Her eyes glowed and her breath came quickly. She stooped and kissed his naked feet. He drew them away quickly, with a cry of protest, and in the agitation of his gesture nearly overthrew the rickety chair.
“Woman, you’re insane. Have you no shame?”
“No.”
“What do you want of me?” he asked fiercely.
“Love.”
“What sort of man do you take me for?”
“A man like any other,” she replied calmly.
“Do you think after all that Angus Munro has done for me I could be such a damned beast as to play about with his wife? I admire him more than any man I’ve ever known. He’s grand. He’s worth a dozen of me and you put together. I’d sooner kill myself than betray him. I don’t know how you can think me capable of such a dastardly act.”
“Oh, my dear, don’t talk such bilge. What harm is it going to do him? You mustn’t take that sort of thing so tragically. After all, life is very short; we’re fools if we don’t take what pleasure we can out of it.”
“You can’t make wrong right by talking about it.”
“I don’t know about that. I think that’s a very controvertible statement.”
He looked at her with amazement. She was sitting at his feet, cool to all appearance and collected, and she seemed to be enjoying the situation. She seemed quite unconscious of its seriousness.
“Do you know that I knocked a fellow down at the club because he made an insulting remark about you?”
“Who?”
“Bishop.”
“Dirty dog. What did he say?”
“He said you’d had affairs with men.”
“I don’t know why people won’t mind their own business. Anyhow, who cares what they say? I love you. I’ve never loved anyone like you. I’m absolutely sick with love for you.”
“Be quiet. Be quiet.”
“Listen, tonight when Angus is asleep I’ll slip into your room. He sleeps like a rock. There’s no risk.”
“You mustn’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“No, no, no.”
He was frightened out of his wits. Suddenly she sprang to her feet and went into the house.
Munro came back at noon, and in the afternoon they busied themselves as usual. Darya, as she sometimes did, worked with them. She was in high spirits. She was so gay that Munro suggested that she was beginning to enjoy the life.
“It’s not so bad,” she admitted. “I’m feeling happy today.”
She teased Neil. She seemed not to notice that he was silent and kept his eyes averted from her.
“Neil’s very quiet,” said Munro. “I suppose you’re feeling a bit weak still.”
“No. I just don’t feel very talkative.”
He was harassed. He was convinced that Darya was capable of anything. He remembered the hysterical frenzy of Nastasya Filipovna in The Idiot, and felt that she too could behave with that unfortunate lack of balance. He had seen her more than once fly into a temper with one of the Chinese servants and he knew how completely she could lose her self-control. Resistance only exasperated her. If she did not immediately get what she wanted she would go almost insane with rage. Fortunately she lost interest in a thing with the same suddenness with which she hankered for it, and if you could distract her attention for a minute she forgot all about it. It was in such situations that Neil had most admired Munro’s tact. He had often been slyly amused to see with what a pawky and yet tender cunning he appeased her feminine tantrums. It was on Munro’s account that Neil’s indignation was so great. Munro was a saint, and from what a state of humiliation and penury and random shifts had he not taken her to make her his wife! She owed everything to him. His name protected her. She had respectability. The commonest gratitude should have made it impossible for her to harbour such thoughts as she had that morning expressed. It was all very well for men to make advances, that was what men did, but for women to do so was disgusting. His modesty was outraged. The passion he had seen in her face, and the indelicacy of her gestures, scandalized him.
He wondered whether she would really carry out her threat to come to his room. He didn’t think she would dare. But when night came and they all went to bed, he was so terrified that he could not sleep. He lay there listening anxiously. The silence was broken only by the repeated and monotonous cry of an owl. Through the thin wall of woven palm leaves he heard Munro’s steady breathing. Suddenly he was conscious that someone was stealthily creeping into his room. He had already made up his mind what to do.
“Is that you, Mr Munro?” he called in a loud voice.
Darya stopped suddenly. Munro awoke.
“There’s someone in my room. I thought it was you.”
“It’s all right,” said Darya. “It’s only me, I couldn’t sleep, so I thought I’d go and smoke a cigarette on the veranda.”
