Ah King by W. Somerset Maugham

Author:W. Somerset Maugham
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-05-01T04:00:00+00:00

Darling, I cannot sail on the seventh after all. Please forgive me. Am writing fully. Fondest love. Tim.

“‘Well, perhaps the machinery he wanted isn’t ready and he can’t bring himself to sail without it,’ I said.

“‘What could it matter if it came by a later ship? Anyhow, it’ll be hung up at Penang.’

“‘It may be something about the house.’

“‘If it is why doesn’t he say so? He must know how frightfully anxious I am.’

“‘It wouldn’t occur to him,’ I said. ‘After all, when you’re away you don’t realize that the people you’ve left behind don’t know something that you take as a matter of course.’

“She smiled again, but now more happily.

“‘I dare say you’re right. In point of fact Tim is a little like that. He’s always been rather slack and casual. I dare say I’ve been making a mountain out of a molehill. I must just wait patiently for his letter.’

“Olive was a girl with a lot of self-control and I saw her by an effort of will pull herself together. The little line between her eyebrows vanished and she was once more her serene, smiling, and kindly self. She was always gentle: that day she had a mildness so heavenly that it was shattering. But for the rest of the time I could see that she kept her restlessness in check only by the deliberate exercise of her common sense. It was as though she had a foreboding of ill. I was with her the day before the mail was due. Her anxiety was all the more pitiful to see because she took such pains to hide it. I was always busy on mail day, but I promised to get up to the estate later on and hear the news. I was just thinking of starting when Hardy’s seis came along in the car with a message from the amah asking me to go at once to her mistress. The amah was a decent, elderly woman to whom I had given a dollar or two and said that if anything went wrong on the estate she was to let me know at once. I jumped into my car. When I arrived I found the amah waiting for me on the steps.

“‘A letter came this morning,’ she said.

“I interrupted her. I ran up the steps. The sitting-room was empty.

“‘Olive,’ I called.

“I went into the passage and suddenly I heard a sound that froze my heart. The amah had followed me and now she opened the door of Olive’s room. The sound I had heard was the sound of Olive crying. I went in. She was lying on her bed, on her face, and her sobs shook her from head to foot. I put my hand on her shoulder.

“‘Olive, what is it?’ I asked.

“‘Who’s that?’ she cried. She sprang to her feet suddenly, as though she were scared out of her wits. And then: ‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said. She stood in front of me, with her head thrown back and her eyes closed, and the tears streamed from them.

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