Burmese Days (25 page)

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.