Ah King

by W. Somerset Maugham

  Violet forced herself to say the things that were expected of her, but Enid was not listening. She wanted to tell the whole story of her hopes and fears, of her symptoms, and then of her interview with the doctor. She went on and on.

  “When are you going to tell Knobby?” Violet asked at last. “Now, when he gets in?”

  “Oh, no, he’s tired and hungry when he gets back from his round. I shall wait until tonight after dinner.”

  Violet repressed a movement of exasperation; Enid was going to make a scene of it and was choosing her moment; but after all, it was only natural. It was lucky, for it would give her the chance to see Knobby first. As soon as she was rid of her she rang him up. She knew that he always looked in at his office on his way home, and she left a message asking him to call her. She was only afraid that he would not do so till Tom was back, but she had to take a chance of that. The bell rang and Tom had not come in.

  “Hal?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will you be at the hut at three?”

  “Yes. Has anything happened?”

  “I’ll tell you when I see you. Don’t worry.”

  She rang off. The hut was a little shelter on Knobby’s estate which she could get to without difficulty and where they occasionally met. The coolies passed it while they worked and it had no privacy; but it was a convenient place for them without exciting comment to exchange a few minutes’ conversation. At three Enid would be resting and Tom at work in his office.

  When Violet walked up Knobby was already there. He gave a gasp.

  “Violet, how white you are.”

  She gave him her hand. They did not know what eyes might be watching them and their behaviour here was always such as anyone could observe.

  “Enid came to see me this morning. She’s going to tell you tonight. I thought you ought to be warned. She’s going to have a baby.”

  “Violet!”

  He looked at her aghast. She began to cry. They had never talked of the relations they had, he with his wife and she with her husband. They ignored the subject because it was to each horribly painful. Violet knew what her own life was; she satisfied her husband’s appetite, but, with a woman’s strange nonchalance, because to do so gave her no pleasure, attached no importance to it; but somehow she had persuaded herself that with Hal it was different. He felt now instinctively how bitterly what she had learned wounded her. He tried to excuse himself.

  “Darling, I couldn’t help myself.”

  She cried silently and he watched her with miserable eyes.

  “I know it seems beastly,” he said, “but what could I do? It wasn’t as if I had any reason to …”

  She interrupted him.

  “I don’t blame you. It was inevitable. It’s only because I’m stupid that it gives me such a frightful pain in my heart.”

  “Darling!”

  “We ought to have gone away together two years ago. It was madness to think we could go on like this.”

  “Are you sure Enid’s right? She thought she was in the family way three or four years ago.”

  “Oh, yes, she’s right. She’s frightfully happy. She says you wanted a child so badly.”

  “It’s come as such an awful surprise. I don’t seem able to realize it yet.”

  She looked at him. He was staring at the leaf-strewn earth with harassed eyes. She smiled a little.

  “Poor Hal.” She sighed deeply. “There’s nothing to be done about it. It’s the end of us.”

  “What do you mean?” he cried.

  “Oh, my dear, you can’t very well leave her now, can you? It was all right before. She would have been unhappy, but she would have got over it. But now it’s different. It’s not a very nice time for a woman anyhow. For months she feels more or less ill. She wants affection. She wants to be taken care of. It would be frightful to leave her to bear it all alone. We couldn’t be such beasts.”

  “Do you mean to say you want me to go back to England with her?”

  She nodded gravely.

  “It’s lucky you’re going. It’ll be easier when you get away and we don’t see one another every day.”

  “But I can’t live without you now.”

  “Oh, yes, you can. You must. I can. And it’ll be worse for me, because I stay behind and I shall have nothing.”

  “Oh, Violet, it’s impossible.”

  “My dear, it’s no good arguing. The moment she told me I saw it meant that. That’s why I wanted to see you first. I thought the shock might lead you to blurt out the whole truth. You know I love you more than anything in the world. She’s never done me any harm. I couldn’t take you away from her now. It’s bad luck on both of us, but there it is, I simply wouldn’t dare to do a filthy thing like that.”

