Seducers in Ecuador and the Heir

by Vita Sackville-West

  Bellamy was buried, and Lomax, Artivale, and Miss Whitaker attended the funeral, drawn together again into their little group of four, – if you counted Bellamy, invisible, but terribly present, in his coffin. To be buried in the rain is dreary, but to be buried on a morning of gay sunshine is more ironical. Fortunately for Lomax, he was able to obscure the sunshine by the use of his black glasses; and heaven knows he needed them. He was either indifferent or oblivious to the remarkable appearance he offered, in a top-hat, a black coat, and black spectacles. “Weak eyes,” noted the reporters. In fact he cared nothing for externals now, especially with the memory of his last meeting with Bellamy strong upon him. On seeing Miss Whitaker he roused himself a little, just enough to look at her with a wondering curiosity; he had forgotten her existence lately, except for the dim but constant knowledge that something stood blocked between him and Marion Vane, a something that wore neither name nor features, and whose materialisation he recognised, briefly puzzled by her importance, as Miss Whitaker. Important yet not important, for, in the muffled world which was his refuge, nothing mattered; events happened, but his mind registered nothing. Marion Vane herself was but a figure coming to him with outstretched hands, a figure so long desired, wearing that very gesture seemingly so impossible; and, in that gesture finally made, so instantly repudiated. His whole relationship with Marion Vane seemed now condensed into that moment of repudiation. “I am the resurrection and the life,” saith the Lord, but the clods thumped down with very convincing finality into Bellamy’s grave. Miss Whitaker stood near him, in black, very fragile; yes, she too had her pathos. Whether she had or had not trapped him with a lie . . . well, the lie, and the necessity for the lie, were of a deeper pathos than any truth she might have chosen to exploit. It is less pathetic to have a seducer in Ecuador than to have no seducer anywhere. But she might, thought Lomax, at least have acted up to her own invention. She might, knowing that she was going to meet him at the funeral, at least have thrust a cushion up under her skirt. A coarse man, Lomax. But perhaps she would have thought that irreverent at a funeral. There was no telling what queer superstitions people had; half the time, they did not know themselves, until a test found them out. Perhaps Miss Whitaker had boggled at that. Give her the benefit of the doubt; oh, surely better to credit her with a scruple than with lack of imagination! “I am become the first-fruits of them that sleep” – what did it all mean, anyway? Bellamy and the storm; why should the storm have given Bellamy courage? brought, so to speak, his hitherto only speculative courage to a head? Where was the relationship? What bearing had the extrinsic world upon the intrinsic? Why should the contemplation of life through coloured glasses make that life the easier to ruin? Why should reality recede? What was reality? Marion with her hands outstretched; so sure of him. Better to have helped Bellamy; better to have helped Miss Whitaker. Even though Miss Whitaker’s need of help was, perhaps, fictitious? Yes, even so. The loss was hers, not his. Her falsity could not impair his quixotism; that was a wild, irrational thing, separate, untouched, independent. It flamed out of his life, – for all the unreality of Miss Whitaker, that actual Miss Whitaker who subscribed to the census paper, paid rates and taxes, and had an existence in the eyes of the law, – it flamed as a few things flamed: his two meetings with Bellamy, his repudiation of Marion Vane. There were just a few gashes of life, bitten in; that was all one could hope for. Was it worth living seventy, eighty years, to accumulate half-a-dozen scars? Half-a-dozen ineradicable pictures, scattered over the monotony of seventy, eighty pages. He had known, when he married Miss Whitaker, that he repudiated Marion Vane; to repudiate her when she came with outstretched hands was but the projection of the half-hour in the Cairo registry office. But it was that that he remembered, and her hurt incredulous eyes; as it was Bellamy’s cry that he remembered; always the tangible thing, – such was the weakness of the human, fleshly system. Now Bellamy would rot and be eaten, “Earth to earth, dust to dust”; his sickly body corrupting within the senseless coffin; and by that Lomax would be haunted, rather than by his spiritual tragedy; the tangible again, in the worms crawling in and out of a brain its master had preferred to still into eternal nescience. How long did it take for the buried flesh to become a skeleton? So long, and no less, would Lomax be haunted by the rotting corpse of Bellamy, as he would not have been haunted by the man dragging out a living death. Illogical, all of it; based neither upon truth nor upon reason, but always upon instinct, which reason dismissed as fallacious. Lomax opened his eyes, which he had closed; saw the world darkened, though he knew the sun still shone; and regretted nothing.

