"But then one of us would have to put the other out of the way—eh, Hal?" said Charteris dolefully, as Mr James departed, his great shoulders still heaving with laughter.
* * * * * *
When Mr Nisbet and Captain Cowper left Ranjitgarh the following week, Gerrard went part of the way with them. They travelled by water, their respective escorts marching by land, and he would have a day or two to wait at one of the riverside towns until his men came up. The hot weather would soon begin, and the river was low, so that the progress of the boats was agreeably diversified by frequent groundings, now on the shore and now on a sandbank, and the heat and the glare of the water furnished an excuse for much grumbling. Nisbet was a quiet, inoffensive man, who found perpetual occupation and solace in writing, reading, re-reading and annotating innumerable documents, of which he seemed to carry a whole library about with him, but his contentment was powerless to infect his companions. Captain Cowper was low-spirited owing to the parting from his wife, for after inducing Sir Edmund and Lady Antony to postpone their return to the hills for two days that she might see him off, Marian had disgraced herself and her parents by making a scene—though happily not in public—at her husband's departure. Her frantic entreaties to him not to go, or if he must go, to take her with him, her dire forebodings of evil, had made it very hard for him to leave her; and when neither her father's anger, nor Lady Cinnamond's warnings that she would do herself harm, were able to quiet her sobs, Captain Cowper had been obliged to tear himself away from her clinging hands without a proper farewell. It was no comfort to picture her lonely misery in the hills, with no one but Honour, of whose tenderness he had the very lowest opinion, to act as confidant, and her husband spent many hours daily in writing letters, and making sketches of any object of interest that offered itself, for her benefit.
Little as he had in common with his two companions, Gerrard dreaded the moment when he would step ashore on the left bank of the Bari, thence to strike southwards and take up his new work at Habshiabad. The absolute isolation from men of his own colour which this would entail was not a prospect he could face with any pleasure. From Charteris he would now be separated by the whole breadth of Agpur, unless they both journeyed far to the south-west, where for a short distance the boundaries of Darwan and Habshiabad ran along opposite banks of the river Tindar, while of Nisbet and Cowper in Agpur itself it was unlikely that he would see anything, as the frontier dispute with which they were to deal concerned the other side of the state. Moreover, it was impossible not to feel that his work had been taken out of his hands and given to them to do. Whatever the situation in Agpur might be, he had contributed, however involuntarily, to make it what it was, and others were now about to take it in hand, without the advantage of his past experience, and with the drawback of inheriting whatever odium attached to him.
The evening before they were to reach Naoghat, Nawab Sadiq Ali's port on the Bari, and separate, they fastened up to the bank at a spot where there was no village, but only a few poor huts, and where a patch of marshy jungle held out the promise of wildfowl. Nisbet was busy with his office Munshi, completing a catalogue of papers relating to the affairs of Agpur, but Captain Cowper and Gerrard took their guns, and set off along the bank in opposite directions. The sport was poor, and after shooting a brace and a half of birds and walking a long distance, Gerrard was warned by the gathering darkness to retrace his steps. A white mass at the foot of a tree in one of the drier parts of the bog attracted his attention in the distance, and on coming near enough to see distinctly he found it was a respectably dressed elderly man sitting there motionless. As Gerrard approached, the old man rose and salaamed courteously, and disclosed himself as the scribe of the Rani Gulab Kur.
"O master of many hands, how is it I find you here?" asked Gerrard in surprise. "Are you waiting for a tiger to come and make a meal of you?"
"Nay, sahib, it is your honour I am awaiting. I bear a message from my mistress for your ear alone."
"But is her Highness in this neighbourhood? I should wish to wait on her and pay my respects."
"Her Highness is far away, sahib, but she does not forget the gratitude due to your honour for your faithfulness to the dead. When we passed through Ranjitgarh, it was told her that there was a project of marriage between your honour and the daughter of the General Sahib with the white hair, and she bade this slave note down the name, that she might, if opportunity offered, do good to the General Sahib and his family for your honour's sake. Hearing, then, that the Sahib who commands the troops going to Agpur is sister's husband to the daughter of the General Sahib, she judged it well to send a warning."
"Her Highness can hardly be so far away, after all, if she heard this news in time to send you to meet me here, O venerable one," said Gerrard.