Tales of the Malayan Coast Part 7

She shuddered, she knew not why, and went slowly across the elastic bamboo strips of the floor and down the ladder.

Noa watched the trim little figure with its single covering of cotton, the straight, graceful body, and perfectly poised head and delicate neck, the bare feet and ankles, the sweet, comely face with its fresh young lips, free from the red stains of the syrah leaf, and its big brown eyes that looked from beneath heavy silken lashes. He smiled, but did not stir as she came to him. He was proud of her after the manner of his kind. Her beauty appealed to him unconsciously, although he had never been taught to consider beauty, or even seek it. He would have married her without a question, if she had been as hideous as his sister, who was scarred with the small-pox. He would never have complained if, according to Malayan custom, he had not been permitted to have seen her until the marriage day. He must marry some one, now that the Prince had gone to Joh.o.r.e, and his father had given up all hope of seeing him a hadji; and besides, the captain of the launch and the old punghulo, or chief, Anak's father, were fast friends. The marriage meant little more to the man.

But to Anak,--once the Prince Mat had told her she was pretty, when she had come down to the wharf to beg a small crocodile to bury underneath her grandmother's bungalow to keep off white ants, and her cheeks glowed yet under her brown skin at the remembrance. Noa had never told her she was beautiful!

A featherless hen was scratching in the yellow sand at her feet, and a brood of featherless chicks were following each cluck with an intensity of interest that left them no time to watch the actions of the lovers.

"Why did you come?" she asked in the soft liquid accents of her people.

There was an eagerness in the question that suggested its own answer.

"To bring a message to the punghulo," he replied, not noticing the coquetry of the look.

"Oh! then you are in haste. Why do you wait? My father is at the ca.n.a.l."

"It is about you," he went on, his face glowing. "The Prince is coming back, and we are to be married. My father, the captain, made bold to ask his Excellency to let the Prince be present, and he granted our prayer."

She turned away to hide her disappointment. It was the thought of the honor that was his in the eyes of the province, and not that he was to marry her, that set the lights dancing in his eyes! She hated him then for his very love; it was so sure and confident in its right to overlook hers in this petty attention from a mere boy, who had once condescended to praise her girlish beauty.

"When is the Prince coming?" she questioned, ignoring his clumsy attempt to take her hand.

"During the feast of Hari Raya Hadji," he replied, smiling.

She kicked some sand with her bare toes, amongst the garrulous chickens.

"Tell me about the Prince."

Her mood had changed. Her eyes were wide open, and her face all aglow. She was wondering if he would notice her above the bridesmaids,--if it was not for her sake he was coming?

And then her lover told her of the gossip of the palace,--of the Prince's life in the Sultan's court,--of his wit and grace,--of how he had learned English, and was soon to go to London, where he would be entertained by the Queen.

Above their heads the wind played with the tattered flags of the palms, leaving openings here and there that exposed the steely-white glare of the sky, and showed, far away to the northward, the denuded red dome of Mount Ophir.

The girl noted the cl.u.s.ters of berries showing redly against the dark green of some pepper-vines that clambered up the black nebong posts of her home; she wondered vaguely as he talked if she were to go on through life seeing pepper-vines and betel-nut trees, and hot sand and featherless hens, and never get beyond the shadow of the mysterious mountains.

Possibly it was the sight of the white ladies from Singapore, possibly it was the few light words dropped by the half-grown Prince, possibly it was something within herself,--something inherited from ancestors who had lived when the fleets of Solomon and Hiram sought for gold and ivory at the base of the distant mountains,--that drove her to revolt, and led her to question the right of this marriage that was to seal her forever to the attap bungalow, and the narrow, colorless life that awaited her on the banks of the Maur. She turned fiercely on her wooer, and her brown eyes flashed.

"You have never asked me whether I love!"

The Malay half rose from his seat. The look of surprise and perplexity that had filled his face gave place to one of almost childish wonder.

"Of course you love me. Is it not so written in the Koran,--a wife shall reverence her husband?"

"Why?" she questioned angrily.

He paused a moment, trying dimly to comprehend the question, and then answered slowly,--

"Because it is written."

She did not draw away when he took her hand; he had chosen his answer better than he knew.

"Because it is written," that was all. Her own feeble revolt was but as a breath of air among the yellow fronds above their heads.

