All Passion Spent

by Vita Sackville-West

  The caretaker shrugged. After all, there was nothing in the house for Lady Slane to steal, and she wanted her tea. Receiving a tip of half-a-crown, she went. Lady Slane was left alone in the house; she heard the front door slam as the caretaker went away. How wrongly caretakers were named: they took so little care. A perfunctory banging about with black water in a galvanised pail, a dirty clout smeared over the floor, and they thought their work was done. Small blame to them, perhaps, receiving a few shillings a week and expected to make their knuckles even more unsightly in the care of a house which, to them, was at best a job and at worst a nuisance. One could not demand of them that they should give the care which comes from the heart. Very few months of such toil would blunt one’s zeal, and caretakers had a lifetime of it. Nor could one expect them to feel how strange a thing a house was, especially an empty house; not merely a systematic piling-up of brick on brick, regulated in the building by plumb-line and spirit-level, pierced at intervals by doors and casements, but an entity with a life of its own, as though some unifying breath were blown into the air confined within this square brick box, there to remain until the prisoning walls should fall away, exposing it to a general publicity. It was a very private thing, a house; private with a privacy irrespective of bolts and bars. And if this superstition seemed irrational, one might reply that man himself was but a collection of atoms, even as a house was but a collection of bricks, yet man laid claim to a soul, to a spirit, to a power of recording and of perception, which had no more to do with his restless atoms than had the house with its stationary bricks. Such beliefs were beyond rational explanation; one could not expect a caretaker to take them into account.

  Lady Slane experienced the curious sensation common to all who remain alone for the first time in an empty house which may become their home. She gazed out of the first-floor window, but her mind ran up and down the stairs and peeped into rooms, for already, at this her first visit, the geography had impressed itself familiarly; that in itself was a sign that she and the house were in accord. It ran down even into the cellar, where she had not descended, but whose mossy steps she had seen; and she wondered idly whether fungi grew there – not the speckled orange sort but the bleached kind – unwholesome in a more unpleasant way. It seemed likely that fungi should be included among the invaders of the house, and this brought her back to the bare room in which she stood, with its impudent inhabitants blowing, waving, running, as they listed.

  These things – the straw, the ivy frond, the spider – had had the house all to themselves for many days. They had paid no rent, yet they had made free with the floor, the window, and the walls, during a light and volatile existence. That was the kind of companionship that Lady Slane wanted; she had had enough of bustle, and of competition, and of one set of ambitions writhing to circumvent another. She wanted to merge with the things that drifted into an empty house, though unlike the spider she would weave no webs. She would be content to stir with the breeze and grow green in the light of the sun, and to drift down the passage of years, until death pushed her gently out and shut the door behind her. She wanted nothing but passivity while these outward things worked their will upon her. But, first of all, it was necessary to know whether she could have the house.

  A slight sound downstairs – was it the opening of a door? – made her listen. Mr Bucktrout? Her appointment with him was for half-past four, and the hour was already struck. She must see him, she supposed, though she hated business, and would have preferred to take possession of the house as the straw, the ivy, and the spider had taken possession, simply adding herself to their number. She sighed, foreseeing a lot of business before she could sit at peace in the garden; documents would have to be signed, orders given, curtains and carpets chosen, and various human beings set in motion, all provided with hammers, tin-tacks, needles, and thread, before she and her belongings could settle down after their last journey. Why could one not possess the ring of Aladdin? Simplify life as one might, one could not wholly escape its enormous complication.

  The thought struck her that the Mr Bucktrout whose name she had noted thirty years ago might well have been replaced by some efficient young son, and great was her relief when, peeping over the banisters, she saw, curiously foreshortened to her view, a safely old gentleman standing in the hall. She looked down on his bald patch; below that she saw his shoulders, no body to speak of, and then two patent-leather toes. He stood there hesitant; perhaps he did not know that his client had already arrived, perhaps he did not care. She thought it more probable that he did not care. He appeared to be in no hurry to find out. Lady Slane crept down a few steps, that she might get a better view of him. He wore a long linen coat like a house-painter’s; he had a rosy and somewhat chubby face, and he held one finger pressed against his lips, as though archly and impishly preoccupied with some problem in his mind. What on earth is he going to do, she wondered, observing this strange little figure. Still pressing his finger, as though enjoining silence, he tiptoed across the hall to where a stain on the wall indicated that a barometer had once hung there; then rapidly tapped the wall like a woodpecker tapping a tree; shook his head; muttered ‘Falling! falling!’; and, picking up the skirts of his coat, he executed two neat pirouettes which brought him back to the centre of the hall, his foot pointed nicely before him.

