Volume One—Chapter Twenty Four.
The Pains of a Princess.
Captain Hilton saw no reason for detaining his subaltern, only bade him be ready to return to the island at the slightest sign of danger, which Chumbley promised to do; and he was about to walk down to the landing-stage, when, happening to gaze across the swift river towards Mr Perowne’s beautiful garden, which sloped down to the water’s edge, with as good a semblance of a lawn as could be obtained in that part of the world, he caught sight of a couple of figures in white, walking slowly up and down in the shade of the trees.
He was too far distant to make out their faces, but he had no doubt that the two were Helen and Grey Stuart.
“Now, I would not mind laying a whole shilling that Master Hilton has his binocular focussed exactly upon one of your faces, and is watching every turn of expression. If you smile he thinks it is with thoughts of him; and take it altogether, the poor fellow imagines you are always dreaming of him, when you are wondering what is worn now in Paris or London, and whether any of the new fashions will reach you by the next steamer.
“Yes, that’s Helen—fair Helen,” he said, leaning upon a rail, and gazing across the water. “Chumbley, old fellow, I’m beginning to think you are not such a fool as I used to imagine you to be. It was a good brave stroke to get away from the toils of that syren; for there’s no mistake about it, old man, you were just like a big fly in the pretty spider’s web.
“By George! she is a very lovely girl though! She seems to fascinate everyone she comes near. Thank goodness, she only got me by one leg, and I broke out, I hope, without much damaging the net. Certainly she soon seemed to repair it. I wish I were a good prophet,” he went on, lighting a cigarette. “I should like to be able to say what is to take place here, who’ll marry whom, and who’ll remain single. Hullo! what’s coming now?”
The splash of oars roused him from his reverie, and turning towards the landing-stage, he made out a dragon-boat, or naga, as the larger row-galleys used by the Malay nobles are called, rapidly approaching the little isle.
It was propelled by a dozen rowers, all dressed uniformly in yellow silk bajus or jackets, their coarse black hair being topped by a natty little cap similar to that worn by a cavalry soldier in undress, and they kept stroke with wonderful accuracy as they forced the boat along.
A large shed-like awning of bamboo and palm leaves covered the latter part of the vessel; and Chumbley forgot his customary inertia, and scanned the boat eagerly, to see if it contained armed men. To his surprise, however, he saw that the whole space beneath the broad awning was filled with women, whose brightly-coloured silken sarongs were hung from their heads after the manner of veils; and though the rowers each wore his kris, the hilt was covered, and it was evidently a friendly visit.
“I don’t know though,” thought Chumbley. “Perhaps it is a ruse, and instead of women, those are smart youths, well armed, ready to give our fellows a dig with the kris, and take the place by surprise.
“No,” he said, after a few moments’ pause, for there was no mistaking the object of the visit, the Malays being a particularly religious people, and great sticklers for form and ceremony, to which they adhere with scrupulous exactness, so that any one pretty well versed in their customs would know at a glance at their dress whether their object was friendly or the reverse.
“Why, it must be the Inche Maida,” muttered Chumbley, giving the native name to a princess residing some distance higher up the stream. “I ought to have been in full fig. I suppose I must go and receive her as I am.”
He threw away his cigarette, turned out the guard, sent a messenger up to the Residency with the news of the Princess’s arrival, bidding the man leave word at the officers’ quarters as he passed, and then walked down to the landing-stage, just as the dragon-boat, with its carved and gilded prow, was run abreast.
Chumbley courteously raised his muslin-covered pith helmet, tucked it beneath his arm, and helped the Princess to step ashore.
She was a remarkably handsome woman of about thirty, with features of the Malay type, but softened into a nearer approach to beauty than is common amongst the women of this nation, whose prominent lips and dilated nostrils are not compensated by the rich long black hair, and large lustrous dark eyes.
In the case of the Princess there was almost a European cast of feature, and she possessed an imposing yet graceful carriage, which with her picturesque costume and flower-decked hair, made her far from unattractive, in spite of her warm brown skin.
