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13

As Flory came through the gate of the hospital compound four
ragged sweepers passed him, carrying some dead coolie, wrapped in
sackcloth, to a foot-deep grave in the jungle. Flory crossed the
brick-like earth of the yard between the hospital sheds. All down
the wide verandas, on sheetless charpoys, rows of grey-faced men
lay silent and moveless. Some filthy-looking curs, which were said
to devour amputated limbs, dozed or snapped at their fleas among
the piles of the buildings. The whole place wore a sluttish and
decaying air. Dr Veraswami struggled hard to keep it clean, but
there was no coping with the dust and the bad water-supply, and the
inertia of sweepers and half-trained Assistant Surgeons.

Flory was told that the doctor was in the out-patients' department.
It was a plaster-walled room furnished only with a table and two
chairs, and a dusty portrait of Queen Victoria, much awry. A
procession of Burmans, peasants with gnarled muscles beneath their
faded rags, were filing into the room and queueing up at the table.
The doctor was in shirt-sleeves and sweating profusely. He sprang
to his feet with an exclamation of pleasure, and in his usual fussy
haste thrust Flory into the vacant chair and produced a tin of
cigarettes from the drawer of the table.

'What a delightful visit, Mr Flory! Please to make yourself
comfortable--that iss, if one can possibly be comfortable in such a
place ass this, ha, ha! Afterwards, at my house, we will talk with
beer and amenities. Kindly excuse me while I attend to the
populace.'

Flory sat down, and the hot sweat immediately burst out and
drenched his shirt. The heat of the room was stifling. The
peasants steamed garlic from all their pores. As each man came to
the table the doctor would bounce from his chair, prod the patient
in the back, lay a black ear to his chest, fire off several
questions in villainous Burmese, then bounce back to the table and
scribble a prescription. The patients took the prescriptions
across the yard to the Compounder, who gave them bottles filled
with water and various vegetable dyes. The Compounder supported
himself largely by the sale of drugs, for the Government paid him
only twenty-five rupees a month. However, the doctor knew nothing
of this.

On most mornings the doctor had not time to attend to the out-
patients himself, and left them to one of the Assistant Surgeons.
The Assistant Surgeon's methods of diagnosis were brief. He would
simply ask each patient, 'Where is your pain? Head, back or
belly?' and at the reply hand out a prescription from one of three
piles that he had prepared beforehand. The patients much preferred
this method to the doctor's. The doctor had a way of asking them
whether they had suffered from venereal diseases--an ungentlemanly,
pointless question--and sometimes he horrified them still more by
suggesting operations. 'Belly-cutting' was their phrase for it.
The majority of them would have died a dozen times over rather than
submit to 'belly-cutting'.

As the last patient disappeared the doctor sank into his chair,
fanning his face with the prescription-pad.

'Ach, this heat! Some mornings I think that never will I get the
smell of garlic out of my nose! It iss amazing to me how their
very blood becomes impregnated with it. Are you not suffocated,
Mr Flory? You English have the sense of smell almost too highly
developed. What torments you must all suffer in our filthy East!'

'Abandon your noses, all ye who enter here, what? They might write
that up over the Suez Canal. You seem busy this morning?'

'Ass ever. Ah but, my friend, how discouraging iss the work of a
doctor in this country! These villagers--dirty, ignorant savages!
Even to get them to come to hospital iss all we can do, and they
will die of gangrene or carry a tumour ass large ass a melon for
ten years rather than face the knife. And such medicines ass their
own so-called doctors give to them! Herbs gathered under the new
moon, tigers' whiskers, rhinoceros horn, urine, menstrual blood!
How men can drink such compounds iss disgusting.'

'Rather picturesque, all the same. You ought to compile a Burmese
pharmacopoeia, doctor. It would be almost as good as Culpeper.'

'Barbarous cattle, barbarous cattle,' said the doctor, beginning to
struggle into his white coat. 'Shall we go back to my house?
There iss beer and I trust a few fragments of ice left. I have an
operation at ten, strangulated hernia, very urgent. Till then I am
free.'

'Yes. As a matter of fact there's something I rather wanted to
talk to you about.'

They recrossed the yard and climbed the steps of the doctor's
veranda. The doctor, having felt in the ice-chest and found that
the ice was all melted to tepid water, opened a bottle of beer and
called fussily to the servants to set some more bottles swinging in
a cradle of wet straw. Flory was standing looking over the veranda
rail, with his hat still on. The fact was that he had come here to
utter an apology. He had been avoiding the doctor for nearly a
fortnight--since the day, in fact, when he had set his name to the
insulting notice at the Club. But the apology had got to be
uttered. U Po Kyin was a very good judge of men, but he had erred
in supposing that two anonymous letters were enough to scare Flory
permanently away from his friend.

'Look here, doctor, you know what I wanted to say?'

'I? No.'

'Yes, you do. It's about that beastly trick I played on you the
other week. When Ellis put that notice on the Club board and I
signed my name to it. You must have heard about it. I want to try
and explain--'

'No, no, my friend, no, no!' The doctor was so distressed that he
sprang across the veranda and seized Flory by the arm. 'You shall
NOT explain! Please never mention it! I understand perfectly--but
most perfectly.'

'No, you don't understand. You couldn't. You don't realize just
what KIND of pressure is put on one to make one do things like
that. There was nothing to make me sign the notice. Nothing could
have happened if I'd refused. There's no law telling us to be
beastly to Orientals--quite the contrary. But--it's just that one
daren't be loyal to an Oriental when it means going against the
others. It doesn't DO. If I'd stuck out against signing the
notice I'd have been in disgrace at the Club for a week or two.
So I funked it, as usual.'

'Please, Mr Flory, please! Possitively you will make me
uncomfortable if you continue. Ass though I could not make all
allowances for your position!'

'Our motto, you know is, "In India, do as the English do".'

'Of course, of course. And a most noble motto. "Hanging
together", ass you call it. It iss the secret of your superiority
to we Orientals.'

'Well, it's never much use saying one's sorry. But what I did come
here to say was that it shan't happen again. In fact--'

'Now, now, Mr Flory, you will oblige me by saying no more upon this
subject. It iss all over and forgotten. Please to drink up your
beer before it becomes ass hot ass tea. Also, I have a thing to
tell you. You have not asked for my news yet.'

'Ah, your news. What is your news, by the way? How's everything
been going all this time? How's Ma Britannia? Still moribund?'

'Aha, very low, very low! But not so low ass I. I am in deep
waters, my friend.'

