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Pepita

Page 20

by Vita Sackville-West


  Poor Mr Brain. The whole story which he had been sent out to investigate was a very odd one. It concerned nothing less than the deliberate falsification of the register recording the marriage of Pepita Duran to Juan Antonio Oliva. Nobody disputed this falsification; the only question was, by whom it had been perpetrated, in whose interest, by whom instigated, and with what purpose in view? There it stood plainly in the register of the church of San Millan at Madrid for anyone to see; it needed no handwriting expert, though several were called. It was most curious, inexplicable, and apparently pointless. The names of the contracting parties had first been scratched out, so roughly and incompletely as to leave them still legible under a magnifying-glass, and then written in again in the same space, but in a handwriting different from the rest of the register.

  Now what could have induced anyone to take the extremely difficult and dangerous step of getting the church register into his possession for the sole purpose of erasing two names which he then re-wrote? Mr Brain, in spite of his name, could not imagine. He did, however, pursue the obvious course of asking himself what person or persons could have any possible motive in tampering with the register, or in employing another person or persons thus to tamper. The finger of probability pointed, in Mr Brain’s opinion, straight at Henry Sackville-West.

  It was greatly to Henry Sackville-West’s interest to discredit his mother’s alleged marriage to Oliva. If Pepita, in short, had never really been married to Oliva, or to anyone else, there was no reason why she should not have married Lionel Sackville-West, with whom she had lived for so many years and by whom she had had so many children, in which case the children would have been legitimate and he, Henry, as the eldest son would succeed his father as Lord Sackville and owner of Knole.fn1 It was a stake worth playing for. Unfortunately there were a number of documents in existence, all referring to this inconvenient marriage to Oliva. There was the application for the licence to marry, in the book of entradas kept at the Vicaria in Madrid; the application for the dispensation of banns, in the same book; a licence issued by the Vicaria authorising the parish priest of San Millan to perform the ceremony; the actual entry in the church register, recording the celebration of the marriage; and finally a similar entry in the Civil Register of Marriages kept by the civil authorities in Madrid. No plotter, however unscrupulous and daring, could hope to obtain possession of all these five pieces of evidence, two of them conclusive, for the purpose of falsifying or destroying them.

  To this day no one knows who the plotter was, nor how he went about his work. Only the most obscure hints indicate the conspiracy that was going on. Thus Manuel Guerrero, Pepita’s old friend the ballet-master, was got hold of and was offered sums of money and a share in the spoil if only he would contradict the evidence he had already given. A ‘soldado de licencia frequently invited him to refreshments and once took him to the bull-fight at Aranjuez, speaking Spanish like a native but with an Andalusian accent’. Guerrero, though not averse to profiting by the refreshments and the free seat at a bull-fight, remained suspicious and advised his acquaintance to go and consult a lawyer, but, perhaps maliciously, mentioned the name of a lawyer whom he knew to be already involved in the business on behalf of Lionel Sackville-West’s family. The suggestion met with no welcome from the soldado de licencia. ‘Ah no, not I!’ he replied; ‘better to let a sleeping dog sleep.’

  Three men were eventually accused, and stood their trial in Madrid, being finally acquitted because the jury could not reach an agreement. It is not for me to offer any opinion, and I prefer to state the case in the words of the Spanish Crown Prosecutor:

  ‘The Crown Prosecutor inclines to the belief that the marriage was valid, and that the entry was tampered with in order to create a doubt as to its validity.

  ‘After enquiry, it results that the accused, Enrique Rophon,fn2 was in communication with a person living in Paris, named Henry Sackville-West, with the object of annulling the marriage celebrated in the church of San Millan on Jan. 10th, 1851, between Juan Antonio Gabriel de la Oliva and Josefa Duran. As the accused and Sackville-West were convinced that such annulment was impossible, the marriage having been celebrated with all legal formalities, they concerted a plan for the disappearance from the register of the church of the page referring to this marriage, or to forge it. Forgery was decided upon, and Rophon, accompanied by the accused, Manuel Anton, to whom he had offered a large sum of money, went to the church of San Millan, after having given notice of their intentions to the other accused, Jose Sanchez. Sanchez was the attendant of the church, who took the register of marriages from which Rophon erased the names of the parties mentioned above. Rophon then induced Anton to re-write what he (Rophon) had scratched out. Anton did so, without varying anything in its sense, but making certain additions, and in such a way that the actual fact was made to appear false.’

  It was ingenious, this sort of double-crossing. A leading and most respectable London paper suggested that it looked like ‘a diabolical plot’, and gave a simple illustration:

  ‘Suppose one has a genuine cheque and erases the amount mentioned, then writes in the same amount. The cheque becomes suspicious, and nobody will cash it, except after inquiry and examination; but all the same the cheque is good because the signature, guarantee, and everything else, except the erasure, are valid. The difficulties which arise are caused without forgery in the proper sense of the term, and yet litigious matter is made out of a genuine cheque.’