  “I wish I were dead,” he moaned.

  “That wouldn’t do her any good, or me either,” she smiled.

  “What about the future? Have we got to sacrifice our whole lives?”

  “I’m afraid so. It sounds rather grim, darling, but I suppose sooner or later we shall get over it. One gets over everything.”

  She looked at her wrist-watch.

  “I ought to be getting back. Tom will be in soon. We’re all meeting at the club at five.”

  “Tom and I are supposed to be playing tennis.” He gave her a pitiful look. “Oh, Violet, I’m so frightfully unhappy.”

  “I know. So am I. But we shan’t do any good by talking about it.”

  She gave him her hand, but he took her in his arms and kissed her, and when she released herself her cheeks were wet with his tears. But she was so desperate she could not cry.

  Ten days later the Clarkes sailed.

  While George Moon was listening to as much of this story as Tom Saffary was able to tell him, he reflected in his cool, detached way how odd it was that these commonplace people, leading lives so monotonous, should have been convulsed by such a tragedy. Who would have thought that Violet Saffary, so neat and demure, sitting in the club reading the illustrated papers or chatting with her friends over a lemon squash, should have been eating her heart out for love of that ordinary man? George Moon remembered seeing Knobby at the club the evening before he sailed. He seemed in great spirits. Fellows envied him because he was going home. Those who had recently come back told him by no means to miss the show at the Pavilion. Drink flowed freely. The Resident had not been asked to the farewell party the Saffarys gave for the Clarkes, but he knew very well what it had been like, the good cheer, the cordiality, the chaff, and then after dinner the gramophone turned on and everyone dancing. He wondered what Violet and Clarke had felt as they danced together. It gave him an odd sensation of dismay to think of the despair that must have filled their hearts while they pretended to be so gay.

  And with another part of his mind George Moon thought of his own past. Very few knew that story. After all, it happened twenty-five years ago.

  “What are you going to do now, Saffary?” he asked.

  “Well, that’s what I wanted you to advise me about. Now that Knobby’s dead I don’t know what’s going to happen to Violet if I divorce her. I was wondering if I oughtn’t to let her divorce me.”

  “Oh, you want to divorce?”

  “Well, I must.”

  George Moon lit another cigarette and watched for a moment the smoke that curled away into the air.

  “Did you ever know that I’d been married?”

  “Yes, I think I’d heard. You’re a widower, aren’t you?”

  “No, I divorced my wife. I have a son of twenty-seven. He’s farming in New Zealand. I saw my wife the last time I was home on leave. We met at a play. At first we didn’t recognize one another. She spoke to me. I asked her to lunch at the Berkeley.”

  George Moon chuckled to himself. He was alone. It was a musical comedy. He found himself sitting next to a large fat dark woman whom he vaguely thought he had seen before, but the play was just starting and he did not give her a second look. When the curtain fell after the first act she lo
oked at him with bright eyes and spoke.

  “How are you, George?”

  It was his wife. She had a bold, friendly manner and was very much at her ease.

  “It’s a long time since we met,” she said.

  “It is.”

  “How has life been treating you?”

  “Oh, all right.”

  “I suppose you’re a Resident now. You’re still in the Service, aren’t you?”

  “Yes. I’m retiring soon, worse luck.”

  “Why? You look very fit.”

  “I’m reaching the age limit. I’m supposed to be an old buffer and no good any more.”

  “You’re lucky to have kept so thin. I’m terrible, aren’t I?”

  “You don’t look as though you were wasting away.”

  “I know. I’m stout and I’m growing stouter all the time. I can’t help it and I love food. I can’t resist cream and bread and potatoes.”

  George Moon laughed, but not at what she said; at his own thoughts. In years gone by it had sometimes occurred to him that he might meet her, but he had never thought that the meeting would take this turn. When the play was ended and with a smile she bade him good night, he said:

  “I suppose you wouldn’t lunch with me one day?”

