Ah King Read Free

put in it all I could of surprise, interest, and curiosity. But Gaze said nothing and we walked the rest of the way in silence. The boy was waiting at the door as we entered the house and after a last gin pahit we sat down to dinner.
    At first Gaze was inclined to be talkative. Owing to the restriction of the output of rubber there had sprung up a considerable activity among the smugglers and it was part of his duty to circumvent their knavishness. Two junks had been captured that day and he was rubbing his hands over his success. The go-downs were full of confiscated rubber and in a little while it was going to be solemnly burnt. But presently he fell into silence and we finished without a word. The boys brought in coffee and brandy and we lit our cheroots. Gaze leaned back in his chair. He looked at me reflectively and then looked at his brandy. The boys had left the room and we were alone.
    “I’ve known Mrs Cartwright for over twenty years,” he said slowly. “She wasn’t a bad-looking woman in those days. Always untidy, but when she was young it didn’t seem to matter so much. It was rather attractive. She was married to a man called Bronson. Reggie Bronson. He was a planter. He was manager of an estate up in Selantan and I was stationed at Alor Lipis. It was a much smaller place than it is now; I don’t suppose there were more than twenty people in the whole community, but they had a jolly little club, and we used to have a very good time. I remember the first time I met Mrs Bronson as though it was yesterday. There were no cars in those days and she and Bronson had ridden in on their bicycles. Of course then she didn’t look so determined as she looks now. She was much thinner, she had a nice colour, and her eyes were very pretty-blue, you know-and she had a lot of dark hair. If she’d only taken more trouble with herself she’d have been rather stunning. As it was she was the best-looking woman there.”
    I tried to construct in my mind a picture of what Mrs Cartwright-Mrs Bronson as she was then-looked like from what she was now and from Gaze’s not very graphic description. In the solid woman, with her well-covered bones, who sat rather heavily at the bridge-table, I tried to see a slight young thing with buoyant movements and graceful, easy gestures. Her chin now was square and her nose decided, but the roundness of youth must have masked this: she must have been charming with a pink-and-white skin and her hair, carelessly dressed, brown and abundant. At that period she wore a long skirt, a tight waist, and a picture hat. Or did women in Malaya still wear the topees that you see in old numbers of the illustrated papers?
    “I hadn’t seen her for-oh, nearly twenty years,” Gaze went on. “I knew she was living somewhere in the F.M.S., but it was a surprise when I took this job and came here to run across her in the club just as I had up in Selantan so many years before. Of course she’s an elderly woman now and she’s changed out of all recognition. It was rather a shock to see her with a grown-up daughter, it made me realize how the time had passed; I was a young fellow when I met her last and now, by Jingo, I’m due to retire on the age limit in two or three years. Bit thick, isn’t it?”
    Gaze, a rueful grin on his ugly face, looked at me with faint indignation, as though I could help the hurrying march of the years as they trod upon one another’s heels.
    “I’m no chicken myself,” I replied.
    “You haven’t lived out East all your life. It ages one before one’s time. One’s an elderly man at fifty and at fifty-five one’s good for nothing but the scrap-heap.”
    But I did not want Gaze to wander off into a disquisition on old age.
    “Did you recognize Mrs Cartwright when you saw her again?” I asked.
    “Well, I did and I didn’t. At the first glance I thought I knew her, but couldn’t quite place her. I thought perhaps she was someone I’d met on board ship when I was going