'What? U Po Kyin again? Is he still libelling you?'

'If he iss libelling me! This time it iss--well, it iss something
diabolical. My friend, you have heard of this rebellion that is
supposed to be on the point of breaking out in the district?'

'I've heard a lot of talk. Westfield's been out bent on slaughter,
but I hear he can't find any rebels. Only the usual village
Hampdens who won't pay their taxes.'

'Ah yes. Wretched fools! Do you know how much iss the tax that
most of them have refused to pay? Five rupees! They will get
tired of it and pay up presently. We have this trouble every year.
But ass for the rebellion--the SO-CALLED rebellion, Mr Flory--I
wish you to know that there iss more in it than meets the eye.'

'Oh? What?'

To Flory's surprise the doctor made such a violent gesture of anger
that he spilled most of his beer. He put his glass down on the
veranda rail and burst out:

'It iss U Po Kyin again! That unutterable scoundrel! That
crocodile deprived of natural feeling! That--that--'

'Go on. "That obscene trunk of humors, that swol'n parcel of
dropsies, that bolting-hutch of beastliness"--go on. What's he
been up to now?'

'A villainy unparalleled'--and here the doctor outlined the plot
for a sham rebellion, very much as U Po Kyin had explained it to Ma
Kin. The only detail not known to him was U Po Kyin's intention of
getting himself elected to the European Club. The doctor's face
could not accurately be said to flush, but it grew several shades
blacker in his anger. Flory was so astonished that he remained
standing up.

'The cunning old devil! Who'd have thought he had it in him? But
how did you manage to find all this out?'

'Ah, I have a few friends left. But now do you see, my friend,
what ruin he iss preparing for me? Already he hass calumniated me
right and left. When this absurd rebellion breaks out, he will do
everything in his power to connect my name with it. And I tell you
that the slightest suspicion of my loyalty could be ruin for me,
ruin! If it were ever breathed that I were even a sympathizer with
this rebellion, there iss an end of me.'

'But, damn it, this is ridiculous! Surely you can defend yourself
somehow?'

'How can I defend myself when I can prove nothing? I know that all
this iss true, but what use iss that? If I demand a public
inquiry, for every witness I produce U Po Kyin would produce fifty.
You do not realize the influence of that man in the district. No
one dare speak against him.'

'But why need you prove anything? Why not go to old Macgregor and
tell him about it? He's a very fair-minded old chap in his way.
He'd hear you out.'

'Useless, useless. You have not the mind of an intriguer, Mr
Flory. Qui s'excuse, s'accuse, iss it not? It does not pay to cry
that there iss a conspiracy against one.'

'Well, what are you going to do, then?'

'There iss nothing I can do. Simply I must wait and hope that my
prestige will carry me through. In affairs like this, where a
native official's reputation iss at stake, there iss no question
of proof, of evidence. All depends upon one's standing with the
Europeans. If my standing iss good, they will not believe it of
me; if bad, they will believe it. Prestige iss all.'

They were silent for a moment. Flory understood well enough that
'prestige iss all'. He was used to these nebulous conflicts, in
which suspicion counts for more than proof, and reputation for more
than a thousand witnesses. A thought came into his head, an
uncomfortable, chilling thought which would never have occurred to
him three weeks earlier. It was one of those moments when one sees
quite clearly what is one's duty, and, with all the will in the
world to shirk it, feels certain that one must carry it out. He
said:

'Suppose, for instance, you were elected to the Club? Would that
do your prestige any good?'

'If I were elected to the Club! Ah, indeed, yes! The Club! It
iss a fortress impregnable. Once there, and no one would listen to
these tales about me any more than if it were about you, or Mr
Macgregor, or any other European gentleman. But what hope have I
that they will elect me after their minds have been poisoned
against me?'

'Well now, look here, doctor, I tell you what. I'll propose your
name at the next general meeting. I know the question's got to
come up then, and if someone comes forward with the name of a
candidate, I dare say no one except Ellis will blackball him.
And in the meantime--'

'Ah, my friend, my dear friend!' The doctor's emotion caused him
almost to choke. He seized Flory by the hand. 'Ah, my friend,
that iss noble! Truly it iss noble! But it iss too much. I fear
that you will be in trouble with your European friends again. Mr
Ellis, for example--would he tolerate it that you propose my name?'

'Oh, bother Ellis. But you must understand that I can't promise to
get you elected. It depends on what Macgregor says and what mood
the others are in. It may all come to nothing.'

The doctor was still holding Flory's hand between his own, which
were plump and damp. The tears had actually started into his eyes,
and these, magnified by his spectacles, beamed upon Flory like the
liquid eyes of a dog.

'Ah, my friend! If I should but be elected! What an end to all my
troubles! But, my friend, ass I said before, do not be too rash in
this matter. Beware of U Po Kyin! By now he will have numbered
you among hiss enemies. And even for you hiss enmity can be a
danger.'

'Oh, good Lord, he can't touch me. He's done nothing so far--only
a few silly anonymous letters.'

'I would not be too sure. He hass subtle ways to strike. And for
sure he will raise heaven and earth to keep me from being elected
to the Club. If you have a weak spot, guard it, my friend. He
will find it out. He strikes always at the weakest spot.'

'Like the crocodile,' Flory suggested.

'Like the crocodile,' agreed the doctor gravely. 'Ah but, my
friend, how gratifying to me if I should become a member of your
European Club! What an honour, to be the associate of European
gentlemen! But there iss one other matter, Mr Flory, that I did
not care to mention before. It iss--I hope this iss clearly
understood--that I have no intention of USING the Club in any way.
Membership is all I desire. Even if I were elected, I should not,
of course, ever presume to COME to the Club.'

'Not come to the Club?'

'No, no! Heaven forbid that I should force my society upon the
European gentlemen! Simply I should pay my subscriptions. That,
for me, iss a privilege high enough. You understand that, I
trust?'

'Perfectly, doctor, perfectly.'

Flory could not help laughing as he walked up the hill. He was
definitely committed now to proposing the doctor's election. And
there would be such a row when the others heard of it--oh, such a
devil of a row! But the astonishing thing was that it only made
him laugh. The prospect that would have appalled him a month back
now almost exhilarated him.

Why? And why had he given his promise at all? It was a small
thing, a small risk to take--nothing heroic about it--and yet it
was unlike him. Why, after all these years--the circumspect, pukka
sahib-like years--break all the rules so suddenly?

