menu_book Chapter 2

CHAPTER II When in compliance with Lingard's abrupt demand, Ormire consented to wed the Malay girl, no one knew that on the day when the interesting young convert had lost all her natural relations and found a white father, she had been fighting desperately, like the rest of them on board the prow and was only prevented from leaping overboard, like the few other survivors, by

a severe wound in the leg. There, on the foredeck of the prow, old Lingard found her under a heap of dead and dying pirates and had her carried on the poop of the flesh before the Malay craft was set on fire and sent adrift. She was conscious, and in the great peace and stillness of the tropical evening, succeeding

the battle, she watched all she held dear on earth after her own savage manner drift away into the gloom in a great roar of flame and smoke. She lay there, unheeding the careful hands attending to her wound, silent and absorbed in gazing at the funeral-pile of those brave men she had so much admired and so well helped in their contest with the redoubtable Rudger Laut.

The light night breeze fanned the brig gently to the southward, and the great blaze of light got smaller and smaller till it twinkled only on the horizon like a setting star. It set. The heavy canopy of smoke reflected the glare of hidden flames for a short time and then disappeared also.

She realised that with this vanishing gleam her old life departed too. Henceforth there was slavery in the far countries amongst strangers, in unknown and perhaps terrible surroundings. Being fourteen years old, she realised her position and came to that conclusion, the only one possible to a Malay girl, soon ripened under a tropical sun and not unaware of her

personal charms, of which she heard many a young brave warrior of her father's crew express an appreciative admiration. There was in her the dread of the unknown. Otherwise, she accepted her position calmly, after the manner of her people, and even considered it quite natural.

For was she not a daughter of warriors, conquered in battle, and did she not belong rightfully to the victorious Rudger? Even the evident kindness of the terrible old man must spring, she thought, from admiration for his captive, and the flattered vanity eased for her the pangs of sorrow after such an awful calamity.

Perhaps had she known of the high walls, the quiet gardens, and the silent nuns of the Samarang Convent where her destiny was leading her, she would have sought death in her dread and hate of such a restraint. But in imagination she pictured to herself the usual life of a Malay girl, the usual succession of heavy work and fierce love, of intrigues, gold ornaments, of domestic

drudgery, and of that great but occult influence which is one of the few rites of half-savage womankind. But her destiny in the rough hands of the old sea dog, acting under unreasoning impulses of the heart, took a strange and to her a terrible shape. She bore it all, the restraint and the teaching and the new faith, with calm submission, concealing

her hate and contempt for all that new life. She learned the language very easily, yet understood but very little of the new faith the good sister's taught her, assimilating quickly only the superstitious elements of the religion. She called Lingard father, gently and caressingly, at each of his short and noisy visits, under

the clear impression that he was a great and dangerous power, it was good to propitiate. Was he not now her master? And during those long four years she nourished a hope of finding favour in his eyes, and ultimately becoming his wife, counsellor and guide. Those dreams of the future were dispelled by the Raja Laat's fiat, which made Allmire's

fortune, as that young man fondly hoped. And dressed in the hateful finery of Europe, the centre of an interested circle of Batavian society, the young convert stood before the altar with an unknown and sulky-looking white man. For Allmire was uneasy, a little disgusted, and greatly inclined to run away.

A judicious fear of the adopted father-in-law and a just regard for his own material welfare prevented him from making a scandal. Yet while swearing fidelity, he was concocting plans for getting rid of the pretty Malay girl in a more or less distant future. She however had retained enough of conventional teaching to understand well that according

to white men's laws she was going to be Allmire's companion and not his slave, and promised to herself to act accordingly. So when the Flash, freighted with materials for building a new house, left the harbour of Batavia, taking away the young couple into the unknown Borneo, she did not carry on her deck so much love and happiness as old Lingard was wont to boast of before his casual friends

in the verandas of various hotels. The old seaman himself was perfectly happy. Now he had done his duty by the girl. You know I made her an orphan, he often concluded solemnly when talking about his own affairs to a scratch audience of shore-loafers, as it was his habit to do.

And the approbative shouts of his half-intoxicated auditors filled his simple soul with delight and pride. I carry everything right through, was another of his sayings, and in the pursuance of that principle he pushed the building of House and Go-Down on the Pantai River with feverish haste.

The house for the young couple, the go-downs for the big trade Allmire was going to develop while he, Lingard, would be able to give himself up to some mysterious work which was only spoken of in hints, but was understood to relate to gold and diamonds in the interior of the island. Allmire was impatient too.

Had he known what was before him he might not have been so eager and full of hope as he stood watching the last canoe of the Lingard expedition disappear in the bend up the river. When turning round he beheld the pretty little house, the big go-downs built neatly by an army of Chinese carpenters, the new jetty round which were clustered the trading canoes, he felt a sudden elation in the thought that the world was his.

