No More Learning

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.

It was dreadful. He could not face her after that. He turned to hurry out of the Club, and
then dared not even pass the door of the card-room, lest she should see him. He went into
the lounge, wondering how to escape, and finally climbed over the veranda rail and
dropped on to the small square of lawn that ran down to the Irrawaddy. The sweat was
running from his forehead. He could have shouted with anger and distress. The accursed
luck of it! To be caught out over a thing like that. ‘Keeping a Bunnese woman’ — and it
was not even true! But much use it would ever be to deny it. Ah, what damned, evil
chance could have brought it to her ears?

But as a matter of fact, it was no chance. It had a perfectly sound cause, which was also
the cause of Mrs Lackersteen’s curious behaviour at the Club this evening. On the
previous night, just before the earthquake, Mrs Lackersteen had been reading the Civil
List. The Civil List (which tells you the exact income of every official in Burma) was a
source of inexhaustible interest to her. She was in the middle of adding up the pay and
allowances of a Conservator of Forests whom she had once met in Mandalay, when it
occurred to her to look up the name of Lieutenant Verrall, who, she had heard from Mr
Macregor, was arriving at Kyauktada tomorrow with a hundred Military Policemen.
When she found the name, she saw in front of it two words that startled her almost out of
her wits.

The words were ‘The Honourable’!

The HONOURABLE! Lieutenants the Honourable are rare anywhere, rare as diamonds
in the Indian Army, rare as dodos in Burma. And when you are the aunt of the only
marriageable young woman within fifty miles, and you hear that a lieutenant the
Honourable is arriving no later than tomorrow — well! With dismay Mrs Lackersteen
remembered that Elizabeth was out in the garden with Flory — that drunken wretch Flory,
whose pay was barely seven hundred rupees a month, and who, it was only too probable,
was already proposing to her! She hastened immediately to call Elizabeth inside, but at
this moment the earthquake intervened. However, on the way home there was an



opportunity to speak. Mrs Lackersteen laid her hand affectionately on Elizabeth’s arm
and said in the tenderest voice she had ever succeeded in producing:

‘Of course you know, Elizabeth dear, that Flory is keeping a Burmese woman? ’

For a moment this deadly charge actually failed to explode. Elizabeth was so new to the
ways of the country that the remark made no impression on her. It sounded hardly more
significant than ‘keeping a parrot’.

‘Keeping a Burmese woman? What for? ’

‘What FOR? My dear! what DOES a man keep a woman for? ’

And, of course, that was that.

For a long time Flory remained standing by the river bank. The moon was up, mirrored in
the water like a broad shield of electron. The coolness of the outer air had changed
Flory ’s mood. He had not even the heart to be angry any longer. For he had perceived,
with the deadly self-knowledge and self-loathing that come to one at such a time, that
what had happened served him perfectly right. For a moment it seemed to him that an
endless procession of Burmese women, a regiment of ghosts, were marching past him in
the moonlight. Heavens, what numbers of them! A thousand — no, but a full hundred at
the least. ‘Eyes right! ’ he thought despondently. Their heads turned towards him, but they
had no faces, only featureless discs. He remembered a blue longyi here, a pair of ruby
ear-rings there, but hardly a face or a name. The gods are just and of our pleasant vices
(pleasant, indeed! ) make instruments to plague us. He had dirtied himself beyond
redemption, and this was his just punishment.

He made his way slowly through the croton bushes and round the clubhouse. He was too
saddened to feel the full pain of the disaster yet. It would begin hurting, as all deep
wounds do, long afterwards. As he passed through the gate something stirred the leaves
behind him. He started. There was a whisper of harsh Burmese syllables.


‘Pike-san pay-like! Pike-san pay-like! ’



He turned sharply. The ‘pike-san pay-like’ (‘Give me the money’) was repeated. He saw
a woman standing under the shadow of the gold mohur tree. It was Ma Hla May. She
stepped out into the moonlight warily, with a hostile air, keeping her distance as though
afraid that he would strike her. Her face was coated with powder, sickly white in the
moon, and it looked as ugly as a skull, and defiant.

She had given him a shock. ‘What the devil are you doing here? ’ he said angrily in
English.

