CHAPTER XXII.
TOBY JOY’S SHORT CUT.
Honor Gordon and Sir Gloster sent their ponies on ahead—as the path was all downhill—and elected to walk. To tell the truth, the gentleman was a nervous rider, and greatly preferred pedestrian exercise. It was an ominous fact, that whereas Sir Gloster had closely accompanied Miss Gordon and her escort on their way to the picnic—so much so, indeed, as to be almost always within earshot—he now brusquely shook off any of the party who evinced a desire to attach themselves to him and his companion.
“Miss Paske was most amusing as a fortune-teller and all that sort of thing,” he remarked, “but were you not rather uneasy about your future?”
“Not a bit”—contemptuously kicking a little cone downhill; “she made it up as she went along.”
“She was awfully down on young Jervis. What a career she painted for him, poor beggar!”
“The wish was doubtless father to the thought. She does not like him.”
“And the idea of her saying that you would not be married till you were forty! As if you could not marry to-morrow, if you chose!”
Honor began to feel uncomfortable and to long for the presence of a third person: she made a lively gesture of dissent as she prepared to scramble down an exceedingly steep and greasy footpath.
“You know you could,” pursued Sir Gloster, seizing her hand, by way of giving her assistance, and nearly precipitating her to mother earth. “For example, you might marry me.”
Miss Paske had just assured him that he would succeed in his aims, and he was resolved to test her prophecy without delay.
“Oh, Sir Gloster!” exclaimed the young lady, vainly trying to release her fingers.
“You will let me keep this dear little hand for ever? I fell in love with you almost from the first. You are beautiful and musical, and would understand at once the fitness of things. My mother would like you. Do you think you could care for me, and all that sort of thing?”
“Oh, Sir Gloster,” she repeated, pausing on the path, a sudden red suffusing her cheeks, and looking at him with real dismay, “I like you—but not in that way.”
“Perhaps I have been too sudden. If I were to wait a week or two. Let me talk to your aunt?”
“No, no, please”—with anxious repudiation. “It would make no difference. I am sorry, but I never, never could care for you as you wish.”
Mrs. Sladen and Mark Jervis, who were behind, descending the same zigzag path, happened to be immediately above the pair. Sounds ascend, and they were at the moment silent, when suddenly, through the leaves, and the cool evening air, a voice seemed wafted to their feet, which said—
“I have been too sudden. If I were to wait a week or two. Let me talk to your aunt.”
Mrs. Sladen and her companion looked straight at one another, and became guiltily crimson. There was a moment’s pause, ere the man exclaimed—
“There is no use in our pretending we are deaf! We have just heard what was never meant for other ears, and I’m awfully sorry.”
“So am I,” she answered; “sorry in one way, glad in another.”
“I doubt if Mrs. Brande would share your joy,” he retorted with a significant smile.
“Of course we will keep it a dead secret.”
“Of course”—emphatically. “On the whole,” with a short laugh, “I am not sure that it is not safer to write.”
“Is this what you will do?” she inquired playfully.
“I don’t know, but I certainly have had a lesson not to try my fate coming home from a crowded picnic. What a dismal walk those two will have! Can you imagine a more unpleasant tête-à-tête? What can they talk about now?”
“Their walk, and every one’s, seems ended here,” remarked Mrs. Sladen, pointing to a crowd of coolies, dandies, men, ladies, and ponies who were all jammed together and making a great noise.
“Of course, this is Toby Joy’s short cut, and most likely a practical joke,” exclaimed Jervis. “I believe he was at the bottom of the lost lunch too.”
The much-boasted short cut was likely to prove the proverbial “longest way round,” and now afforded a very disagreeable surprise to the company of merry pleasure-seekers. They had been descending a densely wooded shoulder of a hill, with the cheery confidence of ignorance, to where at one point an artificially banked-up and stone-faced road crossed a deep gorge.
The path, owing to the action of the rain, had slipped down, and there was now but a precarious footing across the breach, barely wide enough for a single pony—and that a steady one. Above, towered the hill, almost sheer; below, lay the blue shale precipice, clothed in fir trees, bushes, and brambles. To a hill coolie, or a person with a good head, it was passable; at least twenty had gone over, including Mrs. Brande in her dandy, who waved her hand jauntily as she was carried across. She was a plucky woman, as far as precipices were concerned.