But the world had to be conquered first, and its conquest was not so easy as he thought. He was very soon made to understand that he was not wanted in that corner of it where old Lingard and his own weak will placed him in the midst of unscrupulous intrigues and of a fierce trade competition. The Arabs had found out the river, had established a trading post in Sambia, and where they traded

they would be masters and suffer no rival. Lingard returned unsuccessful from his first expedition and departed again spending all the profits of the legitimate trade on his mysterious journeys. Ormayr struggled with the difficulties of his position, friendless and unaided, say for the protection given to him for Lingard's sake by the old Rajah, the predecessor of

Lakambah. Lakambah himself, then living as a private individual on a rice clearing seven miles down the river, exercised all his influence towards the help of the white man's enemies, plotting against the old Rajah and Ormayr with a certainty of combination, pointing clearly to a profound knowledge of their most secret affairs.

Outwardly friendly, his portly form was often to be seen on Ormayr's veranda, his green turban and gold-embroidered jacket shone in the front rank of the decorous throng of malaise coming to greet Lingard on his returns from the interior. His salams were of the lowest and his handshakings of the heartiest when welcoming the old trader. But his small eyes took in the signs of the times and he departed from those interviews

with a satisfied and furtive smile to hold long consultations with his friend and ally Sayyid Abdullah, the chief of the Arab trading post, a man of great wealth and of great influence in the islands. It was currently believed at that time in the settlement that Lakambah's visits to Ormayr's house were not limited to those official interviews.

One on moonlight nights the belated fishermen of Sambirah saw a small canoe shooting out from the narrow creek at the back of the white man's house, and the solitary occupant paddled cautiously down the river in the deep shadows of the bank. And those events, duly reported, were discussed round the evening fires far into the night with a cynicism of expression common to aristocratic malaise and with a malicious pleasure in the

domestic misfortunes of the Orang Blando, the hated Dutchman. Ormayr went on struggling desperately, but with a feebleness of purpose depriving him of all chance of success against men so unscrupulous and resolute as his rivals the Arabs. The trade fell away from the large go-downs and the go-downs themselves rotted piecemeal. The old man's banker, Hudig of Makassar, failed, and with this went the whole available capital.

The profits of past years had been swallowed up in Lingard's exploring craze. Lingard was in the interior, perhaps dead, at all events giving no sign of life. Ormayr stood alone in the midst of those adverse circumstances, deriving only a little comfort from the companionship of his little daughter, born two years after the marriage and at the time some six years old.

His wife had soon commenced to treat him with a savage contempt expressed by sulkish silence only occasionally varied by a flood of savage invective. He felt she hated him and saw her jealous eyes watching himself and the child with almost an expression of hate. She was jealous of the little girl's evident preference for the father, and Ormayr felt

he was not safe with that woman in the house. While she was burning the furniture and tearing down the pretty curtains in her unreasoning hate of those signs of civilization, Ormayr, cowed by these outbursts of savage nature, meditated in silence on the best way of getting rid of her. He thought of everything, even planned murder in an undecided and feeble sort of way, but

dared do nothing, expecting every day the return of Lingard with news of some immense good fortune. He returned, indeed, but aged, ill, a ghost of his former self, with the fire of fever burning in his sunken eyes, almost the only survivor of the numerous expedition. But he was successful at last.

Untold riches were in his grasp. He wanted more money, only a little more to realize a dream of fabulous fortune. And Hudik had failed. Ormayr scrapped all he could together, but the old man wanted more. If Ormayr could not get it, he would go to Singapore, to Europe even, but before all

to Singapore, and he would take the little Nina with him. The child must be brought up decently. He had good friends in Singapore who would take care of her and have her taught properly. All would be well, and that girl, upon whom the old seaman seemed to have transferred all his former affection for the mother, would be the richest woman in the East, in the world

even. So old Lingard shouted, pacing the veranda with his heavy quarter-deck step, gesticulating with a smouldering charute, ragged, dishevelled, enthusiastic. And Ormayr, sitting huddled up on a pile of mats, thought with dread of the separation with the only human being he loved, with greater dread still, perhaps, of the scene with his

wife, the savage tigress deprived of her young. She will poison me, thought the poor wretch, well aware of that easy and final manner of solving the social, political or family problems in Malay life. To his great surprise she took the news very quietly, giving only him and Lingard a furtive glance and saying not a word.