‘Pike-san pay-like! ’

‘What money? What do you mean? Why are you following me about like this? ’

‘Pike-san pay-like! ’ she repeated almost in a scream. ‘The money you promised me,
thakin. You said you would give me more money. I want it now, this instant! ’

‘How can I give it you now? You shall have it next month. I have given you a hundred
and fifty rupees already. ’

To his alarm she began shrieking ‘Pike-san pay-like! ’ and a number of similar phrases
almost at the top of her voice. She seemed on the verge of hysterics. The volume of noise
that she produced was startling.

‘Be quiet! They’ll hear you in the Club! ’ he exclaimed, and was instantly sorry for
putting the idea into her head.

‘Aha! NOW I know what will frighten you! Give me the money this instant, or I will
scream for help and bring them all out here. Quick, now, or I begin screaming! ’

‘You bitch! ’ he said, and took a step towards her. She sprang nimbly out of reach,
whipped off her slipper, and stood defying him.


‘Be quick! Fifty rupees now and the rest tomorrow. Out with it! Or I give a scream they
can hear as far as the bazaar! ’



Flory swore. This was not the time for such a scene. Finally he took out his pocket-book,
found twenty-five rupees in it, and threw them on to the ground. Ma Hla May pounced on
the notes and counted them.

‘I said fifty rupees, thakin! ’

‘How can I give it you if I haven’t got it? Do you think I carry hundreds of rupees about
with me? ’

‘I said fifty rupees! ’

‘Oh, get out of my way! ’ he said in English, and pushed past her.

But the wretched woman would not leave him alone. She began to follow him up the road
like a disobedient dog, screaming out ‘Pike-san pay-like! Pike-san pay-like! ’ as though
mere noise could bring the money into existence. He hurried, partly to draw her away
from the Club, partly in hopes of shaking her off, but she seemed ready to follow him as
far as the house if necessary. After a while he could not stand it any longer, and he turned
to drive her back.

‘Go away this instant! If you follow me any farther you shall never have another anna. ’
‘Pike-san pay-like! ’

‘You fool,’ he said, ‘what good is this doing? How can I give you the money when I have
not another pice on me? ’

‘That is a likely story! ’

He felt helplessly in his pockets. He was so wearied that he would have given her
anything to be rid of her.
His fingers encountered his cigarette-case, which was of gold.
He took it out.

‘Here, if I give you this will you go away? You can pawn it for thirty rupees. ’


Ma Hla May seemed to consider, then said sulkily, ‘Give it me. ’



He threw the cigarette-case on to the grass beside the road. She grabbed it and
immediately sprang back clutching it to her ingyi, as though afraid that he would take it
away again. He turned and made for the house, thanking God to be out of the sound of
her voice. The cigarette-case was the same one that she had stolen ten days ago.

At the gate he looked back. Ma Hla May was still standing at the bottom of the hill, a
greyish figurine in the moonlight. She must have watched him up the hill like a dog
watching a suspicious stranger out of sight. It was queer. The thought crossed his mind,
as it had a few days earlier when she sent him the blackmailing letter, that her behaviour
had been curious and unlike herself. She was showing a tenacity of which he would never
have thought her capable — almost, indeed, as though someone else were egging her on.


CHAPTER 18

After the row overnight Ellis was looking forward to a week of baiting Flory. He had
nicknamed him Nancy — short for nigger’s Nancy Boy, but the women did not know
that — and was already inventing wild scandals about him. Ellis always invented scandals
about anyone with whom he had quarrelled — scandals which grew, by repeated
embroideries, into a species of saga. Flory’s incautious remark that Dr Veraswami was a
‘damned good fellow’ had swelled before long into a whole Daily Worker-ful of
blasphemy and sedition.

‘On my honour, Mrs Lackersteen,’ said Ellis — Mrs Lackersteen had taken a sudden
dislike to Flory after discovering the great secret about Verrall, and she was quite ready
to listen to Ellis’s tales — ‘on my honour, if you’d been there last night and heard the
things that man Flory was saying — well, it’d have made you shiver in your shoes! ’

‘Really! You know, I always thought he had such CURIOUS ideas. What has he been
talking about now? Not SOCIALISM, I hope? ’


‘Worse. ’



There were long recitals. However, to Ellis’s disappointment, Flory had not stayed in
Kyauktada to be baited. He had gone back to camp the day after his dismissal by
Elizabeth. Elizabeth heard most of the scandalous tales about him. She understood his
character perfectly now. She understood why it was that he had so often bored her and
irritated her. He was a highbrow — her deadliest word — a highbrow, to be classed with
Lenin, A. J. Cook and the dirty little poets in the Montparnasse cafes. She could have
forgiven him even his Burmese mistress more easily than that. Flory wrote to her three
days later; a weak, stilted letter, which he sent by hand — his camp was a day’s march
from Kyauktada. Elizabeth did not answer.

