The Path to Honour Part 26

"A brick! I feel like one," laughed Gerrard. He and Charteris looked at one another and laughed again. They had both discarded their tunics in favour of what they called blouses, loose holland garments like long Norfolk jackets, and Gerrard had exchanged his cap for a hat of white feathers lined with green, the precursor of the sun-helmet.

"Good job we ain't in Khemistan. Old Harry Lennox would have court-martialled us like winkin'," said Charteris. "He wouldn't even consider it an extenuating circ.u.mstance that we've won."

"Not very much of a win, since we can't follow it up."

"Well, I don't know. Another fight like this will bring us in sight of Agpur."

[1] Guns mounted on the backs of camels.

[2] The Mohammedan creed.

CHAPTER XIX.

AS OTHERS SEE US.

"I can't think why there was no letter for me!" lamented Marian Cowper.

"Perhaps it will come by a special runner to-morrow," suggested Honour.

"Papa would send it on, I am sure."

"But it ought to have come to-day. Charley has never missed his proper day before."

"Perhaps he was too busy to write."

"Too busy! As if he would let anything keep him from writing to me!"

"I didn't mean that he would not wish to write, but that he might not be able," explained Honour with care.

"Of course. You needn't apologize for Charley to me, thank you. If he doesn't write it's because he can't, and any one else would understand how I feel about it--especially when it is getting so near the time for him to come back." Marian's nerves were evidently on edge, as she moved restlessly about the room, and shot out her sentences at her sister like darts. "I wish you wouldn't sit there so quietly. You don't sympathize a bit. If Charley doesn't come up here next month as he promised, I don't know what I shall do. At any rate, if anything happens it will be his fault."

"Oh, Marian, how can you be so unfair?" cried Honour, with her usual earnestness. "You know poor Charles will come if he possibly can. And how dreadful to say it would be his fault if anything went wrong!"

"I didn't say 'if anything went wrong'; I said 'if anything happened,'"

corrected Marian pettishly. "And I don't know why you should say 'poor Charles.' He would be perfectly happy if he was here with me, and so should I. He understands things--oh, I do want him so!"

"Oh, don't cry," entreated Honour in alarm. "Dear Marian, you will only do yourself harm, you know, and you were so anxious he should find you well and cheerful. Just finish your letter to him, and then let us sit out on the verandah a little before going to bed. The Antonys'

guests will be leaving, and you know how pretty the torches look among the hills."

"How can I finish my letter when I don't know whether there is anything in his to answer?" complained Marian. "Well, I will leave it unsealed, and put in an extra sheet if necessary. I'll come out in a minute.

I'm sorry I am so cross, Honour. After all it isn't your fault that you are not Charley."

"Of course not," said Honour indignantly, and there was more than a suggestion of what was known, in those days of distended skirts, as "flouncing" in the quick rustle with which she left the room. Somehow Marian and she seemed perpetually to rub one another the wrong way, and every one thought it was her fault, because Marian was always so bright and pleasant in public. Marian received plenty of sympathy and wanted more, but Honour felt that a little would be very pleasant to herself.

Yet why should her thoughts in this connection be suddenly discovered to have flown to Gerrard? "He understands," she said to herself, and blushed hotly in the darkness to remember that these were the very words Marian had used of her husband. Giving herself a little shake, as though to get rid of the momentary foolishness, she bent her thoughts sternly to the subject of Sir Edmund and Lady Antony's dinner-party. Ladies in the hills whose husbands were on service did not accept invitations in those benighted days, and Honour had naturally remained with her sister. Their bungalow stood a little higher than the Resident's Lodge, and the effect of the torches by which all the guests were lighted along the hill-paths was very pretty from their verandah.

"Marian," she called out, "the people are beginning to leave. Some one is coming up our path."

"Oh, it is only the new people--a judge or something and his wife--who have taken Hilltop Hall. But I shall have finished before they pa.s.s the gate. I should like to see what they are like."

