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{{title
{{TextQuality|75%}}{{title
|title= Burmese Days
|title= ''Burmese Days''
|author= George Orwell
|author= George Orwell
|notes=
|notes= This novel publish in 1934 is based loosely on Orwell's five years as a policeman in the Indian Imperial Police force in Burma. It is a caustic, fast-paced tale about the waning days of British imperialism before World War II. From Wikipedia article on [[:en.wp:Burmese Days|Burmese Days]].
}}
}}
{{PD-Canada}}


'This desert inaccessible
<div class="text">
'This desert inaccessible<br>
Under the shade of melancholy boughs'
Under the shade of melancholy boughs'


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{{DISPLAYTITLE:''Burmese Days''}}
 
[[Category:George Orwell novels]]
 
[[Category:1934 novels]]
 
== 15 ==
 
When Flory arrived at the Club he found the Lackersteens in an
unusually morose mood.  Mrs Lackersteen was sitting, as usual, in
the best place under the punkah, and was reading the Civil List,
the Debrett of Burma.  She was in a bad temper with her husband,
who had defied her by ordering a 'large peg' as soon as he reached
the Club, and was further defying her by reading the Pink'un.
Elizabeth was alone in the stuffy little library, turning over the
pages of an old copy of Blackwood's.
 
Since parting with Flory, Elizabeth had had a very disagreeable
adventure.  She had come out of her bath and was half-way through
dressing for dinner when her uncle had suddenly appeared in her
room--pretext, to hear some more about the day's shooting--and
begun pinching her leg in a way that simply could not be
misunderstood.  Elizabeth was horrified.  This was her first
introduction to the fact that some men are capable of making love
to their nieces.  We live and learn.  Mr Lackersteen had tried to
carry the thing off as a joke, but he was too clumsy and too nearly
drunk to succeed.  It was fortunate that his wife was out of
hearing, or there might have been a first-rate scandal.
 
After this, dinner was an uncomfortable meal.  Mr Lackersteen was
sulking.  What rot it was, the way these women put on airs and
prevented you from having a good time!  The girl was pretty enough
to remind him of the Illustrations in La Vie Parisienne, and damn
it! wasn't he paying for her keep?  It was a shame.  But for
Elizabeth the position was very serious.  She was penniless and had
no home except her uncle's house.  She had come eight thousand
miles to stay here.  It would be terrible if after only a fortnight
her uncle's house were to be made uninhabitable for her.
 
Consequently, one thing was much surer in her mind than it had
been: that if Flory asked her to marry him (and he would, there was
little doubt of it), she would say yes.  At another time it was
just possible that she would have decided differently.  This
afternoon, under the spell of that glorious, exciting, altogether
'lovely' adventure, she had come near to loving Flory; as near as,
in his particular case, she was able to come.  Yet even after that,
perhaps, her doubts would have returned.  For there had always been
something dubious about Flory; his age, his birthmark, his queer,
perverse way of talking--that 'highbrow' talk that was at once
unintelligible and disquieting.  There had been days when she had
even disliked him.  But now her uncle's behaviour had turned the
scale.  Whatever happened she had got to escape from her uncle's
house, and that soon.  Yes, undoubtedly she would marry Flory when
he asked her!
 
He could see her answer in her face as he came into the library.
Her air was gentler, more yielding than he had known it.  She was
wearing the same lilac-coloured frock that she had worn that first
morning when he met her, and the sight of the familiar frock gave
him courage.  It seemed to bring her nearer to him, taking away the
strangeness and the elegance that had sometimes unnerved him.
 
He picked up the magazine she had been reading and made some
remark; for a moment they chattered in the banal way they so seldom
managed to avoid.  It is strange how the drivelling habits of
conversation will persist into almost all moments.  Yet even as
they chattered they found themselves drifting to the door and then
outside, and presently to the big frangipani tree by the tennis
court.  It was the night of the full moon.  Flaring like a white-
hot coin, so brilliant that it hurt one's eyes, the moon swam
rapidly upwards in a sky of smoky blue, across which drifted a few
wisps of yellowish cloud.  The stars were all invisible.  The
croton bushes, by day hideous things like jaundiced laurels, were
changed by the moon into jagged black and white designs like
fantastic wood-cuts.  By the compound fence two Dravidian coolies
were walking down the road, transfigured, their white rags
gleaming.  Through the tepid air the scent streamed from the
frangipani trees like some intolerable compound out of a penny-in-
the-slot machine.
 
'Look at the moon, just look at it!' Flory said.  'It's like a
white sun.  It's brighter than an English winter day.'
 
Elizabeth looked up into the branches of the frangipani tree, which
the moon seemed to have changed into rods of silver.  The light lay
thick, as though palpable, on everything, crusting the earth and
the rough bark of trees like some dazzling salt, and every leaf
seemed to bear a freight of solid light, like snow.  Even
Elizabeth, indifferent to such things, was astonished.
 
'It's wonderful!  You never see moonlight like that at Home.  It's
so--so--'  No adjective except 'bright' presenting itself, she was
silent.  She had a habit of leaving her sentences unfinished, like
Rosa Dartle, though for a different reason.
 
'Yes, the old moon does her best in this country.  How that tree
does stink, doesn't it?  Beastly, tropical thing!  I hate a tree
that blooms all the year round, don't you?'
 
He was talking half abstractedly, to cover the time till the
coolies should be out of sight.  As they disappeared he put his arm
round Elizabeth's shoulder, and then, when she did not start or
speak, turned her round and drew her against him.  Her head came
against his breast, and her short hair grazed his lips.  He put his
hand under her chin and lifted her face up to meet his.  She was
not wearing her spectacles.
 
'You don't mind?'
 
'No.'
 
'I mean, you don't mind my--this thing of mine?' he shook his head
slightly to indicate the birthmark.  He could not kiss her without
first asking this question.
 
'No, no.  Of course not.'
 
A moment after their mouths met he felt her bare arms settle
lightly round his neck.  They stood pressed together, against the
smooth trunk of the frangipani tree, body to body, mouth to mouth,
for a minute or more.  The sickly scent of the tree came mingling
with the scent of Elizabeth's hair.  And the scent gave him a
feeling of stultification, of remoteness from Elizabeth, even
though she was in his arms.  All that that alien tree symbolized
for him, his exile, the secret, wasted years--it was like an
unbridgeable gulf between them.  How should he ever make her
understand what it was that he wanted of her?  He disengaged
himself and pressed her shoulders gently against the tree, looking
down at her face, which he could see very clearly though the moon
was behind her.
 
'It's useless trying to tell you what you mean to me,' he said.
'"What you mean to me!"  These blunted phrases!  You don't know,
you can't know, how much I love you.  But I've got to try and tell
you.  There's so much I must tell you.  Had we better go back to
the Club?  They may come looking for us.  We can talk on the
veranda.'
 
'Is my hair very untidy?' she said.
 
'It's beautiful.'
 
'But has it got untidy?  Smooth it for me, would you, please?'
 
She bent her head towards him, and he smoothed the short, cool
locks with his hand.  The way she bent her head to him gave him a
curious feeling of intimacy, far more intimate than the kiss, as
though he had already been her husband.  Ah, he must have her, that
was certain!  Only by marrying her could his life be salvaged.  In
a moment he would ask her.  They walked slowly through the cotton
bushes and back to the Club, his arm still round her shoulder.
 
'We can talk on the veranda,' he repeated.  'Somehow, we've never
really talked, you and I.  My God, how I've longed all these years
for somebody to talk to!  How I could talk to you, interminably,
interminably!  That sounds boring.  I'm afraid it will be boring.
I must ask you to put up with it for a little while.'
 
She made a sound of remonstrance at the word 'boring'.
 
'No, it is boring, I know that.  We Anglo-Indians are always looked
on as bores.  And we ARE bores.  But we can't help it.  You see,
there's--how shall I say?--a demon inside us driving us to talk.
We walk about under a load of memories which we long to share and
somehow never can.  It's the price we pay for coming to this
country.'
 
They were fairly safe from interruption on the side veranda, for
there was no door opening directly upon it.  Elizabeth had sat down
with her arms on the little wicker table, but Flory remained
strolling back and forth, with his hands in his coatpockets,
stepping into the moonlight that streamed beneath the eastern eaves
of the veranda, and back into the shadows.
 
'I said just now that I loved you.  Love!  The word's been used
till it's meaningless.  But let me try to explain.  This afternoon
when you were there shooting with me, I thought, my God! here at
last is somebody who can share my life with me, but really share
it, really LIVE it with me--do you see--'
 
He was going to ask her to marry him--indeed, he had intended to
ask her without more delay.  But the words were not spoken yet;
instead, he found himself talking egoistically on and on.  He could
not help it.  It was so important that she should understand
something of what his life in this country had been; that she
should grasp the nature of the loneliness that he wanted her to
nullify.  And it was so devilishly difficult to explain.  It is
devilish to suffer from a pain that is all but nameless.  Blessed
are they who are stricken only with classifiable diseases!  Blessed
are the poor, the sick, the crossed in love, for at least other
people know what is the matter with them and will listen to their
belly-achings with sympathy.  But who that has not suffered it
understands the pain of exile?  Elizabeth watched him as he moved
to and fro, in and out of the pool of moonlight that turned his
silk coat to silver.  Her heart was still knocking from the kiss,
and yet her thoughts wandered as he talked.  Was he going to ask
her to marry him?  He was being so slow about it!  She was dimly
aware that he was saying something about loneliness.  Ah, of
course!  He was telling her about the loneliness she would have to
put up with in the jungle, when they were married.  He needn't have
troubled.  Perhaps you did get rather lonely in the jungle
sometimes?  Miles from anywhere, no cinemas, no dances, no one but
each other to talk to, nothing to do in the evenings except read--
rather a bore, that.  Still, you could have a gramophone.  What a
difference it would make when those new portable radio sets got out
to Burma!  She was about to say this when he added:
 
'Have I made myself at all clear to you?  Have you got some picture
of the life we live here?  The foreignness, the solitude, the
melancholy!  Foreign trees, foreign flowers, foreign landscapes,
foreign faces.  It's all as alien as a different planet.  But do
you see--and it's this that I so want you to understand--do you
see, it mightn't be so bad living on a different planet, it might
even be the most interesting thing imaginable, if you had even one
person to share it with.  One person who could see it with eyes
something like your own.  This country's been a kind of solitary
hell to me--it's so to most of us--and yet I tell you it could
be a paradise if one weren't alone.  Does all this seem quite
meaningless?'
 
He had stopped beside the table, and he picked up her hand.  In the
half-darkness he could see her face only as a pale oval, like a
flower, but by the feeling of her hand he knew instantly that she
had not understood a word of what he was saying.  How should she,
indeed?  It was so futile, this meandering talk!  He would say to
her at once, Will you marry me?  Was there not a lifetime to talk
in?  He took her other hand and drew her gently to her feet.
 
'Forgive me all this rot I've been talking.'
 
'It's all right,' she murmured indistinctly, expecting that he was
about to kiss her.
 
'No, it's rot talking like that.  Some things will go into words,
some won't.  Besides, it was an impertinence to go belly-aching on
and on about myself.  But I was trying to lead up to something.
Look, this is what I wanted to say.  Will--'
 
'Eliz-a-beth!'
 
It was Mrs Lackersteen's high-pitched, plaintive voice, calling
from within the Club.
 
'Elizabeth?  Where are you, Elizabeth?'
 
Evidently she was near the front door--would be on the veranda in a
moment.  Flory pulled Elizabeth against him.  They kissed hurriedly.
He released her, only holding her hands.
 
'Quickly, there's just time.  Answer me this.  Will you--'
 
But that sentence never got any further.  At the same moment
something extraordinary happened under his feet--the floor was
surging and rolling like a sea--he was staggering, then dizzily
falling, hitting his upper arm a thump as the floor rushed towards
him.  As he lay there he found himself jerked violently backwards
and forwards as though some enormous beast below were rocking the
whole building on its back.
 
The drunken floor righted itself very suddenly, and Flory sat up,
dazed but not much hurt.  He dimly noticed Elizabeth sprawling
beside him, and screams coming from within the Club.  Beyond the
gate two Burmans were racing through the moonlight with their long
hair streaming behind them.  They were yelling at the top of their
voices:
 
'Nga Yin is shaking himself!  Nga Yin is shaking himself!'
 
Flory watched them unintelligently.  Who was Nga Yin?  Nga is the
prefix given to criminals.  Nga Yin must be a dacoit.  Why was he
shaking himself?  Then he remembered.  Nga Yin was a giant supposed
by the Burmese to be buried, like Typhaeus, beneath the crust of
the earth.  Of course!  It was an earthquake.
 
'An earthquake!' he exclaimed, and he remembered Elizabeth and
moved to pick her up.  But she was already sitting up, unhurt, and
rubbing the back of her head.
 
'Was that an earthquake?' she said in a rather awed voice.
 
Mrs Lackersteen's tall form came creeping round the corner of the
veranda, clinging to the wall like some elongated lizard.  She was
exclaiming hysterically:
 
'Oh dear, an earthquake!  Oh, what a dreadful shock!  I can't bear
it--my heart won't stand it!  Oh dear, oh dear!  An earthquake!'
 
Mr Lackersteen tottered after her, with a strange ataxic step
caused partly by earth-tremors and partly by gin.
 
'An earthquake, dammit!' he said.
 
Flory and Elizabeth slowly picked themselves up.  They all went
inside, with that queer feeling in the soles of the feet that one
has when one steps from a rocking boat on to the shore.  The old
butler was hurrying from the servants' quarters, thrusting his
pagri on his head as he came, and a troop of twittering chokras
after him.
 
'Earthquake, sir, earthquake!' he bubbled eagerly.
 
'I should damn well think it was an earthquake,' said Mr Lackersteen
as he lowered himself cautiously into a chair.  'Here, get some
drinks, butler.  By God, I could do with a nip of something after
that.'
 
They all had a nip of something.  The butler, shy yet beaming,
stood on one leg beside the table, with the tray in his hand.
'Earthquake, sir, BIG earthquake!' he repeated enthusiastically.
He was bursting with eagerness to talk; so, for that matter, was
everyone else.  An extraordinary joie de vivre had come over them
all as soon as the shaky feeling departed from their legs.  An
earthquake is such fun when it is over.  It is so exhilarating to
reflect that you are not, as you well might be, lying dead under a
heap of ruins.  With one accord they all burst out talking: 'My
dear, I've never HAD such a shock--I fell absolutely FLAT on my
back--I thought it was a dam' pariah dog scratching itself under
the floor--I thought it must be an explosion somewhere--' and so on
and so forth; the usual earthquake-chatter.  Even the butler was
included in the conversation.
 
'I expect you can remember ever so many earthquakes can't you
butler?' said Mrs Lackersteen, quite graciously, for her.
 
'Oh yes, madam, many earthquakes!  1887, 1899, 1906, 1912--many,
many I can remember, madam!'
 
'The 1912 one was a biggish one,' Flory said.
 
'Oh, sir, but 1906 was bigger!  Very bad shock, sir!  And big
heathen idol in the temple fall down on top of the thathanabaing,
that is Buddhist bishop, madam, which the Burmese say mean bad omen
for failure of paddy crop and foot-and-mouth disease.  Also in 1887
my first earthquake I remember, when I was a little chokra, and
Major Maclagan sahib was lying under the table and promising he
sign the teetotal pledge tomorrow morning.  He not know it was an
earthquake.  Also two cows was killed by falling roofs,' etc., etc.
 
The Europeans stayed in the Club till midnight, and the butler
popped into the room as many as half a dozen times, to relate a new
anecdote.  So far from snubbing him, the Europeans even encouraged
him to talk.  There is nothing like an earthquake for drawing
people together.  One more tremor, or perhaps two, and they would
have asked the butler to sit down at table with them.
 
Meanwhile, Flory's proposal went no further.  One cannot propose
marriage immediately after an earthquake.  In any case, he did not
see Elizabeth alone for the rest of that evening.  But it did not
matter, he knew that she was his now.  In the morning there would
be time enough.  On this thought, at peace in his mind, and dog-
tired after the long day, he went to bed.
 
== 16 ==
 
The vultures in the big pyinkado trees by the cemetery flapped from
their dung-whitened branches, steadied themselves on the wing, and
climbed by vast spirals into the upper air.  It was early, but
Flory was out already.  He was going down to the Club, to wait
until Elizabeth came and then ask her formally to marry him.  Some
instinct, which he did not understand, prompted him to do it before
the other Europeans returned from the jungle.
 
As he came out of the compound gate he saw that there was a new
arrival at Kyauktada.  A youth with a long spear like a needle in
his hand was cantering across the maidan on a white pony.  Some
Sikhs, looking like sepoys, ran after him, leading two other
ponies, a bay and a chestnut, by the bridle.  When he came level
with him Flory halted on the road and shouted good morning.  He had
not recognized the youth, but it is usual in small stations to make
strangers welcome.  The other saw that he was hailed, wheeled his
pony negligently round and brought it to the side of the road.  He
was a youth of about twenty-live, lank but very straight, and
manifestly a cavalry officer.  He had one of those rabbit-like
faces common among English soldiers, with pale blue eyes and a
little triangle of fore-teeth visible between the lips; yet hard,
fearless and even brutal in a careless fashion--a rabbit, perhaps,
but a tough and martial rabbit.  He sat his horse as though he were
part of it, and he looked offensively young and fit.  His fresh
face was tanned to the exact shade that went with his light-
coloured eyes, and he was as elegant as a picture with his white
buckskin topi and his polo-boots that gleamed like an old
meerschaum pipe.  Flory felt uncomfortable in his presence from
the start.
 
'How d'you do?' said Flory.  'Have you just arrived?'
 
'Last night, got in by the late train.'  He had a surly, boyish
voice.  'I've been sent up here with a company of men to stand by
in case your local bad-mashes start any trouble.  My name's
Verrall--Military Police,' he added, not, however, inquiring
Flory's name in return.
 
'Oh yes.  We heard they were sending somebody.  Where are you
putting up?'
 
'Dak bungalow, for the time being.  There was some black beggar
staying there when I got in last night--Excise Officer or
something.  I booted him out.  This is a filthy hole, isn't it?' he
said with a backward movement of his head, indicating the whole of
Kyauktada.
 
'I suppose it's like the rest of these small stations.  Are you
staying long?'
 
'Only a month or so, thank God.  Till the rains break.  What a
rotten maidan you've got here, haven't you?  Pity they can't keep
this stuff cut,' he added, swishing the dried-up grass with the
point of his spear.  'Makes it so hopeless for polo or anything.'
 
'I'm afraid you won't get any polo here,' Flory said.  'Tennis is
the best we can manage.  There are only eight of us all told, and
most of us spend three-quarters of our time in the jungle.'
 
'Christ!  What a hole!'
 
After this there was a silence.  The tall, bearded Sikhs stood in a
group round their horses' heads, eyeing Flory without much favour.
It was perfectly clear that Verral was bored with the conversation
and wanted to escape.  Flory had never in his life felt so
completely de trop, or so old and shabby.  He noticed that
Verrall's pony was a beautiful Arab, a mare, with proud neck and
arching, plume-like tail; a lovely milk-white thing, worth several
thousands of rupees.  Verrall had already twitched the bridle to
turn away, evidently feeling that he had talked enough for one
morning.
 
'That's a wonderful pony of yours,' Flory said.
 
'She's not bad, better than these Burma scrubs.  I've come out to
do a bit of tent-pegging.  It's hopeless trying to knock a polo
ball about in this muck.  Hey, Hira Singh!' he called, and turned
his pony away.
 
The sepoy holding the bay pony handed his bridle to a companion,
ran to a spot forty yards away, and fixed a narrow boxwood peg in
the ground.  Verral took no further notice of Flory.  He raised his
spear and poised himself as though taking aim at the peg, while the
Indians backed their horses out of the way and stood watching
critically.  With a just perceptible movement Verrall dug his knees
into the pony's sides.  She bounded forward like a bullet from a
catapult.  As easily as a centaur the lank, straight youth leaned
over in the saddle, lowered his spear and plunged it clean through
the peg.  One of the Indians muttered gruffly 'Shabash!'  Verrall
raised his spear behind him in the orthodox fashion, and then,
pulling his horse to a canter, wheeled round and handed the
transfixed peg to the sepoy.
 
Verrall rode twice more at the peg, and hit it each time.  It was
done with matchless grace and with extraordinary solemnity.  The
whole group of men, Englishman and Indians, were concentrated upon
the business of hitting the peg as though it had been a religious
ritual.  Flory still stood watching, disregarded--Verrall's face
was one of those that are specially constructed for ignoring
unwelcome strangers--but from the very fact that he had been
snubbed unable to tear himself away.  Somehow, Verrall had filled
him with a horrible sense of inferiority.  He was trying to think
of some pretext for renewing the conversation, when he looked up
the hillside and saw Elizabeth, in pale blue, coming out of her
uncle's gate.  She must have seen the third transfixing of the peg.
His heart stirred painfully.  A thought occurred to him, one of
those rash thoughts that usually lead to trouble.  He called to
Verrall, who was a few yards away from him, and pointed with his
stick.
 
'Do these other two know how to do it?'
 
Verrall looked over his shoulder with a surly air.  He had expected
Flory to go away after being ignored.
 
'What?'
 
'Can these other two do it?' Flory repeated.
 
'The chestnut's not bad.  Bolts if you let him, though.'
 
'Let me have a shot at the peg, would you?'
 
'All right,' said Verrall ungraciously.  'Don't go and cut his
mouth to bits.'
 
A sepoy brought the pony, and Flory pretended to examine the curb-
chain.  In reality he was temporizing until Elizabeth should be
thirty or forty yards away.  He made up his mind that he would
stick the peg exactly at the moment when she passed (it is easy
enough on the small Burma ponies, provided that they will gallop
straight), and then ride up to her with it on his point.  That was
obviously the right move.  He did not want her to think that that
pink-faced young whelp was the only person who could ride.  He was
wearing shorts, which are uncomfortable to ride in, but he knew
that, like nearly everyone, he looked his best on horseback.
 
Elizabeth was approaching.  Flory stepped into the saddle, took the
spear from the Indian and waved it in greeting to Elizabeth.  She
made no response, however.  Probably she was shy in front of
Verrall.  She was looking away, towards the cemetery, and her
cheeks were pink.
 
'Chalo,' said Flory to the Indian, and then dug his knees into the
horse's sides.
 
