V

Seryozha lay in bed in his little room, which was just an oblong bite taken out of the kitchen. His bed was the original kang of this Korean house⁠—a brick-and-plaster oven. On it⁠—since it was summer⁠—were spread all the winter quilts and blankets to intervene between Seryozha’s heavy young bones and the hard kang. The colder it grew in autumn, the more quilts were taken from beneath his body to be placed above it. Seryozha always connected winter with heavy dreaming, since at that season he always had to sleep flat on his back to save his hip bones from contact with the almost unpadded heated kang. But now, in summer, there were three quilts beneath him, and Seryozha could lie comfortably on his side, bent into the shape of a query mark, glaring at the window. The window, carved by Anna long ago with a blunt saw out of the boards of the outer wall, was high up in the corner made by the flimsy kitchen partition and the ceiling. It was very crooked. Anna was, in all her contrivings, too ardent ever to measure things. “I work by eye only,” she would boast, triumphantly daring you to make the obvious retort as she flaunted her results all askew.

Seryozha glared at the window till the foolish, crooked block of sunny morning light printed itself on his retina, so that when his eye wandered, a black crooked window was stamped all over the room. He was so full of angry single-hearted determination that, as he clenched his teeth, he felt as if his burning self, pregnant with its passion to get its own way, was too big for his skin; he had to keep his aching jaws and the smarting muscles round his eyes locked against its rising, bursting growth. There seemed to be a kind of explosion impending of swelling, thwarted will.

“Kept at home like a little schoolboy,” he thought, tears of irritation squeezing out of the corners of his eyes. Seoul, the city denied, rose like a palace before him. He thought of his mother in a distorted paroxysm of anger. Her ungainliness, her uncontrolled loud voice, her dusty abundant hair, her thick ankles, the hiccups that afflicted her when she was agitated⁠—all made her a hateful effigy in his mind, into which he stuck pins of impotent protest.

He felt alternately rooted to this unloved little house⁠—and far away, walking heroically along a resilient bright road⁠—stopping where he liked⁠—getting wet when he liked⁠—never having to argue⁠—kicking the behinds of rude little Chinese boys⁠—buying sweets and cigarettes recklessly⁠—banging his stick against trees with a various resonance⁠—lighting little fires at the feet of fantastic rocks. Then suddenly⁠—zip⁠—his future telescoped, his traveling thoughts were snatched back to reality⁠—back to prison, as the Reverend Mr. Butters’s pince-nez, when he let them go, were snatched back to concealment by a spring under his lapel.

Seryozha’s dog, with a coarse, confident scratch born of long habit, threw open the latchless door from the kitchen and came in. Seeing Seryozha awake, the dog began to curtsy, to make a little falsetto humming noise through its nose, to wag about two-thirds of its spine⁠—from shoulderblades to tail tip⁠—as it waltzed about the floor, never taking its eyes from Seryozha’s face. Seryozha glared at the dog, making no answer to its extravagant greeting. He was fond of the dog, or rather, fundamentally accustomed to it; he felt as if the dog were part of himself, so it never occurred to him to be responsive or polite to it. Sometimes, to the dog’s rapturous delight, he swung it about by the teeth, or threw it violently across the room in a frenzy of joviality. But today he stared moodily through it, and the dog, though experience had not given it much ground for hope, redoubled its efforts. It reared itself delicately up and planted one tentative paw on the edge of the kang, swishing its tail wildly from side to side. No protest, no encouragement. It stretched its neck shyly forward and lightly licked the tip of Seryozha’s nose. As if this chaste kiss⁠—like the prince’s kiss on the lips of the Sleeping Beauty⁠—had called the dormant energies of the prostrate god into action, Seryozha suddenly sat up, and his bare leg, swinging out of bed with a scythe-like action, cut down the erect figure of the dog as though it had been a swathe of corn. Seryozha had heard through the door left open by the dog’s exuberant entrance sounds of someone in the kitchen. He could begin worrying his mother again. The impotent watches of the night were past.

The dog picked itself up, pleased. For it, too, the day had begun. It began scratching its mastoid energetically.

Seryozha pulled on his trousers, wriggled his blouse over his head, and, while still buckling his belt, was in the kitchen, glaring across the table at his mother.

Anna, dressed in a cotton underbodice that much accentuated her stout flabby bust, a crocheted shawl, and a thick crimson flounced petticoat, was sitting at the table, playing patience. She looked up, a little abashed, as Seryozha came in, and mumbled in tones that sank lower and lower, “I was looking through the cupboard for that bar of washing-soap⁠—I am sure I did not use it up; it is somewhere, I know⁠—and I came across the old pack of cards and I thought I would try if I could remember that game that Mrs. Atkinson⁠ ⁠…” Her voice faded away into a deep growling, “The four on the five and then the king goes up.⁠ ⁠…”

Her son’s cold eye was fixed upon her in disgust. “Mamma, about the matter we were talking of last night,” he cried, hoarsely. He had been rehearsing arguments during the small hours; they had seemed irresistible at the time, but now they eluded him.

“What were we talking of last night?” asked Anna, a mulish look coming over her face. She added, “And then the red nine on the black ten.”

