Vita Sackville-West: Selected Writings

by Vita Sackville-West

  “Clearly, you no longer love me,” she said for the third time.

  “Zapantiotis sold his soul for money—was it money you promised him?” he went on. “So easily—just for a little money! His soul, and all of us, for money. Money, father’s god; he’s a wise man, father, to serve the only remunerative god. Was it money you promised Zapantiotis?” he shouted at her, seizing her by the arm, “or was he, perhaps, like Paul, in love with you? Did you perhaps promise him yourself? How am I to know? There may still be depths in you—you woman—that I know nothing about. Did you give yourself to Zapantiotis? Or is he coming tonight for his reward? Did you mean to ship me off to Athens, you and your accomplices, while you waited here in this room—our room—for your lover?”

  “Julian!” she cried—he had forced her on to her knees—“you are saying monstrous things.”

  “You drive me to them,” he replied; “when I think that while the troops were landing you lay in my arms, here, knowing all the while that you had betrayed me—I could believe anything of you. Monstrous things! Do you know what monstrous things I am thinking? That you shall not belong to Zapantiotis, but to me. Yes, to me. You destroy love, but desire revives, without love; horrible, but sufficient. That’s what I am thinking. I dare say I could kiss you still, and forget. Come!”

  He was beside himself.

  “Your accusations are so outrageous,” she said, half-fainting, “your suggestions are obscene, Julian; I would rather you killed me at once.”

  “Then answer me about Zapantiotis. How am I to know?” he repeated, already slightly ashamed of his outburst, “I’m readjusting my ideas. Tell me the truth; I scarcely care.”

  “Believe what you choose,” she replied, although he still held her, terrified, on the ground at his feet, “I have more pride than you credit me with—too much to answer you.”

  “It was money,” he said after a pause, releasing her. She stood up; reaction overcame her, and she wept.

  “Julian, that you should believe that of me! You cut me to the quick—and I gave myself to you with such pride and gladness,” she added almost inaudibly.

  “Forgive me; I suppose you, also, have your own moral code; I have speculated sufficiently about it, Heaven knows, but that means very little to me now,” he said, more quietly, and with even a spark of detached interest and curiosity. But he did not pursue the subject. “What do you want done with your clothes? We have wasted quite enough time.”

  “You want me to come with you?”

  “You sound incredulous; why?”

  “I know you have ceased to love me. You spoke of marrying me. Your love must have been a poor flimsy thing, to topple over as it has toppled! Mine is more tenacious, alas. It would not depend on outside happenings.”

  “How dare you accuse me?” he said, “You destroy and take from me all that I care for” (“Yes,” she interpolated, as much bitterness in her voice as in his own—but all the time they were talking against one another—“you cared for everything but me”), “then you brand my love for you as a poor flimsy thing. If you have killed it, you have done so by taking away the one thing…”

  “That you cared for more than for me,” she completed.

  “With which I would have associated you. You yourself made that association impossible. You hated the things I loved. Now you’ve killed those things, and my love for you with them. You’ve killed everything I cherished and possessed.”

  “Dead? Irretrievably?” she whispered.

  “Dead.”

  He saw her widened and swimming eyes and added, too much stunned for personal malice, yet angry because of the pain he was suffering, “You shall never be jealous of me again. I think I’ve loved all women, loved you—gone through the whole of love, and now washed my hands of it; I’ve tested and plumbed your vanity, your hideous egotism”—she was crying like a child, unreservedly, her face hidden against her arm—“your lack of breadth in everything that was not love.”

  As he spoke, she raised her face and he saw light breaking on her—although it was not, and never would be, precisely the light he desired. It was illumination and horror; agonised honor, incredulous dismay. Her eyes were streaming with tears, but they searched him imploringly, despairingly, as in a new voice she said—

  “I’ve hurt you, Julian … how I’ve hurt you! Hurt you! I would have died for you. Can’t I put it right? oh, tell me! Will you kill me?” and she put her hand up to her throat, offering it. “Julian, I’ve hurt you … my own, my Julian. What have I done? What madness made me do it? Oh, what is there now for me to do? only tell me; I do beseech you only to tell me. Shall I go—to whom?—to Malteios? I understand nothing; you must tell me. I wanted you so greedily; you must believe that. Anything, anything you want me to do.… It wasn’t sufficient, to love you, to want you; I gave you all I had, but it wasn’t sufficient. I loved you wrongly, I suppose; but I loved you, I loved you!”

