Читать книгу Tinker's Leave - Maurice Baring - Страница 7

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The conversation was at this moment interrupted by the arrival of some acquaintances of Miles’ new friends.

Miles took leave of his hostess, and he thought the adventure would be put away in the limbo in which so many projected dreams, journeys, castles in the air or in Spain, are stored.

But as he left the appartement, Madame Dashkov said to him once more: “We will expect you to déjeuner to-morrow. And we will go on with the discussion.”

Alyosha followed him to the door and said:

“Think it over. I am serious. To-morrow morning, at ten, we will arrange everything. I have to go to Petersburg. I have just come back from America. I went there on business for my Government, to buy machines for them. Anyhow, la nuit porte conseil. I want a companion, and it would interest you to see Russia.”

“Very well,” said Miles; “I will think it over.”

He wondered at his own words. He wondered that he could even pretend for a moment to consider so wild a scheme.

Miles dined as usual at his Duval restaurant. He was glad to be by himself. He sat on after dinner, smoking cigarettes. It was, of course, out of the question—this fantastic journey. But why?—why not? What was to prevent him? It was true it wasn’t a life to go every day to the office and sign letters ... it was not as if he were leaving responsible work ... he was merely a machine—not even a machine, just a figurehead. There was Aunt Fanny ... but he would not even have to face an interview with her; and then he might say it was good for his business to get into touch with some Russians. At any rate, it would give him experience, and experience could never do any one any harm. Well, he would think it over in the night. He intended to ponder over the question for several hours, and to consider it from every angle, and in every detail; but as soon as he was in bed he fell asleep, and he was surprised to find when he woke up that it was half-past nine.

After he had dressed and drunk his café au lait, as he looked at the bright April sun shining on the quays and on the Seine, he felt that the conversation of yesterday had been a dream ... he was now back in real life once more. He would go for a brisk walk, on his way to the Bristol. He would tell Alyosha Kouragine that the matter was out of the question; he would then make his arrangements for going back to London.

It was a lovely spring morning. The sky was of the palest, cleanest blue. Most of the trees in the Champs Elysées were still bare, but here and there there was a touch of green. There were buds everywhere, and the boughs were red with sap.

As Miles crossed the Place de la Concorde, he paused and wondered at the elegance of Paris. The city seemed to have put on her spring apparel. He looked up the Champs Elysées towards the Arc de Triomphe, and that monument seemed to be unreal as a bubble, a part of the sky, a bit of water-colour flung lightly on the canvas by an artist in a moment of careless inspiration. He looked up the Rue Royale; the buildings with their graceful colonnades to the right and the left of the street, and the Madeleine at the end of it looked as clean and as clear as those of a coloured print in perfect condition. And then the Louvre and the gardens of the Tuileries and the bridges and the Chamber of Deputies: they were all of them notes in the spring symphony ... there was no smoke in the air. Cabs drove by, and the sun glinted on the shiny white hats of the cabmen; here and there a red taxi-auto; a boy passed him, carrying a basket on his head, whistling; a man in the Tuileries gardens was calling to the birds, who seemed to know him and came to him tame and in flocks; an old priest passed by in a shabby soutane reading in a little book; nurses, children, soldiers, neatly dressed women, lounging voyous, all of them seemed to-day to be part of the spring landscape. The scene, thought Miles, had been staged especially for him.

He walked on past the gardens of the Tuileries, down the Rue de Rivoli, and when he reached the Rue Castiglione, instead of turning up it, he walked further on, wishing to prolong his walk. At last he turned up a side street into the Rue St. Honoré, which was full of bustle, and then suddenly he was aware of a sound in the distance: four or five notes played on a reedy pipe.

What was it? Who was it?

Had he known, it was only one of the street cries of Paris, a mender of china or umbrellas advertising his trade ... but to Miles on that April morning the notes had an intoxicating lilt and magical gaiety about them. It was as though the Spring itself were calling. Miles thought of a fairy tale; he could not remember which.

The music got into his blood; a spirit of intoxicating irresponsibility seized him, and he said to himself:

“Yes, why not? Why not? Why shouldn’t I go away? ... travel ... travel ... over the hills and far away, and seek adventure ... live? ... Why should I go back to London? Must I?” It was no doubt the sensible thing. But was it really? And why? And what did that matter?

When he arrived at the hotel, Alyosha hardly kept him waiting a moment.

“I asked you to come early because there are several things to be done. You must go to the Embassy and get a passport. Have you a passport?”

