The patriotic business over, our host began telling us joke after joke. But I did not listen because, while he was telling his joke, my time was occupied in preparing my next (I had to be ready or he would go off with his next), and at the end of each of his jokes I laughed automatically with the others. For, as everyone knows, it is much more fun telling your own anecdotes (since anecdotes to be enjoyed must have sunk in, and that needs time) than listening to new ones.
Next morning Sylvia, in her new clothes and hat, went off without me and had a rattling good time with her new friends. But she returned for the Carlton dance, and I felt the silk glide on her smooth warm limbs as she pressed against me in the tango. And everybody asked: ‘Who is that lovely girl with the dark-brown locks?’ And I felt she was mine for all time. Now I should have been happy. Yet every hope fulfilled bears its own fatality. What we hoped for has come true; but not quite as we had hoped it. ‘I have been to Confession this morning,’ she said as we danced. ‘To confess my love for Princie. A young priest,’ she added. ‘Quite good-looking.’
‘And what did he say?’
‘He said: “Everything?”
‘I said “Yes.”
‘ “But why?” said he.
‘ “Because,” said I, “because I love him.”
‘ “But who is he?” said he.
‘ “I do not know,” said I. “I love him.” ’
Before leaving Shanghai, my uncle and aunt deemed it proper to drop cards on the Captains and Ward Room Officers of the Allied cruisers, and Uncle Emmanuel being laid up with indigestion, he requested me to take round his cards for him. I liked being ‘piped’. The American Flag-Lieutenant, a friend of mine, used to pipe me as befits a colonel rather than a captain, and I went on board the U.S. Flagship pretty frequently. Philip Brown met me on the quarter-deck. ‘I am right glad to see you, George,’—he held out his hand. ‘Well, it’s against the regulations of our country to keep any liquor on board, but if you will follow me to my cabin I’ll see to it that you get some all the same.’ And indeed! and indeed! From underneath his bunk he produced a bottle of whisky and a siphon, and Philip used the bottle rather more than the siphon. ‘Come on, you old Cheese. Come, get it down your system! Pour it down your cavity!’
From the American Flagship I went on the British, from that on the French, the Italian, the Jap, and so forth. Everywhere I was duly ‘piped’ on and off. On the quarter-deck of the Chink ship I was met by a befuddled petty officer who could not comprehend the nature of my visit. ‘What do you want?’ he asked with startling directness.
‘Commandant Vanderflint,’ I began, ‘who is ill—’
‘Who ill? You ill?’ asked the Chink.
‘Great heavens, no! This is his card — for the Captain.’
‘Ah—!—Nobody at home,’ he said after a pause.
As I turned to go something struck a spark between his brows, but he stood there, still dubious and undecided, while I gained the gangway. Then, after some excogitation, he began to screech for a sailor, who, as I stepped ashore, piped after me a solitary miserable thin note.
On Friday Mr. Cephas Speak took leave of us, for he was due elsewhere over the week-end, and he left his huge palatial house with its retinue of servants, stables, the garage holding his four cars, entirely at our disposal. ‘There,’ he said, handing Nora a box of sweets. ‘And give this to Harry.’ Berthe had been dispatched to spend the night on board the boat to superintend the loading of our luggage in the early morning; and she had taken Harry with her. ‘You had better take charge of my typewriter, Harry,’ I had said to him. When next morning Aunt Molly came down in her new travelling dress which she had ordered locally—‘Oh, mummy, you do look a sight!’ Nora exclaimed. ‘I want to—’
‘I have no time, darling.’
‘When will you have time to have time?’ Nora persisted. But she would not move, and when urged to put her hat on, she began to cry.
‘What are you crying for, Norkins?’
‘I want to stop for dinner — that’s the trouble!’ she whined. Natàsha, with her parasol in her gloved hands, walked like a little lady. Then we were sitting in the stately limousine, waiting for the chauffeur to move. The chauffeur had got out of his seat and was fiddling with the engine which was firing shots like a maxim. In the end, his efforts were rewarded. The machine obeyed. He switched in the gear, and the gigantic automobile leapt forward. The man put on speed. Aunt Molly, who was frightened of motor-cars when crossing a street, was no less frightened when sitting inside: lest the car should collide with another. Soon we were speeding down the Bund, hastening towards the docks. ‘What is that boat there?’ asked Aunt Teresa, pointing to a large three-funnelled liner.
‘That is our boat, the Rhinoceros, I think.’
The car stopped. We were at the water’s edge. Another ocean liner was receding steadily towards the sea, receding from the shore that hugged her towards the moody main, till she became a point on the horizon and then was lost to sight.
48
SO SOON AS SHE SAW HARRY, NORA BEGAN TO YELP from sheer joy. It was the first time in their lives that they had been parted for so long as a whole day. He stood on the deck and looked down at us — a little man in a big cap.
‘Aunt Berthe hasn’t touched your typewriter; it’s all right, nobody’s touched it,’ he said to me first thing I came on board.
Harry and Nora, meeting again after this their first parting, stood face to face and laughed quietly for a whole two minutes. Then they tore off together all round the deck.
‘And where’s that sweet for Harry from Mr. Speak?’ Aunt Molly asked Nora.
Nora had never once delivered a sweet to Harry since the time she was born.
‘You’ve eaten my Easter egg,’ she said lamely — though that was now over two years ago.
Harry said nothing. He now never smiled — he was so serious, as if the cares of the world were upon him; or if he did, it was more than ever the smile of a very old man — perfectly senile! Harry did not seem to grow, while Nora was fast catching up with him. He looked like a little old man — very wise, cynical, toothless.
Bubby approved of the ship, saying, ‘Thank goodness there are no motor-cars here, mummy’; while Nora spoke of it as ‘This slippery house’. She was blossoming out every day. ‘I don’t say any more “I ’hink”; I say “I th-th-think”.’ So pleased with herself.
It was a real long voyage — with children, with a shipload of luggage, a voyage destined to last many weeks; the ending of a life-period, a new beginning in time, of which the fate could not be foreseen. It made me think of that dreaded long voyage to America in Les Malheurs de Sophie. The children were delighted. They thought that they were setting out across the water, and that at the other end of the sea, called England, they would meet Daddy, who was waiting for them on the shore.
‘I writed, writed, writed to him — and he never wroted,’ said Nora.
Harry looked on demurely with his forget-me-not eyes. ‘He’ll come if we give him sumfink,’ said he.
‘Ah! little Norkin!’ Natàsha exclaimed. And almost at once, as we stood there, there passed down the deck the inevitable old seaman in a dark-blue blouse; and as he passed us he winked at Natàsha so merrily that it called forth from her a lingering outburst of gurgling delight. I have no special insight into seamen’s hearts — for that I must refer you to Joseph Conrad — but the old seaman struck me on the face of it — how shall I put it? — as ‘a bit of all right’. Natàsha made friends with him. ‘You just come from England?’ she asked. ‘Have you seen Princess Mary? Oh, how beauty! Oh, what a lovely!’