“Oh, is that all?” said Munro. “Don’t catch cold.”
She walked through Neil’s room and out. He saw her light a cigarette. Presently she went back and he heard her get into bed.
He did not see her next morning, for he started out collecting before she was up, and he took care not to get in till he was pretty sure Munro would be back. He avoided being alone with her till it was dark and Munro went down for a few minutes to arrange the moth-traps.
“Why did you wake Angus last night?” she said in a low angry whisper.
He shrugged his shoulders and going on with his work did not answer.
“Were you frightened?”
“I have a certain sense of decency.”
“Oh, don’t be such a prig.”
“I’d rather be a prig than a dirty swine.”
“I hate you.”
“Then leave me alone.”
She did not answer, but with her open hand smartly slapped his face. He flushed, but did not speak. Munro returned and they pretended to be intent on whatever they were doing.
For the next few days Darya, except at meal-times and in the evenings, never spoke to Neil. Without prearrangement they exerted themselves to conceal from Munro that their relations were strained. But the effort with which Darya roused herself from a brooding silence would have been obvious to anyone more suspicious than Angus, and sometimes she could not help herself from being a trifle sharp with Neil. She chaffed him, but in her chaff was a sting. She knew how to wound and caught him on the raw, but he took care not to let her see it. He had an inkling that the good-humour he affected infuriated her.
Then one day when Neil came back from collecting, though he had delayed till the last possible minute before tiffin, he was surprised to find that Munro had not yet returned. Darya was lying on a mattress on the veranda, sipping a gin pahit and smoking. She did not speak to him when he passed through to wash. In a minute the Chinese boy came into his room and told him that tiffin was ready. He walked out.
“Where’s Mr Munro?” he asked.
“He’s not coming,” said Darya. “He sent a message to say that the place he’s at is so good he won’t come down till night.”
Munro had set out that morning for the summit of the mountain. The lower levels had yielded poor results in the way of mammals, and Munro’s idea was, if he could find a good place higher up, with a supply of water, to transfer the camp. Neil and Darya ate their meal in silence. After they had finished he went into the house and came out again with his topee and his collecting gear. It was unusual for him to go out in the afternoon.
“Where are you going?” she asked abruptly.
“Out.”
“Why?”
“I don’t feel tired. I’ve got nothing much else to do this afternoon.”
Suddenly she burst into tears.
“How can you be so unkind to me?” she sobbed. “Oh, it is cruel to treat me like this.”
He looked down at her from his great height, his handsome, somewhat stolid face bearing a harassed look. “What have I done?”
“You’ve been beastly to me. Bad as I am
I haven’t deserved to suffer like this. I’ve done everything in the world for you. Tell me one single little thing I could do that I haven’t done gladly. I’m so terribly unhappy.”
He moved on his feet uneasily. It was horrible to hear her say that. He loathed and feared her, but he had still the respect for her that he had always felt, not only because she was a woman, but because she was Angus Munro’s wife. She wept uncontrollably. Fortunately the Dyak hunters had gone that morning with Munro. There was no one about the camp but the three Chinese servants and they, after tiffin, were asleep in their own quarters fifty yards away. They were alone.
“I don’t want to make you unhappy. It’s all so silly. It’s absurd of a woman like you to fall in love with a fellow like me. It makes me look such a fool. Haven’t you got any self-control?”
“Oh, God. Self-control!”
“I mean, if you really cared for me you couldn’t want me to be such a cad. Doesn’t it mean anything to you that your husband trusts us implicitly? The mere fact of his leaving us alone like this puts us on our honour. He’s a man who would never hurt a fly. I should never respect myself again if I betrayed his confidence.”
She looked up suddenly.
“What makes you think he would never hurt a fly? Why, all those bottles and cases are full of the harmless animals he’s killed.”
“In the interests of science. That’s quite another thing.”
“Oh, you fool, you fool.”
“Well, if I am a fool I can’t help it. Why do you bother about me?”
“Do you think I wanted to fall in love with you?”
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
“Ashamed? How stupid! My God, what have I done that I should eat my heart out for such a pretentious ass?”
