Vita Sackville-West: Selected Writings

by Vita Sackville-West

  Bellamy’s body was exhumed. No one understood why, since the administration of veronal had never been disputed. It was exhumed secretly, at night, by the light of a lantern, and carried into an empty cottage next to the graveyard. The papers next day gave these details. Lomax read them with a nauseous horror. Bellamy, who had abjured life so that his tormented body might be at peace! And now, surrounded by constables, officers of the Law, on a rainy night, lit by the gleams of a hurricane lantern, what remained of his flesh had been smuggled into a derelict cottage and investigated by the scalpel of the anatomist. Truly the grave was neither fine nor private.

  Then the newspaper accounts ceased; Bellamy was reburied; and the world went on as usual.

  A friendship flared up—surely the queerest in London—between Lomax and Miss Whitaker. They met quite often. They dined together; they went to theatres. One afternoon they chartered a taxi and did a London round: they went to Sir John Soane’s Museum, to Mme. Tussaud’s, and the Zoo. Side by side, they looked at Mme. Tussaud’s own modelling of Marie Antoinette’s severed head fresh from the basket; they listened to somebody’s cook beside them, reading from her catalogue: “Mary Antonette, gelatined in 1792; Lewis sixteen—why, he was gelatined too”; they held their noses in the Small Cats’ House, appreciated the Coati, who can turn his long snout up or down, to left or right, without moving his head, and contemplated at length the Magnificent Bird of Paradise, who hopped incessantly, and the Frogmouth, who, of all creation, has in the supremest degree the quality of immobility and identification with his bough. Lomax found Miss Whitaker quite companionable on these occasions. If she told him how often she had observed the Magnificent Bird and the Frog-mouth in their native haunts, he liked her none the less for that; a piquancy was added to her otherwise drab little personality, for he was convinced that she had never stirred out of England save in Bellamy’s yacht. And certainly there had been neither Magnificent Bird nor Frogmouth in Illyria.

  How romantic were the journeys of Miss Whitaker! How picturesque her travelling companions!

  It must not be thought, however, that she incessantly talked about herself, for the very reverse was true; the allusions which she let fall were few, but although few they were always most startling.

  Her company was usually, if not immediately, available. That was a great advantage to Lomax, who soon found that he could depend upon her almost at a moment’s notice. Sometimes, indeed, a little obstacle came back to him over the telephone: “Lunch today? oh dear, I am so sorry I can’t; I promised Roger that I would lunch with him,” or else, “I promised Carmen that I would motor down to Kew.” Lomax would express his regret. And Miss Whitaker, “But wait a moment, if you will ring off now I will try to get through to him (or her), and see if I can’t put it off.” And twenty minutes later Lomax’s telephone bell would ring, and Miss Whitaker would tell him how angry Roger (or Carmen) had been, declaring that she was really too insufferable, and that he (or she) would have nothing more to do with her.

  Miss Whitaker, indeed, was part of the fantasy of Lomax’s life. He took a great interest in Roger and Carmen, and was never tired of their doings or their tempers. He sometimes arrived at Miss Whitaker’s house to find a used tea-cup on the tray, which was pointed out to him as evidence of their recent departure. He sympathised over a bruise inflicted by the jealousy of Roger. On the whole, he preferred Carmen, for he liked women to have pretty hands, and Carmen’s were small, southern, and dimpled; in fact, he came very near to being in love with Carmen. He beheld them, of course, as he now beheld Miss Whitaker, as he beheld everything, through the miraculous veil of his spectacles; crudity was tempered, criticism in abeyance; only compassion remained, and a vast indifference. All sense of reality had finally left him on the day that he repudiated Marion Vane; he scarcely suffered now, and even the nightmare which was beginning to hem him in held no personal significance; he was withdrawn. He heard the rumours about Bellamy’s death, as though they concerned another man. He was quite sure that he regretted nothing he had done.

  * * *

  He was staring at the card he held in his hand: MR. ROBERT WHITAKER.

