Family History

by Vita Sackville-West

  He had retaliated on her for the phrase about tub-thumping. As she knew, he was readily stung to retaliation, but on this occasion he hurt her bitterly, though she concealed it. What did an extra hurt matter, when the heart was already one vast wound? He said, “I dare say you were glad to be rid of me. You always worried about what the Jarrolds might say.” She smiled at thatt, and said, “Yes, Miles, I’m afraid I did.”

  She went back to London after Dan had gone. December in the country was not to her taste; besides, she could not easily get people to stay at Newlands in December. And she must have people with her always, meaningless to her though they might be, for she feared her own company. She must have people from morning till night,—or, rather, from morning fill morning, for she seldom went to bed now till two or three o’clock. When she did go to bed, she could not sleep; and dreaded those small, weak hours when all the ills of life swelled to the size of the globe and crushed her on her pillow. At six or seven she would fall asleep; would sleep till nine or ten; then, waking, would reach for the telephone and command Ruth or some other adorer to come round instantly. She took some pleasure in bullying Ruth, and having sent for her, would keep her waiting indefinitely while she had her bath. It was a petty revenge to take, on so petty an object; but her smarting soul sought any relief.

  Evan, too, was constant in his attendance. She despised and disliked Evan with his maundering and sentimental ways, but at all events he was always available. She could ring him up at a moment’s notice and say that she wanted to go to a theatre or a night-club. She preferred him, really, to the young men who were always ready to take her out. Although he made most distasteful love to her, he was still her brother-in-law, and she could be on easy terms with him; they could talk about Tommy or about Lady Orlestone and her rhododendrons; she could snub him as much as she liked, and he never took offence. They could maintain an endless and effortless chatter about their common family. She could scold him about his excessive drinking, and, seeing him look down his nose, could feel that she had done him a little good, besides giving him sympathy. Relations with Evan were quite easy, especially in a public place, where he could not try to put his arm round her shoulders.

  She avoided seeing him alone in the flat.

  Evan had, too, a sort of clumsy tact. He never mentioned Miles. But the sense that he knew about her and Miles gave her a curious comfort and support.

  She was with Evan when she first saw Miles and Lesley Anquetil together. They were dining at the same restaurant and did not catch sight of her for some time. Indeed, it was in a mirror that she herself saw them. The familiar image struck her suddenly as she raised her eyes to the mirror on the wall, and turning round she assured herself that the minute reflection had not misled her. They were laughing and talking confidentially, leaning their elbows on the small table, both looking very young and remarkable. Yes, they were striking, Miles so fair and Lesley so dark and sleek. They looked distinguished and intelligent,—absurd words, with which to describe the pang Evelyn felt as she observed how they complemented one another. She could not continue to stare at them over her shoulder, but, turning back, saw them again in the mirror. What a strange thing a mirror was! It gave the colour of life, the size of life, the gesture, yet offered nothing but a remote unreality. Thatt was not Miles, his hair shining above the dark suit and the white cloth; reaching out his hand to take bread; pouring red wine from a dark bottle. Yet it was Miles; she had but to turn round, and the reality was close behind her.

  “Evan,” she said, “has anyone ever invented a spectroscopic mirror?”

  Evan stared. He had been talking, and she had evidently not been listening.

  “Eh?”

  “I was just thinking, a mirror shows everything flat, doesn’t it? Not really in the round? I mean, you don’t feel as though you could put your hand behind anything reflected in a mirror? It’s so life-like, and yet not life-like at all. Rather frightening, I think.”

  Evan not unnaturally looked up into the mirror just behind his head. Then he saw.

  “Would you like to go away?” he asked, having seen. She was grateful to him,—poor Evan! But she shook her head and smiled.

  “No, Evan dear, it’s no good running away.”

  “It was bound to happen sooner or later,” he said. “Yes, it was bound to happen sooner or later.” “Is this the first time?”

  “Yes, it’s the first time.”

  “Then you’ve been lucky.”

  “Yes, I’ve been lucky.”

  “Have they seen you?”

  “No, I don’t think so,—not yet.”

  “They will.”

  “Yes, of course they will.”

  He could not know what pain thatt pronoun “they” gave her.

  “They’ll come up and speak to you, Evelyn.”

  “Yes, I expect they will. They’ll feel bound to. It’s awkward for them, isn’t it?”

  “Evelyn, don’t look like thatt.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well,—I don’t know.”

  She laughed.

  “Well done, my inarticulate Evan!”

  “What does thatt mean, exactly?”

  “It means that you aren’t very good at expressing what you mean.”

  “Well,” said Evan uncomfortably, “one isn’t.”

  No, Evan and his sort were not good at expressing what they meant. Miles, on the other hand, had been extremely good at it. Perhaps thatt was partly what Viola had in mind when she called Miles an Elizabethan Englishman . . . Still, Evan was a kindly soul, and she was glad to be with him rather than with a stranger.

