Sally : a study and other tales of the outskirts

Front matter

ASIA

CORNELL

UNIVERSITY

Foreword

These tales of the Outskirts, fragmentary garnerings of

" The lore o' men who ha' dealt with men In the raw and the naked lands,''

I cannot suffer to go from me quite without one word wishing them God-speed, and perhaps one other of apology and explanation. These stories have been written through the sheer delight I have found in recording, no matter with how little of skill or art, the impressions of men and things which have been imprinted upon my memory during twenty years of life in the East ; and now that they are about to quit me, seeking their own fortune in a world that may well have no room for them, it is to me as though, in parting with them, I was severing the last link that binds me to a life which I have loved, to a people and to a land which have become to me very dear. For I, who once was outcast in Asia, to-day am outcast from the East, and, behold, the East is claiming me as she never claimed me before !

FOREWORD.

Twenty years — the years which bridge the gulf between boyhood and middle age — have wedded me to Malaya, and now, of a sudden, there has been pronounced against me the decree of a great divorce.

Those years have brought me things good and things ill, joys and sorrows, failures over -numerous and successes one or two : my union with the East has had, like nearly every union, its jars and its evil moments, its periods of depression, its passing accesses of aversion, of nausea, of satiety. But above and beyond and behind all this, how much, how more than much, it has held for me! Now at the last, when the bitter hour of separation has come, a full realisation of all that the East has meant for me, of all that the East has taught to me, of all that the East has given to me, of all that the East stands for in my heart and in my memory, is upon me with overpowering force ; and I, the whilom exile, kneel humbly at her dear feet, — " grim Step-Mother of our kind," though some be found to name her, — thank her for her bounties, kiss her time-worn hand, and so depart in sadness.

And to-day these tales of the Outskirts go from me too, the last of their kind, or so I fancy, that my hand shall fashion : and with their going there is closed for me a long chapter of my life — a chapter through every rough line of which I fain would live again. Treat them kindly then, my brethren, ye Knights of the grey Goose-quill, judging them not as literature but as truth — as fragments whose only value is that they are, as it were, the aftermath of a rich harvest

FOREWORD. XI

of experience garnered in joy, — joy, the thought of which, now that the old life is taken from me utterly, is bitter in my mouth.

The brilliant sunshine of the Tropics floods the world about me as I write : all around is the luxuriant vegetation and the vivid colouring unknown to tame and temperate lands: far away yonder on the wooded hillside the vermilion of the bois immortel stains with glorious tint the tender greenery. Here, too, is a land of splendour and of beauty, with the same mysterious hint of sadness underlying all; but this is not my shrine, these High Woods are not my dear Malayan forests; this is a Holy of Holies held sacred by other men, who well may resent the prying presence of a stranger who must learn much ere he can hope to catch the hushed whisper of the inner sanctuary. Meanwhile the dissimilarity in similarity mocks my memory, and, deprived of the light of intimate, first-hand knowledge, that in the East had become for me so sure a guide, I stand to-day bewildered in the half-darkness of a new experience — crying for the Moon !

All these tales have already made their bow to the public in various magazines. For permission to reprint them my thanks are due to Mr Blackwood, to Mr Reginald Smith, K.C., and to the Editors of ' Macmillan's Magazine ' and ' Temple Bar.'

HUGH CLIFFORD.

Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, B.W.I.

SALLY": A STUDY.

I

" D IVE ? 1 should think so ! " said his host to

Jack Norris. "You just watch the little beggar dive ! "

It was early morning, and the two men were stripping for a swim on board one of the big house-boats which lie eternally at their moorings on the right bank of the river near Thames Ditton. The place was littered with sweaters, towels, flannels, boat-cushions, books, newspapers, pipes, and the varied accumulations of rubbish such as only a house-boat full of bachelors can collect when it lacks even the feminine influence of a charwoman. Without, seen through the wide oblong windows, the tawny waters ran cool and inviting under the glad sunshine of a bright summer morning. From a spring-board rigged in the bows men from time to time took running headers : in the middle of the narrow fairway five or six heads were bobbing, while arms and legs in number to correspond splashed gallantly. The cheery clamour of the bathers carried far over the water.

