IN order that I may keep on perfectly safe ground, and successfully resist the temptation to depart from my resolve, I will tell you a story of my visit to Burmah, where, wandering aimlessly, I found an old friend in a distinguished Indian civilian, who invited me to accompany him on a tour of inspection. I gladly accepted his invitation, and we had been travelling for some time, driving, riding, walking, and, finally, after rafting over a magnificent series of rapids, had been some days paddling down the river in house-boats, when we reached a remote inland station called Phatmah. I caught my first view of the place as our boat swung round a bend in the great river, disclosing a reach of brown water, enclosed between high, jungle-covered banks, and shut in, at the end, by a green hill, crowned by a plank bungalow with a mat roof.

The boat was soon alongside the rough landing-stage, where a young civilian, introduced as Basset, was waiting to receive his chief. We climbed the steep hill, and Basset conducted us to the house devoted to our shelter for the couple of days we were to spend at Phatmah.

In my two days’ stay there, I had ample opportunities of seeing the place, and realising its few attractions and its many drawbacks. There was a tiny native village on the bank of one of the two streams that here united in one great river, and flowed in stately, ever-widening progress for over two hundred miles before it reached the sea: two hundred miles of virgin forest, save for the native villages and clearings that lined the banks at uncertain intervals. A few jungle tracks leading to distant mines were the only apology for roads; the river was the real highway, and the sole means of transport were native boats. Comfortable enough, these boats, for men used to jungle travel; flat and wide, with a palm-leaf roof, the fore-part occupied by the crew, the after-part by passengers. There was a deck of boards or split bamboos, and you could only move about it by crawling on your hands and knees. Entrance and exit were accomplished by the same means. A door, at the back of the enclosed after-deck, led on to a bamboo frame over the rudder; the steersman sat on the palm-leaf awning, and the only privacy was obtained by hanging a screen between crew and passengers. There was room for two mattresses on the after-deck, and there the passengers sat or lay through the blazing heat of the tropical day and the star-lit stillness of the Burmese night.

At this station there dwelt, besides Basset, an officer of police, another concerned with public works, and an apothecary in charge of a hospital. That was all. Their quarters were dotted about on the high land behind Basset’s bungalow. For the rest, the eye was met by jungle—near and far—endless jungle, and the river-reach. Silent and placid the waters, moving along in brown eddies, when, as now, the river was in flood; clear and shallow, disclosing groups of rocks dotted about the bed, in what was called the dry season.

At the time of our visit it was spring, and the jungle, especially in certain parts of the mountainous country, was a truly marvellous sight. The forest had put on its wedding garment, and the new leaves of many, even of most of the trees, were dazzling in the brilliance of their colouring. The prevailing hues were red and yellow; but then there were shades of red and of yellow that one never seemed to have dreamed of, such quantity, such intensity that the eyes almost ached with gazing at the glory of it all.

One is struck, especially in the East, by the wonder of flowering trees, or the striking creepers that cling to the tops of forest giants; but imagine these same trees in all their height, their wealth of foliage, and beauty of form, one mass of colour! There were trees of delicate lemon, of brilliant cadmium, of deepest orange; trees of such crimson that every leaf looked as though it were dripping with fresh blood; trees of copper and pale pink, of terra-cotta and scarlet—all these in one pure colour, or intermingled with every shade of green from palest apple, through varying tones of emerald, to the shining dark leaves that seemed all but black. Dotted about, here and there, stood trees of some shade of brown, or graceful forms clothed in darker or paler heliotrope. The virgin Eastern forest is a sight to see, but the glory of the jungle in the first freshness of spring leafage is a revelation.

That jungle was one of the attractions of Phatmah;—not monopolised by Phatmah, only shared, and not to so large an extent as by a thousand other places nearer the great hills.

Then there was the river reach, where all day long the shadows crept gradually closer under one bank as they were projected from the other; while now and then a native boat passed up or down the river, and, for a few minutes, broke the melancholy of that changeless stretch of water. The sunsets made the last, and perhaps the greatest attraction of Phatmah. Then, in the after-glow, great beams of light would rise, fan-like, from east and west, almost meeting in the zenith, and leave, between their rays, sharply-defined, heavenly roads of deepest blue; while the soft white clouds, riding through the sky, took shades of gold and rose and pearly-grey, until the stars shone out and set all the cicadas shrilling a chorus to waken every other denizen of the jungle.

