The Polyglots

by William Gerhardie

  ‘He?’

  ‘He is there, with maman—talking.’

  ‘Gustave——’ I sighed.

  ‘I don’t like his name.’

  ‘Why? Flaubert was called Gustave. It ought to be distinguished. It’s no worse than mine any day. Georges—there’s only Georges Carpentier. Unsuitable association for an intellectual!’

  ‘If it were just the name …’ She looked at me. Suddenly, shyly: ‘I dreamt last night you and I were flying in an aeroplane,’ she said. ‘I threw out two of your books, and you were so angry, so angry—you leapt after them straight out of the aeroplane, and we were so high up, so dreadfully high up. I cried my eyes out, but they could not find you. Afterwards somehow you returned—but how I forget.’

  I looked at her. My soul, after much pain, had become strangely quiet. I just looked at her and could not speak.

  ‘In the Daily Mail,’ she said, ‘there was an article the other day about love—How to win and keep a woman’s love.’

  ‘The Daily Mail … The Daily Mail … But why the Daily Mail? Why do you read the Daily Mail?’

  ‘Because I like these articles they have about love and things. I follow them to know how we stand, how we love each other, you see? You should read them.’

  ‘I have been so weak,’ I wailed melodramatically—and really feeling the part. ‘So miserably weak, so indecisive. I have imbibed this curse of a Hamletian vacillation with the name, I suppose.’

  ‘Never mind, darling, we shall travel. We shall come over to Europe one day and see you; won’t it be nice?’

  ‘And Gustave!’ I wailed, almost in tears. ‘Gustave! Gustave! of all people! Casting pearls—So silly, so really idiotic when one comes to think—isn’t it? Why was he dragged into this affair? Oh, when you consider, think ahead, weigh up, select—it’s almost better, really better, if you never thought at all.’

  ‘Never mind, darling.’

  ‘I deserve what I got—and with interest—I deserve it, honestly. But you; why you? Why should you have been let down as you have been, by me and your mother—me and your mother!’

  ‘Never mind, darling. He doesn’t count. Nothing will count. We shall think of each other all the time, and nothing, nothing will count.’

  I looked at her, I looked long and steadily, and her eyes blinked several times in the interval. I looked—and suddenly the tears welled up from my eyes. ‘Queenie!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘My little queenie.’

  ‘Yes … Prince.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘My little prince.’

  ‘Yes. Oh, must we part?’

  ‘How cruel!’

  ‘Sixteen thousand miles.’

  ‘Don’t, or I shall cry.’

  And the evening seemed to listen, to grieve, to sympathize with our losing each other.

  ‘The fact of the matter,’ she purled, looking into my face with her dark velvety eyes, ‘is that I shall never see you again.’

  ‘Gustave!’ called my aunt. He went back to her.

  ‘There, he’s coming now’—Sylvia turned to me as if to go. She liked Gustave well enough against a background—the background of other people; the more the better. Being alone with him was another matter. Then he was like a thread pulled out of a pattern—a poor thing. When she was engaged to him she would never be alone with him, but insisted on going out with friends, myself included. And now she must be pointedly alone with him.

  ‘Gustave! Good night,’ said my aunt. ‘Sylvia won’t go home with you to-night. Elle n’ira pas.’

  And, again, I was reminded of military orders: ‘B Company will parade.’ But she deigned to add:

  ‘She is too tired to-night and will stay at home. Elle restera à la maison. À demain, alors!’

  Gustave just raised his faint brow a little—as though it came to him that the practice was rather against precedent in most marriages. He gulped once or twice, coughed a little, and adjusted his Adam’s apple. He pulled at his collar in a timid gesture, cleared his throat half-heartedly, and said, ‘Well, then, good night, maman’.

  ‘Good night, Gustave’—she touched his faint brow as he bent over her and licked her blanched hand—‘à demain!’

  For a moment he stood there as if wanting to say something, then gulped and went out.

  He was gone.

  If you doubt this, I simply say to you: you do not know my aunt. We stood there, Sylvia and I, it seemed both of us breathless. The thing was too sudden. Even Aunt Teresa herself looked as though she had astonished herself. Suddenly I understood the secret power of that woman. I understood—what so far I had failed to understand—how she had managed to take her husband with her all the way to the Far East in the midst of ‘the greatest war the world had ever seen’.