Presently another head broke through the surface of the river some twenty yards up - stream, — a head to which the wet hair clung sleek and black as the fur of an otter, — and from it came a cry of defiance, the tone of which was somehow strangely familiar as it smote upon Jack Norris's ears. The swimmers answered the challenge with discordant chorus, and began to splash up against the current, with straining arms and legs, in the direction of the man who had uttered it. The latter waited until his pursuers had nearly surrounded him, were almost upon him, and then dived neatly, leaving barely so much as a ripple behind him. Two or three men went down headlong in pursuit, to reappear in a minute or so baffled and panting. A moment later, first one and then another were drawn under, with gurgles and splutterings of protest, by an invisible hand that had gripped them by the heels. With renewed splutterings each in turn came to the surface, laughing and shouting, breathing forth threats of instant retribution. Dashing the water from their eyes, they looked around, vainly seeking for some sign of their antagonist's whereabouts, calling upon him by name the while with humorous mock-wrath.

" Sally ! " they cried. " Sally, you young ruffian ! Sally ! Sally ! Sally, you villain ! We'll pay you out properly when we catch you ! "

Again the head, with its close covering of straight limp hair, came to the surface, far down river this time, and well out of the reach of its pursuers. Again that queer challenging cry came from it, and set Norris tingling with old memories suddenly awakened.

"Why, he is a Malay!" he exclaimed. "No one but a Malay ever used that lilting whoop. It is the sorak — their war-cry ! "

" Of course he is a Malay," said the part-owner of the house-boat. " He is Sally, you know — a Malay boss of sorts. We all knew him when we were at Winchester. He is being educated in England privately, not at the school ; but he is an awfully decent little chap, and was very pally with a lot of us."

Jack Norris stepped out on to the bows, and stood for a minute in his bathing-pants looking across the river. The Englishmen had abandoned the hopeless chase, and the little Malay was swimming back to them, breasting the current with the unmistakable long overhand stroke of his people. The sight, and the echo of the cry which still rang in his ears, brought back to Norris suddenly the memory of many a swim in the glorious rivers of the Malay Peninsula ; and for a space the banks around him, with their fringe of moored house-boats and floating stages, the trim towing-path opposite skirting the tall brick wall, and the great shapeless pile of Hampton Court Palace, its window-panes winking in the sunlight, its ruddy bulk surmounted by grotesque chimney-stacks, picked out with white masonry and set with grinning gargoyles, were rolled back. He seemed once more to be standing on the beak of a Malayan prahu, with an olive-green tide of waters surging past him, and spreading away and away to the marvellous tangles of forest that stood, more than half a mile apart, hedging the river on either flank. Then he braced himself and took a header from the bow, and the chill of the English stream smote him with a shock of surprise, for so complete had been the momentary illusion that he had expected to be greeted by the tepid waters of the East.

When he rose to the surface he found himself close to the man they called " Sally." His face— the boyish, hairless face of a young Malay — was turned towards him. The great, black, velvety, melancholy eyes of his race looked at Norris from their place in the flawless, olive-tinted skin in which they were set. The mouth, somewhat full, with mobile sensitive lips that pouted slightly, had just that sweetness of expression that is most often seen in the face of a little child. The features were clean-cut, delicate, giving promise of more adaptability than strength of character : the whole effect was pretty and pleasing, for this was a Malay of rank and breeding, the offspring of men who for uncounted generations have had the fairest women of their land to wife.

Mechanically Norris spoke in the vernacular.

" What is the news ? " he asked, using the conventional greeting.

" Khabar baik ! The news is good ! " the Malay answered, speaking the words from sheer force of habit, and he eyed Norris curiously with evident surprise. Then his face lighted up with a gleam of recognition, and his lips, parting in a grin, disclosed two even rows of beautiful white teeth, — teeth such as belong by right to every Malay, did not the inexplicable fashion of this people order them to be mutilated with the stone -file and blackened by indelible pigment.

