Family History

by Vita Sackville-West

  “A pretty feeble joke,” grumbled Geoffrey.

  He was right, however. Mr. Jarrold did like Dan. He respected him, seeing that the boy was not a puppet as his own two sons were puppets.

  “Catherine,” said Hester, pursuing the subject later on, “what about Dan?”

  “What about him, dear? You know I never like to say anything against anybody, especially the young. They are so touchingly unprotected, I always think.”

  This reply showed Hester that she might proceed. She proceeded. Catherine was an excellent audience. She had not preserved her virginity for forty-five years without revealing the fact in every phrase and gesture. A practicing Christian, she was packed with virtuous complacence and not one ounce of charity.

  She was less interested in Dan than in Evelyn.

  “Perhaps we ought not to blame the poor boy, Hester. You know the power of influence on a young mind, and perhaps Dan’s home influence has not always been,—well, what it might have been had poor Tommy lived.”

  “You mean?”

  “I think you understand what I mean. Don’t oblige me to put censorious thoughts into words.”

  “You are so scrupulous, Catherine,—such a sweet trait in you, dearest. It’s quite true, we know so little of Evelyn’s life, apart from us. Her friends, for instance, she may have dozens of friends we have never heard of. Remember, Catherine, Evelyn is a pretty woman still.”

  “Yes, and she looks a great deal younger than she actually is. One must grant her thatt. It is not difficult, I believe, nowadays, if you like to spend your time and money in dressmakers’ shops and beauty-parlours. Personally I can imagine a better use for my time.”

  “Well, then. You know how fond I am of Evelyn,—how fond we all are, in fact,—heaven forbid that I should say a word against her,—but she’s a vain woman, Catherine,—oh, quite harmless vanity!—and, in short, what do you think?” Hester paused, expectant.

  “I don’t like to think,” said Catherine, who liked it very much indeed.

  “No, I thought you’d say thatt. Neither do I. But supposing there should be, well, somebody in her life? Somebody we know nothing of? Would thatt be a very good example for Dan? a very good way of teaching him to respect his father’s memory?”

  “Oh, Hester, I don’t believe,—no, I can’t believe,—I won’t believe it.”

  “Mind you, Catherine, I’m not saying anything definite.”

  “Of course not,—but who could it be?”

  “How can one tell? Evelyn goes about a lot,—and she has her own flat, after all.”

  “What a dreadful, dreadful idea,” said Catherine, deliciously titillated. She thought it over, with all the details she could invent, while performing the Christian act of carrying a pot of jelly down to poor old Mrs. Moffat in the village. She looked at Evelyn with a fresh eye, noting her grace, her beauty, and imagining thatt grace, thatt beauty, taken into the arms of a man.

  Then the two boys had an open row. Hester and Geoffrey, pacing up and down the garden together, heard angry voices coming from the gun-room. They heard Dan’s voice saying, “You little skunk.”

  “Oh, Geoffrey, there’s Dan upsetting Robin again.”

  They hurried towards the open door and found the two boys, Robin very flushed and defiant, Dan very scornful and superior.

  “Now, then, you boys, what is it this time?”

  “He said he’d thrash me,” said Robin, relieved by the arrival of his parents.

  “For shame, Dan,—and you twice his size! Is thatt the sort of thing they teach you at Eton?”

  “What had you been doing, Robin?” Geoffrey asked, more sensibly.

  “I did nothing at all, Daddy.”

  “Let Dan speak. Dan, what did he do?”

  “Oh, nothing,” said Dan, looking down and kicking his toe into the ground.

  “Well, if neither of you will say, Robin had better come along with us and next time you meet try to behave yourselves properly.—Really, Geoffrey,” said Hester as they walked away, “I think I must speak to Evelyn about the way Dan bullies Robin.”

  She spoke to Evelyn, and Evelyn lost her temper, and the whole family became involved. Everybody took Robin’s part, and said that it was shameful that Dan should threaten a boy two years younger than himself. Everybody felt that Robin was a nice healthy normal boy, and that Dan was a freak, a pariah. Their manners were too good to allow them to say so openly, but the implication was not lost upon Evelyn.

  She got Dan into her own room.

  “Now, Dan, what was it all about?”

  “I can’t tell you, Mummy.”

  “I can’t think why you and Robin don’t get on better,—he’s not very interesting, I admit, but he’s quite a harmless little boy.”

