Kitabı oku: «The Argus Pheasant», sayfa 13

CHAPTER XXVI
"To Half of My Kingdom —"

Captain Carver selected a cigar from Peter Gross's humidor and reclined in the most comfortable chair in the room.

"A beastly hot day," he announced, wiping the perspiration from his forehead. "Regular Manila weather."

"The monsoon failed us again to-day," Peter Gross observed.

Carver dropped the topic abruptly. "I dropped over," he announced, "to see if the juragan talked any."

Peter Gross glanced out of the window toward the jungle-crowned hills. The lines of his mouth were very firm.

"He told me a great deal," he admitted.

"About Paddy?" There was an anxious ring in Carver's voice.

"About Paddy – and other things."

"The lad's come to no harm?"

"He is aboard Ah Sing's proa, the proa we saw standing out to sea when we reached the beach. He is safe – for the present at least. He will be useful to Ah Sing, the natives reverence him so highly."

"Thank God!" Carver ejaculated in a relieved voice. "We'll get him back. It may take time, but we'll get him."

Peter Gross made no reply. He was staring steadfastly at the hills again.

"Odd he didn't take you, too," Carver remarked.

"The juragan told me that he intended to come back with a portion of his crew for me later," Peter Gross said. "They ran short of provisions, so they had to go back to the proas, and they took Paddy with them. Some one warned them you were on the march with Jahi, so they fled. Tsang Che, the juragan, says his crew was slow in taking on fresh water; that is how we were able to surprise him."

"That explains it," Carver remarked. "I couldn't account for their leaving you behind."

Peter Gross lapsed into silence again.

"Did you get anything else from him, any real evidence?" Carver suggested presently.

The resident roused himself with an effort.

"A great deal. Even more than I like to believe."

"He turned state's evidence?"

"You might call it that."

"You got enough to clear up this mess?"

"No," Peter Gross replied slowly. "I would not say that. What he told me deals largely with past events, things that happened before I came here. It is the present with which we have to deal."

"I'm a little curious," Carver confessed.

Peter Gross passed his hand over his eyes and leaned back.

"He told me what I have always believed. Of the confederation of pirates with Ah Sing at their head; of the agreements they have formed with those in authority; of where the ships have gone that have been reported missing from time to time and what became of their cargoes; of how my predecessor died. He made a very full and complete statement. I have it here, written in Dutch, and signed by him." Peter Gross tapped a drawer in his desk.

"It compromises Van Slyck?"

"He is a murderer."

"Of de Jonge – your predecessor?"

"It was his brain that planned."

"Muller?"

"A slaver and embezzler."

"You're going to arrest them?" Carver scanned his superior's face eagerly.

"Not yet," Peter Gross dissented quietly. "We have only the word of a pirate so far. And it covers many things that happened before we came here."

"We're waiting too long," Carver asserted dubiously. "We've been lucky so far; but luck will turn."

"We are getting the situation in hand better every day. They will strike soon, their patience is ebbing fast; and we will have the Prins with us in a week."

"The blow may fall before then."

"We must be prepared. It would be folly for us to strike now. We have no proof except this confession, and Van Slyck has powerful friends at home."

"That reminds me," Carver exclaimed. "Maybe these documents will interest you. They are the papers Jahi found on your jailers. They seem to be a set of accounts, but they're Dutch to me." He offered the papers to Peter Gross, who unfolded them and began to read.

"Are they worth anything?" Carver asked presently, as the resident carefully filed them in the same drawer in which he had placed Tsang Che's statement.

"They are Ah Sing's memoranda. They tell of the disposition of several cargoes of ships that have been reported lost recently. There are no names but symbols. It may prove valuable some day."

"What are your plans?"

"I don't know. I must talk with Koyala before I decide. She is coming this afternoon."

Peter Gross glanced out of doors at that moment and his face brightened. "Here she comes now," he said.

Carver rose. "I think I'll be going," he declared gruffly.

"Stay, captain, by all means."

Carver shook his head. He was frowning and he cast an anxious glance at the resident.

"No; I don't trust her. I'd be in the way, anyway." He glanced swiftly at the resident to see the effect of his words. Peter Gross was looking down the lane along which Koyala was approaching. A necklace of flowers encircled her throat and bracelets of blossoms hung on her arms – gardenia, tuberose, hill daisies, and the scarlet bloom of the flame-of-the-forest tree. Her hat was of woven nipa palm-leaves, intricately fashioned together. Altogether she was a most alluring picture.

When Peter Gross looked up Carver was gone. Koyala entered with the familiarity of an intimate friend.

"What is this I hear?" Peter Gross asked with mock severity. "You have been saving me from my enemies again."

Koyala's smile was neither assent nor denial.

