Collected Short Stories Volume 4 by W. Somerset Maugham

  'I had a man called Foreman then, the best valet I ever had, and why do you think he gave me notice? You know in the Housekeeper's Room the ladies' maids and the gentlemen's gentlemen sit according to the precedence of their masters. He told me he was sick of going to party after party at which I was the only commoner. It meant that he always had to sit at the bottom of the table, and all the best bits were taken before a dish reached him. I told the story to the old Duke of Hereford, and he roared. "By God, sir," he said, "if I were King of England, I'd make you a viscount just to give your man a chance." "Take him yourself, Duke," I said. "He's the best valet I've ever had." "Well, Warburton," he said, "if he's good enough for you he's good enough for me. Send him along."'

  Then there was Monte Carlo, where Mr Warburton and the Grand Duke Fyodor, playing in partnership, had broken the bank one evening; and there was Marienbad. At Marienbad Mr Warburton had played baccarat with Edward VII.

  'He was only Prince of Wales then, of course. I remember him saying to me, "George, if you draw on a five you'll lose your shirt." He was right; I don't think he ever said a truer word in his life. He was a wonderful man. I always said he was the greatest diplomatist in Europe. But I was a young fool in those days, I hadn't the sense to take his advice. If I had, if I'd never drawn on a five, I dare say I shouldn't be here today.'

  Cooper was watching him. His brown eyes, deep in their sockets, were hard and supercilious, and on his lips was a mocking smile. He had heard a good deal about Mr Warburton in Kuala Solor, not a bad sort, and he ran his district like clockwork, they said, but by heaven, what a snob! They laughed at him good-naturedly, for it was impossible to dislike a man who was so generous and so kindly, and Cooper had already heard the story of the Prince of Wales and the game of baccarat. But Cooper listened without indulgence. From the beginning he had resented the Resident's manner. He was very sensitive, and he writhed under Mr Warburton's polite sarcasms. Mr Warburton had a knack of receiving a remark of which he disapproved with a devastating silence. Cooper had lived little in England and he had a peculiar dislike of the English. He resented especially the public-school boy since he always feared that he was going to patronize him. He was so much afraid of others putting on airs with him that, in order as it were to get in first, he put on such airs as to make everyone think him insufferably conceited.

  'Well, at all events the war has done one good thing for us,' he said at last. 'It's smashed up the power of the aristocracy. The Boer War started it, and I914 put the lid on.'

  'The great families of England are doomed,' said Mr Warburton with the complacent melancholy of an émigré who remembered the court of Louis XV. 'They cannot afford any longer to live in their splendid palaces and their princely hospitality will soon be nothing but a memory.'

  'And a damned good job too in my opinion.'

  'My poor Cooper, what can you know of the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome?'

  Mr Warburton made an ample gesture. His eyes for an instant grew dreamy with a vision of the past.

  'Well, believe me, we're fed up with all that rot. What we want is a business government by business men. I was born in a Crown Colony, and I've lived practically all my life in the colonies. I don't give a row of pins for a lord. What's wrong with England is snobbishness. And if there's anything that gets my goat it's a snob.'

  A snob! Mr Warburton's face grew purple and his eyes blazed with anger. That was a word that had pursued him all his life. The great ladies whose society he had enjoyed in his youth were not inclined to look upon his appreciation of themselves as unworthy, but even great ladies are sometimes out of temper and more than once Mr Warburton had had the dreadful word flung in his teeth. He knew, he could not help knowing, that there were odious people who called him a snob. How unfair it was! Why, there was no vice he found so detestable as snobbishness. After all, he liked to mix with people of his own class, he was only at home in their company, and how in heaven's name could anyone say that was snobbish? Birds of a feather.

  'I quite agree with you,' he answered. 'A snob is a man who admires or despises another because he is of a higher social rank than his own. It is the most vulgar failing of our English middle-class.'