“No,” said Miles, “but——”

“And then you must get it viséd, and we must go to the Russian Embassy, and then we will take you to the wagon-lits and get you a ticket.” Alyosha seemed to take it for granted that Miles had made up his mind to go. He did not even ask him whether he had thought over the matter. “In the way of clothes,” he went on, “I expect you have got what you want. But I would advise you to buy a kettle—what you call a tea-basket. I think they are always useful when one wants to make tea for oneself on long journeys.”

“But I really think,” said Miles, and he knew he was only saying this for the sake of form, “that before taking such a decision, it would be only fair for me to consult my partner.” He would have been miserable if Alyosha had agreed.

“Why?” asked Alyosha. “What difference will it make to him? If you stop to consult him, it will be too late. I thought we had settled all that. My uncle and my aunt say it’s absurd that you should waste your life in this manner. Let us get a fiacre.”

Miles and Alyosha walked downstairs, and Miles felt that he was in the hands of a delightful familiar; that he had no more will of his own, but that he was being borne away like Faust in the cloak of a reliable Mephistopheles. After all, Alyosha was right. It would not make the slightest difference to Saxby whether he was in London or not. Saxby treated him as a piece of furniture.

“Well, I must send him a telegram.”

“We will do that presently.”

They drove to the sleeping-car office. Alyosha had his seat already. They booked one for Miles. They went to the British Embassy, where Miles interviewed one of the secretaries, and obtained a passport without difficulty. They then went to the Russian Embassy, where other formalities were accomplished. Alyosha quietly took charge of the proceedings, although he never put himself forward. He seemed to do nothing except be there, but nevertheless he suggested each step, and saw that it was carried out. He managed Miles as a skilful conductor manages an orchestra—not a single dot or quaver escaped his notice, and yet he seemed to be doing nothing.

Their business lasted the whole morning. It included the dispatch of two telegrams—one to Saxby and the other to Aunt Fanny, announcing Miles’ departure for St. Petersburg; and the purchase of a convenient suit-case and a tea-basket for the journey. Alyosha had known at what shops to procure these articles.

They had been so busily engaged in practical details that it struck Miles, as they got into a fiacre to drive back to the hotel, that he had as yet no idea what Alyosha was going to do in Russia—whether he lived there and was going home, or whether he meant to go for a short visit.

“Are you going to Russia for good?” he asked him suddenly.

Alyosha had just been explaining to Miles that he always slept in loose blankets, and could not bear a Jaeger sleeping-bag.

“I am on my way from America. I was sent there by my Government when the war began ... I was in the Far East; they sent me to British Columbia to buy things. I was an officer before, long ago, when I was young, but ‘that’s another story,’ and I can’t tell it to you now, it is too long; perhaps I will never tell it to you at all. But for reasons which you would understand if I told you, it is not possible for me to get a job as an officer in the Army at present.... I am a kind of free-lance. I have to get what jobs I can. They may be many and different. I have had some already: I have bought cattle in Mongolia and I have been on an embassy to a Hun-Hu-se general ... you know what the Hun-Hu-ses are, not red-bearded brigands but cultivated outlaws—a sort of independent Chinese Foreign Legion or militant Freemasons—a state within a state—who live on blackmail. I went to arrange with them that they should annoy the Japanese if war broke out. I didn’t know Chinese, but we got on very well all the same. Then the war broke out. As I was in British Columbia, I was caught and so I had to come back this way and not by sea. I hope to get the same job when I come back.... It depends.”

“Then you are going back to the war?”

“Of course.”

“At once? Then I shall be left to myself. I shouldn’t, I suppose, be able to go with you?”

“Would you like to go?”

“Yes,” said Miles.

He had never thought of such a thing before, but he knew that nothing was more true.

“Well, we should have to arrange that,” said Alyosha.

They arrived back at the hotel in time for luncheon. Madame Dashkov and her husband took the arrangements they had made as a matter of course. They seemed to think it an excellent as well as a natural thing that Miles should be starting for St. Petersburg.

So much so, that Miles was infected by their mood, and began to think that it was a natural thing himself. They all dined together that night and went, to please Dashkov, to the Théatre Français, where there was a performance of Victor Hugo’s Ruy Blas. Alyosha excused himself at the last moment, saying he had too many letters to write.

Madame Dashkov criticised the play and Monsieur Dashkov criticised the acting, but Miles was moved to tears. He had never in his life seen anything so touching or so romantic.

The next morning he started for St. Petersburg with Alyosha. The Dashkov family came to see them off at the station. That evening Mrs. Consterdine arrived in Paris. But she was too late to stop Miles. He had gone, so they said at the hotel, that morning, and he had left no direction.