‘Heaven only knows!’
As I strolled off I saw Mme Negodyaev leaning on the rails. It was her first appearance since Colombo.
‘Do you see those white cliffs? This is England,’ I said with a secret sense of proprietorship.
‘Yes. But to us,’ she said, ‘it makes little difference now whether it’s England or Belgium or what. Do we get off tonight?’
‘We shall anchor tonight, very late, but shan’t be allowed on shore till the morning on account of passports and things.’
We were silent; then she said:
‘Now there are only the two of us — and, of course, Màsha. Poor Màsha! Your aunt told me she would see us through. She commands such influence and authority, so we don’t worry. We two don’t need much. We have no one to educate now.’ The tears came to her eyes.
I looked on.
England, my England!
Though we had all looked for it with impatience, it seemed as if nevertheless it had been sprung on us unawares. Passengers suddenly transferred their interest from one another to their luggage. All had found their way into the hold and were opening and shutting up boxes and generally interfering with their fellow-men. (And when I say ‘men’ I also mean women.) People were busy and aloof and not a little irritable, while stewards became conspicuously courteous and obliging. Everyone thought of what he would do next: and that ‘next’ seemed to have little or nothing to do with the man standing next to him. Towards lunch-time the sun came out, but vanished again after lunch.
By four o’clock, while the boat was still moving, passport and quarantine officials came up on a cutter, and, like pirates, climbed up our ship long before the port hove in sight. The white cliffs were now more than ever clearly visible in the distance.
‘We shall probably land tonight.’
‘More probably tomorrow morning,’ said Beastly. ‘When a boat comes into port she always begins hooting and messing about for the best part of six hours. High Navigation, I expect! Ha-ha!’ He guffawed loudly. ‘Eye-wash, that’s all it is! Done on purpose to bluff you. They don’t want you to run away with the idea that navigation is as blessedly simple a matter as it really is — that’s about the truth of it! Same with applying for a passport and that sort of silly thing. All done to impress you. So here. You bet we’ll mess about till the morning instead of driving up like in a cab.’
‘And in Russia,’ I observed, ‘the coachman whips up the horse and drives up at the greatest possible speed, pulling up, abruptly, at the porch. It’s supposed to look grand.’
‘I know. Of course, this cannot be done with a car.’
‘Well, I knew a French lieutenant in Russia who did it.’
‘The ass, ruining the tyres!’
‘Therein,’ I observed, ‘lay the whole piquancy of the thing.’
Beastly nodded his head heavily, as if wondering what the world indeed was coming to! He knew what was what. There was no pessimism, no doubt, no inaction about him. He would go back to the Argentine to his railroads; he would go and dig a gold mine in Canada; he would start a company for the developing of the port of Vladivostok and make bags of money, and then go into politics abroad and at home, shout at open-air meetings, build bridges, dig oil wells, exploit forests and coal-fields, and raze the whole earth to the ground; he would — he would turn the world upside down and stand on it, gesticulating and holding forth with authority. He would — But as I listened to him I was certain that, whatever he did, he would miss the essential.
The dismal afternoon was nearing to its close, and still the mild waves ran past us, and the Rhinoceros held towards one point in England like the needle of a compass to the Pole. Already we could see the faint flickering lights of the English coast-line. And still the Rhinoceros heaved.
Towards six, when the coast seemed at arm’s length but the boat still moved unabated, and the steward was strapping up my hold-alls in the cabin, I went up on deck. In the marble saloon at the ‘blunt end’ of the ship sat the passport and quarantine officials holding judgment, like inquisitors, on the ‘aliens’. The General with the mad eyes, Captain and Mme Negodyaev looked like helpless buzzing flies fallen a prey to the tentacles of a spider. We — the Commodore among us — had donned uniforms, and otherwise, as British subjects, took up privileged positions at the front of the saloon, at the back of which the ‘aliens’ were rounded up and herded, like hostages in a siege, and pressed to answer hypothetical questions, in shame and iniquity, before they too could be admitted to the promised land.
We had come up. England hove in sight quite plainly now as a green island with houses and people and parks. We were outside the harbour, just going in; the ship listed heavily now on this side, now on that, clumsily turning round, finding her way into the harbour and hooting hoarsely and hideously; while from the funnels columns of black smoke broke into the drizzling sky. The man at the wheel told the man down below to back engines; then the ship stopped; then the engines resumed. And, true to prophecy, we were ‘messing about’ just outside the harbour. All the ship’s officers were at their posts; only the surgeon, his job over, stood idle at the hatch, puffing at a cigarette. A very long time yet she lolled there, hooting and turning about, it seemed aimlessly, while we stood at the rail balancing on our heels, as at last, pitching heavily, she entered the harbour. We went, past the breakwaters, up the long, wide enclosure of Southampton Water, between two rows of green lawn, when the engines, as if tired, gave way and stopped, the big boat drifting on noiselessly of her own momentum, till she cast anchor — lying- to in midstream.
Arrived. The Rhinoceros had become very still, her task done, her strength spent, listless and drooping. Sylvia stood at my side by the rail and cooed a lot of divorcing Gustave and marrying me on the strength of it. But I had long since got used to it and did not listen, but looked out on the handsome trimmed lawns of the banks. She put a sweet in her mouth and looked on, munching. ‘Dinner on board before landing,’ she said.
‘Oh, we shan’t land till the morning.’
‘Oh! Really? Oh! Oh! — Darling,’ she said; ‘I love you. Oh, I love you! I love you! I love you!’
‘And I too.’
A passport official came up to me. ‘Will you kindly interpret for this gentleman; he can’t speak a word of English?’
As I went up, he said, ‘There is the question of his daughter—’
‘I have two daughters,’ Captain Negodyaev was saying, ‘Màsha and Natàsha—’
‘There’s only one on the passport,’ rejoined the official.
‘Quite so,’ flustered the other. ‘Màsha does not appear on the passport because she is grown up, is married, and lives with her husband, Ippolit Sergèiech Blagovèschenski, away in South Russia. And Natàsha—’
His eyes filled. His face twitched. He gulped. ‘The gong has — hasn’t sounded yet?’ he asked nervously.
‘Not yet.’
Red-eyed, he looked at his wife. A tiny tear glittered on her lashes. ‘Our cherub,’ she lisped, ‘is gone — gone from us — to the cherubim.’
I told the passport official.
‘I see,’ said the man.
And while we stood there and waited, and while we paced on in silence I heard no stealthy steps; no cool covert hands hid my sight. There was no gurgling laughter, no shrug, no ecstatic delight. It was doleful in the gathering twilight, and the lights of England blinked at us ruefully, sadly. The gong echoed to the sound of the sea, and the gulls, the wind, and the drizzling rain.
THE END