Read Ebook: The Path to Honour by Grier Sydney C

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Ebook has 1404 lines and 103045 words, and 29 pages

CHAP.

THE PATH TO HONOUR.

The time was towards the close of the 'forties of the nineteenth century, and the place the city of Ranjitgarh, capital of the great native state of Granthistan, which was not yet a British possession, but well on the way to becoming one. This ultimate destiny was entirely undesired by the powers that were, who had just appointed Colonel Edmund Antony--a fanatical upholder of native rights, according to his enemies--as British Resident and protector of the infant prince occupying the uneasy throne. The task of regenerating Granthi society from the top, much against its will, and welding its discordant elements into a peaceful, prosperous, and contented buffer state against encroaching Ethiopia on the north, promised to be no easy one, but Colonel Antony was undertaking it confidently, with the support of two or three of his brothers and a picked band of assistants drawn from the army and Civil Service. That moral suasion might be duly backed up by physical force, ten thousand British and Indian troops, under the command of a Peninsular veteran, General Sir Arthur Cinnamond, were garrisoning the citadel of Ranjitgarh and holding the lines of Tej Singh in the suburbs. The city thus overawed Colonel Antony was wont to call the wickedest place in Asia, in blissful ignorance of the sins not only of distant Gamara, but of towns much nearer home. Its streets were filled with a swaggering disbanded soldiery that had faced the might of England and the Company in four pitched battles during the last decade, shameless women peered from its every lattice, and its defence of religion took the form of frequent bloodthirsty "cow rows," but he saw in its wickedness no insuperable bar to the success of his policy. In twelve years or so the British would retire, leaving a reformed nation to govern itself. Meanwhile, in order to emphasise the transient nature of the occupation, a Mohammedan tomb served as the English church, and a single house of moderate size was made to accommodate the Resident and all his assistants, becoming the scene of as much hard work and high endeavour as might have sufficed to redeem an empire.

On an inner courtyard of the Residency there looked out a number of small rooms, each of which was shared by two young men, who had much ado to bestow themselves and their possessions in the limited space and the section of verandah that appertained to it. One room was much like another, with its camp-beds and table, and its miscellaneous assortment of camel-trunks and tin cases piled up at the back or serving as seats; and each verandah was graced by two long chairs, usually to be found in sociable proximity, with a view to the better enjoyment of the occupants' brief periods of leisure. On one particular verandah, however, the chairs were placed as far apart as space would permit, and turned away from each other, so that Lieutenant Robert Charteris and Lieutenant Henry Gerrard, of the Bengal Fusiliers and the Company's Engineers respectively, might each delude himself into the thought that he was alone in his glory. This arrangement was of the newest, but it was already causing keen delight in the circles which had known the two young men as inseparable friends. Born no farther apart than the Rectory and Hall of a country village, they had learnt together under Gerrard's father, the Rector, entered Addiscombe together, and passed out at the same time, Gerrard with an array of medals which secured him one of the coveted commissions in the Engineers, and Charteris, undistinguished save by proficiency in games and universal popularity, slipping contentedly into the Infantry. Appointed to the same station, they had seen a certain amount of active service in company, and continuing to gain the good opinion of those in high places, Gerrard as a promising scientific soldier and Charteris as a born leader of men, had both enjoyed the distinction of being selected by Colonel Antony as his assistants at Ranjitgarh. But here discord stepped between them in the fair form of Miss Honour Cinnamond, the youngest daughter of the General commanding the Division, and after edifying the station for some time by their ardent rivalry, Charteris and Gerrard were no longer on speaking terms. The station regarded it as an excellent joke, but to Colonel Antony, who took life seriously, it was a scandal and a sin, to be ended at once and peremptorily. Knowing his man, he had on this particular day announced his ultimatum to Gerrard.

"When is this foolishness going to end?" he asked impatiently, after the two young men had passed each other in his presence without a sign of recognition--"this breach between you and Charteris, I mean?"

"I would advise you not to reckon upon that. I am thinking strongly of sending Charteris back to his regiment."

"But the disgrace, sir!" Gerrard was thunder-struck. "You said yourself that he was so well fitted for this work. It suits him too, and no mistake."

Colonel Antony frowned at the slang. "Is it possible that you perceive any good in him?" he asked coldly.

