‘I am the last man,’ my tone was conciliatory, ‘to want to give the matter a significance it does not possess.’
‘Oh!’
‘Emmanuel,’ said Aunt Teresa in a tone which clearly implied that she was proud of his display of paternal authority but sought to show that much in life must be forgiven. She fumbled in her speech. What she meant, but found it difficult to convey in words, was that she had been unhappy all along at the thought of having done her daughter out of her birthright — which is love — but that I had somehow managed to restore that privilege. ‘But Emmanuel, Sylvia was already married at the time.’
‘On the eve of my departure, you old cuckoo of an uncle!’
‘Married?’ said Uncle Emmanuel, agreeably astonished at this extenuating circumstance. ‘Of course, that puts a different complexion on it. Well, at that rate we shall presume that she knew what she was doing. Still — still—’
But he did not get beyond that ‘still’—a protest put on record, but not pressed.
Dinner over, we lounged over coffee on deck. The big steamer had gone out into the open sea; the pier was discernible only by its string of lights. When the café orchestra subsided, in the intervals we could just catch the distant strains of the band playing in the illuminated gardens of Government House. On the bows a gramophone screamed shrilly, and some Cockney petty officers danced to it with one another in quick, vulgar movements.
This was China — the Far East! The moist heat of evening enveloped us, and standing at the rail, the ship in midstream, somehow one felt sorry for onself and all the lives that live.
49
Methinks it should be now a huge eclipse
Of sun and moon and that the affrighted globe
Should yawn at alteration.
WHEN WE HAD COME BACK NEXT DAY (THE SHIP had broken down and was undergoing alterations and repairs) the General with the mad eyes was still on board, pacing the deck in his sweat-eaten canvas shoes, as a cat paces the roof of a house in flames. The General, who had come from Hong-Kong to Shanghai and had arrived again at Hong-Kong, decided to go on to Singapore, where the Russian Consul — so he hoped — would finance him and request and require that he be allowed forthwith to land on British soil. To this idea he clung with that ready hope of the fainthearted who, because he dreads the prospect of despair — his sole alternative, clutches at each straw with the assurance of salvation. The General with the mad eyes looked on the British Empire as a huge joke, while Captain Negodyaev regarded it as a refuge for himself and for his family from the imagined persecutions which he so feared on Russian soil, and gravely saluted the Union Jack on every possible occasion; and the occasions, considering that every port we touched was unequivocally British, were not few. It is a truism that whenever Russians meet they quarrel. Captain Negodyaev was a monarchist at heart, and the General with the mad eyes a Bolshevik convert. When on board I played the magnificent old Russian national anthem, the General remarked that it was most improper, while Captain Negodyaev begged me to go on. Yet, it was the Captain who was socially despised by the General, who called his junior a vulgar time-server, and scoffed at his undistinguished unit and provincial upbringing. The Bolshevik General had been a guardsman and a military academician. He prided himself on his connexions in England, and spoke a great deal of the peers with whom he was intimate. ‘I have only to write to Lord Curzon,’ he would say, with a self-satisfied smile, ‘and all the British ports will lie open before me.’
‘But in spite of all your aristocratic friends,’ rejoined Captain Negodyaev, ‘they won’t let you out to buy yourself a pack of postcards. Whereas I—’
‘Of course not, because I am a big gun; but you — you’re a nonentity, they don’t notice you.’
The Captain of H.M.T. Rhinoceros, a stout little man with an unpleasant smile, and wearing the C.M.G. ribbon, implied in all he said and did that he was every bit as good as a regular Captain of the Royal Navy. But the R.N. Commodore, who travelled as a private passenger on board and wore plain clothes, was a constant eyesore to him; and during dinner the Captain dwelt at length on the service rendered in the war by the Mercantile Marine.
‘Certainly!’ Beastly nodded heavily as was his custom. ‘What I always say is: one man’s as good as another and a damned sight better!’ And he guffawed loudly.
The Captain looked round at the company, and the Commodore. The Commodore made no comment.
Each morning at 10.30 the procession of inspection passed along the deck, headed by the Captain and the Officer Commanding Troops, and followed by the First Officer, the Adjutant, the Second Officer, the Officer of the Day, the Purser, the Chief Engineer, the Medical Officer, and the Ship’s Surgeon. At the conclusion of one of these parades Captain Negodyaev stopped the Captain (who was on his way to do something) and, through me, conveyed:
‘I have two daughters, Captain: Màsha and Natàsha. Tell the Captain that Màsha is away — married. And this is Natàsha.’
‘This is Natàsha,’ I translated, ignoring the preamble.
The Captain touched Natàsha kindly on the shoulder, not because he wanted to, but because she happened to be in his way. ‘This is your daughter?’ he asked, in a tone implying that she should not be allowed to block the passage. And he went his way.
After lunch there was deck-tennis. Beastly played, as you might expect him to, with cheery determination, nodding significantly, a look of evident satisfaction and a broad proud grin coming on his face as his opponents proved unequal to returning his stroke (not because he was so good but because they were so bad). But he looked round as if to say: ‘There! this is me all over: to settle it by one stroke!’ And he would look round to see if all had noticed it. And Mme Negodyaev played as though she quite expected (assuming a degree of justice in the universe) that her measure of exertion must also be her measure of success. And when it wasn’t — well, then she looked as though there was no justice in the world, no reason, no goodness, no God!
‘What a lovely, lovely sea!’ Sylvia exclaimed, as she stood at the rail awaiting the dinner-gong.
‘A stagnant pool reflecting a stray sunbeam may appear to a short-lived insect as evidence of the miraculous and divine. The sublime in nature does not depend on such simple answers as whether this glorious sea before us be the elixir of divine nature or merely a chance pool of slop spilt by some careless char-woman of another dimension: for the miracle might well be in the essence of its being all these things at once.’
‘Darling, you are getting very dull,’ she said.
Early in the morning we cast anchor off the shore of Singapore. A green-tabbed officer steamed up in a white launch flying the naval ensign, and stepping on board enquired, ‘Is there a Russian General here — a General Pok-Pok-Pokhitonoff? A dangerous man.’ There was. And the result of it was that the General with the mad eyes was not allowed ashore.
At Singapore, among other things, books were purchased for the education of Natàsha. Her parents had been worrying more and more about her education. ‘She’s already eight, she will be nine in a year, and she’s not too attentive,’ Mme Negodyaev complained. ‘I always said that I would have my children educated to perfection. And I did not stint my last penny on Màsha. Poor Màsha! She’s been so well educated, and yet she’s not too happy. Ah, well. And now there is Natàsha. — Ah, here is my cherub.’