  Half-way through dinner, Miles saw her. Their eyes met in the mirror. He had looked up just at the moment when she was again looking into it,—for she could not keep her eyes away. It was a curious experience. She saw his startled look in the glass; she saw him drop his eyes and seek her out,—the real her, in the flesh. Seeing his reflected self do this, she refrained from turning round. Unless she turned round, their eyes could not meet. So she went on eating her dinner and talking to Evan, although she knew that Miles was looking at her.

  She tried to keep her eyes away from the mirror, and succeeded but for one glance. The one glance showed her again Miles talking to Lesley. It told her that Lesley was still unconscious of her presence. Miles betrayed himself by an over-nervous animation. The girl was serene as ever; interested in her companion and in what he was saying. They were again leaning their elbows on the small table, talking. Miles betrayed his nervousness only by the rapidity with which he crumbled his bread.

  Evelyn did not know what she said to Evan. She had only the comforting sense that Evan understood, and forgave her all her lapses.

  She became aware that either she and Evan, or Miles and Lesley, must leave the restaurant first. Some movement had to be made, so she rose gallantly, and passed between the tables. She paused to speak to Miles and Lesley. Lesley looked up, surprised; then, recognising her, was all friendly smiles. Evelyn wondered how much she knew. Miles got up, embarrassed. He dropped his napkin, and had to grope for it under the table,—a ridiculous attitude for any man to take, but because she loved him it endeared him to her all the more. She was sorry for him, because she had inadvertently spoilt his evening. Yet she was glad to have spoilt it.

  The encounter passed off in the most civilised way.

  She had come home late, the fog being thick over London. (She hoped that Dan, in France, would escape the fog.) It was thick, it was horrible. It was the kind of fog in which women had their earrings torn through their ears by an unseen assailant. Evan brought her home late thatt night, or, rather, early next morning, for they had gone on to dance, and having got rid of Evan with some difficulty, she paused alone in the flat before going to bed Evan, growing more and more sentimental as the night wore on, had again besought her to ma
rry him. “It’s allowed, you know,—Act of Parliament,” he had said for the twentieth time; and for the twentieth time she had chaffed him, saying, that proposal of matrimony was a bad habit growing upon him. He didn’t propose matrimony to anyone but her, he said; and poor Tommy would have approved. She said she was tired of hearing poor Tommy’s posthumous views quoted. Evan boggled at that; he was alarmed by words such as posthumous; he said she must have picked them up from young Vane-Merrick,—having by then at two in the morning lost his natural tact. Young Vane-Merrick was a damned high-brow, he said; look at that girl he was dining with, dressed in a shirt made of some green silk Indian stuff. Some Chelsea model he had picked up. Not at all, said Evelyn coldly; Viola Anquetil’s girl, I know her well. She tried to make it sound as though Viola Anquetil’s girl were her best friend; almost her god-daughter. Well, said Evan, she’s not the marrying sort; anything else you like, but not marriage. Evelyn did not know whether to be pleased or not by thatt remark. She did not relish the allusion to “anything else you like.” At the same time, she preferred it to a marriage in St. George’s, Hanover Square, or St. Margaret’s, Westminster, whereby Miles would be advertised to the world as the official and authorised lover of Lesley Anquetil, or another. Vanity took strange forms,—vanity and jealousy, too. She had come to the point of scarcely minding what Miles did with his private life; he was a young man after all, and must have his relaxations, she could understand and tolerate thatt, but she did mind passionately about his being advertised publicly in connection with another woman. It was an absurd form for jealousy to take, no doubt; but jealousy took it.

  She opened the window and leant her elbows on the sill, thinking of Miles and Lesley together. She was sure that one day soon she would read an announcement in the Times: The Hon. M. Vane-Merrick and Miss L. Anquetil. Would Miles warn her in advance? would Viola? Viola surely would; she understood the workings of the heart. Miles did not understand them at all. He grew worried and bothered about them only when other people’s feelings became inconveniently acute. His own feelings were kept for public affairs. Lesley would never bother him. It was as impossible to imagine that her feelings would ever overcome her to the point of inconvenience, as to imagine that those two swallows’ wings of hair on her forehead would ever become tousled and disordered. Certainly, she was the perfect wife for Miles,—if a wife he must have.

  Evelyn continued to lean her elbows on the sill, though the December night was cold and the fog was deep: she remembered the way Miles had leant his elbows on the small table, before he became aware of her presence. Just in such a way did she lean her elbows on the sill now, but whereas Miles had talked across the table to Lesley, so did she now breathe the cold solitary air, with no one to talk to but only her own thoughts to keep her company. She had had a bath and was warm; too warm, she knew, for the chill deadly air that crept in through the open window. These fogs of London, how strange they were, turning everything into unreality; as strange as the mirror reflecting Miles. She would never again be able to look into a mirror in a public place without a feeling of dread.

