Ah King (Works of W. Somerset Maugham)

“But in two days they’re capable of committing the most frightful atrocities,” she cried. “It’s quite unspeakable what they may do.”

  “Whatever damage they do they’ll pay for. I promise you that.”

  “Oh, Alban, you can’t sit still and do nothing. I beseech you to go yourself at once.”

  “Don’t be so silly. I can’t quell a riot with eight policemen and a sergeant. I haven’t got the right to take a risk of that sort. We’d have to go in boats. You don’t think we could get up unobserved. The lalang along the banks is perfect cover and they could just take pot shots at us as we came along. We shouldn’t have a chance.”

  “I’m afraid they’ll only think it weakness if nothing is done for two days, sir,” said Oakley.

  “When I want your opinion I’ll ask for it,” said Alban acidly. “So far as I can see when there was danger the only thing you did was to cut and run. I can’t persuade myself that your assistance in a crisis would be very valuable.”

  The half-caste reddened. He said nothing more. He looked straight in front of him with troubled eyes.

  “I’m going down to the office,” said Alban. “I’ll just write a short report and send it down the river by launch at once.”

  He gave an order to the sergeant, who had been standing all this time stiffly at the top of the steps. He saluted and ran off. Alban went into a little hall they had to get his topee. Anne swiftly followed him.

  “Alban, for God’s sake listen to me a minute,” she whispered.

  “I don’t want to be rude to you, darling, but I am pressed for time. I think you’d much better mind your own business.”

  “You can’t do nothing, Alban. You must go. Whatever the risk.”

  “Don’t be such a fool,” he said angrily.

  He had never been angry with her before. She seized his hand to hold him back.

  “I tell you I can do no good by going.”

  “You don’t know. There’s the woman and Prynne’s children. We must do something to save them. Let me come with you. They’ll kill them.”

  “They’ve probably killed them already.”

  “Oh, how can you be so callous! If there’s a chance of saving them it’s your duty to try.”

  “It’s my duty to act like a reasonable human being. I’m not going to risk my life and my policemen’s for the sake of a native woman and her half-caste brats. What sort of a damned fool do you take me for?”

  “They’ll say you were afraid.”

  “Who?”

  “Everyone in the colony.”

  He smiled disdainfully.

  “If you only knew what a complete contempt I have for the opinion of everyone in the colony.”

  She gave him a long searching look. She had been married to him for eight years and she knew every expression of his face and every thought in his mind. She stared into his blue eyes as if they were open windows. She suddenly went quite pale. She dropped his hand and turned away. Without another word she went back on to the veranda. Her ugly little monkey face was a mask of horror.

  Alban went to his office, wrote a brief account of the facts, and in a few minutes the motor launch was pounding down the river.

  The next two days were endless. Escaped natives brought them news of happenings on the estate. But from their excited and terrified stories it was impossible to get an exact impression of the truth. There had been a good deal of bloodshed. The head overseer had been killed. They brought wild tales of cruelty and outrage. Anne could hear nothing of Prynne’s woman and the two children. She shuddered when she thought of what might have been their fate. Alban collected as many natives as he could. They were armed with spears and swords. He commandeered boats. The situation was serious, but he kept his head. He felt that he had done all that was possible and nothing remained but for him to carry on normally. He did his official work. He played the piano a great deal. He rode with Anne in the early morning. He appeared to have forgotten that they had had the first serious difference of opinion in the whole of their married life. He took it that Anne had accepted the wisdom of his decision. He was as amusing, cordial, and gay with her as he had always been. When he spoke of the rioters it was with grim irony: when the time came to settle matters a good many of them would wish they had never been born.

  “What’ll happen to them?” asked Anne.

  “Oh, they’ll hang.” He gave a shrug of distaste. “I hate having to be present at executions. It always makes me feel rather sick.”

