One Maid's Mischief

by George Manville Fenn

She uttered a sigh of misery at her own dread and overwrought imagination, as she now realised the fact that the soft rustling was that of leaves as the night wind stirred them when it passed, for the soft, heavy breathing of the sleepers came regularly to her ear.

It was very strange and confusing, though, for now in that intense darkness she seemed to have lost herself, and she could not tell exactly from which side the heavy breathing came.

Once, as she listened intently, it seemed to grow so loud that it struck her it was the breathing of some monster of the jungle that had stopped by the open window; but soon she recovered herself sufficiently to feel that she was wrong; it was but the regular sleep of her companions, and laying her hand upon her breast to stay the throbbings of her heart, she gathered up the loose sarong that interfered with her progress, and stepped on cautiously towards where she believed the door to be.

Once more the yielding bamboos bent beneath her weight, creaking loudly, and as they cracked at every step the more loudly now that she was walking beyond the rugs, the sounds were so plain in the still night that she tremblingly wondered why her companions did not wake.

At last one gave so loud a crack that she stood perfectly still, afraid to either advance or recede; but to her great comfort the regular breathing of the two Malay girls rose and fell, as it were, like the pulses of the intensely hot night.

With the feeling that any attempt at haste must result in failure, Helen stood there listening as the low hum of the night-flying insects reached her ear; and somehow, in spite of the peril in which she stood, thoughts of the past came back, and the hot-breathed gloom seemed to suggest those summer nights at the Miss Twettenham’s when the sun-scorched air lingered in the dormitories, and they used to sit by the open windows, enjoying the sweetness of the soft night, reluctant to go to bed. Those were the times when, filled with romantic thoughts, they listened to the nightingales answering each challenge from copse to copse, and making the listeners think of subjects the Misses Twettenham never taught—subjects relating to love, with serenades, cavaliers, elopements, and other horrors, such as would have made the thin hair of those amiable elderly ladies stand on end. For there was something very witching in those soft summer nights, an atmosphere that set young hearts dream of romantic futures. Helen Perowne had perhaps had the wildest imagination of any dreamer there, but in her most exalted times she had never dreamed so wild a life-romance as that of which she had become the heroine; and as she stood there with her throat parched, listening to the hum of mosquitoes and the breathing of her companions, everything seemed so unreal that she was ready to ask herself whether she slept—whether she did not dream still—and would awake to find herself back in the conventual seclusion of the old school.

Then once more came the shudder-engendering roar of the prowling tiger, apparently close at hand, and in its deep, strange tones seeming to make the building vibrate.

Helen shivered, and the cold, damp perspiration gathered on her face, as she felt now the propinquity of the tiger to such an extent that she was ready to sink down helpless upon the floor.

There it was again—that low, deep, muttering roar, ending in a growling snarl, and so close below the window that she trembled, knowing as she did that there were only a few frail bamboo laths between her and the most savage creature that roamed the jungle.

Was it real, she asked herself once more, that she, Helen Perowne, was here in this wild forest, surrounded by beasts of prey, and none of her friends at hand; or had she lost her senses, and would she awaken some day calm and cool at home, with a faint, misty recollection of having suffered from some fever that had attacked her brain.