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.
Sebastian is young, handsome and romantic, the heir to a vast and beautiful English country estate. He is a fixed feature in the eternal round of lavish parties, intrigues and traditions at the cold, decadent heart of Edwardian high society. Everyone knows the role he must play, but Sebastian isn’t sure he wants the part. Position, privilege and wealth are his, if he can resist the lure of a brave new world.
Novels
Heritage
The Dragon in Shallow Waters
The Heir
Challenge
Seducers in Ecuador
All Passion Spent
Family History
Grand Canyon
Non-Fiction
Passenger to Teheran
Saint Joan of Arc
English Country Houses
Pepita
The Eagle and The Dove
Sissinghurst: The Creation of a Garden
No character in this book is wholly fictitious
Among the many problems which beset the novelist, not the least weighty is the choice of the moment at which to begin his novel. It is necessary, it is indeed unavoidable, that he should intersect the lives of his dramatis personae at a given hour; all that remains is to decide which hour it shall be, and in what situation they shall be discovered. There is no more reason why they should not first be observed lying in a bassinette—having just been deposited for the first time in it—than that the reader should make their acquaintance in despairing middle age, having just been pulled out of a canal. Life, considered in this manner from the novelist’s point of view, is a long stretch full of variety, in which every hour and circumstance have their peculiar merit, and might furnish a suitable spring-board for the beginning of a story. Life, moreover, as we continue to consider it from the novelist’s point of view, life although varied is seen to be continuous; there is only one beginning and only one ending, no intermediate beginnings and endings such as the poor novelist must arbitrarily impose; which perhaps explains why so many novels, shirking the disagreeable reminder of Death, end with Marriage, as the only admissible and effective crack in continuity. So much for the end; but there are obvious disadvantages to starting the hero off with his birth. For one thing, he is already surrounded by grown-ups, who by reason of his tender and inarticulate age must play some part in the novel, or at any rate in the first chapters of it, and whose lives are already complicated in such a fashion that it is no true beginning for them when they are hauled ready-made into the story. For another thing—but I need not enlarge. The arbitrariness of choice has already been made sufficiently evident, and no further justification is necessary to explain why we irrupt into the life of our hero (for so, I suppose, he must be called) at the age of nineteen, and meet him upon the roof a little after midday on Sunday, July the 23rd, nineteen hundred and five.
He had climbed on to the roof not only because for years such exercise had been his favourite pastime but because it was now his only certain method of escape. Escape was a necessity; otherwise, his mother expected him to play the host, which meant that the men chaffed him and that the women rumpled his hair. Even at that early age, he liked his hair to be oiled and tidy. Even at that early age, he resented any intrusion, however genial, upon his privacy. So he escaped; sprang upstairs through the rich confusion of staircases and rooms; and finally reaching the attics pushed his way out through a small door which opened on to the leads. Nimble in tennis-shoes, he went up an angle of the sloping tiles, to sit astride the peak of the roof; tore his shirt open, fanned his flushed face, and drank the air in large draughts. Arrived there, his surroundings supported him in the most approved fashion. A cloud of white pigeons wheeled above him in the blue sky. Acres of red-brown roof surrounded him, heraldic beasts carved in stone sitting at each corner of the gables. Across the great courtyard the flag floated red and blue and languid from a tower. Down in the garden, on a lawn of brilliant green, he could see the sprinkled figures of his mother’s guests, some sitting under the trees, some strolling about; he could hear their laughter and the tap of the croquet mallets. Round the garden spread the park; a herd of deer stood flicking with their short tails in the shade of the beeches. All this he could see from the free height of the roof. Immediately below him—very far below, it seemed—lay a small inner court, paved, with an immense bay-tree growing against the grey wall, and as he peered down, feeling a little giddy, he saw a procession emerge from a door and take its way across to a door opposite. He grinned. Well did he know what this procession meant. It meant that at a given moment in the servants’ dinner, the flock of housemaids had risen from their seats in the servants’ hall, and, carrying their plates of pudding in their hands, were retiring to their own sitting-room to complete their meal. So the procession came, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, one behind the other, in print dresses and white aprons, carrying their plates, each plate with a dab of pudding on it and a spoon laid across, as though they observed the ritual of some ancient and hierarchical etiquette.
It must, therefore, be a quarter to one. The servants’ dinner began at half-past twelve, and the punctuality of the house was as reliable as the sun himself. Sebastian grinned; then he sighed. For the approach of luncheon meant that he must abandon the roof and its high freedom, with the surveying glance it gave him of house, garden, and park, and go downstairs to be engulfed once more in the bevy of his mother’s guests. Week-ends were always like this, throughout the summer, though he, Sebastian, who was at Oxford, suffered from them only during his summer holidays. For his sister it was different; she was always at home, and even now probably was having her hair tweaked and frizzed, till, as her brother said, she could hardly shut her mouth. On Monday and Tuesday—unless it rained—her hair would still be curly; by Wednesday it would again be lank.
