Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 128.djvu/91

Rh 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