  He saw a flicker of amusement in Cooper's eyes. Cooper put up his hand to hide the broad smile that rose to his lips, and so made it more noticeable. Mr Warburton's hands trembled a little.

  Probably Cooper never knew how greatly he had offended his chief. A sensitive man himself he was strangely insensitive to the feelings of others.

  Their work forced them to see one another for a few minutes now and then during the day, and they met at six to have a drink on Mr Warburton's veranda. This was an old-established custom of the country which Mr Warburton would not for the world have broken. But they ate their meals separately, Cooper in his bungalow and Mr Warburton at the Fort. After the office work was over they walked till dusk fell, but they walked apart. There were but few paths in this country where the jungle pressed close upon the plantations of the village, and when Mr Warburton caught sight of his assistant passing along with his loose stride, he would make a circuit in order to avoid him. Cooper, with his bad manners, his conceit in his own judgement, and his intolerance, had already got on his nerves; but it was not till Cooper had been on the station for a couple of months that an incident happened which turned the Resident's dislike into bitter hatred.

  Mr Warburton was obliged to go up-country on a tour of inspection, and he left the station in Cooper's charge with more confidence, since he had definitely come to the conclusion that he was a capable fellow. The only thing he did not like was that he had no indulgence. He was honest, just, and painstaking, but he had no sympathy for the natives. It bitterly amused Mr Warburton to observe that this man who looked upon himself as every man's equal should look upon so many men as his own inferiors. He was hard, he had no patience with the native mind, and he was a bully. Mr Warburton very quickly realized that the Malays disliked and feared him. He was not altogether displeased. He would not have liked it very much if his assistant had enjoyed a popularity which might rival his own. Mr Warburton made his elaborate preparations, set out on his expedition, and in three weeks returned. Meanwhile the mail had arrived. The first thing that struck his eyes when he entered his sitting-room was a great pile of open newspapers. Cooper had met him, and they went into the room together. Mr Warburton turned to one of the servants who had been left behind, and sternly asked him what was the meaning of those open papers. Cooper hastened to explain.

  'I wanted to read all about the Wolverhampton murder, and so I borrowed your Times. I brought them back again. I knew you wouldn't mind.'

  Mr Warburton turned on him, white with anger.

  'But I do mind. I mind very much.'

  'I'm sorry,' said Cooper, with composure. 'The fact is, I simply couldn't wait till you came back.'

  'I wonder you didn't open my letters as well.'

  Cooper, unmoved, smiled at his chief's exasperation.

  'Oh, that's not quite the same thing. After all, I couldn't imagine you'd mind my looking at your newspapers. There's nothing private in them.'

  'I very much object to anyone reading my paper before me.' He went up to the pile. There were nearly thirty numbers there. 'I think it extremely impertinent of you. They're all mixed up.'

  'We can easily put them in order,' said Cooper, joining him at the table.

  'Don't touch them,' cried Mr Warburton.

  'I say, it's childish to make a scene about a little thing like that.'

  'How dare you speak to me like that?'

  'Oh, go to hell,' said Cooper, and he flung out of the room.

  Mr Warburton, trembling with passion, was left contemplating his papers. His greatest pleasure in life had been destroyed by those callous, brutal hands. Most people living in out-of-the-way places when the mail comes tear open impatiently their papers and taking the last ones first glance at the latest news from home. Not so Mr Warburton. His ne
wsagent had instructions to write on the outside of the wrapper the date of each paper he dispatched, and when the great bundle arrived Mr Warburton looked at these dates and with his blue pencil numbered them. His headboy's orders were to place one on the table every morning in the veranda with the early cup of tea and it was Mr Warburton's especial delight to break the wrapper as he sipped his tea, and read the morning paper. It gave him the illusion of living at home. Every Monday morning he read the Monday Times of six weeks back, and so went through the week. On Sunday he read the Observer. Like his habit of dressing for dinner it was a tie to civilization. And it was his pride that no matter how exciting the news was he had never yielded to the temptation of opening a paper before its allotted time. During the war the suspense sometimes had been intolerable, and when he read one day that a push was begun he had undergone agonies of suspense which he might have saved himself by the simple expedient of opening a later paper which lay waiting for him on a shelf. It had been the severest trial to which he had ever exposed himself, but he victoriously surmounted it. And that clumsy fool had broken open those neat tight packages because he wanted to know whether some horrid woman had murdered her odious husband.