This however did not prevent her the next day from jumping into the river and swimming after the boat in which Lingard was carrying away the nurse with the screaming child. Ormayr had to give chase with his whale-boat and drag her in by the hair in the midst of cries and curses enough to make heaven fall. Yet after two days spent in wailing, she returned to her former mode of life, chewing betel nut

and sitting all day amongst her women in stupefied idleness. She aged very rapidly after that, and only roused herself from her apathy to acknowledge, by a scathing remark or an insulting exclamation, the accidental presence of her husband. He had built for her a riverside hut in the compound where she dwelt in perfect seclusion. Lacumba's visits had ceased when, by a convenient decree of providence and the help of a little

scientific manipulation, the old ruler of Sambir departed this life. Lacumba reigned in his stead now, having been well served by his Arab friends with the Dutch authorities. Sayyid Abdullah was the great man and trader of the Pantai. All-mire lay ruined and helpless under the clothes-meshed net of their intrigues, owing

his life only to his supposed knowledge of Lingard's valuable secret. Lingard had disappeared. He wrote once from Singapore, saying the child was well and under the care of a Mrs. Vink, and that he himself was going to Europe to raise money for the great enterprise. He was coming back soon.

There would be no difficulties, he wrote. People would rush in with their money. Evidently they did not, for there was only one letter more from him saying he was ill, had found no relation living, but little else besides. Then came a complete silence.

Europe had swallowed up the Rajahal out, apparently, and All-mire looked vainly westward for a ray of light out of the gloom of his shattered hopes. Years passed, and the rare letters from Mrs. Vink, later on from the girl herself, were the only thing to be looked to, to make life bearable amongst the triumphant savagery of the river.

All-mire lived now alone, having even ceased to visit his debtors who would not pay sure of La Cumba's protection. The faithful Sumatris Ali cooked his rice and made his coffee, for he dared not trust anyone else, and least of all his wife. He killed time, wandering sadly in the overgrown paths round the house, visiting the ruined

go-downs where a few brass guns covered with verdigris and only a few broken cases of mouldering Manchester goods reminded him of the good early times, when all this was full of life and merchandise, and he overlooked a busy scene on the riverbank, his little daughter by his side. Now the upcountry canoes glided past the little rotten wharf of Lingard and Co to paddle up

the Pantai branch and cluster round the new jetty belonging to Abdullah. They thought that they loved Abdullah, but they dared not trade with the man whose star had set. Had they done so, they knew there was no mercy to be expected from the Arab or Raja, no rice to be got on credit in the times of scarcity from either, and All-mire could not help them,

having at times hardly enough for himself. All-mire and his isolation and despair often envied his near neighbour, the Chinaman Jim Meng, whom he could see stretched on a pile of cool mats, a wooden pillow under his head, and an opium pipe in his nerveless fingers. He did not seek, however, consolation in opium.

Perhaps it was too expensive. Perhaps his white man's pride saved him from that degradation. But most likely it was the thought of his little daughter in the far-off Straits settlements. He heard from her often since Abdullah bought a steamer, which ran now between Singapore and the Pantai settlements every three months or so.

All-mire felt himself nearer his daughter. He longed to see her, and planned a voyage to Singapore, but put off his departure from year to year, always expecting some favourable turn of fortune. He did not want to meet her with empty hands and with no words of hope on his lips. He could not take her back into that savage life to which he was condemned himself.

He was also a little afraid of her. What would she think of him? He reckoned the years. A grown woman, a civilised woman, young and hopeful, while he felt old and hopeless and very much like those savages round him.

He asked himself what was going to be her future. He could not answer that question yet, and he dared not face her. And yet he longed after her. He hesitated for years. His hesitation was put an end to by Nina's unexpected appearance in Sambir.

She arrived in the steamer under the captain's care. Ormai beheld her with surprise, not unmixed with wonder. During those ten years, the child had changed into a woman, black-haired, olive-skinned, tall and beautiful, with great sad eyes, where the startled expression common to Malay womankind was modified by a thoughtful tinge inherited from her European ancestry.

Ormai thought with dismay of the meeting with his wife and daughter of what this grave girl in European clothes would think of a beetle-nut-chewing mother squatting in a dark hut, disorderly, half naked and sulky. He also feared an outbreak of temper on the part of that pest of a woman he had hitherto managed to keep tolerably quiet, thereby saving the remnants of his dilapidated furniture.

And he stood there before the closed door of the hut in the blazing sunshine, listening to the murmur of voices, wondering what went on inside. Wherefrom all the servant-maids had been expelled at the beginning of the interview and now stood clustered by the palings with half-covered faces in a chatter of curious speculation. He forgot himself there trying to catch a stray word through the bamboo walls, till

the captain of the steamer, who had walked up with the girl, fearing a sunstroke, took him under the arm and led him into the shade of his own veranda, where Nina's trunk stood already having been landed by the steamer's men. As soon as Captain Ford had his glass before him and his cheroot lighted, Ormire asked for the explanation of his daughter's unexpected arrival.