“Mamma, it isn’t fair.⁠ ⁠… I’m a man now.⁠ ⁠… Mamma, remember I am in my nineteenth year.⁠ ⁠… You don’t realize.⁠ ⁠… Look at the way I arranged things with the Chinese when papa was away⁠ ⁠… did I behave like a child then? And now, when it is simply a matter of a little business journey⁠ ⁠…”

“It is useless to go on talking like this, Seryozha. You and your father must have lost your wits, to have such an idea. Walking all alone to Seoul. What an idea! Why, you can’t even walk from here to Erh-tao-kou without getting into a fight with Chinese coolies.⁠ ⁠… And it isn’t age that makes any difference. Your father’s as big a fool as you are, and God knows he’s old enough to know better.”

“But, mamma, I have admitted that that was a folly⁠—it was papa’s idea, and I protected him as far as I could. You said yourself at the time.⁠ ⁠… And look at those men we buried that day⁠—soldiers⁠—officers⁠—and one of them looked younger than I am. Their mothers⁠ ⁠…” For a moment he thought enviously of the countless orphans of the revolution. Probably those dead soldiers had no mothers. “At any rate, that fight was, I admit, a stupid business⁠—a whim of papa’s. This Seoul idea is a real business matter.”

“A pretty business matter,” said Anna, sweeping her cards violently together, making a sort of splash of cards. “A very pretty business matter⁠—taking a three weeks’ holiday from your good regular work in order to wander off to ask an old rogue for some money your father lent him ten years ago. A likely thing, isn’t it?⁠ ⁠… And even if you got the money, how long do you think you would keep such a sum?⁠—thieves along every road and in every inn, and rogues and harlots always on the lookout for young fools like you. What about that five yen I gave you last Christmas to buy a boiler, and you spent it all on a present for that little brothel-grub, Sonia?”

“I was young then,” said Seryozha, confused. “And in any case I give all the money I earn to you, so surely I have a right to spend five yen once in my life. However, I confess that I was mistaken in Sonia’s character. It was a long time ago⁠ ⁠…”

Where were all the telling phrases that had filed so orderly through his mind in the dark clearness of the night?

“Mamma, another thing is⁠ ⁠…” He stopped distractedly. He had forgotten the other thing⁠—all the other things.

“Well?”

Seryozha stamped his foot with an oath. He thought of the rather dashing, mocking, grown-up attitude he habitually maintained toward his father and mother, in his own eyes⁠—and even, to some extent, in theirs. He remembered, in a rather glorified form, his conversation with his father about the two hundred yen. “My good papa, to leave two hundred yen in the hands of a probably dishonest and certainly incompetent peasant! Was that businesslike?”⁠ ⁠… “Dear old man, do you mean rubles, dollars, or yen? I want to understand this matter thoroughly so that I can help you⁠ ⁠…” That was the proper tone⁠—the usual tone. And now⁠—“Oh, mamma⁠—oh, please, mamma, let me go!⁠ ⁠… Really, mamma, do believe that I’m not a child any more.⁠ ⁠…” Poor Seryozha, he felt robbed of something that he violently resented losing⁠—a king robbed of his crown and suddenly made a beggar. He began to despair. Never had the journey to Seoul seemed more necessary to his happiness than at that moment. Then suddenly, with a sort of artificial revulsion of feeling, he let it go. The only thing left, then, was not to want to go⁠—to want not to go. Not only to cease pleading, but to be actually glad that he was not going on a hot, dusty journey among silly, whining, flapping Koreans. By ceasing to want to go he could get even with his mother, he could save his self-esteem. Even if his mother were to implore him to go now, he would refuse. “Too much trouble, mamma,” he rehearsed inwardly in a languid, superior, secret voice. “And nothing to show for it in the end. You and papa would waste the money on muddles and follies, even if I were to get it for you.”

He looked round with a cold, critical look, collecting evidence of his parents’ inferiority, in order to comfort himself. Anna had upset a saucepan full of greasy water in the corner near the stove, and, since the mud floor was slightly concave, a long dark snake of water stretched slowly toward the middle of the kitchen. There was no neatness anywhere. The edge of the window⁠—now hanging open on limp homemade hinges⁠—was tattered with the strips of paper that in winter had been pasted round the edges of the panes to keep out the cold. The wall was all mottled with damp patches; a great marbled shape of damp had been there for years, and, in Seryozha’s unconsciously ingenious eyes, represented a woman in a flying cloak reaching for a great flying rose. She had three arms, to be sure, but you can’t expect nature’s artistic byproducts to be so accurate as all that.⁠ ⁠…

Poor Seryozha bit his lips and sucked them in as he turned away to stare moodily down at his dog. The dog would have enjoyed the walk to Seoul; they would have been like two parts of the same Seryozha⁠—one part walking proudly, the other part leaping, blowing in the wind, barking at larks, scratching at rat-holes, drinking puddles.⁠ ⁠… However, Seryozha thought, I wouldn’t go now if I were asked. Certainly the dog would have had a good time. But a man can’t take a three weeks’ walk simply to please a dog.

The dog lay in a curve on the floor. Evidently some other dog⁠—probably its last ladylove⁠—was thinking of it, for its ear itched⁠—the traditional symptom. It wriggled and wagged its ear repeatedly. Its eyes were open. It liked the sound of voices. That damn goat, too, was somewhere else. Everything seemed to the dog to be going nicely.

