Victoria Mary Sackville-West, known as Vita, was born in 1892 at Knole in Kent, the only child of aristocratic parents. In 1913 she married diplomat Harold Nicolson, with whom she had two sons and travelled extensively before settling at Sissinghurst Castle in 1930, where she devoted much of her time to creating its now world-famous garden. Throughout her life Sackville-West had a number of other relationships with both men and women, and her unconventional marriage would later become the subject of a biography written by her son Nigel Nicolson. Though she produced a substantial body of work, amongst which are writings on travel and gardening, Sackville-West is best known for her novels The Edwardians (1930) and All Passion Spent (1931), and for the pastoral poem The Land (1926) which was awarded the prestigious Hawthornden Prize. She died in 1962 at Sissinghurst.
‘M-m-m, my dear,’ said old Mr Jarrold, taking his daughter-in-law for the hundred-and-twentieth time round his Museum, ‘thatt’s the first bit of coal brought up from the pits at Orlestone. Look at it. Thatt’s what sent Dan to Eton. Thatt’s what made a gentleman of Dan. A dirty lump, I daresay, but worth more than all those cowrie-shells I brought back from Java. M-m-m.’
Mr Jarrold was such a dear old man that Evelyn Jarrold, his daughter-in-law, looked willingly for the hundred-and-twentieth time at the first bit of coal from Orlestone, and indeed at all the other miscellaneous exhibits in the Museum. Mr Jarrold always seemed to forget that she had been round the Museum before, and seized upon her whenever she came to luncheon at the Park Lane house, to take her round the Museum afterwards. Although he referred continually to his grandson Dan, his advanced age apparently allowed him to ignore the fact that Dan’s mother was no stranger to the house, to the family, or to the Museum. He might still treat her as a visitor and as an attractive woman; might still exercise his somewhat senile gallantry. ‘M-m-m, my dear,’ he said, taking her arm, leading her from show-case to show-case.
She looked dutifully at his collection, disguising her boredom because she was naturally kind-hearted and liked to please the old man. Rather dusty, she thought, and lacking in life; but they preserved some kind of existence so long as Mr Jarrold remained alive to croon his saga over them. Lumps of coal; cowrie-shells; the practical and the romantic. She knew the order of value in which he placed them. Yet he had gone once to Java, in his yacht; but his yacht had been but the outcome of his dirty lumps of coal; he had owned a yacht, because other rich men owned yachts; and the unexpected sorrow of his life, – greater even than the sorrow of his eldest son’s death in 1916, – had been his rejection from the Royal Yacht Squadron. He had been obliged to go round the world flying the blue instead of the white ensign. Evelyn experienced some indignation on his behalf whenever she remembered his humiliation.
‘M-m-m, my dear,’ he murmured, like an old and sleepy bee.
Still, he had done well for himself and his family in the world; so well, that a baronetcy was confidently expected before the year was out. He was prominent among industrial magnates, and his charity was both lavish and discriminating. Mr Jarrold alone affected to pooh-pooh the suggestion of the baronetcy. Honours and success had clearly waited in store for the Jarrolds from the first. Evelyn Wilson, as the daughter of a country solicitor, had been congratulated on her good fortune when she became engaged to the eldest Jarrold son so far back as 1913. It was unfortunate, of course, that her husband should have been killed in the war, but at any rate her son remained as the heir. Neither her friends nor her father saw any reason to revise their congratulations.
The Museum was certainly dark and dusty, curiously housed in the Park Lane family mansion. The show-cases extended round the dark well of a hall, and round the upper galleries of thatt hall, fenced off from the well by balustrades of mouchara-bieh. Mr Jarrold took a pride in the Eastern touch provided by those pierced and fretted balustrades. They testified that he, also, was acquainted with the Orient. They testified that he, also, was a man of taste, a traveller, a man of culture. Anybody who knew Mr Jarrold knew, naturally, that he did not give a fig for culture, except in so far as his fortune could provide it as an adjunct, an extra, a subject alternately for boast or for derision, whether typified by his own travels or by his grandson’s classical education at Eton. Both experiences resolved themselves into the same category for Mr Jarrold: a gentleman’s luxury, quite separate from practical life. He enjoyed turning his grandson on, after dinner, to repeat a dozen lines from the Aeneid; such an accompaniment seemed to improve the quality of his port. ‘Come on, Dan,’ he would say; ‘Tu regere imperio populos Romane memento, – how does it go?’ And then he would beat time to the magnificent rhythm with a fork, and would derive satisfaction from the fact that he had a grandson who – thanks to him – could quote Virgil. But his electric gramophone, which wound itself up and changed its own records, and was also a wireless, gave him the same sort of pleasure. Culture, for him, was something rather expensive, and of no practical use at all.
Still, he was a dear old man, and Evelyn followed him willingly as he mumbled round his Museum.
It had all been assembled by himself personally; no exhibit went back further than his own generation, or, one might say, further than the Jarrold family itself. Mr Jarrold was practically the creator of the family. Only in his generation had the Jarrolds clambered definitely out of the clay. Mr Jarrold could point to the lump of coal which had sent his sons to St Paul’s and his grandson to Eton; he could point to the model of the first shunting-station at the pit-head. He was very much the founder of a dynasty as he took visitors round these show-cases. It was only when he came to the evidences of his travels that he became a little confused, a little shame-faced. Here, he evidently felt, the unnecessary impinged upon the sensible. The presence of the unnecessary could be explained away only by the fact that men with fortunes such as William Jarrold’s could afford to own yachts. Yachts took such men, in their rare holidays, to strange, un-English places from which it was almost obligatory to bring back queer, un-English objects, if only to show how great the difference between English people and natives was. Mr Jarrold muddled all this up vaguely with culture. It induced in him a confused state of mind. Pride became blurred by apology. Apology became overlaid by pride. It was fine to have a grandson who could quote Virgil, though the quotation of Virgil was also a little shameful; something to be treated with a mixture of derision and pride. It was fine to have travelled on one’s own yacht to the East, though a little shameful to have troubled to assemble works of art, – as Mr Jarrold considered his mouchara-bieh balustrades to be, – from the East. Works of art were all right so long as they were expensive enough. But Mr Jarrold could never quite apply thatt justification to his collection of curios.
