MUTTERINGS OF THE STORM.
"Onora, my dearest little one, have you anything to tell me?" Unable
to bear the suspense any longer, Lady Cinnamond had pursued her
daughter to her room.
"No, mamma; only that he is gone."
"But you have not sent him away?"
"I told him again that I could not marry him."
"But I thought you cared for him!" Lady Cinnamond's regret was not
unmixed with indignation. "When you thought he was dead, you said----"
It was Honour's turn to be indignant. "I said I couldn't tell, mamma.
And I don't like him as much now as I did when I thought he was dead."
"These poor young men!" lamented her mother. "Then is the unfortunate
Mr Gerrard to be made happy at last? Or is it some one else?"
"It isn't any one!" cried Honour hotly. "Is it my fault if they will
want to marry me? I am sure I have made it clear to them over and over
again that I don't want to marry anybody."
"My child, that is a thing that nothing will make clear to a man," said
her mother solemnly--"especially when it is plain that you take
pleasure in his society."
"But I don't. Mamma, I never told you, but long ago, more than a year,
I lent _Sintram_ to Mr Charteris, without telling him how fond I was of
it. He gave it back to me all smelling of smoke, and said that he
couldn't make head or tail of it, but it struck him as uncommon silly."
"But, my dear, surely that ought to have warned you that your tastes
were not congenial. What can have made you think your feelings had
changed?"
"Oh, mamma, I don't know." Honour paused for a moment, then hurried
on. "One doesn't remember that kind of thing when a person is dead,
you know. And there seemed to be so many nice points about him that I
had never guessed----"
"But which Mr Gerrard brought out? Well, your objection can't
apply----" Lady Cinnamond broke off hastily. "I won't worry you any
more to-night, dear."
"Good-night, mamma. I am sorry I was cross."
Lady Cinnamond left her reluctantly, for the rest of the family were on
the tiptoe of expectation to hear what had happened, and she had
earnestly hoped to be able to silence their jeers with the announcement
that Honour was engaged like other people.
"Well, mamma, is he coming to see papa in the morning?" demanded Mrs
Cowper eagerly, as soon as her mother appeared.
"No, dear; I am sorry to say she has refused him again."
"Fastidious little puss!" chuckled Sir Arthur. "Faith! it'll be the
other that will come to-morrow."
"Isn't Honour a queer quizzical sort of girl?" inquired Mrs Cowper
earnestly of her parents. "Do you think she will accept Mr Gerrard,
mamma?"
"My dear, I am afraid to say, but I should fear not."
"Why should she, if she don't want him?" said Sir Arthur briskly.
"Rosita, I don't like to see this eagerness to get rid of your
daughters. It reflects badly upon your bringing-up of them, ma'am."
"Oh no, papa; how can you say so? It speaks well for mamma's happiness
in her married life."
"I see Charles hasn't cured you of your pertness yet, miss--ma'am, I
should say. Poor fellow! I wonder if I ought to have told him what he
was bringing upon himself?"
Justice demanded that Marian should immediately rise and pull her
father's hair, but in the middle of the operation she paused
tragically. "Something has just struck me," she said. "Why do we all
take it for granted that Honour must end by marrying one of these two
men? It may be some one we have never thought of that she really cares
for."
"My dear, don't imagine fresh complications," said her mother in alarm.
"All the available young men have proposed, so that she could have had
any one she liked."
"Perhaps she was afraid of her cruel father," suggested Mrs Cowper,
deftly arranging Sir Arthur's hair into a curl in the middle of his
forehead. "Don't touch that, papa, whatever you do. I want Charley to
see it; it will give him a new view of your character. Of course it is
the persistence of these two men that makes you feel that one of them
is fated to succeed. Others come and others go, but they go on for
ever."
"Perhaps it would be as well to forbid them both the house," suggested
her victimised father.
"Not both at once, papa! Why, neither we nor Honour should ever know
which was the right one, if they were both shut out together. You must
do it in turn."
"And after making one welcome for a week or so, pick a quarrel with him
and install the other? Precious undignified, my dear child, but a man
must make sacrifices for the sake of his family."
"Ah, but that's just what you don't do!" cried Marian, roused to
recollection of a grievance of her own. "How could you all but promise
Charley that if a peaceful mission was sent to Agpur, he should command
the escort?"
"But surely, my dear, I was sacrificing my own comfort in promising to
spare him?"
"No, you were sacrificing me!" pouted his daughter. "I was making
signs to you the whole time, not to let him go unless he would take me
with him, and he won't. He has been horrid about it."
"My dear Marian, you could not possibly go, with the hot weather coming
on!" cried her mother, aghast.
