Page:The further side of silence (IA furthersideofsil00clifiala).pdf/134

 The matter was related to me by the great upcountry chief, the Dato' Maharâja Pěrba of Jělai, who said that he had never heard of any parallel case. I warned him solemnly not to let the thing become a precedent; for there are many ill-favoured women in his district, and if they had all followed the girl's example, the population would have suffered considerable depletion. Later, however, when I learned the real reasons which had led to the suicide, I was sorry that I had ever jested about it, for the girl's was a sad little story.

Some months earlier a Pĕkan Malay had come up the Jĕlai on a trading expedition, and had cast his eyes upon the girl. To her he was all that the people of the surrounding villages were not. He walked with a swagger, wore his weapons and his clothes. with an air that none save a Malay who has been bred in the neighbourhood of a râja's court knows how to assume, and was full of brave tales, to which the elders of the village could only listen with wonder and respect. Just as Lancelot enthralled Elaine, so did this man—a figure no less wonderful and splendid to this poor little upcountry maid—come into her life, revolutionizing her ideas and her ideals, and filling her with hopes and with desires of which hitherto she had never dreamed. Against so practised and experienced a wooer what could her simple arts avail? Snatching at a moment's happiness and reckless of the future, she gave herself to him, hoping, thereby, it may be, to hold him in silken bonds through which he might not break; but what was