In a little Eastern settlement, in spite of feelings of caste, the
Europeans are so few that rules of society are to a certain extent set
aside, so that people mix to a greater degree than in larger towns. In
spite of her rather particular, and, to be truthful, rather sharp,
old-maidish ways, Mrs Bolter soon found herself heartily welcomed by
all, and readily accorded, as the doctor's wife, almost a leading
position in the place.
This position would by rights have been given to the lady of the
principal merchant, but Mr Perowne had lost his wife when Helen was
very young; and Isaac Stuart--"Old Stuart," as he was generally called--
was no better off, his daughter Grey having been left motherless at a
very early age.
The idea of Mr Perowne was that upon his daughter joining him she
should take the lead and give receptions; and to this end the first
party was arranged, to which Mr and Mrs Doctor Bolter and the chaplain
had been invited, the time rapidly coming round, and the guests
assembling at Mr Perowne's handsome house, where the luxurious dinner,
served in the most admirable manner by the soft-footed, quiet Chinese
servants, passed off without a hitch; and at last, with a smile that
seemed to have the effect of being directed at every gentleman at table,
Helen Perowne rose, and the ladies left the room.
The conversation soon became general, and then the doctor's voice rose
in opposition to a laugh raised against something he had said.
"Oh, yes," he cried, "laugh and turn everything I say into ridicule: I
can bear it. I have not been out all these years in the jungle for
nothing."
"Does Mrs Bolter approve of your theory, doctor?" said the Resident.
"I have not mentioned it to her, sir," replied the doctor, glancing at
the curtains looped over the open doorway; "and if you have no
objection, I will make the communication myself. My journey home and my
marriage have put it a good deal out of my head. But what I want to
tell all here is, that the thing is as plain as the nose on your face."
Mr Harley, to whom this was principally addressed, gently stroked the
bridge of his aquiline nose, half closed his eyes, and smiled in a
good-humoured way.
"That's right," said the doctor. "Go on unbelieving. Some day I'll
give you the most convincing proofs that what I say is right."
"But will Mrs Bolter approve of your running wild in the jungle now you
are married?" said the Resident, quietly.
"Pooh, sir--pooh, sir! My wife is a very sensible little woman, isn't
she, Arthur?" he cried; and the chaplain smiled and bowed before lapsing
into a dreamy state, and sitting back in his chair, gazing at the
curtains hanging softly across the open door.
"Oh, we're ready enough to believe, doctor," said the Resident; "don't
be offended."
"Pooh! I'm not offended," exclaimed the doctor. "All discoveries get
laughed at till the people are forced to believe. Here, young man,
you've had enough fruit," he cried sharply, as one of the party
stretched forth his hand to help himself to the luscious tropic fruits
with which the table was spread.
"What a tyrant you are, doctor," said the young officer.
"Here, boy," cried the doctor, to one of the silent Chinese servants
gliding about the table, "more ice.--You're as unbelieving as John
Chinaman here."
"We'll believe fast enough, doctor," said the last speaker; "but it is
only fair that we should ask for facts."
"Facts, Captain Hilton," said the doctor, turning sharply upon the
sun-tanned young officer, who, like the rest of the party, was attired
in white, for the heat of the large, lightly-furnished room was very
great, "facts, sir? What do you want? Haven't you your Bible, and does
it not tell you that Solomon's ships went to Ophir, and brought back
gold, and apes, and peacocks?"
"Yes," said Captain Hilton, "certainly;" and the Reverend Arthur bowed
his head.
"Oh, you'll grant that," said the little doctor, with a smile of triumph
and a glance round the table.
"Of course," said the young officer, taking a cigarette.
"I say, Doctor," said the Resident--"or no; I'll ask your
brother-in-law. Mr Rosebury, did the doctor ventilate his astounding
theory over in England?"
"No," replied the chaplain, smiling, "I have never heard him propound
any theory."
"I thought not," said the Resident. "Go on, doctor."
"I don't mind your banter," said the little doctor, good-humouredly.
"Now look here, Captain Hilton, I want to know what more you wish for.
There's Malacca due south of where you are sitting, and there lies Mount
Ophir to the east."
"But there is a Mount Ophir in Sumatra," said Lieutenant Chumbley, the
big, heavy dragoon-looking fellow, who had not yet spoken.
