“It’s quite illegal,” Wilson said. “You’re supposed to fine them.”
“Do you still have them whipped?”
“Oh, yes. They could raise a row if they chose to complain. But they don’t. They prefer it to the fines.”
“How strange!” said Macomber.
“Not strange, really,” Wilson said. “Which would you rather do? Take a good birching or lose your pay?”
Then he felt embarrassed at asking it and before Macomber could answer he went on, “We all take a beating every day, you know, one way or another.”
This was no better. “Good God,” he thought. “I am a diplomat, aren’t I?”
“Yes, we take a beating,” said Macomber, still not looking at him. “I’m awfully sorry about that lion business. It doesn’t have to go any further, does it? I mean no one will hear about it, will they?”
“You mean will I tell it at the Mathaiga Club?” Wilson looked at him now coldly. He had not expected this. So he’s a bloody four-letter man as well as a bloody coward, he thought. I rather liked him too until today. But how is one to know about an American?
“No,” said Wilson. “I’m a professional hunter. We never talk about our clients. You can be quite easy on that. It’s supposed to be bad form to ask us not to talk though.”
He had decided now that to break would be much easier. He would eat, then, by himself and could read a book with his meals. They would eat by themselves. He would see them through the safari on a very formal basis —what was it the French called it? Distinguished consideration—and it would be a damn sight easier than having to go through this emotional trash. He’d insult him and make a good clean break. Then he could read a book with his meals and he’d still be drinking their whisky. That was the phrase for it when a safari went bad. You ran into another white hunter and you asked, “How is everything going?” and he answered, “Oh, I’m still drinking their whisky,” and you knew everything had gone to pot.
“I’m sorry,” Macomber said and looked at him with his American face that would stay adolescent until it became middle-aged, and Wilson noted his crew-cropped hair, fine eyes only faintly shifty, good nose, thin lips and handsome jaw. “I’m sorry I didn’t realize that. There are lots of things I don’t know.”
So what could he do, Wilson thought. He was all ready to break it off quickly and neatly and here the beggar was apologizing after he had just insulted him. He made one more attempt. “Don’t worry about me talking,” he said. “I have a living to make You know in Africa no woman ever misses her lion and no white man ever bolts.”
“I bolted like a rabbit,” Macomber said.
Now what in hell were you going to do about a man who talked like that, Wilson wondered.
Wilson looked at Macomber with his flat, blue, machine-gunner’s eyes and the other smiled back at him. He had a pleasant smile if you did not notice how his eyes showed when he was hurt.
“Maybe I can fix it up on buffalo,” he said. “We’re after them next, aren’t we?”
“In the morning if you like,” Wilson told him. Perhaps he had been wrong. This was certainly the way to take it. You most certainly could not tell a damned thing about an American. He was all for Macomber again. If you could forget the morning. But, of course, you couldn’t. The morning had been about as bad as they come.
“Here comes the Memsahib,” he said. She was walking over from her tent looking refreshed and cheerful and quite lovely. She had a very perfect oval face, so perfect that you expected her to be stupid. But she wasn’t stupid, Wilson thought, no, not stupid.
“How is the beautiful red-faced Mr. Wilson? Are you feeling better, Francis, my pearl?”
“Oh, much,” said Macomber.
“I’ve dropped the whole thing,” she said, sitting down at the table. “What importance is there to whether Francis is any good at killing lions? That’s not his trade. That’s Mr. Wilson’s trade. Mr. Wilson is really very impressive killing anything. You do kill anything, don’t you?”
“Oh, anything,” said Wilson. “Simply anything.” They are, he thought, the hardest in the world; the hardest, the cruelest, the most predatory and the most attractive and their men have softened or gone to pieces nervously as they have hardened. Or is it that they pick men they can handle? They can’t know that much at the age they marry, he thought. He was grateful that he had gone through his education on American women before now because this was a very attractive one.
“We’re going after buff in the morning,” he told her.
“I’m coming,” she said.
“No, you’re not.”
“Oh, yes, I am. Mayn’t I, Francis?”
“Why not stay in camp?”
“Not for anything,” she said. “I wouldn’t miss something like today for anything.”
When she left, Wilson was thinking, when she went off to cry, she seemed a hell of a fine woman. She seemed to understand, to realize, to be hurt for him and for herself and to know how things really stood. She is away for twenty minutes and now she is back, simply enamelled in that American female cruelty. They are the damnedest women. Really the damnedest.
“We’ll put on another show for you tomorrow,” Francis Macomber said.
“You’re not coming,” Wilson said.
“You’re very mistaken,” she told him. “And I want so to see you perform again. You were lovely this morning. That is if blowing things’ heads off is lovely.”
“Here’s the lunch,” said Wilson. “You’re very merry, aren’t you?”
“Why not? I didn’t come out here to be dull.”
“Well, it hasn’t been dull,” Wilson said. He could see the boulders in the river and the high bank beyond with the trees and he remembered the morning.
“Oh, no,” she said. “It’s been charming. And tomorrow. You don’t know how I look forward to tomorrow.”
“That’s eland he’s offering you,” Wilson said.
“They’re the big cowy things that jump like hares, aren’t they?”
“I suppose that describes them,” Wilson said.
“It’s very good meat,” Macomber said.
“Did you shoot it, Francis?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“They’re not dangerous, are they?”
“Only if they fall on you,” Wilson told her.
“I’m so glad.”
“Why not let up on the bitchery just a little, Margot,” Macomber said, cutting the eland steak and putting some mashed potato, gravy and carrot on the down-turned fork that tined through the piece of meat.
“I suppose I could,” she said, “since you put it so prettily.” “Tonight we’ll have champagne for the lion,” Wilson said. “It’s a bit too hot at noon.”
“Oh, the lion,” Margot said. “I’d forgotten the lion!” So, Robert Wilson thought to himself, she is giving him a ride, isn’t she? Or do you suppose that’s her idea of putting up a good show? How should a woman act when she discovers her husband is a bloody coward? She’s damn cruel but they’re all cruel. They govern, of course, and to govern one has to be cruel sometimes. Still, I’ve seen enough of their damn terrorism.
“Have some more eland,” he said to her politely.
That afternoon, late, Wilson and Macomber went out in the motor car with the native driver and the two gun-bearers. Mrs. Macomber stayed in the camp. It was too hot to go out, she said, and she was going with them in the early morning. As they drove off Wilson saw her standing under the big tree, looking pretty rather than beautiful in her faintly rosy khaki, her dark hair drawn back off her forehead and gathered in a knot low on her neck, her face as fresh, he thought, as though she were in England. She waved to them as the car went off through the swale of high grass and curved around through the trees into the small hills of orchard bush.
In the orchard bush they found a herd of impala, and leaving the car they stalked one old ram with long, wide-spread horns and Macomber killed it with a very creditable shot that knocked the buck down at a good two hundred yards and sent the herd off bounding wildly and leaping over one another’s backs in long, leg-drawn-up leaps as unbelievable and as floating as those one makes sometimes in dreams.
“That was a good shot,” Wilson said. “They’re a small target.”
“Is it a worth-while head?” Macomber asked.