But long before the usual procession--a gentleman on a pony, a lady in a _jampan_, and torchbearers and servants _ad libitum_--which Honour was expecting could have reached the gate, it was opened and two people came up the steep path to the bungalow. By the light of the torch carried before them by a servant, Honour recognised Lady Antony, with a burnouse thrown over her evening dress, and her husband. Her heart stood still, for such a visit could only mean bad news. Sir Edmund and his wife were fond of dropping in informally on their young neighbours, but to leave their guests, at an important entertainment in their own house--this was unheard of. Honour ran to the top of the steps to meet them.

"Oh, what is it?" she cried, lowering her voice so that it should not reach Marian. "Is it papa?"

"Sir Arthur is well. I have a letter from him," said Sir Edmund.

"Your mother is also in good health."

"Then who is it?" demanded Honour fearfully. "Is it either of my brothers? Oh, not--not Charles?"

"Hush! let me break it to her," said Lady Antony, as Marian's pretty sparkling face, the eyes wide with astonishment, appeared at the window. "Dear Marian," she took the girl's arm and led her back into the room, "I have something to say to you."

"What was it--cholera?" Honour was asking with dry lips of Sir Edmund as they stood on the verandah.

"No, unfortunately." Honour's eyes met his in perplexity. "It was murder. This morning I received news that Captain Cowper and Mr Nisbet had been wounded in a street-tumult at Agpur, but that Cowper's injuries were so slight he did not wish his wife alarmed about them.

To-night your father sends a runner to say that the poor fellows were pursued and murdered outside the city."

"How dreadful!" was all Honour could say.

"Dreadful indeed," said Sir Edmund gloomily. "I have no doubt that Sher Singh will be able to clear himself of any complicity in the crime, but I fear he must have shown culpable weakness. And weakness is difficult to distinguish from wickedness at a time when men's pa.s.sions are excited, as they are bound to be by this news."

"But what does it signify about Sher Singh? It is poor Charles we have to think of, and poor, poor Marian!" cried Honour indignantly. Sir Edmund's eyes looked beyond her.

"Pardon me; we have the whole question of the treatment of native states, the whole principle of justice to the native, to think of.

Eyes blinded by the natural, though unholy, desire for revenge are little fitted to see clearly. There is grave reason to fear that even now hasty steps have been taken, which may compromise our future action. I understand that young Charteris crossed the frontier, or was about to cross it, on the news of the outbreak. My brother reports that he has ordered him to return immediately, but it is almost impossible that the harm has not been done."

"What harm?" demanded Honour. "Mr Charteris hoped to save poor Charles, of course. Then, when he knew he was too late for that, he would try to rescue his body."

Sir Edmund looked at her with a kind of despair for her feminine obtuseness. "That is quite out of the question," he said, "and Charteris knows it. If he went on, it would be----"

"You don't mean that Marian will never know where her husband is buried--never be able to visit his grave?"

"It is highly probable. My dear young lady, what can it signify where our vile bodies lie? They are in G.o.d's keeping, whether cast out on the face of the ground or laid in a churchyard at home."

"Oh, don't!" Honour could have shaken Sir Edmund. "Can't you see?

Oh, please don't say anything of that kind to Marian, as if she had not enough to bear already."

"I do not think I introduced the subject----"

"I must see how poor Marian is," interrupted Honour, and left him hastily. She had a momentary vision of her sister sobbing in Lady Antony's arms, but a warning hand upraised forbade her to enter the room, and she returned unwillingly to Sir Edmund, who had forgotten all about the difference of opinion in the hurry of his thoughts.

"I shall go down to-morrow night," he said, as though speaking to himself. "I cannot be sure of James when it is a question of keeping these young fellows in order. Charteris must return at once, of course, and one can only hope that he may not have done irreparable harm."

"What harm could he do, with only a few men, against Sher Singh's whole army?" demanded Honour.

"The harm of making it appear that the case has been prejudged. Sher Singh may have been innocent of all but cowardice, but to send an army against him without inquiry will force him in self-defence to throw himself into the arms of the war-party. He must be approached without show of force, and his life guaranteed to him if he will consent to submit his conduct to an impartial court of inquiry--such as the Durbar here."