Kitabı oku: «One Maid's Mischief», sayfa 16
Volume Two – Chapter Eight.
Danger Ahead
Grey Stuart lost her cavalier Chumbley soon after supper, for the Princess pointed to a chair beside her, Hilton being very quiet and distant, and in spite of several reproachful glances from his companion’s eyes, proving to be very poor company indeed.
In fact, as soon as he could with decency give up what was to him a tiresome duty, Hilton left the Malay Princess’s side, making the vacancy that was filled up by Grey, while soon after the Rajah came and took a chair upon the other side of the Scottish maiden, chatting to her with a slight hesitancy of speech, but pleasantly and well.
“Do you enjoy – this party?” he said.
“Oh! so much!” replied Grey. “It is so different from anything at home.”
“At home?” queried the Prince, who knew the simplicity of old Stuart’s household.
“I mean at home in England.”
“Oh! yes, I see. At home in England,” said the Prince musingly. “I must go and see at home in England. I should like to go.”
“You would be much pleased, I am sure,” said Grey, smiling; “but it is a very bad climate.”
“That is why you English come to our beautiful land. I see!” exclaimed the Prince. “But you enjoy yourself – this party?”
“Oh! very much!” cried Grey; but a shadow crossed her countenance as she spoke.
“I have said I will try and pass you all,” said the Prince, laughing. “I mean mine to be the greatest of the fêtes. It must be; for if I do not make mine a grander party than all, my people will look down upon me, and say, ‘See how weak and poor he is compared to the English!’ I must make mine very brave and good.”
“I hear what you are saying,” exclaimed the Inche Maida; “but I will excel you; for I will give another party, greater, and brighter, and more beautiful still. Miss Stuart will help me with good advice, and mine shall be more English than yours. We will not be beaten.”
“No, no!” said the Rajah, laughing; “do not help her, Miss Stuart; help me, and I will be so grateful. It is so easy to say I will give a grand party, but it is hard to make it so that it will please these English gentlemen and ladies.”
“Ladies and gentlemen, Prince,” said the Inche Maida.
“Of course – yes,” he replied. “That is where I make things wrong. You English place the ladies first, and I always make mistakes like that.”
“You will soon acquire our habits,” said Grey, who could not help her eyes wandering in search of Hilton.
“Thank you,” said the Prince. “I shall try; but as I say, it is so hard to make a feast quite right. If I want to make a banquet for my people with flowers, and fireworks, and elephants, and gongs, and tom-toms, it is all so easy; but an English party, to satisfy all you – ah! it is too much.”
Meanwhile, heart-sick and disgusted with everything and everybody present, Hilton wandered away to the pagoda, where Mr Stuart had taken up hi quarters directly after supper.
“Hullo! young fellow,” said the old merchant, gruffly, “come to your senses again?”
“Senses? Haven’t been out of them that I know of,” retorted Hilton.
“Well, ye’ve been running wild after Perowne’s lassie.”
“Mr Stuart!”
“And one never sees her without Captain Hilton ahint her.”
“Mr Stuart, I was not aware that I was answerable to you for my conduct,” exclaimed the young officer, hotly.
“Nay – nay – nay – dinna – don’t be fashed, laddie, I was vexed to see ye rinning after a lassie who will throw ye over for the next man she sees – that’s a’ – ”
“Mr Stuart, I will not listen to anything in Miss Perowne’s disparagement!” cried the young man hotly. “How dare you speak to me like this!”
“Have a cigar, laddie?” said the old Scot, drily. “They’re verra good, and they’ll soothe ye down better than anything I ken.”
Hilton glared at him angrily. “There, there, there, let me have my say, laddie. I rather like ye, Hilton, though ye are only a soldier; so don’t fly in a passion with an old man. Tak’ a cigar.”
Hilton hesitated, but finally took the cigar, lit it, and began to smoke.
“I ken weel what’s wrong,” said the old man; “but never heed it, mon. It mak’s ye sore to-day, but ye’ll soon get over it. I’ve seen ivery thing that’s gone on sin the lassies have been here. Try a drappie o’ that whuskie, laddie; that and yon cigar will mak’ ye forget all about the trouble wi’ the girl.”
“Mr Stuart, I must request you to be silent upon this question, unless you wish to quarrel.”
“Quarrel? Not I, lad! I’m as peaceable a body as ever lived; but tak’ my advice – don’t wherret yoursel’ about Helen Perowne. She’s not made for ye.”
“Sir!”
