Ah King Page 17

  “He shook his head.

  “‘If you saw her you wouldn’t wish it,’ he said.

  “I stared at him aghast. In the silence I heard a man’s convulsive sobbing.

  “‘Who’s that?’ I asked.

  “‘Her brother.’

  “Then I felt a hand on my arm. I looked round and saw it was Mrs Sergison.

  “‘My poor boy,’ she said, ‘I’m so sorry for you.’

  “‘What on earth made her do it?’ I groaned.

  “‘Come away, my dear,’ said Mrs Sergison. ‘You can do no good here.’

  “‘No, I must stay,’ I said.

  “‘Well, go and sit in my room,’ said the doctor.

  “I was so broken that I let Mrs Sergison take me by the arm and lead me into the doctor’s private room. She made me sit down. I couldn’t bring myself to realize that it was true. I thought it was a horrible nightmare from which I must awake. I don’t know how long we sat there. Three hours. Four hours. At last the doctor came in.

  “‘It’s all over,’ he said.

  “Then I couldn’t help myself, I began to cry. I didn’t care what they thought of me. I was so frightfully unhappy.

  “We buried her next day.

  “Mrs Sergison came back to my house and sat with me for a while. She wanted me to go to the club with her. I hadn’t the heart. She was very kind, but I was glad when she left me by myself. I tried to read, but the words meant nothing to me. I felt dead inside. My boy came in and turned on the lights. My head was aching like mad. Then he came back and said that a lady wished to see me. I asked who it was. He wasn’t quite sure, but he thought it must be the new wife of the tuan at Putatan. I couldn’t imagine what she wanted. I got up and went to the door. He was right. It was Sally. I asked her to come in. I noticed that she was deathly white. I felt sorry for her. It was a frightful experience for a girl of that age and for a bride a miserable homecoming. She sat down. She was very nervous. I tried to put her at her ease by saying conventional things. She made me very uncomfortable because she stared at me with those enormous blue eyes of hers, and they were simply ghastly with horror. She interrupted me suddenly.

  “‘You’re the only person here I know,’ she said. ‘I had to come to you. I want you to get me away from here.’

  “I was dumbfounded.

  “‘What do you mean?’ I said.

  “‘I don’t want you to ask me any questions. I just want you to get me away. At once. I want to go back to England!’

  “‘But you can’t leave Tim like that just now,’ I said. ‘My dear, you must pull yourself together. I know it’s been awful for you. But think of Tim. If you have any love for him the least you can do is try and make him a little less unhappy.’

  “‘Oh, you don’t know,’ she cried. ‘I can’t tell you. It’s too horrible. I beseech you to help me. If there’s a train tonight let me get on it. If I can only get to Penang I can get a ship. I can’t stay in this place another night. I shall go mad.’

  “I was absolutely bewildered.

  “‘Does Tim know?’ I asked her.

  “‘I haven’t seen Tim since last night. I’ll never see him again. I’d rather die.’

  “I wanted to gain a little time.

  “‘But how can you go without your things? Have you got any luggage?’

  “‘What does that matter?’ she cried impatiently. ‘I’ve got what I want for the journey.’

  “‘Have you any money?’

  “‘Enough. Is there a train tonight?’

  “‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It’s due just after midnight.’

  “‘Thank God. Will you arrange everything? Can I stay here till then?’

  “‘You’re putting me in a frightful position,’ I said. ‘I don’t know what to do for the best. You know, it’s an awfully serious step you’re taking.’

  “‘If you knew everything you’d know it was the only possible thing to do.’

  “‘It’ll create an awful scandal here. I don’t know what people’ll say. Have you thought of the effect on Tim?’ I was worried and unhappy. ‘God knows I don’t want to interfere in what isn’t my business. But if you want me to help you I ought to know enough to feel justified in doing so. You must tell me what’s happened.’

  “‘I can’t. I can only tell you that I know everything.’

  “She hid her face with her hands and shuddered. Then she gave herself a shake as though she were recoiling from some frightful sight.