They were his weakness; he loved them. He kept the master-key of the show-cases on his watch-chain.
His watch-chain was almost an emblem of civic dignity. It crossed his stomach in great gold links, and disappeared into a waistcoat pocket at either end. Mr Jarrold’s clothes were a trifle old-fashioned, for his tailor had been forbidden to vary their cut for the past forty years. Black clothes in London, with a morning coat and a grey stripe in the trousers; dark grey tweed of a peculiarly unbending thickness in the country. When he went out, whether in London or the country, he donned a square black hat, midway between a topper and a bowler. Evelyn said that in London he looked like a nineteenth-century statesman, and in the country like a nineteenth-century squire. The mutton-chop whiskers, fringing his rubicund old face, and the broad tie invariably pushed through a ring, produced this effect. His short, thick-set hands, covered with freckles and fine red hairs, were the hands of a practical man accustomed to power and authority. He had never known a day’s illness in his life, and now in his seventy-fifth year his faculties remained undiminished. His constant mumble which might have been taken as a sign of old age, was, in fact, nothing more than a nervous habit of which he himself was scarcely conscious, and was thoroughly belied by the piercing glance of his small grey eye. Thatt eye declared that William Jarrold, coal-owner and iron-master, would see through all nonsense and would stand none of it, either from his family or his employees. His sons had winced before it, his subordinates had trembled, and his wife had always known her place. It was a favourite saying of his, that a man should be master in his own house.
But he was not in the least grim, and he had always liked a pretty woman, though he had been wise enough not to marry one. He liked his daughter-in-law Evelyn. His gaiety increased noticeably whenever she came to the house. Evelyn liked him too; she almost loved him. They were the best of friends. She took trouble to please him, chaffing him affectionately, creating little private jokes between them, so that he purred like an old tom-cat and chaffed her in return. ‘Ah, my dear, you waste your time on an old fellow like me.’ For all his chaff, however, she knew that his views on life were severe. His upper middle-class morality was absolutely rigid. A second marriage he would have tolerated, since it was not reasonably to be expected that her life should have to come to an end on the day Tommy was killed in Flanders, but any less reputable affair he would condemn out of hand. He took it for granted that Evelyn, like all the other members of his family, knew exactly how far she ought to go. He had no doubt that she had accepted a certain amount of admiration between the ages of twenty-four, when Tommy was killed, and thirty-nine, which she now must be. Thatt was natural. He had paid her a good many compliments himself, and younger men must have paid her many more. But of her virtue he was unquestioningly convinced. And if anyone in his presence expressed a wonder at her continued celibacy, he explained it by saying that she lived for the boy.
‘When does Dan come back, my dear?’
‘On the twentieth, Papa.’
All his children called him Papa. Evelyn had brought herself to it with difficulty.
‘And you’re both coming down to Newlands for Christmas?’
‘But of course. If you’ll have us.’
‘Don’t you always come for Christmas? Well, then. Besides, what should I do without you? And I want you to talk to Evan.’
‘What’s the matter with Evan, Papa?’
‘Drinks too much,’ said Mr Jarrold shortly.
‘Evan?’
‘Evan. Suppose he thinks I can’t see. I can, though. I can see when a bottle of brandy, half full at the end of dinner, is empty by breakfast. Damn good brandy too, – much too good to get drunk on.’
‘You mean?’
‘I mean that he sneaks down to the dining-room and finishes it after I’ve gone to bed. Thatt’s what I mean. M-m-m.’
‘Why don’t you tell Paterson to put away the drinks after you leave the dining-room?’
‘Sensible as usual, my dear, – I like your sense – but Paterson would see through it. I can’t give my own son away to Paterson. Difficult enough to give him away to you.’
Evelyn had known for years that Evan drank.
‘Very well, Papa, I’ll talk to him.’
‘I haven’t told his mother,’ said Mr Jarrold, shooting a sudden glance at her.
‘No, of course not, Papa; much better not.’
‘Don’t you think so?’ said Mr Jarrold, delighted and relieved by this confirmation. ‘Only distress her, – what? – and do no good to Evan. Tommy never drank, did he?’
‘No!’ said Evelyn, suddenly laughing, and for some reason she pressed the old man’s arm affectionately to her side; ‘Tommy had every virtue and no vices.’ Mr Jarrold must never know anything about Tommy’s mean little vices. Tommy was a ‘good fellow’ in his father’s eyes.
‘Dull dog, Tommy,’ rose to Mr Jarrold’s tongue, but he suppressed it, remembering that Tommy was dead and had been Evelyn’s husband. ‘I can’t think where Evan gets it from,’ he grumbled; ‘I never drank as a young man; at least, no more than was natural. A binge every now and then; but I never soaked. Evan soaks.’
‘Have you said anything to him yourself, Papa?’
