Ah King (Works of W. Somerset Maugham) Page 6

  “You know, my dear, it’s a pity your husband doesn’t try to be more come-hither with people. He’s very intelligent; don’t you think it would be better if he didn’t let others see he knows it quite so clearly? My husband said to me only yesterday: Of course I know Alban Torel is the cleverest young man in the Service, but he does manage to put my back up more than anyone I know. I am the Governor, but when he talks to me he always gives me the impression that he looks upon me as a damned fool.”

  The worst of it was that Anne knew how low an opinion Alban had of the Governor’s parts.

  “He doesn’t mean to be superior,” Anne answered, smiling. “And he really isn’t in the least conceited. I think it’s only because he has a straight nose and high cheek-bones.”

  “You know, they don’t like him at the club. They call him Powder-Puff Percy.”

  Anne flushed. She had heard that before and it made her very angry. Her eyes filled with tears.

  “I think it’s frightfully unfair.”

  Mrs Hannay took her hand and gave it an affectionate little squeeze.

  “My dear, you know I don’t want to hurt your feelings. Your husband can’t help rising very high in the Service. He’d make things so much easier for himself if he were a little more human. Why doesn’t he play football?”

  “It’s not his game. He’s always only too glad to play tennis.”

  “He doesn’t give that impression. He gives the impression that there’s no one here who’s worth his while to play with.”

  “Well, there isn’t,” said Anne stung.

  Alban happened to be an extremely good tennis-player. He had played a lot of tournaments in England and Anne knew that it gave him a grim satisfaction to knock those beefy, hearty men all over the court. He could make the best of them look foolish. He could be maddening on the tennis court and Anne was aware that sometimes he could not resist the temptation.

  “He does play to the gallery, doesn’t he?” said Mrs Hannay.

  “I don’t think so. Believe me, Alban has no idea he isn’t popular. As far as I can see he’s always pleasant and friendly with everybody.”

  “It’s then he’s most offensive,” said Mrs Hannay dryly.

  “I know people don’t like us very much,” said Anne, smiling a little. “I’m very sorry, but really I don’t know what we can do about it.”

  “Not you, my dear,” cried Mrs Hannay. “Everybody adores you. That’s why they put up with your husband. My dear, who could help liking you?”

  “I don’t know why they should adore me,” said Anne.

  But she did not say it quite sincerely. She was deliberately playing the part of the dear little woman and within her she bubbled with amusement. They disliked Alban because he had such an air of distinction, and because he was interested in art and literature; they did not understand these things and so thought them unmanly; and they disliked him because his capacity was greater than theirs. They disliked him because he was better bred than they. They thought him superior; well, he was superior, but not in the sense they meant. They forgave her because she was an ugly little thing. That was what she called herself, but she wasn’t that, or if she was it was with an ugliness that was most attractive. She was like a little monkey, but a very sweet little monkey and very human. She had a neat figure. That was her best point. That and her eyes. They were very large, of a deep brown, liquid and shining; they were full of fun, but they could be tender on occasion with a charming sympathy. She was dark, her frizzy hair was almost black, and her skin was swarthy; she had a small fleshy nose, with large nostrils, and much too big a mouth. But she was alert and vivacious. She could talk with a show of real interest to the ladies of the colony about their husbands and their servants and their children in England, and she could listen appreciatively to the men who told her stories that she had often heard before. They thought her a jolly good sort. They did not know what clever fun she made of them in private. It never occurred to them that she thought them narrow, gross, and pretentious. They found no glamour in the East because they looked at it vulgarly with material eyes. Romance lingered at their threshold and they drove it away like an importunate beggar. She was aloof. She repeated to herself Landor’s line:

  “Nature I loved, and next to nature, art.”

  She reflected on her conversation with Mrs Hannay, but on the whole it left her unconcerned. She wondered whether she should say anything about it to Alban; it had always seemed a little odd to her that he should be so little aware of his unpopularity; but she was afraid that if she told him of it he would become self-conscious. He never noticed the coldness of the men at the club. He made them feel shy and therefore uncomfortable. His appearance then caused a sort of awkwardness, but he, happily insensible, was breezily cordial to all and sundry. The fact was that he was strangely unconscious of other people. She was in a class by herself, she and a little group of friends they had in London, but he could never quite realize that the people of the colony, the government officials and the planters and their wives, were human beings. They were to him like pawns in a game. He laughed with them, chaffed them, and was amiably tolerant of them; with a chuckle Anne told herself that he was rather like the master of a preparatory school taking little boys out on a picnic and anxious to give them a good time.

