The Gentleman

by Forrest Leo

  ‘Obliquely,’ I mutter.

  Vivien has regained her cool. She drops her arm to her side; the tip of her sword cuts a line in the carpet. ‘There is nothing oblique about a proposal accepted.’

  I cannot argue with the soundness of her reasoning, so I change tacks. ‘Why did you tell your brother that you loved me?’

  ‘Because I did.’

  ‘Only at first.’

  ‘No,’ she says. ‘I loved you.’

  ‘Yes, I know, but then you stopped loving me.’

  ‘No I didn’t.’

  My heart is beating very quickly. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What do you mean what do I mean?’ she demands. ‘I feel as though I’m being extraordinarily clear.’

  ‘So—’ I can hardly form the words. ‘So you still love me.’

  She does not say anything, but there is something in her face.

  ‘You do!’ I cry. ‘You still love me!’

  She again says nothing.

  ‘I love you,’ I say.

  Still she does not speak. Her knuckles are white upon her sword hilt. I do not know if she is about to kiss me or skewer me.

  ‘I’m serious,’ I say. ‘I love you. I think I’ve always loved you.’

  ‘You’ve demonstrated it poorly,’ she says.

  ‘I know. I’m sorry. Please take me back.’

  She stares at me, as if waiting for something. I stare back. Her eyes are—

  ‘Is that it?’ she says. She sounds angry. Her sword arm is rising.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Her voice is withering. ‘You. Sold me. To. The. Devil. And your apology consists of “I’m sorry, please take me back”?’

  ‘Brevity is the soul of wit,’ I suggest.

  ‘DON’T QUOTE POLONIUS AT ME, YOU STUPID MAN.’ She falls upon me with three overhead blows in rapid succession from her left side to my right. I counter them all, and she draws back like a serpent.

  ‘Viv, look—’

  ‘Don’t call me Viv.’

  ‘Mrs Savage,’ I say, and she glares at me. ‘Vivien! Please. Listen to me.’

  She has no intention of doing so. Instead she raises her blade to her face, examining it minutely for damage, and asks, ‘Is this about your pride? Did I wound it by not falling at your feet?’

  ‘You wounded my pride by letting me marry you for your money.’

  ‘That makes no sense,’ she says, returning her attention from her sword to me. Her eyes are steely, I pun to myself.

  ‘So why didn’t you say no?’

  ‘Because I loved you!’

  ‘But you knew I was only after your money.’

  ‘I DIDN’T KNOW THAT.’

  ‘Well, you should have,’ I say.

  I can hear the rapid beating of my own heart. She says nothing more. ‘Why did you marry me?’ I ask at length. ‘What were you thinking?’

  ‘I was thinking that your favourite book is The Idylls of the King, and that maybe there was a reason for that. I was thinking that you love your little sister so much that I genuinely fear for the safety of her future husband, whomever he may be. I was thinking of the way your hand twitches when it’s not holding a pen. And I was thinking of how if you stopped worrying so much about keeping the metre, which has never been your strong suit, you could be a truly great poet.’

  ‘There will never be a great poet without structure.’

  ‘Structure and blank verse aren’t synonyms,’ she says stubbornly.

  ‘So I should use hexameter?’ I demand. ‘Spenserian stanzas? Alexandrine couplets?’

  ‘Don’t be daft.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re saying!’ I say.

  ‘Structure has nothing to do with metre.’

  ‘It has everything to do with metre!’

  ‘NO,’ says my tempestuous wife. ‘Structure is about the layout of ideas. Metre is just the arrangement of words in a line.’

  ‘That’s not true!’

  ‘It is! You’re being thick on purpose!’

  ‘Poetry out of metre can be written by a child,’ I protest.

  ‘So can blank verse,’ she counters.

  ‘Not good blank verse.’

  With the ghost of a smile she says, ‘Unless it is an extraordinarily intelligent child.’

  ‘Unless it is an extraordinarily intelligent child,’ I concede.

  ‘But it’s the same with free verse!’ she bursts out. ‘Of course a child can write it, but unless the child is Mozart it won’t be any good!’