The very next instant, before the horse had taken to bounds, Flory
found himself hurtling through the air, hitting the ground with a
crack that wrenched his shoulder almost out of joint, and rolling
over and over.  Mercifully the spear fell clear of him.  He lay
supine, with a blurred vision of blue sky and floating vultures.
Then his eyes focused on the khaki pagri and dark face of a Sikh,
bearded to the eyes, bending over him.
 
'What's happened?' he said in English, and he raised himself
painfully on his elbow.  The Sikh made some gruff answer and
pointed.  Flory saw the chestnut pony careering away over the
maidan, with the saddle under its belly.  The girth had not been
tightened, and had slipped round; hence his fall.
 
When Flory sat up he found that he was in extreme pain.  The right
shoulder of his shirt was torn open and already soaking with blood,
and he could feel more blood oozing from his cheek.  The hard earth
had grazed him.  His hat, too, was gone.  With a deadly pang he
remembered Elizabeth, and he saw her coming towards him, barely ten
yards away, looking straight at him as he sprawled there so
ignominiously.  My God, my God! he thought, O my God, what a fool I
must look!  The thought of it even drove away the pain of the fall.
He clapped a hand over his birth-mark, though the other cheek was
the damaged one.
 
'Elizabeth!  Hullo, Elizabeth!  Good morning!'
 
He had called out eagerly, appealingly, as one does when one is
conscious of looking a fool.  She did not answer, and what was
almost incredible, she walked on without pausing even for an
instant, as though she had neither seen nor heard him.
 
'Elizabeth!' he called again, taken aback; 'did you see my fall?
The saddle slipped.  The fool of a sepoy hadn't--'
 
There was no question that she had heard him now.  She turned her
face full upon him for a moment, and looked at him and through him
as though he had not existed.  Then she gazed away into the
distance beyond the cemetery.  It was terrible.  He called after
her in dismay--
 
'Elizabeth!  I say, Elizabeth!'
 
She passed on without a word, without a sign, without a look.  She
was walking sharply down the road, with a click of heels, her back
turned upon him.
 
The sepoys had come round him now, and Verrall, too, had ridden
across to where Flory lay.  Some of the sepoys had saluted
Elizabeth; Verrall had ignored her, perhaps not seeing her.  Flory
rose stiffly to his feet.  He was badly bruised, but no bones were
broken.  The Indians brought him his hat and stick, but they did
not apologize for their carelessness.  They looked faintly
contemptuous, as though thinking that he had only got what he
deserved.  It was conceivable that they had loosened the girth on
purpose.
 
'The saddle slipped,' said Flory in the weak, stupid way that one
does at such moments.
 
'Why the devil couldn't you look at it before you got up?' said
Verrall briefly.  'You ought to know these beggars aren't to be
trusted.'
 
Having said which he twitched his bridle and rode away, feeling the
incident closed.  The sepoys followed him without saluting Flory.
When Flory reached his gate he looked back and saw that the
chestnut pony had already been caught and re-saddled, and Verrall
was tent-pegging upon it.
 
The fall had so shaken him that even now he could hardly collect
his thoughts.  What could have made her behave like that?  She had
seen him lying bloody and in pain, and she had walked past him as
though he had been a dead dog.  How could it have happened?  HAD it
happened?  It was incredible.  Could she be angry with him?  Could
he have offended her in any way?  All the servants were waiting at
the compound fence.  They had come out to watch the tent-pegging,
and every one of them had seen his bitter humiliation.  Ko S'la ran
part of the way down the hill to meet him, with concerned face.
 
'The god has hurt himself?  Shall I carry the god back to the
house?'
 
'No,' said the god.  'Go and get me some whisky and a clean shirt.'
 
When they got back to the house Ko S'la made Flory sit down on the
bed and peeled off his torn shirt which the blood had stuck to his
body.  Ko S'la clicked his tongue.
 
'Ah ma lay?  These cuts are full of dirt.  You ought not to play
these children's games on strange ponies, thakin.  Not at your age.
It is too dangerous.'
 
'The saddle slipped,' Flory said.
 
'Such games,' pursued Ko S'la, 'are all very well for the young
police officer.  But you are no longer young, thakin.  A fall hurts
at your age.  You should take more care of yourself.'
 
'Do you take me for an old man?' said Flory angrily.  His shoulder
was smarting abominably.
 
'You are thirty-five, thakin,' said Ko S'la politely but firmly.
 
It was all very humiliating.  Ma Pu and Ma Yi, temporarily at
peace, had brought a pot of some dreadful mess which they declared
was good for cuts.  Flory told Ko S'la privately to throw it out of
the window and substitute boracic ointment.  Then, while he sat in
a tepid bath and Ko S'la sponged the dirt out of his grazes, he
puzzled helplessly, and, as his head grew clearer, with a deeper
and deeper dismay, over what had happened.  He had offended her
bitterly, that was clear.  But, when he had not even seen her since
last night, how COULD he have offended her?  And there was no even
plausible answer.
 
He explained to Ko S'la several times over that his fall was due to
the saddle slipping.  But Ko S'la, though sympathetic, clearly did
not believe him.  To the end of his days, Flory perceived, the fall
would be attributed to his own bad horsemanship.  On the other
hand, a fortnight ago, he had won undeserved renown by putting to
flight the harmless buffalo.  Fate is even-handed, after a fashion.
 
== 17 ==
 
Flory did not see Elizabeth again until he went down to the Club
after dinner.  He had not, as he might have done, sought her out
and demanded an explanation.  His face unnerved him when he looked
at it in the glass.  With the birthmark on one side and the graze
on the other it was so woebegone, so hideous, that he dared not
show himself by daylight.  As he entered the Club lounge he put his
hand over his birthmark--pretext, a mosquito bite on the forehead.
It would have been more than his nerve was equal to, not to cover
his birthmark at such a moment.  However, Elizabeth was not there.
 
Instead, he tumbled into an unexpected quarrel.  Ellis and
Westfield had just got back from the jungle, and they were sitting
drinking, in a sour mood.  News had come from Rangoon that the
editor of the Burmese Patriot had been given only four months'
imprisonment for his libel against Mr Macregor, and Ellis was
working himself up into a rage over this light sentence.  As soon
as Flory came in Ellis began baiting him with remarks about 'that
little nigger Very-slimy'.  At the moment the very thought of
quarrelling made Flory yawn, but he answered incautiously, and
there was an argument.  It grew heated, and after Ellis had called
Flory a nigger's Nancy Boy and Flory had replied in kind, Westfield
too lost his temper.  He was a good-natured man, but Flory's
Bolshie ideas sometimes annoyed him.  He could never understand
why, when there was so clearly a right and a wrong opinion about
everything, Flory always seemed to delight in choosing the wrong
one.  He told Flory 'not to start talking like a damned Hyde Park
agitator', and then read him a snappish little sermon, taking as
his text the five chief beatitudes of the pukka sahib, namely:
 
Keeping up our prestige,
The firm hand (without the velvet glove),
We white men must hang together,
Give them an inch and they'll take an ell, and
Esprit de Corps.
 
All the while his anxiety to see Elizabeth was so gnawing at
Flory's heart that he could hardly hear what was said to him.
Besides, he had heard it all so often, so very often--a hundred
times, a thousand times it might be, since his first week in
Rangoon, when his burra sahib (an old Scotch gin-soaker and great
breeder of racing ponies, afterwards warned off the turf for some
dirty business of running the same horse under two different names)
saw him take off his topi to pass a native funeral and said to him
reprovingly:  'Remember laddie, always remember, we are sahiblog
and they are dirrt!'  It sickened him, now, to have to listen to
such trash.  So he cut Westfield short by saying blasphemously:
 
'Oh, shut up!  I'm sick of the subject.  Veraswami's a damned good
fellow--a damned sight better than some white men I can think of.
Anyway, I'm going to propose his name for the Club when the general
meeting comes.  Perhaps he'll liven this bloody place up a bit.'
 
Whereat the row would have become serious if it had not ended as
most rows ended at the Club--with the appearance of the butler, who
had heard the raised voices.
 
'Did master call, sir?'
 
'No.  Go to hell,' said Ellis morosely.
 
The butler retired, but that was the end of the dispute for the
time being.  At this moment there were footsteps and voices
outside; the Lackersteens were arriving at the Club.
 
When they entered the lounge, Flory could not even nerve himself to
look directly at Elizabeth; but he noticed that all three of them
were much more smartly dressed than usual.  Mr Lackersteen was even
wearing a dinner-jacket--white, because of the season--and was
completely sober.  The boiled shirt and pique waistcoat seemed to
hold him upright and stiffen his moral fibre like a breastplate.
Mrs Lackersteen looked handsome and serpentine in a red dress.  In
some indefinable way all three gave the impression that they were
waiting to receive some distinguished guest.
 
When drinks had been called for, and Mrs Lackersteen had usurped
the place under the punkah, Flory took a chair on the outside of
the group.  He dared not accost Elizabeth yet.  Mrs Lackersteen had
begun talking in an extraordinary, silly manner about the dear
Prince of Wales, and putting on an accent like a temporarily
promoted chorus-girl playing the part of a duchess in a musical
comedy.  The others wondered privately what the devil was the
matter with her.  Flory had stationed himself almost behind
Elizabeth.  She was wearing a yellow frock, cut very short as the
fashion then was, with champagne-coloured stockings and slippers to
match, and she carried a big ostrich-feather fan.  She looked so
modish, so adult, that he feared her more than he had ever done.
It was unbelievable that he had ever kissed her.  She was talking
easily to all the others at once, and now and again he dared to put
a word into the general conversation; but she never answered him
directly, and whether or not she meant to ignore him, he could not
tell.
 
'Well,' said Mrs Lackersteen presently, 'and who's for a rubbah?'
 
She said quite distinctly a 'rubbah'.  Her accent was growing more
aristocratic with every word she uttered.  It was unaccountable.
It appeared that Ellis, Westfield and Mr Lackersteen were for a
'rubbah'.  Flory refused as soon as he saw that Elizabeth was not
playing.  Now or never was his chance to get her alone.  When they
all moved for the card-room, he saw with a mixture of fear and
relief that Elizabeth came last.  He stopped in the doorway,
barring her path.  He had turned dreadly pale.  She shrank from him
a little.
 
'Excuse me,' they both said simultaneously.
 
'One moment,' he said, and do what he would his voice trembled.
'May I speak to you?  You don't mind--there's something I must
say.'
 
'Will you please let me pass, Mr Flory?'
 
'Please!  Please!  We're alone now.  You won't refuse just to let
me speak?'
 
'What is it, then?'
 
'It's only this.  Whatever I've done to offend you--please tell me
what it is.  Tell me and let me put it right.  I'd sooner cut my
hand off than offend you.  Just tell me, don't let me go on not
even knowing what it is.'
 
'I really don't know what you're talking about.  "Tell you how
you've offended me?"  Why should you have OFFENDED me?'
 
'But I must have!  After the way you behaved!'
 
'"After the way I behaved?"  I don't know what you mean.  I don't
know why you're talking in this extraordinary way at all.'
 
'But you won't even speak to me!  This morning you cut me
absolutely dead.'
 
'Surely I can do as I like without being questioned?'
 
'But please, please!  Don't you see, you must see, what it's like
for me to be snubbed all of a sudden.  After all, only last night
you--'
 
She turned pink.  'I think it's absolutely--absolutely caddish of
you to mention such things!'
 
'I know, I know.  I know all that.  But what else can I do?  You
walked past me this morning as though I'd been a stone.  I know
that I've offended you in some way.  Can you blame me if I want to
know what it is that I've done?'
 
He was, as usual, making it worse with every word he said.  He
perceived that whatever he had done, to be made to speak of it
seemed to her worse than the thing itself.  She was not going to
explain.  She was going to leave him in the dark--snub him and then
pretend that nothing had happened; the natural feminine move.
Nevertheless he urged her again:
 
'Please tell me.  I can't let everything end between us like this.'
 
'"End between us"?  There was nothing to end,' she said coldly.
 
The vulgarity of this remark wounded him, and he said quickly:
 
'That wasn't like you, Elizabeth!  It's not generous to cut a man
dead after you've been kind to him, and then refuse even to tell
him the reason.  You might be straightforward with me.  Please tell
me what it is that I've done.'
 
She gave him an oblique, bitter look, bitter not because of what he
had done, but because he had made her speak of it.  But perhaps she
was anxious to end the scene, and she said:
 
'Well then, if you absolutely force me to speak of it--'
 
'Yes?'
 
'I'm told that at the very same time as you were pretending to--
well, when you were . . . with me--oh, it's too beastly!  I can't
speak of it.'
 
'Go on.'
 
'I'm told that you're keeping a Burmese woman.  And now, will you
please let me pass?'
 
With that she sailed--there was no other possible word for it--she
sailed past him with a swish of her short skirts, and vanished into
the card-room.  And he remained looking after her, too appalled to
speak, and looking unutterably ridiculous.
 
It was dreadful.  He could not face her after that.  He turned to
hurry out of the Club, and then dared not even pass the door of the
card-room, lest she should see him.  He went into the lounge,
wondering how to escape, and finally climbed over the veranda rail
and dropped on to the small square of lawn that ran down to the
Irrawaddy.  The sweat was running from his forehead.  He could have
shouted with anger and distress.  The accursed luck of it!  To be
caught out over a thing like that.  'Keeping a Burmese woman'--and
it was not even true!  But much use it would ever be to deny it.
Ah, what damned, evil chance could have brought it to her ears?
 
But as a matter of fact, it was no chance.  It had a perfectly
sound cause, which was also the cause of Mrs Lackersteen's curious
behaviour at the Club this evening.  On the previous night, just
before the earthquake, Mrs Lackersteen had been reading the Civil
List.  The Civil List (which tells you the exact income of every
official in Burma) was a source of inexhaustible interest to her.
She was in the middle of adding up the pay and allowances of a
Conservator of Forests whom she had once met in Mandalay, when it
occurred to her to look up the name of Lieutenant Verrall, who, she
had heard from Mr Macregor, was arriving at Kyauktada tomorrow with
a hundred Military Policemen.  When she found the name, she saw in
front of it two words that startled her almost out of her wits.
 
The words were 'The Honourable'!
 
The HONOURABLE!  Lieutenants the Honourable are rare anywhere, rare
as diamonds in the Indian Army, rare as dodos in Burma.  And when
you are the aunt of the only marriageable young woman within fifty
miles, and you hear that a lieutenant the Honourable is arriving no
later than tomorrow--well!  With dismay Mrs Lackersteen remembered
that Elizabeth was out in the garden with Flory--that drunken
wretch Flory, whose pay was barely seven hundred rupees a month,
and who, it was only too probable, was already proposing to her!
She hastened immediately to call Elizabeth inside, but at this
moment the earthquake intervened.  However, on the way home there
was an opportunity to speak.  Mrs Lackersteen laid her hand
affectionately on Elizabeth's arm and said in the tenderest voice
she had ever succeeded in producing:
 
'Of course you know, Elizabeth dear, that Flory is keeping a
Burmese woman?'
 
For a moment this deadly charge actually failed to explode.
Elizabeth was so new to the ways of the country that the remark
made no impression on her.  It sounded hardly more significant than
'keeping a parrot'.
 
'Keeping a Burmese woman?  What for?'
 
'What FOR?  My dear! what DOES a man keep a woman for?'
 
And, of course, that was that.
 
For a long time Flory remained standing by the river bank.  The
moon was up, mirrored in the water like a broad shield of electron.
The coolness of the outer air had changed Flory's mood.  He had not
even the heart to be angry any longer.  For he had perceived, with
the deadly self-knowledge and self-loathing that come to one at
such a time, that what had happened served him perfectly right.
For a moment it seemed to him that an endless procession of Burmese
women, a regiment of ghosts, were marching past him in the
moonlight.  Heavens, what numbers of them!  A thousand--no, but a
full hundred at the least.  'Eyes right!' he thought despondently.
Their heads turned towards him, but they had no faces, only
featureless discs.  He remembered a blue longyi here, a pair of
ruby ear-rings there, but hardly a face or a name.  The gods are
just and of our pleasant vices (pleasant, indeed!) make instruments
to plague us.  He had dirtied himself beyond redemption, and this
was his just punishment.
 
He made his way slowly through the croton bushes and round the
clubhouse.  He was too saddened to feel the full pain of the
disaster yet.  It would begin hurting, as all deep wounds do, long
afterwards.  As he passed through the gate something stirred the
leaves behind him.  He started.  There was a whisper of harsh
Burmese syllables.
 
'Pike-san pay-like!  Pike-san pay-like!'
 
He turned sharply.  The 'pike-san pay-like' ('Give me the money')
was repeated.  He saw a woman standing under the shadow of the gold
mohur tree.  It was Ma Hla May.  She stepped out into the moonlight
warily, with a hostile air, keeping her distance as though afraid
that he would strike her.  Her face was coated with powder, sickly
white in the moon, and it looked as ugly as a skull, and defiant.
 
She had given him a shock.  'What the devil are you doing here?' he
said angrily in English.
 
'Pike-san pay-like!'
 
'What money?  What do you mean?  Why are you following me about
like this?'
 
'Pike-san pay-like!' she repeated almost in a scream.  'The money
you promised me, thakin.  You said you would give me more money.  I
want it now, this instant!'
 
'How can I give it you now?  You shall have it next month.  I have
given you a hundred and fifty rupees already.'
 
To his alarm she began shrieking 'Pike-san pay-like!' and a number
of similar phrases almost at the top of her voice.  She seemed on
the verge of hysterics.  The volume of noise that she produced was
startling.
 
'Be quiet!  They'll hear you in the Club!' he exclaimed, and was
instantly sorry for putting the idea into her head.
 
'Aha!  NOW I know what will frighten you!  Give me the money this
instant, or I will scream for help and bring them all out here.
Quick, now, or I begin screaming!'
 
'You bitch!' he said, and took a step towards her.  She sprang
nimbly out of reach, whipped off her slipper, and stood defying
him.
 
'Be quick!  Fifty rupees now and the rest tomorrow.  Out with it!
Or I give a scream they can hear as far as the bazaar!'
 
Flory swore.  This was not the time for such a scene.  Finally he
took out his pocket-book, found twenty-five rupees in it, and threw
them on to the ground.  Ma Hla May pounced on the notes and counted
them.
 
'I said fifty rupees, thakin!'
 
'How can I give it you if I haven't got it?  Do you think I carry
hundreds of rupees about with me?'
 
'I said fifty rupees!'
 
'Oh, get out of my way!' he said in English, and pushed past her.
 
But the wretched woman would not leave him alone.  She began to
follow him up the road like a disobedient dog, screaming out 'Pike-
san pay-like!  Pike-san pay-like!' as though mere noise could bring
the money into existence.  He hurried, partly to draw her away from
the Club, partly in hopes of shaking her off, but she seemed ready
to follow him as far as the house if necessary.  After a while he
could not stand it any longer, and he turned to drive her back.
 
'Go away this instant!  If you follow me any farther you shall
never have another anna.'
 
'Pike-san pay-like!'
 
'You fool,' he said, 'what good is this doing?  How can I give you
the money when I have not another pice on me?'
 
'That is a likely story!'
 
He felt helplessly in his pockets.  He was so wearied that he would
have given her anything to be rid of her.  His fingers encountered
his cigarette-case, which was of gold.  He took it out.
 
'Here, if I give you this will you go away?  You can pawn it for
thirty rupees.'
 
Ma Hla May seemed to consider, then said sulkily, 'Give it me.'
 
He threw the cigarette-case on to the grass beside the road.  She
grabbed it and immediately sprang back clutching it to her ingyi,
as though afraid that he would take it away again.  He turned and
made for the house, thanking God to be out of the sound of her
voice.  The cigarette-case was the same one that she had stolen ten
days ago.
 
At the gate he looked back.  Ma Hla May was still standing at the
bottom of the hill, a greyish figurine in the moonlight.  She must
have watched him up the hill like a dog watching a suspicious
stranger out of sight.  It was queer.  The thought crossed his mind,
as it had a few days earlier when she sent him the blackmailing
letter, that her behaviour had been curious and unlike herself.  She
was showing a tenacity of which he would never have thought her
capable--almost, indeed, as though someone else were egging her on.
 
== 18 ==
 
After the row overnight Ellis was looking forward to a week of
baiting Flory.  He had nicknamed him Nancy--short for nigger's
Nancy Boy, but the women did not know that--and was already
inventing wild scandals about him.  Ellis always invented scandals
about anyone with whom he had quarrelled--scandals which grew, by
repeated embroideries, into a species of saga.  Flory's incautious
remark that Dr Veraswami was a 'damned good fellow' had swelled
before long into a whole Daily Worker-ful of blasphemy and
sedition.
 
'On my honour, Mrs Lackersteen,' said Ellis--Mrs Lackersteen had
taken a sudden dislike to Flory after discovering the great secret
about Verrall, and she was quite ready to listen to Ellis's tales--
'on my honour, if you'd been there last night and heard the things
that man Flory was saying--well, it'd have made you shiver in your
shoes!'
 
'Really!  You know, I always thought he had such CURIOUS ideas.
What has he been talking about now?  Not SOCIALISM,  I hope?'
 
'Worse.'
 
There were long recitals.  However, to Ellis's disappointment,
Flory had not stayed in Kyauktada to be baited.  He had gone back
to camp the day after his dismissal by Elizabeth.  Elizabeth heard
most of the scandalous tales about him.  She understood his
character perfectly now.  She understood why it was that he had so
often bored her and irritated her.  He was a highbrow--her
deadliest word--a highbrow, to be classed with Lenin, A. J. Cook
and the dirty little poets in the Montparnasse cafes.  She could
have forgiven him even his Burmese mistress more easily than that.
Flory wrote to her three days later; a weak, stilted letter, which
he sent by hand--his camp was a day's march from Kyauktada.
Elizabeth did not answer.
 
