All Passion Spent

by Vita Sackville-West

  She felt exalted, she escaped from an obvious pettiness, from a finicking life, whenever she remembered that no adventure could now befall her except the supreme adventure for which all other adventures were but a preparation.

  She miscalculated, however, forgetting that life’s surprises were inexhaustible, even up to the end. On re-entering her house that afternoon she found a man’s hat of peculiar square shape reposing upon the hall table, and Genoux in a state of excitement greeted her with a whisper: ‘Miladi! il y a un monsieur … je lui ai dit que miladi était sortie, mais c’est un monsieur qui n’écoute pas … il attend miladi au salon. Faut-il servir le thé? – Miladi ôtera bien ses souliers, de peur qu’ils ne soient humides?’

  Lady Slane looked back upon her meeting with Mr FitzGeorge. So did Mr FitzGeorge look back upon his meeting with Lady Slane. Having waited long enough, and vainly, for Kay to bring him, he had taken the law into his own hands and had come by himself. Miserly in spite of his millions, he had travelled up to Hampstead by Underground; had walked from the station; had paused before Lady Slane’s house, and with the eye of a connoisseur had appreciated its Georgian dignity. ‘Ah,’ he had said with satisfaction, ‘the house of a woman of taste.’ He soon discovered his error, for, having over-ridden Genoux’s objections and pushed his way into the hall, he found that Lady Slane had no taste at all. Perversely, this delighted him the more. The room into which Genoux reluctantly showed him was simple and comfortable. ‘Arm-chairs and chintz, and the light in the right place,’ he muttered, wandering about. He was extraordinarily moved at the prospect of seeing Lady Slane again. But when she came it was obvious that she did not remember him in the least. She greeted him politely, with a return to the viceregal manner; apologised for her absence, asked him to sit down; said that Kay had mentioned his name; said that tea would come in a minute; but was manifestly puzzled as to what errand had brought him. Perhaps she wondered whether he wished to write her husband’s life? Mr FitzGeorge, as this reflection struck him, cackled suddenly, and, to his hostess, inexplicably. He could scarcely explain at once that the Vicereine and not the Viceroy had touched his imagination, more than half a century ago, at Calcutta.

  As it was, he was compelled to explain that, as a young man, he had come with letters of introduction to Government House and had perfunctorily been asked to dinner. Mr FitzGeorge, however, was not embarrassed; he was too genuinely detached from such social conventions. He accounted for himself quite simply and without evasions. ‘You see,’ he said, ‘I was a nameless young man, to whom an unknown father had left a large fortune, with the wish that I should travel round the world. I was naturally delighted to avail myself of such an opportunity. It is always pleasant to gratify wishes which coincide with one’s own. The solicitors, who were also my guardians,’ he added dryly, ‘commended my promptitude in complying with the wish expressed in the will. In their view, old dotards mouldering in Lincoln’s Inn, a young man who would desert London for the far East at his father’s suggestion was a filial young man indeed. I suppose they thought the stage-doors of Shaftesbury Avenue a greater attraction than the bazaars of Canton. Well, they erred. Half the treasures of my collection to-day, Lady Slane, I owe to that journey round the world sixty years ago.’

  It was clear that Lady Slane had never heard of his collection. She said as much. He was delighted, much as he had been delighted when he discovered that she had no taste.

  ‘Capital, Lady Slane! My collection is, I suppose, at least twice as valuable as that of Eumorphopoulos, and twice as famous – though, I may add, I have paid a hundredth part of its present value for it. And, unlike most experts, I have never lost sight of beauty. Rarity, curiosity, antiquity are not enough for me. I must have beauty or, at any rate, craftmanship. And I have been justified. There is no piece in my collection to-day which any museum would not despoil its best show-case to possess.’