‘No fear!’ said Mr Jarrold emphatically. ‘Why, if a man of my age said anything of the sort to a man of his age, he’d drink two bottles of brandy instead of one. I’ve lived long enough to know thatt. No; I’ll give him a chance first. M-m-m. You talk to him, my dear, and if he takes no notice of what you say I’ll weigh in. I’ll bring up all the big guns too. ’Tell him I’ll cut him off with a shilling. ’Tell him I won’t regard him as my son. ’Won’t have drunkards directing my business when I’m gone. ’Won’t have drunkards looking after Dan’s interests. Not safe. As soon trust the Rolls to a drunken chauffeur. But I won’t speak to him myself till everything else has failed.’
‘I shall probably fail, Papa.’
‘Certain to. Hopeless job I’m giving you. Shan’t blame you if you do. The hand that rocks the cradle can’t cork the bottle. M-m-m. All the same, Evan likes you. Likes you too much, I sometimes think. There’s just a chance, he might listen. Try.’
‘I’ll try, Papa,’ said Evelyn, who had already tried.
‘That’s right. Tackle the hopeless job, and you may bring it off. I have, sometimes. Tackled the hopeless job. Not often. Only on big issues. Evan isn’t a big issue.’
‘Poor Evan, Papa!’
‘Nonsense. Don’t sentimentalise. He ought to have more guts. Everybody has temptations. Had them myself. Didn’t give way. Not thatt sort, though. Poor Evan, – rubbish. Tell him to take a pull on himself. Tell him to remember the business. He wants a share in it, doesn’t he? Well, he won’t get it unless he takes a pull. Not a pull at the bottle, mind. Another sort of pull. M-m-m. At his socks.’
Evelyn found the subject embarrassing; it gave her a feeling of dishonesty to pretend surprise at Mr Jarrold’s confidences, when she herself could have told him far more about Evan than he was ever likely to know.
‘Don’t let us think about it any more now,’ she said; ‘I promise you that I’ll see what I can do at Christmas. Show me some more of your treasures. I don’t believe I have ever seen everything in the Museum. And I shall have to be going in a few minutes.’
‘Appointment?’
‘Only with a dressmaker,’ said Evelyn smiling.
‘Ah, thatt’s good,’ said Mr Jarrold, faintly stirred by this suggestion of feminine mysteries; ‘have lots of pretty frocks for Christmas. You always look nice, my dear. Those furs, – very becoming to you. And nice scent too. Like women to use scent. Suitable. Always say that women are the flowers of life, and flowers ought to smell good. Most of the new ones don’t though.’
‘Did Mrs Jarrold tell you thatt, Papa?’
‘I’ve got a nose of my own, haven’t I? Improved varieties – pooh. They’ve improved all the smell out of them. Give me cabbage roses every time, and nice soft clothes for women. Muslin, thatt’s what I like, and pretty colours.’
‘I can’t wear muslin in December, I’m afraid, Papa.’
‘Oh, you’re all right,’ said Mr Jarrold, looking at her approvingly; ‘you look soft, and warm, – the way women ought to look, and as though you hadn’t a bone in your body. Healthy, though. Most women nowadays look as though they hadn’t room to keep their lungs in.’
‘You’ll soon be telling me that I’m fat,’ said Evelyn.
‘Slender, slender,’ said Mr Jarrold; ‘not sickly, I meant, and not as hard as a board. Just right. We might get some skating at Christmas.’
She was accustomed to his abrupt changes of subject.
‘I hope so,’ she replied, glowing; ‘I love skating, and so does Dan.’
‘Spoil his hunting, though,’ said Mr Jarrold.
‘I don’t know that thatt would break his heart,’ said Evelyn cautiously. She felt her own heart beginning to beat faster. Here was the opening she had been waiting for, and much as she disliked the prospect she must avail herself of it. She had promised Dan. Dan, who was frightened of his grandfather, had persuaded himself that his mother would make everything all right, and though Evelyn had sighed over his weakness when she saw how easily he shifted his difficulties on to her, she had resolved not to fail him.
‘Nonsense,’ said Mr Jarrold; ‘every proper boy would break his heart if his hunting was spoilt in his Christmas holidays. Dash it, not every boy has hunters like Dan. Most boys have to come out on an old tub of a pony on two days of the week. But no one could ever say I didn’t mount my grandson properly.’
He was quite angry, quite indignant. He took his hand away from Evelyn’s arm, and walked away by himself, staring into a show-case full of grinning Javanese masks, his hands clasped behind his back, muttering to himself.
‘Of course they couldn’t,’ said Evelyn, inclined to laugh although she foresaw that she was in for a bad quarter of an hour; ‘you’ve always given Dan the best hunters of any boy in England. He was asking after them only the other day, – St Andrew’s Day. I went down to Eton, and almost the first thing he said was, How’s Silver Star?’
‘Glad to hear it,’ said Mr Jarrold grimly, without turning round.
He was not in the least mollified. She could see thatt, by the nervous, angry way he kept clasping and unclasping his fingers. Childish old creature! she thought. He had deliberately chosen to be affronted in his pride, just as a pretext for losing his temper. In a moment she would give him something to lose his temper about, in sober earnest. Perhaps he would even forbid her to come to Newlands with Dan for Christmas. Thatt would be a relief. These family gatherings, taken so much as a matter of course, were sometimes almost more than she could bear. She would go with Dan to the South of France ….
‘Papa, don’t be so cross. The boy loves riding, you know, and he could ride even if he couldn’t hunt.’
