The Road to Mandalay Part 10

"That was our last stopping-place. When I leave the _Blanks.h.i.+re_, where I have been so much at home, I shall feel rather astray."

"So you would like a home on the rolling deep?" suggested her companion.

"No, indeed; shall I _ever_ forget that day we had off Crete? But I have never been long away from mother; I am going to a new country, a new life, and almost new relations--it all seems so strange and vague."

"But your aunt cannot be a stranger," suggested Shafto. "You know her, don't you?"

"Oh, yes; but I have not seen her for eight years. The last time she was over, she stayed with us for a few weeks. I remember her as handsome and beautifully dressed, with wonderful toilet arrangements in ivory and silver, and bottles of heavy Indian scent. She was very kind and had such soft caressing manners, and gave us lots of chocolate and nice presents. I recollect a beautiful emerald ring she wore--but I cannot recall the colour of her eyes."

"Oh, well, that oversight will soon be repaired!"

"Aunt Flora was fond of gaiety and theatres; we lived in Chelsea, and as our small house could hardly hold her big boxes and we had no telephone, she went to the Carlton, where she was more in the middle of things, and could entertain her friends from India and Burma--but she came to see us two or three times a week."

"And where was her lord and master?"

"In Germany; I have never seen him."

"How did your aunt come across him?"

"In Hong Kong, of all places! She was married at eighteen to a young officer; they ran away, and I believe grandpa never forgave her. He was a General, a strict old martinet, and she was his favourite daughter. After they had been married a couple of years, Aunt Flora's husband was killed in an accident and she was left rather badly off.

People out there were very kind to her. She had been hurt in the accident and was laid up for months. Then this rich German asked her to marry him, and as she was reluctant to return home and face grandpa, she said 'Yes.' But perhaps it was love match number two."

"Yes, perhaps it was."

"That all happened twenty years ago, and since then Aunt Flora has made her home in the East--China, the Straits Settlements and Burma. You see, her friends and her interests are mostly out there. She and mother always write to one another; we do her commissions in London, and she sends us Burmese silks and umbrellas and curry stuff; but we were immensely surprised when, without any little hints or preparations, Uncle Karl wrote and invited me to pay them a long visit--and so here I am! I do hope I shan't be a fish out of water.

I've never been accustomed to living with wealthy people, and, I'm told that Uncle Karl is immensely rich."

"You need not consider that a drawback. It is better than being immensely poor--for instance, like myself."

"You don't look poor."

She smiled as she glanced at his well-cut suit and admirable brown shoes.

"I'm not exactly a whining beggar, selling boot laces and matches, but I am uncommonly glad to have got this job, which brings me in about four hundred a year. In London I was a clerk at less than half, and here is my chance to see the world--and I'm bound to make the most of it."

"Mrs. Milward said you were to have gone into the Army."

"Yes, but if you can't get what you like, you must like what you can get," was the philosophic rejoinder.

"I suppose your people were very sorry to part with you. My poor mother cried for nearly three days; my sister, I know, will miss me dreadfully. This is not sheer vanity, as you might suppose, but we have always done things together--and there is only a year between us."

"Well, my mother did not cry much, and I have no sisters to mourn for me."

"No sisters," she echoed, as if the fact struck hot as unusual.

"No, nor brothers either--only cousins."

"Sometimes they do just as well; are they pretty?"

"No," he answered rather curtly, as Cossie's round complacent face rose before his mental eye.

After a short pause he changed the topic and asked:

"Do you ride, Miss Leigh?"

"Yes, but not since we've come to London; I love riding. In the country, in father's lifetime, I rode a cob--he went in the cart, too; he was such a dear, but very tricky; once or twice he ran away with me; I didn't tell father, because I knew I'd never again be allowed to ride alone, and I do enjoy riding by myself."

"I'm sorry to hear that, for if I can rise to the price of a gee, I was hoping you would allow me to join you occasionally."

"I should be delighted, but----" and she hesitated.

"Oh, yes," he added quickly, "I know what you are going to say: 'How about a chaperon?'"

"Perhaps they don't keep chaperons in Rangoon?"

"Oh, yes, my dear, they do," declared Mrs. Maitland, who, as she joined them, had overheard the last remark, "and extra fierce specimens, I can a.s.sure you! Miss Leigh, they want me to sing Gounod's 'Ave Maria,' so will you be an angel and come and play my accompaniment?"

As Miss Leigh was always ready to be "an angel" at a moment's notice, she offered no resistance when Mrs. Maitland took her by the arm and led her away to the music-room.

Shafto and Miss Leigh were usually among the first to appear on deck, both being early risers; she, in order to leave a clear field for Mrs.

Milward's prolonged toilet, and the elaborate operations of her clever maid. The pretty grey hair had to be taken out of pins, brushed, back-combed and deftly arranged, as the frame to its owner's beaming and youthful face. Lacing, b.u.t.toning and hooking also absorbed considerable time.

As for Shafto, he was no lie-a-bed. Even in those dark, raw winter days at Lincoln Square, when breakfast was served by electric light, he was always punctual, and one of the first to descend and retrieve his boots through the smoky atmosphere of the lower regions. What a contrast were those murky hours to these glorious mornings in the tropics--the green translucent sea, the soft golden light, the salt, stimulating air, all s.h.i.+mmering and melting together! The day really dawned for Shafto when a certain Panama hat, crowning a beautiful head, emerged from the companion ladder, and the smile in a pair of bright dark eyes greeted him like a ray of suns.h.i.+ne. One morning, as the couple paced the deck before breakfast, accompanied by Mr. Hoskins, an excited fellow traveller accosted the trio.

"I say," he began, "have you heard? They have just signalled land ahead!"

"Oh, where?" cried Sophy eagerly.

"Do you see over the starboard bow, that faint dark streak upon the sky line?"

She nodded.

"Well then," he announced impressively, "that is Burma!"

Shafto s.n.a.t.c.hed up a pair of gla.s.ses and gazed at the long line of coast and, as he gazed, he felt as if he stood upon Pisgah and a whole new world lay open before him. He was figuratively surveying the Promised Land!

CHAPTER XI

A BURMESE HOSTESS

Early in the same afternoon the _Blanks.h.i.+re_ picked up her pilot at Elephant Point and entered the famous Irrawaddy. Long before her destination was in sight, twenty miles from the sea, the glorious Shwe Dagon, a s.h.i.+ning golden object, towered into view, flas.h.i.+ng in the sunlight against a background of impenetrable woods.

Rangoon, on a river navigable for nine hundred miles, is a large and important seaport and, as the wealth of one of the richest countries filters through its ports, naturally the approach is thronged with s.h.i.+pping. Our incoming liner met or overtook cargo steamers, tank s.h.i.+ps, battered tramps and heavily laden wind-jammers in the tow of straining tugs, not to mention steam-launches, barges and swarms of the local _sampan_, or small boat.

At the wharf where, amidst deafening yells and hoa.r.s.e shoutings, the _Blanks.h.i.+re_ crept to her berth, crowds of different races--brown, black, yellow and white--awaited the English mail. Pa.s.sengers were eagerly claimed by their friends and hurried away to motors and carriages; all was excitement and bustle. Alas! 'board-s.h.i.+p friends.h.i.+ps soon evaporate, and presently Shafto found himself standing on the aft-deck with his gun-case and cabin luggage, deserted and forgotten--no, for here came Hoskins, the police officer, hot and breathless.