The Polyglots by William Gerhardie Read Free Book Online

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 tragedyof 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 andbeautiful and yet strangely intimate and near. How beautiful she was.
    ‘What is this scent?’
    ‘
Cœur de Jeanette
. Oh, do play.’
    ‘Very well, then.’
    I struck some introductory chords, and after repeating them a dozen times or so plunged into that climaxic bit of bursting passion from
Tristan
that I loved. And then stopped. I knew no further.
    ‘Oh, go on!’
    ‘I’m not in the mood.’
    ‘Please,