563296589345

V
In spite of the whisky he had drunk at the Club, Flory had little sleep that night. The pariah curs were
baying the moon–it was only a quarter full and nearly down by midnight, but the dogs slept all day in
the heat, and they had begun their moon-choruses already. One dog had taken a dislike to Flory’s
house, and had settled down to bay at it systematically. Sitting on its bottom fifty yards from the gate,
it let out sharp, angry yelps, one to half a minute, as regularly as a clock. It would keep this up for two
or three hours, until the cocks began crowing.
Flory lay turning from side to side, his head aching. Some fool has said that one cannot hate an
animal; he should try a few nights in India, when the dogs are baying the moon. In the end Flory could
stand it no longer. He got up, rummaged in the tin uniform case under his bed for a rifle and a couple
of cartridges, and went out on to the veranda.
It was fairly light in the quarter moon. He could see the dog, and he could see his foresight. He
rested himself against the wooden pillar of the veranda and took aim carefully; then, as he felt the
hard vulcanite butt against his bare shoulder, he flinched. The rifle had a heavy kick, and it left a
bruise when one fired it. The soft flesh of his shoulder quailed. He lowered the rifle. He had not the
nerve to fire it in cold blood.
It was no use trying to sleep. Flory got his jacket and some cigarettes, and began to stroll up and
down the garden path, between the ghostly flowers. It was hot, and the mosquitoes found him out and
came droning after him. Phantoms of dogs were chasing one another on the maidan. Over to the left
the gravestones of the English cemetery glittered whitish, rather sinister, and one could see the
mounds near by, that were the remains of old Chinese tombs. The hillside was said to be haunted, and
the Club choleras cried when they were sent up the road at night.
‘Cur, spineless cur,’ Flory was thinking to himself; without heat, however, for he was too
accustomed to the thought. ‘Sneaking, idling, boozing, fornicating, soul-examining, self-pitying cur.
All those fools at the Club, those dull louts to whom you are so pleased to think yourself superior–
they are all better than you, every man of them. At least they are men in their oafish way. Not
cowards, not liars. Not half-dead and rotting. But you——’
He had reason to call himself names. There had been a nasty, dirty affair at the Club that evening.
Something quite ordinary, quite according to precedent; but still dingy, cowardly, dishonouring.
When Flory had arrived at the Club only Ellis and Maxwell were there. The Lackersteens had gone
to the station with the loan of Mr Macgregor’s car, to meet their niece, who was to arrive by the night
train. The three men were playing three-handed bridge fairly amicably when Westfield came in, his