No More Learning

Maxwell had been
almost a nonentity — just a ‘good fellow’ like any other of the ten thousand ex colore
good fellows of Burma — and with no close friends. No one among the Europeans
genuinely mourned for him. But that is not to say that they were not angry. On the
contrary, for the moment they were almost mad with rage. For the unforgivable had
happened — A WHITE MAN had been killed. When that happens, a sort of shudder runs
through the English of the East. Eight hundred people, possibly, are murdered every year
in Burma; they matter nothing; but the murder of A WHITE MAN is a monstrosity, a
sacrilege. Poor Maxwell would be avenged, that was certain. But only a servant or two,
and the Forest Ranger who had brought in his body and who had been fond of him, shed
any tears for his death.

On the other hand, no one was actually pleased, except U Po Kyin.

‘This is a positive gift from heaven! ’ he told Ma Kin. ‘I could not have arranged it better
myself. The one thing I needed to make them take my rebellion seriously was a little
bloodshed. And here it is! I tell you, Ma Kin, every day I grow more certain that some
higher power is working on my behalf. ’

‘Ko Po Kyin, truly you are without shame! I do not know how you dare to say such
things. Do you not shudder to have murder upon your soul? ’

‘What! I? Murder upon my soul? What are you talking about? I have never killed so
much as a chicken in my life. ’

‘But you are profiting by this poor boy’s death. ’

‘Profiting by it! Of course I am profiting by it! And why not, indeed? Am I to blame if
somebody else choose to commit murder? The fisherman catches fish, and he is damned
for it. But are we damned for eating the fish? Certainly not. Why NOT eat the fish, once
it is dead? You should study the Scriptures more carefully, my dear Kin Kin. ’



The funeral took place next morning, before breakfast. All the Europeans were present,
except Verrall, who was careering about the maidan quite as usual, almost opposite the
cemetery. Mr Macgregor read the burial service. The little group of Englishmen stood
round the grave, their topis in their hands, sweating into the dark suits that they had dug
out from the bottom of their boxes. The harsh morning light beat without mercy upon
their faces, yellower than ever against the ugly, shabby clothes. Every face except
Elizabeth’s looked lined and old. Dr Veraswami and half a dozen other Orientals were
present, but they kept themselves decently in the background. There were sixteen
gravestones in the little cemetery; assistants of timber firms, officials, soldiers killed in
forgotten skirmishes.

‘Sacred to the memory of John Henry Spagnall, late of the Indian Imperial Police, who
was cut down by cholera while in the unremitting exercise of etc. , etc. , etc.

Flory remembered Spagnall dimly. He had died very suddenly in camp after his second
go of delirium tremens. In a corner there were some graves of Eurasians, with wooden
crosses. The creeping jasmine, with tiny orange-hearted flowers, had overgrown
everything. Among the jasmine, large rat-holes led down into the graves.

Mr Macgregor concluded the burial service in a ripe, reverent voice, and led the way out
of the cemetery, holding his grey topi — the Eastern equivalent of a top hat — against his
stomach. Flory lingered by the gate, hoping that Elizabeth would speak to him, but she
passed him without a glance. Everyone had shunned him this morning. He was in
disgrace; the murder had made his disloyalty of last night seem somehow horrible. Ellis
had caught Westfield by the arm, and they halted at the grave-side, taking out their
cigarette-cases. Flory could hear their slangy voices coming across the open grave.

