Читать книгу One Maid's Mischief - Fenn George Manville - Страница 16

At last Mrs Bolter’s troubles were, as she said, at an end, for the great steamer had transferred a portion of her passengers to the station gunboat at the mouth of the Darak river. There had been a quick run up between the low shores dense with their growth of mangrove and nipah palm. The station had been reached, and the ladies transferred to the arms of their fathers, both waiting anxiously for the coming boat upon the Resident’s island, where in close connection with the fort Mr Harley’s handsome bungalow had been built.

For the first few days all was excitement at Sindang, for the report of the beauty of “Old Stuart’s” daughter, and above all that of the child of the principal merchant in the place, created quite a furore among the officers of the two companies of foot stationed at the fort, and the young merchants and civil officers of the place.

“It is really a very, very great relief, Henry,” said Mrs Doctor. “I can sleep as easily again now those girls are off my hands. I mean that girl; but really I don’t feel so satisfied as I should like, for though I know Helen Perowne to be safe in her father’s charge, I am not at all sure that my responsibility has ceased.”

“Ah, you must do what you can for the motherless girls, my dear. Eh, Arthur? what do you say?”

“I quite agree with you, Harry,” said the new chaplain, quietly; “but the change to here is – is rather confusing at first.”

“Oh, you’ll soon settle down, old fellow; and I say, Mary, my dear, it is a beautiful place, is it not?”

“Very, very beautiful indeed,” replied the little lady; “but it is very hot.”

“Well, say warmish,” said the doctor, chuckling; “but I did not deceive you about that. You’ll soon get used to it, and you won’t be so ready to bustle about; you must take it coolly.”

“As you do?” said Mrs Doctor, smiling.

“As I do? Oh, I’m the doctor, and here is every one getting his or her liver out of order during my absence! My hands are terribly full just now; but we shall soon settle down. How is the church getting on, Arthur?”

“Slowly, my dear Harry,” said the Reverend Arthur, in his quiet way. “They are making the improvements I suggested. Mr Perowne subscribed handsomely, and Mr Harley is supplying more labour; but I’m afraid I was rather negligent this morning, for I strolled away towards the woods.”

“Jungle, my dear fellow, jungle! but don’t go again without me; I’m more at home here than you.”

“But the woods – I mean jungle – looked so beautiful; surely there is nothing to fear.”

“Not much – with care,” replied the doctor, “but still there are dangers – fever, sunstroke, tigers, crocodiles, poisonous serpents, venomous insects and leeches.”

“Goodness gracious!” ejaculated Mrs Doctor. “Arthur, you are on no account to go again!”

“But, my dear Mary – ” said the chaplain, meekly.

“Now, don’t argue, Arthur. I say you are on no account to go again!”

“But really, my dear Mary – ”

“I will listen to no excuse, Arthur. Unless Henry, who understands the place, accompanies you, I forbid your going again. I hope you have not been into any other dangerous place.”

“Oh, no, my dear Mary; I only went and called upon Mr Perowne.” Mrs Bolter started, and the doctor burst into a roar of laughter.

“Ha, ha, ha!” he cried. “Why, my dear boy, that’s a far more dangerous place than the jungle.”

“I – I do not understand you, Henry,” said the chaplain, with a faint flush in his cheek.

“Not understand me, my dear fellow! Why, Perowne keeps a most ferocious creature there, and it’s loose too.”

“Loose?” cried Mrs Doctor, excitedly.

“Oh, yes: I’ve seen it about the grounds, parading up and down on the lawn by the river, and in the house as well.”

“Gracious me, Henry, the man must be mad! What is it?” cried Mrs Bolter.

“Regular tigress – man-eater,” said the doctor.

“And you allowed your brother-in-law to go there without warning, Henry? Really, I am surprised at you!”

“Oh! pooh, pooh!” ejaculated the doctor. “Arthur can take care of himself.”

“And here have I accepted an invitation for all of us to go there the week after next to dinner! I won’t go. I certainly will not go.”

“Nonsense, my dear Mary – nonsense!” said the doctor, with his eyes twinkling. “We must go. Perowne would be horribly put out if we did not.”

“Now look here, Henry, when I was a maiden lady I never even kept a cat or a dog, because I said to myself that live animals about a house might be unpleasant to one’s friends. So how do you suppose that when I have become a married lady I am going to sanction the presence of dangerous monsters in a house?”