" Ya Allah, Tuan Nori' ! It is thou ! " he exclaimed.

The word or two of the vernacular, to which he added the popular mispronunciation of Jack's name, slipped from him unconsciously. An instant later he corrected himself.

" Do you remember me ? " he asked in English. " I am Raja Saleh of Pelesu. I met you las' at Ka.ru."

He spoke his acquired language fluently, but with a strong foreign intonation, lengthening the flat English vowels and eliding the last of two final consonants. His words unlocked a forgotten chamber of Jack's memory, and at once the boy himself, his identity, his circumstances, and all connected with him, were made so clear that Norris fell to wondering how it had come to pass that, even for a moment, he had failed to recognise him. Immediately the Englishman and the Malay were busy interchanging news, the former chatting volubly of men and places with st range n ames ^ that surely had never before bee n s poken on the bosom of the ancient Thames, the latter listening and replying," but with a certain indifference and aloofness that were curious. Once more, from force of habit, Norris spoke in the vernacular. Using the Malayan idiom like his own mothe r, tongue, he had neve ? : -y§L. I 5§t-?-_5?: t i v ? who did not prefer to converse withjbim in -that language, or who was completely at his best when employing the white man's speech. The foreign tongue seems in some subtle fashion to emphasise defects in taste and character which the more familiar vernacular mercifully hides. Iang-Miilia Raja Muhammad Saleh bin Iang-Maha-Mulia Sultan Abubakar Maathanl Shah Iang-di-per-Tuan Pelesu, however, — to give his full title to the youth who was known to his English friends by the undistinguished name of "Sally," — had not heard Malay spoken for years, and he seemed now to shy away from it, as though it were not only unfamiliar, but also, in some sort, distressing to him. It was only at a much later period" ~5F their intercourse that Saleh came back to his Malayan tongue, and found in it the only medium of expression with which to convey to

Jack an understanding of the feelings that were in his heart.

Now, as the bathers dressed themselves on board the house-boat, — Saleh standing among them all in complete unconsciousness of the nakedness which would have outraged the sense of decency of the meanest of his subjects, — Jack was busy piecing together all that he could recollect concerning his past meetings with the lad. So again the familiar surroundings of the home-land faded, and were replaced by scenes that he had looked upon, lived through, years before, and thousands of miles away, on the banks of a mighty Malayan river.

II

They rose up singly, — these scattered memories of incidents in which Saleh had played a part, — lingered for a moment, and were gone ; for the mind, when it wanders in retrospect, knows no trammels of space or time, and, flashing hither and thither at will, throws sudden gleams into the dark places with all the speed and the vividness of lightning. Thus, as in silence N orris dressed himself amid the hum of talk on board the house-boat, the trivial happenings of nearly a score of years were reviewed in less than half as many minutes, each picture rising before him clear-cut and complete to the last detail, glimmering for an instant ere it vanished to give room to another — just as a view cast by a magic-lantern leaps whole and sudden out of the darkness, burns its impression upon our eyesight, and in a flash is blotted out.

