Upstairs in the drawing-room Sylvia, in her fragile champagne georgette, looking the tenderest of fairies, came up whistling and hopping slightly on her toes.
‘Oh, how I love you!’
‘Oh! Really?’ she said. ‘Oh! Oh! I see.’ She talked to herself, cooing like a dove. We sat on the sofa. I examined her rings, and a pang shot through my heart at the sight of the ring next to her wedding-ring. And, as if divining my thought, she took it off and showed it me silently. This: Set me as a seal upon thine heart. And our eyes clouded. — Then, in a newspaper, she came across a poem which she thought fitted the occasion, and read it out to me in a whisper:
Some day our eyes shall see
The face we love so well,
Some day our hands shall clasp
And never say ‘Farewell.’
‘I want a lock of your hair.’
‘Yes, darling, you can have whatever lock of hair you like.’ I fetched the scissors.
She took two of my cards, on the one side of which was: ‘Captain G. H. A. Diabologh, British Military Representative, Harbin’, and on the other she copied the poem, reading out as she wrote:
Some day my eyes shall see
The face … no, the boy I love so well,
Some day my hands shall clasp—
‘Not “my hands”, surely. You don’t want to clasp your own hands. You can do that all the time.’
‘Well, “our hands”, then.’
‘Lips, not hands.’
‘Yes, lips. Some day our lips shall clasp — but not “clasp” surely?’
‘No, meet.’
‘And never say “Farewell.” ’
And having completed both cards, she handed me one and kept the other, as keepsakes for eternal remembrance.
‘And the petals of this yellow flower.’ She gave me a petal, and kept one for herself.
‘Yes.’
There was silence.
I looked at her. ‘Why don’t you say something?’
‘There’s a great lump in my throat,’ she said, ‘so talking is impossible.’
I went over to the piano, and striking up a few bars began to compose on the theme of farewell. But the result was abominable.
Sylvia opened a page with strings of demi-semi-quavers — thick as blackberries. I struck a few notes and then stopped. Crochets and quavers depress me. And when I cannot read difficult music I sound a few bars and then pretend it’s no use going on.
‘Go on!’ she enjoined.
‘I’m not in the mood.’
And I played Tristan instead. I played louder and louder and louder. The door opened suddenly and Berthe came in.
‘Your Aunt Teresa asks you not to play so loud; she does not feel well.’
‘Oh, bother!’
Berthe counted fifteen valerian drops into the glass which she held in her hand, and then departed.
To get away from them! — to get away from them! — to be undisturbed for the night — that is what we wanted and craved for above all else.
I looked into her eyes.
‘Darling, I do, I do, I will miss you. But I shall come back,’ she said.
I played softly — improvising again as I went along.
‘What is this?’
‘Set me as a seal upon thine heart.’
She smiled. ‘It is, really.’
Sylvia, so light, so fragile, pale and delicate in her georgette, like a China rose, sat behind me on a high marble table (on which Dr. Murgatroyd once upon a time had burnt the seat of his trousers), gently swinging her legs. Suddenly, as I played, tears welled up from her large hazel eyes.
I looked at her. ‘Did you see my crying, dear?’
‘No.’
‘As I played I did.’
‘Don’t cry. If you cry I shall cry too.’
‘But you had tears,’ I said, a little jealous. ‘I saw.’
‘A little.’
I improvised and improvised till, in the end, I came a cropper. I was sorry now for all we did not do: for the walk we never took; for the kiss I did not press nor linger over. ‘For ever and ever and ever—’
‘Never mind, dear; you shall come to me to-night,’ she whispered.
‘What?’ I stifled a gasp of surprise, but could not help looking incredulous at this news too good to be true.
She said: ‘Come to me, dear, to-night, after ten, when they are all asleep. Promise me!’
‘You want me to?’ I said complacently, checking my surprise instinctively for fear that my shock might shock her off her declared intention, as I would to anyone who offered me the sum of £100,000—to preclude its seeming unnaturally generous to the donor. ‘You want me to?’
‘Yes.’
And I daresay since, as I now perceived, she had deliberately imparted this unexpected piece of news in a complacent tone so as to startle me the more into a thrill, my own complacency (the policy of which she did not see) was somewhat of a disappointment to her. I ought to have thrilled with gratitude at the new lease of love that she was offering me; but the novelty of it by now had worn off a little. ‘And Gustave?’ I said uncertainly, anxious for confirmation.
‘Well — it’s the last time. So he shouldn’t mind. — I mean — it being the first time. And besides,’ she said, ‘he won’t know.’
‘He might find out.’
‘He’ll find out nothing’—she shook her head. ‘He’s such a ninny!’
‘You — you are sure you don’t mind, darling?’
‘All young people who love each other live with each other.’
‘Of course they do! Of course!’
The reader knows that at the time of her renouncing me, without a murmur, at her selfish mother’s bid, I was touched profoundly by Sylvia’s self-sacrifice. Passion had become compassion. Oh, what a high, exalted form of love! But when suddenly the tables turned, I thought: ‘Why not? After all, why should my silly aunt have it all her own silly way?’
You will have to square my aunt over it, whether you will or no. This whole business of our love had been so tampered with by Aunt Teresa that it was, for all practical purposes, out of our hands. And now, after a long series of reverses, the opportunities simply played into our hands. To have acted differently I could not have been George Hamlet Alexander Diabologh, nor she Sylvia Ninon Thérèse Anastathia Vanderflint. So if blame you must, blame Aunt Teresa. I have no words strong enough to condemn her reprehensible behaviour. It was wicked. It was unforgivable. It was — it was a damned shame!
At about twenty minutes before ten I sat in my attic and watched the town dissolve in the gathering gloom. Foolish associations press into one’s brain—Götterdämmerung. I scanned the pages of a book devoted to a scholarly analysis of the difference between what is ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’, and meditating on this difference nearly fell asleep. I am, as you may know, an intellectual. I smoked one cigarette, then lit another, and when the clock on my table struck ten, I threw away the cigarette, and went to Sylvia.