‘Do you think I care what you say? What business is it of yours? It’s for Macgregor to decide.’
‘Then do you–ah–adhere to your decision?’ said Mr Macgregor gloomily.
‘Yes.’
Mr Macgregor sighed. ‘A pity! Well, in that case I suppose I have no choice–’
‘No, no, no!’ cried Ellis, dancing about in his rage. ‘Don’t give in to him! Put it to the vote. And if that son of a bitch doesn’t put in a black ball like the rest of us, we’ll first turf him out of the Club himself, and then–well! Butler!’
‘Sahib!’ said the butler, appearing.
‘Bring the ballot box and the balls. Now clear out!’ he added roughly when the butler had obeyed.
The air had gone very stagnant; for some reason the punkah had stopped working. Mr Macgregor stood up with a disapproving but judicial mien, taking the two drawers of black and white balls out of the ballot box.
‘We must proceed in order. Mr Flory proposes Dr Veraswami, the Civil Surgeon, as a member of this Club. Mistaken, in my opinion, greatly mistaken; however–! Before putting the matter to the vote–’
‘Oh, why make a song and dance about it?’ said Ellis. ‘Here’s my contribution! And another for Maxwell.’ He plumped two black balls into the box. Then one of his sudden spasms of rage seized him, and he took the drawer of white balls and pitched them across the floor. They went flying in all directions. ‘There! Now pick one up if you want to use it!’
‘You damned fool! What good do you think that does?’
‘Sahib!’
They all started and looked round. The chokra was goggling at them over the veranda rail, having climbed up from below. With one skinny arm he clung to the rail and with the other gesticulated towards the river.
‘Sahib! Sahib!’
‘What’s up?’ said Westfield.
They all moved for the window. The sampan that Flory had seen across the river was lying under the bank at the foot of the lawn, one of the men clinging to a bush to steady it. The Burman in the green gaungbaung was climbing out.
‘That’s one of Maxwell’s Forest Rangers!’ said Ellis in quite a different voice. ‘By God! something’s happened!’
The Forest Ranger saw Mr Macgregor, shikoed in a hurried, preoccupied way and turned back to the sampan. Four other men, peasants, climbed out after him, and with difficulty lifted ashore the strange bundle that Flory had seen in the distance. It was six feet long, swathed in cloths, like a mummy. Something happened in everybody’s entrails. The Forest Ranger glanced at the veranda, saw that there was no way up, and led the peasants round the path to the front of the Club. They had hoisted the bundle on to their shoulders as funeral bearers hoist a coffin. The butler had flitted into the lounge again, and even his face was pale after its fashion–that is, grey.
‘Butler!’ said Mr Macgregor sharply.
‘Sir!’
‘Go quickly and shut the door of the card-room. Keep it shut. Don’t let the memsahibs see.’
‘Yes, sir!’
The Burmans, with their burden, came heavily down the passage. As they entered the leading man staggered and almost fell; he had trodden on one of the white balls that were scattered about the floor. The Burmans knelt down, lowered their burden to the floor and stood over it with a strange reverent air, slightly bowing, their hands together in a shiko. Westfield had fallen on his knees, and he pulled back the cloth.
‘Christ! Just look at him!’ he said, but without much surprise. ‘Just look at the poor little b—!’
Mr Lackersteen had retreated to the other end of the room, with a bleating noise. From the moment when the bundle was lifted ashore they had all known what it contained. It was the body of Maxwell, cut almost to pieces with dahs by two relatives of the man whom he had shot.
22
Maxwell’s death had caused a profound shock in Kyauktada. It would cause a shock throughout the whole of Burma, and the case–‘the Kyauktada case, do you remember?’–would still be talked of years after the wretched youth’s name was forgotten. But in a purely personal way no one was much distressed. Maxwell had been almost a nonentity–just a ‘good fellow’ like any other of the ten thousand ex colore good fellows of Burma–and with no close friends. No one among the Europeans genuinely mourned for him. But that is not to say that they were not angry. On the contrary, for the moment they were almost mad with rage. For the unforgivable had happened–a white man had been killed. When that happens, a sort of shudder runs through the English of the East. Eight hundred people, possibly, are murdered every year in Burma; they matter nothing; but the murder of a white man is a monstrosity, a sacrilege. Poor Maxwell would be avenged, that was certain. But only a servant or two, and the Forest Ranger who had brought in his body and who had been fond of him, shed any tears for his death.
