Upon a bench, backed against the part.i.tion, almost within touch of her hand, sat the man Warrington and his servant, arguing over their accounts. The former"s battered helmet was tilted at a comfortable angle and an ancient cutty hung pendent from his teeth, an idle wisp of smoke hovering over the blackened bowl.
Elsa quietly returned to her chair in the bow and tried to become interested in a novel. By and by the book slipped from her fingers to her lap, and her eyes closed. But not for long. She heard the rasp of a camp-stool being drawn toward her.
"You weren"t dozing, were you?" asked the purser apologetically.
"Not in the least. I have only just got up."
"Shouldn"t have disturbed you; but your orders were that whenever I had an interesting story about the life over here, I was to tell it to you instantly. And this one is just rippin"!"
"Begin," said Elsa. She sat up and threw back her cloak, for it was now growing warm. "It"s about Parrot & Co., I"m sure."
"You"ve hit it off the first thing," admiringly.
"Well, go on."
"It"s better than any story you"ll read in a month of Sundays. Our man has just turned the trick, as you Americans say, for twenty thousand pounds."
"Why, that is a fortune!"
"For some of us, yes. You see, whatever he was in the past, it was something worth while, I fancy. Engineering, possibly. Knew his geology and all that. Been wondering for months what kept him hanging around this bally old river. Seems he found oil, borrowed the savings of his servant and bought up some land on the line of the new discoveries. Then he waited for the syndicate to buy. They ignored him. They didn"t send any one even to investigate his claim. Stupid, rather. After a while, he went to them, at Prome, at Rangoon. They thought they knew his kind. Ten thousand rupees was all he asked.
They laughed. The next time he wanted a hundred thousand. They laughed again. Then he left for the teak forests. He had to live. He came back in four months. In the meantime they had secretly investigated. They offered him fifty thousand. _He_ laughed. He wanted two hundred thousand. They advised him to raise cocoanuts.
What do you suppose he did then?"
"Got some other persons interested."
"Right-o! Some Americans in Rangoon said they"d take it over for two hundred thousand. Something about the deal got into the newspapers.
The American oil men sent over a representative. That settled the syndicate. What they could have originally purchased for ten thousand they paid three hundred thousand."
"Splendid!" cried Elsa, clapping her hands. She could see it all, the quiet determination of the man, the penury of the lean years, his belief in himself and in what he had found, and the disinterested loyalty of the servant. "Sometimes I wish I were a man and could do things like that."
"Recollect that landing last night?"
Elsa"s gesture signified that she was glad to be miles to the south of it.
"Well, he wasn"t above having his revenge. He made the syndicate come up there. They wired asking why he couldn"t come on to Rangoon. And very frankly he gave his reasons. They came up on one boat and left on another. They weren"t very pleasant, but they bought his oil-lands.
He came aboard last night with a check for twenty thousand pounds and two rupees in his pocket. The two rupees were all he had in this world at the time they wrote him the check. Arabian night; what?"
"I am glad. I like pluck; I like endurance; I like to see the lone man win against odds. Tell me, is he going back to America?"
"Ah, there"s the weak part in the chain." The purser looked diffidently at the deck floor. It would have been easy enough to discuss the Warrington of yesterday, to offer an opinion as to his past; but the Warrington of this morning was backed by twenty thousand good English sovereigns; he was a different individual, a step beyond the casual d.a.m.nation of the mediocre. "He says he doesn"t know what his plans will be. Who knows? Perhaps some one ran away with his best girl. I"ve known lots of them to wind up out here on that account."
"Is it a rule, then, that disappointed lovers fly hither, penniless?"
The mockery escaped the purser, who was a good fellow in his blundering way. "Chaps gamble, you know. And this part of the world is full of fleas and mosquitoes and gamblers. When a man"s been chucked, he"s always asking what"s trumps. He"s not keen on the game; and the professional gambler takes advantage of his condition. Oh, there are a thousand ways out here of getting rid of your money when the girl"s given you the go-by!"
"To that I agree. When do we reach Prome?"
"About six," understanding that the Warrington incident was closed.
"It isn"t worth while going ash.o.r.e, though. Nothing to see at night."
"I have no inclination to leave the boat until we reach Rangoon."
She met Warrington at luncheon, and she greeted him amiably. To her mind there was something pitiful in the way the man had tried to improve his condition. b.u.t.tons had been renewed, some with black thread and some with white; and there were little islands of brown yarn, at the elbows, at the bottom of the pockets, along the seams. So long as she lived, no matter whom she might marry, she was convinced that never would the thought of this man fade completely from her memory. Neither the amazing likeness nor the romantic background had anything to do with this conviction. It was the man"s utter loneliness.
"I have been waiting for Parrot & Co. all the morning," she said.
"I"ll show him to you right after luncheon. It wasn"t that I had forgotten."
She nodded; but he did not comprehend that this inclination of the head explained that she knew the reason of the absence. She could in fancy see the strong brown fingers clumsily striving to thread the needle.
(As a matter of fact, her imagination was at fault. James had done the greater part of the repairing.)
Rajah took the center of the stage; and even the colonel forgot his liver long enough to chuckle when the bird turned somersaults through the steel-hoop. Elsa was delighted. She knelt and offered him her slim white finger. Rajah eyed it with his head c.o.c.ked at one side. He turned insolently and entered his cage. Since he never saw a finger without flying at it in a rage, it was the politest thing he had ever done.
"Isn"t he a sa.s.sy little beggar?" laughed the owner. "That"s the way; his hand, or claw, rather, against all the world. I"ve had him half a dozen years, and he hates me just as thoroughly now as he did when I picked him up while I was at Jaipur."
"Have you carried him about all this time?" demanded the colonel.
"He was one of the two friends I had, one of the two I trusted,"
quietly, with a look which rather disconcerted the Anglo-Indian.
"By the actions of him I should say that he was your bitterest enemy."
"He is; yet I call him friend. There"s a peculiar thing about friendship," said the kneeling man. "We make a man our friend; we take him on trust, frankly and loyally; we give him the best we have in us; but we never really know. Rajah is frankly my enemy, and that"s why I love him and trust him. I should have preferred a dog; but one takes what one can. Besides . . ." Warrington paused, thrust the perch between the bars, and got up.
"Jah, jah, jah! Jah--jah--ja-a-a-h!" the bird shrilled.
"Oh, what a funny little bird!" cried Elsa, laughing. "What does he say?"
"I"ve often wondered. It sounds like the bell-gong you hear in the Shwe Dagon PaG.o.da, in Rangoon. He picked it up himself."
The colonel returned to his elderly charges and became absorbed in his aged _Times_. If the girl wanted to pick up the riff-raff to talk to, that was her affair. Americans were impossible, anyhow.
"How long have you been in the Orient?" Elsa asked.
"Ten years," he answered gravely.
"That is a long time."
"Sometimes it was like eternity."
"I have heard from the purser of your good luck."
"Oh!" He stooped again and locked the door of Rajah"s cage. "I dare say a good many people will hear of it."
"It was splendid. I love to read stories like that, but I"d far rather hear them told first-hand."
Elsa was not romantic in the sense that she saw heroes where there were only ordinary men; but she thrilled at the telling of some actual adventure, something big with life. Her heart and good will went out to the man who won against odds. Strangely enough, soldier"s daughter though she was, the pomp and glamour and cruelty of war were detestable to her. It was the obscure and unknown hero who appealed to her: such a one as this man might be.
"Oh, there was nothing splendid about the thing. I simply hung on."