  Lady Slane, knowing nothing of such things, was amused by such innocently childish boastfulness. She egged him on, this naïf old magpie, this collector of beautiful objects, who had suddenly made his way into her house, and now sat by her fire, bragging, forgetting that dinner-party at Calcutta and his friendship with Kay, which alone could have justified his intrusion. He had for her, from the first moment, the charm of a completely detached and isolated figure. The very fact that he had no known parents and no legitimate name, but was purely and simply himself, invested him with a certain legendary charm in her eyes. She had had enough, in her life, of people whose worldly status was their passport to admission. Mr FitzGeorge had no such passport; even his wealth could scarcely be considered a passport, for his reputation as a miser instantly destroyed the hopes of the most sanguine seeker after benefit. Curiously enough, Lady Slane was not offended by his avarice as she was offended by it in her own son William. William and Lavinia were furtively avaricious; they couldn’t help being stingy, since parsimony ran in their blood – she remembered thinking when they became engaged that that was the real link between them – but they were not frank about it, they tried to cover it up. Mr FitzGeorge indulged his weakness on the grander scale, making no bones about it. Lady Slane liked people who, if they had vices, were not ashamed of them. She despised all hypocritical disguises. So when Mr FitzGeorge told her that he hated parting with money, could only be induced to do so when irresistibly tempted by beauty, and could console himself only by the lure of a bargain, she frankly laughed and frankly gave him her respect. He looked at her across the fire. His coat, she observed, was shabby. ‘I remember,’ he said, ‘that you laughed at me in Calcutta.’

  He seemed to remember a great many things about Calcutta. ‘Lady Slane,’ he said, fencing, when she taxed him with his excellent memory, ‘have you not yet noticed that youthful memories sharpen with advancing age?’ That little ‘yet’ made her laugh again: he was playing the part of a man pretending to a woman that she still retained her youth. She was eighty-eight, but the man-to-woman mainspring still coiled like a cobra between them. Innumerable years had elapsed since she had felt that stimulus; it came as an unexpected revival, a flicker, a farewell, stirring her strangely and awaking some echo whose melody she could not quite recapture. Had she really seen FitzGeorge before, or did his slight and old-fashioned gallantry awaken only the general memory of years when all men had looked at her with admiration in their eyes? Whichever it was, his presence disquieted her, though she could not pretend that her faint agitation was anything but pleasant, and he had looked at her, too, in such a way as to suggest that he could provide her with the explanation if he would. All the evening, after he had gone, she sat gazing into the fire, her book neglected, wondering, trying to remember, trying to put her hand on something that remained tantalisingly just round the corner, just out of reach. Something had knocked against her as the clapper might knock against a cracked old bell in a disused steeple. No music travelled out over the valleys, but within the steeple itself a tingling vibration arose, disturbing the starlings in their nests and causing the cobwebs to quiver.

  Next morning she, of course, derided her evening mood. What queer freak of sentimentality had caught her? For two hours she had been as dreamy as a girl! It was FitzGeorge’s fault for entering her house in that way, for sitting down beside her fire as though he had some right to be there, for talking about the past, for teasing her gently about her dignity as the young Vicereine, for looking at her as though he were saying only half of what he would say later on, for being slightly mocking, slightly gallant, wholly admiring, and, secretly, moved. Although he had preserved a surface manner, she knew that his visit had not been without import to him. She wondered whether he would come again.

  If the gentleman returned, said Genoux, was he to be admitted? Next time she would be prepared for him; he should not brush her aside as though she were yesterday’s newspaper and walk straight into the hall, laying his funny little hat on the table. ‘Ah, mon Dieu, miladi, quel drôle de chapeau!’ She doubled herself up, rubbing her hands down
her thighs as she laughed. Lady Slane loved Genoux’s whole-hearted enjoyment of anything that struck her as funny. In response, she permitted herself a smile at Mr FitzGeorge’s hat. Where did he get such hats? asked Genoux; car jamais je n’ai vu un pareil chapeau en devanture. Did he have them made purposely for himself alone? And his muffler – had her ladyship seen it? All checks, like a stud-groom. ‘C’est un original,’ Genoux concluded sagely; but, unlike an English servant, she was not interested merely in making fun of Mr FitzGeorge. She wanted to know more about him. It was pathetic, she said, to be like that – un vieux monsieur, and all alone. Had he never been married? He did not look as though he had been married. She followed Lady Slane about, eager for the information Lady Slane was unable to provide. He had made a good tea, said Genoux; she had noticed the shabbiness of his coat, assuming an excessive poverty: ‘J’ai vite couru au coin de la rue, attraper l’homme aux muffins;’ and was noticeably disappointed when Lady Slane told her rather dryly that Mr FitzGeorge, to the best of her knowledge, was a millionaire. ‘Un milliardaire! et s’affubler comme ça!’ Genoux could not get over it. But what was the long and short of it to be? she asked. Was she to let him in next time, or was she not?

