‘I askèd dem. Eh bien, ’ow long is ze civil war goin’ to las’, and zey tellèd, “We know not ‘ow long, doan ask us.” Voyons donc, I say, you mus’ know, vous autres militaires!’
‘Are they pretty awful, the Bolsheviki?’ asked Mr. Speak, with an air as if he fully expected to hear that they were awful.
‘Ah! je crois bien!’ rejoined my uncle with some heat. ‘A nation must protect its ’ome, the family, the sacred hearth. We want our girls to remain girls. If they — the Bolsheviks I mean — are allowed to go on the way they please, why, at that rate soon there won’t be a virgin left in Russia! Ah! c’est terrible!’
Mr. Speak looked as though he wanted to hear more about the virgins, but Uncle Emmanuel looked grave, and so Mr. Speak too put on a look of gravity.
Unconsciously, our tales became heroic. We felt they had to be if we were to be equal to his hospitality. And that was very great. Great as it was, though, it seemed to grow in proportion to the magnitude of our tales, and these must needs keep pace with his growing hospitality. ‘Oh, come,’ I said at last, to check Uncle Emmanuel’s extravagant imagination.
‘Excuse to me,’ he rejoined, ‘I know of what I’m talking.’
Mr. Speak could only listen. He shook his head. It seemed incredible. Uncle Emmanuel went on.
‘Very truly said,’ Captain Negodyaev chimed in. ‘I have myself two daughters, Mr. Speak: Màsha and Natàsha. Màsha, poor thing, is married, and she has to live in the most miserable conditions in South Russia, with her husband, Ippolit Sergèiech Blagovèschenski. And this — Natàsha! — this is Natàsha.’
Mr. Speak nodded approvingly, for he regarded Captain Negodyaev as a bulwark against Bolshevism. And he gave Natàsha a round box of chocolates tied with an orange ribbon.
‘Oh, look! look! Harry, look! What a beauty thing! Oh, what a lovely!’
‘A nice little girl!’ commented Mr. Speak.
‘Unfortunately, things being what they are, Mr. Speak, Natàsha’s education is being completely neglected. We simply don’t know what to do.’
‘And now. I suppose, we had better all go to bed,’ said my aunt. ‘It’s a quarter-past two.’
Mr. Speak wished us all a good night.
On the bedside-table were novels. The dear old thing had put them there for me to read. There they were — Gilbert Frankau, Compton Mackenzie, Stephen McKenna. The house, for all its luxurious magnificence, boasted no water-pipes, the water, cold or hot, having to be carried up by Chinese servants, of whom there was a host at our disposal. The reason for this idiosyncrasy was that nowadays water-pipes were by no means rare, being laid in every decent house, whereas Mr. Speak preferred to see his regiment of Chinese servants really earn their pay at some considerable exertion. During the night the roof, it seemed, had fallen in and burst through the ceilings. (These palaces were not of a substantial build.) And at breakfast Mr. Speak apologized for the disturbance caused during the night. ‘I regret,’ said he, ‘that owing to the roof accident I shall have to put you and your wife into one room.’
‘A là guerre comme à la guerre,’ replied Uncle Emmanuel.
‘How pale Natàsha looks!’ Aunt Molly observed. Natàsha, according to Mme Negodyaev, had been crying in her sleep. And Natàsha related a dream that had frightened her in the night. A snow-covered hill somewhere in Russia. Tired of walking, she had sat down — and waited. Dusk was falling quickly. And as she waited, what she waited for appeared. Over the snow-clad mountains lost in twilight, in the dim blue distance a black mass was moving towards her. As it approached, her eye could discern that it was a procession of men. ‘Awful mens coming along and not looking at me and carrying something — oh, like a coffin. Oh, I was so frightened. And they came nearer and nearer, not looking at me, and then stopped before me and laid down the coffin, saying nothing. And I saw it was open and empty. I said, “Oh, who have you come for?” And they said: “For you.” Oh — it gave me such a — oh!’ She shuddered, and then suddenly began to cry.
After lunch I strolled about in the garden. Magnificent trees. A bed of tulips all bending towards the sun, like a corps de ballet. Strange: the Shanghai house was like the house of my dreams. Its shape reminded me of our house in Petersburg, dreaming upon the bank of the wide Neva. I remembered so well how it stood there, a little worse for wear and tear, but infinitely near, as if saying with reproach: ‘You have left me, but I have a soul of my own, and I shall live even when you will not.’ The interior, to some extent, also seemed familiar. This is my sister’s room, I thought. Here on the wide landing I used to wait for her on my tricycle car to come home from school, merely to convey her down this corridor to her room … Here at this window we would sit and wait for the carriage to return from the station with our parents, home from Nice. — All that is over … But is it over?
Natàsha came running across the path, her sea-green eyes sparkling in the sun. ‘Oh, I have been to the pictures; Mr. Speak took us! Oh, what a lovely!’ she cried. ‘Mary Pickford. Oh, what a beauty boy little Lord Fountainpen! with long beauty hair like that. Oh, and so sad — I so cried! Oh, how I cried all the time! Oh, how beauty! Oh! oh!’ She liked Mr. Speak, but wondered how it was that he who was so rich did not fill all his cupboards with chocolate.
While in Shanghai Natàsha attended the dentist, and Mr. Speak said that for each tooth she put under the door Mouse would bring her a dollar. Two teeth had been put by her there, and Mouse brought her two dollars. Natàsha’s eyes sparkled with joy as she picked up the coins in the morning. ‘Look, Harry, look!’ she exclaimed. When the third tooth was extracted, Natàsha demurred. ‘Poor Mouse, she can’t get so many dollars,’ she sighed.
At dinner there was sole dieppoise; saline of partridge with button mushrooms and an orange salad; roast shoulder of mutton with braised celery, potato fritters, red currant jelly, and brown gravy; Coup Jacques; and Angels on Horseback. The table had been set magnificently. The old Chinese butler stood behind our host, mute like a statue, the incarnation of duty and devotion, and saw to it that every whim of his master’s was carried immediately into effect. A procession of servants, whom he marshalled, stole in and out without a sound and served us reverently, as though offering a sacrifice, while the high-priest looked on in awe. The ladies having left us, Uncle Emmanuel talked of the wrongs suffered by Belgium at the hands of the late enemy, as he puffed at a cigar. ‘Ah, figurez-vous,’ he began in a confidential tone, buttonholing Mr. Speak, a tone which implied that he was going to impart something of value. ‘Les crapauds!’ The message died in the cigar smoke as suddenly as it had come to life. Mr. Speak, withal a profiteer who felt a little awkward in the presence of such officers as had ‘done their bit’ in the war but at ease with the confidences of my uncle, told us eagerly of his own work in ousting German merchants from Shanghai and installing himself in their places. He had done his bit. Our host looked at us timidly expectant, anxious for approval of his patriotic work; which he received forthwith from Uncle Emmanuel, who said: ‘Les crapauds! In Belgium they tookèd Bourgmestre Max, they tookèd him and they takèd him, les crapauds!’
Mr. Speak sighed. ‘A great war’, he uttered.
‘Ah, nous autres militaires we have cause to remember it!’ said my uncle. ‘Now we are sailing home vers la patrie.’