Heritage

by Vita Sackville-West

  ‘I looked hastily at Ruth; she had seen the thing happen. The distress which had troubled her face gave way to anger; the name “Rawdon!” slipped in involuntary indignation from her lips. Then an instinct asserted itself to pretend that she had seen nothing, and to get out of the place before her cousin had discovered her. But she conquered the instinct, staring at Westmacott till he turned as though compelled in her direction.

  ‘Not a word did they speak to one another then, but in the silence her anger and contempt flashed across at him like a heliograph, and his vexation flashed back at her. She stood there staring at him deliberately, staring him out of countenance. God! how vexed and furious he was! It makes me laugh now to remember it. I never knew what a fool a man could look when he was caught red-handed. The gipsy only giggled vulgarly, and tried to rearrange her tumbled dress. Ruth never even glanced at her, and presently she removed her gaze, from Westmacott — it seemed quite a long time though I suppose it was not really more than a few seconds — and turned to me.

  ‘ “Shall we go?” she said.

  ‘We went, Ruth haughty, and I at a loss for words. Decidedly the expedition had not been a success. The sheep-dog ran on in front and tactfully, barked, and in throwing little stones at him relations were re-established between us. I was prepared not to allude to the incident, but Ruth was bolder; she grappled directly with the difficulty.

  ‘ “You saw Rawdon?” she said with suppressed violence.

  ‘ “I . . . Well, yes, I saw him.”

  ‘ “What was he doing there? He was up to no good with those gipsy women.”

  ‘I had nothing to say; I knew she was right.

  ‘ “He’s always after women,’ she added violently.

  ‘I knew that she would not have said this to me had she not been completely startled out of her self-control.

  ‘ “He cares for you though, in his heart,” I said, rather inanely.

  ‘ “Does he!” she exclaimed. “It doesn’t look like it.”

  ‘ “Well,” I said, “he rides the cart-horses bare-back with his face to their tails to please you.”

  ‘ “Oh, you may joke,” she said; “he wants to please me now, but where’d I be if I belonged to him? He’d sing a very different song.”

  ‘ “It rests with you, after all,” I ventured.

  ‘She was silent, swishing at the hedges with her stick as she passed.

  ‘ “Doesn’t it?” I urged.

  ‘ “Oh — I suppose so.”

  ‘ “How do you mean, you suppose so? Nobody wants you to marry him; your parents don’t; your brothers don’t. You need never see him again. Send him away!”

  ‘ “I can’t do that,” she said in a very low voice.

  ‘ “Why not?”

  ‘ “I can’t . . . I sometimes feel I can’t escape Rawdon,” she cried out. “He’s always been there since I can remember, I think he always will be there. There’s something between us; it may be fancy; but there’s something between us.”

  ‘ “Hush!” I said, startled as I was; “here he is.”

  ‘He caught us up, walking rapidly, and I could see at a glance that he was determined to have it out with Ruth in spite of my presence. He came up with us, and he took her by the arm.

  ‘ “Ruth!” he said, in a vibrant voice. “I want a word with you. You’ve misjudged me.”

  ‘We had all come to a standstill.

  ‘ “I can’t misjudge what I see,” she answered very coldly.

  ‘ “You saw, you saw! well, and what of it? That was only a bit of fun. Damn you, if you treated me a bit better yourself. . . .”

  ‘ “Let me alone, Rawdon,” she said, shaking him off. “You can do as you like, that’s your affair, only let me alone. I don’t want to talk to you. You go your way, and I’ll go mine.”

  ‘ “Your way!” she said, scowling at me. “Your way’s my way, as you’ll learn.”

  ‘ “Now don’t you come bullying me, Rawdon,” she said, but I think she was frightened.

  ‘ “Well, you speak me fair and I won’t bully you. I was up to no harm, only larking around. . . . Come, Ruthie, haven’t you a smile for me? You treat me cruel bad most days, you know, and I don’t take offence. Ruthie!”

  ‘ “We’re not alone, Rawdon,” she said sharply.