  Mr Warburton sent for his boy and told him to bring wrappers. He folded up the papers as neatly as he could, placed a wrapper round each and numbered it. But it was a melancholy task.

  'I shall never forgive him/ he said. 'Never.'

  Of course his boy had been with him on his expedition; he never travelled without him, for his boy knew exactly how he liked things, and Mr Warburton was not the kind of jungle traveller who was prepared to dispense with his comforts; but in the interval since their arrival he had been gossiping in the servants' quarters. He had learnt that Cooper had had trouble with his boys. All but the youth Abas had left him. Abas had desired to go too, but his uncle had placed him there on the instructions of the Resident, and he was afraid to leave without his uncle's permission.

  'I told him he had done well, Tuan,' said the boy. 'But he is unhappy. He says it is not a good house, and he wishes to know if he may go as the others have gone.'

  'No, he must stay. The Tuan must have servants. Have those who went been replaced?'

  'No, Tuan, no one will go.'

  Mr Warburton frowned. Cooper was an insolent fool, but he had an official position and must be suitably provided with servants. It was not seemly that his house should be improperly conducted.

  'Where are the boys who ran away?'

  'They are in the kampong, Tuan.'

  'Go and see them tonight, and tell them that I expect them to be back in Tuan Cooper's house at dawn tomorrow.'

  'They say they will not go, Tuan.'

  'On my order?'

  The boy had been with Mr Warburton for fifteen years, and he knew every intonation of his master's voice. He was not afraid of him, they had gone through too much together, once in the jungle the Resident had saved his life, and once, upset in some rapids, but for him the Resident would have been drowned; but he knew when the Resident must be obeyed without question.

  'I will go to the kampong,' he said.

  Mr Warburton expected that his subordinate would take the first opportunity to apologize for his rudeness, but Cooper had the ill-bred man's inability to express regret; and when they met next morning in the office he ignored the incident. Since Mr Warburton had been away for three weeks it was necessary for them to have a somewhat prolonged interview. At the end of it, Mr Warburton dismissed him.

  'I don't think there's anything else, thank you.' Cooper turned to go, but Mr Warburton stopped him. 'I understand you've been having some trouble with your boys.'

  Cooper gave a harsh laugh.

  'They tried to blackmail me. They had the damned cheek to run away, all except that incompetent fellow Abas – he knew when he was well off – but I just sat tight. They've all come to heel again.'

  'What do you mean by that?'

  'This morning they were all back on their jobs, the Chinese cook and all. There they were, as cool as cucumbers; you would have thought they owned the place. I suppose they'd come to the conclusion that I wasn't such a fool as I looked.'

  'By no means. They came back on my express order.'

  Cooper flushed slightly.

  'I should be obliged if you wouldn't interfere with my private concerns.'

  'They're not your private concerns. When your servants run away it makes you ridiculous. You are perfectly free to make a fool of yourself, but I cannot allow you to be made a fool of. It is unseemly that your house should not be properly staffed. As soon as I heard that your boys had left you, I had them told to be back in their places at dawn. That'll do.'

  Mr Warburton nodded to signify that the interview was at an end. Cooper took no notice.

  'Shall I tell you what I did? I called them and gave the whole bally lot the sack. I gave them ten minutes to get out of the compound.'

  Mr Warburton shrugged his shoulders.

  'What makes you think you can get others?'

  'I've told my own clerk to see about it.'

  Mr Warburton reflected for a moment.

  'I think you behaved very foolishly. You will do well to remember in future that good masters make good servants.'

  'Is there anything else you want to teach me?'