  ‘Now all go to bed. Ugh! I feel so done up.’

  ‘But it’s barely eight o’clock!’

  ‘Never mind. All go to bed. You are leaving early tomorrow.’

  I strolled about the house, pondering on my departure. My trunks were packed. My cupboards bare. My hours void.

  Sylvia was in the drawing-room. She rose to meet me. ‘I’m so glad you’ve come.’

  ‘Why, darling?’

  ‘I felt so sad just now. I had a bath—and suddenly I felt so lonely—lonely—lonely—as if I were all alone in the world.’ She blinked. ‘I have only you to talk to.’

  A kiss.

  ‘O—o—o!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A sore on my lip.’

  ‘Never mind.’

  ‘Sylvia!’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Sylvia!’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Sylvia! Sylvia! Sylvia! Sylvia! Sylvia!…’ I murmured in varying accents, rapturous intonations, as she nestled closer to me. We were alone, and the world had shrunk into a corner of our soul, listened, and was silent.

  I kissed her on the eyes—her hazel eyes—her warm and tender eyelids. ‘There. And again. And again.’

  Sylvia kissed impetuously, as though there were no noses on our faces which got in the way. I kissed more carefully, avoiding the noses. And, by this time, kisses for me had become as plentiful and unsought as chocolates at a birthday party. Through the open window there came the smell of spring—the fragrant moist and heavy odour.

  ‘If you go on loving me, and I go on loving you—what else do we want?’ she said.

  ‘We want each other, of course, in the flesh.’

  ‘We can still love each other, think of each other.’

  ‘Think!’ I echoed sardonically.

  Outside was spring, as beautiful as the last, as beautiful as the next. The sun had come out, but the rain still fell slowly, perfunctorily.

  How, after a run of ill-luck, of despair, life blossoms out unexpectedly.

  We went into the garden, walked under the trees, felt the raindrops on our faces—cool, clear, splashy silver drops. When life smiles on you, it compensates for all. The beeches, dark and delicate against the fading sky, like Sylvia’s lace hat, stood passive and unquestioning, and there seemed wisdom in their unquestioning acceptance of all things, in their taking life for granted; wisdom—and a sadness.

  ‘Put on that champagne georgette, put it on for me.’

  ‘But it’s a ball-dress, darling.’

  ‘Never mind. I love you in it. I want to remember you in it—for ever.’

  She looked serious, blinking. ‘Will you, darling?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She went in, and I remained, and, waiting for her, paced the lawn and watched the trees listless in the melancholy of revivification. I remembered suddenly last spring, our love, my mood one evening. There was the memory of a promise unfulfilled—of former springs—in this early breaking rigour as I drew a full breath of the twilight dampness that engulfed me, a promise that I knew would never be fulfilled this side of the grave. And I felt sad. Not because we two were destined to be parted, and I was leaving on the morrow. I think that were we never to be
parted I would have been just as sad. Had I been thieved of love—as Gustave was that evening—I know I would have felt, and felt acutely, the melancholy of reviving life. But I had been rewarded handsomely and unexpectedly, yet it was spring—and I was sad. This sadness we attribute to terrestrial reasons but that visits us in spring, like a haunting phrase of music, this sadness without reason—what is it? Is it regret because we, fragments of a single soul, grieve in separation, lament our being ‘misunderstood’? But if we cannot understand ourselves! if at our best we are half empty, what answer can we give each other, we who have grown sceptical, and justly so, of answers, we broken melodies who can but ask and ask (because there is a question, and so there is a Something) when we are joined at last in the grand union of a universal soul: what message shall we send unto the skies but yet another question, ‘orchestral’ but unanswered as before? Till we lose heart and cry in anguish: How long, O Lord, how long?

  Upstairs in the drawing-room Sylvia, in her fragile champagne georgette, looking the tenderest of fairies, came up whistling and hopping slightly on her toes.

  ‘Oh, how I love you!’