"In Sumatra?" cried the doctor. "Bah, sir, bah! That isn't Solomon's
place at all. I tell you I've investigated the whole thing. Here's
Ophir east of Malacca, with its old gold workings all about the foot of
the mountain; there are the apes in the trees--Boy, more ice."
"And where are the peacocks?" drawled Chumbley.
"Hark at him!" cried the doctor; "he says where are the peacocks? Look
here, Mr Chumbley, if you would take a gun, or a geologist's hammer,
and exercise your limbs and your understanding, instead of dangling
about after young ladies--"
"Shouldn't have brought them out, doctor," drawled the young fellow,
coolly.
"Or say a collecting-box and a cyanide bottle," continued the doctor,
"instead of getting your liver into a torpid state by sitting and lying
under trees and verandas smoking and learning to chew betel like the
degraded natives, you would not ask me where are the peacocks?"
"I don't know where they are, doctor," said the young man, slowly.
"In the jungle, sir, in the jungle, which swarms with the lovely
creatures, and with pheasants too. Pff! 'tis hot--Boy, more ice."
"Don't be so hard on a fellow, doctor," drawled the lieutenant. "I'm
new to the country, and I've twice as much body to carry about as you
have. You're seasoned and tough; I'm young and tender. So the jungle
swarms with peacocks, does it?"
"Yes, sir, swarms," said the doctor, with asperity. "Well," said
Chumbley, languidly, "let it swarm! I knew it swarmed with mosquitoes."
"Sir," said the doctor, contemptuously, as he glanced at the great frame
of the young officer, "you never exert yourself, and I don't believe,
sir, that you know what is going on within a mile of the Residency."
"I really don't believe I do," said the young man, with a sleepy yawn.
"I say, Mr Perowne, can't you give us a little more air?"
"My dear Mr Chumbley," said the host, a thin, slightly grey, rather
_distingue_ man, "every door and window is wide open. Take a little
more iced cup."
"It makes a fellow wish he were a frog," drawled the lieutenant. "I
should like to go and lie right in the water with only my nose in the
air."
As he spoke he gazed sleepily through his half-closed eyes at the broad,
moonlit river gliding on like so much molten silver, while on the
farther bank the palms stood up in columns, spreading their great fronds
like lace against the spangled purple sky.
Below them, playing amidst the bushes and undergrowth that fringed the
river, it seemed as if nature had sent the surplus of her starry
millions from sky to earth, for the leaves were dotted with fire-flies
scintillating and flashing in every direction. A dense patch of
darkness would suddenly blaze out with hundreds of soft, lambent sparks,
then darken again for another patch to be illumined, as the wondrous
insects played about like magnified productions of the points of light
that run through well-burned tinder.
From time to time there would be a faint plash rise from the river, and
the water rippled in the moonbeams, sounds then well understood by the
occupants of Mr Perowne's dining-room, for as the languid lieutenant
made another allusion to the pleasure of being a frog, the doctor said,
laughing: "Try it Chumbley; you are young and tolerably plump, and it
would make a vacancy for another sub. The crocodiles would bless you."
"Two natives were carried off last week while bathing on the bank," said
a sharp, harsh voice, and a little, thin, dry man who had been lying
back in an easy-chair with a handkerchief over his head raised himself
and passed his glass to be filled with claret and iced water. "Hah!
Harley," he continued, with a broad Scotch accent, "you ought to put
down crocodiles. What's the use of our having a Resident if he is not
to suppress every nuisance in the place?"
"Put down crocodiles, Mr Stuart, eh? Rather a task!"
"Make these idle young officers shoot them then, instead of dangling
after our daughters. Set Chumbley to work."
"The crocodiles never hurt me," drawled the young man. "Rather ugly,
certainly, but they've a nice open style of countenance. I like hunting
and shooting, but I don't see any fun in making yourself a nuisance to
everything that runs or flies, as the doctor there does, shooting, and
skinning and sticking pins through 'em, and putting them in glass cases
with camphor. I hope you don't do much of that sort of thing, Mr
Rosebury?"
"I? Oh, no," said the Reverend Arthur, raising his eyes from a dreamy
contemplation of the doorway, through which a pleasant murmur of female
voices came. "I--I am afraid I am guilty as to insects."
"But you draw the line at crocodiles, I suppose? Poor brutes! They
never had any education, and if you put temptation in their way, of
course they'll tumble in."
"And then repent and shed crocodile's tears," said Captain Hilton,
smiling.