Anna squeezed her face into an upside-down isosceles triangle between her hands, her elbows pressed on the table among the cards. She looked at her son, restless with pity for him, as he stood staring down at the dog, raising his eyebrows in childish and studied indifference, shuffling his toe, pretending to tread on the dog’s tail. She would make him some curd cakes this afternoon; he loved those. Perhaps she could afford that Brownie kodak in the Japanese shop, if she did without her new dress length. After all, he gave her almost all his earnings. It never occurred to her to relent on the Seoul question. All the dangers that lurked for him outside her sight accumulated round the very thought of the ridiculous journey⁠—brigands, swindlers, earthquakes and other convulsions of nature, tigers, brothels, Japanese policemen, prisons, diseases, drownings in rivers.⁠ ⁠… Seryozha would have been a super-boy to have suffered even a third of them in three weeks. But Anna’s imagination was always over-exuberant. She did not follow up her fears at all because⁠—well, simply, he was not going to Seoul. Curd cakes and perhaps a kodak for him. Still, the sight of his tremulous eyebrows and pursed lips made her throat ache with pity.

Old Sergei felt his way in at the door. “No breakfast yet?” he exclaimed in an unusually high sweet voice. “Ah well, these glorious summer days tempt one to procrastinate.⁠ ⁠…” It was at once obvious that today he was The Perfect Christian; serenity was the password of the moment. Anna and Seryozha were to realize that they had an afflicted saint in their midst. He had had slight qualms in the night, thinking that, if he were really to die, Anna in her present mood would be but a tearless widow and Seryozha an all too resilient orphan.

The kid bleated outside in the shed. The dog mumbled a growl of jealous irritation into its own tail as it lay sleepily curved in a bar of sunlight.

“And the little goat?” asked Old Sergei with a sugared playfulness. “The most important member of the household? Did it sleep well? Has it breakfasted?”

With a loud crude snort, Anna rose and began slamming down bread, cups, knives, and spoons on the bare table among the playing-cards. Old Sergei sat down at the foot of the table. His thin, gaunt hands, like little wan giraffes striding, patted about among the cards. “Playing cards before breakfast? Well, well, well!⁠ ⁠…” he said in a voice of resignation, but with an effort made no complaining comment. “If we had money,” he added, “we could allow ourselves, perhaps, a little Korean girl as servant. But I dare say you are right, Annitchka my dove, in thinking that we are best as we are⁠—without the money I left with Isaev in Seoul. Of course the interest would have mounted up very considerably in ten years⁠—but as you say, Annitchka, what is money? Poverty is nothing, as long as we have love and peace in our home. It was only for your sake and Seryozha’s that I thought of it. You are not so young as you were, and I thought a little maidservant.⁠ ⁠… However, it is not to be.”

“It certainly is not,” said Anna, who had never appreciated the effective weight of silence as an argument. “The child is most certainly not going to Seoul by himself, so you had better give up the idea.”

An almost agonizing pang went through Seryozha as he heard this, but he thought, “If they only knew⁠—I wouldn’t go now, even if they went down on their knees to me. Probably I shall run away altogether; they can expect nothing better, treating me as they do. But certainly I will not do their fetching and carrying, either to Seoul or anywhere else.”

“Did you not hear me say, my dove, that I had given up the idea?” said Old Sergei, gently. “I am only explaining to you now, in retrospect, what my idea had been. I had not, of course, thought of sending the child unprotected. If you are a mother, dearest Annitchka, remember that I am a father, and Seryozha’s safety is as much my preoccupation as yours. I had thought of looking for some trustworthy fellow⁠—a superior coolie⁠—who for a small wage⁠—”

“If he found an angel from God to go with him,” said Anna raucously, “I might let him go. Short of that⁠ ⁠…” Seryozha, who actually stood before her nearly six feet tall and with a slight shimmer of very young beard on his pink cheeks, was shrinking in her imagination with every word of the discussion. He had now almost got back to the weaning stage, and she saw a flashing picture of one of God’s angels pushing her baby away from her in a pram.

“An angel from God, Seryozha,” said Old Sergei, whimsically and plaintively. “You will have to look long to find an angel from God willing to protect a poor Russian. Poor Russians indeed! God has forgotten them⁠—he sends no angels now.⁠ ⁠… But of course, my dear,” he interrupted himself, cooing, as he turned to Anna, “I was not insisting on the boy’s taking the journey. I had only referred to the fact that it had been for your sake I had entertained the idea. The money would have been useful to you rather than to me. A little maidservant⁠ ⁠… an oil stove instead of that mud oven.⁠ ⁠… Such things would have made life easier for you⁠—given you leisure, perhaps, to play cards in the mornings instead of troubling about your husband’s breakfast. Poverty and discomfort wear out even the most devoted.⁠ ⁠… For myself, why should I mind? I have not long to live in this world⁠ ⁠… an old blind man on the brink of the grave has no temptation to think of himself.”

“Why don’t you write for the money? If Isaev is really willing to repay it, he could send it.”