  ‘Oh! Really?’ she said. ‘Oh! Oh! I see.’ She talked to herself, cooing like a dove. We sat on the sofa. I examined her rings, and a pang shot through my heart at the sight of the ring next to her wedding-ring. And, as if divining my thought, she took it off and showed it me silently. This: Set me as a seal upon thine heart. And our eyes clouded.—Then, in a newspaper, she came across a poem which she thought fitted the occasion, and read it out to me in a whisper:

  Some day our eyes shall see

  The face we love so well,

  Some day our hands shall clasp

  And never say ‘Farewell.’

  ‘I want a lock of your hair.’

  ‘Yes, darling, you can have whatever lock of hair you like.’ I fetched the scissors.

  She took two of my cards, on the one side of which was: ‘Captain G. H. A. Diabologh, British Military Representative, Harbin’, and on the other she copied the poem, reading out as she wrote:

  Some day my eyes shall see

  The face … no, the boy I love so well,

  Some day my hands shall clasp——

  ‘Not “my hands”, surely. You don’t want to clasp your own hands. You can do that all the time.’

  ‘Well, “our hands”, then.’

  ‘Lips, not hands.’

  ‘Yes, lips. Some day our lips shall clasp—but not “clasp” surely?’

  ‘No, meet.’

  ‘And never say “Farewell.” ’

  And having completed both cards, she handed me one and kept the other, as keepsakes for eternal remembrance.

  ‘And the petals of this yellow flower.’ She gave me a petal, and kept one for herself.

  ‘Yes.’

  There was silence.

  I looked at her. ‘Why don’t you say something?’

  ‘There’s a great lump in my throat,’ she said, ‘so talking is impossible.’

  I went over to the piano, and striking up a few bars began to compose on the theme of farewell. But the result was abominable.

  Sylvia opened a page with strings of demi-semi-quavers—thick as blackberries. I struck a few notes and then stopped. Crochets and quavers depress me. And when I cannot read difficult music I sound a few bars and then pretend it’s no use going on.

  ‘Go on!’ she enjoined.

  ‘I’m not in the mood.’

  And I played Tristan instead. I played louder and louder and louder. The door opened suddenly and Berthe came in.

  ‘Your Aunt Teresa asks you not to play so loud; she does not feel well.’

  ‘Oh, bother!’

  Berthe counted fifteen valerian drops into the glass which she held in her hand, and then departed.

  To get away from them!—to get away from them!—to be undisturbed for the night—that is what we wanted and craved for above all else.

  I looked into her eyes.

  ‘Darling, I do, I do, I will miss you. But I shall come back,’ she said.

  I played softly—improvising again as I went along.

  ‘What is this?’

  ‘Set me as a seal upon thine heart.’

  She smiled. ‘It is, really.’

  Sylvia, so light, so fragile, pale and delicate in her georgette, like a China rose, sat behind me on a high marble table (on which Dr. Murgatroyd once upon a time had burnt the seat of his trousers), gently swinging her legs. Suddenly, as I played, tears welled up from her large hazel eyes.

  I looked at her. ‘Did you see my crying, dear?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘As I played I did.’

  ‘Don’t cry. If you cry I shall cry too.’

  ‘But you had tears,’ I said, a little jealous. ‘I saw.’

  ‘A little.’

  I improvised and improvised till, in the end, I came a cropper. I was sorry now for all we did not do: for the walk we never took; for the kiss I did not press nor linger over. ‘For ever and ever and ever——’

  ‘Never mind, dear; you shall come to me to-night,’ she whispered.

  ‘What?’ I stifled a gasp of surprise, but could not help looking incredulous at this news too good to be true.

  She said: ‘Come to me, dear, to-night, after ten, when they are all asleep. Promise me!’

  ‘You want me to?’ I said complacently, checking my surprise instinctively for fear that my shock might shock her off her declared intention, as I would to anyone who offered me the sum of £100,000—to preclude its seeming unnaturally generous to the donor. ‘You want me to?’

  ‘Yes.’

  And I daresay since, as I now perceived, she had deliberately imparted this unexpected piece of news in a complacent tone so as to startle me the more into a thrill, my own complacency (the policy of which she did not see) was somewhat of a disappointment to her. I ought to have thrilled with gratitude at the new lease of love that she was offering me; but the novelty of it by now had worn off a little. ‘And Gustave?’ I said uncertainly, anxious for confirmation.

