Volume Two—Chapter Four.
Mrs Barlow.
Mr Perowne’s house was literally besieged the next morning, for the news of the disappearance ran through the little community like wildfire. British and native communities were equally excited; and after snatching an hour’s rest at the imperative command of his wife, the doctor was hastily swallowing some breakfast previous to going back to Mr Perowne’s, but could hardly get on for interruptions.
“I am not alarmed, Henry,” said the little lady, in a quiet, decided way; “and I insist upon your being properly fortified before unduly exerting yourself. I could not bear for you to be ill.”
The words were said very quietly, but in such a tone that Dr Bolter set down his cup, and rising, left his place, and tenderly embraced the earnest little woman he had made his wife.
“I will take all the care I can, my dear Mary,” he said.
“I know you will, Henry,” said the little lady, whose lip quivered slightly as she spoke; “but now go and finish your breakfast, and then start. Don’t be uneasy about me, dear, but go and do what you think best under the circumstances.”
“I will, my love—I will,” said Dr Bolter, with his mouth full of toast.
“It all sounds very alarming, dear, but I cannot help thinking that it will be explained in a very simple manner.”
“I hope so.”
“You see there are four of them; and as Arthur is one, I think we may feel assured.”
“Well, my dear these are business times,” said the doctor, “and we must speak in business ways. Arthur is the best old fellow in the world; but I am sorry to say that he is a terrible old woman.”
“Henry!” said the lady, reproachfully.
“Well, my dear, he is. Now, would you have much confidence in him if it were a case of emergency?”
“I—I think I would sooner trust to you, Henry,” said the little lady, softly; “but do make haste and get a good breakfast. If you want me, send a message, and I will come directly.”
“All right,” said the doctor, rising once more. “Now I’m off.”
“But one moment, Henry,” said the little lady, whose feelings now got the upper hand. “Tell me, dear—do you think anything dreadful has happened?”
“What do you call dreadful, my dear?” said the doctor, cheerily.
“That the crocodiles—”
She did not finish, but looked imploringly at her lord.
“Bah!—stuff!—nonsense! No, Mary, I don’t.”
“Then that this dreadful Rajah has carried them off?”
“If it had only been Madam Helen, I should have felt suspicious; but what could he want with Hilton and Chumbley, or with our Arthur?”
“To marry them,” suggested Mrs Bolter.
“Stuff! my dear, not he. If Murad had carried her off, he would not have bothered about a parson.”
“But Arthur was waiting about her all the evening.”
“So he was, my dear.”
“And he may have killed Hilton and poor Mr Chumbley, while they were defending her.”
“Yes, he might, certainly,” said the doctor, drily; “but how the—”
“Henry!”
“I only meant dickens. I say how the dickens he was going to carry her off when he was at the party all the time I can’t see.”
“But was he?”
“To the very last. Oh! it will all settle itself into nothing, unless Arthur has taken Helen off into the jungle and married her himself, with Hilton and Chumbley for witnesses.”
“Is this a time for joking, Henry?” said the little lady, reproachfully.
“Really, my dear, it would be no joke if Arthur had his own way.”
“I’m afraid,” sighed little Mrs Bolter, “that Helen Perowne had a good deal to with my brother accepting the chaplaincy.”
“I’m sure she had,” chuckled the doctor.
“If I had thought so I would never have consented to come,” said the lady with asperity.
“Wouldn’t you, Mary? Wouldn’t you?” said the little doctor, taking her in his arms; and the lady withdrew her words just as a step was heard outside.
“Here’s another stoppage,” cried the doctor, impatiently. “Why, it’s Mrs Barlow. What does she want?”
Mrs Barlow was a widow lady of about forty, the relict of a well-to-do merchant of the station, who, after her widowhood, preferred to stay and keep her brother’s house to going back to England; at any rate, as she expressed it, for a few years.
She was one of the set who visited at Mr Perowne’s, and had also been at the trip up the river to the Inche Maida’s home; but being a decidedly neutral-tinted lady, in spite of her black attire, she was so little prominent that mention of her has not been necessary until now.
“Stop a minute;” she exclaimed, excitedly, as she arrested the doctor on his step.
“Not ill, are you, Mrs Barlow?” queried the doctor.
“Not bodily, doctor,” she began, “but—”
“My wife is inside, my dear madam,” cried the doctor, “and I must be off.”
“Stop!” exclaimed Mrs Barlow, authoritatively; and she took the little doctor’s arm, and led him back into the breakfast-room. “You are his brother, Dr Bolter. Mrs Bolter, you are his sister, ma’am. I can speak freely to you both.”
“Of course, madam, of course,” said the doctor; and then to himself, “Has the woman been taking very strong tea?”
“I have only just learned the terrible news, Dr Bolter—Mrs Bolter,” cried the lady, “and I came on to you.”
“Very kind of you I am sure, ma’am.”
“What do you think, doctor? You have some idea.”
“Not the least at present, ma’am. I was just off to see.”
“That is good of you; but tell me first,” cried the widow, half hysterically. “You do not—you cannot think—that that dreadful woman—”
“What, the Inche Maida, ma’am?”
“No, no! I mean Helen Perowne—has deluded him into following her away to some other settlement.”
“Whom, ma’am, Hilton or Chumbley?”
“Oh, dear me, no, doctor; I mean dear Mr Rosebury.”
“Oh, you mean dear Mr Rosebury, do you?” said the doctor.
“Yes, Dr Bolter; oh, yes. Tell me; do you think that dreadful girl has deluded him away?”
“No, ma’am, I don’t,” cried the doctor, stoutly. “Hang it all, no! I’d give her the credit of a good deal, but not of that. Hang it, no.”
