The Argus Pheasant

Vanden Bosch was too much impressed with his importance to enjoy being chaffed. Ignoring the thrust, he observed dryly: “Your excellency might try King Saul’s plan.”

“Ha!” the governor exclaimed with interest. “What is that?”

Van Schouten prided himself on his knowledge of the Scriptures, and the general could not repress a little smirk of triumph at catching him napping.

“King Saul tied David’s hands by giving him his daughter to wife,” he explained. “In the same way, your excellency might clip the Argus Pheasant’s wings by marrying her to one of our loyal servants. It might be managed most satisfactorily. A proper marriage would cause her to forget the brown blood that she hates so bitterly.”

“It is not her brown blood that she hates, it is her white blood,” Van Schouten contradicted. “But who would be the man?”

“Why not Mynheer Muller, the controller!” Vanden Bosch asked. “From what your excellency says, he would not be unwilling. Then our troubles in Bulungan would be over.”

Van Schouten scowled thoughtfully.

“It would be a good match,” the general urged. “He is only common blood Marken herring-fisher’s son by a Celebes woman. And she”-he shrugged his shoulders-“for all her pretty face and plump body she is Leveque, the French trader’s daughter, by a Dyak woman.”

He licked his lips in relish of the plan.

Van Schouten shook his head.

“No, I cannot do it,” he said. “I could send her to the coffee plantations that would be just punishment for her transgressions. But God keeps me from sentencing any woman to marry.”