The Edwardians by Vita Sackville-West Page A

their own set, anybody might do as they pleased, but no scandal must leak out to the uninitiated. Appearances must be respected, though morals might be neglected. Sylvia knew and had always obeyed this unwritten law. Lucy had no cause to be uneasy, though she might perhaps have felt a tremor had she known how very passionately Sylvia had fallen in love with Sebastian.
    The way in which Lucy had originally discovered her son’s infatuation perhaps deserves remark and record.
    Houses such as Chevron enjoy not only their traditions but their minor habits. Raisins and almonds appear during Advent, when the last bunches of white grapes shrivel yellow like the skin of an old woman and are no longer decorative though still palatable; raisins and almonds, with oranges and bananas, are typical of the winter season when the home produce, but for the humble apple, gives out; yet there are certain imported fruits which persist irrespective of season throughout the year. Such a foreigner is the French Plum. Black, glossy, he remains a plum so long as he is offered in a bottle labelled J. & C. Clark, Bordeaux—his most expensive and luxurious form; in more modest households he is bought by the pound from the grocer, is stewed, served with custard, and becomes a Prune, even as a sheep becomes mutton once it is dead, or the deceased relict of a baronet, in the column headed Latest Wills, becomes Dame. The distinction between French plums and stewed prunes is thus not to be over-looked by those sensitive to these nice shades. French plums, then, were a constant adjunct to the Chevron dinner table, though stewed prunes never. French plums appeared regularly, in their squat tubby little bottle labelled J. & C. Clark, Bordeaux, and Viola, who detested them, had from her childhood upwards been enjoined to eat them—“So good for you, darling; another one, just to please mother”—but by the usual irony of life, Sebastian, whose complexion mattered less, had always consumed them in large quantities of his own accord. He had, indeed, been known to finish off a bottle at a single sitting, and to tell the chaplet, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor, Gentleman, Apothecary, Ploughboy, Thief, several times over in the garland of stones arranged round the edge of his plate. What more natural, therefore, than that his mother should notice that he now never ate more than four? or, if pressed, was consistent in bringing the tally up to nine? She tested him more than once, dining alone with him and Viola at Chevron: always four stones, or nine. “This year, next year, now, or never?” she twitted him; that fitted the four, but not the nine. Then it dawned on her:
Elle m’ aime, un peu, beaucoup, passionnémen
t
—
and
she saw the arithmetic which would bring it to
pas du tout.
Then, being committed to numbers, how could she fail to put two and two together? Sebastian’s secret was hers.
    It was also the property of the Chevron servants. Correct, distant, reserved, it was not to be supposed that they were without eyes in their heads, and it may also be imagined that they had their views upon the subject. This strange behind-the-scenes domestic world, indeed—so sharply segregated, yet so intimately concerned—had been thrown into a muddled state of mind upon observing the new complication in the affairs of their master. The upper servants, who regarded themselves as the discreet guardians of the house and family, suffered most from this confusion of their feelings, for they brought to the consideration of the matter two entire but conflicting systems of opinion, the one learnt in youth in a home decently regardful of the moral virtues, the other acquired through years of experience in an atmosphere where self-indulgence was the natural law. What was their own existence but one long pandering to this self-indulgence? Printed cards, with a list and timetable of duties, hung in all the underservants’