CHAPTER XVII

Our boat-boys were sent on botanical expeditions for jungle plants, and every morning and evening a great variety of things arrived at the Astana, many of which I had never seen or even heard of. In the morning I would take my work into Miss North’s room and sit with her whilst she painted, for I loved her companionship. She it was who first made me realize the beauty, solace, and delight found in trees, plants, and flowers. But sometimes she was very stern; she thought me young and stupid. She would look at me through her spectacles, very kindly, I must say. “Why, you know nothing,” she said, “although you are so late from school!” She once asked me where pitcher-plants were to be found. “Pitcher-plants,” I said; “I have never heard of them. I don’t think there are any in the country.” “But this is the land of pitcher-plants,” Miss North replied, “and if you like we will try and find them together.” I sent for the boat-boy. I remember distinctly the picture she was painting at the time—​a clump of sago palms growing in our garden. She told me how I could describe pitcher-plants to the faithful Kong Kong, one of our boat-boys, a Sarawak Malay, an odd and uncouth individual, with long hair flowing over his shoulders. He had been with the Rajah for many years. “Oh yes,” said Kong Kong, “I know. They grow where earth is marshy. I can show you where they grow.” One morning Miss North and I got up early and crossed the river almost before sunrise, and with Kong Kong as our guide, went in search of the pitcher-plants. We walked for a little way along the Rock Road, and turned into a path leading through a kind of moor, where the sensitive plant lay like a carpet covering the ground. That curse of agriculturists always delighted me. I felt a certain enjoyment in walking through the great patches of this shrinking stuff with its myriads of leaves closing at the slightest touch. We left a pathway behind us of apparently dying vegetation, but a minute or two after our passage it resumed its normal shape. Malays call it the “Shy” plant. Kong Kong then led the way over a swamp, where logs of wood were laid to keep passers-by off the mud. Our progress across these logs was not an easy matter. We went through a grove of trees, and suddenly, in a clearing, we came to the spot. I do not think anyone who has only seen pitcher-plants growing in the sedate way they do at Kew can have any idea of the beautiful madness of their growth when in a wild state. Here they were, cups long, round, wide, and narrow, some shaped like Etruscan vases, others like small earthenware cooking-pots, the terminations of long, narrow, glossy green leaves. Their colour, too, was perfectly exquisite—​a pale green ground, splashed over with rose, carmine, yellow, and brown, the little lids to the cups daintily poised just above each pitcher. I suppose there must have been thousands of these plants, twisting, creeping, and flinging themselves over dead trunks of trees, falling in cascades of colour above our heads, forming a perfect bower. We all stood still, silently looking at them. At length Miss North remarked: “And you said yesterday there were no such things in the country!”

Miss North remained with us about six weeks, and when I very sorrowfully accompanied her on board the steamer on her return to England, I felt that something new and delightful had come into my life, for she had not only introduced me to pitcher-plants, but to orchids, palms, ferns, and many other things of whose existence I had never dreamed. Miss North was the one person who made me realize the beauties of the world. She was noble, intelligent, and kind, and her friendship and the time we spent together are amongst my happiest memories. She used to paint all day, and, thinking this must be bad for her, I sometimes tried to get her away early in the afternoon for excursions, but she would never leave her work until waning daylight made painting impossible. I remember how she painted a sunset behind Matang, which painting she gave to me. She sat on a hill overlooking the river until the sun went behind the mountain. The world grew dark, and the palms in the neighbourhood looked black against the sky as she put her last stroke into the picture. She put up her palette, folded her easel, and was preparing to walk home with me to the Astana, when for some moments she stood quite still, staring at the thread of red light disappearing behind the shoulder of the mountain. “I cannot speak or move,” she said. “I am drunk with beauty!”

But there was one thing that Miss North and I did not agree upon. She did not approve of the view I took of our Dyak and Kayan people. She liked to meet Malay ladies, because, as we all know, they have better manners than most Europeans, but she could not bear the thought of either Dyaks or Kayans. I could never eradicate from her mind the idea that they were savages. I used to try and interest her in these people, for I longed that she should accompany us in some of our journeys into the interior, but this she would never do. “Don’t talk to me of savages,” she would say; “I hate them.” “But they are not savages,” I would reply. “They are just like we are, only circumstances have made them different.” “They take heads: that is enough for me,” she would add severely, and would listen to no defence for that curious custom of theirs, for which I could find so many excuses.