Family History

by Vita Sackville-West

  He was especially grateful to her for sending him back to his book. Time and his publishers were pressing, and in the last few months he had lost many days on Evelyn’s demand. Why could she not always be reasonable as she was this morning? Then, no trouble would ever arise between them.

  He went back into the cottage and began turning over the papers on his desk. At the back of his mind he kept the vision of her passing down the nuttery, unlatching the gate, and walking out into the sunlight of the field beyond; he knew that in an hour’s time, two hours’ time, he would go out and find her, and that their relation would be as idyllically resumed. But in the meantime, he was detached enough to be grateful to her for her hour of concession to his ordinary life.

  So grateful was he, and so unusually relieved,—for he had prepared a solid revision of his book in advance, and Evelyn’s unexpected advent had made him fear that lie must delay its execution,—that he became absorbed in his writing and forgot all about the time.

  He wrote better than usual, and his mind worked more clearly, because of his consciousness that she was out somewhere in his fields, waiting for him.

  Evelyn crossed the fields till she came to the lake in the hollow, when she sat down on a tree-stump and gazed across the shimmering water. She thought of nothing consciously; her being was simply lapped in a sensuous warmth, compounded partly of love and partly of the summer day. Presently Miles would come back to her. Nothing else mattered. She knew that he had his book to write; let him write it! His book was important; yet unimportant. He might even ring up Bretton at Maidstone, and have a long conversation with him, a voice interrupting every now and then to say “Six minutes,—nine minutes,—twelve minutes,” but all those minutes would be as nothing compared with the minute when she would see him coming down the field towards the lake to join her. It’s a terrible thing, a divine thing, she thought, pressing her fingers again into her eyeballs as when she had watched the swallows, to be a woman and so much in love. One must keep the poignancy of it even from one’s lover; and thatt constitutes the loneliness of love, for a woman. However much in love he, and I, may be, there is a difference: the world remains with him, and the world vanishes for me. The masculine world remains quite separate from the world of love. So,—the logical sequence followed in her mind,—I must not bother him. I must fit in with the mood that moves him, and be grateful for what I can get. He is a man, and I am a woman. His life is full, and mine is empty, except in so far as he fills it.

  But it was hard for her to school herself; sitting beside the lake, waiting for Miles to join her. Twenty hours with him had unfitted her for rational argument. She was his; therefore he must be hers. His book, and his telephone calls to Bretton, were insignificant. “I, thy God, am a jealous god,” when the god is the god of love.

  She waited for so long that her reasonableness began to evaporate and her temper to rise. Really, she must mean very little to him, if he could waste so many hours when they might be together! She pulled up a little tuft of grass and nibbled the stalks crossly, making a valiant effort to control herself. She was determined not to receive him sharply, when he did consent to arrive. It was her own fault: she had told him to work at his book and not to hurry. He was not to blame for taking her at her word. Thus she admonished herself. Still, her temper began to rise at his assumption that she could happily and patiently watch wild-ducks on the lake for an indefinite time.

  Then she saw him coming towards her across the fields. Her indignation dissolved. The fields, and the summer, and love, and Miles, were again blended in her mind. They were all part of the same thing. She forgot that he had kept her waiting.

  She would not rise to meet him. She would delay the moment when he would take her hand and say that his writing was over and done with, and that he was free to be with her for the rest of the day. A physical tremor ran over her at his approaching nearness. “Seven months!” she thought, “and still so idiotically in love!”

  He came up to her and threw himself down on the grass at her side.

  “Finished your writing, Miles? What shall we do? Shall we go for a walk in the wood, or would you like to take me out in the boat? Whatever you like. I’m perfectly happy so long as we are alone.”

  “We aren’t going to be alone, I’m afraid.”

  “Not alone? What do you mean?” She sat up straight, then she relaxed again, as she guessed what he might mean. “You’ve got to see Bretton or someone,” she said, determined to be reasonable.

  “The Anquetils telephoned,” he said deliberately; “they want to motor down for the day.”

  “Miles, you didn’t say they could come?”

  “Of course I did,—they haven’t been here since last year. You don’t mind, do you?”

  “Not mind! Oh, Miles, you knew I should mind. How could you do anything so inconsiderate and so cruel? You did it on purpose, I believe, to spite me, to provoke a quarrel. Or did you really think I should not mind? Are you just obtuse, or most ingeniously cruel? Whichever it is, I don’t understand you, I don’t understand.”

  All her serenity and happiness were piteously dispelled; she was hurt, angry, and astonished. She looked at him as though trying to penetrate into his motives. He returned her gaze with the hard eyes she had learnt to dread. As a matter of fact, he felt guilty, and the sense of guilt made him defiant. It was not true that he had intended to spite and provoke her; but it was true that he had intended to humble what he considered as her unreasonableness. Even as he had answered the telephone, he had smiled wickedly at the thought of her indignation. Now he was sorry, when he saw her disappointment and distress; still, he would not give way.

  “How you exaggerate! They will go back to London this evening, leaving us alone,—if thatt is really what you like.”

  “You’re a brute, Miles,—a cold brute. Very well: if they come, I go.”

