‘Why, my dear sir — ha, ha, ha, ha! you don’t know your own silly business!’
‘Comment?’
‘Come on yourself! Get down to it and write to the Marshal for the autograph, here, now.’ The two men standing over him, Uncle Emmanuel sat down to his desk and, with tears in his eyes, began to write to the Marshal.
The three little bears played nicely together, having moved their three little chairs round the table, though now and then Harry upset their shop, and then you heard Natàsha’s voice: ‘Harry! Harry! What for you doing!’ and also you heard Nora’s voice: ‘Leave me alone! Shup up! Harry! Leave me alone! Stop it! Stop it!’
‘Whatever is the matter?’ Aunt Molly asked.
‘Nora’s eaten my chocolate-cream,’ Harry wailed.
‘Because he’s eaten my Easter egg last year!’ Nora cried eagerly.
Slap! Slap! Slap! came from Aunt Molly — and tears galore from the children’s eyes.
Then they played as before. They exchanged with each other some of their presents. ‘Give back?’
‘No give back?’ or ‘To keep?’ Harry changed his chocolate stick with a little boy for a watch. ‘I gave him this,’ Harry said, looking the while at the watch. ‘Is it worth it?’ The little boy ate the chocolate stick and then cried and wanted his watch back. Harry pricked Nora’s balloon, and, watching it, I thought: I’d like to die like that — fizzle out.
‘Harry’s been kicking Natàsha!’ Nora complained to her mummy. But Harry, who heard this, only called out ‘Nora!’ put his arm round her, and off they ran together happily, neither of them caring a straw. Only Bubby played demurely alone.
At half-past ten, just before retiring to bed, Captain Negodyaev had a relapse of persecution mania, and he bid his wife and daughter dress — ready for flight at a moment’s notice. They sat in the hot drawing-room, all dressed and ready, in their fur coats and muffs and hats and warm goloshes, till he declared ‘All Clear!’ and sent them off to bed.
Towards bed-time the children were overwhelmed with presents. They were dazed, almost unhappy: Nora dying from fatigue. Washed and put to bed, she knelt up and prayed: ‘Gentle Jesus meek and mile look upon a little chile pity my s-s-s-simplicity. God bless mummy and daddy and granpas and granmas and uncles and aunties and cousins — and Cousin Georgie.’
Then Harry, too, rose on his knees. ‘Green grow—’
He stopped. An impatient wave of the hand—‘Not that!’—and fell dead asleep.
35
AFTER CHRISTMAS OUR WEDDING WAS POSTPONED till after the New Year. ‘Do you mind, darling?’
‘No, just as you like, darling.’
I looked at her tenderly. ‘Lovie-dovie-cats’-eyes.’
‘This is too soppy, darling,’ she said.
Since early morning on New Year’s day visitors had been calling on us. Franz Joseph came. The spelling lady came. The virgin came. After the virgin and the daughter of the actual-state’s-councillor, there came a morose-looking Russian major general with pale mad eyes, whose conversation was largely incoherent. I was besieged by them, yet I liked them. They were good, well-behaved lunatics, trim and neat in their diminutive, harmless lunacy, compared with our war lords in their raving, disorderly madness. They were floating in a sea of bewilderment and confusion, but we who were waging this colossal war with seriousness and with method were more destructively futile in our pretensions, more grievously self-deluded. The world had got unhinged and was whirling round in a pool of madness, and those few lunatics were whirling independently within ours: wheels within wheels! And I received them with courtesy, to the pained astonishment of Vladislav, who, pointing at Franz Joseph, said: ‘In France they wouldn’t have spoken to that man.’ So sensible and nice and relevant they were in their own little world of delusion that we, big lunatics, who were engaged in making war and revolution, allowed the little lunatics to roam in peace at large: out of a latent instinct of proportion that it would have been absurd to lock them up in the face of what was being done by admittedly sane people in our midst. Asylums and prisons were open: indeed, not in Russia alone. To give Europe her due, ‘retail’ murderers had been invited to vacate their prison cells to participate in the wholesale murder going on galore upon the battlefields.
There also came a Metropolitan. The vladika apologized for calling on a holiday — but the affair was urgent, for he had the welfare of the Orthodox people at heart. It was vodka — the undoing of many a weak soul in the past. For years and years the Government had seen fit to poison the Russian pravoslavnie people. The time had come, he thought, for the Church to take a stand. What should be done? Well, yes, he knew what should be done and would be glad if I could see my way to urge his scheme before the General. The vodka monopoly should be transferred forthwith to private interests. There was a powerful financial syndicate prepared to purchase the monopoly and he was in favour of their doing so, on conscientious grounds, for verily the Government could not continue this systematic intoxication of the pravoslavnie people. He was in touch with them. Yes, the syndicate were willing. He — well, ye-es, he had been approached by them.
‘But,’ I faltered, ‘the systematic intoxication of the pravoslavnie population is to go on at that rate?’
The holy father leaned back and flung open his hands, just as Uncle Emmanuel was wont to do when he said, ‘Que voulez-vous?’ He paused.
‘Well, that would be a matter for their own conscience,’ he said at last. ‘We cannot control everything.’
‘I see. The syndicate would then be personally responsible to God for the intoxication of the pravoslavnie population?’
‘It is immoral for the State to poison the people it is called upon to govern,’ said the Metropolitan, with a glint of righteous anger in his eyes. ‘Private enterprise is another matter.’
He left me with the distinct impression that private enterprise was indeed another matter. And I equipped him with a card to Dr. Murgatroyd.
General ‘Pshe-Pshe’ (as we now called him for short) brought with him Count Valentine — a thin, ungainly individual with a high-pitched voice, whose one redeeming feature was his title. All afternoon I sat in my room in the attic and faked New Year’s messages for Aunt Teresa, purporting as it were to come from local Jap and Chink officials and their wives, and as I showered them upon my aunt, she would exclaim: ‘Tiens! Encore! Ah!’—delighted at her popularity — while I went up and typed again. Natàsha stole up the stairs like a kitten, and entreated: ‘Play with me, oh, play with me!’ while I typed on, ‘General and Madame Pan-La-Toon send greetings of the season to Monsieur le Commandant and Madame Vanderflint and wish them happiness in the New Year.’
‘Tiens! Encore une! Mais voilà un dèluge!’ Aunt Teresa cried, opening the missives and smiling happily at Berthe. It quite reminded her of the old days.
36
AUNT TERESA GIVES A BALL
IT WAS ALREADY THE MIDDLE OF MARCH, BUT THE winter was still on, white, crisp, impenetrable. Aunt Teresa had become a social centre of the town; and perhaps what added zest to the adventure was the knowledge that our polyglottic presence in Harbin was only temporary — as temporary as life on earth. We specialized in being nice to everybody. Only the children were rather naughty. They would come up to any guest, however stolid, and say: ‘You are awfully ugly’, or Bubby would comment on her mother’s looks as Aunt Molly came down the stairs in a new dress: ‘Oh, mummy, you do look a fright!’ We were an unusual set of people caught in an unusual set of circumstances and conditions. I like to think that we had, by the play of accident, escaped from much that has become threadbare and stereotyped in life. In the world war, the Russian revolution, things had taken place, strange shiftings of families and populations of which little has been heard as yet but the effect of which will tell one day