Challenge

V. Sackville-West

Description

Challenge (1923) is a novel by Vita Sackville-West. While she is most widely recognized as the lover of English novelist Virginia Woolf, Sackville-West was a popular and gifted poet, playwright, and novelist in her own right. A prominent lesbian and bohemian figure, Sackville-West was also the daughter of an English Baron, granting her a unique and often divided perspective on life in the twentieth century. “After spending nearly two years in exile, Julian was once more upon his way to Herakleion.” A man of fate, Julian Davenant was born into a wealthy English family on the island of Herakleion. Rather than continue the legacy of colonialism, Davenant—a Byronic hero—dreams of independence for the people of Greece, and eventually finds himself at the center of a revolutionary plot. As his political star rises, his love affair with the beautiful Eve catches fire, plunging Julian into a world of passion and danger. Known for her tumultuous, heated affairs with men and women alike, Sackville-West is an artist whose works so often mirror her life. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Vita Sackville-West’s Challenge is a classic of English literature reimagined for modern readers.

Sujets

• Romance historique
• Ève
• Fiction
• Romance
• Violet Trefusis
• Julian
• List of islands of Greece
• Greek War of Independence
• Eve
• Julián (desambiguación)
• Historical

Informations

• Publié par: Mint Editions
• Date de parution: 28 septembre 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781513212081
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Challenge
V. Sackville-West
 
 
 
Challenge was first published in 1923.
This edition published by Mint Editions 2021.
ISBN 9781513212180 | E-ISBN 9781513212081
Published by Mint Editions®
minteditionbooks .com
Publishing Director: Jennifer Newens
Design & Production: Rachel Lopez Metzger
Project Manager: Micaela Clark
Typesetting: Westchester Publishing Services
 
C ONTENTS E PILOGUE P ART I . J ULIAN I II III IV V P ART II . E VE I II III IV V VI P ART III . A PHROS I II III IV V VI VII
 
E PILOGUE
A man and a woman leaned idly over the balustrade watching the steady stream of guests that mounted the magnificent staircase. The marble of the balustrade was cool beneath the woman’s bare arms, for it was summer, and the man, without interrupting his murmur of comment and anecdote, glanced admiringly at her, and thought that, in spite of her forty years, she, with diamonds in her hair and the great ropes of pearls over her shoulders, need not fear comparison with all the beauty of London assembled at that ball. Her beauty and dignity melted pleasantly, for him, into the wealth of the house, the lights, the abundance of flowers, and the distant orchestra. Again the idea that this woman, for the asking, would decorate his own house with her presence, and would ornament his own distinguished name, played flatteringly through his mind. He reflected with gratification that it lay within his power to do her this honour. For, a vain man, he never questioned but that the favour would lie entirely on his side.
He pointed out to her the famous general on the stairs, escorting his daughter; the new American beauty; the young man recently succeeded to fabulous estates; the Indian prince who had turned the heads of half the women in London. Skilful, she paid him the compliment of interest and amusement, letting it be understood that he was himself of far greater interest to her than the personages who served as pegs to his wit. As he paused once, she revived the conversation:—
“There is a man I have never seen before; that tall, dark man. And the handsome woman with him—she must be his wife.”
“Why must she be his wife?” he asked, amused.
“Because I am sure she is the type of woman he would marry, stately and correct; am I not right?”
“You are quite right; she is his wife. He has been and still is a very successful man; an Under-Secretary at thirty-five, and in the Cabinet before he was forty. Many people think that he will be the next Viceroy.”
At that moment the man on the stairs looked up, and his eyes met those of the woman leaning on the balustrade above.
“What a wonderful face!” she exclaimed, startled, to her companion. “Wonderful—but he looks as though he had learnt all the sorrow of the world.—He looks—what shall I say?—so weary.”
“Then he has no business to,” he answered with a smile. “He has everything man can wish for: power, wealth, and, as you can see, an admirable wife. As usual, however, your perception is unerring: he’s the most cynical fellow I ever came across. He believes in nothing—and is incidentally the only real philanthropist I know. His name is perfectly familiar to you. It is Davenant.”
“Oh,” she said, carried away by her interest, “is that Julian Davenant? Of course everyone has heard of him. Stay,” she added, searching in her memory, “wasn’t there some extraordinary story about him as a young man? some crazy adventure he engaged in? I don’t remember exactly…”
The man at her side began to laugh.
“There was indeed,” he replied; “do you remember an absurd tiny republic named Herakleion, which has since been absorbed by Greece?”
“Herakleion?” she murmured. “Why, I have been there in a yacht, I believe; a little Greek port; but I didn’t know it had ever been an independent republic?”
“Dear me, yes,” he said, “it was independent for about a hundred years, and Julian Davenant as a young man was concerned in some preposterous revolution in those parts; all his money comes, you know, from his vine-growing estates out there. I am a little vague myself as to what actually happened. He was very young at the time, not much more than a boy.”
“How romantic,” said the woman absently, as she watched Julian Davenant shaking hands with his hostess.
“Very romantic, but we all start by being romantic until we have outgrown it, and anyway, don’t you think we are going, you and I, rather too much out of our way this evening to look for romance?” said the man, leaning confidentially a little nearer.
B UT THESE TWO PEOPLE HAVE nothing to do with the story.
 