But although it was easy to get up it was not so easy, as Sebastian found, and was to find as life went on, to get down. He hung for a long time in perilous hesitation over the well of the little court. He could not make up his mind to jump. Supposing he missed his footing? shot between the battlements and crashed into the depths below? The air was good, warmed by the sun; and the ground was good, when the foot was on it; but he hung now in a false position between the two; a tentative movement made a tile slip. It slipped with a single, cautionary rattle. The heraldic leopards watched him sarcastically, holding their shields. Overhead, the clock suddenly struck One, and the sound reverberated all round the roofs, coming to rest again in the clock-tower, after its journey of warning in that solitary punctuation of time. The pigeons rose in a scatter, only to settle once more on the gables, and there to resume their courtships. There was nothing for it but to jump. Sebastian jumped.
He was late for luncheon, and his mother looked at him disapprovingly as he slipped into his place at one of the little tables. His mother was annoyed, but she idolised her son, and could not deny that he was very good-looking. His good looks were of the kind that surprised her afresh every time he came into the room. He was so sleek, so dark, and so olive-skinned. So personable. Potini, that sly, agreeable, sensuous Italian, hit the nail on the head when he murmured to her that Sebastian enjoyed all the charm of patrician adolescence. Patrician adolescence! Yes, thought his mother, who could never have found the words for herself; yes, that’s Sebastian. He could be half an hour late for luncheon, and one would still forgive him.
There were thirty people to luncheon; but two places remained empty; they were destined for two people who were motoring down from London and who, naturally, had so far failed to arrive. The duchess never waited for motorists. They must take their chance. And, today being Sunday, they would not be able to send the usual telegram saying that they had broken down.
Conversation stopped for a moment when Sebastian came in, and one or two people laughed. They were amused; not unkindly. Luncheon was laid in the banqueting-hall at small tables of four and six, the formality of a long table being reserved for dinner. The hall was large and high, with a flagged floor; coats of arms stained the windows, and the heraldic leopards stood rampant in carved and painted wood against the panelling; antlers of stags ornamented the walls, opposite the full-length Vandycks; two Bacchanalian little vines, dwarfed but bearing bunches of grapes of natural size, stood in gold wine-coolers on either side of the door; they were a well-known speciality of Chevron. Sebastian found himself at a table with Sir Harry Tremaine, Lady Roehampton, and the old Duchess of Hull. He liked Lady Roehampton, and was faintly troubled by her presence; in her large Leghorn hat, with nestling roses and blue velvet streamers, and a muslin fichu like that of Marie Antoinette, she looked exactly like her own portrait by Sargent, which had been the sensation of that year’s Academy, and it was not difficult to believe that she was popularly accepted as a professional beauty. The old Duchess of Hull he could not abide. She was heavily but badly made-up, with a triangle of red on either cheek, and, since her sense of direction was no longer very sure, she made bad shots with her fork which wiped the enamel off her face all round her mouth, and left the old yellow skin coming through. But her tongue was as sharp and witty as ever, and moreover she played an admirable hand at Bridge. No hostess could afford to omit her from a party. ‘Well, young man?’ she barked at Sebastian; but Lady Roehampton murmured, ‘Well, Sebastian?’ and smiled at him as though she knew exactly what he had been doing.
Lady Roehampton, though no one seeing her would have suspected it, had a marriageable daughter.
And now the rest of the day must be got through somehow, but the members of the house-party, though surely spoilt by the surfeits of entertainment that life had always offered them, showed no disposition to be bored by each other’s familiar company, and no inclination to vary the programme which they must have followed on innumerable Sunday afternoons since they first emerged from the narrowness of school or school-room, to take their place in a world where pleasure fell like a ripened peach for the outstretching of a hand. Leonard Anquetil, watching them from outside, marvelled to see them so easily pleased. Here are a score or more of people, he thought, who by virtue of their position are accustomed to the intimate society of princes, politicians, financiers, wits, beauties, and other makers of history, yet are apparently content with desultory chatter and make-believe occupation throughout the long hours of an idle day. Nor could he pretend to himself that on other days they diverted themselves differently, or that their week-end provided a deserved relaxation from a fuller and more ardent life. All their days were the same; had been the same for an eternity of years; not only for themselves, thought Anquetil, but for a long dwindling procession of their ancestors. By God, thought Anquetil, waking up to a truth that hitherto had not occurred to him, Society has always existed. Strange hocus-pocus, that juggles certain figures into prominence, so that their aspect is familiar to the wife of the bank-clerk, and their doings a source of envy to the daughter of the chemist in South Kensington! With what glamour this scheme is invested, insolent imposture! and upon what does it base its pretensions? for Anquetil, for the life of him, could not see that these people were in any way remarkable, nor that their conversation was in any way worthy of exciting the interest of an eager man. He listened carefully, tabulating their topics. They were more interested, he observed, in facts than in ideas. A large proportion of their conversation seemed to consist in asking one another what they had thought of such-and-such an entertainment, and whether they were going to such-and-such an other. ‘What was Miriam’s party like, Lucy? sticky, as usual?’ ‘No,’ said Lucy, ‘quite a good party for once, but of course nothing will ever make poor Miriam into a good hostess.’ ‘Millions don’t make a salon.’ ‘Are you lunching with Celia to-morrow, Lucy?’ ‘Yes,—are you? What fun. Who else is going, do you know?’ ‘Tommy, you’re going, aren’t you? How too deevy. We’ll all be able to laugh at Celia in a corner. And let me see—tomorrow evening is Stafford House, isn’t it? Deevy parties at Stafford House, always. And Millie looking like a goddess, with a golden train half-way down the stairs. The charm of that woman! Everybody will be there.’ ‘Violet really ought to be stopped from giving parties. There ought to be an Act of Parliament about it. Friday was ghastly.’ ‘Ghastly! Horribilino! And the filthiest food.’ ‘Where are you going to stay for Ascot?’ . . . Anquetil nearly got up and wandered off, but he was fascinated and amused. These parties of theirs, he thought, were like chain-smoking: each cigarette was lighted in the hope that it might be more satisfactory than the last. Then investments bulked heavy in their talk, and other people’s incomes, and the merits of various stocks and shares; also the financial shrewdness of Mrs Cheyne, a lady unknown to Anquetil, save by repute, but who cropped up constantly in the conversation; Romola Cheyne, it appeared, had made a big scoop in rubber last week—but some veiled sneers accompanied this subject, for how could Romola fail, it was asked, with such sources of information at her disposal? Dear Romola: what a clever woman. And never malicious, said someone. No, said someone else; too clever to be malicious. Then they passed on to other house-parties, and Anquetil learnt how poor Constance had made the gaffe of her life, by inviting Sophie and Verena together; but who Sophie and Verena were, or why they should not be invited together, Anquetil did not discover. And would Constance’s girl marry young Ambermere? she would be a fool if she refused him, for when his father died he would come into thirty thousand a year—incomes again, thought Anquetil, who happened to know young Ambermere and had once had the pleasure of telling him exactly what he thought of him. He felt sorry for Constance’s girl. Then for a space it seemed good to them to play at being serious. Politics flitted across the conversation, and these ladies and gentlemen spoke with a proprietary and casual familiarity, somewhat as though politics were children that they entrusted to the care of nurses and tutors, remembering their existence from time to time, principally in order to complain of the inefficient way the nurses and tutors carried out their duties; but although they were careful to give an impression of being behind the scenes, like parents who go up to the nursery once a day, their acquaintance remained oddly remote and no more convincing than an admirably skilful bluff. It was founded, Anquetil discovered, on personal contact with politicians; ‘Henry told me last week . . .,’ or ‘A. J. B. was dining with me and said . . .,’ but their chief desire was to cap one another’s information. So this is the great world, thought Anquetil; the world of the élite; and he began to wonder what qualities gave admission to it, for he had already noticed that no definite principle appeared to dictate selection. He was not really very much interested, but the study would do well enough as an amusement for a Sunday afternoon under the trees of Chevron, listening to chatter in which he could not take part. This organisation puzzled him, for, so far, he could perceive no common factor between all these people; neither high birth nor wealth nor brains seemed to be essential—as Anquetil in his simplicity had thought—for though Sir Adam was fabulously rich, Tommy Brand was correspondingly poor; and though the Duchess of Hull was a duchess, Mrs Levison was by birth and marriage a nobody; and though Lord Robert Gore was a clever, ambitious young man, Sir Harry Tremaine was undeniably a ninny. Yet they all took their place with the same assurance, and upon the same footing. Anquetil knew that they and their friends formed a phalanx from which intruders were rigorously excluded; but why some people qualified and others did not, he could not determine. Some of these women were harsh-faced, and lacked both charm and wit; their only virtue, a glib conversance with such topics as came up for discussion and a manner of delivering themselves as though the final word had been uttered on the subject. If this is Society, thought Anquetil, God help us, for surely no fraud has ever equalled it. These are the people, or a sample of them, who ordain the London season, glorify Ascot, make or unmake the fortune of small Continental watering-places, inspire envy, emulation, and snobbishness—well, thought Anquetil, with a shrug, they spend money, and that is the best that can be said for them. Lying in his long wicker chair, he could see some of them strolling about the lawn, and so low did he lie that the green lawn appeared to stand up behind them, like a green cloth stretched on a wall, with the little domes of the parasols moving against it, and the trim waists cutting their hour-glass pattern above the flowing out of the skirt.