  He had been angry, but now he was seized with a strange pity; pity of her childish bewilderment: the thing that she had perpetrated was a thing she could not understand. She would never fully understand.… He looked at her as she stood crying, and remembered her other aspects, in the flood-time of her joy, careless, radiant, irresponsible; they had shared hours of illimitable happiness.

  “Eve! Eve!” he cried, and through the wrenching despair of his cry he heard the funeral note, the tear of cleavage like the downfall of a tree.

  He took her in his arms and made her sit upon the bed; she continued to weep, and he sat beside her, stroking her hair. He used terms of endearment towards her, such as he had never used in the whole course of their passionate union, “Eve, my little Eve”; and he kept on repeating, “my little Eve,” and pressing her head against his shoulder.

  They sat together like two children. Presently she looked up, pushing back her hair with a gesture he knew well.

  “We both lose the thing we cared most for upon earth, Julian, you lose the Islands, and I lose you.”

  She stood up, and gazed out of the window towards Herakleion. She stood there for some time without speaking, and a fatal clearness spread over her mind, leaving her quite strong, quite resolute, and coldly armoured against every shaft of hope.

  “You want me to marry you,” she said at length.

  “You must marry me in Athens tomorrow, if possible, and as soon as we are married we can go to England.”

  “I utterly refuse,” she said, turning round towards him.

  He stared at her; she looked frail and tired, and with one small white hand held together the edges of her Spanish shawl. She was no longer crying.

  “Do you suppose,” she went on, “that not content with having ruined the beginning of your life for you—I realise it now, you see—I shall ruin the rest of it as well? You may believe me or not, I speak the truth like a dying person when I tell you I love you to the point of sin; yes, it’s a sin to love as I love you. It’s blind, it’s criminal. It’s my curse, the curse of Eve, to love so well that one loves badly. I didn’t see. I wanted you too blindly. Even now I scarcely understand how you can have ceased to love me.—No, don’t speak. I do understand it—in a way; and yet I don’t understand it. I don’t understand that an idea can be dearer to one than the person one loves.… I don’t understand responsibilities; when you’ve talked about responsibilities I’ve sometimes felt that I was made of other elements than you … But you’re a man and I’m a woman; that’s the rift. Perhaps it’s a rift that can never be bridged. Never mind that. Julian, you must find some more civilised woman than myself; find a woman who will be a friend, not an enemy. Love makes me into an enemy, you see. Find somebody more tolerant, more unselfish. More maternal. Yes, that’s it,” she said, illuminated, “more maternal; I’m only a lover, not a mother. You told me once that I was of the sort that sapped and destroyed. I’ll admit that, and let you go. You mustn’t waste yourself on me. But, oh, Julian,” she said, coming close to him, “if I give you up—because in giving you up I ut
terly break myself—grant me one justice: never doubt that I loved you. Promise me, Julian. I shan’t love again. But don’t doubt that I loved you; don’t argue to yourself, ‘She broke my illusions, therefore she never loved me,’ let me make amends for what I did, by sending you away now without me.”

  “I was angry; I was lying; I wanted to hurt you as you had hurt me,” he said desperately. “How can I tell what I have been saying to you? I’ve been dazed, struck.… It’s untrue that I no longer love you. I love you, in spite, in spite … Love can’t die in an hour.”

  “Bless you,” she said, putting her hand for a moment on his head, “but you can’t deceive me. Oh,” she hurried on, “you might deceive yourself; you might persuade yourself that you still loved me and wanted me to go with you; but I know better. I’m not for you. I’m not for your happiness, or for any man’s happiness. You’ve said it yourself: I am different. I let you go because you are strong and useful—oh, yes, useful! so disinterested and strong, all that I am not—too good for me to spoil. You have nothing in common with me. Who has? I think I haven’t any kindred. I love you! I love you better than myself!”

