There is this gift of making another feel that there is no one else of any consequence in the world. While I lied ahead, I felt Sylvia exercise that gift — a most subtle kind of flattery this, needing no words, just a look, a touch, a tone. And as I spoke I felt this in the looks which Sylvia cast me. The stars twinkled. The night flushed, listened, as I lied on. And now I felt that my interminable talk already bored them a little.
‘The war is over,’ said my aunt, ‘and yet there will be men, I know, who will regret it. The other day I talked to an English Captain who had been through the thick of the Gallipoli campaign, and he assured me positively that he liked fighting — and simply carried me off my feet. And I don’t know whether he isn’t right. He liked fighting the Turks because, he said, they are such splendid fellows. Mind you! he had nothing at all against them; on the contrary, he thought they were gentlemen and sportsmen — almost his equals. But he said he’d fight a Turk any day, with pleasure. Because they fought cleanly. After all,’ my aunt continued, ‘there’s something splendid, say what you like — a zest of life! — in his account of fighting the Turks. The Turks rush out of the wood with glittering bayonets, chanting: “Allah! Allah! Allah!” as they advance into battle. Because, you see, they think they are already at the gates of Heaven, only waiting to be admitted. So they rush gravely and steadily into battle, chanting: “Allah! Allah! Allah!” I don’t know — but it must be, as he says, exhilarating!’
‘And then,’ I said, continuing the picture, ‘some sportsman sends a cold bayonet blade into the vulnerable parts of the man. You understand what happens?’ I became cool, calculatingly suave. ‘The intestines are a delicate tissue; when, for example, you eat a lump of something that your stomach cannot digest, you are conscious of pain. Now picture what happens in that human stomach at the advent of a sharp cold blade. It isn’t merely that it cuts the guts; it lets them out. Picture it. And you will understand the peculiar intonation of his last “Allah!” ’
‘Oh, you are disgusting!’
‘This is cruel! cruel!’ said my aunt.
‘Yes, to you, who would like your wars “respectable”, conducted in good taste, outside in the yard, but please not on the drawing-room carpet! While my own feelings are that in a war soldiers should begin at home with the civilian population, particularly with the old ladies.’
‘That is enough,’ she said.
‘No, I won’t have you run away with a partial picture. Allah, indeed. What of your son in Flanders?’
‘Oh, he is all right. Besides, it is all over now.’
‘M-m … wait a few days.’ I was excited. But I knew that to give the full effect to your sermon you must be calm, let your passion sift through your sentences. When I am righteously angry I let my righteous anger gather, and then put the brake on it, and give vent to it in cool, biting, seemingly dispassionate tones. I harness my anger to do the work of indictment. Turning ever so gently towards her, I fixed an evangelic look upon my aunt. ‘What is the terrible thing in a war? In the war men’s nerves gave way, and then they were court martialled for their nerves having given way — deserted them — and were shot at dawn — as deserters, for cowardice. And the sole judges of them were their superior officers who dared not know any better.
‘And why is it,’ I continued, avoiding momentarily the look which crept into Aunt Teresa’s eyes, ‘that stay-at-homes, particularly women, and more particularly old women, are the worst offenders in this stupid business of glorifying war? Why is it that they are more mischievous in mind, less generous in outlook than their youngsters in the trenches?’
Aunt Teresa closed her eyes with a faint sigh, as if to indicate that it was a strain on her delicate system to listen to my unending flow.
While, ‘I remember,’ I continued, ‘an hotel in Brighton where I stayed two weeks before joining up in the so-called Great War. The inevitable old ladies with their pussy cats were by far the worst of all. They talked in terms of blood. They demanded the extermination of the whole of the German race; nothing less, they said, would satisfy them. They longed to behead all German babies with their own hands for the genuine pleasure, they said, that this would give them. They were not human babies, they argued, but vermin. It was a service they desired to render to their country and the human race at large. They had a right to demonstrate their patriotism. I was not a little shocked, I must confess, at this tardy display of Herodism in old, decaying women. I told them as much, politely, and they called me a pro-German. They discovered unpleasant possibilities in my name that had slipped their attention heretofore — a serious oversight. A danger to the Realm. Diabologh — but in heaven what a name to be sure! One of them went as far as to say that there was — there seemed to be — a distinct suggestion of something — well — diabolical about it that should be watched. They talked of cement grounds prepared by German spies at various vulnerable points in England to serve the purpose of future German heavy guns, ingeniously disguised as tennis courts, and of me in the same breath. “Why don’t you,” said one of the old ladies, a particularly antiquated specimen of her sex, “rather than make that impossible noise on the piano, go and fight for your country?” “Die?” I said, “that you may live? The thought’s enough to make anyone a funk.”
‘Throughout the countries which had participated in the war’ (I continued, because my aunt, breathless at my imputations, had nothing ready with which to interrupt my flow) ‘there is still a tendency among many bereaved ones to assuage themselves by the thought that their dead have fallen for something at once noble and worth while which overtowers somehow the tragedy of their death — almost excusing it. Mischievous delusion! Their dead are victims — neither more nor less — of the folly of adults who having blundered the world into a ludicrous war, now build memorials — to square it all up with. If I were the Unknown Soldier, my ghost would refuse to lie down under that heavy piece of marble; I would arise, I would say to them: keep your blasted memorials and learn sense! Christ died 1918 years back, and you’re as incredibly foolish as ever you were.’
I subsided suddenly. There was a pause.
‘Thank you. We are much obliged to you for your lecture,’ said Aunt Teresa.
‘Welcome,’ I said, ‘welcome.’
8
AFTER DINNER WE SAUNTERED OVER INTO THE drawing-room, and Uncle Emmanuel lit a cigar. The open piano beckoned to me as I stood in front of it, sipping my coffee.
‘Do you play?’ asked Mme Vanderphant.
I do not like to say that I don’t, because as a child I had had innumerable piano lessons. But I could never be bothered to learn even to read music with any degree of proficiency. I therefore resent being pressed to play the piano in public. And my shy feeling is wasted, for they think it is merely false modesty, and that I like being asked. When I was at Oxford I took up music as a supplementary subject. I soon gave it up; I simply could not be bothered to learn the rudiments of its technical side, and finally, when I decided to give it up, I was told by my teacher of music that I could do so with no loss to music as a whole. Yet I am intensely musical.
‘Play us something,’ said Berthe.
‘I don’t feel in the mood.’
‘Oh, do play,’ Sylvia said, coming up to me; her dress touched me, her scent gave me a thrill of something delicate and beautiful and yet strangely intimate and near. How beautiful she was.