One Maid's Mischief Part 56

Die because a woman's fair?

Shall I pale my cheeks with care Because another's rosy are?'"

He sang softly, enjoying more and more the delicious coolness of the breeze off the river.

"I'm nearly cured," he said, bitterly.

"'I know a maiden fair to see, Take care!

She can both false and friendly be, Beware! beware!

Trust her not, She is fooling thee!'"

He sang again in a low voice.

"My case exactly. Oh! my dear madam. I'm afraid you will come to grief one of these days, for it is not every fellow who will give you up as I do, and hide his wound under a smiling face.

"And do I give her up?" he said, softly; and there was a tender, dreamy look in his eyes as he spoke.

"Bah! what a madman I am!" he cried, with a mocking laugh; "she throws me over as she has thrown over others. What an idiot I was not to see all this sooner!

"The old story--the old story," he muttered. "Man's vanity and woman's pride. I was conceited enough to think that, though she might trifle with others, I was her one special choice. There was no such other man upon the earth as I, Captain Hilton, the Apollo among his fellows.

Serve me right!" he cried pa.s.sionately, "for a weak fool, and I deserve it all, if only to be a lesson to bring me to my senses?"

Growing excited with his thoughts, he strolled down another path, leading to the lower lawn which sloped to the river.

"I wonder who is with her now!" he muttered, as he gazed with lowering brow at the smooth, star-spangled stream.

"What does it matter! I'll get a lesson in _nonchalance_ from old Chum!

I've been fooled like the rest. I might have known that I should be, but I was conceited enough to think that I had thoroughly won her heart."

He told himself that it was all over now, and smoked away viciously, sending forth great puffs of vapour, still thinking of his position.

"What the d.i.c.kens did that woman, the Inche Maida, mean!" he said, suddenly, as he strolled now close beside the river in complete forgetfulness of all the dangers with which it was invested by his friends. "Why, if I were a conceited fellow--well, so I am, horribly,"

he said, bitterly--"I should have fancied that she was making love to me. It is too ridiculous!" he exclaimed, stopping short, and seeing nothing but introspectively, hearing nothing but the echoes of his own thoughts. "This place is growing hateful to me. I shall get leave or exchange. I feel as if I could not stay here any longer, and--Hah!

Help! What! Good Heav--"

The rest of Hilton's words did not reach the soft midnight air, for, deep in thought, he had not seen the shadow even of the coming danger which had fallen in an instant, and his mad struggles were proving all in vain.

VOLUME TWO, CHAPTER TEN.

PLUS.

As Hilton cried for help his voice sounded stifled and dull, while he vainly tried to cast off a great woollen cloth that had been deftly thrown over his head. It took hardly an instant before it was wound tightly round him. Then a rope was twisted so rapidly round arms and legs, that he was turned, as it were, into a complete mummy; and when his a.s.sailants threw him upon the gra.s.s he was so helpless that they literally rolled him over and over down the slope of closely shaven herbage into a large row-boat, into whose bottom he fell without pain, and almost without a sound.

"I thought it was the crocodiles," he said to himself, as his heart beat painfully; and then he began to writhe in spirit at his want of caution, for he felt sure that this, the capture of an officer, was one of the first steps towards an attack upon the Residency island.

Just then he heard a voice, and what seemed to be a whispered order in Malay; and the boat might have been seen to glide away like a shadow over the starry water, breaking it up into spangles as it went on and on towards the middle of the stream without so much as a sound.

Then a pang shot through the young officer's heart, to tell him that he was not, in spite of his word, quite cured, for his first thought now was: "What will become of Helen!" A few minutes later Chumbley strolled up to the paG.o.da, where old Stuart was comfortably enjoying his gla.s.s.

"Well, old fellow," he drawled: "not melted away yet."

"No; nor you neither," retorted the old merchant. "Want some whuskie?"

"No; I want a cigar," said Chumbley; and he helped himself from the box.

"Seen anything of Hilton?" he asked, as he lit the roll of tobacco.

"Yes! here a bit ago, and then went off to smoke in the cool air. Leave my little girl all right?"

"Yes; she was sitting talking to the Princess and the Rajah in front of the house. What a lovely night!"

"Humph, yes. Pretty well; but you should see the night, laddie, over one o' the Scottish lochs, wi' the ootline o' a mountain stannin oot i'

front o' the northern sky. Ay, but that's a sight."

"Yes, s'pose so," said Chumbley; "but as we can't have the night over the Scottish loch, isn't it as well to make the best of this?"

"Humph! yes," said the old man; "but I'm getting tired of sitting here.

I want to go back home. How much longer is this tomfoolery going to last?"

"Can't say, sir. Why don't you go on to the lawn and have a chat?"

"Pah! Do I look like a man who could do that sort of thing?"

"Can't say you do," replied Chumbley, cheerfully. "Well, I'm going to look for Hilton!" and, stepping out of the paG.o.da, he went across the lawn, with his hands deep down in his pockets.

"_Now_, let's see," he said to himself, as he strolled lazily on, "where would that chap be likely to have stuck himself up for a quiet smoke?

"Seems to have had a tiff with beauty to-night. P'r'aps she has pitched him as she has other people before, present company not excepted. All the more likely for him to have gone off for a quiet smoke--Now where would he go?"

There was a pause here, as if for someone else to answer, but as no one did--

"Down by the river," he said--"safe." Chumbley thrust his hands lower down into his pockets, and as if led by fate, he followed slowly almost the very track taken by Hilton so short a time before.

Finding that portion of the extensive grounds quite solitary, Chumbley began to hum what was meant for an air, in a peculiar voice more remarkable for noise than tune--due, no doubt, to his having his cigar in his lips, at which he gravely sucked away as if keeping time to the melody he emitted with the smoke.

"Gra.s.s too damp to lie down," he said to himself, "else it would be rather jolly, and I'm precious tired. Not safe though. Old Bolter would vow there was rheumatism and fever in every blade. Why the d.i.c.kens don't they put garden seats down here?"

He strolled on, casting his eyes about in every direction in search of his friend.

"Precious dark!" he said. "Now where has old Hilton hidden himself?

Hallo! Why there he is! What a jolly old lunatic he must be. I wonder what old Bolter would say?"

For not very far from the bank of the stream, he could dimly make out a figure lying apparently asleep.

Chumbley immediately began to think of the risks to be incurred from crocodiles, and walking quickly up he bent down over the sleeping figure.

"Here--hi! Hallo! Hilton, is that you? Hang it, man, don't lie there!"

There was no reply, and Chumbley hesitated as to whether he should touch the figure.