65 Short Stories (213 page)

Woman, you’re insane. Have you no shame?’

‘No.’

‘What do you want of me?’ he asked fiercely.

‘Love.’

‘What sort of man do you take me for?’

‘A man like any other,’ she replied calmly.

Do you think after all that Angus Munro has done for me I could be such a damned beast as to play about with his wife? I admire him more than any man I’ve ever known. He’s grand. He’s worth a dozen of me and you put together. I’d sooner kill myself than betray him. I don’t know how you can think me capable of such a dastardly act.’

‘Oh, my dear, don’t talk such bilge. What harm is it going to do him? You mustn’t take that sort of thing so tragically. After all, life is very short; we’re fools if we don’t take what pleasure we can out of it.’

‘You can’t make wrong right by talking about it.’

‘I don’t know about that. I think that’s a very controvertible statement.’

He looked at her with amazement. She was sitting at his feet, cool to all appearance and collected, and she seemed to be enjoying the situation. She seemed quite unconscious of its seriousness.

Do you know that I knocked a fellow down at the club because he made an insulting remark about you?’

‘Who?’

‘Bishop.’

‘Dirty dog. What did he say?’

‘He said you’d had affairs with men.’

‘I don’t know why people won’t mind their own business. Anyhow, who cares what they say? I love you. I’ve never loved anyone like you. I’m absolutely sick with love for you.’

‘Be quiet. Be quiet’

‘Listen, tonight when Angus is asleep I’ll slip into your room. He sleeps like a rock. There’s no risk.’

‘You mustn’t do that’

‘Why not?’

‘No, no, no.’

He was frightened out of his wits. Suddenly she sprang to her feet and went into the house.

Munro came back at noon, and in the afternoon they busied themselves as usual. Darya, as she sometimes did, worked with them. She was in high spirits. She was so gay that Munro suggested that she was beginning to enjoy the life.

‘It’s not so bad,’ she admitted. ‘I’m feeling happy today.’

She teased Neil. She seemed not to notice that he was silent and kept his eyes averted from her.

‘Neil’s very quiet,’ said Munro. ‘I suppose you’re feeling a bit weak still.’

‘No. I just don’t feel very talkative.’

He was harassed. He was convinced that Darya was capable of anything. He remembered the hysterical frenzy of Nastasya Filipovna in 
The Idiot, 
and felt that she too could behave with that unfortunate lack of balance. He had seen her more than once fly into a temper with one of the Chinese servants and he knew how completely she could lose her self-control. Resistance only exasperated her. If she did not immediately get what she wanted she would go almost insane with rage. Fortunately she lost interest in a thing with the same suddenness with which she hankered for it, and if you could distract her attention for a minute she forgot all about it. It was in such situations that Neil had most admired Munro’s tact. He had often been slyly amused to see with what a pawky and yet tender cunning he appeased her feminine tantrums. It was on Munro’s account that Neil’s indignation was so great. Munro was a saint, and from what a state of humiliation and penury and random shifts had he not taken her to make her his wife! She owed everything to him. His name protected her. She had respectability. The commonest gratitude should have made it impossible for her to harbour such thoughts as she had that morning expressed. It was all very well for men to make advances, that was what men did, but for women to do so was disgusting. His modesty was outraged. The passion he had seen in her face, and the indelicacy of her gestures, scandalized him.

He wondered whether she would really carry out her threat to come to his room. He didn’t think she would dare. But when night came and they all went to bed, he was so terrified that he could not sleep. He lay there listening anxiously. The silence was broken only by the repeated and monotonous cry of an owl. Through the thin wall of woven palm leaves he heard Munro’s steady breathing. Suddenly he was conscious that someone was stealthily creeping into his room. He had already made up his mind what to do.

‘Is that you, Mr Munro?’ he called in a loud voice.

Darya stopped suddenly. Munro awoke.

‘There’s someone in my room. I thought it was you.’

‘It’s all right,’ said Darya. ‘It’s only me, I couldn’t sleep, so I thought I’d go and smoke a cigarette on the veranda.’

‘Oh, is that all?’ said Munro. ‘Don’t catch cold.’

She walked through Neil’s room and out. He saw her light a cigarette. Presently she went back and he heard her get into bed.

He did not see her next morning, for he started out collecting before she was up, and he took care not to get in till he was pretty sure Munro would be back. He avoided being alone with her till it was dark and Munro went down for a few minutes to arrange the moth-traps.

‘Why did you wake Angus last night?’ she said in a low angry whisper. He shrugged his shoulders and going on with his work did not answer. ‘Were you frightened?’

‘I have a certain sense of decency.’

‘Oh, don’t be such a prig.’

‘I’d rather be a prig than a dirty swine.’

‘I hate you.’

‘Then leave me alone.’

She did not answer, but with her open hand smartly slapped his face. He flushed, but did not speak. Munro returned and they pretended to be intent on whatever they were doing.

For the next few days Darya, except at meal-times and in the evenings, never spoke to Neil. Without prearrangement they exerted themselves to conceal from Munro that their relations were strained. But the effort with which Darya roused herself from a brooding silence would have been obvious to anyone more suspicious than Angus, and sometimes she could not help herself from being a trifle sharp with Neil. She chaffed him, but in her chaff was a sting. She knew how to wound and caught him on the raw, but he took care not to let her see it. He had an inkling that the good-humour he affected infuriated her.

Then one day when Neil came back from collecting, though he had delayed till the last possible minute before tiffin, he was surprised to find that Munro had not yet returned. Darya was lying on a mattress on the veranda, sipping a gin pahit and smoking. She did not speak to him when he passed through to wash. In a minute the Chinese boy came into his room and told him that tiffin was ready. He walked out.

