Vita Sackville-West

by Vita Sackville-West

  Was she to blame for her cruelty, her selfishness, her disregard for truth? was she, not evil, but only alien? to be forgiven all for the sake of the rarer, more distant flame? Was the standard of cardinal virtues set by the world the true, the ultimate standard? Was it possible that Eve made part of a limited brotherhood? was indeed a citizen of some advanced state of such perfection that this world’s measures and ideals were left behind and meaningless? meaningless because unnecessary in such a realm of serenity?

  Aphros, then—the liberty of Aphros—and Aphros meant to him far more than merely Aphros—that was surely a lovely and desirable thing, a worthy aim, a high beacon? If Eve cared nothing for the liberty of Aphros, was it because in her world (he was by now convinced of its existence) there was no longer any necessity to trouble over such aims, liberty being as natural and unmeditated as the air in the nostrils?

  (Not that this would ever turn him from his devotion; at most he could look upon Aphros as a stage upon the journey towards that higher aim—the stage to which he and his like, who were nearly of the elect, yet not of them, might aspire. And if the day should ever come when disillusion drove him down; when, far from becoming a citizen of Eve’s far sphere, he should cease to be a citizen even of Aphros and should become a citizen merely of the world, no longer young, no longer blinded by ideals, no longer nearly a poet, but merely a grown, sober man—then he would still keep Aphros as a bright memory of what might have been, of the best he had grasped, the possibility which in the days of youth had not seemed too extravagantly unattainable.)

  But in order to keep his hold upon this world of Eve’s, which in his inner consciousness he already recognised as the most valuable rift of insight ever vouchsafed to him, it was necessary that he should revolutionise every ancient gospel and reputable creed. The worth of Eve was to him an article of faith. His intimacy with her was a privilege infinitely beyond the ordinary privilege of love. Whatever she might do, whatever crime she might commit, whatever baseness she might perpetrate, her ultimate worth, the core, the kernel, would remain to him unsullied and inviolate. This he knew blindly, seeing it as the mystic sees God; and knew it the more profoundly that he could have defended it with no argument of reason.

  What then? the poet, the creator, the woman, the mystic, the man skirting the fringes of death—were they kin with one another and free of some realm unknown, towards which all, consciously or unconsciously, were journeying? Where the extremes of passion (he did not mean only the passion of love), of exaltation, of danger, of courage and vision—where all these extremes met—was it there, the great crossways where the moral ended, and the divine began? Was it for Eve supremely, and to a certain extent for all women and artists—the visionaries, the lovely, the graceful, the irresponsible, the useless!—was it reserved for them to show the beginning of the road?

  Youth! youth and illusion! to love Eve and Aphros! when those two slipped from him he would return sobered to the path designated by the sign-posts and milestones of man, hoping no more than to keep as a gleam within him the light glowing in the sky above that unattainable but remembered city.

  * * *

  He returned to earth; Eve was kneading and tormenting a lump of putty, and singing to herself meanwhile; he watched her delicate, able hands, took one of them, and held it up between his eyes and the sun.

  “Your fingers are transparent, they’re like cornelian against the light,” he said.

  She left her hand within his grasp, and smiled down at him.

  “How you play with me, Julian,” she said idly.

  “You’re such a delicious toy.”

  “Only a toy?”

  He remembered the intricate, untranslatable thoughts he had been thinking about her five minutes earlier, and began to laugh to himself.

  “A great deal more than a toy. Once I thought of you only as a child, helpless, irritating, adorable child, always looking for trouble, and turning to me for help when the trouble came.”

  “And then?”

  “Then you made me think of you as a woman,” he replied gravely.

  “You seemed to hesitate a good deal before deciding to think of me as that.”

  “Yes, I tried to judge our position by ordinary codes; you must have thought me ridiculous.”

  “I did, darling.” Her mouth twisted drolly as she said it.

  “I wonder now how I could have insulted you by applying them to you,” he said with real wonderment; everything seemed so clear and obvious to him now.