“You talk about what you’ve done for me. What has Munro done for you?”
“Munro bores me to death. I’m sick of him. Sick to death of him.”
“Then I’m not the first?”
Ever since her amazing avowal he had been tortured by the suspicion that what those men at Kuala Solor had said of her was true. He had refused to believe a word of it, and even now he could not bring himself to think that she could be such a monster of depravity. It was frightful to think that Angus Munro, so trusting and tender, should have lived in a fool’s paradise. She could not be as bad as that. But she misunderstood him. She smiled through her tears.
“Of course not. How can you be so silly? Oh, darling, don’t be so desperately serious. I love you.”
Then it was true. He had sought to persuade himself that what she felt for him was exceptional, a madness that together they could contend with and vanquish. But she was simply promiscuous.
“Aren’t you afraid Munro will find out?”
She was not crying any more. She adored talking about herself, and she had a feeling that she was inveigling Neil into a new interest in her.
“I sometimes wonder if he doesn’t know, if not with his mind, then with his heart. He’s got the intuition of a woman and a woman’s sensitiveness. Sometimes I’ve been certain he suspected and in his anguish I’ve sensed a strange, spiritual exaltation. I’ve wondered if in his pain he didn’t find an infinitely subtle pleasure. There are souls, you know, that feel a voluptuous joy in laceration.”
“How horrible!” Neil had no patience with these conceits. “The only excuse for you is that you’re insane.”
She was now much more sure of herself. She gave him a bold look.
“Don’t you think I’m attractive? A good many men have. You must have had dozens of women in Scotland who weren’t so well made as I am.”
She looked down at her shapely, sensual figure with calm pride.
“I’ve never had a woman,” he said gravely.
“Why not?”
She was so surprised that she sprang to her feet. He shrugged his shoulders. He could not bring himself to tell her how disgusting the idea of such a thing was to him, and how vile he had thought the haphazard amours of his fellow-students at Edinburgh. He took a mystical joy in his purity. Love was sacred. The sexual act horrified him. Its excuse was the procreation of children and its sanctification marriage. But Darya, her whole body rigid, stared at him, panting; and suddenly, with a sobbing cry in which there was exultation and at the same time wild desire, she flung herself on her knees and seizing his hand passionately kissed it.
“Alyosha,” she gasped. “Alyosha.”
And then, crying and laughing, she crumpled up in a heap at his feet. Strange, hardly human sounds issued from her throat and convulsive tremors passed through her body so that you would have thought she was receiving one electric shock after another. Neil did not know if it was an attack of hysteria or an epileptic fit.
“Stop it,” he cried. “Stop it.”
He took her up in his strong arms and laid her in the chair. But when he tried to leave her she would not let him. She flung her arms round his neck and held him. She covered his face with kisses. He struggled. He turned his face away. He put his hand between her face and his to protect himself. Suddenly she dug her teeth into it. The pain was so great that, without thinking, he gave her a great swinging blow.
“You devil,” he cried.
His violent gesture had forced her to release him. He held his hand and looked at it. She had caught him by the fleshy part on the side, and it was bleeding. Her eyes blazed. She was feeling alert and active.
“I’ve had enough of this. I’m going out,” he said.
She sprang to her feet.
“I’ll come with you.”
He put on his topee and, snatching up his collecting gear without a word, turned on his heel. With one stride he leaped down the three steps that led from the floor of the house to the ground. She followed him.
“I’m going into the jungle,” he said.
“I don’t care.”
In the ravening desire that possessed her she forgot her morbid fear of the jungle. She recked nothing of snakes and wild beasts. She did not mind the branches that hit her face or the creepers that entangled her feet. For a month Neil had explored all that part of the forest and he knew every yard of it. He told himself grimly that he’d teach her to come with him. He forced his way through the undergrowth with rapid strides; she followed him, stumbling but determined; he crashed on, blind with rage, and she crashed after him. She talked; he did not listen to what she said. She besought him to have pity on her. She bemoaned her fate. She made herself humble. She wept and wrung her hands. She tried to cajole him. The words poured from her lips in an unceasing stream. She was like a mad woman. At last in a little clearing he stopped suddenly and turning round faced her.
