The Edwardians

by Vita Sackville-West

  Lucy seldom came down until luncheon, but this morning she wandered into the garden at midday, a lacy parasol slanting between her fair head and the sun. The silence of the house oppressed her, nor had she been able to find Anquetil either in the solar or in the library, and, spoilt, she was already out of temper at not having found him where she had expected to find him. Her heels made little round marks as she sauntered across the turf. Miss Wace watched her from an upper window, with feelings compounded of resentment and adoration. How neat the duchess looks this morning, to be sure, she reflected, in that tailor-made which shows off her figure to such advantage, and which indicates that she is going to London, after the muslins of Sunday; but still she keeps the country touch in her parasol, and has perched no hat as yet on the curves of her coiffure. Miss Wace, who herself affected a dress of heliotrope serge with a stiff petersham belt, and who scraped her hair angrily back from her ears, lived in a constant dilemma between disapproval of Lucy’s frivolity, and rapturous fascination before her femininity. She never could grow accustomed to this being who at one moment would goad one into such a paroxysm of indignation as could culminate only in giving one’s immediate notice, and who next moment would charm one into such a state of subjection that one would gladly have sat up all night, boiling hot milk against the hour when a tired Lucy would be pleased to go to bed. Some people, thought Miss Wace, working herself up, think that everything is permitted them; for although she found great satisfaction in formulas she had never quite arrived at the formula that everybody imposes their own valuation. It was impossible to take serious exception to anything the duchess said, she thought now, as she watched Lucy twirling her parasol, a coloured butterfly flitting across the grass; impossible to be really offended; but then again she remembered how Lucy had flown at her for something that was really not her fault, and she decided that sooner or later the day must come when she would pack her boxes and go. “There is such a thing as self-respect,” was one of her favourite phrases. In her heart of hearts she knew perfectly well that she would cease to exist—would peter out—away from the thrilling and dangerous excitement of Lucy’s proximity; and besides, she knew equally well that she would never bring herself to leave a house where the King came so often. “I am not a snob, my dear,” she was fond of confiding to an intimate friend; “I pride myself on that, I simply don’t know the meaning of snobbishness, I am indeed a Republican and proud of it,” and it was only with a great show of reluctance that she could be induced to describe the latest royal visit. “Such a terrible lot of extra work it means for me,” she would sigh, and then she would go on to relate how she must look into every detail, even to seeing that the strip of red drugget was properly laid across the court and the Royal Standard ready to be substituted for the ordinary flag on the tower. “You would think the servants by now were accustomed to this sort of thing—six visits we had, I think, last year—but would you believe it, something is always forgotten.” It was fair to assume, however, that there were compensations for her extra trouble, for upon the left side of her thin and Republican bosom hung a mauve enamel watch from a true lover’s knot of mauve enamel ribbon. “I have to wear it face outwards,” she would explain, “because of the initials on the back. So silly. Such a pity. It would have been so much nicer plain,” and then she would turn the watch over and display the interlaced E.R. VII, and the crown on the back. “Of course I don’t like it,” she would say, “but it’s a good little timekeeper, and so I wear it.” In point of fact everybody knew that it was not a good little timekeeper at all, but gained about an hour a day.

  Lucy disappeared round the corner of the house and Miss Wace went severely back to her accounts. Lucy was not looking for Anquetil, or at any rate she did not acknowledge to herself that she was; she was merely strolling in the garden. But she found. Anquetil where she least expected him—in the summer-house talking to Viola. The summer-house served as an outdoor schoolroom; the walls were scribbled over with sums and childish drawings, the table-edge carved into scollops by an idle penknife. Annoyance surged up in Lucy, which she rapidly attributed to the fact that Viola was looking so plain. According to Lucy’s ideas, the child was looking her very worst, for Lucy liked her hair to be frizzed out and tied with a large black bow, also she liked her to wear girlish frocks, fussed over with little ruches and trimmings; but today Viola’s hair was straight and sleek, and lay like black satin against her forehead, making her small face yet paler and more oval; also she wore a severe red dress, which in Lucy’s opinion became her not at all. Her hair was curled yesterday, thought Lucy, and the weather is dry; she must have been putting water on it. Lucy, with her taste for fidgety ornament and the feminine graces of the piquante woman, was incapable of appreciating her daughter’s smooth line and glossy delicacy. The child had good eyes, she admitted that; and there was something to be said for her winged eyebrows, that always looked as though they had been brushed over with oil; but why must she be as pale as a saint and do her hair like the Madonna.