He knew why. It was because Elizabeth, by coming into his life,
had so changed it and renewed it that all the dirty, miserable
years might never have passed. Her presence had changed the whole
orbit of his mind. She had brought back to him the air of England--
dear England, where thought is free and one is not condemned
forever to dance the danse du pukka sahib for the edification of
the lower races. Where is the life that late I led? he thought.
Just by existing she had made it possible for him, she had even
made it natural to him, to act decently.

Where is the life that late I led? he thought again as he came
through the garden gate. He was happy, happy. For he had
perceived that the pious ones are right when they say that there is
salvation and life can begin anew. He came up the path, and it
seemed to him that his house, his flowers, his servants, all the
life that so short a time ago had been drenched in ennui and
homesickness, were somehow made new, significant, beautiful
inexhaustibly. What fun it could all be, if only you had someone
to share it with you! How you could love this country, if only you
were not alone! Nero was out on the path, braving the sun for some
grains of paddy that the mali had dropped, taking food to his
goats. Flo made a dash at him, panting, and Nero sprang into the
air with a flurry and lighted on Flory's shoulder. Flory walked
into the house with the little red cock in his arms, stroking his
silky ruff and the smooth, diamond-shaped feathers of his back.

He had not set foot on the veranda before he knew that Ma Hla May
was in the house. It did not need Ko S'la to come hurrying from
within with a face of evil tidings. Flory had smelled her scent of
sandalwood, garlic, coco-nut oil and the jasmine in her hair. He
dropped Nero over the veranda rail.

'THE WOMAN has come back,' said Ko S'la.

Flory had turned very pale. When he turned pale the birthmark made
him hideously ugly. A pang like a blade of ice had gone through
his entrails. Ma Hla May had appeared in the doorway of the
bedroom. She stood with her face downcast, looking at him from
beneath lowered brows.

'Thakin,' she said in a low voice, half sullen, half urgent.

'Go away!' said Flory angrily to Ko S'la, venting his fear and
anger upon him.

'Thakin,' she said, 'come into the bedroom here. I have a thing to
say to you.'

He followed her into the bedroom. In a week--it was only a week--
her appearance had degenerated extraordinarily. Her hair looked
greasy. All her lockets were gone, and she was wearing a
Manchester longyi of flowered cotton, costing two rupees eight
annas. She had coated her face so thick with powder that it was
like a clown's mask, and at the roots of her hair, where the powder
ended, there was a ribbon of natural-coloured brown skin. She
looked a drab. Flory would not face her, but stood looking
sullenly through the open doorway to the veranda.

'What do you mean by coming back like this? Why did you not go
home to your village?'

'I am staying in Kyauktada, at my cousin's house. How can I go
back to my village after what has happened?'

'And what do you mean by sending men to demand money from me? How
can you want more money already, when I gave you a hundred rupees
only a week ago?'

'How can I go back?' she repeated, ignoring what he had said. Her
voice rose so sharply that he turned round. She was standing very
upright, sullen, with her black brows drawn together and her lips
pouted.

'Why cannot you go back?'

'After that! After what you have done to me!'

Suddenly she burst into a furious tirade. Her voice had risen to
the hysterical graceless scream of the bazaar women when they
quarrel.

'How can I go back, to be jeered at and pointed at by those low,
stupid peasants whom I despise? I who have been a bo-kadaw, a
white man's wife, to go home to my father's house, and shake the
paddy basket with old hags and women who are too ugly to find
husbands! Ah, what shame, what shame! Two years I was your wife,
you loved me and cared for me, and then without warning, without
reason, you drove me from your door like a dog. And I must go back
to my village, with no money, with all my jewels and silk longyis
gone, and the people will point and say, "There is Ma Hla May who
thought herself cleverer than the rest of us. And behold! her
white man has treated her as they always do." I am ruined, ruined!
What man will marry me after I have lived two years in your house?
You have taken my youth from me. Ah, what shame, what shame!'

He could not look at her; he stood helpless, pale, hang-dog. Every
word she said was justified, and how tell her that he could do no
other than he had done? How tell her that it would have been an
outrage, a sin, to continue as her lover? He almost cringed from
her, and the birthmark stood on his yellow face like a splash of
ink. He said flatly, turning instinctively to money--for money had
never failed with Ma Hla May:

'I will give you money. You shall have the fifty rupees you asked
me for--more later. I have no more till next month.'

This was true. The hundred rupees he had given her, and what he
had spent on clothes, had taken most of his ready money. To his
dismay she burst into a loud wail. Her white mask puckered up and
the tears sprang quickly out and coursed down her cheeks. Before
he could stop her she had fallen on her knees in front of him, and
she was bowing, touching the floor with her forehead in the 'full'
shiko of utter abasement.

'Get up, get up!' he exclaimed. The shameful, abject shiko, neck
bent, body doubled up as though inviting a blow, always horrified
him. 'I can't bear that. Get up this instant.'

She wailed again, and made an attempt to clasp his ankles. He
stepped backwards hurriedly.

'Get up, now, and stop that dreadful noise. I don't know what you
are crying about.'

She did not get up, but only rose to her knees and wailed at him
anew. 'Why do you offer me money? Do you think it is only for
money that I have come back? Do you think that when you have
driven me from your door like a dog it is only because of money
that I care?'

'Get up,' he repeated. He had moved several paces away, lest she
should seize him. 'What do you want if it is not money?'

'Why do you hate me?' she wailed. 'What harm have I done you? I
stole your cigarette-case, but you were not angry at that. You are
going to marry this white woman, I know it, everyone knows it. But
what does it matter, why must you turn me away? Why do you hate
me?'

'I don't hate you. I can't explain. Get up, please get up.'

She was weeping quite shamelessly now. After all, she was hardly
more than a child. She looked at him through her tears, anxiously,
studying him for a sign of mercy. Then, a dreadful thing, she
stretched herself at full length, flat on her face.

'Get up, get up!' he cried out in English. 'I can't bear that--
it's too abominable!'

She did not get up, but crept, wormlike, right across the floor to
his feet. Her body made a broad ribbon on the dusty floor. She
lay prostrate in front of him, face hidden, arms extended, as
though before a god's altar.

'Master, master,' she whimpered, 'will you not forgive me? This
once, only this once! Take Ma Hla May back. I will be your slave,
lower than your slave. Anything sooner than turn me away.'

