Mr. Jervis, Vol. 3 (of 3)

When it became known at the club, and subsequently all over Shirani, that young Jervis had suddenly disappeared the night of the bachelors’ ball, great was the sensation.

No, no, there was no suspicion of foul play; there were his servants to be questioned. Jan Mahomed, his respectable, grey-bearded attendant, had declared that the night his master had come home, he had got straight from his evening clothes into his riding things, and had taken the grey pony and galloped away into the darkness. Whither? How could he say? holding out a pair of lean, empty hands, with a gesture of pitiable ignorance. He made no mention of the letter; for this prudent retainer had lived with bachelor sahibs before.

Mrs. Langrishe and Lalla were for once agreed. They were convinced that Mr. Jervis had gone further than he had intended with Miss Gordon, and to repair the error, had subsequently put miles between them—was probably by this time on blue water. But they did not venture to air this opinion openly; it was reserved for “ladies only.” Major Langrishe had laughed it to scorn; and as for Toby Joy, he and Lalla almost had a quarrel on the subject—their very first quarrel.

“Jervis to propose to a girl, and then run away!” he cried indignantly. “About the last fellow in Shirani to do such a mean trick. Jervis is a gentleman to the soles of his boots, and a real good chap, worth fifty of Waring.”

“Yes, so we all learn now, when it’s rather late in the day,” retorted Lalla, sarcastically.

“You mean about the money! But I mean in other ways. He took it awfully well the day I nearly smashed up him and Mrs. Sladen; you saw that yourself! He certainly lay low with regard to the fact of his being wealthy. He is the least ostentatious fellow I ever met, and as straight as a die, a complete contrast to the great Clarence, who has been playing the deuce up at Simla, by all accounts, and making ducks and drakes of any quantity of coin.”

“Well, at least, we know where he is, and what he is doing!” retorted Lalla. “But no one can say the same of the cousin. Where is he, and what is he doing? He was always very close about himself, and I consider the whole thing most suspicious. Supposing a man proposed for me.”

“Yes, supposing a man proposed for you,” repeated Toby, edging nearer to the lady.

“And I accepted him. Now, don’t look so utterly idiotic, for mercy’s sake! And he simply took to his heels and ran away, would I not think that peculiar conduct? I must say Honor Gordon takes it better than I should, under the circumstances.”

“How soon are you going to get rid of that fellow Gloster?” inquired Toby irrelevantly.

Sir Gloster was bringing a tedious convalescence to an end, and taking daily airings in Mrs. Langrishe’s rickshaw; and people, who were disappointed of a wedding in one quarter, were eagerly expecting to hear of one in another.

“I don’t know,” coquettishly. “Perhaps I may never get rid of him!”

“You know you only say that to make me wretched. You don’t really mean it, do you?” pleaded Toby, with such a look of misery on his usually merry face, that Miss Paske burst into an uncontrollable scream of laughter, and said—

“Toby, how can you be so exquisitely silly?”

The few days Mark Jervis had written of had grown into ten, and he had almost slipped out of people’s minds, save when a string of ponies being led along by their syces, and wearing smart jhools, with the initials M. J., brought him momentarily to remembrance.

And now Captain Waring suddenly reappeared. He came direct from Simla, back to despised Shirani, and in anything but his usual cheery spirits. How he had cursed his coolies and ponies on the way up! What a life the débonnaire Clarence had led his miserable servants, as if the poor wretches were responsible for his discomfiture, his bad luck, his ruin, for it had come to that—and it was a desperate man, who spurred his distressed country-bred pony up the last two miles of the dusty cart road.

He was surprised to find Haddon Hall tenantless; but when the bearer explained how “a Pahari had brought a note, and his master had gone ‘ek dum,’” i.e. on the spot, he nodded his head sagaciously, and appeared to understand all about it. What he could not comprehend was Mark’s prolonged absence. “Ten days gone,” Mahomed said; two days, were he in Mark’s shoes, would be amply sufficient time to devote to his eccentric parent.