“Hoot, laddie, in a passion again! I tell ye you’re much too good for such a body as she. I ken she’s handsome enough for an angel; but what’s all that if she don’t care a twistle o’ the finger for ye?” Bertie Hilton frowned heavily and smoked furiously; while, when the old merchant thrust the whiskey decanter towards him, he snatched it up, poured out half a tumbler full, and had stretched out his hand to take it and gulp it down, when, to his surprise and anger, old Stuart snatched the tumbler away, poured half of the spirit back into the decanter, and then filled up the tumbler with water.
“Not while I’m sitting by ye, Bertie Hilton,” said the old man. “I like my whuskie and I like to see a fren’ enjoy his drappie wi’ me; but it must be a drappie. When I see a man making a fool o’ himsel’ by taking more than is good, I just stop him if I can, as I stopped you.”
The young man’s face flushed, and an angry remark was about to issue from his lips, when the ridiculous and friendly sides of the question presented themselves to him, and instead of going into a fit of temper consequent upon his irritable state, he burst into a hearty fit of laughter.
“Hah! That’s better, my lad,” said the old merchant, smiling in his dry, grim fashion. “I like that. Ye’re an officer and ye know how to command yourself as well as your men. Now then, sit down and sup your whuskie and smoke like a man.”
“You shall be obeyed, sir,” said Hilton, good-humouredly.
“That’s right, laddie. Tak’ your misfortunes like a man. I know it’s hard to bear, and nothing wherrets a man more than seeing a lassie play wi’ others before his very een, when a’ the time she has been leading him to believe she cares for him alone?”
“Would it be a very difficult task to you, Mr Stuart, to leave my private affairs alone?” said Hilton, quietly.
“Oh, ay, I’ll leave them alone if ye’ll only be sensible and act like a mon. Bertie Hilton, ye’re a big mon, and a captain in Her Majesty’s service, and ye’re been acting like a weak boy.”
Hilton’s eyes flashed again as he turned angrily upon the old man, who seemed to become more Scottish in his language as he slowly imbibed his native drink.
“I see ya glowering at me, my lad; but I dinna mind it, for I’m one of your best frens, and when I thrash ye with words about your lassie it’s a’ for your good. There, haud yer whisht. I ken what ye’d say, that ye’re a mon and not a boy to be dictated to by an old Scotchman like this.”
“Well, I was thinking something of the kind, Mr Stuart, and so I tell you frankly,” cried Hilton, who could not help feeling amused at the old man’s dry ways. The reproofs, too, came at a time when the younger was very much open to conviction, for his experiences of the last few days had all been towards showing him that Helen Perowne was trifling with him, and if she were now, he felt that she had been from the first.
Still, it was very painful to have to be taken to task like this upon so tender a subject; and after sitting awhile with the old man, he suddenly jumped up, relit his cigar, which he had allowed to go out, and nodding shortly, he strolled out of the pagoda into the grounds.
“Coming to his senses,” said old Stuart, in a thoughtful way. “Hah! I should go rather cross it my lassie were to carry on like Perowne’s Helen. Why, she drives nearly all the young fellows wild. The young hussy! she ought to be shut up in a convent till she comes to her senses. I’d have none of it at home with me.”
Volume Two – Chapter Nine.
A Supplement to a Strange Evening
It was very beautiful in the gardens, and in spite of the number of people present, the place was so large that Hilton had no difficulty in finding a shady path in whose gloom he could walk up and down, finding the silence and darkness congenial in his present state of mind.
Every here and there there were lanterns, and flashes of light came from the illuminated lawn in company with the strains of music; but for the greater part the light was that from the great soft stars in the begemmed arch overhead, and the music that of the swift river rippling against the bank.
What should he do? he asked himself. Would he not be acting a wiser and a more manly part if he at once gave up his pursuit of Helen, and treated her with the contempt she deserved?
For she did deserve contempt. He felt this, and he knew the state of the warm affection he had had for her. He knew she had flirted a little before, but he looked upon that as mere maiden trifling before she had been ready to bestow upon him all the riches of her fresh young love. He was ready to condone anything that had taken place before; but when, after some long experience, he found that he was only being made the plaything of the hour, and that she was ready to throw him over in favour of the newest comer, his heart rebelled.
The fact was that Hilton was coming back to his normal senses very fast, and the idol that he had been worshipping and accrediting with all the perfections under the sun, was beginning to assume a very matter-of-fact, worldly aspect in his eyes.
The chaplain, officer after officer on board ship, Chumbley, Mr Harley, himself – they had all been favoured lovers in turn, and then thrown over after a certain amount of trifling.