  “‘He had no right to marry me. It was monstrous.’

  “And as she spoke her voice rose shrill and piercing. I was afraid she was going to have an attack of hysterics. Her pretty doll-like face was terrified and her eyes stared as though she could never close them again.

  “‘Don’t you love him any more?’ I asked.

  “‘After that?’

  “‘What will you do if I refuse to help you?’ I said.

  “‘I suppose there’s a clergyman here or a doctor. You can’t refuse to take me to one of them.’

  “‘How did you get here?’

  “‘The head boy drove me. He got a car from somewhere.’

  “‘Does Tim know you’ve gone?’

  “‘I left a letter for him.’

  “‘He’ll know you’re here.’

  “‘He won’t try to stop me. I promise you that. He daren’t. For God’s sake don’t you try either. I tell you I shall go mad if I stay here another night.’

  “I sighed. After all she was of an age to decide for herself.”

  I, the writer of this, hadn’t spoken for a long time.

  “Did you know what she meant?” I asked Featherstone.

  He gave me a long, haggard look.

  “There was only one thing she could mean. It was unspeakable. Yes, I knew all right. It explained everything. Poor Olive. Poor sweet. I suppose it was unreasonable of me, at that moment I only felt a horror of that little pretty fair-haired thing with her terrified eyes. I hated her. I didn’t say anything for a while. Then I told her I’d do as she wished. She didn’t even say thank you. I think she knew what I felt about her. When it was dinner-time I made her eat something and then she asked me if there was a room she could go and lie down in till it was time to go to the station. I showed her into my spare room and left her. I sat in the sitting-room and waited. My God, I don’t think the time has ever passed so slowly for me. I thought twelve would never strike.

  I rang up the station and was told the train wouldn’t be in till nearly two. At midnight she came back to the sitting-room and we sat there for an hour and a half. We had nothing to say to one another and we didn’t speak. Then I took her to the station and put her on the train.”

  “Was there an awful scandal?”

  Featherstone frowned.

  “I don’t know. I applied for short leave. After that I was moved to another post. I heard that Tim had sold his estate and bought another. But I didn’t know where. It was a shock to me at first when I found him here.”

  Featherstone, getting up, went over to a table and mixed himself a whisky and soda. In the silence that fell now I heard the monotonous chorus of the croaking frogs. And suddenly the bird that is known as the fever-bird, perched in a tree close to the house, began to call. First, three notes in a descending, chromatic scale, then five, then four. The varying notes of the scale succeeded one another with maddening persistence. One was compelled to listen and to count them, and because one did not know how many there would be it tortured one’s nerves.

  “Blast that bird,” said Featherstone. “That means no sleep for me tonight.”