She had wound her arms round his ankles, actually was kissing his
toes. He stood looking down at her with his hands in his pockets,
helpless. Flo came ambling into the room, walked to where Ma Hla
May lay and sniffed at her longyi. She wagged her tail vaguely,
recognizing the smell. Flory could not endure it. He bent down
and took Ma Hla May by the shoulders, lifting her to her knees.

'Stand up, now,' he said. 'It hurts me to see you like this. I
will do what I can for you. What is the use of crying?'

Instantly she cried out in renewed hope: 'Then you will take me
back? Oh, master, take Ma Hla May back! No one need ever know. I
will stay here when that white woman comes, she will think I am one
of the servants' wives. Will you not take me back?'

'I cannot. It's impossible,' he said, turning away again.

She heard finality in his tone, and uttered a harsh, ugly cry. She
bent forward again in a shiko, beating her forehead against the
floor. It was dreadful. And what was more dreadful than all, what
hurt in his breast, was the utter gracelessness, the lowness of the
emotion beneath those entreaties. For in all this there was not a
spark of love for him. If she wept and grovelled it was only for
the position she had once had as his mistress, the idle life, the
rich clothes and dominion over servants. There was something
pitiful beyond words in that. Had she loved him he could have
driven her from his door with far less compunction. No sorrows are
so bitter as those that are without a trace of nobility. He bent
down and picked her up in his arms.

'Listen, Ma Hla May,' he said; 'I do not hate you, you have done me
no evil. It is I who have wronged you. But there is no help for
it now. You must go home, and later I will send you money. If you
like you shall start a shop in the bazaar. You are young. This
will not matter to you when you have money and can find yourself a
husband.'

'I am ruined!' she wailed again. 'I shall kill myself. I shall
jump off the jetty into the river. How can I live after this
disgrace?'

He was holding her in his arms, almost caressing her. She was
clinging close to him, her face hidden against his shirt, her body
shaking with sobs. The scent of sandalwood floated into his
nostrils. Perhaps even now she thought that with her arms around
him and her body against his she could renew her power over him.
He disentangled himself gently, and then, seeing that she did not
fall on her knees again, stood apart from her.

'That is enough. You must go now. And look, I will give you the
fifty rupees I promised you.'

He dragged his tin uniform case from under the bed and took out
five ten-rupee notes. She stowed them silently in the bosom of her
ingyi. Her tears had ceased flowing quite suddenly. Without
speaking she went into the bathroom for a moment, and came out with
her face washed to its natural brown, and her hair and dress
rearranged. She looked sullen, but not hysterical any longer.

'For the last time, thakin: you will not take me back? That is
your last word?'

'Yes. I cannot help it.'

'Then I am going, thakin.'

'Very well. God go with you.'

Leaning against the wooden pillar of the veranda, he watched her
walk down the path in the strong sunlight. She walked very
upright, with bitter offence in the carriage of her back and head.
It was true what she had said, he had robbed her of her youth. His
knees were trembling uncontrollably. Ko S'la came behind him,
silent-footed. He gave a little deprecating cough to attract
Flory's attention.

'What's the matter now?'

'The holy one's breakfast is getting cold.'

'I don't want any breakfast. Get me something to drink--gin.'

Where is the life that late I led?

14

Like long curved needles threading through embroidery, the two
canoes that carried Flory and Elizabeth threaded their way up the
creek that led inland from the eastern bank of the Irrawaddy. It
was the day of the shooting trip--a short afternoon trip, for they
could not stay a night in the jungle together. They were to shoot
for a couple of hours in the comparative cool of the evening, and
be back at Kyauktada in time for dinner.

The canoes, each hollowed out of a single tree-trunk, glided
swiftly, hardly rippling the dark brown water. Water hyacinth with
profuse spongy foliage and blue flowers had choked the stream so
that the channel was only a winding ribbon four feet wide. The
light filtered, greenish, through interlacing boughs. Sometimes
one could hear parrots scream overhead, but no wild creatures
showed themselves, except once a snake that swam hurriedly away and
disappeared among the water hyacinth.

'How long before we get to the village?' Elizabeth called back to
Flory. He was in a larger canoe behind, together with Flo and Ko
S'la, paddled by a wrinkly old woman dressed in rags.

'How far, grandmama?' Flory asked the canoe-woman.

The old woman took her cigar out of her mouth and rested her paddle
on her knees to think. 'The distance a man can shout,' she said
after reflection.

'About half a mile,' Flory translated.

They had come two miles. Elizabeth's back was aching. The canoes
were liable to upset at a careless moment, and you had to sit bolt
upright on the narrow backless seat, keeping your feet as well as
possible out of the bilge, with dead prawns in it, that sagged to
and fro at the bottom. The Burman who paddled Elizabeth was sixty
years old, half naked, leaf-brown, with a body as perfect as that
of a young man. His face was battered, gentle and humorous. His
black cloud of hair, finer than that of most Burmans, was knotted
loosely over one ear, with a wisp or two tumbling across his cheek.
Elizabeth was nursing her uncle's gun across her knees. Flory had
offered to take it, but she had refused; in reality, the feel of it
delighted her so much that she could not bring herself to give it
up. She had never had a gun in her hand until today. She was
wearing a rough skirt with brogue shoes and a silk shirt like a
man's, and she knew that with her Terai hat they looked well on
her. She was very happy, in spite of her aching back and the hot
sweat that tickled her face, and the large, speckled mosquitoes
that hummed round her ankles.

The stream narrowed and the beds of water hyacinth gave place to
steep banks of glistening mud, like chocolate. Rickety thatched
huts leaned far out over the stream, their piles driven into its
bed. A naked boy was standing between two of the huts, flying a
green beetle on a piece of thread like a kite. He yelled at the
sight of the Europeans, whereat more children appeared from
nowhere. The old Burman guided the canoe to a jetty made of a
single palm-trunk laid in the mud--it was covered with barnacles
and so gave foothold--and sprang out and helped Elizabeth ashore.
The others followed with the bags and cartridges, and Flo, as she
always did on these occasions, fell into the mud and sank as deep
as the shoulder. A skinny old gentleman wearing a magenta paso,
with a mole on his cheek from which four yard-long grey hairs
sprouted, came forward shikoing and cuffing the heads of the
children who had gathered round the jetty.

'The village headman,' Flory said.

The old man led the way to his house, walking ahead with an
extraordinary crouching gait, like a letter L upside down--the
result of rheumatism combined with the constant shikoing needed in
a minor Government official. A mob of children marched rapidly
after the Europeans, and more and more dogs, all yapping and
causing Flo to shrink against Flory's heels. In the doorway of
every hut clusters of moonlike, rustic faces gaped at the
'Ingaleikma'. The village was darkish under the shade of broad
leaves. In the rains the creek would flood, turning the lower
parts of the village into a squalid wooden Venice where the
villagers stepped from their front doors into their canoes.

