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.
18
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.’
‘Without further cost to yourself, as they say in the business world.’ She learnt my expressions, I noticed, and repeated them. A very good sign.
I looked at her tenderly. ‘My Irish darling! Mein irisch Kind!’
‘Oh! Oh! Indeed,’ she said. She was brimming all over with life and wanted to be naughty like a child, but didn’t quite know how to set about it, and so only hopped about on tiptoe, while I wondered if I had sufficient money in my pocket-book, and if so, whether I could not spend it better than by dining out — buying a new pair of cavalry boots, for example. And my spirit clouded. Like my old grandfather on my mother’s side, I was not over-fond of spending money, and now at this extravagant resolution to distract myself with Sylvia by an expensive meal, my old grandfather called to me from the grave. His motto had been: ‘Bargain, bargain, bargain hard, and when you’ve done, beg a hank of thread.’ He was never tired of warning: ‘When poverty comes through the door, love flies out of the window.’ Or he would buy a pennyworth of paper clips and demand a guarantee. He had spent his whole nervous force in life in seeing that he always got full value for his money, and he died unconscious of the fact that he had not received the value for the life that he had spent. But in moments of wanton extravagance, my grandfather would be calling to me from the grave.
At the big shop in the Kitaiskaya — I have forgotten the name — I bought Sylvia a bottle of scent. In another shop she bought a piece of elastic; sat down and examined the articles with a proud, competent air and sent the girl about her business. And again I noticed her astoundingly charming profile. As the elastic was being wrapped up for her she took hold of her little vanity-bag, a little insincerely, perhaps, while I was looking dreamily away; then I bestirred myself and anticipated her action with a wholly admirable gallantry. And possibly because the amount was something like tuppence, for once my grandfather did not stir.
As we entered the restaurant ‘Moderne’ we were confronted by an enormous savage-looking head waiter — the sort of man of whom you tell yourself at once, ‘That man’s an ass.’ And subsequent events confirmed our worst suspicions. The waiter looked at us with that savage dubious look, as though he were not quite certain whether Sylvia and I were human beings or some other animals. He displayed the greatest inefficiency in the seemingly simple task of finding us an empty table, of which the number, in proportion to the tables occupied, was vast. Around us stood the waiters — internationals alclass="underline" a race unto themselves — with that look of theirs betraying that their minds were only set upon a share of what I had in my breast-pocket. And because I was palpably allergic to such menials as porters, waiters and the like, I talked in a loud unconcerned voice, calculated also to reassure myself, and generally assumed the attitude of a gastronomic connoisseur and a man of the world — as though I were Arnold Bennett. Sylvia was studying the menu, and the enormous head waiter bent over her chair. And I looked at him with dark hatred. Among other things, Sylvia wanted chicken. There were two kinds of chicken. A whole chicken cost 500 roubles. A wing, 100 roubles. The rate of exchange, be it remembered, at that time was only 200 roubles to £1 sterling. The enormous head waiter strongly recommended the whole chicken. ‘Straight from Paris in an aeroplane,’ he said. I felt cold in the feet.