The Path to Honour Part 21

"Oh, my dear, we will hope she cares for Mr Gerrard," interposed Lady Cinnamond hastily, seeing her husband's brow grow thunderous. Marian had transgressed the unwritten law which forbade the General's womankind to meddle in the slightest degree with his professional appointments, and had added to her misdeeds by weeping.

"She doesn't. I don't believe she has it in her. You'll see, to-morrow," and with this Parthian shot Mrs Cowper quitted the room in tears, meanly leaving her mother to allay the tempest she had raised.

On the morrow poor Lady Cinnamond was almost tempted to think as she did with regard to Honour, for Gerrard, putting his fortune to the touch without, as he a.s.sured himself, the slightest hope of success, met the same fate as his friend. Perhaps his way of broaching the subject was unfortunate.

"Our lamentations over Charteris were rather premature, weren't they?"

he asked her, with an a.s.sumption of lightness which suited her mood as little as his.

"How could you mislead me so dreadfully about him?" demanded Honour, moved to indignation by her wrongs.

"Mislead you? Why, I never said a word that wasn't true!" Gerrard was unfeignedly surprised.

"I suppose not," she admitted unwillingly. "But you dwelt only on his good points, and I--I almost thought I had misjudged him. But when I saw him there was no difference. He brought a smell of smoke into the room with him, and talked slang, just as he always did."

"But why should one recall obvious things like that? Would you have had me try to belittle him to you--if you must think worse of a man for such trifles as smoking and using slang?"

"Trifles in your estimation, perhaps; not in mine."

"Well, at any rate it shows you can't care for him," said Gerrard despairingly, "or you wouldn't notice them."

"I consider that remark extremely rude and uncalled-for," said Honour, with spirit. "You have no right whatever to pa.s.s judgment upon my feelings."

"Pardon me, but how can I help it? Perhaps you mean that if Bob left off slang and smoking he would be all right?"

"And if I did, how would it concern you?"

"Oh, merely that I think you ought to tell him, or let me."

"You think he would do it?"

"Like winkin'. Oh, I _beg_ your pardon. I would, I know, just as I would do any mortal thing you cared to ask me. Ask me, Honour. Can't you give me a bit of hope?"

"How can I? You would not be satisfied--either of you--if I said I would marry you just to escape from unpleasantness of this kind. I mean"--hastily, as she caught sight of his face--"I dislike so much hurting people's feelings, but with you and Mr Charteris I seem able to do nothing else. If you would only both take my answer as final, and let us all be happy and friendly together as we were before this idea came into your minds!"

"We weren't," said Gerrard doggedly. "I was introduced to you two days before Charteris was, and all that time I was in terror, guessing what would happen as soon as he saw you. And sure enough, he raved about you all night, until I put a stop to it by throwing things across the room."

"Please don't tell me things of that kind," said Honour, her colour rising. "They do not interest me. You have a great influence over Mr Charteris. Why not use it to make him see things sensibly, and give up these attempts?"

"Because I wouldn't do it myself. If you could say that you felt the least kindness towards one of us, then the other would withdraw--or towards any one else, then both of us, I hope, would do the proper thing and leave him in peace. But while there's still a fair chance--why, I shall hold on, and so will old Bob, if I know anything of him."

"That is exactly what Mr Charteris said," remarked Honour musingly.

"Well, I am very sorry, and I wish I could get you to look at things more sensibly, but really it is not my fault."

"You can't even hold out any hope for the future?"

"It would merely be unkindness if I did. If you would only----"

"No, please, that's enough," said Gerrard, and withdrew. Charteris was waiting for him on their verandah.

"By the look of gloom on your ingenuous countenance, Hal----" he began.

"Oh, _bus, bus_[1]!" said Gerrard wearily. "Yes, old boy, we're in the same boat, as before."

"There's one comfort, she won't get her bachelor Governor-General for some time," remarked Charteris; "for this man Blairgowrie that they're sending out is married."

"I hate stale jokes!" muttered Gerrard.

"You seem to have come off rather worse than I did. Look here, Hal; I'm going to propose a modification of our agreement. I've had first try this time, and next time you shall have it, without drawing lots.

It's precious hard on you, if you are the right man, that you should only be able to approach her when she's already been rubbed the wrong way by my impudent pretensions."

"I ain't the right man. No one is. But you're a good chap, Bob, and I'm not too proud to accept with thanks. At this moment, I confess it, I don't feel as if I should ever summon up courage to come to the scratch again, but no doubt it'll be different in a year or so."

"I believe you, my boy--especially when you know that if you don't take your chance, I shall. But what stately form comes this way? Our Mr James, as I live!"

"I happened to be pa.s.sing, and I thought I would look in to tell you that it has been settled about Agpur," said James Antony, depositing his ma.s.sive form in the chair vacated for him. "What! ain't there room for me unless you stand, Charteris? Shocking the luxury in which you young fellows live nowadays! Well, I'm glad the business is finished somehow, since my brother will perhaps be contented to trot peaceably back to the hills, but I can't say that your friend Sher Singh has got anything like his deserts. He is to be recognised and, within reasonable limits, supported, provided he fulfils certain not very onerous conditions. Nisbet is to visit Agpur City and settle the preliminaries of the frontier business and the affair of the Rani Gulab Kur's jointure, and will probably remain there as Resident. Well, well! if Sher Singh ain't loyal to us in future, he ought to be!"