Down in the steward’s room the butler offered his arm gravely to the Duchess of Hull’s maid, and conducted her to the place at his right hand. Lord Roehampton’s valet did the same by Mrs Wickenden the housekeeper. Mrs Wickenden, of course, was not married, and her title was bestowed only by courtesy. The order of precedence was very rigidly observed, for the visiting maids and valets enjoyed the same hierarchy as their mistresses and masters; where ranks coincided, the date of creation had to be taken into account, and for this purpose a copy of Debrett was always kept in the housekeeper’s room—last year’s Debrett, appropriated by Mrs Wickenden as soon as the new issue had been placed in her Grace’s boudoir. The maids and valets enjoyed not only the same precedence as their employers, but also their names. Thus, although the Duchess of Hull’s maid had stayed many times at Chevron, and was indeed quite a crony of Mrs Wickenden’s, invited to private sessions in the housekeeper’s room, where the two elderly gossips sat stirring their cups of tea, she was never known as anything but Miss Hull, and none of her colleagues in the steward’s room would ever have owned to a knowledge of what her true name might be. It is to be doubted whether Mrs Wickenden herself had ever used it. Mrs Wickenden and Vigeon the butler, between whom a slightly hostile alliance existed, prided themselves that no mistake had ever been made in the Chevron steward’s room, and that consequently no disputes had ever arisen, such as were known to have happened, most distressingly, in other houses. The household at Chevron was indeed admirably organised. For one thing, any servant who had been at Chevron for less than ten years was regarded as an interloper; at the end of ten years’ service they were summoned to her Grace’s presence and received a gold watch with their name and the date engraved upon the back; a few encouraging words were spoken by her Grace and henceforward they were accepted as part of the establishment. But for this one, brief, intimidating occasion, the under-servants rarely came into contact with her Grace. It was to be doubted whether all of them knew her by sight, and it was quite certain that many of them were unknown to her. Various anecdotes were current; one to the effect that the duchess, meeting the fifth housemaid at the foot of a stair, had asked whether Lady Viola were in her room and had been completely routed by the reply, ‘I’ll go and see, madam; what name shall I say?’ Then there had been that other terrifying incident, when her Grace, taking an unusually early walk in the park on a Sunday morning, had observed the black-robed, black-bonnetted procession setting off for church, and had descried a white rose coquettishly ornamenting a bonnet. The white rose had bobbed up and down across the grass. It was a gay little flower, despite the purity of its colour, and to the shocked eyes of the duchess it had represented insubordination. Mrs Wickenden, summoned on her return from church, was equally scandalised. She explained the whole matter by a deprecatory reference to ‘those London girls,’ and the culprit had been discharged from Chevron by the afternoon train.
It was, however, seldom that any complete stranger obtained a situation at Chevron. The system of nepotism reigned. Thus Mrs Wickenden and Wickenden the head-carpenter were brother and sister; their father and grandfather had been head-carpenters there in their day; several of the housemaids were Mrs Wickenden’s nieces, and the third footman was Vigeon’s nephew. Whole families, from generation to generation, naturally found employment on the estate. Any outsider was regarded with suspicion and disdain. By this means a network was created, and a constant supply of young aspirants ensured. Their wages might range from twelve to twenty-four pounds a year. To do them justice, it must be said that the service they one and all gave to Chevron was whole-hearted and even passionate. They considered the great house as in some degree their own; their pride was bound up in it, and their life was complete within the square of its walls. Wickenden knew more about the structure than Sebastian himself, and Mrs Wickenden had been known to correct her mistress—with the utmost tact and respect—on a point of historical accuracy. Such disputes as might arise between them—and the household was naturally divided into factions—were instantly shelved when any point concerning the interest of Chevron arose. Shelved, perhaps, only to be renewed later with increased but always dignified animosity. A vulgar wrangle was unknown, and indeed it was only among the upper servants that any such thing as a jealous friction existed. Such small fry as under-housemaids and scullery-maids and the like were not supposed to have any feelings: they were only supposed to do as they were told. The severest discipline obtained. But it was known that an occasional clash occurred between Mrs Wickenden and Mr Vigeon; and when that happened, in however dignified a privacy, the repercussion was felt throughout the house, and the ragtag and bobtail might be observed scurrying with additional diligence through hall and passage about their tasks, and many an eye might be furtively wiped under the stimulus of an undeserved scolding.
But when the steward’s room was full of guests, and the table had been extended by the addition of several leaves, no indications of any schism were allowed to appear. Mrs Wickenden and Mr Vigeon, presiding at opposite ends of the table, were held to be models of their profession. They treated one another with immense ceremony, so that a foreigner, unversed in the ways of English service after the grand manner, might well have refused to believe that they had lived side by side for five-and-twenty years in the same house. Mrs Wickenden was small, prim, and birdlike; when she moved, she rustled. In cold weather she wore a black shawl tightly drawn around her shoulders; her steps were quick and precise; her nose was sharp, and her manner slightly deprecatory, even mournful. Vigeon, on the other hand, though correctness personified in his professional capacity, was inclined to be facetious in private life. The duchess did not know this, but Sebastian and Viola did. As children in the house, they had of course been on terms of familiarity with the servants, especially when their mother was away, and as a small boy Sebastian had counted among his treats a particular game that he played with Vigeon. Vigeon could not always be coaxed into playing it—‘No, I can’t be bothered now,’ he would say—but sometimes he condescended, and taking Sebastian in his arms he would lift him up to a painting that hung in the pantry. Sebastian in his sailor suit would squeal and wriggle with excitement. The painting represented a still-life of grapes and lemons beside a plate of oysters. Vigeon would make passes before the picture, finally making the gesture of picking a grape off the canvas, when lo! a real grape would appear between his fingers, and with a final triumphant flourish he would pop it into Sebastian’s mouth. ‘Pick off an oyster, Vigeon!’ Sebastian would cry, ‘pick off an oyster!’ but only on one occasion, never to be forgotten, had Vigeon obliged.
