One Maid's Mischief

Why Chumbley was Brought

As the Inche Maida uttered her angry threat she swept out of the room, leaving the two young officers staring at the heavy curtain that closed the door.

“The fury! – the tigress!” exclaimed Hilton.

“Well, I don’t know!” drawled Chumbley. “She seems to me very much like what woman is all the world round.”

“Why, she is a blood-thirsty savage!” cried Hilton.

“No: only a woman who has lived all her life where every man carries a sharp-pointed weapon. Englishwomen are much the same at heart.”

“Why, you blasphemer against the honour of our fair English maids and dames!” cried Hilton, laughing.

“Not I!” said Chumbley. “They don’t live amongst people who carry daggers and spears. We go unarmed – I mean Europeans – and pay soldiers to do our fighting for us; but you baffle a woman of spirit – you cross her and behave badly to her, and you see if she wouldn’t fight.”

“Fight, man?”

“Yea, but not with a dagger; she would fight with her tongue – perhaps with her pen – and sting and wound, and perhaps pretty well slay her foe.”

“But this woman is outrageous!” cried Hilton. “Our English ladies are all that is soft and gentle.”

“Sometimes,” said Chumbley; “some of us get an ugly stab or two now and then.”

“Out upon you, slanderer!” cried Hilton, laughingly, as he paced up and down once more.

“If you don’t stop that irritating, wild beast’s cage-walk,” said Chumbley, “I’ll petition the Inche Maida to have you chained to a bamboo.”

“Pish!” cried Hilton, imitating his friend, and throwing himself down upon one of the divans.

“I thought the other day that I was stabbed to the heart by a pair of glittering eyes,” said Chumbley; “but being a regular pachyderm, the wound only just went through my skin, and I soon healed up.”

“How allegorical we are getting!” said Hilton, laughing.

“Yes,” replied Chumbley, coolly, “very. Then there was my friend Hilton: he did get a stab that pretty well touched his heart, and the wound smarts still.”

Hilton sat up, and glared at his friend.

“And yet he calls a woman a tigress and a savage because she utters threats that an Englishwoman would hide out of sight.”

“You are improving, Chumbley.”

“Yes, I am,” said the other.

“Now, are you ready to try and escape before we are krissed?”

“Bah! – stuff! She wouldn’t kris us! She’d threaten, but she wouldn’t hurt a hair of your head, unless scissoring off one of your Hyperion curls injured it when she took it for a keepsake. I’m going to prophesy now.”

“Going to what?”

“Prophesy – set up as a prophet. Are you ready?”

“Ready?”

“Yes. Can you bear it?”

“If you are going to chatter away like this,” said Hilton, contemptuously, “I shall pray her Malay majesty to find me another cell. There, go on. What is your prophecy?”

“That as soon as the bit of temper has burned out, madam will come back smiling and be as civil as can be.”

“Not she,” said Hilton. “Hang the woman!”

“Where?” said Chumbley. “Round your neck?”

“No, round yours. I’m sorry I was so rough to her; but it is, ’pon my honour, Chum, such a contemptible, degrading set-out, that I can’t keep my temper over it.”

“You’ll cool down after a bit,” said Chumbley, yawning. “I say, though, I’m hungry. I shall protest when she comes in again. She pretended that she was sending those girls for drinks and cigars. I say,” he cried, excitedly, “I shall protest or break the bars of the cage, or do something fierce, if that is her game.”

“What do you mean?”

“Why, if she is going to starve you into submission, I’ll give in directly if it’s to be that. There, what did I say?” he whispered, as the folds of the heavy curtains were drawn aside, and the Inche Maida entered, looking quite calm and almost sad now as she approached.

“I am sorry,” she said, holding out her hand to Hilton, who rose and bowed, but did not attempt to take the hand she offered.

“I was very angry,” continued the Princess, in a low, penitent voice. “Malay women let their feelings get the mastery when they are angry. I suppose English ladies never do?”

Chumbley coughed slightly and made a grimace.

“Mr Chumbley,” she said, turning to him, “you will shake hands? I am not angry now. You need not be afraid.”

“I wasn’t afraid,” said Chumbley, taking the hand and pressing it warmly.

“You were not?” she cried, with a flash from her dark eyes.

“Not a bit,” he said, laughing.

“Suppose I said I would kill you?” she cried.

“Well, it would be quite time enough to feel afraid when the operation was about to be performed,” said Chumbley, coolly. “I never meet troubles half way.”

“I cannot understand you,” said the Princess. “You are a very strange man. It is because you are so big, I think, that you are not afraid.”

Chumbley bowed.

“Perhaps so,” he said.

“I came back,” said the Princess, “to tell you that I was sorry I spoke so angrily; but you must both know that I will be obeyed. If I were not firm, my people would treat me like you do your servants. I wish to speak to you both now.”

“Say a civil word to her, Hilton,” whispered Chumbley.