But I cannot give any more of my valuable space to Mrs. Browne’s reminiscences of that voyage, which must, according to the volumes of them, have lasted a space of about seven months. I believe they were all very gay at Port Said, walking through the single wide China bazar street of the place, flaming with colour and resonant of musicians in the gambling houses, drinking black coffee on the boulevard, and realizing no whit of Port Said’s iniquity. The Suez Canal had no incident but several loathly odors, and then came the long smooth voyage to Colombo and a fantastic glimpse of first cocoanut trees fringing the shores of Ceylon. A great deal here about sapphires and rubies and cat’s eyes and little elephants made of ivory and small brown diving-boys, and first tropical impressions, but I must not linger in the chronicling. Then the sail up to Madras, and the brief tarrying there, and the days that came after, short days when everybody packed and rejoiced. At last, one night at ten o’clock, a light that was not a star, shining far through the soft still darkness beyond the bow of the ship, the light at the mouth of a wide brown river that slipped to the sea through the India, Helen would see in the morning, and past the city whither her simple heart had gone before her.
Mrs. Macdonald kept out of the way. It was the one considerate thing she did during the voyage. Young Browne, rather white and nervous-looking, came upon Mr. Macdonald first in the turbulent shore-going crowd. Mr. Macdonald was genial and reassuring. “You’ll find her over there, old man,” said he without circumlocution, “rather back. Better bring her up to Hungerford Street to breakfast yourself.” And Helen straightway was found by young Browne in the precise direction Mr. Macdonald had indicated, and “rather back.” She always remembers very distinctly that on that occasion she wore a blue Chambray frock and a sailor hat with a white ribbon round it. It is not a matter of consequence, still it might as well be mentioned.
CHAPTER IV.
I HAVE no doubt that the present Mrs. Browne would like me to linger over her first impressions of Calcutta. She has a habit now of stating that they were keen. That the pillared houses and the palm-shaded gardens, and the multiplicity of turbaned domestics gave her special raptures, which she has since outgrown, but still likes to claim. She said nothing about it at the time, however, and I am disposed to believe that the impressions came later, after young Browne had become a familiar object, and all the boxes were unpacked. As they were not married immediately, but a week after the Khedive arrived, to give Mrs. Macdonald time to unpack her boxes, the former of these processes was an agreeably gradual one occupying six morning and evening drives in Mr. Browne’s dog-cart, and sundry half-hours between. Mrs. Macdonald wanted to make the house pretty for the wedding. “Really, child,” said she, “you can’t be married in a barn like this!” and to that end she drew forth many Liberty muslins, much “art” needlework, and all the decoration flotsam and jetsam of the season’s summer sales in Oxford Street. I understand that both the Brownes protested against the plan to have a wedding; they only wanted to be married, they said, of course in the Church, regularly, but without unnecessary circumstance. “People can see it next day in The Englishman,” suggested young Browne, urged privately to this course by Helen. But it was a point upon which Mrs. Macdonald was inflexible. “Certainly not a big wedding,” said she, “since you don’t want it, but a few people we must have just to see it properly done. What would Calcutta think of you”—reproachfully, to young Browne, “getting the knot tied that way, in a corner! Besides, it will be a lovely way of letting everybody know we are back. I’ll manage it—I know exactly who you ought to have!”
Thereupon Helen brought out from among her effects a certain square wooden box, and besought that it might be opened. “It’s—it’s the cake,” she explained with blushes; “mother thought I ought to bring it—”
“Oh, of course!” exclaimed Mrs. Macdonald briskly; “everybody does. There were five altogether on board the Khedive. Let us hope it has carried well!”
They opened the box, and Helen took out layers of silver paper with nervous fingers. “It seems a good deal crushed,” she said. Then she came upon a beautiful white sugar bird of Paradise lacking his tail, and other fragments dotted with little silver pellets, and the petals of a whole flower-garden in pink icing. “It has not carried well!” she exclaimed grievously—and it hadn’t. It was the proudest erection of the Canbury confectioner’s experience, a glory and a wonder when it arrived at the Rectory, but it certainly had not carried well: it was a travelled wreck.
“Looks very sorry for itself!” remarked young Browne, who happened to be present.