  He was very sympathetic to Oakley, whom they had put to bed and whom Anne was nursing. Perhaps he was sorry that in the exasperation of the moment he had spoken to him offensively, and he went out of his way to be nice to him.

  Then on the afternoon of the third day, when they were drinking their coffee after luncheon, Alban’s quick ears caught the sound of a motor boat approaching. At the same moment a policeman ran up to say that the government launch was sighted.

  “At last,” cried Alban.

  He bolted out of the house. Anne raised one of the jalousies and looked out at the river. Now the sound was quite loud and in a moment she saw the boat come round the bend. She saw Alban on the landing-stage. He got into a prahu and as the launch dropped her anchor he went on board. She told Oakley that the reinforcements had come.

  “Will the D.O. go up with them when they attack?” he asked her.

  “Naturally,” said Anne coldly.

  “I wondered.”

  Anne felt a strange feeling in her heart. For the last two days she had had to exercise all her self-control not to cry. She did not answer. She went out of the room.

  A quarter of an hour later Alban returned to the bungalow with the captain of constabulary who had been sent with twenty Sikhs to deal with the rioters. Captain Stratton was a little red-faced man with a red moustache and bow legs, very hearty and dashing, whom she had met often at Port Wallace.

  “Well, Mrs Torel, this is a pretty kettle of fish,” he cried, as he shook hands with her, in a loud jolly voice. “Here I am, with my army all full of pep and ready for a scrap. Up, boys, and at “em. Have you got anything to drink in this benighted place?”

  “Boy,” she cried, smiling.

  “Something long and cool and faintly alcoholic, and then I’m ready to discuss the plan of campaign.”

  His breeziness was very comforting. It blew away the sullen apprehension that had seemed ever since the disaster to brood over the lost peace of the bungalow. The boy came in with a tray and Stratton mixed himself a stengah. Alban put him in possession of the facts. He told them clearly, briefly, and with precision.

  “I must say I admire you,” said Stratton. “In your place I should never have been able to resist the temptation to take my eight cops and have a whack at the blighters myself.”

  “I thought it was a perfectly unjustifiable risk to take.”

  “Safety first, old boy, eh, what?” said Stratton jovially. “I’m jolly glad you didn’t. It’s not often we get the chance of a scrap. It would have been a dirty trick to keep the whole show to yourself.”

  Captain Stratton was all for steaming straight up the river and attacking at once, but Alban pointed out to him the inadvisability of such a course. The sound of the approaching launch would warn the rioters. The long grass at the river’s edge offered them cover and they had enough guns to make a landing difficult. It seemed useless to expose the attacking force to their fire. It was silly to forget that they had to face a hundred and fifty desperate men and it would be easy to fall into an ambush. Alban expounded his own plan. Stratton listened to it. He nodded now and then. The plan was evidently a good one. It would enable them to take the rioters in the rear, surprise them, and in all probability finish the job without a single casualty. He would have been a fool not to accept it.

  “But why didn’t you do that yourself?” asked Stratton.

  “With eight men and a sergeant?”

  Stratton did not answer.

  “Anyhow, it’s not a bad idea an
d we’ll settle on it. It gives us plenty of time, so with your permission, Mrs Torel, I’ll have a bath.”

  They set out at sunset, Captain Stratton and his twenty Sikhs, Alban with his policemen and the natives he had collected. The night was dark and moonless. Trailing behind them were the dug-outs that Alban had gathered together and into which after a certain distance they proposed to transfer their force. It was important that no sound should give warning of their approach. After they had gone for about three hours by launch they took to the dug-outs and in them silently paddled up-stream. They reached the border of the vast estate and landed. Guides led them along a path so narrow that they had to march in single file. It had been long unused and the going was heavy. They had twice to ford a stream. The path led them circuitously to the rear of the coolie lines, but they did not wish to reach them till nearly dawn and presently Stratton gave the order to halt. It was a long cold wait. At last the night seemed to be less dark; you did not see the trunks of the trees, but were vaguely sensible of them against its darkness. Stratton had been sitting with his back to a tree. He gave a whispered order to a sergeant and in a few minutes the column was once more on the march. Suddenly they found themselves on a road. They formed fours. The dawn broke and in the ghostly light the surrounding objects were wanly visible. The column stopped on a whispered order. They had come in sight of the coolie lines. Silence reigned in them. The column crept on again and again halted. Stratton, his eyes shining, gave Alban a smile.

