The Romantic Adventures of Mr. Darby and of Sarah His Wife (52 page)

Punnett thought for a moment. ‘It might be done, sir,' he said at last. ‘Of course, there'd be no good putting it plain and simple. We'd have to give it what you call a fancy turn. I might say, sir, that the place where they found you is a holy place and you want to have a bit of a ceremony there. And we might perhaps work in something about the river. For instance, I might tell them the river's your wife, if you'll excuse my suggesting it, sir.'

‘By all means, Punnett,' said Mr. Darby. ‘Say whatever you think best, and fix it up, if you can, for the early morning, before it gets too hot.'

From such simple origins sprang the great ceremony of the King's Union with the Sampoto Goddess, one of the most interesting and instructive of all primitive rites, destined to revolutionize the study of folklore because of the extraordinary insight it has afforded into the psychology of the savage mind. Punnett, resourceful as ever, managed to connect the ceremony in the minds of the Mandrats with the phases of the moon, so that Mr. Darby thenceforward had the delicious alleviation of a shower bath once a week.

The success of this idea suggested to Mr. Darby another.

‘Now in this matter of the jungle, Punnett,' he said one morning during the fourth month of his reign;' though, of course,
I'm … ah … precluded from exploring it like … well, what I should call a commoner; as King it seems to me highly expedious that I should see something of my … ah …. dominions. Now couldn't something be done in the way of a tour in a hammock?'

Punnett smiled sadly.' I'll see what I can fix up, sir,' he replied.

What he fixed up was, in its ultimate results, something that neither he nor Mr. Darby had bargained for.

And yet no one who was not a Mandrat or at least an anthropologist even more learned in Mandratic folklore than the late Professor Harrington himself, could have guessed to what the King's journey through the jungle was the inevitable and time-honoured prelude. For Mr. Darby's innocent desire and Punnett's simple and successful measures for its satisfaction set in motion a mechanism which shook the Mandratic Peninsula from end to end.

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‘He seemed a bit surprised when I mentioned it to him, sir,' said Punnett when discussing, weeks later, the whole business and its disquieting outcome;' surprised but gratified, very highly gratified.' Punnett was speaking of Umbahla, the Head Chief, to whom he had communicated Mr. Darby's desire to travel about his kingdom.' “The King,” I said to him, “wants to go round the land.” It seemed a simple thing to mention, sir, but Umbahla got terribly wrought up about it. “The King wishes to show himself to his people? Is it true?” he said, as though I had told him you wanted to give him a cheque for a thousand, sir. “Yes,” I said to him, “it's true enough.” Then he began to call on his grandfathers and great-grandfathers and I don't know who all. “Good,” he says to me. “Good. I will tell the chiefs.” Then he called you a great warrior, sir, and mentioned that the late King was a coward who never wished to show himself to his people. It was all very strange, sir, and looking back on it I see now that I ought to have smelt a rat, if you'll pardon the expression.'

But the point was that Punnett did not smell a rat. He accounted for Umbahla's unaccountable behaviour by reminding himself that the behaviour of savages was always unaccountable,—a curious slip in one who had been valet to an eminent anthropologist, a man who had spent most of his life in accounting brilliantly for the behaviour of savages. But the fact remains, Punnett was, for once, caught napping and Mr. Darby's exploration of the jungle opened under the happiest auspices.

What a blessed relief it was to escape from the hateful Umwaddi Taan into the dim and solemn retreats of the jungle. Borne upon the shoulders of twelve specially elected Mandrats, Mr. Darby at last fulfilled his ambition and under ideal conditions, for a bodyguard of his subjects swept from his path all those creatures which for less fortunate travellers detract from the enchantment of the jungle. Though it is laid down that a cat may look at a king, the black panthers of Mandratia were not allowed the most cursory glance at Mr. Darby; snakes and the more aggressive parrots were sent summarily about their business; the fire-ants and tarantula spiders which beset the paths of adventurous commoners, found him utterly inaccessible. Only mosquitoes and the pium flies took their toll as they had done in Umwaddi Taan.