"This is getting to be a really serious situation for me," he chaffed. "I am finding myself more hopelessly in your debt every day."

Koyala glanced at him swiftly, searchingly. His frankly ingenuous, almost boyish smile evoked a whimsical response from her.

"What are you going to do when I present my claim?" she demanded.

Peter Gross spread out his palms in mock dismay. "Go into bankruptcy," he replied. "It's the only thing left for me to do."

"My bill will stagger you," she warned.

"You know the Persian's answer, 'All that I have to the half of my kingdom,'" he jested.

"I might ask more," Koyala ventured daringly.

Peter Gross's face sobered. Koyala saw that, for some reason, her reply did not please him. A strange light glowed momentarily in her eyes. Instantly controlling herself, she said in carefully modulated tones:

"You sent for me, mynheer?"

"I did," Peter Gross admitted. "I must ask another favor of you, Koyala." The mirth was gone from his voice also.

"What is it?" she asked quietly.

"You know whom we have lost," Peter Gross said, plunging directly into the subject. "Ah Sing carried him away. His uncle, the boy's only living relative, is an old sea captain under whom I served for some time and a very dear friend. I promised him I would care for the lad. I must bring the boy back. You alone can help me."

The burning intensity of Koyala's eyes moved even Peter Gross, unskilled as he was in the art of reading a woman's heart through her eyes. He felt vaguely uncomfortable, vaguely felt a peril he could not see or understand.

"What will be my reward if I bring him back to you?" Koyala asked. Her tone was almost flippant.

"You shall have whatever lies in my power as resident to give," Peter Gross promised gravely.

Koyala laughed. There was a strange, jarring note in her voice.

"I accept your offer, Mynheer Resident," she said. "But you should not have added those two words, 'as resident.'"

Rising like a startled pheasant, she glided out of the door and across the plain. Peter Gross stared after her until she had disappeared.

CHAPTER XXVII
A Woman Scorned

It was Inchi who brought the news of Paddy's return. Three days after Koyala's departure the little Dyak lad burst breathlessly upon a colloquy between Peter Gross and Captain Carver and announced excitedly:

"Him, Djath boy, him, orang blanda Djath boy, him come."

"What the devil is he driving at?" Carver growled. The circumlocution of the south-sea islander was a perennial mystery to him.

"Paddy is coming," Peter Gross cried. "Now get your breath, Inchi, and tell us where he is."

His scant vocabulary exhausted, Inchi broke into a torrent of Dyak. By requiring the lad to repeat several times, Peter Gross finally understood his message.

"Paddy, Koyala, and some of Koyala's Dyaks are coming along the mountain trail," he announced. "They will be here in an hour. She sent a runner ahead to let us know, but the runner twisted an ankle. Inchi found him and got the message."

There was a wild cheer as Paddy, dusty and matted with perspiration, several Dyaks, and Koyala emerged from the banyan-grove and crossed the plain. Discipline was forgotten as the entire command crowded around the lad.

"I shot two Chinamans for you," Vander Esse announced. "An' now daat vas all unnecessary."

"Ye can't keep a rid-head bottled up," Larry Malone, another member of the company, shouted exultingly.

"Aye ban tank we joost get it nice quiet van you come back again," Anderson remarked in mock melancholy. The others hooted him down.

Koyala stood apart from the crowd with her Dyaks and looked on. Glancing upward, Peter Gross noticed her, noticed, too, the childishly wistful look upon her face. He instantly guessed the reason – she felt herself apart from these people of his, unable to share their intimacy. Remorse smote him. She, to whom all their success was due, and who now rendered this crowning service, deserved better treatment. He hastened toward her.

"Koyala," he said, his voice vibrant with the gratitude he felt, "how can we repay you?"

Koyala made a weary gesture of dissent.

"Let us not speak of that now, mynheer," she said.

"But come to my home," he said. "We must have luncheon together – you and Captain Carver and Paddy and I." With a quick afterthought he added: "I will invite Mynheer Muller also."

The momentary gleam of pleasure that had lit Koyala's face at the invitation died at the mention of Muller's name.

"I am sorry," she said, but there was no regret in her voice. "I must go back to my people, to Djath's temple and the priests. It is a long journey; I must start at once."

"You cannot leave us now!" Peter Gross exclaimed in consternation.

"For the present I must," she said resignedly. "Perhaps when the moon is once more in the full, I shall come back to see what you have done."

"But we cannot do without you!"

"Is a woman so necessary?" she asked, and smiled sadly.

"You are necessary to Bulungan's peace," Peter Gross affirmed. "Without you we can have no peace."

"If you need me, send one of my people," she said. "I will leave him here with you. He will know where to find me."