  ‘I thought he muttered, “No, damn it!” between his teeth, and just then I felt a hand close over my wrist on the side farthest from Westmacott, a little imploring hand that checked in the nick of time my impulse to move away. She spoke bravely, as though the contact gave her courage.

  ‘ “That’ll do, now, Rawdon, don’t come making a scene. There’s nothing to make a scene about.”

  ‘ “But you’ll not sulk me?” he said.

  ‘ “I’ll not sulk you, why should I?”

  ‘ “Then give me a kiss, for peace.”

  ‘ “Let me be, Rawdon.”

  ‘She was troubled, now that her anger had passed. I would have walked on, but for the dry, fevered fingers gripping my wrist.

  ‘A new idea had taken possession of Rawdon’s mind; his eyes glowed in the noble, architectural carving of his face, that so belied the coarseness of his nature.

  ‘ “I’m your cousin, Ruth! “ he cried satirically.

  ‘He caught her by the shoulder and turned her towards him. I thought she would have struggled, and indeed I saw the preparatory tautening of her frame; then to my astonishment she yielded suddenly, flexible and abandoned, and he kissed her regardless of my presence; kissed her ferociously, and pushed her from him.

  ‘ “I’ll see you tomorrow?” he asked.

  ‘ “Tomorrow, likely,” she answered indifferently, with a quick return to her old contemptuous manner.

  ‘He nodded, put his hand on the top bar of the adjoining gate, and vaulted it, walking off rapidly across the fields in the direction of his own farm.

  ‘ “And let me tell you,” said Ruth, as though she were continuing an uninterrupted conversation, “he’ll be back around that gipsy place tonight as sure as geese at Michaelmas. He’s as false as can be, is Rawdon.”

  ‘ “Then I think you were weak with him,” I said. “Are you afraid of him?”

  ‘ “It’s like this,” said Ruth, with that great uneasy heave of the uneducated when confronted with the explanation of a problem beyond the scope of their vocabulary, “we never get straight, Rawdon and I. He cringes to me, and then I bully him; or else he bullies me, and then I cringe to him. But quarrel as we may, we always come together again. It’s no good,” she said with a note of despair in her expressive voice like the melancholy of a violin, “we can’t get away from one another. We always come together again.”

  ‘I was sad; I foresaw that those two would drift into marriage from pure physical need, though there might well be more hatred than love between them.

  ‘In the meantime I tried, not always very successfully, to keep Ruth away from him; she liked being with me, I know, and I think she even welcomed a barrier between herself and her all-too compelling cousin, and so it came about that our Sunday afternoons were, as I have told you, usually spent together. There were times when she broke away from me, when the physical craving became, I suppose, too strong for her, and she would go back to Rawdon. But for the most part she would come after dinner on Sundays, silent and reserved, to see if I was disposed for a walk. She would come in her daily untidiness, with the colour blowing in her cheeks, as beautiful and as wild as a flower. I used to feel sorry for Westmacott and his hot blood.

  ‘On these afternoons I tried my experiments on Ruth, and I sometimes wonder whether she ever caught me at the game, for she would give me a scared, distrustful glance, and turn her head away. She was curiously lazy for so hard a worker, and in sudden indolence she would refuse to move, but would lie on the
ground idle and half asleep, and would do nothing but eat the sweets I gave her. I never saw a book in her hand. Once,’ said Malory, throwing a bit of wood at the goats, ‘I thought I would convert her to Art. I brought out some treasured books, and showed her the pictures; she was neither bewildered, nor bored, nor impressed, nor puzzled; she simply thought the masterpieces unspeakably funny. She laughed. . . . I was absurdly offended at first, then I began to come round to her point of view, and now I am not at all sure that I don’t agree. She opened out for me a new attitude.

  ‘After the failure of my pictures, I tried her with a more tangible object. I took her to Penshurst. In telling you of this I am making a very real sacrifice of my pride and self-respect, for, as sometimes happens, I have realised since, from my disinclination to dwell in my own mind upon the incident, that the little rapier of humiliation went deeper than I thought, down to that point in the heart where indifference ceases and essentials begin.’

