Family History

by Vita Sackville-West

  Evelyn watched this procession as she had watched it a hundred times before. Madame Louise and Mr. Rivers hovered over her, saying “Now there’s a pretty little suit, Mrs. Jarrold,—just the thing for Luxor.” Evelyn hesitated, playing with an idea. Should she go to Luxor when Dan had returned to Eton? There was nothing to prevent her. But then another young woman crossed her vision, clad in a scarlet jersey and scarlet trousers, carrying a pair of skis over her shoulder, and she thought that she would like to go to Caux. Sun or snow, which should it be? But a strolling vision in white sauntered across the carpet, and she thought of Monte Carlo.

  She was indeed terribly free.

  Other women whom she knew came in, laughing, shaking the first flakes of snow from their furs, exclaiming about the weather,—though, to be sure, they had only run across the pavement from their car to the door. Mr. Rivers and Madame Louise were graciously pleased to welcome them. Chairs were brought. One of them was a Russian, Princess Charskaya, incomparably plain and chic, who had obviously come with the others in the hope that some pickings might fall to her lot. It was the only way she could manage to subsist. She had attached herself particularly to a rich, unpleasant widow, squat as a toad, whose personal vanity was as surprising as it was excessive, and whose capacity for flattery was as large as an elephant’s capacity for buns. Mr. Rivers was grateful to Princess Charskaya for introducing Mrs. Denman to his shop, since her taste in clothes was expensive although juvenile. He expressed his gratitude in a manner both practical and discreet; he and the Princess had a private nod for one another behind Mrs. Denman’s back.

  Evelyn looked on at the comedy. They were all caricatures of people,—Martha Denman, Betsy Charskaya, Mr. Rivers, and Madame Louise. She wondered whether she herself were a caricature also. There was Julia Levison too, a hard, frizzed relic of Edwardian society, tacking herself on to Mrs. Denman, also for the sake of what she might get. She and Betsy Charskaya hated one another, under a great show of friendship, and yet at moments they almost enjoyed themselves together, seeing how far they could go with Mrs. Denman, and how many compliments they could get her to swallow without suspicion. It was not very pretty. Just now they were trying to persuade her to order a pale and evanescent ball-dress which a slim girl was parading before them. It would exactly match the colour of her eyes . . . After a while, Evelyn got up and went away. Mr. Rivers accompanied her to the door. He winked at her as they went.

  Five o’clock. She was going to a party that evening; she would go home and rest. (Rest from what?) Certainly she had no desire to see any more people. If she got bored between tea and dinner, if she couldn’t concentrate her attention on a novel, she could telephone to someone or other and tell them to come round to her flat. But at present she felt that she wanted to be alone. There was no one she wanted to see except perhaps her niece Ruth, who was fresh and young, and who idolised her. She did not feel very much inclined to summon even Ruth. She would read,—if she could.

  Evelyn lived at the top of a block of new flats in Portman Square. When she reached home, opening the door with her latch-key, she met Privett in the passage. Privett, as usual, wore an air of reproach.

  “Miss Ruth is there, ma’am.” She might as well have said straight out, “How late you are, and where have you been, I should like to know?”

  “Oh, is she? Oh well . . . Tell Mason to bring tea, will you, Privett.”

  “Mason’s out. It’s his Thursday.”

  “Tell Alice, then. Or bring it yourself.—Goodness,” thought Evelyn, going towards the sitting-room, “haven’t I got enough servants?—Ruth?” she said, opening the door.

  “Evelyn, darling!” Ruth came to meet her and gazed at her with the generous admiration of a girl for an older woman. “How delicious you look, as usual. And yet you’ve come in straight out of a snow-storm. How do you manage it? I just missed you at Park Lane. I went there after luncheon with Daddy.”

  “Yes, I met him. He was with a man who wanted to talk to Papa, so I left.”

  “I know. Miles Vane-Merrick.”

  “Yes. Miles Vane-Merrick.”

  Evelyn knew suddenly that Ruth was interested in Miles Vane-Merrick. But of course she said nothing. She took off her coat and threw it on the sofa; took off her fur cap, and smoothed her thick hair. Then she smiled at Ruth.

  “Come and sit down and tell me how you’ve been enjoying life.”

