It was with a feeling that something dreadful had happened that Helen
opened her eyes and stared wildly about her. How long she had been
insensible she could not tell, but her impression was that very few
minutes had elapsed since she was struggling with her assailants.
She had been roughly used she knew, for her arms felt wrenched and
bruised, her head throbbed painfully, there was an acute smarting about
her lips, and a peculiar acrid, pungent, bitter taste in her mouth,
while when she placed her hand to her lips she withdrew it stained with
blood.
She shuddered and looked round at the Malay women, some of whom were
standing, some squatted about on the bamboo floor, watching her with a
gratified smile in their faces, and one and all evidently without the
slightest sympathy for her state.
"What--what have you done?" she panted, with anger now taking the place
of fear. "You shall be punished--bitterly punished for this!"
For answer there was a merry laugh, and the women chatted to each other;
but one of the girls who had been Helen's attendant rose and left the
room, to return in a few minutes with a large braes basin of clear cold
water and a cotton cloth.
Helen tried hard to check her sobs, and gladly availed herself of the
opportunity to bathe her eyes, finding as she did so that one of her
lips smarted and bled quite profusely; there was a wretched sensation
too about the lower part of her face, and her teeth ached violently.
"They shall be bitterly punished for this!" she cried, furiously. "What
have they done?"
Then, like a flash, as she saw the girl who held the basin smile
mockingly, she knew what had taken place, and with a piteous cry she
placed her hands to her mouth, to find that her surmise was correct; the
second girl laughing heartily, and fetching the hand-glass to hold upon
a level with the prisoner's face.
The cold wet dew gathered upon Helen's brow as she gazed at the strange
countenance before her. It was not that which she knew so well, and
upon whose handsome features she had been wont to gaze with half-closed
eyes and with a smile of satisfaction at its beauty; for there before
her was the face of a noble-looking Malay woman, between whose swollen
lips she could see the filed and blackened teeth considered so great a
perfection to her toilet; and with a piteous cry Helen covered her eyes
with her hands, shrank back upon her couch, and sobbed forth:
"What would he think of me now?" Humbled as she was by the treatment
she had received, and agitated by her position, Helen Perowne had enough
of the old nature left to suffer terribly upon every question relating
to her personal appearance. It was a dreadful shock to find that she
had been completely transformed, as it were, into a woman of the
country--one of those upon whom she had been accustomed to look with
such disdain; but the shock was surpassed by the sensation of misery to
find that her self-worshipped beauty was gone, as it were, for ever.
Her greatest enemy could not have inflicted upon her a more cruel pang;
and one constantly-recurring question kept repeating itself:
"What would he say to me now?"--_he_; and it was not of Captain Hilton,
her father, or any of her rejected lovers that she thought, but always
of the Resident. What would Neil Harley think of her if he could see
her distorted features? He could not recognise her, of that she felt
sure, and in her agony of mind a complete change took place in her
feelings. But an hour ago she had watched window and door, listened to
every sound, however slight, and interpreted it to mean the coming of
help--of Neil Harley and her father to fetch her away. But how could
she wish for them to come now? Why should she be taken away? Instead
of Helen Perowne, the beauty of the station, they would find, and would
not recognise, a swarthy native woman, whose aspect would repel them,
and they would be ready to doubt her word should she assert who she was.
She was ready to pray now that no help might come--even that she might
die.
The women stole softly away, whispering to each other that she would
soon come round; and as the suffering girl crouched there in her
abasement her anguish did not grow less poignant, and she found herself,
in spite of the repugnance she felt at the idea of being seen, somehow
looking once more to Neil Harley for help. She recalled how she had
laughed at his pretensions, even to treating them with indignity, and
turning upon him a resentful stare; how, too, tried to pique him by
laughing and flirting directly with some favoured lover. But what had
followed? He had only smilingly told her that he was in nowise jealous,
and that she would come to him with open arms at last.
She recalled, as she sat thinking there, how she had turned from him
with a haughty feeling of annoyance; while now that she was so cruelly
abased he seemed to be her only hope, the one to whose strong arm she
was forced to look for aid; and with a bitter wail of misery, as she
thought of him once more, in spite of her efforts to drive away the
fancy, she kept on asking herself those ever-recurring questions, what
would he think of her--what would he say?
"I am too cruelly punished," she moaned to herself, and for the next
hour or so she was completely prostrated both in body and mind. For her
position was one that must have daunted the stoutest-hearted woman. She
could not hope that, now she had been so degraded, if seen, any
Englishman would recognise her and so give notice of her whereabouts;
while the insolent Rajah might arrive at any moment to triumph over the
downfall of the proud beauty of the station.