It was lucky for Flory that at present he was too busy to have time
to think.  The whole camp was at sixes and sevens since his long
absence.  Nearly thirty coolies were missing, the sick elephant was
worse than ever, and a vast pile of teak logs which should have
been sent off ten days earlier were still waiting because the
engine would not work.  Flory, a fool about machinery, struggled
with the bowels of the engine until he was black with grease and Ko
S'la told him sharply that white men ought not to do 'coolie-work'.
The engine was finally persuaded to run, or at least to totter.
The sick elephant was discovered to be suffering from tapeworms.
As for the coolies, they had deserted because their supply of opium
had been cut off--they would not stay in the jungle without opium,
which they took as a prophylactic against fever.  U Po Kyin,
willing to do Flory a bad turn, had caused the Excise Officers to
make a raid and seize the opium.  Flory wrote to Dr Veraswami,
asking for his help.  The doctor sent back a quantity of opium,
illegally procured, medicine for the elephant and a careful letter
of instructions.  A tapeworm measuring twenty-one feet was
extracted.  Flory was busy twelve hours a day.  In the evening if
there was no more to do he would plunge into the jungle and walk
and walk until the sweat stung his eyes and his knees were bleeding
from the briers.  The nights were his bad time.  The bitterness of
what had happened was sinking into him, as it usually does, by slow
degrees.
 
Meanwhile, several days had passed and Elizabeth had not yet seen
Verrall at less than a hundred yards' distance.  It had been a
great disappointment when he had not appeared at the Club on the
evening of his arrival.  Mr Lackersteen was really quite angry when
he discovered that he had been hounded into his dinner-jacket for
nothing.  Next morning Mrs Lackersteen made her husband send an
officious note to the dakbungalow, inviting Verrall to the Club;
there was no answer, however.  More days passed, and Verrall made
no move to join in the local society.  He had even neglected his
official calls, not even bothering to present himself at Mr
Macgregor's office.  The dakbungalow was at the other end of the
town, near the station, and he had made himself quite comfortable
there.  There is a rule that one must vacate a dakbungalow after a
stated number of days, but Verrall peaceably ignored it.  The
Europeans only saw him at morning and evening on the maidan.  On
the second day after his arrival fifty of his men turned out with
sickles and cleared a large patch of the maidan, after which
Verrall was to be seen galloping to and fro, practising polo
strokes.  He took not the smallest notice of any Europeans who
passed down the road.  Westfield and Ellis were furious, and even
Mr Macgregor said that Verrall's behaviour was 'ungracious'.  They
would all have fallen at the feet of a lieutenant the Honourable if
he had shown the smallest courtesy; as it was, everyone except the
two women detested him from the start.  It is always so with titled
people, they are either adored or hated.  If they accept one it is
charming simplicity, if they ignore one it is loathsome
snobbishness; there are no half-measures.
 
Verrall was the youngest son of a peer, and not at all rich, but by
the method of seldom paying a bill until a writ was issued against
him, he managed to keep himself in the only things he seriously
cared about: clothes and horses.  He had come out to India in a
British cavalry regiment, and exchanged into the Indian Army
because it was cheaper and left him greater freedom for polo.
After two years his debts were so enormous that he entered the
Burma Military Police, in which it was notoriously possible to save
money; however, he detested Burma--it is no country for a horseman--
and he had already applied to go back to his regiment.  He was the
kind of soldier who can get exchanges when he wants them.  Meanwhile,
he was only to be in Kyauktada for a month, and he had no intention
of mixing himself up with all the petty sahiblog of the district.
He knew the society of those small Burma stations--a nasty,
poodle-faking, horseless riffraff.  He despised them.
 
They were not the only people whom Verrall despised, however.  His
various contempts would take a long time to catalogue in detail.
He despised the entire non-military population of India, a few
famous polo players excepted.  He despised the entire Army as well,
except the cavalry.  He despised all Indian regiments, infantry and
cavalry alike.  It was true that he himself belonged to a native
regiment, but that was only for his own convenience.  He took no
interest in Indians, and his Urdu consisted mainly of swear-words,
with all the verbs in the third person singular.  His Military
Policemen he looked on as no better than coolies.  'Christ, what
God-forsaken swine!' he was often heard to mutter as he moved down
the ranks inspecting, with the old subahdar carrying his sword
behind him.  Verrall had even been in trouble once for his
outspoken opinions on native troops.  It was at a review, and
Verrall was among the group of officers standing behind the
general.  An Indian infantry regiment approached for the march-
past.
 
'The ---- Rifles,' somebody said.
 
'AND look at it,' said Verrall in his surly boy's voice.
 
The white-haired colonel of the ---- Rifles was standing near.  He
flushed to the neck, and reported Verrall to the general.  Verrall
was reprimanded, but the general, a British Army officer himself,
did not rub it in very hard.  Somehow, nothing very serious ever
did happen to Verrall, however offensive he made himself.  Up and
down India, wherever he was stationed, he left behind him a trail
of insulted people, neglected duties and unpaid bills.  Yet the
disgraces that ought to have fallen on him never did.  He bore a
charmed life, and it was not only the handle to his name that saved
him.  There was something in his eye before which duns, burra
memsahibs and even colonels quailed.
 
It was a disconcerting eye, pale blue and a little protuberant, but
exceedingly clear.  It looked you over, weighed you in the balance
and found you wanting, in a single cold scrutiny of perhaps five
seconds.  If you were the right kind of man--that is, if you were a
cavalry officer and a polo player--Verrall took you for granted and
even treated you with a surly respect; if you were any other type
of man whatever, he despised you so utterly that he could not have
hidden it even if he would.  It did not even make any difference
whether you were rich or poor, for in the social sense he was not
more than normally a snob.  Of course, like all sons of rich
families, he thought poverty disgusting and that poor people are
poor because they prefer disgusting habits.  But he despised soft
living.  Spending, or rather owing, fabulous sums on clothes, he
yet lived almost as ascetically as a monk.  He exercised himself
ceaselessly and brutally, rationed his drink and his cigarettes,
slept on a camp bed (in silk pyjamas) and bathed in cold water in
the bitterest winter.  Horsemanship and physical fitness were the
only gods he knew.  The stamp of hoofs on the maidan, the strong,
poised feeling of his body, wedded centaurlike to the saddle, the
polo-stick springy in his hand--these were his religion, the breath
of his life.  The Europeans in Burma--boozing, womanizing, yellow-
faced loafers--made him physically sick when he thought of their
habits.  As for social duties of all descriptions, he called them
poodle-faking and ignored them.  Women he abhorred.  In his view
they were a kind of siren whose one aim was to lure men away from
polo and enmesh them in tea-fights and tennis-parties.  He was not,
however, quite proof against women.  He was young, and women of
nearly all kinds threw themselves at his head; now and again he
succumbed.  But his lapses soon disgusted him, and he was too
callous when the pinch came to have any difficulty about escaping.
He had had perhaps a dozen such escapes during his two years in
India.
 
A whole week went by.  Elizabeth had not even succeeded in making
Verrall's acquaintance.  It was so tantalizing!  Every day, morning
and evening, she and her aunt walked down to the Club and back
again, past the maidan; and there was Verrall, hitting the polo-
balls the sepoys threw for him, ignoring the two women utterly.
So near and yet so far!  What made it even worse was that neither
woman would have considered it decent to speak of the matter
directly.  One evening the polo-ball, struck too hard, came
swishing through the grass and rolled across the road in front of
them.  Elizabeth and her aunt stopped involuntarily.  But it was
only a sepoy who ran to fetch the ball.  Verrall had seen the women
and kept his distance.
 
Next morning Mrs Lackersteen paused as they came out of the gate.
She had given up riding in her rickshaw lately.  At the bottom of
the maidan the Military Policemen were drawn up, a dust-coloured
rank with bayonets glittering.  Verrall was facing them, but not in
uniform--he seldom put on his uniform for morning parade, not
thinking it necessary with mere Military Policemen.  The two women
were looking at everything except Verrall, and at the same time, in
some manner, were contriving to look at him.
 
'The wretched thing is,' said Mrs Lackersteen--this was a propos de
bottes, but the subject needed no introduction--'the wretched thing
is that I'm afraid your uncle simply MUST go back to camp before
long.'
 
'Must he really?'
 
'I'm afraid so.  It is so HATEFUL in camp at this time of year!
Oh, those mosquitoes!'
 
'Couldn't he stay a bit longer?  A week, perhaps?'
 
'I don't see how he can.  He's been nearly a month in headquarters
now.  The firm would be furious if they heard of it.  And of course
both of us will have to go with him. SUCH a bore!  The mosquitoes--
simply terrible!'
 
Terrible indeed!  To have to go away before Elizabeth had so much
as said how-do-you-do to Verrall!  But they would certainly have to
go if Mr Lackersteen went.  It would never do to leave him to
himself.  Satan finds some mischief still, even in the jungle.  A
ripple like fire ran down the line of sepoys; they were unfixing
bayonets before marching away.  The dusty rank turned left,
saluted, and marched off in columns of fours.  The orderlies were
coming from the police lines with the ponies and polo-sticks.  Mrs
Lackersteen took a heroic decision.
 
'I think,' she said, 'we'll take a short-cut across the maidan.
It's SO much quicker than going right round by the road.'
 
It WAS quicker by about fifty yards, but no one ever went that way
on foot, because of the grass-seeds that got into one's stockings.
Mrs Lackersteen plunged boldly into the grass, and then, dropping
even the pretence of making for the Club, took a bee-line for
Verrall, Elizabeth following.  Either woman would have died on the
rack rather than admit that she was doing anything but take a
short-cut.  Verrall saw them coming, swore, and reined in his pony.
He could not very well cut them dead now that they were coming
openly to accost him.  The damned cheek of these women!  He rode
slowly towards them with a sulky expression on his face, chivvying
the polo-ball with small strokes.
 
'Good morning, Mr Verrall!' Mrs Lackersteen called out in a voice
of saccharine, twenty yards away.
 
'Morning!' he returned surlily, having seen her face and set her
down as one of the usual scraggy old boiling-fowls of an Indian
station.
 
The next moment Elizabeth came level with her aunt.  She had taken
off her spectacles and was swinging her Terai hat on her hand.
What did she care for sunstroke?  She was perfectly aware of the
prettiness of her cropped hair.  A puff of wind--oh, those blessed
breaths of wind, coming from nowhere in the stifling hot-weather
days!--had caught her cotton frock and blown it against her,
showing the outline of her body, slender and strong like a tree.
Her sudden appearance beside the older, sun-scorched woman was a
revelation to Verrall.  He started so that the Arab mare felt it
and would have reared on her hind legs, and he had to tighten the
rein.  He had not known until this moment, not having bothered to
inquire, that there were any YOUNG women in Kyauktada.
 
'My niece,' Mrs Lackersteen said.
 
He did not answer, but he had thrown away the polo-stick, and he
took off his topi.  For a moment he and Elizabeth remained gazing
at one another.  Their fresh faces were unmarred in the pitiless
light.  The grass-seeds were tickling Elizabeth's shins so that it
was agony, and without her spectacles she could only see Verrall
and his horse as a whitish blur.  But she was happy, happy!  Her
heart bounded and the blood flowed into her face, dyeing it like a
thin wash of aquarelle.  The thought, 'A peach, by Christ!' moved
almost fiercely through Verrall's mind.  The sullen Indians,
holding the ponies' heads, gazed curiously at the scene, as though
the beauty of the two young people had made its impression even on
them.
 
Mrs Lackersteen broke the silence, which had lasted half a minute.
 
'You know, Mr Verrall,' she said somewhat archly, 'we think it
RATHER unkind of you to have neglected us poor people all this
time.  When we're so PINING for a new face at the Club.'
 
He was still looking at Elizabeth when he answered, but the change
in his voice was remarkable.
 
'I've been meaning to come for some days.  Been so fearfully busy--
getting my men into their quarters and all that.  I'm sorry,' he
added--he was not in the habit of apologizing, but really, he had
decided, this girl was rather an exceptional bit of stuff--'I'm
sorry about not answering your note.'
 
'Oh, not at all!  We QUITE understood.  But we do hope we shall see
you at the Club this evening!  Because, you know,' she concluded
even more archly, 'if you disappoint us any longer, we shall begin
to think you rather a NAUGHTY young man!'
 
'I'm sorry,' he repeated.  'I'll be there this evening.'
 
There was not much more to be said, and the two women walked on to
the Club.  But they stayed barely five minutes.  The grass-seeds
were causing their shins such torment that they were obliged to
hurry home and change their stockings at once.
 
Verrall kept his promise and was at the Club that evening.  He
arrived a little earlier than the others, and he had made his
presence thoroughly felt before being in the place five minutes.
As Ellis entered the Club the old butler darted out of the card-
room and waylaid him.  He was in great distress, the tears rolling
down his cheeks.
 
'Sir!  Sir!'
 
'What the devil's the matter now!' said Ellis.
 
'Sir!  Sir!  New master been beating me, sir!'
 
'What?'
 
'BEATING me sir!'  His voice rose on the 'beating' with a long
tearful wail--'be-e-e-eating!'
 
'Beating you?  Do you good.  Who's been beating you?'
 
'New master, sir.  Military Police sahib.  Beating me with his
foot, sir--HERE!'  He rubbed himself behind.
 
'Hell!' said Ellis.
 
He went into the lounge.  Verrall was reading the Field, and
invisible except for Palm Beach trouser-ends and two lustrous
sooty-brown shoes.  He did not trouble to stir at hearing someone
else come into the room.  Ellis halted.
 
'Here, you--what's your name--Verrall!'
 
'What?'
 
'Have you been kicking our butler?'
 
Verrall's sulky blue eye appeared round the corner of the Field,
like the eye of a crustacean peering round a rock.
 
'What?' he repeated shortly.
 
'I said, have you been kicking our bloody butler?'
 
'Yes.'
 
'Then what the hell do you mean by it?'
 
'Beggar gave me his lip.  I sent him for a whisky and soda, and he
brought it warm.  I told him to put ice in it, and he wouldn't--
talked some bloody rot about saving the last pieces of ice.  So I
kicked his bottom.  Serve him right.'
 
Ellis turned quite grey.  He was furious.  The butler was a piece
of Club property and not to be kicked by strangers.  But what most
angered Ellis was the thought that Verrall quite possibly suspected
him of being SORRY for the butler--in fact, of disapproving of
kicking AS SUCH.
 
'Serve him right?  I dare say it bloody well did serve him right.
But what in hell's that got to do with it?  Who are YOU to come
kicking our servants?'
 
'Bosh, my good chap.  Needed kicking.  You've let your servants get
out of hand here.'
 
'You damned, insolent young tick, what's it got to do with YOU if
he needed kicking?  You're not even a member of this Club.  It's
our job to kick the servants, not yours.'
 
Verrall lowered the Field and brought his other eye into play.  His
surly voice did not change its tone.  He never lost his temper with
a European; it was never necessary.
 
'My good chap, if anyone gives me lip I kick his bottom.  Do you
want me to kick yours?'
 
All the fire went out of Ellis suddenly.  He was not afraid, he had
never been afraid in his life; only, Verrall's eye was too much for
him.  That eye could make you feel as though you were under
Niagara!  The oaths wilted on Ellis's lips; his voice almost
deserted him.  He said querulously and even plaintively:
 
'But damn it, he was quite right not to give you the last bit of
ice.  Do you think we only buy ice for you?  We can only get the
stuff twice a week in this place.'
 
'Rotten bad management on your part, then,' said Verrall, and
retired behind the Field, content to let the matter drop.
 
Ellis was helpless.  The calm way in which Verrall went back to his
paper, quite genuinely forgetting Ellis's existence, was maddening.
Should he not give the young swab a good, rousing kick?
 
But somehow, the kick was never given.  Verrall had earned many
kicks in his life, but he had never received one and probably never
would.  Ellis seeped helplessly back to the card-room, to work off
his feelings on the butler, leaving Verrall in possession of the
lounge.
 
As Mr Macgregor entered the Club gate he heard the sound of music.
Yellow chinks of lantern-light showed through the creeper that
covered the tennis-screen.  Mr Macgregor was in a happy mood this
evening.  He had promised himself a good, long talk with Miss
Lackersteen--such an exceptionally intelligent girl, that!--and he
had a most interesting anecdote to tell her (as a matter of fact,
it had already seen the light in one of those little articles of
his in Blackwood's) about a dacoity that had happened in Sagaing in
1913.  She would love to hear it, he knew.  He rounded the tennis-
screen expectantly.  On the court, in the mingled light of the
waning moon and of lanterns slung among the trees, Verrall and
Elizabeth were dancing.  The chokras had brought out chairs and a
table for the gramophone, and round these the other Europeans were
sitting or standing.  As Mr Macgregor halted at the corner of the
court, Verrall and Elizabeth circled round and glided past him,
barely a yard away.  They were dancing very close together, her
body bent backwards under his.  Neither noticed Mr Macgregor.
 
Mr Macgregor made his way round the court.  A chilly, desolate
feeling had taken possession of his entrails.  Good-bye, then, to
his talk with Miss Lackersteen!  It was an effort to screw his face
into its usual facetious good-humour as he came up to the table.
 
'A Terpsichorean evening!' he remarked in a voice that was doleful
in spite of himself.
 
No one answered.  They were all watching the pair on the tennis
court.  Utterly oblivious of the others, Elizabeth and Verrall
glided round and round, round and round, their shoes sliding easily
on the slippery concrete.  Verrall danced as he rode, with
matchless grace.  The gramophone was playing 'Show Me the Way to Go
Home,' which was then going round the world like a pestilence and
had got as far as Burma:
 
'Show me the way to go home,
I'm tired an' I wanna go to bed;
I had a little drink 'bout an hour ago,
An' it's gone right TO my head!' etc.
 
The dreary, depressing trash floated out among the shadowy trees
and the streaming scents of flowers, over and over again, for Mrs
Lackersteen was putting the gramophone needle back to the start
when it neared the centre.  The moon climbed higher, very yellow,
looking, as she rose from the murk of dark clouds at the horizon,
like a sick woman creeping out of bed.  Verrall and Elizabeth
danced on and on, indefatigably, a pale voluptuous shape in the
gloom.  They moved in perfect unison like some single animal.  Mr
Macgregor, Ellis, Westfield and Mr Lackersteen stood watching them,
their hands in their pockets, finding nothing to say.  The
mosquitoes came nibbling at their ankles.  Someone called for
drinks, but the whisky was like ashes in their mouths.  The bowels
of all four older men were twisted with bitter envy.
 
Verrall did not ask Mrs Lackersteen for a dance, nor, when he and
Elizabeth finally sat down, did he take any notice of the other
Europeans.  He merely monopolized Elizabeth for half an hour more,
and then, with a brief good night to the Lackersteens and not a
word to anyone else, left the Club.  The long dance with Verrall
had left Elizabeth in a kind of dream.  He had asked her to come
out riding with him!  He was going to lend her one of his ponies!
She never even noticed that Ellis, angered by her behaviour, was
doing his best to be openly rude.  It was late when the Lackersteens
got home, but there was no sleep yet for Elizabeth or her aunt.
They were feverishly at work till midnight, shortening a pair of Mrs
Lackersteen's jodhpurs, and letting out the calves, to fit
Elizabeth.
 
'I hope, dear, you CAN ride a horse?' said Mrs Lackersteen.
 
'Oh, of course!  I've ridden ever such a lot, at home.'
 
She had ridden perhaps a dozen times in all, when she was sixteen.
No matter, she would manage somehow!  She would have ridden a
tiger, if Verrall were to accompany her.
 
When at last the jodhpurs were finished and Elizabeth had tried
them on, Mrs Lackersteen sighed to see her.  She looked ravishing
in jodhpurs, simply ravishing!  And to think that in only a day or
two they had got to go back to camp, for weeks, months perhaps,
leaving Kyauktada and this most DESIRABLE young man!  The pity of
it!  As they moved to go upstairs Mrs Lackersteen paused at the
door.  It had come into her head to make a great and painful
sacrifice.  She took Elizabeth by the shoulders and kissed her with
a more real affection than she had ever shown.
 
'My dear, it would be such a SHAME for you to go away from
Kyauktada just now!'
 
'It would, rather.'
 
'Then I'll tell you what, dear.  We WON'T go back to that horrid
jungle!  Your uncle shall go alone.  You and I shall stay in
Kyauktada.'
 
== 19 ==
 
The heat was growing worse and worse.  April was nearly over, but
there was no hope of rain for another three weeks, five weeks it
might be.  Even the lovely transient dawns were spoiled by the
thought of the long, blinding hours to come, when one's head would
ache and the glare would penetrate through every covering and glue
up one's eyelids with restless sleep.  No one, Oriental or
European, could keep awake in the heat of the day without a
struggle; at night, on the other hand, with the howling dogs and
the pools of sweat that collected and tormented one's prickly heat,
no one could sleep.  The mosquitoes at the Club were so bad that
sticks of incense had to be kept burning in all the corners, and
the women sat with their legs in pillowslips.  Only Verrall and
Elizabeth were indifferent to the heat.  They were young and their
blood was fresh, and Verrall was too stoical and Elizabeth too
happy to pay any attention to the climate.
 
There was much bickering and scandal-mongering at the Club these
days.  Verrall had put everyone's nose out of joint.  He had taken
to coming to the Club for an hour or two in the evenings, but he
ignored the other members, refused the drinks they offered him, and
answered attempts at conversation with surly monosyllables.  He
would sit under the punkah in the chair that had once been sacred
to Mrs Lackersteen, reading such of the papers as interested him,
until Elizabeth came, when he would dance and talk with her for an
hour or two and then make off without so much as a good-night to
anybody.  Meanwhile Mr Lackersteen was alone in his camp, and,
according to the rumours which drifted back to Kyauktada, consoling
loneliness with quite a miscellany of Burmese women.
 
Elizabeth and Verrall went out riding together almost every evening
now.  Verrall's mornings, after parade, were sacred to polo
practice, but he had decided that it was worth while giving up the
evenings to Elizabeth.  She took naturally to riding, just as she
had to shooting; she even had the assurance to tell Verrall that
she had 'hunted quite a lot' at home.  He saw at a glance that she
was lying, but at least she did not ride so badly as to be a
nuisance to him.
 
They used to ride up the red road into the jungle, ford the stream
by the big pyinkado tree covered with orchids, and then follow the
narrow cart-track, where the dust was soft and the horses could
gallop.  It was stifling hot in the dusty jungle, and there were
always mutterings of faraway, rainless thunder.  Small martins
flitted round the horses, keeping pace with them, to hawk for the
flies their hooves turned up.  Elizabeth rode the bay pony, Verrall
the white.  On the way home they would walk their sweat-dark horses
abreast, so close sometimes his knee brushed against hers, and
talk.  Verrall could drop his offensive manner and talk amicably
enough when he chose, and he did choose with Elizabeth.
 