‘Is thatt all he wants?’ said Mr Jarrold, swinging round on her. He looked so savage that she really quailed. ‘To go ambling round the park instead of going across country? Perhaps he’d like Wilkins to take him on a leading-rein? Perhaps he’d like me to buy him a donkey? The boy’s a coward, Evelyn. I’ve always known it, but I wouldn’t face it. My grandson, a coward! But, by God, I won’t have it. He shall hunt. All gentlemen hunt, don’t they? when they can afford it, which most of them can’t. No one shall say that Jarrold’s grandson isn’t a gentleman, or that his grandfather can’t afford to mount him. Hunt he shall, and I don’t care if he breaks his neck doing it.’
‘He isn’t a coward,’ said Evelyn in a low voice. She was trying to control the trembling which had seized upon her, determined to go through with this ordeal now that it had started. ‘He’s a sensitive boy, he loves animals, and he doesn’t like cruelty. Thatt’s all. You had to know it sooner or later. I promised him I would tell you that he means to give up hunting.’
‘Didn’t dare tell me himself, what? Gets his mother to do it for him! A moral coward as well as a physical one. Very pretty! And what’s all this rubbish about cruelty? The poor fox, I suppose? Doesn’t he want to shoot either, may I ask?’
‘No, Papa, since you ask, he doesn’t.’
‘I see. This is what comes of trying to make a gentleman of my grandson, – my eldest grandson, mark you; my heir. I offer him the best hunters and the best shooting in England, but he’d rather have his nose in a book. Why, my sons are better gentlemen than he is. Tommy was a sportsman, whatever you may say. He hadn’t an idea in his head, but he could get his horse over a fence as cleanly as anybody. Geoffrey, too, lazy beggar though he is. And young Robin, too, – now, there’s a good boy, a real boy. Dan and Evan are the duds. Nice things you’ve been telling me, Evelyn!’
‘You’re very hard on Dan,’ said Evelyn, nettled at hearing her son called a dud; ‘everybody can’t be cut on the same pattern. You admit yourself that Tommy hadn’t an idea in his head. (‘Tommy was a damned good fellow,’ interjected Mr Jarrold.) Dan’s head is full of ideas, he’s an intelligent boy, and he thinks for himself. Isn’t thatt something?’
‘Something, but not much,’ said Mr Jarrold, calming down a little. ‘It’s not natural for a boy of his age to think for himself. Dangerous. Not natural for an English boy, I mean. Don’t know about foreigners. Anyway, they wear socks till they’re fourteen. French boys do. I’ve seen them. And bowl hoops.’
Evelyn laughed; she couldn’t help it.
‘Oh, you may laugh. You say everybody can’t be cut on the same pattern. Why not? We’ve evolved the best pattern in the world, so why not stick to it? Besides, we’ve got more than one pattern. I’m not a gentleman myself, – never pretended to be, I’m a successful business man. I’ve got my place in the world too. But once I’ve done the job, I don’t see why my sons and grandsons shouldn’t reap the benefit. They say it takes three generations to make a gentleman. Well, Dan’s got his three generations behind him.’
‘I don’t see why you should expect him to be an empty-headed ninny,’ said Evelyn, less alarmed now that she was annoyed, and now that Mr Jarrold’s first rage had passed.
‘Obstinate, aren’t you? M-m-m. Stick up for your young. Quite right. But see here, Evelyn, what’s come over Dan? You insisted on taking him off to Italy or somewhere in the summer, so I haven’t really seen him since Easter. He was sound enough then. Has he been getting into a bad set at Eton?’
‘So far as I can make out, he hasn’t any friends at Eton.’
‘All wrong, all wrong,’ muttered Mr Jarrold. He was not angry now; only puzzled and distressed. Evelyn wondered how far she dared go. Perhaps it was wiser to prepare the old man’s mind before the Christmas holidays.
‘You see, Papa. Dan is growing up. A year makes a lot of difference at thatt age. Remember, Dan is seventeen now.’
‘Only a phase, I dare say,’ said Mr Jarrold more hopefully. He looked tired; his burst of anger had tired him.
‘Perhaps, Papa. So you mustn’t get too much annoyed with him if you hear him saying things you don’t agree with.’
‘Not a Socialist, is he?’ barked Mr Jarrold, preparing to lose his temper again.
‘I don’t think he takes much interest in politics,’ Evelyn said evasively. She decided that she had given the old man enough shocks for the present.
‘Or a pacifist? nothing like thatt? Couldn’t stand thatt. Religious, is he?’
‘Not very,’ said Evelyn, with a smile.
‘Don’t care about thatt, so long as he goes to church at Newlands. He must go on Christmas Day and every Sunday. Must keep up appearances for the sake of the village.’
‘I’m sure he’ll do thatt, Papa,’ said Evelyn, not feeling sure at all.
‘Well, well …’ grumbled Mr Jarrold. ‘This hunting business bothers me, all the same. Quite sure he isn’t a coward? How are his games?’
‘I’m afraid I didn’t ask.’
‘He ought to have told you. If he was keen, he would have told you without asking. Bad sign. Bad sign.’
‘He got his Trials Prize last half, you know. And he’s in the First Hundred.’
‘Don’t care. Who ever went to Eton to be educated? Manners and character, – thatt’s what you go to Eton for. Learn to be a man of the world. Learn to control yourself, and so to control others.’
Mr Jarrold, she might have retorted, had never learnt to control himself and yet had controlled others with conspicuous success. Like many a greater man, he had given way to his feelings and his bouts of temper whenever he felt inclined. He had never absorbed the English gospel of repression, ardently as he might preach it now for the benefit of his sons or his grandson. But then, he had never been to an English public school. He had never even come under the heritage of Dr Arnold’s influence. He had knocked his way upward through life, getting crudely to the top, meeting his fellow men in the ordinary, ungentlemanly rough-and-tumble of competition. He had dispensed with both manners and classical education. Nor had games entered much into his life. He had never had time. He had originated in a different class and a different age. Evelyn could not see that he was any the worse for thatt.