  “We’ve caught the blighters asleep.”

  He lined up his men. They inserted cartridges in their guns. He stepped forward and raised his hand. The carbines were pointed at the coolie lines.

  “Fire.”

  There was a rattle as the volley of shots rang out. Then suddenly there was a tremendous din and the Chinese poured out, shouting and waving their arms, but in front of them, to Alban’s utter bewilderment, bellowing at the top of his voice and shaking his fists at them, was a white man.

  “Who the hell’s that?” cried Stratton.

  A very big, very fat man, in khaki trousers and a singlet, was running towards them as fast as his fat legs would carry him and as he ran shaking both fists at them and yelling:

  “Smerige flikkers! Vervloekte ploerten!”

  “My God, it’s Van Hasseldt,” said Alban.

  This was the Dutch manager of the timber camp which was situated on a considerable tributary of the river about twenty miles away.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he puffed as he came up to them.

  “How the hell did you get here?” asked Stratton in turn.

  He saw that the Chinese were scattering in all directions and gave his men instructions to round them up. Then he turned again to Van Hasseldt.

  “What’s it mean?”

  “Mean? Mean?” shouted the Dutchman furiously. “That’s what I want to know. You and your damned policemen. What do you mean by coming here at this hour in the morning and firing a damned volley. Target practice? You might have killed me. Idiots!”

  “Have a cigarette,” said Stratton.

  “How did you get here, Van Hasseldt?” asked Alban again, very much at sea. “This is the force they’ve sent from Port Wallace to quell the riot.”

  “How did I get here? I walked. How did you think I got here? Riot be damned. I quelled the riot. If that’s what you came for you can take your damned policemen home again. A bullet came within a foot of my head.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Alban.

  “There’s nothing to understand,” spluttered Van Hasseldt, still fuming. “Some coolies came to my estate and said the Chinks had killed Prynne and burned the bally place down, so I took my assistant and my head overseer and a Dutch friend I had staying with me and came over to see what the trouble was.”

  Captain Stratton opened his eyes wide.

  “Did you just stroll in as if it was a picnic?” he asked.

  “Well, you don’t think after all the years I’ve been in this country I’m going to let a couple of hundred Chinks put the fear of God into me? I found them all scared out of their lives. One of them had the nerve to pull a gun on me and I blew his bloody brains out. And the rest surrendered. I’ve got the leaders tied up. I was going to send a boat down to you this morning to come up and get them.”

  Stratton stared at him for a minute and then burst into a shout of laughter, He laughed till the tears ran down his face. The Dutchman looked at him angrily, then began to laugh too; he laughed with the big belly laugh of a very fat man and his coils of fat heaved and shook. Alban watched them sullenly. He was very angry.

  “What about Prynne’s girl and the kids?” he asked.

  “Oh, they got away all right.”

  It just showed how wise he had been not to let himself be influenced by Anne’s hysteria. Of course the children had come to no harm. He never thought they would.

  Van Hasseldt and his little party started back for the timber camp, and as soon after as possible Stratton embarked his twenty Sikhs and leaving Alban with his sergeant and his policemen to deal with the situation departed for Port Wallace. Alban gave him a brief report for the Governor. There was much for him to do. It looked as though he would have to stay for a considerable time; but since every house on the estate had been burned to the ground and he was obliged to install himself in the coolie lines he thought it better that Anne should not join him. He sent her a note to that effect. He was glad to be able to reassure her of the safety of poor Prynne’s girl. He set to work at once to make his preliminary inquiry. He examined a host of witnesses. But a week later he received an order to go to Port Wallace at once. The launch that brought it was to take him and he was able to see Anne on the way down for no more than an hour. Alban was a trifle vexed.