  ‘Well—it’s the last time. So he shouldn’t mind.—I mean—it being the first time. And besides,’ she said, ‘he won’t know.’

  ‘He might find out.’

  ‘He’ll find out nothing’—she shook her head. ‘He’s such a ninny!’

  ‘You—you are sure you don’t mind, darling?’

  ‘All young people who love each other live with each other.’

  ‘Of course they do! Of course!’

  The reader knows that at the time of her renouncing me, without a murmur, at her selfish mother’s bid, I was touched profoundly by Sylvia’s self-sacrifice. Passion had become compassion. Oh, what a high, exalted form of love! But when suddenly the tables turned, I thought: ‘Why not? After all, why should my silly aunt have it all her own silly way?’

  You will have to square my aunt over it, whether you will or no. This whole business of our love had been so tampered with by Aunt Teresa that it was, for all practical purposes, out of our hands. And now, after a long series of reverses, the opportunities simply played into our hands. To have acted differently I could not have been George Hamlet Alexander Diabologh, nor she Sylvia Ninon Thérèse Anastathia Vanderflint. So if blame you must, blame Aunt Teresa. I have no words strong enough to condemn her reprehensible behaviour. It was wicked. It was unforgivable. It was—it was a damned shame!

  At about twenty minutes before ten I sat in my attic and watched the town dissolve in the gathering gloom. Foolish associations press into one’s brain—Götterdämmerung. I scanned the pages of a book devoted to a scholarly analysis of the difference between what is ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’, and meditating on this difference nearly fell asleep. I am, as you may know, an intellectual. I smoked one cigarette, then lit another, and when the clock on my table struck ten, I threw away the cigarette, and went to Sylvia.

  I do not know how far you are prepared to follow me in my attempt to leave nothing
out. I am an inexperienced writer, a new hand at this business of depicting life. However that may be, I knocked at Sylvia’s door. There was no answer. I went in. And there was no one there.

  I caught the scent of Cœur de Jeanette, and of powder. Here I sat in Sylvia’s room, looked at her girlish books, her girlish things. And I grew sad, sad at my departure. For some reason this insistent passage from Maupassant, which I had run across in Arnold Bennett, clung to my brain and would not let go—‘How I have wept, the long night through, over the poor women of the past, so beautiful, so tender, so sweet, whose arms have opened for the kiss, and who are dead!’ And it seemed as though Sylvia were already dead, ruined, gone—the way of all damnation!

  I stood up. I saw my face in the glass. I combed my black mop of hair back from the forehead with her comb: it gave me a secret thrill of pleasure to do so. The comb sparkled. How exquisite, how overwhelmingly happy was life! The big bird had stirred its wings in me, ready to fly. I looked round. I could wish I had flowers—to invade our room with flowers, as in Le Lys Rouge. But now there was no time. On the stained and tattered wall there was a copy of an English oleograph—heaven knows how it had found its way here, and why Sylvia had not had the impulse to remove it—of a young woman in wedding dress and a bouquet of roses in her white-gloved hand, bearing the inscription: ‘An anxious moment—waiting for the bridegroom.’ And I thought: ‘Our roles are reversed.’ I looked out of the window, my brow pressed against the chilly glass, wondering, hoping, doubting, the town eclipsing into darkness, the growing string of lights winking steadily, demurely. The flowers on the wallpaper. How they complement each other in making figures! Tick-tick, tick-tick—this is æon beating upon æon, time receding into the past, life running down. On the table was a bronze bust of Sylvia done by a young sculptor of our acquaintance. What beckoned those shoulders, those breasts? What raptures did they cajole? Suddenly I felt that I was basking in the heat of the sun, bathing in empyrean anticipations: this beauty I had always looked for and somehow always missed was mine—to be mine almost any minute. It was as if the future and the past had merged into one vast vague dream; but the present has come to stay, has become momentary and eternal, and intolerable enough on that account. And I thought of how, when all this tribulation and excitement should be over, I would return once more to my peaceful, sober treatise in connexion with the evolution of an attitude.