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 souclass="underline" 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?