“Thank you, doctor,” said the lady hysterically. “Of course I should have forgiven it, and set it all down to her; but you do me good, doctor, by assuring me that my surmise is impossible. What do you think then?”
“That it’s all a mystery for us to find out, and I was going to hunt it up when you stopped me, ma’am.”
“Excuse me, Mrs Barlow,” said little Mrs Bolter, who had been fidgeting about, and waiting for an opportunity to speak, “but will you kindly explain what you mean by your very particular allusions to my brother?”
“Must I?” said the lady, with a martyred look.
“If you please, ma’am,” said Mrs Bolter, sternly; and the little lady looked as if she were ready to apply the moral thumbscrews and the rack itself to the visitor if she did not make a clean breast.
“Do you not know?” whispered Mrs Barlow, with a pathetic look, and a timidly bashful casting down of the eyes.
“No, ma’am, I do not,” said little Mrs Bolter, haughtily.
“I thought you must have known,” sighed the lady. “But under these circumstances, when he may be in terrible peril, perhaps crying aloud, ‘Rosina, come to my aid,’ why should I shrink from this avowal? I am not ashamed to own it. Ah, Dr Bolter—oh, Mrs Bolter—I have loved him from his first sermon, when he looked down at me and seemed to address me with that soft, impressive voice which thrilled the very fibres of my heart, and now he is gone—he is gone! What does it mean! What shall we do?”
“Mary, you’d better administer a little sal-volatile, my dear,” said the doctor. “You know the strength; I’m off.”
The doctor backed out of the room, leaving Mrs Barlow sobbing on the sofa, and hurried off in the direction of the Residency, talking to himself on the way.
“This is something fresh!” he muttered; “and it isn’t leap-year either. Rum creatures women! I wonder what Mary is saying to her now! Here, paddle me across,” he said to one of the natives who was cleaning out his sampan ready for any passengers who might want to be put across to the island.
As he neared the landing-stage, he found Mr Harley anxiously busy despatching boat after boat up and down stream, each boat being paddled by a couple of friendly natives, and containing a noncommissioned officer and private selected for their intelligence.
“Ah! that’s right, Harley!” said the doctor, rubbing his hands after a friendly salute, and the information given and taken that there was not the slightest news of the missing people. “But don’t you think we ought to take some steps ashore?”
“Wait a moment; let me ease my mind by getting these fellows off,” said the Resident hoarsely; and he gave the men the strictest injunctions to carefully search the banks of the river, and also to closely question every Malay they met as to whether anything of the missing party had been seen. Eight boats had been sent off upon this mission, the men accepting the task readily enough, irrespective of the promise of reward; and hardly had the last been despatched, when the Resident proposed that they should go across to Mr Perowne’s.
“It is only fair to consult him as to our next proceedings,” said the Resident, gloomily; and almost in silence they were paddled across to the mainland, and went up to the scene of last night’s festivities, where everything looked dismal and in confusion. Half-burnt lanterns hung amidst the trees, tables and chairs were piled up anyhow in the grounds, and the lawn was strewn with the débris of the feast yet uncleared away, the attention of the servants having been so much occupied with their search.
The two new-comers found Mr Perowne quite prostrate with this terrible anxiety, and Mr Stuart trying, with his daughter, to administer some little consolation in the way of hope.
“Cheer up, mon!” the old Scot was saying. “I daresay she’ll turn up all right yet.”
Mr Perowne looked at him so reproachfully that the old Scot paused and then turned uneasily away.
“Poor wretch!” he muttered; “he has trouble eneuch—enough I mean.”
“Ah! Harley, what news?” cried Mr Perowne.
“None as yet,” was the reply.
“Have you sent out boats?”
“Yes, eight; and let us hope that they will discover something.”
“But you do not think they will?”
The Resident was silent.
“Harley here thinks that the Rajah is at the bottom of it all,” said the doctor.
“Impossible!” cried the unhappy father. “He was here when she was missed, or I might have suspected him. I fear it is something worse than even that.”
“I cannot help my suspicions,” said the Resident, quietly. “Perhaps I wrong him.”
“I think ye do, Harley,” said the old Scot. “I saw him here long after Miss Helen must have been gone. I’m thinking she and the young officers have taken a boat and gone down the river for a wee bit of game, seeing the night was fine.”
“Oh! papa,” cried Grey, “I am sure Helen would not have been so imprudent.”
“I’m sure it’s very kind of ye to think so well o’ your schoolfellow, but I’m no’ so sure. Trust me, the Rajah had no hand in the matter.”
“He has plenty of servants who would work his will,” said the Resident, thoughtfully; “but this charge of mine must not go forth to Murad’s ears. If I am wronging an innocent man, we shall have made a fresh enemy; and Heaven knows we have enough without that!”
“You may be right,” said the doctor, “but I have my doubts.”
“He’s wrong,” said old Stuart. “He’s not the man with the spirit in him to do so stirring a thing.”
“And he would never take off those two young fellows and my brother-in-law.”
“I begin to think he has,” said Perowne, snatching at the solution once more, after holding the opinion and casting it off a dozen times. “He has never forgiven her for her refusal. Are we to sit still under his insult, Harley? You have plenty of men under your command.”
“True,” said the Resident; “but should I be justified in calling them out and making a descent on Murad’s town upon the barest suspicion?”
Suggestion after suggestion was offered, as the reason of the Resident’s remark was fully realised; but as time went on the little knot of English people more fully than ever realised how helpless they were in the midst of the Malays, whose good offices they were compelled to enlist.