Morrison tipped the concierge at the hotel generously to ensure that his ticket to Kobe would be for a train with both a sleeping carriage and dining car. It had neither.
The train was packed with army reservists and members of the Army Service Corps headed for the front. At every station they embarked, solemn-faced, young, flush with pride and uncertainty, their packs smelling of pickles and dried fish. Mothers and wives in dark blue ‘victory colour’ kimonos farewelled them from underneath banners inscribed with their names and to the bombast of military marches played by schoolchildren in brass bands. The train pulled out of each station to cries of ‘Banzai! Banzai!’ Morrison took notes out of a lifetime’s habit, but his heart was not with his eyes or his pencil.
At one station, the train stopped long enough for him to send a telegram: FAREWELL MY DARLING. GOD BLESS YOU AND GIVE YOU MUCH HAPPINESS. ALWAYS THINKING OF YOU. ERNEST.
At Kobe’s Oriental Hotel, Morrison met up with a correspondent who had witnessed both the crossing of the Yalu and a battle at the Manchurian town of Chu Lien Cheng. ‘The Japanese fighting must be seen to be believed,’ the man raved. ‘They are devils unchained. Nothing can stay in their path.’
He walked out onto the beach, past fishermen laying sardines to dry on straw mats and children playing by the water’s edge as their mothers squatted nearby mending nets. Overcome by unreasonable hope, he turned his steps to the Telegraph Office. He had left her his itinerary. The clerk checked. Nothing had come for him. He scribbled out a second telegram and handed it to the clerk. JUST ARRIVED. LEAVING TOMORROW. AM WRITING MUCH LOVE FROM ERNEST. ORIENTAL HOTEL. Restless, he strolled to the ancient port of Hyogo, barely taking in the fine temples and shrines. Marooned by language, he spoke to no one. Returning to the hotel, he asked the desk if anything had come for him. Nothing had. What is she doing that she cannot find the time for a telegram? He could guess.
The Japanese press claimed the Manchurian city of Liaoyang had fallen. That would be good news indeed. Morrison wondered if James had made it in time to witness the battle.
He slept poorly.
The following morning, just before ten o’clock, the hotel delivered a telegram. It had been sent from Yokohama at eight past nine. NEVER FORGET YOU AND DEEPLY GRIEVED AT PARTING. HAVE PLEASANT VOYAGE TO PEKING. SURELY LEAVING ON THE MONGOLIA. MUCH LOVE MAYSIE.
Morrison instantly wired back: DORIC LEAVING TONIGHT MIDNIGHT ARRIVES NAGASAKI SUNDAY EARLY. PROCEEDING SAME EVENING SHANGHAI ARRIVING EARLY TUESDAY. YOUR KIND TELEGRAM JUST RECEIVED GIVEN ME MUCH PLEASURE FOR I WAS WORRYING GREATLY NOT HAVING HEARD FROM YOU YESTERDAY. ALL LOVING HEARTFELT WISHES FOR YOUR HAPPINESS AND CONTENTMENT. ERNEST.
On deck, Morrison discovered in his pocket a pamphlet he’d picked up when waiting for Mae a few days earlier. Having made the acquaintance of a Japanese merchant on the same boat who was supplying canvas tents to the army, he asked him to translate it. The man read it and frowned. ‘The author, Kotoku Shusui, is a famous journalist. He says that if war promotes the cause of humanity, ethics and freedom, that is good. But if it is to advance the careers of politicians and military men, and benefit speculators with the result that people’s wealth is plundered and their children must die, we must firmly oppose it.’
‘I see.’ Morrison frowned, unexpectedly rattled by the recollection of Mae’s sharp little commentary on the morality of men and war. He could have argued, of course. But that would have given Egan an advantage. It seemed so important then, the competition. It was over, all of it, and he needed to accept that. The story was finished, his last telegram the coda. He should not think of her again. He and the Japanese merchant stared into the waves.
The Doric stopped at Nagasaki around four o’clock on the afternoon of the twenty-sixth of June. MISS PERKINS GRAND HOTEL YOKOHAMA. JUST STARTING FOR SHANGHAI. MAY YOUR VOYAGE HOME BE ALL SUNSHINE. YOUR RETURN WHILST LEAVING MANY DESOLATE IN THE ORIENT WILL SURELY MAKE GLAD THE HEARTS OF THOSE DEAR TO YOU IN OAKLAND WHO ARE SO EAGERLY WAITING TO GIVE YOU WELCOME. I TRUST THAT AMIDST YOUR DISTRACTIONS YOU WILL SOMETIMES FIND LEISURE TO WRITE TO ME AND WILL NOT LET ME SLIP ALTOGETHER FROM YOUR MEMORY I KNOW NOT IF FATE WILL EVER PERMIT US TO COME TOGETHER AGAIN BUT WHATEVER HAPPENS I SHALL ALWAYS TREASURE YOUR MEMORY. AND GRATEFULLY RECALL THOSE HAPPY MOMENTS I HAVE SPENT WITH YOU. GOODBYE MY DEAR. ERNEST.
By the time the steamer departed on its final leg, it was four in the morning the following day. No telegram had come in reply. He was not sure why he’d expected one might. She must have gone in the Mongolia after all, he wrote in his journal. Being always under the influence of the last-comer, she would at the time of leaving have forgotten all about me.
Exhausted, he lay on his bunk. The cabin was airless and hot. The ship’s whistle blew continuously. Sweating and tossing on the small bunk, Morrison gave up on sleep and opened his journal once more. But what does it matter? The sooner that it ended, the better. It has been a curious episode in my career, this passionate attachment.
He felt himself on the move again, for him a state much like home.
Breakfast consisted of a cup of terrible coffee and a greasy bologna sausage at the same table as a man who had been horribly disfigured, he explained to Morrison with disconcerting good cheer, by the blowing out of his rifle breech. It was stifling below deck and insupportable above. Trying to read on a long chair on deck, he imagined Maysie in her elegant stateroom on the Mongolia, singing for the other passengers in the first-class music room, playing her little food game with the fine meals in the dining saloon. He suddenly recalled her telling him that Mrs Goodnow had said that once she’d been ‘kissed’ by another woman she’d never look back. Mae had declared she was going to get a Japanese maid who would kiss her all the way to America. He wondered if she’d done so, and lingered a moment on that thought. Dozing off, he woke up with sore legs, a headache and sunburn, as well as the sense that beauty, comfort and pleasure had been leached from his world.
The merchant had disembarked at Nagasaki. The only remaining diversion was one Miss Florence E. Smith, tall, splendidly shaped and off to Shanghai to marry her lover in the Standard Oil Company. Morrison could have sworn he’d seen her in Yokohama in the company of Major Seeman. When the Doric berthed in Shanghai the next day, her lover was nowhere in sight and Miss Smith was awash in tears. Just as Morrison thought he’d worked it out—another faithless woman, another tragic tale—and considered offering to console her himself, the lover appeared and Miss Smith sprang into his arms. What a fortunate pair. Such complete happiness. A love that is most beautiful to witness.
Morrison’s heart contracted suddenly around the thought of Maysie. It occurred to him that she might, at that very moment, be unwrapping a pile of his letters and reading them to, perhaps, the captain of the Mongolia. He tried to smile at the image.