  ‘Mr Bucktrout?’ said Lady Slane, descending.

  Mr Bucktrout gave a skip and changed the foot pointed before him. He paused to admire his instep. Then he looked up. ‘Lady Slane?’ he said, performing a bow full of elaborate courtesy.

  ‘I came about the house,’ said Lady Slane, quite at her ease and drawn by an instant sympathy to this eccentric person.

  Mr Bucktrout dropped his skirts and stood on two feet like anybody else. ‘Ah yes, the house,’ he said; ‘I had forgotten. One must be business-like, although the glass is falling. So you want to see the house, Lady Slane. It is a nice house – so nice that I wouldn’t care to let it to everybody. It is my own house, you understand; I am the owner, as well as the agent. If I had been merely the agent, acting on the owner’s behalf, I should have felt it my duty to let when I could. That is why it has remained empty for so long. I have had many applicants, but I liked none of them. But you shall see it.’ He put a slight emphasis on the ‘you’.

  ‘I have seen it,’ said Lady Slane; ‘the caretaker showed me over.’

  ‘Of course. A horrid woman. So harsh, so sordid. Did you give her a tip?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lady Slane, amused. ‘I gave her half-a-crown.’

  ‘Ah, that’s a pity. Too late now, though. Well, you have seen the house. Have you seen it all? Bedrooms, three; bathroom, one; lavatories, two, one upstairs and one down; reception rooms, three; lounge hall; usual offices. Company’s water; electric light. Half an acre of garden; ancient fruit-trees, including a mulberry. Fine cellar; do you care for mushrooms? you could grow mushrooms in the cellar. Ladies, I find, seldom care much for wine, so the cellar might as well be used for mushrooms. I have never yet met with a lady who troubled to lay down a pipe of port. And so, Lady Slane, having seen the house, what do you think of it?’

  Lady Slane hesitated, as the fanciful idea crossed her mind of telling Mr Bucktrout the exact thoughts which had occurred to her while she awaited him; she felt confident that he would receive them with complete gravity and without surprise. But, instead, she confined herself to saying with the approved caution and reticence of a potential tenant, ‘I think it would probably suit me very well.’

  ‘Ah, but the question is,’ said Mr Bucktrout, again putting his finger to his lips, ‘will you suit it? I have a feeling that you might. And, in any case, you would not want it after the end of the world.’

  ‘I expect my own end will come before that,’ said Lady Slane, smiling.

  ‘Not unless you are very old indeed,’ said Mr Bucktrout seriously. ‘The end of the world is due in two years’ time – I could convince you by a few simple mathematical calculations. Perhaps you are no mat
hematician. Few ladies are. But if the subject interests you I could come to tea with you one day when you are established and give you my demonstration.’

  ‘So I am going to be established here, am I?’ said Lady Slane.

  ‘I think so – yes – I think so,’ said Mr Bucktrout, putting his head on one side and looking obliquely at her. ‘It seems likely. Otherwise, why should you have remembered the house for thirty years – you said so in your letter – and why should I have turned away so many tenants? The two things seem to come together, do they not, to converge at a point, after describing separate arcs? I am a great believer in the geometrical designs of destiny. That is another thing I should like to demonstrate to you one day if I may come to tea. Of course, if I were only the agent I should never suggest coming to tea. It would not be meet. But, being also the owner, I feel that once we have finished all our business we may meet upon an equal footing.’

  ‘Indeed, I hope you will come whenever you feel inclined, Mr Bucktrout,’ said Lady Slane.