Some who were nervous hesitated on the brink—they were torn between two conflicting emotions, hunger and fear; many were actually beginning to retrace their steps. Toby Joy, on his hard-mouthed yellow “tat,” was riding backwards and forwards over the chasm to demonstrate how easy it was, and bragging and joking and making himself so conspicuous that some of his misguided victims—including Colonel Sladen—would not have been at all sorry if he had vanished down the Khud.
Colonel Sladen’s hunger stimulated his temper. The traditional bear with a sore head was a playful and gentle animal, in comparison to him, at the present moment. He had been a noted horseman in his day, but being now much too heavy to ride, he was fond of bragging of his ponies, and thrusting that light weight, his unhappy wife, into positions that made her blood run ice, and then he would boast and say, “Pooh! the pony is a lamb! My wife rides him, rides him with a thread, sir;” and he would straddle his legs, and swagger about the club, and subsequently sell the animal at a high figure.
“A nasty place to ride across! Not a bit of it—it’s safer than doing it on foot. These hill ponies never make mistakes.” This he had remarked in his gruffest tone to Captain Waring, whose fair companion was literally trembling on the brink. “Wait—and just you watch how my wife will do it, on the Budmash—she will show you all the way. Milly,” he bellowed, looking up the hill, “come along, come along.”
“Oh,” she exclaimed, turning a face as white as death on Mark, “I really dare not ride across that place. I have no nerve now, and this is the shying pony.”
“Come on! Don’t you see that you are stopping up the road?” roared her lord and master, indicating the various people who were sneaking back. Then, as she joined him, he added in a lower tone—
“I would not be such a coward to save my life.”
“I am a coward,” she muttered to Mark with a ghastly smile, “and I doubt if even that will save my life;” and she began to put her pony in motion.
“It is only fifty yards across,” said Jervis, encouragingly; “it will be over in two minutes. I’ll get off and lead your pony, and I guarantee to take you over safely.”
“Are you going?” cried Colonel Sladen, impatiently. “Get along, and give the other women a lead. Oh!” to her escort, who had dismounted, “are you going too? Quite unnecessary.”
There was a sudden cessation of talking, argument, grumbling, chaff, and laughter. A curious silence fell on both sides of the bad bit. People looked on with awed, grave, or excited faces, as if they were witnessing some sensational drama, whilst they watched with breathless interest a notoriously timid little woman, on a notoriously ill-tempered pony, risking her life in obedience to her husband’s commands. She might get across safely, then again she might not. The chances were about even.
“Come along,” said Jervis, cheerfully, taking the Budmash by the head, with an air that showed that pink-eyed, red-haired gentleman that he was not going to stand any nonsense.
“Shut your eyes,” continued the young man, “and imagine that you are on a turnpike road; you will be at the other side before you really think that you have started. We are halfway across now.”
Yes, half of the journey had been satisfactorily accomplished. The Budmash led like a lamb; the tension of expectation had relaxed. Spectators were beginning to breathe freely, and even to turn away, when all at once there was a sound of galloping, a wild yell, a crash, a rattle of shale, and Mrs. Sladen, the pony, and Jervis had vanished down the Khud! There had been a momentary vision of two struggling people, four madly kicking shining shoes, and they had disappeared into a chasm of trees, and were completely lost to sight.
And what had caused the accident?
Why, Toby Joy, of course. Toby, who had been indulging in an outburst of tomfoolery, and riding backwards and forwards, dangling his feet out of the stirrups, and giving view-halloes, had taken too many liberties with a long-suffering animal—who was extremely anxious to get home, who was on the wrong side of the road for the tenth time, and who, when he at last “got a lead” from another pony, was simply not to be denied. His reckless master had left the reins on his neck, being, like every one else, an eager spectator of the martyrdom of Mrs. Sladen. Cupid had suddenly dashed forward, thundered down the declivity, cannoned violently against the Budmash, and hurled him and his companions into space.
For a moment there was an absolute silence, which was broken by Colonel Sladen, who roared out—
“My pony is killed!”
“And your wife!” cried Honor, who was standing beside him. “Is your wife nothing?” she repeated with passionate energy.
In a second a swarm of coolies, syces, and their masters, led (to do him justice) by Toby Joy, were clambering down the jungle. Though very steep, it was not a sheer descent, and presently there came a shout of “All right.”
The bushes, brambles, and long twining hill-creepers had broken the fall and saved them.