  She was afraid it wasn’t much good telling Alban. He was incapable of the dissimulation which, she happily realized, came so easily to her. What was one to do with these people? The men had come out to the colony as lads from second-rate schools, and life had taught them nothing. At fifty they had the outlook of hobbledehoys. Most of them drank a great deal too much. They read nothing worth reading. Their ambition was to be like everybody else. Their highest praise was to say that a man was a damned good sort. If you were interested in the things of the spirit you were a prig. They were eaten up with envy of one another and devoured by petty jealousies. And the women, poor things, were obsessed by petty rivalries. They made a circle that was more provincial than any in the smallest town in England. They were prudish and spiteful. What did it matter if they did not like Alban? They would have to put up with him because his ability was so great. He was clever and energetic. They could not say that he did not do his work well. He had been successful in every post he had occupied. With his sensitiveness and his imagination he understood the native mind and he was able to get the natives to do things that no one in his position could. He had a gift for languages, and he spoke all the local dialects. He not only knew the common tongue that most of the government officials spoke, but was acquainted with the niceties of the language and on occasion could make use of a ceremonial speech that flattered and impressed the chiefs. He had a gift for organization. He was not afraid of responsibility. In due course he was bound to be made a Resident. Alban had some interest in England; his father was a brigadier-general killed in the war, and though he had no private means he had influential friends. He spoke of them with pleasant irony.

  “The great advantage of democratic government,” he said, “is that merit, with influence to back it, can be pretty sure of receiving its due reward.”

  Alban was so obviously the ablest man in the Service that there seemed no reason why he should not eventually be made Governor. Then, thought Anne, his air of superiority, of which they complained, would be in place. They would accept him as their master and he would know how to make himself respected and obeyed. The position she foresaw did not dazzle her. She accepted it as a right. It would be fun for Alban to be Governor and for her to be the Governor’s wife. And what an opportunity! They were sheep, the government servants and the planters; when Government House was the seat of culture they would soon fall into line. When the best way to the Governor’s favour was to be intelligent, intelligence would become the fashion. She and Alban would cherish the native arts and collect carefully the memorials of a vanished past. The country would make an advance it had never dreamed of. They would develop it, but along lines of order and beauty. They would
instil into their subordinates a passion for that beautiful land and a loving interest in these romantic races. They would make them realize what music meant. They would cultivate literature. They would create beauty. It would be the golden age.

  Suddenly she heard Alban’s footstep. Anne awoke from her day-dream. All that was far away in the future. Alban was only a District Officer yet and what was important was the life they were living now. She heard Alban go into the bath-house and splash water over himself. In a minute he came in. He had changed into a shirt and shorts. His fair hair was still wet.

  “Tiffin ready?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  He sat down at the piano and played the piece that he had played in the morning. The silvery notes cascaded coolly down the sultry air. You had an impression of a formal garden with great trees and elegant pieces of artificial water and of leisurely walks bordered with pseudo-classical statues. Alban played with a peculiar delicacy. Lunch was announced by the head boy. He rose from the piano. They walked into the dining-room hand in hand. A punkah lazily fanned the air. Anne gave the table a glance. With its bright-coloured tablecloth and the amusing plates it looked very gay.

  “Anything exciting at the office this morning?” she asked.

  “No, nothing much. A buffalo case. Oh, and Prynne has sent along to ask me to go up to the estate. Some coolies have been damaging the trees and he wants me to come along and look into it.”

  Prynne was manager of the rubber estate up the river and now and then they spent a night with him. Sometimes when he wanted a change he came down to dinner and slept at the D.O.“s bungalow. They both liked him. He was a man of five-and-thirty, with a red face, with deep furrows in it, and very black hair. He was quite uneducated, but cheerful and easy, and being the only Englishman within two days’ journey they could not but be friendly with him. He had been a little shy of them at first. News spreads quickly in the East and long before they arrived in the district he heard that they were highbrows. He did not know what he would make of them. He probably did not know that he had charm, which makes up for many more commendable qualities, and Alban with his almost feminine sensibilities was peculiarly susceptible to this. He found Alban much more human than he expected, and of course Anne was stunning. Alban played ragtime for him, which he would not have done for the Governor, and played dominoes with him. When Alban was making his first tour of the district with Anne, and suggested that they would like to spend a couple of nights on the estate, he had thought it as well to warn him that he lived with a native woman and had two children by her. He would do his best to keep them out of Anne’s sight, but he could not send them away, there was nowhere to send them. Alban laughed.

  “Anne isn’t that sort of woman at all. Don’t dream of hiding them. She loves children.”

  Anne quickly made friends with the shy, pretty little native woman and soon was playing happily with the children. She and the girl had long confidential chats. The children took a fancy to her. She brought them lovely toys from Port Wallace. Prynne, comparing her smiling tolerance with the disapproving acidity of the other white women of the colony, described himself as knocked all of a heap. He could not do enough to show his delight and gratitude.

  “If all highbrows are like you,” he said, “give me highbrows every time.”

  He hated to think that in another year they would leave the district for good and the chances were that, if the next D.O. was married, his wife would think it dreadful that, rather than live alone, he had a native woman to live with him and, what was more, was much attached to her.

  But there had been a good deal of discontent on the estate of late. The coolies were Chinese and infected with communist ideas. They were disorderly. Alban had been obliged to sentence several of them for various crimes to terms of imprisonment.

  “Prynne tells me that as soon as their term is up he’s going to send them all back to China and get Javanese instead,” said Alban. “I’m sure he’s right. They’re much more amenable.”