  “Aren’t you rather losing your sense of proportion?”

  “I don’t think so. If you are capable of doing something which you know will hurt me, it means only one thing, doesn’t it? That you don’t care about me as I tried to persuade myself that you cared. You have left me alone the whole morning, anyhow. You are either a brute, indifferent, or a bully. Whichever it is, makes very little difference. I won’t accept you on such terms. I prefer to leave you now, at once, and for good. You can go on with your book in peace, and you can keep your friends.”

  She got up.

  “You needn’t lie there sneering at me, Miles. I mean it. You know that we have each always wanted the upper hand,—oh, I’ll admit, if you like, that neither of us has a very nice character. We’re both vain and domineering. Well, you haven’t won. You’ve won in a way, because I loved you far more than you ever loved me; you can count thatt as a triumph if you like. Now it’s over, and I daresay you will be thankful to be rid of me.”

  “Evelyn, you’re saying all the things that people say on these occasions. One after the other, they’re inevitably trotted out.”

  “My dear Miles, you’re welcome to your superiority. Keep it for the Anquetils,—perhaps it will impress them. It doesn’t impress me. I’m an ordinary human woman, not clever, not intellectual,—I always told you so. I never tried to keep you on false pretences. But at least let me say this to you, I gave up things for you that I never thought to give up . . .”

  “Your respectability, I suppose you mean?”

  “Yes, I do mean thatt. You may sneer. It meant something to me.—And there again,” she added, reminded of another grievance, “you never gave me a thought when you asked the Anquetils down here. What would they think if they found me here, alone with you! You know how much I risk by coming at all, without publishing it to all the world.”

  “The Anquetils aren’t all the world; besides, they know about us already.”

  “Yes,—you told them. Without asking my leave, you told them.” She
chose to forget the pleasure she had experienced on hearing that he had been unable to disguise his new happiness from his best friends. “Never for one moment have you stopped to think how much you might be compromising me. Dan,—my servants,—my relations,—have you ever thought of them?”

  “Good Lord, that you should reckon with such contemptible things!”

  “They may seem contemptible to you. To me, they aren’t. Yet I have sacrificed them all to you, Miles. Do you imagine that the sacrifice meant nothing to me?—No, I won’t reproach you. I’ve suffered on your account,—more than you know,—but I’ve been happy with you, too, at moments,—no, I won’t reproach you.—I’m going now, Miles. Don’t tell the Anquetils I was here, will you?”

  Alarmed and irritated, he caught her by the skirt as she moved away.

  “Evelyn, don’t be so ridiculous. There are other things in life than lovers’ quarrels. The quarrel and the reconciliation,—it’s a convention of fiction.”

  “Miles, let go of my skirt, please. It is you who look ridiculous sprawling on the grass, clutching at me.—Anyhow, what do you mean by saying the quarrel and the reconciliation are a convention of fiction? Get fiction out of your head, and you’ll be a wiser man.”

  “Get sense into yours,” he grumbled, releasing her, “and you’ll be a wiser woman.”

  “We’re both right,” she said, looking at him very sadly; and although at than moment he could have recaptured her easily, since she was unhappy and temporarily softened, he missed his opportunity, and she went away from him across the field, in the pretty frock he had liked so much before breakfast.

  Cross, he watched her go; then jumped up and went after her.

  “Evelyn!”

  She stopped and turned to him, but she was very cold. “I don’t think there’s any more to be said, is there?” “These quarrels are so silly. We were so happy.” “Yes, we were, but you’ve spoilt it.”

  “Can’t we put it right?”

  “If you want to put it right, Miles, telephone to the Anquetils and stop them from coming.”

  “No,” he said, after a pause.

  “You won’t?”

  “I won’t.—The issue is an absurd one. And it’s too late anyway.”

  “I see: you prefer your friends to me. Well, let us leave it at thatt.”

  She walked on.

  “I don’t prefer my friends to you,” he said, following her, “but I do prefer a peaceful life to a life full of wasteful and unnecessary emotion.” His moment of remorse had gone; he was very angry and resentful.

  “Is it unnecessary emotion,” she said, stopping, “when I sit for hours waiting for you and thinking to myself that at last,—at last!—I shall have you to myself all day, yes, and all night too, Miles, and then you come and say calmly that other people are coming to spoil our solitude, and seem not to care that those other people should rob us of what is so precious to me if not to you? And indeed invite them deliberately, knowing full well that you destroy all my pleasure: meaning, indeed, to destroy my pleasure because you think me unreasonable. Have you no imagination, you who pride yourself on your intelligence?—Oh yes, Miles! you have imagination; you have enough imagination to know quite clearly what you were doing, and that’s what I can’t forgive. I could forgive your stupidity,—you’re only a man after all,—but I can’t forgive your deliberation. You meant to hurt me; well, you’ve succeeded, but you’ve lost me in doing it.”