  “Why, how do you think of me now?”

  “Oh, God knows!” he replied. “I’ve called you changeling sometimes, haven’t I?” He decided to question her. “Tell me, Eve, how do you explain your difference? you outrage every accepted code, you see, and yet one retains one’s belief in you. Is one simply deluded by your charm? or is there a deeper truth? can you explain?” He had spoken in a bantering tone, but he knew that he was trying an experiment of great import to him.

  “I don’t think I’m different, Julian; I think I feel things strongly, no more.”

  “Or else you don’t feel them at all.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well—Paul,” he said reluctantly.

  “You have never got over that, have you?”

  “Exactly!” he exclaimed. “It seems to you extraordinary that I should still remember Paul, or that his death should have made any impression upon me. I ought to hate you for your indifference. Sometimes I have come very near to hating you. But now—perhaps my mind is getting broader—I blame you for nothing because I believe you are simply not capable of understanding. But evidently you can’t explain yourself. I love you!” he said, “I love you!”

  He knew that her own inability to explain herself—her unselfconsciousness—had done much to strengthen his new theories. The flower does not know why or how it blossoms.…

  * * *

  On the day that he told her, with many misgivings, that Kato was coming to Aphros, she uttered no word of anger, but wept despairingly, at first without speaking, then with short, reiterated sentences that wrung his heart for all their unreason—“We were alone. I was happy as never in my life. I had you utterly. We were alone. Alone! Alone!”

  “We will tell Kato the truth,” he soothed her; “she will leave us alone still.”

  But it was not in her nature to cling to straws of comfort. For her, the sunshine had been unutterably radiant; and for her it was now proportionately blackened out.

  “We were alone,” she repeated, shaking her head with unspeakable mournfulness, the tears running between her fingers.

  For the first time he spoke to her with a moved, a tender compassion, full of reverence.

  “Your joy … your sorrow … equally over-whelming and tempestuous. How you feel—you tragic child! Yesterday you laughed and made yourself a crown of myrtle.”

  She refused to accompany him when he went to meet Kato, who, after a devious journey from Athens, was to land at the rear of the island away from the curiosity of Herakleion. She remained in the cool house, sunk in idleness, her pen and pencil alike neglected. She thought only of Julian, absorbingly, concentratedly. Her past life appeared to her, when she thought of it at all, merely as a period in which Julian had not loved her, a period of waiting, of expectancy, of anguish sometimes, of incredible reticence supported only by the certainty which had been her faith and her inspiration …

  To her surprise, he returned, not only with Kato but with Grbits.

  Every word and gesture of the giant demonstrated his enormous pleasure. His oddly Mongolian face wore a perpetual grin of triumphant truancy. His good-humour was not to be withstood. He wrung Eve’s hands, inarticulate with delight. Kato, her head covered with a spangled veil—Julian had never seen her in a hat—stood by, looking on, her hands on her hips, as though Grbits were her exhibit. Her little eyes sparkled with mischief.

  “He is no longer an officer in the Serbian army,” she said at last, “only a freelance, at
Julian’s disposal. Is it not magnificent? He has sent in his resignation. His career is ruined. The military representative of Serbia in Herakleion!”

  “A free-lance,” Grbits repeated, beaming down at Julian. (It annoyed Eve that he should be so much the taller of the two.)

  “We sent you no word, not to lessen your surprise,” said Kato.

  They stood, all four, in the courtyard by the fountain.

  “I told you on the day of the elections that when you needed me I should come,” Grbits continued, his grin widening.

  “Of course, you are a supreme fool, Grbits,” said Kato to him.

  “Yes,” he replied, “thank Heaven for it.”

