All Passion Spent by Vita Sackville-West

Author:Vita Sackville-West
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House

Part Three

This Life we live is dead for all its breath;

Death’s self it is, set off on pilgrimage,

Travelling with tottering steps the first short stage.

CHRISTINA ROSSETTI

Summer over, the October days were no longer warm enough for Lady Slane to sit in the garden. In order to get her airing she must go for a little walk, loaded with cloaks and furs by Genoux, who accompanied her to the front door to make sure that she did not discard any of her wrappings in the hall on the way. Lady Slane sometimes protested, as Genoux dragged one garment after another from the cupboard. ‘But, Genoux, you are making me look like an old bundle.’ Genoux, hanging the last cloak firmly round her shoulders, replied, ‘Miladi est bien trop distinguée pour avoir jamais l’air d’un vieux bundle.’ ‘Do you remember, Genoux,’ said Lady Slane, drawing on her gloves, ‘how you always wanted me to wear woollen stockings for dinner?’ It was indeed true. Genoux in cold weather had never been willing to put out silk stockings with her mistress’s evening dress; or if she put them, after many remonstrances, she hopefully put also a woollen pair to wear underneath. ‘Mais pourquoi pas, miladi?’ said Genoux sensibly; ‘dans ce temps-là les dames, même les jeunes dames, portaient les jupes convenablement longues, et un jupon par dessus le marché. Pourquoi s’enrhumer, pour des chevilles qui n’y paraissent pas? C’était la même histoire pour les combinaisons que miladi voulait à tout prix ôter pour le dîner, précisément au soir lorsqu’il fait plus froid.’ She accompanied Lady Slane downstairs, talking in this strain, for all her volubility had been released since quitting Elm Park Gardens and the household of English servants with their cold discreet ways. She hovered and clucked over Lady Slane, half-scolding, half-cherishing. ‘Miladi n’a jamais su se soigner. Elle ferait beaucoup mieux d’écouter sa vieille Genoux. Les premiers jours d’octobre, c’est tout ce qu’il y a de plus malin. Ça vous attrape sans crier gare. A l’âge de miladi on ne doit pas prendre de libertés.’ ‘Don’t bury me till you need, Genoux,’ said Lady Slane, escaping from her Anglicisms and pessimism alike.

She went down the steps carefully, for there had been a frost and they might be slippery. Genoux would watch her out of sight, she knew, so at the corner she must turn round to wave. Genoux would be hurt if she forgot to turn round. Yet by the gesture she would not be reassured; she would not be happy again until she had readmitted the muffled figure of the old lady to the safety of the house; drawn her in, taken off her boots, brought her slippers and perhaps a cup of hot soup, carried away her wraps, and left her to her book beside the sitting-room fire. Yet Genoux, for all her adages and croakings, was a gay and philosophical old soul, full of wisdom of the sturdy peasant kind. (She waved back to Lady Slane as Lady Slane after dutifully looking round turned the corner and pursued her way slowly towards the Heath.

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