  Thatt was almost too much for Dan, who was feeling very sore; he grunted. What would his mother think, he wondered, if she could overhear Robin’s habitual conversation with one of the grooms? What would Aunt Hester think, or Uncle Geoffrey? They all approved of Robin’s passion for the stables; his grandfather had said only yesterday, very pointedly, that he did like to see a boy who was fond of horses. If they only knew! But Dan wasn’t going to tell them. Let them smile benevolently when Robin came back with bits of straw on his back. The only thing he, Dan, could do was to curse the little beast. He would tell Mr. Vane-Merrick. He would put the ethics of the question to him without mentioning Robin’s name.

  “Mummy, how many more days have we got to stay here?”

  “Five, Dan,—why?” Had she not been counting them, ticking them off, day by day!

  “Oh, nothing.”

  “Do you want to go back to London?”

  “No, I want to go to Mr. Vane-Merrick’s. There’s such a lot of humbug here,—I can’t stand it.”

  There was even more humbug than Dan thought. Geoffrey had a pretty shrewd idea of his son’s real character. But he only laughed to himself, in his easy-going way: Robin had something in him, not like thatt mealy-mouthed softy Dan. He felt a throb of pride whenever he watched his son taking his pony over the jumps in the paddock or bringing down a bird with the new gun his grandfather had given him for Christmas. If a boy of fifteen could do thatt, shaping towards the man he would eventually be, what did a bit of smut matter?

  The boy would get his house-colours, too, before long. And they would never superannuate such a good cricketer! Geoffrey had had a conversation with Robin’s house-master, who with a wink had reassured him on the point of Robin’s superannuation. He wasn’t much good at his books, certainly,—in fact, he had twice failed to pass in trials,—but he was the best fast-bowler in the house. These little difficulties could be got over. Robin was safe for his colours, eventually; and anyone who was safe for his colours was safe for Pop: not likely that they would superannuate anybody who was safe for Pop.

  No, thought Geoffrey, Robin was all right; what a pity he wasn’t the heir. England would be safe, if boys like Robin were always the heirs; not boys like Dan.

  It was not a successful Christmas party; nobody could pretend that it was. Evelyn had to spend all her time steering them off the shoals. She had to be inexhaustibly gay and inventive; and thatt was very hard, when she had her own private preoccupations and, furthermore, was herself involved in the family complications by her estrangement from Ruth. Ruth and she, at previous Christmas gatherings, had been accustomed to meet between tea and dinner in their rooms and to compare notes idly over the events of the day. She had drawn a certain satisfaction from Ruth’s adoration; not that she cared particularly for Ruth, but to someone of her nature it was always pleasant to hold another being in complete, uncritical subjection. Ruth could be allowed to fill in the boredom of her spare moments. She was quite cynically aware that this wanton desire for domination sprang from the least pleasant side of her nature. The most unworthy vi
ctim was better than no victim at all. It irked her vanity now to realise that she had lost her hold over Ruth; incidentally she was sorry for Ruth, but did not see what she could do about it; and was additionally piqued by the irony of Miles Vane-Merrick, of all people, defrauding her of a slave.

  Those evening meetings with Ruth were a thing of the past. It was awkward for both of them. Ruth came once, and tapped at Evelyn’s door, but their conversation was strained and brief; it had none of the silly, easy, friendly flow of former days. It ended by both of them saying simultaneously that they supposed they ought to write letters; both the simultaneity and the obviousness of the excuse made matters worse and more difficult. This was wounding and annoying. Then there was Ruth’s manifest unhappiness; Evelyn had never realised that the superficial Ruth could be genuinely unhappy. Unreasonably, it irritated her that someone else should be unhappy, however mutely, when she herself was so terrifyingly, rapturously happy. Ruth’s poor white face and pathetic efforts to appear normal were a reproach to her.

  Ruth suffered acutely. The terrible verses ran in her head:

  “For it is not an open enemy that hath done me this dishonour, for then I could have borne it.

  “Neither was it mine adversary that did magnify himself against me, for then peradventure I would have hid myself from him.

  “But it was even thou, my companion, my guide, and my own familiar friend.”