“This is impossible,” he cried. “I’m fed up. When Angus comes back I must tell him I’ve got to go. I shall go back to Kuala Solor tomorrow morning and go home.”
“He won’t let you go, he wants you. He finds you invaluable.”
“I don’t care. I’ll fake up something.”
“What?”
He mistook her.
“Oh, you needn’t be frightened, I shan’t tell him the truth. You can break his heart if you want to; I’m not going to.”
“You worship him, don’t you? That dull, phlegmatic man.”
“He’s worth a hundred of you.”
“It would be rather funny if I told him you’d gone because I wouldn’t yield to your advances.”
He gave a slight start and looked at her to see if she was serious.
“Don’t be such a fool. You don’t think he’d believe that, do you? He knows it would never occur to me.”
“Don’t be too sure.”
She had spoken carelessly, with no particular intention other than to continue the argument, but she saw that he was frightened and some instinct of cruelty made her press the advantage.
“Do you expect mercy from me? You’ve humiliated me beyond endurance. You’ve treated me like dirt. I swear that if you make any suggestion of going I shall go stra
ight to Angus and say that you took advantage of his absence to try and assault me.”
“I can deny it. After all it’s only your word against mine.”
“Yes, but my word’ll count. I can prove what I say.”
“What do you mean?”
“I bruise easily. I can show him the bruise where you struck me. And look at your hand.” He turned and gave it a sudden glance. “How did those teeth marks get there?”
He stared at her stupidly. He had gone quite pale. How could he explain that bruise and that scar? If he was forced to in self-defence he could tell the truth, but was it likely that Angus would believe it? He worshipped Darya. He would take her word against anyone’s. What monstrous ingratitude it would seem for all Munro’s kindness and what treachery in return for so much confidence! He would think him a filthy skunk and from his standpoint with justice. That was what shattered him, the thought that Munro, for whom he would willingly have laid down his life, should think ill of him. He was so unhappy that tears, unmanly tears that he hated, came to his eyes. Darya saw that he was broken. She exulted. She was paying him back for the misery he had made her suffer. She held him now. He was in her power. She savoured her triumph, and in the midst of her anguish laughed in her heart because he was such a fool. At that moment she did not know whether she loved or despised him.
“Now will you be good?” she said.
He gave a sob and blindly, with a sudden instinct of escape from that abominable woman, took to his heels and ran as hard as he could. He plunged through the jungle, like a wounded animal, not looking where he was going, till he was out of breath. Then, panting, he stopped. He took out his handkerchief and wiped away the sweat that was pouring into his eyes and blinding him. He was exhausted and he sat down to rest.
“I must take care I don’t get lost,” he said to himself.
That was the least of his troubles, but all the same he was glad that he had a pocket compass, and he knew in which direction he must go. He heaved a deep sigh and rose wearily to his feet. He started walking. He watched his way and with another part of his mind miserably asked himself what he should do. He was convinced that Darya would do what she had threatened. They were to be another three weeks in that accursed place. He dared not go; he dared not stay. His mind was in a whirl. The only thing was to get back to camp and think it out quietly. In about a quarter of an hour he came to a spot that he recognized. In an hour he was back. He flung himself miserably into a chair. And it was Angus who filled his thoughts. His heart bled for him. Neil saw now all sorts of things that before had been dark to him. They were revealed to him in a flash of bitter insight. He knew why the women at Kuala Solor were so hostile to Darya and why they looked at Angus so strangely. They treated him with a sort of affectionate levity. Neil thought it was because Angus was a man of science and so in their foolish eyes somewhat absurd. He knew now it was because they were sorry for him and at the same time found him ridiculous. Darya had made him the laughing-stock of the community. If ever there was a man who hadn’t deserved ill usage at a woman’s hands it was he. Suddenly Neil gasped and began to tremble all over. It had suddenly occurred to him that Darya did not know her way through the jungle; in his anguish he had hardly been conscious of where they went. Supposing she could not find her way home?
Ah King (Works of W. Somerset Maugham) Page 25