  “In Athens the sympathy is all with the Islands,” said Kato. She had taken off her veil, and they could see that she wore the gold wheat-ears in her hair. Her arms were, as usual, covered with bangles, nor had she indeed made any concessions to the necessities of travelling, save that on her feet, instead of her habitual square-toed slippers, she wore long, hideous, heelless, elastic-sided boots. Eve reflected that she had grown fatter and more stumpy, but she was, as ever, eager, kindly, enthusiastic, vital; they brought with them a breath of confidence and efficiency, those disproportionately assorted travelling companions; Julian felt a slight shame that he had neglected the Islands for Eve; and Eve stood by, listening to their respective recitals, to Grbits’ startling explosions of laughter, and Kato’s exuberant joy, tempered with wisdom. They both talked at once, voluble and excited; the wheat-ears trembled in Kato’s hair, Grbits’ white regular teeth flashed in his broad face, and Julian, a little bewildered, turned from one to the other with his unsmiling gravity.

  “I mistrust the forbearance of Herakleion,” Kato said, a great weight of meditated action pressing on behind her words; “a month’s forbearance! In Athens innumerable rumours were current: of armed ships purchased from the Turks, even of a gun mounted on Mylassa—but that I do not believe. They have given you, you say, a month in which to come to your senses. But they are giving themselves also a month in which to prepare their attack,” and she plied him with practical questions that demonstrated her clear familiarity with detail and tactic, while Grbits contributed nothing but the cavernous laugh and ejaculations of his own unquestioning optimism.

  Five

  The second attack on Aphros was delivered within a week of their arrival.

  Eve and Kato, refusing the retreat in the heart of the island, spent the morning together in the Davenant house. In the distance the noise of the fighting alternately increased and waned; now crackling sharply, as it seemed, from all parts of the sea, now dropping into a disquieting silence. At such times Eve looked mutely at the singer. Kato gave her no comfort, but, shaking her head and shrugging her shoulders, expressed only her ignorance. She found that she could speak to Julian sympathetically of Eve, but not to Eve sympathetically of Julian. She had made the attempt, but after the pang of its effort, had renounced it. Their hostility smouldered dully under the shelter of their former friendship. Now, alone in the house, they might indeed have remained for the most time apart in separate rooms, but the common anxiety which linked them drew them together, so that when Kato moved Eve followed her, unwillingly, querulously; and expressions of affection were even forced from them, of which they instantly repented, and by some phrase of veiled cruelty sought to counteract.

  No news reached them from outside. Every man was at his post, and Julian had forbidden all movement about the village. By his orders also the heavy shutters had been closed over the windows of the Davenant drawing-room, where Eve and Kato sat, with the door open on to the courtyard for the sake of light, talking spasmodically, and listening to the sounds of the firing. At the first quick rattle Kato had said, “Machine-guns,” and Eve had replied, “Yes; the first time—when we were here alone—he told me they had a machine-gun on the police-launch;” then Kato said, after a pause of firing, “This time they have more than one.”

  Eve raised tormented eyes.

  “Anastasia, he said he would be in shelter.”

  “Would he remain in shelter for long?” Kato replied scornfully.

  Eve said, “He has Grbits with him.”

  Kato, crushing down the personal preoccupation, dwelt ardently on the fate of her country. She must abandon to Eve the thought of Julian, but of the Islands at least she might think possessively, diverting to their dear though inanimate claim all the need of passion and protection humanly denied her. From a woman of always intense patriotism, she had become a fanatic. Starved in one direction, she had doubled her energy in the other, realising, moreover, the power of that bond between herself and Julian. She could have said with thorough truthfulness that her principal cause of resentment against Eve was Eve’s indifference toward the Islands—a loftier motive than the more human jealousy. She had noticed Julian’s reluctance to mention the Islands in Eve’s presence. Alone with herself and Grbits, he had never ceased to pour forth the flood of his scheme, both practical and utopian, so that Kato could not be mistaken as to the direction of his true preoccupations. She had seen the vigour he brought to his governing. She had observed with a delighted grin to Grbits that, despite his Socialistic theories, Julian had in point of fact instituted a complete and very thinly-veiled autocracy in Hagios Zacharie. She had seen him in the village assembly, when in spite of his deferential appeals to the superior experience of the older men, he steered blankly past any piece of advice that ran contrary to the course of his own ideas. She knew that, ahead of him, when he should have freed himself finally of Herakleion (and that he would free himself he did not for a moment doubt), he kept always the dream of his tiny, ideal state. She revered his faith, his energy, and his youth, as the essence in him most worthy of reverence. And she knew that Eve, if she loved these things in him, loved them only in theory, but in practice regarded them with impatient indifference. They stole him away, came between him and her.… Kato knew well Eve’s own ideals. Courage she exacted. Talents she esteemed. Genius, freedom, and beauty she passionately worshipped as her gods upon earth. But she could tolerate nothing material, nor any occupation that removed her or the other from the blind absorption of love.

