Tales of the Malayan Coast
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 Johore 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,
wishing 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 passed 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.
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 passion,
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 brass 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 pronounced
the couple man and wife, and laid at Anak's feet a wide gold bracelet
set with sapphires, and engraven with the arms of Johore. He dropped
his eyes to conceal the look of pity and abhorrence that her swollen
gums and disfigured features inspired, and as he passed 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 cushions
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 brass cup, from another a syrah leaf
smeared with lime, added a clove, a cardamom, and a scraping 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
mass. 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 passed 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 snatched 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 compassionate."
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.