The Spring of the Tiger Page 3

  "It sounds like a play."

  ''It felt like a play when I was trapped in that jungle. A drama though . . . and I yearned for a comedy. I gathered that the valiant soldiers led by the colonel captured the tyrant of Kandy and they kept him in exile for the rest of his life. His family had ruled for two thousand years. I remember that part. It was like the last line before the curtain of the second act. Now this is where the colonel comes in. He was very skilled with medicines. They had to be that, for a greater menace than the followers of the wicked King of Kandy were the diseases which could attack those who were strangers to the land. Well, it so happened that one of the mighty nabobs had a son who was attacked by a cobra. The colonel came along at the precise moment and killed the cobra, but the child was dying, so they thought. By great good fortune one of the herbs in the colonel's medicine kit saved the child's life. Yes, I really think someone ought to make a play of it. The Ashington Pearls! That would be a good title. Pearls, diamonds, rubies, there is something appealing about them, don't you think?"

  I agreed and was all impatience to hear more.

  "Mind you," she went on, "the story continues on conventional lines. You have guessed the outcome already. Grateful, mighty nabob asks himself what he can give in exchange for his son's hfe. Nothing could be as valuable to him as that, and the gods will not be very pleased with him if he does not show his gratitude to them for producing the colonel at the right moment. He grapples with himself. What object does he value most outside his sons and daughters? There are the pearls. So he gave your great-great-great—I am not sure how many 'greats'—grandfather the pearls. That's the story and those are the pearls. There were conditions. The pearls were priceless. A fortune in themselves. The Ashing-tons, besides being brave soldiers, were sharp businessmen. They tried to have them valued. Each pearl was perfect and of a remarkable size and there is a diamond and emerald clasp which it-

  self is a masterpiece of artistry. The Kandyan nabob made the sort of speech which is considered right for such ceremonies of endowment. The pearls would bring bad luck if they passed into the wrong hands. Only the blood of an eldest son could compare with their worth. The nabob had hesitated to part with them for he feared that might bring him ill fortune . . . but the incomparable pearls were the only object worthy to offer for the life of his son."

  "It's wonderful," I said enthusiastically.

  She smiled at me. "Dear Little Siddons, you are such a child."

  I was ready to accept the fact to please my mother since it put her in the right mood to go on.

  "The pearls were mine for a while. They had been worn by your father's first wife and then they came to me . . . but not for keeps. No one keeps the pearls. That's one of the rules. I wore them, as you see, while my portrait was painted." She closed her eyes. "There was a room where the light was right. It v/as a dark house, that one. The bushes and trees grew so thick round it. Towards the end I used to dream that they grew up in the night while I slept and shut me in so that I was a prisoner there forever. You see what effect the place was having on me."

  "But you did escape and you brought me with you. Tell me more about the pearls."

  "As soon as they touched my skin I felt a sort of fascination. I suppose I thought of that Kandyan nobleman and all the people who had worn the necklace before me. The artist who painted me was a pleasant young Englishman. He fell in love with me. He said the pearls were like my skin . . . flawless. His painting of me was perfect but he was never satisfied with the pearls. He said they changed—actually altered in texture—while he tried to paint them. When the picture was finished he took a small boat along the river Mahaweli Ganga and drifted out to sea. The boat came back but he was not in it. Sheba said that the pearls had brought him bad luck. Or I had. I had never thought him very serious when he talked of being in love with me."

  "And you never liked the pearls after that."

  "No, I never did."

  "Where are they now?"

  "I suppose Clytie has them. They go to her unless your father

  marries again and has a son . . . but how can he when I'm alive. There would be no divorce. The Ashingtons would never allow that. So it seems Clytie has a clear run . . . though it's against the rules in a way. She's an Ashington, but if she marries and has a son, they'd go to her son's wife."

  "It's all so interesting to me. Who is Clytie?"

  "She is my stepdaughter, the daughter of your father's first wife. I went out there when she was a year old."

  "Tell me more about Clytie. What is she like?"

  "She was four years old when I left. I noticed nothing much about her. I rarely saw her. She was left with her nurse all the time. When you came you were in the nursery with her. Sheba looked after you both."

  "Irene Rushton," I said solemnly, "do you realize I have just learned I have a sister."

  "A half sister."

  "I always wanted a sister. Clytie! It's an unusual name."

  "Your father said that when she was born she was like a sunflower."

  "I know. Clytie was a water nymph and Apollo fell in love with her. He turned her into a sunflower so that she would always be turned towards him on his daily journeys across the heavens."

  "What nonsense," said my mother.

  "He must have felt very tender towards her," I replied softly.

  "You're a romantic idiot."

  "At the moment I feel a rather bewildered one. I'm so excited. I have a sister. If only I could see her!"

  It was the wrong thing to have said. My mother was clearly wishing she had not told me so much. Her mouth was set rather grimly. She wrapped up the picture and handed me the keys. "Put it away," she said. There was a finality about the statement.

  The picture was symbolic. She had brought too much out of the hidden places of memory this morning. Secrets were going to be laid away. She would not be so rash again.

  I was right. She was not.