It was lucky for Flory that at present he was too busy to have time to think. The whole
camp was at sixes and sevens since his long absence. Nearly thirty coolies were missing,
the sick elephant was worse than ever, and a vast pile of teak logs which should have
been sent off ten days earlier were still waiting because the engine would not work.
Flory, a fool about machinery, struggled with the bowels of the engine until he was black
with grease and Ko S’la told him sharply that white men ought not to do ‘coolie- work’.
The engine was finally persuaded to run, or at least to totter. The sick elephant was
discovered to be suffering from tapeworms. As for the coolies, they had deserted because
their supply of opium had been cut off — they would not stay in the jungle without opium,
which they took as a prophylactic against fever. U Po Kyin, willing to do Flory a bad
turn, had caused the Excise Officers to make a raid and seize the opium. Flory wrote to
Dr Veraswami, asking for his help. The doctor sent back a quantity of opium, illegally
procured, medicine for the elephant and a careful letter of instructions. A tapeworm
measuring twenty-one feet was extracted. Flory was busy twelve hours a day. In the
evening if there was no more to do he would plunge into the jungle and walk and walk
until the sweat stung his eyes and his knees were bleeding from the briers. The nights
were his bad time. The bitterness of what had happened was sinking into him, as it
usually does, by slow degrees.

Meanwhile, several days had passed and Elizabeth had not yet seen Verrall at less than a
hundred yards’ distance. It had been a great disappointment when he had not appeared at
the Club on the evening of his arrival. Mr Lackersteen was really quite angry when he
discovered that he had been hounded into his dinner-jacket for nothing. Next morning
Mrs Lackersteen made her husband send an officious note to the dakbungalow, inviting



Verrall to the Club; there was no answer, however. More days passed, and Verrall made
no move to join in the local society. He had even neglected his official calls, not even
bothering to present himself at Mr Macgregor’s office. The dakbungalow was at the other
end of the town, near the station, and he had made himself quite comfortable there. There
is a rule that one must vacate a dakbungalow after a stated number of days, but Verrall
peaceably ignored it. The Europeans only saw him at morning and evening on the
maidan. On the second day after his arrival fifty of his men turned out with sickles and
cleared a large patch of the maidan, after which Verrall was to be seen galloping to and
fro, practising polo strokes. He took not the smallest notice of any Europeans who passed
down the road. Westfield and Ellis were furious, and even Mr Macgregor said that
Verrall’ s behaviour was ‘ungracious’. They would all have fallen at the feet of a
lieutenant the Honourable if he had shown the smallest courtesy; as it was, everyone
except the two women detested him from the start. It is always so with titled people, they
are either adored or hated. If they accept one it is channing simplicity, if they ignore one
it is loathsome snobbishness; there are no half-measures.

Verrall was the youngest son of a peer, and not at all rich, but by the method of seldom
paying a bill until a writ was issued against him, he managed to keep himself in the only
things he seriously cared about: clothes and horses. He had come out to India in a British
cavalry regiment, and exchanged into the Indian Army because it was cheaper and left
him greater freedom for polo. After two years his debts were so enormous that he entered
the Burma Military Police, in which it was notoriously possible to save money; however,
he detested Burma — it is no country for a horseman — and he had already applied to go
back to his regiment. He was the kind of soldier who can get exchanges when he wants
them. Meanwhile, he was only to be in Kyauktada for a month, and he had no intention of
mixing himself up with all the petty sahiblog of the district. He knew the society of those
small Burma stations — a nasty, poodle-faking, horseless riffraff. He despised them.