“You do not understand the ins and outs of the affair, dear Annitchka. How should you⁠—a trusting, sweethearted woman like yourself? It is for the head of the family to wrestle with such sordid problems⁠—to protect those he loves from the miseries of⁠—”

“I don’t want any breakfast,” said Seryozha, suddenly. “And I shall not go to work today. My back aches. I am going out.”

His dog, as ready for its call as a good fireman, reached the door as soon as he did. Their shadows merged in a muddle of wagging, striding black and white at the door. Seryozha and the dog stood together in the doorway, looking out at the bright day.

Anna looked at Seryozha and felt, on his behalf, an elaborate fanciful female version of the boy’s impotent disappointment. She sat hacking violently at the bread, muttering and hiccuping to herself, clapping her knees together under her absurd petticoat. She was always hurting someone, she thought, making some mistake or being obliged to correct someone else’s mistake in a painful way. She so seldom managed to feel that she was giving satisfaction; wherever she went she imagined people thinking, “Why doesn’t Anna⁠ ⁠… ? Why does Anna⁠ ⁠… ? If it weren’t for Anna.⁠ ⁠…” She felt that she had been endowed with a superfluity of power to hurt and thwart people. Curd cakes and a kodak would be nothing but a bribe to her son⁠—a bribe to persuade him to overlook her accursed genius for being an obstacle.

“I’m making some curd cakes for tea,” she said in a defiant cross voice toward her son’s defiant cross back in the doorway.

“I don’t like curd cakes. I was sick last time I ate your curd cakes,” said Seryozha. Simply because he had loved curd cakes as a child, he thought, she retained her obsession that they were a poultice for all the austere wounds of his maturity.

He walked away into the wide, straggling, pitted street. His dog burst out of the yard like a torpedo and exploded in facetious barkings at the tail of the debased but nimble Korean dog that lived next door. The Korean dog had such short legs that they were little more than four bumps on its lower corners⁠—nevertheless, it fled with the lowly agility of a lizard. Seryozha’s dog walked with the stiffness of pride for a few minutes after that, and followed its master to the river.

The river was crossed by a wooden bridge with a sort of petticoat of dog-toothed wooden frill prudishly concealing the upper part of its piers. This decoration showed that it was a Russian-built bridge, and, in fact, Seryozha’s own hands had sawed and planed some of its planks. One could not say, however, that it was well built. A Russian refugee, a military engineer, a heroic but untrustworthy creature, had contracted for and designed the work only the year before, and now the thing was, unfortunately, tumbling down. The Chinese local authorities did not mind very much; they were well used to things tumbling down immediately after they were finished. Obstinately proud, therefore, of their petticoated but frail bridge, they quite cheerfully paid for endless pinnings together, proppings up and general coddlings of their treasure. At present the river was in flood, and logs rushing down the swollen stream from far lumber camps were a constant menace to the knock-kneed piers of the bridge, so, clinging to the toe of every pier, a coolie sat, chivalrously pushing fierce logs away with a pole. Wherever one person is found doing something definite in China, there also are found a score of people watching him do it. The sagging balustrade of the bridge was lined with shaven heads bending over to watch the defense against the blundering attack of the logs.

Seryozha thrust himself into this line of watchers, his strong square shoulders and forearms wedged between two skinny Chinese torsos. Seryozha’s dog swaggered along the line of human behinds and calves, sniffing lightly at each leg, as if playing with the idea of biting a piece out of one⁠—though of course it had too sacred a respect for the integrity of human skin actually to lift a tooth against it. Still, it would be a damn good joke, thought the dog, opening and shutting its nose jovially against one calf after another.

Next to Seryozha a young Chinese in European clothes lolled superciliously over the balustrade. This young man had a nose that sprang abruptly like a little eagle’s beak from a flatness between very bright black eyes. He lifted his rather negroid upper lip often to show one sparkling gold tooth in the middle of a row of ordinary yellow bone ones. On the top of his very thick, coarse, carefully parted black hair a too small Panama hat cocked a flaunting brim, and round the crown of the hat a ribbon showed what may well have been a medley of the colors of Eton, one of the more refined cycling clubs, and the Salvation Army. The young man had a very lively, acute expression, in spite of his deliberate attitude of scorn, and from the moment when Seryozha settled his elbows on the adjoining yard of balustrade, the sparkling lidless eyes of the young Chinese never left the Russian’s face.

“You speak English?” said the stranger to Seryozha.

For a moment Seryozha, who was in a very bad temper, considered ignoring the remark. He spoke fairly fluent English, taught by his Anglophile mother, and often used that language with her to annoy his father by shutting him out from jokes or secrets. He glowered at the stranger and then, struck in his tender heart by the look of polite confident expectancy on the face of the Chinese, he said, “I speak English⁠—not much, but enough.”

“I could see at once you were not English, of course,” said the young man. “You are Russian. I could not, of course, make a mistake on a thing like that. Yet, since I speak no Russian and you, probably, no Cantonese dialect, I thought I was perhaps justified in addressing you in English. I was right. Allow me to introduce myself⁠—Mr. Wilfred Chew⁠—Chu Wei-fu.”

