The Path to Honour Part 2

"Dear Papa and Charles returned already!" cried Mrs Cowper, peering through the Venetians. "Fly, Mamma! Charley, Charley, come and see whether you approve of my gown!"

Lady Cinnamond fled, in answer to the sonorous shout of "Rosa! Rosita!

Sita!" which pealed through the house, and Captain Cowper entered from the verandah.

"Stunning!" he breathed fervently. "Horrid shame to waste it all on a handful of politicals up in No Man's Land instead of exhibiting it at Government House. You wear this fallal on your head, I suppose?"

"Oh, Charley, you careless fellow!" Mrs Cowper rescued the broad strip of lace with indignation. "My beautiful berthe! It goes on the bodice--_so_, don't you know? On my head, indeed!"

"But it would look ravishing wherever you wore it," averred her husband, dodging the geranium-spray she threw at him, and there followed a brisk engagement with the flowers left in the box, to which Honour listened with some secret contempt but considerable interest, as she sewed on her roses where her mother had pinned them. Honour was learning lessons which ran counter to every maxim that had influenced her hitherto, and baffled all her efforts to reconstruct her vanished world. Those were the days when phrenology was considered an indispensable aid to instructors of youth, and a professor of the science had duly felt Honour's b.u.mps, and recorded, for the guidance of her cousins, his mature opinion that, "though this young lady will not find it easy to apply herself to fresh subjects of study, yet she will never lose what she has once mastered." But in this case the mastering was the difficulty. To her, life had hitherto meant a round of recurring duties, to be performed conscientiously as they came, and love a blinding illumination revealing to a humble worshipper the form of a hero and a saint, but ending preferably in renunciation--if voluntary and wholly unnecessary so much the n.o.bler and better. To think of love in connection with an ordinary, average man was something very like sacrilege, and poor Honour fairly shuddered when Mrs Jardine, who bore her a grudge for unsettling Mr Jardine's mind with the new views she had brought from home, broke to her the horrible fact that she had made two ordinary young men fall in love with her. It was of a piece with the disturbing discovery that whereas she had come out, as she understood, to soothe the declining years of her aged parents, those parents, though grey-haired, were disconcertingly hale and hearty, and asked only that she would be happy and make herself agreeable--two tasks of which Honour found the first impossible, and the second extremely difficult.

Her daughters took a very secondary place in Lady Cinnamond's mind when her husband was in question, and it was seldom that Sir Arthur had to complain of his wife's not being present to receive him when he returned from his duties. She ran into his snuggery now like a girl, and broke into the liquid Spanish which formed such an effective defence against the ears of aides-de-camp or English-speaking servants.

"You are tired, my Arturo. The sitting has been very long. Were the Durbar open to reason?"

"My dearest, they have no thought but to procrastinate and obstruct business, and our excellent Colonel indulges them far too tenderly.

Every form of ceremony must be observed, and all the long-drawn compliments duly inserted, until a whole morning is wasted over one small matter."

"And my poor Arturo must sit and listen to it?"

"For his sins he must." Sir Arthur smiled whimsically at his wife.

"Judge for yourself how contentedly he did it to-day, my sweet one.

The Durbar knew that the home mail had come in, and scented a glorious opportunity. Every man had to be satisfied of the health of her Majesty, Prince Albert, all the little princes and princesses, the Duke of Wellington, and the Chairman of the Court of Directors. When the memory or ingenuity of one failed, his neighbour took up the tale.

Then some genius remembered a precious piece of _gup_, and asked with all solemnity whether it was true that a new Governor-General had been appointed, which led to a canva.s.s of the merits of all possible candidates. There sits poor Antony with agony in his eyes, seeing his time wasted to no purpose, and all the business left undone, while he can't bring himself to check the Sirdars in their loquacity. I saw James Antony fuming behind him. Rose of my heart, your Arthur will be indiscreet enough to confide to you a profound secret. If the Resident goes up to the hills, and his brother takes his place, the Sirdars will be taught the meaning of despatch."

