Forrest Leo - The Gentleman

At the time it seemed the most romantic thing that had ever happened. But looking back, I see it to have been the beginning of the end. I was composing poetry, and Vivien interrupted me in a way which brooked no further converse. So there you have it.

I courted a goddess, but married only a woman. I hear that this is how it often goes, and I must pause here to note that marriage seems to me a most awful institution. If only we could carry out eternal courtships! I believe then I should be content, for the weeks courting Vivien were the happiest of my life. When every glance makes one’s heart beat quicker and one’s breath come short, and when a shy smile or spirited toss of the head makes one’s eyes lose focus, the world becomes more vivid. Even London becomes a welcoming place, a lovely place, a town of beauty instead of filth and parties.*

I am not looking forward to Simmons’s return.

The door creaks open. I do not lift my head. ‘Did you find me a mask so I can attend my own party, Simmons?’ I ask with some bitterness.

‘Oh,’ comes a querulous, stammering voice I have never heard before, ‘I’m not Simmons.’

I look up. The stranger has entered my study and closed the door behind him. He is absurdly thin, well dressed, and wears no costume but a bird-beaked Venetian carnival mask which he holds on a stick in front of his face. His shoulders are sloped as though with inexpressible weariness, but he does not appear to be elderly. As I study him, I find that I cannot in fact age him within a decade.

‘Indeed,’ I say. ‘You’re lost.’

‘Not lost, either,’ he says. The stammer wears upon my nerves.

‘No, see, in fact you are. This is my private study. The party is out there.’

‘I’m not here for the party, Mr Savage, though it does seem to be an excellent one.’

‘Then what are you here for?’ I demand. I do not like strangers, interlopers, stammerers, uninvited guests, or gentlemen travelling incognito.

‘Only to thank you,’ he says with great politeness, lowering the mask absently. There is nothing in his face of note. It is a perfectly ordinary face, one with a nose, two grey eyes with lids to them, a mouth, a chin, and everything else one would expect to find upon a face. I still cannot determine his age.

‘To thank me?’

‘For the kind word. I had been in a dark place, you understand, but hearing a friendly word can work miracles, and I’m feeling jolly much better.’

I stare at him, quite at a loss. At last, I say, ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

‘Earlier tonight you defended me from a particularly short-sighted priest, for which I came to thank you.’

I am utterly confused. He keeps looking at me with significance, but I do not understand the look. ‘You must be mistaken,’ I say. ‘All that happened is that a priest tripped over a cobblestone and was cursing the—’ Then I understand all at once. It is an unpleasant sensation, the sort of thing I imagine a man must feel who has had legs his whole life and then finds them abruptly amputated. ‘Oh,’ I say dumbly. ‘Then you are— Really?’

He says only, ‘Indeed.’*

I have never spoken to a supernatural entity before, and do not know precisely how to proceed. The Prince of Darkness — for I am reasonably certain it is he — simply looks at me. I study his face again. It remains ordinary. I wonder if this is his body, or if he has appropriated it. I try not to shudder at the thought. My mind conjures up images of a perfectly ordinary fellow walking home when suddenly the Devil floats up out of the dusty roadway and through his leather soles and along his shins and past his knees and around his hips and into his heart, rather like smoke into a smoker’s lungs. I glance at him again. I am waiting for something, but I am not sure what. Flames to spurt up, I suppose, or horns to sprout from his forehead, or a dead angel to plummet through the roof. None of these things happen, and the longer I look at him the more uncomfortable he seems to become and (strangely) the less uncomfortable I become.

‘Well I say,’ I venture at last. ‘This is unexpected.’

‘But not unwelcome, I hope?’ he asks eagerly.

‘No,’ I say, thrown off by his diminutive demeanour. He seems really quite tame, and what’s more, even a trifle melancholy. ‘No, of course not.’

‘Oh good!’ he exclaims with feeling. ‘I do so hate to be unwelcome!’

I scratch my head. I have reason to believe I am standing in my study hiding from the guests of a fancy dress party conducting an interview with the Devil, but for some reason there does not seem to be anything particularly odd about it. He is very polite, and I am very polite, and what more I expect I cannot say.

After a very long and awkward moment in which I find speech impossible, the Gentleman says, ‘Well, I’d best be going. But again, I thank you, and I wish you a happy life free from care.’

‘Alas, sir, I am already married!’ I say without thinking.

‘Oh sir,’ he cries in horror, quite taken aback. ‘What, and a fine poet like you?’

I grin ruefully at his boyish chagrin. ‘I’m afraid so.’

‘Oh dear,’ he says, with what sounds like genuine concern. ‘Why?’

I find myself beginning to like the old chap, and so I tell him the truth: ‘It was a financial thing.’

‘You married for money?’

‘I blush to admit that I did. Otherwise I never would have done it. I never planned to marry — in fact, I planned never to marry. I am not made of marriageable stuff. My mind is not a marriageable mind and I do not come from marriageable stock. My parents died upon their anniversary, you see.’

‘Indeed, indeed,’ he says, nodding sagely.

‘You see, sir,’ I carry on, the floodgates now open, ‘as you say, I’m a poet, and poets aren’t meant to marry! Poets are meant to dream and dance in the moonlight and love hopelessly! And in short, sir, I found that as soon as I had married I quite lost my ability to write and have been losing my already tenuous grasp on my reason ever since — for I find that no matter what I try — and believe me, I have tried everything: I stopped speaking to conserve my apparently limited supply of verbiage, I stopped sleeping so as to not waste creativity in dreaming, I even considered burning my library, thinking that without reading material I should be forced to generate my own. But no matter what I try I cannot, come — excuse me — Hell or high water, write, and it seems that the well of my genius has run dry and I am left bereft at twenty-two with neither words nor ideals to sustain me. And in short, sir, since my marriage I cannot write, and but for my little sister — no, in fact, regardless of my little sister — I wish I were dead.’

There is a pause after my speech, and I wonder if it had been ill-advised. I meant every word, but it occurs to me that revealing one’s inmost heart to Satan may not always be the wisest course of action. At length he says with quiet feeling, ‘I’m so sorry! That sounds dreadful.’

‘It is,’ I say, deciding that Satan or no, this gentleman is especially reasonable and quick to apprehend.

‘All the same,’ he adds after pensing a moment, ‘one can’t help but point out that it’s your own fault.’

‘I don’t follow.’

‘Hang it, man, you’re a poet ! And you married for money instead of love!’

He is perfectly correct, of course, and I know it — indeed, I have said as much myself. But something in his manner irks me. I do not like it when I am preached at, and I am feeling contrary — too contrary even to appreciate the irony of being preached at by the Devil. I say, ‘That has nothing to do with it. It’s my wife’s fault.’