“I cannot think how I could have been so foolish!” he exclaimed, suddenly; “and yet she is very beautiful – most beautiful; and when she gives a fellow one of those tender, beseeching looks, he need be made of iron to resist her.”
He walked up and down a little longer, finished his cigar, lit another, and went on, evidently feeling in better spirits.
“I shall get over it in a few days,” he said, with a half laugh, “unless I turn disappointed swain, and go and jump into the river. The crocodiles would soon make short work of me. By jove! how beautiful those fire-flies are!” he exclaimed.
Then he sighed, and went backward mentally.
“They put one in mind of Helen’s beautiful eyes,” he muttered. Beautiful Helen! Bah! Stuff! I’ll be fooled by no woman living!
“‘Shall I, wasting in despair.
Die because a woman’s fair?
Shall I pale
my cheeks with care
Because another’s rosy are?’”
He sang softly, enjoying more and more the delicious coolness of the breeze off the river.
“I’m nearly cured,” he said, bitterly.
“‘I know a maiden fair to see,
Take care!
She can both false and friendly be,
Beware! beware!
Trust her not,
She is fooling thee!’”
He sang again in a low voice.
“My case exactly. Oh! my dear madam. I’m afraid you will come to grief one of these days, for it is not every fellow who will give you up as I do, and hide his wound under a smiling face.
“And do I give her up?” he said, softly; and there was a tender, dreamy look in his eyes as he spoke.
“Bah! what a madman I am!” he cried, with a mocking laugh; “she throws me over as she has thrown over others. What an idiot I was not to see all this sooner!
“The old story – the old story,” he muttered. “Man’s vanity and woman’s pride. I was conceited enough to think that, though she might trifle with others, I was her one special choice. There was no such other man upon the earth as I, Captain Hilton, the Apollo among his fellows. Serve me right!” he cried passionately, “for a weak fool, and I deserve it all, if only to be a lesson to bring me to my senses?”
Growing excited with his thoughts, he strolled down another path, leading to the lower lawn which sloped to the river.
“I wonder who is with her now!” he muttered, as he gazed with lowering brow at the smooth, star-spangled stream.
“What does it matter! I’ll get a lesson in nonchalance from old Chum! I’ve been fooled like the rest. I might have known that I should be, but I was conceited enough to think that I had thoroughly won her heart.”
He told himself that it was all over now, and smoked away viciously, sending forth great puffs of vapour, still thinking of his position.
“What the dickens did that woman, the Inche Maida, mean!” he said, suddenly, as he strolled now close beside the river in complete forgetfulness of all the dangers with which it was invested by his friends. “Why, if I were a conceited fellow – well, so I am, horribly,” he said, bitterly – “I should have fancied that she was making love to me. It is too ridiculous!” he exclaimed, stopping short, and seeing nothing but introspectively, hearing nothing but the echoes of his own thoughts. “This place is growing hateful to me. I shall get leave or exchange. I feel as if I could not stay here any longer, and – Hah! Help! What! Good Heav – ”
The rest of Hilton’s words did not reach the soft midnight air, for, deep in thought, he had not seen the shadow even of the coming danger which had fallen in an instant, and his mad struggles were proving all in vain.
Volume Two – Chapter Ten.
Plus
As Hilton cried for help his voice sounded stifled and dull, while he vainly tried to cast off a great woollen cloth that had been deftly thrown over his head. It took hardly an instant before it was wound tightly round him. Then a rope was twisted so rapidly round arms and legs, that he was turned, as it were, into a complete mummy; and when his assailants threw him upon the grass he was so helpless that they literally rolled him over and over down the slope of closely shaven herbage into a large row-boat, into whose bottom he fell without pain, and almost without a sound.
“I thought it was the crocodiles,” he said to himself, as his heart beat painfully; and then he began to writhe in spirit at his want of caution, for he felt sure that this, the capture of an officer, was one of the first steps towards an attack upon the Residency island.
Just then he heard a voice, and what seemed to be a whispered order in Malay; and the boat might have been seen to glide away like a shadow over the starry water, breaking it up into spangles as it went on and on towards the middle of the stream without so much as a sound.
Then a pang shot through the young officer’s heart, to tell him that he was not, in spite of his word, quite cured, for his first thought now was: “What will become of Helen!” A few minutes later Chumbley strolled up to the pagoda, where old Stuart was comfortably enjoying his glass.
“Well, old fellow,” he drawled: “not melted away yet.”
“No; nor you neither,” retorted the old merchant. “Want some whuskie?”
