Sylvia & Michael Part 6

In old days at the _Pension Gontran_ the meals had always been irregular, though a dozen clamorous and hungry boarders had by the force of their united wills evoked the semblance of a set repast. With the departure of her guests, Mere Gontran had copied her animals in eating whenever inclination and opportunity coincided. One method of satisfying herself was to sit down at the kitchen table and rattle an empty plate at the servant, who would either grunt and shake her head (in which case Mere Gontran would produce biscuits from the pocket of her ap.r.o.n) or would empty some of the contents of a saucepan into the empty plate. On one occasion when they visited the kitchen there was something to eat, a fact which was appreciated not only by the dogs and cats, but also by Mere Gontran's three sons, who lounged in and sat down in a corner, talking to one another in Russian.

"They don't know what to do," said their mother. "It hasn't been decided yet whether they're French or Russian. They went to the Emba.s.sy to see about going to France, but they were told that they were Russian; and when they went to the military authorities here, they were told that they were French. The work they were doing has stopped, and they've nothing to do except smoke cigarettes and borrow money from me for their trams. I spoke to their father about it again last night, but his answer was very irrelevant, very irrelevant indeed."

"What did he say?"

"Well, he was talking with one of his fellow-spirits called d.i.c.k, at the time, and he kept on saying, _'d.i.c.k's picked a daisy,'_ till I got so annoyed that I threw the planchette board across the room. He was just the same about his sons when he was alive. If ever I asked him a question about their education or anything, he'd slip out of it by talking about his work at the Emba.s.sy. He was one of the most irrelevant men I ever knew. Well, I shall have to ask him again to-night, that's all, because I can't have them hanging about here doing nothing forever.

It isn't as if I could understand them or they me. Bless my soul, it's not surprising that I come to rely more and more on so-called dumb animals. Yesterday they smoked one hundred and forty-six cigarettes between them. I shall have to go and see the amba.s.sador myself about their nationality. He knows it's not my fault that Gontran muddled it up. In my opinion, they're Russian. Anyway, they can't say 'bo' to a goose in any other language, and it's not much good their fighting the Germans in what French _they_ know."

The three young men ate stolidly throughout this monologue, oblivious of its bearing upon their future, indifferent to anything but the food before them.

After the neatness and regularity of the hospital, the contrast of living at the _Pension Gontran_ made an exceptionally strong impression of disorder on Sylvia. It vaguely recalled her life at Lillie Road with Mrs. Meares, as if she had dreamed that life over again in a nightmare: there was not even wanting to complete the comparison her short hair.

Yet with all the grubbiness and discomfort of it she was glad to be with Mere Gontran, whose mind, long attuned to communion with animals, had gained thereby a simplicity and sincerity that communion with mankind could never have given to her. Like the body after long fasting, the mind after a long illness was peculiarly receptive, and Sylvia rejoiced at the opportunity to pause for a while before re-entering ordinary existence in order to contemplate the life of another lonely soul.

The evening meal at the _Pension Gontran_ was positively formal in comparison with the haphazard midday meal; Mere Gontran's three sons rarely put in an appearance, and the maid used to come in with set dishes and lay them on the table in such a close imitation of civilized behavior that Sylvia used to watch her movements with a fascinated admiration, as she might have watched the performance of an animal trained to wait at table. The table itself was never entirely covered with a white cloth, but that even half of it should be covered seemed miraculous after the kitchen table. The black-and-red checkered cloth that covered the dining-room table for the rest of the day was pushed back to form an undulating range of foothills, beyond which the relics of Mere Gontran's incomplete undertakings piled themselves in a mountainous disarray; stockings that ought to be mended, seedlings that ought to be planted out, garden tools that ought to be put away, packs of cards, almanacs, b.a.l.l.s of wool, knitting-needles, flower-pots, photograph-frames, everything that had been momentarily picked up by Mere Gontran in the course of her restless day had taken refuge here.