Ah, the joy of those rides together!  The joy of being on horseback
and in the world of horses--the world of hunting and racing, polo
and pigsticking!  If Elizabeth had loved Verrall for nothing else,
she would have loved him for bringing horses into her life.  She
tormented him to talk about horses as once she had tormented Flory
to talk about shooting.  Verrall was no talker, it was true.  A few
gruff, jerky sentences about polo and pigsticking, and a catalogue
of Indian stations and the names of regiments, were the best he
could do.  And yet somehow the little he said could thrill
Elizabeth as all Flory's talk had never done.  The mere sight of
him on horseback was more evocative than any words.  An aura of
horsemanship and soldiering surrounded him.  In his tanned face and
his hard, straight body Elizabeth saw all the romance, the splendid
panache of a cavalryman's life.  She saw the North-West Frontier
and the Cavalry Club--she saw the polo grounds and the parched
barrack yards, and the brown squadrons of horsemen galloping with
their long lances poised and the trains of their pagris streaming;
she heard the bugle-calls and the jingle of spurs, and the
regimental bands playing outside the messrooms while the officers
sat at dinner in their stiff, gorgeous uniforms.  How splendid it
was, that equestrian world, how splendid!  And it was HER world,
she belonged to it, she had been born of it.  These days, she
lived, thought, dreamed horses, almost like Verrall himself.  The
time came when she not only TOLD her taradiddle about having
'hunted quite a lot', she even came near believing it.
 
In every possible way they got on so well together.  He never bored
her and fretted her as Flory had done.  (As a matter of fact, she
had almost forgotten Flory, these days; when she thought of him, it
was for some reason always his birthmark that she remembered.)  It
was a bond between them that Verrall detested anything 'highbrow'
even more than she did.  He told her once that he had not read a
book since he was eighteen, and that indeed he 'loathed' books;
'except, of course, Jorrocks and all that'.  On the evening of
their third or fourth ride they were parting at the Lackersteens'
gate.  Verrall had successfully resisted all Mrs Lackersteen's
invitations to meals; he had not yet set foot inside the
Lackersteens' house, and he did not intend to do so.  As the syce
was taking Elizabeth's pony, Verrall said:
 
'I tell you what.  Next time we come out you shall ride Belinda.
I'll ride the chestnut.  I think you've got on well enough not to
go and cut Belinda's mouth up.'
 
Belinda was the Arab mare.  Verrall had owned her two years, and
till this moment he had never once allowed anyone else to mount
her, not even the syce.  It was the greatest favour that he could
imagine.  And so perfectly did Elizabeth appreciate Verrall's point
of view that she understood the greatness of the favour, and was
thankful.
 
The next evening, as they rode home side by side, Verrall put his
arm round Elizabeth's shoulder, lifted her out of the saddle and
pulled her against him.  He was very strong.  He dropped the
bridle, and with his free hand, lifted her face up to meet his;
their mouths met.  For a moment he held her so, then lowered her to
the ground and slipped from his horse.  They stood embraced, their
thin, drenched shirts pressed together, the two bridles held in the
crook of his arm.
 
It was about the same time that Flory, twenty miles away, decided
to come back to Kyauktada.  He was standing at the jungle's edge by
the bank of a dried-up stream, where he had walked to tire himself,
watching some tiny, nameless finches eating the seeds of the tall
grasses.  The cocks were chrome-yellow, the hens like hen sparrows.
Too tiny to bend the stalks, they came whirring towards them,
seized them in midflight and bore them to the ground by their own
weight.  Flory watched the birds incuriously, and almost hated them
because they could light no spark of interest in him.  In his
idleness he flung his dah at them, scaring them away.  If she were
here, if she were here!  Everything--birds, trees, flowers,
everything--was deadly and meaningless because she was not here.
As the days passed the knowledge that he had lost her had grown
surer and more actual until it poisoned every moment.
 
He loitered a little way into the jungle, flicking at creepers with
his dah.  His limbs felt slack and leaden.  He noticed a wild
vanilla plant trailing over a bush, and bent down to sniff at its
slender, fragrant pods.  The scent brought him a feeling of
staleness and deadly ennui.  Alone, alone, in the sea of life
enisled!  The pain was so great that he struck his fist against a
tree, jarring his arm and splitting two knuckles.  He must go back
to Kyauktada.  It was folly, for barely a fortnight had passed
since the scene between them, and his only chance was to give her
time to forget it.  Still, he must go back.  He could not stay any
longer in this deadly place, alone with his thoughts among the
endless, mindless leaves.
 
A happy thought occurred to him.  He could take Elizabeth the
leopard-skin that was being cured for her in the jail.  It would be
a pretext for seeing her, and when one comes bearing gifts one is
generally listened to.  This time he would not let her cut him
short without a word.  He would explain, extenuate--make her
realize that she had been unjust to him.  It was not right that she
should condemn him because of Ma Hla May, whom he had turned out of
doors for Elizabeth's own sake.  Surely she must forgive him when
she heard the truth of the story?  And this time she SHOULD hear
it; he would force her to listen to him if he had to hold her by
the arms while he did it.
 
He went back the same evening.  It was a twenty-mile journey, by
rutted cart-tracks, but Flory decided to march by night, giving the
reason that it was cooler.  The servants almost mutinied at the
idea of a night-march, and at the very last moment old Sammy
collapsed in a semi-genuine fit and had to be plied with gin before
he could start.  It was a moonless night.  They made their way by
the light of lanterns, in which Flo's eyes gleamed like emeralds
and the bullocks' eyes like moonstones.  When the sun was up the
servants halted to gather sticks and cook breakfast, but Flory was
in a fever to be at Kyauktada, and he hurried ahead.  He had no
feeling of tiredness.  The thought of the leopard-skin had filled
him with extravagant hopes.  He crossed the glittering river by
sampan and went straight to Dr Veraswami's bungalow, getting there
about ten.
 
The doctor invited him to breakfast, and--having shooed the women
into some suitable hiding-place--took him into his own bath-room so
that he could wash and shave.  At breakfast the doctor was very
excited and full of denunciations of 'the crocodile'; for it
appeared that the pseudo-rebellion was now on the point of breaking
out.  It was not till after breakfast that Flory had an opportunity
to mention the leopard-skin.
 
'Oh, by the way, doctor.  What about that skin I sent to the jail
to be cured?  Is it done yet?'
 
'Ah--' said the doctor in a slightly disconcerted manner, rubbing
his nose.  He went inside the house--they were breakfasting on the
veranda, for the doctor's wife had protested violently against
Flory being brought indoors--and came back in a moment with the
skin rolled up in a bundle.
 
'Ass a matter of fact--' he began, unrolling it.
 
'Oh, doctor!'
 
The skin had been utterly ruined.  It was as stiff as cardboard,
with the leather cracked and the fur discoloured and even rubbed
off in patches.  It also stank abominably.  Instead of being cured,
it had been converted into a piece of rubbish.
 
'Oh, doctor!  What a mess they've made of it!  How the devil did it
happen?'
 
'I am so sorry, my friend!  I wass about to apologize.  It wass the
best we could do.  There iss no one at the jail who knows how to
cure skins now.'
 
'But, damn it, that convict used to cure them so beautifully!'
 
'Ah, yes.  But he iss gone from us these three weeks, alas.'
 
'Gone?  I thought he was doing seven years?'
 
'What?  Did you not hear, my friend?  I thought you knew who it
wass that used to cure the skins.  It was Nga Shwe O.'
 
'Nga Shwe O?'
 
'The dacoit who escaped with U Po Kyin's assistance.'
 
'Oh, hell!'
 
The mishap had daunted him dreadfully.  Nevertheless, in the
afternoon, having bathed and put on a clean suit, he went up to the
Lackersteens' house, at about four.  It was very early to call, but
he wanted to make sure of catching Elizabeth before she went down
to the Club.  Mrs Lackersteen, who had been asleep and was not
prepared for visitors, received him with an ill grace, not even
asking him to sit down.
 
'I'm afraid Elizabeth isn't down yet.  She's dressing to go out
riding.  Wouldn't it be better if you left a message?'
 
'I'd like to see her, if you don't mind.  I've brought her the skin
of that leopard we shot together.'
 
Mrs Lackersteen left him standing up in the drawing-room, feeling
lumpish and abnormally large as one does at such times.  However,
she fetched Elizabeth, taking the opportunity of whispering to her
outside the door:  'Get rid of that dreadful man as soon as you
can, dear.  I can't bear him about the house at this time of day.'
 
As Elizabeth entered the room Flory's heart pounded so violently
that a reddish mist passed behind his eyes.  She was wearing a silk
shirt and jodhpurs, and she was a little sunburned.  Even in his
memory she had never been so beautiful.  He quailed; on the instant
he was lost--every scrap of his screwed-up courage had fled.
Instead of stepping forward to meet her he actually backed away.
There was a fearful crash behind him; he had upset an occasional
table and sent a bowl of zinnias hurtling across the floor.
 
'I'm so sorry!' he exclaimed in horror.
 
'Oh, not at ALL!  PLEASE don't worry about it!'
 
She helped him to pick up the table, chattering all the while as
gaily and easily as though nothing had happened:  'You HAVE been
away a long time, Mr Flory!  You're quite a STRANGER!  We've SO
missed you at the Club!' etc., etc.  She was italicizing every
other word, with that deadly, glittering brightness that a woman
puts on when she is dodging a moral obligation.  He was terrified
of her.  He could not even look her in the face.  She took up a box
of cigarettes and offered him one, but he refused it.  His hand was
shaking too much to take it.
 
'I've brought you that skin,' he said flatly.
 
He unrolled it on the table they had just picked up.  It looked so
shabby and miserable that he wished he had never brought it.  She
came close to him to examine the skin, so close that her flower-
like cheek was not a foot from his own, and he could feel the
warmth of her body.  So great was his fear of her that he stepped
hurriedly away.  And in the same moment she too stepped back with a
wince of disgust, having caught the foul odour of the skin.  It
shamed him terribly.  It was almost as though it had been himself
and not the skin that stank.
 
'Thank you EVER so much, Mr Flory!'  She had put another yard
between herself and the skin.  'Such a LOVELY big skin, isn't it?'
 
'It was, but they've spoiled it, I'm afraid.'
 
'Oh no!  I shall love having it!--Are you back in Kyauktada for
long?  How dreadfully hot it must have been in camp!'
 
'Yes, it's been very hot.'
 
For three minutes they actually talked of the weather.  He was
helpless.  All that he had promised himself to say, all his
arguments and pleadings, had withered in his throat.  'You fool,
you fool,' he thought, 'what are you doing?  Did you come twenty
miles for this?  Go on, say what you came to say!  Seize her in
your arms; make her listen, kick her, beat her--anything sooner
than let her choke you with this drivel!'  But it was hopeless,
hopeless.  Not a word could his tongue utter except futile
trivialities.  How could he plead or argue, when that bright easy
air of hers, that dragged every word to the level of Club-chatter
silenced him before he spoke?  Where do they learn it, that
dreadful tee-heeing brightness?  In these brisk modern girls'
schools, no doubt.  The piece of carrion on the table made him more
ashamed every moment.  He stood there almost voiceless, lumpishly
ugly with his face yellow and creased after the sleepless night,
and his birthmark like a smear of dirt.
 
She got rid of him after a very few minutes.  'And now, Mr Flory,
if you DON'T mind, I ought really--'
 
He mumbled rather than said, 'Won't you come out with me again some
time?  Walking, shooting--something?'
 
'I have so LITTLE time nowadays!  ALL my evenings seem to be full.
This evening I'm going out riding.  With Mr Verrall,' she added.
 
It was possible that she added that in order to wound him.  This
was the first that he had heard of her friendship with Verrall.  He
could not keep the dread, flat tone of envy out of his voice as he
said:
 
'Do you go out riding much with Verrall?'
 
'Almost every evening.  He's such a wonderful horseman!  And he has
absolute STRINGS of polo ponies!'
 
'Ah.  And of course I have no polo ponies.'
 
It was the first thing he had said that even approached seriousness,
and it did no more than offend her.  However, she answered him with
the same gay easy air as before, and then showed him out.  Mrs
Lackersteen came back to the drawing-room, sniffed the air, and
immediately ordered the servants to take the reeking leopard-skin
outside and burn it.
 
Flory lounged at his garden gate, pretending to feed the pigeons.
He could not deny himself the pain of seeing Elizabeth and Verrall
start on their ride.  How vulgarly, how cruelly she had behaved to
him!  It is dreadful when people will not even have the decency to
quarrel.  Presently Verrall rode up to the Lackersteens' house on
the white pony, with a syce riding the chestnut, then there was a
pause, then they emerged together, Verrall on the chestnut pony,
Elizabeth on the white, and trotted quickly up the hill.  They were
chattering and laughing, her silk-shirted shoulder very close to
his.  Neither looked towards Flory.
 
When they had disappeared into the jungle, Flory still loafed in
the garden.  The glare was waning to yellow.  The mali was at work
grubbing up the English flowers, most of which had died, slain by
too much sunshine, and planting balsams, cockscombs, and more
zinnias.  An hour passed, and a melancholy, earth-coloured Indian
loitered up the drive, dressed in a loin-cloth and a salmon-pink
pagri on which a washing-basket was balanced.  He laid down his
basket and salaamed to Flory.
 
'Who are you?'
 
'Book-wallah, sahib.'
 
The book-wallah was an itinerant peddler of books who wandered from
station to station throughout Upper Burma.  His system of exchange
was that for any book in his bundle you gave him four annas, and
any other book.  Not quite ANY book, however, for the book-wallah,
though analphabetic, had learned to recognize and refuse a Bible.
 
'No, sahib,' he would say plaintively, 'no.  This book (he would
turn it over disapprovingly in his flat brown hands) this book with
a black cover and gold letters--this one I cannot take.  I know not
how it is, but all sahibs are offering me this book, and none are
taking it.  What can it be that is in this black book?  Some evil,
undoubtedly.'
 
'Turn out your trash,' Flory said.
 
He hunted among them for a good thriller--Edgar Wallace or Agatha
Christie or something; anything to still the deadly restlessness
that was at his heart.  As he bent over the books he saw that both
Indians were exclaiming and pointing towards the edge of the
jungle.
 
'Dekko!' said the mali in his plum-in-the-mouth voice.
 
The two ponies were emerging from the jungle.  But they were
riderless.  They came trotting down the hill with the silly guilty
air of a horse that has escaped from its master, with the stirrups
swinging and clashing under their bellies.
 
Flory remained unconsciously clasping one of the books against his
chest.  Verrall and Elizabeth had dismounted.  It was not an
accident; by no effort of the mind could one imagine Verrall
falling off his horse.  They had dismounted, and the ponies had
escaped.
 
They had dismounted--for what?  Ah, but he knew for what!  It was
not a question of suspecting; he KNEW.  He could see the whole
thing happening, in one of those hallucinations that are so perfect
in detail, so vilely obscene, that they are past bearing.  He threw
the book violently down and made for the house, leaving the book-
wallah disappointed.  The servants heard him moving about indoors,
and presently he called for a bottle of whisky.  He had a drink and
it did him no good.  Then he filled a tumbler two-thirds full,
added enough water to make it drinkable, and swallowed it.  The
filthy, nauseous dose was no sooner down his throat than he
repeated it.  He had done the same thing in camp once, years ago,
when he was tortured by toothache and three hundred miles from a
dentist.  At seven Ko S'la came in as usual to say that the bath-
water was hot.  Flory was lying in one of the long chairs, with his
coat off and his shirt torn open at the throat.
 
'Your bath, thakin,' said Ko S'la.
 
Flory did not answer, and Ko S'la touched his arm, thinking him
asleep.  Flory was much too drunk to move.  The empty bottle had
rolled across the floor, leaving a trail of whisky-drops behind it.
Ko S'la called for Ba Pe and picked up the bottle, clicking his
tongue.
 
'Just look at this!  He has drunk more than three-quarters of a
bottle!'
 
'What, again?  I thought he had given up drinking?'
 
'It is that accursed woman, I suppose.  Now we must carry him
carefully.  You take his heels, I'll take his head.  That's right.
Hoist him up!'
 
They carried Flory into the other room and laid him gently on the
bed.
 
'Is he really going to marry this "Ingaleikma"?' said Ba Pe.
 
'Heaven knows.  She is the mistress of the young police officer at
present, so I was told.  Their ways are not our ways.  I think I
know what he will be wanting tonight,' he added as he undid Flory's
braces--for Ko S'la had the art, so necessary in a bachelor's
servant, of undressing his master without waking him.
 
The servants were rather more pleased than not to see this return
to bachelor habits.  Flory woke about midnight, naked in a pool of
sweat.  His head felt as though some large, sharp-cornered metal
object were bumping about inside it.  The mosquito net was up, and
a young woman was sitting beside the bed fanning him with a wicker
fan.  She had an agreeable negroid face, bronze-gold in the
candlelight.  She explained that she was a prostitute, and that Ko
S'la had engaged her on his own responsibility for a fee of ten
rupees.
 
Flory's head was splitting.  'For God's sake get me something to
drink,' he said feebly to the woman.  She brought him some soda-
water which Ko S'la had cooled in readiness and soaked a towel and
put a wet compress round his forehead.  She was a fat, good-
tempered creature.  She told him that her name was Ma Sein Galay,
and that besides plying her other trade she sold paddy baskets in
the bazaar near Li Yeik's shop.  Flory's head felt better
presently, and he asked for a cigarette; whereupon Ma Sein Galay,
having fetched the cigarette, said naively, 'Shall I take my
clothes off now, thakin?'
 
Why not? he thought dimly.  He made room for her in the bed.  But
when he smelled the familiar scent of garlic and coco-nut oil,
something painful happened within him, and with his head pillowed
on Ma Sein Galay's fat shoulder he actually wept, a thing he had
not done since he was fifteen years old.
 
== 20 ==
 
Next morning there was great excitement in Kyauktada, for the long-
rumoured rebellion had at last broken out.  Flory heard only a
vague report of it at the time.  He had gone back to camp as soon
as he felt fit to march after the drunken night, and it was not
until several days later that he learned the true history of the
rebellion, in a long, indignant letter from Dr Veraswami.
 
The doctor's epistolary style was queer.  His syntax was shaky and
he was as free with capital letters as a seventeenth-century
divine, while in the use of italics he rivalled Queen Victoria.
There were eight pages of his small but sprawling handwriting.
 
MY DEAR FRIEND [the letter ran],--You will much regret to hear that
the WILES OF THE CROCODILE have matured.  The rebellion--the SO-
CALLED rebellion--is all over and finished.  And it has been, alas!
a more Bloody affair than I had hoped should have been the case.
 
All has fallen out as I have prophesied to you it would be.  On the
day when you came back to Kyauktada U Po Kyin's SPIES have informed
him that the poor unfortunate men whom he have Deluded are
assembling in the jungle near Thongwa.  The same night he sets out
secretly with U Lugale, the Police Inspector, who is as great a
Rogue as he, if that could be, and twelve constables.  They make a
swift raid upon Thongwa and surprise the rebels, of whom they are
only Seven!! in a ruined field hut in the jungle.  Also Mr Maxwell,
who have heard rumours of the rebellion, came across from his camp
bringing his Rifle and was in time to join U Po Kyin and the police
in their attack on the hut.  The next morning the clerk Ba Sein,
who is U Po Kyin's JACKALL and DIRTY WORKER, have orders to raise
the cry of rebellion as Sensationally as possible, which was done,
and Mr Macgregor, Mr Westfield and Lieutenant Verrall all rush out
to Thongwa carrying fifty sepoys armed with rifles besides Civil
Police.  But they arrive to find it is all over and U Po Kyin was
sitting under a big teak tree in the middle of the village and
PUTTING ON AIRS and lecturing the villages, whereat they are all
bowing very frightened and touching the ground with their foreheads
and swearing they will be forever loyal to the Government, and the
rebellion is already at an end.  The SO-CALLED weiksa, who is no
other than a circus conjurer and the MINION of U Po Kyin, have
vanished for parts unknown, but six rebels have been Caught.  So
there is an end.
 
Also I should inform you that there was most regrettably a Death.
Mr Maxwell was I think TOO ANXIOUS to use his Rifle and when one of
the rebels try to run away he fired and shoot him in the abdomen,
at which he died.  I think the villagers have some BAD FEELING
towards Mr Maxwell because of it.  But from the point of view legal
all is well for Mr Maxwell, because the men were undoubtedly
conspiring against the Government.
 
Ah, but, my Friend, I trust that you understand how disastrous may
all this be for me!  You will realise, I think, what is its bearing
upon the Contest between U Po Kyin and myself, and the supreme LEG-
UP it must give to him.  It is the TRIUMPH OF THE CROCODILE.  U Po
Kyin is now the Hero of the district.  He is the PET of the
Europeans.  I am told that even Mr Ellis has praised his conduct.
If you could witness the abominable Conceitedness and the LIES he
is now telling as to how there were not seven rebels but Two
Hundred!! and how he crushed upon them revolver in hand--he who
only directing operations from a SAFE DISTANCE while the police and
Mr Maxwell creep up upon the hut--you would find is veritably
Nauseous I assure you.  He has had the effrontery to send in an
official report of the matter which started, 'By my loyal
promptitude and reckless daring', and I hear that positively he had
had this Conglomeration of lies written out in readiness days
BEFORE THE OCCURRENCE.  It is Disgusting.  And to think that now
when he is at the Height of his triumph he will again begin to
calumniate me with all the venom at his disposal etc. etc.
 
The rebels' entire stock of weapons had been captured.  The armoury
with which, when their followers were assembled, they had proposed
to march upon Kyauktada, consisted of the following:
 
Item, one shotgun with a damaged left barrel, stolen from a Forest
Officer three years earlier.
 
Item, six home-made guns with barrels of zinc piping stolen from
the railway.  These could be fired, after a fashion, by thrusting a
nail through the touch-hole and striking it with a stone.
 
Item, thirty-nine twelve-bore cartridges.
 
Item, eleven dummy guns carved out of teakwood.
 
Item, some large Chinese crackers which were to have been fired in
terrorem.
 
Later, two of the rebels were sentenced to fifteen years'
transportation, three to three years' imprisonment and twenty-five
lashes, and one to two years' imprisonment.
 
The whole miserable rebellion was so obviously at an end that the
Europeans were not considered to be in any danger, and Maxwell had
gone back to his camp unguarded.  Flory intended to stay in camp
until the rains broke, or at least until the general meeting at the
Club.  He had promised to be in for that, to propose the doctor's
election; though now, with his own trouble to think of, the whole
business of the intrigue between U Po Kyin and the doctor sickened
him.
 