  “What a speech!” he said to himself, enraged that she should make this fuss over nothing, but at the same time he knew somewhere in his heart that her resentment was justified according to her own lights; he knew that she had tried to be good about his book; he knew that the Anquetils symbolised some essential rift between himself and her. The fuss she made was unjustifiable in the letter of the law, but in the spirit of the law something could be said on her side. “Damn love, damn women,” he said to himself; watching her cross the field. He was upset and sorry; still, he was not willing to give way. “Why shouldn’t Viola and Leonard come just for the day?” he said to himself, watching her go; and he wondered if she would really go for ever, but having a tyrannical nature himself he reckoned on her not breaking so easily away from him, and was pleased rather than otherwise at the test he had imposed upon her. “Another tiff,” he said to himself: strolling after her. He hoped only that she would not be rude to the Anquetils. Rudeness was a thing he could not tolerate, unless it sprang flaming from the furnace of some conviction,—Bretton’s rudeness, for instance, always gained his sympathy, and Leonard Anquetil’s gruffness merely amused him. The bad manners of ill-temper, however, he found displeasing and embarrassing.

  He decided that he could trust Evelyn: she was too conventional to be rude.

  When the Anquetils arrived, she was nowhere to be seen. He felt a little uneasy. Was she really packing, upstairs? Had he really lost her? His mind was divided between pleasure at the Anquetils’ arrival and anxiety as to the black cloud that had obscured Evelyn’s heaven. He knew,—no one better,—how acutely she suffered from these storms of feeling; he knew too, doing her justice, that she usually tried to disguise her feelings from him, unless they overcame her beyond the point of prudence and wisdom. On this occasion they had overcome her; and on this occasion he was entirely to blame. She was right: he had known full well that he would destroy all her pleasure. He hated himself for his wanton unkindness; yet at the same time he was angry with her for her resentment. It was in no good mood that he went out to meet the Anquetils.

  Their charming simplicity at once reversed his mood. They were frankly delighted to see him, and frankly delighted with their jaunt into the country. He felt instantly, as he always felt in their company, that no petty misunderstandings could possibly arise amongst them. Here was real friendship, both between Viola and Leonard, and between Viola, Leonard, and himself. They had brought their boy Paul with them, and Lesley their daughter; and they had brought a lobster too, bought on the way through Tonbridge, fearing that Mrs. Munday’s catering might prove inadequate for so large an invasion. “Hermits like you, Miles, live for a week on a leaf of green salad, I know,” said Viola, as she gave him the lobster wrapped up in a bit of newspaper.

  “Not at all,” he said, thinking that he might as well get the announcement over at once; “I am entertaining a party, which means that I live in luxury. Evelyn Jarrold is staying with me,—you remember, Viola, I brought her to dine with you.”

  “Oh, what fun,” said Viola instantly, “I shall enjoy seeing her again. I don’t think you were there thatt evening, Lesley? No, of course, you were in Paris.—Lesley insisted on going to the Sorbonne, you know, Miles, and we were thankful to let her go, rather than to see her fly off to Australia. She had to have some outlet for her energies, and of the two the Sorbonne alarmed us less.—My dear Miles, how lovely your castle is looking. You’ve abolished all the nettles since last year. And as we drove through your broad acres, Leonard remarked that you had put up several new gates. You remember, last year they were all broken down and off their hinges.”

  “One does these things little by little,” said Miles, smiling. He was grateful to her for skating so delicately over the announcement of Evelyn’s presence, and he was grateful to Leonard for noticing his new gates. Evelyn had not noticed them. “Lord!” he said, suddenly expressing a secret thought, “I wish I could afford to be a really good landlord.”

  “You ought to hob-nob with my brother-in-law,” said Anquetil in his gruff way; he was always gruff, but never disagreeable. “You’re both of you old Tories at heart. The only difference is, that Sebastian can afford to be an old Tory, and a good landlord, and all the rest of it, and you can’t.”

  “Never mind,” said Miles; “I do my best and I get a lot of pleasure out of it. My new gates give me quite as much satisfaction as all his model dairies give Sebastian. But now come along,” he sai
d, “and forget your sneers at landlords,—whom you confuse with capitalists, which God knows they aren’t,—come along and give the lobster to Mrs. Munday, and then we may get some luncheon.”

  He took them down the garden path, happy and soothed by their presence. They walked with him, stopping to appreciate his flowers, chaffing him on his country habits. Their appreciation was genuine, and so was their chaff. All the time he was wondering when Evelyn would appear. Surely it was not possible that she should play him a trick by remaining in her room until they had gone, or, worse, by telephoning for a taxi to take her to the station. Knowing how violent she was, he could not be sure of her.—There she was, coming in her light frock through the gateway at the end of the path.

  She behaved, of course, perfectly. Nobody but Miles could have detected the slight chill in her manner. Outwardly she struck exactly the right note, assuming neither the prerogative of a hostess nor the detachment of a stranger. So perfectly did she play her part that even Miles might have deluded himself into the belief that she welcomed the Anquetils as cordially as himself. Miles, however, knowing her so well, saw through her graciousness; his knowledge of her was like a foot stamping on a thin film of ice. He knew, moreover, that she was tempted to like the Anquetils in spite of herself. Thatt made it all the more difficult for her. It was so difficult to hate people whom one really liked! The situation was consequently rich with complications.