  Ruth enjoyed life frankly, making no bones about it. She was generally popular, because of her innocent assumption that everybody enjoyed thatt agreeable business equally. Some people found her innocent zest slightly exasperating,—Evelyn herself sometimes repressed a movement of irritation,—but as her contemporaries responded to her gaiety and as her elders usually smiled benignly, Ruth always had what she called a good time. Her grand-father especially liked to hear of her enjoying herself. Like other men who have risen from small beginnings, William Jarrold welcomed the idea that his descendants could afford to be idle; it flattered his vanity. And Ruth was not at all averse from taking full advantage of the Jarrold fortune; encouraged by her mother, a candid snob, she made use of it to frequent a society which was not really her own. Indirect use, of course; but it was certainly convenient to have motors which one could lend to one’s friends and a country house where one could entertain them. Ruth Jarrold was very well pleased with matters as she had arranged them. All the Jarrolds were ambitious in one way or another, and Ruth’s ambition took the form of a mild and harmless, though silly, worldliness.

  Her devotion to Evelyn was genuine, and it was especially fortunate that the popular Mrs. Tommy Jarrold should be not only her aunt but a definite social asset.

  She chattered. Evelyn lent herself amiably to the chatter; it seemed to her that she was always lending herself amiably to somebody or something, till she ceased to have any existence of her own at all. Would she ever turn round on the whole of her acquaintance, and in a moment of harshness send them all packing? She knew that the necessary harshness lurked somewhere within her; in fact, she was rather frightened of it. Once or twice in the past it had got the better of her; it might get the better of her again. She disliked it, thinking it ugly. But she felt sometimes that she could endure the emptiness of her friends and the conventionality of the Jarrolds no longer. The two old Jarrolds were real enough, in their separate ways, but the rest of them were puppets, manikins, and their acquired conventions were so much waste paper.

  Fragments of Ruth’s chatter reached her as though from afar. “And do tell me about Eton . . . was everybody there? . . . did you watch the wall-game? . . . and how was Dan? . . . I really must come down with you on the Fourth next year . . . it’ll be Dan’s last half, won’t it? . . . I always think the Fourth is such fun . . . everybody one knows . . . as good as Ascot . . . and then the fireworks . . . how I wish I had another cousin going to Eton! . . . or a brother . . . but never mind, it’ll be fun when Dan is up at Oxford. I do think it so extraordinary, don’t you, the way one sometimes hears of a boy who doesn’t like Eton? I heard of one only the other day who actually asked to be taken away, and he played for his House, too, and was just going to be elected to Pop.”

  “And was he?” said Evelyn vaguely.

  “Elected to Pop? No, of course not. Oh, taken away, you mean. Yes, he was; he made such a fuss and said he’d run away otherwise. His father had to pay for two full halves, and as he wasn’t at all rich he minded thatt much more than taking his son away.”

  “And who was this?” asked Evelyn, busy making the tea.

  “Well, as a matter-of-fact, it was Miles Vane-Merrick,” Ruth paused. “Of course, he is very queer. He has all kinds of extraordinary notions. He won’t play cricket any more, and he won’t go to parties. . . .”

  “Isn’t he going to the dance to-night?” said Evelyn, suddenly looking kindly at her young niece.

  “Well, as a matter-of-fact, he is; I m
ade him promise to. I don’t think it’s good for a young man to shut himself up in an old castle whenever he isn’t in the slums of his constituency, do you, Evelyn? With nothing but yokels?”

  “Is thatt what he does?”

  “Yes,—but don’t let’s talk about him, he isn’t really very interesting. Let’s talk about you.”

  “I thought him very good-looking,” said Evelyn carefully.

  “Good-looking, yes, I suppose he is rather; like Sir Philip Sidney, I always think. Somebody once said he was very Elizabethan. He’s very clever, you know,” said Ruth; “he likes poetry, I believe he even writes it.”

  “What a pity,” said Evelyn; “it would be so much better if he played cricket.”

  “Well, Daddy and I think so, but I shouldn’t have expected you to think so. Evelyn; I always suspect you of being a bit of a highbrow.” Ruth laughed affectionately. “But it is odd, isn’t it, in a person like Miles Vane-Merrick? I mean, he’s so good at everything, or might be, if he took the trouble; but he doesn’t seem to care. Of course it doesn’t matter quite so much, as he isn’t the eldest son; I suppose he can do as he likes, but if he were the eldest son it would really be rather a pity.”