The dining-room itself was long, low, and dark, with a smell of bird-cages and withering geraniums; sometimes when Mere Gontran had managed to concentrate her mind long enough upon the tr.i.m.m.i.n.g of a lamp, there would be a lamp with a shade like a draggled petticoat; more frequently the evening meal (dinner was too stringent a definition) was lighted by two candles, the wicks of which every five minutes a.s.sumed the form of large fiery flies' heads and danced up and down with delight like children who have dressed themselves up, until Mere Gontran attacked them with a weapon that was used indifferently as a nutcracker and a snuffer, but which had been designed by its maker to extract nails. Under these repeated a.s.saults the candles themselves deliquesced and formed stalagmites and stalact.i.tes of grease, which she used to break off, roll up into b.a.l.l.s, and drop on the floor, where they perplexed the greed of the various cats, whose tails, upright with an expectation of food, could dimly be seen waving in the shadows like seaweed.

On the first night of Sylvia's arrival she had been too tired to sit up with Mere Gontran and attend the conversation with her deceased husband, nor did the widow overpersuade her, because it was important to settle the future of her three sons by threatening Gontran with a visit to the Emba.s.sy, a threat that might disturb even his astral liberty. Sylvia gathered from Mere Gontran's account of the interview, next morning, that it had led to words, if the phrase might be used of communication by raps, and it seemed that the spirit had retired to sulk in some celestial nook as yet unvexed by earthly communications; his behavior as narrated by his wife reminded Sylvia of an irritated telephone subscriber.

"But he'll be sorry for it now," said Mere Gontran. "I'm expecting him to come and say so every moment."

Gontran, however, must have spent the day walking off his wife's ill-temper in a paradisal excursion with a kindred spirit, for nothing was heard of him, and she was left to her solitary gardening, as maybe often in life she had been left.

"I hope nothing's happened to Gontran," she said, gravely, when Sylvia and she sat down to the evening meal.

"Isn't the liability to accident rather reduced by getting rid of matter?" Sylvia suggested.

"Oh, I'm not worrying about a broken leg or anything like that," Mere Gontran explained. "But supposing he's reached another plane?"

"Ah, I hadn't thought of that."

"The communications get more difficult ever year since he died," the widow complained. "The first few months after his death, hardly five minutes used to pa.s.s without a word from him, and all night long he used to rap on the head of my bed, until James used to get quite fidgety."

James was the bulldog who slept with Mere Gontran.

"And now he raps no longer?"

"Oh yes, he still raps," Mere Gontran replied, "but much more faintly.

But there again, he's already moved to three different planes since his death. Hush! What's that?"

She stared into the darkest corner of the dining-room.

"Is that you, Gontran?"

"I think it was one of the birds," Sylvia said.

Mere Gontran waved her hand for silence.

"Gontran! Is that you? Where have you been all day? This is a friend of mine who's staying here. You'll like her very much when you know her.

Gontran! I want to talk to you after dinner. Now mind, don't forget. I'm glad you've got back. I want you to make some inquiries in England to-morrow."

Sylvia was distinctly aware of a deep-seated amus.e.m.e.nt all the time at Mere Gontran's matter-of-fact way of dealing with her husband's spirit, and she could never make up her mind how with her sense of amus.e.m.e.nt could exist simultaneously a credulity that led her to hear at the conclusion of Mere Gontran's last speech three loud raps upon the air of the room.

"He's got over last night," said Mere Gontran in a satisfied voice. "But there again, he always had a kind nature at bottom. Three nice cheerful raps like that always mean he's going to give up his evening to me."

Sylvia's first instinct was to find in what way Mere Gontran had tricked her into hearing those three raps; something in the seer's true gaze forbade the notion of trickery, and a shiver roused by the inexplicable, the shiver that makes a dog run away from an open umbrella blown across a lawn, slipped through her being.

Although Mere Gontran was puffing at her soup as if nothing had happened, the house had changed, or rather it had not changed so much as revealed itself in a brief instant. All that there was of queerness in this tumble-down _pension_ became endowed with deliberate meaning, and it was no longer possible to ascribe the atmosphere to the effect of weakened nerves upon a weakened body. Sylvia began to wonder if the form her delirium had taken had not been directly due to this atmosphere; more than ever she was inclined to attach a profound significance to her delirium and perceive in it the diabolic revelation with which it had originally been fraught.