“Oh, but it won’t hurt you,” said the doctor. “I tell you it’s a man-eater. We must go, Mary.”

“I certainly must beg of you not to ask me,” said the little lady. “My dear Harry, it gives me great pain to go against your wishes, but I could not – I really could not go.”

“Not if I assured you it was perfectly safe?”

“If you gave me that assurance, Henry, I – I think I would go; for I believe you would not deceive me.”

“Never,” said the doctor, emphatically. “Well, I assure you that you need not be under the slightest apprehension.”

“But is it chained up, Harry?”

“Well, no, my dear,” replied the little doctor; “they could not very well chain her up. But I was there yesterday though, and I saw that Perowne had given her a very handsome chain.”

“Then why doesn’t he chain her up? I shall certainly tell Mr Perowne that he ought. This comes of the poor man having no wife and living out in these savage parts. Really, Henry, I don’t think we ought to go.”

“Oh! pooh, pooh – nonsense, my dear! You’ve nothing to mind. I’m not afraid of her. I’ll take care of you.”

“I know you are very good, and brave, and strong, Harry,” said the little lady, smiling, “and if you say it is safe I will go, for I do trust in your knowledge, and – there, now, I declare I am quite angry! You are laughing, sir! I’m sure there is some trick!”

“Trick? What trick?” cried the doctor, chuckling.

“Do you mean to tell me, sir, that Mr Perowne has a wild tigress running about his place?”

“Oh, no; I never said a wild tigress – did I, Arthur?”

“I – I did not quite hear what you said, Henry,” replied the chaplain.

“You said a dangerous creature – a sort of tigress, sir.”

“Right, so I did; and so he has.”

“What is it then?” said Mrs Doctor, very sharply.

“A handsome young woman,” chuckled the doctor – “his daughter Helen.”

“Now, Henry, I do declare that you are insufferable!” cried Mrs Doctor, angrily, as her brother rose softly, walked to the window of the pretty palm-thatched bungalow, and stood gazing out at the bright flowers with which the doctor had surrounded his place.

“Well, it’s true enough,” chuckled the doctor. “I never saw such a girl in my life. She has had that great fellow Chumbley hanging after her for weeks, and now – ”

“And now what, sir?”

Perhaps it was the wind, but certainly just then there was a sound as of a faint sigh from somewhere by the window, and it seemed as if the chaplain was recalling the past days of repose at his little home near Mayleyfield, and wondering whether he had done right to come; but no one heeded him, and the doctor went on:

“Now she seems to have lassoed young Hilton.”

“What, Captain Hilton?”

“Yes, my dear, with a silken lasso; and he is all devotion.”

“Henry, you astound me!” cried Mrs Doctor. “Why, I thought that Mr Harley meant something there.”

“So did I,” said the doctor, “but it seems all off. Harley and Chumbley cashiered, vice Hilton – the reigning hero of the day.”

“Of the day indeed!” exclaimed Mrs Doctor. “I never did see such a girl. It is dreadful.”

“And yet you scolded me for calling her a dangerous creature.”

“Well, I must own that she is, Henry,” said Mrs Doctor; and once more there was a faint sigh by the window.

“She’s a regular man-trap, my dear, and practises with her eyes upon everyone she sees. I don’t think even her great-grandfather would be safe. She actually smiled at me yesterday.”

“What?” cried the little lady.

“Perowne sent for me, you know.”

“Yes, of course, I remember. Go on, Henry.”

“They’d been out together – she wanted to see the Residency island – and then nothing would do but she must have a walk in the jungle; and then, I don’t know whether she began making eyes at the leeches, but half a dozen fastened upon her, of course.”

“Why, of course, sir?”

“Because she went out walking in ridiculous high-heeled low shoes, with fancy stockings.”

“Well, Henry, how tiresomely prolix you are!”

“Well, that’s all, my dear, only that the leeches fastened on her feet and ankles.”

“And did Mr Perowne send for you to take them off?”

“Well, not exactly, my dear, they pulled them off themselves; but one bite would not stop bleeding, and I had to apply a little pad on the instep – wonderfully pretty little ankles and insteps, my dear, when the stockings are off.”

“Doctor Bolter!” exclaimed the little lady in so severe a tone of voice that the subject of Helen Perowne was dismissed, and the culprit allowed to go to his little surgery to see to the compounding of some medicines necessary for his sick.