  “Sugar?”

  “Yes, please, lots. And what about you, Evelyn? Have you been enjoying yourself? Do you know, I haven’t seen you for a week.”

  “Such a long time?” said Evelyn.

  “I really miss you when I don’t see you,” said Ruth seriously, “though I don’t suppose you would notice it if you didn’t see me for a month. When you took Dan to Italy last summer I missed you dreadfully, and you only sent me a picture postcard. I am always terrified of something going wrong when you are away.”

  “Why, my dear child, what could possibly go wrong? Nothing ever goes wrong with you Jarrolds. You march from success to success; you’re a lucky, prosperous family.”

  Even in the midst of her school-girlish admiration for Evelyn, Ruth thought it rather heartless of Evelyn to talk like thatt, considering that poor Uncle Tommy had been killed in the war.

  “Things do go wrong sometimes, don’t they?” she said. “And I always feel,” she added, repairing her secretly disloyal criticism, “that you would be the only person to put them right. You can always get round Grandpapa. I’m sure,” she went on, her enthusiasm gaining on her, “that you could get round anybody. You’re wonderful, Evelyn; you’re so quiet, and self-contained, and rather mocking, and yet perfectly human. I wonder what you really think about? When you’re alone, I mean?”

  “Clothes, mostly,” said Evelyn, who disliked it when Ruth became intense, although her vanity made her jealously possessive of even this commonplace girl’s devotion; “and of the next party.”

  “Thatt’s the sort of thing you say, and I don’t believe it’s true a bit. You make me feel uneasy sometimes, Evelyn, much as I love you.”

  “But you do love me, don’t you?”

  “Oh, Evelyn, you know I do. Better than anybody, except of course Mummy and Daddy.”

  “Sure?” asked Evelyn, resenting the clause about Mummy and Daddy.

  “Quite sure. But why do you want to know? You can’t really mind whether I do or not.”

  “Doesn’t everyone like to be loved?” said Evelyn. It was rather unfair, she thought, to play with the girl like this, but she must needs have all the Jarrolds at her feet, though she despised herself for it. It was a game, which she played when she had nothing better to do.

  “Of course everyone likes to be loved, but I should have thought you got enough love without mine.”

  “One never gets enough love,” said Evelyn, abruptly getting up. She had wrung the admission she wanted from the girl, as she might have wrung it from anybody else, and was suddenly bored. “You must run away now, my dear; I want to rest a bit before dressing for dinner.”

  “Oh, Evelyn, you are unkind. Can’t I stay?”

  “No, you can’t. If you stayed, you might begin to love me less.”

  “You know I shouldn’t; and if I did, you wouldn’t care.”

  “Oh yes, I should,” said Evelyn, taking the girl’s face between her hands and laughing down into her eyes. Her expression as she did so was at one and the same time so gay, so mocking, and yet so tender that Ruth forgave her all her heartlessness and loved her the more. One could forgive Evelyn everything, when she looked at one like thatt. “All right, you brute,” she said, “I’ll go, and leave you to your rest. We meet tonight.”

  “If you call thatt a meeting. I shall see you in the distance, dancing with Miles Vane-Merrick. Your Elizabethan young man.”

  “Evelyn, don’t tease.”

  “Mustn’t I? All right, I won’t.”

  Ruth was always strangely elated when she had been with Evelyn. She always came away, her head swimming with unusual, suggestive, dangerous notions. What was Evelyn’s life, apart from what anybody could see of it? Outwardly, she led the ordinary, semi-decorous, semi-frivolous life of a woman dividing her time between her family connections and her personal amusement; she was a devoted mother, to her son, an ideal daughter-in-law, sister-in-law, and aunt; once a week, at least, she lunched at Park Lane, leaving the old people in the best of moods after her departure; once a fortnight, at least, she dined with Ruth’s parents, made Ruth’s stiff and cautious mother unbend, and made Ruth’s father say a number of things he would never have said but for her presence—daring things, even, which brought from his wife a secretly delighted “Really, Geoffrey! I’m surprised at you;” once a month, at least, she let Uncle Evan take her to a play, Which could not be very amusing for an in-request woman like Evelyn, since Uncle Evan was habitually morose, occasionally uproarious in a disconcerting and unexpected way, but always stupid beyond even the Jarrold tolerance of empty-headedness. Ruth could not reconcile this ideally domesticated Evelyn with the spoilt, luxurious Evelyn who rang the bell fifty times a day for a patient though disagreeable Privett; who could get herself served first by all the head-waiters of London, Paris, and Berlin; who could accept your admiration as a joke, and yet make you feel that your admiration represented something of value to her; who gave you the impression of a life lived behind a life; who was, in short, apparently a model of the domestic virtues and who yet suggested all the chic of Vogue and all the passion of Shakespeare.