When after dinner Mere Gontran took a pack of cards and began to tell her fortune, Sylvia had a new impulse to dread; but she shook it off almost irritably and listened to the tale.

"A long journey by land. A long journey by sea. A dark man. A fair woman. A fair man. A dark woman. A letter."

The familiar rigmarole of a hundred such tellings droned its course, accompanied by the flip-flap, flip-flap of the cards. The information was general enough for any human being on earth to have extracted from it something applicable to himself; yet, against her will, and as it were bewitched by the teller's solemnity, Sylvia began to endow the cards with the personalities that might affect her life. The King of Hearts lost his rubicund complacency and took on the lineaments of Arthur: the King of Clubs parted with his fierceness and a.s.sumed the graceful severity of Michael Fane: with a kind of impa.s.sioned egotism Sylvia watched the journeyings of the Queen of Hearts, noting the contacts and biting her lips when she found her prototype a.s.sociated with unfavorable cards.

"Come, I don't think the outlook's so bad," said Mere Gontran at the end of the final disposition. "If your bed's a bit doubtful, your street and your house are both very good, and your road lies south. But there again, this blessed war upsets everything, and even the cards must be read with half an eye on the war."

When the cards had been put away, Mere Gontran produced the _planchette_ and set it upon a small table covered in red baize round the binding of which hung numerous little woolen pompons.

"Now we shall find out something about your friends in England," she announced, cheerfully.

Sylvia had not the heart to disappoint Mere Gontran, and she placed her hands upon the heart-shaped board, which trembled so much under Mere Gontran's eager touch that the pencil affixed made small squiggles upon the paper beneath. The _planchette_ went on fidgeting more and more under their four hands like a restless animal trying to escape, and from time to time it would skate right across the paper, leaving a long penciled trail in its path, which Mere Gontran would examine with great intentness.

"It looks a little bit like a Y," she would say.

"A very little bit," Sylvia would think.

"Or it may be an A. Never mind. It always begins rather doubtfully. I _won't_ lose my temper with it to-night."

The _planchette_ might have been a tenderly loved child learning to write for the first time, by the way Mere Gontran encouraged it and tried to award a shape and purpose to its most amorphous tracks. When it had covered the sheet of paper with an impossibly complicated river-system, Mere Gontran fetched a clean sheet and told Sylvia severely that she must try not to urge the _planchette_. Any attempt at urging had a very bad effect on its willingness.

"I didn't think I was urging it," said Sylvia, humbly.

"Try and sit more still, dear. If you like, I'll put my feet on your toes and then you won't be so tempted to jig. We may have to sit all night, if we aren't careful."

Sylvia strained every nerve to sit as still as possible in order to avoid having her toes imprisoned all night by Mere Gontran's feet, which were particularly large, even for so tall a woman. She concentrated upon preventing her hands from leading _planchette_ to trace the course of any more rivers toward the sea of baize, and after sitting for twenty minutes like this she felt that all the rest of her body had gone into her hands. She had never thought that her hands were small, but she had certainly never realized that they were as large and as ugly as they were; as for Mere Gontran's, they had for some time lost any likeness to hands and lay upon the _planchette_ like two uncooked chops. At last when Sylvia had reached the state of feeling like a large pincushion that was being rapidly p.r.i.c.ked by thousands of pins, Mere Gontran murmured:

"It's going to start."

Immediately afterward the _planchette_ careered across the paper and wrote a sentence.

"_d.i.c.k's picked a daisy,_" Mere Gontran read out. "Drat the thing! Never mind, we'll have one more try."

Again a sentence was written, and again it repeated that d.i.c.k had picked a daisy.

Suddenly Samuel the collie made an odd noise.

"He's going to speak through Samuel," Mere Gontran declared. "What is it, dear? Tell me what it is?"

The dog, who had probably been stung by a gnat, got up and, putting his head upon his mistress's knee, gazed forth ineffable sorrows.