On the other hand, no one was actually pleased, except U Po Kyin.
‘This is a positive gift from heaven!’ he told Ma Kin. ‘I could not have arranged it better myself. The one thing I needed to make them take my rebellion seriously was a little bloodshed. And here it is! I tell you, Ma Kin, every day I grow more certain that some higher power is working on my behalf.’
‘Ko Po Kyin, truly you are without shame! I do not know how you dare to say such things. Do you not shudder to have murder upon your soul?’
‘What! I? Murder upon my soul? What are you talking about? I have never killed so much as a chicken in my life.’
‘But you are profiting by this poor boy’s death.’
‘Profiting by it! Of course I am profiting by it! And why not, indeed? Am I to blame if somebody else choose to commit murder? The fisherman catches fish, and he is damned for it. But are we damned for eating the fish? Certainly not. Why not eat the fish, once it is dead? You should study the Scriptures more carefully, my dear Kin Kin.’
The funeral took place next morning, before breakfast. All the Europeans were present, except Verrall, who was careering about the maidan quite as usual, almost opposite the cemetery. Mr Macgregor read the burial service. The little group of Englishmen stood round the grave, their topis in their hands, sweating into the dark suits that they had dug out from the bottom of their boxes. The harsh morning light beat without mercy upon their faces, yellower than ever against the ugly, shabby clothes. Every face except Elizabeth’s looked lined and old. Dr Veraswami and half a dozen other Orientals were present, but they kept themselves decently in the background. There were sixteen gravestones in the little cemetery; assistants of timber firms, officials, soldiers killed in forgotten skirmishes.
‘Sacred to the memory of John Henry Spagnall, late of the Indian Imperial Police, who was cut down by cholera while in the unremitting exercise of’ etc., etc., etc.
Flory remembered Spagnall dimly. He had died very suddenly in camp after his second go of delirium tremens. In a corner there were some graves of Eurasians, with wooden crosses. The creeping jasmine, with tiny orange-hearted flowers, had overgrown everything. Among the jasmine, large rat-holes led down into the graves.
Mr Macgregor concluded the burial service in a ripe, reverent voice, and led the way out of the cemetery, holding his grey topi–the Eastern equivalent of a top hat–against his stomach. Flory lingered by the gate, hoping that Elizabeth would speak to him, but she passed him without a glance. Everyone had shunned him this morning. He was in disgrace; the murder had made his disloyalty of last night seem somehow horrible. Ellis had caught Westfield by the arm, and they halted at the grave-side, taking out their cigarette-cases. Flory could hear their slangy voices coming across the open grave.
‘My God, Westfield, my God, when I think of that poor little b— lying down there–oh, my God, how my blood does boil! I couldn’t sleep all night, I was so furious.’
‘Pretty bloody, I grant. Never mind, promise you a couple of chaps shall swing for it. Two corpses against their one–best we can do.’
‘Two! It ought to be fifty! We’ve got to raise heaven and hell to get these fe
llows hanged. Have you got their names yet?’
‘Yes, rather!! Whole blooming district knows who did it. We always do know who’s done it in these cases. Getting the bloody villagers to talk–that’s the only trouble.’
‘Well, for God’s sake get them to talk this time. Never mind the bloody law. Whack it out of them. Torture them–anything. If you want to bribe any witnesses, I’m good for a couple of hundred chips.’
Westfield sighed. ‘Can’t do that sort of thing, I’m afraid. Wish we could. My chaps’d know how to put the screw on a witness if you gave ’em the word. Tie ’em down on an ant-hill. Red peppers. But that won’t do nowadays. Got to keep our own bloody silly laws. But never mind, those fellows’ll swing all right. We’ve got all the evidence we want.’
‘Good! And when you’ve arrested them, if you aren’t sure of getting a conviction, shoot them, jolly well shoot them! Fake up an escape or something. Anything sooner than let those b—s go free.’
‘They won’t go free, don’t you fear. We’ll get ’em. Get somebody, anyhow. Much better hang wrong fellow than no fellow,’ he added, unconsciously quoting.