  Lady Slane said she did not suppose Mr FitzGeorge would come again, but even as she said it she detected herself in a lie, for as he took his leave, Mr FitzGeorge had kept her hand and had asked for permission to return. Why should she lie to Genoux? ‘Yes, let him in,’ she said, moving away towards her sitting-room.

  There were three of them now, three old gentlemen – Mr Bucktrout, Mr Gosheron, and Mr FitzGeorge. A funny trio – an agent, a builder, and a connoisseur! all old, all eccentric, and all unworldly. How oddly it had come about, that the whole of her life should have fallen away from her – her activities, her children, and Henry – and should have been so completely replaced in this little interlude before the end by a new existence so satisfyingly populated! She supposed that she herself was responsible for its creation, but could not imagine how she had done it. ‘Perhaps,’ she said aloud, ‘one always gets what one wants in the end.’ And taking down an old book, she opened it at random and read:

  Cease of your oaths, cease of your great swearing,

  Cease of your pomp, cease of your vainglory,

  Cease of your hate, cease of your blaspheming,

  Cease of your malice, cease of your envy,

  Cease of your wrath, cease of your lechery,

  Cease of your fraud, cease your deception,

  Cease of your tongues making detraction.

  It was surely remarkable that someone should have expressed her longing in – she looked at the date – 1493?

  She read the next verse:

  Flee faint falsehood, fickle, foul, and fell,

  Flee fatal flatterers, full of fairness,

  Flee fair feigning, fables of favell,

  Flee folks’ fellowship, frequenting falseness,

  Flee frantic facers fulfilled of frowardness,

  Flee fools’ fallacies, flee fond fantasies,

  Flee from fresh babblers, feigning flatteries.

  She had fled them all, except the fond fantasies; her three old gentlemen were fond fantasies – fond fantasticks, she amended, smiling. As for pomp, vainglory, and tongues making detraction, they were things that never crossed her threshold now except when Carrie brought them in on a gust of chilly air. Then she caught herself up for so readily adopting Mr FitzGeorge and adding him to her intimates: what reason had she to suppose, beyond a phrase spoken in parting civility, that he would ever come again?

  He came again, and she heard Genoux welcoming him as an old friend in the hall. Yes, her ladyship was in; yes, her ladyship had said she would be delighted to receive monsieur at any time. Lady Slane listened, wishing that Genoux would not be quite so hospitable on her behalf. She was not at all sure, now, that she liked her privacy being laid open to invasion by Mr FitzGeorge. She must ask Kay to drop him a hint.

  Meanwhile she received him, rising in her soft black draperies and giving him her hand with the smile he remembered. Why should she not? After all, they were two old people, very old people, so old that they were all the time age-conscious, and being so old it was agreeable to sit like two cats on either side of the fire warming their bones, stretching out hands so transparent as to let the pink light of the flames through them, while their conversation without effort rose or fell. Lady Slane, all her life long, had made people feel that they could talk if they liked, but need not talk if disinclined –one of the reasons why Henry Holland had first decided to marry her. Having a fund of quietness within herself, she could understand that other people also enjoyed being quiet. Few women, Henry Holland said, could be quiet without being dull, and fewer women could talk without being a bore; but then Henry Holland, although he enjoyed women, had a low opinion of them and was satisfied by none except his own wife. FitzGeorge with really remarkable shrewdness had diagnosed this in Calcutta where the Viceroy, heaven knows, had been sufficiently surrounded by pretty and animated women all flatteringly deluded by the apparently close and exclusive attention he accorded to each one in turn.

