The Favorite Short Stories of W. Somerset Maugham (24 page)

“Is he a wine merchant?”

“Not exactly,” smiled Mr. Warburton. “I was speaking of Lord Hollington of Castle Reagh. He’s one of the richest peers in England. A very old friend of mine. I was at Eton with his brother.”

This was an opportunity that Mr. Warburton could never resist and he told a little anecdote of which the only point seemed to be that he knew an earl. The port was certainly very good; he drank a glass and then a second. He lost all caution. He had not talked to a white man for months. He began to tell stories. He showed himself in the company of the great. Hearing him you would have thought that at one time ministries were formed and policies decided on his suggestion whispered into the ear of a duchess or thrown over the dinner-table to be gratefully acted on by the confidential adviser of the sovereign. The old days at Ascot, Goodwood and Cowes lived again for him. Another glass of port. There were the great house-parties in Yorkshire and in Scotland to which he went every year.

“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 daresay I shouldn’t be here to-day.”

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 every one 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 1914 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 bom 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 any one 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 verandah. 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 judgment 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 any one 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 newsagent had instructions to write on the outside of the wrapper the date of each paper he despatched and when the great bundle arrived Mr. Warburton looked at these dates and with his blue pencil numbered them. His head-boy’s orders were to place one on the table every morning in the verandah 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 to-night and tell them that I expect them to be back in Tuan Cooper’s house at dawn to-morrow.” “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.”