  So Robert existed. Robert who had scoured Russia to avenge a woman. He was disappointed in Miss Whitaker. Since Robert existed, what need had she to mention him? An imaginary brother might tickle the fancy; a real brother was merely commonplace. With a sigh he gave orders for the admission of Robert. He awaited him, reflecting that the mortification of discovering that which one believed true to be untrue is as nothing compared to the mortification of discovering that which one believed untrue to be true. All art, said Lomax, is a lie; but that lie contains more truth than the truth. But here was Robert.

  He was large and angry; lamentably like his sister’s presentment of him. Lomax began to believe both in his Persian oil-field and in his exaggerated sense of honour. And when he heard Robert’s business, he could no longer cherish any doubts as to Miss Whitaker’s veracity. Here was Robert, large as life, and unmistakably out for revenge.

  Lomax sat smiling, examining his finger-nails, and assenting to everything. Yes, he had been secretly married to Robert’s sister in Cairo. Yes, it was quite possible, if Robert liked to believe it, that he was a bigamist. A seducer of young women. At that Lomax frankly laughed. Robert did not at all like the note in his laughter, mocking? satirical? He did not like it at all. Did Mr. Lomax at least realise that he would have Miss Whitaker’s family to reckon with? He, Robert, had heard things lately about Mr. Lomax which he would not specify at present, but which would be investigated, with possibly very unpleasant results for Mr. Lomax. They were things which were making Miss Whitaker’s family most uneasy. He did not pretend to know what Lomax’s little game had been, but he had come today to warn him that he had better lie low and be up to no tricks. Lomax was greatly amused to find himself regarded as an adventurer. He put on a bland manner towards Robert which naturally strengthened Robert’s conviction. And his last remark persuaded Robert that he was not only dangerous, but eccentric.

  “By the way,” he said, stopping Robert at the door; “would you mind telling me whether you have ever been in Russia? And did you catch your man?”

  Robert stared angrily, and said, “Yes, to both questions.”

  “Ah, pity, pity!” said Lomax regretfully, shaking his head. There was another illusion gone.

  He was almost tempted to wonder whether he ought not to believe again, as he had believed originally, in the seducer in Ecuador.

  * * *

  When he next saw Miss Whitaker he made no allusion to Robert’s visit; neither did she, though she must have known of it. She had received an anonymous letter threatening abduction, and was full of that; she showed it to Lomax, who considered it with suitable gravity. He found Miss Whitaker’s adventures most precious to him in his state of life and of mind. He clung on to them, for he knew that his own danger was becoming urgent. He had heard the phrase, “living on a volcano,” but until now it had had as little meaning as it has for the rest of us. But now he knew well enough the expectation of being blown, at any moment, sky-high.

  With these thoughts in his head, Lomax decided that he must see Artivale before it was too late. Before it was too late. Before, that is to say, he had been deprived of the liberty of action; that was the first step, that deprivation, to be followed by the second step: deprived of speech, gesture, thought—deprived of life itself. Before he was reduced, first to a prisoner, and then to a limp body lifted from under the gallows by the hands of men.

  He must see Artivale.

  Artivale lived in Paris. Lomax travelled to Paris, surprised, almost, to find his passport unchallenged and himself unchecked as he climbed into a train or crossed the gangway of a boat. Again and again surprise returned to him, whether he ordered a cup of tea in his Pullman or sat in his corner of the French compartment looking at La Vie Parisienne like any ordinary man. He was going to Paris. He had bought his ticket, and the clerk in the booking-office had hande
d it to him without comment. That meant freedom—being a free man. The privileges of freedom. He looked at his fellow-travellers and wondered whether they knew how free they were. How free to come and go, and how quickly their freedom might be snatched from them. He wondered what they would say if they knew that a condemned man travelled with them. Time was the important thing; whether he had time enough to do what he had to do before the hand fell upon him. “But,” thought Lomax, laughing to himself, “they are all condemned, only they forget about it; they know it, but they forget.” And as he looked at them through his spectacles—the black ones—moving as though they had eternity before them in a world dim, unreal, and subdued, they seemed to him in their preoccupation and their forgetfulness extremely pitiful.