He watched closely for Seryozha’s bow, but Seryozha’s large untutored body knew none of these graces. Seryozha simply looked at the Chinese with a cold rather stolid intensity, his mouth a little open, his fingers drumming rather impudently on the wooden rail in front of him. Mr. Chew himself bowed, therefore, once for Seryozha and once for himself. He was evidently a young man who never spared himself this kind of effort.

“I myself speak English quite perfectly,” he said. “I have lived in England for many years⁠—in London, to be exact, as a law student. I am now qualified to practice as a barrister. I could have made a fortune in London in the law, I dare say. But I am not the kind of man who deserts his country. I am Chinese. I am not ashamed of being Chinese. On the contrary. I therefore return to China to lay my services at her feet.”

“Oi-oi!” said Seryozha. He had never heard the English tongue spoken so fast⁠—or through a gold tooth. The combination of speed and sparkle he found intriguing but bewildering.

“Russians,” went on Mr. Chew, “are a people of very striking intelligence, influence, and⁠—in short, a people full of soul. Nevertheless, in Canton, my native city, I must confess that, from the point of view of an English trained professional man like myself, the Russian influence seems perhaps not altogether⁠—Excuse me, sir, what are your politics?”

“Politics?” squeaked Seryozha. “Oi! I am sorry, I am not a political person.”

“No politics? Well, of course, my dear Mr.⁠—er⁠—I sympathise with your point of view. It shows intelligence. Living in a foreign land as your business evidently obliges you to do, you feel, very reasonably, that you cannot sufficiently keep in touch with the conflicting ideas that followed upon the Russian revolution⁠—that the Bolshevik theory, interesting though it may be⁠—”

“Eh⁠—Bolshevik!” said Seryozha. “I mistook. I thought you have said politics. Eh no, of course, my family is a very White Russian family⁠—most White indeed.”

“I thought so. I was right. Well, as I was saying, the Bolsheviks have made Canton, my native city, a quite impossible place for a man like myself to conduct a career in. They are called ‘bloody Bolshies,’ you know, sir, in London⁠—and truly it is so. Shanghai is almost as bad, and⁠—to make a long story short⁠—”

“You cannot,” said Seryozha, who had been listening intently.

“Cannot what?”

“You cannot make a long story now short. It is too late. The story already is long. Though very interesting,” he added politely, seeing the expression of poor Mr. Chew’s face.

Wilfred Chew swallowed twice, with two little clicks, and his face looked suddenly childishly abashed and disappointed. One thin eyebrow puckered and rose high, as if that eye were trying to say, “Well, I at least don’t care⁠ ⁠…”

“Ah,” said Mr. Chew, and was silent, trying to be brave.

They leaned on the balustrade side by side, watching in silence the logs coming down in a disorderly scattered charge. Every approaching log was announced to the bridge’s defenders by a roar of warning from the spectators. Logs that traveled meekly endways were allowed to pass under the bridge unmolested, with a ready pole held hoveringly over them at the crucial moment, or, if they steered too close to a pier, a light kick from a coolie’s bare outstretched foot. But other logs, broadside on to their course, rolled clumsily down the muddy stream like rolling pins on yellow flour, and these, to the tune of howls of advice and applause, were deftly turned and steered under the bridge by the poles of the coolies. In the full central flow of the current, the logs rushed down like dragons to the attack. But near the banks of the river they traveled sleepily, even occasionally making long waltzing pauses in quiet eddies. These more dilatory attackers exerted a fascination for not too scrupulous citizens. Somehow, out of a group of logs that remained too long in harbor, one or two were likely never to put to sea again. All the cottages near by had the smoke of a good supply of firewood rising out of their chimneys, and one householder was frankly building a new bullock-shed of damp planks.

Seryozha’s dog squeezed itself between Seryozha and Wilfred Chew and, putting both paws on a horizontal rail below the balustrade, leaned out intelligently to watch the doings on the river. It barked once or twice in rather an affected voice, and then, deciding that it had shown all the interest that it could be expected to show in an almost smell-less entertainment, went away to talk with a group of farm dogs outside an inn near by.

Seryozha was uncomfortable about this deathlike silence in his right ear. He disliked the feeling of snubbing or interrupting anything. He obscurely wanted things to go on happily by themselves⁠—puppies to go on playing, suns to go on rising and setting, flowers to go on growing, babblers to go on babbling.⁠ ⁠… Of course, killing animals was different. Killing was part of the game of life that had a right to go on. Killing was allowed but snubbing was not.

“And London?” he said, in a grumbling, ungracious voice. “It is a good city?”

“London,” said Mr. Chew instantly, as if a cork had been pulled out, “is not, conventionally speaking, perhaps, a beautiful city. There are fogs and a great many rains. Westminster Abbey, the Tower of London, Buckingham and Saint James’s Palaces, Madame Tussaud’s, the Nelson lions, Selfridge’s, and the home of the late Charles Dickens⁠—all these are sublime structures and, what is very odd, the dirtiness of the London air and light makes their color beautiful, streaky, and fitting with their surroundings. If, however, by the word ‘good’ you perhaps mean to refer to morality, it is certainly a fact, Mr.⁠—er⁠—, that the London streets are full of moral dangers for a young man. Luckily for me, I was very carefully educated in the Christian principles at the Wesleyan Academy at Yueh-lai-chou, where I studied in my boyhood. The second master, namely Reverend Mr. Oswald Fawcett, has been the good influence on my life. He well prepared me for the temptations of life in a great city, and so I may say that I passed unscathed through the fire.”