  Uncertainty tortured her further. Had she known for certain that Evelyn loved Miles Vane-Merrick, she could have borne it; but being a woman herself she had no illusions as to the depths of woman’s cruelty where love or vanity were concerned. Evelyn, she knew, had a cruel and ugly side to her nature. She stated it in those terms, crudely, going no further, and not realising that in Evelyn she had to deal with an exceedingly complex and passionate temperament, quite beyond the limits of her understanding. She stopped short at the point where she realised that Evelyn might quite well be playing with Miles Vane-Merrick simply in order to humiliate her and bring her to heel, and also because she could not tolerate the spectacle of a man’s interest going to another woman. Women, even the greatest of friends, did those things to one another. Ruth knew thatt. She took it so much as a matter of course that she would not have blamed anyone but Evelyn. But it hurt her to think that Evelyn, whom she had worshipped since childhood and who was already so rich in devotion of various kinds, should have wished to snatch her one poor treasure from her.

  Perhaps Evelyn had no idea how bitterly she minded. But then why did Evelyn avoid her and make any excuse not to be left alone with her? No, Evelyn knew well enough what she was doing.

  All doubt in the matter was removed from Ruth’s mind on New Year’s Eve, when, coming in from a walk, the party found their letters arranged in packets on the hall-table waiting for them. “Here are yours, Evelyn,” Ruth said thoughtlessly, and saw that an envelope addressed in Miles’ handwriting lay on the top of the pile.

  Evelyn took the opportunity to say to Dan during the evening, in Ruth’s presence, “I heard from Mr. Vane-Merrick to-day, Dan, saying that he expects us on the 2nd. Dan and I are going to stay with your friend Vane-Merrick, Ruth,” she added turning to Ruth; “isn’t thatt a joke? I believe he lives in the most hideous discomfort, but Dan wants to go, so I suppose I must sacrifice myself.”

  What on earth impelled her to make such an announcement? Neither Ruth nor Evelyn could have analyzed the impulse.

  “I didn’t know Dan had met him,” said Ruth with a knife in her heart.

  Dan was all eagerness at once.

  “Do you know him too, Ruth?” He had not quite outgrown the naïf surprise of the young on discovering that someone they know is acquainted also with someone else whom they know. It is the second stage; after childhood which assumes that everybody in one’s own little circle is familiar to everybody outside it. “Isn’t he a marvellous person? He took us to a Russian film one night in London. I thought he was the most exciting person I had ever met. Mummy thinks so too,—don’t you, Mummy? But she won’t say so; I think she’s afraid of my talking to him too much.”

  Dan suddenly stopped; he was not usually so expansive to Ruth. Only the reminder of Vane-Merrick had loosened his tongue. He felt snubbed when Ruth said casually, “Oh, is he so very marvellous? Quite a nice young man, I thought.”

  She knew the truth now. She was struck with pain at the thought that Evelyn would stay with him,—would see the queer half-ruined castle where he spent all his leisure alone,—would enter into his personal life, creating a fresh intimacy between herself and him, the intimacy of daily life shared without a cumbrous interrupting paraphernalia of servants; she imagined how Dan would be sent out to draw water from the well, while Miles coaxed the fire, and Evelyn called out to know whether the kettle was boiling yet. What fun they would have! and behind the fun would be the hidden, tremulous passion which must be concealed from the boy, but which would be the sweeter, perhaps, for its secrecy. The double pain hurt Ruth so much that she put her face into her hands with a little moan. She had not known until then how much life could hurt.

  Evelyn shrugged her shoulders as she made her way towards the library. It had been an unpleasant little episode, and she was glad it was over. At least it had cleared things up between herself and Ruth; Evelyn had no relish for ambiguous positions.

  As she neared the library door, Minnie ran out howling. “Why, Minnie, what’s the matter?”

  “Grandpapa’s so angry with Uncle Evan.”

  “In there?”

  “Yes, in there. I’m going to Cocoa. I’m frightened.”

  “Are they alone?”

  “Yes.”

  Evelyn hesitated. Should she go in and interfere? It might make things easier for Evan. But it was difficult, when one’s head was full of one thing and one thing only, to throw oneself into the troubles of others. “Oh, Miles,” she whispered, pressing her hands together in impatient exasperation, longing for the peace and happiness which would be hers next week.

  She went in.

  Mr. Jarrold was obviously very angry indeed. He was storming up and down the room, slapping his hands behind his back, as was his custom when in a rage. Evan stood by the fire looking very sheepish, a decanter of whisky and a siphon on the table near him.