  Under the great girders of the Gare du Nord they scurried, tiny figures galvanised suddenly into shouting and haste. But it was not the recollection of their ultimate condemnation that made them hurry; it was the returning urgency of their own affairs after the passivity of the journey. After all, the train is going as fast as it can, and the most impatient traveller can do no more than allow himself to be carried. But on arrival it is different. Porters may be speeded up by abuse, other travellers may be shoved out of the way, one may capture the first taxi in the rank rather than the last. All these things are of great importance. Perversely, Lomax, as soon as he had descended from the train, began to dawdle. The station, that great cavern full of shadows, swallowing up the gleaming tracks, stopping the monstrous trains as with a wall of finality; those tiny figures so senselessly hurrying; those loads of humanity discharged out of trains from unknown origins towards unknown destinations; all this appeared to him as the work of some crazy etcher, building up a system of lit or darkened masses, here a column curving into relief, there a cavernous exit yawning to engulf, here groins and iron arches soaring to a very heaven of night, there metallic perspectives diminishing towards a promise of day; and everywhere the tiny figures streaming beneath the architectural nightmare, microscopic bodies of men with faces undistinguishable, flying as for their lives along passage—ways between eddies of smoke in a fantastic temple of din and murk and machinery. Moreover, he was wearing, it must be remembered, the black glasses. That which was sombre enough to other eyes, to him was sinister as the pit. He knew the mood which the black glasses induced; yet he had deliberately come away with no other pair in his pocket. The fear which troubled him most was the thought that in his imprisonment his glasses might be taken from him—he had dim recollections, survivals from a life in which the possibility of imprisonment played no part, that condemned criminals must be deprived of all instruments of suicide. And the black glasses, of them all, best suited his natural humour. Therefore he had indulged himself, on perhaps his last opportunity, by bringing no alternative pair. Since he had lost everything in life, he would riot in the luxury of beholding life through an extravagance of darkness.

  A dragon pursued him, clanging a bell; mechanically he moved aside, and the electric luggage-trucks passed him, writhing into the customs-house at the end of the station. Artivale lived in the Quartier Latin; it was necessary to get there before the hand fell on his shoulder. Paris taxi-drivers were mad, surely, and their taxis on the verge of disintegration; chasing enormous trams, charged by demonaic lorries, hooting incessantly and incessantly hooted at, Lomax in his wheeled scrap-iron rattled across a Paris darkened into the menace of an imminent cataclysm. A heaven of lead hung over the ghastly streets. All condemned, thought Lomax, as he racketed through the procession of life that was so gaily unconscious of the night in which it moved.

  He arrived at Artivale’s house.

  Artivale himself opened the door.

  “Good God!” he said on seeing Lomax, “what … But come in.—You’re ill,” he continued, when he had got Lomax inside the door.

  “No,” said Lomax, oblivious of the startling appearance he presented, with haggard cheeks behind the absurd spectacles; “only, I had to see you—in a hurry.”

  “In a hurry?” said Artivale, accustomed to think of Lomax as a man without engagements, occupations, or urgency.

  “You see,” said Lomax, “I murdered Bellamy and I may be arrested at any moment.”

  “Of course that does explain your hurry,” said Artivale, “but would you mind coming down to the kitchen, where I want to keep my eye on some larvae? We can talk there. My servants don’t understand English.”

  Lomax followed him downstairs to the basement, where in a vaulted kitchen enormous blue butterflies circled in the air and a stout negress stoked the oven. The room was dark and excessively hot. “We’re in the tropics,” said Lomax, looking at the butterflies.

  Artivale apologised for the atmosphere. “I have to keep it hot for the sake of the larvae,” he explained, “and I had to import the black women because no French servant would stand the heat. These are the larvae,” and he showed Lomax various colourless smudges lying on the tables and the dresser. “Now tell me about Bellamy.”

  The negress beamed upon them benevolently, showing her teeth. A negro girl came from an inner room, carrying a pile of plates. A butterfly of extraordinary brilliancy quivered for a moment on the kitchen clock, and swept away, up into the shadows of the roof, fanning Lomax with its wings in passing.

  “The murder was nothing,” said Lomax; “he asked me to do it. He was ill, you see—mortally—and he was afraid of pain. That’s all very simple. He left me his fortune, though.”

  “Yes,” said Artivale, “I read his will in the paper.”

  “I am leaving that to you,” said Lomax.

