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.