‘My God, Westfield, my God, when I think of that poor little b — lying down there — oh,
my God, how my blood does boil! I couldn’t sleep all night, I was so furious. ’

‘Pretty bloody, I grant. Never mind, promise you a couple of chaps shall swing for it.
Two corpses against their one — best we can do. ’

‘Two! It ought to be fifty! We’ve got to raise heaven and hell to get these fellows hanged.
Have you got their names yet? ’



‘Yes, rather! ! Whole blooming district knows who did it. We always do know who’s
done it in these cases. Getting the bloody villagers to talk — that’s the only trouble. ’

‘Well, for God’s sake get them to talk this time. Never mind the bloody law. Whack it out
of them. Torture them — anything. If you want to bribe any witnesses, I’m good for a
couple of hundred chips. ’

Westfield sighed. ‘Can’t do that sort of thing, I’m afraid. Wish we could. My chaps’d
know how to put the screw on a witness if you gave ‘em the word. Tie ‘em down on an
ant-hill. Red peppers. But that won’t do nowadays. Got to keep our own bloody silly
laws. But never mind, those fellows’ll swing all right. We’ve got all the evidence we
want. ’

‘Good! And when you’ve arrested them, if you aren’t sure of getting a conviction, shoot
them, jolly well shoot them! Fake up an escape or something. Anything sooner than let
those b — s go free. ’

‘They won’t go free, don’t you fear. We’ll get ‘em. Get SOMEBODY, anyhow. Much
better hang wrong fellow than no fellow,’ he added, unconsciously quoting.

‘That’s the stuff! I’ll never sleep easy again till I’ve seen them swinging,’ said Ellis as
they moved away from the grave. ‘Christ! Let’s get out of this sun! I’m about perishing
with thirst. ’

Everyone was perishing, more or less, but it seemed hardly decent to go down to the Club
for drinks immediately after the funeral. The Europeans scattered for their houses, while
four sweepers with mamooties flung the grey, cement-like earth back into the grave, and
shaped it into a rough mound.

After breakfast, Ellis was walking down to his office, cane in hand. It was blinding hot.
Ellis had bathed and changed back into shirt and shorts, but wearing a thick suit even for
an hour had brought on his prickly heat abominably. Westfield had gone out already, in
his motor launch, with an inspector and half a dozen men, to arrest the murderers. He had
ordered Verrall to accompany him — not that Verrall was needed, but, as Westfield said, it
would do the young swab good to have a spot of work.



Ellis wriggled his shoulders — his prickly heat was almost beyond bearing. The rage was
stewing in his body like a bitter juice. He had brooded all night over what had happened.
They had killed a white man, killed A WHITE MAN, the bloody sods, the sneaking,
cowardly hounds! Oh, the swine, the swine, how they ought to be made to suffer for it!
Why did we make these cursed kid-glove laws? Why did we take everything lying down?
Just suppose this had happened in a German colony, before the War! The good old
Germans! They knew how to treat the niggers. Reprisals! Rhinoceros hide whips! Raid
their villages, kill their cattle, burn their crops, decimate them, blow them from the guns.

Ellis gazed into the horrible cascades of light that poured through the gaps in the trees.
His greenish eyes were large and mournful. A mild, middle-aged Burman came by,
balancing a huge bamboo, which he shifted from one shoulder to the other with a grunt as
he passed Ellis. Ellis’s grip tightened on his stick. If that swine, now, would only attack
you! Or even insult you — anything, so that you had the right to smash him! If only these
gutless curs would ever show fight in any conceivable way! Instead of just sneaking past
you, keeping within the law so that you never had a chance to get back at them. Ah, for a
real rebellion — martial law proclaimed and no quarter given! Lovely, sanguinary images
moved through his mind. Shrieking mounds of natives, soldiers slaughtering them. Shoot
them, ride them down, horses’ hooves trample their guts out, whips cut their faces in
slices!

Five High School boys came down the road abreast. Ellis saw them coming, a row of
yellow, malicious faces — epicene faces, horribly smooth and young, grinning at him with
deliberate insolence. It was in their minds to bait him, as a white man. Probably they had
heard of the murder, and — being Nationalists, like all schoolboys — regarded it as a
victory. They grinned full in Ellis’s face as they passed him. They were trying openly to
provoke him, and they knew that the law was on their side. Ellis felt his breast swell. The
look of their faces, jeering at him like a row of yellow images, was maddening. He
stopped short.

