“It was good of you to wear the sarong I gave you, and your best kabaya and the
flowers I like in your hair. I heard more than one say that it showed you would
make a good wife in spite of our knowing one another before marriage.”
“You think that it was for you that I put on all this bravery?” she asked, looking
him straight in the face. “Am I not to be your wife? Can I not dress in honor of
the young Prince and—Allah?”
He turned to stammer a reply. The hot blood mounted to his temples, and he
grasped the girl’s arm so that she cried out with pain.
“You are to be my wife, and I your master. It is my wish that you should ever
dress in honor of our rulers and our Allah, for in showing honor to those above
you, you honor your husband. I do not understand you at all times, but I intend
that you shall understand me. Sudah!”
“Tuan Allah Suka!” (The Lord Allah has willed it), she murmured, and they
plodded on through the hot sand in silence.
After his return they saw the Prince often, and once when Anak came down to
the wharf to bring a durian to the captain of the launch from her father, the old
punghulo, she met him face to face, and he touched her cheek with his jewelled
fingers, and said she had grown much prettier since he left.
Noa was not angry at the Prince, rather he was proud of his notice, but a sinister
light burned in his eyes as he saw the flushed face and drooping head of the girl.
And once the Prince passed by the punghulo’s home on his way into the jungle
in search of a tiger, and inquired for his daughter. Anak treasured the
remembrance of these little attentions, and pondered over them day after day, as
she worked by her mother’s side at the loom, or sat outside in the sand, picking
the flossy burs from the betel-nuts, watching the flickering shadows that every
breeze in the leaves above scattered in prodigal wastefulness about and over her.
She told herself over and over, as she followed with dreamy eyes the vain
endeavors of a chameleon to change his color, as the shadows painted the sand
beneath him first green and then white, that her own hopes and strivings were
just as futile; and yet when Noa would sit beside her and try to take her hand, she