Saraband for Two Sisters

Bersaba was beside me. She had her arms about me, holding me tightly. “You’re all right now. I thought I saw Richard down here, so I came ... and it was that. He saw me and-“ Mr. and Mrs. Cherry were running out of the house and as she came to the figure on the grass Mrs. Cherry did a strange thing. She knelt beside it and laid her face on the fallen body.

It was like a nightmare. The coldness of the night and Bersaba and I standing there clinging together as though one feared she would lose the other; the body lying on the grass and Mrs. Cherry rocking back and forth on her heels, incoherently murmuring in obvious uncontrollable grief. Grace and Meg came out with Jesson, and Grace knelt down and said, “He’s dead.”

Mrs. Cherry wailed, “Cherry shot him. He shot our son.”

Cherry laid his hand on his wife’s shoulder and tried to comfort her.

“We ought to get him into the house,” said Jesson.

The sight of the blood sickened me. Bersaba put her arm about me. “You should go back to bed, Angelet,” she said.

I ignored her. I had to know what was happening.

They put him in the weapons room and as he lay there on the floor I caught a glimpse of his face. It was strange and terrifying. Thick and wiry hair grew low on the brow; hair covered the lower part of his face; but there was something evil about that face which had not been put there by death.

Grace took Mrs. Cherry away and we were left with Cherry and Jesson in the hall.

I said, “What does this mean? Who is this man? You shot him, Cherry?”

Cherry said, “Yes, I shot him. You heard Mrs. Cherry. It’s true. He is our son.”

‘Where did he come from?” asked Bersaba. “How is it that he has appeared here suddenly?»

“He escaped, my lady. He escaped once before. It has been a great trial to us. He was in a madhouse. He had the strength of two men and he was dangerous. I couldn’t have him in the house. He caused such damage before. There didn’t seem nothing else to do. I knew I’d have to ...if ever he came back.”

Bersaba took control of the situation. She went to the kitchen and brought something from Mrs. Cherry’s cupboard, poured it into a goblet, and made Cherry drink it. “You must control yourself,” she said. ‘What you did you believed to be for the best.»

“ ‘Twas a terrible trial to us all these years, for we never knew when he might break out again.”

“There’s nothing you can do now,” said Bersaba. “He is dead. Tomorrow you must take him out of the house and bury him.”

Cherry nodded.

“Jesson shall take you to bed.”

“I did it to save you, my lady. I did it to save the house. There’s no knowing what he would have done. He goes mad, see. He would have burnt the place down. I had to do it. I had to. Mrs. Cherry must see it But he’s her son and-“ Bersaba turned to Jesson. “Take him to his room, Jesson,” she said. “Stay with him and Mrs. Cherry. I’ll look after my sister.”

She led me to my room and stayed with me. We talked for a long time. “He did right,” she said. “You could see that he was mad-even as he lay there on the grass. If he had got into the house he might have murdered us all. Cherry must have known how desperate he was.”

“To shoot his own son-“ I began.

“He is better dead.” _ Though the children had slept peacefully through the disturbance there was no sleep for any of the adults in the house that night. In the morning Cherry and Jesson took the body away and buried it on the edge of the paddock and they put a stone there on which Cherry engraved the words “Joseph Cherry” and the date. He talked to us afterward more calmly than he had on the previous night. Bersaba was wonderful, for she made him realize that in sacrificing his son he had saved us all, for the story Cherry had to tell was horrifying. His son had been born abnormal; during his childhood he had become violent. As a boy he had found a special delight in torturing and killing animals, and later he had had an uncontrollable urge to do the same to human beings. He had had to be taken into a madhouse and chained. He had escaped once before and some instinct had brought him to his parents. So he had come to Far Flamstead. Then his presence had only been discovered when he had entered the house. He was stopped in time before he had set it on fire. Then his father had shot him through the leg. That was what he had aimed to do on this occasion, but the shot had entered his heart.

“You are a brave man, Cherry,” said Bersaba, “and I think everyone in this house should be grateful to you today!”

Of course the incident had changed the household. Before, we had been on the alert for soldiers who might destroy our home and kill us. Now we had been brought face to face with an equally terrifying situation. Both Bersaba and I trembled at the thought of what might have happened if that madman had entered the room in which the sleeping children lay, and we couldn’t be grateful enough to Cherry.