  As Malory said this, he looked at me with his quizzical, interrogative expression, as if to see how I was taking it. I noticed then that he had a crooked smile which gave to his face a quaint attraction. He was a clean-shaven man, with lean features and a dark skin; graying hair; I supposed him to be in the neighbourhood of forty.

  ‘When I asked Ruth if she would come to Penshurst with me,’ he continued, ‘she said she must change her dress. She was absent for about half an hour, while I waited in the garden and threw stones for the sheep-dog. When she joined me I saw that she had done her best to smarten herself up; she had frizzed her hair and put on a hat, and her blouse was decorated with some sort of lace — I can’t give you a closer description than that. I scarcely recognised her, and though I felt that I was expected to make some comment I knew at the same time that I was physically unable to do so. ‘How nice you look!” were the words that my will hammered out in my brain, but the words that left my lips were, “Come along.”

  ‘We started thus unpropitiously, and the strain between us was tautened at every step by the mood of excitement which possessed her. I had never known her like this before. Usually she was quiet, lazy about her speech, and not particularly apposite when she did make a remark, yet I had always found her a satisfactory companion. Today she chattered volubly, and the painful conviction grew upon me that she was trying to be coy; she hinted that she had broken an appointment with Westmacott; I became more and more silent and miserable. I had anticipated with so much pleasure our going to Penshurst, and I knew now that the afternoon was to be a failure. When we reached the house, bad became worse; Ruth giggled in the rooms, and the housekeeper looked severely at her. She made terrible jokes about the pictures; giggled again, crammed her handkerchief against her mouth; pinched my arm. At last my endurance gave out, and I said, “We had better go home,” and I thanked the housekeeper, and said we would find our own way out.

  ‘Ruth was very crestfallen as we went silently across the park; she walked with hanging head beside me, and as I looked down on the top of her absurd hat I was almost sorry for her, but I was really annoyed, and childishly disappointed, so I said nothing, and stared gloomily in front of me. I thought that if I thus marked my disapproval of her sudden mood she would never repeat the experiment, and that next day she would return to her blue linen dress and her habitual reserve. I did not think she would make a scene, but rather that she would be glad to pass over the disaster in silence.

  ‘I was surprised when she stopped abruptly.

  ‘ “I suppose you’ll never take me out again?” she said, as though the idea had been boiling wildly in her brain till it found a safety valve in her lips.

  ‘ “My dear Ruth . . .” I began.

  ‘ “How cold you are!” she cried violently, and she stamped her foot upon the ground. “Why don’t you get angry with me? shake me? abuse me? at any rate, say something. Only “my dear Ruth.” I suppose I’m not good enough for you to speak to. If that’s it, say so. I’ll go home a different way. What have I done? What’s wrong? What have I done?”

  ‘I realised that she was in the grip of an emotion she could not control. Such emotions came over one but seldom in ordinary life, but when they come they are uncontrollable, for they spring from that point in the heart, which I was speaking of, where indifference ceases and essentials begin. Still, while realising this, I hardened myself against her.

  ‘ “Nothing,” I said, adding, “except failed to be yourself.”

  ‘ “What do you want me to be?” she asked, staring at me.

  ‘ “My dear Ruth,” I said, “I like you in blue linen.”

  ‘I swear I only meant it symbolically; it was perhaps foolish of me to think she would understand. She went on staring at me for a moment, then a change came over her face, a wounded look, horrible to see, and I felt I had hurt a child, most grievously, but before I could rush into the breach I had made and build it up again with fair words, she had dropped her face into her hands and I saw that her shoulders were shaking. She uttered no word of reproach or self-justification, no plea; thereby increasing her pathos a hundredfold.

  ‘I was distressed and embarrassed beyond measure; I hated myself, but no longer hated her. I had begun to like her again in the brief period of her rage, and now in the period of her despair I liked her again completely. I implored her to stop crying, and I tried confusedly to explain my meaning.