The headman's house was a little bigger than the others, and it had
a corrugated iron roof, which, in spite of the intolerable din it
made during the rains, was the pride of the headman's life. He had
foregone the building of a pagoda, and appreciably lessened his
chances of Nirvana, to pay for it. He hastened up the steps and
gently kicked in the ribs a youth who was lying asleep on the
veranda. Then he turned and shikoed again to the Europeans, asking
them to come inside.

'Shall we go in?' Flory said. 'I expect we shall have to wait half
an hour.'

'Couldn't you tell him to bring some chairs out on the veranda?'
Elizabeth said. After her experience in Li Yeik's house she had
privately decided that she would never go inside a native house
again, if she could help it.

There was a fuss inside the house, and the headman, the youth and
some women dragged forth two chairs decorated in an extraordinary
manner with red hibiscus flowers, and also some begonias growing in
kerosene tins. It was evident that a sort of double throne had
been prepared within for the Europeans. When Elizabeth had sat
down the headman reappeared with a teapot, a bunch of very long,
bright green bananas, and six coal-black cheroots. But when he had
poured her out a cup of tea Elizabeth shook her head, for the tea
looked, if possible, worse even than Li Yeik's.

The headman looked abashed and rubbed his nose. He turned to Flory
and asked him whether the young thakin-ma would like some milk in
her tea. He had heard that Europeans drank milk in their tea. The
villages should, if it were desired, catch a cow and milk it.
However, Elizabeth still refused the tea; but she was thirsty, and
she asked Flory to send for one of the bottles of soda-water that
Ko S'la had brought in his bag. Seeing this, the headman retired,
feeling guiltily that his preparations had been insufficient, and
left the veranda to the Europeans.

Elizabeth was still nursing her gun on her knees, while Flory
leaned against the veranda rail pretending to smoke one of the
headman's cheroots. Elizabeth was pining for the shooting to
begin. She plied Flory with innumerable questions.

'How soon can we start out? Do you think we've got enough
cartridges? How many beaters shall we take? Oh, I do so hope we
have some luck! You do think we'll get something, don't you?'

'Nothing wonderful, probably. We're bound to get a few pigeons,
and perhaps jungle fowl. They're out of season, but it doesn't
matter shooting the cocks. They say there's a leopard round here,
that killed a bullock almost in the village last week.'

'Oh, a leopard! How lovely if we could shoot it!'

'It's very unlikely, I'm afraid. The only rule with this shooting
in Burma is to hope for nothing. It's invariably disappointing.
The jungles teem with game, but as often as not you don't even get
a chance to fire your gun.'

'Why is that?'

'The jungle is so thick. An animal may be five yards away and
quite invisible, and half the time they manage to dodge back past
the beaters. Even when you see them it's only for a flash of a
second. And again, there's water everywhere, so that no animal is
tied down to one particular spot. A tiger, for instance, will roam
hundreds of miles if it suits him. And with all the game there is,
they need never come back to a kill if there's anything suspicious
about it. Night after night, when I was a boy, I've sat up over
horrible stinking dead cows, waiting for tigers that never came.'

Elizabeth wriggled her shoulder-blades against the chair. It was a
movement that she made sometimes when she was deeply pleased. She
loved Flory, really loved him, when he talked like this. The most
trivial scrap of information about shooting thrilled her. If only
he would always talk about shooting, instead of about books and Art
and that mucky poetry! In a sudden burst of admiration she decided
that Flory was really quite a handsome man, in his way. He looked
so splendidly manly, with his pagri-cloth shirt open at the throat,
and his shorts and puttees and shooting boots! And his face,
lined, sunburned, like a soldier's face. He was standing with his
birthmarked cheek away from her. She pressed him to go on talking.

'DO tell me some more about tiger-shooting. It's so awfully
interesting!'

He described the shooting, years ago, of a mangy old man-eater who
had killed one of his coolies. The wait in the mosquito-ridden
machan; the tiger's eyes approaching through the dark jungle, like
great green lanterns; the panting, slobbering noise as he devoured
the coolie's body, tied to a stake below. Flory told it all
perfunctorily enough--did not the proverbial Anglo Indian bore
always talk about tiger-shooting?--but Elizabeth wriggled her
shoulders delightedly once more. He did not realize how such talk
as this reassured her and made up for all the times when he had
bored her and disquieted her. Six shock-headed youths came down
the path, carrying dahs over their shoulders, and headed by a
stringy but active old man with grey hair. They halted in front of
the headman's house, and one of them uttered a hoarse whoop,
whereat the headman appeared and explained that these were the
beaters. They were ready to start now, if the young thakin-ma did
not find it too hot.

They set out. The side of the village away from the creek was
protected by a hedge of cactus six feet high and twelve thick.
One went up a narrow lane of cactus, then along a rutted, dusty
bullock-cart track, with bamboos as tall as flagstaffs growing
densely on either side. The beaters marched rapidly ahead in
single file, each with his broad dah laid along his forearm. The
old hunter was marching just in front of Elizabeth. His longyi was
hitched up like a loin-cloth, and his meagre thighs were tattooed
with dark blue patterns, so intricate that he might have been
wearing drawers of blue lace. A bamboo the thickness of a man's
wrist had fallen and hung across the path. The leading beater
severed it with an upward flick of his dah; the prisoned water
gushed out of it with a diamond-flash. After half a mile they
reached the open fields, and everyone was sweating, for they had
walked fast and the sun was savage.

'That's where we're going to shoot, over there,' Flory said.

He pointed across the stubble, a wide dust-coloured plain, cut up
into patches of an acre or two by mud boundaries. It was horribly
flat, and lifeless save for the snowy egrets. At the far edge a
jungle of great trees rose abruptly, like a dark green cliff. The
beaters had gone across to a small tree like a hawthorn twenty
yards away. One of them was on his knees, shikoing to the tree and
gabbling, while the old hunter poured a bottle of some cloudy
liquid on to the ground. The others stood looking on with serious,
bored faces, like men in church.

'What ARE those men doing?' Elizabeth said.

'Only sacrificing to the local gods. Nats, they call them--a kind
of dryad. They're praying to him to bring us good luck.'