  THE BACK OF BEYOND

  GEORGE MOON was sitting in his office. His work was finished, and he lingered there because he hadn’t the heart to go down to the club. It was getting on towards tiffin time, and there would be a good many fellows hanging about the bar. Two or three of them would offer him a drink. He could not face their heartiness. Some he had known for thirty years. They had bored him, and on the
whole he disliked them, but now that he was seeing them for the last time it gave him a pang. Tonight they were giving him a farewell dinner. Everyone would be there and they were presenting him with a silver tea-service that he did not in the least want. They would make speeches in which they would refer eulogistically to his work in the colony, express their regret at his departure, and wish him long life to enjoy his well-earned leisure. He would reply suitably. He had prepared a speech in which he surveyed the changes that had taken place in the F.M.S. since first, a raw cadet, he had landed at Singapore. He would thank them for their loyal cooperation with him during the term which it had been his privilege to serve as Resident at Timbang Belud, and draw a glowing picture of the future that awaited the country as a whole and Timbang Belud in particular. He would remind them that he had known it as a poverty-stricken village with a few Chinese shops and left it now a prosperous town with paved streets down which ran trams, with stone houses, a rich Chinese settlement, and a clubhouse second in splendour only to that of Singapore. They would sing “For he’s a jolly good fellow’ and “Auld Lang Syne’. Then they would dance and a good many of the younger men would get drunk. The Malays had already given him a farewell party and the Chinese an interminable feast. Tomorrow a vast concourse would see him off at the station and that would be the end of him. He wondered what they would say of him. The Malays and the Chinese would say he had been stern, but acknowledge that he had been just. The planters had not liked him. They thought him hard because he would not let them ride roughshod over their labour. His subordinates had feared him. He drove them. He had no patience with slackness or inefficiency. He had never spared himself and saw no reason why he should spare others. They thought him inhuman. It was true that there was nothing come-hither in him. He could not throw off his official position when he went to the club and laugh at bawdy stories, chaff and be chaffed. He was conscious that his arrival cast a gloom, and to play bridge with him (he liked to play every day from six to eight) was looked upon as a privilege rather than an entertainment. When at some other table a young man’s four as the evening wore on grew hilarious, he caught glances thrown in his direction and sometimes an older member would stroll up to the noisy ones and in an undertone advise them to be quiet. George Moon sighed a little. From an official standpoint his career had been a success, he had been the youngest Resident ever appointed in the F.M.S., and for exceptional services a C.M.G. had been conferred upon him; but from the human it had perhaps been otherwise. He had earned respect, respect for his ability, industry, and trustworthiness, but he was too clear-sighted to think for a moment that he had inspired affection. No one would regret him. In a few months he would be forgotten.

  He smiled grimly. He was not sentimental He had enjoyed his authority, and it gave him an austere satisfaction to know that he had kept everyone up to the mark. It did not displease him to think that he had been feared rather than loved. He saw his life as a problem in higher mathematics, the working-out of which had required intense application of all his powers, but of which the result had not the least practical consequence. Its interest lay in its intricacy and its beauty in its solution. But like pure beauty it led nowhither. His future was blank. He was fifty-five, and full of energy, and to himself his mind seemed as alert as ever, his experience of men and affairs was wide: all that remained to him was to settle down in a country town in England or in a cheap part of the Riviera and play bridge with elderly ladies and golf with retired colonels. He had met, when on leave, old chiefs of his, and had observed with what difficulty they adapted themselves to the change in their circumstances. They had looked forward to the freedom that would be theirs when they retired and had pictured the charming uses to which they would put their leisure. Mirage. It was not very pleasant to be obscure after having dwelt in a spacious Residency, to make do with a couple of maids when you had been accustomed to the service of half a dozen Chinese boys and, above all, it was not pleasant to realize that you did hot matter a row of beans to anyone when you had grown used to the delicate flattery of knowing that a word of praise could delight and a frown humiliate all sorts and conditions of men.

  George Moon stretched out his hand and helped himself to a cigarette from the box on his desk. As he did so he noticed all the little lines on the back of his hand and the thinness of his shrivelled fingers. He frowned with distaste. It was the hand of an old man. There was in his office a Chinese mirror-picture that he had bought long ago and that he was leaving behind. He got up and looked at himself in it. He saw a thin yellow face, wrinkled and tight-lipped, thin grey hair, and grey tired eyes. He was tallish, very spare, with narrow shoulders, and he held himself erect. He had always played polo and even now could beat most of the younger men at tennis. When you talked to him he kept his eyes fixed on your face, listening attentively, but his expression did not change, and you had no notion what effect your words had on him. Perhaps he did not realize how disconcerting this was. He seldom smiled.