"I hope Nisbet will have a strong escort, sir," Gerrard ventured to say, emboldened by the speaker's evident, though unexpressed, dissatisfaction with the arrangement. James Antony looked at him severely from under bushy brows. His loyalty to his more brilliant brother never permitted him the luxury of criticising his decisions in public, and he had gone farther than he intended in allowing his feelings to appear.

"The escort will be sufficient, of course. Charley Cowper goes in command--has special leave for the purpose. They start next week."

"Then I shall have to hurry back to Darwan," said Charteris.

"Just as well you should be on the spot," agreed James Antony. "You go to Habs.h.i.+abad, I suppose, Gerrard?"

"I suppose so, sir."

"Precious little enthusiasm over the prospect, I see. Well, it is a come-down for the acting-Resident of Agpur."

"That was entirely a thing out of the usual run, sir." Gerrard roused himself in self-defence. "I was warned not to expect to continue on that footing, and I didn't for a moment."

"I can find you plenty of work here, if you prefer it. Ah, I see," he laughed. "The woman is spoiling Eden, as usual. Get married, get married, and you'll think no more about her."

"Thank you for your advice, sir. Your own experience?" asked Charteris.

James Antony looked first furious, then almost contrite, and finally gave way to a huge burst of laughter. "Curious how one falls in with other people's way of talking, when one knows it is absolutely false!"

he said. "No, it is not my experience, and you know it, you young dog.

I married my wife because I couldn't do without her, and it has been the same story from that day to this. That's my experience, and you can't do better than follow it."

"But then one of us would have to put the other out of the way--eh, Hal?" said Charteris dolefully, as Mr James departed, his great shoulders still heaving with laughter.

When Mr Nisbet and Captain Cowper left Ranjitgarh the following week, Gerrard went part of the way with them. They travelled by water, their respective escorts marching by land, and he would have a day or two to wait at one of the riverside towns until his men came up. The hot weather would soon begin, and the river was low, so that the progress of the boats was agreeably diversified by frequent groundings, now on the sh.o.r.e and now on a sandbank, and the heat and the glare of the water furnished an excuse for much grumbling. Nisbet was a quiet, inoffensive man, who found perpetual occupation and solace in writing, reading, re-reading and annotating innumerable doc.u.ments, of which he seemed to carry a whole library about with him, but his contentment was powerless to infect his companions. Captain Cowper was low-spirited owing to the parting from his wife, for after inducing Sir Edmund and Lady Antony to postpone their return to the hills for two days that she might see him off, Marian had disgraced herself and her parents by making a scene--though happily not in public--at her husband's departure. Her frantic entreaties to him not to go, or if he must go, to take her with him, her dire forebodings of evil, had made it very hard for him to leave her; and when neither her father's anger, nor Lady Cinnamond's warnings that she would do herself harm, were able to quiet her sobs, Captain Cowper had been obliged to tear himself away from her clinging hands without a proper farewell. It was no comfort to picture her lonely misery in the hills, with no one but Honour, of whose tenderness he had the very lowest opinion, to act as confidant, and her husband spent many hours daily in writing letters, and making sketches of any object of interest that offered itself, for her benefit.

Little as he had in common with his two companions, Gerrard dreaded the moment when he would step ash.o.r.e on the left bank of the Bari, thence to strike southwards and take up his new work at Habs.h.i.+abad. The absolute isolation from men of his own colour which this would entail was not a prospect he could face with any pleasure. From Charteris he would now be separated by the whole breadth of Agpur, unless they both journeyed far to the south-west, where for a short distance the boundaries of Darwan and Habs.h.i.+abad ran along opposite banks of the river Tindar, while of Nisbet and Cowper in Agpur itself it was unlikely that he would see anything, as the frontier dispute with which they were to deal concerned the other side of the state. Moreover, it was impossible not to feel that his work had been taken out of his hands and given to them to do. Whatever the situation in Agpur might be, he had contributed, however involuntarily, to make it what it was, and others were now about to take it in hand, without the advantage of his past experience, and with the drawback of inheriting whatever odium attached to him.

The evening before they were to reach Naoghat, Nawab Sadiq Ali's port on the Bari, and separate, they fastened up to the bank at a spot where there was no village, but only a few poor huts, and where a patch of marshy jungle held out the promise of wildfowl. Nisbet was busy with his office Muns.h.i.+, completing a catalogue of papers relating to the affairs of Agpur, but Captain Cowper and Gerrard took their guns, and set off along the bank in opposite directions. The sport was poor, and after shooting a brace and a half of birds and walking a long distance, Gerrard was warned by the gathering darkness to retrace his steps. A white ma.s.s at the foot of a tree in one of the drier parts of the bog attracted his attention in the distance, and on coming near enough to see distinctly he found it was a respectably dressed elderly man sitting there motionless. As Gerrard approached, the old man rose and salaamed courteously, and disclosed himself as the scribe of the Rani Gulab Kur.

"O master of many hands, how is it I find you here?" asked Gerrard in surprise. "Are you waiting for a tiger to come and make a meal of you?"