My Own Darling Prince [she wrote]. Here I am in sad, sad Trouble. My lovely brother Anatole Roland Joseph was executed in Flanders on the 22nd of last month. He had gone to sleep on watch duty which he had taken over voluntarily for some soldier who was very tired, and was caught asleep by an N.C.O. who hated him, and court-martialled.
She enclosed the letters he wrote with an indelible pencil on the night before the execution, and the tears he poured as he wrote to his mother, father and sister, each a separate letter of farewell, stained them in pale-blue blobs. Judging by the size of the blobs, he must have cried freely at the stern injustice of being pushed perforce out of this world, at the thought of never seeing them again. ‘They can kill my body, but they can’t kill my soul,’ he wrote. ‘I shall go to heaven and be with God.’ They sent his clothes home, blood-stained in places, with several bullet punctures about the chest.
Needless to tell you how Heartbroken I feel. I have waited for a letter from you: but none. Are you angry with me? Please, please write to me Princie Darling lovely Child. It will be Christmas soon. I will send you a little gift later in the week. I had a fall and hurt my Arm — better now. And here I suffer while His Grace dances gaily on the warships. I just longed for a letter from you, and of course disapp. was Sylvia.
Ever yours,
Sadie. New name.
VERY SAD
Please wire.
Aunt Teresa wrote that her poor health was in as miserable a state as ever and that she had resigned herself to spend the remainder of her days in her exile in the Far East. There was little purpose in going back to Belgium now that Anatole was dead, and they were all removing to Harbin, where Countess X., an old Russian friend of hers, who was going back to Europe, would let them have her flat practically free of rent. Uncle Lucy’s remittance had still not arrived, and she was taking Sylvia home from the ‘Sacred Heart’ as she could not afford the fees.
15
WHEN, AFTER MY RECOVERY, I RETURNED TO THE OFFICE, I found that the Major had usurped my job. I worked, for a little while, under his orders, and then got sick of it. The clerks (like permanent officials untroubled by a change of Minister) worked unperturbed as before. ‘Chesterton,’ said Sergeant Smith, from his desk. ‘Ah, Chesterton, sir!’
‘What about him? He says more than he knows.’
‘But,’ rejoined Sergeant Smith, ‘how he walks down Fleet Street, stopping every few paces, lost deep in thought; then suddenly dashes across, stops dead in the middle of the thoroughfare, the buses and taxis and things all whizzing past and around him, then touches his forehead—“Got it”—and having captured the missing link in his thoughts returns to the pavement. A great character.’
‘A hair-splitting dud!’ rejoined Sergeant Jones.
‘No!’
‘Now then,’ said the Major, from my former desk. ‘Now then!’
Finding it impossible to evict him from my chair (now more amply occupied by his form), I accepted Sir Hugo’s offer of combining a little duty with pleasure, and proceeded on a sheepskin expedition to Harbin to bring back a quantity of sheepskin coats which had been ordered for the Russian Army. As Beastly was returning to Harbin to consult the railway authorities in that city on matters locomotive, we agreed to go together, Pickup and Beastly’s batman Lenaine (the latter a public school boy whose father as he came to see him off at Euston wore a top hat and looked like a lord) travelling with us. It was full winter, and bitterly cold. Two weary nights, impenetrable gloom.
A lovely morning. I stood on the open platform as the train raced between a forest and a field, both deep in snow. A harsh wind whipped me in the face, but the sky was blue and cloudless and the vast space of snow glittered in the sunshine.
Sylvia was waiting for me at the station, looked out, and seeing me went in — I suppose out of shyness. Then we met. She had grown. She was taller and more beautiful than she had been in Japan; she looked fresh and strong in her short astrakhan-bordered coat and warm overshoes. And Harbin, which I had visited one summer, seemed full of precious associations; but under the cloak of winter it had acquired an unreal, fantastic appearance. The pines and firs were covered with snow; the ground creaked agreeably under our feet as we walked to their house.
As we entered the large stone building, a door on the landing was open and a terrific row seemed in progress in one of the flats, as if someone — someone who shouldn’t have been — had been killed. I looked up at Sylvia, in alarm.
‘It’s Berthe and Mme Vanderphant,’ she said, ‘talking.’
And indeed, as we ascended the steps, it transpired that Berthe and Mme Vanderphant were amicably imparting to each other their deep-felt impression that it was very cold in the flat.
‘Mais, Mathilde, c’est épouvantable ce qu’il y fait froid!’
‘Ah, mais je te crois bien, Berthe!’
And so on.
The flat was a little dark, but otherwise nice and comfortably furnished, and there was a bath. But when I applied for its use I created a commotion. ‘Allons!’ said Berthe, ‘we must send for the workmen to repair the bath.’ Some hours afterwards they arrived and set to work on the geyser, which gave angry little puffs of explosion — when they all began to curse each other. While the bath was being prepared for my impending use, two homeless dressmakers who had been allowed by Aunt Teresa to use the bathroom as a room for dressmaking were enjoined by Berthe to leave it. They stood in the corridor, surprised and afraid, as if wondering what was ‘up’, and holding their work in their hands, while I washed, slowly, lingeringly, interminably. And I could hear their voices, amid the angry little puffs of the geyser, while in the adjoining room Uncle Emmanuel conversed politely with Mme Vanderphant: