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!” 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, 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.”