Volume Three—Chapter Six.
In Time of Peril.
With eyes wild and hair dishevelled Helen Perowne sat crouched together as far from the Rajah as her means would allow.
“Why, Helen,” he said mockingly, and with a gleam of triumph in his eyes, as he half reclined against the bamboo wall, “how beautiful you look!” He made a movement as if to clasp her in his arms, but she sprang up with a cry of horror.
“What folly!” he said, laughing as he slowly changed his feet. “And you will not drink—you are afraid that I shall try to poison you. Don’t be afraid. Why should I now? I love you too well. When first you began to woo me—”
She burst into a piteous fit of sobbing, and then turned upon him her eyes full of misery and despair.
“That makes you more handsome!” he cried, excitedly. “Be angry with me; I love it! I will say that again. When you first began to woo me—”
It had not the intended effect, for Helen remained silent, watching him with dilated eyes, as if he were some tiger about to make a spring.
“I say when you first began to woo me,” he continued, “I resisted for a time, for you are only a white woman, and not of our blood or our religion; but I felt at last that you had made me your slave, and once my love had turned to you, fate told me that you would be mine, and I gave way to my passion. Then you led me on till I declared my love, when you professed to cast me off, and I accepted the words; but they were words only. Fate said that I was to take to myself a wife from the invaders of my country, and do you think I was going to let the opposition of your friends, as you did, stand in the way?”
He waited for her to reply, but she remained watchful and silent.
“I knew all along,” he went on, evidently to provoke her to speak, “that you only professed to reject me, and that you were waiting, as I was, the time when you would be mine; and though I grew daily more impatient, I was ready to wait for my reward. At last the time has come. Look at me well, my wife, for such you are; even the priests have studied, and found that a prince of my race was to marry a woman fair as the morning light.”
He took a step forward, and as she shrank back with a cry of horror, he stopped and laughed.
“Why do you shrink away, little wife?” he said. “The time has passed now for that, and you should cling to me, and pay me for my patient waiting and my brave deed. But you were afraid of the water and wine, as if I should poison or drug you. Why should I? You are here—my wife—in my home amongst my slaves. It is foolishness to think that I should give you poison to drink—to you who love me so well. See here!”
He walked quickly forward to where the wine was placed, and Helen watched him keenly as he poured out a cupful, smiled at her, and drank it slowly to the last drop.
“Now,” he said, smiling, “will you drink without fear? I will pour you out a cup. No; I will use this from which I drank. It is only your husband’s, and you need not mind.”
He poured out a fresh cup of the palm wine; but as if from clumsiness shook the native bottle that contained the liquid. Helen did not perceive it; but the wine as he partook of it himself was clear; now it was thick and discoloured, a fact that would have been seen at once in a glass.
She still kept aloof from him, with her mind actively at work, seeking some means of escaping from her enemy’s hands, for she could not conceal from herself that appeals and violence would be equally in vain.
She came to the full endorsement, then, of previous thoughts—that her sole hope of escape depended upon artifice: her womanly cunning must be brought to bear. She felt that she had mastered Murad before; why should she not now—by seeming to accept her fate? He would, she argued, doubtless submit to her wishes if she showed a semblance of accepting his suit, and in this spirit, as he pressed her once more to partake of the wine, she began to parley with him.
“I do not drink wine,” she said.
“But you must be faint,” he urged. “You have only drunk water; you have not eaten.”
“Then I will eat,” she said.
“May I seat myself, and eat with you?”
She paused for a moment, for her nature fought against the subterfuge she was about to practise; but he was keenly watching her, and she motioned to him to take his seat upon the mats.
“When you are seated,” he said, with a smile of triumph playing about his lips.
She hesitated for a moment or two, and then sat down, Murad following her example, and contenting himself, as she seemed ready to start away, with placing the wine-cup at her side, and seating himself opposite.
“That is better,” he said, smiling. “Now make me happy by letting me see you eat.”
Every mouthful seemed as if it would choke her, and her heart beat wildly as she thought of her unprotected state; but she battled bravely with her feelings, and spoke quietly, answering the Rajah’s questions, and striving all the while for strength and courage to carry out her designs.
As for Murad, he was perfectly triumphant in his way. The victory was his; and with all the pride of a weak man at his success in bringing the handsome English beauty to her knees, he laughed merrily, making Helen shiver as she saw the wild excitement in his eyes, and listened to the compliments he paid to her beauty.
“I like you the more for your brave resistance,” he said; “and most of all for your cleverness and wisdom. You see that it is of no use to fight, so like a wise captain you surrender.”
He laughed again, and kept his flaming eyes fixed upon her.
“You shall be my queen, Helen,” he said, talking in a quick, excited way. “You shall help me to fight all my enemies, and drive them out, till all the country round is mine, for you are Malayan now, and your people will have to go. I shall not slay them. No: they will find they have no position here, and they will go as they came; but you will stay. You will not wish to leave me, my queen. You will not wish to be white again. But you have not drunk your wine. Come: you must drink, Helen; it is my cup, and I wish to drink again.”
She took up the cup and held it to him, Murad taking it with a bow and smile, holding her fingers within his pressed against the side of the vessel, and keeping them prisoned there.
She did not shrink, but sat motionless, her hand becoming deathly cold, and the dank perspiration gathering upon her brow.
“No,” he said at last, with a smile; “it is not fair. You must drink to me. See!” he continued, raising the cup to his lips, and holding it there for some moments. “I drink to your happiness—a toast you English people call it.”
She watched him narrowly, and saw that he did not drink, merely held the cup to his lips, and then slowly let it down to the level of his breast, carefully wiping his lips before holding out the cup to her.
“Stay,” he cried, “I must fill it up again;” and taking the native bottle, his hand shook a good deal as he refilled the cup. “Your presence agitates me,” he said. “See how my hand trembles. It is all for love—the love you taught me to feel.”
Helen trembled with horror; and never had her heart reproached her in all her past more bitterly than at this moment. It was retribution, and she felt it cruelly.
“There,” he cried, touching the edge of the cup again with his lips, “drink from that, Helen, my love, my wife, as an earnest of the kisses you press upon these lips, for I will not force them from you; they shall come full and freely as your gifts. Forced kisses are from slaves, and I can command them when I will! I want your warm, true, freely-given English love, and in return I will worship you, and make you a queen as great as your own, far over the seas. There, take the cup and drink. Yes, you must—you shall drink. No, no,” he cried, laughing in a harsh, strange way, “I do not command, I beg and pray.”
He had risen now, and was bending down over her with the wine, and in her horror and fear of his presence she was ready to shriek aloud. His hand grasped her arm as he pressed the cup towards her. It was with no lustful caress, but with a spasmodic, furious grasp to save himself from falling as the cup dropped from his hand, making a great patch upon the soft brown matting that was spread with sweets and fruit.
He recovered himself though directly, and stood upright, but kept on muttering angrily and gazing about him in a wild, excited way. His eyes looked fixed and dilated, while his hands were extended as if feeling about for something to grasp.
Helen gazed at him in horror, and she shrank more and more away as Murad kept on muttering in the Malay tongue before sinking down heavily and then letting his head drop as if it were much too heavy to bear.
She stared, believing it to be some ruse, but a heavy, stertorous breathing set in, and the Rajah sank lower and lower, evidently in a heavy stupor, while now all became confused and misty before Helen’s eyes; and as, like a flash, the thought passed through her brain that after all the water that she had tasted had been drugged, a deathly sickness overcame her, and she sank back insensible upon the mats.