'You are a fine actor, my young friend,' said an old fellow near me. 'I never saw a thing carried off so well. You might have been amongst the darkies all your life.'
'I protest, I am not sure of him yet,' said another.
'Is he sure of himself?' This was from Mrs. Lyster, who sat exactly opposite to me at the table. I noticed, with a little pang, that her tone was chilly, and she looked at me with a gleam of something like anger in her eyes—I am afraid she will not forgive me for having disappointed her——
—My trick has produced consequences which I was far from expecting when I planned it. All of my 'Patagonia' friends, with the exception of Chunder Singh, who is almost irritatingly affectionate, have been giving me the cold shoulder. The Captain and the first officer are excessively busy whenever they catch sight of me. Colonel Trent has chosen to adopt a short, reserved manner which prevents me from addressing him much. Mrs. Lyster is politely cold, and several ladies, who had condescended to be gracious to me, have quietly relegated me to a much less intimate footing.
So far as these last are concerned I do not mind; but Mrs. Lyster and I have been too friendly for me to be able to give her up without a struggle. I asked her this morning how soon she meant to forgive me. She answered hurriedly, but with a spice of resentment in her manner, that she did not know what I meant; there was nothing to forgive, and then, to avoid more questions, she left me abruptly. In the afternoon she approached me of her own accord, and made an effort to be cordial; but the effort was too apparent for me to be able to feel very grateful.
What is the meaning of it all? Can she, can any of them, imagine that I am only playing the European? Mrs. Lyster cannot, for she knows all about me. But even allowing that it were so, not that I am an Asiatic, for that would be impossible, but that my sympathies reach out into the land where the ideas which have measurelessly enriched the spiritual heritage of the nations had their birth; nay, more, that some secret tie of blood or mental kinship does actually bind my life to that of the east—why should they, therefore, despise me? Ah! what a puzzle it is! What a strange, inexplicable tangle! Who, who, will ever set it right?
—This has been a busy week, for it has included our landing at Alexandria, our day up the Nile, our night at Cairo, and our caravan journey across the Desert to Suez, where we took ship again. It is night now. I have just come down from the hurricane-deck, where I have been talking to Chunder Singh. We are steaming quietly down the Gulf of Suez, with the shores of Arabia and Egypt looking dim and ghostly in the moonlight rising on either side of us.
My mind is full of the strange thing Chunder Singh has been telling me. I was right in my original suspicion. He did, and does, take a peculiar interest in me. It was for my sake that he came over to England, and for my sake that he is returning; but he would not seek to know me until I had bade my home friends farewell, and was launched, as it were, on my new life. He was the intimate friend and counsellor of my cousin, the rajah, who himself desired that he should make my acquaintance in this way. Other of his servants and retainers are to meet me in Bombay, and put themselves at my disposition.
This is, of course, rather startling news. I have scarcely realised it yet; but in the meantime my feelings are mingled. On the one hand I am thankful; I find it pleasant to know that I have been thought of and provided for in the great new land, which will presently open out before me. On the other I have a sensation of something like fear. It is as if the new life were seizing me, drawing me in, as if I should never again return to the old life, with all its sweet, homely ways. No doubt this is merely a sentiment. I ought to be thankful, and I am, that there is someone to whom I can speak of the future, and who, for the sake of those who have gone before me, as well as for my own sake, will advise and guide me.
One of the principal events of this week is that I have made a new friend. My friend is a little girl about seven years of age, though she looks much younger. She has white skin, just touched here and there with the daintiest rose-colour, tiny bewitching features, yellow hair soft as spun silk, and grey eyes that have a curiously pathetic look in them. In figure she is the lightest, airiest little creature; such perfect hands and feet, and so ridiculously small. Light as she is, I wonder sometimes that those feet can bear the weight of her. She trots about the deck in pink shoes that are like fairy's slippers—the most absurdly beautiful things! One of them fell off the other day, and she came to me to have it put on, and I never had such a difficult task in all my life.