‘Where’s Mr Munro?’ he asked.

‘He’s not coming,’ said Darya. ‘He sent a message to say that the place he’s at is so good he won’t come down till night.’

Munro had set out that morning for the summit of the mountain. The lower levels had yielded poor results in the way of mammals, and Munro’s idea was, if he could find a good place higher up, with a supply of water, to transfer the camp. Neil and Darya ate their meal in silence. After they had finished he went into the house and came out again with his topee and his collecting gear. It was unusual for him to go out in the afternoon.

‘Where are you going?’ she asked abruptly.

‘Out’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t feel tired. I’ve got nothing much else to do this afternoon.’ Suddenly she burst into tears.

‘How can you be so unkind to me?’ she sobbed. ‘Oh, it is cruel to treat me like this.’

He looked down at her from his great height, his handsome, somewhat stolid face bearing a harassed look. ‘What have I done?’

‘You’ve been beastly to me. Bad as I am I haven’t deserved to suffer like this. I’ve done everything in the world for you. Tell me one single little thing I could do that I haven’t done gladly. I’m so terribly unhappy.’

He moved on his feet uneasily. It was horrible to hear her say that He loathed and feared her, but he had still the respect for her that he had always felt, not only because she was a woman, but because she was Angus Munro’s wife. She wept uncontrollably. Fortunately the Dyak hunters had gone that morning with Munro. There was no one about the camp but the three Chinese servants and they, after tiffin, were asleep in their own quarters fifty yards away. They were alone.

‘I don’t want to make you unhappy. It’s all so silly. It’s absurd of a woman like you to fall in love with a fellow like me. It makes me look such a fool. Haven’t you got any self-control?’

‘Oh, God. Self-control!’

‘I mean, if you really cared for me you couldn’t want me to be such a cad. Doesn’t it mean anything to you that your husband trusts us implicitly? The mere fact of his leaving us alone like this puts us on our honour. He’s a man who would never hurt a fly. I should never respect myself again if I betrayed his confidence.’

She looked up suddenly.

‘What makes you think he would never hurt a fly? Why, all those bottles and cases are full of the harmless animals he’s killed.’

‘In the interests of science. That’s quite another thing.’

‘Oh, you fool, you fool.’

‘Well, if I am a fool I can’t help it. Why do you bother about me?’ Do you think I wanted to fall in love with you?’

‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself.’

‘Ashamed? How stupid! My God, what have I done that I should eat my heart out for such a pretentious ass?’

‘You talk about what you’ve done for me. What has Munro done for you?’

‘Munro bores me to death. I’m sick of him. Sick to death of him.’

‘Then I’m not the first?’

Ever since her amazing avowal he had been tortured by the suspicion that what those men at Kuala Solor had said of her was true. He had refused to believe a word of it, and even now he could not bring himself to think that she could be such a monster of depravity. It was frightful to think that Angus Munro, so trusting and tender, should have lived in a fool’s paradise. She could not be as bad as that. But she misunderstood him. She smiled through her tears.

‘Of course not. How can you be so silly? Oh, darling, don’t be so desperately serious. I love you.’

Then it was true. He had sought to persuade himself that what she felt for him was exceptional, a madness that together they could contend with and vanquish. But she was simply promiscuous.

‘Aren’t you afraid Munro will find out?’

She was not crying any more. She adored talking about herself, and she had a feeling that she was inveigling Neil into a new interest in her.

‘I sometimes wonder if he doesn’t know, if not with his mind, then with his heart. He’s got the intuition of a woman and a woman’s sensitiveness. Sometimes I’ve been certain he suspected and in his anguish I’ve sensed a strange, spiritual exaltation. I’ve wondered if in his pain he didn’t find an infinitely subtle pleasure. There are souls, you know, that feel a voluptuous joy in laceration.’

‘How horrible!’ Neil had no patience with these conceits. ‘The only excuse for you is that you’re insane.’

She was now much more sure of herself She gave him a bold look.

‘Don’t you think I’m attractive? A good many men have. You must have had dozens of women in Scotland who weren’t so well made as I am.’ She looked down at her shapely, sensual figure with calm pride. ‘I’ve never had a woman,’ he said gravely.

‘Why not?’

She was so surprised that she sprang to her feet. He shrugged his shoulders. He could not bring himself to tell her how disgusting the idea of such a thing was to him, and how vile he had thought the haphazard amours of his fellow-students at Edinburgh. He took a mystical joy in his purity. Love was sacred. The sexual act horrified him. Its excuse was the procreation of children and its sanctification marriage. But Darya, her whole body rigid, stared at him, panting; and suddenly, with a sobbing cry in which there was exultation and at the same time wild desire, she flung herself on her knees and seizing his hand passionately kissed it.

Alyoshal she gasped. Alyosha.’

And then, crying and laughing, she crumpled up in a heap at his feet. Strange, hardly human sounds issued from her throat and convulsive tremors passed through her body so that you would have thought she was receiving one electric shock after another. Neil did not know if it was an attack of hysteria or an epileptic fit.

‘Stop it,’ he cried. ‘Stop it.’

He took her up in his strong arms and laid her in the chair. But when he tried to leave her she would not let him. She flung her arms round his neck and held him. She covered his face with kisses. He struggled. He turned his face away. He put his hand between her face and his to protect himself Suddenly she dug her teeth into it. The pain was so great that, without thinking, he gave her a great swinging blow.

‘You devil,’ he cried.

His violent gesture had forced her to release him. He held his hand and looked at it. She had caught him by the fleshy part on the side, and it was bleeding. Her eyes blazed. She was feeling alert and active.