“No; I want a cigar,” said Chumbley; and he helped himself from the box. “Seen anything of Hilton?” he asked, as he lit the roll of tobacco.
“Yes! here a bit ago, and then went off to smoke in the cool air. Leave my little girl all right?”
“Yes; she was sitting talking to the Princess and the Rajah in front of the house. What a lovely night!”
“Humph, yes. Pretty well; but you should see the night, laddie, over one o’ the Scottish lochs, wi’ the ootline o’ a mountain stannin oot i’ front o’ the northern sky. Ay, but that’s a sight.”
“Yes, s’pose so,” said Chumbley; “but as we can’t have the night over the Scottish loch, isn’t it as well to make the best of this?”
“Humph! yes,” said the old man; “but I’m getting tired of sitting here. I want to go back home. How much longer is this tomfoolery going to last?”
“Can’t say, sir. Why don’t you go on to the lawn and have a chat?”
“Pah! Do I look like a man who could do that sort of thing?”
“Can’t say you do,” replied Chumbley, cheerfully. “Well, I’m going to look for Hilton!” and, stepping out of the pagoda, he went across the lawn, with his hands deep down in his pockets.
“Now, let’s see,” he said to himself, as he strolled lazily on, “where would that chap be likely to have stuck himself up for a quiet smoke?
“Seems to have had a tiff with beauty to-night. P’r’aps she has pitched him as she has other people before, present company not excepted. All the more likely for him to have gone off for a quiet smoke – Now where would he go?”
There was a pause here, as if for someone else to answer, but as no one did —
“Down by the river,” he said – “safe.” Chumbley thrust his hands lower down into his pockets, and as if led by fate, he followed slowly almost the very track taken by Hilton so short a time before.
Finding that portion of the extensive grounds quite solitary, Chumbley began to hum what was meant for an air, in a peculiar voice more remarkable for noise than tune – due, no doubt, to his having his cigar in his lips, at which he gravely sucked away as if keeping time to the melody he emitted with the smoke.
“Grass too damp to lie down,” he said to himself, “else it would be rather jolly, and I’m precious tired. Not safe though. Old Bolter would vow there was rheumatism and fever in every blade. Why the dickens don’t they put garden seats down here?”
He strolled on, casting his eyes about in every direction in search of his friend.
“Precious dark!” he said. “Now where has old Hilton hidden himself? Hallo! Why there he is! What a jolly old lunatic he must be. I wonder what old Bolter would say?”
For not very far from the bank of the stream, he could dimly make out a figure lying apparently asleep.
Chumbley immediately began to think of the risks to be incurred from crocodiles, and walking quickly up he bent down over the sleeping figure.
“Here – hi! Hallo! Hilton, is that you? Hang it, man, don’t lie there!”
There was no reply, and Chumbley hesitated as to whether he should touch the figure.
“’Tisn’t Hilton!” he said to himself. “One of the servants, perhaps, keeping up his Mohammedan rules on the question of wine upon the wrong side.”
“Hallo! you sir!” he cried aloud. “’Tisn’t safe to lie there; do you hear?” and going down on one knee, he turned the figure completely over. “Here wake up or the crocs will have you! Is anything the matter?”
“Help me up,” came in reply, spoken in good English.
Chumbley was too earnest a man to resist that appeal; and bending lower, he tried to pass one hand beneath the prostrate figure, the man feebly laying his hands upon the lieutenant the while.
Then, in an instant, the feeble clasp became one of iron; and before Chumbley could more than realise that he was being held, a second figure bounded from behind a bush on to his back, dexterously throwing a sort of bag over his head and drawing it tight about his neck.
The young officer was taken by surprise; but he was not so easy a prey as Hilton. As a rule, Chumbley resembled the elephant in his slow, ponderous movement. Now, there was something almost leonine in his activity, the latent almost herculean strength he possessed being brought into play.
Uttering a smothered roar, he tried to shake off his assailants as they clung to his back and neck, pinioning his arms, and holding on so closely, that in the dark the figures of the three men seemed like one huge monstrous creature writhing savagely upon the grass.
Four more dark figures had suddenly appeared upon the scene, looking weird and strange in the starlight; and while the distant sound of voices, with an occasional burst of laughter, came to where the struggle was going on, all here was so quiet – save for the oppressed breathing – that no attention was drawn towards them from the visitor-dotted lawn.
The fresh-comers leaped at Chumbley like dogs at their hunted quarry; but so fierce was the resistance that one of them was dashed to the earth, the others shaken off, and the young man followed up the display of his tremendous strength by making a blindfold effort to ran.