  Kato sighed. Far otherwise would she have cared for Julian! She caught sight of herself in a mirror, thick, squat, black, with little sparkling eyes; she glanced at Eve, glowing with warmth, sleek and graceful as a little animal, idle and seductive. Outside a crash of firing shook the solid house, and bullets rattled upon the roofs of the village.

  It was intolerable to sit unoccupied, working out bitter speculations, while such activity raged around the island. To know the present peril neither of Julian nor of Aphros! To wait indefinitely, probably all day, possibly all night!

  “Anastasia, sing.”

  Kato complied, as much for her own sake as for Eve’s. She sang some of her own native songs, then, breaking off, she played, and Eve drew near to her, lost and transfigured by the music; she clasped and unclasped her hands, beautified by her ecstasy, and Kato’s harsh thoughts vanished; Eve was, after all, a child, an all too loving and passionate child, and not, as Kato sometimes thought her, a pernicious force of idleness and waste. Wrong-headed, tragically bringing sorrow upon herself in the train of her too intense emotions.… Continuing to play, Kato observed her, and felt the light eager fingers upon her arm.

  “Ah, Kato, you make me forget. Like some drug of forgetfulness that admits me to caves of treasure. Underground caves heaped with jewels. Caves of the winds; zephyrs that come and go. I’m carried away into oblivion.”

  “Tell me,” Kato said.

  Obedient to the lead of the music, Eve wandered into a story—

  “Riding on a winged horse, he swept from east to west; he looked down upon the sea, crossed by the wake of ships, splashed here and there with islands, washing on narrow brown stretches of sand, or dashing against the foot of cliffs—you hear the waves breaking?—and he saw how the moon drew the tides, and how ships came to rest for a litt
le while in harbours, but were homeless and restless and free; he passed over the land, swooping low, and he saw the straight streets of cities, and the gleam of fires, the neat fields and guarded frontiers, the wider plains; he saw the gods throned on Ida, wearing the clouds like mantles and like crowns, divinely strong or divinely beautiful; he saw things mean and magnificent; he saw the triumphal procession of a conqueror, with prisoners walking chained to the back of his chariot, and before him white bulls with gilded horns driven to the sacrifice, and children running with garlands of flowers; he saw giants hammering red iron in northern mountains; he saw all the wanderers of the earth; Io the tormented, and all gipsies, vagabonds, and wastrels: all jongleurs, poets, and mountebanks; he saw these wandering, but all the staid and solemn people lived in the cities and counted the neat fields, saying, ‘This shall be mine and this shall be yours.’ And sometimes, as he passed above a forest, he heard a scurry of startled feet among crisp leaves, and sometimes he heard, which made him sad, the cry of stricken trees beneath the axe.”

  She broke off, as Kato ceased playing.

  “They are still firing,” she said.

  “Things mean and magnificent,” quoted Kato slowly. “Why, then, withhold Julian from the Islands?”

  She had spoken inadvertently. Consciousness of the present had jerked her back from remembrance of the past, when Eve had come almost daily to her flat in Herakleion, bathing herself in the music, wrapped up in beauty; when their friendship had hovered on the boundaries of the emotional, in spite of—or perhaps because of?—the thirty years that lay between them.

  “I heard the voice of my fantastic Eve, of whom I once thought,” she added, fixing her eyes on Eve, “as the purest of beings, utterly removed from the sordid and the ugly.”