‘And how are you?’—the General turned to Mme Negodyaev.
‘Ach!’ she uttered — and sighed.
‘What a life!’ He looked out of the window.
‘Yes, it’s a life in name only. We wait. In the winter we wait for the spring. But spring has come, and I am pestered by flies and mosquitoes. In the spring we wait for the summer. But summer comes — and it rains like in autumn. Ach!’ She waved an abject gesture, and grew silent.
‘You’re a pessimist,’ said he, screwing up one end of his short crisp moustache. ‘I am not entirely so.’
‘I have always, all my life, been on the point of beginning to live, and I haven’t lived. I haven’t, I haven’t, and I haven’t. I had hoped so much, and nothing has come of it. Now I hope no more — so perhaps something may come of it.’ The sun flashed through the glass and lit up her sunken face. ‘I have great hopes,’ she said.
She lived, and the life that should have been went beside her. I thought: hopeless natures, like hers, are easily let down by life, but on the other hand, just as easily consoled by hopes as shadowy and baseless as those which they had just discarded.
At Tientsin — he was going on to Tsingtao — the General got out together with the squinting Corporal Cripple, who now marched on with the kit on his back along to the depôt. The General pressed his prickly moustache against my aunt’s pale fingers; but our train was about to go, and Aunt Teresa, as she waited for him to finish his embrace, looked troubled and impatient. ‘Berthe! I do sincerely hope they haven’t left my medicine-chest behind!’ she wailed across her shoulder. He released her hand. She got in, and the train moved, and the saluting General, with the platform he was standing on, and the sandbank with the squatting Chinese child gaping at the train, and the country road that Corporal Cripple was traversing, moved backwards, and whirled out of sight.
I felt the wind rushing in through the open window, and saw the sun shining purple through the fretful yellow blinds, and the year was awakening and the day stubbornly dying.
Crossing the Yangtsekiang in a steam launch, I looked at the wide yellow river, and then at Aunt Teresa at my side. I loved my aunt — in moderation. But now seeing her, so pale and frail before me, I thought: ‘Poor Aunt Teresa! How long will she survive?’ And it seemed to me that now in this strong light I could see for once beyond her share of foibles. I could see — But, oh, what is there to see in the human soul stripped of outward ornament? Bewilderment, day-dreaming, and hope, unending hope …
Landed on the other side, we mounted the coach and sat mute as if bound by some mysterious sense of fraternity, while the train raced on to Shanghai. Suddenly, as though some huge bird had eclipsed the sun, it grew dark. And we felt as if a shadow had fallen on the clear still-water surface of our souls. Gloom. Rain; hail drummed at the pane. The world was a sorrowful place to live in!
I watched Beastly pull up the window, and I thought it was characteristic of us that he should be the first to be aroused to the necessity of action. It was of value. I meditated.
‘ “The one thing in the world of value,” said Emerson,’ said I, ‘ “is the active soul.” ’
‘Very truly said,’ rejoined Captain Negodyaev.
Natàsha sat facing me, and as I looked into her sparkling sea-green eyes I thought — I knew not why — I thought of death. Why, looking at her, should I think of death? This camping-ground that we call life: our turn, and we go forth into those bleak immensities. And behind us, at the port which growing distance separates us from, the church bells are tolling mournfully, solemnly, as out we sail into the boundless misty sea … Where? Why? Ah, now we know these questions do not arise. They are not; they were unreal.
It had stopped raining and the sun had come out.
‘Look, my girls, it’s a lovely day!’ said Harry.
The sun had come out, and at once all had become radiant and gay. I closed my eyes and fell asleep in the sun.
47
THE PARIS OF THE FAR EAST
WHEN I WOKE IT WAS PAST MIDNIGHT, AND THE train was already nearing Shanghai. Berthe was busy packing the hand-luggage of my aunt, and we were hauling down our baggage from the rack and putting on our hats and coats, when the train rushed into the station. It was a station much like any other station. It might have been Victoria or Charing Cross for all the difference I noticed. Two motors — so we learnt from a chasseur — awaited us. It seemed we could choose between the Cephas Speaks and the Septimus Pecks — two merchant princes of Shanghai, who, imagining that we were heroes who had won the war, in fact competed for the opportunity of offering us their hospitality. We chose the Cephas Speaks, and stepped into a luxurious limousine, with the aid of a smartly arrayed chasseur, and drove off. I think we chose them on account of the imposing look of the chasseur, and drove in the luxurious motor through the dark shimmering city, which is called, with a degree of truth, the Paris of the Far East. I looked out at the nocturnal streets with their many lights, that curious blend of Europe and the Orient, so disquieting and enchanting as though just on account of that blend, as the great big car rolled magnificently through the warm, moist air of spring. Through beautiful well-kept lanes which in the moonlight looked as if covered with snow, between deep walls of dark foliage we moved. The big car rolled along swiftly, but its size and grandeur gave its very swiftness a look of leisure, as though it said, with a self-contented, patronizing air: ‘That is nothing to me.’
And thinking of our curious destinies, I said: ‘Life is a chance cross-section — with chance encounters happening to come our way. Events come casually, begin discordantly, and end abruptly: they hinge entirely on chance; but within each event which comes our way we develop our inner harmony wholly and coherently.’
‘Darling, why don’t you talk to me of something interesting instead?’ Sylvia demurred.
Melancholily, the car rolled along, and then giving forth a small hoot of the horn, turned into another lane of deeper foliage and more moon. The car drove into a courtyard. Servants rushed to our feet. And, helped out on all sides, we alighted and mounted the steps into the palace of the hospitable merchant prince.
In the hall, despite the late hour, stood Mr. Cephas Speak, a crude but shy, diffident man, with extended hand (he would have liked to extend both, but he was too shy), and a hearty solicitude for our welfare and comfort. Having apparently done nothing in the war but fill his own pockets, he felt the more diffident with people like ourselves whom, on account of our heroic-looking uniforms, he imagined to be warriors without fear and without reproach. As I came down from my bedroom, Mr. Speak was already listening to Uncle Emmanuel’s highly coloured accounts of our bleak experiences.
‘You’ve had a pretty rough time, I can see, at the hands of the Bolsheviki,’ observed Mr. Speak, and filled Uncle Emmanuel’s glass and passed round the sandwiches.
‘Ah! mais je crois bien!’ agreed my uncle, swallowing a cocktail and pieces of a sandwich.
‘The trials, the perpetual excitements and uncertainties, the tribulations of this life of my sad exile,’ said Aunt Teresa, ‘have completely wrecked my poor nerves.’
‘Ah, c’est terrible,’ echoed my uncle.
Our host surveyed us all with infinite compassion. ‘Now you must have a thorough rest and pull up if you can. You must try and completely forget the Bolsheviki.’ And he passed round the sandwiches. It was as though we had been shipwrecked and were now picked up, and Mr. Speak was administering first-aid. Aunt Teresa heaved a deep sigh, and Uncle Emmanuel said: