Littell's Living Age/Volume 128/Issue 1648/The Dilemma - Part XVI
THE DILEMMA.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
Kirke's Horse was allowed only a brief respite from the Labours of campaign. It had scarcely settled down in its summer quarters when orders were received to be ready to march on active service with the first break of cold weather; and a few days before the appointed time, its commandant returned from the hills quite set up again by his visit, as active as ever, plunging eagerly into all the business of regimental equipment. In reply to Yorke's inquiries after Mrs. Falkland, he said that she too was in excellent health and spirits. Yorke of course expressed his pleasure at this, hardly knowing whether he was really gratified to hear it he had pictured her as pensive, though resigned, and yearning for sympathy and observed, for want of something better to say, that the events at the residency, and especially the death of her husband so soon after their marriage, must have been a great shock; to which Kirke replied that she had pretty well got over that. "Marriage, you see," he went on to say, "must be a different sort of thing from an ordinary love-affair, when a woman marries a man so much older than herself. It was hardly to be expected that my cousin should be very long getting over the loss of Falkland, poor fellow. By the way, she is never tired of talking about you, and can't say too much in your praise." Notwithstanding the pleasure this remark gave him, something in Kirke's hard way of talking jarred on Yorke's feelings; and yet, he asked himself, what could he wish more than that she should have forgotten her first love? Was not that exactly what he was hoping for? There was little more said between them about Olivia. Kirke was a reserved man on private affairs; and Yorke, not being sure if Olivia had told her cousin that she was in correspondence with him, did not mention it himself.
The regiment now marched southwards, six hundred strong, the vacancies having been more than filled up with picked recruits, equipped now as lancers, with three additional subaltern officers, all promising young fellows eager to distinguish themselves, and the whole body, men and horses, in splendid order. But this campaign, although laborious and fatiguing, was not productive of much in the way of hard fighting. The enemy's spirit was now broken, and the principal duty of the cavalry was to wear them down, to follow up the roving bands which still kept the field from place to place, giving no rest until they should be all cut up or dispersed. This work, which fell mainly to the cavalry, was calculated to try men's power of endurance, as well as the officers intelligence; but only one incident of the campaign shall be here mentioned, as it nearly occasioned at the time a quarrel between Yorke and his commanding officer, and led afterwards to serious consequences.
It was on the evening of a day marked by the surprise of a large body of the enemy, horse and foot, who had been followed up during a forced march persevered in for many days with only brief halts; the enemy had broken up after a slight struggle, and a destructive pursuit had been maintained all the afternoon, the pursuers indulging to the full the passion for taking life inherent in most human hearts, till the general in command, a man who seemed never to know what fatigue was himself, was fain to order a halt, the infantry being far behind, and the horses of the cavalry dead beat. Kirke's Horse were encamped for the night in front of the scattered column on a bare spot of ground interspersed with scanty bushes; and Kirke and Yorke, with one native officer and an orderly, were riding slowly along the front inspecting the pickets, when Kirke's quick eye detected some object behind a bush a little way in advance, and he rode towards it followed by the others. It proved to be a deserted palanquin, apparently, from the elaborate external gilding, belonging to a person of rank. After looking at it for a few moments, they were about to turn their horses heads backwards, when the orderly with the point of his lance suddenly pushed open one of the sliding doors, exposing a veiled figure sitting upright within.
"Holloa! said Kirke, some member of the zenana left behind. Here's a chance for you, Yorke — you might manage to console the lady, I daresay."
"She looks rather a stout party, replied Yorke; probably an ancient of days. What on earth are we to do with this poor old beebee? We cant leave her here to die in the jungle."
"It isnt a beebee at all, sahib," said the native officer, a swaggering young Patân, in his own language, who, catching the word beebee, had guessed the nature of the remark; and stooping down he pulled aside the shawl in which the face of the figure was enveloped, and displayed the features of a stout elderly man. "The shawl will suit me, he continued, whisking it off and placing it in front of his saddle. "And here's another for me," said the orderly, fishing up on the point of his lance the end of another shawl which was round the mans body, and then pulling it off. As he did so, a small box fell out and rolled on the ground, the lid opening at the same time. The contents seemed to be something white.
The orderly dismounted and picked the box up. He lifted the white substance off: it was cotton-wool, below which lay some ornaments set with stones, which glittered even in the twilight.
"Jewels!" said the man, with a grin, holding the box up to his colonel. Kirke took it from him, and held it out so that Yorke could see the contents. There were several layers of cotton, and jewels between each which seemed to be of value.
"Perhaps there are some more things worth having — just see," said Kirke to the man, who thereupon began to pull off the other garments of the occupant of the palanquin. He found a dagger with a jewelled hilt, some money rolled up in muslin round his waist, and a couple of gold drinking-vessels. Kirke told him to keep the money for himself, and to hand the dagger and vessels to the ressaldar; and, so saying, put the case of jewels in his pocket.
The captive meanwhile sat in the palanquin, holding up his joined hands in prayerful supplication, and constantly repealing the formula that Kirke was a protector of the poor and his father and mother.
"What is to be done with the rascal, sir?" said the ressaldar to Kirke, in his own language.
"Oh, we don't want any prisoners, of course," said the colonel, as he turned away and rode off; whereupon the ressaldar made a sign to the trooper, who, poising his lance for an instant as if to take aim, ran the man through the body as he still sat in the palkee with supplicating hands. The poor wretch fell back groaning and raising his arms as he writhed under the wound; but the trooper, drawing out his lance from the body, with a grim smile drove it in again through his chest, and, after a convulsive struggle, the body settled down into the stillness of death.
"That man must have been some one of mark," said Yorke to the colonel, as they rode away: "would it not have been worth while bringing him in as a prisoner?"
"The general would certainly have hung him in the morning; besides, our fellows are too tired to be bothered with guarding prisoners all night."
Well, I can run a pandy through with as much gusto as any man in fair fight, but I am getting sick of this executioners business in cool blood after the battle; it is beastly work."
"It must be done, though," said Kirke; "the rogues have given enough trouble already, without being allowed to get off free, and begin playing the mischief again."
"I suppose it is necessary, but it isn't pleasant, and the looting part of it is not much nicer. I declare I felt little better than a Pindaree robber when we were stripping that poor wretch. Happily one has the consolation of feeling that it is plundering for the benefit of the army generally, and only indirectly for one's self. That haul we have just made may turn out to be a good one for the prize-fund."
Kirke did not reply at once. After a pause he said, "I don't think it is expected that those who do all the work should hand in every trifle they pick up for the benefit of a lot of fellows who are pottering about, taking things easily, in the rear."
"I don't call jewellery a trifle."
"Jewellery is a big word; I suppose there is about enough to make a couple of trinkets for our respective lady-loves;" and, as Kirke said this, he looked towards his companion, smiling, as if in jest, but looking also somewhat eager to see how he would receive the suggestion. "However," he added, in a low tone — for they had reached the spot where the other officers were assembled — "you may leave me to make the report of the matter."
The mule which carried the light mess-equipment of the regiment had now come up, and a tin of English soup was already warming on the fire, while the troopers around were preparing their frugal meal of corn-flour, or contentedly munching the parched grain they had brought with them. The meal despatched, all who were not on duly lay down on the ground without blanket or cloaks — for the baggage had not come up — almost too tired to smoke their cheroots before falling asleep.
Next day Yorke spoke to his commanding officer, as they were riding along together, about the things taken the evening before, and said he supposed they would be given up to the prize-agents.
"You don't expect Futteh Khan and my orderly to disgorge the things I let them take?" said Kirke. "Their ideas on such points are not quite so nice as yours." And there was something of a sneer in the tone of his voice.
"No," replied Yorke; "the things they took will be kept by them, of course. I was thinking of the jewels." "My dear fellow, they are not worth making a fuss about. I suppose if you were to pick up an old pistol, or a grass-cutter's pony to replace the one you lost, you wouldn't feel that you had done the rest of the army out of their rights."
"But that is different. These jewels may be very valuable."
"Not much in that way, I fancy; but they are pretty little things, I admit. Look here," continued Kirke, taking the box out of his breast-pocket and holding it out towards Yorke — "look here, Yorke; you would like to take your choice, wouldn't you? Which will you have?" And Kirke's manner was such that it could not be said he was not speaking in jest, although it seemed as if he would certainly like to be taken at his word.
But Yorke, looking straight before him over his horse's head, merely waved away the offer, and said, "You are joking, colonel, of course; I take it for granted that you intend to hand the jewels over to the prize-agent."
"Oh, of course," replied the other, "I was only joking;" but he could not conceal from his manner that he felt as if he had sustained a rebuff; and the silence which followed as they rode along, was a little awkward on both sides.
Both officers, however, had plenty of work to occupy their attention, and Yorke had ceased to think about the matter when, a few weeks later, it was brought to his recollection.
He was detached from headquarters with one squadron of the regiment, at a station which had lately been reoccupied by the civil officers of government. The last embers of the great conflagration were now extinguished, and the detachment was peacefully encamped on an open space before the town, expecting orders to go into summer quarters. One evening Yorke was sauntering through the camp inspecting the horses picketed in two lines before the troopers' tents, while the ressaldar Futteh Khan attended him. The latter was dressed in his loose native garments, both of them being off duty and the inspection purely non-official, when Yorke noticed in his girdle the jewelled dagger which had been taken from the rebel in the palanquin.
"That is a handsome dagger," said Yorke in Hindustani, "and if those jewels are real it must be worth something."
"Ah, sahib, these little stones are mere trifles," replied the ressaldar; "it was the colonel sahib who carried off the loot. They say that the man whom we found in the palkee was the raja's dewân, and that the jewels were worth a lakh of rupees."
"So much the better," replied Yorke; "we shall all get the larger share when the prize-money comes to be distributed."
"So the colonel sahib had actually made them over to the prize-agent?" asked the man, respectfully enough, yet as if surprised to hear it; and the conversation arousing an uneasy feeling in Yorke's mind, he took the opportunity of a messenger going to regimental headquarters next day to ask Kirke about it.
"I take it for granted," he said at the end of a letter written about other matters — "that you have made over the jewels to the prize-agent as you said you intended to do; but the men in the regiment appear to be talking about the thing, and to suppose that they were worth far more than their real value; while I infer from Futteh Khan's manner that he thinks he ought to have had a share. The capture havnng been a joint one, it is perhaps now a little unfortunate that the things were not publicly given up, so that the men might have been without any ground for suspicion that we had taken any benefit by it. It would be a great satisfaction to hear from you that the transfer has been actually made. Pray excuse my troubling you about the matter." To which Kirke replied by the following postscript in his letter sent back by the messenger: "take your mind easy about the jewels, which were duly handed over to the proper party. They turned out to be trumpery things."
The great war having come to an end at last, and it being now the height of the hot season, the field force to which Kirke's Horse was attached was broken up, and the different regiments composing it, calling in their detachments, marched off to their respective summer quarters. Mustaphabad was the station allotted to Kirke's Horse, several hundred miles off, and not to be reached till long after the fierce Indian summer should have passed its greatest heat; but the men — veterans in campaigning, although young in years — set out on the long march in high spirits, for Mustaphabad was not far from the district in which the regiment was raised, and they might now expect to get furloughs to visit their homes. What strange chance is it, thought Yorke, which brings us back to the old eventful scenes? Can it be that the dream of my youth is really to be fulfilled, and that Olivia will be won to share my lot in that very place? a lot I just as I used to picture it, a humble home, if not quite the shabby cottage of my subaltern days. But she, too, has since then known discomfort and simple ways of life, and whatever place she lives in will be sufficiently adorned. Surely it must be a good omen which takes me there again! Plenty of time had the young man to build his castles in the air, searching over and over again in her letters for something substantial on which to erect a foundation for his hopes. At times it seemed as if her letters breathed a tenderness which, as if she was won already, at any rate invited him to declare his passion; and then, again, reading them under the influence of the reaction which would follow any excess of hopefulness, he thought he could detect only a spirit of resignation and sorrowful clinging to the memory of the past, which would render his tale of love an insult. These letters were of old date, for during the late campaign he had received no news from her. The regiment had, however, been wandering amid wild parts, difficult to communicate with; mails had been lost, and Olivia's letters might have miscarried — her notions about Indian geography and the movements of the different armies he knew to be somewhat vague, while he, for his part, had been too constantly on the move to write often; but now that they were marching along the main line of road, he would surely receive some news. Thus he thought and hoped, as the regiment slowly covered the long track, marching by night, and getting through the stifling day in their tents as best they could, for the heat seemed much harder to bear now that the excitement of active service was ended, and each camping-ground looking the exact counterpart of the last — a brown, barren, burnt-up plain.
Now and then they would come to a European station, where the officers of the famous regiment were sure of a hospitable reception from the residents, and would pass the day in the comparative coolness of a house, setting out again at midnight on the dusty road.
It was at one of these stations that Yorke heard for the first time of the death of Mr. Cunningham in England, which it appeared had been known in India for some weeks. This accounts for her silence, thought he; no wonder she had not spirits to write when bowed down with this fresh calamity. And how heartless my last letter to her must have seemed, for she could not have supposed that I was ignorant of what everybody in India seemed to know! And being full of the news, he naturally spoke to Kirke about it the first time they met. They were spending the day as guests at different houses, but were to dine together at a regimental mess, and he met his commandant when riding into the mess-garden at dusk. They had never once referred to Olivia in conversation since the first day after Kirke's return from the hills in the previous autumn. Yorke was not sure if the other had guessed the state of his own feelings, but Kirke was a man who was wont to speak somewhat contemptuously of women in general, and had often expressed the opinion that soldiers were spoilt by marriage; and Yorke thought he would not look favourably on the idea of having a married second in command, still less one married to his cousin. Indeed Yorke fancied he could detect a tone of pique in Kirke's manner when congratulating him on the high regard entertained for him by Olivia, which induced him to abstain from talking about her, still more from any expression of wonder at not getting letters from her; and a reserve of this sort once set up became every day more difficult to break through. Now, however, Yorke made the attempt.
"Have you heard the news, colonel?" he said, as the two met at the garden entrance, and rode slowly up the drive together to the mess-house. "Have you heard the news of poor Cunningham's death?"
"Oh yes, of course," replied Kirke; "I heard of that some weeks ago: I thought everybody knew it. A case of liver, I believe; he was very bad, as it turned out, when he went home."
"I only heard of it this afternoon. This will alter Mrs. Falkland's plans, I suppose, and even delay her journey home? I have understood that she has no near relations to whom she could go. It is a sad situation for her; I have been able to think of nothing else all day." When he said this, the young fellow felt himself like a selfish hypocrite, being sensible in reality of a sensation of rapture, as if the loss of her father brought her one step nearer to himself.
"Very good of you. I am sure," replied Kirke, drily, and speaking slightly through his nose, as was his manner when intending to be sarcastic. "Yes, indeed, it is difficult to say what she is to do under the circumstances, isn't it? A handsome young woman like her wants a protector of some sort, doesn't she?"
Here they had arrived at the mess- house, and the conversation perforce ended. Nor did Yorke feel disposed to renew it, for Ivirke's tone jarred on him. And the subject was not referred to again during the rest of the march.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
Mustaphabad was reached at last, some time after the rainy season had set in. It was still very hot, but the country had now put on its green mantle again, and was no longer a wilderness; and it seemed to Yorke another good omen that on the very day of their marching in, the English mail arrived with another batch of honours; Kirke was promoted to a full colonel, and Yorke made a C.B. The regiment was met on arrival by the general — for Mustaphabad was now the headquarters of a division — no less a person than our old friend Tartar, now Sir Montague Tartar, K.C.B., who came out to meet it at the head of his staff as a compliment to this distinguished corps: and after a brief inspection, and some praise bestowed for the excellent appearance of both men and horses after the long march, the regiment proceeded to occupy the quarters allotted them, the native cavalry lines on the right flank of the station, the officers taking possession of such of the vacant bungalows as they had engaged beforehand, — comfortable houses enough, especially by contrast with tents, which had been lately rethatched and repaired, and, with their neat gardens, looked none the worse for the mutiny damages. Kirke alone of the officers had not been able to make up his mind about hiring a house beforehand, and took possession of a couple of rooms in the mess-house until he could choose one for himself.
During the first few days after their arrival, regimental business kept all the officers employed. Horses had to be cast, and men's furlough papers made out, and arms overhauled and replaced: but when this was all set in train, and Yorke thought he could be spared, he asked Kirke to forward his application for the usual sixty days' leave.
"I can't let you go just now, my dear fellow," said Kirke, "for I am just going to take privilege leave myself, and we can't both be absent together. But you shall have your leave as soon as ever I come back."
Yorke thought this a little selfish, as Kirke had had long leave the previous season, and he not a day; however, the latter was commanding officer and could please himself, so there was no more to be said about it. And Yorke set himself to getting as best he could through the sixty days which had to be passed till his turn should come. It was pleasant to find that the station had quite recovered its ordinary aspect, for the ravages of the mutineers and plunderers who followed in their train, although awful to witness, had but a limited scope to work upon. The Anglo-Indian bungalow consists of substantial walls supporting a thatched roof, which, if it could be easily burnt, could also be easily replaced; this done and the walls whitewashed, the house looks as good as new, while the rapid growth of Indian vegetation soon obliterates any damage done to Indian gardens by trampling over the shrubs. The little bungalow at the other end of the station in the lines formerly occupied by the 76th Native Infantry, which Spragge and he used to live in, looked just the same as ever; it was occupied again, and there, standing by the stable-door in the corner of the garden, as Yorke rode by on the evening of his arrival, was the new tenant smoking a cigar and superintending the littering-up of his horse, just as he used to do in the days of the gallant Devotion — evidently a subaltern as he had been, but who probably surveyed life like a veteran from the vantage-ground of one or two campaigns. The residency, too, which of course he rode out to see on his first spare evening, had been completely restored, and with a fresh coat of plaster on the walls was looking quite smart; while half a score of scarlet-clad messengers lounged about the portico, just as in the old pre-mutiny days. The new commissioner, a civilian, from another part of the country, being out for his evening drive, Yorke took the liberty of dismounting and walking over the grounds, recalling the different points rendered memorable in his mind by incidents of the siege. There, for example, was the bush behind which the fellow was crouching whom Egan shot, the first man he saw hit. Hard by, a stone with an inscription recorded that the body of Major Peart had been disinterred from underneath that spot, and removed to the cantonment cemetary. The bodies of the rebels, too, he learnt, had been exhumed from the well into which they were cast, and the interior filled up. He walked into the west veranda. The family of the new commissioner was in England, and the rooms on this side were unoccupied. Here was her room. How neat and trim she always looked when she stepped forth, even in those times! And here was the spot where was the old beer-chest on which he used to sit when on guard, and when she would come and sit down too sometimes of an evening, and Falkland would look in and join in a few minutes' chat. How sweet her gentle laugh was that evening when Spragge was hunting the scorpion! Only two years ago, and it seems like twenty. But ah! if the end of my pilgrimage should now be near at hand!
For the present, however, there was nothing for it but patience, and it happened that there was plenty of employment to occupy his time, in the task which now devolved on him of unravelling the regimental accounts. The financial economy of a native cavalry regiment, in which the men find their own horses, and a quasi-feudal system used to obtain, some of the wealthier sort bringing their own retainers at contract rates, is always more or less complicated, involving the need for the employment of a native banker, who forms a regular part of its establishment. The fact that the regiment had been raised in a hurry and been almost constantly on active service did not tend to make matters simpler, the men having scarcely ever had a regular issue of pay, but having been maintained from allowances made from time to time on account, which had still to be adjusted. Kirke, who had kept these affairs entirely in his own hands, was moreover not a good man of business, and Yorke found the regimental accounts in such confusion that he would fain have abstained from taking them up during his temporary command; but the discharges had to be made out of some disabled men, and to square their accounts involved going into those of the whole regiment. So he was obliged to apply himself to the troublesome task.
But business and day-dreams were both interrupted by the news he received one day. It was in a letter from Spragge, who, like himself, had been campaigning during the past season, leaving his young wife in the hills for her confinement, and had now rejoined her on leave soon after the birth of his child. "I found my dear little wife," said the writer, "making a good recovery, and baby nearly a month old. Both Kitty and I want you to be godfather to the youngster, who is to be called Arthur Yorke Christopher — her poor father was called Christopher, you know. I am sure you won't refuse us. It does seem so funny to be a papa, and to think that only two years ago I was merely a poor beggar of an ensign, without a rupee to bless myself with, and about as much idea of being able to marry as of being made governor-general. I tell Kitty she wouldn't have looked at me in those days. What a wonderful event this mutiny has been, to be sure! It has been the making of us all, hasn't it? They were jolly days too, though, when we were chumming together with the old 76th, weren't they? though I was so awfully hard up then. But the married state is the happy one, after all; I never could have supposed that any girl would have got to care for a rum-looking fellow like me — and Kitty is a wife beyond what words can express. You ought to follow my example, my dear fellow; why don't you come up and pay us a visit? There are no end of nice girls up here, and a swell like you might have his choice. By the way, your old flame is about to console herself immediately, as of course you have heard. The wedding is to take place to-morrow, I believe, but it has been kept very quiet, and no one is invited — I suppose because the lady lost her father such a short time ago. Kitty says she was sure your C.O. was very sweet on her — I don't mean Kitty, but the other — when he was up here last rains; but I always thought he was such a tremendous soldier, and woman-hater into the bargain, that matrimony was quite out of his line. However, my little wife is more knowing in these things than me."
As Yorke, stopping in his reading of the letter at this point, looked round the room, he felt that while nothing in it had changed, he had entered in these few moments on another world. There on the table lay the shabby books of regimental accounts, the floor was littered with Hindustani vouchers and figured statements, squatting by which sat the patient moonshee, figured abstract in hand, waiting the sahib's pleasure to proceed with the addition; the punkah flapped to and fro lazily overhead; outside the door a couple of orderlies were chatting in undertones, discussing probably, as usual, the price of wheat in the bazaar. Everything about him denoted the same monotonous workaday world as it had been a few moments before, but a world from which all hope and pleasure had fled — a world now inexpressibly flat and dreary for the future. Summoning up courage, however, he called to the moonshee to proceed with the reading of his vernacular abstract, while he checked off the corresponding English account before him, keeping his attention to it and yet wondering at his own calmness. "Is it that I have really no heart," he asked himself the while, "that I am about to do these things?" But no; the crushed feeling and the utter desolation that possessed him gave up a plain answer on this point. For an hour he continued the plodding occupation in hand before dismissing the moonshee, and then, pacing up and down the room, could think over the announcement in the bitterness of his heart. Once he stopped and took up the letter from the table to see if any doubt could be gleaned from it; but the facts were too plain to admit of consolation on this score. This was not mere station gossip; besides, it was only too plainly corroborated by what had gone before. Olivia's silence, Kirke's sarcastic, triumphant manner, were now plainly accounted for. "People call me the lucky major," he said bitterly; "and I am the object of envy to half the youngsters in the country — what a satire is this on the falseness of appearances! no whipped cuckold could feel meaner than I do now." Then the thought came up whether he was not paying the penalty for his modesty. Could it be that Olivia had accepted her cousin out of pique because he had not declared himself? This foolish idea, however, was soon dismissed; though the young man said to himself, with a sort of savage joy, that after all the real Olivia was something less noble than the image he had carried so long in his heart. "I kept back my tale of love because I thought it would offend her gentle breast to hear it while mourning for her husband; and lo! all the while she was already consoling herself with another. Nor is it my Olivia who would be satisfied with the love of such a man as Kirke so hard, narrow, and selfish." Here his better judgment told him that he was talking nonsense; it was no wonder a woman and a cousin should fall in love with so splendid a soldier. "By heaven, if he is unkind to her, I will kill him!" But no; Yorke's conscience told him that this would not happen. He was hard and cruel, but not to his own kind.
"Well," he said at last, "what does it matter? My idol is shattered; but I was a fool to carry about so unsubstantial a thing. I have my profession, and I suppose, like everybody else, I shall get over the disappointment. At any rate, there is no need to pose in the character of the jilted lover. No one knows what a fool I have been; even Spragge thinks my old flame, as he calls it, was burnt out long ago; and no one shall now discover my secret."
Nevertheless he felt that he could not have faced the regimental mess-dinner that evening, where the approaching marriage of the commanding officer would certainly be the engrossing topic, and was glad that he had an engagement to dine out with his old friend General Tartar, at whose house he found himself taking an unconcerned share in the conversation, and a steady hand at whist afterwards.
