William Gerhardie - The Polyglots

‘The difference between the dreamer and your practical man, as somebody has said, is that the dreamer sees the dawn before the other fellow.’

‘Why? Because he sits up all night?’

‘That is one of the reasons.’

‘But your aunt,’ she said. ‘Why, there’s really nothing the matter with her. Nothing at all. It is all put on. But she is jealous of me even when I say I have caught a chill. But I’ve no more time to waste,’ she hastened. ‘I must go and change her compresses and make her her tisane .’

‘This is remarkable!’ exclaimed my aunt as I went in to her. ‘Your Uncle Lucy evidently imagines that our money is his own and that he can do with it whatever he likes! He must have gone off his head! When our father died we each had 100,000 roubles. Two months later your Uncle Lucy, who continued at the head of affairs as managing director, informed us that we each possessed 400,000 roubles, and less than a year hence he wrote to tell us we possessed one million roubles. Fifteen years later he told us that we had just 30,000 each. We never knew what we had! And now he writes to tell me that I’ve nothing.’

To Uncle Lucy, I daresay, it must have seemed that all he had done was to present the case to them in a new and startling light, but to his sister he was now worse than a criminal. Uncle Emmanuel drafted a reply in French and stood over her as she translated it hurriedly and not very efficiently into English. From long disuse Aunt Teresa’s English had become very foreign; but assuredly Uncle Lucy’s was no better. Opening her red-leather buvard and placing the writing-pad upon it, she began, without deigning to address him:

I duly received your insultent [so she spelt it] wicked and unjust letter dated 17th inst. I cannot realize that you, a gentleman, could have written in that shameful way to your poor old sister you have known enough to state she was true, honest and straightforward! You seem to have forgotten that when our father died we all inherited the same sum which you begged of us to leave in the business which you undertook to manage! I perfectly admit you made it prosper the first years and paid us a very good dividend, of which you profited more than any of us, as you lived in a palace as you may say — in the greatest luxury — spending money wholesale — this was of course your business. We lived plainly and spent the money on our children’s education, added what Emmanuel earned, as he has never lived doing nothing as you seem to think!

My jewels are the only thing I will have to leave to my daughter after my death! Emmanuel is trying to sell my silver, as we are head over heels in debt to the Belgian lady and family who share our flat with us, but he must consider the future when no more able to work and a sick wife to support, and the comfort and care my poor miserable state of health requires. And still I cannot afford consulting a first-class specialist, nor having sufficient strengthening food in my sad exile! We live in no luxury and I have to struggle hard to make ends meet. I do all the correspondence and write to all our relations for Christmas and Easter and birthdays as I cannot on account of my poor miserable state of health do house work — you have been able to shake my poor health, which is still worse since my poor son’s death!

If Major Beastly told you we live in luxury, it is not true, of course. We tried to give him a good time during his stay in Tokyo and here, in depriving ourselves — at great sacrifice to ourselves, not knowing that he was to show himself a turncoat and informer! — and at very great inconvenience, too, for this man, as you may know yourself by now, doesn’t shave but — oh, makes such a smell with a hair-burning apparatus that we have been obliged to open all windows in the house, and I caught a chill in consequence, which is terribly dangerous in my miserable state of health!

If you had no wife or sons to help you, I assure you I would give anything to allow you a small sum, but as it is, and having no money of my own, I cannot do so.

Well, this is the last you will ever hear from me — you have hurt and offended me too cruelly, too unjustly! I shall never forget your shameful insultent letter I certainly never deserved!

Uncle Emmanuel suggested her signing it at this point. But Aunt Teresa felt that this was not really enough.

‘May God forgive you!’ she added, and then signed it:

‘Teresa Vanderflint.’

Uncle Emmanuel, writing his letter in French, began thus:

To my brother-in-law Lucy Diabologh.

I have just read the abusive letter which you have had the audacity to write to your sister Teresa who had nothing but the tenderest feelings towards you. Allowing for your own feelings in the matter, I choose to tell you that you have surpassed the measure of decent behaviour and that your letter has completely wrecked the health of my poor wife whose precarious state impels constant care and attention, and for whom, I must warn you, such emotions may prove fatal. If my income was inferior to that derived by my wife from the money inherited from her father, it does not yet follow that I have lived on your money, as you imply. Nevertheless, your offer to settle your debt to us of 500,000 roubles by one shilling appears to me so indescribably odious that I decline to discuss the matter with you any further. I repeat that I have never had the privilege of living on you, as you imagine, but that my family benefited by an advantageous (?) investment in a Russian industry at a time of prosperity of a capital of 100,000 roubles which belonged to my wife and that you were in duty bound to do your best for all of us. The facts have proved, alas! that the too absolute confidence that we have reposed in the ability and judgment of our brother-in-law has resulted in a catastrophe which must have occurred even if the war and revolution had not intervened. It must not, therefore, be forgotten by you that we are your creditors and not you ours, as you erroneously suppose.

I regret that for the first time that I have to correspond with a brother-in-law whom I had never had the occasion to meet I must be called to give him a lesson in savoir vivre . I ask him to cease all malignant polemics in regard to his brother-in-law and to spare his sister emotions so painful as those caused by his last missive.

He signed with a flourish:

‘Emmanuel Vanderflint.’

Aunt Teresa’s and Uncle Emmanuel’s letters were so long and explicit that Uncle Lucy as he read them must have felt he wanted to dine in between.

THE DOVE

MEANWHILE, THE SITUATION AS REGARDS THE sheepskin coats was still uncertain. Vague and perplexing. Dubious and undetermined. Confused and unsettled. Oracular, ambiguous, equivocal. Bewildering, precarious, embarrassing and controvertible, mysterious and undefinable, inscrutable and unaccountable, impenetrable, hesitant — apparently insoluble. Incredible! Incomprehensible! My orders were to ascertain their whereabouts and to arrange for their dispatch by rail to — I didn’t quite remember where. This I tried to arrange. ‘But where are the coats?’ the railway authorities questioned. Alas, this was more than I knew. For the sheepskin coats, as I said, could not be traced.

At last I telegraphed:

‘Sheepskin coats cannot be traced. Wire instructions.’ And tired out by this exertion of duty and feeling the need of wholesome recreation, I said to Sylvia:

‘Come out and dine with me.’

‘Oh! Oh! Really? Oh! Indeed! I see! Oh! Very nice!’ she said in tones of roguish whimsicality which that moment made her irresistible.

I added: ‘Without further cost to yourself, as they say in the business world.’