But on one horrible occasion the vigilance of the King's bodyguard was defied. A fine speciman of the giant Iggarù, that loathsome snake whose touch Punnett had once compared with that of a cow's tongue, contrived an audience with the Sovereign by the monstrous device of secreting itself in the royal couch. But the creature's diabolical ingenuity was of little service to it. The screech with which Mr. Darby greeted his unexpected bedfellow summoned his bodyguard in a flash and the creature, which proved to be fifteen feet long and five feet in circumference, paid for its sacrilege with its life. This was the only time that nature was permitted to infringe the sanctity of the King.

^c
If only we could get into communication with Gamage's, Punnett,' said Mr. Darby as they halted one evening in a
village clearing;' if only we could send an order to Gamage's for some mosquito curtains, it would be what I should call perfect, absolutely perfect.'

‘If it was possible to write to Gamage's, sir, we might already be on our way home,' Punnett replied sadly.

Stage by stage, Mr. Darby progressed through his dominions. Long days through the strange twilight of the jungle, a twilight sometimes variegated by pools, ponds, and lakes o glaring sunshine where a fallen tree had left a rare hole in the green roofage or the natives had carved a clearing,—a twilight electrified sometimes by a hanging shower of mauve or scarlet orchids, a noisy flock of green parrots, or the brief apparition of a huge metallic blue butterfly. Nights in some remote clearing, where bonfires slashed the sultry darkness with the flickering scarlet of flame. Other nights in jungle villages, among scenes of barbaric enthusiasm, where black demons danced and yelled and called down destruction on the King's enemies. Nights, the best of all, in villages on the sea coast, where the jungle receded and the clusters of thatched huts nestled among rocks; where sometimes a delicious sea breeze, smelling of brine, freshened the stagnant air and called up, in the King's mind, memories of seaside holidays with Sarah at Scarborough or Saltburn.

The last village to be visited lay neither in the jungle nor on the sea coast, but on the high summit of Umfo, the ankle-bone of the Peninsula. It was the village of the Head Chief Umbahla, the largest and most important in Mandras. All day the sweating bearers hoisted the royal litter up rocky paths of an extreme steepness, hoisted it out of the hot, tree-shrouded, stagnant jungle-atmosphere into the clean upper airs of the mountain. With a leap of the heart Mr. Darby found himself suddenly lifted, as through a trap-door on a tower, out of the green-roofed dimness of the forest into stark daylight; saw below him the vast green matted roofage oi the jungle, like the congregated roofs of an immense cathedral on whose tower he sat, and breathed an air that was like wine to his torpid senses. Here and there the rolling greenness flashed miraculously into scarlet or lilac or yellow where
the tangle of orchids and lianas broke through the tree-tops in a riot of bloom.

There they halted so that the King might enjoy the spectacle of his kingdom and the bearers take breath and ease their aching muscles. They seemed to be standing on the summit of the world: yet the mountain, gaunt and treeless now, still rose sheer behind them, for they had not yet reached the top of the tower. They had merely emerged from the interior on to an open gallery upon which stood the bare, domed crown of the mountain. Now, as if by an external stair, began the ascent of the dome. For many hours yet the toiling bearers strained and sweated, while beneath Mr. Darby's wondering gaze the jungle-roof dropped lower and lower and miles of undulating treetops, reaches of curving, silvery-gleaming shore, and boundless tracts of an ocean blue as heaven and translucent as a crystal opened out into an ever growing immensity. Away to the north the green of the jungle died abruptly into a tract of red sand. It was the band of desert that divided the territory of the Mandrats from that of the Tongali, the northern boundary of Mr. Darby's dominions.

Upwards and upwards still their slow journey progressed through the long, hot afternoon, till it seemed to Mr. Darby, seated upon his lurching litter, that he was being thrust slowly aloft out of earth into Heaven.

At last the steepness decreased, the ground flattened out; they were rounding the crest of the dome; and an hour before sunset they paused on the summit where another wonder revealed itself. For the summit of Umfo is the lip of a huge crater, an inverted dome set in the top of the greater dome of the mountain; and, looking down into the great bowl Mr. Darby saw, wonderfully displayed beneath him, hundreds of beehives faultlessly disposed in a formal pattern. It was the village of Umbahla. For a long while he gazed down upon it, fascinated by its exquisite order after the riotous disorder of nature through which he had travelled. But as he gazed, the peaceful scene changed, became alive. Swarms of bees poured from the hives, circulated like a flow
of brown blood through the veins and arteries of the village, flooded into the central heart where they coagulated into a great brown clot. Then the clot stirred, boiled, broke into patterned fragments, and in a series of formal evolutions wove and unwove itself towards that part of the bowl from whose high rim the King and his followers looked down upon it. Umbahla and his people were coming to welcome the King to their village.

