Chapter IX: Part 9

Then begins a new life. He must start by learning the language of his fellows, as perfectly as it is given to a stranger to learn it. That is but the first step in a long and often a weary march. Next, he must study, with the eagerness of Browning's Grammarian, every native custom, every native conventionality, every one of the ten thousand ceremonial observances to which natives attach so vast an importance. He must grow to understand each one of the hints and _doubles ententes_, of which Malays make such frequent use, every little mannerism, sign and token, and, most difficult of all, every motion of the hearts, and every turn of thought, of those whom he is beginning to call his own people. He must become conscious of native Public Opinion, which is often diametrically opposed to the opinion of his race-mates on one and the same subject. He must be able to unerringly predict how the slightest of his actions will be regarded by the natives, and he must shape his course accordingly, if he is to maintain his influence with them, and to win their sympathy and their confidence. He must be able to place himself in imagination in all manner of unlikely places, and thence to instinctively feel the native Point of View. That is really the whole secret of governing natives. A quick perception of their Point of View, under all conceivable circumstances, a rapid process by which a European places himself in the position of the native, with whom he is dealing, an instinctive and instantaneous apprehension of the precise manner in which he will be affected, and a clear vision of the man, his feelings, his surroundings, his hopes, his desires, and his sorrows,--these, and these alone, mean that complete sympathy, without which the white man among Malays, is but as a sounding brass and as a tinkling cymbal.

It does not all come at once. Months, perhaps years, pass before the exile begins to feel that he is getting any grip upon the natives, and even when he thinks that he knows as much about them as is good for any man, the oriental soul shakes itself in its brown casing, and comes out in some totally unexpected and unlooked-for place, to his no small mortification and discouragement. But, when he has got thus far, discouragement matters little, for he has become bitten with the love of his discoveries, and he can no more quit them than the dipsomaniac can abandon the drams which are killing him.

Then he gets deep into a groove and is happy. His fingers are between the leaves of the Book of Human Nature, and his eager eyes are scanning the lines of the chapter which in time he hopes to make his own. The advent of another white man is a weariness of the flesh. The natives about him have learned to look upon him as one of their own people. His speech is their speech, he can think as they do, can feel as they feel, rejoice in their joys, and sorrow in their pains. He can tell them wonderful things, and a philosophy of which they had not dreamed. He never offends their susceptibilities, never wounds their self-respect, never sins against their numerous conventionalities. He has feasted with them at their weddings, doctored their pains, healed their sick, protected them from oppression, stood their friend in time of need, done them a thousand kindnesses, and has helped their dying through the strait and awful pass of death. Above all, he _understands_, and, in a manner, they love him. A new white man, speaking to him in an unknown tongue, seems to lift him for the time out of their lives. The stranger jars on the natives, who are the exile's people, and he, looking through the native eyes which are no longer strange to him, sees where his race-mate offends, and in his turn is jarred, until he begins to hate his own countrymen. Coming out of the groove hurts badly, and going back into it is almost worse, but when a man is once well set in the rut of native life, these do not disturb him, for he is happy, and has no need of other and higher things. This is the exile's Heaven.

As years go on the up-country life of which I write will become less and less common in this Peninsula of ours, and the Malays will be governed wholly by men, who, never having lived their lives, cannot expect to have more than a surface knowledge of the people whose destinies are in their hands. The Native States will, I fancy, be none the better governed, and those who rule them will miss much which has tended to widen the lives of the men who came before them, and who dwelt among the people while they were still as God made them.

And those who led these lives? The years will dim the memories of all they once learned and knew and experienced; and as they indite the caustic minute to the suffering subordinate, and strangle with swaddlings of red-tape the tender babe of prosperity, they will perchance look back with wonder at the men they once were, and thinking of their experiences in the days of long ago will marvel that each one of them as he left the desert experienced the pang of Chillon's prisoner:--

Even I
Regained my freedom with a sigh.