Three big wooden houses, raised on piles above the untidy litter of a compound, connected each to each by narrow gangways roofed and walled; three highpitched pyramids of thatch, the dried palm -leaves rustling and lifting under the full beat of the noontide sun ; a big brown river rolling by, with a dull murmur of sound, beyond the ten-foot fence of wattled bamboos which encloses in its lop-sided square this palace of a native king. In the central house Jack Norris squats cross-legged, surrounded by a mob of expectant Malays of both sexes. The great barn-like apartment is bare, save for the mengkuang-palm mats spread upon the floor, and the bellying squares of ceiling patchwork sagging from the rafters overhead, whence, near the centre of the room, a big hammock also depends, swaying gently to and fro. Above the hammock, in dingy contrast to the glaring patterns of the Manchester ceiling-cloths, an old casting-net, whereof the soiled and rent meshes prove that it has seen much service, hangs in an uneven oblong. It is a barrier raised against the assaults of the Pen-anggal — the Undone One — that fearful wraith of a woman who has died in childbirth, and who cherishes for ever a quenchless enmity towards little children. She, poor wretch, wrenched terribly in twain, is doomed to flit eternally through the night, — a dreadful shape with agonised woman's face, full breasts, and nought beside save only certain awful blood-stained streamers, — bringing a curse of destruction wherever she can win an entry. But the gods, who suffer such things to be, mercifully ordain that her onslaughts upon defenceless babes can only be made from above, and a discarded casting-net dipped in magic-water, it is well known, will often stay and baffle her. Yet even now, perchance, she may be lurking, unseen by impotent human eyes, in the hammock itself, wherefore due precaution must be taken ere the royal baby can be safely laid to rest therein.

As the crowd sits watching, a grim figure strides into the centre of the room. It is that of an aged woman, tall, erect, with a fierce mouth, wild eyes, and a tumble of shaggy elf-locks making an unsightly halo about her lean face, a woman dressed in the male costume of a Malay warrior. It is Raja Anjang — the witch of the blood royal — and at her coming a little wave of tremor ripples over the faces of the Malay onlookers. She is in a condition of trance — possessed by her familiar demons: those unseeing eyes and every rigid muscle in her big angular frame bear witness to her uncanny state, and no man knows with certainty what will befall while this inspired beldam fills the stage. She wanders round and round the hammock, moving with long masculine strides, muttering fearfully words of a forgotten language which none save the wizards know; and her elf-locks, stirring restlessly, seem to be lifted by winds which should have no place in that still atmosphere. Then stooping, she seizes suddenly upon a reluctant cat, which the onlookers thrust within her reach, and clutches the miauling creature to her fiat breasts with merciless grip. A chorus of minor witches squatting on her right breaks into a wild chant of incantation, while the devil-drums sob and pant in time to the rhythm of the dirge. With her disengaged hand Raja Anjang seizes the cord of the hammock and sets it swinging in time to the chant, which grows momentarily wilder and wilder. The women who form the chorus are rocking themselves backward and forward in a kind of hysteria of excitement ; the hands

"sally": a study. ii

that smite the drums are raised between each stroke high in the air with fingers wriggling rapidly in frantic gesticulation; the hair and the garments of the hag by the hammock are agitated anew, as though those unearthly breezes, which are yet unfelt by the spectators, were raging mightily. When the weird song is at its shrillest the cat is dropped into the sag of the hammock, whence it scrambles quickly on to the mat-covered floor. It is promptly recaptured by those nearest to it, and the witch pounces upon it with the spring of a tigress. Again, and yet a third time, the unhappy beast is clutched to that comfortless bosom, is dropped into the hammock, and at the last is suffered to make its escape, spitting and scratching with bared claws and humped back. A wild cry goes up from the mouths of all the Malays present, and is succeeded by a heavy silence. The witch sinks to the floor in a shapeless bundle, sweating profusely, and rocks to and fro with smothered moans and cries. Her struggle with the ghastly Pm-anggal has left her utterly spent. The close atmosphere of the room is heavy with the reek of incense.

A little pause ensues, the stillness of which is tense with the recent excitement, and then from the inner apartment a huddled procession of women makes its way, headed by the king himself, a great rolling figure clad in glaring colours. One of the women carries a tiny burden swaddled in cloth-of-gold, the upper folds of which being presently drawn aside reveal the existence of a minute head. With much state and ceremony the crown of this head is solemnly shaved, the invisible fluff shorn from it being reverently treasured, and when this operation has been performed, the baby is at last placed in the hammock, whence all evil spirits have now departed for their new abode in the body of the miserable cat.