Grapes were on the steward’s room table now, for Mrs Wickenden controlled ‘the fruit’ from her lair behind the stillroom, and no one troubled as to the exact number of bunches ordered daily from the kitchen garden. It was all part of the system of loose and lavish extravagance on which the house was run. Everybody, from Sebastian downwards, obtained exactly what they wanted; they had only to ask, and the request was fulfilled as though by magic. The house was really as self-contained as a little town; the carpenter’s shop, the painter’s shop, the forge, the sawmill, the hothouses, were there to provide whatever might be needed at a moment’s notice. So the steward’s room, like the dining-room and the schoolroom, was never without its fruit and delicacies. More especially when visiting maids and valets were there to be entertained by the domestic deities of Chevron, for snobbishness must be satisfied, and only by extravagance and waste could the honour of Chevron, in the opinion of Vigeon and Mrs Wickenden, be maintained. They would not have Miss Hull and Mr Roehampton go away on the Monday morning, and relate at their next weekend that Chevron fell below the proper standard.
Sebastian’s mother tapped at Lady Roehampton’s door an hour before dinner. She had not remembered exactly which room had been allocated to Lady Roehampton, for she had settled such matters with Miss Wace at least a week earlier, but she knew that she would find her in one of the best bedrooms, and in any case the name of each guest would be neatly written on a card slipped into a tiny brass frame on the bedroom door. This question of the disposition of bedrooms always gave the duchess and her fellow-hostesses cause for anxious thought. It was so necessary to be tactful, and at the same time discreet. The professional Lothario would be furious if he found himself in a room surrounded by ladies who were all accompanied by their husbands. Tommy Brand, on one such occasion, had been known to leave the house on the Sunday morning—thank goodness, thought the duchess, that wasn’t at Chevron! Romola Cheyne, who always neatly sized up everybody in a phrase—very illuminating and convenient—said that Tommy’s motto was ‘Chacun a sa chacune.’ Then there were the recognised lovers to be considered; the duchess herself would have been greatly annoyed had she gone to stay at the same party as Harry Tremaine, only to find that he had been put at the other end of the house. (But she was getting tired of Harry Tremaine.) It was part of a good hostess’ duty to see to such things; they must be made easy, though not too obvious. So she always planned the rooms carefully with Miss Wace, occasionally wondering whether that upright and virtuous virgin was ever struck by the recurrence of certain adjustments and coincidences. She knew that she could trust Wacey to carry out her instructions; nevertheless, looking for Lady Roehampton’s room, she glanced critically at the name-plates. Wacey had done her work well. Lord Robert Gore was in the Red Silk Room; Mrs Levison just across the passage. That was as it should be. Julia Levison was the duchess’ bosom friend; indeed, it was largely owing to her friendship that Mrs Levison was admitted into such society at all. The Archbishop’s Room, the Queen’s Room, the Tapestry Room, Little North, George III’s, George III’s Dressing-room—she passed them all; they all bore names she did not want. Their counterparts would hang on cards beside the bell-indicator outside the pantry, for the information of the visiting maids and valets: the Tapestry Room: the Duchess of Hull; the Queen’s Room: H.E. the Italian Ambassador—thus the pantry indicator would read. Little North—a humble room, a bachelor’s room—Mr Leonard Anquetil; but Anquetil, she reflected, would have no valet; he would be valeted by a Chevron footman. Anquetil was the lion of the moment; an explorer, he had been marooned for a whole winter somewhere near the South Pole in a snow-hut with four companions, one of whom had gone mad, but for some reason it was difficult to make him talk of his experiences; a pity, for they had been reported in all the papers; still, Polar sufferings were perhaps on the whole a bore, and, since one must certainly have the lion of the moment at one’s parties, it was perhaps just as well that he should not boringly roar. So she passed by the rooms, and found Lady Roehampton in the Chinese Room. ‘How nice to see you alone for a moment, Sylvia,’—as the experienced maid withdrew. The professional beauty was moving idly about the room looking like a loosened rose: she was wrapped in grey satin edged with swansdown. ‘How attractive you look, Sylvia; I don’t wonder that people get on chairs to stare at you. I don’t wonder that Romola Cheyne gets uneasy. But seriously, no one would believe that your Margaret was eighteen.’ ‘Nor your Sebastian nineteen, Lucy dear.’ They were intimate friends; they had known the undeniable facts, dates, and current gossip about each other’s lives from their youth upwards. Lucy sank on to the sofa. ‘Oh, these parties! Sylvia, dear, how very nice to snatch a moment with you alone. Really that old Octavia Hull is becoming too terrible for words; did you see how she dribbled at tea? She ought to be put out of the way. Sebastian nineteen—yes. Absurd. To think that you might be his mother.’ ‘Or his mother-in-law,’ thought Lady Roehampton; it was an idea that had occurred to her more than once. She did not utter this aloud, nor the supplementary remark, ‘Or his mistress,’ which had entered her head for the first time that day. Instead, she said, ‘Speaking of Romola Cheyne, wasn’t she staying here last week?’ Lucy knew from her tone that some revelation was imminent, and when she saw Lady Roehampton take up the blotting-book she instantly understood. ‘How monstrous!’ cried Lucy, moved to real indignation; ‘how often have I told the groom of the chambers to change the blotting-paper, in case something of the sort should happen? I’ll sack him to-morrow. Well, what is it all about? It makes one’s blood run cold, doesn’t it, to think of the hands one’s letters might fall into? I suppose it’s a letter to . . .’ and here she uttered a name so august that in deference to the respect and loyalty of the printer it must remain unrevealed. ‘No,’ said Lady Roehampton, ‘that’s just the point: it isn’t. Look!’ Lucy joined her at the mirror, and together they read the indiscreet words of Romola Cheyne. ‘Well!’ said Lucy, ‘I always suspected that, and it’s nice to know for certain. But what I can’t understand, is how a woman like Romola could leave a letter like that on the blotting-pad. Doesn’t that seem to you incredible? She knows perfectly well that this house is always full of her friends,’ said Lucy with unconscious irony. ‘Now what are we to do with it? The recklessness of some people!’
The two friends were both highly delighted. Little incidents like this added a spice to life.
Lady Roehampton carefully tore out the treacherous sheet. ‘There’s no fire,’ she said laughing; ‘for the moment I’ll lock it up in my writing-case. I daresay I’ll find some means of destroying it safely tomorrow.’ Lucy laughed too, and agreed, knowing well that Lady Roehampton had no intention whatever of destroying it. She might never use it, but on the other hand it might be useful. ‘But meanwhile is it safe?’ asked Lucy. ‘You’re sure your maid hasn’t a key of your writing-case? Servants are so unscrupulous, one can’t trust them a yard. However long they have been with one,—even if one looks on them as old friends,—one never knows when they will turn nasty. You’re sure you hadn’t better give it to me?’
Lucy expected no answer to this, and Lady Roehampton gave none. That was consistent with her usual manner. She had a way of suddenly dropping a subject; it was a trick she had often found convenient, and since she enjoyed all the assurance of a beautiful woman, she was able always to impose her own wishes upon her audience. So now she could abandon the subject of the letter, and revert to Sebastian, who had aroused her interest: ‘That dark romantic boy of yours, Lucy,—tell me about him. When does he leave Oxford? Is he going into the Guards?’ Lucy was never reluctant to talk about Sebastian; moreover, Lady Roehampton had no son, only a daughter of whom she was reputed jealous. ‘My dark romantic boy, Sylvia! how absurd you are, he’s only an untidy schoolboy,—a colt, I tell him,—I hope he won’t get spoilt, if women like you take too much notice of him. He’s a nice boy, I admit, though he’s apt to be moody.’
‘But that’s his charm, my dear Lucy: Sebastian sulky is irresistible. Promise me you will never ruin him by persuading him to appear good-tempered.’ ‘How perverse you are, Sylvia; I believe you really like people to be disagreeable. So that you can win them round. You would like Sebastian to snarl at you for half an hour, if at the end of forty minutes you were sure of having him at your feet.’ ‘What nonsense you talk, Lucy; I knew Sebastian in his cradle. But you needn’t shut your eyes to the fact that he will have great attraction for women. That casual, though charming manner of his. . . . I doubt if he knows so much as my name.’ ‘My dear Sylvia, you are one of his favourites; when I tell him you are coming, he says, Thank goodness for that.’ ‘That means,’ said Lady Roehampton, gratified at having caught the fish for which she was angling, ‘he is bored by most of our friends.’ ‘Worse than that, Sylvia,’ said Lucy, settling down to a grievance, ‘sometimes I think he really dislikes them. He says such sarcastic things,—quite unlike a boy. Cutting things. They make me quite uncomfortable. At other times he seems to enjoy himself. I can’t make him out.’ ‘Adolescence,’ said Sylvia, blowing a long thread of smoke from her cigarette, for although she never smoked in public she could enjoy a cigarette in the privacy of her bedroom. ‘If I could really think that!’ sighed Lucy; ‘if I could be sure he was going to turn out all right! It’s a great responsibility, Sylvia.’ ‘You could always marry again, Lucy,’ said Lady Roehampton, looking at her friend. ‘Yes,’ said Lucy, instantly on her guard, ‘I could, but I prefer keeping my difficulties to myself, on the whole. I am quite prepared to run Chevron for Sebastian until he marries. But, Sylvia, we must dress.’ ‘Dinner at half-past eight?’ ‘Dinner at half-past eight. What are you going to put on? The Nattier-blue taffeta? I always think you look better in that than in anything else. Don’t hurry, darling. I shall be late anyhow.’