‘That’s the stuff! I’ll never sleep easy again till I’ve seen them swinging,’ said Ellis as they moved away from the grave. ‘Christ! Let’s get out of this sun! I’m about perishing with thirst.’
Everyone was perishing, more or less, but it seemed hardly decent to go down to the Club for drinks immediately after the funeral. The Europeans scattered for their houses, while four sweepers with mamooties flung the grey, cement-like earth back into the grave, and shaped it into a rough mound.
After breakfast, Ellis was walking down to his office, cane in hand. It was blinding hot. Ellis had bathed and changed back into shirt and shorts, but wearing a thick suit even for an hour had brought on his prickly heat abominably. Westfield had gone out already, in his motor launch, with an Inspector and half a dozen men, to arrest the murderers. He had ordered Verrall to accompany him–not that Verrall was needed, but, as Westfield said, it would do the young swab good to have a spot of work.
Ellis wriggled his shoulders–his prickly heat was almost beyond bearing. The rage was stewing in his body like a bitter juice. He had brooded all night over what had happened. They had killed a white man, killed a white man, the bloody sods, the sneaking, cowardly hounds! Oh, the swine, the swine, how they ought to be made to suffer for it! Why did we make these cursed kid-glove laws? Why did we take everything lying down? Just suppose this had happened in a German colony, before the War! The good old Germans! They knew how to treat the niggers. Reprisals! Rhinoceros hide whips! Raid their villages, kill their cattle, burn their crops, decimate them, blow them from the guns.
Ellis gazed into the horrible cascades of light that poured through the gaps in the trees. His greenish eyes were large and mournful. A mild, middle-aged Burman came by, balancing a huge bamboo, which he shifted from one shoulder to the other with a grunt as he passed Ellis. Ellis’s grip tightened on his stick. If that swine, now, would only attack you! Or even insult you–anything, so that you had the right to smash him! If only these gutless curs would ever show fight in any conceivable way! Instead of just sneaking past you, keeping within the law so that you never had a chance to get back at them. Ah, for a real rebellion–martial law proclaimed and no quarter given! Lovely, sanguinary images moved through his mind. Shrieking mounds of natives, soldiers slaughtering them. Shoot them, ride them down, horses’ hooves trample their guts out, whips cut their faces in slices!
Five High School boys came down the road abreast. Ellis saw them coming, a row of yellow, malicious faces–epicene faces, horribly smooth and young, grinning at him with deliberate insolence. It was in their minds to bait him, as a white man. Probably they had heard of the murder, and–being Nationalists, like all schoolboys–regarded it as a victory. They grinned full in Ellis’s face as they passed him. They were trying openly to provoke him, and they knew that the law was on their side. Ellis felt his breast swell. The look of their faces, jeering at him like a row of yellow images, was maddening. He stopped short.
‘Here! What are you laughing at, you young ticks?’
The boys turned.
‘I said what the bloody hell are you laughing at?’
One of the boys answered, insolently–but perhaps his bad English made him seem more insolent than he intended.
‘Not your business.’
There was about a second during which Ellis did not know what he was doing. In that second he had hit out with all his strength, and the cane landed, crack! right across the boy’s eyes. The boy recoiled with a shriek, and in the same instant the other four had thrown themselves upon Ellis. But he was too strong for them. He flung them aside and sprang back, lashing out with his stick so furiously that none of them dared come near.
‘Keep your distance, you —s! Keep off, or by God I’ll smash another of you!’
Though they were four to one he was so formidable that they surged back in fright. The boy who was hurt had fallen on his knees with his arms across his face, and was screaming ‘I am blinded! I am blinded!’ Suddenly the other four turned and darted for a pile of laterite, used for road-mending, which was twenty yards away. One of Ellis’s clerks had appeared on the veranda of the office and was leaping up and down in agitation.
‘Come up, sir come up at once. They will murder you!’
Ellis disdained to run, but he moved for the veranda steps. A lump of laterite came sailing through the air and shattered itself against a pillar, whereat the clerk scooted indoors. But Ellis turned on the veranda to face the boys, who were below, each carrying an armful of laterite. He was cackling with delight.