When Noa had gone, the girl drew herself wearily up the ladder, and dropped on a cool palm mat near the never ceasing loom. For almost the first time in her short, uneventful life she fell to thinking of herself. She wondered if the white ladies in Singapore married because all had been arranged by a father who forgot you the moment you disappeared within the door of your own house,--if they loved one man better than another,--if they could always marry the one they liked best. She wondered why every one must be married,--why could she not go on and live just as she had,--she could weave and sew?

A gray lizard darted from out its hiding-place in the attap at a great atlas moth which worked its brilliant wings; clumsily it tore their delicate network until the air was full of a golden dust.

"I am the moth," she said softly, and raised her hand too late to save it from its enemy.

The Sultan's own yacht, the Pante, brought the Prince back to Maur, and as it was low tide, the Governor's launch went out beyond the bar and met him.

The band played the national anthem when he landed on the pier, and Inchi Mohammed, the Tuan Hakim, or Chief Justice, made a speech.

The red gravel walk from the landing to the palace gate was strewn with hibiscus and alamander and yellow convolvulus flowers, and bordered with the delicate maidenhair fern.

Joh.o.r.e and British flags hung in great festoons from the deep verandas of the palace, and the bra.s.s guns from the fort gave forth the royal salute.

Anak was in the crowd with her father, the old chief, and her affianced, Noa. She had put on her silk sarong and kabaya, and some curious gold brooches that were her mother's. In her coal-black hair she had stuck some sprays of the sweet-smelling chumpaka flower. On her slender bare feet were sandals cunningly wrought in colored beads. Her soft brown eyes glowed with excitement, and she edged away from the punghulo's side until she stood close up in front, so near that she could almost touch the sarong of the Tuan Hakim as he read.

The Prince had grown so since he left that she scarcely knew him, and save for the narrow silk sarong about his waist, he was dressed in the English clothes of a Lieutenant of his Highness's artillery. In the front of his rimless cap shone the arms of Joh.o.r.e set in diamonds, exactly as his father, the Governor, wore them. He paused and smiled as he thanked the cringing Tuan Hakim.

The blood rushed to the girl's cheeks, and she nearly fell down at his feet. She realized but dimly that Noa was plucking at her kabaya, wis.h.i.+ng her to go with him to see the bungalow that his father was building for them.

"The posts are to be of polished nebong" he was saying, "the wood-work of maranti wood from Pahang; and there is to be a cote, ever so cunningly woven of green and yellow bamboo, for your ring-doves, under the attap of the great eaves above the door."

She turned wearily toward her lover, and the bright look faded from her comely face. With a half-uttered sigh she drew off her sandals and tucked them carefully beneath the silver zone that held her sarong in place.

"Anak," he said softly, as they left the hot, red streets, filled with lumbering bullock-carts and omnipresent rickshas, "why do you look away when I talk of our marriage? Is it because the Koran teaches modesty in woman, or is it because you are over-proud of your husband when you see him among other men?"

But the girl was not listening.

He looked at her keenly, and as he saw the red blood mantle her cheek, he smiled and went on:--

"It was good of you to wear the sarong I gave you, and your best kabaya and the flowers I like in your hair. I heard more than one say that it showed you would make a good wife in spite of our knowing one another before marriage."

"You think that it was for you that I put on all this bravery?" she asked, looking him straight in the face. "Am I not to be your wife? Can I not dress in honor of the young Prince and--Allah?"

He turned to stammer a reply. The hot blood mounted to his temples, and he grasped the girl's arm so that she cried out with pain.

"You are to be my wife, and I your master. It is my wish that you should ever dress in honor of our rulers and our Allah, for in showing honor to those above you, you honor your husband. I do not understand you at all times, but I intend that you shall understand me. Sudah!"

"Tuan Allah Suka!" (The Lord Allah has willed it), she murmured, and they plodded on through the hot sand in silence.

After his return they saw the Prince often, and once when Anak came down to the wharf to bring a durian to the captain of the launch from her father, the old punghulo, she met him face to face, and he touched her cheek with his jewelled fingers, and said she had grown much prettier since he left.

Noa was not angry at the Prince, rather he was proud of his notice, but a sinister light burned in his eyes as he saw the flushed face and drooping head of the girl.

And once the Prince pa.s.sed by the punghulo's home on his way into the jungle in search of a tiger, and inquired for his daughter. Anak treasured the remembrance of these little attentions, and pondered over them day after day, as she worked by her mother's side at the loom, or sat outside in the sand, picking the flossy burs from the betel-nuts, watching the flickering shadows that every breeze in the leaves above scattered in prodigal wastefulness about and over her.