  ‘Mozart wrote poetry?’ I ask. I hadn’t been aware, but I ought to find some of it.*

  ‘Oh for God’s sake,’ says Vivien. I do not understand. ‘You could be good!’ she cries.

  ‘I am good,’ I reply with wounded dignity.

  ‘You could be great,’ she says.*

  ‘HOW?’

  ‘By not being a STUPID, arrogant—’ She regains her composure. ‘By listening to me. By letting me help you. I want to help you.’

  I do not say anything for a very long time. I am waging a war with my vanity. I at last conquer it, and say, ‘Fine.’

  ‘Fine what?’

  In answer, I pull all the wretched scraps of poetry I’ve been labouring over off my desk and throw them into the fireplace. I drop my sword with a clatter on the hearthstones. ‘I surrender,’ I say. ‘You win.’

  Her jaw clenches and she raises her sword. ‘Then you don’t love me,’ says the impossible creature.

  ‘You,’ I say, as my poems blaze, ‘are infuriating.’

  ‘You married me,’ she points out.

  ‘I married you,’ I repeat. Saying the words aloud clarifies something in my mind. I pick up my sword. Very deliberately, I advance on her. I raise the blade to my lips in salute (it is something I have read), kneel before her, and lay it at her feet.

  ‘Vivien,’ I say. ‘I am through fighting you. I am yours, body and soul. If ever I give you cause to doubt that again, bid me pick up this sword and I shall defend the assertion with my life. In the meantime, let it be my pledge. If you will have me, I am yours.’*

  I look into her shining eyes. I see myself reflected in them. She is silent a very long while.

  ‘Simmons,’ she says at last. ‘Please hang these swords upon the wall. There they shall be kept until they are wanted.’

  ‘Very good, ma’am,’ says Simmons. ‘I shall do so directly. Will there be anything else?’

  Vivien glances at me. ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘I need my things moved out of Lizzie’s room. My husband and I have a poetical argument to finish, which I suspect will take several nights at least. It would be inconvenient to have to walk between bedrooms.’*

  I may be dreaming it, but I am nearly sure that Simmons is smiling. ‘Of course, ma’am,’ he says, and leaves the room with his customary good grace.

  Sixteen

  In Which the Adventurers Depart.

  Well,’ says the Gentleman. ‘That was very informative. Well fought, my friend!’

  I feel such an overpowering sense of goodwill that I do not even remember that I am angry with him. I bow to the couch, which applauds politely.

  ‘Now will someone please,’ I say, ‘tell me what this “plan” was?’

  ‘Oh,’ says Vivien, ‘it was nothing really—just a rather misguided attempt to make you fall in love with me.’

  I smile and say, ‘It worked, darling.’

  ‘You forget yourself,’ she says coldly, and my heart stops. ‘You did not pass the trial, you circumvented it. We are still a long way from “darling.”’

  Lancaster laughs heartily and cries, ‘Capital, by Christ!’ Vivien cracks a smile, and my heart resumes its march. I have still to learn this peculiar woman.

  ‘It really is a pity,’ says Vivien.
‘It was a splendid plan, and you quite ruined it. I had been building an imaginary lover almost since our marriage.’

  ‘A what?’ I say.

  ‘An imaginary lover. To make you jealous. I began as soon as I realised the pit we had fallen into. I left signs everywhere.’

  ‘Signs?’

  ‘Yes—men’s gloves, canes, hats, things like that. Love notes—I drafted them and had Simmons copy them out in a male hand. I had flowers and chocolates and sundry gifts sent to me from anonymous admirers. Surely you noticed the escalation in the last month? It was all driving toward a carefully orchestrated abscondtion which was to leave you in paroxysms of jealousy during which you would be struck with a thunderbolt—you loved me, and couldn’t bear to see me in the arms of another man!’

  I am thunderstruck. To suppose that this entire time, my wife has been a step ahead of me. There is only one peculiar thing—‘I never noticed,’ I say.*

  ‘You never noticed what?’

  ‘Anything. The gloves, the gifts, the notes. I was aware of them, but it never occurred to me that you could be unfaithful. I assumed the notes were from Simmons to Mrs Davis—’ (Vivien shudders) ‘—and the gloves forgotten at parties.’