Only one allusion was made to the approaching event, when his host, next to whom Yorke sat, said to him, "So our pretty widow is about to console herself. Well, I shouldn't have thought Kirke was a marrying man; but if he was to commit himself in this way at all, he couldn't have done better." Tartar was a confirmed old bachelor himself, who married, a few years afterwards, a widow with a large family.
Yorke replied, in an unconcerned voice, that he supposed Mrs. Falkland would be well off, as she had her first husband's property as well as her father's.
"Falkland didn't leave a penny — he was notoriously liberal to prodigality — but her father must have saved something; although you mustn't suppose," continued Sir Montague, who had the reputation of being very fond of money, and to be serving in India because it was such a favourable field for profitable investments, "that a man living by himself in India cant spend his income easily enough. Well, Kirke will find the money useful; he won't have a rupee more than he has need for."
This was an allusion to the fact that Kirke was supposed to be heavily in debt; but Yorke did not care to discuss the private affairs of his commanding officer with a third party, and the conversation dropped.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
Next day Yorke received a letter from Kirke himself. It was chiefly on regimental business, but contained at the end the following paragraph: —
"You will, of course, have heard of my approaching marriage. My wife — for so I may call her, since the marriage is to take place this afternoon — will write to you herself in a few days, to explain why the matter has been kept so quiet, even from our mutual friends; but I must take this opportunity to thank you on her behalf for your many kindnesses. She will always retain a grateful recollection of them, and continue to regard you as a warm friend. I don't believe she will write the promised letter notwithstanding," said Yorke to himself (and, indeed, the letter never came); and he sat wondering idly how far the message was really sent by Olivia herself, and whether Kirke guessed his feelings, and wished to express pity for his disappointment.
A day or two afterwards the newspapers contained the announcement of the marriage of Colonel Rupert Kirke, C. B., Commandant Kirke's Horse, to Olivia, daughter of the late Archibald Cunningham, Esquire, Bengal Civil Service.
No allusion to her being Falkland's widow, thought the young man bitterly, as he read the notice; it is as well, forsooth, that noble fellow should be forgotten. And yet, he added, apostrophizing himself, why be a hypocrite? You would have been pleased enough, you know in your heart, that she should forget Falkland for your benefit. Besides, it is not she, but the bridegroom, who has sent the notice to the papers.
Yorke's first impulse was to take leave and go away to avoid being present when Kirke should return with his wife; but he was restrained by a fear lest the cause of his absence should be suspected, and like the man who lingers in a company because he feels that his character will be discussed as soon as his back is turned, so Yorke held on at his post, determined to face the return of Kirke and his bride, at whatever cost to himself.
This took place about a month after the wedding, just as the rainy season was coming to an end, and when a fresh coolness in the early mornings betokened the approach of the charms of an Indian winter.
Kirke's delay in taking a house had of course been explained by his intended marriage. He wanted to select a house himself instead of choosing one beforehand. And there not being one sufficiently good in the cavalry lines, he had now written to engage a large house in another part of the station. Thither the newly-married pair came, a day sooner than was expected, arriving at daybreak; and Yorke, returning that morning from a visit to the general, was riding at foot-pace down the road bordered by the garden of Kirke's house, when he came upon Kirke and Olivia, standing in the garden-drive a few steps within the entrance. Kirke called out to him as he passed by, and advanced towards him, and he had no resource but to turn into the drive to meet him, and dismounting to shake hands and to move on where Olivia stood a few paces behind.
Kirke was neatly dressed as usual, in a light morning suit, with a wideawake hat covered with a drab silk turban, his face clean shaven save for the heavy black moustache. Olivia was dressed in a black-and-white muslin robe, with a large straw hat trimmed with black ribbon, her face shaded from the sun by a parasol, and Yorke could not help admitting to himself what a handsome couple they looked, and how well suited to each other; while Olivia's appearance and figure as she stood before him brought back forcibly the recollection of the day when he paid his first visit to the residency, and she walked across the park with her father to greet him. How like, and yet how changed! the first freshness of youth had passed away, although in his eyes she appeared as beautiful as ever, and he thought she looked nervous and distraught as he advanced towards her. She held out her hand, which he took gravely. "Does she confess that she has jilted me?" thought he; "and does that anxious look mean an appeal for mercy and forgiveness? But who am I that I should interpret looks — a blockhead that is always fancying a light-hearted woman to be in love with him, when really she is handing her heart about all round the country? Probably she is wondering whether I am going to stay for breakfast, and whether there is enough to eat in the house." And yet, as he thought over it afterwards, surely, if she was not conscious of wrong-doing, this was a strange meeting for two old friends and constant correspondents.
The conversation began with commonplace. What sort of a journey had they had down? and was not this first feeling of cold delightful? "Cold!" said Olivia, "it seems so dreadfully hot after the hills." Then noticing his horse, she said: "Ah! there is Selim; how well he looks," going up to it and patting its neck, "after all he has gone through, dear thing! What good care you have taken of him!"