The first to be brought up was Mrs. Sladen, minus her hat, assisted by two gentlemen, and looking exceedingly white and small. Next came Jervis, with a streak of blood on his face and a torn coat. Last of all, the pony emerged, struggling, scrambling, driven, and dragged by about twenty energetic syces.
“You are not badly hurt, I hope?” said Honor, who had hurried across the broken path, and was the first to greet her friend as she was helped up to the bank.
“Not she,” rejoined Colonel Sladen, brusquely; “she has only had the breath knocked out of her! Give her some whisky, and she will be all right.”
As his wife sat down on a flat stone, and, after bravely trying to reassure every one, suddenly burst into loud hysterical sobbing, he added—
“How can you behave in this cry-baby way, Milly? You are not a bit hurt—it was all your own fault” (every misfortune or mistake was invariably “her own fault”). “If you had not stayed shilly-shallying, but started when I told you——”
“Oh, shut up, will you?” interrupted Jervis in a furious undertone.
Colonel Sladen became almost black in the face; but before he could recover his breath, Captain Waring broke into the group—
“Hullo, Mark, old chap, you are looking rather cheap—any bones broken?”
“I’m not much the worse. We had a wonderful escape; the brambles saved us, and the root of a big tree. My wrist——” becoming rather white.
“Your wrist!” repeated a doctor. “Let us have a look at it. Ah! and I see you have cut your head. Oh, ho! the wrist is fractured; a simple fracture—it won’t be much. I’ll set it now;” which he proceeded to do on the spot—an operation superintended by bystanders with deepest interest.
Colonel Sladen watched with jealous scrutiny to see if the patient would flinch; but no, alas! he was doomed to disappointment. To tell the truth, as far as he was concerned, he would not have minded if the insolent young hound had broken his neck.
Mrs. Brande, who was always well to the front in cases of accidents or sickness, had long abandoned her dandy, suggested one person’s flask, another person’s smelling-bottle, and was full of most anxious solicitude.
“I’ll be all right,” said Jervis, looking round the eager circle. “Well, before I’m twice married, as old nurses say, Miss Paske”—suddenly catching sight of her bright, questioning, little marmoset eyes—“it would have been only friendly of you to have prepared us for this!”
“It’s all very fine for you to laugh it off,” protested Mrs. Brande. “You just get into my dandy this instant. I can walk; indeed, it will do me good; and you shall come home with me straight, and I’ll nurse you.”
But Jervis declared that no nursing was required, and would not hear of this arrangement. When his wrist had been set, and tied up with splints of wood and various handkerchiefs, he got on his pony and jogged away as briskly as the best.
The recent scene had not occupied more than twenty-five minutes, and soon every one was en route, every one but Sir Gloster, who had mysteriously vanished from the crowd, and had been one of the earliest to retreat and hurry home. Wise Mrs. Langrishe, who had not gone by the short cut, had seen him trot stolidly past her, alone, looking extraordinarily solemn and morose, and drew her own conclusions. What a goose the girl had been! He might yet be caught at the rebound—stranger things had happened. Oh, if Lalla would only behave herself!
Two days after the great picnic, Mrs. Brande came into her drawing-room, where Mark Jervis, with his arm in a sling, was having tea with her niece and Mrs. Sladen. She looked quite flushed and upset as she said—
“What do you think, Honor? Here is Sir Gloster’s visiting card—P.P.C., sent by a servant. I hear he has gone away for good. Don’t you think he might have had the manners to call, after all the good dinners he has had here?” and she seemed on the verge of tears.
“But he did call, very often, aunt,” replied Honor, without raising her eyes from Ben.
“Well, he never came to say good-bye, and I met him yesterday at Manockjee’s buying tinned butter and European stores. He seemed to want to hide. I thought it was because he was ashamed of my seeing him bargaining down the butter and cheese. So I just went after him, to put him at his ease, but somehow I missed him. I think he got away through the verandah, where they keep the old furniture.”
“He has gone to the Snows, no doubt,” remarked Mrs. Sladen, exchanging a swift glance with her confederate.
“Has he? There is something very queer and sudden about the whole thing. I cannot make it out.”
She was not nearly as clever as Mrs. Langrishe, who had “made it out” at a glance, and held her tongue. Indeed, Mrs. Brande was almost the only person in Shirani who did not know that Sir Gloster Sandilands had proposed for her niece the day of the Great Starvation Picnic—and had been refused.