“Oi-oi!” said Seryozha, putting a careful note of enthusiasm into the ejaculation this time. “And I think there is very many motorcars in London.”

“How many are there in Chi-tao-kou?”

“I think five, not speaking about Mr. Chang’s motorbicycle.”

“There are probably a thousand times as many in London. Motorcars are undoubtedly among the dangers of the streets in London. But I was referring to moral dangers⁠—wine, women, song⁠—”

“We too have singing girls in Chi-tao-kou. Even one Russian one called Sonia Matvievna.”

“I dare say you have. But singing girls mean nothing to me. I take morals and religion very seriously, you see, Mr.⁠—er⁠—.⁠ ⁠… Ethics, as we call them in London. Reverend Mr. Fawcett used always to say, ‘One can have a good time⁠—God likes us to have a good time⁠—but it should be God’s brand of good time.’ I always think of those words when I am in a moral danger. Is this God’s brand of good time?’ I say to myself, silently. ‘No, it is Satan’s brand.’ So I say, ‘Get behind.’ ”

“Tck tck!” clicked Seryozha, shaking his head ambiguously as it sank lower and lower between his hunched shoulders.

“You are asking yourself,” continued Mr. Chew, “what is this man Chew, a barrister from the Middle Temple, London, EC4, and a Christian of devout morality, doing in a little halfpenny-farthing town like Chi-tao-kou? And you may well ask, Mr.⁠—er⁠—”

“Very well indeed,” said Seryozha.

“The truth is that, under the present confused regime in China, aggravated by ‘bloody Bolshies’ (as Londoners say), it is extremely difficult for a highly educated member of the Middle Temple, called to the bar in London, and, until recently, the devil of Mr. W. I. Morgan, the renowned barrister, to get a living out of practising law in Shanghai or Canton. I therefore engaged myself, temporarily, in other employment⁠—that is, I have been acting as companion, philosopher, and friend (professional) to a young gentleman called Sir Theo Mustard, whose late father was a millionaire in Leeds, England, and whose uncle, now guardian, sent his charge to see the world, expense no object. I must admit that Sir Theo Mustard is not perhaps altogether fortunate⁠—or even normal⁠—in mental equipment, and only occasionally showed a keen interest in the beauty spots to which I guided him. We traveled to the Yangtze gorges; to Nanking; to the Holy Mountain; to the model prison, Peking; to call on the Governor of Mukden; to the Chinese drama; to spend one week in Seoul; to the Kongo-san; and finally I escorted him, with valet, to the train in Harbin which will carry him to Berlin. In Harbin Sir Theo Mustard and I parted with mutual expressions of good will and⁠—”

“To Seoul?” exclaimed Seryozha.

“Yes, Seoul, a fine old-world city, called by some the Peking of Korea. Of course my professional escort was paid for with a very handsome salary, but, most unfortunately, I received bad advice about investments in Harbin, and, to make a long⁠—I mean⁠—in short, I found myself stranded in Manchuria with scarcely a⁠—”

“You have been to Seoul?”

“Yes, I have told you. I went to Seoul with Sir Theo Mustard and spent there a very enjoyable week, since there Sir Theo Mustard was afflicted with earache, which obliged us to stay longer in that picturesque old capital than we had intended. The earache arose, I think, from an otherwise most successful afternoon we spent in the Seoul museum. It made a great impression on Sir Theo Mustard, for he several times referred to Seoul by name, even after we had reached Harbin⁠—”

“Do you know the way from here to Seoul?”

“Certainly I do. I have a great gift for studying maps, railway guides, and other schedules, and in Nanking I was able to show Sir Theo Mustard a chart showing our exact future movements⁠—times of trains⁠—expeditions⁠—names of hotels⁠—curio-shops, etcetera⁠—foreshadowing every detail up to the last moment of the trip. Of course it was impossible for me to anticipate the earache, but apart from this⁠—”

“Will you please come with me and visit my mother and my father to tell them about Seoul?” asked Seryozha.

They both stepped backward from the balustrade with such alacrity that they trod on two bare Chinese feet on tiptoe behind them.

“Certainly I will come and visit anybody,” said Mr. Chew. “As soon as I saw your face, Mr.⁠—er⁠—, I felt we should be friends. I was right.”

“Have you met a gentleman called Gavril Ilitch Isaev in Seoul?” asked Seryozha breathlessly, as they walked side by side up the street.

“Isaev? He keeps a small but respectable hotel in Seoul, and, curiously enough, I stayed there for a night or two, since the Japanese hotel was full when we first arrived or rather, it had only one suite disengaged, which was occupied by Sir Theo Mustard and valet.”

Seryozha’s dog bounced into Anna’s kitchen, and when Anna saw it, she thought, “Thank God, he has not gone away forever, after all.”

“Mamma,” said Seryozha, “I have brought Mr. Wilfred Chew from London.”

“From London?” exclaimed Anna, and instantly left the room. For she was still wearing only her cotton bodice and petticoat, and there was a bottle-green velvet dress, sixteen years old, waiting in a tin trunk for just such an occasion as this.