‘Doesn’t it all rather depend,’ she said, ‘on what we want Dan to do when he grows up?’
‘Dan needn’t do anything,’ said Mr Jarrold proudly. ‘He can go into the Guards.’ He spoke without irony. ‘He’ll be a peer before he’s twenty-five. He can fill up his time in the House of Lords.’
‘Papa, what do you mean?’
‘I’ve let the cat out of the bag, it seems,’ said Mr Jarrold, cocking his head at her, his temper completely restored. He was charmingly naïf at that moment, and Evelyn forgave him all his trespasses.
‘Really, Papa? New Year’s Honours?’
Mr Jarrold nodded.
‘Does Mrs Jarrold know?’
‘Haven’t told her. Haven’t told Evan or Geoffrey or Catherine. Didn’t mean to tell you. Meant to let you all see it in The Times. Surprise.’
‘Well, Papa, I won’t give you away.’ She put her arms round him and kissed him. She was sure that he had let her into his secret to make up for having been so cross about Dan. Dear old man. During the brief moment of her kiss he savoured the slight, warm scent that hid within her furs.
‘Trust you, Evelyn.’
‘You can. I’m so glad. You don’t know how glad I am. For you.’
She spoke truthfully. She was glad for the old man’s sake, and, because she came from the middle class herself, for the sake of her son. Aristocracy held a glamour for her. She was glad that Mr Jarrold should be rewarded, because such a reward would please him; and she was glad to think that her son would eventually take his place in the House of Lords. Her father would be pleased, too, pottering in retirement among his water-colours at Biggleswade. ‘My grandson,’ he would say, ‘Lord ….’
‘What name have you decided on?’ she asked.
‘Can’t make up my mind. Thought you might help. Newlands sounds a bit too new, somehow. Silly business. Wouldn’t accept it, but for Dan. And now you tell me Dan won’t hunt, or shoot, – demmit, he’ll go vegetarian and teetotal next. Crank. Hate cranks.’
‘What about Orlestone as a name?’ she said, edging him off the dangerous subject. Orlestone was in the district of the Jarrold coal-pits.
‘Orlestone. Not bad. Thought of it myself.’
‘Well, you can tell us for certain on New Year’s Day, Papa.’
‘Mind you look surprised,’ said Mr Jarrold.
‘But of course! Mrs Jarrold mightn’t like it, if she thought I had known before she did.’
‘Stuff, – she minds nothing except the slugs eating the esquilogias.’
‘The what, Papa?’
‘Esquilogias. One of those flowers she’s always poring over.’
‘Aquilegias, you mean, Papa, – or eschscholtzias.’
‘Cross between the two. Anyhow, something that makes me feel left out in the cold. When she talks about them to one of those gardening friends of hers. She had a man down the other day, who’d discovered seventy new kinds of lily in Manchuria.’
‘Dear me, Papa.’
‘Well, I may have got it wrong. He’d discovered something somewhere, and there were seventy kinds of it. They discussed each kind in detail. I went to sleep.’
He was in a good mood now, pleased that Evelyn should know his secret, gratified that she should have received it with suitable delight. Because the revelation had made him shy, he turned it off with a joke. Quite enough emotion had been displayed when she kissed him. They understood one another very well.
‘Dear Papa, I’m afraid I must be going now.’
‘Got your car? Want a taxi?’
‘Neither. I shall walk.’
‘Cold day,’ said Mr Jarrold warningly.
‘I’ve got a fur coat.’
‘Quite right to walk when you can,’ said Mr Jarrold, accompanying her down the polished gallery of the Museum; ‘keeps your complexion fresh.’ He stumped along beside her. ‘You won’t tell anybody, Evelyn, eh?’
‘Word of honour, Papa.’
‘M-m. I’ll take thatt.’
At the top of the stairs they met Geoffrey Jarrold coming up with an unknown young man.
‘Hullo, Papa. I was looking for you. Hullo, Evelyn. This is Miles Vane-Merrick, Papa. He wants to talk to you about conditions among industrial workers. I told him I was sure you couldn’t be bothered.’
‘M-m-m,’ said Mr Jarrold. Vane-Merrick’s name was well known to him as a rising young M.P., – an aristocrat in the ranks of the I.L.P. Vane-Merrick might be worth talking to. ‘Come along,’ said Mr Jarrold; ‘Evelyn’s just going, – got an appointment with a dressmaker. My daughter-in-law, Mr Vane-Merrick.’
They smiled conventionally and nodded to one another. Evelyn saw a fair young man with an extraordinarily gay, frank, and alert expression. Vane-Merrick saw a dark, slim woman dressed in green velvet and sables, a bunch of violets pinned into her furs. He was struck even then by her look of passionate reserve. It was not so much her obvious loveliness and elegance that attracted him, as the secret her whole being withheld. Their glances crossed for an instant. She went on her way, elegantly, down the polished staircase, exchanging remarks with her father-in-law who insisted on escorting her.