The ceremonies and dances of that final evening exceeded in wildness and splendour all that had preceded them. It seemed to Mr. Darby that he had landed not in Heaven, not in Hell, but in an insane amalgamation of both. By the time the festival was ended Mr. Darby's brain was in a whirl and his bodily strength exhausted.

Next morning, soon, too soon, after dawn, the village awoke, and Mr. Darby and his suite accompanied by the whole population poured down the slopes of Umfo and set out in triumph for Umwaddi Taan. They reached it on the evening of the second day.

And there, as on the evening of his coronation ten months ago, Mr. Darby to his amazement found the whole tribe congregated. Every village that he had visited in his long progress through his dominions had emptied its population, as if for another great festival, into the King's Clearing. And there, in the celebrations that immediately followed, Umbahla and the twelve chiefs, assisted by choruses of their villagers, extolled the nobility and bravery of their King, the mighty Daabee Taan whom the gods had sent to restore the Mandrat people to their former greatness.

What was it all about? What did it mean? Mr. Darby ordered Punnett instantly to find out; and when the night was far advanced, when silence had fallen on Umwaddi Taan and the bonfires were burning low, Punnett returned to the royal hut with the unpalatable truth.

‘I'm sorry to say, sir, we've gone and declared war.'

Mr. Darby's mouth fell open: terror blazed from his spectacles.' War, Punnett? But who declared war? Not us, not me, certainly.'

‘Yes, sir,' said Punnett sadly. ‘I'm afraid we did, sir. A little mistake, sir! A misunderstanding, so to speak. It turns out that when a king travels round his kingdom, anyway in these parts, it always means he's going to declare war. It's a
sine qua non,
if I may say so. I wish we'd known it before, sir; I wish Professor Harrington had made a note of it.'

Mr. Darby's cheeks had fallen in. ‘But it's … it's ridiculous, Punnett!' he stammered. ‘It's against common sense. It's … it's outrageous!
Outrageous
! You mean to say that just because I take a … ah … a little tour round the country, I … ah … what I should call automatically declare war?'

‘That's it, sir!' replied Punnett with a melancholy smile.' That's the trouble with savages, sir; you never know where you have them. The most harmless thing you do or say, sir, especially when you happen to be King, may turn the tap on, so to speak.'

‘Then,' said Mr. Darby in great consternation,' you must go and … ah … countermand the war at
once,
Punnett. Tell them from me that they've mistaken my meaning, that I don't want a war. Not in the least! Far from it! Anything but! Quite,
quite
the … ah … contrary!'

With a melancholy and deprecating smile Punnett shook his head.' I daren't do it, sir, if you'll excuse my saying so. They're so wrought up, as you saw this evening, sir, that nothing would stop them now. It'ud be as much as our lives are worth to try, and I promised Mrs. Darby I'd look after you, sir.'

Mr. Darby's face had shrunk with terror into the face of a rabbit. ‘Then what, in Heaven's name, Punnett, are we to do?'

‘Try and get a good night's sleep, if I may suggest it, sir. We'll need it.'

‘And let the war go on?'

‘And let the war go on, sir. It's much safer to let it go on than to try and stop it.'

There was silence in the hut. Punnett stretched himself on his mattress: it might have been supposed that both were
asleep. But Mr. Darby was far from sleep. He was thinking, feverishly and furiously.' By the way, Punnett/ he asked after some minutes,'who is the … ah … the enemy?'

' The Tongali, sir. There's no others available.'

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In spite of Punnett's wise advice, not a wink of sleep did Mr. Darby sleep all that night. About four a.m. he fell into a dull stupor from which, all too soon, he was roused by a low rumble like far-distant thunder. With terrifying speed it grew to the formidable drumming of rain on an iron roof, grew from that to the all-confounding roar of a hundred swooping aeroplanes, and then died away gradually to soft remote thunder again. Then again it increased, boiled up once more to the same terrifying pandemonium, and sank back in the same sustained gradations to a long threatening mutter, heavy with menace.