The hunter came back and in a cracked voice explained that they
were to beat a small patch of scrub over to the right before
proceeding to the main jungle. Apparently the Nat had counselled
this. The hunter directed Flory and Elizabeth where to stand,
pointing with his dah. The six beaters, plunged into the scrub;
they would make a detour and beat back towards the paddy-fields.
There were some bushes of the wild rose thirty yards from the
jungle's edge, and Flory and Elizabeth took cover behind one of
these, while Ko S'la squatted down behind another bush a little
distance away, holding Flo's collar and stroking her to keep her
quiet. Flory always sent Ko S'la to a distance when he was
shooting, for he had an irritating trick of clicking his tongue if
a shot was missed. Presently there was a far-off echoing sound--a
sound of tapping and strange hollow cries; the beat had started.
Elizabeth at once began trembling so uncontrollably that she could
not keep her gun-barrel still. A wonderful bird, a little bigger
than a thrush, with grey wings and body of blazing scarlet, broke
from the trees and came towards them with a dipping flight. The
tapping and the cries came nearer. One of the bushes at the
jungle's edge waved violently--some large animal was emerging.
Elizabeth raised her gun and tried to steady it. But it was only a
naked yellow beater, dah in hand. He saw that he had emerged and
shouted to the others to join him.

Elizabeth lowered her gun. 'What's happened?'

'Nothing. The beat's over.'

'So there was nothing there!' she cried in bitter disappointment.

'Never mind, one never gets anything the first beat. We'll have
better luck next time.'

They crossed the lumpy stubble, climbing over the mud boundaries
that divided the fields, and took up their position opposite the
high green wall of the jungle. Elizabeth had already learned how
to load her gun. This time the beat had hardly started when Ko
S'la whistled sharply.

'Look out!' Flory cried. 'Quick, here they come!'

A flight of green pigeons were dashing towards them at incredible
speed, forty yards up. They were like a handful of catapulted
stones whirling through the sky. Elizabeth was helpless with
excitement. For a moment she could not move, then she flung her
barrel into the air, somewhere in the direction of the birds, and
tugged violently at the trigger. Nothing happened--she was pulling
at the trigger-guard. Just as the birds passed overhead she found
the triggers and pulled both of them simultaneously. There was a
deafening roar and she was thrown backwards a pace with her collar-
bone almost broken. She had fired thirty yards behind the birds.
At the same moment she saw Flory turn and level his gun. Two of
the pigeons, suddenly checked in their flight, swirled over and
dropped to the ground like arrows. Ko S'la yelled, and he and Flo
raced after them.

'Look out!' said Flory, 'here's an imperial pigeon. Let's have
him!'

A large heavy bird, with flight much slower than the others, was
flapping overhead. Elizabeth did not care to fire after her
previous failure. She watched Flory thrust a cartridge into the
breech and raise his gun, and the white plume of smoke leapt up
from the muzzle. The bird planed heavily down, his wing broken.
Flo and Ko S'la came running excitedly up, Flo with the big
imperial pigeon in her mouth, and Ko S'la grinning and producing
two green pigeons from his Kachin bag.

Flory took one of the little green corpses to show to Elizabeth.
'Look at it. Aren't they lovely things? The most beautiful bird
in Asia.'

Elizabeth touched its smooth feathers with her finger-tip. It
filled her with bitter envy, because she had not shot it. And yet
it was curious, but she felt almost an adoration for Flory now that
she had seen how he could shoot.

'Just look at its breast-feathers; like a jewel. It's murder to
shoot them. The Burmese say that when you kill one of these birds
they vomit, meaning to say, "Look, here is all I possess, and I've
taken nothing of yours. Why do you kill me?" I've never seen one
do it, I must admit.'

'Are they good to eat?'

'Very. Even so, I always feel it's a shame to kill them.'

'I wish I could do it like you do!' she said enviously.

'It's only a knack, you'll soon pick it up. You know how to hold
your gun, and that's more than most people do when they start.'

However, at the next two beats, Elizabeth could hit nothing. She
had learned not to fire both barrels at once, but she was too
paralysed with excitement ever to take aim. Flory shot several
more pigeons, and a small bronze-wing dove with back as green as
verdigris. The jungle fowl were too cunning to show themselves,
though one could hear them cluck-clucking all round, and once or
twice the sharp trumpet-call of a cock. They were getting deeper
into the jungle now. The light was greyish, with dazzling patches
of sunlight. Whichever way one looked one's view was shut in by
the multitudinous ranks of trees, and the tangled bushes and
creepers that struggled round their bases like the sea round the
piles of a pier. It was so dense, like a bramble bush extending
mile after mile, that one's eyes were oppressed by it. Some of the
creepers were huge, like serpents. Flory and Elizabeth struggled
along narrow game-tracks, up slippery banks, thorns tearing at
their clothes. Both their shirts were drenched with sweat. It was
stifling hot, with a scent of crushed leaves. Sometimes for
minutes together invisible cidadas would keep up a shrill, metallic
pinging like the twanging of a steel guitar, and then, by stopping,
make a silence that startled one.

As they were walking to the fifth beat they came to a great peepul
tree in which, high up, one could hear imperial pigeons cooing. It
was a sound like the far-off lowing of cows. One bird fluttered
out and perched alone on the topmost bough, a small greyish shape.

'Try a sitting shot,' Flory said to Elizabeth. 'Get your sight on
him and pull off without waiting. Don't shut your left eye.'

Elizabeth raised her gun, which had begun trembling as usual. The
beaters halted in a group to watch, and some of them could not
refrain from clicking their tongues; they thought it queer and
rather shocking to see a woman handle a gun. With a violent effort
of will Elizabeth kept her gun still for a second, and pulled the
trigger. She did not hear the shot; one never does when it has
gone home. The bird seemed to jump upwards from the bough, then
down it came, tumbling over and over, and stuck in a fork ten yards
up. One of the beaters laid down his dah and glanced appraisingly
at the tree; then he walked to a great creeper, thick as a man's
thigh and twisted like a stick of barley sugar, that hung far out
from a bough. He ran up the creeper as easily as though it had
been a ladder, walked upright along the broad bough, and brought
the pigeon to the ground. He put it limp and warm into Elizabeth's
hand.

She could hardly give it up, the feel of it so ravished her. She
could have kissed it, hugged it to her breast. All the men, Flory
and Ko S'la and the beaters, smiled at one another to see her
fondling the dead bird. Reluctantly, she gave it to Ko S'la to put
in the bag. She was conscious of an extraordinary desire to fling
her arms round Flory's neck and kiss him; and in some way it was
the killing of the pigeon that made her feel this.

