Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 128.djvu/96

86 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 