  Both Anquetil and Viola looked up as the duchess came round the corner, for she threw a shadow between them and the sun. Lucy knew instantly that she was in the way. This small circumstance increased her annoyance beyond all measure; she might have forgiven another woman, say Sylvia Roehampton, for engaging Anquetil’s attention so easily and lightly in the summer-house with the dragonflies darting over the flowers in the sunk garden, for then she could have entered into rivalry with the other woman and they would both have begun to spar with weapons whose use they well understood; but Viola she could not forgive for having crept into Anquetil’s confidence, so to speak, by the back door. It was because Viola was a child, of course, that Anquetil had unbent to her, he who had stood so on his guard from Saturday to Monday. Innocence had succeeded where skill had failed. But she pretended to be surprised to see him there, and said, “Dear me, Mr. Anquetil! Why, I thought you were still sleeping off the effects of your bridge last night. What a lovely morning, isn’t it? I so enjoy a little quiet walk before luncheon. I do hope, Viola, you haven’t been boring Mr. Anquetil. And what about your lessons, my dear child? Surely you ought to have been doing those? Why, the table is littered with your books. What will Miss Watkins say? I must really take you away, Mr. Anquetil, and let Viola go on with her lessons, or the poor child will get into trouble—I always wonder whether Miss Watkins isn’t a little too strict, but one doesn’t like to interfere too often; governesses have their own methods, haven’t they? and it’s scarcely fair to make them feel one doesn’t trust them.”

  Anquetil had been waiting for a chance to speak, and now he took it. “That’s quite all right, duchess. I am the culprit. I squared Miss Watkins, on condition that I might tell Viola stories till luncheon. I explained that it would be good for her geography. And it has, hasn’t it, Viola? What she doesn’t know now about the Orinoco isn’t worth knowing. That’s the way to learn geography,” he went on, seeing that Lucy was about to speak; “talk to somebody who’s been there instead of learning paragraphs out of a repulsive little primer like this. Or spend an hour with a globe. Now you, duchess, couldn’t tell me what places you would pass through if you drew a line round the world on the latitude of Madrid. Try!”

  The duchess was amazed; this was a very different Anquetil from the hard, unwilling man she had tried to lionise and whom she had thought she might eventually conquer. He sparkled; he was laughing at her. Viola watched them both, between alarm and fascination. Anquetil’s presence gave her an extraordinary support; she knew, somehow, that her mother would not lose her temper before him. Afterwards . . . but her mother was going to London after luncheon, and by the end of the week, when she came back, she would have forgotten.

  Lucy intercepted Sebastian in the library before luncheon. She put on her fondling manner, smoothing back his hair in the way he particularly disliked. Suave though she was, he knew that something had occurred to put her in an ill humour; he knew, too, that her first remarks
were but a preliminary to what she really wanted to say. So he was not surprised when she finally said, “Oh, by the way, about Mr. Anquetil . . .” Which picture upstairs, she wanted to know, was so like Mr. Anquetil? She had been too lazy to go upstairs and look for it. But Sebastian knew the pictures so much better than she did. He knew so much more about Chevron altogether. Which picture was it? An ugly man, Mr. Anquetil; but not an entirely uninteresting face—didn’t Sebastian agree?—that funny scar, those funny blue freckles, those funny puffs of hair. Not a modern face. He might be hanging among all those historical Tudor portraits in the Brown Gallery, all in the same frames, with their names written on festoons swooping from corner to corner: Drake, Howard, Raleigh—which was it? “No particular picture,” said Sebastian; “he’s like any Elizabethan sailor.” “Any Elizabethan pirate,” said Lucy “Most Elizabethan sailors were pirates,” said Sebastian. Lucy laughed her most silvery laugh, the laugh that had made several men believe that she understood what they said.