"Nor in any weather whatever," said Sir Arthur firmly. "Your signals
were lost on me, Marian, but nothing would induce me to consent to your
going to Agpur. The place is clearly in a most disturbed state, and
the good faith of the new Rajah extremely doubtful."
"Then don't let Charley go," was the prompt rejoinder.
Sir Arthur raised his eyebrows. "You must settle that with your
husband yourself, my dear. I have promised to allow him leave for the
purpose if he wishes it."
"And he will say that you are depending on him to command the escort,
and I must settle it with you!" complained Marian. "And nobody really
thinks about me at all."
"My dear, it will be an excellent opportunity for Charles to bring
himself into notice, whether the progress of the mission is peaceable
or not. And if he goes, you and Honour shall have a run up to the
hills, if Lady Antony will be so good as to look after you. But at
present it is quite uncertain whether a mission will be despatched at
all. We may have war instead."
"Well, I think you might send one of Honour's young men, papa," said
Marian, half crying. "She doesn't care about either of them, and if
anything happened to Charley I should die."
"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 assured 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 assumption 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 pass 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 passing, and I thought I would look in to tell you
that it has been settled about Agpur," said James Antony, depositing
his massive 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 Habshiabad, 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 shore 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 documents, 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 ashore on the left bank of the Bari, thence
to strike southwards and take up his new work at Habshiabad. 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 Habshiabad 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 Munshi, 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 mass 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?"
"Nay, sahib, it is your honour I am awaiting. I bear a message from my
mistress for your ear alone."
"But is her Highness in this neighbourhood? I should wish to wait on
her and pay my respects."
"Her Highness is far away, sahib, but she does not forget the gratitude
due to your honour for your faithfulness to the dead. When we passed
through Ranjitgarh, it was told her that there was a project of
marriage between your honour and the daughter of the General Sahib with
the white hair, and she bade this slave note down the name, that she
might, if opportunity offered, do good to the General Sahib and his
family for your honour's sake. Hearing, then, that the Sahib who
commands the troops going to Agpur is sister's husband to the daughter
of the General Sahib, she judged it well to send a warning."
"Her Highness can hardly be so far away, after all, if she heard this
news in time to send you to meet me here, O venerable one," said
Gerrard.
"I speak but as I am bidden, sahib. Her Highness entreats you to warn
that Sahib and his friend to put no trust in the fair words of Sher
Singh--and this not so much because he is treacherous, though
treacherous he is to the very depths of hell, as because he is weak.
He sees it is not to his interest to provoke a war with the English at
this moment, but he is entirely dependent on his Sirdars--by reason of
his faulty title to the throne, and his non-fulfilment of the promises
made to them before his accession--and they have no care for him and
his safety. They have sent out messengers again, since those sent
throughout Granthistan returned without promises of help, and are
seeking to enlist Abd-ur-Rashid Khan of Ethiopia, promising him the
city of Shah Bagh, which is to him as the apple of his eye, if he will
invade Granthistan from the north when the rising begins. Let the
Sahibs then beware, for blood once shed is not to be gathered up from
the ground, and Sher Singh is not the man to defend his guests if the
city be howling for their death."
"I will warn them," said Gerrard. "And now come and lodge in our camp
for this night, and in the morning go your way and carry my respectful
thanks to her Highness."
"It is forbidden, sahib. I depart immediately, to report to my
mistress that I have performed her errand."
"So be it, then. Carry my deepest salaams to her Highness," and
Gerrard went on towards the camp. After supper he told Nisbet and
Cowper of the warning he had received for them. It caused no surprise.
"It's quite true about Abd-ur-Rashid," said Nisbet. "Ronaldson caught
one of his messengers sneaking about in his camp near Shah Bagh, trying
to corrupt his escort. That may have been in view of this very plan
for a general rising, but he thought it was one of the usual schemes
for getting hold of Shah Bagh again."
"If Abd-ur-Rashid and the Granthis can manage to agree, we are likely
to come off badly," said Cowper.
"But they won't," said Nisbet. "The thieves are bound to fall out."
"After a time," said Gerrard, "but they may make it very unpleasant for
you first. And suppose your Granthis take sides with the Agpuris? I
took Granthis into Agpur and brought them out again, but then I had had
them for some time first. I wish you knew more of your escort, and
they of you."
"My dear fellow," said Cowper, yawning, "we know at least that no
Granthi is to be trusted. They are a set of _nimuk harams_,[2] and we
shan't trust them. Sir Edmund chooses to trust Sher Singh, as he would
any native that ever walked, but that's all the goodness of his heart,
and we ain't going to be led away by it. Forewarned is forearmed."
[1] Enough.
[2] Perfidious, false to their salt.