More weeks crawled by.  The heat was dreadful now.  The overdue
rain seemed to have bred a fever in the air.  Flory was out of
health, and worked incessantly, worrying over petty jobs that
should have been left to the overseer, and making the coolies and
even the servants hate him.  He drank gin at all hours, but not
even drinking could distract him now.  The vision of Elizabeth in
Verrall's arms haunted him like a neuralgia or an earache.  At any
moment it would come upon him, vivid and disgusting, scattering his
thoughts, wrenching him back from the brink of sleep, turning his
food to dust in his mouth.  At times he flew into savage rages, and
once even struck Ko S'la.  What was worse than all was the DETAIL--
the always filthy detail--in which the imagined scene appeared.
The very perfection of the detail seemed to prove that it was true.
 
Is there anything in the world more graceless, more dishonouring,
than to desire a woman whom you will never have?  Throughout all
these weeks Flory's mind held hardly a thought which was not
murderous or obscene.  It is the common effect of jealousy.  Once
he had loved Elizabeth spiritually, sentimentally indeed, desiring
her sympathy more than her caresses; now, when he had lost her, he
was tormented by the basest physical longing.  He did not even
idealize her any longer.  He saw her now almost as she was--silly,
snobbish, heartless--and it made no difference to his longing for
her.  Does it ever make any difference?  At nights when he lay
awake, his bed dragged outside the tent for coolness, looking at
the velvet dark from which the barking of a gyi sometimes sounded,
he hated himself for the images that inhabited his mind.  It was so
base, this envying of the better man who had beaten him.  For it
was only envy--even jealousy was too good a name for it.  What
right had he to be jealous?  He had offered himself to a girl who
was too young and pretty for him, and she had turned him down--
rightly.  He had got the snub he deserved.  Nor was there any
appeal from that decision; nothing would ever make him young again,
or take away his birthmark and his decade of lonely debaucheries.
He could only stand and look on while the better man took her, and
envy him, like--but the simile was not even mentionable.  Envy is a
horrible thing.  It is unlike all other kinds of suffering in that
there is no disguising it, no elevating it into tragedy.  It is
more than merely painful, it is disgusting.
 
But meanwhile, was it true, what he suspected?  Had Verrall really
become Elizabeth's lover?  There is no knowing, but on the whole
the chances were against it, for, had it been so, there would have
been no concealing it in such a place as Kyauktada.  Mrs Lackersteen
would probably have guessed it, even if the others had not.  One
thing was certain, however, and that was that Verrall had as yet
made no proposal of marriage.  A week went by, two weeks, three
weeks; three weeks is a very long time in a small Indian station.
Verrall and Elizabeth rode together every evening, danced together
every night; yet Verrall had never so much as entered the
Lackersteens' house.  There was endless scandal about Elizabeth, of
course.  All the Orientals of the town had taken it for granted that
she was Verrall's mistress.  U Po Kyin's version (he had a way of
being essentially right even when he was wrong in detail) was that
Elizabeth had been Flory's concubine and had deserted him for
Verrall because Verrall paid her more.  Ellis, too, was inventing
tales about Elizabeth that made Mr Macgregor squirm.  Mrs
Lackersteen, as a relative, did not hear these scandals, but she was
growing nervous.  Every evening when Elizabeth came home from her
ride she would meet her hopefully, expecting the 'Oh, aunt!  What DO
you think!'--and then the glorious news.  But the news never came,
and however carefully she studied Elizabeth's face, she could divine
nothing.
 
When three weeks had passed Mrs Lackersteen became fretful and
finally half angry.  The thought of her husband, alone--or rather,
not alone--in his camp, was troubling her.  After all, she had sent
him back to camp in order to give Elizabeth her chance with Verrall
(not that Mrs Lackersteen would have put it so vulgarly as that).
One evening she began lecturing and threatening Elizabeth in her
oblique way.  The conversation consisted of a sighing monologue
with very long pauses--for Elizabeth made no answer whatever.
 
Mrs Lackersteen began with some general remarks, apropos of a
photograph in the Tatler, about these fast MODERN girls who went
about in beach pyjamas and all that and made themselves so
dreadfully CHEAP with men.  A girl, Mrs Lackersteen said, should
NEVER make herself too cheap with a man; she should make herself--
but the opposite of 'cheap' seemed to be 'expensive', and that did
not sound at all right, so Mrs Lackersteen changed her tack.  She
went on to tell Elizabeth about a letter she had had from home with
further news of that poor, POOR dear girl who was out in Burma for
a while and had so foolishly neglected to get married.  Her
sufferings had been quite heartrending, and it just showed how glad
a girl ought to be to marry anyone, literally ANYONE.  It appeared
that the poor, poor dear girl had lost her job and been practically
STARVING for a long time, and now she had actually had to take a
job as a common kitchen maid under a horrid, vulgar cook who
bullied her most shockingly.  And it seemed that the black beetles
in the kitchen were simply beyond belief!  Didn't Elizabeth think
it too absolutely dreadful?  BLACK BEETLES!
 
Mrs Lackersteen remained silent for some time, to allow the black
beetles to sink in, before adding:
 
'SUCH a pity that Mr Verrall will be leaving us when the rains
break.  Kyauktada will seem quite EMPTY without him!'
 
'When do the rains break, usually?' said Elizabeth as indifferently
as she could manage.
 
'About the beginning of June, up here.  Only a week or two now. . . .
My dear, it seems absurd to mention it again, but I cannot get out
of my head the thought of that poor, poor dear girl in the kitchen
among the BLACK BEETLES!'
 
Black beetles recurred more than once in Mrs Lackersteen's
conversation during the rest of the evening.  It was not until the
following day that she remarked in the tone of someone dropping an
unimportant piece of gossip:
 
'By the way, I believe Flory is coming back to Kyauktada at the
beginning of June.  He said he was going to be in for the general
meeting at the Club.  Perhaps we might invite him to dinner some
time.'
 
It was the first time that either of them had mentioned Flory since
the day when he had brought Elizabeth the leopard-skin.  After
being virtually forgotten for several weeks, he had returned to
each woman's mind, a depressing pis aller.
 
Three days later Mrs Lackersteen sent word to her husband to come
back to Kyauktada.  He had been in camp long enough to earn a short
spell in headquarters.  He came back, more florid than ever--
sunburn, he explained--and having acquired such a trembling of the
hands that he could barely light a cigarette.  Nevertheless, that
evening he celebrated his return by manoeuvring Mrs Lackersteen out
of the house, coming into Elizabeth's bedroom and making a spirited
attempt to rape her.
 
During all this time, unknown to anyone of importance, further
sedition was afoot.  The 'weiksa' (now far away, peddling the
philosopher's stone to innocent villagers in Martaban) had perhaps
done his job a little better than he intended.  At any rate, there
was a possibility of fresh trouble--some isolated, futile outrage,
probably.  Even U Po Kyin knew nothing of this yet.  But as usual
the gods were fighting on his side, for any further rebellion would
make the first seem more serious than it had been, and so add to
his glory.
 
== 21 ==
 
O western wind, when wilt thou blow, that the small rain down can
rain?  It was the first of June, the day of the general meeting,
and there had not been a drop of rain yet.  As Flory came up the
Club path the sun of afternoon, slanting beneath his hat-brim, was
still savage enough to scorch his neck uncomfortably.  The mali
staggered along the path, his breast-muscles slippery with sweat,
carrying two kerosene-tins of water on a yoke.  He dumped them
down, slopping a little water over his lank brown feet, and
salaamed to Flory.
 
'Well, mali, is the rain coming?'
 
The man gestured vaguely towards the west.  'The hills have
captured it, sahib.'
 
Kyauktada was ringed almost round by hills, and these caught the
earlier showers, so that sometimes no rain fell till almost the end
of June.  The earth of the flower-beds, hoed into large untidy
lumps, looked grey and hard as concrete.  Flory went into the
lounge and found Westfield loafing by the veranda, looking out over
the river, for the chicks had been rolled up.  At the foot of the
veranda a chokra lay on his back in the sun, pulling the punkah
rope with his heel and shading his face with a broad strip of
banana leaf.
 
'Hullo, Flory!  You've got thin as a rake.'
 
'So've you.'
 
'H'm, yes.  Bloody weather.  No appetite except for booze.  Christ,
won't I be glad when I hear the frogs start croaking.  Let's have a
spot before the others come.  Butler!'
 
'Do you know who's coming to the meeting?' Flory said, when the
butler had brought whisky and tepid soda.
 
'Whole crowd, I believe.  Lackersteen got back from camp three days
ago.  By God, that man's been having the time of his life away from
his missus!  My inspector was telling me about the goings-on at his
camp.  Tarts by the score.  Must have imported 'em specially from
Kyauktada.  He'll catch it all right when the old woman sees his
Club bill.  Eleven bottles of whisky sent out to his camp in a
fortnight.'
 
'Is young Verrall coming?'
 
'No, he's only a temporary member.  Not that he'd trouble to come
anyway, young tick.  Maxwell won't be here either.  Can't leave
camp just yet, he says.  He sent word Ellis was to speak for him if
there's any voting to be done.  Don't suppose there'll be anything
to vote about, though eh?' he added, looking at Flory obliquely,
for both of them remembered their previous quarrel on this subject.
 
'I suppose it lies with Macgregor.'
 
'What I mean is, Macgregor'll have dropped that bloody rot about
electing a native member, eh?  Not the moment for it just now.
After the rebellion and all that.'
 
'What about the rebellion, by the way?' said Flory.  He did not
want to start wrangling about the doctor's election yet.  There was
going to be trouble and to spare in a few minutes.  'Any more news--
are they going to have another try, do you think?'
 
'No.  All over, I'm afraid.  They caved in like the funks they are.
The whole district's as quiet as a bloody girls' school.  Most
disappointing.'
 
Flory's heart missed a beat.  He had heard Elizabeth's voice in the
next room.  Mr Macgregor came in at this moment, Ellis and Mr
Lackersteen following.  This made up the full quota, for the women
members of the Club had no votes.  Mr Macgregor was already dressed
in a silk suit, and was carrying the Club account books under his
arm.  He managed to bring a sub-official air even into such petty
business as a Club meeting.
 
'As we seem to be all here,' he said after the usual greetings,
'shall we--ah--proceed with our labours?'
 
'Lead on, Macduff,' said Westfield, sitting down.
 
'Call the butler, someone, for Christ's sake,' said Mr Lackersteen.
'I daren't let my missus hear me calling him.'
 
'Before we apply ourselves to the agenda,' said Mr Macgregor when
he had refused a drink and the others had taken one, 'I expect you
will want me to run through the accounts for the half-year?'
 
They did not want it particularly, but Mr Macgregor, who enjoyed
this kind of thing, ran through the accounts with great thoroughness.
Flory's thoughts were wandering.  There was going to be such a row
in a moment--oh, such a devil of a row!  They would be furious when
they found that he was proposing the doctor after all.  And
Elizabeth was in the next room.  God send she didn't hear the noise
of the row when it came.  It would make her despise him all the more
to see the others baiting him.  Would he see her this evening?
Would she speak to him?  He gazed across the quarter-mile of
gleaming river.  By the far bank a knot of men, one of them wearing
a green gaungbaung, were waiting beside a sampan.  In the channel,
by the nearer bank, a huge, clumsy Indian barge struggled with
desperate slowness against the racing current.  At each stroke the
ten rowers, Dravidian starvelings, ran forward and plunged their
long primitive oars, with heart-shaped blades, into the water.  They
braced their meagre bodies, then tugged, writhed, strained backwards
like agonized creatures of black rubber, and the ponderous hull
crept onwards a yard or two.  Then the rowers sprang forward,
panting, to plunge their oars again before the current should check
her.
 
'And now,' said Mr Macgregor more gravely, 'we come to the main
point of the agenda.  That, of course, is this--ah--distasteful
question, which I am afraid must be faced, of electing a native
member to this Club.  When we discussed the matter before--'
 
'What the hell!'
 
It was Ellis who had interrupted.  He was so excited that he had
sprung to his feet.
 
'What the hell!  Surely we aren't starting THAT over again?  Talk
about electing a damned nigger so this Club, after everything
that's happened!  Good God, I thought even Flory had dropped it by
this time!'
 
'Our friend Ellis appears surprised.  The matter has been discussed
before, I believe.'
 
'I should think it damned well was discussed before!  And we all
said what we thought of it.  By God--'
 
'If our friend Ellis will sit down for a few moments--' said Mr
Macgregor tolerantly.
 
Ellis threw himself into his chair again, exclaiming, 'Bloody
rubbish!'  Beyond the river Flory could see the group of Burmans
embarking.  They were lifting a long, awkward-shaped bundle into
the sampan.  Mr Macregor had produced a letter from his file of
papers.
 
'Perhaps I had better explain how this question arose in the first
place.  The Commissioner tells me that a circular has been sent
round by the Government, suggesting that in those Clubs where there
are no native members, one at least shall be co-opted; that is,
admitted automatically.  The circular says--ah yes! here it is:
"It is mistaken policy to offer social affronts to native officials
of high standing."  I may say that I disagree most emphatically.
No doubt we all do.  We who have to do the actual work of
government see things very differently from these--ah--Paget M.P.s
who interfere with us from above.  The Commissioner quite agrees
with me.  However--'
 
'But it's all bloody rot!' broke in Ellis.  'What's it got to do
with the Commissioner or anyone else?  Surely we can do as we like
in our own bloody Club?  They've no right to dictate to us when
we're off duty.'
 
'Quite,' said Westfield.
 
'You anticipate me.  I told the Commissioner that I should have to
put the matter before the other members.  And the course he
suggests is this.  If the idea finds any support in the Club, he
thinks it would be better if we co-opted our native member.  On the
other hand, if the entire Club is against it, it can be dropped.
That is, if opinion is quite unanimous.'
 
'Well, it damned well is unanimous,' said Ellis.
 
'D'you mean,' said Westfield, 'that it depends on ourselves whether
we have 'em in here or no?'
 
'I fancy we can take it as meaning that.'
 
'Well, then, let's say we're against it to a man.'
 
'And say it bloody firmly, by God.  We want to put our foot down on
this idea once and for all.'
 
'Hear, hear!' said Mr Lackersteen gruffly.  'Keep the black swabs
out of it.  Esprit de corps and all that.'
 
Mr Lackersteen could always be relied upon for sound sentiments in
a case like this.  In his heart he did not care and never had cared
a damn for the British Raj, and he was as happy drinking with an
Oriental as with a white man; but he was always ready with a loud
'Hear, hear!' when anyone suggested the bamboo for disrespectful
servants or boiling oil for Nationalists.  He prided himself that
though he might booze a bit and all that, dammit, he WAS loyal.  It
was his form of respectability.  Mr Macgregor was secretly rather
relieved by the general agreement.  If any Oriental member were co-
opted, that member would have to be Dr Veraswami, and he had had
the deepest distrust of the doctor ever since Nga Shwe O's
suspicious escape from the jail.
 
'Then I take it that you are all agreed?' he said.  'If so, I will
inform the Commissioner.  Otherwise, we must begin discussing the
candidate for election.'
 
Flory stood up.  He had got to say his say.  His heart seemed to
have risen into his throat and to be choking him.  From what Mr
Macgregor had said, it was clear that it was in his power to secure
the doctor's election by speaking the word.  But oh, what a bore,
what a nuisance it was!  What an infernal uproar there would be!
How he wished he had never given the doctor that promise!  No
matter, he had given it, and he could not break it.  So short a
time ago he would have broken it, en bon pukka sahib, how easily!
But not now.  He had got to see this thing through.  He turned
himself sidelong so that his birthmark was away from the others.
Already he could feel his voice going flat and guilty.
 
'Our friend Flory has something to suggest?'
 
'Yes.  I propose Dr Veraswami as a member of this Club.'
 
There was such a yell of dismay from three of the others that Mr
Macgregor had to rap sharply on the table and remind them that the
ladies were in the next room.  Ellis took not the smallest notice.
He had sprung to his feet again, and the skin round his nose had
gone quite grey.  He and Flory remained facing one another, as
though on the point of blows.
 
'Now, you damned swab, will you take that back?'
 
'No, I will not.'
 
'You oily swine!  You nigger's Nancy Boy!  You crawling, sneaking,--
bloody bastard!'
 
'Order!' exclaimed Mr Macgregor.
 
'But look at him, look at him!' cried Ellis almost tearfully.
'Letting us all down for the sake of a pot-bellied nigger!  After
all we've said to him!  When we've only got to hang together and we
can keep the stink of garlic out of this Club for ever.  My God,
wouldn't it make you spew your guts up to see anyone behaving like
such a--?'
 
'Take it back, Flory, old man!' said Westfield.  'Don't be a bloody
fool!'
 
'Downright Bolshevism, dammit!' said Mr Lackersteen.
 
'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 fellows 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
the 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.
 
'This is some kind of disturbance!  Butler, pick that lamp up.
Miss Lackersteen, look to your aunt.  See if she is hurt.  The rest
of you come with me!'
 
They all made for the front door, which someone, presumably the
butler, had closed.  A fusillade of small pebbles was rattling
against it like hail.  Mr Lackersteen wavered at the sound and
retreated behind the others.
 
'I say, dammit, bolt that bloody door, someone!' he said.
 
'No, no!' said Mr Macgregor.  'We must go outside.  It's fatal not
to face them!'
 
He opened the door and presented himself boldly at the top of the
steps.  There were about twenty Burmans on the path, with dahs or
sticks in their hands.  Outside the fence, stretching up the road
in either direction and far out on to the maidan, was an enormous
crowd of people.  It was like a sea of people, two thousand at the
least, black and white in the moon, with here and there a curved
dah glittering.  Ellis had coolly placed himself beside Mr
Macgregor, with his hands in his pockets.  Mr Lackersteen had
disappeared.
 
Mr Macgregor raised his hand for silence.  'What is the meaning of
this?' he shouted sternly.
 
There were yells, and some lumps of laterite the size of cricket
balls came sailing from the road, but fortunately hit no one.  One
of the men on the path turned and waved his arms to the others,
shouting that they were not to begin throwing yet.  Then he stepped
forward to address the Europeans.  He was a strong debonair fellow
of about thirty, with down-curving moustaches, wearing a singlet,
with his longyi kilted to the knee.
 
'What is the meaning of this?' Mr Macgregor repeated.
 
The man spoke up with a cheerful grin, and not very insolently.
 
'We have no quarrel with you, min gyi.  We have come for the timber
merchant, Ellis.'  (He pronounced it Ellit.)  'The boy whom he
struck this morning has gone blind.  You must send Ellit out to us
here, so that we can punish him.  The rest of you will not be
hurt.'
 
'Just remember that fellow's face,' said Ellis over his shoulder to
Flory.  'We'll get him seven years for this afterwards.'
 
Mr Macgregor had turned temporarily quite purple.  His rage was so
great that it almost choked him.  For several moments he could not
speak, and when he did so it was in English.
 
'Whom do you think you are speaking to?  In twenty years I have
never heard such insolence!  Go away this instant, or I shall call
out the Military Police!'
 
'You'd better be quick, min gyi.  We know that there is no justice
for us in your courts, so we must punish Ellit ourselves.  Send him
out to us here.  Otherwise, all of you will weep for it.'
 
Mr Macgregor made a furious motion with his fist, as though
hammering in a nail, 'Go away, son of a dog!' he cried, using his
first oath in many years.
 
There was a thunderous roar from the road, and such a shower of
stones, that everyone was hit, including the Burmans on the path.
One stone took Mr Macgregor full in the face, almost knocking him
down.  The Europeans bolted hastily inside and barred the door.  Mr
Macgregor's spectacles were smashed and his nose streaming blood.
They got back to the lounge to find Mrs Lackersteen looping about
in one of the long chairs like a hysterical snake, Mr Lackersteen
standing irresolutely in the middle of the room, holding an empty
bottle, the butler on his knees in the corner, crossing himself (he
was a Roman Catholic), the chokras crying, and only Elizabeth calm,
though she was very pale.
 
'What's happened?' she exclaimed.
 
'We're in the soup, that's what's happened!' said Ellis angrily,
feeling at the back of his neck where a stone had hit him.  'The
Burmans are all round, shying rocks.  But keep calm!  They haven't
the guts to break the doors in.'
 
'Call out the police at once!' said Mr Macgregor indistinctly, for
he was stanching his nose with his handkerchief.
 
'Can't!' said Ellis.  'I was looking round while you were talking
to them.  They've cut us off, rot their damned souls!  No one could
possibly get to the police lines.  Veraswami's compound is full of
men.'
 
'Then we must wait.  We can trust them to turn out of their own
accord.  Calm yourself, my dear Mrs Lackersteen, PLEASE calm
yourself!  The danger is very small.'
 
It did not sound small.  There were no gaps in the noise now, and
the Burmans seemed to be pouring into the compounds by hundreds.
The din swelled suddenly to such a volume that no one could make
himself heard except by shouting.  All the windows in the lounge
had been shut, and some perforated zinc shutters within, which were
sometimes used for keeping out insects, pulled to and bolted.
There was a series of crashes as the windows were broken, and then
a ceaseless thudding of stones from all sides, that shook the thin
wooden walls and seemed likely to split them.  Ellis opened a
shutter and flung a bottle viciously among the crowd, but a dozen
stones came hurtling in and he had to close the shutter hurriedly.
The Burmans seemed to have no plan beyond flinging stones, yelling
and hammering at the walls, but the mere volume of noise was
unnerving.  The Europeans were half dazed by it at first.  None of
them thought to blame Ellis, the sole cause of this affair; their
common peril seemed, indeed, to draw them closer together for the
while.  Mr Macgregor, half-blind without his spectacles, stood
distractedly in the middle of the room, yielding his right hand to
Mrs Lackersteen, who was caressing it, while a weeping chokra clung
to his left leg.  Mr Lackersteen had vanished again.  Ellis was
stamping furiously up and down, shaking his fist in the direction
of the police lines.
 
'Where are the police, the f-- cowardly sods?' he yelled, heedless
of the women.  'Why don't they turn out?  My God, we won't get
another chance like this in a hundred years!  If we'd only ten
rifles here, how we could slosh these b--s!'
 
'They'll be here presently!' Mr Macgregor shouted back.  'It will
take them some minutes to penetrate that crowd.'
 
'But why don't they use their rifles, the miserable sons of
bitches?  They could slaughter them in bloody heaps if they'd only
open fire.  Oh, God, to think of missing a chance like this!'
 