  Thank goodness, thought Mr FitzGeorge, she has no taste. He was sick to death of women who prided themselves on their taste, and thereby assumed an understanding with him as a connoisseur. There was no relation between the two things, – between ‘decoration’ and real beauty. His works of art belonged to a different world from the skilful interiors of women of taste. He looked almost tenderly at Lady Slane’s pink shaded lamps and Turkey rug. If one wanted beauty, one had only to rest one’s eyes on her, so fine and old and lovely, like an ivory carving; flowing down like water into her chair, so slight and supple were her limbs, the firelight casting a flush of rose over her features and snowy hair. Youth had no beauty like the beauty of an old face; the face of youth was an unwritten page. Youth could never sit as still as that, in absolute repose, as though all haste, all movement, were over and done with, and nothing left but waiting and acquiescence. He was glad that he had never seen her in the middle years, so that he might keep untarnished his memory of her when she was young, lively, and full of fire, completing it with this present vision of her, having arrived at the other end of the story. The same woman, but he himself in ignorance of what had happened in between.

  He became aware that he had not spoken for quite five minutes. Lady Slane appeared to have forgotten him. Yet she was not asleep, for she was looking quietly into the fire, her hands lying loose in their usual attitude, and her foot resting on the fender. He was surprised that she should accept him so naturally. ‘But we are old,’ he thought, ‘and our perceptions are muted. She takes it for granted that I should sit here as though I had known her all my life. Lady Slane,’ he said aloud, ‘I don’t believe you took much pleasure in your viceroyalty?’

  His voice was always rather harsh and sardonic, and even in her company he made no attempt to soften it. He disregarded and despised mankind so much that he seldom spoke without a sneer. Kay was his only friend, but even Kay got the rough side of his tongue oftener than the smooth.

  Lady Slane stiffened, out of a reviving loyalty to Henry. ‘Even viceroyalty has its uses, Mr FitzGeorge.’

  ‘But not for such as you,’ Mr FitzGeorge said, unrepentant. ‘Do you know,’ he said, leaning forward, ‘I was really upset by seeing you trapped among those mummers. You submitted and did your part – oh, admirably! – but all the time you were denying your nature. I remember waiting for you and Lord Slane to appear before dinner; we were assembled in some big drawing-room, thirty of us, I daresay, people wearing jewels and uniforms, all standing about feeling more or less foolish on an immense expanse of carpet. I remember there was a huge chandelier all lit up with candles; it tinkled whenever anybody walked overhead. I wondered whether it was your footstep that made it tinkle. And then a great folding-door was thrown open and you came in with the Viceroy, and all the women curtsied. After dinner you both came round the circle of yo
ur guests, saying something to each; you wore white, with diamonds in your hair, and you asked me if I hoped to get any big-game shooting. I suppose you thought that was the right thing to say to a rich young man; you couldn’t know that I abominated the idea of killing animals. I said no, I was just a traveller; but although you smiled attentively I don’t believe you listened to my answer. You were thinking what you should say to the next person, and no doubt you said something just as well composed and just as inappropriate. It was the Viceroy, not you, who suggested that I should accompany you on your trip.’

  ‘On our trip?’ said Lady Slane, amazed.

  ‘You know that easy amiable way he had of throwing out suggestions? Half the time one knew that he didn’t mean what he said, and that he never expected one to act upon it. One was expected to bow and say, Thank you so much, that would be delightful, and then never to refer to it again. He would say, China? yes, I am going to China next week; very interesting country, China; you ought to come with me. But he would have been very much surprised if one had taken him at his word, though I daresay that with his perfect manners he would have concealed his surprise. Now, Lady Slane, isn’t it true?’

  Without waiting to hear whether it were true, he went on. ‘But on this one occasion somebody did take him at his word. I did. He said, You’re an antiquarian, FitzGeorge – antiquarian for him was a vague term – you’re an antiquarian, he said, and you’re in no hurry. Why don’t you come with us to Fatihpur Sikhri?’