  Ruth’s mother and father were alone together when Ruth came in. Because they had nothing to say to one another, after twenty years of married life, her mother was doing a cross-word puzzle and her father was smoking his pipe over the evening paper. At the sight of their daughter they brightened a little.

  “Hullo, Ruth, where have you been?”

  “Darling child, you ought to go and rest before dinner.”

  Ruth had known exactly what they would both say. Far from irritating her, it soothed her to hear the expected phrases. It calmed her, after the inexplicable agitation of Evelyn.

  “I went to see Evelyn,” she replied to the one, certain that this reply would meet with approval; “Yes, Mummy, I think I’ll go and rest for a bit,” she replied to the other, glad of an excuse to escape immediately, since she had no more to say to her parents than they had to say to one another—except the things which could not be said, and which one did not say—and in the privacy of her own room she could at least telephone to one of her friends, even to Evelyn whom she had just left.

  “You look tired, darling.”

  Another expected phrase. How comforting it was! though perhaps dull.

  “Oh no, Mummy, I’m not tired a bit.”

  “What are you going to wear to-night? I should wear the blue if I were you.”

  “Oh, Mummy, I thought I’d wear my new red.”

  “Well, darling, if you like.—Geoffrey, what foreign word of six letters begins with p and ends with e and means attractive?”

  “
Piquante, I should think,” said Geoffrey, who was reading the divorce court news.

  “P-i-q-u-a-n-t-e,—no that won’t do, thatt’s got eight letters. Oh, Geoffrey, don’t be such a broken reed. Do think of something else.”

  “Petite,” said Ruth, inspired.

  “Petite! I do believe you’ve got it, P-e-t-i-t-e. But does that mean attractive? People have such odd ideas of attractiveness nowadays,” said Ruth’s mother, who stood five feet eleven in her stockings. “Anyway, there might be a t in the middle, fitting in with carrot,—a carrot is what one dangles in front of a donkey’s nose, isn’t it? I’ll put it in, in pencil, so that I can rub it out if something better turns up. Darling, you’ve been so helpful, but do go and rest now. You look fagged out.”

  It made one sound interesting, to be told that one looked fagged out, although the effect might not be becoming. It was pleasant, to come home to one’s family, and to be met by exactly the scene and the phrases that one expected. Ruth kissed her mother and went away upstairs. The house was warm, since it possessed the central heating which people less well-off could not afford,—or else despised, the English, among northern races, being the race which disregards its climate most in spite of its perennial, unique, and self-protective comments upon it. The house was warm, and full of hot-house flowers supplied weekly by a florist; flowers out of their season, tulips at Christmas, roses at the New Year, peach-blossom in January, spoiling the arrival of all such spontaneous and lovely things at the moment naturally ordained for them. But to Mrs. Geoffrey Jarrold and her daughter Ruth they represented no more than the necessary appurtenances of luxury; no more than the warmed rooms, the illustrated papers, and the lift which by the pressing of a little button spared one the effort of climbing two or three flights of stairs. Ruth felt sincerely grateful to her grandfather who entirely by his own efforts had ensured such comfortable circumstances for his descendants. Of course, she would have preferred to come of gentle stock, or, better still, of an ancient aristocracy, but nowadays people soon forgot that one’s grandfather had been a self-made man, even a man of the people: the new families quickly merged with the genuine article. Nobody, to-day, could have told that her own father was the son of such a man. Thus she reassured herself.—But, she thought, stretching herself out luxuriously on the sofa in front of her sitting-room fire, she really ought not to be so self-conscious about it all; thatt was a slight give-away.