  ‘She would have none of my explanations, but turned on me cheeks flaming with a shame which forbade any allusion to her clothes. I could see that she was trembling from head to foot, and by the force of her authority over me I gauged the force of her emotion over herself. Genius and passion are alike compelling. Here was a Ruth I did not know, but it was a Ruth I had desired to see, and I triumphed secretly for having divined her under the Ruth of every day.

  ‘Well,’ said Malory, ‘I have made my confession now, for it partakes of the nature of confession. I never saw that piteous finery again, and I never saw the mood that matched it. She calmed down at length, and we made a compact of friendship, but if ever the name of Penshurst arose in conversation I saw the scarlet flags fluttering in her cheeks.

  ‘Meanwhile the familiarity of the place grew on me, as I had foreseen, and there were many inmates of the farm, now old-established, whom I had known since their birth; plants and animals alike. We were haymaking, a common enough pursuit, but to me full of delight; I loved the ready fields, the unceasing whirr and rattle of the cutter, the browning grass as it lay where it had fallen, and the rough wooden rake in my hand. I loved the curve of the fields over the hill, and the ridges of hay stretching away like furrows. Above all I loved the great stack, which swallowed up the cart-loads one by one, and the green tarpaulins furled above it, which made it look like a galleon with sails and rigging.

  ‘I told you I had dipped into many things; I worked once on a Greek trader which plied with figs and oranges from Smyrna to Corinth through the islands of the Aegean. It was a bulky, mediaeval-looking vessel, with vast red sails, very little changed, I should imagine, from the one in which Ulysses sailed on his immortal journey. I learnt a certain amount about the orange trade, but I learnt another thing from that Greek ship which I value more: I learnt about colour, hot, tawny colour, that ran the gamut from the bronze limbs of the crew, through the Venetian sails, to the fire of the fruit, and echoed again in the sunset behind Hymettus, and dropped in the cool aquamarine of the waves near the shore, and deepened into sapphire as I hung over the sides of the ship above the moving water. From this rich canvas I had come to the grays and greens and browns of England, the dove after the bird of Paradise, and, do you know, I felt the relationship of the two, the relationship of labour between the Greek, the almost pirate, crew, and the English farmer with his classic and primitive tools, the brotherhood between the sweeping scythe and the dipping oar, between the unwieldy stack and the clumsy vessel.

  ‘The scent of the hay is in my nostrils, and
the stirring is in my arms to throw up my fork-load upon the cart. We worked sometimes till ten at night, a race with the weather; we worked by sunlight and moonlight, and I preferred the latter. You may think that I preferred it because it pleased me to see the round yellow moon come up from behind the trees, and light that wholesome scene with its unwholesome radiance? Well, you are wrong, I am perhaps less perverse than you think me. I preferred it because I got less hot.

  ‘Rawdon Westmacott used to come over to help us. A pair of extra hands was welcome, but I think old Pennistan would rather the hands had been tied on to any other body. It was quite clear that he neglected his own farm only to be near Ruth, and I had long since gathered that the Pennistans would never willingly consider him as a son-in-law. I sympathised with them. He was an unruly man, as wild as he was handsome, a byword among the young men of the countryside; prompt with his fists — that was perhaps the best thing that could be said of him — foul with his tongue, intolerable when in his cups. So quarrelsome was he that even when sober he would seek out cause for insult. I myself, who in my capacity of guest, took every precaution to avoid any unpleasantness, had an ominous encounter with him. I had spent a day in London, and returned with various little gifts which I had thought would please the Pennistans; to Ruth I brought a pair of big, round, brass earrings and a coloured scarf, for I had a fancy to see her tricked out as a gipsy. It entertained me to see her, who as I told you was habitually slow of mind, enthusiasm, and speech, respond with some latent instinct to the gaudy things. She ran to the glass in the kitchen and began to screw the rings on to her unpierced ears.

  ‘ “You must learn to dance now, Ruth,” I said.

  ‘She looked round at me, and in the turn of her head and the flash of the rings I seemed to see Concha of the gipsy booth.