A biting wind caught Evelyn as she emerged from the security of the Jarrolds’ house into the roar of London. She shivered, and turned up her fur collar, putting down her nose against the wind. The scarlet buses thundered past her, going down Park Lane. They reminded her of the days when she had been obliged to travel in buses; when she had taken her place among the waiting groups on the kerb, getting in the way of hurrying passers-by, being pushed aside by competitive boarders of the bus; days when the harsh cry of the conductor’s voice came accompanied by an out-stretched, barring arm, ‘Outside only!’ like the cry of fate, condemning one forever to the outside seat, in the rain, in the cold, though a bus was ostensibly the most democratic of conveyances. Today, even buses had changed. Their outsides offered as much shelter as their insides. Moreover, one could smoke on the top. Life was undergoing the process of being levelled up for everyone. Evelyn Jarrold felt less sympathy for bus-boarders than Evelyn Wilson had felt twenty years ago. Perhaps thatt was because Evelyn Jarrold had entered into the preserves of the capitalists. She now registered a definite annoyance when taxis delayed the free passage of her motor through Hyde Park, and was apt to recall the days when the Park was closed to all but privately-owned vehicles. Her grievance against buses and the conductor with his strident voice had diminished noticeably since she herself had owned her private car or had been able to hail a taxi whenever she stood in need of one.
Perversely, despite the wind and the general unpleasantness of the December weather, she preferred to walk. One could afford to walk, when one was lapped in sables, and could hail a taxi whenever weather-conditions became intolerable. The icy wind, whipping, biting, brought a certain exhilaration. Discomforts that one need not necessarily endure, always do induce a certain exhilaration. Hence the perennial charm of picnics.
Evelyn struggled up Park Lane against the wind. Life was easy and pleasant for her, – too easy, too pleasant, – and she welcomed the wind as something that would buffet her from without. People were too much inclined as a rule to consider her wishes; to make much of her, to spoil her; the Jarrolds adored her, and her many friends were a great deal fonder of her than she of them. It was all too soft and comfortable. It made her sometimes a little impatient and uneasy. In material ways, too, she was fortunate; at the dressmaker’s where she was going she would order anything she wanted, and she knew that she would want a great deal, being easily tempted in such feminine ways. She would be unable to resist the pretty tissues, the furs and flowers; indeed there was no reason why she should resist them. She would have a lot of things sent home on approval, strewing them all over her room and wandering amongst them, while Privett, her dour maid who had been with her ever since her marriage, looked on disapprovingly, saying only, when consulted, that she had got enough clothes already. But she would eventually charm a smile even out of Privett.
Madame Louise the head saleswoman at Rivers and Roberts came forward with a pleased smirk to welcome Mrs Jarrold. She reserved thatt smirk for customers whom it was a pleasure to dress, those customers who would always do credit to the firm. Customers of the other sort were greeted only with a hard and supercilious stare, as much as to enquire what their business might be with Rivers and Roberts. But Mrs Tommy Jarrold was a favourite, no doubt about it. Even the mannequins smiled, and the great Mr Rivers himself came out from behind a curtain when he heard that Mrs Jarrold was in the shop. He was very small and finicky, with long expressive hands and tiny little feet in patent-leather shoes; when he flittered beside Madame Louise, who was large and tightly encased in black satin, her grey hair cropped and brushed back so that she looked almost like an eighteenth-century gentleman, one expected her to pick up Mr Rivers and spank him. Evelyn often wondered amusedly at their exact relationship. They were colleagues, deferring to one another’s opinion, but did they loathe one another secretly? Did the most terrible scenes take place behind thatt curtain, in Mr Rivers’ sanctum? scenes from which they emerged, bland and smiling, when the arrival of an American duchess was announced to them by a scared assistant? However they might behave in private, in public they were a formidable combination. A glance from them was enough to make a stout millionairess feel like a disgrace upon the earth.
They implied by their manner that it was a matter of complete indifference to them whether they sold their goods or not. In fact, their manner suggested, they would rather not sell them at all, such trafficking being beneath their dignity. They were artists, creators, who if they received a cheque would scarcely know what to do with it. If any client committed the solecism of asking a price, they raised their eyebrows and summoned some inferior being to give the answer, during which time they discreetly turned away to save themselves the pain of overhearing so sordid a discussion. It was always assumed that anybody who entered Rivers and Roberts’ must be above such small considerations. The whole atmosphere of the establishment breathed such an assumption.
For the display of their creations they employed a number of young women of surpassing beauty, whom Madame Louise treated with quasi-paternal benevolence and Mr Rivers with a fussy irritability. But though Madame Louise might call them ‘dear,’ and though Mr Rivers might dance up to them, jerking a fold into place or stepping back to admire the effect of an orchid held between finger and thumb against the shoulder, these young ladies reproduced with marked success the superbly indifferent manner of their employers. They were bored, they were beautiful, they were scornful. They minced across the stretches of grey pile carpet as though the clothes they wore were their own. And indeed the clothes they wore suggested every varying hour in the life of a young lady of fashion, a débutante in the crowded and luxurious year of her first emancipation. She played tennis, she danced, she dined, she went to Scotland in tweeds and to Ascot in painted chiffon; she bathed, she went on the river; she was cool or cosy. But whatever she did she was exquisite, disdainful, and bored.
Evelyn watched this procession as she had watched it a hundred times before. Madame Louise and Mr Rivers hovered over her, saying ‘Now there’s a pretty little suit, Mrs Jarrold, – just the thing for Luxor.’ Evelyn hesitated, playing with an idea. Should she go to Luxor when Dan had returned to Eton? There was nothing to prevent her. But then another young woman crossed her vision, clad in a scarlet jersey and scarlet trousers, carrying a pair of skis over her shoulder, and she thought that she would like to go to Caux. Sun or snow, which should it be? But a strolling vision in white sauntered across the carpet, and she thought of Monte Carlo.
She was indeed terribly free.