‘You damned, dirty little niggers!’ he shouted down at them. ‘You got a surprise that time, didn’t you? Come up on this veranda and fight me, all four of you! You daren’t. Four to one and you daren’t face me! Do you call yourselves men? You sneaking, mangy little rats!’
He broke into Burmese, calling them the incestuous children of pigs. All the while they were pelting him with lumps of laterite, but their arms were feeble and they threw ineptly. He dodged the stones, and as each one missed him he cackled in triumph. Presently there was a sound of shouts up the road, for the noise had been heard at the police station, and some constables were emerging to see what was the matter. The boys took fright and bolted, leaving Ellis a complete victor.
Ellis had heartily enjoyed the affray, but he was furiously angry as soon as it was over. He wrote a violent note to Mr Macgregor, telling him that he had been wantonly assaulted and demanding vengeance. Two clerks who had witnessed the scene, and a chaprassi, were sent along to Mr Macgregor’s office to corroborate the story. They lied in perfect unison. ‘The boys had attacked Mr Ellis without any provocation whatever, he had defended himself,’ etc., etc. Ellis, to do him justice, probably believed this to be a truthful version of the story. Mr Macgregor was somewhat disturbed, and ordered the police to find the four schoolboys and interrogate them. The boys, however, had been expecting something of the kind, and were lying very low; the police searched the bazaar all day without finding them. In the evening the wounded boy was taken to a Burmese doctor, who, by applying some poisonous concoction of crushed leaves to his left eye, succeeded in blinding him.
The Europeans met at the Club as usual that evening, except for Westfield and Verrall, who had not yet returned. Everyone was in a bad mood. Coming on top of the murder, the unprovoked attack on Ellis (for that was the accepted description of it) had scared them as well as angered them. Mrs Lackersteen was twittering to the tune of ‘We shall all be murdered in our beds’. Mr Macgregor, to reassure her, told her in cases of riot the European ladies were always locked inside the jail until everything was over; but she did not seem much comforted. Ellis was offensive to Flory, and Elizabeth cut him almost dead. He had come down to the Club in the insane hope of making up their quarrel, and her demeanour made him so miserable that for the greater part of the evening he skulked in t
he library. It was not till eight o’clock when everyone had swallowed a number of drinks, that the atmosphere grew a little more friendly, and Ellis said:
‘What about sending a couple of chokras up to our houses and getting our dinners sent down here? We might as well have a few rubbers of bridge. Better than mooning about at home.’
Mrs Lackersteen, who was in dread of going home, jumped at the suggestion. The Europeans occasionally dined at the Club when they wanted to stay late. Two of the chokras were sent for, and on being told what was wanted of them, immediately burst into tears. It appeared that if they went up the hill they were certain of encountering Maxwell’s ghost. The mali was sent instead. As the man set out Flory noticed that it was again the night of the full moon–four weeks to a day since that evening, now unutterably remote, when he had kissed Elizabeth under the frangipani tree.
They had just sat down at the bridge table, and Mrs Lackersteen had just revoked out of pure nervousness, when there was a heavy thump on the roof. Everyone started and look up.
‘A coco-nut falling!’ said Mr Macgregor.
‘There aren’t any coco-nut trees here,’ said Ellis.
The next moment a number of things happened all together. There was another and much louder bang, one of the petrol lamps broke from its hook and crashed to the ground, narrowly missing Mr Lackersteen, who jumped aside with a yelp, Mrs Lackersteen began screaming, and the butler rushed into the room, bareheaded, his face the colour of bad coffee.
‘Sir, sir! Bad men come! Going to murder us all, sir!’
‘What? Bad men? What do you mean?’
‘Sir, all the villagers are outside! Big stick and dah in their hands, and all dancing about! Going to cut master’s throat, sir!’
Mrs Lackersteen threw herself backwards in her chair. She was setting up such a din of screams as to drown the butler’s voice.
‘Oh, be quiet!’ said Ellis sharply, turning on her. ‘Listen, all of you! Listen to that!’
There was a deep, murmurous, dangerous sound outside, like the humming of an angry giant. Mr Macgregor, who had stood up, stiffened as he heard it, and settled his spectacles pugnaciously on his nose.
The Complete Novels Page 34