Yorke remained silent, for he could not trust himself to speak, being tempted to bid her take back her gift, and an awkward pause ensued, ended by Kirke's plunging into business, and beginning to ask various questions about the regiment, while Olivia stood by listening. Presently several of the native officers of the regiment came up in a body to pay their respects, the news of the commandant's arrival having now reached the lines, and Yorke took his departure, Kirke asking him as he mounted to ride off to come and dine that evening. They would be quite alone, he said, for they had not settled down, but were still all at sixes and sevens in the house. And Yorke accepted the invitation. The sooner I get accustomed to the thing the better, he said to himself, as he rode off, not knowing rightly whether he had gotten himself free from his chains, or was in closer bondage than ever.
Fortunately for him, he was not as it turned out the Kirkes' only guest at dinner that evening, Maxwell the regimental surgeon being also of the party. Olivia was dressed in black, being still in mourning for her father; but except that she seemed a little paler than before, Yorke did not now perceive any change in her; already he was forgetting the old face and remembering only the new.
The house, notwithstanding Kirke's apologies, seemed already to be in good order; it was indeed unusually well furnished for one in an up-country station: the servants were in livery with handsome waist-belts and turbans ornamented with silver crests, and all the table appointments were new and costly. The arrangements all showed careful pre-arrangement, for a large establishment is not to be set up without notice a thousand miles from Calcutta. How far had Olivia been cognizant of all this, and the engagement one of long standing? or had Kirke done it all in anticipation of her accepting him?
The conversation — interrupted at times by Kirke scolding the servants loudly because something or other had been forgotten — turned principally on the campaign, and the later parts of it, for Olivia had not met Maxwell since the residency siege, and there was an awkwardness in going back to those times. Kirke, however, showed no delicacy on that score: for on Maxwell observing that the garden outside looked very neat and well kept, considering that the place had been so long unoccupied. Kirke said that the whole station seemed in capital order: "and I am told," he added, "that the residency is looking quite spick and span again. We must drive over there to-morrow, Olivia, if we have time, and have a look round the old place."
Olivia looked distressed, but her husband did not notice it, and went on: "I hear that they have moved Peart's body out of the garden, and the other fellows who were buried there. So they have got decent interment at last, which is more than can be said for a good many of our old friends."
Then Olivia rose from the table and went into the drawing-room, and Yorke could see that her face was pale, and that she looked hurt and ashamed. The man is perfectly brutal in his want of perception, he said to himself. Decent interment indeed! I wonder what dungheap covers poor Falkland's bones?
When the gentlemen came into the drawing-room, Olivia was outside in the veranda, but she joined them soon afterwards and made tea. Yorke noticed, that the tea-serice and appointments were all handsome and expensive.
Presently Kirke proposed that Olivia should sing: and she went to the piano — a large one, evidently new like everything else. Kirke, who did not know one note of music from another, sat in an easy-chair with his hands behind his head and went to sleep. Yorke felt that politeness demanded he should go up and stand by the performer, but he could not bring himself to do what would seem like an act of forgiveness and blotting out old memories; so he too kept his chair. Maxwell did the same: and, after Olivia had sung and played for a few minutes, she stopped and joined them again. The cessation of the music awoke her husband, who held out his left hand as she passed his chair, and gave hers a caress. Yorke remembered the occasion when her first husband had done just the same thing, on the day when he first saw them together on the outbreak of the mutiny. Truly an old performer in the part, he thought, bitterly; and somehow the act made her sink lower in his estimation, although he could not help admitting to himself that if he had been the second husband, he should not have thought the worse of her for permitting these little endearments.
Maxwell and Yorke walked home together, instead of riding, the evening air being now cool and pleasant. They were both silent for a little while, each apparently averse to discuss the matter which occupied his thoughts. At last Maxwell said, with some bitterness of tone, "The commandant does not grow wiser in money matters as he grows older. What a foolish beginning, to be sure! It would need twice his pay to live in that style. And he must be heavily in debt, to start with — at least he was before the mutiny."
"But I suppose Mrs. Kirke succeeds to all her father's property? He ought to have saved a good deal with his large salary."
"I doubt if he had saved a farthing. There is nothing easier than to muddle away your income, however large it may be. He told me just before he started for England that he should have nothing but his pension to live on, barely enough for a bachelor who never gave money a thought; and he was saying what a comfort it was to him that his daughter was so well provided for. No, I can fancy a heedless youngster starting off in extravagance like this on his marriage — it was just the sort of thing a foolish young civilian might have done in old days; but a man like Kirke ought to have more sense than to begin by buying a lot of things he can't pay for. If he does not pull up soon there will be a smash, take my word for it. Well, I am glad I shall not be here to see it. No," he continued, seeing that the other looked surprised, "the war is over, and my work is done; I am entitled to my full pension, and may as well take it at once."
"I know we could not have expected you to stay much longer with us; it must be close on your time for promotion; but surely it is a bad time to retire, just as you are coming into the good things of the service."
