"Twenty-eight, Berkshire Street," repeated Yeovil, and got into the cab,
leaving the driver to re-translate the direction into his own language.
A succession of cabs leaving the station blocked the roadway for a moment
or two, and Yeovil had leisure to observe the fact that Viktoria Strasse
was lettered side by side with the familiar English name of the street. A
notice directing the public to the neighbouring swimming baths was also
written up in both languages. London had become a bi-lingual city, even
as Warsaw.
The cab threaded its way swiftly along Buckingham Palace Road towards the
Mall. As they passed the long front of the Palace the traveller turned
his head resolutely away, that he might not see the alien uniforms at the
gates and the eagle standard flapping in the sunlight. The taxi driver,
who seemed to have combative instincts, slowed down as he was turning
into the Mall, and pointed to the white pile of memorial statuary in
front of the palace gates.
"Grossmutter Denkmal, yes," he announced, and resumed his journey.
Arrived at his destination, Yeovil stood on the steps of his house and
pressed the bell with an odd sense of forlornness, as though he were a
stranger drifting from nowhere into a land that had no cognisance of him;
a moment later he was standing in his own hall, the object of respectful
solicitude and attention. Sprucely garbed and groomed lackeys busied
themselves with his battered travel-soiled baggage; the door closed on
the guttural-voiced taxi driver, and the glaring July sunshine. The
wearisome journey was over.
"Poor dear, how dreadfully pulled-down you look," said Cicely, when the
first greetings had been exchanged.
"It's been a slow business, getting well," said Yeovil. "I'm only three-
quarter way there yet."
He looked at his reflection in a mirror and laughed ruefully.
"You should have seen what I looked like five or six weeks ago," he
added.
"You ought to have let me come out and nurse you," said Cicely; "you know
I wanted to."
"Oh, they nursed me well enough," said Yeovil, "and it would have been a
shame dragging you out there; a small Finnish health resort, out of the
season, is not a very amusing place, and it would have been worse for any
one who didn't talk Russian."
"You must have been buried alive there," said Cicely, with commiseration
in her voice.
"I wanted to be buried alive," said Yeovil. "The news from the outer
world was not of a kind that helped a despondent invalid towards
convalescence. They spoke to me as little as possible about what was
happening, and I was grateful for your letters because they also told me
very little. When one is abroad, among foreigners, one's country's
misfortunes cause one an acuter, more personal distress, than they would
at home even."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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