  ‘But did the parties not tip you off?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You weren’t suspicious that I should want to conceal my identity and dance with strange men on a weekly basis?’

  ‘You— Do you mean— Are you telling me that you don’t like society parties?’

  She stares at me for a long moment. ‘Who,’ she says, ‘do you think I am?’

  ‘You don’t! You don’t actually like parties!’

  ‘Of course I don’t like parties.’*

  ‘But, then, where were you these past days?’

  ‘Hubert’s, of course. I certainly wasn’t going to take Mother into my confidence, or she’d never have forgiven you.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ says Hubert to me, concerned I suppose that I might hold ill will against him for his part in this plot.* But I am preoccupied with Vivien, and pay him no mind.

  I sink down shakily into my desk chair. ‘It was all an act,’ I say, only beginning to comprehend the ramifications of what she is telling me.

  ‘What was?’

  ‘All of it! The parties, the frivolity, the flirting. That wasn’t you at all?’

  ‘Certainly not!’ She sounds offended that I could ever have considered it. ‘If I were a man I should accompany Ashley everywhere; but I am not, and so I cannot. I loathe society. It is a game which must be played, that is all.’

  I forget that we have an audience until Lizzie says, ‘Nellie, you are in grave danger of being supplanted in my affections by your wife.’

  I ignore her. ‘But if— If you had just— Everything I hated about you wasn’t actually . . . you! Why did you not simply appear to me as you are?’

  ‘I did!’ she cries. ‘I did, and for the first fortnight of our marriage you ignored me entirely! I was a new bride, nervous and uncertain and in undiscovered country, and you locked yourself in this study and made it eminently clear you wanted nothing to do with me.’

  ‘But that’s because I was composing! I was finishing— I forget what I was finishing, but I couldn’t be interrupted by matrimony! You’re a poet, you must understand! I was composing. And when I emerged, I found you . . . vapid.’

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What you were composing.’

  ‘I forget what it was.’

  ‘Liar.’

  ‘It’s in my desk.’

  ‘Why is it not published?’

  ‘Because I couldn’t finish it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. I became . . . stuck.’

  ‘I COULD HAVE HELPED YOU GET UNSTUCK!’

  With an exasperated sigh she throws herself down in an armchair. My head is spinning. There is a large part of me which is quite miserable, a larger one which is wracked with guilt, and a third and largest which feels as though I am the luckiest man upon the face of this earth.

  ‘Well,’ says Lizzie, ‘in a sense the plan worked perfectly.’

  ‘Yes,’ says Kensington supportively. ‘Mr Savage did realise his mistake, and through Mrs Savage’s absence fell in love with her. I believe that everything is resolved.’

  ‘Not everything!’ cries Lancaster. ‘I am still undone.’

  Viv lifts her head and smiles at her brother mischievously. ‘You know,’ she says, ‘I’ve been thinking it over—and I’m very near to hitting upon a plan for you! It will likely be rather dangerous, though.’

  ‘Will it involve piracy?’ he asks, perking up.

  ‘It will.’

  ‘And derring-do?’

  ‘And rapscallionism.’

  ‘And rakishness?’

  ‘Rakishness, disguise, and swashbuckling.’

  ‘God I’ve missed you!’ exclaims Lancaster, and I can only agree with him. That I should ever have thought this woman anything but magnificent is and for the rest of my life will remain a source of deepest shame.*

  ‘Or you could come with me,’ says the Gentleman.

  We all swing to face him. ‘I could what?’ says Lancaster.

  ‘I mean, if you were so inclined—I am certainly not exercising any sort of metaphysical authority, let it be understood. But if you were at all interested (I understand you are an explorer of sorts) you could certainly accompany me home.’

  ‘Home—to Hell?’

  The Gentleman winces. ‘Oh,’ he says, ‘I do so hate that word.’

  ‘Essex Grove,’ I put in. ‘Essex Grove is a much better name—it makes it sound more inviting.’

  ‘Precisely!’ cries the Gentleman, much gratified by my memory. He flashes me a shy smile.