She accepted Chumbley’s assistance with a smile that checked the thought in his mind that she was a fine-looking woman; for that smile revealed a set of remarkably even teeth, but they were filed to a particular pattern and stained black.
Chumbley removed his eyes at once from this disfigurement, and let them rest on the magnificent knot of jetty hair, in which were stuck, in company with large gold pins, clusters of a white and odorous jasmine.
He could not help noting, too, the gracefully-worn scarf of gossamer texture, passing from her right shoulder beneath her left arm, and secured by a richly-chased gold brooch of native workmanship. This she removed to set the scarf at liberty, so as to throw over her head to screen it from the sun.
Accustomed to command, she made no scruple in exposing her face to the gaze of men; but as the women who formed her train alighted, each raised her hands to a level with her temples, and spread the silken sarong she wore over her head, so that it formed an elongated slit, covering every portion of the face but the eyes, and following the Princess in this uncomfortable guise, they took their places ashore.
“I have come to see the Resident,” said the Princess, looking very fixedly at Chumbley, and speaking in excellent English. “Will you take me to his presence?”
Chumbley bowed, and he forgot his slow drawl as he said that he would be happy to lead her to the Residency; but felt rather disconcerted as the visitor exclaimed, in a very pointed way:
“I have not seen you before. Are you the lieutenant?”
“I have not had the pleasure of meeting you either,” he replied, rather liking the visitor’s dignified way as he recovered himself; “but I have heard Mr and Miss Perowne talk of the Inche Maida.”
“What did they say about me?” she said, sharply.
“That you were a noble lady, and quite a princess.”
“Ah!” she replied, looking at him fixedly. “How big and strong you are.”
Chumbley stared and tried to find something suitable to reply, but nothing came, and the situation seemed to him so comical that he smiled, and then, as the Princess smiled too, he laughed outright.
“Forgive my laughing,” he said, good-humouredly. “I can’t help being big; and I suppose I am strong.”
“There is the Resident!” said the lady then; and she drew her hand from Chumbley’s arm. “Ah! and the captain.”
For just then Harley stepped out from the Residency veranda to meet his visitors; and Hilton, who had found time to put on the regimental scarlet and buckle on his sword, came up to make the reception more imposing.
The Princess shook hands in the European fashion, and accepted the Resident’s arm, smiling and bowing as if excusing herself to Hilton. Then, declining to enter the house, she took a seat in the broad veranda amongst the Resident’s flowers, while her women grouped themselves behind her, letting fall the sarongs they held over their faces now that, with the exception of a single sentry, none of the common soldiers were about to gaze upon their charms.
But for her costume, the Inche Maida would have passed very well for a dark Englishwoman, and she chatted on for a time about the Resident’s flowers and her own; about her visits to the English ladies at the station; and the various European luxuries that she kept adding to her home some twenty miles up the river, where she had quite a palm-tree palace and a goodly retinue of slaves.
Both Mr Harley and Hilton knew that there was some special object in the lady’s visit; but that was scrupulously kept in the background, while coffee and liqueurs were handed round, the visitors partaking freely of these and the sweetmeats and cakes kept by the Resident for the gratification of his native friends.
“It is nearly a year since you have been to see me Mr Harley,” said the lady at last. “When will you come again?”
“I shall be only too glad to come and see you,” said the Resident, “I have not forgotten the pleasure of my last journey to your home.”
“And you will come too?” said the Princess quickly; and she turned her great dark eyes upon Hilton, gazing at him fixedly the while.
“I—er—really I hardly think I can leave.”
“You will not come?” she cried, with an impetuous jerk of the head. “You think I am a savage, and you despise my ways. Mr Harley will tell you I have tried for years to learn your English customs and to speak your language. It is not fair.”
“Indeed,” cried Hilton, eager to make up for what the visitor evidently considered a slight, “I only hesitated on the score of duty.”
“You would not care to come,” she said, with the injured look of a spoiled child.
“Indeed I should,” exclaimed Hilton, “and I will come.”
“You will come?” she cried, with her dark eyes flashing.
“Yes, indeed I will.”
