"When he died, I was by his bedside. He was murmuring the name Arthur Hastings, and I took it as referring to me. On his deathbed, he gave me a signature, a surname, a vague story. I accepted these things as a soldier accepts a rifle with no ammunition—it might be useless, but holding it still makes you seem like a soldier. Of course, in the end, I didn't become a soldier but a middle-class person, in name only."
Several hours later, the old gentleman passed away.
On the bedside table remained a will and a document for a name change.
The funeral was simple, attended by a few old servants in ill-fitting black clothes, a priest reciting the prayers, Arthur bowing his head in silence. Everything was as he had hoped: quiet, dignified, undisputed.
Next, it was time for him to leave.
He set off, with no relatives seeing him off and no nostalgia for his homeland. Arthur Hastings boarded a carriage heading south to London from Bradford.
