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.
VI
Seryozha and Wilfred Chew began their journey in a happy sunlight swimming with swallows. Neither Seryozha nor Wilfred saw the birds. And indeed, birds are transparent, I think, like the safe anonymous shapes of sheep on hillsides or policemen at city crossings; these things are part of fitness; they are so native to the air that they become glass to the attention. An eagle is different, of course; no one ever looks through an eagle; a piece of the sky is reserved for him, and he moves into his place as a king moves to his throne, with every eye upon him.
“I think it is three meters from this to that,” said Seryozha, becoming for a moment an eagle, spreading his arms to an imperial stretch and pointing his beak to the sun. Unfortunately, his feet unexpectedly remained on earth and tripped over a stone.
“Three meters is nothing for an eagle,” said Wilfred, who was