She took twenty minutes dressing herself and frizzing her hair, and as⁠—self-conscious, hopeful, and flushed⁠—she came to the open door of the living-room, she stood for a moment outside and heard her husband saying to Seryozha in Russian: “Tell him politely that we are poor and could not possibly afford two yen a day above his keep. But tell him that he shall share and share alike with you⁠—he shall be treated, in fact, like my own son, in addition to a little salary of twenty-five sen a day⁠—”

Anna tightened her lips and came in. She was flattered and astonished to see the brightening of Mr. Chew’s smooth, mobile face as he saw her.

“Ah, Mrs. Malinin, I presume,” he said. “It has seemed long waiting for you, but ladies must be waited for⁠—I remember this in London. I am so interested to hear that you also know London. I have been for four years a law student in London⁠—Middle Temple⁠ ⁠… you of course know Middle Temple⁠—and I was called to the bar there eight months ago.”

“Ah yes, the bar of London,” said Anna, eagerly. “I am very ignorant of most London matters, but I know of course there are many bars.”

Mr. Chew accepted this innocent remark as a joke so readily that it might almost have been guessed that he had made it himself more than once. When he smiled, Anna noticed his solitary gold tooth and thought that it looked like the royal box glittering in the middle of the row of ordinary boxes at the opera. So she said: “And the opera of London⁠—oh, how happily I remember it! I have been to the opera four times with a lady called Honorable Mrs. Atkinson⁠—there has been Siegfried⁠—The Valkyrie⁠—Magic Flute and La Bohême.”

“I also knew a family called Atkinson,” said Wilfred Chew. “Edward F. Atkinson, but I don’t like him much⁠—such a conceited chap⁠—I worked in the chambers on the same stairs for four months and he scarcely spoke⁠ ⁠… simply because he was the son of a solor⁠—naturally anybody could get briefs in such circumstances⁠—”

“To me,” said Anna, after a partially smothered hiccup which showed how deeply excited she was, “the scenery of the opera is very, very happy, Mr. Chew⁠—in such scenery one has never been so unfortunate as to see all⁠—do you understand?⁠—there is always a round the corner or an over the hill which one has not seen. How very, very happy it is to me, to know that there has been a round the corner⁠—that I have not seen⁠—even if it is only made with woods and paints. England, to me, Mr. Chew, is a big, big round the corner.⁠ ⁠… More happy than possible happiness⁠—yes, no?”

“Now there,” said Mr. Chew, “I should scarcely agree with you entirely, though of course I have had many happy hours in London. But to a young man carving out a career the work was often hard, Mrs. Malinin, and English people⁠—with the exception of a gentleman like Reverend Mr. Oswald Fawcett⁠—are nearly always snobs⁠—”

Anna, her burning eyes fixed upon his tooth, said: “Yes, yes, Mr. Chew. And the pillars of this opera-house⁠—do you remember?⁠—all gold and twisted⁠—so” (for a moment she seemed to think that she could twist her fat upraised forefinger into an imitation of barley sugar)⁠—“like⁠ ⁠… like⁠ ⁠… pillars of that thing⁠—how do you call it?⁠—horses-merrily-go-galloping-round on the Hampstead Heath. These go-rounds are very, very good things, I think, but Betti was being sick afterward in the hot tent.”

Old Sergei and Seryozha sat back in their chairs, their hands folded across their diaphragms, proud of their wife and mother, listening hopefully to this loud and genial conversation, though they did not understand very much of it. During a short check, Old Sergei said in Russian, “My love, do you not think that Mr. Chew would be just the man to⁠—”

“Kensington Gardens, too, is good,” said Anna, bounding in her chair. “Each day, at half past eleven, Betti and I have walked through the Kensington Gardens as far as Queen Cleopatra’s Needle⁠—”

Wilfred Chew started as if stung. “There is some mistake, surely, Mrs. Malinin. Cleopatra’s Needle is not in the Kensington Gardens.”

“Yes. But yes. A little spike in the middle of the Kensington Gardens.”

“This is the Albert Memorial.”

“Tcht, Mr. Chew! King Albert’s Memorial is very well known by me. I make no mistake. A very, very big spike⁠—King Albert in middle⁠—bull⁠—elephant⁠—lady at corners. It is all known by me.”

“Nevertheless, Cleopatra’s Needle is, beyond question, on the Embankment of the river Thames, Mrs. Malinin.”

“Tcht, tcht!”

“Anna my dear,” said Old Sergei. “It has just occurred to me that we might induce Mr. Chew⁠—”

“But I know the Kensington Gardens very, very good, Mr. Chew. Each morning have I walked to that little spike, builded in a pink stone, very shining⁠—”

“Ladies always know best, Mrs. Malinin,” said Mr. Chew, archly. “But in this case⁠—”

“Ah tschah! But I have seen⁠—”

“Well, well⁠ ⁠… you ladies must have your own way. Reverend Mr. Fawcett used to say, ‘Always allow a lady the courtesy of the last word, Wilfred.’ So let us say Cleopatra’s Needle had wings and flew every morning at half past eleven to the Kensington Gardens to make her bow to you, Mrs. Malinin.”

