It is so strange, I have come back to tell you. The soft white clouds are actually there—motionless—they cover everything, sea and plain and valley, everything but the loftiest ridges of this mountain. The moon rides high, turning to silver the tops of the great billowy clouds, while it shines full on this house and garden, casting deep shadows from the fern-trees across the gravel, and, from the eaves and pillars of the house, across the verandah. The air is perfectly still now, though, some hours ago, it was blowing a gale and the wind wailed as though mourning its own lost soul.
It seemed then, as it tore round the corner of the house, to be crying, “I come from the rice swamps which have no dividing banks, from the waters which contain no fish, where the apes cry by night and the baboons drink as they hang from the boughs; a place where the chinchîli resorts to bathe, and where man’s food is the kĕmahang fern.” Some day I will tell you more about that place.
And the spirits of the storm that have passed and left this death-like stillness, where are they now? They went seaward, westward, to you-ward, but they will never reach you, and you will not hear their message.
III
WEST AND EAST
ONE night, in the early months of this year, I sat at dinner next to a comparatively young married woman, of the type that is superlatively blonde in colour and somewhat over-ample in figure. She was indifferently dressed, not very well informed, but apparently anxious, by dint of much questioning, to improve her knowledge where possible. She was, I believe, a journalist.
Some one must have told her that I had been in the East, and she, like most stay-at-home people, evidently thought that those who go beyond the shores of England can only be interested in, or have an acquaintance with, the foreign country wherein they have sojourned. Therefore the lady fired at me a volley of questions, about the manners and habits of the Malay people, whom she always referred to as “savages.” I ventured to say that she must have a mistaken, or at any rate incomplete, knowledge of the race to speak of Malays as savages, but she assured me that people who were black, and not Christians, could only be as she described them. I declined to accept that definition, and added that Malays are not black. I fancy she did not believe me; but she said it did not matter, as they were not white and wore no clothes. I am afraid I began to be almost irritated, for the long waits between the courses deprived me of all shelter from the rain of questions and inconsequent remarks.
At last, I said, “It may surprise you to hear that these savages would think, if they saw you now, that you are very insufficiently clad;” and I added, to try and take the edge off a speech that I felt was inexcusably rude, “they consider the ordinary costume of white men so immodest as to be almost indecent.” “Indeed,” said the lady, who only seemed to hear the last statement, “I have often thought so too, but I am surprised that savages, for I must call them savages, should mind about such things.” It was hopeless, and I asked how soon the great American people might be expected to send a force to occupy London.
I have just been reminded of this conversation. A few days ago, I wrote to a friend of mine, a Malay Sultan, whom I have not seen for some months, a letter inquiring how he was, and saying I hoped soon to be able to visit him. Now comes his answer; and you, who are in sympathy with the East, will be able to appreciate the missive of this truculent savage.