  “I don’t know why the Governor can’t leave me to get things straight without dragging me off like this. It’s extremely inconvenient.”

  “Oh, well, the Government never bothers very much about the convenience of its subordinates, does it?” smiled Anne.

  “It’s just red-tape. I would offer to take you along, darling, only I shan’t stay a minute longer than I need. I want to get my evidence together for the Sessions Court as soon as possible. I think in a country like this it’s very important that justice should be prompt.”

  When the launch came in to Port Wallace one of the harbour police told him that the harbour-master had a chit for him. It was from the Governor’s secretary and informed him that His Excellency desired to see him as soon as convenient after his arrival. It was ten in the morning. Alban went to the club, had a bath and shaved, and then in clean ducks, his hair neatly brushed, he called a rickshaw and told the boy to take him to the Governor’s office. He was at once shown in to the secretary’s room. The secretary shook hands with him.

  “I’ll tell H.E. you’re here,” he said. “Won’t you sit down?”

  The secretary left the room and in a little while came back.

  “H.E. will see you in a minute. Do you mind if I get on with my letters?”

  Alban smiled. The secretary was not exactly come-hither. He waited, smoking a cigarette, and amused himself with his own thoughts. He was making a good job of the preliminary inquiry. It interested him. Then an orderly came in and told Alban that the Governor was ready for him. He rose from his seat and followed him into the Governor’s room.

  “Good morning, Torel.”

  “Good morning, sir.”

  The Governor was sitting at a large desk. He nodded to Alban and motioned to him to take a seat. The Governor was all grey. His hair was grey, his face, his eyes; he looked as though the tropical suns had washed the colour out of him; he had been in the country for thirty years and had risen one by one through all the ranks of the Service; he looked tired and depressed. Even his voice was grey. Alban liked him because he was quiet; he did not think him clever, but he had an unrivalled knowledge of the country, and his great experience was a very good substitute for
intelligence. He looked at Alban for a full moment without speaking and the odd idea came to Alban that he was embarrassed. He very nearly gave him a lead.

  “I saw Van Hasseldt yesterday,” said the Governor suddenly.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Will you give me your account of the occurrences at the Alud Estate and of the steps you took to deal with them.”

  Alban had an orderly mind. He was self-possessed. He marshalled his facts well and was able to state them with precision. He chose his words with care and spoke them fluently.

  “You had a sergeant and eight policemen. Why did you not immediately go to the scene of the disturbance?”

  “I thought the risk was unjustifiable.”

  A thin smile was outlined on the Governor’s grey face.

  “If the officers of this Government had hesitated to take unjustifiable risks it would never have become a province of the British Empire.”

  Alban was silent. It was difficult to talk to a man who spoke obvious nonsense.

  “I am anxious to hear your reasons for the decision you took.”

  Alban gave them coolly. He was quite convinced of the Tightness of his action. He repeated, but more fully, what he had said in the first place to Anne. The Governor listened attentively.

  “Van Hasseldt, with his manager, a Dutch friend of his, and a native overseer, seems to have coped with the situation very efficiently,” said the Governor.

  “He had a lucky break. That doesn’t prevent him from being a damned fool. It was madness to do what he did.”

  “Do you realize that by leaving a Dutch planter to do what you should have done yourself, you have covered the Government with ridicule?”

  “No, sir.”

  “You’ve made yourself a laughing-stock in the whole colony.”

  Alban smiled.

  “My back is broad enough to bear the ridicule of persons to whose opinion I am entirely indifferent.”

  “The utility of a government official depends very largely on his prestige, and I’m afraid his prestige is likely to be inconsiderable when he lies under the stigma of cowardice.”

  Alban flushed a little.