PART I
JULIAN
 
I
O n Sunday, after the races were over, the diplomatic, indigenous, and cosmopolitan society of Herakleion, by virtue of a custom they never sought to dispute, streamed through the turnstiles of the race-course to regain their carriages and to drive for an hour in the ilex avenue consecrated to that purpose outside the suburbs of the town. Like the angels on Jacob’s ladder, the carriages went up one side and down the other, at a slow walk, the procession invariably headed by the barouche of the French Legation, containing M. Lafarge, chief of the mission, his beard spread fan-like over his frock-coat, but so disposed as to reveal the rosette in his button-hole, peeping with a coy red eye at the passing world; Madame Lafarge, sitting erect and bowing stiffly from her unassailable position as dictator to social Herakleion; and, on the strapontin , Julie Lafarge, repressed, sallow-faced daughter of the emissaries of France. Streaming after the barouche came mere humanity, some in victorias, some in open cabs, all going at a walk, and down the centre rode the young men of the place, and down the centre Alexander Christopoulos, who dared all and to whom all was forgiven, drove his light buggy and American trotter at a rattling pace and in a cloud of dust.
The diplomatic carriages were distinguished by the presence of a chasseur on the box, though none so gorgeous as the huge scarlet-coated chasseur of the French Legation. It was commonly said that the Danish Minister and his wife, who were poor, denied themselves food in order to maintain their carriage for the Sunday drive. The rich Greeks, on the other hand, from generation to generation, inherited the family brake, which was habitually driven by the head of the clan on the box, his wife beside him, and his sons and unmarried daughters sitting two by two, on the six remaining seats behind. There had been a rush of scandal when Alexander Christopoulos had appeared for the first time alone in his buggy, his seat in the family brake conspicuously empty. There remained, however, his four sisters, the Virgins of Herakleion, whose ages ranged from thirty-five to forty, and whose batteries were unfailingly directed against the latest arrival. The fifth sister had married a banker in Frankfort, and was not often mentioned. There were, besides the brakes of the rich Greeks, the wagonettes of the English Davenants, who always had English coachmen, and frequently absented themselves from the Sunday drive to remind Herakleion that, although resident, they were neither diplomatic, indigenous, nor cosmopolitan, but unalterably English. They were too numerous and too influential to be disregarded, but when the name of Davenant was mentioned in their absence, a murmur was certain to make itself heard, discreet, unvindictive, but none the less remorseless, “Ah yes, the English Levantines.”
Sunshades were lowered in the ilex avenue, for the shadows of the ancient trees fell cool and heavy across the white dust. Through the ilexes, the sea glimmered on a lower level, washing idly on the shore; vainly blue, for Herakleion had no eyes for the sea. The sea was always there, always blue, just as Mount Mylassa was always there, behind the town, monotonous and immovable. The sea was made for the transport of merchandise and to provide man with fish. No one had ever discovered a purpose in Mount Mylassa.
When the French barouche had reached the end of the avenue, it turned gravely in a wide circle and took its place at the head of the descending carriages. When it had reached its starting-point, the entrance to the avenue, it detached itself from the procession and continued on its way towards the town. The procession did not follow it. Another turn up and down the avenue remained for the procession, and the laughter became perceptibly brighter, the smiles of greeting more cordial, with the removal of Madame Lafarge’s influence. It was known that the barouche would pass the race-course at its former dignified walk, but that, once out of sight, Madame Lafarge would say, “ Grigora , Vassili!” to the chasseur, that the horses would be urged into a shambling trot and that the ladies in the carriage would open their sunshades to keep off the glare of the sun which beat down from heaven and reverberated from the pavements and the white walls of the houses as they drove through the streets of the deserted town.
Deserted, for that part of the population which was not within doors strolled in the ilex avenue, looking at the carriages. A few lean dogs slept on door-steps where the shadow of the portico fell sharply dividing the step into a dark and a sunny half. The barouche rolled along the wide quay, where here and there the parapet was broken by a flight of steps descending to the water; passed the casino, white, with palms and cacti growing hideously in the forecourt; rolled across the square platia , where a group of men stood lounging within the cool and cavernous passage-way of the club.
Madame Lafarge stopped the barouche.
A young man detached himself from the group with a slightly bored and supercilious expression. He was tall beyond the ordinary run of Frenchmen; had dark eyes under meeting eyebrows in an ivory face, and an immensely high, flat, white brow, from which the black wavy hair grew straight back, smoothed to the polish of a black greyhound. “Our Persian minia