A lump of rock burst one of the zinc shutters.  Another followed
through the hole it had made, stove in a 'Bonzo' picture, bounced
off, cut Elizabeth's elbow, and finally landed on the table.  There
was a roar of triumph from outside, and then a succession of
tremendous thumps on the roof.  Some children had climbed into the
trees and were having the time of their lives sliding down the roof
on their bottoms.  Mrs Lackersteen outdid all previous efforts with
a shriek that rose easily above the din outside.
 
'Choke that bloody hag, somebody!' cried Ellis.  'Anyone'd think a
pig was being killed.  We've got to do something.  Flory, Macgregor,
come here!  Think of a way out of this mess, someone!'
 
Elizabeth had suddenly lost her nerve and begun crying.  The blow
from the stone had hurt her.  To Flory's astonishment, he found her
clinging tightly to his arm.  Even in that moment it made his heart
turn over.  He had been watching the scene almost with detachment--
dazed by the noise, indeed, but not much frightened.  He always
found it difficult to believe Orientals could be really dangerous.
Only when he felt Elizabeth's hand on his arm did he grasp the
seriousness of the situation.
 
'Oh, Mr Flory, please, please think of something!  You can, you
can!  Anything sooner than let those dreadful men get in here!'
 
'If only one of us could get to the police lines!' groaned Mr
Macgregor.  'A British officer to lead them!  At the worst I must
try and go myself.'
 
'Don't be a fool!  Only get your throat cut!' yelled Ellis. '_I_'ll
go if they really look like breaking in.  But, oh, to be killed by
swine like that!  How furious it'd make me!  And to think we could
murder the whole bloody crowd if only we could get the police
here!'
 
'Couldn't someone get along the river bank?' Flory shouted
despairingly.
 
'Hopeless!  Hundreds of them prowling up and down.  We're cut off--
Burmans on three sides and the river on the other!'
 
'The river!'
 
One of those startling ideas that are overlooked simply because
they are so obvious had sprung into Flory's mind.
 
'The river!  Of course!  We can get to the police lines as easy as
winking.  Don't you see?'
 
'How?'
 
'Why, down the river--in the water!  Swim!'
 
'Oh, good man!' cried Ellis, and smacked Flory on the shoulder.
Elizabeth squeezed his arm and actually danced a step or two in
glee.  'I'll go if you like!' Ellis shouted, but Flory shook his
head.  He had already begun slipping his shoes off.  There was
obviously no time to be lost.  The Burmans had behaved like fools
hitherto, but there was no saying what might happen if they
succeeded in breaking in.  The butler, who had got over his first
fright, prepared to open the window that gave on the lawn, and
glanced obliquely out.  There were barely a score of Burmans on the
lawn.  They had left the back of the Club unguarded, supposing that
the river cut off retreat.
 
'Rush down the lawn like hell!' Ellis shouted in Flory's ear.
'They'll scatter all right when they see you.'
 
'Order the police to open fire at once!' shouted Mr Macgregor from
the other side.  'You have my authority.'
 
'And tell them to aim low!  No firing over their heads.  Shoot to
kill.  In the guts for choice!'
 
Flory leapt down from the veranda, hurting his feet on the hard
earth, and was at the river bank in six paces.  As Ellis had said,
the Burmans recoiled for a moment when they saw him leaping down.
A few stones followed him, but no one pursued--they thought, no
doubt, that he was only attempting to escape, and in the clear
moonlight they could see that it was not Ellis.  In another moment
he had pushed his way through the bushes and was in the water.
 
He sank deep down, and the horrible river ooze received him,
sucking him knee-deep so that it was several seconds before he
could free himself.  When he came to the surface a tepid froth,
like the froth on stout, was lapping round his lips, and some
spongy thing had floated into his throat and was choking him.  It
was a sprig of water hyacinth.  He managed to spit it out, and
found that the swift current had floated him twenty yards already.
Burmans were rushing rather aimlessly up and down the bank,
yelling.  With his eye at the level of the water, Flory could not
see the crowd besieging the Club; but he could hear their deep,
devilish roaring, which sounded even louder than it had sounded on
shore.  By the time he was opposite the Military Police lines the
bank seemed almost bare of men.  He managed to struggle out of the
current and flounder through the mud, which sucked off his left
sock.  A little way down the bank two old men were sitting beside a
fence, sharpening fence-posts, as though there had not been a riot
within a hundred miles of them.  Flory crawled ashore, clambered
over the fence and ran heavily across the moonwhite parade-ground,
his wet trousers sagging.  As far as he could tell in the noise,
the lines were quite empty.  In some stalls over to the right
Verrall's horses were plunging about in a panic.  Flory ran out on
to the road, and saw what had happened.
 
The whole body of policemen, military and civil, about a hundred
and fifty men in all, had attacked the crowd from the rear, armed
only with sticks.  They had been utterly engulfed.  The crowd was
so dense that it was like an enormous swarm of bees seething and
rotating.  Everywhere one could see policemen wedged helplessly
among the hordes of Burmans, struggling furiously but uselessly,
and too cramped even to use their sticks.  Whole knots of men were
tangled Laocoon-like in the folds of unrolled pagris.  There was a
terrific bellowing of oaths in three or four languages, clouds of
dust, and a suffocating stench of sweat and marigolds--but no one
seemed to have been seriously hurt.  Probably the Burmans had not
used their daks for fear of provoking rifle-fire.  Flory pushed his
way into the crowd and was immediately swallowed up like the
others.  A sea of bodies closed in upon him and flung him from side
to side, bumping his ribs and choking him with their animal heat.
He struggled onwards with an almost dreamlike feeling, so absurd
and unreal was the situation.  The whole riot had been ludicrous
from the start, and what was most ludicrous of all was that the
Burmans, who might have killed him, did not know what to do with
him now he was among them.  Some yelled insults in his face, some
jostled him and stamped on his feet, some even tried to make way
for him, as a white man.  He was not certain whether he was
fighting for his life, or merely pushing his way through the crowd.
For quite a long time he was jammed, helpless, with his arms pinned
against his sides, then he found himself wrestling with a stumpy
Burman much stronger than himself, then a dozen men rolled against
him like a wave and drove him deeper into the heart of the crowd.
Suddenly he felt an agonizing pain in his right big toe--someone in
boots had trodden on it.  It was the Military Police subahdar, a
Rajput, very fat, moustachioed, with his pagri gone.  He was
grasping a Burman by the throat and trying to hammer his face,
while the sweat rolled off his bare, bald crown.  Flory threw his
arm round the subahdar's neck and managed to tear him away from his
adversary and shout in his ear.  His Urdu deserted him, and he
bellowed in Burmese:
 
'Why did you not open fire?'
 
For a long time he could not hear the man's answer.  Then he caught
it:
 
'Hukm ne aya'--'I have had no order!'
 
'Idiot!'
 
At this moment another bunch of men drove against them, and for a
minute or two they were pinned and quite unable to move.  Flory
realized that the subabdar had a whistle in his pocket and was
trying to get at it.  Finally he got it loose and blew piercing
blasts, but there was no hope of rallying any men until they could
get into a clear space.  It was a fearful labour to struggle our of
the crowd--it was like wading neck-deep through a viscous sea.  At
times the exhaustion of Flory's limbs was so complete that he stood
passive, letting the crowd hold him and even drive him backwards.
At last, more from the natural eddying of the crowd than by his own
effort, he found himself flung out into the open.  The subahdar had
also emerged, ten or fifteen sepoys, and a Burmese Inspector of
Police.  Most of the sepoys collapsed on their haunches almost
falling with fatigue, and limping, their feet having been trampled
on.
 
'Come on, get up!  Run like hell for the lines!  Get some rifles
and a clip of ammunition each.'
 
He was too overcome even to speak in Burmese, but the men understood
him and lopped heavily towards the police lines.  Flory followed
them, to get away from the crowd before they turned on him again.
When he reached the gate the sepoys were returning with their rifles
and already preparing to fire.
 
'The sahib will give the order!' the subahdar panted.
 
'Here you!' cried Flory to the Inspector.  'Can you speak
Hindustani?'
 
'Yes, sir.'
 
'Then tell them to fire high, right over the people's heads.  And
above all, to fire all together.  Make them understand that.'
 
The fat Inspector, whose Hindustani was even worse than Flory's,
explained what was wanted, chiefly by leaping up and down and
gesticulating.  The sepoys raised their rifles, there was a roar,
and a rolling echo from the hillside.  For a moment Flory thought
that his order had been disregarded, for almost the entire section
of the crowd nearest them had fallen like a swath of hay.  However,
they had only flung themselves down in panic.  The sepoys fired a
second volley, but it was not needed.  The crowd had immediately
begun to surge outwards from the Club like a river changing its
course.  They came pouring down the road, saw the armed men barring
their way, and tried to recoil, whereupon there was a fresh battle
between those in front and those behind; finally the whole crowd
bulged outwards and began to roll slowly up the maidan.  Flory and
the sepoys moved slowly towards the Club on the heels of the
retreating crowd.  The policemen who had been engulfed were
straggling back by ones and twos.  Their pagris were gone and their
puttees trailing yards behind them, but they had no damage worse
than bruises.  The Civil Policemen were dragging a very few
prisoners among them.  When they reached the Club compound the
Burmans were still pouring out, an endless line of young men
leaping gracefully through a gap in the hedge like a procession of
gazelles.  It seemed to Flory that it was getting very dark.  A
small white-clad figure extricated itself from the last of the
crowd and tumbled limply into Flory's arms.  It was Dr Veraswami,
with his tie torn off but his spectacles miraculously unbroken.
 
'Doctor!'
 
'Ach, my friend!  Ach, how I am exhausted!'
 
'What are you doing here?  Were you right in the middle of that
crowd?'
 
'I was trying to restrain them, my friend.  It was hopeless until
you came.  But there is at least one man who bears the mark of
this, I think!'
 
He held out a small fist for Flory to see the damaged knuckles.
But it was certainly quite dark now.  At the same moment Flory
heard a nasal voice behind him.
 
'Well, Mr Flory, so it's all over already!  A mere flash in the pan
as usual.  You and I together were a little too much for them--
ha, ha!'
 
It was U Po Kyin.  He came towards them with a martial air,
carrying a huge stick, and with a revolver thrust into his belt.
His dress was a studious negligee--singlet and Shan trousers--to
give the impression that he had rushed out of his house post-haste.
He had been lying low until the danger should be over, and was now
hurrying forth to grab a share of any credit that might be going.
 
'A smart piece of work, sir!' he said enthusiastically.  'Look how
they are flying up the hillside!  We have routed them most
satisfactory.'
 
'WE!' panted the doctor indignantly.
 
'Ah, my dear doctor!  I did not perceive that you were there.  It
is possible that YOU also have been in the fighting?  YOU--risking
your most valuable life!  Who would have believed such a thing?'
 
'You've taken your time getting here yourself!' said Flory angrily.
 
'Well, well sir, it is enough that we have dispersed them.
Although,' he added with a touch of satisfaction, for he had
noticed Flory's tone, 'they are going in the direction of the
European houses, you will observe.  I fancy that it will occur to
them to do a little plundering on their way.'
 
One had to admire the man's impudence.  He tucked his great stick
under his arm and strolled beside Flory in an almost patronizing
manner, while the doctor dropped behind, abashed in spite of
himself.  At the Club gate all three men halted.  It was now
extraordinarily dark, and the moon had vanished.  Low overhead,
just visible, black clouds were streaming eastward like a pack of
hounds.  A wind, almost cold, blew down the hillside and swept a
cloud of dust and fine water-vapour before it.  There was a sudden
intensely rich scent of damp.  The wind quickened, the trees
rustled, then began beating themselves furiously together, the big
frangipani tree by the tennis court flinging out a nebula of dimly
seen blossom.  All three men turned and hurried for shelter, the
Orientals to their houses, Flory to the Club.  It had begun
raining.
 
== 23 ==
 
Next day the town was quieter than a cathedral city on Monday
morning.  It is usually the case after a riot.  Except for the
handful of prisoners, everyone who could possibly have been
concerned in the attack on the Club had a watertight alibi.  The
Club garden looked as though a herd of bison had stampeded across
it, but the houses had not been plundered, and there were no new
casualties among the Europeans, except that after everything was
over Mr Lackersteen had been found very drunk under the billiard-
table, where he had retired with a bottle of whisky.  Westfield and
Verrall came back early in the morning, bringing Maxwell's
murderers under arrest; or at any rate, bringing two people who
would presently be hanged for Maxwell's murder.  Westfield, when he
heard the news of the riot, was gloomy but resigned.  AGAIN it
happened--a veritable riot, and he not there to quell it!  It
seemed fated that he should never kill a man.  Depressing,
depressing.  Verrall's only comment was that it had been 'damned
lip' on the part of Flory (a civilian) to give orders to the
Military Police.
 
Meanwhile, it was raining almost without cease.  As soon as he woke
up and heard the rain hammering on the roof Flory dressed and
hurried out, Flo following.  Out of sight of the houses he took off
his clothes and let the rain sluice down on his bare body.  To his
surprise, he found that he was covered with bruises from last
night; but the rain had washed away every trace of his prickly heat
within three minutes.  It is wonderful, the healing power of
rainwater.  Flory walked down to Dr Veraswami's house, with his
shoes squelching and periodical jets of water flowing down his neck
from the brim of his Terai hat.  The sky was leaden, and
innumerable whirling storms chased one another across the maidan
like squadrons of cavalry.  Burmans passed, under vast wooden hats
in spite of which their bodies streamed water like the bronze gods
in the fountains.  A network of rivulets was already washing the
stones of the road bare.  The doctor had just got home when Flory
arrived, and was shaking a wet umbrella over the veranda rail.  He
hailed Flory excitedly.
 
'Come up, Mr Flory, come up at once!  You are just apropos.  I was
on the point of opening a bottle of Old Tommy Gin.  Come up and let
me drink to your health, ass the saviour of Kyauktada!'
 
They had a long talk together.  The doctor was in a triumphant
mood.  It appeared that what had happened last night had righted
his troubles almost miraculously.  U Po Kyin's schemes were undone.
The doctor was no longer at his mercy--in fact, it was the other
way about.  The doctor explained to Flory:
 
'You see, my friend, this riot--or rather, your most noble
behaviour in it--wass quite outside U Po Kyin's programme.  He had
started the SO-CALLED rebellion and had the glory of crushing it,
and he calculated that any further outbreak would simply mean more
glory still.  I am told that when he heard of Mr Maxwell's death,
hiss joy was positively'--the doctor nipped his thumb and forefinger
together--'what iss the word I want?'
 
'Obscene?'
 
'Ah yes.  Obscene.  It iss said that actually he attempted to
dance--can you imagine such a disgusting spectacle?--and exclaimed,
"Now at least they will take my rebellion seriously!"  Such iss his
regard for human life.  But now hiss triumph iss at an end.  The
riot hass tripped up in mid-career.'
 
'How?'
 
'Because, do you not see, the honours of the riot are not hiss, but
yours!  And I am known to be your friend.  I stand, so to speak, in
the reflection of your glory.  Are you not the hero of the hour?
Did not your European friends receive you with open arms when you
returned to the Club last night?'
 
'They did, I must admit.  It was quite a new experience for me.
Mrs Lackersteen was all over me. "DEAR Mr Flory", she calls me now.
And she's got her knife properly in Ellis.  She hasn't forgotten
that he called her a bloody hag and told her to stop squealing like
a pig.'
 
'Ah, Mr Ellis iss sometimes over-emphatic in hiss expressions.  I
have noticed it.'
 
'The only fly in the ointment is that I told the police to fire
over the crowd's heads instead of straight at them.  It seems
that's against all the Government regulations.  Ellis was a little
vexed about it.  "Why didn't you plug some of the b--s when you had
the chance?" he said.  I pointed out that it would have meant
hitting the police who were in the middle of the crowd; but as he
said, they were only niggers anyway.  However, all my sins are
forgiven me.  And Macgregor quoted something in Latin--Horace, I
believe.'
 
It was half an hour later when Flory walked along to the Club.  He
had promised to see Mr Macgregor and settle the business of the
doctor's election.  But there would be no difficulty about it now.
The others would eat out of his hand until the absurd riot was
forgotten; he could have gone into the Club and made a speech in
favour of Lenin, and they would have put up with it.  The lovely
rain streamed down, drenching him from head to foot, and filling
his nostrils with the scent of earth, forgotten during the bitter
months of drought.  He walked up the wrecked garden, where the
mali, bending down with the rain splashing on his bare back, was
trowelling holes for zinnias.  Nearly all the flowers had been
trampled out of existence.  Elizabeth was there, on the side
veranda, almost as though she were waiting for him.  He took off
his hat, spilling a pool of water from the brim, and went round to
join her.
 
'Good morning!' he said, raising his voice because of the rain that
beat noisily on the low roof.
 
'Good morning!  ISN'T it coming down?  Simply PELTING!'
 
'Oh, this isn't real rain.  You wait till July.  The whole Bay of
Bengal is going to pour itself on us, by instalments.'
 
It seemed that they must never meet without talking of the weather.
Nevertheless, her face said something very different from the banal
words.  Her demeanour had changed utterly since last night.  He
took courage.
 
'How is the place where that stone hit you?'
 
She held her arm out to him and let him take it.  Her air was
gentle, even submissive.  He realized that his exploit of last
night had made him almost a hero in her eyes.  She could not know
how small the danger had really been, and she forgave him
everything, even Ma Hla May, because he had shown courage at the
right moment.  It was the buffalo and the leopard over again.  His
heart thumped in his breast.  He slipped his hand down her arm and
clasped her fingers in his own.
 
'Elizabeth--'
 
'Someone will see us!' she said, and she withdrew her hand, but not
angrily.
 
'Elizabeth, I've something I want to say to you.  Do you remember a
letter I wrote you from the jungle, after our--some weeks ago?'
 
'Yes.'
 
'You remember what I said in it?'
 
'Yes.  I'm sorry I didn't answer it.  Only--'
 
'I couldn't expect you to answer it, then.  But I just wanted to
remind you of what I said.'
 
In the letter, of course, he had only said, and feebly enough, that
he loved her--would always love her, no matter what happened.  They
were standing face to face, very close together.  On an impulse--
and it was so swiftly done that afterwards he had difficulty in
believing that it had ever happened--he took her in his arms and
drew her towards him.  For a moment she yielded and let him lift up
her face and kiss her; then suddenly she recoiled and shook her
head.  Perhaps she was frightened that someone would see them,
perhaps it was only because his moustache was so wet from the rain.
Without saying anything more she broke from him and hurried away
into the Club.  There was a look of distress or compunction in her
face; but she did not seem angry.
 
He followed her more slowly into the Club, and ran into Mr
Macgregor, who was in a very good humour.  As soon as he saw Flory
he boomed genially, 'Aha!  The conquering hero comes!' and then, in
a more serious vein, offered him fresh congratulations.  Flory
improved the occasion by saying a few words on behalf of the
doctor.  He painted quite a lively picture of the doctor's heroism
in the riot.  'He was right in the middle of the crowd, fighting
like a tiger,' etc., etc.  It was not too much exaggerated--for the
doctor had certainly risked his life.  Mr Macgregor was impressed,
and so were the others when they heard of it.  At all times the
testimony of one European can do an Oriental more good than that of
a thousand of his fellow countrymen; and at this moment Flory's
opinion carried weight.  Practically, the doctor's good name was
restored.  His election to the Club could be taken as assured.
 
However, it was not finally agreed upon yet, because Flory was
returning to camp.  He set out the same evening, marching by night,
and he did not see Elizabeth again before leaving.  It was quite
safe to travel in the jungle now, for the futile rebellion was
obviously finished.  There is seldom any talk of rebellion after
the rains have started--the Burmans are too busy ploughing, and in
any case the waterlogged fields are impassable for large bodies of
men.  Flory was to return to Kyauktada in ten days, when the
padre's six-weekly visit fell due.  The truth was that he did not
care to be in Kyauktada while both Elizabeth and Verrall were
there.  And yet, it was strange, but all the bitterness--all the
obscene, crawling envy that had tormented him before--was gone now
that he knew she had forgiven him.  It was only Verrall who stood
between them now.  And even the thought of her in Verrall's arms
could hardly move him, because he knew that at the worst the affair
must have an end.  Verrall, it was quite certain, would never marry
Elizabeth; young men of Verrall's stamp do not marry penniless
girls met casually at obscure Indian stations.  He was only amusing
himself with Elizabeth.  Presently he would desert her, and she
would return to him--to Flory.  It was enough--it was far better
than he had hoped.  There is a humility about genuine love that is
rather horrible in some ways.
 
U Po Kyin was furiously angry.  The miserable riot had taken him
unawares, so far as anything ever took him unawares, and it was
like a handful of grit thrown into the machinery of his plans.  The
business of disgracing the doctor had got to be begun all over
again.  Begun it was, sure enough, with such a spate of anonymous
letters that Hla Pe had to absent himself from office for two whole
days--it was bronchitis this time--to get them written.  The doctor
was accused of every crime from pederasty to stealing Government
postage stamps.  The prison warder who had let Nga Shwe O escape
had now come up for trial.  He was triumphantly acquitted, U Po
Kyin having spent as much as two hundred rupees in bribing the
witnesses.  More letters showered up on Mr Macgregor, proving in
detail that Dr Veraswami, the real author of the escape, had tried
to shift the blame on to a helpless subordinate.  Nevertheless, the
results were disappointing.  The confidential letter which Mr
Macgregor wrote to the Commissioner, reporting on the riot, was
steamed open, and its tone was so alarming--Mr Macgregor had spoken
of the doctor as 'behaving most creditably' on the night of the
riot--that U Po Kyin called a council of war.
 
'The time has come for a vigorous move,' he said to the others--
they were in conclave on the front veranda, before breakfast.  Ma
Kin was there, and Ba Sein and Hla Pe--the latter a bright-faced,
promising boy of eighteen, with the manner of one who will
certainly succeed in life.
 
'We are hammering against a brick wall,' U Po Kyin continued; 'and
that wall is Flory.  Who could have foreseen that that miserable
coward would stand by his friend?  However, there it is.  So long
as Veraswami has his backing, we are helpless.'
 
'I have been talking to the Club butler, sir,' said Ba Sein.  'He
tells me that Mr Ellis and Mr Westfield still do not want the
doctor to be elected to the Club.  Do you not think they will
quarrel with Flory again as soon as this business of the riot is
forgotten?'
 