Sunsets cannot be commanded; they are intermittent, and, though they are comforting—in a way—they do not always come when they are most wanted. In Phatmah it would rain in torrents on the evening that you had set your heart upon seeing a gorgeous sunset, and, when it did not rain, it was hotter than in almost any other spot in Burmah, and that is saying a great deal. Moreover, it was as dull probably as any place on earth, except to the three white men who lived there and had their work to do, or whose business took them, weekly, or at least monthly, into some other more or less desolate part of the district.

I noted these things in that first day I was at Phatmah, while my friend and Basset were talking about roads to be made and buildings constructed, natives to be encouraged or sat upon, dacoits harried, and all the things that make the life of the exiled English officer in the outermost parts of the Empire. I also observed Basset. I knew he had a wife, a girl whom he had just married, when at home on leave in England, and who was now in that house, across the grass, a hundred yards away. I had not seen Basset’s wife, but I had heard of her from some who had met her, before she left the last confines of civilisation and started for what must in future be her home. What I had heard made it seem unlikely that Mrs. Basset would reconcile herself to jungle life, and, when I understood Phatmah, I thought it would be very surprising if such a miracle could be wrought for the sake of Basset.

Basset was a most excellent fellow, a good officer, good to look at, lithe and well-made, a man who had found favour with his seniors and was likely to do well. He was young, but that was a fault for which he was not responsible, and one that every day was curing. And yet, when I saw Phatmah, I thought Basset had been unwise, and when I saw his wife, as I did the next day, I felt certain of it.

I had been told she was very young in years and child-like at that, nervous to the last degree, selfish, unreasonable, full of fancies, and rather pretty—but the one or two ladies who were my informants differed as to this last important particular.

What I saw for myself, when I went to call upon “the only lady in Phatmah,” was this: a glory of fair waving hair framing a young, but not very youthful face; a pallid complexion, and features where nothing specially appealed for admiration; a voice that was not more than pleasant, and a figure that, while very petite, seemed well enough shapen, as far as could be seen under the garment of silk and lace that must have been the first of its kind to visit Phatmah. The house did not strike me as showing more than the evidences of a young man’s anxiety to make it what he would call “fit for a lady”; but then the resources of Phatmah were strictly limited, the Bassets had only just, so to speak, arrived, and things entrusted to the tender mercies of river transport were often months upon the way. On the whole there was nothing about Mrs. Basset to excite either sympathy or interest, if you had met her in any civilised place; but as the only white woman in Phatmah, come here to gain her first real experiences of life, scared by frogs and lizards, and terrified by the many insects that fly straight at you and stick on your hair, your face, your clothes, one could not help feeling that the experiment, if not a cruel one to her, was at least thoughtless, and, if persisted in, might end in disaster.

My friend and I exerted ourselves that afternoon and evening (for the Bassets dined with us) to put as good a complexion as we could on Burmah in general and Phatmah in particular; and though, to the ordinary spectator, we might have appeared to succeed fairly well, I carried away with me vague suspicions, born of my own observation and the conversation I had had with the lady as we sat and looked over that jungle-shrouded river-reach, while the path to the stars grew an ever-deepening blue, and she told me somewhat of herself and her life. There was no doubt that she not only looked dissatisfied, but felt it, and said it, and took credit for her candour. Then she complained that Phatmah offered no opportunities for “getting into mischief,” but that was probably merely another way of saying that she was utterly bored; and, in truth, when she asked if I could conceive a greater dulness, the trite reply that she had her husband stuck in my throat, and I admitted that it was immeasurably dull, but talked cheerfully of what it would be when communication with the outside world was easier, and then fell to asking her if she read, or played, or sang, or sketched, as Phatmah seemed to be the very place for study, or the practice of accomplishments. She pleaded that she was too lately from school to hanker after study, but became almost enthusiastic on the subject of music.

Then our tÊte-À-tÊte was interrupted, and in the evening the only thing that struck me was that, for a girl so lately from school, our guest drank rather more in quantity and variety than was usual, and whenever in the after-days my thoughts went back to Phatmah, I remembered this with an uncomfortable feeling of the awful loneliness of that reach of brown river, the boundless forest, and the girl, left for days to her own devices, and the possibility of “getting into mischief” by drowning a craving, not for excitement so much as for the companionship of her kind.

A hundred miles below Phatmah the river wound through the plains in long reaches, six or seven miles in length; the country was more open, and the banks were occasionally fringed with palms and orchards surrounding the huts of a native hamlet. The moon was waxing to the full, and, sitting at the stern of my boat, looking back up the long stretch of water bathed in mellow light, till the wide band of silver narrowed to a point that vanished in grey mist, I could not help thinking that, even here, the sense of loneliness, of monotony, and banishment, was less acute than in Phatmah’s forest-bound clearing.