  He had never before seen Miss Whitaker’s house. It was small, and extremely conventional. He sat drinking her tea, and telling himself over and over again that she was his wife. There were letters on her writing-table, and he caught himself looking for the foreign stamp; but he could see nothing but bills. He suspected her correspondence of containing nothing more intimate. Yet here she was, a woman secretly married; that, at any rate, was true, whatever else might be false. He wondered whether she hinted it to her acquaintances, and whether they disbelieved her.

  “Why did you laugh?” said Miss Whitaker.

  They resumed their conversation. It was feverishly impersonal, yet they both thought it must end by crashing into the shrine of intimacy. But as though their lives depended upon it they juggled with superficiality. Lomax devoted only half his attention to their talk, which indeed was of a nature so contemptibly futile as to deserve no more; the rest of his attention wandered about the room, inquiring into the sudden vividness of Miss Whitaker’s possessions: her initials on a paper-cutter, E. A. W.; the photograph of a woman, unknown to him, on the mantelpiece; a little stone Buddha; a seal in the pen-tray. Lomax saw them all through his darkened veil. This was her present, – this small, conventional room; here she opened her morning paper, smoked her after-breakfast cigarette; here she returned in the evening, removed her hat, sat down to a book, poked the fire. But her past stretched away behind her, a blank to Lomax. No doubt she had done sums, worn a pig-tail, cried, and had a mother. So far, conjectures were safe. But her emotional interludes? All locked up? or hadn’t there been any? What, to her, was the half-hour in the Cairo registry office? Did it bulk, to her, as Bellamy and Marion Vane bulked to him? One could never feel the shape of another person’s mind; never justly apprehend its population. And he was not at all anxious to plumb the possibly abysmal pathos of Miss Whitaker; he didn’t want those friends of hers, those strong manly men, to evaporate beneath the crudity of his search. He didn’t want to be faced with the true desolation of the little room.

  The rumours about Bellamy’s death became common property only a few weeks later. They apparently had their origin in Bellamy’s will, by which the fortune went to Lomax, turning him from a poor man into a rich one, to his embarrassed astonishment. He wondered vaguely whether the rumours had been set afoot by Miss Whitaker, but came to the conclusion that fact or what she believed to be fact had less allurement for her than frank fiction. Ergo, he said, her seducer in Ecuador interests her more than her secret husband in London. And he reasoned well.

  Bellamy’s body was exhumed. No one understood why, since the administration of veronal had never been disputed. It was exhumed secretly, at night, by the light of a lantern, and carried into an empty cottage next to the graveyard. The papers next day gave these details. Lomax read them with a nauseous horror. Bellamy, who had abjured life so that his tormented body might be at peace! And now, surrounded by constables, officers of the Law, on a rainy night, lit by the gleams of a hurricane lantern, what remained of his flesh had been smuggled into a derelict cottage and investigated by the scalpel of the anatomist. Truly the grave was neither fine nor private.

  Then the newspaper accounts ceased; Bellamy was reburied; and the world went on as usual.

  A friendship flared up – surely the queerest in London, – between Lomax and Miss Whitaker. They met quite often.
They dined together; they went to theatres. One afternoon they chartered a taxi and did a London round: they went to Sir John Soane’s Museum, to Mme. Tussaud’s, and the Zoo. Side by side, they looked at Mme. Tussaud’s own modelling of Marie Antoinette’s severed head fresh from the basket; they listened to somebody’s cook beside them, reading from her catalogue: “Mary Antonette, gelatined in 1792; Lewis sixteen, – why, he was gelatined too”; they held their noses in the Small Cats’ House, appreciated the Coati, who can turn his long snout up or down, to left or right, without moving his head, and contemplated at length the Magnificent Bird of Paradise, who hopped incessantly, and the Frogmouth, who, of all creation, has in the supremest degree the quality of immobility and identification with his bough. Lomax found Miss Whitaker quite companionable on these occasions. If she told him how often she had observed the Magnificent Bird and the Frogmouth in their native haunts, he liked her none the less for that; a piquancy was added to her otherwise drab little personality, for he was convinced that she had never stirred out of England save in Bellamy’s yacht. And certainly there had been neither Magnificent Bird nor Frogmouth in Illyria.