"A vulgar error, sir!" said the doctor, sharply. "Crocodiles have no
tear-secreting glands."
"They could not wipe their eyes in the water if they had, doctor," said
Captain Hilton, merrily.
"Of course not, sir," said the doctor; "but as I was saying, gentlemen,
when Solomon's ships--"
"I say, Perowne," interrupted the little Scotch merchant, in his harsh
voice, "hadn't we better join the ladies? If Bolter is going to
ventilate his theory I shall go to sleep."
"I've done," said the doctor, leaning back and thrusting his hands into
his pockets; "but I must say, Stuart, that as an old resident in these
parts I think you might give a little attention to a fact of great
historical interest, and one that might lead to a valuable discovery of
gold. What do you say, Perowne?"
"I leave such matters to you scientific gentlemen," said the host,
carefully flicking a scrap of cigar-ash from his shirt-front.
"You can't tempt Perowne," laughed the little Scot. "He is a regular
Mount Ophir in himself, and," he added to himself, "has a flaunting
peacock--I mean peahen--of his own."
"Nay, nay, Stuart," said the host, smiling meaningly; "I am not a rich
man."
"Oh, no," chuckled his brother merchant; "he's as poor as a Jew."
Mr Perowne shook his head at his harsh-voiced guest, glanced round
suavely, as if asking permission of his guests, and then rose from the
handsomely-furnished table.
"Then we will join the ladies," he said, blandly; and the Chinese
servants drew aside the light muslin curtains which hung in graceful
folds over the arched door.
It was but a few steps across a conservatory, the bright tints of whose
rich tropical flowers and lustrous sheen of whose leaves were softened
and subdued by the light of some half-dozen large Chinese lanterns,
cleverly arranged so as to give the finest effect to the gorgeous
plants.
Here several of the party paused for a few moments to gaze through
another muslin-draped portal into the drawing-room, whose shaded lamps
with their heavy silken fringes cast a subdued light upon a group, the
sight of which had a strange effect upon several of the men.
There, in the darker part of the beautifully-furnished room, where the
taste of Paris was mingled with the highest and airiest ornamentation of
the East, sat little Mrs Doctor very far back in a cane chair--wide
awake, as she would have declared had anyone spoken, but with her mouth
open, and a general vacancy of expression upon her countenance
suggestive of some wonder visible in the land of dreams.
Close by her, upon a low seat, was Grey Stuart, looking very simple and
innocent in her diaphanous white dress; but there was trouble in her
gentle eyes, and her lips seemed pinched as if with pain, as now and
then one of her hands left the work upon which she was engaged to push
back a wave of her thick soft hair.
She too was partly in shadow, but as she pushed back the thick fair
hair, it was possible to see that there were faint lines of care in her
white forehead, for she too was gazing at the group that had taken the
attention of the gentlemen leaving their dessert.
For in the centre of the room, just where the soft glow of one of the
shaded lamps formed quite a halo round her glistening dark hair, and
seemed to add lustre to her large, well-shaped eyes, reclined Helen
Perowne. Her attitude was graceful, and evidently studied for effect.
One hand rested on the back of the well-stuffed ottoman, so as to
display the rounded softness of her shapely arm; while her head was
thrown back to place at the same advantage her creamy-hued well-formed
throat, and at the same time to allow its owner to turn her gaze from
time to time upon the companion standing beside her, grave, statuesque,
and calm, but with all the fire of his Eastern nature glowing in his
large dark eyes, which needed no interpreter to tell the tale they told.
"A nigger now!" said Lieutenant Chumbley to himself, with a look of
contempt at the handsome young hostess. "Well, there's no knowing what
that girl would do."
"The rajah--the sultan!" muttered Captain Hilton, with a
furiously-jealous look. "How dare he! The insolent, dark-skinned cad!"
"Flying at a seat upon an ivory throne in a palm-tree palace, eh,
Helen?" mused the Resident, with a quiet smile. "Well, you will exhaust
them all in time?"
These thoughts ran through the brains of each of the spectators of the
little scene within the drawing-room in turn, but only one of the
dinner-party spoke aloud, and that was in a low voice in another's ear.
It was the little Scotchman, Grey Stuart's father, who spoke, as he laid
his hand upon his host's shoulder.
"Perowne, mahn," he whispered, "ye'll have a care there, and speak to
your lass, for there'll be the deil's own mischief, and murder too, if
she leads that fellow on."