  He stood up; he stammered in his terror and earnestness, but she only shook her head.

  “No, Julian.”

  “You’re too strong,” he cried, “you little weak thing; stronger than I.”

  She smiled; he was unaware of the very small reserve of her strength.

  “Stronger than you,” she repeated; “yes.”

  Again he implored her to go with him; he even threatened her, but she continued to shake her head and to say in a faint and tortured voice, “Go now, Julian; go, my darling; go now, Julian.”

  “With you, or not at all.” He was at last seriously afraid that she meant what she said.

  “Without me.”

  “Eve, we were so happy. Remember! Only come; we shall be as happy again.”

  “You mustn’t tempt me; it’s cruel,” she said, shivering. “I’m human.”

  “But I love you!” he said. He seized her hands, and tried to drag her towards the door.

  “No,” she answered, putting him gently away from her. “Don’t tempt me, Julian, don’t; let me make amends in my own way.”

  Her gentleness and dignity were such that he now felt reproved, and, dimly, that the wrong done was by him towards her, not by her towards him.

  “You are too strong—magnificent, and heartbreaking,” he said in despair.

  As strong as a rock,” she replied, looking straight at him and thinking that at any moment she must fall. But still she forced her lips to a smile of finality.

  “Think better of it,” he was beginning, when they heard a stir of commotion in the court below.

  “They are coming for you!” she cried out in sudden panic. “Go; I can’t face any one just now…”

  He opened the door on to the landing.

  “Kato!” he said, falling back. Eve heard the note of fresh anguish in his voice.

  Kato came in; even in that hour of horror they saw that she had merely dragged a quilt round her shoulders, and that her hair was down her back. In this guise her appearance was indescribably grotesque.

  “Defeated, defeated,” she said in lost tones to Julian. She did not see that they had both involuntarily recoiled before her; she was beyond such considerations.

  “Anastasia,” he said, taking her by the arm and shaking her slightly to recall her from her bemusement, “here is something more urgent—thank God, you will be my ally—Eve must leave Aphros with me; tell her so, tell her so; she refuses.” He shook her more violently with the emphasis of his words.

  “If he wants you.…” Kato said, looking at Eve, who had retreated into the shadows and stood there, half fainting, supporting herself against the back of a chair. “If he wants you.…” she repeated, in a stupid voice, but her mind was far away.

  “You don’t understand, Anastasia,” Eve answered; “it was I that betrayed him.” Again she thought she must fall.

  “She is lying!” cried Julian.

  “No,” said Eve. She and Kato stared at one another, so preposterously different, yet with currents of truth rushing between them.

  “You!” Kato said at last, awaking.

  “I am sending him away,” said Eve, speaking as before to the other woman.

  “You!” said Kato again. She turned wildly to Julian. “Why didn’t you trust yourself to me, Julian, my beloved?” she cried; “I wouldn’t have treated you so, Julian; why didn’t you trust yourself to me?” She pointed at Eve, silent and brilliant in her coloured shawl; then, her glance falling upon her own person, so sordid, so unkempt, she gave a dreadful cry and looked around as though seeking for escape. The other two both turned their heads away; to look at Kato in that moment was more than they could bear.

  Presently they heard her speaking again; her self-abandonment had been brief; she had mastered herself, and was making it a point of honour to speak with calmness.

  “Julian, the officers have orders that you must leave the island before dawn; if you do not go to them, they will fetch you here. They are waiting below in the courtyard now. Eve”—her face altered—“Eve is right: if she has indeed done as she says, she cannot go with you. She is right; she is more right, probably, than she has ever been in her life before or ever will be again. Come, now; I will go with you.”

  “Stay with Eve, if I go,” he said.

  “Impossible!” replied Kato, instantly hardening, and casting upon Eve a look of hatred and scorn.

  “How cruel you are, Anastasia!” said Julian, making a movement of pity towards Eve.

  “Take him away, Anastasia,” Eve murmured, shrinking from him.

  “See, she understands me better than you do, and understands herself better too,” said Kato, in a tone of cruel triumph; “if you do not come, Julian, I shall send up the officers.” As she spoke she went out of the room, her quilt trailing, and her heel-less slippers clacking on the boards.

