Part 33 (1/2)
”Just this--that they are as a race too indolant and easy-going to study any big question, or to take the trouble to think for themselves.”
”But what about the hundreds and thousands of holy priests who spend all their rives in profound meditation? What do you say to that? Come now.”
”I say that they live a life of incorrigible idleness; they have no need to maintain themselves; they just eat, and sit, and muse; everything is supplied to them, including their yellow robe and betel nut. Their religion is selfish.”
”Well, well, I'm too stupid to argue, my dear child, my brain is like cotton wool; but I have my hopes, my sure hopes. Karl is different.
He is cultured, he reads Marx and Hegel, and says we are like cabbages and have no future; when we go it is as a candle that is blown out.
Oh, here are visitors! What a bore! I shall not appear! Run and tell the bearer.”
”Oh, but these are your own special old friends, Mrs. Vansittart and Mrs. Dowler. _Do_ let them come in; they will amuse you--poor dears, you know they always call after dark.”
These visitors, friends of former days, were social derelicts, who had, so to speak, ”gone ash.o.r.e” in Rangoon. One was chained to Burma by dire poverty and a drunken husband; the other, who had been a wealthy woman of considerable local importance, was now a childless widow, supporting herself with difficulty by means of a second-rate boarding-house. To these old friends, and in many other cases, Mrs.
Krauss had proved a generous and tactful helper. Both visitors were wearing costumes which had been worn and admired at ”Heidelberg” and were still fairly presentable.
After a stay of an hour the ladies withdrew, leaving their hostess well entertained but completely exhausted. Then they hastily sought out Sophy in order to express to her, in private, their horror at the terrible change in her aunt.
”Her spirit is there all right,” said Mrs. Dowler (who had a hundred-rupee note in her glove), ”but oh, my dear Miss Leigh, _how_ she's wasted! I felt like crying all the time I was sitting with her.”
”Yes, she should see a doctor, and that this very day,” added Mrs.
Vansittart.
”Oh, but you know Aunt Flora,” protested Sophy; ”she cannot bear doctors, and Lily, her ayah, knows pretty well what to do.”
”Tell me, Miss Leigh, what is the real truth about your aunt's illness?” said Mrs. Dowler, suddenly dropping her voice to a mysterious whisper. ”It has been so long and so tedious--off and on for at least three years. She has been worse the last four months, and indeed ever since you went up to May Myo. It is not a malignant growth, please G.o.d?”
”Oh, no, nothing of that sort; just weakness and this relaxing climate.”
”She should have returned home years ago,” said Mrs. Vansittart; ”and when she does go--oh, it will be a bad day and a sad day for me and many others, not to speak of all the animals she has befriended. She is wonderfully sympathetic to dumb creatures and indeed to everybody.”
”That's true,” echoed her companion, ”no one knows of your aunt's good deeds and charities, not even her own servants, and that is saying _everything_. Her hand has raised many an unfortunate out of the dust.”
Thus whispering, advising and hoping and bemoaning, the two ladies were conducted by Sophy to their jointly-hired _ticka gharry_, and were presently rattled away.
Sophy, too, had her own particular visitors, Mabel Pomeroy, Mrs.
Gregory and Fuchsia--Fuchsia, almost daily. To her it seemed that Sophy's confidences were frozen; she rarely mentioned her aunt, and gave evasive answers to her friend's probing inquiries. At last the brave American spoke out:
”You are frightfully changed, my Sophy girl--changed in a month. You have become so dull and absent-minded, and have lost all your pretty colour. Of course, _I_ know the reason, but you can do no good--no, not a sc.r.a.p. You had much better have gone home when you discovered the secret--you are as thin as a walking-stick, and look as if you sat up all night and never went to bed.”
”Well, even if I did and, mind you, I'm not saying that I do, it is no worse for my health than dancing all night, is it? I'm very fond of Aunt Flora, and I'd do more than that for her.”
”She has added years to your life; the gay flitting-about Sophy, with her pretty kittenish ways and harmless claws, has been thrust in a sack--and drowned!”
”Well, I do think you might have given her Christian burial,” protested Sophy with a laugh.
”Christian burial brings me to the Marriage Service. What do you think--that great stupid Irishman, has at last blundered out a proposal, and in me,” rising and making a curtsey, ”you behold the future Mrs. Patrick FitzGerald.”
”Oh, Fuchsia!” jumping up to embrace her, ”I do congratulate you, and I do hope you will be very happy.”