‘Here! What are you laughing at, you young ticks? ’

The boys turned.


‘I said what the bloody hell are you laughing at? ’



One of the boys answered, insolently — but perhaps his bad English made him seem more
insolent than he intended.


‘Not your business. ’

There was about a second during which Ellis did not know what he was doing. In that
second he had hit out with all his strength, and the cane landed, crack! right across the
boy’s eyes. The boy recoiled with a shriek, and in the same instant the other four had
thrown themselves upon Ellis. But he was too strong for them. He flung them aside and
sprang back, lashing out with his stick so furiously that none of them dared come near.

‘Keep your distance, you — s! Keep off, or by God I’ll smash another of you! ’ Though
they were four to one he was so formidable that they surged back in fright. The boy who
was hurt had fallen on his knees with his arms across his face, and was screaming ‘I am
blinded! I am blinded! ’ Suddenly the other four turned and darted for a pile of laterite,
used for road-mending, which was twenty yards away. One of Ellis’s clerks had appeared
on the veranda of the office and was leaping up and down in agitation.

‘Come up, sir come up at once. They will murder you! ’

Ellis disdained to run, but he moved for the veranda steps. A lump of laterite came sailing
through the air and shattered itself against a pillar, whereat the clerk scooted indoors. But
Ellis turned on the veranda to face the boys, who were below, each carrying an armful of
laterite. He was cackling with delight.

‘You damned, dirty little niggers! ’ he shouted down at them. ‘You got a surprise that
time, didn’t you? Come up on this veranda and fight me, all four of you! You daren’t.
Four to one and you daren’t face me! Do you call yourselves men? You sneaking, mangy
little rats! ’

He broke into Burmese, calling them the incestuous children of pigs. All the while they
were pelting him with lumps of laterite, but their anns were feeble and they threw
ineptly. He dodged the stones, and as each one missed him he cackled in triumph.
Presently there was a sound of shouts up the road, for the noise had been heard at the



police station, and some constables were emerging to see what was the matter. The boys
took fright and bolted, leaving Ellis a complete victor.

Ellis had heartily enjoyed the affray, but he was furiously angry as soon as it was over.
He wrote a violent note to Mr Macgregor, telling him that he had been wantonly
assaulted and demanding vengeance. Two clerks who had witnessed the scene, and a
chaprassi, were sent along to Mr Macgregor’ s office to corroborate the story. They lied in
perfect unison. ‘The boys had attacked Mr Ellis without any provocation whatever, he
had defended himself,’ etc. , etc. Ellis, to do him justice, probably believed this to be a
truthful version of the story. Mr Macgregor was somewhat disturbed, and ordered the
police to find the four schoolboys and interrogate them. The boys, however, had been
expecting something of the kind, and were lying very low; the police searched the bazaar
all day without finding them. In the evening the wounded boy was taken to a Burmese
doctor, who, by applying some poisonous concoction of crushed leaves to his left eye,
succeeded in blinding him.

The Europeans met at the Club as usual that evening, except for Westfield and Verrall,
who had not yet returned. Everyone was in a bad mood. Coming on top of the murder, the
unprovoked attack on Ellis (for that was the accepted description of it) had scared them
as well as angered them. Mrs Lackersteen was twittering to the tune of ‘We shall all be
murdered in our beds’. Mr Macgregor, to reassure her, told her in cases of riot the
European ladies were always locked inside the jail until everything was over; but she did
not seem much comforted. Ellis was offensive to Flory, and Elizabeth cut him almost
dead. He had come down to the Club in the insane hope of making up their quarrel, and
her demeanour made him so miserable that for the greater part of the evening he skulked
in the library. It was not till eight o’clock when everyone had swallowed a number of
drinks, that the atmosphere grew a little more friendly, and Ellis said:

‘What about sending a couple of chokras up to our houses and getting our dinners sent
down here? We might as well have a few rubbers of bridge. Better than mooning about at
home. ’

Mrs Lackersteen, who was in dread of going home, jumped at the suggestion. The
Europeans occasionally dined at the Club when they wanted to stay late. Two of the



chokras were sent for, and on being told what was wanted of them, immediately burst
into tears.
It appeared that if they went up the hill they were certain of encountering
Maxwell’s ghost. The mali was sent instead. As the man set out Flory noticed that it was
again the night of the full moon — four weeks to a day since that evening, now unutterably
remote, when he had kissed Elizabeth under the frangipani tree.