After the fifth beat the hunter explained to Flory that they must
cross a clearing that was used for growing pineapples, and would
beat another patch of jungle beyond. They came out into sunlight,
dazzling after the jungle gloom. The clearing was an oblong of an
acre or two hacked out of the jungle like a patch mown in long
grass, with the pineapples, prickly cactus-like plants, growing in
rows, almost smothered by weeds. A low hedge of thorns divided the
field in the middle. They had nearly crossed the field when there
was a sharp cock-a-doodle-doo from beyond the hedge.

'Oh, listen!' said Elizabeth, stopping. 'Was that a jungle cock?'

'Yes. They come out to feed about this time.'

'Couldn't we go and shoot him?'

'We'll have a try if you like. They're cunning beggars. Look,
we'll stalk up the hedge until we get opposite where he is. We'll
have to go without making a sound.'

He sent Ko S'la and the beaters on, and the two of them skirted the
field and crept along the hedge. They had to bend double to keep
themselves out of sight. Elizabeth was in front. The hot sweat
trickled down her face, tickling her upper lip, and her heart was
knocking violently. She felt Flory touch her heel from behind.
Both of them stood upright and looked over the hedge together.

Ten yards away a little cock the size of a bantam, was pecking
vigorously at the ground. He was beautiful, with his long silky
neck-feathers, bunched comb and arching, laurel-green tail. There
were six hens with him, smaller brown birds, with diamond-shaped
feathers like snake-scales on their backs. All this Elizabeth and
Flory saw in the space of a second, then with a squawk and a whirr
the birds were up and flying like bullets for the jungle. Instantly,
automatically as it seemed, Elizabeth raised her gun and fired. It
was one of those shots where there is no aiming, no consciousness of
the gun in one's hand, when one's mind seems to fly behind the
charge and drive it to the mark. She knew the bird was doomed even
before she pulled the trigger. He tumbled, showered feathers thirty
yards away. 'Good shot, good shot!' cried Flory. In their
excitement both of them dropped their guns, broke through the thorn
hedge and raced side by side to where the bird lay.

'Good shot!' Flory repeated, as excited as she. 'By Jove, I've
never seen anyone kill a flying bird their first day, never! You
got your gun off like lightning. It's marvellous!'

They were kneeling face to face with the dead bird between them.
With a shock they discovered that their hands, his right and her
left, were clasped tightly together. They had run to the place
hand-in-hand without noticing it.

A sudden stillness came on them both, a sense of something
momentous that must happen. Flory reached across and took her
other hand. It came yieldingly, willingly. For a moment they
knelt with their hands clasped together. The sun blazed upon them
and the warmth breathed out of their bodies; they seemed to be
floating upon clouds of heat and joy. He took her by the upper
arms to draw her towards him.

Then suddenly he turned his head away and stood up, pulling
Elizabeth to her feet. He let go of her arms. He had remembered
his birthmark. He dared not do it. Not here, not in daylight!
The snub it invited was too terrible. To cover the awkwardness of
the moment he bent down and picked up the jungle cock.

'It was splendid,' he said. 'You don't need any teaching. You can
shoot already. We'd better get on to the next beat.'

They had just crossed the hedge and picked up their guns when there
was a series of shouts from the edge of the jungle. Two of the
beaters were running towards them with enormous leaps, waving their
arms wildly in the air.

'What is it?' Elizabeth said.

'I don't know. They've seen some animal or other. Something good,
by the look of them.'

'Oh, hurrah! Come on!'

They broke into a run and hurried across the field, breaking
through the pineapples and the stiff prickly weeds. Ko S'la and
five of the beaters were standing in a knot all talking at once,
and the other two were beckoning excitedly to Flory and Elizabeth.
As they came up they saw in the middle of the group an old woman
who was holding up her ragged longyi with one hand and gesticulating
with a big cigar in the other. Elizabeth could hear some word
that sounded like 'Char' repeated over and over again.

'What is it they're saying?' she said.

The beaters came crowding round Flory, all talking eagerly and
pointing into the jungle. After a few questions he waved his hand
to silence them and turned to Elizabeth:

'I say, here's a bit of luck! This old girl was coming through the
jungle, and she says that at the sound of the shot you fired just
now, she saw a leopard run across the path. These fellows know
where he's likely to hide. If we're quick they may be able to
surround him before he sneaks away, and drive him out. Shall we
try it?'

'Oh, do let's! Oh, what awful fun! How lovely, how lovely if we
could get that leopard!'

'You understand it's dangerous? We'll keep close together and
it'll probably be all right, but it's never absolutely safe on
foot. Are you ready for that?'

'Oh, of course, of course! I'm not frightened. Oh, do let's be
quick and start!'

'One of you come with us, and show us the way,' he said to the
beaters. 'Ko S'la, put Flo on the leash and go with the others.
She'll never keep quiet with us. We'll have to hurry,' he added to
Elizabeth.

Ko S'la and the beaters hurried off along the edge of the jungle.
They would strike in and begin beating farther up. The other
beater, the same youth who had climbed the tree after the pigeon,
dived into the jungle, Flory and Elizabeth following. With short
rapid steps, almost running, he led them through a labyrinth of
game-tracks. The bushes trailed so low that sometimes one had
almost to crawl, and creepers hung across the path like trip-wires.
The ground was dusty and silent underfoot. At some landmark in the
jungle the beater halted, pointed to the ground as a sign that this
spot would do, and put his finger on his lips to enjoin silence.
Flory took four SG cartridges from his pockets and took Elizabeth's
gun to load it silently.

There was a faint rustling behind them, and they all started. A
nearly naked youth with a pellet-bow, come goodness knows whence,
had parted the bushes. He looked at the beater, shook his head and
pointed up the path. There was a dialogue of signs between the two
youths, then the beater seemed to agree. Without speaking all four
stole forty yards along the path, round a bend, and halted again.
At the same moment a frightful pandemonium of yells, punctuated by
barks from Flo, broke out a few hundred yards away.

Elizabeth felt the beater's hand on her shoulder, pushing her
downwards. They all four squatted down under cover of a prickly
bush, the Europeans in front, the Burmans behind. In the distance
there was such a tumult of yells and the rattle of dahs against
tree-trunks that one could hardly believe six men could make so
much noise. The beaters were taking good care that the leopard
should not turn back upon them. Elizabeth watched some large, pale
yellow ants marching like soldiers over the thorns of the bush.
One fell on to her hand and crawled up her forearm. She dared not
move to brush it away. She was praying silently, 'Please God, let
the leopard come! Oh please, God, let the leopard come!'