'Of course they will quarrel, they always quarrel.  But in the
meantime the harm is done.  Just suppose that man WERE elected!  I
believe I should die of rage if it happened.  No, there is only one
move left.  We must strike at Flory himself!'
 
'At Flory, sir!  But he is a white man!'
 
'What do I care?  I have ruined white men before now.  Once let
Flory be disgraced, and there is an end of the doctor.  And he
shall be disgraced!  I will shame him so that he will never dare
show his face in that Club again!'
 
'But, sir!  A white man!  What are we to accuse him of?  Who would
believe anything against a white man?'
 
'You have no strategy, Ko Ba Sein.  One does not ACCUSE a white
man; one has got to catch him in the act.  Public disgrace, in
flagrante delicto.  I shall know how to set about it.  Now be
silent while I think.'
 
There was a pause.  U Po Kyin stood gazing out into the rain with
his small hands clasped behind him and resting on the natural
plateau of his posterior.  The other three watched him from the end
of the veranda, almost frightened by this talk of attacking a white
man, and waiting for some masterstroke to cope with a situation
that was beyond them.  It was a little like the familiar picture
(is it Meissonier's?) of Napoleon at Moscow, poring over his maps
while his marshals wait in silence, with their cocked hats in their
hands.  But of course U Po Kyin was more equal to the situation
than Napoleon.  His plan was ready within two minutes.  When he
turned round his vast face was suffused with excessive joy.  The
doctor had been mistaken when he described U Po Kyin as attempting
to dance; U Po Kyin's figure was not designed for dancing; but, had
it been so designed, he would have danced at this moment.  He
beckoned to Ba Sein and whispered in his ear for a few seconds.
 
'That is the correct move, I think?' he concluded.
 
A broad, unwilling, incredulous grin stole slowly across Ba Sein's
face.
 
'Fifty rupees ought to cover all the expenses,' added U Po Kyin,
beaming.
 
The plan was unfolded in detail.  And when the others had taken it
in, all of them, even Ba Sein, who seldom laughed, even Ma Kin, who
disapproved from the bottom of her soul, burst into irrepressible
peals of laughter.  The plan was really too good to be resisted.
It was genius.
 
All the while it was raining, raining.  The day after Flory went
back to camp it rained for thirty-eight hours at a stretch,
sometimes slowing to the pace of English rain, sometimes pouring
down in such cataracts that one thought the whole ocean must by now
have been sucked up into the clouds.  The rattling on the roof
became maddening after a few hours.  In the intervals between the
rain the sun glared as fiercely as ever, the mud began to crack and
steam, and patches of prickly heat sprang out all over one's body.
Hordes of flying beetles had emerged from their cocoons as soon as
the rain started; there was a plague of loathly creatures known as
stink-bugs, which invaded the houses in incredible numbers,
littered themselves over the dining-table and made one's food
uneatable.  Verrall and Elizabeth still went out riding in the
evenings, when the rain was not too fierce.  To Verrall, all
climates were alike, but he did not like to see his ponies
plastered with mud.  Nearly a week went by.  Nothing was changed
between them--they were neither less nor more intimate than they
had been before.  The proposal of marriage, still confidently
expected, was still unuttered.  Then an alarming thing happened.
The news filtered to the Club, through Mr Macgregor, that Verrall
was leaving Kyauktada; the Military Police were to be kept at
Kyauktada, but another officer was coming in Verrall's place, no
one was certain when.  Elizabeth was in horrible suspense.  Surely,
if he was going away, he must say something definite soon?  She
could not question him--dared not even ask him whether he was
really going; she could only wait for him to speak.  He said
nothing.  Then one evening, without warning, he failed to turn up
at the Club.  And two whole days passed during which Elizabeth did
not see him at all.
 
It was dreadful, but there was nothing that could be done.  Verrall
and Elizabeth had been inseparable for weeks, and yet in a way they
were almost strangers.  He had kept himself so aloof from them all--
had never even seen the inside of the Lackersteens' house.  They
did not know him well enough to seek him out at the dakbungalow, or
write to him; nor did he reappear at morning parade on the maidan.
There was nothing to do except wait until he chose to present
himself again.  And when he did, would he ask her to marry him?
Surely, surely he must!  Both Elizabeth and her aunt (but neither
of them had even spoken of it openly) held it as an article of
faith that he must ask her.  Elizabeth looked forward to their next
meeting with a hope that was almost painful.  Please God it would
be a week at least before he went!  If she rode with him four times
more, or three times--even if it were only twice, all might yet be
well.  Please God he would come back to her soon!  It was
unthinkable that when he came, it would only be to say good-bye!
The two women went down to the Club each evening and sat there
until quite late, listening for Verrall's footsteps outside while
seeming not to listen; but he never appeared.  Ellis, who
understood the situation perfectly, watched Elizabeth with spiteful
amusement.  What made it worst of all was that Mr Lackersteen was
now pestering Elizabeth unceasingly.  He had become quite reckless.
Almost under the eyes of the servants he would waylay her, catch
hold of her and begin pinching and fondling her in the most
revolting way.  Her sole defence was to threaten that she would
tell her aunt; happily he was too stupid to realize that she would
never dare do it.
 
On the third morning Elizabeth and her aunt arrived at the Club
just in time to escape a violent storm of rain.  They had been
sitting in the lounge for a few minutes when they heard the sound
of someone stamping the water off his shoes in the passage.  Each
woman's heart stirred, for this might be Verrall.  Then a young man
entered the lounge, unbuttoning a long raincoat as he came.  He was
a stout, rollicking, chuckle-headed youth of about twenty-five,
with fat fresh cheeks, butter-coloured hair, no forehead, and, as
it turned out afterwards, a deafening laugh.
 
Mrs Lackersteen made some inarticulate sound--it was jerked out of
her by her disappointment.  The youth, however, hailed them with
immediate bonhomie, being one of those who are on terms of slangy
intimacy with everyone from the moment of meeting them.
 
'Hullo, hullo!' he said 'Enter the fairy prince!  Hope I don't sort
of intrude and all that?  Not shoving in on any family gatherings
or anything?'
 
'Not at all!' said Mrs Lackersteen in surprise.
 
'What I mean to say--thought I'd just pop in at the Club and have
a glance round, don't you know.  Just to get acclimatized to the
local brand of whisky.  I only got here last night.'
 
'Are you STATIONED here?' said Mrs Lackersteen, mystified--for they
had not been expecting any newcomers.
 
'Yes, rather.  Pleasure's mine, entirely.'
 
'But we hadn't heard. . . .  Oh, of course!  I suppose you're from
the Forest Department?  In place of poor Mr Maxwell?'
 
'What?  Forest Department?  No fear!  I'm the new Military Police
bloke, you know.'
 
'The--what?'
 
'New Military Police bloke.  Taking over from dear ole Verrall.
The dear ole chap got orders to go back to his regiment.  Going off
in a fearful hurry.  And a nice mess he's left everything in for
yours truly, too.'
 
The Military Policeman was a crass youth, but even he noticed that
Elizabeth's face turned suddenly sickly.  She found herself quite
unable to speak.  It was several seconds before Mrs Lackersteen
managed to exclaim:
 
'Mr Verrall--going?  Surely he isn't going away YET?'
 
'Going?  He's gone!'
 
'GONE?'
 
'Well, what I mean to say--train's due to start in about half an
hour.  He'll be along at the station now.  I sent a fatigue party
to look after him.  Got to get his ponies aboard and all that.'
 
There were probably further explanations, but neither Elizabeth nor
her aunt heard a word of them.  In any case, without even a good-
bye to the Military Policeman, they were out on the front steps
within fifteen seconds.  Mrs Lackersteen called sharply for the
butler.
 
'Butler!  Send my rickshaw round to the front at once!  To the
station, jaldi!' she added as the rickshaw-man appeared, and,
having settled herself in the rickshaw, poked him in the back with
the ferrule of her umbrella to start him.
 
Elizabeth had put on her raincoat and Mrs Lackersteen was cowering
in the rickshaw behind her umbrella, but neither was much use
against the rain.  It came driving towards them in such sheets that
Elizabeth's frock was soaked before they had reached the gate, and
the rickshaw almost overturned in the wind.  The rickshaw-wallah
put his head down and struggled into it, groaning.  Elizabeth was
in agony.  It was a mistake, SURELY it was a mistake.  He had
written to her and the letter had gone astray.  That was it, that
MUST be it!  It could not be that he had meant to leave her without
even saying good-bye!  And if it were so--no, not even then would
she give up hope!  When he saw her on the platform, for the last
time, he could not be so brutal as to forsake her!  As they neared
the station she fell behind the rickshaw and pinched her cheeks to
bring the blood into them.  A squad of Military Police sepoys
shuffled hurriedly by, their thin uniforms sodden into rags,
pushing a handcart among them.  Those would be Verrall's fatigue
party.  Thank God, there was a quarter of an hour yet.  The train
was not due to leave for another quarter of an hour.  Thank God, at
least, for this last chance of seeing him!
 
They arrived on the platform just in time to see the train draw out
of the station and gather speed with a series of deafening snorts.
The stationmaster, a little round, black man, was standing on the
line looking ruefully after the train, and holding his waterproof-
covered topi on to his head with one hand, while with the other he
fended off two clamorous Indians who were bobbing at him and trying
to thrust something upon his attention.  Mrs Lackersteen leaned out
of the rickshaw and called agitatedly through the rain.
 
'Stationmaster!'
 
'Madam!'
 
'What train is that?'
 
'That is the Mandalay train, madam.'
 
'The Mandalay train!  It can't be!'
 
'But I assure you, madam!  It is precisely the Mandalay train.'  He
came towards them, removing his topi.
 
'But Mr Verrall--the Police officer?  Surely he's not on it?'
 
'Yes, madam, he have departed.'  He waved his hand towards the
train, now receding rapidly in a cloud of rain and steam.
 
'But the train wasn't due to start yet!'
 
'No, madam.  Not due to start for another ten minutes.'
 
'Then why has it gone?'
 
The stationmaster waved his topi apologetically from side to side.
His dark, squabby face looked quite distressed.
 
'I know, madam, I know!  MOST unprecedented!  But the young Military
Police officer have positively COMMANDED me to start the train!  He
declare that all is ready and he do not wish to be kept waiting.
I point out the irregularity.  He say he do not care about
irregularity.  I expostulate.  He insist.  And in short--'
 
He made another gesture.  It meant that Verrall was the kind of man
who would have his way, even when it came to starting a train ten
minutes early.  There was a pause.  The two Indians, imagining that
they saw their chance, suddenly rushed forward, wailing, and
offered some grubby notebooks for Mrs Lackersteen's inspection.
 
'What DO these men want?' cried Mrs Lackersteen distractedly.
 
'They are grass-wallahs, madam.  They say that Lieutenant Verrall
have departed owing them large sums of money.  One for hay, the
other for corn.  Of mine it is no affair.'
 
There was a hoot from the distant train.  It rolled round the bend,
like a black-behinded caterpillar that looks over its shoulder as
it goes, and vanished.  The stationmaster's wet white trousers
flapped forlornly about his legs.  Whether Verrall had started the
train early to escape Elizabeth, or to escape the grass-wallahs,
was an interesting question that was never cleared up.
 
They made their way back along the road, and then struggled up the
hill in such a wind that sometimes they were driven several paces
backwards.  When they gained the veranda they were quite out of
breath.  The servants took their streaming raincoats, and Elizabeth
shook some of the water from her hair.  Mrs Lackersteen broke her
silence for the first time since they had left the station:
 
'WELL!  Of all the unmannerly--of the simply ABOMINABLE. . . !'
 
Elizabeth looked pale and sickly, in spite of the rain and wind
that had beaten into her face.  But she would betray nothing.
 
'I think he might have waited to say good-bye to us,' she said
coldly.
 
'Take my word for it, dear, you are thoroughly well rid of him! . . .
As I said from the start, a most ODIOUS young man!'
 
Some time later, when they were sitting down to breakfast, having
bathed and got into dry clothes, and feeling better, she remarked:
 
'Let me see, what day is this?'
 
'Saturday, Aunt.'
 
'Ah, Saturday.  Then the dear padre will be arriving this evening.
How many shall we be for the service tomorrow?  Why, I think we
shall ALL be here!  How very nice!  Mr Flory will be here too.  I
think he said he was coming back from the jungle tomorrow.'  She
added almost lovingly, 'DEAR Mr Flory!'
 
== 24 ==
 
It was nearly six o'clock in the evening, and the absurd bell in
the six-foot tin steeple of the church went clank-clank, clank-
clank! as old Mattu pulled the rope within.  The rays of the
setting sun, refracted by distant rainstorms, flooded the maidan
with a beautiful, lurid light.  It had been raining earlier in the
day, and would rain again.  The Christian community of Kyauktada,
fifteen in number, were gathering at the church door for the
evening service.
 
Flory was already there, and Mr Macgregor, grey topi and all, and
Mr Francis and Mr Samuel, frisking about in freshly laundered drill
suits--for the six-weekly church service was the great social event
of their lives.  The padre, a tall man with grey hair and a
refined, discoloured face, wearing pince-nez, was standing on the
church steps in his cassock and surplice, which he had put on in Mr
Macgregor's house.  He was smiling in an amiable but rather
helpless way at four pink-cheeked Karen Christians who had come to
make their bows to him; for he did not speak a word of their
language nor they of his.  There was one other Oriental Christian,
a mournful, dark Indian of uncertain race, who stood humbly in the
background.  He was always present at the church services, but no
one knew who he was or why he was a Christian.  Doubtless he had
been captured and baptized in infancy by the missionaries, for
Indians who are converted when adults almost invariably lapse.
 
Flory could see Elizabeth coming down the hill, dressed in lilac-
colour, with her aunt and uncle.  He had seen her that morning at
the Club--they had had just a minute alone together before the
others came in.  He had only asked her one question.
 
'Has Verrall gone--for good?'
 
'Yes.'
 
There had been no need to say any more.  He had simply taken her by
the arms and drawn her towards him.  She came willingly, even
gladly--there in the clear daylight, merciless to his disfigured
face.  For a moment she had clung to him almost like a child.  It
was a though he had saved her or protected her from something.  He
raised her face to kiss her, and found with surprise that she was
crying.  There had been no time to talk then, not even to say,
'Will you marry me?'  No matter, after the service there would be
time enough.  Perhaps at his next visit, only six weeks hence, the
padre would marry them.
 
Ellis and Westfield and the new Military Policeman were approaching
from the Club, where they had been having a couple of quick ones to
last them through the service.  The Forest Officer who had been
sent to take Maxwell's place, a sallow, tall man, completely bald
except for two whisker-like tufts in front of his ears, was
following them.  Flory had not time to say more than 'Good evening'
to Elizabeth when she arrived.  Mattu, seeing that everyone was
present, stopped ringing the bell, and the clergyman led the way
inside, followed by Mr Macgregor, with his topi against his
stomach, and the Lackersteens and the native Christians.  Ellis
pinched Flory's elbow and whispered boozily in his ear:
 
'Come on, line up.  Time for the snivel-parade.  Quick march!'
 
He and the Military Policeman went in behind the others, arm-in-
arm, with a dancing step--the policeman, till they got inside,
wagging his fat behind in imitation of a pwe-dancer.  Flory sat
down in the same pew as these two, opposite Elizabeth, on her
right.  It was the first time that he had ever risked sitting with
his birthmark towards her.  'Shut your eyes and count twenty-five',
whispered Ellis as they sat down, drawing a snigger from the
policeman.  Mrs Lackersteen had already taken her place at the
harmonium, which was no bigger than a writing-desk.  Mattu
stationed himself by the door and began to pull the punkah--it was
so arranged that it only flapped over the front pews, where the
Europeans sat.  Flo came nosing up the aisle, found Flory's pew and
settled down underneath it.  The service began.
 
Flory was only attending intermittently.  He was dimly aware of
standing and kneeling and muttering 'Amen' to interminable prayers,
and of Ellis nudging him and whispering blasphemies behind his hymn
book.  But he was too happy to collect his thoughts.  Hell was
yielding up Eurydice.  The yellow light flooded in through the open
door, gilding the broad back of Mr Macgregor's silk coat like
cloth-of-gold.  Elizabeth, across the narrow aisle, was so close to
Flory that he could hear every rustle of her dress and feel, as it
seemed to him, the warmth of her body; yet he would not look at her
even once, lest the others should notice it.  The harmonium
quavered bronchitically as Mrs Lackersteen struggled to pump
sufficient air into it with the sole pedal that worked.  The
singing was a queer, ragged noise--an earnest booming from Mr
Macgregor, a kind of shamefaced muttering from the other Europeans,
and from the back a loud, wordless lowing, for the Karen Christians
knew the tunes of the hymns but not the words.
 
They were kneeling down again.  'More bloody knee-drill,' Ellis
whispered.  The air darkened, and there was a light patter of rain
on the roof; the trees outside rustled, and a cloud of yellow
leaves whirled past the window.  Flory watched them through the
chinks of his fingers.  Twenty years ago, on winter Sundays in his
pew in the parish church at home, he used to watch the yellow
leaves, as at this moment, drifting and fluttering against leaden
skies.  Was it not possible, now, to begin over again as though
those grimy years had never touched him?  Through his fingers he
glanced sidelong at Elizabeth, kneeling with her head bent and her
face hidden in her youthful, mottled hands.  When they were
married, when they were married!  What fun they would have together
in this alien yet kindly land!  He saw Elizabeth in his camp,
greeting him as he came home tired from work and Ko S'la hurried
from the tent with a bottle of beer; he saw her walking in the
forest with him, watching the hornbills in the peepul trees and
picking nameless flowers, and in the marshy grazing-grounds,
tramping through the cold-weather mist after snipe and teal.  He
saw his home as she would remake it.  He saw his drawing-room,
sluttish and bachelor-like no longer, with new furniture from
Rangoon, and a bowl of pink balsams like rosebuds on the table, and
books and water-colours and a black piano.  Above all the piano!
His mind lingered upon the piano--symbol, perhaps because he was
unmusical, of civilized and settled life.  He was delivered for
ever from the sub-life of the past decade--the debaucheries, the
lies, the pain of exile and solitude, the dealings with whores and
moneylenders and pukka sahibs.
 
The clergyman stepped to the small wooden lectern that also served
as a pulpit, slipped the band from a roll of sermon paper, coughed,
and announced a text.  'In the name of the Father, the Son and the
Holy Ghost.  Amen.'
 
'Cut it short, for Christ's sake,' murmured Ellis.
 
Flory did not notice how many minutes passed.  The words of the
sermon flowed peacefully through his head, an indistinct burbling
sound, almost unheard.  When they were married, he was still
thinking, when they were married--
 
Hullo!  What was happening?
 
The clergyman had stopped short in the middle of a word.  He had
taken off his pince-nez and was shaking them with a distressed air
at someone in the doorway.  There was a fearful, raucous scream.
 
'Pike-san pay-like!  Pike-san pay-like!'
 
Everyone jumped in their seats and turned round.  It was Ma Hla
May.  As they turned she stepped inside the church and shoved old
Mattu violently aside.  She shook her fist at Flory.
 
'Pike-san pay-like!  Pike-san pay-like!  Yes, THAT'S the one I
mean--Flory, Flory!  (She pronounced it Porley.)  That one sitting
in front there, with the black hair!  Turn round and face me, you
coward!  Where is the money you promised me?'
 
She was shrieking like a maniac.  The people gaped at her, too
astounded to move or speak.  Her face was grey with powder, her
greasy hair was tumbling down, her longyi was ragged at the bottom.
She looked like a screaming hag of the bazaar.  Flory's bowels
seemed to have turned to ice.  Oh God, God!  Must they know--must
Elizabeth know--that THAT was the woman who had been his mistress?
But there was not a hope, not the vestige of a hope, of any
mistake.  She had screamed his name over and over again.  Flo,
hearing the familiar voice, wriggled from under the pew, walked
down the aisle and wagged her tail at Ma Hla May.  The wretched
woman was yelling out a detailed account of what Flory had done to
her.
 
'Look at me, you white men, and you women, too, look at me!  Look
how he has ruined me!  Look at these rags I am wearing!  And he is
sitting there, the liar, the coward, pretending not to see me!  He
would let me starve at his gate like a pariah dog.  Ah, but I will
shame you!  Turn round and look at me!  Look at this body that you
have kissed a thousand times--look--look--'
 
She began actually to tear her clothes open--the last insult of a
base-born Burmese woman.  The harmonium squeaked as Mrs Lackersteen
made a convulsive movement.  People had at last found their wits
and began to stir.  The clergyman, who had been bleating
ineffectually, recovered his voice, 'Take that woman outside!' he
said sharply.
 
Flory's face was ghastly.  After the first moment he had turned his
head away from the door and set his teeth in a desperate effort to
look unconcerned.  But it was useless, quite useless.  His face was
as yellow as bone, and the sweat glistened on his forehead.
Francis and Samuel, doing perhaps the first useful deed of their
lives, suddenly sprang from their pew, grabbed Ma Hla May by the
arms and hauled her outside, still screaming.
 
It seemed very silent in the church when they had finally dragged
her out of hearing.  The scene had been so violent, so squalid,
that everyone was upset by it.  Even Ellis looked disgusted.  Flory
could neither speak nor stir.  He sat staring fixedly at the altar,
his face rigid and so bloodless that the birth-mark seemed to glow
upon it like a streak of blue paint.  Elizabeth glanced across the
aisle at him, and her revulsion made her almost physically sick.
She had not understood a word of what Ma Hla May was saying, but
the meaning of the scene was perfectly clear.  The thought that he
had been the lover of that grey-faced, maniacal creature made her
shudder in her bones.  But worse than that, worse than anything,
was his ugliness at this moment.  His face appalled her, it was so
ghastly, rigid and old.  It was like a skull.  Only the birthmark
seemed alive in it.  She hated him now for his birthmark.  She had
never known till this moment how dishonouring, how unforgivable a
thing it was.
 
Like the crocodile, U Po Kyin had struck at the weakest spot.  For,
needless to say, this scene was U Po Kyin's doing.  He had seen his
chance, as usual, and tutored Ma Hla May for her part with
considerable care.  The clergyman brought his sermon to an end
almost at once.  As soon as it was over Flory hurried outside, not
looking at any of the others.  It was getting dark, thank God.  At
fifty yards from the church he halted, and watched the others
making in couples for the Club.  It seemed to him that they were
hurrying.  Ah, they would, of course!  There would be something to
talk about at the Club tonight!  Flo rolled belly-upwards against
his ankles, asking for a game.  'Get out, you bloody brute!' he
said, and kicked her.  Elizabeth had stopped at the church door.
Mr Macgregor, happy chance, seemed to be introducing her to the
clergyman.  In a moment the two men went on in the direction of Mr
Macgregor's house, where the clergyman was to stay for the night,
and Elizabeth followed the others, thirty yards behind them.  Flory
ran after her and caught up with her almost at the Club gate.
 