  Lucy had arranged in her own mind that Anquetil should accompany her to London, but to her intense irritation this plan was thwarted, not by Viola, but by Sebastian, who surprisingly proposed that Anquetil should come for a ride with him in the afternoon and take an evening train. Sebastian had never been known to do such a thing before—usually he did nothing but express his impatience that everyone should clear out of Chevron as early as possible—so that his mother’s dismay was equalled only by her astonishment. She was now filled by the unpleasant suspicion that she herself was de trop, and that Anquetil, no less than her own children, looked forward to the hour of her departure, when they might all three be left alone together. Still, she doted too much upon Sebastian to resent even the consequences of anything he might do; if scapegoat there must be, that scapegoat should be Viola. Should she take Viola to London with her? she wondered; pretending to herself that she would then have the girl handy if she wanted a safety valve for her ill humour—for thus far she could be frank with herself—but refusing to acknowledge that her real wish was to prevent any growth of the companionship between Anquetil and Viola. Then she decided that it would be too much of a bore to have Viola in London. She felt uneasy sometimes under the girl’s unspoken criticism, and in London, she knew, the house would be full of people at all hours of the day, people at whom the girl would glance once before going out of the room—let them stay together; she washed her hands of Anquetil; fool that she had been, even to have thought of him! She would take Wacey with her instead. Still, she had been baffled; she took the thought away to London with her, as irritating as a stone in the shoe.

  They rode, all three of them, with the two dogs, that afternoon, and Anquetil found himself happy and at ease in the society of the two young creatures. More than that: he felt himself exhilarated, as he seldom was, save in the anticipation of some new adventure. He was approaching that age when the contemplation of the very young is in itself a source of wistful happiness; that is to say, he was nearing forty—twenty-two years older than Viola, twenty years older than Sebastian. Necessarily in good condition, thanks to the arduous life he had always led, he was yet aware of a difference between his own austere fitness and their simple animal spirits. If he enjoyed their opening gallop, it was partly because it undid the softness of two full days in London, and could be put down to the credit of his account with bodily health, but for them it was no more than a natural expression of exuberance, as they loosed their horses and tore, racing each other, up the valley, wildly waving their caps and shouting at one another as they raced neck-to-neck up the final lap between the banks of bracken. Side by side they sat their horses waiting for him to come up with them, a great view of fields and distant hills opening behind them, but he slackened his pace into a trot, for he liked to look at them and thought that he should carry away forever this image of the two sitting so gay and slender in the clearing of the bracken, with the English view behind them and their horses pawing the turf, and Sarah and Henry stretched panting on the ground. They reminded him of a picture by Charles Furse. It seemed to Anquetil that he caught a moment exactly at its passing. Earlier in the morning he had thought of Chevron as a dead thing, an anachronism, an exquisite survival, and his democratic instincts had brought a slightly sardonic smile to his lips; now he modified his conception, and smiled again, but this time he also sighed for the passing of something so characteristic, so intrinsically real, and so gracious. It must go, he thought, go with all its absurd paraphernalia of servants and luxury; but in its going it would carry with it much that was dignified, traditional, and—though he laughed at the word—elegant. His opinions turned over, and he felt suddenly regretful as a man of letters might feel at the debasing of literature, or as a lover of dogs might feel at the coarsening of the greyhound. An anachronism certainly, but many fine things were anachronisms, most indeed; he would like to raise the wall round the park, and keep Chevron with all its inhabitants as a national museum, but then they should never change or grow older, least of all Sebastian and Viola; all should be transformed into a palace of Sleeping Beauty, only they should not be touched as with a sleep of death, but should move immortal about their immemorial activities. For his own part, he felt convinced that he would never see Chevron again; the incident would be isolated in his life; he was too active for England ever to hold him long, and already he had other plans in preparation, but the short incursion into this strangely segregated world had surprisingly enriched him, as one is enriched by any experience one had believed to be entirely outside the scope of one’s sympathies, and which unexpectedly acquires a life of its own in a new reach of one’s comprehension.