  “To me—but, my dear fellow, you’re not going to die.”

  “Oh yes,” said Lomax, “I shall be hung, of course. Besides, we are all condemned, you know.”

  “Ultimately, yes,” replied Artivale, “but not imminently.”

  “That’s why people forget about it,” said Lomax, gazing at him very intently.

  Artivale began to wonder whether Lomax suffered from delusions.

  “Could you take off those spectacles?” he asked.

  “No,” said Lomax. “I should go mad if I did. You have no idea how beautiful your butterflies are, seen through them—the blue through a veil of black. But to go back to the fortune. I ought, perhaps, to leave it to Miss Whitaker, but she has enough of her own already.”

  “Why to Miss Whitaker?” asked Artivale.

  “I married her in Cairo,” replied Lomax; “I forgot to tell you that. It is so difficult to remember all these things.”

  “Are you telling me that you and Miss Whitaker were married all that time on the yacht?”

  “Exactly. She was going to have a child, you know—by another man.

  “I see,” said Artivale.

  “But of course all these things that I am telling you are private.”

  “Oh, quite,” said Artivale. “Miss Whitaker was going to have a child, so you married her, Bellamy had a mortal illness, so you murdered him. Private and confidential. I quite understand.”

  “I hope you will have no scruples about accepting the fortune,” said Lomax anxiously. “I am leaving it to you, really, as I should leave it to a scientific institute—because I believe you will use it to the good of humanity. But if you make any difficulties I shall alter my will and leave it to the Royal Society.”

  “Tell me, Lomax,” said Artivale, “do you care a fig for humanity?”

  “There is nothing else to care about,” said Lomax.

  “Of course I accept your offer—though not for myself,” said Artivale.

  “That’s all right then,” said Lomax, and he rose to go.

  “Stay a moment,” said Artivale. “Naturally, you got Bellamy to sign a paper stating that you were about to murder him at his own request?”

  “No,” said Lomax; “it did cross my mind, but it seemed indelicate, somehow—egotistic, you know, at a moment like that, to mention such a thing—and as he didn’t suggest it I thought I wouldn’t bother him. After all, he
was paying me a great compliment—a very great compliment.”

  “Oh, undoubtedly!” said Artivale, “but I think, if you will forgive my saying so, that your delicacy outran your prudence. Any evidence that I can give…”

  “But you have only my word, and that isn’t evidence,” replied Lomax, smiling.

  At that moment a bell pealed through the house upstairs.

  “That will be for me,” said Lomax; “how lucky that I had time to say what I wanted to say.”

  “Oh, you are lucky, aren’t you?” cried Artivale wildly; “a lucky, lucky dog. Your luck’s inconceivable. Lomax—look Lomax—you must get out of this house. The back door.

  The bell rang again.

  “It’s only a question of sooner or later,” said Lomax gently; “for everybody, you know; not only for me. If they let me keep the spectacles I don’t mind. With them, I don’t see things as they are. Or perhaps I do. It doesn’t make much difference which. If you won’t go up and open that door, I shall go and open it myself.”

  They took Lomax away in a cab. He was not allowed to keep his spectacles. Artivale came downstairs again to the kitchen, and watched a peacock butterfly of humming-bird proportions crawl free of its cocoon and spread its wings in flight.

  * * *

  It was only during the course of his trial that Lomax discovered how pitiable a weapon was truth. A law-court is a place of many contradictions; pitch-pine walls and rows of benches give it the appearance of a school treat, white wigs and scarlet and phraseology erect it into a seeming monument to all civilisation, but of the helplessness of the victim there is at least no doubt at all. His bewilderment is the one certain factor. Lomax in the days when he might meet fact with fantasy had been a contented man; now, when he tried to meet with fact the fantastical world which so suddenly and so utterly swamped him, was a man confounded, a man floundering for a foothold. He had lost his spectacles. He had lost his attitude towards life. He had lost Miss Whitaker, or at any rate had exchanged her for a Miss Whitaker new and formidable, a Miss Whitaker who, astonishingly and catastrophically, spoke a portion of the truth. If earth had turned to heaven and heaven to earth a greater chaos could not have resulted in his mind.