They were not the only people whom Verrall despised, however. His various contempts
would take a long time to catalogue in detail. He despised the entire non-military
population of India, a few famous polo players excepted. He despised the entire Army as
well, except the cavalry. He despised all Indian regiments, infantry and cavalry alike. It
was true that he himself belonged to a native regiment, but that was only for his own
convenience. He took no interest in Indians, and his Urdu consisted mainly of swear-



words, with all the verbs in the third person singular. His Military Policemen he looked
on as no better than coolies. ‘Christ, what God-forsaken swine! ’ he was often heard to
mutter as he moved down the ranks inspecting, with the old subahdar carrying his sword
behind him. Verrall had even been in trouble once for his outspoken opinions on native
troops. It was at a review, and Verrall was among the group of officers standing behind
the general. An Indian infantry regiment approached for the march-past.

‘The Rifles,’ somebody said.

‘AND look at it,’ said Verrall in his surly boy’s voice.

The white-haired colonel of the Rifles was standing near. He flushed to the neck,

and reported Verrall to the general. Verrall was reprimanded, but the general, a British
Army officer himself, did not rub it in very hard. Somehow, nothing very serious ever did
happen to Verrall, however offensive he made himself. Up and down India, wherever he
was stationed, he left behind him a trail of insulted people, neglected duties and unpaid
bills. Yet the disgraces that ought to have fallen on him never did. He bore a channed
life, and it was not only the handle to his name that saved him. There was something in
his eye before which duns, hurra memsahibs and even colonels quailed.

It was a disconcerting eye, pale blue and a little protuberant, but exceedingly clear. It
looked you over, weighed you in the balance and found you wanting, in a single cold
scrutiny of perhaps five seconds. If you were the right kind of man — that is, if you were a
cavalry officer and a polo player — Verrall took you for granted and even treated you with
a surly respect; if you were any other type of man whatever, he despised you so utterly
that he could not have hidden it even if he would. It did not even make any difference
whether you were rich or poor, for in the social sense he was not more than normally a
snob. Of course, like all sons of rich families, he thought poverty disgusting and that poor
people are poor because they prefer disgusting habits. But he despised soft living.
Spending, or rather owing, fabulous sums on clothes, he yet lived almost as ascetically as
a monk. He exercised himself ceaselessly and brutally, rationed his drink and his
cigarettes, slept on a camp bed (in silk pyjamas) and bathed in cold water in the bitterest
winter. Horsemanship and physical fitness were the only gods he knew. The stamp of
hoofs on the maidan, the strong, poised feeling of his body, wedded centaurlike to the



saddle, the polo-stick springy in his hand — these were his religion, the breath of his life.
The Europeans in Burma — boozing, womanizing, yellow-faced loafers — made him
physically sick when he thought of their habits. As for social duties of all descriptions, he
called them poodle-faking and ignored them. Women he abhorred. In his view they were
a kind of siren whose one aim was to lure men away from polo and enmesh them in tea-
fights and tennis-parties. He was not, however, quite proof against women. He was
young, and women of nearly all kinds threw themselves at his head; now and again he
succumbed. But his lapses soon disgusted him, and he was too callous when the pinch
came to have any difficulty about escaping. He had had perhaps a dozen such escapes
during his two years in India.

A whole week went by. Elizabeth had not even succeeded in making Verrall’s
acquaintance. It was so tantalizing! Every day, morning and evening, she and her aunt
walked down to the Club and back again, past the maidan; and there was Verrall, hitting
the polo-balls the sepoys threw for him, ignoring the two women utterly. So near and yet
so far! What made it even worse was that neither woman would have considered it decent
to speak of the matter directly. One evening the polo-ball, struck too hard, came swishing
through the grass and rolled across the road in front of them. Elizabeth and her aunt
stopped involuntarily. But it was only a sepoy who ran to fetch the ball. Verrall had seen
the women and kept his distance.

Next morning Mrs Lackersteen paused as they came out of the gate. She had given up
riding in her rickshaw lately. At the bottom of the maidan the Military Policemen were
drawn up, a dust-coloured rank with bayonets glittering. Verrall was facing them, but not
in uniform — he seldom put on his unifonn for morning parade, not thinking it necessary
with mere Military Policemen. The two women were looking at everything except
Verrall, and at the same time, in some manner, were contriving to look at him.