  ‘You are most gracious, Lady Slane. I have few friends, and I find that as one grows older one relies more and more on the society of one’s contemporaries and shrinks from the society of the young. They are so tiring. So unsettling. I can scarcely, nowadays, endure the company of anybody under seventy. Young people compel one to look forward on a life full of effort. Old people permit one to look backward on a life whose effort is over and done with. That is reposeful. Repose, Lady Slane, is one of the most important things in life, yet how few people achieve it? How few people, indeed, desire it? The old have it imposed upon them. Either they are infirm, or weary. But half of them still sigh for the energy which once was theirs. Such a mistake.’

  ‘That, at any rate, is a mistake of which I am not guilty,’ said Lady Slane, betraying herself with relief to Mr Bucktrout.

  ‘No? Then we are agreed upon at least one of the major subjects. It is terrible to be twenty, Lady Slane. It is as bad as being faced with riding over the Grand National course. One knows one will almost certainly fall into the Brook of Competition, and break one’s leg over the Hedge of Disappointment, and stumble over the Wire of Intrigue, and quite certainly come to grief over the Obstacle of Love. When one is old, one can throw oneself down as a rider on the evening after the race, and think, Well, I shall never have to ride that course again.’

  ‘But you forget, Mr Bucktrout,’ said Lady Slane, delving into her own memories, ‘when one was young, one enjoyed living dangerously – one desired it – one wasn’t appalled.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mr Bucktrout, ‘that is true. When I was a young man I was a Hussar. My greatest pleasure was pig-sticking. I assure you, Lady Slane, that I touched the highest moment of life whenever I saw a fine pair of tusks coming at me. I have several pairs, mounted, in my house to-day, which I should be pleased to show you. But I had no ambition – no military ambition. I never had the slightest wish to command my regiment. So of course I resigned my commission, since when I have learnt that the pleasures of contemplation are greater than the pleasures of activity.’

  The image of Mr Bucktrout as a Hussar, thus evoked by his queerly stilted phrases, moved Lady Slane to an amusement which she was careful to conceal. She found it easy to believe that he had never cherished any military ambition. She found him entirely to her liking. Still, it was necessary to recall him to practical matters, she supposed, though heaven knows that this rambling conversation was for her a new and luxurious indulgence. ‘But now, about the house, Mr Bucktrout,’ she began, much as Carrie had resumed the topic with herself after that flow of passing jewels; it was a relapse into the old viceregal manner that brought Mr Bucktrout back from pig-sticking in the scrub to the subject of rents in Hampstead. ‘I like the house,’ said Lady Slane, ‘and apparently,’ she added with a smile that undid the viceregal manner, ‘you approve of me as a tenant. But what about business? What about the rent?’

  He gave her a startled look; evidently, he had been busy pig-sticking by himself in the interval; had returned to life as a Hussar, forgetting himself as owner and agent. He put his finger to his nose this time, quizzing Lady Slane, giving himself time to think. The subject seemed distasteful to him, though relics of a business training tugged at him, jerking some string in his mind; he lived, naturally, in a world where rents were not of much importance. So did Lady Slane; and thus a pair more ill-assorted, and yet better assorted, to discuss rents could scarcely be imagined. ‘The rent … the rent …’ said Mr Bucktrout, as one who endeavours to establish connection with some word in a foreign language he once has known.

  Then he brightened. ‘Of course: the rent,’ he said briskly. ‘You want to take the house on a yearly tenancy?’ he said, recovering his vocabulary after his excursion of fifty years back into his pig-sticking days as a Hussar. ‘It would scarcely be worth your while,’ he added, ‘to take it on more than a yearly tenancy. You might vacate it at any moment, and your heirs would not wish to have it on their hands. I think that on that basis we might come to a satisfactory agreement. I like the idea of a tenant who will give me recovery of the house within a short period. Apart from my personal predilection for you, Lady Slane, abruptly sprung though that predilection may be, I relish the idea that this particular house should return at short intervals again into my keeping. From that point of view alone, you would suit me admirably as a tenant. There are other points of view, of course – as in this life there invariably are – but in the interests of business I must for the present ignore them. Those other points of view are purely sentimental – ee gee, that I should fancy you as the occupier of this particular house (speaking as the owner, not the agent), and that I may look forward to agreeable afternoons at tea-time when I may set before you, as a lady of understanding, my several little demonstrations. Those considerations must stand aside for the moment. We are here to discuss the question of rent.’ He pointed a foot; recollected himself; took it back; and cocked at Lady Slane an eye full of satisfaction and triumph.

