Tales of the Malayan Coast Part 8

She told herself over and over, as she followed with dreamy eyes the vain endeavors of a chameleon to change his color, as the shadows painted the sand beneath him first green and then white, that her own hopes and strivings were just as futile; and yet when Noa would sit beside her and try to take her hand, she would fly into a pa.s.sion, and run sobbing up the ladder of her home. Noa became moody in turn. His father saw it and his mates chaffed him, but no one guessed the cause. That it should be for the sake of a woman would have been beyond belief; for did not the Koran say, "If thy wife displease thee, beat her until she see the sin of her ways"? One day, as he thought, it occurred to him, "She does not want to marry me!" and he asked her, as though it made any difference. There were tears in her eyes, but she only threw back her head and laughed, and replied as she should:--

"That is no concern of ours. Is your father, the captain, displeased with my father's, the punghulo's, dowry?"

And yet Noa felt that Anak knew what he would have said.

He went away angry, but with a gnawing at his heart that frightened him,--a strange, new sickness, that seemed to drive him from despair to a longing for revenge, with the coming and going of each quick breath. He had been trying to make love in a blind, stumbling way; he did not know it,--why should he? Marriage was but a bargain in Malaya. But Anak with her finer instincts felt it, and instead of fanning this tiny, unknown spark, she was driving it into other and baser channels.

In spite of her better nature she was slowly making a demon out of a lover,--a lover to whom but a few months before she would have given freely all her love for a smile or the lightest of compliments.

From that day until the day of the marriage she never spoke to her lover save in the presence of her elders,--for such was the law of her race.

She submitted to the tire-women who were to prepare her for the ceremony, uttering no protest as they filed off her beautiful white teeth and blackened them with lime, nor when they painted the palms of her hands and the nails of her fingers and toes red with henna. She showed no interest in the arranging of her glossy black hair with jewelled pins and chumpaka flowers, or in the draping of her sarong and kabaya. Only her lacerated gums ached until one tear after another forced its way from between her blackened lids down her rouged cheeks.

There had been feasting all day outside under the palms, and the youths, her many cousins, had kicked the ragga ball, while the elders sat about and watched and talked and chewed betel-nut. There were great rice curries on bra.s.s plates, with forty sambuls> within easy reach of all, luscious mangosteens, creamy durians and mangoes, and betel-nuts with lemon leaves and lime and spices. Fires burned about among the graceful palms at night, and lit up the silken sarongs and polished kris handles of the men, and gold-run kabayas of the women.

The Prince came as he promised, just as the old Kadi had p.r.o.nounced the couple man and wife, and laid at Anak's feet a wide gold bracelet set with sapphires, and engraven with the arms of Joh.o.r.e. He dropped his eyes to conceal the look of pity and abhorrence that her swollen gums and disfigured features inspired, and as he pa.s.sed across the mats on the bamboo floor he inwardly cursed the customs of his people that destroyed the beauty of its women. He had lived among the English of Singapore, and dined at the English Governor's table.

A groan escaped the girl's lips as she dropped back among the cus.h.i.+ons of her tinsel throne. Noa saw the little tragedy, and for the first time understood its full import. He ground his teeth together, and his hand worked uneasily along the scabbard of his kris.

In another moment the room was empty, and the bride and groom were left side by side on the gaudily bedecked platform, to mix and partake of their first betel-nut together. Mechanically Noa picked the broken fragments of the nut from its bra.s.s cup, from another a syrah leaf smeared with lime, added a clove, a cardamom, and a sc.r.a.ping of mace, and handed it to his bride. She took it without raising her eyes, and placed it against her bleeding gums. In a moment a bright red juice oozed from between her lips and ran down the corner of her distorted mouth. Noa extended his hand, and she gave him the half-masticated ma.s.s. He raised it to his own mouth, and then for the first time looked the girl full in the face.

There was no love-light in the drooping brown eyes before him. The syrah-stained lips were slightly parted, exposing the feverish gums, and short, black teeth. Her hands hung listlessly by her side, and only for the color that came and went beneath the rouge of her brown cheeks, she might have been dead to this last sacred act of their marriage vows.

"Anak!" he said slowly, drawing closer to her side. "Anak, I will be a true husband to you. You shall be my only wife--"

He paused, expecting some response, but she only gazed stolidly up at the smoke-begrimed attap of the roof.

"Anak--" he repeated, and then a shudder pa.s.sed through him, and his eyes lit up with a wild, frenzied gleam,

A moment he paused irresolute, and then with a spring he grasped the golden handle of his kris and with one bound was across the floor, and on the sand below among the revellers.

For an instant the snake-like blade of the kris shone dully in the firelight above his head, and then with a yell that echoed far out among the palms, it descended straight into the heart of the nearest Malay.

The hot life-blood spurted out over his hand and naked arm, and dyed the creamy silk of his wedding baju a dark red.