Years passed, and I was again in Burmah, this time with an object. I had forgotten all about the Bassets: one does not remember people who live in the East, only the places that are striking, and the things seen or heard of that may become profitable in one way or another. I thought of my friend, because he might be able to help me, but he was away in another part of the province and I had to journey alone. Officials are useful on their own ground, and even when they are not personal friends, they are, in the East at any rate, ready enough to be hospitable. The advantage of “entertaining angels unawares” is, however, all on their side, and guests so soon recognise this fact, that they feel under no obligation to their hosts, and seldom wish to remember them if they meet them in Europe. This is specially the case with English notabilities, who seem to think that they have a prescriptive right, not only to waste a man’s time, but also to use his house, stables, and servants, as at an hotel where the visitor exercises every privilege except that of making payment. Unfortunately for me, I had to go beyond the region of even occasional civilians, those isolated exiles whose houses the stranger occupies, whether the master is present or absent, and for some days I had to put up with the DÂk Bungalow and the chicken of happy despatch.

It was the very hottest time of the morning when I arrived at such a bungalow in a small mining village. I had been riding since dawn, and was glad enough to turn into that weedy compound and get off my pony. Whew! the heat of it! The two or three sinewy hens, which by-and-by would be slaughtered to make the traveller’s holiday, were sitting half-buried and wallowing in the dust, with their wings spread out and their mouths open, gasping for breath. It was a day when solids liquefy, when inanimate objects develop an extraordinary faculty for sticking to each other, and when water no longer feels wet. There was not a sign of any human being anywhere, and I went round to the back premises to try and find the caretaker. After a diligent search I discovered him, fast asleep of course, and, while he went to prepare a room, I unsaddled the pony and put it in the stable. Then I went into the house and told the servant to get me some food while I had a bath. The process of catching the hen and cooking her was a long one, and I was sleeping in a chair when the man came to tell me the feast was ready. I had an idea that I was not alone in the house, and, when I questioned the caretaker, he said that there was a lady who had arrived the night before and had not appeared that morning. Our means of conversation was limited to a few words, and I could not make out who the lady was, or even whether he knew her; but it seemed to me a curious thing that a white woman should be there, and I supposed she came from one of the big ruby mines; but even then it was strange that she should be alone. I made further inquiries about the neighbourhood, and learned that I was not more than a day’s journey from Phatmah. I knew it was somewhere about, but had not thought it so near; it was not on the line of my objective, and I was not interested in its exact position. Then some of my bearers arrived with luggage, and I deliberately settled myself for a siesta.

It was late afternoon when I awoke, and I determined to push on to another small place, which I could just reach before darkness made further progress impossible. Even a short stage by night would be preferable to the frightful heat and the oppressive atmosphere of this lonely house, in its neglected and overgrown garden, where one lean chicken now scratched alone. Just then the caretaker came to me and asked my advice about the other guest. He had seen and heard nothing of her for the whole day, and was afraid there must be something amiss. That, I felt, was extremely likely, especially when he told me he had knocked at the door of her room and received no answer. I did not at all like the mission, but there was nothing for it but to go and see what was the matter. A few steps took us to the door of the lady’s room, and I knocked, first gently, then loudly, but no sound broke the ominous silence. Then I turned the handle, only to find that the door was locked. As I could not force it open without making a great clatter, I went outside to try the windows. There were two of these some height from the ground, and it was difficult to get at them. The first was fast, and from my insecure footing I could not force it; but with the second I was more fortunate, and as a half-shutter sprang open, and a stream of light poured into the dark room, I saw the form of a girl, or woman, lying on the bed, in an attitude that somehow did not suggest sleep. I shouted at her, but she never moved, and then I climbed into the room. I noticed instantly that there was hardly anything lying about the ill-furnished room, but, on a small table near the bed, was an almost empty brandy bottle and a glass. The woman was dressed in a blouse and skirt, the only things she had taken off being apparently her hat and shoes. She had her back towards me, and the sunlight centred on a mass of fair hair and gave it a deeper tinge. Before I put my hand on her cold fingers I felt certain she was dead, and as I gently turned her head and recognised in the now grey features the face of the only white woman in Phatmah, I don’t think I was very much surprised, though I was terribly shocked. Held tightly in her other hand was a small empty bottle that had once held chloral, and the faint sickly smell of it hung in the heavy stifling atmosphere of that bare and comfortless room. Poor lonely child, she had managed to “get into mischief” after all.