  He puts it delicately, admirably, thought Lady Slane; it would scarcely be worth my while to take the house on more than a yearly tenancy, since at any moment I might vacate it by being carried out of it in my coffin. But what if he should pre-decease me? for although I am certainly an old woman, he is equally certainly an old man. Any delicacy of speech between people so near to death, is surely absurd? But people do not willingly speak in plain English of death, however fixedly its imminence may weigh on their hearts; so Lady Slane refrained from pointing out the possible fallacies of Mr Bucktrout’s argument, and merely said, ‘A yearly tenancy would suit me very well. Still, that doesn’t reply to my inquiry about the rent?’

  Mr Bucktrout was manifestly embarrassed at being thus chased into a corner. Although both owner and agent, he was one of those who resent seeing their fantasies reduced to terms of pounds and pence. Moreover, he had set his heart upon Lady Slane as a tenant. He temporised. ‘Well, Lady Slane, I counter your inquiry. What rent would you be willing to pay?’

  Delicacy again, thought Lady Slane. He doesn’t say: ‘What rent could you afford to pay?’ This fencing, this walking round one another like two courting pigeons, was becoming ludicrous. Henry would have struck down between them, cleaving the situation with an axe of cold sense. Yet she liked the odd little man, and was thankful, heartily thankful, that she had rejected Carrie’s company. Carrie, like her father, would drastically have intervened, shattering thereby a relationship which had grown up, creating itself, as swiftly and exquisitely as a little rigged ship of blown glass, each strand hardening instantly as it left the tube and met the air, yet remaining so brittle that a false note, jarring on the ethereal ripples, could splinter it. Shrinking, Lady Slane named a sum, too large; which Mr Bucktrout immediately halved, too small.

  But between them they came to a settlement. Though it might not be everybody’s method of conducting business, it suited them very well, and they parted very much pleased with each other.

  Carrie found her
mother curiously reticent about the house. Yes, she had seen it; yes, she had seen the agent; yes, she had arranged to take it. On a yearly tenancy. Carrie exclaimed. What if the agent got a better offer and turned her out? Lady Slane smiled wisely. The agent, she said, wouldn’t turn her out. But, said Carrie, agents were such dreadfully grasping people – quite naturally – they had to be grasping – what guarantee had her mother that at the end of a year she might not be obliged to look for another house? Lady Slane said that she anticipated no such thing; Mr Bucktrout was not that kind of person. Well, but, said Carrie, exasperated, Mr Bucktrout had his living to make, hadn’t he? Business wasn’t based on philanthropy. And had her mother made any arrangements about repairs and decoration, she asked? whisking off on to another subject, since she gave up all hope of doing something about the lease; what about papering, and distempering, and leaks in the roof? Had her mother thought of that? Carrie, who had controlled all her mother’s decisions for years, really suffered a frenzy of mortification and anxiety, intensified by her inability to give free rein to her indignation, for she could not reasonably assume authority over an old lady of eighty-eight, if that old lady chose suddenly to imply that having reached the age of eighty-eight she was capable of managing her affairs for herself. Carrie was sure that she was capable of nothing of the sort; apart from her consternation at seeing herself deposed, she was genuinely concerned at seeing her mother heading straight and unrescuable into the most terrible muddle. Lady Slane meanwhile replied calmly that Mr Bucktrout had promised to arrange with carpenters, painters, plumbers, and upholsterers on her behalf. It was kind of Carrie to worry, but quite unnecessary. She and Mr Bucktrout would manage everything between them.