“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!