They had just sat down at the bridge table, and Mrs Lackersteen had just revoked out of
pure nervousness, when there was a heavy thump on the roof. Everyone started and look
up.

‘A coco-nut falling! ’ said Mr Macgregor.

‘There aren’t any coco-nut trees here,’ said Ellis.

The next moment a number of things happened all together. There was another and much
louder bang, one of the petrol lamps broke from its hook and crashed to the ground,
narrowly missing Mr Lackersteen, who jumped aside with a yelp, Mrs Lackersteen began
screaming, and the butler rushed into the room, bareheaded, his face the colour of bad
coffee.

‘Sir, sir! Bad men come! Going to murder us all, sir! ’

‘What? Bad men? What do you mean? ’

‘Sir, all the villagers are outside! Big stick and dah in their hands, and all dancing about!
Going to cut master’s throat, sir! ’

Mrs Lackersteen threw herself backwards in her chair. She was setting up such a din of
screams as to drown the butler’s voice.

‘Oh, be quiet! ’ said Ellis sharply, turning on her. ‘Listen, all of you! Listen to that! ’

There was a deep, murmurous, dangerous sound outside, like the humming of an angry
giant. Mr Macgregor, who had stood up, stiffened as he heard it, and settled his
spectacles pugnaciously on his nose.



‘This is some kind of disturbance! Butler, pick that lamp up. Miss Lackersteen, look to
your aunt. See if she is hurt. The rest of you come with me! ’


They all made for the front door, which someone, presumably the butler, had closed. A
fusillade of small pebbles was rattling against it like hail. Mr Lackersteen wavered at the
sound and retreated behind the others.

‘I say, dammit, bolt that bloody door, someone! ’ he said.

‘No, no! ’ said Mr Macgregor. ‘We must go outside. It’s fatal not to face them! ’

He opened the door and presented himself boldly at the top of the steps. There were about
twenty Burmans on the path, with dahs or sticks in their hands. Outside the fence,
stretching up the road in either direction and far out on to the maidan, was an enonnous
crowd of people. It was like a sea of people, two thousand at the least, black and white in
the moon, with here and there a curved dah glittering. Ellis had coolly placed himself
beside Mr Macgregor, with his hands in his pockets. Mr Lackersteen had disappeared.

Mr Macgregor raised his hand for silence. ‘What is the meaning of this? ’ he shouted
sternly.

There were yells, and some lumps of laterite the size of cricket balls came sailing from
the road, but fortunately hit no one. One of the men on the path turned and waved his
arms to the others, shouting that they were not to begin throwing yet. Then he stepped
forward to address the Europeans. He was a strong debonair fellow of about thirty, with
down-curving moustaches, wearing a singlet, with his longyi kilted to the knee.

‘What is the meaning of this? ’ Mr Macgregor repeated.

The man spoke up with a cheerful grin, and not very insolently.

‘We have no quarrel with you, min gyi. We have come for the timber merchant, Ellis. ’
(He pronounced it Ellit. ) ‘The boy whom he struck this morning has gone blind. You
must send Ellit out to us here, so that we can punish him. The rest of you will not be
hurt. ’



‘Just remember that fellow’s face,’ said Ellis over his shoulder to Flory. ‘We’ll get him
seven years for this afterwards. ’


Mr Macgregor had turned temporarily quite purple. His rage was so great that it almost
choked him. For several moments he could not speak, and when he did so it was in
English.