'Elizabeth!'
 
She looked round, saw him, turned white, and would have hurried on
without a word.  But his anxiety was too great, and he caught her
by the wrist.
 
'Elizabeth!  I must--I've got to speak to you!'
 
'Let me go, will you!'
 
They began to struggle, and then stopped abruptly.  Two of the
Karens who had come out of the church were standing fifty yards
away, gazing at them through the half-darkness with deep interest.
Flory began again in a lower tone:
 
'Elizabeth, I know I've no right to stop you like this.  But I must
speak to you, I must!  Please hear what I've got to say.  Please
don't run away from me!'
 
'What are you doing?  Why are you holding on to my arm?  Let me go
this instant!'
 
'I'll let you go--there, look!  But do listen to me, please!
Answer me this one thing.  After what's happened, can you ever
forgive me?'
 
'Forgive you?  What do you mean, FORGIVE you?'
 
'I know I'm disgraced.  It was the vilest thing to happen!  Only,
in a sense it wasn't my fault.  You'll see that when you're calmer.
Do you think--not now, it was too bad, but later--do you think you
can forget it?'
 
'I really don't know what you're talking about.  Forget it?  What
has it got to do with ME?  I thought it was very disgusting, but
it's not MY business.  I can't think why you're questioning me like
this at all.'
 
He almost despaired at that.  Her tone and even her words were the
very ones she had used in that earlier quarrel of theirs.  It was
the same move over again.  Instead of hearing him out she was going
to evade him and put him off--snub him by pretending that he had no
claim upon her.
 
'Elizabeth!  Please answer me.  Please be fair to me!  It's serious
this time.  I don't expect you to take me back all at once.  You
couldn't, when I'm publicly disgraced like this.  But, after all,
you virtually promised to marry me--'
 
'What!  Promised to marry you?  WHEN did I promise to marry you?'
 
'Not in words, I know.  But it was understood between us.'
 
'Nothing of the kind was understood between us!  I think you are
behaving in the most horrible way.  I'm going along to the Club at
once.  Good evening!'
 
'Elizabeth!  Elizabeth!  Listen.  It's not fair to condemn me
unheard.  You knew before what I'd done, and you knew that I'd
lived a different life since I met you.  What happened this evening
was only an accident.  That wretched woman, who, I admit, was once
my--well--'
 
'I won't listen, I won't listen to such things!  I'm going!'
 
He caught her by the wrists again, and this time held her.  The
Karens had disappeared, fortunately.
 
'No, no, you shall hear me!  I'd rather offend you to the heart
than have this uncertainty.  It's gone on week after week, month
after month, and I've never once been able to speak straight out to
you.  You don't seem to know or care how much you make me suffer.
But this time you've got to answer me.'
 
She struggled in his grip, and she was surprisingly strong.  Her
face was more bitterly angry than he had ever seen or imagined it.
She hated him so that she would have struck him if her hands were
free.
 
'Let me go!  Oh, you beast, you beast, let me go!'
 
'My God, my God, that we should fight like this!  But what else can
I do?  I can't let you go without even hearing me.  Elizabeth, you
MUST listen to me!'
 
'I will not!  I will not discuss it!  What right have you to
question me?  Let me go!'
 
'Forgive me, forgive me!  This one question.  Will you--not now,
but later, when this vile business is forgotten--will you marry
me?'
 
'No, never, never!'
 
'Don't say it like that!  Don't make it final.  Say no for the
present if you like--but in a month, a year, five years--'
 
'Haven't I said no?  Why must you keep on and on?'
 
'Elizabeth, listen to me.  I've tried again and again to tell you
what you mean to me--oh, it's so useless talking about it!  But do
try and understand.  Haven't I told you something of the life we
live here?  The sort of horrible death-in-life!  The decay, the
loneliness, the self-pity?  Try and realize what it means, and that
you're the sole person on earth who could save me from it.'
 
'Will you let me go?  Why do you have to make this dreadful scene?'
 
'Does it mean nothing to you when I say that I love you?  I don't
believe you've ever realized what it is that I want from you.  If
you like, I'd marry you and promise never even touch you with my
finger.  I wouldn't mind even that, so long as you were with me.
But I can't go on with my life alone, always alone.  Can't you
bring yourself ever to forgive me?'
 
'Never, never!  I wouldn't marry you if you were the last man on
earth.  I'd as soon marry the--the sweeper!'
 
She had begun crying now.  He saw that she meant what she said.
The tears came into his own eyes.  He said again:
 
'For the last time.  Remember that it's something to have one
person in the world who loves you.  Remember that though you'll
find men who are richer, and younger, and better in every way than
I, you'll never find one who cares for you so much.  And though I'm
not rich, at least I could make you a home.  There's a way of
living--civilized, decent--'
 
'Haven't we said enough?' she said more calmly.  'Will you let me
go before somebody comes?'
 
He relaxed his grip on her wrists.  He had lost her, that was
certain.  Like a hallucination, painfully clear, he saw again their
home as he had imagined it; he saw their garden, and Elizabeth
feeding Nero and the pigeons on the drive by the sulphur-yellow
phloxes that grew as high as her shoulder; and the drawing-room,
with the water-colours on the walls, and the balsams in the china
bowl mirrored by the table, and the book-shelves, and the black
piano.  The impossible, mythical piano--symbol of everything that
that futile accident had wrecked!
 
'You should have a piano,' he said despairingly.
 
'I don't play the piano.'
 
He let her go.  It was no use continuing.  She was no sooner free
of him than she took to her heels and actually ran into the Club
garden, so hateful was his presence to her.  Among the trees she
stopped to take off her spectacles and remove the signs of tears
from her face.  Oh, the beast, the beast!  He had hurt her wrists
abominably.  Oh, what an unspeakable beast he was!  When she
thought of his face as it had looked in church, yellow and
glistening with the hideous birthmark upon it, she could have
wished him dead.  It was not what he had done that horrified her.
He might have committed a thousand abominations and she could have
forgiven him.  But not after that shameful, squalid scene, and the
devilish ugliness of his disfigured face in that moment.  It was,
finally, the birthmark that had damned him.
 
Her aunt would be furious when she heard that she had refused
Flory.  And there was her uncle and his leg-pinching--between the
two of them, life here would become impossible.  Perhaps she would
have to go Home unmarried after all.  Black beetles!  No matter.
Anything--spinsterhood, drudgery, anything--sooner than the
alternative.  Never, never, would she yield to a man who had been
so disgraced!  Death sooner, far sooner.  If there had been
mercenary thoughts in her mind an hour ago, she had forgotten them.
She did not even remember that Verrall had jilted her and that to
have married Flory would have saved her face.  She knew only that
he was dishonoured and less than a man, and that she hated him as
she would have hated a leper or a lunatic.  The instinct was deeper
than reason or even self-interest, and she could no more have
disobeyed it than she could have stopped breathing.
 
Flory, as he turned up the hill, did not run, but he walked as fast
as he could.  What he had to do must be done quickly.  It was
getting very dark.  The wretched Flo, who even now had not grasped
that anything serious was the matter, trotted close to his heels,
whimpering in a self-pitying manner to reproach him for the kick he
had given her.  As he came up the path a wind blew through the
plaintain trees, rattling the tattered leaves and bringing a scent
of damp.  It was going to rain again.  Ko S'la had laid the dinner-
table and was removing some flying beetles that had committed
suicide against the petrol-lamp.  Evidently he had not heard about
the scene in church yet.
 
'The holy one's dinner is ready.  Will the holy one dine now?'
 
'No, not yet.  Give me that lamp.'
 
He took the lamp, went into the bedroom and shut the door, The
stale scent of dust and cigarette-smoke met him, and in the white,
unsteady glare of the lamp he could see the mildewed books and the
lizards on the wall.  So he was back again to this--to the old,
secret life--after everything, back where he had been before.
 
Was it not possible to endure it!  He had endured it before.  There
were palliatives--books, his garden, drink, work, whoring, shooting,
conversations with the doctor.
 
No, it was not endurable any longer.  Since Elizabeth's coming the
power to suffer and above all to hope, which he had thought dead in
him, had sprung to new life.  The half-comfortable lethargy in
which he had lived was broken.  And if he suffered now, there was
far worse to come.  In a little while someone else would marry her.
How he could picture it--the moment when he heard the news!--'Did
you hear the Lackersteen kid's got off at last?  Poor old So-and-
so--booked for the altar, God help him,' etc., etc.  And the casual
question--'Oh, really?  When is it to be?'--stiffening one's face,
pretending to be uninterested.  And then her wedding day approaching,
her bridal night--ah, not that!  Obscene, obscene.  Keep your eyes
fixed on that.  Obscene.  He dragged his tin uniform-case from under
the bed, took out his automatic pistol, slid a clip of cartridges
into the magazine, and pulled one into the breech.
 
Ko S'la was remembered in his will.  There remained Flo.  He laid
his pistol on the table and went outside.  Flo was playing with Ba
Shin, Ko S'la's youngest son, under the lee of the cookhouse, where
the servants had left the remains of a woodfire.  She was dancing
round him with her small teeth bared, pretending to bite him, while
the tiny boy, his belly red in the glow of the embers, smacked
weakly at her, laughing, and yet half frightened.
 
'Flo!  Come here, Flo!'
 
She heard him and came obediently, and then stopped short at the
bedroom door.  She seemed to have grasped now that there was
something wrong.  She backed a little and stood looking timorously
up at him, unwilling to enter the bedroom.
 
'Come in here!'
 
She wagged her tail, but did not move.
 
'Come on, Flo!  Good old Flo!  Come on!'
 
Flo was suddenly stricken with terror.  She whined, her tail went
down, and she shrank back.  'Come here, blast you!' he cried, and
he took her by the collar and flung her into the room, shutting the
door behind her.  He went to the table for the pistol.
 
'No come here!  Do as you're told!'
 
She crouched down and whined for forgiveness.  It hurt him to hear
it.  'Come on, old girl!  Dear old Flo!  Master wouldn't hurt you.
Come here!'  She crawled very slowly towards his feet, flat on her
belly, whining, her head down as though afraid to look at him.
When she was a yard away he fired, blowing her skull to fragments.
 
Her shattered brain looked like red velvet.  Was that what he would
look like?  The heart, then, not the head.  He could hear the
servants running out of their quarters and shouting--they must have
heard the sound of the shot.  He hurriedly tore open his coat and
pressed the muzzle of the pistol against his shirt.  A tiny lizard,
translucent like a creature of gelatine, was stalking a white moth
along the edge of the table.  Flory pulled the trigger with his
thumb.
 
As Ko S'la burst into the room, for a moment he saw nothing but the
dead body of the dog.  Then he saw his master's feet, heels
upwards, projecting from beyond the bed.  He yelled to the others
to keep the children out of the room, and all of them surged back
from the doorway with screams.  Ko S'la fell on his knees behind
Flory's body, at the same moment as Ba Pe came running through the
veranda.
 
'Has he shot himself?'
 
'I think so.  Turn him over on his back.  Ah, look at that!  Run
for the Indian doctor!  Run for your life!'
 
There was a neat hole, no bigger than that made by a pencil passing
through a sheet of blotting-paper, in Flory's shirt.  He was
obviously quite dead.  With great difficulty Ko S'la managed to
drag him on to the bed, for the other servants refused to touch the
body.  It was only twenty minutes before the doctor arrived.  He
had heard only a vague report that Flory was hurt, and had bicycled
up the hill at top speed through a storm of rain.  He threw his
bicycle down in the flower-bed and hurried in through the veranda.
He was out of breath, and could not see through his spectacles.  He
took them off, peering myopically at the bed.  'What iss it, my
friend?' he said anxiously.  'Where are you hurt?'  Then, coming
closer, he saw what was on the bed, and uttered a harsh sound.
 
'Ach, what is this?  What has happened to him?'
 
The doctor fell on his knees, tore Flory's shirt open and put his
ear to his chest.  An expression of agony came into his face, and
he seized the dead man by the shoulders and shook him as though
mere violence could bring him to life.  One arm fell limply over
the edge of the bed.  The doctor lifted it back again, and then,
with the dead hand between his own, suddenly burst into tears.  Ko
S'la was standing at the foot of the bed, his brown face full of
lines.  The doctor stood up, and then losing control of himself for
a moment, leaned against the bedpost and wept noisily and
grotesquely his back turned on Ko S'la.  His fat shoulders were
quivering.  Presently he recovered himself and turned round again.
 
'How did this happen?'
 
'We heard two shots.  He did it himself, that is certain.  I do not
know why.'
 
'How did you know that he did it on purpose?  How do you know that
it was not an accident?'
 
For answer, Ko S'la pointed silently to Flo's corpse.  The doctor
thought for a moment, and then, with gentle, practised hands,
swathed the dead man in the sheet and knotted it at foot and head.
With death, the birthmark had faded immediately, so that it was no
more than a faint grey stain.
 
'Bury the dog at once.  I will tell Mr Macgregor that this happened
accidentally while he was cleaning his revolver.  Be sure that you
bury the dog.  Your master was my friend.  It shall not be written
on his tombstone that he committed suicide.'
 
== 25 ==
 
It was lucky that the padre should have been at Kyauktada, for he
was able, before catching the train on the following evening, to
read the burial service in due form and even to deliver a short
address on the virtues of the dead man.  All Englishmen are
virtuous when they are dead.  'Accidental death' was the official
verdict (Dr Veraswami had proved with all his medico-legal skill
that the circumstances pointed to accident) and it was duly
inscribed upon the tombstone.  Not that anyone believed it, of
course.  Flory's real epitaph was the remark, very occasionally
uttered--for an Englishman who dies in Burma is so soon forgotten--
'Flory?  Oh yes, he was a dark chap, with a birthmark.  He shot
himself in Kyauktada in 1926.  Over a girl, people said.  Bloody
fool.'  Probably no one, except Elizabeth, was much surprised at
what had happened.  There is a rather large number of suicides
among the Europeans in Burma, and they occasion very little
surprise.
 
Flory's death had several results.  The first and most important of
them was that Dr Veraswami was ruined, even as he had foreseen.
The glory of being a white man's friend--the one thing that had
saved him before--had vanished.  Flory's standing with the other
Europeans had never been good, it is true; but he was after all a
white man, and his friendship conferred a certain prestige.  Once
he was dead, the doctor's ruin was assured.  U Po Kyin waited the
necessary time, and then struck again, harder than ever.  It was
barely three months before he had fixed it in the head of every
European in Kyauktada that the doctor was an unmitigated scoundrel.
No public accusation was ever made against him--U Po Kyin was most
careful of that.  Even Ellis would have been puzzled to say just
what scoundrelism the doctor had been guilty of; but still, it was
agreed that he was a scoundrel.  By degrees, the general suspicion
of him crystallized in a single Burmese phrase--'shok de'.
Veraswami, it was said, was quite a clever little chap in his way--
quite a good doctor for a native--but he was THOROUGHLY shok de.
Shok de means, approximately, untrustworthy, and when a 'native'
official comes to be known as shok de, there is an end of him.
 
The dreaded nod and wink passed somewhere in high places, and
the doctor was reverted to the rank of Assistant Surgeon and
transferred to Mandalay General Hospital.  He is still there, and
is likely to remain.  Mandalay is rather a disagreeable town--it
is dusty and intolerably hot, and it is said to have five main
products all beginning with P, namely, pagodas, pariahs, pigs,
priests and prostitutes--and the routine-work of the hospital is a
dreary business.  The doctor lives just outside the hospital
grounds in a little bake-house of a bungalow with a corrugated iron
fence round its tiny compound, and in the evenings he runs a
private clinic to supplement his reduced pay.  He has joined a
second-rate club frequented by Indian pleaders.  Its chief glory is
a single European member--a Glasgow electrician named Macdougall,
sacked from the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company for drunkenness, and now
making a precarious living out of a garage.  Macdougall is a dull
lout, only interested in whisky and magnetos.  The doctor, who will
never believe that a white man can be a fool, tries almost every
night to engage him in what he still calls 'cultured conversation';
but the results are very unsatisfying.
 
Ko S'la inherited four hundred rupees under Flory's will, and with
his family he set up a tea-shop in the bazaar.  But the shop
failed, as it was bound to do with the two women fighting in it at
all hours, and Ko S'la and Ba Pe were obliged to go back to
service.  Ko S'la was an accomplished servant.  Besides the useful
arts of pimping, dealing with money-lenders, carrying master to bed
when drunk and making pick-me-ups known as prairie oysters on the
following morning, he could sew, darn, refill cartridges, attend to
a horse, press a suit, and decorate a dinner-table with wonderful,
intricate patterns of chopped leaves and dyed rice-grains.  He was
worth fifty rupees a month.  But he and Ba Pe had fallen into lazy
ways in Flory's service, and, they were sacked from one job after
another.  They had a bad year of poverty, and little Ba Shin
developed a cough, and finally coughed himself to death one
stifling hot-weather night.  Ko S'la is now a second boy to a
Rangoon rice-broker with a neurotic wife who makes unending kit-
kit, and Ba Pe is pani-wallah in the same house at sixteen rupees a
month.  Ma Hla May is in a brothel in Mandalay.  Her good looks are
all but gone, and her clients pay her only four annas and sometimes
kick her and beat her.  Perhaps more bitterly than any of the
others, she regrets the good time when Flory was alive, and when
she had not the wisdom to put aside any of the money she extracted
from him.
 
U Po Kyin realized all his dreams except one.  After the doctor's
disgrace, it was inevitable that U Po Kyin should be elected to the
Club, and elected he was, in spite of bitter protests from Ellis.
In the end the other Europeans came to be rather glad that they had
elected him, for he was a bearable addition to the Club.  He did
not come too often, was ingratiating in his manner, stood drinks
freely, and developed almost at once into a brilliant bridge-
player.  A few months later he was transferred from Kyauktada and
promoted.  For a whole year, before his retirement, he officiated
as Deputy Commissioner, and during that year alone he made twenty
thousand rupees in bribes.  A month after his retirement he was
summoned to a durbar in Rangoon, to receive the decoration that had
been awarded to him by the Indian Government.
 
It was an impressive scene, that durbar.  On the platform, hung
with flags and flowers, sat the Governor, frock-coated, upon a
species of throne, with a bevy of aides-de-camp and secretaries
behind him.  All round the hall, like glittering waxworks, stood
the tall, bearded sowars of the Governor's bodyguard, with pennoned
lances in their hands.  Outside, a band was blaring at intervals.
The gallery was gay with the white ingyis and pink scarves of
Burmese ladies, and in the body of the hall a hundred men or more
were waiting to receive their decorations.  There were Burmese
officials in blazing Mandalay pasos, and Indians in cloth-of-gold
pagris, and British officers in full-dress uniform with clanking
sword-scabbards, and old thugyis with their grey hair knotted
behind their heads and silver-hilted dahs slung from their
shoulders.  In a high, clear voice a secretary was reading out the
list of awards, which varied from the C.I.E. to certificates of
honour in embossed silver cases.  Presently U Po Kyin's turn came
and the secretary read from his scroll:
 
'To U Po Kyin, Deputy Assistant Commissioner, retired, for long and
loyal service and especially for his timely aid in crushing a most
dangerous rebellion in Kyauktada district'--and so on and so on.
 
Then two henchmen, placed there for the purpose hoisted U Po Kyin
upright, and he waddled to the platform, bowed as low as his belly
would permit, and was duly decorated and felicitated, while Ma Kin
and other supporters clapped wildly and fluttered their scarves
from the gallery.
 
U Po Kyin had done all that mortal man could do.  It was time now
to be making ready for the next world--in short, to begin building
pagodas.  But unfortunately, this was the very point at which his
plans went wrong.  Only three days after the Governor's durbar,
before so much as a brick of those atoning pagodas had been laid, U
Po Kyin was stricken with apoplexy and died without speaking again.
There is no armour against fate.  Ma Kin was heartbroken at the
disaster.  Even if she had built the pagodas herself, it would have
availed U Po Kyin nothing; no merit can be acquired save by one's
own act.  She suffers greatly to think of U Po Kyin where he must
be now--wandering in God knows what dreadful subterranean hell of
fire, and darkness, and serpents, and genii.  Or even if he has
escaped the worst, his other fear has been realized, and he has
returned to the earth in the shape of a rat or a frog.  Perhaps at
this very moment a snake is devouring him.
 
As to Elizabeth, things fell out better than she had expected.
After Flory's death Mrs Lackersteen, dropping all pretences for
once, said openly that there were no men in this dreadful place and
the only hope was to go and stay several months in Rangoon or
Maymyo.  But she could not very well send Elizabeth to Rangoon or
Maymyo alone, and to go with her practically meant condemning Mr
Lackersteen to death from delirium tremens.  Months passed, and the
rains reached their climax, and Elizabeth had just made up her mind
that she must go home after all, penniless and unmarried, when--Mr
Macgregor proposed to her.  He had had it in his mind for a long
time; indeed, he had only been waiting for a decent interval to
elapse after Flory's death.
 
Elizabeth accepted him gladly.  He was rather old, perhaps, but a
Deputy Commissioner is not to be despised--certainly he was a far
better match than Flory.  They are very happy.  Mr Macgregor was
always a good-hearted man, but he has grown more human and likeable
since his marriage.  His voice booms less, and he has given up his
morning exercises.  Elizabeth has grown mature surprisingly
quickly, and a certain hardness of manner that always belonged to
her has become accentuated.  Her servants live in terror of her,
though she speaks no Burmese.  She has an exhaustive knowledge of
the Civil List, gives charming little dinner-parties and knows how
to put the wives of subordinate officials in their places--in
short, she fills with complete success the position for which
Nature had designed her from the first, that of a burra memsahib.
 
THE END

Latest revision as of 17:04, 28 December 2016

Burmese Days
written by George Orwell
This novel publish in 1934 is based loosely on Orwell's five years as a policeman in the Indian Imperial Police force in Burma. It is a caustic, fast-paced tale about the waning days of British imperialism before World War II. From Wikipedia article on Burmese Days.




'This desert inaccessible
Under the shade of melancholy boughs'

As you like it.

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