  She ought to go to bed. But she had fallen into the habit of delaying the hour when she must turn out the lights and lie sleepless in the darkness. To-night she would take a sleeping-draught; it was a luxury she allowed herself as seldom as possible. To-night she thought she deserved it. She felt so wretchedly lonely, and the fog seemed to increase her loneliness. Leaning out of the window, she could see the flares at the street corner making a lurid orange patch in the fog. Had Miles made his way home safely, she wondered, as a solitary taxi passed, hooting carefully?

  She realised then that she was very cold indeed, and after measuring out her chloral she lay awake for some time with her teeth chattering, in spite of the warmth of her bed.

  Horrible dreams assailed her; she dreamt that she stood on a cold night with Miles on the top of his tower, and that he refused to let her go down into warmth and safety. When she urged him, he sprang upon the parapet and leaped over; she heard the thud of his body on the flagstones below. She awoke sweating and trembling, unable to convince herself that it had been only a dream. At first she thought that the sweating and trembling were due to the dream; then she realised that she could not regain control of her limbs, and passing her hand over her forehead she discovered that it remained wet. The room was dark; no transparency of light was visible behind the curtains. She turned on the lamp, and saw to her astonishment that it was eleven o’clock. The chloral, she supposed, had made her sleep so long. She ought to feel refreshed, but, on the contrary, she felt tired and heavy; her head was aching and so were her limbs.

  She rang for Privett, who came with a disapproving air.

  “You’ve been taking thatt stuff again,” she said, as she saw the empty glass beside the bottle.

  “Privett, is it really eleven?”

  “Yes, it is, and after. What can you expect if you take thatt stuff?”

  “But the room was quite dark.”

  “There’s a fog so thick you could throw it about in handfuls.”

  Privett drew back the curtains and revealed a solid brown wall beyond the windows. The room remained lit by the electric light; a bright cell scooped out of the darkness. She turned on the electric fire.

  “Only half the fire, Privett, please, I’m so hot.”

  “Hot? Why? It’s cold and raw.” Privett came over and looked at her. “You’re flushed. Not feverish, are you?” She put her hand on Evelyn’s forehead. “I’ll take your temperature,” she said firmly.

  Evelyn really felt too ill to resist. Privett’s rough kindliness and concern were a comfort; she allowed herself to be taken in charge.

  “Well?” she said, when Privett, having assumed her spectacles, studied the thermometer under the light.

  “Over a hundred,” Privett announced finally. It was actually a hundred and two, and she was alarmed.

  “A hundred’s nothing,” Evelyn murmured. “I must have got a chill last night.”

  “You’ll stop where you are.”

  Evelyn smiled.

  “All right, Nannie. I haven’t much inclination to do anything else.”

  “I don’t expect you have,” said Privett grimly as she went out of the room.

  She wondered what she ought to do. A hundred and two was not a good temperature to have early in the morning. Send for the doctor? Ring up Mrs. Geoffrey? “There’s no one to look after the poor lamb,” she muttered, and for the thousandth time she cursed thatt young Vane-Merrick. If Mrs. Jarrold had got a chill it was Vane-Merrick’s fault.

  She rang up Mrs. Geoffrey.

  “Of course, Privett, quite right; send for the doctor. at once. Dr. Gregory, of course. I’ll come round myself, if I can get there through this fog.”

  The doctor came first. He said that Evelyn had undoubtedly got a chill, and a severe one; prescribed aspirin, and nothing but soup for luncheon; and informed her cheerily that bed was the best place on a day like this.

  “You aren’t missing much,” he said, rubbing his hands together and looking with appreciation round the pretty room. He was an elderly doctor with a fashionable practice, and did not at all object to visiting pretty women with insignificant complaints and agreeable surroundings. Mrs. Jarrold, he thought, looked very lovely lying there in bed, as soft as a fallen petal, flushed, her curly head dark on the pillow, very quiet and rather sorry for herself. He wondered why she had never married again.—”You’ll be all right in a day or two,” he said, “I’ll look in again this evening. But now tell me,” he added, “what have you been doing to land yourself with a chill like this? Going about late at night in a thin frock, eh? Oh, you frivolous young women!”

  “No,” said Evelyn, “I stood by an open window last night after a hot bath.”

  “Admiring the fog, I suppose? Well, if people like you didn’t do these crazy things, I suppose we
doctors would starve. Or were you trying to commit suicide?” He laughed; a fat, comfortable laugh at his own joke. “Now don’t get up to admire the fog today,” he said, wagging his finger at her.

  On his way out he met Mrs. Geoffrey and Ruth. They were old friends; he had, in fact, received Ruth as she made her entry into the world.

  When they had exchanged their views as to the state of the weather, they referred to the patient.

  “Just a chill, Mrs. Geoffrey; she’ll be all right in a couple of days.”

  “Privett quite frightened me: a hundred and two, you know . . . nothing for a child, of course, but quite a high temperature for a grown up person.”

  “Oh, servants are always alarmists. You’ll see, her temperature will be down by tonight.”

  “But temperatures always go up at night.”