But somehow, in spite of her peril, her thoughts wandered from the
Rajah, and kept centring themselves upon that question of what Neil
Harley would think and say, if ever he should look again upon her
terribly-disfigured face.
By degrees her sobs grew less painful, and she lay back with her face
still hidden in her hands, thinking of the harsh file that had been used
to her beautiful teeth, and the powerful stain that had been applied,
and wondering why she had not foreseen, after the dyeing of her face,
that a further attempt would be made to liken her to the native women.
She realised, too, now how strong was the Malay nature in cunning, for
their proceedings would more effectually secure her from being found
than concealment in the deepest recesses of the jungle. In fact, though
she kept her eyes closed, ever staring, as it were, straight out of the
darkness, was the swarthy distorted countenance she had seen in the
glass, with its filed and blackened teeth; and as this was burned into
her brain, she felt that so long as speech was denied her she might be
kept even in the native town close to her friends, none of whom would
recognise in her the Helen Perowne they sought.
She knew that it was a cunningly-devised and clever plan for destroying
her identity, and by it she felt, as she shuddered, she had become as it
were one of the Rajah's slaves--one of the wretched, hopeless women
branded as his like so many cattle, and in her anguish the hot blinding
tears gathered once more as she realised the degradation of her
position, and her spirits sank lower and lower as she once more lay back
and wept.
At length, after how long a time she could not tell, she was aroused by
one of her Malay attendants who seemed to be somewhat moved by her
distress. This, the gentler of the two, brought a little vessel of
perfumed water, and bending over the sobbing prisoner, she gently
removed her hands, and after a little resistance succeeded in bathing
her burning eyes and stinging lips, talking to her soothingly the while
in Malay, a good portion of which Helen, whose senses were sharpened by
her position, contrived to understand.
"Why do you cry, dear?" said the girl tenderly. "I ought not to like
you, but you are so handsome, and in such trouble, that I feel sorry.
But why do you cry? You cannot tell how you are improved. You were
dreadful before with your English look--your sickly pale face, your
white teeth and poor thin lips. Now you are lovely and our people would
worship you with your soft brown skin and shining dark teeth. The
filing has made your poor thin lips grow large and fresh as they should
be. Look; they are nearly as big and full as mine. He will love you
more and more now, and though I laughed when I saw you first, and
thought you a poor weak white thing, now I begin to feel afraid and
jealous and to hate you for coming here."
As Helen caught the meaning of these words, fully realising what was
meant, and heard her companion speak of someone who would be gratified
by her changed appearance, a shiver of dread ran through her, and she
lay back staring wildly at the speaker.
"Jealousy--hate me," thought Helen. "Yes; she talked of hating me."
A ray of hope shot through the darkness here.
"She cannot like to have me here, and she would be glad to see me gone.
What am I," she cried, mentally, "to crouch here in this pitiful way,
weeping and bewailing my misfortunes, asking myself what those who love
me will think and say? Have I been such a wretched handsome doll all my
life, that now I am cast upon myself for protection my actions are those
of a child?"
A change was coming over Helen Perowne, forced by the terrible position
in which she was placed, and roused now in spirit, she thought more and
more deeply of all this, till it seemed to her that the Malay girl had
struck the keynote of her future action, and that after feeling her way
cautiously she had but to appeal to this attendant for her aid, and she
would win her goodwill in an attempt to escape.
The day wore on, and in spite of herself the weariness produced by
exhaustion brought on a sensation of drowsiness that Helen could not
overcome. One minute she had determined that she would not yield to
sleep, the next she was starting with a cry of fear from a deep slumber
which had surprised her almost as she thought.
The Malay girl smiled, laid her cool hand upon her forehead, and kissed
her very tenderly--so tenderly that, with a sob, proud disdainful Helen
Perowne caught the brown hand in hers, and laid it upon her throbbing
breast.
Again the drowsy sensation began to master her, and she started up with
a face distorted, fleeing as she believed from some terrible danger.
The girl spoke a few soothing words, and gazed so kindly in the
prisoner's eyes, that Helen sank back once more, yielding to the
powerful influence that came upon her, and almost the next moment she
was sleeping deeply, quite exhausted by what she had suffered.
The Malay girl bent over her for a few minutes, and then softly withdrew
her hand from between Helen's, to follow her companion to the window,
where she was sitting droning over some native ditty about meeting her
love beneath the moonbeams among the waving rice, and then they sat
chatting and laughing together in a low tone. Now they discussed
Helen's features, then her want of courage, and lastly, in a dull
indifferent way, they began to wonder whether their lord would be
satisfied with what they had done, and when he was likely to come.