One half of Sebastian detested his mother’s friends; the other half was allured by their glitter. Sometimes he wanted to gallop away by himself to the world’s ends, sometimes he wanted to give himself up wholly to the flattering charm of pretty women. Sometimes he wished to see his whole acquaintance cast into a furnace, so vehemently did he deprecate them, sometimes he thought that they had mastered the problem of civilisation more truly than the Greeks or Romans. ‘Since one cannot have truth,’ cried Sebastian, struggling into his evening shirt, ‘let us at least have good manners.’ The thought was not original: his father had put it into his head, years ago, before he died. But this brings us to Sebastian’s private trouble: he never could make up his mind on any subject. It was most distressing. He had, apparently, no opinions but only moods,—moods whose sweeping intensity was equalled only by the rapidity of their change. He could never accustom himself to their impermanence; whatever state of mind was upon him at the moment, he instantly believed to be his settled outlook upon life. Momentarily alarmed when it deserted him, he changed over at once in oblivious optimism. Between-whiles, when no particular mood possessed him, he worried over his own instability. Something, he thought, must be wrong with him. He contrasted himself with the people he knew: how calm they were, how certain, how self-assured! With what unfaltering determination did they appear to have pursued their chosen path from its beginning right up to its end!—No, not yet right up to its end. Most of the people he knew at home were in their middle age; some certainly were old, the old Duchess of Hull, for instance, progressing, though still indomitably, towards her grave; but it was obvious that as they had begun, so did they mean to conclude. The world would be with them, late, as soon. They had known their own minds; they had stuck to their opinions. They had made their choice. How enviable! They had settled their scheme of values. How reposeful! But was it, he wondered, a very good choice? Were those values so very valuable? His mood underwent a violent revulsion. He wanted suddenly to be up on the roof again, this time under the stars. Sulky and critical, he shut his disappointed spaniels into his bedroom and went downstairs to obey his mother’s summons.
On leaving Lady Roehampton, Lucy went to her own room: the great house was quiet; all the guests were safely shut into their rooms till dinner; no one was about, except a housemaid beating up the cushions or a footman emptying the waste-paper basket. Along the passages, the windows were open, for it was a warm July evening, and the pigeons cooing on the battlements made the silence murmurous as though the grey stone of the walls had itself become vocal. Lucy hurried through the empty rooms. She detested solitude, even for half an hour; the habit of constant company—it could scarcely be called companionship—had unfitted her for her own society, and now she sagged and felt forlorn. She ought to look into the schoolroom, she thought, and say good-night to Viola, who, in dressing-gown and pigtails, would be eating her supper, but the idea, no sooner than conceived, filled her with boredom. She decided to summon her favourite Sebastian instead. Reaching her room, where her maid, Button, was laying out her dress, she said, ‘Send word to his Grace, Button, that I should like to see him here for a few minutes.’
Oh, the weariness of life, she thought, sitting down at her dressing-table; and then she remembered how Leonard Anquetil had looked at her when she had shown him the garden after tea, and a slight zest for life revived. She sat with lowered eyes, smiling a downward smile, while her thoughts dawdled over Leonard Anquetil and her fingers played with the jewels laid out on the dressing-table. She had recently had the family jewels reset by Cartier, preferring the fashion of the day to the heavy gold settings of Victoria’s time. The top of the dressing-table was of looking-glass, so that the gems were duplicated; rubies to-night, she thought idly, picking up a brooch and setting it down again; last night she had worn the emeralds, and her depression returned as she reflected that some day she would have to give up the jewels to Sebastian’s wife. She did not want to become either a dowager or a grandmother; she did not want to renounce her position as mistress of Chevron. Its luxury and splendour were very pleasant to her. Perhaps she would end by marrying Sir Adam after all, before Sebastian and his bride could turn her out; it would be a come-down to marry a Jew, and physically Sir Adam was not appetising, but then his millions were fabulous, and she could make him buy a place quite as imposing as Chevron. Not as beautiful, perhaps, but quite as imposing. Her hands strayed over the rubies; yes, and he would buy jewels for her too; her own, this time; no question of heirlooms. Besides, Sir Adam could do whatever he liked with the King. If only Sir Adam were not physically in love with her, she might really consider it.
Sebastian came in, and Lucy became brisk again.