‘The wretched thing is,’ said Mrs Lackersteen — this was a propos de bottes, but the
subject needed no introduction — ‘the wretched thing is that I’m afraid your uncle simply
MUST go back to camp before long. ’

‘Must he really? ’


‘I’m afraid so. It is so HATEFUL in camp at this time of year! Oh, those mosquitoes! ’



‘Couldn’t he stay a bit longer? A week, perhaps? ’


‘I don’t see how he can. He’s been nearly a month in headquarters now. The firm would
be furious if they heard of it. And of course both of us will have to go with him. SUCH a
bore! The mosquitoes — simply terrible! ’

Terrible indeed! To have to go away before Elizabeth had so much as said how-do-you-
do to Verrall! But they would certainly have to go if Mr Lackersteen went. It would never
do to leave him to himself. Satan finds some mischief still, even in the jungle. A ripple
like fire ran down the line of sepoys; they were unfixing bayonets before marching away.
The dusty rank turned left, saluted, and marched off in columns of fours. The orderlies
were coming from the police lines with the ponies and polo-sticks. Mrs Lackersteen took
a heroic decision.

‘I think,’ she said, ‘we’ll take a short-cut across the maidan. It’s SO much quicker than
going right round by the road. ’

It WAS quicker by about fifty yards, but no one ever went that way on foot, because of
the grass-seeds that got into one’s stockings. Mrs Lackersteen plunged boldly into the
grass, and then, dropping even the pretence of making for the Club, took a bee-line for
Verrall, Elizabeth following. Either woman would have died on the rack rather than
admit that she was doing anything but take a short-cut. Verrall saw them coming, swore,
and reined in his pony. He could not very well cut them dead now that they were coming
openly to accost him. The damned cheek of these women! He rode slowly towards them
with a sulky expression on his face, chivvying the polo-ball with small strokes.

‘Good morning, Mr Verrall! ’ Mrs Lackersteen called out in a voice of saccharine, twenty
yards away.

‘Morning! ’ he returned surlily, having seen her face and set her down as one of the usual
scraggy old boiling-fowls of an Indian station.

The next moment Elizabeth came level with her aunt. She had taken off her spectacles
and was swinging her Terai hat on her hand. What did she care for sunstroke? She was
perfectly aware of the prettiness of her cropped hair. A puff of wind — oh, those blessed



breaths of wind, coming from nowhere in the stifling hot- weather days! — had caught her
cotton frock and blown it against her, showing the outline of her body, slender and strong
like a tree. Her sudden appearance beside the older, sun-scorched woman was a
revelation to Verrall. He started so that the Arab mare felt it and would have reared on
her hind legs, and he had to tighten the rein. He had not known until this moment, not
having bothered to inquire, that there were any YOUNG women in Kyauktada.

‘My niece,’ Mrs Lackersteen said.

He did not answer, but he had thrown away the polo-stick, and he took off his topi. For a
moment he and Elizabeth remained gazing at one another. Their fresh faces were
unmarred in the pitiless light. The grass-seeds were tickling Elizabeth’s shins so that it
was agony, and without her spectacles she could only see Verrall and his horse as a
whitish blur. But she was happy, happy! Her heart bounded and the blood flowed into her
face, dyeing it like a thin wash of aquarelle. The thought, ‘A peach, by Christ! ’ moved
almost fiercely through VerraU’s mind. The sullen Indians, holding the ponies’ heads,
gazed curiously at the scene, as though the beauty of the two young people had made its
impression even on them.

Mrs Lackersteen broke the silence, which had lasted half a minute.

‘You know, Mr Verrall,’ she said somewhat archly, ‘we think it RATHER unkind of you
to have neglected us poor people all this time. When we’re so PINING for a new face at
the Club. ’

He was still looking at Elizabeth when he answered, but the change in his voice was
remarkable.

‘I’ve been meaning to come for some days. Been so fearfully busy — getting my men into
their quarters and all that. I’m sorry,’ he added — he was not in the habit of apologizing,
but really, he had decided, this girl was rather an exceptional bit of stuff — ‘I’m sorry
about not answering your note. ’



‘Oh, not at all! We QUITE understood. But we do hope we shall see you at the Club this
evening! Because, you know,’ she concluded even more archly, ‘if you disappoint us any
longer, we shall begin to think you rather a NAUGHTY young man! ’

‘I’m sorry,’ he repeated. ‘I’ll be there this evening. ’

There was not much more to be said, and the two women walked on to the Club. But they
stayed barely five minutes. The grass-seeds were causing their shins such torment that
they were obliged to hurry home and change their stockings at once.

Verrall kept his promise and was at the Club that evening.