  If Anquetil had been surprised at himself for remaining at Chevron till after luncheon, and then still more surprised at his acceptance of Sebastian’s invitation to remain until the evening, how much more and finally surprised was he to find himself agreeing to remain until the following morning! But he was now no longer the duchess’ guest; he was Sebastian’s and Viola’s. He was no longer a member of a house party, an outsider, an onlooker, alternately bored, contemptuous, and amused; he was one of a happy trio, light-hearted in the absence of the grownups. He had noticed the change that came over the two children (for as children he regarded them) as soon as their mother had left the house. She had gone in a flurry of cushions, handbags, dust-coats, dozens of little unnecessary things that had to be carried out by hand and stowed away on the back seat of the brougham; the servants had scurried like rabbits; everything seemed to have been forgotten at the last minute; Button and Miss Wace had been harried and chivied, the former remaining commendably imperturbable, the latter getting visibly flustered, for tears came into her eyes, her nose turned red, and she dived for a handkerchief into the pocket concealed in her petticoat; poor Miss Wace looked remarkably plain, with a flat tweed cap on her head and a long dust-coat of brown holland. Over the whole scene of departure hung the probability that the duchess would miss the train. Anquetil reflected that he could have departed for the South Pole with less agitation. Off she had gone at last, alone in the brougham, while Button and Miss Wace followed, jerking and swaying, in the noisy wagonette. “Back on Saturday!” she had cried to the children through the window; and “Perhaps I shall find you still here” she had cried to Anquetil, who was not sure whether he ought to regard this as irony or as an invitation. So he had smiled and shaken his head, but the duchess was already engaged in rescuing a slipping parcel and next moment the brougham had carried her beyond the reach of any answer. Anquetil was glad to have witnessed the whole of this little comedy; he liked seeing how other people lived, provided he was not obliged to follow their example. “Now!” said Sebastian; and Anquetil knew that only his natural good manners prevented him from adding a great deal more.

  What charming children they both were, he reflected; natural, unspoilt, and so good to look at. Simple? He would not go so far as to say that, though they were certainly simple in what he called the right way; that is to sa
y, they were easily amused, laughed readily, and enjoyed the pleasures of their physical well-being. Anquetil, who held definite views, did not like young people to be blasé, and blasé these two were not, though they had certainly had enough to make them so. But simple? He came back to that question and thankfully decided that he might reject the word. He had not much use for exaggerated simplicity, except in the men with whom he pursued the adventure of his perilous voyages. These men, however, knew nothing of him beyond his qualities as a cheerful, resourceful, and reliable companion; it was a curious relationship, in which a very special kind of intimacy, begotten of common hardship and necessity, was allied to complete ignorance of one another’s private life and character. Anquetil reserved that relationship for those men, of whom he scarcely knew whether he was fond or not. From other people, in the rare intervals of life in England—which he thought of almost as life on dry land—he demanded something different. He would not have wasted his time over Sebastian had he felt that Sebastian could be summed up as a young aristocrat, charming because his breeding made him so, and very little else except the dash of romance which he could scarcely avoid, and which he owed to his birth, his wealth, his youth, and his personal good looks. This dash of obvious romance, indeed, had almost sufficed to prejudice Anquetil against the boy from the start. Even the additional qualities of a good landlord, of a good country gentleman in fact, inherited but respect-worthy, would not have added much to Sebastian’s interest in Anquetil’s eyes. He would have taken such qualities for granted; and, as it happened, had been given an opportunity of observing them for himself, for after their gallop they had ridden over to several farms and cottages undergoing improvement or repair, where Anquetil had recorded Sebastian’s easy manner with his tenants and his evident familiarity with their affairs. So far so good, but it was not enough. On such attributes, Sebastian might be comfortably pigeon-holed with other young men in an equally fortunate position, and dismissed from Anquetil’s mind. But, fully expecting to arrive at some such conclusion, he had watched the boy, and still had found his expectation unsatisfied. This colt was not really broken to the bridle; perhaps never would be. Though, to be sure, he might carry his rider tamely for a year or more before bucking him off.