  This is all more or less cautious, legal, and official, but a hand comes to draw aside the curtain for a moment, and to reveal the darkened stage on which these mysterious movements were taking place. Again I make no comment, and offer no opinion; I merely quote the evidence of Don Ricardo Dorremocea, a clerk in the office of the church of San Millan. He can be allowed to express, much better than I can, the sort of thing which was going on for years in the background of my mother’s life, a direct though belated repercussion from the gay indiscretions of Pepita; curious chapters of cause and effect, running darkly parallel to the brilliantly illuminated existence my mother was outwardly leading.

  The functions of Don Ricardo Dorremocea seem to have been somewhat varied, for apart from his employment at the church of San Millan he also attended a theatre in some ill-defined capacity.

  ‘I was engaged’, he says, ‘in assisting at the performances of the Guignol Theatre which was then in the Prado. One evening about dusk at the end of August or the beginning of September, a performance having just closed, I was on the stage. Someone came and told me that a person outside wished to see me. I asked who it was and he said that he did not know, but that he asked for the man who belonged to San Millan Church.

  ‘I went out to the street door of the theatre and saw two men. They wore automobile caps, but were otherwise dressed as chulos.

  ‘The chulo dress is a well-known distinctive dress which was, I believe, originally the costume of Andalusia. In Madrid the dress is worn by certain men of the lower classes who think well to adopt it. Some of them are of the inferior class of bull-fighters, and some others, although not bull-fighters, take great delight in running after bull-fights. The chulo is a sort of swaggerer or gentleman-rough. Any man is at liberty to adopt the chulo dress, but no one would be likely to do so without having some natural fitness for the part.

  ‘One of the chulos advanced to me and said, “You are the one who is employed in the Parish Church of San Millan?” I replied, “Si, señor”. He then said, “I am come to treat of a matrimonial question”. I said, “As the time is so short between the acts I can’t attend to you now. Tell me where I can see you.” The chulo then gave me an appointment at a tavern in Calle San Miguel at the corner of Hortaleza at night when I left the theatre. The hour was not fixed. After the theatre was over (from 12 to 12.30) I went to the tavern. The chulo who had made the appointment was seated at a table on the right. Two or three other men appeared to be sitting there in company with him. I don’t know whether they were chulos or not
. I did not go to the table.

  ‘The chulo rose and advanced towards me and told the tavern keeper to give me a glass of wine. We had no conversation in the tavern. After I had drunk the wine, the chulo took me into the street.

  ‘He then said that what he wanted was for me to tear out the leaf from the register of the marriage of Juan Antonio de la Oliva with Josefa Duran and that we would take this leaf to a gentleman who would read it and then burn it, so that I should not be compromised, and that he would give me fifty dollars. I told him I would not do that, and he then said, “You need not be at all afraid, for in the Vicaria it has been arranged” (or “it is being arranged”, I am not sure which) “to make to disappear the marriage expediente and the names from the Index”.

  ‘He said that he had been in the office of San Millan Church talking with Sanchez to get him to tear out the leaf and also to make to disappear the despacho and that he had offered him 1000 pesetas. He said that Sanchez had replied, “No, but for 1000 dollars if you like”.

  ‘He said that Sanchez had shown him the despacho and also the marriage entry. The chulo then added that if he had only gone there provided as he then was (taking out something which appeared to be a revolver) it would have been another thing.

  ‘I then hurriedly said good-bye to the chulo, who said, “Well, we will wait till Monday then”. I only repeated “goodbye” and left him, and have seen nothing of him since.

  ‘I am not positive that the two chulos were in company with one another, but they appeared to be so. They were both standing there—one advanced to speak to me and the other remained where he was. The one who spoke to me had what they call coderas on the elbows—a light jacket with patches of black cloth on the elbows.

  ‘As to the age of the chulo, I am rather short-sighted, but he seemed to me something like 38 or perhaps 40 years old. He had a darkish moustache and was two or three inches taller than myself. He spoke Castilian very well, no provincial accent. I can’t form any idea as to whether he was disguised or whether he was a real chulo.

  ‘The automobile cap was a cap of dark cloth with a peak. In general form it resembled an automobile cap, but I think it was flatter in the head than an automobile cap. Chulos generally wear a broad-brimmed hat. Rather recently the other sort of cap has come into fashion. Even organ-grinders wear them, so that there is nothing strange in a chulo wearing one.

  ‘Before the meeting with the chulo I had not heard attention called to the marriage entry. I had never heard that any proceedings were going on about that marriage. I had no idea who Antonio Oliva was.

  ‘The chulo said nothing about who Oliva and Duran were. I think he mentioned that the marriage was in the year 1855, but directly I heard what he wanted done I paid no more attention to him. He said nothing as to whether he had got a certificate of the marriage. He did nothing but make me the proposition straight out, and as soon as I heard what it was I paid no more attention to him. He said nothing as to what was the object of destroying the entry. I was not with him in the street any longer than was necessary to say what I have mentioned.

  ‘He gave me no idea where he lived, whether in Madrid or not. He said that he would be at the tavern again on the following Monday to see whether I brought him the leaf. He did not name any hour. I was only too anxious to get away from a man who had made such a proposal and did not notice what he said.