‘Give me a wrap, Button. You can start doing my hair. Sebastian, give me the plan of the dinner-table. On the table there. No, silly boy. Button, give it to his Grace. Now, Sebastian, read it out to me while I have my hair done. Oh, George Roehampton takes me in, does he? Must he? Such a bore that man is. And Sir Adam the other side. Don’t pull my hair like that, Button; really, I never knew such a clumsy woman; now you have given me a headache for the rest of the evening. Do be more careful. Well, I am not going to enjoy myself very much, I can see: Sir Adam and George Roehampton. However, it’s inevitable. Or no, let me see for myself. That Miss Wace is such a fool that she may quite well have made a muddle of the whole thing. Come and hold the plan for me to see, Sebastian. Button! you pulled my hair again. How many times must I tell you to be careful? Once more, and I give you notice, I declare I will. Tilt it up, Sebastian; I can’t see.’
Sebastian stood beside his mother holding the red leather pad, with slits into which cards bearing the names of the guests were inserted. As she stood holding it, he watched his mother’s reflection in the mirror. With her fair hair and lively little crumpled face, she looked extraordinarily young for her age as a rule, but now she was busily applying cream and wiping the cosmetics from her face with a handkerchief, at the same time as Button removed the pads from under her hair and laid them on the dressing-table. ‘Rats,’ her children called them. They were unappetising objects, like last year’s birds-nests, hot and stuffy to the head, but they could not be dispensed with, since they provided the foundation on which the coiffure was to be swathed and piled, and into which the innumerable hairpins were to be stuck. It was always a source of great preoccupation with the ladies that no bit of the pad should show through the natural hair. Often they put up a tentative hand to feel, even in the midst of the most absorbing conversation; and then their faces wore the expression which is seen only on the faces of women whose fingers investigate the back of their heads. Sebastian had watched this hairdressing process a hundred times, but now seeing it take place in the mirror, he observed it with a new eye. He stared at his mother’s reflection, with the pool of rubies in the foreground, and the uncomely ‘rats,’ as though she were a stranger to him, realising that behind the glitter and animation in which they lived he had absolutely no knowledge of her. If he had been asked to describe his mother, he must have said, ‘She is a famous hostess, with a talent for mimicry and a genius for making parties a success. She is charming and vivacious. In private life she is often irritable and sometimes unkind. She likes bridge and racing. She never opens a book, and she cannot bear to be alone. I have not the faintest idea of what she is really like.’ He would not have added, because he did not know, that she was ruthless and predatory.
‘Why are you staring like that, Sebastian? You make me quite shy.’ Her hair was about her shoulders now, and Button was busy with the curling-tongs. She heated them first on the spirit lamp, and then held them carefully to her own cheek to feel if they were hot enough. ‘Bless the boy, one would think he had never watched me dress before. Now about that dinner-table, yes, it’s all wrong; I thought it would be. She has clean forgotten the ambassador. Button, you must call Miss Wace—no, Sebastian, you fetch her. No, ring the bell; I don’t want you to go away. Why on earth can’t people do their own jobs properly? What do I pay Wacey a hundred and fifty a year for, I should like to know? Oh dear, and look at the time; I shall be late for dinner. I declare the trouble of entertaining is enough to spoil all one’s pleasure. It’s a little hard, I do think, that one should never have any undiluted pleasure in life. Who’s that at the door? Button, go and see. And Miss Wace must come at once.’
‘Lady Viola would like to know if she may come and say good night to your Grace.’
‘Oh, bother the child—well, yes, I suppose she must if she wants to. Now, Button, haven’t you nearly finished? Don’t drag my hair back like that, woman. Give me the tail comb. Don’t you see, it wants more fullness at the side. Really, Button, I thought you were supposed to be an expert hairdresser. You may think yourself lucky, Sebastian, that you were born a boy. This eternal hair, these eternal clothes! they wear a woman out before her time. Oh, there you are, Miss Wace. This plan is all wrong—perfectly hopeless. I don’t go in with Lord Roehampton at all. What about the ambassador? You must alter it. Do it in here, as quick as you can. Sebastian will help you. And Viola. Come in, Viola; don’t look so scared, child; I can’t bear people who look scared. Now I must leave you all while I wash. No, I don’t want you now, Button; you get on my nerves. I’ll call you when I want you. Get my dress ready. Children, help Miss Wace—yes, you too, Viola; it’s high time you took a little trouble to help your poor mother—and do, all three of you, try to show a little intelligence.’
The duchess retired into her dressing-room, from where she kept up a flow of comments.
‘Viola, you must really take a little more trouble about your appearance. You looked a perfect fright at luncheon today; I was ashamed of you. And you really must talk more, instead of sitting there like a stuffed doll. You had that nice Mr Anquetil, who is perfectly easy to get on with. You might be ten, instead of seventeen. I have a good mind to start you coming down to dinner, except that you would cast a blight over everything. Girls are such a bore—poor things, they can’t help it, but really they are a problem. They ruin conversation; one has to be so careful. Women ought to be married, or at any rate widowed. I don’t mean you, of course, Wacey. I’m ready for you, Button.’