L'ENVOI

By the green shade of the palm trees,
Where the river flows along
To be wedded to the calm seas,
Dwell the people of my song.
With a languid step they wander
Thro' the forest or the grove,
And with listless eyes they ponder
On the glories poets love.
They have little joy in beauty,
Little joy in virtue high,
Honour, mercy, truth, and duty,
Or the creeds for which men die.
But their lives are calm and peaceful,
And they ask for nothing more
Save some happy, listless, easeful
Years, and peace from strife and war.

Tales I tell of women wailing,
Cruel wrong and bitter strife,
Shrieking souls that pass, and quailing
Hearts that shrink beneath the knife.
Tales I tell of evil passions,
Men that suffer, men that slay,
All the tragedy that fashions
Life and death for such as they.
Yet these things are but as fleeting
Shadows, that more lightly pass
Than the sunlight, which retreating
Leaves no stain upon the grass.
O my friends! I judge ye lightly,
Listen to the tales I tell.
Answer, have I spoken rightly?
Judge me, have I loved ye well?

THE END

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TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:

In the original text Malay words were spelled with diacritics or accents. This file has been encoded in UTF-8 and uses unicode characters in order to correctly display the full range of diacritics found in the original text, namely:

breves (e.g. e), indicating short vowels;

circumflexes (e.g. â) indicating long vowels;

vowels with diaeresis (e.g. ä) indicating vowels which should be
sounded separately.

In addition, the right single quotation mark (U+2019) has been used to indicate a glottal stop in Malay words, such as in the word "Dato’". This is the only use of the symbol. The ASCII apostrophe character continues to be used for demarcate quoted speech, indicate possessives and contractions in English words.

Inconsistencies in the hyphenation of words have been preserved. (body-guard, bodyguard; eye-ball, eyeball; eye-lid, eyelid; fire-light, firelight; foot-hills, foothills; sun-down, sundown; sweet-stuff, sweetstuff)

Pg. 3, original text was "become morally week and seedy", "weak" was probably intended instead of "week" and changed accordingly. (become morally weak and seedy)

Pg. 14, in original text "Perak" here was spelled with a circumflex above the "e" in contrast to numerous other instances where a breve above the "e" is used. Changed to match the dominant pattern. (Sultân of Perak from continuing)

Pg. 30, "whi l" changed to "while". (while the Malays gambled)

Pg. 54, added closing single quote mark to demarcate end of quoted speech. ('_Diam! Diam!_')

Pg. 86 and 87, in the original text, these pages have two instances of "Itam" spelled without a circumflex above the "I" in contrast to numerous instances from Pg. 90 onwards where a circumflex above the "I" is used. Changed to match the dominant pattern. (Tungku Long, Tungku Îtam)(Tungku Îtam, who had been watching)

Pg. 105, duplicated word "a" removed (cultivation of a _pâdi_ swamp)

Pg. 116, "Râja Sibîdi" is also spelled "Râja Sebidi" in two other instances on the same page. Original text preserved in all cases as it is unclear which the author intended.

Pg. 193, in the original text there was one instance of "Tungku" here spelled without the breve above the "e" in contrast to numerous instances in the text which all carry the breve. Changed to match the dominant pattern (Tungku Saleh's boat tied up)

Pg. 193, unusual word "sweatmeats". Author probably meant "sweetmeats". Original text preserved. (while the Prince ate some sweatmeats)

Pg. 210, poem at the beginning of the chapter. In the original text, there was the unusual word "scrak", spelled with a c with acute accent. Author might have intended "sôrak" spelled with a circumflex over the "o". "Sôrak" occurs elsewhere in the text meaning a "war-cry", which is plausible in the context here. However, the original text has been preserved.

Pg. 247, a piece of poetry quoted by the author. The last line appears to be missing some punctuation--a closing single-quote mark at the end and possibly a comma after "whispered". The author's original text has been preserved--the missing punctuation could have been intentional if he had, for example, been quoting verbatim from his source. (And whispered 'Thou thyself art Heaven or Hell.)

Pg. 255-256, poem "L'envoi". In the original text a page break occurred after the first 16 lines of the poem. This break has been presumed to also be a stanza break as it divides the poem into two equal groups of 16 lines and there is a change in tone at this point.