Other women whom she knew came in, laughing, shaking the first flakes of snow from their furs, exclaiming about the weather, – though, to be sure, they had only run across the pavement from their car to the door. Mr Rivers and Madame Louise were graciously pleased to welcome them. Chairs were brought. One of them was a Russian, Princess Charskaya, incomparably plain and chic, who had obviously come with the others in the hope that some pickings might fall to her lot. It was the only way she could manage to subsist. She had attached herself particularly to a rich, unpleasant widow, squat as a toad, whose personal vanity was as surprising as it was excessive, and whose capacity for flattery was as large as an elephant’s capacity for buns. Mr Rivers was grateful to Princess Charskaya for introducing Mrs Denman to his shop, since her taste in clothes was expensive although juvenile. He expressed his gratitude in a manner both practical and discreet; he and the Princess had a private nod for one another behind Mrs Denman’s back.
Evelyn looked on at the comedy. They were all caricatures of people, – Martha Denman, Betsy Charskaya, Mr Rivers, and Madame Louise. She wondered whether she herself were a caricature also. There was Julia Levison too, a hard, frizzed relic of Edwardian society, tacking herself on to Mrs Denman, also for the sake of what she might get. She and Betsy Charskaya hated one another, under a great show of friendship, and yet at moments they almost enjoyed themselves together, seeing how far they could go with Mrs Denman, and how many compliments they could get her to swallow without suspicion. It was not very pretty. Just now they were trying to persuade her to order a pale and evanescent ball-dress which a slim girl was parading before them. It would exactly match the colour of her eyes …. After a while, Evelyn got up and went away. Mr Rivers accompanied her to the door. He winked at her as they went.
Five o’clock. She was going to a party that evening; she would go home and rest. (Rest from what?) Certainly she had no desire to see any more people. If she got bored between tea and dinner, if she couldn’t concentrate her attention on a novel, she could telephone to someone or other and tell them to come round to her flat. But at present she felt that she wanted to be alone. There was no one she wanted to see except perhaps her niece Ruth, who was fresh and young, and who idolised her. She did not feel very much inclined to summon even Ruth. She would read, – if she could.
Evelyn lived at the top of a block of new flats in Portman Square. When she reached home, opening the door with her latch-key, she met Privett in the passage. Privett, as usual, wore an air of reproach.
‘Miss Ruth is there, ma’am.’ She might as well have said straight out, ‘How late you are, and where have you been, I should like to know?’
‘Oh, is she? Oh well …. Tell Mason to bring tea, will you, Privett.’
‘Mason’s out. It’s his Thursday.’
‘Tell Alice, then. Or bring it yourself. – Goodness,’ thought Evelyn, going towards the sitting-room, ‘haven’t I got enough servants? – Ruth?’ she said, opening the door.
‘Evelyn, darling!’ Ruth came to meet her and gazed at her with the generous admiration of a girl for an older woman. ‘How delicious you look, as usual. And yet you’ve come in straight out of a snow-storm. How do you manage it? I just missed you at Park Lane. I went there after luncheon with Daddy.’
‘Yes, I met him. He was with a man who wanted to talk to Papa, so I left.’
‘I know. Miles Vane-Merrick.’
‘Yes. Miles Vane-Merrick.’
Evelyn knew suddenly that Ruth was interested in Miles Vane-Merrick. But of course she said nothing. She took off her coat and threw it on the sofa; took off her fur cap, and smoothed her thick hair. Then she smiled at Ruth.
‘Come and sit down and tell me how you’ve been enjoying life.’
Ruth enjoyed life frankly, making no bones about it. She was generally popular, because of her innocent assumption that everybody enjoyed thatt agreeable business equally. Some people found her innocent zest slightly exasperating, – Evelyn herself sometimes repressed a movement of irritation, – but as her contemporaries responded to her gaiety and as her elders usually smiled benignly, Ruth always had what she called a good time. Her grandfather especially liked to hear of her enjoying herself. Like other men who have risen from small beginnings, William Jarrold welcomed the idea that his descendants could afford to be idle; it flattered his vanity. And Ruth was not at all averse from taking full advantage of the Jarrold fortune; encouraged by her mother, a candid snob, she made use of it to frequent a society which was not really her own. Indirect use, of course; but it was certainly convenient to have motors which one could lend to one’s friends and a country house where one could entertain them. Ruth Jarrold was very well pleased with matters as she had arranged them. All the Jarrolds were ambitious in one way or another, and Ruth’s ambition took the form of a mild and harmless, though silly, worldliness.
Her devotion to Evelyn was genuine, and it was especially fortunate that the popular Mrs Tommy Jarrold should be not only her aunt but a definite social asset.
She chattered. Evelyn lent herself amiably to the chatter; it seemed to her that she was always lending herself amiably to somebody or something, till she ceased to have any existence of her own at all. Would she ever turn round on the whole of her acquaintance, and in a moment of harshness send them all packing? She knew that the necessary harshness lurked somewhere within her; in fact, she was rather frightened of it. Once or twice in the past it had got the better of her; it might get the better of her again. She disliked it, thinking it ugly. But she felt sometimes that she could endure the emptiness of her friends and the conventionality of the Jarrolds no longer. The two old Jarrolds were real enough, in their separate ways, but the rest of them were puppets, manikins, and their acquired conventions were so much waste paper.