  ‘Well,’ says Lancaster, ‘that is interesting, by Christ. I considered stowing away on the four o’clock train to Paris, but I seem to have missed it. And so—’

  ‘What time is it?’ asks Hubert sharply.

  Lancaster looks at his watch and says, ‘Seven minutes past four.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ says Hubert in great agitation. ‘I am so sorry. You must excuse me, what? Sorry!’ And he flees from the room.*

  ‘Do you know,’ says Vivien thoughtfully as we stare after him in astonishment, ‘Hubert is the first man in my life who has offered to fight for my honour.’*

  Lancaster is about to protest, but the Gentleman speaks first. He points to the half-finished canvas (which is still upon the easel) and asks Lizzie, ‘Did you paint that?’

  ‘I did,’ she says.

  I open my mouth to apologise for her impropriety, but the Gentleman says, ‘I like it very much.’

  ‘So do I!’ says Lancaster like a puppy. He peers at it. ‘What are those circles?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I hasten to reply before Lizzie can. But she pays Lancaster no attention. She is gazing at her handiwork.

  She crinkles her nose. ‘It’s a terrible painting.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ says the Gentleman. ‘It’s the work of an inexperienced artist, certainly. But it’s clear that you understand how to make a painting great, even if you do not yet have the skill.’

  ‘Do you really think so?’

  ‘Certainly. It’s the understanding that counts. It’s like music. Mrs Savage was speaking of Mozart—when you listen to Mozart, you of course hear his proficiency—you recognise, if you will, that he is good at his job. But what makes him great is his preternatural grasp of things you cannot even begin to comprehend. Surely you know what I mean?’

  ‘No,’ I say, even as Vivien and Lancaster answer as one in the affirmative. I sigh inwardly, knowing what is to come next.

  ‘I am afraid I must plead ignorance,’ says Lizzie with a venomous gla
nce in my direction. (I was correct in my deduction.) ‘Those responsible for my education have been found sorely wanting in certain areas. Ashley, are you really going with him?’

  ‘Yes,’ says Lancaster slowly, ‘I believe I am. You see, the thing is, I’ve built my life around the explication of things that cannot be explained and the exploration of places that exist which everyone says don’t. And now I have an opportunity, a very rare opportunity, to visit one. And I believe I once told Mummy I’d be damned before I got married, ha ha ha!’* His wonted good spirits seem to be returning by the moment.

  ‘Good,’ says Lizzie. ‘I’m going with you.’

  ‘Now see here,’ says Lancaster, shocked, ‘you can’t just up and—’

  ‘Are you telling me what I can and cannot do, Ashley Lancaster?’ asks Lizzie sharply.

  He looks appropriately cowed. After a moment, he says in a small voice, ‘It will be nice to have some company.’

  ‘It will indeed!’ cries the Gentleman, beaming. ‘I hope that while Mr Lancaster is off exploring the Elysian Fields you wouldn’t be opposed to remaining behind in my cottage and drinking some tea and reading some books and perhaps even conversing a little? I do get most dreadfully lonely sometimes.’

  ‘The pleasure would be all mine,’ says Lizzie with a curtsy. ‘And you can teach me all about art and music and things!’

  ‘Lizzie,’ I say, ‘were you intending to ask my permission?’

  ‘Certainly not,’ she says with some surprise.

  ‘You two could come!’ says Lancaster.

  ‘No,’ says Viv, ‘I don’t think so. We have a very great deal to talk about. And,’ she adds with a frank glance which makes me turn crimson, ‘we have other unfinished business besides.’

  ‘Oh good!’ says Lizzie. ‘I’ve been trying to tell Nellie that he really must—’

  Mercifully, she is interrupted by the Gentleman. ‘Oh dear,’ he says suddenly.

  ‘What?’ asks Lancaster, as eager to change the subject as I am.

  ‘I’ve just thought of something. It’s rather difficult for me to bring home guests in their corporal form. I quite forgot.’

  Lancaster’s face falls. ‘But sir,’ he says, ‘there must be a way! Tell me that there’s a way. I must leave England immediately.’