"Why, sir,"--Gerrard was too much perturbed in mind to attempt to answer the question,--"he could never go back contentedly to ordinary subaltern's work after this. He will do something desperate--perhaps even get transferred to the Bombay side, and volunteer for Khemistan."

He spoke with bated breath, for to the Antony brothers and all their circle the neighbouring province of Khemistan was a region of outer darkness, ruled by two fallen angels bearing the names of General Sir Henry Lennox and Major St George Keeling. It was a point of honour to assist their labours by harrying them with a constant dropping fire of minutes and remonstrances, with an occasional round-shot in the shape of interference on the part of the Supreme Government, deftly engineered from Ranjitgarh. And the pity of it was that the men thus thwarted with the purest possible motives were carrying on a similar work, and in the same spirit, as their opponents, but--and here came the line of cleavage--on different methods. Colonel Antony's grave dark face was immovable.

"It is for you to save him if you choose, Gerrard. What! do you think that I will allow the work here--the regeneration of the Granthi state--to be endangered by petty, miserable squabbles between my assistants? I have seen too much of support withheld at critical moments because one man had a grudge against another. Here we are all brothers. If Charteris intends to keep up this enmity, he must go."

"But if he is to blame, sir, so am I," confessed Gerrard reluctantly.

"I am glad to hear you say so. There can be no difficulty, then, in your admitting as much to him. I own I had thought that since you were more likely to be soon in a position to marry, he was probably the trespasser on your ground. The young lady favours him, then?"

"No, sir, neither of us." Gerrard spoke bitterly, but Colonel Antony brought his fist down upon the table with a resounding thud.

"What! you stand on the same footing, neither has cause for jealousy of the other, and yet this miserable alienation continues? You are indeed to blame, Gerrard. Go and ask your comrade's pardon, appeal to the memories of your youth and his, engage with him to bear this common disappointment as gentlemen, as Christians! No man living has more cause to be grateful for the blessing of a good wife than I, but I trust I should have been granted sufficient resolution to live solitary for ever had I perceived that my happiness was likely to mean a brother's misery, and imperil the hopes of a nation. You are not called even to make such a renunciation, since the matter is taken out of your hands--merely to acquiesce in a decision not your own."

"But if I am to blame, sir, so must Charteris be," protested Gerrard, feeling, as the Resident's associates not infrequently did, that Colonel Antony's standard was too high for this wicked world.

"That is quite possible. He believes that you have injured him?"

"I suppose so, sir."

"And he is conscious that he has injured you?"

"I can't say, sir. How should I know?"

"Then your duty is clear. Whether his conscience is awakened or not is uncertain, but you feel that you have, though unwittingly, done him an injury. Go and repair it, leaving him to find out his part in the matter for himself."

It was this conversation that Gerrard was uncomfortably turning over in his mind on the verandah. The natural man in him rebelled, very naturally, against humbling himself to Charteris, who was at least as much to blame as he was, and had made his resentment offensively evident. But it was Charteris who would suffer if a reconciliation was not effected in some way. The argument was conclusive, as Colonel Antony had foreseen it would be. Gerrard looked round the corner of his chair, and rather sheepishly said, "Bob!"

There was no answer from Charteris, but his legs, the only part of him that was visible, seemed to take on an air of indignant protest. Gerrard tried again. "Bob, look here! I want to tell you something."

This time Charteris sat up, exhibiting an angry countenance and a rough head. "Don't want to hear it," he growled. "Hang it! can't a man be left in peace in his own quarters?"

"No, but--I say, Bob," repeated Gerrard, feverishly anxious to anticipate the impending move, "the Colonel has been speaking to me--pitched it uncommon strong, he did. Do wait and hear what I have to say! Why should we go on making asses of ourselves over a girl who hasn't a civil word for either of us?"

"Last night," said Gerrard laconically. Charteris came a step nearer.

"Will you kindly tell me," he said, addressing creation generally, "exactly what that girl wants? Hal, I could have sworn it was you when she refused me."

"And until she refused me, I could have sworn it was you. Pretty clear she don't want either of us, ain't it? In fact, I may as well tell you, as she doesn't seem to have done it, that she said she had no intention of marrying at all."

