the leopard, and Flo was slinking after them a long way in the rear. The sun was going down beyond the Irrawaddy. The light shone level across the field, gilding the stubble stalks, and striking into their faces with a yellow, gentle beam. Elizabeth’s shoulder was almost touching Flory’s as they walked. The sweat that had drenched their shirts had dried again. They did not talk much. They were happy with that inordinate happiness that comes of exhaustion and achievement, and with which nothing else in life—no joy of either the body or the mind—is even able to be compared.
‘The leopard-skin is yours,’ Flory said as they approached the village.
‘Oh, but you shot him!’
‘Never mind, you stick to the skin. By Jove, I wonder how many of the women in this country would have kept their heads like you did! I can just see them screaming and fainting. I’ll get the skin cured for you in Kyauktada jail. There’s a convict there who can cure skins as soft as velvet. He’s doing a seven-year sentence, so he’s had time to learn the job.’
‘Oh well, thanks awfully.’
No more was said for the present. Later, when they had washed off the sweat and dirt, and were fed and rested, they would meet again at the Club. They made no rendezvous, but it was understood between them that they would meet. Also, it was understood that Flory would ask Elizabeth to marry him, though nothing was said about this either.
At the village Flory paid the beaters eight annas each, superintended the skinning of the leopard, and gave the headman a bottle of beer and two of the imperial pigeons. The skin and skull were packed into one of the canoes. All the whiskers had been stolen, in spite of Ko S’la’s efforts to guard them. Some young men of the village carried off the carcase in order to eat the heart and various other organs, the eating of which they believed would make them strong and swift like the leopard.
XV
When Flory arrived at the Club he found the Lackersteens in an unusually morose mood. Mrs Lackersteen was sitting, as usual, in the best place under the punkah, and was reading the Civil List, the Debrett of Burma. She was in a bad temper with her husband, who had defied her by ordering a ‘large peg’ as soon as he reached the Club, and was further defying her by reading the Pink’un. Elizabeth was alone in the stuffy little library, turning over the pages of an old copy of Blackwood’s.
Since parting with Flory, Elizabeth had had a very disagreeable adventure. She had come out of her bath and was half-way through dressing for dinner when her uncle had suddenly appeared in her room—pretext, to hear some more about the day’s shooting—and begun pinching her leg in a way that simply could not be misunderstood. Elizabeth was horrified. This was her first introduction to the fact that some men are capable of making love to their nieces. We live and learn. Mr Lackersteen had tried to carry the thing off as a joke, but he was too clumsy and too nearly drunk to succeed. It was fortunate that his wife was out of hearing, or there might have been a first-rate scandal.
After this, dinner was an uncomfortable meal. Mr Lackersteen was sulking. What rot it was, the way these women put on airs and prevented you from having a good time! The girl was pretty enough to remind him of the illustrations in La Vie Parisienne, and damn it! wasn’t he paying for her keep? It was a shame. But for Elizabeth the position was very serious. She was penniless and had no home except her uncle’s house. She had come eight thousand miles to stay here. It would be terrible if after only a fortnight her uncle’s house were to be made uninhabitable for her.
Consequently, one thing was much surer in her mind than it had been: that if Flory asked her to marry him (and he would, there was little doubt of it), she would say yes. At another time it is just possible that she would have decided differently. This afternoon, under the spell of that glorious, exciting, altogether ‘lovely’ adventure, she had come near to loving Flory; as near as, in his particular case, she was able to come. Yet even after that, perhaps, her doubts would have returned. For there had always been something dubious about Flory; his age, his birthmark, his queer, perverse way of talking—that ‘highbrow’ talk that was at once unintelligible and disquieting. There had been days when she had even disliked him. But now her uncle’s behaviour had turned the scale. Whatever happened she had got to escape from her uncle’s house, and that soon. Yes, undoubtedly she would marry Flory when he asked her!
He could see her answer in her face as he came into the library. Her air was gentler, more yielding than he had known it. She was wearing the same lilac-coloured frock that she had worn that first morning when he met her, and the sight of the familiar frock gave him courage. It seemed to bring her nearer to him, taking away the strangeness and the elegance that had sometimes unnerved him.
He picked up the magazine she had been reading and made some remark; for a moment they chattered in the banal way they so seldom managed to avoid. It is strange how the drivelling habits of conversation will persist into almost all moments. Yet even as they chattered they found themselves drifting to the door and then outside, and presently to the big frangipani tree by the tennis court. It was the night of the full moon. Flaring like a white-hot coin, so brilliant that it hurt one’s eyes, the moon swam rapidly upwards in a sky of smoky blue, across which drifted a few wisps of yellowish cloud. The stars were all invisible. The croton bushes, by day hideous things like jaundiced laurels, were changed by the moon into jagged black-and-white designs like fantastic woodcuts. By the compound fence two Dravidian coolies were walking down the road, transfigured, their white rags gleaming. Through the tepid air the scent streamed from the frangipani tree like some intolerable compound out of a penny-in-the-slot machine.
‘Look at the moon, just look at it!’ Flory said. ‘It’s like a white sun. It’s brighter than an English winter day.’
Elizabeth looked up into the branches of the frangipani tree, which the moon seemed to have changed into rods of silver. The light lay thick, as though palpable, on everything, crusting the earth and the rough bark of trees like some dazzling salt, and every leaf seemed to bear a freight of solid light, like snow. Even Elizabeth, indifferent to such things, was astonished.
‘It’s wonderful! You never see moonlight like that at Home. It’s so—so——’ No adjective except ‘bright’ presenting itself, she was silent. She had a habit of leaving her sentences unfinished, like Rosa Dartle, though for a different reason.
‘Yes, the old moon does her best in this country. How that tree does stink, doesn’t it? Beastly, tropical thing! I hate a tree that blooms all the year round, don’t you?’
He was talking half abstractedly, to cover the time till the coolies should be out of sight. As they disappeared he put his arm round Elizabeth’s shoulder, and then, when she did not start or speak, turned her round and drew her against him. Her head came against his breast, and her short hair grazed his lips. He put his hand under her chin and lifted her face up to meet his. She was not wearing her spectacles.
‘You don’t mind?’
‘No.’
‘I mean, you don’t mind my—this thing of mine?’ he shook his head slightly to indicate the birthmark. He could not kiss her without first asking this question.
‘No, no. Of course not.’
A moment after their mouths met he felt her bare arms settle lightly round his neck. They stood pressed together, against the smooth trunk of the frangipani tree, body to body, mouth to mouth, for a minute or more. The sickly scent of the tree came mingling with the scent of Elizabeth’s hair. And the scent gave him a feeling of stultification, of remoteness from Elizabeth, even though she was in his arms. All that that alien tree symbolised for him, his exile, the secret, wasted years—it was like an unbridgeable gulf between them. How should he ever make her understand what it was that he wanted of her? He disengaged himself and pressed her shoulders gently against the tree, looking down at her face, which he could see very clearly though the moon was behind her.
‘It’s useless trying to tell you what you mean to me,’ he said. ‘ “What you mean to me”! These blunted phrases! You don’t know, you can’t know, how much I love you. But I’ve got to try and tell you. There’s so much I must tell you. Had we better go