"So much the better for the conduct of business, then. But they will not love him as they do the Colonel."

Sir Arthur laughed. "I fancy James can dispense with their affection if he secures their obedience. The Colonel desired his compliments to you, my love, and begged that you would not consider his absence this evening in any way a slight, since his principles demand it of him.

The furbelows all ready, eh?"

"Nearly. But, Arturo, I have been entertaining Mrs Jardine the greater part of the morning."

"Some nice new piece of scandal, eh? What was the 'real duty' that brought her out in the heat?"

"An earnest desire to promote peace. She thought it might be better if Honour did not appear to-night. No, my Arturo,"--as Sir Arthur moved explosively,--"it was a warning given out of pure kindness to me, a foreigner. I told her what had happened, and she went away, I trust, satisfied. She thought me cold, I fear, for I restrained both voice and words."

"Better, much better. But that a woman of that kind should have it in her power to---- That Honour should contrive to get herself talked about!"

"She is so young, Arturo; she did not understand. And it was not all her fault."

"Which means that it was her father's. Well, but how was I to know that a daughter of yours and mine would turn out a fool? When she overwhelms me with a cool proposal to set up schools and I don't know what for the European women and children, what could I do but tell her it was the chaplain's business? You won't say that I ought to have encouraged her? Think of all the unpleasantness it would have caused in the regiments! And surely it was only natural to turn aside the matter by pointing out a sphere where her efforts would be more acceptable? Why, if I had said such a thing to Charlotte, or Eliza, or Marian, they would have blushed prettily and said, 'Oh, Papa!' and Marian might have giggled, but would any of them ever have thought of actually carrying it out?"

For this was the unfortunate result of Sir Arthur's ill-timed jocularity in advising his daughter to turn her enthusiasm for humanity to account in reforming some of Colonel Antony's a.s.sistants, instancing Gerrard and Charteris as standing in special need of her services.

Young ladies were scarce, Honour was handsome and had inherited a touch of her mother's dignity, and when she unbent and displayed a flattering interest in the moral and spiritual welfare of each young man, the mischief was done.

"And then, to improve matters, she refuses both of them!" went on Sir Arthur despairingly. "What does she want? No one seems to please her."

"If we were in Spain, it would be very simple," mused Lady Cinnamond.

"She would go into religion."

Sir Arthur bristled up at once. "What, ma'am! a convent for my daughter? I'd have you remember----"

His wife laughed, and patted his hand. "Calm yourself, my Arturo. No well-regulated convent would keep a daughter of yours within its walls for a day, nor would she care to stay there. Even Honour's romance would not survive the actual experience. But since we are not in Spain, we cannot hope to cure her fancies so quickly. Still----"

"Aye, romance--all romance!" growled Sir Arthur. "For your sake and mine, my dear, I trust it may wear off soon, but I doubt it. What hope is there of a girl who wears King Charles the First's hair in a locket?"

Sir Arthur's pessimism did not keep him from paying Honour a fatherly compliment on her appearance that evening--a compliment accompanied, however, as the jam by the powder, with the reminder that she might be thankful if she ever arrived within measurable distance of her mother in looks. Lady Cinnamond, in pink satin, with a black lace shawl depending from a high jewelled comb at the back of her head in a manner reminiscent of the mantilla of her youth, laughed at the a.s.surance, and hurried her party out to the elephant which was in waiting. The bridal pair were inclined to be pensive, privately lamenting the waste of a whole evening in public which might have been spent in a sweet _solitude a deux_ on the verandah. Ostensibly out of consideration for the ladies' dresses, Captain Cowper had suggested that he and his wife should follow on a second elephant, but this was vetoed by his father-in-law, who declared that they would, in pure absence of mind, go for a moonlight ride through the city, and never arrive at the ball.