  How romantic were the journeys of Miss Whitaker! How picturesque her travelling companions!

  It must not be thought, however, that she incessantly talked about herself, for the very reverse was true; the allusions which she let fall were few, but although few they were always most startling.

  Her company was usually, if not immediately, available. That was a great advantage to Lomax, who soon found that he could depend upon her almost at a moment’s notice. Sometimes, indeed, a little obstacle came back to him over the telephone: “Lunch to-day? oh dear, I am so sorry I can’t; I promised Roger that I would lunch with him”, or else, “I promised Carmen that I would motor down to Kew.” Lomax would express his regret. And Miss Whitaker, “But wait a moment, if you will ring off now I will try to get through to him (or her), and see if I can’t put it off.” And twenty minutes later Lomax’s telephone bell would ring, and Miss Whitaker would tell him how angry Roger (or Carmen) had been, declaring that she was really too insufferable, and that he (or she) would have nothing more to do with her.

  Miss Whitaker, indeed, was part of the fantasy of Lomax’s life. He took a great interest in Roger and Carmen, and was never tired of their doings or their tempers. He sometimes arrived at Miss Whitaker’s house to find a used tea-cup on the tray, which was pointed out to him as evidence of their recent departure. He sympathised over a bruise inflicted by the jealousy of Roger. On the whole, he preferred Carmen, for he liked women to have pretty hands, and Carmen’s were small, southern, and dimpled; in fact, he came very near to being in love with Carmen. He beheld them, of course, as he now beheld Miss Whitaker, as he beheld everything, through the miraculous veil of his spectacles; crudity was tempered, criticism in abeyance; only compassion remained, and a vast indifference. All sense of reality had finally left him on the day that he repudiated Marion Vane; he scarcely suffered now, and even the nightmare which was beginning to hem him in held no personal significance; he was withdrawn. He heard the rumours about Bellamy’s death, as though they concerned another man. He was quite sure that he regretted nothing he had done.

  He was staring at the card he held in his hand: MR. ROBERT WHITAKER.

  So Robert existed. Robert who had scoured Russia to avenge a woman. He was disappointed in Miss Whitaker. Since Robert existed, what need had she to mention him? An imaginary brother might tickle the fancy; a real brother was merely commonplace. With a sigh he gave orders for the admission of Robert. He awaited him, reflecting that the mortification of discovering that which one believed true to be untrue is as nothing compared to the mortification of discovering that which one believed untrue to be true. All art, said Lomax, is a lie; but that lie contains more truth than the truth. But here was Robert.

  He was large and angry; lamentably like his sister’s presentment of him. Lomax began to believe both in his Persian oil-field and in his exaggerated sense of honour. And when he heard Robert’s business, he could no longer cherish any doubts as to Miss Whitaker’s veracity. Here was Robert, large as life, and unmistakably out for revenge.

  Lomax sat smiling, examining his finger-nails, and assenting to everything. Yes, he had been secretly married to Robert’s sister in Cairo. Yes, it was quite possible, if Robert liked to believe it, that he was a bigamist. A seducer of young women. At that Lomax frankly laughed. Robert did not at all like the note in his laughter; mocking? satirical? He did not like it at all. Did Mr. Lomax at least realise that he would have Miss Whitaker’s family to reckon with? He, Robert, had heard things lately about Mr. Lomax which he would not specify at present, but which would be investigated, with possibly very unpleasant results for Mr. Lomax. They were things which were making Miss Whitaker’s family most uneasy. He did not pretend to know what Lomax’s little game had been, but he had come to-day to warn him that he had better lie low and be up to no tricks. Lomax was greatly amused to find himself regarded as an adventurer. He put on a bland manner towards Robert which naturally strengthened Robert’s conviction. And his last remark persuaded Robert that he was not only dangerous, but eccentric.

  “By the way,” he said, stopping Robert at the door; “would you mind telling me whether you have ever been in Russia? And did you catch your man?”