  ‘I do not remember mentioning the chulo incident to anyone until after the proceedings appeared in the newspapers. I was very much occupied in various ways and did not read the newspapers. My attention was first called to the matter by two of my friends who are clerks in the Municipal Court of the Inclusa. One is named Ceferino. I do not remember his surname. The other, I cannot recollect his name at the moment. I knew them by their coming to San Millan Church respecting certificates and acts of matrimony. They told me of what had appeared in the newspapers about the Register at San Millan Church, and on their mentioning the name of Oliva it recalled to my mind the incident with the chulo, and I narrated it to them as I have now done in this statement.

  ‘Being in the vicinity of Calle San Miguel, we said, “Let us pass by the place and have a glass.” So we went to the tavern and had a glass. Until that occasion I had not been there since the interview with the chulo.’

  II

  The storm had been growling ever since 1896, when the intentions of Henry Sackville-West first became apparent and steps had been taken to prepare some defence against them (in other words, the evidence had been secured, which forms the material for the first part of this book) but it was known that nothing could materialise publicly in England until the death of my grandfather should precipitate the necessary decision in the courts. Quite apart from his estates, an English peerage could not be allowed to remain in dispute; but, equally, the question of succession to an English peerage could not arise until the death of the peer.

  My grandfather had always seemed to me immensely old,—he had, after all, been born in the reign of George IV, which came quite a long way back in the history books,—and although I was fond of him in the unexamining way that a child is fond of anyone to whom it has always been accustomed, it probably seemed to me more remarkable that he should be still alive than that the hour of his death should be in any way imminent. I know I was only vaguely surprised when my mother told me we should not all be going to Scotland as usual one year, but that Seery was going to a different place in Scotland with his sisters, and that I should be sent alone to stay with them. I knew, of course, that Grandpapa had recently had an operation whose nature had never been made clear to me; I knew also that he had, even more recently, fallen downstairs, which was a very serious thing for an old man to do; but I don’t think it ever dawned on me that I was being sent to stay with Seery and his sisters in Scotland in order to get me out of the way. I do remember being sent in to my grandfather’s little sitting-room to say good-bye and being there quite alone with him, and his looking at me in a rather strange and particular way. He, at any rate, knew that he would never see me again; for my own part, I wondered only why he left his hand lying so long, so heavily, and so affectionately on my shoulder.

  The next incident embarrasses me to relate, but it sticks up in my mind so vividly that I cannot suppress it. I was in Scotland, in my bedroom in the gaunt, unfriendly house in Banffshire which Seery had taken. It was before breakfast; I was half-dressed; a servant came to the door bringing me a letter. One does not receive many letters at the age of sixteen, so any letter was an excitement, especially a letter in an unfamiliar writing. I stared at it; I stared particularly at the inaccurate superscription: ‘The Hon. Vita Sackville-West’. Never in my life had I received a letter addressed like that.

  It was in a slightly foreign-looking hand. I tore it open. I hope the distinguished author by whose name it was signed will forgive me for thus dragging her into my family history, and for recording here that she had most kindly and graciously replied to a letter from one of her many young fans. Yes, I had written to Baroness Orczy; carried away by my admiration for the Scarlet Pimpernel, I had written a fan-mail letter to his creator. And she had answered. There was the signature: Emmuska Orczy. But she oughtn’t to have addressed me as the Hon. I wasn’t. I was overcome with shame; I felt that somehow or other I had misled her; perhaps I shouldn’t have written on Knole paper….

  There came a second knock at my door. Not another letter, surely? No, it was one of Seery’s sisters, in a pink flannel dressing-gown, her hair not yet done,—a guise in which I had never yet been privileged to see her, and which startled me as much as the superscription on Baroness Orczy’s envelope. She was exceedingly kind. She put her arms round me and very gently broke to me that a telegram had just arrived saying that my grandfather was dead. My mind absolutely refused to register this fact, and I could feel only that her sympathy was meaningless and misplaced. Yet I knew she was being very kind, and somewhere in the background of my mind I reproached myself for being ungrateful. Then she said I
had better go down and see Seery, who was very much upset.

  Still moving in this world of unreality, I made my way down to Seery’s room. I found him sitting in front of his dressing-table, clad only in a suit of Jaeger combinations. He was sobbing uncontrolledly, and his sobs shook his loose enormous frame like a jelly. He was quite oblivious of his appearance. He was just overcome by the fact that ‘the old man’ was no more. I stood looking at that huge, Jaeger, sob-shaken bulk, and envied him his power of feeling things so immediately and acutely. For myself, I couldn’t feel anything at all; I was just worried because I had no mourning to put on, because I felt dimly that I ought to telegraph to my mother and didn’t know what one said on such occasions, and because I had already begun to wonder whether it would be disrespectful to go fishing that day, or whether I ought to stay at home and perhaps play croquet by myself?

  It was only when I went upstairs again to my own room and found Baroness Orczy’s envelope lying on the dressing-table that I realised she had been right in her superscription after all; right, though a little previous. My father was now Lord Sackville,—or wasn’t he?

 

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