The probabilities are that, as he had instinctively taken the direction leading to the house, he would have got so far that his assailants would not have cared to follow, had not one of them thrust out a foot as Chumbley was passing, and tripped him up, when he fell with a heavy thud to the ground.
Before he could make a fresh effort to rise, half a dozen Malays were upon him; and while some sat and knelt upon, others bound him hand and foot.
Then they paused to listen whether the struggle had been overheard; but finding it had excited no attention either at the house or the Residency island, they leisurely rolled their prisoner over and over down the grassy slope into a waiting boat close up to the bank. A few vessels of water were dipped, and quickly poured over the grass where the struggle had taken place, and then once more the star-spangled surface of the river was broken up as a shadowy boat softly glided out to the middle of the river, and then seemed to die away.
But the incidents of the night were not yet at an end, Fate seemed to lend her aid to bring them to one peculiar bent.
For, hot and weary of the insipid attentions of her new conquest, and fagged out with her task of entertaining so many guests, Helen Perowne began to think of how she should escape, wishing the while that everyone would go, and far from satisfied with her last encounter with Hilton.
She looked round the lit-up space for someone on whom to inflict herself, but Hilton was not there; she could see neither Chumbley nor the Resident, only several of the younger men, merchants and civil officers – no one at all worth talking to save the chaplain, who had been watching her wistfully all the evening, and who now stood with one hand resting upon a chair, looking as if he would have given his life for one kind word from her lips.
“Poor Arthur!” she said, in a half amused, half troubled way, “I wish he would not be so weak?”
She gave another impatient look round, but there was no victim worthy of her arrows; and with an imperious glance at Arthur Rosebury, she let her eyes once more pass over the various groups of guests, for the most part carrying on an animated conversation, and turned to enter the house.
Just as she reached one of the open French windows, a Malay servant approached, and saluted her respectfully.
“The master says will the mistress come down the garden a minute to speak to him?”
“How tiresome!” she exclaimed petulantly. “Where is my father?”
“By the river, mistress, where it is cool to smoke,” replied the man, softly. “He says he will not keep you, but you must come at once.”
This was all in broken English, but sufficiently plain to be understood.
“He might have come to me,” said Helen, impatiently. “I am so hot and tired. There, go on. No, not that way. Let us go by the side path.”
The man bowed and went on, with Helen following, when the chaplain seized the opportunity to join her.
“It is getting cold and damp, Miss Perowne,” he said, softly. “Will you let me put this over your shoulders?”
“What!” she said; “have you been carrying that ever since I gave it to you hours ago?”
The chaplain bowed, and held the light, filmy shawl, that he had felt it a joy to bear, ready to throw over her shoulders.
“No,” she cried, petulantly, “I am too hot as it is. There,” she cried, relenting, as she saw his fallen countenance, and for want of another victim, “you may come with me and carry the shawl till I want to put it on.”
The chaplain’s heart gave a bound, and, too pleased to speak, he followed Helen closely, as the man led her towards the bottom of the lawn, where, as they drew nearer, a dark figure could be dimly seen slowly pacing up and down.
“How angry dear Mary would be if she knew,” thought the Reverend Arthur; “but I cannot help it. I suppose I am very weak, and it is my fate?”
“What is wrong now?” thought Helen, whose conscience was quick to take alarm. “Is he going to speak to me about Hilton? No; he would not have – he could not have been so cowardly as to speak to my father about our quarrel.”
They were very near now, and Helen could see that her father had one hand up to his face, resting the elbow in his other hand.
“It cannot be about Murad. That must be over,” mused Helen. Then aloud, “Is anything the matter, papa? Are you unwell?”
At that moment she realised the fact that the figure in evening dress was not her father, the chaplain noticing her start, and trying to go forward to her aid; but, as he took a step, a hand was clapped over his lips, an arm tightly embraced him, and as he dimly saw a white handkerchief tied across Helen’s face, he was lifted from the ground and borne away, too much surprised to do more than struggle weakly at such a disadvantage that even a strong man would have been as helpless as a child.
Helen made an effort to shriek for aid, but a black cloud seemed suddenly to envelop her in the shape of a great cloth, wrapping her round and round. Then she felt herself lifted from her feet, and half-stifled, half-fainting with the horror of her situation, she was just conscious of being carried for a few minutes, and then of being placed in a boat; while in the midst of her horror and excitement there seemed to come up before her the faces of her three old mistresses at the calm, quiet school, then that of Grey Stuart looking reproachfully, and then all faded away into one complete void.
