The Polyglots Read Online Free PDF Page B

tellèd dem: I doèd what I can.’
    ‘I know a chap,’ said Beastly, ‘an American called Brown, who knows everybody who is anybody. I’ll tackle him, and I am surehe’ll take it on. But’—he held out a warning forefinger—‘no bunkum, you know.’
    ‘Please?’ asked my uncle, not understanding the word.
    ‘No bunkum!’ warned Beastly, who was suspicious of ‘foreigners’.
    My uncle did not deign to reply.

6
AUNT TERESA
    SOME LITTLE TIME AFTER MY AUNT HAD GONE UP TO lie down in her bedroom I was called up to her. There was an acute scent of
Mon Boudoir
aroma and of miscellaneous cosmetics in the room. She powdered herself thick—you felt you wanted to scrape it off with a penknife. On the bedside-table were medicine bottles, cosmetics, old photographs, books; and on the quilt a red-leather
buvard
, a writing-pad; behind her, soft pillows; and ensconced in all this, as in a nest, was Aunt Teresa—the incarnation of delicate health. She remembered every birthday and wrote and received a multitude of letters at Christmas and Easter, on occasions of family weddings, births, deaths, confirmations, promotions, appointments, etc., and made careful notes of the dates of all letters and postcards received and dispatched in a little red leather-bound book specially kept for the purpose. It was July—late afternoon, early evening—and melancholy.
    ‘You look fairly comfortable,’ I observed, gazing round.
    ‘Ach! if I had
Constance
!’ drawled my aunt. ‘If only I had
Constance
to look after me! Alas! I had to leave her at Dixmude! and I have no trained nurse to look after me in my sad exile!’
    Constance was the daughter of a great friend of Aunt Teresa, whom she had befriended after his death, and befriending her, had made a servant of her.
    ‘They are nice friendly people, the Vanderphants,’ I said after a pause.
    ‘Yes, but Mme Vanderphant is a bit thick-headed, and doesn’t quite understand about my poor miserable health!—and talks so loud. And she’s terribly greedy. On the boat, four years ago, she ate so much (because she knew that food was included in the fare) that the Captain was quite disgusted, and purposely steered alongside the waves—to make her sick.’
    ‘And was she?’
    ‘Wasn’t she!’ exclaimed my aunt, with malice. ‘She just was.’
    ‘But Berthe is awfully nice, isn’t she?’ I said.
    And Aunt Teresa, in a deep, deep baritone, in the voice of the wolf who, masquerading as the grandmother, spoke to Little Red Ridinghood from beneath the bedclothes, drawled: ‘Yes, Berthe has taken pity on me in my illness and she looks after me, poor invalid that I am! She is kind and attentive, but isn’t she a perfect fright to look at?’
    ‘Well, there’s something sympathetic about her face, all the same.’
    ‘No, but isn’t she ugly—that long red beak! And you know she doesn’t know she is ugly. She even fancies herself. She thinks she isn’t at all bad to look at.’
    ‘Well, I’ve seen worse.’
    ‘But,
non, mon Dieu
!’ she laughed. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone so ludicrously ugly. But, as I say—of course, she is not
Constance
, but she’s quite kind to me and attentive.’ Aunt Teresa was looking all the while at my shining brown calves, where my servant Pickup had ‘put on’ a ‘Cherry Blossom’ shine. Perhaps she thought of her own youth, regretted that her pigmy husband had never had such calves as mine. For I am strong of limb, my calves especially, and my dark-brown tightly strapped cavalry boots and spurs (in which I cultivate a certain swaggering kick in my walk), polished to a high degree by Pickup, show off my legs to advantage. Women like me. My blue eyes, which I roll in a winning way when I talk to them, look well beneath my dark brows—which Idaily pencil. My nose is remotely tilted, a little arched. But what disposes them to me, I think, are my delicate nostrils, which give me a naïve, tender, guileless expression, like