Ford said little beyond generalizing in vague but violent terms upon the foolishness of women in general and of Mrs. Vink in particular. You know, Caspar, he said in conclusion to the excited Ormire, it is ducidly awkward to have a half-caste girl in the house. There's such a lot of fools about.

There was that young fellow from the bank who used to ride to the Vink bungalow early and late. That old woman thought it was for that Emma of hers. When she found out what he wanted exactly, there was a row, I can tell you. She would not have Nina not an hour longer in the house.

Fact is, I heard of this affair and took the girl to my wife. My wife is a pretty good woman, as women go, and upon my word we would have kept the girl for you, only she would not stay. Now then, don't flare up, Caspar. Sit still.

What can you do? I told her so. Let her stay with you. She was never happy over there. Those two Vink girls are no better than dressed-up monkeys.

They slighted her. You can't make her white. It's no use you swearing at me. You can't. She's a good girl for all that, but she would not tell my wife anything.

If you want to know, ask her yourself. But if I was you, I would leave her alone. You're welcome to her passage, money old fellow, if you're short now. And the skipper, throwing away his cigar, walked off to wake them up on board as he expressed it.

Ohmaya vainly expected to hear of the cause of his daughter's return from his daughter's lips. Not that day, not on any other day, did she ever allude to her Singapore life. He did not care to ask, awed by the calm impassiveness of her face, by those solemn eyes looking past him on the great still forest sleeping in majestic repose to the murmur of the broad

river. He accepted the situation. Happy in the gentle and protecting affection the girl showed him, fitfully enough, for she had, as she called it, her bad days, when she used to visit her mother, and remain long hours in the riverside hut, coming out as inscrutable as ever, but with a contemptuous

look and a short word ready to answer any of his speeches. He got used even to that, and on those days kept quiet, although greatly alarmed by his wife's influence upon the girl. Otherwise Nina adapted herself wonderfully to the circumstances of a half savage and miserable life.

She accepted without question or apparent disgust the neglect, the decay, the poverty of the household, the absence of furniture, and the preponderance of rice-diet on the family table. She lived with Ohmaya in the little house, now sadly decaying, built originally by Lingard for the young couple.

The malaise eagerly discussed her arrival. There were at the beginning crowded levees of Malay women with their children, seeking eagerly after ubat for all the ills of the flesh from the young memputi. In the cool of the evening, grave Arabs in long white shirts and yellow sleeveless jackets walked slowly on the dusty path by the riverside towards Ohmaya's gate, and made solemn calls

upon that unbeliever, under shallow pretense of business, only to get a glimpse of the young girl in a highly decorous manner. Ivan Lakamba came out of his stockade in a great pomp of war canoes and red umbrellas, and landed on the rotten little jetty of Lingard and co. He came, he said, to buy a couple of brass guns as a present to his friend, the chief

of Sambir Diyaks, and while Ohmaya, suspicious but polite, busied himself in unearthing the old pop-guns and the go-downs, the raja sat on an armchair in the veranda, surrounded by his respectful retinue, waiting in vain for Nina's appearance. She was in one of her bad days, and remained in her mother's hut, watching with her the ceremonious proceedings on the veranda.

The raja departed, baffled but courteous, and soon Ohmaya began to reap the benefits of improved relations with the ruler in the shape of the recovery of some debts paid to him with many apologies and many alo salam by debtors till then considered hopelessly insolvent. Under these improving circumstances, Ohmaya brightened up a little.

All was not lost, perhaps. Those Arabs and Malays saw at last that he was a man of some ability, he thought, and he began, after his manner, to plan great things, to dream of great fortune for himself and Nina, especially for Nina. Under these vivifying impulses, he asked Captain Ford to write to his friends in England,

making inquiries after Lingard. Was he alive or dead? Had he left any papers, documents, any indications or hints as to his great enterprise? Meantime, he had found among the rubbish in one of the empty rooms a notebook belonging to the old adventurer.

He studied the crabbed handwriting of its pages and often grew meditative over it. Other things also woke him up from his apathy. The stir made in the whole of the island by the establishment of the British Borneo Company affected even the sluggish flow of the panty life. Great changes were expected.

Annexation was talked of. The Arabs grew civil. Ohmaya began building his new house for the use of the future engineers, agents or settlers of the new company. He spent every available gilder on it with a confiding heart.

One thing only disturbed his happiness. His wife came out of her seclusion, importing a green jacket, scant sarongs, shrill voice and witch-like appearance into his quiet life in the small bungalow. And his daughter seemed to accept that savage intrusion into their daily existence with wonderful equanimity.

He did not like it, but dared say nothing. End of chapter 2