  Events followed their normal course. Depression set in; moods followed. "She's like a bear with a sore head," said Meg. "Two

  sore heads," added Janet, and she said ominously: "I reckon we'd make a good thing out of that hostelry, Meg."

  Then Tom Mellor came up with a play and it was the right one. Rehearsals began; there were tantrums and the ordeal of learning lines while she changed her personahty and became the character she was to play.

  "One of these days she'll play a murderess," said Meg. Then we shall all have to look out."

  "You'd see me out of this house like a streak of lightning," was Janet's comment; and I had the impression that she would not altogether dislike my mother's taking on such a role.

  But she played the fascinating siren, which suited her beautifully, and in a few weeks, after the excitement of the first night and the ordeal of reading the notices next day, for fear some critic should offend her, the days passed as they had so many times before.

  We were back to normal and there was not another word about Clytie.

  But I did not forget her.

  I thought a great deal about my family and longed to know more of them, but there was no one whom I could ask except my mother, and on the occasions when I brought up the matter she showed so clearly that she had no intention of telling me more— and gave such an indication that she was sorr}' she had betrayed so much—that I realized I had to wait for an opportune moment.

  I tried to pump Meg. I was sure she would talk about it if she knew anything. All she could tell me was what I knew already. My mother had astonished everyone by marrying a tea planter and going off to Ceylon, from where she had returned three years later with a child, myself.

  "Three years was not long enough for people to forget. She was welcomed back with open arms, you might say. She'd matured, they said. Not that she liked the word. Flowered into perfection. That was better. Well, she's got that—whatever you call it—that brings them flocking to see her. When she's onstage no one looks at anyone else. Some of the other players like that—I don't th
inkl

  But she's an actress from her toes to her fingertips. She'll act her way through life, that one."

  So all I could get from Meg was the story of triumphs and chances thrown away. I talked of her to Toby, but he knew nothing. He had seen her for the first time only eighteen months ago and fallen under her spell—so much so that he had made himself important to her in the only way he could—teaching her daughter.

  I was with him a great deal, as well as during those morning sessions at the worktable. He showed me London. Once we sneaked out in the early morning to Covent Garden. It was exciting to see the fruit and the flowers and bustling traders. We went to Kensington Gardens and watched the children—and some grown-ups— saihng their boats on the Round Pond; we went into the Orangery and wandered around the pleached alley; we walked through Kensington Gardens, Hyde Park, Green Park and St. James's— grass all the way in the heart of town with only the lovely muted sound of traffic to remind us that we were in the heart of a big city. We walked down Pall Mall, where Charles II had played the game which gave it its name, and paused to pay homage in Whitehall where his father, Charles I, had lost his head. We sailed along the river to Hampton Court and Windsor.

  We played games of our own invention. One of us would hum a bar of music and the other had to guess what it was. We had a quotations game in which a subject was chosen and we had to find a verse or a proverb about it. I liked the animal ones best when one of us would shout "Ass" and the other would answer "The law is an ass." Or "Bear" and the answer would be "Catch the bear before you sell his skin." A great deal of it came from poetry, at which Toby excelled; we scored points for correct answers and were not allowed to use the same quotation twice. "Tiger" brought forth "Tiger, tiger burning bright" several times and then Toby came up with one which stuck in my mind and I remembered later.

  "And their revenge is as a tiger's spring. Deadly, and quick and crushing. . ."

  "Whose revenge?" I wanted to know, and he quoted the verse from Byron's Don Juan.

  t*i

  'Alas the love of women! It is known To be a lovely and a fearful thing; For all of theirs upon that die is thrown. And if 'tis lost, life has no more to bring To them but mockeries of the past alone. And their revenge is as the tiger's spring. Deadly, and quick and crushing; yet as real Torture is theirs—what they inflict they feeV "

  I was impressed and after that we started reading Byron together.

  I took it all for granted that lovely summer which was the final chapter to a way of life. I was to look back on it with bittersweet memories in the years to come.

  I was a child at heart, whether I put my hair up or not, and it never occurred to me that change was waiting to spring just like the tiger. I thought—if I thought at all—that those summer days would last forever and we could continue our explorations in the years to come.

  The play had a very long run. It was going to be a record, everyone said. If it had been a short one I think my mother might have grown uneasy about the time I spent with Toby. She liked her admirers to be always at her call. It was not that Toby adored her any the less. He had just found a way of serving her which was proving to be very pleasant.

  Once, greatly daring, Toby took me to the theater. We did not tell my mother. It was evening and Toby said there was something about a theater in the evening that there wasn't in the afternoon. I wore one of my mother's dresses. I was as tall as she was. "You're going to be a lamppost, you are," Meg had said. "All skin and bone if you ask me," added Janet.

  "Nonsense," said Toby, "you'll be tall and elegant."

  What a comfort Toby was!

  The dress was of the simpler kind—one she had worn for an ingenue role—and it was blue, which gave my greenish grayish eyes a hint of blue. I put my hair up—heinous sin—and we set out in a hansom.

  What an evening! How we laughed! We gripped hands when

  my mother appeared on the stage and we were both overcome by emotion at the sight of her.