She leaned towards him, speaking eagerly:
“I am glad. I like you English. You shall hunt and shoot. There are tigers, and I have elephants. My slaves shall find game, and you shall have my boat to fetch you.”
Dark as her skin was, the Resident noticed the red blood mantling beneath it in her cheeks as she spoke eagerly, fixing her eyes upon Hilton as she spoke, and then lowering the lids in a dreamy, thoughtful way.
“Then you will both come?” she said.
“Yes, I promise for both; but we cannot leave the station together,” said Mr Harley.
“It is well,” she said, smiling; “and you too, lieutenant—you will come and see me? You like to shoot. All Englishmen like to shoot.”
“Oh, yes, I’ll come,” said Chumbley, with his slow, heavy drawl. “I think it would be rather jolly. Yes, I’ll come.”
She nodded and smiled at him once more, as if he amused her; and Harley noticed that she glanced at Chumbley again and again as the conversation went on, looking at him as if he were some fine kind of animal she thought it would be well to buy at the first opportunity.
All at once, though, she turned sharply upon the Resident, and the object of her visit came out.
“I want you to help me,” she said, with an angry flash in her eye. “I am a woman, and I cannot fight, or I would not come to you for help. But you English are just. You have settled in our country, and your Princess says, ‘Let there be no cruelty and ill-treatment of the people where you are.’ I have seen you for ten years, ever since I became a woman who could think and act; but because I am a woman I am oppressed. Because I will not be his wife Rajah Hamet stops my people’s boats, and takes away tin and rice. His people beat my slaves and steal their fruit and fowls. Our lives become suffering, for my people are me. I am not a mother, but they call me mother, and they say, ‘See, your children are robbed and beaten; they moisten the dust of the earth with their tears.’”
“Ah! ah! ah! ay! ayo!”
The three Englishmen started, for at these words of their Princess the women burst into a piteous wail, and beat their breasts.
“We suffer; I weep with my children,” continued the Princess, rising and holding out her hands, as she went on speaking with a natural grace and fiery eloquence. “I grow hot with anger, and I am ready to take my father’s kris and limbing and to go out against this coward who oppresses me; but I am a woman, and I should lead my people to death. I cannot do this, but I think and think till the rage grows cold, and my reason comes back, and I say, ‘The great Queen loves her people, and she will not have them hurt. Her rulers, and counsellors, and warriors are in our country, and I will go to them and say, See, I am a woman—a princess. I pay you the tribute you ask of me, and I give you love and all I have that you ask. Save me, then, from this man. Teach him that he cannot rob and injure my people, and so beat and injure me—a helpless woman.’ Will you do this, or shall I go back to my own place and say, ‘The English are brave, but they will not help me? I am a woman, and you and your children must bear your lot.’”
She ceased speaking and crossed her hands humbly upon her breast; but her eyes lit up as she saw that Chumbley—upon whom her words had had a remarkable effect—was watching the Resident keenly, and was evidently eager to speak.
“Princess,” said Mr Harley, “I am deeply grieved that you should have to make this appeal. I do not act in a matter of such grave importance as this without asking advice; but that I will do at once, and believe me, if I could help it, you should not wait an hour for redress.”
“Not half an hour if I could have my way,” cried Chumbley, excitedly. “Princess, I hope we shall soon visit you for some purpose.”
She smiled at him again, and nodded her satisfaction; but there was something very grave and earnest in her look as she almost timidly turned to Hilton.
He saw the look, which was one of appeal, and seemed to ask for a reply.
“I, too,” he said, “should gladly come to your assistance.”
“Then my task is done,” she said. “Mr Harley, pray give me your help, and my people shall be ready should evil days come, as they did when I was a mere girl, and the English were in peril of their lives.”
“Princess, I will do my best,” he replied; and at a sign from their lady the women rose and stood ready to follow her back to her boat.
“Good-bye,” she said, simply, and she held out her hand, placing it afterwards upon Captain Hilton’s arm, as if she wished him to escort her down to the landing-stage.
This he did, followed by Chumbley, and on reaching the boat the rowers leaped to their places with the alacrity of well-drilled and disciplined men.