Thus, with jests and counter-jests, they reached the great _shamiana_, erected for the occasion, and were swallowed up in an overwhelming flood of scarlet and dark blue uniforms. When Honour took off her wrap, her mother observed with vexation that they had both forgotten the pearl necklace, but it did not occur to her that the girl's absence of mind was due to the fact that she was nerving herself to a desperate deed.

With the laudable idea of discouraging gossip by behaving as if nothing unpleasant had happened, Gerrard secured a dance, and sheer pity for his embarra.s.sed partner impelled him to make conversation while they waited for the music to begin. Colonel Antony disapproved of dancing, especially in India, on account of the effect on the natives, but his brother James had just pa.s.sed them, with Marian Cowper, a radiant vision, on his arm, and Gerrard ventured a remark on the contrast between the stern-featured civilian and his partner. Receiving nothing but an almost inaudible murmur of a.s.sent, he observed how well and happy Mrs Cowper was looking.

"Oh yes. Of course, she likes India." The sigh which accompanied the words told more than Honour had intended, and she went on hastily.

"She has a sort of natural connection with it, you know, for Mrs Hastings was her G.o.dmother."

"Mrs Hastings? Not----?"

"Yes, the widow of Warren Hastings. Doesn't it carry one back into history?" Honour had forgotten her embarra.s.sment, for things of this kind had a way of making links between Gerrard and herself.

"I should have thought it was impossible."

"Oh, she only died about ten years ago--yes, the year the Queen came to the throne. So I am not making poor Marian out to be terribly old."

The minds of both were wandering back to Westminster Hall filled with serried rows of faces, with all eyes turned upon a small pale man in the midst, when they were suddenly recalled to the present by the indignant approach of Bob Charteris.

"Pardon me--my dance, I think?" he said, glaring at Gerrard.

"No, excuse me--my dance," returned Gerrard, maintaining his position, and suspecting his friend unjustly of having supped early and too well.

"I really must appeal to Miss Cinnamond," said Charteris, with barely veiled hostility. "You promised me this dance, didn't you?"

"I was under the impression that Miss Cinnamond had promised it to me,"

said Gerrard, more sternly than he realised.

"Oh, please," stammered Honour, not at all in the dignified way in which the beautiful and stately ladies of her favourite German stories were wont to intervene between knights contending for their favours--"I am afraid I have behaved very badly again. I--I wanted to speak to you both, and--and I did not know how to do it except by giving you the same dance."

"We are only too much honoured," said Gerrard, with overwhelming courtesy. He was inwardly furious, but the girl looked ready to cry, and a burst of tears in public was above all things to be avoided in the circ.u.mstances. "You find the tent too crowded? Let us look for a quieter place, then. If you could get hold of a shawl or something, Bob?"

Charteris obeyed, with exemplary outward meekness, and joined them immediately in a smaller tent arranged as a card-room, but not yet put to its intended use. Disregarding Gerrard's movement, he put the shawl round Honour himself, and they stood waiting her pleasure in silence, while she gripped her fan so hard in both hands that it broke in two.

She raised a crimson face at last.

"I wanted to speak to you together," she began again. "You both think I have treated you badly, but indeed I did not mean it. But that was not what I wished to say. I hear--some one--a friend--tells me that you are angry with one another on my account. It makes me so unhappy, and I don't see why----"

Her voice failed, and Charteris and Gerrard remained awkwardly silent, each intensely conscious of the extreme superfluity of the other's presence. Alone, either might have made shift to say something, but with his rival there, whatever was said would only make things worse.

Looking up despairingly, Honour saw in their faces what made her cry out in terror.

"Oh, you wouldn't! you wouldn't! Don't make me feel that I have done such a dreadful thing! If you fought a duel about me I should die.

There is no need. I will promise never to marry any one--ever. I will do it willingly, gladly. Isn't that enough? What more can I do? Only tell me, and don't do such a wicked, unchristian thing."

"For pity's sake, Hal--you have the gift of the gab," growled Charteris in Gerrard's ear, as she turned agonized eyes upon them.