“So it is,” he replied; “but that isn’t.” She followed the direction of his eyes as he fixed them on Captain Hilton and Helen Perowne, and then, with the flush dying out of her cheeks, she looked at him inquiringly.
“I say, Miss Stuart,” he drawled, “don’t call me a mischief-maker, please.”
“Certainly not. Why should I?”
“Because I get chattering to people about Miss Perowne. I wish she’d marry somebody. I say, hasn’t she hooked Bertie Hilton?”
There was no reply, and Chumbley went on: “I mean to tell him he’s an idiot when he gets back to quarters to-night. I don’t believe Helen Perowne cares a sou for him. She keeps leading him on till the poor fellow doesn’t know whether he stands on his head or his heels, and by-and-by she’ll pitch him over.”
Grey bent her head a little lower, for there seemed to be a knot in the work upon which she was engaged, but she did not speak.
“I say, Miss Stuart, look at our coffee-coloured friend. Just you watch his eyes. I’ll be hanged if I don’t think there’ll be a row between him and Hilton. He looks quite dangerous!”
“Oh, Mr Chumbley!” cried Grey, gazing at him as if horrified at his words.
“Well, I shouldn’t wonder,” he continued. “Helen Perowne has been leading him on, and now he has been cut to make room for Hilton. These Malay chaps don’t understand this sort of thing, especially as they all seem born with the idea that we are a set of common white people, and that one Malay is worth a dozen of us.”
“Do – do you think there is danger?” said Grey hoarsely.
“Well, no, perhaps not danger,” replied Chumbley, coolly; “but things might turn ugly if they went on. And it’s my belief that, if my lady there does not take care, she’ll find herself in a mess.”
A more general mingling of the occupants of the drawing-room put an end to the various tête-à-têtes, and Grey Stuart’s present anxiety was somewhat abated; but she did not feel any the more at rest upon seeing that the young rajah had softly approached Hilton, and was smiling at him in an innocently bland way, bending towards him as he spoke, and keeping very close to his side for the rest of the evening.
At last “good-byes” were said, and the party separated, the two young officers walking slowly down towards the landing-stage, to enter a native boat and be rowed to their quarters on the Residency island.
The heat was very great, and but little was said for some minutes, during which Hilton was rapturously thinking of the beauty of Helen’s eyes.
“I say, Chum,” he said suddenly. “Murad has invited me to go on a hunting-trip with him in the interior. Would you go?”
“Certainly – if – ” drawled Chumbley, yawning.
“If? If what!”
“I wanted a kris in my back, and to supply food to the crocodiles.”
Volume One – Chapter Twenty.
A Proposal
Mr Perowne’s home at Sindang was kept up in almost princely style, and he was regarded as the principal inhabitant of the place. Both English and Chinese merchants consulted him, and the native dealers and rajahs made him the first offers of tin slabs, rice, gambier, gutta-percha, and other products of the country, while a large proportion of the English and French imports that found favour with the Malays were consigned to the house of Perowne and Company.
People said that he must be immensely rich, and he never denied the impeachment, but went on in a quiet, bland way, accepting their hints, polite to all, whether trading or non-trading, while his table was magnificently kept up, and to it the occupants of the station were always made welcome.
When fate places people in the tropics, they make a point of rising early. Helen Perowne was up with the sun, and dressed in a charming French muslin costume, had a delightful drive, which she called upon Grey Stuart to share, before she met her father at breakfast – a meal discussed almost in silence, for Mr Perowne would give a good deal of his attention to business matters over his meals, a habit against which Dr Bolter warned him, but without avail.
The repast was nearly finished, when a servant entered and announced that the Sultan Murad was coming down the river in his dragon-boat, and evidently meant to land at the stage at the bottom of the garden.
“What does he want?” said the merchant, absently. “Been collecting tribute, I suppose, and wants to sell. Go and see if he lands,” he said aloud, “and then come back.”
“This is the way we have to make our money, my dear,” said Perowne, smiling, but without seeing the increased colour in his child’s face.
“The Sultan is here, sir,” said the man, returning.
“Where?” asked Mr Perowne.
“In the drawing-room, sir. Shall I bring in fresh breakfast?”
“I don’t know. I’ll ring. I’ve done, Helen. I say, young lady, what a colour you have got! You stopped out too long in the sun this morning.”
“Oh, no, papa, I think not,” she replied; “but it is hot.”
“You’ll soon get used to that, my dear. I don’t mind the heat at all. Party went off very well last night, I think.”
The merchant was by this time at the door, wondering what proposal the Rajah had to make to him, for all these petty princes stoop to doing a little trading upon their own account, raising rice in large quantities by means of their slaves; but, man of the world as the merchant was, he did not find himself prepared for the proposition that ensued.
In this case Helen was more prepared than her father, though even she was taken by surprise. She had had her suspicions that the Rajah might take her soft glances and gently-spoken words as sufficient permission for him to speak to her father; and though she trembled at the possible result, there was something so deliciously gratifying to her vanity that she could not help enjoying the position.
To be asked in marriage by a real sultan! What would the Miss Twettenhams say? and if she accepted him she would be sultana. The idea was dazzling at a distance, but even to her romance-loving brain there was something theatrical when it was looked at with the eyes of common sense.
She could not accept him. It was absurd; and after all, perhaps he had no such idea as that in coming. It was, as her father thought, some matter of business, such as he had been in the habit of visiting her father about over and over again, and such as had resulted in the intimacy which made him a welcome guest at the house.
She thought differently, however; and though she assumed surprise, she was in nowise startled when her father returned.
“I say, Nelly!” he exclaimed, looking annoyed, and completely off his balance, “what the dickens have you been about?”
“About, papa?” said the girl, raising her eyebrows, “I don’t understand you!”
“Then the sooner you do the better! I’ve quite enough to worry me without your foolery! Here’s the Rajah come to see me on business.”
“Very well, papa, I don’t understand business,” she said, quietly.
“But you’ll have to understand it!” he cried, angrily. “Here, he says that you have been giving him permission to speak to me; and as far as I can understand him, he proposes for your hand!”
“The Rajah, papa! Oh! absurd!”
“Oh, yes, it’s absurd enough, confound his copper-coloured insolence! But it puts me in a fix with him. If I offend him, I shall offend his people, or he’ll make them offended, and I shall be a heavy loser. Did you tell him to speak to me?”
“Certainly not, papa!”
“Perhaps I misunderstood him, for he speaks horrible English. But whether or no, he proposes that you shall be his wife.”
“His