V

Such pitiful, heartrending scenes as this became a frequent occurrence. Each of the three sisters walked arm in arm with each of the “three brothers,” and I trailed alone behind them, a kind of tutor, with a heinous sense of my three months’ voyage ripening into a grievance. A poor thing, sir, but mine own! The three sisters, escorted safely home, would cry out from the house steps, “Good night, Brothers!” The “three brothers” then would answer, “Good night, Sisters!” I alone said nothing. I felt that an additional “brother” might spoil the symmetry of the arrangement. The fact of the matter, as you will see, was that I was not one of the “three brothers.” That settled it.

A very similar situation would ensue at dances, those delightful dances of the American Red Cross. We, that is, the three sisters, the “three brothers” and I (the odd number), would drive down in an American Service limousine, rolling gently through the dark and gruesome streets, the mellow moon shining feebly on the muddy road. Next we entered that long draughty room in the Naval Barracks taken over by the American Red Cross. In a little while the three sisters reappeared in the room, looking the bouquet that they were, that big nigger band would blurt out its syncopated music, and they would slide away in the embrace of the “three brothers” and vanish in a paraphernalia of Allied uniforms, while I was reduced to being a “wallflower,” or else to dance with plump and heavy women, which after my experience with Nina felt very much like moving heavy chairs about the floor. It was idiotic to have travelled sixteen thousand miles to do this sort of thing!⁠ ⁠… That settled it.

I dare say it was my fault⁠—but my somewhat inartistic intrusions on a party that was otherwise complete, began to tire Nina. She asked me to give up “pursuing” her. I resolved not to pursue her. I told her so. I kept telling her so. My passionate explanations of my aloofness began to anger her. My vehement assurances of resignation to my lonely lot struck her as discordant and dishonest. And she conferred on me the sentence which in love is hardest of all sentences to bear⁠—the sentence of indifference. Now there is but one way to combat indifference in love, and that is by a feud. You tell yourself: She may think of the quarrel at times, perhaps regret the loss, or be annoyed, or feel hostile. There is then some link between you and her. However small, that is at least something. Indifference is simply nowhere. Acting on these lines, my three months’ journey always in my mind, I developed a grievance that outraged my soul. I swore there and then to myself that never again, so long as I lived, would I go to see Nina. That settled it.

I found myself going there that same afternoon, it seemed in spite of myself and partly under the influence of the wine that I had consumed at lunch. The day was a peculiarly sunny and friendly kind of day and the blue sky and the clear air and even the shops themselves seemed to beckon to me not to be a fool, not to stand upon my silly dignity; and so I discovered, as I walked along till I could see their house beckoning to me in the distance, that her indifference, even if confirmed (and I now refused to confirm it), had the overlooked advantage of admitting me of being in her presence. But when I returned I found I had innumerable occasions to revert to my original interpretation of indifference.

And feeling that my affairs were in a bad way I made a bold coup to regain my tottering prestige. I appeared furiously, almost indecently intellectual, talked in quick succession of Turgenev, Goethe, Dostoevski, Chekhov, Flaubert, Shakespeare and Tolstoy. It impressed nobody. She hardly listened to me. So I tried Wagner, Scriabin, Debussy and Richard Strauss. Nothing doing. I tackled Ibsen, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Shaw, Bennett, Chesterton and H. G. Wells; quoted them. It cut no ice. She showed that this sort of thing “did not go down with her” at all. Clearly she wasn’t “having any.” And the great men, I fear, looked small beneath her scornful look.

I met her once in the street. It had been snowing in the night, prematurely for the season; now the snow was thawing and the ground was muddy. The sun was yellow, honey-coloured, and her sidelong look seemed warmer in the sunshine.

“Will you marry me?” I said.

“No.” She shook her head. “I am tired of you.”

“I know that,” I replied, and walked silently beside her.

“If I were really tired of you I wouldn’t tell you.”

“Then why do you tell me?” I took it up, hungering for something positive, however small.

“I don’t always say what I think,” was the answer.

We walked on.

“We are leaving in any case,” she said.

“When? Where?”

“Next month⁠ ⁠… for Shanghai. Mama is going to start a business there. Hats. We have to do something.⁠ ⁠… We shall have a good time in Shanghai.”

“Ah, you won’t!” I said.

She looked at me.

“What of your ‘three brothers’?” I gloated.

“Their ship is going there next month. Aha! Do you think Mama would get us to come otherwise?”

“Good riddance!” I said.

“What’s happened?”

“Go!” I cried. “But for heaven’s sake go. Off with you! I haven’t time to waste. I want to get back. I am missing my examination!”

“You can go back now if you like. I’m not keeping you.”

“What’s the matter with you?”

“What’s the matter with you?”

“I shall see you off first,” I said, “and then I’ll go.”