  'I should like to teach you manners, but it would be an arduous task, and I have not the time to waste. I will see that you get boys.'

  'Please don't put yourself to any trouble on my account. I'm quite capable of getting them for myself.'

  Mr Warburton smiled acidly. He had an inkling that Cooper disliked him as much as he disliked Cooper, and he knew that nothing is more galling than to be forced to accept the favours of a man you detest.

  'Allow me to tell you that you have no more chance of getting Malay or Chinese servants here now than you have of getting an English butler or a French chef. No one will come to you except on an order from me. Would you like me to give it?'

  'No.'

  'As you please. Good morning.'

  Mr Warburton watched the development of the situation with acrid humour. Cooper's clerk was unable to persuade Malay, Dyak, or Chinese to enter the house of such a master. Abas, the boy who remained faithful to him, knew how to cook only native food, and Cooper, a coarse feeder, found his gorge rise against the everlasting rice. There was no water-carrier, and in that great heat he needed several baths a day. He cursed Abas, but Abas opposed him with sullen resistance and would not do more than he chose. It was galling to know that the lad stayed with him only because the Resident insisted. This went on for a fortnight and then, one morning, he found in his house the very servants whom he had previously dismissed. He fell into a violent rage, but he had learnt a little sense, and this time, without a word, he let them stay. He swallowed his humiliation, but the impatient contempt he had felt for Mr Warburton's idiosyncrasies changed into a sullen hatred: the Resident with this malicious stroke had made him the laughing-stock of all the natives.

  The two men now held no communication with one another. They broke the time-honoured custom of sharing, notwithstanding personal dislike, a drink at six o'clock with any white man who happened to be at the station. Each lived in his own house as though the other did not exist. Now that Cooper had fallen into the work, it was necessary for them to have little to do with one another in the office. Mr Warburton used his orderly to send any message he had to give his assistant, and his instructions he sent by formal letter. They saw one another constantly, that was inevitable, but did not exchange half a dozen words in a week. The fact that they could not avoid catching sight of one another got on their nerves. They brooded over their antagonism, and Mr Warburton, taking his daily walk, could think of nothing but how much he detested his assistant.

  And the dreadful thing was that in all probability they would remain thus, facing each other in deadly enmity, till Mr Warburton went on leave. It might be three years. He had no reason to send in a complaint to headquart
ers: Cooper did his work very well, and at that time men were hard to get. True, vague complaints reached him and hints that the natives found Cooper harsh. There was certainly a feeling of dissatisfaction among them. But when Mr Warburton looked into specific cases, all he could say was that Cooper had shown severity where mildness would not have been misplaced, and had been unfeeling when he himself would have been sympathetic. He had done nothing for which he could be taken to task. But Mr Warburton watched him. Hatred will often make a man clear-sighted, and he had a suspicion that Cooper was using the natives without consideration, yet keeping within the law, because he felt that thus he could exasperate his chief. One day perhaps he would go too far. None knew better than Mr Warburton how irritable the incessant heat could make a man and how difficult it was to keep one's self-control after a sleepless night. He smiled softly to himself. Sooner or later Cooper would deliver himself into his hand.

  When at last the opportunity came, Mr Warburton laughed aloud. Cooper had charge of the prisoners; they made roads, built sheds, rowed when it was necessary to send the prahu up or down stream, kept the town clean, and otherwise usefully employed themselves. If well-behaved they even on occasion served as house-boys. Cooper kept them hard at it. He liked to see them work. He took pleasure in devising tasks for them; and seeing quickly enough that they were being made to do useless things the prisoners worked badly. He punished them by lengthening their hours. This was contrary to the regulations, and as soon as it was brought to the attention of Mr Warburton, without referring the matter back to his subordinate, he gave instructions that the old hours should be kept; Cooper, going out for his walk, was astounded to see the prisoners strolling back to the gaol; he had given instructions that they were not to knock off till dusk. When he asked the warder in charge why they had left off work he was told that it was the Resident's bidding.