  She was a wonderful actress. I was not surprised that so many people came to see her and that she had been welcomed back with open arms. We saw Everard in the stalls. He had to be careful that he wasn't seen because apparently he was well known on account of his position in the House. He would bring her home and stay, I guessed.

  I loved the play, I wept when tears were expected and Toby gave me his handkerchief to wipe my eyes. It was characteristic of me that I had come without my own. As soon as it was over and the actors and actresses were taking their curtain calls, Toby hustled me out.

  "I'd love to take you to supper," he said. "That would round o£E the evening, but it would be running it a bit fine."

  I agreed. I imagined getting back to the house to find my mother already there. Her wrath would be great, I knew, for not only was my hair up, but I reckoned I looked quite seventeen years old.

  It was exciting coming out with the crowds. We even saw the royal carriage with the Prince of Wales in it.

  "With the princess for once," commented Toby. "Not one of the harem."

  I laughed, feeling enormously sophisticated as we set off in the hansom giggling over the adventure.

  Janet saw us coming in. She was noncommittal but I saw the grim smile of satisfaction about her lips and I knew she was thinking of my mother, whom I had begun to realize she did not like very much. She resented Meg's servitude and was always comparing what she called the pollution of London, which she and her sister unnecessarily endured, with the fresh air of the country which, with a littie common sense, could be theirs.

  I couldn't sleep when I went to bed that night. I lay thinking how exciting life was and how wonderful it was to grow up.

  I heard my mother come in. Everard was with her.

  I still lay awake thinking of her meeting my father and going to that strange house in Ceylon which I fancied had frightened her a little. I thought of Colonel Ashington and the pearis, and most of

  all I thought of Chide. I wondered if I should see her one day. But even then I didn't think of change.

  It was a few days after that visit to the theater when I noticed the woman in the black cloak. I glanced out of my bedroom window and saw her. What called my attention to her was the fact that she seemed to be staring at the house. I couldn't see her face very well because the cloak had a hood and it was drawn forward, hiding a great deal.

  I turned away from the window and put some of my clothes away and was thus occupied for about ten minutes. Then I went back to the window again. The woman was still there.

  The impulse came to me to go and ask her if she wanted something. Then I realized how naive that would be. She was probably meeting someone or perhaps going somewhere and was too early.

  "You're what I'd call a rusher-in," Meg had told me. "You don't stop to think. It comes into your head and you say or do it. Then it's said and done and there's no going back."

  Many people passed through Denton Square. It was not exactly a backwater. Then it came to me. Of course she was one of my mother's admirers. That was the solution. Someone gazing in wonder at the house where she lived.

  As I stood watching I saw Meg hurrying along. She took out her key, and as she did so the woman crossed the road and spoke to her. Meg nodded and exchanged a few words and then she came in.

  I continued to stand at the window after the door had shut on Meg. The woman had turned and crossed the road again. She stood for a little while looking at the house. Then I believe she was aware of me standing behind the lace curtain for her eyes seemed to be fixed on the window.

  I didn't know why it was but I felt a sudden shiver run down my spine and a horrible inexplicable fear came to me as I stood there. It was what Janet would have said, like "someone walking over your grave."

  It seemed a long time—but it could only have been a matter of seconds—before she turned away and began to walk rapidly off. My heart was beating fast as I watched her. I felt there was something strange about her.

  So strongly did I fe
el it, that I went to find Meg at once.

  She was in the kitchen and had unwrapped some cosmetics and ribbons she had been out to buy for my mother.

  "Look at this," she said, holding up a pale mauve ribbon. 'The nearest I could get. I don't think it's going to suit her ladyship. I tramped the whole length of Bond Street and couldn't get better."

  "It's lovely, Meg," I said. "Who was that woman standing outside?"

  "Woman!" Meg was clearly concentrating on ribbon and the difficulty of finding the right color through the whole length of Bond Street. "Woman?" she repeated. "No, I don't think it's going to please her. There's too much red in that mauve. It's the nice bluey shade she wants. What was that?"

  "The woman," I said. "Who was that woman?"

  "Oh, her . . . Wanted to know if Irene Rushton lived here. Another of them. They get a thrill just walking down the street where her dainty feet have trod."

  "She looked . . . different."

  "They come in all shapes and sizes, ducky. You'd be surprised at some of the types I've seen hanging round stage doors. I've seen millionaires that look like tramps and penniless young bloods that would pass for the highest in the land. You don't want to take notice of looks."

  "Yes," I said thoughtfully. "So it was just another of Irene Rushton's admirers."

  "That's about the ticket," Meg confirmed.

  I couldn't entirely forget the woman. Her image kept coming in and out of my mind. Then I forgot all about her for something quite devastating happened.

  I was sitting at the schoolroom table with Toby when he said suddenly: "I'm leaving England, Sarah."

  It was as though the clock on the mantelpiece had stopped; someone had kicked the jigsaw of my life which I was carefully putting together and in which I had thought Toby did not figure so very largely until that moment. It was like the end of my world.

  He smiled almost apologetically. "Well," he said, "it couldn't be expected to go on, could it? I had to do something ... my fa-