A priest in a green jubah and ample red turban, who has sat complacently watching the magic practices which are an abomination to the Prophet's Law, stands erect and recites a rolling Arabic prayer with breathless fluency, his audience sitting with hands on knees and curved palms uppermost, chiming in at intervals with long " Amins ! "

Then the spectators rise to their feet, and each in turn files past the hammock, and looks down at the child as he drops a dollar or two into a basket placed convenient for the purpose. Jack Norris, as he stands gazing down at the infant, sees a small brick-red disk, with a slack, slowly moving mouth, a shapeless button of a nose, a skin all crumpled with puckers, and two big dull eyes made grotesque by enormous arched eyebrows traced with soot upon the wrinkled forehead. The rest of the baby is immobile in its lashing of swaddling-clothes, and is imbedded deeply in a nest of gorgeous Malayan silks.

It is thus that Jack gets his first glimpse of the boy whom his English friends call " Sally."

It is late at night in the audience-hall of the king, — a big bare room without ornament or furniture, — and the monarch, nude to the waist, is squatting on a mat beside a Chinese gambling-cloth. Around him sit a number of his courtiers, and facing him are two yellow Chinamen in loose coats and trousers of shining black linen. In the centre of the cloth there rests a little square box made of dull brass, and presently, at a sign from the king, one of the courtiers begins to draw upward with maddening slowness the outer cover, which fits very closely over the inner box. A dead silence reigns while all eyes are riveted upon the dice-box and the hand that lifts its cover. Little by little, a fraction of an inch at a time, the outer box is raised, the narrower column of brass within it being disclosed more and more, standing squarely on the mat. At last the cover is free of that which it has encased, and more slowly than ever the courtier proceeds to twist it round in such a fashion that presently a corner of the hidden die will be made visible. The gamblers are leaning forward now with straining eyes ; they draw their breaths pantingly ; and still the hand gripping the dice-box moves with incredible slowness. The notes and dollars are piled in little heaps all in one quarter of the mat. The obsequious courtiers have followed the inspiration of their king.

There is another second or two of tense excitement and expectation, and then a shout is raised, — a shout which is discordant and angry, tingling with passionate disappointment — a shout with which are blent imprecations and fierce ejaculations of disgust — a shout which ends in a sound like a sob. The king's inspiration has failed him, and he and his courtiers, in consequence, are the poorer by many good silver dollars. It is the last coup of a disastrous evening, and the king, who is a prudent soul withal, will have no more of it. The Chinamen gather up their gaming -gear and their winnings, and depart into the night. Their unemotional faces — faces "like wooden planks," as the Malay idiom has it — betray no consciousness of the obvious hatred which they inspire. They are quite indifferent to it, for the money is duly pouched, and they know that the justice-loving British Government, in the person of the Resident, sits mighty and impassive on the river's farther bank, and takes thought even for the property and the lives of the despised yellow man. A little naked boy, who has been sleeping fitfully with his head pillowed on a courtier's knee, rouses himself, puts on an enormous orange-coloured cap a size too large for him (his only garment), lights a cigarette, and sits listening gravely to the hum of talk about him, talk of all that might have been had chance proved less fickle. He is Raja Saleh, the king's baby son.

Jack Norris, who has been watching the play with such patience as he can command, sees that his time has come at last. He has visited the palace in order to have speech with the king concerning some of that shameless monarch's most glaring misdemeanours, — matters connected with an abducted wife, an aggrieved husband, and a pack of motherless bairns — a squalid tragedy, in which the king has played the part of an ignoble Mephistopheles. The culprit is curiously insensitive. His feelings, overlaid by many strata of ruffianism and self-content, are things which have to be dug for. He knows now what has brought Norris to his hall, but he evinces no desire that the humiliating discussion about to take place should be conducted in private. In a sense he is somewhat proud of his achievement, for it is not every man of his years who can be such a devastating roue as he, and he enters with gusto into a lurid account of his indiscretions, making display of an unfettered coarseness of speech and thought, while the little angel-faced boy, his son, sits at his side looking preternaturally wise. It is not the first time that the child has been privileged to listen to an exposition of his father's crude notions concerning morality and seemliness of conduct. It is