‘Whom do you think you are speaking to? In twenty years I have never heard such
insolence! Go away this instant, or I shall call out the Military Police! ’

‘You’d better be quick, min gyi. We know that there is no justice for us in your courts, so
we must punish Ellit ourselves. Send him out to us here. Otherwise, all of you will weep
for it. ’

Mr Macgregor made a furious motion with his fist, as though hammering in a nail, ‘Go
away, son of a dog! ’ he cried, using his first oath in many years.

There was a thunderous roar from the road, and such a shower of stones, that everyone
was hit, including the Burmans on the path. One stone took Mr Macgregor full in the
face, almost knocking him down. The Europeans bolted hastily inside and barred the
door. Mr Macgregor’ s spectacles were smashed and his nose streaming blood. They got
back to the lounge to find Mrs Lackersteen looping about in one of the long chairs like a
hysterical snake, Mr Lackersteen standing irresolutely in the middle of the room, holding
an empty bottle, the butler on his knees in the corner, crossing himself (he was a Roman
Catholic), the chokras crying, and only Elizabeth calm, though she was very pale.

‘What’s happened? ’ she exclaimed.

‘We’re in the soup, that’s what’s happened! ’ said Ellis angrily, feeling at the back of his
neck where a stone had hit him. ‘The Burmans are all round, shying rocks. But keep
calm! They haven’t the guts to break the doors in. ’

‘Call out the police at once! ’ said Mr Macgregor indistinctly, for he was stanching his
nose with his handkerchief.



‘Can’t! ’ said Ellis. ‘I was looking round while you were talking to them. They’ve cut us
off, rot their damned souls! No one could possibly get to the police lines. Veraswami’s
compound is full of men. ’

‘Then we must wait. We can trust them to turn out of their own accord. Calm yourself,
my dear Mrs Lackersteen, PLEASE calm yourself! The danger is very small. ’

It did not sound small. There were no gaps in the noise now, and the Burmans seemed to
be pouring into the compounds by hundreds. The din swelled suddenly to such a volume
that no one could make himself heard except by shouting. All the windows in the lounge
had been shut, and some perforated zinc shutters within, which were sometimes used for
keeping out insects, pulled to and bolted. There was a series of crashes as the windows
were broken, and then a ceaseless thudding of stones from all sides, that shook the thin
wooden walls and seemed likely to split them. Ellis opened a shutter and flung a bottle
viciously among the crowd, but a dozen stones came hurtling in and he had to close the
shutter hurriedly. The Burmans seemed to have no plan beyond flinging stones, yelling
and hammering at the walls, but the mere volume of noise was unnerving. The Europeans
were half dazed by it at first. None of them thought to blame Ellis, the sole cause of this
affair; their common peril seemed, indeed, to draw them closer together for the while. Mr
Macgregor, half-blind without his spectacles, stood distractedly in the middle of the
room, yielding his right hand to Mrs Lackersteen, who was caressing it, while a weeping
chokra clung to his left leg. Mr Lackersteen had vanished again. Ellis was stamping
furiously up and down, shaking his fist in the direction of the police lines.

‘Where are the police, the f — cowardly sods? ’ he yelled, heedless of the women. ‘Why
don’t they turn out? My God, we won’t get another chance like this in a hundred years! If
we’d only ten rifles here, how we could slosh these b — s! ’

‘They’ll be here presently! ’ Mr Macgregor shouted back. ‘It will take them some minutes
to penetrate that crowd. ’

‘But why don’t they use their rifles, the miserable sons of bitches? They could slaughter
them in bloody heaps if they’d only open fire. Oh, God, to think of missing a chance like
this! ’



A lump of rock burst one of the zinc shutters. Another followed through the hole it had
made, stove in a ‘Bonzo’ picture, bounced off, cut Elizabeth’s elbow, and finally landed
on the table. There was a roar of triumph from outside, and then a succession of
tremendous thumps on the roof. Some children had climbed into the trees and were
having the time of their lives sliding down the roof on their bottoms. Mrs Lackersteen
outdid all previous efforts with a shriek that rose easily above the din outside.