"But that may be too late," Peter Gross objected. His tone became very grave. "The crisis is almost upon us," he declared. "Ah Sing will make the supreme test soon – how soon I cannot say – but I do not think he will let very many days pass by. He is not accustomed to being thwarted. I shall need you here at my right hand to advise me."

Koyala looked at him searchingly. The earnestness of his plea, the troubled look in his straight-forward, gray eyes fixed so pleadingly upon her, seemed to impress her.

"There is a little arbor in the banyan-grove yonder where we can talk undisturbed," she said in a voice of quiet authority. "Come with me."

"We can use my office," Peter Gross offered, but Koyala shook her head.

"I must be on my journey. I will see you in the grove."

Peter Gross walked beside her. He found difficulty in keeping the pace she set; she glided along like a winged thing. Koyala led him directly to the clearing and reclined with a sigh of utter weariness in the shade of a stunted nipa palm.

"It has been a long journey," she said with a wan smile. "I am very tired."

"Forgive me," Peter Gross exclaimed in contrition. "I should not have let you go. You must come back with me to the residency and rest until to-morrow."

"A half-hour's rest will be all I need," Koyala replied.

"But this is no place for you," Peter Gross expostulated.

"The jungle is my home," Koyala said with simple pride. "The Argus Pheasant nests in the thickets."

"Surely not at night?"

"What is there to harm me?" Koyala smiled wearily at his alarm.

"But the wild beasts, the tigers, and the leopards, and the orang-utans in the hill districts, and the snakes?"

"They are all my friends. When the tiger calls, I answer. If he is hungry, I keep away. I know all the sounds of the jungle; my grandfather, Chawatangi, taught them to me. I know the warning hiss of the snake as he glides through the grasses, I know the timid hoofbeat of the antelope, I know the stealthy rustle of the wild hogs. They and the jackals are the only animals I cannot trust."

"But where do you sleep?"

"If the night is dark and there is no moon, I cut a bundle of bamboo canes. I bind these with creepers to make a platform and hang it in a tree. Then I swing between heaven and earth as securely or more securely, than you do in your house, for I am safe from the malice of men. If it rains I make a shelter of palm-leaves on a bamboo frame. These things one learns quickly in the forest."

"You wonderful woman!" Peter Gross breathed in admiration.

Koyala smiled. She lay stretched out her full length on the ground. Peter Gross squatted beside her.

"You haven't told me where you found Paddy?" he remarked after a pause.

"Oh, that was easy," she said. "Ah Sing has a station a little way this side of the Sadong country – "

Peter Gross nodded.

"I knew that he would go there. So I followed. When I got there Ah Sing was loading his proa with stores. I learned that your boy was a prisoner in one of the houses of his people. I went to Ah Sing and begged his life. I told him he was sacred to Djath, that the Dyaks of Bulungan thought him very holy indeed. Ah Sing was very angry. He stormed about the loss of his proa and refused to listen to me. He said he would hold the boy as a hostage.

"That night I went to the hut and found one of my people on guard. He let me in. I cut the cords that bound the boy, dyed his face brown and gave him a woman's dress. I told him to wait for me in the forest until he heard my cry. The guard thought it was me when he left."

Her voice drooped pathetically.

"They brought me to Ah Sing. He was very angry, he would have killed me, I think, if he had dared. He struck me – see, here is the mark." She drew back the sleeve of her kabaya and revealed a cut in the skin with blue bruises about it. Peter Gross became very white and his teeth closed together tightly.

"That is all," she concluded.

There was a long silence. Koyala covertly studied the resident's profile, so boyish, yet so masterfully stern, as he gazed into the forest depths. She could guess his thoughts, and she half-smiled.

"When you left, I promised you that you should have a reward – anything that you might name and in my power as resident to give," Peter Gross said presently.

"Let us not speak of that – yet," Koyala dissented. "Tell me, Mynheer Gross, do you love my country?"

"It is a wonderfully beautiful country," Peter Gross replied enthusiastically, falling in with her mood. "A country of infinite possibilities. We can make it the garden spot of the world. Never have I seen such fertile soil as there is in the river bottom below us. All it needs is time and labor – and men with vision."

Koyala rose to a sitting posture and leaned on one hand. With deft motion of the other she made an ineffectual effort to cover her nut-brown limbs, cuddled among the ferns and grasses, with the shortened kabaya. Very nymphlike she looked, a Diana of the jungle, and it was small wonder that Peter Gross, the indifferent to woman, gave her his serious attention while she glanced pensively down the forest aisles.

"Men with vision!" she sighed presently. "That is what we have always needed. That is what we have always lacked. My unhappy people! Ignorant, and none to teach them, none to guide them into the better way. Leaders have come, have stayed a little while, and then they have gone again. Brooke helped us in Sarawak – now only his memory is left." A pause. "I suppose you will be going back to Java soon again, mynheer?"

