“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