Once more he struck, as he chanted a promise from the Koran, and the shrill, agonized cry of a woman broke upon the ears of the astonished guests.

Then the fierce sinister yell of "Amok! amok!" drowned the woman's moans, and sent every Malay's hand to the handle of his kris.

"Amok!" sprang from every man's lips, while women and children, and those too aged to take part in the wild saturnalia of blood that was to follow, scattered like doves before a hawk.

With the rapidity of a Malayan tiger, the crazed man leaped from one to another, dealing deadly strokes with his merciless weapon, right and left. There was no gleam of pity or recognition in his insane glance when he struck down the sister he had played with from childhood, neither did he note that his father's hand had dealt the blow that dropped his right arm helpless to his side. Only a cry of baffled rage and hate escaped his lips, as he s.n.a.t.c.hed his falling knife with his left hand. Another blow, and his father fell across the quivering body of his sister.

"O Allah, the all-merciful and loving kind!" he sang, as the blows rained upon his face and breast. "O Allah, the compa.s.sionate."

The golden handle of his kris shone like a dying coal in the centre of a circle of flamelike knives; then with one wild plunge forward, into the midst of the gleaming points, it went out.

"Sudah!--It is finished," and a Malay raised his steel-bladed limbing to thrust it into the bare breast of the dying man.

The young Prince stepped out into the firelight and raised his hand. The long, shrill wail of a tiger from far off toward Mount Ophir seemed to pulsate and quiver on the weird stillness of the night.

Noa opened his eyes. They were the eyes of a child, and a faint, sweet smile flickered across the ghastly features and died away in a spasm of pain.

A picture of their childhood days flashed through the mind of the Prince and softened the haughty lines of his young face. He saw, through it all, the wharf below the palace grounds,--the fat old penager dozing in the sun,--the raft they built together, and the birch-colored crocodiles that lay among the sinuous mangrove roots.

"Noa," he whispered, as he imperiously motioned the crowd back.

The dying man's lips moved. The Prince bent lower.

"She--loved--you. Yes--" Noa muttered, striving to hold his failing breath,--"love is from--Allah. But not for--me;--for English--and--Princes."

They threw his body without the circle of the fires.

The tense feline growl of the tiger grew more distinct. The Prince's hand sought the jewelled handle of his kris. There was a swift rush in the darkness, a cras.h.i.+ng among the rubber-vines, a short, quick snarl, and then all was still.

If you run amok in Malaya, you may kill your enemy or your dearest friend, but you will be krissed in the end like a pariah dog. Every man, woman, and child will turn his hand against you, from the mother who bore you to the outcast you have befriended.

The laws are as immutable as fate.

LEPAS'S REVENGE

The Tale of a Monkey

There were many monkeys--I came near saying there were hundreds--in the little clump of jungle trees back of the bungalow. We could lie in our long chairs, any afternoon, when the sun was on the opposite side of the house, and watch them from behind the bamboo "chicks"

swinging and playing in the maze of rubber-vines.

They played tag and high-spy, and a variety of other games. When they were tired of playing, they fell to quarrelling, scolding, and chasing each other among the stiff, varnished leaves, making so much noise that I could not get my afternoon nap, and often had to call to the syce to throw a stone into the branches. Then they would scuttle away to the topmost parts of the great trees and there join in giving me a rating that ought to have made me ashamed forever to look another monkey in the face.

One day, I went out and threw a stick at them myself, and the next day I found my shoes, which the Chinese "boy" had pipe-clayed and put out in the sun to dry, missing; and the day after I found the netting of my mosquito house torn from top to bottom.

So I was not in the best of humors when I was awakened, one afternoon, by the whistling of a monkey close to my chair. I reached out quickly for my cork helmet which I had thrown down by my side. As it was there, I looked up in surprise to see what had become of my visitor.

There he sat up against the railing of the veranda with his legs cramped up under him, ready to flee if I made a threatening gesture.

His face was turned toward me, with the thin, hairless skin of its upper lip drawn back, showing a perfect row of milk-white teeth that were chattering in deadly terror. The whole expression of his face was one of conciliation and entreaty.

I knew that it was all make-believe, so I half closed my eyes and did not move. The chattering stopped. The little fellow looked about curiously, drew his mouth up into a pucker, whistled once or twice to make sure I was not awake, and reached out his bony arm for a few crumbs of cake that had fallen near.

He was not more than a foot in height. His diminutive body seemed to have been fitted into a badly worn skin that was two sizes too large for him, and the scalp of his forehead moved about like an overgrown wig.

He was the most ordinary kind of gray, jungle monkey, not even a wah-wah or spider face.

"Well," I said, after we had thoroughly inspected each other, "where are my shoes?"

Like a flash the whistling ceased, and with a pathetic trembling of his thin upper lip he commenced to beg with his mouth, and to put up his homely little hands in mute appeal.