Clarence was in a bad plight, and almost at the end of his resources, which had hitherto been as unfailing as the widow’s cruse. He had gambled recklessly, with stronger men than himself; he had thrown good money after bad, in the usual wild attempt to recover both. His I.O.U.’s and debts of honour and lottery accounts came to a large total; he would be posted in a few days if he did not pay up. As to other debts, they were legion—shop bills, club and mess accounts, wages—they poured down on him in all directions, ever since that little brute Binks had peached at Simla and spoiled everything. Miss Potter had bitterly upbraided him, and subsequently snubbed him unmistakably; the men at the club looked coldly on him; the high players in the card-room had seemed stiff and curiously averse to his “cutting in.” People suddenly stopped talking when he joined them; yes, he was at a crisis in his life, a crisis brought on by his own insane recklessness, and raging passion for play. He had come expressly to Shirani to get Mark to assist him; if he failed him, if he refused to stretch out a hand, and drag him back from the gulf of insolvency and disgrace, on the brink of which he tottered, down he must go, and be swept away and swallowed up, among the thousands and thousands who have similarly gone under!

After a bath, a meal, and a smoke, Captain Waring felt better, and set to work to think things out steadily, and to pull himself together. He had sold his own ponies and guns, their price was a sop to his most urgent creditors. He would now proceed to dispose of Mark’s battery. Yes, they were fine weapons—he would put them and the ponies on the notice board at the club at once—the price of them would pay their passages and immediate expenses; Mark’s £500 would cover all debts; he had not a rupee left at the agent’s, and he would make Mark come home at once. It was true that their year’s leave had yet four months to run, this was the middle of June, but he had made India too hot to hold him for the second time. The sooner he set about winding up affairs the better, and he rose on the spur of the moment, resolved to cast an eye over his cousin’s saleable effects.

He went into Jervis’s room, the smaller and worst of the bedrooms, and very plainly furnished. There was a bare camp bed, a rickety chest of drawers, a washed-out dhurrie on the floor, also a long row of boots; a couple of saddles on a stand, and a first-rate battery of guns—“a double-barrel central-fire breach-loader, by Purdy, that will fetch 250 rupees; a 500 express, by Lancaster, 400 rupees; 8-bore rifle, 600 rupees; rook rifle, 100—say, 1300 rupees,” was his mental calculation.

When he had examined these, a parcel on the chest of drawers arrested his attention; there was also a programme. He took it up and looked it over; he was extremely inquisitive in such small matters. The card was full, and opposite three dances were scribbled the initials “H. G.”

“Humph!” he muttered aloud. “So that is going on!” And as his gaze travelled to a ladylike parcel in silver paper—“What the dickens is this?”

He promptly unrolled it, and beheld a most superior white ostrich feather-fan, with the monogram H. G. on the handle. Captain Waring unfurled it, fanned himself slowly, folded it up once more, and said—

“A feather shows how the wind blows, Mark my boy! Well, I’ll go over to the club and hear what is going on, look up the mail steamers, and offer your ponies and rifles, my fine fellow. You will have to come home with me sooner than you think, and I’ll get great kudos from the uncle for carrying you off from a dangerous entanglement—in other words, from H. G.”

And Captain Waring sauntered out to the stables in a surprisingly good humour.

“I’m sorry he has got the grey with him!” he muttered to himself; “the grey is a long way the best of the three! The grey is worth five hundred rupees.”

Strange to say, the grey, carrying his owner, arrived home that same day about four o’clock, much to the bearer’s joy. His master spent the afternoon packing, making arrangements, giving orders, writing letters. He announced that he was going away again the next morning, and Jan Mahomed and his son were to follow with all his baggage. In future he would live with his father near Ramghur.

Jan Mahomed received this astounding piece of information in the usual native fashion, merely with a stolid face and a long salaam.

Yes, his choice was made, the die cast, to Major Jervis’s intense satisfaction, and to Fernandez Cardozo’s intense amazement. The former had been ill, and had detained his son from an earlier return to Haddon Hall to wind up his affairs, and open his letters, the latter including one from his uncle, which had been lying on the writing-table for a whole week. It said—

As Mark looked up from this letter he met the scrutinizing black eyes of Jan Mahomed which were fixed upon his face.

“This sahib has been ill,” he said, severely. “Jungle fever getting?”

“No, Jan, I am all right. This is the day the English dâk goes out, and I want you to take a letter to the post for me, it will be ready in twenty minutes, and send word to the Captain Sahib, that I have come back.”

Then he drew his writing-case towards him and began a letter to his uncle. Evidently this letter was not an easy composition, in fact, he had already written it several times at Ramghur, and then instantly destroyed it, but it must be written somehow, and now. The post left within the hour. At length he wrote—

This letter, hastily written, with numerous erasures, the writer did not trust himself to read over, but thrust it into an envelope, addressed and despatched it on the spot, as if he almost feared that he might be tempted to recall it, and change his mind.