  Mr. Jarrold having lost all control of himself; turned instantly to Evelyn.

  “Look at thatt, Evelyn, I ask you. Five o’clock in the afternoon, and he’s at it already. Thought I was safely away at a board meeting. It’s a disgrace. He hasn’t been out all day,—he’s just been swilling whisky in here, making a beast of himself. I tell him I won’t stand it. I won’t have a son of mine making a beast of himself in my house. If he wants to drink, let him go and do it elsewhere. But I’ll alter my will, by God; not a penny of my money shall he touch, not a word shall he have to say in the running of my business. I’ve told him; now he can take his choice.”

  “And I’ve told Papa that it’s unreasonable to curse a grown-up man for having a whisky and soda instead of tea on a cold afternoon,” said Evan, very sulky.

  “Damn you, sir, don’t prevaricate,” bellowed Mr. Jarrold. “You know very well why I curse you. You soak from morning to night behind my back. You’re a useless, drunken, feeble, idle loafer. I’m ashamed of you. I’ve a good mind to turn you out of the house straight away. I don’t know what’s happened to all my children. Rotten fruit, thatt’s what they are. Geoffrey’s a nincompoop, you’re a drunkard, Dan is a softy,—thatt’s all the reward I get for raising a family and working all my life to give them the best of everything. And then you dare to talk to me about a whisky and soda instead of tea! By God, sir, I’d like to hit you, I’d like to bash in your silly face,” and Mr. Jarrold, shaking with fury, advanced upon his son with a raised fist.

  “My dear father,” said Evan, taking refuge in a chilly superiority, and also edging away a li
ttle, “aren’t you forgetting yourself? This isn’t a collier’s cottage, after all”

  “No, it isn’t,” said Mr. Jarrold, “and sometimes I wish it were. I wish I’d never raised myself out of the class I was born in. Oh, I’m not ashamed of it, though you are. You’re ashamed to remember that your father’s father was a man of the people,—you, with your airs and graces, aping the gentleman, all so lardy-da. You’re nothing,—you’re neither one thing nor the other. I’ve made you into something false. Not a collier’s cottage,—no. But I was born in a collier’s cottage and I’m proud of it. My father had red blood in his veins instead of glucose. By God, England did produce men then.”

  He paused, forgot his personal grievance, and launched out upon the most illuminating discourse Evelyn had ever heard from his lips. Her respect for him increased; he might be crude, he might be rough, he might lack entirely the decorative charm of the gentlemanly Geoffrey and the contemptible Evan, he might lack the awaking sensibility of Dan, but he was as solid as an old bull in a field, and he had no fastidious artificial hesitation about saying what he thought. He was so vigorous, and withal so eloquent, that Evelyn understood at last how he had always been able to carry his board of directors with him. She was glad to see that Dan had crept into the room and was listening.

  “I don’t say that they didn’t make mistakes. Many people think that it was a mistake ever to have turned England into an industrial country at all. But no man, in those days, could have been expected to have thatt degree of foresight. It was the great chance, and they took it. By God, they did take it! With both hands. They couldn’t be expected to see that by nineteen thirty-one it would have become an unmanageable monster. Think of the excitement, the opportunity. My father told me what he felt when he set up his first workshops. A man like my father had had no chance till then; either one was a gentleman, or a peasant, or a small tradesman, or a working-man—big fry, or little fry, anyway. There wasn’t any real midway class. It was all privilege on the one hand, and lack of opportunity on the other. Those who had the privilege took their rights rather than their advantage. Those who had no opportunity were obliged to go without it. But then energetic men like my father grew up to make the new England, and their sons carried it further,—I carried it further myself. I say, we made something. It might have been better unmade, but you can’t go back on the past; you can’t go back on what has been done. We created a new sort of Englishman, neither big fry, nor little, but he was a real enough man in those days, tough, outspoken, with no nonsense about him. Then came the trouble: we weren’t content to let our sons remain what we ourselves had been, plain men of business who understood their job and were determined to get the best out of it. We wanted our sons to become the very thing that we had despised and envied. And now, by God, we’ve got what we wanted. We’ve created a lot of good-for-nothings who are damned careful of their manners and of their manners only, because they know they’re in a false position. Give me a gentleman, give me a countryman, give me a working-man, give me an honest-to-God middle-class John Smith, but heaven save me from these pretentious humbugs who imagine themselves the aristocracy of the future.