  Robert stared angrily, and said, “Yes, to both questions.”

  “Ah, pity, pity!” said Lomax regretfully, shaking his head. There was another illusion gone.

  He was almost tempted to wonder whether he ought not to believe again, as he had believed originally, in the seducer in Ecuador.

  When he next saw Miss Whitaker he made no allusion to Robert’s visit; neither did she, though she must have known of it. She had received an anonymous letter threatening abduction, and was full of that; she showed it to Lomax, who considered it with suitable gravity. He found Miss Whitaker’s adventures most precious to him in his state of life and of mind. He clung on to them, for he knew that his own danger was becoming urgent. He had heard the phrase, “living on a volcano”, but until now it had had as little meaning as it has for the rest of us. But now he knew well enough the expectation of being blown, at any moment, sky-high.

  With these thoughts in his head, Lomax decided that he must see Artivale before it was too late. Before it was too late. Before, that is to say, he had been deprived of the liberty of action; that was the first step, that deprivation, to be followed by the second step: deprived of speech, gesture, thought, – deprived of life itself. Before he was reduced, first to a prisoner, and then to a limp body lifted from under the gallows by the hands of men.

  He must see Artivale.

  Artivale lived in Paris. Lomax travelled to Paris, surprised, almost, to find his passport unchallenged and himself unchecked as he climbed into a train or crossed the gangway of a boat. Again and again surprise returned to him, whether he ordered a cup of tea in his Pullman or sat in his corner of the French compartment looking at La Vie Parisienne like any ordinary man. He was going to Paris. He had bought his ticket, and the clerk in the booking-office had handed it to him without comment. That meant freedom, – being a free man. The privileges of freedom. He looked at his fellow-travellers and wondered whether they knew how free they were. How free to come and go, and how quickly their freedom might be snatched from them. He wondered what they would say if they knew that a condemned man travelled with them. Time was the important thing; whether he had time enough to do what he had to do before the hand fell upon him. “But”, thought Lomax, laughing to himself, “they are all condemned, only they forget about it; they know it, but they forget.” And as he looked at them through his spectacles, – the black ones, – moving as though they had eternity before them in a world dim, unreal, and subdued, they seemed to him in their preoccupation and their forgetfulness extremely pitiful.

  Under the great girders of the Gare du No
rd they scurried, tiny figures galvanised suddenly into shouting and haste. But it was not the recollection of their ultimate condemnation that made them hurry; it was the returning urgency of their own affairs after the passivity of the journey. After all, the train is going as fast as it can, and the most impatient traveller can do no more than allow himself to be carried. But on arrival it is different. Porters may be speeded up by abuse, other travellers may be shoved out of the way, one may capture the first taxi in the rank rather than the last. All these things are of great importance. Perversely, Lomax, as soon as he had descended from the train, began to dawdle. The station, that great cavern full of shadows, swallowing up the gleaming tracks, stopping the monstrous trains as with a wall of finality; those tiny figures so senselessly hurrying; those loads of humanity discharged out of trains from unknown origins towards unknown destinations; all this appeared to him as the work of some crazy etcher, building up a system of lit or darkened masses, here a column curving into relief, there a cavernous exit yawning to engulf, here groins and iron arches soaring to a very heaven of night, there metallic perspectives diminishing towards a promise of day; and everywhere the tiny figures streaming beneath the architectural nightmare, microscopic bodies of men with faces undistinguishable, flying as for their lives along passage-ways between eddies of smoke in a fantastic temple of din and murk and machinery. Moreover, he was wearing, it must be remembered, the black glasses. That which was sombre enough to other eyes, to him was sinister as the pit. He knew the mood which the black glasses induced; yet he had deliberately come away with no other pair in his pocket. The fear which troubled him most was the thought that in his imprisonment his glasses might be taken from him – he had dim recollections, survivals from a life in which the possibility of imprisonment played no part, that condemned criminals must be deprived of all instruments of suicide. And the black glasses, of them all, best suited his natural humour. Therefore he had indulged himself, on perhaps his last opportunity, by bringing no alternative pair. Since he had lost everything in life, he would riot in the luxury of beholding life through an extravagance of darkness.