The Polyglots Read Free Page B

gentleman reading an impossible newspaper. The whole thing was like a dream, and my impending meeting with relatives I had never seen—that too seemed like meeting unseen relations in dreamland, a place so utterly foreign and strange it might have been Mars. I sat very still, my eyes fixed on the whirling landscape—the engine whistled, the train went fast—while my thoughts went faster still, sending forth incalculable impulses of torment and delight. I thought of my aunt, of my lovely girl cousin whom I was to meet for the first time. In Tokyo I would get out, and then—what strange—what unthought-of things might begin!

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    I WONDERED WHAT MY AUNT WAS REALLY LIKE. I HAD heard so much about her life that I was strangely curious to see her in the flesh. I chortled at the thought of her puny consort with a waxed moustache, whose faded photograph in Belgian uniform with a row of medals on his military chest I well remembered. They had always lived at Dixmude, uncle being a Belgian
Commandant
. In the so-called Great War, however, in the year of grace 1914, my aunt decreed that Belgium—indeed, Europe—was no fit abode for her, and together with her husband and her daughter set out in flight for the Far East. The Far East, I think, was chosen on the ground that it was far—as far at least as my aunt conceivably could get without coming back across the other side of ourround globe. I shall be told, of course, that it is against all military precedent for officers to be allowed to leave their country in the midst of a great war. To that, in the light of after-knowledge, I have but one reply to make: you do not know my aunt. And let me say at once that I would not have you think my uncle other than an honourable and gallant officer. He had even been at the siege of Liège; but deciding, I suppose, that he had tempted Providence enough, he left the front of battle and acquiesced in his wife’s arrangement that he should leave the country, as she was far too weak and ill to go alone, their daughter at that time being still a child. But if they all left Dixmude at the sound of the first gun, don’t blame my uncle for it, rather blame my aunt who, to say the least of it, was a woman with a will. At the age of twelve she had been adopted, while in Russia, by an old Princess who brought her up with her own daughter, and no doubt because of her marvellous beauty Aunt Teresa was spoiled and treasured by them out of all proportion. They married her off to a young good-for-nothing, born in circumstances of romance. Her husband, to be sure, was the son of a young heir (of the highest in the land) and his erewhile governess, Mlle Fifi, and his arrival—the flower of spontaneous exultation—caused both parents at the time profound astonishment. Whether he took more after his father or his mother, it is hard for me to say. Nicholas (for this was his name) seemed to combine a grand-ducal recklessness with a truly Parisian gaiety. There was no end to his antics. He flourished loaded pistols into people’s faces, firing at random. He took up with wild gipsy girls and drove about with them madly in
troikas
. He was at home in every kind of orgy, and thoroughly neglected my aunt. He played practical jokes on policemen, and on one occasion tied a constable to a tame bear and threw them both in the canal and held them floating on a rope. Another time, returning in the small hours of the morning, he encountered on the bridge a young giraffe which was being led from the railway station to the zoo, bought it on the spot and brought it up to Aunt Teresa’s bedroom. And, in the circumstances of the case, my aunt suffered.For years she suffered silently, kept going by the hope that some day they might be raised to princely rank. And, as she had foreseen, Nicholas was about to be legitimized and granted princely status, when, following the precedent of a milliard others, he gave up his soul to God. And Aunt Teresa missed the cherished prize by