  “Any day you like.”

  They arranged a date and duly met. He knew that she had married the man on whose account he had divorced her, and he judged by her clothes that she was in comfortable circumstances. They drank a cocktail. She ate the hors-d’oeuvre with gusto. She was fifty if she was a day, but she carried her years with spirit. There was something jolly and careless about her, she was quick on the uptake, chatty, and she had the hearty, infectious laugh of the fat woman who has let herself go. If he had not known that her family had for a century been in the Indian Civil Service he would have thought that she had been a chorus girl. She was not flashy, but she had a sort of flamboyance of nature that suggested the stage. She was not in the least embarrassed.

  “You never married again, did you?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “Pity. Because it wasn’t a success the first time there’s no reason why it shouldn’t have been the second.”

  “There’s no need for me to ask if you’ve been happy.”

  “I’ve got nothing to complain of. I think I’ve got a happy nature. Jim’s always been very good to me; he’s retired now, you know, and we live in the country, and I adore Betty.”

  “Who’s Betty?”

  “Oh, she’s my daughter. She got married two years ago. I’m expecting to be a grandmother almost any day.”

  “That ages us a bit.”

  She gave a laugh.

  “Betty’s twenty-two. It was nice of you to ask me to lunch, George. After all, it would be silly to have any feelings about something that happened so long ago as all that.”

  “Idiotic’

  “We weren’t fitted to one another and it’s lucky we found it out before it was too late. Of course I was foolish, but then I was very young. Have you been happy too?”

  “I think I can say I’ve been a success.”

  “Oh, well, that’s probably all the happiness you were capable of.”

  He smiled in appreciation of her shrewdness. And then, putting the whole matter aside easily, she began to talk of other things. Though the courts had given him custody of their son, he, unable to look after him, had allowed his mother to have him. The boy had emigrated at eighteen and was now married. He was a stranger to George Moon, and he was aware that if he met him in the street he would not recognize him. He was too sincere to pretend that he took much interest in him. They talked of him, however, for a while, and then they talked of actors and plays.

  “Well,” she said at last, “I must be running away. I’ve had a lovely lunch. It’s been fun meeting you, George. Thanks so much.”

  He put her into a taxi and taking off his hat walked down Piccadilly by himself. He thought her quite a pleasant, amusing woman: he laughed to think that he had ever been madly in love with her. There was a smile on his lips when he spoke again to Tom Saffary.

  “She was a damned good-looking girl when I married her. That was the trouble. Though, of course, if she hadn’t been I’d never have married her. They were all after her like flies round a honey-pot. We used to have awful rows. And at last I caught her out. Of course I divorced her.”

  “Of course.”

  “Yes, but I know I was a damned fool to do it.” He leaned forward. “My dear Saffary, I know now that if I’d had any sense I’d have shut my eyes. She’d have settled down and made me an excellent wife.”

  He wished he were able to explain to his visitor how grotesque it had seemed to him when he sat and talked with that jolly, comfortable, and good-humoured woman that he should have made so much fuss about what now seemed to him to matter so little.

  “But one has one’s honour to think of,” said Saffary.

  “Honour be damned. One has one’s happiness to think of. Is one’s honour really concerned because one’s wife hops into bed with another man? We’re not crusaders, you and I, or Spanish grandees. I liked my wife. I don’t say I haven’t had other women. I have. But she had just that something that none of the others could give me. What a fool I was to throw away what I wanted more than anything in the world because I couldn’t enjoy exclusive possession of it!”

  “You’re the last man I should ever have expected to hear speak like that.”

  George Moon smiled thinly at the embarrassment that was so clearly expressed on Saffary’s fat troubled face.

  “I’m probably the first man you’ve heard speak the naked truth,” he retorted.

  “Do you mean to say that if it were all to do over again you would act differently?”

  “If I were twenty-seven again I suppose I should be as big a fool as I was then. But if I had the sense I have now I’ll tell you what I’d do if I found my wife had been unfaithful to me. I’d do just what you did last night: I’d give her a damned good hiding and let it go at that.”

