For a moment I feared he would go into convulsions, but I soon discovered that my sympathy, had been wasted.
Then I noticed, for the first time, that there was a leather strap around his body just in front of his back legs, and that a string was attached to it, which ran through the railings and off the veranda. I looked over, and there, squatting on his sandalled feet, was a Malay, with the other end of the string in his hand.
He arose, smiling, touched his forehead with the back of his brown palm, and asked blandly:--
"Tuan, want to buy?"
The calm a.s.surance of the man amused me.
"What, that miserable little monkey?" I said. "Do you take me for a tourist? Look up in those trees and you will see monkeys that know boiled rice from padi."
The man grinned and showed his brilliantly red teeth and gums.
"Tuan see. This monkey very wise," and he made a motion with his stick. The little fellow sprang from the railing to his bare head, and sat holding on to his long black hair.
"See, Tuan," and he made another motion, and the monkey leaped to the ground and commenced to run around his master, hopping first on one foot and then on the other, raising his arms over his head like a ballet dancer. After every revolution he would stop and turn a handspring.
The Malay all the time kept up a droning kind of a song in his native tongue, improvising as he went along.
The tenor of it was that one Hamat, a poor Malay, but a good Mohammedan, who had never been to Mecca, wanted to go to become a Hadji. He had no money but he had a good monkey that was very dear to him. He had found it in a distant jungle, beyond Joh.o.r.e, when a little baby; had brought it up like one of his own children and had taught it to dance and salaam.
Now he must sell the monkey to the great Tuan, or Lord, that the money might help take him to Mecca. The monkey must dance well and please the mighty Tuan.
As the little fellow danced, he kept one eye on me as though he understood it all.
"How old is he?" I asked, becoming interested.
"Just as old as your Excellency would like," he replied, bowing.
"Is he a year old?"
"If the Tuan please."
"Well, how much do you want for him?"
"What your Excellency can give."
"Twenty-five dollars?" I asked.
His face lit up from chin to forehead. He hitched nervously at the folds of his sarong, and changed the quid of red betel-nut from one corner of his mouth to the other.
"Here, Hamat," I said, laughing, "here is five dollars; take it; when you come back from Mecca with a green turban come and see me. If I am sick of the monkey, you can have him back."
So commenced our acquaintance with Lepas. We got into the habit of calling him Lepas, because it was the Malay for "let go," which definition we broadened until it became a term of correction for every form of mischief. He was such a restless, active little imp, with hands into everything and upon everything, that it was "Lepas!" from morning to night.
He soon learned the word"s twofold meaning. If we said "Lepas" sternly, he subsided at once; but when we called it pleasantly he came running across the room and leaped into our laps.
It did not take Lepas as long to forget his former master as it did to forget his former habits. In truth, his civilization was never more than skin deep.
He would sit for hours cuddled up in the mistress"s lap, playing with her work and making deft slaps at pa.s.sing flies, until he had thoroughly convinced her of his perfect trustworthiness. Then, the moment her back was turned, he would slip away to her bureau, and such a mess as he would make of her ribbons and laces!
I think he liked the servants better than he did us. He would dance and turn handsprings and salaam for them, but never for the mistress or myself. Such tricks, he seemed to think, were beneath his new position in society.
He had a standing grudge against me, however, for insisting on his bath in the big Shanghai jar every day, and took delight in rolling in the red dust of the road the moment he was through.
It was not long before he had a feud with the monkeys in the trees, back of the house. He would stand on the ground, within easy reach of the house, and as saucily as you please, till they were worked up into a white heat of rage over his remarks.
Once he caught a baby monkey that had become entangled in the wiry lallang gra.s.s under the trees, and dragged it screeching into the house. Before we could get to him he had nearly drowned it by treating it to a bath,--an act, I suppose, intended to convey to me his opinion of my humane efforts to keep him clean.
I expected as a matter of course to lose another pair of shoes or something, in payment for this unneighborly behavior, but the colony in the trees seemed to know that I was innocent. It was not long before they caught the true culprit, and gave him such a beating that he was quiet and subdued for days.
But Lepas was a lovable little fellow with all his mischief. Every afternoon when I came home from the office, tired out with the heat and the fierce glare of the sun, he would hop over to my chair, whistle soothingly, and make funny little chirrups with his lips, until I noticed him.
Then he would crawl quietly up the legs of the chair until he reached my shoulder, where he would commence with his cool little fingers to inspect my eyes and nose, and to pick over carefully each hair of my mustache and head.
So we forgave him when he pulled all the feathers out of a ring-dove that was a valued present from an old native rajah; when he turned lamp-oil into the ice cream, and when he broke a rare Satsuma bowl in trying to catch a lizard. He was always so penitent after each misadventure!
We had heard that Hamat had sailed for Jedda with a shipload of pilgrims and were therefore expecting him back soon; but we had decided not to give up Lepas. He had become a sort of necessity about the house.
Next door to us, lived a high official of the English service. He was a sour, cross old man and did not like pets. Even the monkeys in the trees knew better than to go into his "compound," or inclosure.
But Lepas started off on a voyage of discovery one day, and not only invaded his compound, but actually entered his house. The official caught him in the act of hiding his shaving-set between the palm thatch of the roof and the cheese-cloth ceiling. Recognizing Lepas, he did not kill him, but took him by his leathern girdle and soused him in his bath-tub, until he was so near dead that it took him hours to crawl home.
Lepas went around with a sad, injured expression on his wrinkled little face, for days. Not even a mangosteen sprinkled with sugar could awaken his enthusiasm.
He went so far as to make up with the monkeys in the trees, and once or twice I caught him condescending to have a game of leap-frog with them. I made up my mind that he had determined to turn over a new leaf, but the syce shook his head knowingly and said:--
"Lepas all the time thinking. He thinks bad things."
And so it proved.
One night the mistress gave a very big dinner party. The high official from next door was there. So were several other high officials of Singapore, the general commanding her Majesty"s troops, and the foreign consuls and members of Legislative Council.
It was a hot night, and the punkah-wallah outside kept the punkah, or mechanical fan, switching back and forth over our heads with a rapidity that made us fear its ropes would break, as very often happened.
Suddenly there was a crash, and a champagne gla.s.s struck squarely in the high official"s soup and spattered it all over his white expanse of shirt front. We all looked up at the punkah. At the same instant a big, soft mango smashed in the high official"s face and changed its ruddy red color to a sickly yellow.
The women screamed, and the men jumped up from the table. Then began a regular fusillade of wine gla.s.ses and tropical fruits.
Sometimes they hit the high official from next door, at whom they all seemed to be aimed, but more often they fell upon the table, among the gla.s.s and dishes. In a moment everything was in wild confusion, and the mistress"s beautifully decorated table looked as though a bomb had exploded on it.
The Chinese "boys" made a rush for the end of the room, and there, up on the sideboard, among the gla.s.s, pelting his enemy, the high official, as fast as he could throw, was Lepas.
A finger bowl struck the butler full in the face, and gave the monkey time to make his escape out into the darkness through the wide-open doors.
We saw nothing more of Lepas for a week or more; we had, indeed, about given him up, wondering as to his whereabouts, when one afternoon, as I was taking my usual post-tiffin siesta on the cool side of the great, wide-spreading veranda, I heard a timid whistle, and looked up to see Lepas seated on the railing, as sad and humble as any truant schoolboy.
His hair was matted and faded and his face was dirty. His form had lost some of the plumpness that had come to it with good living, but there was the same wicked twinkle in his eyes, and the same hypocritical deceit in his bearing as of old.