  “You don’t think there’s going to be any serious trouble?”

  “Oh, no. Prynne knows his job and he’s a pretty determined fellow. He wouldn’t put up with any nonsense and with me and our policemen to back him up I don’t imagine they’ll try any monkey tricks.” He smiled. “The iron hand in the velvet glove.”

  The words were barely out of his mouth when a sudden shouting arose. There was a commotion and the sound of steps. Loud voices and cries.

  “Tuan, Tuan.”

  “What the devil’s the matter?”

  Alban sprang from his chair and went swiftly on to the veranda. Anne followed him. At the bottom of the steps was a group of natives. There was the sergeant, and three or four policemen, boatmen, and several men from the kampong.

  “What is it?” called Alban.

  Two or three shouted back in answer. The sergeant pushed others aside and Alban saw lying on the ground a man in a shirt and khaki shorts. He ran down the steps. He recognized the man as the assistant manager of Prynne’s estate. He was a half-caste. His shorts were covered with blood and there was clotted blood all over one side of his face and head. He was unconscious.

  “Bring him up here,” called Anne.

  Alban gave an order. The man was lifted up and carried on to the veranda. They laid him on the floor and Anne put a pillow under his head. She sent for water and for the medicine-chest in which they kept things for emergency.

  “Is he dead?” asked Alban.

  “No.”

  “Better try to give him some brandy.”

  The boatmen brought ghastly news. The Chinese coolies had risen suddenly and attacked the manager’s office. Prynne was killed, and the assistant manager, Oakley by name, had escaped only by the skin of his teeth. He had come upon the rioters when they were looting the office, he had seen Prynne’s body thrown out of the window, and had taken to his heels. Some of the Chinese saw him and gave chase. He ran for the river and was wounded as he jumped into the launch. The launch managed to put off before the Chinese could get on board and they had come down-stream for help as fast as they could go. As they went they saw flames rising from the office buildings. There was no doubt that the coolies had burned down everything that would burn.

  Oakley gave a groan and opened his eyes. He was a little, dark-skinned man, with flattened features and thick coarse hair. His great native eyes were filled with terror.

  “You’re all right,” said Anne. “You’re quite safe.”

  He gave a sigh and smiled. Anne washed his face and swabbed it with antiseptics. The wound on his head was not serious.

  “Can you speak yet?” said Alban.

  “Wait a bit,” she said. “We must look at his leg.”

  Alban ordered the sergeant to get the crowd out of the veranda. Anne ripped up one leg of the shorts. The material was clinging to the coagulated wound.

  “I’ve been bleeding like a pig,” said Oakley.

  It was only a flesh wound. Alban was clever with his fingers, and though the blood began to flow again they staunched it. Alban put on a dressing and a bandage. The sergeant and a policeman lifted Oakley on to a long chair. Alban gave him a brandy and soda, and soon he felt strong enough to speak. He knew no more than the boatmen had already told. Prynne was dead and the estate was in flames.

  “And the girl and the children?” asked Anne.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Oh, Alban.”

  “I must turn out the police. Are you sure Prynne is dead?”

  “Yes, sir. I saw him.”

  “Have the rioters got fire-arms?”

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  “How d’you mean, you don’t know?” Alban cried irritably. “Prynne had a gun, hadn’t he?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “There must have been more on the estate. You had one, didn’t you? The head overseer had one.”

  The half-caste was silent. Alban looked at him sternly.

  “How many of those damne
d Chinese are there?”

  “A hundred and fifty.”

  Anne wondered that he asked so many questions. It seemed waste of time. The important thing was to collect coolies for the transport up-river, prepare the boats, and issue ammunition to the police.

  “How many policemen have you got, sir?” asked Oakley.

  “Eight and the sergeant.”

  “Could I come too? That would make ten of us. I’m sure I shall be all right now I’m bandaged.”

  “I’m not going,” said Alban.

  “Alban, you must,” cried Anne. She could not believe her ears.

  “Nonsense. It would be madness. Oakley’s obviously useless. He’s sure to have a temperature in a few hours. He’d only be in the way. That leaves nine guns. There are a hundred and fifty Chinese and they’ve got fire-arms and all the ammunition in the world.”

  “How do’you know?”

  “It stands to reason they wouldn’t have started a show like this unless they had. It would be idiotic to go.”

  Anne stared at him with open mouth. Oakley’s eyes were puzzled.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Well, fortunately we’ve got the launch. I’ll send it to Port Wallace with a request for reinforcements.”

  “But they won’t be here for two days at least.”

  “Well, what of it? Prynne’s dead and the estate burned to the ground. We couldn’t do any good by going up now. I shall send a native to reconnoitre so that we can find out exactly what the rioters are doing.” He gave Anne his charming smile. “Believe me, my pet, the rascals won’t lose anything by waiting a day or two for what’s coming to them.”

  Oakley opened his mouth to speak, but perhaps he hadn’t the nerve. He was a half-caste assistant manager and Alban, the D.O., represented the power of the Government. But the man’s eyes sought Anne’s and she thought she read in them an earnest and personal appeal.