Anna, only half understanding, rocked backward and forward in restored satisfaction, patting her fat knees with every forward swing. But as she did so she became secretly more and more doubtful of the accuracy of her memory of Cleopatra’s Needle. Her pleased face clouded slowly as the doubt crystallized, her rocking was gradually braked and stilled by inward questionings. There was silence in the room.

“Annitchka my dove,” said Old Sergei, rapidly, in Russian. “Mr. Chew has just come from acting as guide to a young English nobleman, and it has occurred to me that we might persuade him to look after our Seryozha on this trip down to Seoul⁠—”

Anna sighed.

“I know you are not very anxious that he should go, my love, but Mr. Chew’s fortunate arrival must surely alter your view to a certain extent. It almost seems as if he were sent by God to us in our difficulty. He actually knows Isaev⁠—has been staying in his house. If I understand your conversation rightly, he seems to know your friends, the Honorable Atkinsons, in London, which must give you pleasure. Also, it seems to me very probable that he is of the same family as my old friend Colonel Chu Wen-chou (whose father came from Canton also, you remember) and⁠—”

Wilfred Chew, listening with bland blankness to the Russian, caught the names. “Ha⁠—Atkinson⁠—Chu⁠—Isaev⁠—all this talk of families and mutual acquaintances.⁠ ⁠… I was telling your husband, Mrs. Malinin⁠—(in joke, of course)⁠—that he must remember that he is not seeking for a tribe or family to go with his son, but simply for a reliable companion⁠—and that⁠—”

“Oi, tcht!” said Seryozha in English. “Please let my papa be satisfied in the way he wishes. This talk of families is good talk for him⁠—it makes him glad.”

Anna sighed again, and heaved in her chair.

“It is natural,” said Old Sergei, half apologetically, half reproachfully, “that I should be glad to find that my son’s companion comes of an honest and good stock. I always respected Colonel Chu and, although his father came from Canton, the colonel was never seduced by Bolshevik influence, so rampant in that part of China. Anna my dove, I am sure you agree with me that, all things considered, this is an opportunity that should not be missed.”

Anna’s eyes were fixed on her son’s face. Seryozha’s mouth was open and his face, unusually pale, was lighted up with a half-incredulous hope. Anna imagined how that tense white look would crumple up at a word of discouragement from her. It would be like pricking his poor, silly, feverish, puffed-up heart. After all, why shouldn’t he go? she thought, deliberately letting her rigid mind go limp. People went on such journeys and returned; and if their mothers had feared the worst for them beforehand, that in itself was a sort of insurance that the worst was not to be. She began looking forward to watching Seryozha’s face, three minutes from now, when she should have said yes. Now she only uttered an ambiguous grunt.

“The only question is, the expense,” said Old Sergei. He turned to Wilfred Chew and said in English, “We poor mans. Two yens every day too much. I pays twenty-five sens every day. Also I pays all foods and beds.”

Wilfred Chew smiled engagingly and shrugged his shoulders, holding his head on one side, “Between gentlemen, Mr. Malinin, there should be no bargaining. But surely one yen a day, and all expenses, would not be too much to ask. You must remember that I am an educated chap⁠—not a common vulgar guide, so to speak⁠—”

“Speke!” shouted Anna, a sudden glare of inspiration burning up the whole problem in her mind. “This spike in Kensington Gardens is called Speke’s Needle.”

“Ha⁠—Speke!” said Mr. Chew, faintly, for he had been severely startled by his hostess’s full-throated roar. “Ha! no doubt, yes⁠ ⁠… Speke’s Needle.⁠ ⁠… A renowned judge, of course, Speke.⁠ ⁠…”

The discussion came to a standstill for a moment, but Anna, her mind now cleared of distractions, was her keen self again. “One yen a day we have not got,” she said, abruptly. “You see, Seryozha, it is not your mother that prevents. The thing is not possible. You know yourself what we have and what we have not.”

“Of course,” said Old Sergei, in Russian. “If the interest on my two hundred yen should by now have reached a considerable sum, we should be able to afford to pay⁠—say fifty sen a day now and, when the money was in our hands, give Mr. Chew something extra, proportionate to the services he will have rendered us.”

“If there will be more money for us in Seoul,” said Seryozha, to Chew in English, nerved by the crisis to speak thus crudely in spite of his shyness, before a young man so superior, “my father will give more money to you. He speak fifty sen a day promise⁠—at the end more, perhaps.”

“My salary for acting as escort to Sir Theo Mustard⁠—” began Wilfred Chew. Then, as he saw a mulish finality written on the faces of all three Malinins, he added, “but there, life is full of such contrasts. I will escort your son for fifty sen a day and expenses, on the understanding that if he obtains the money with interest from Mr. Isaev, I can claim ten sen on every yen obtained over and above the two hundred yen.”

“Well⁠ ⁠… Annitchka?” said Old Sergei, faintly.

“I should have to wash out all three of his shirts,” said Anna, her eyes suddenly full of tears. “And I must have time to patch the knee of his best trousers.⁠ ⁠…”

Seryozha remembered one of his mother’s English idioms. “Tschah! All this bibbing and tuckering⁠ ⁠…” he said. Then, with a loud creaking yell of joy, he rushed into his mother’s arms.