Jack, not the king or his people, who is irked by the boy's presence, and finds the ugly discussion doubly degrading while those big sad eyes are fixed upon him. To the Malays the innocence of childhood makes no appeal : to them there is nothing incongruous in the subject of the talk and its baby audience. But duty may not be shirked ; the matter must be threshed out, and before such listeners as the king may select ; wherefore ignoble passions, and the wanton cruelties born of them, are freely canvassed for an hour and more. The discussion, as all who take part in it know well, is only a form, but it is deemed to be necessary in order to salve the royal self-esteem and render possible the king's inevitable surrender to a power greater than his own.

When at last the end is reached, sweetmeats of unspeakable nastiness are served, the king, little Raja Saleh, and Norris eating from the same tray, while the courtiers range themselves around others in the order of their precedence and rank. The child pecks at the unwholesome stuff with the blase indifference bred of long familiarity and the absence of any attempt to restrain his appetites, and all the while his grave looks are fixed upon the white man.

" Why dost thou not wear a hat, Tuan ? " he inquires suddenly, gazing with open disapproval at N orris's bare head.

" I follow my custom, little one."

" And thou wearest boots — even in the king's hall ! "

" That too is my custom ; moreover, it prevents my feet from being bruised by stones on the way."

" I wore boots once, Tuan," says the child proudly. " Shoes of gold cunningly fashioned. That was on the day when for the first time I trod upon the earth.

There was a great feast that day because of my boots."

" Men do not think it necessary to feast whenever I put on my boots, nor can I afford to have them fashioned of gold. Did they hurt thy feet, little brother ? "

" Yes," says the child thoughtfully. " They hurt me sore; but, Tuan, they were beautiful to behold. Do thy boots hurt thee ? "

" No, my boots are soft and comfortable. Thou shouldst wear boots like mine, little one."

" So will I. Thou, Tuan, are doubtless wealthy. Thou shalt send to Singapura and purchase boots for me. Thou wilt send, wilt thou not, Tuan, for I desire greatly to possess them ? " He drops his little head on one side with so insinuating an air that he is altogether irresistible.

" Thou shalt have thy boots, little one, never fear," says Jack.

" Listen, you people," cries the child exultantly to the assembled courtiers. " The Tuan is sending to Singapura to purchase boots for me, stout leather boots, yellow and comely. Armed with them, how gallantly shall I kick! O Ma?! there'll be many children with sore stomachs in the king's compound the day I don them ! " and he laughs in joyful anticipation.

" There is no need to teach young tiger-cubs how to use their claws," says an old man admiringly, quoting a native proverb, and the king leads the laughter.

"If thou makest any such use of thy boots thou shalt lose them," says Norris ; " and now I must take my leave of the king."

"And wilt thou bear the woman with thee?" inquires the child. "That will surely anger my

" SALLY : A STUDY. V]

father. When I am big I will take all the women I choose and use them villainously — ay, and keep them too, if so I wish ! "

" There is no need to teach young tiger-whelps how to prey ! " cackles the old man again, and once more it is the king who leads the applause.

Other pictures flit across Norris's memory. Days upon the river with boat and casting-net, or when the natives of the countryside muster to help drag the great relap-cord down-stream for miles, driving shoals of frightened fish before it, to be caught at last in cunning mazes of bamboo stakes. Days in the fruit orchards, when all the court goes a-picnicking, and the boys gather in little groups to feast gluttonously while they talk knowingly of war and daggers and women. Days in the jungle, when the king and his people go forth to gather flowers, mounted on huge clay-coloured elephants. And in every picture Saleh fills a space, always cutting a pretty figure ; always gaily clad in delicate silks ; always having as his right the best of everything that is going ; always pampered and petted, flattered and adulated ; always taught that his whims are above aught else, that his desires are given him to satisfy, not to restrain; always applauded most loudly for his naughtiest deeds and sayings.