The Princess stood aside till the last of her attendants was in her place, and then she turned to Hilton.
“Good-bye,” she said.
“Good-bye, Princess,” he replied, shaking her hand. “I hope we shall have orders to come to your help.”
“So do I,” cried Chumbley, as he took the Princess’s hand in turn; and as he uttered his earnest words he involuntarily raised her hand to his lips and kissed it with profound respect.
The Inche Maida’s eyes flashed as she glanced at him, but they turned directly after with rather a regretful look at Hilton, as she seated herself beneath the awning. Then giving a signal with her hand, the rowers’ paddles dipped, the swift boat darted out into the stream, was deftly turned, and began to ascend rapidly; the two young men standing upon the stage where the guard had presented arms, both of them a good deal impressed.
“I say, old fellow,” cried Chumbley, speaking with animation, “that’s an uncommonly fine woman, in spite of her coffee skin.”
“Yea; you seemed to think so,” replied Hilton, laughing.
“Did I?” said Chumbley, with his eyes fixed on the retreating boat.
“Yes; I never saw you so polite to a woman before.”
“Didn’t you? Well, but she is in trouble, poor thing; and I say, hang it all, old man, how well she spoke out about her people—her children, and her wrongs.”
“Yes, it seems very hard, especially as I don’t think Harley will get instructions to interfere on her behalf.”
“Not interfere!” cried Chumbley. “Then it will be a damned shame. My dear old man, if we don’t get orders to dress that fellow down, I’ll go up and see her myself, and instead of tiger-hunting I’ll try if I can’t punch the blackguard’s head.”
“Why, Chumbley, old boy, what’s the matter with you!” cried Hilton, laughing.
“Matter? With me? Nothing at all.”
“But you seem all on fire to go and help the Princess.”
“Well, of course,” said the lieutenant, warmly; “and so I would any woman who was in distress. Why, hang it all, a fellow isn’t worth much who wouldn’t run some risks to protect a woman.”
“Hear! hear! Bravo! bravo! Why Chumbley, you improve.”
“Stuff! nonsense!” cried the latter, ashamed of his warmth.
“Stuff if you like, and prime stuff,” rejoined Hilton. “It’s the sort of stuff of which I like to see men made. I have hopes of you yet, Chumbley. You will turn ladies’ man—grow smooth and refined.”
“And use a pouncet-box, eh?”
“No; I draw the line at the pouncet-box and silk,” laughed Hilton.
“Never mind! Chaff as much as you like, I’d go and help that Inche Maida. By Jove! what a name for a woman?”
“Yes, it is a name for such a fine Cleopatra of a princess. I say, Chum, she seems to have taken quite a fancy to you.”
“To me, eh? Well, I like that! Oh, come!” laughed Chumbley. “Why, I saw her lay her hand upon your arm as if she wanted it to stay there. I’ll swear I saw her squeeze your hand. No, my boy, it was your Hyperion curls that attracted her ladyship.”
“But I’ll vow I saw her take a lot of notice of you, Chum.”
“Yes, but it was because I looked so big; that was all, lad. She’s a sort of hen Frederick William of Prussia, who would adore a regiment of six-feet-six grenadiers. But never mind that; I think she ought to be helped.”
“Yes,” said Hilton, quietly; “but I wish it was Murad who had done the wrong, for then I think that I should feel as warm as you—Well, what is it?”
“Mr Harley wishes to see you directly, sir,” said an orderly.
“Come along, Chumbley; there’s news, it seems. What is it, Harley?” he continued, as they joined the Resident in the veranda.
“I have just had news from a man I can trust. Murad is getting his people together, and I fear it means trouble.”
“Let it come, then,” said Hilton, firmly. “I’m rather glad.”
“Glad!” said the Resident, sternly; “and with all these women and children under our charge!”
“I was not thinking of them,” said Hilton, warmly, “but of chastising a scoundrel who seems determined to be thrashed.”
“I hope he’ll bring the other fellow too,” said Chumbley.
“Hilton—Chumbley!” said the Resident, sternly. “You think upon the surface. You do not realise what all this trouble means!”