"Not until my work is completed," Peter Gross assured gravely.

"But that will be soon. You will crush your enemies. You will organize the districts and lighten our burdens for a while. Then you will go. A new resident will come. Things will slip back into the old rut. Our young men are hot-headed, there will be feuds, wars, piracy. There are turns in the wheel, but no progress for us, mynheer. Borneo!" Her voice broke with a sob, and she stole a covert glance at him.

"By heaven, I swear that will not happen, Koyala," Peter Gross asserted vehemently. "I shall not go away, I shall stay here. The governor owes me some reward, the least he can give me is to let me finish the work I have begun. I shall dedicate my life to Bulungan – we, Koyala, shall redeem her, we two."

Koyala shook her head. Her big, sorrowful eyes gleamed on him for a moment through tears.

"So you speak to-day when you are full of enthusiasm, mynheer. But when one or two years have passed, and you hear naught but the unending tales of tribal jealousies, and quarrels over buffaloes, and complaints about the tax, and falsehood upon falsehood, then your ambition will fade and you will seek a place to rest, far from Borneo."

The gentle sadness of her tear-dimmed eyes, the melancholy cadences of her voice sighing tribulation like an October wind among the maples, and her eloquent beauty, set Peter Gross's pulses on fire.

"Koyala," he cried, "do you think I could give up a cause like this – forget the work we have done together – to spend my days on a plantation in Java like a buffalo in his wallow?"

"You would soon forget Borneo in Java, mynheer– and me."

The sweet melancholy of her plaintive smile drove Peter Gross to madness.

"Forget you? You, Koyala? My right hand, my savior, savior thrice over, to whom I owe every success I have had, without whom I would have failed utterly, died miserably in Wobanguli's hall? You wonderful woman! You lovely, adorable woman!"

Snatching her hands in his, he stared at her with a fierce hunger that was half passion, half gratitude.

A gleam of savage exultation flashed in Koyala's eyes. The resident was hers. The fierce, insatiate craving for this moment, that had filled her heart ever since she first saw Peter Gross until it tainted every drop of blood, now raced through her veins like vitriol. She lowered her lids lest he read her eyes, and bit her tongue to choke utterance. Still his grasp on her hands did not relax. At last she asked in a low voice, that sounded strange and harsh even to her:

"Why do you hold me, mynheer?"

The madness of the moment was still on Peter. He opened his lips to speak words that flowed to them without conscious thought, phrases as utterly foreign to his vocabulary as metaphysics to a Hottentot. Then reason resumed her throne. Breathing heavily, he released her.

"Forgive me, Koyala," he said humbly.

A chill of disappointment, like an arctic wave, submerged Koyala. She felt the sensation of having what was dearest in life suddenly snatched from her. Her stupefaction lasted but an instant. Then the fury that goads a woman scorned possessed her and lashed on the blood-hounds of vengeance.

"Forgive you?" she spat venomously. "Forgive you for what? The words you did not say, just now, orang blanda, when you held these two hands?"

Peter Gross had risen quickly and she also sprang to her feet. Her face, furious with rage, was lifted toward his, and her two clenched fists were held above her fluttering bosom. Passion made her almost inarticulate.

"Forgive you for cozening me with sweet words of our work, and our mission when you despised me for the blood of my mother that is in me? Forgive you for leading me around like a pet parrot to say your words to my people and delude them? Forgive you for the ignominy you have heaped upon me, the shame you have brought to me, the loss of friendships and the laughter of my enemies?"

"Koyala – " Peter Gross attempted, but he might as well have tried to stop Niagara.

"Are these the things you seek forgiveness for?" Koyala shrieked. "Liar! Seducer! Orang blanda!"

She spat the word as though it were something vile. At that moment there was a rustling in the cane back of Peter Gross. Bewildered, contrite, striving to collect his scattered wits that he might calm the tempest of her wrath, he did not hear it. But Koyala did. There was a savage exultation in her voice as she cried:

"To-morrow the last white will be swept from Bulungan. But you will stay here, mynheer– "

Hearing the footsteps behind him, Peter Gross whirled on his heel. But he turned too late. A bag was thrust over his head. He tried to tear it away, but clinging arms, arms as strong as his, held it tightly about him. A heavy vapor ascended into his nostrils, a vapor warm with the perfume of burning sandalwood and aromatic unguents and spices. He felt a drowsiness come upon him, struggled to cast it off, and yielded. With a sigh like a tired child's he sagged into the waiting arms and was lowered to the ground.

"Very good, Mynheer Muller," Koyala said. "Now, if you and Cho Seng will bind his legs I will call my Dyaks and have him carried to the house we have prepared for him."