“Hullo, why haven’t you dressed?” He looked about the room. “You haven’t unpacked.”
“No.”
“Why on earth not?”
“I’m not going to unpack. I’m not going to stay here. I’m leaving you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’ve stuck it out till now. I made up my mind I would till we got home. I set my teeth, I’ve borne more than I thought it possible to bear, but now it’s finished. I’ve done all that could be expected of me. We’re back in London now and I can go.”
He looked at her in utter bewilderment.
“Are you mad, Anne?”
“Oh, my God, what I’ve endured! The journey to Singapore, with all the officers knowing, and even the Chinese stewards. And at Singapore, the way people looked at us at the hotel, and the sympathy I had to put up with, the bricks they dropped and their embarrassment when they realized what they’d done. My God, I could have killed them. That interminable journey home. There wasn’t a single passenger on the ship who didn’t know. The contempt they had for you and the kindness they went out of their way to show me. And you so self-complacent and so pleased with yourself, seeing nothing, feeling nothing. You must have the hide of a rhinoceros. The misery of seeing you so chatty and agreeable. Pariahs, that’s what we were. You seemed to ask them to snub you. How can anyone be so shameless?”
She was flaming with passion. Now that at last she need not wear the mask of indifference and pride that she had forced herself to assume she cast aside all reserve and all self-control. The words poured from her trembling lips in a virulent stream.
“My dear, how can you be so absurd?” he said good-naturedly, smiling. “You must be very nervous and high-strung to have got such ideas in your head. Why didn’t you tell me? You’re like a country bumpkin who comes to London and thinks everyone is staring at him. Nobody bothered about us, and if they did what on earth did it matter? You ought to have more sense than to bother about what a lot of fools say. And what do you imagine they were saying?”
“They were saying you’d been fired.”
“Well, that was true,” he laughed.
“They said you were a coward.”
“What of it?”
“Well, you see, that was true too.”
He looked at her for a moment reflectively. His lips tightened a little.
“And what makes you think so?” he asked acidly.
“I saw it in your eyes, that day the news came, when you refused to go to the estate and I followed you into the hall when you went to fetch your topee. I begged you to go, I felt that whatever the danger you must take it, and suddenly I saw the fear in your eyes. I nearly fainted with the horror.”
“I should have been a fool to risk my life to no purpose. Why should I? Nothing that concerned me was at stake. Courage is the obvious virtue of the stupid. I don’t attach any particular importance to it.”
“How do you mean that nothing that concerned you was at stake? If that’s true then your whole life is a sham. You’ve given away everything you stood for, everything we both stand for. You’ve let all of us down. We did set ourselves up on a pinnacle, we did think ourselves better than the rest of them because we loved literature and art and music, we weren’t content to live a life of ignoble jealousies and vulgar tittle-tattle, we did cherish the things of the spirit, and we loved beauty. It was our food and drink. They laughed at us and sneered at us. That was inevitable. The ignorant and the common naturally hate and fear those who are interested in things they don’t understand. We didn’t care. We called them Philistines. We despised them and we had a right to despise them. Our justification was that we were better and nobler and wiser and braver than they were. And you weren’t better, you weren’t nobler, you weren’t braver. When the crisis came you slunk away like a whipped cur with his tail between his legs. You of all people hadn’t the right to be a coward. They despise us now and they have the right to despise us. Us and all we stood for. Now they can say that art and beauty are all rot; when it comes to a pinch people like us always let you down. They never stopped looking for a chance to turn and rend us and you gave it to them. They can say that they always expected it. It’s a triumph for them. I used to be furious because they called you Powder-Puff Percy. Did you know they did?”
“Of course. I thought it very vulgar, but it left me entirely indifferent.”
“It’s funny that their instinct should have been so right.”
“Do you mean to say you’ve been harbouring this against me all these weeks? I should never have thought you capable of it.”
“I couldn’t let you down when everyone was against you. I was too proud for that. Whatever happened I swore to myself that I’d stick to you till we got home. It’s been torture.”
“Don’t you love me any more?”
“Love you? I loathe the very sight of you.”
“Anne!”
“God knows I loved you. For eight years I worshipped the ground you trod on. You were everything to me. I believed in you as some people believe in God. When I saw the fear in your eyes that day, when you told me that you weren’t going to risk your life for a kept woman and her half-caste brats, I was shattered. It was as though someone had wrenched my heart out of my body and trampled on it. You killed my love there and then, Alban. You killed it stone-dead. Since then when you’ve kissed me I’ve had to clench my hands so as not to turn my face away. The mere thought of anything else makes me feel physically sick. I loathe your complacence and your frightful insensitiveness. Perhaps I could have forgiven it if it had been just a moment’s weakness and if afterwards you’d been ashamed. I should have been miserable, but I think my love was so great that I should only have felt pity for you. But you’re incapable of shame. And now I believe in nothing. You’re only a silly, pretentious, vulgar poseur. I would rather be the wife of a second-rate planter so long as he had the common human virtues of a man than the wife of a fake like you.”
He did not answer. Gradually his face began to discompose. Those handsome, regular features of his horribly distorted and suddenly he broke out into loud sobs. She gave a little cry.
“Don’t Alban, don’t.”
“Oh, darling, how can you be so cruel to me? I adore you. I’d give my whole life to please you. I can’t live without you.”
She put out her arms as though to ward off a blow.
“No, no, Alban, don’t try to move me. I can’t. I must go. I can’t live with you any more. It would be frightful. I can never forget. I must tell you the truth, I have only contempt for you and repulsion.”
He sank down at her feet and tried to cling to her knees. With a gasp she sprang up and he buried his head in the empty chair. He cried painfully with sobs that tore his chest. The sound was horrible. The tears streamed from Anne’s eyes and, putting her hands to her ears to shut out that dreadful, hysterical sobbing, blindly stumbling she rushed to the door and ran out.
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 Moon 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.
The Complete Short Stories of W. Somerset Maugham: East and West (Vol. 1 of 2)) Page 108