There was a sudden loud pattering on the leaves. Elizabeth raised
her gun, but Flory shook his head sharply and pushed the barrel
down again. A jungle fowl scuttled across the path with long noisy
strides.

The yells of the beaters seemed hardly to come any closer, and
this end of the jungle the silence was like a pall. The ant on
Elizabeth's arm bit her painfully and dropped to the ground. A
dreadful despair had begun to form in her heart; the leopard was
not coming, he had slipped away somewhere, they had lost him. She
almost wished they had never heard of the leopard, the disappointment
was so agonizing. Then she felt the beater pinch her elbow. He was
craning his face forward, his smooth, dull yellow cheek only a few
inches from her own; she could smell the coco-nut oil in his hair.
His coarse lips were puckered as in a whistle; he had heard
something. Then Flory and Elizabeth heard it too, the faintest
whisper, as though some creature of air were gliding through the
jungle, just brushing the ground with its foot. At the same moment
the leopard's head and shoulders emerged from the undergrowth,
fifteen yards down the path.

He stopped with his forepaws on the path. They could see his low,
flat-eared head, his bare eye-tooth and his thick, terrible
forearm. In the shadow he did not look yellow but grey. He was
listening intently. Elizabeth saw Flory spring to his feet, raise
his gun and pull the trigger instantly. The shot roared, and
almost simultaneously there was a heavy crash as the brute dropped
flat in the weeds. 'Look out!' Flory cried, 'he's not done for!'
He fired again, and there was a fresh thump as the shot went home.
The leopard gasped. Flory threw open his gun and felt in his
pocket for a cartridge, then flung all his cartridges on to the
path and fell on his knees, searching rapidly among them.

'Damn and blast it!' he cried. 'There isn't a single SG among
them. Where in hell did I put them?'

The leopard had disappeared as he fell. He was thrashing about in
the undergrowth like a great, wounded snake, and crying out with a
snarling, sobbing noise, savage and pitiful. The noise seemed to
be coming nearer. Every cartridge Flory turned up had 6 or 8
marked on the end. The rest of the large-shot cartridges had, in
fact, been left with Ko S'la. The crashing and snarling were now
hardly five yards away, but they could see nothing, the jungle was
so thick.

The two Burmans were crying out 'Shoot! Shoot! Shoot!' The sound
of 'Shoot! Shoot!' got farther away--they were skipping for the
nearest climbable trees. There was a crash in the undergrowth so
close that it shook the bush by which Elizabeth was standing.

'By God, he's almost on us!' Flory said. 'We must turn him
somehow. Let fly at the sound.'

Elizabeth raised her gun. Her knees were knocking like castanets,
but her hand was as steady as stone. She fired rapidly, once,
twice. The crashing noise receded. The leopard was crawling away,
crippled but swift, and still invisible.

'Well done! You've scared him,' Flory said.

'But he's getting away! He's getting away!' Elizabeth cried,
dancing about in agitation. She made to follow him. Flory jumped
to his feet and pulled her back.

'No fear! You stay here. Wait!'

He slipped two of the small-shot cartridges into his gun and ran
after the sound of the leopard. For a moment Elizabeth could not
see either beast or man, then they reappeared in a bare patch
thirty yards away. The leopard was writhing along on his belly,
sobbing as he went. Flory levelled his gun and fired at four
yards' distance. The leopard jumped like a cushion when one hits
it, then rolled over, curled up and lay still. Flory poked the
body with his gun-barrel. It did not stir.

'It's all right, he's done for,' he called. 'Come and have a look
at him.'

The two Burmans jumped down from their tree, and they and Elizabeth
went across to where Flory was standing. The leopard--it was a
male--was lying curled up with his head between his forepaws. He
looked much smaller than he had looked alive; he looked rather
pathetic, like a dead kitten. Elizabeth's knees were still
quivering. She and Flory stood looking down at the leopard, close
together, but not clasping hands this time.

It was only a moment before Ko S'la and the others came up,
shouting with glee. Flo gave one sniff at the dead leopard, then
down went her tail and she bolted fifty yards, whimpering. She
could not be induced to come near him again. Everyone squatted
down round the leopard and gazed at him. They stroked his
beautiful white belly, soft as a hare's, and squeezed his broad
pugs to bring out the claws, and pulled back his black lips to
examine the fangs. Presently two of the beaters cut down a tall
bamboo and slung the leopard upon it by his paws, with his long
tail trailing down, and then they marched back to the village in
triumph. There was no talk of further shooting, though the light
still held. They were all, including the Europeans, too anxious to
get home and boast of what they had done.

Flory and Elizabeth walked side by side across the stubble field.
The others were thirty yards ahead with the guns and the leopard,
and Flo was slinking after them a long way in the rear. The sun
was going down beyond the Irrawaddy. The light shone level across
the field, gilding the stubble stalks, and striking into their
faces with a yellow, gentle beam. Elizabeth's shoulder was almost
touching Flory's as they walked. The sweat that had drenched their
shirts had dried again. They did not talk much. They were happy
with that inordinate happiness that comes of exhaustion and
achievement, and with which nothing else in life--no joy of either
the body or the mind--is even able to be compared.

'The leopard skin is yours,' Flory said as they approached the
village.

'Oh, but you shot him!'

'Never mind, you stick to the skin. By Jove, I wonder how many of
the women in this country would have kept their heads like you did!
I can just see them screaming and fainting. I'll get the skin
cured for you in Kyauktada jail. There's a convict there who can
cure skins as soft as velvet. He's doing a seven-year sentence, so
he's had time to learn the job.'

'Oh well, thanks awfully.'

No more was said for the present. Later, when they had washed off
the sweat and dirt, and were fed and rested, they would meet again
at the Club. They made no rendezvous, but it was understood
between them that they would meet. Also, it was understood that
Flory would ask Elizabeth to marry him, though nothing was said
about this either.

At the village Flory paid the beaters eight annas each, superintended
the skinning of the leopard, and gave the headman a bottle of beer
and two of the imperial pigeons. The skin and skull were packed
into one of the canoes. All the whiskers had been stolen, in spite
of Ko S'la's efforts to guard them. Some young men of the village
carried off the carcass in order to eat the heart and various other
organs, the eating of which they believed would make them strong and
swift like the leopard.

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.

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