  “Are you asking me to forgive Violet?”

  The Resident shook his head slowly and smiled.

  “No. You’ve forgiven her already. I’m merely advising you not to cut off your nose to spite your face.”

  Saffary gave him a worried look. It disconcerted him to know that this cold precise man should see in his heart emotions which seemed so unnatural to himself that he thrust them out of his consciousness.

  “You don’t know the circumstances,” he said. “Knobby and I were almost like brothers. I got him his job. He owed everything to me. And except for me Violet might have gone on being a governess for the rest of her life. It seemed such a waste; I couldn’t help feeling sorry for her. If you know what I mean, it was pity that first made me take any notice of her. Don’t you think it’s a bit thick that when you’ve been thoroughly decent with people they should go out of their way to do the dirty on you? It’s such awful ingratitude.”

  “Oh, my dear boy, one mustn’t expect gratitude. It’s a thing that no one has a right to. After all, you do good because it gives you pleasure. It’s the purest form of happiness there is. To expect thanks for it is really asking too much. If you get it, well, it’s like a bonus on shares on which you’ve already received a dividend; it’s grand, but you mustn’t look upon it as your due.”

  Saffary frowned. He was perplexed. He could not quite make it out that George Moon should think so oddly about things that it had always seemed to him there were no two ways of thinking about. After all there were limits. I mean, if you had any sense of decency you had to behave like a tuan. There was your own self-respect to think of. It was funny that George Moon should give reasons that looked so damned plausible for doing something that, well, damn it, you had to admit you’d be only too glad to do if you could see your way to it. Of course George Moon was queer. No one ever quite understood him.

  “Knobby Clarke is dead, Saffary. You can’t be jealous of him any more.
No one knows a thing except you and me and your wife, and tomorrow I’m going away for ever. Why don’t you let bygones be bygones?”

  “Violet would only despise me.”

  George Moon smiled and, unexpectedly on that prim, fastidious face, his smile had a singular sweetness.

  “I know her very little. I always thought her a very nice woman. Is she as detestable as that?”

  Saffary gave a start and reddened to his ears.

  “No, she’s an angel of goodness. It’s me who’s detestable for saying that of her.” His voice broke and he gave a little sob. “God knows I only want to do the right thing.”

  “The right thing is the kind thing.”

  Saffary covered his face with his hands. He could not curb the emotion that shook him.

  “I seem to be giving, giving all the time, and no one does a God-damned thing for me. It doesn’t matter if my heart is broken, I must just go on.” He drew the back of his hand across his eyes and sighed deeply. “I’ll forgive her.”

  George Moon looked at him reflectively for a little.

  “I wouldn’t make too much of a song and dance about it, if I were you,” he said. “You’ll have to walk warily. She’ll have a lot to forgive too.”

  “Because I hit her, you mean? I know, that was awful of me.”

  “Not a bit. It did her a power of good. I didn’t mean that. You’re behaving generously, old boy, and, you know, one needs a devil of a lot of tact to get people to forgive one one’s generosity. Fortunately women are frivolous and they very quickly forget the benefits conferred upon them. Otherwise, of course, there’d be no living with them.”

  Saffary looked at him open-mouthed.

  “Upon my word you’re a rum “un, Moon,” he said. “Sometimes you seem as hard as nails and then you talk so that one thinks you’re almost human, and then, just as one thinks one’s misjudged you and you have a heart after all, you come out with something that just shocks one. I suppose that’s what they call a cynic’

  “I haven’t deeply considered the matter,” smiled George Moon, “but if to look truth in the face and not resent it when it’s unpalatable, and take human nature as you find it, smiling when it’s absurd and grieved without exaggeration when it’s pitiful, is to be cynical, then I suppose I’m a cynic. Mostly human nature is both absurd and pitiful, but if life has taught you tolerance you find in it more to smile at than to weep.”