“How did you get rid of the yellow robe?”
“Oh, easy enough, and without any ceremony of disgrace whatever. Shure, half the Burmans you meet have worn it for, p’r’aps, a year or two—but it’s not everyone who has the vocation.”
“I can’t understand your ever taking to it.”
“Can ye not, sir?” rejoined the ex-pongye, laying a muscular hand on the bulwark and fixing a far away, abstracted gaze upon the lazy green sea. “I may as well tell ye that the first story I made out to ye was not altogether the truth. I had in me mind a mental reservation. I just slipped out of Army life and hid meself in the forests—all along of a little girlie.” His lower lip trembled as he added: “She died, sir—and I was just broke over it.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Shafto. “Well, such things have happened before.”
“It was like this, sir,” now turning and fixing a pair of tragic dark eyes on his companion, “I was engaged to be married—same as yourself. She was the daughter of a sergeant in the arsenal in Madras; her father and mine were old friends, and when mine was killed in Afghanistan, me mother just dwindled away and broke her heart. Sergeant Fairon and his wife was real good to me and took me home; she mothered me and he ‘belted’ me, and they helped to start me for the Lawrence Asylum Orphanage. I was about eight years of age then, and this little girl was two. After a good spell I come back to St. George’s Fort, a grown-up man and a corporal. Polly, she was grown up, too—and the prettiest girl you could see in a thousand miles; we fell in love with one another, and Sergeant Fairon had a sort of wish for me, being, they said, the very spit of me own father, and though I knew in me heart Polly was a million times too good for me and I was not fit to wipe her shoes, still, I made bold to ask him for her and he said ‘Yes.’ I knew I’d get permission to marry, for my name was never in the defaulters’ book, and Polly was fair as a lily—not one of your yellow ‘Cranies’ the Colonel was so dead set agin. Well, I was just too happy to be lucky, saving up me pay and Mrs. Fairon buying a few bits of house linen for us, and Polly making her trousseau, when the regiment was shifted all of a sudden from Madras to Mandalay and our plans were knocked on the head.”
“Yes, that was bad luck,” said Shafto sympathetically.
“Still and all, I was full of hope, expecting my stripes and hearing every mail from Polly, when one day the letter corporal handed me an envelope with a deep black edge; it was from Sergeant Fairon telling me Polly was dead; taken off in three hours with cholera. He enclosed half a letter she was writing to me when she was called. Well, sir, I would not believe it! No; I held out agin it for days; but of course I had to give in. At first the grief was just a little scratch; but every day the pain went deeper and deeper, as if some one was turning a knife in my heart. To think I’d never look upon her again or hear her voice, and her gay laugh, it seemed impossible—but, in the end, I believed, and I felt as if I was groping about in black darkness! What had I to live for? What was the good of going on?
“At times I thought of my rifle, but I put that idea aside because of the regiment and the scandal in the newspapers—still, I was always meditating some way out. I think now, if I’d opened my mind to one of my pals, it would have been easier, and I’d not have felt it so cruel hard; but somehow I’d never breathed the name of Polly to one of them—I held her like a holy thing apart. I could not stand the talk and the coarse chaff of the barrack-room, so I kept my trouble sealed up, till at last it grew too big for me, and I made up my mind to do away with myself, where no one would be a penny the wiser. I got a couple of days’ leave—by way of seeing a pal at Tonghoo—and I went up the river and away into the Jungles, and wandered about looking for some venomous reptile to put an end to me in a natural way! But, if you’ll believe me, sir, divil a bite could I get—not after searching for half a day; and, av coorse, had I been looking without intention, I’d have found dozens.
“What with walking miles in the blazing sun and nothing to eat, I believe I fell down with a stroke, and some wood-cutters found me and carried me into their village—a big place with a great thorn hedge and gates to keep off the Dacoits. The head man they call a Thugyi took me over, and his women nursed me; he was a rich fellow with four yoke of oxen, and so no expense was spared; and there I lived for many a long day, very strange and out of myself. I could not remember who I was, nor where I came from; all the clothes I had to me name was a shirt and a pair of drawers. By degrees, thanks to great charity and kindness, I come round, I remembered everything only too well, and then I buried Mick Ryan in the jungle and became a pongye. The peace and quiet ate into me very bones, and I took on the yellow robe. The rest and the holy life tamed me and did my soul good; and many an evening when I’d be roaming in the forests, among the splendid tall trees and beautiful flowers, with the birds and animals around me so tame and at their ease, I’d have a feelin’ that Polly was walkin’ alongside of me, the face on her shining with the light of heaven! But,” drawing himself erect, “excuse me, sir, for bothering you with all this foolish, crazy sort of talk.”