"Fudge!" cried Charteris, quite in the vein of the immortal Mr Burchell. "Then she's here on false pretences. What does a spin. come out for but to get a husband? No, you mark my words, my boy; she's waiting for a bachelor Governor-General!"

Gerrard opened his lips to protest, but not feeling called upon to repeat the whole of his conversation with Miss Cinnamond, closed them again. "Anyhow," he said at last, rather awkwardly, "as we're in the same boat, don't you think we might come to an agreement of some sort, and do people out of a little of the fun they're having over us? 'Our Mr James' told the Colonel to-day that we wanted our heads knocking together."

"James Antony is a coarse brute, and I should uncommonly like to see him try it!" said Charteris, with concentrated fury. Then he came and stood over Gerrard, and looked at him curiously. "Were you going to suggest that we should come to an agreement to give up all thoughts of her?" he asked with extreme calmness.

"No, not for a moment."

"I'm glad to hear that, because I shouldn't think of doing it. I mean to go on asking her, over and over again, until she accepts me."

"And so do I," cried Gerrard, starting up, stung out of his usual quietness of manner. They glared at each other angrily for a moment, then Charteris laughed rather unsteadily.

"Basis for an agreement is rather wanting, ain't it? I regard you as a person of ordinary sanity, so I don't imagine you were going to propose either that I should nobly resign her in your favour, or you in mine. Then what on earth is there left to do?"

"We have to think of her as well as ourselves," said Gerrard, trying to steady his voice. "She may not marry at all, as she said"--Charteris snorted--"or she may marry some one else, neither of us. And I am sure we should both rather see her married to some one else, and happy, than marry her ourselves and know that she wasn't happy."

The construction of the sentence was involved, but its meaning was clear. Charteris flung up his head contemptuously. "You're wrong there," he said. "Speak for yourself. I want to see her married to me, and I'd undertake to make her happy. I shall be an uncommon good husband, I can tell you. What are you laughing at, pray?"

"I'm not laughing--at least, not exactly," gasped Gerrard, restraining himself with difficulty. "Forgive me, old fellow. It was the picture of you saying to the future Mrs Charteris, 'Be happy, or I'll know the reason why,' that overcame me."

Charteris looked deeply offended, but after a moment joined in the laugh. "Of course I know I can't put it pretty, as you could," he admitted grudgingly. "But I mean to marry her, and make her happy too."

"And so do I," said Gerrard again. "But it's quite clear she can't marry both of us, and mayn't marry either of us, ain't it? Well, what I say is, let us carry the affair through decently, so that the best man may win, if either of us wins at all. That appeals to you, doesn't it?"

"Not a bit," said Charteris promptly. "You are the best man."

Charteris, leaning against a pillar of the verandah, looked down at him and laughed. "If I didn't know you for a cunning old weasel, I should put you down as jolly green, Hal. Suppose she should meanwhile intimate, in the most unimaginably proper and delicate way, a preference for either of us?"

"For the present one or the absent one?" asked Gerrard drily. "Well, in either case, I think the present one ought to let the absent one know, before taking any action. But don't look so blue. You forget that we shall both be in our districts, at a safe distance from Ranjitgarh, for six months at least."

"And in the meantime she may marry some one else."

"Then we shan't have lost our friendship as well as her."

Charteris clapped him on the shoulder with a laugh. "I believe you, my boy! You don't know what a bore it has been this last fortnight, remembering what was between us whenever I wanted to tell you anything. Done with you, then, subject to necessary modifications to be agreed upon from time to time by mutual consent, and to the approval of the lady."

"But you wouldn't tell her?" cried Gerrard, aghast.

"Wouldn't I, just? Why, how is she to keep our joint memory green against the assaults of eligible subcommissioners and fat Commissariat colonels, unless she has this to remember us by? Hang suffering in silence! Let her know what fine fellows she has got waiting on her nod."

"Well, you can tell her," unwillingly.

"But she may not choose to grant us an opportunity."

Charteris winked in the most vulgar manner. "What'll you take on it? Do you think she don't know she has set you and me by the ears? If not, old Mother Jardine will soon enlighten her. And then--oh, my revered Hal, can you doubt what her first move will be? To reconcile us, my boy, as if we were two dirty little snivelling urchins in her village school at home! Will she make us shake hands? Oh, ain't it glorious!"

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