Читать книгу One Maid's Mischief - Fenn George Manville - Страница 17

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 distingué 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.”