Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 128.djvu/188

Rh days divided them more completely than would an intervening ocean; and Kirke, once on this line, got to Bombay and disappeared from the country before any of his angry creditors had time to set about intercepting him.

On the day after Kirke's flight Yorke sent in his resignation of his appointment as second in command and officiating commandant of the regiment. This, however, was not at first accepted: he was offered the opportunity of reconsidering his resolution, and the great people at headquarters even went so far as to let him know that they thought such a step foolish and quixotic. No slur of any kind attached to him in the affair, it was said, and it was intimated to be the intention of the commander-in-chief to make him permanent in the command of a regiment with which he had been associated from its first formation, and with which — so the great man was pleased to say — he had performed distinguished service. But Yorke stood by his resolve. "I owe everything professionally to Kirke," he wrote to a friend on the headquarter staff. "He took me up when I was an obscure subaltern, selected me out of others, and gave me my first start in life. It is to his generous praise that I owe my promotion and my honours; I should despise myself forever if I allowed myself to step into the poor fellow's shoes." "The regiment must have a commandant of some sort," retorted his friend; "it is not your fault that there happens to be a vacancy. Surely it may as well be you, who know the regiment thoroughly, as another." "The other," replied Yorke, "will not be a personal friend of the late commandant." Then came news that the government was about to reduce several regiments; whether Kirke's Horse would be among those to be maintained, would depend probably on who might be in command. He had to consider the interest of his brother officers, therefore, and not only his own feeling. This argument came home; but he was firm in abiding by his resolve, and after a few miserable days spent in command against his will, he obtained Sir Montague Tartar's sanction to be struck off the strength of the garrison pending confirmation of his resignation, and quitted Mustaphabad. Major Egan therefore succeeded to the command of Kirke's Horse pending arrival of the new commandant an officer promoted from another regiment, whose term of office, however, was a brief one, for the famous regiment was disbanded a few weeks later, in the general reduction which followed the restoration of peace in India.

Although his well-wishers in high places were somewhat annoyed at what they termed his obstinacy in the matter, Yorke was too good an officer to remain long unemployed; and in a few months he was appointed to the divisional staff of the army and posted to a station on the frontier. The change of employment was a welcome one at first, and in the occupation of learning the duties of this new branch of his profession he sought eagerly for distraction from the depression of spirit left by Kirke's ruin, and all the miserable circumstances attending it — his own unwitting share in the catastrophe, and the unhappy fate of the woman whose memory was still so dear.

Time passed on, and no news came of the fugitives, all trace of whom had disappeared; and the event which had created such absorbing interest at the time soon began to grow dim in general recollection; but with Yorke himself there still remained an enduring scar. Until he left it, he was not aware how deeply the interest of his life had been wrapped up in the regiment with which the most important part of it had been passed, and what a blank the severance from it had made; still more how deeply he missed the presence of the one woman who, though she never could be his, was yet more to him than all the world besides. Active and assiduous in the new business of his profession, he yet found himself now more lonely and friendless than at any time since he first landed in the country; and, perversely shunning the society at his command, he yet yearned in his solitary home for the friendship and sympathy which he would not summon up the effort to seek among new faces. There came up now for the first time the home-sickness which is wont to beset the solitary exile, and at times the inclination was strong to throw up his appointment and return for a while to England. The joys of married life could not be his, but there at least a home awaited him, and the renewal of family affection. Why should not that suffice for him as for so many others? In this frame of mind, growing daily more disposed to be solitary and cynical; hardly perceiving himself how different the man was becoming from the shy but ardent lad of ten years before, who landed in the country full of hope and enthusiasm, yet grimly conscious of the folly of allowing himself to cherish a feeling of dissatisfaction with a career more successful than his wildest day-dreams used to