Fragments of Ruth’s chatter reached her as though from afar. ‘And do tell me about Eton … was everybody there? … did you watch the wall-game? … and how was Dan? … I really must come down with you on the Fourth next year …. it’ll be Dan’s last half, won’t it? … I always think the Fourth is such fun … everybody one knows … as good as Ascot … and then the fireworks … how I wish I had another cousin going to Eton! … or a brother … but never mind, it’ll be fun when Dan is up at Oxford. I do think it so extraordinary, don’t you, the way one sometimes hears of a boy who doesn’t like Eton? I heard of one only the other day who actually asked to be taken away, and he played for his House, too, and was just going to be elected to Pop.’
‘And was he?’ said Evelyn vaguely.
‘Elected to Pop? No, of course not. Oh, taken away, you mean. Yes, he was; he made such a fuss and said he’d run away otherwise. His father had to pay for two full halves, and as he wasn’t at all rich he minded thatt much more than taking his son away.’
‘And who was this?’ asked Evelyn, busy making the tea.
‘Well, as a matter-of-fact, it was Miles Vane-Merrick,’ Ruth paused. ‘Of course, he is very queer. He has all kinds of extraordinary notions. He won’t play cricket any more, and he won’t go to parties ….’
‘Isn’t he going to the dance tonight?’ said Evelyn, suddenly looking kindly at her young niece.
‘Well, as a matter-of-fact, he is; I made him promise to. I don’t think it’s good for a young man to shut himself up in an old castle whenever he isn’t in the slums of his constituency, do you, Evelyn? With nothing but yokels?’
‘Is thatt what he does?’
‘Yes, – but don’t let’s talk about him, he isn’t really very interesting. Let’s talk about you.’
‘I thought him very good-looking,’ said Evelyn carefully.
‘Good-looking, yes, I suppose he is rather; like Sir Philip Sidney, I always think. Somebody once said he was very Elizabethan. He’s very clever, you know,’ said Ruth; ‘he likes poetry, I believe he even writes it.’
‘What a pity,’ said Evelyn; ‘it would be so much better if he played cricket.’
‘Well, Daddy and I think so, but I shouldn’t have expected you to think so. Evelyn; I always suspect you of being a bit of a highbrow.’ Ruth laughed affectionately. ‘But it is odd, isn’t it, in a person like Miles Vane-Merrick? I mean, he’s so good at everything, or might be, if he took the trouble; but he doesn’t seem to care. Of course it doesn’t matter quite so much, as he isn’t the eldest son; I suppose he can do as he likes, but if he were the eldest son it would really be rather a pity.’
‘Sugar?’
‘Yes, please, lots. And what about you, Evelyn? have you been enjoying yourself? Do you know, I haven’t seen you for a week.’
‘Such a long time?’ said Evelyn.
‘I really miss you when I don’t see you,’ said Ruth seriously, ‘though I don’t suppose you would notice it if you didn’t see me for a month. When you took Dan to Italy last summer I missed you dreadfully, and you only sent me a picture postcard. I am always terrified of something going wrong when you are away.’
‘Why, my dear child, what could possibly go wrong? Nothing ever goes wrong with you Jarrolds. You march from success to success; you’re a lucky, prosperous family.’
Even in the midst of her school-girlish admiration for Evelyn, Ruth thought it rather heartless of Evelyn to talk like thatt, considering that poor Uncle Tommy had been killed in the war.
‘Things do go wrong sometimes, don’t they?’ she said. ‘And I always feel,’ she added, repairing her secretly disloyal criticism, ‘that you would be the only person to put them right. You can always get round Grandpapa. I’m sure,’ she went on, her enthusiasm gaining on her, ‘that you could get round anybody. You’re wonderful, Evelyn; you’re so quiet, and self-contained, and rather mocking, and yet perfectly human. I wonder what you really think about? When you’re alone, I mean?’
‘Clothes, mostly,’ said Evelyn, who disliked it when Ruth became intense, although her vanity made her jealously possessive of even this commonplace girl’s devotion; ‘and of the next party.’
‘Thatt’s the sort of thing you say, and I don’t believe it’s true a bit. You make me feel uneasy sometimes, Evelyn, much as I love you.’
‘But you do love me, don’t you?’
‘Oh, Evelyn, you know I do. Better than anybody, except of course Mummy and Daddy.’
‘Sure?’ asked Evelyn, resenting the clause about Mummy and Daddy.
‘Quite sure. But why do you want to know? You can’t really mind whether I do or not.’
‘Doesn’t everyone like to be loved?’ said Evelyn. It was rather unfair, she thought, to play with the girl like this, but she must needs have all the Jarrolds at her feet, though she despised herself for it. It was a game, which she played when she had nothing better to do.
‘Of course everyone likes to be loved, but I should have thought you got enough love without mine.’
‘One never gets enough love,’ said Evelyn, abruptly getting up. She had wrung the admission she wanted from the girl, as she might have wrung it from anybody else, and was suddenly bored. ‘You must run away now, my dear; I want to rest a bit before dressing for dinner.’
‘Oh, Evelyn, you are unkind. Can’t I stay?’
‘No, you can’t. If you stayed, you might begin to love me less.’
‘You know I shouldn’t; and if I did, you wouldn’t care.’
‘Oh yes, I should,’ said Evelyn, taking the girl’s face between her hands and laughing down into her eyes. Her expression as she did so was at one and the same time so gay, so mocking, and yet so tender that Ruth forgave her all her heartlessness and loved her the more. One could forgive Evelyn everything, when she looked at one like thatt. ‘All right, you brute,’ she said, ‘I’ll go, and leave you to your rest. We meet tonight.’
‘If you call thatt a meeting. I shall see you in the distance, dancing with Miles Vane-Merrick. Your Elizabethan young man.’
‘Evelyn, don’t tease.’
‘Mustn’t I? All right, I won’t.’
Vogue