"Good things of the service, — what are they? To become a superintending surgeon, and spend your day in an office making out returns and reports, and never seeing a real case from one year's end to the other? No, I am too fond of my profession for that, and I have enough for my wants. Besides, I daresay I may practice a little at home, if needs be. And to tell you the truth, Yorke," continued the doctor, stopping short — for they had now got to the point in the road where their ways parted — "I don't care to stay here any longer. Falkland was a dear friend of mine, and so was her father," — pointing with his hand in the direction of the house they had just left, — "and I can't bear to see her toying with another man in that way, and so soon, too, after that noble fellows death. I am not a marrying man myself, and may be peculiar in my ideas, but there seems a sort of degradation the thing."
Yorke, too, as he walked away, felt that there had been degradation, and yet he knew in his heart that the offence would have vanished from his eyes if Olivia had reserved her fondling for himself. "And what would my old friend Maxwell think of me, I wonder, if he knew that the feeling uppermost in my heart is envy, and not contempt?"
A big dinner given by the officers of Kirke's Horse at their mess to the commandant and his bride, at which Yorke as second in command occupied the centre of the table, with Olivia on his right hand, was the first of a series of entertainments held in honour of the newly-married couple; and society at Mustaphabad was as lively during that cold season as it had ever been in pre-mutiny days, the Kirkes soon beginning to return freely the hospitalities they received. A handsome new carriage for Olivia had arrived from Calcutta, with a pair of fast-trotting Australian horses; Kirke's own chargers were the best that could be got in India; and the officers of the regiment, who during the war had been dressed in plain drab little better than that worn by the men, were now requested to procure an elaborate uniform covered with embroidery, of a pattern designed by the colonel, and with horse-appointments to match. It was plain to everybody that this style of living would not be met by the salary of a commandant of irregular cavalry; but, although there were rumours in the station, where gossip as usual was rife, of servants' wages and bazaar bills unpaid, the general presumption was that Mrs. Kirke had been left a fortune by her father. A man who had drawn a large salary for many years, and kept only a bachelor establishment, would naturally have saved a good deal, which must have come to his only daughter. So society was satisfied, although pronouncing the Kirkes to be foolish in the matter of expenditure, and criticising freely the costly style of entertainment in which they indulged. Rather, they might have said, in which Kirke indulged, for he was the sole manager of their domestic concerns. His wife had had no experience of house-keeping, and Kirke found it easier to do things himself than to show her how to do them. Thus he began by ordering the dinner during their honeymoon, and kept up the practice, Olivia being quite satisfied to leave the matter in his hands, as well as the management of the servants and dealings with tradesmen. Her own toilet once furnished, she had no need for money, for there were no ladies' shops in Mustaphabad, and if there had been, cash payments would not have been employed. Thus, beyond ordering the carriage when she wanted it, or sending for her ayah when that domestic failed to appear at the proper time, Olivia took no more part in the management of the household than if she had been a guest in it, even her notes of invitation being carried out by one of the colonel's orderlies; and of the state of his ways and means she was wholly ignorant, as she was equally of the gossip about his debts. She had always been surrounded by easy circumstances, and the sort of life they led seemed quite in the natural way. After all, her establishment was not on a larger scale than that of Mrs. Plunger, whose husband commanded the dragoon regiment now at Mustaphabad; but then Olivia did not know that Colonel Plunger was a man of fortune, whose presence in India was an accident due to the mutiny, and who was anxiously casting about for the means of exchanging out of it again.
Any misgivings Yorke might have allowed himself to entertain lest Kirke should ill-treat his wife proved to be unfounded. Kirke, though a hard man and cruel in his dealings with enemies and rebels, was gentle with her; although not manifesting much of the little endearments which might naturally have been given to a newly-married wife, he was thoroughly kind, and Yorke could never detect anything in his treatment of her to which in his heart he could take exception. Kirke was disposed to be harsh to his men, and somewhat overbearing towards his officers, now that the war had come to an end; and was often violent with his servants, abusing them at meals if anything went wrong, and striking them for trifling offences; and this used at first to distress Olivia, who had never seen anything of the kind before, for her father was a man slow to anger, and Falkland used to treat everybody about him, native and European, with gentle courtesy; but after a a time she appeared to get accustomed to these ebullitions, and Yorke could not help admitting that she was both fond and proud of her husband, and that any qualms she might have felt at discarding himself — and he was not sure that she had ever entertained such a feeling — had become lulled to rest by the familiarity of the new footing on which they now stood to each other.
Thus the time passed on under these new and strange conditions. Among other liberal tastes Kirke indulged in, was that of keeping open house for the officers of the regiment. Although fond of his wife's society, and frequenting the mess but little, for he neither smoked nor played billiards, he was not a man of much mental resource, and preferred always seeing his wife at the head of the table with more or less company sitting at it, to dining alone with her; Yorke especially was very frequently there, and even when her health no longer permitted her to dine out, or receive general company, he still received frequent invitations as an old friend to join their dinner, and was thus constantly at the house, as constantly making resolutions to break off the intimacy and to get transferred to another regiment, or at least to go on leave, but nevertheless still hanging on, accepting the invitations received almost daily, watching the condition of his hostess with feelings strangely compounded of interest, anger, and self-contempt.