  An orderly came in with a name written on a chit. George Moon looked at it and told him to show the visitor in. He sat down once more in his chair and looked with his cold eyes at the door through which in a moment the visitor would come. It was Tom Saffary, and he wondered what he wanted. Presumably something to do with the festivity that night. It had amused him to hear that Tom Saffary was the head of the committee that had organized it, for their relations during the last year had been far from cordial. Saffary was a planter and one of his Tamil overseers had lodged a complaint against him for assault. The Tamil had been grossly insolent to him and Saffary had given him a thrashing. George Moon realized that the provocation was great, but he had always set his face against the planters taking the law in their own hands, and when the case was tried he sentenced Saffary to a fine. But when the court rose, to show that there was no ill feeling he asked Saffary to luncheon: Saffary, resentful of what he thought an unmerited affront, curtly refused and since then had declined to have any social relations with the Resident. He answered when George Moon, casually, but resolved not to be affronted, spoke to him; but would neither play bridge nor tennis with him. He was manager of the largest rubber estate in the district, and George Moon asked himself sardonically whether he had arranged the dinner and collected subscriptions for the presentation because he thought his dignity required it or whether, now that his Resident was leaving, it appealed to his sentimentality to make a noble gesture. It tickled George Moon’s frigid sense of humour to think that it would fall to Tom Saffary to make the principal speech of the evening, in which he would enlarge upon the departing Resident’s admirable qualities and voice the community’s regret at their irreparable loss.

  Tom Saffary was ushered in. The Resident rose from his chair, shook hands with him and thinly smiled.

  “How do you do? Sit down. Won’t you have a cigarette?”

  “How do you do?”

  Saffary took the chair to which the Resident motioned him, and the Resident waited for him to state his business. He had a notion that his visitor was embarrassed. He was a big, burly, stout fellow, with a red face and a double chin, curly black hair, and blue eyes. He was a fine figure of a man, strong as a horse, but it was plain he did himself too well. He drank a good deal and ate too heartily. But he was a good business man and a hard worker. He ran his estate efficiently. He was popular in the community. He was generally known as a good chap. He was free with his money and ready to lend a helping hand to anyone in distress. It occurred to the Resident that Saffary had come in order before the dinner to compose the difference between them. The emotion that might have occasioned such a desire excited in the Resident’s sensibility a very faint, good-humoured contempt. He had no enemies because individuals did not mean enough to him for him to hate any of them, but if he had, he thought, he would have hated them to the end.

  “I dare say you’re a bit surprised to see me here this morning, and I expect, as it’s your last day and all that, you’re pretty busy.”

  George M
oon did not answer, and the other went on.

  “I’ve come on rather an awkward business. The fact is that my wife and I won’t be able to come to the dinner tonight, and after that unpleasantness we had together last year I thought it only right to come and tell you that it has nothing to do with that. I think you treated me very harshly; it’s not the money I minded, it was the indignity, but bygones are bygones. Now that you’re leaving I don’t want you to think that I bear any more ill-feeling towards you.”

  “I realized that when I heard that you were chiefly responsible for the send-off you’re giving me,” answered the Resident civilly. “I’m sorry that you won’t be able to come tonight.”

  “I’m sorry, too. It’s on account of Knobby Clarke’s death,” Saffary hesitated for a moment. “My wife and I were very much upset by it.”

  “It was very sad. He was a great friend of yours, wasn’t he?”

  “He was the greatest friend I had in the colony.”

  Tears shone in Tom Saffary’s eyes. Fat men were very emotional, thought George Moon.

  “I quite understand that in that case you should have no heart for what looks like being a rather uproarious party,” he said kindly. “Have you heard anything of the circumstances?”

  “No, nothing but what appeared in the paper.”

  “He seemed all right when he left here.”

  “As far as I know he’d never had a day’s illness in his life.”

  “Heart, I suppose. How old was he?”

  “Same age as me. Thirty-eight.”

  “That’s young to die.”

  Knobby Clarke was a planter and the estate he managed was next door to Saffary’s. George Moon had liked him. He was a rather ugly man, sandy, with high cheek-bones and hollow temples, large pale eyes in deep sockets and a big mouth. But he had an attractive smile and an easy manner. He was amusing and could tell a good story. He had a careless good-humour that people found pleasing. He played games well. He was no fool. George Moon would have said he was somewhat colourless. In the course of his career he had known a good many men like him. They came and went. A fortnight before, he had left for England on leave and the Resident knew that the Saffarys had given a large dinner-party on his last night. He was married and his wife of course went with him.