William Gerhardie - The Polyglots

‘And has he managed well?’

‘Well, yes,’ she said. ‘I must confess that he has been very generous. Very, very generous. Only lately—’

‘Lately—?’

‘Lately he hasn’t been sending us any dividends.’

‘Oh?’

‘It’s very strange,’ she said.

‘Of course, his business is paralysed by what is going on in Krasnoyarsk.’

‘Quite. But we can’t be living on nothing. And in Japan where everything is so dear! Sylvia’s convent alone eats up half of my money! It’s over two months overdue. It’s very strange,’ she said. ‘We’ve waited, waited …’

‘All things come to him who waits,’ said Uncle Emmanuel.

‘Emmanuel,’ said my aunt, ‘you will go tomorrow morning to the General Post Office, and enquire if our telegram has been received by Lucy.’

‘Very well, my angel.’

Aunt Teresa’s way of speaking to her husband reminded me of regimental orders: ‘B Company will parade—. 3rd Battalion will embark—.’ It was neither hectoring nor flustered; it quietly assumed the thing done (in the future), it just did not consider the possibility of non-compliance.

‘ Emmanuel, tu iras — Emmanuel, tu feras— ’

‘ Oui, mon ange .’ And he went. And he did.

When Aunt Teresa went up to her bedroom to lie down before dinner, Uncle Emmanuel told us that he would be able to procure the autograph of a famous French marshal for anyone who chose to contribute twenty thousand francs to the French Red Cross; and my uncle took the opportunity to ask us if we knew of any possible buyers or, perhaps, of an auction or a war charity where such a bait would prove attractive. ‘Zey askèd me to do it,’ he was telling Major Beastly, with propitiatory gestures, ‘and I takèd it; I tellèd dem: I doèd what I can.’

‘I know a chap,’ said Beastly, ‘an American called Brown, who knows everybody who is anybody. I’ll tackle him, and I am sure he’ll take it on. But’—he held out a warning forefinger—‘no bunkum, you know.’

‘Please?’ asked my uncle, not understanding the word.

‘No bunkum!’ warned Beastly, who was suspicious of ‘foreigners’.

My uncle did not deign to reply.

AUNT TERESA

SOME LITTLE TIME AFTER MY AUNT HAD GONE UP TO lie down in her bedroom I was called up to her. There was an acute scent of Mon Boudoir aroma and of miscellaneous cosmetics in the room. She powdered herself thick — you felt you wanted to scrape it off with a penknife. On the bedside-table were medicine bottles, cosmetics, old photographs, books; and on the quilt a red-leather buvard , a writing-pad; behind her, soft pillows; and ensconced in all this, as in a nest, was Aunt Teresa — the incarnation of delicate health. She remembered every birthday and wrote and received a multitude of letters at Christmas and Easter, on occasions of family weddings, births, deaths, confirmations, promotions, appointments, etc., and made careful notes of the dates of all letters and postcards received and dispatched in a little red leather-bound book specially kept for the purpose. It was July — late afternoon, early evening — and melancholy.

‘You look fairly comfortable,’ I observed, gazing round.

‘Ach! if I had Constance !’ drawled my aunt. ‘If only I had Constance to look after me! Alas! I had to leave her at Dixmude! and I have no trained nurse to look after me in my sad exile!’

Constance was the daughter of a great friend of Aunt Teresa, whom she had befriended after his death, and befriending her, had made a servant of her.

‘They are nice friendly people, the Vanderphants,’ I said after a pause.

‘Yes, but Mme Vanderphant is a bit thick-headed, and doesn’t quite understand about my poor miserable health! — and talks so loud. And she’s terribly greedy. On the boat, four years ago, she ate so much (because she knew that food was included in the fare) that the Captain was quite disgusted, and purposely steered alongside the waves — to make her sick.’

‘And was she?’

‘Wasn’t she!’ exclaimed my aunt, with malice. ‘She just was.’

‘But Berthe is awfully nice, isn’t she?’ I said.

And Aunt Teresa, in a deep, deep baritone, in the voice of the wolf who, masquerading as the grandmother, spoke to Little Red Ridinghood from beneath the bedclothes, drawled: ‘Yes, Berthe has taken pity on me in my illness and she looks after me, poor invalid that I am! She is kind and attentive, but isn’t she a perfect fright to look at?’

‘Well, there’s something sympathetic about her face, all the same.’

‘No, but isn’t she ugly — that long red beak! And you know she doesn’t know she is ugly. She even fancies herself. She thinks she isn’t at all bad to look at.’

‘Well, I’ve seen worse.’

‘But, non, mon Dieu !’ she laughed. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone so ludicrously ugly. But, as I say — of course, she is not Constance , but she’s quite kind to me and attentive.’ Aunt Teresa was looking all the while at my shining brown calves, where my servant Pickup had ‘put on’ a ‘Cherry Blossom’ shine. Perhaps she thought of her own youth, regretted that her pigmy husband had never had such calves as mine. For I am strong of limb, my calves especially, and my dark-brown tightly strapped cavalry boots and spurs (in which I cultivate a certain swaggering kick in my walk), polished to a high degree by Pickup, show off my legs to advantage. Women like me. My blue eyes, which I roll in a winning way when I talk to them, look well beneath my dark brows — which I daily pencil. My nose is remotely tilted, a little arched. But what disposes them to me, I think, are my delicate nostrils, which give me a naïve, tender, guileless expression, like this—‘M’m’—which appeals to them.

‘That’s enough, George,’ said my aunt.

‘What?’

‘Admiring yourself in the looking-glass all the time.’

‘Not a bit—’

‘You will dine with us.’

‘Yes. Now I must go back to the hotel to change.’

‘Don’t be late,’ she called after me.

When I descended, Beastly had already gone. At the hotel I found an invitation for me to attend next week a dinner given by the Imperial General Staff. As I drove back to dinner, full of half-apprehended anticipations, the shadows were already black under the wheels, and next to the little dwarf slave there ran another with a longer neck and legs like stilts.

AND AS I RANG THE BELL AND THE BOY OPENED THE door to me, Sylvia was there, standing in the hall, bright-eyed, long-limbed, graceful as a sylph. We waited for my aunt: some moments afterwards she came down, and in her wake we all went in to dinner. Sylvia sat facing me. She bent her head, closed her eyes (while I noticed the length of the lashes), and bringing her outstretched fingers together, hurriedly mumbled grace to herself. Then took up the spoon — and once again revealed her luminous eyes. And I noticed the exquisite curve of her finely drawn black brows.

She was so strikingly beautiful that one could not get used to her face: could not rest one’s eyes on her, could not make out what was the matter with it, after all. She was so beautiful that one’s eye could not fix on her — and one asked oneself why the deuce she wasn’t more beautiful still!

‘Sylvia! Again!’ said Aunt Teresa.

And, involuntarily, Sylvia blinked.

‘And your friend?’ Mme Vanderphant asked.

‘Who? Beastly? He is dining out.’

‘ Mais voilà un nom !’ laughed my aunt, and revealed her beautiful profile against the light: it was plastered up pretty considerably with powder and paste, but the outlines were intact and lovely enough, I can tell you.