  “Eve, for the last time…”

  A cry was wrenched from her, “Go! if you pity me!”

  “I shall come back.”

  “Oh, no, no!” she replied, “you’ll never come back. One doesn’t live through such things twice.” She shook her head like a tortured animal that seeks to escape from pain. He gave an exclamation of despair, and, after one wild gesture towards her, which she weakly repudiated, he followed Kato. Eve heard their steps upon the stairs, then crossing the courtyard, and the tramp of soldiers; the house-door crashed massively. She stooped very slowly and mechanically, and began to pick up the gay and fragile tissue of her clothes.

  Seven

  She laid them all in orderly fashion across the bed, smoothing out the folds with a care that was strongly opposed to her usual impatience. Then she stood for some time drawing the thin silk of the sari through her fingers and listening for sounds in the house; there were none. The silence impressed her with the fact that she was alone.

  “Gone!” she thought, but she made no movement.

  Her eyes narrowed and her mouth became contracted with pain.

  “Julian,” she murmured, and, finding some slippers, she thrust her bare feet into them with sudden haste and threw the corner of her shawl over her shoulder.

  She moved now with feverish speed; any one seeing her face would have exclaimed that she was not in conscious possession of her will, but would have shrunk before the force of her determination. She opened the door upon the dark staircase and went rapidly down; the courtyard was lit by a torch the soldiers had left stuck and flaring in a bracket. She had some trouble with the door, tearing her hands and breaking her nails upon the great latch, but she felt nothing, dragged it open, and found herself in the street. At the end of the street she could see the glare from the burning buildings of the market-place, and could hear the shout of military orders.

  She knew she must take the opposite road; Malteios had told her that. “Go by the mule-path over the bill; it will lead you straig
ht to the creek where the boat will be waiting, he had said. “The boat for Julian and me,” she kept muttering to herself as she speeded up the path stumbling over the shallow steps and bruising her feet upon the cobbles. It was very dark. Once or twice as she put out her hand to save herself from falling she encountered only a prickly bush of aloe or gorse, and the pain stung her, causing a momentary relief.

  “I mustn’t hurry too much,” she said to herself, “I mustn’t arrive at the creek before they have pushed off the boat. I mustn’t call out…”

  She tried to compare her pace with that of Julian, Kato, and the officers, and ended by sitting down for a few minutes at the highest point of the path, where it had climbed over the shoulder of the island, and was about to curve down upon the other side. From this small height, under the magnificent vault studded with stars, she could hear the sigh of the sea and feel the slight breeze ruffling her hair. “Without Julian, without Julian—no, never,” she said to herself, and that one thought revolved in her brain. “I’m alone,” she thought, “I’ve always been alone.… I’m an outcast, I don’t belong here.…” She did not really know what she meant by this, but she repeated it with a blind conviction, and a terrible loneliness overcame her. “Oh, stars!’ she said aloud, putting up her hands to them, and again she did not know what she meant, either by the words or the gesture. Then she realised that it was dark, and standing up she thought, “I’m frightened,” but there was no reply to the appeal for Julian that followed immediately upon the thought. She clasped her shawl round her, and tried to stare through the night; then she thought “People on the edge of death have no need to be frightened,” but for all that she continued to look fearfully about her, to listen for sounds, and to wish that Julian would come to take care of her.

  She went down the opposite side of the hill less rapidly than she had come up. She knew she must not overtake Julian and his escort. She did not really know why she had chosen to follow them, when any other part of the coast would have been equally suitable for what she had determined to do. But she kept thinking, as though it brought some consolation, “He passed along this path five-ten-minutes ago; he is there somewhere, not far in front of me.” And she remembered how he had begged her to go with him. “… But I couldn’t have gone!” she cried, half in apology to the dazzling happiness she had renounced, “I was a curse to him—to everything I touch. I could never have controlled my jealousy, my exorbitance.… He asked me to go, to be with him always,” she thought, sobbing and hurrying on; and she sobbed his name, like a child, “Julian! Julian! Julian!”