He was silent for a few minutes.
"That is the fate of mixing bloods in these tropical lands," he said with a shudder. "And the woman always suffers more than the man!"
I met another Malay-English girl on the ship going from Singapore to Batavia, Java.
She too was an educated, English-speaking girl of a strange beauty and fascination. She started to talk with me as I sat alone on the Dutch ship. We were the only English-speaking people on board and we felt a certain comradeship. We sat an entire evening talking about the problem of a girl of mixed blood in the Malay States.
"White men always assume that we are bad girls. They come into the offices where we work as stenographers and insult us. It is that taint of mixed blood. We have the longings and the ideals of the best blood that is in our veins; but the skin and the color and the passions of the worst. We try to be good; some of us; but everything is against us. We can never marry white men; though we frequently fall in love with them for we work side by side with them in the offices. But when it comes to marrying us they fear the social ban. It is a terrible thing. There is no way out! It is a thing that has been imposed upon us from the generations that have gone. We pay!"
I shall never forget her brown eyes, her brown skin, her heaving breast, as the great Dutch ship cut the waves of the South China Sea bound for Java.
"Why are you leaving a good position and going to Java?" I asked her.
"They say things are better for us girls in Java; that the Dutch are not so particular. I shall no doubt be homesick for Singapore but I am going to try Java for a while. My sister is there!"
* * * * * *
A Feminine-Flash light that has its humorous side was one that I experienced in Borneo.