‘Choke that bloody hag, somebody! ’ cried Ellis. ‘Anyone’d think a pig was being killed.
We’ve got to do something. Flory, Macgregor, come here! Think of a way out of this
mess, someone! ’

Elizabeth had suddenly lost her nerve and begun crying. The blow from the stone had
hurt her. To Flory’s astonishment, he found her clinging tightly to his ann. Even in that
moment it made his heart turn over. He had been watching the scene almost with
detachment — dazed by the noise, indeed, but not much frightened. He always found it
difficult to believe Orientals could be really dangerous. Only when he felt Elizabeth’s
hand on his arm did he grasp the seriousness of the situation.

‘Oh, Mr Flory, please, please think of something! You can, you can! Anything sooner
than let those dreadful men get in here! ’

‘If only one of us could get to the police lines! ’ groaned Mr Macgregor. ‘A British officer
to lead them! At the worst I must try and go myself. ’

‘Don’t be a fool! Only get your throat cut! ’ yelled Ellis. ‘/‘II go if they really look like
breaking in. But, oh, to be killed by swine like that! How furious it’d make me! And to
think we could murder the whole bloody crowd if only we could get the police here! ’

‘Couldn’t someone get along the river bank? ’ Flory shouted despairingly.

‘Hopeless! Hundreds of them prowling up and down. We’re cut off — Burmans on three
sides and the river on the other! ’


‘The river! ’



One of those startling ideas that are overlooked simply because they are so obvious had
sprung into Flory’s mind.

‘The river! Of course! We can get to the police lines as easy as winking. Don’t you see? ’


‘How? ’


‘Why, down the river — in the water! Swim! ’

‘Oh, good man! ’ cried Ellis, and smacked Flory on the shoulder. Elizabeth squeezed his
arm and actually danced a step or two in glee. ‘I’ll go if you like! ’ Ellis shouted, but
Flory shook his head. He had already begun slipping his shoes off. There was obviously
no time to be lost. The Burmans had behaved like fools hitherto, but there was no saying
what might happen if they succeeded in breaking in. The butler, who had got over his
first fright, prepared to open the window that gave on the lawn, and glanced obliquely
out. There were barely a score of Burmans on the lawn. They had left the back of the
Club unguarded, supposing that the river cut off retreat.

‘Rush down the lawn like hell! ’ Ellis shouted in Flory’s ear. ‘They’ll scatter all right
when they see you. ’

‘Order the police to open fire at once! ’ shouted Mr Macgregor from the other side. ‘You
have my authority. ’

‘And tell them to aim low! No firing over their heads. Shoot to kill. In the guts for
choice! ’

Flory leapt down from the veranda, hurting his feet on the hard earth, and was at the river
ha nk in six paces. As Ellis had said, the Burmans recoiled for a moment when they saw
him leaping down. A few stones followed him, but no one pursued — they thought, no
doubt, that he was only attempting to escape, and in the clear moonlight they could see
that it was not Ellis. In another moment he had pushed his way through the bushes and
was in the water.


He sank deep down, and the horrible river ooze received him, sucking him knee-deep so
that it was several seconds before he could free himself. When he came to the surface a



tepid froth, like the froth on stout, was lapping round his lips, and some spongy thing had
floated into his throat and was choking him. It was a sprig of water hyacinth. He managed
to spit it out, and found that the swift current had floated him twenty yards already.
Burmans were rushing rather aimlessly up and down the bank, yelling. With his eye at
the level of the water, Flory could not see the crowd besieging the Club; but he could
hear their deep, devilish roaring, which sounded even louder than it had sounded on
shore.