CHAPTER XLII.
Starting from Calcutta on his homeward voyage with wounds barely healed, and still suffering from the lassitude induced by fever and weakness, Yorke was at first more disposed to indulge in his habitual mood of dwelling on the disappointments of the past than to find enjoyment in anticipations of the future. And yet there was room for satisfaction as well as regrets in a retrospect of the twelve years since he had last seen the sea. How short the time seemed to look back upon, and yet how much had happened in it! Then he was landing in India a friendless cadet; now he was a lieutenant-colonel, decorated, commanding a crack cavalry regiment — an object of admiration, as he thought with not unnatural complacency, to all the younger officers of the army — and with every prospect of attaining to the command of a division before he got to middle age. Truly, if the Mutiny had brought desolation to many it had made a career for the survivors: pluck and luck had done it in his case; with some more of the latter commodity to help, what might not be possible in the future? What a tremendous personage I used to consider a lieutenant-colonel and C.B. in my young days! To be sure, lieutenant-colonels used to be very old fellows then, and C.B.'s rarer than they are now; but still, even according to present lights, it is not a bad grade to have reached before one is thirty. And yet," thought he, "the change is not altogether for the better. I was fresh and ingenuous then, a believer in men and women, and one dream of my youth at any rate has not been realized. It is not success which has made me hard and cynical — if I am so, as people say — but disappointment and humiliation. Men call me the lucky colonel, and think me greatly to be envied; they little know that I have failed to get the one thing I ever really tried for — that the woman on whom I had set my heart held me of no account, and while trifling with me, was offering her own to any one else to take who wanted it!" Yet notwithstanding that his hopes in this matter were dissipated forever, the young man still found a sort of melancholy pleasure in remaining constant to the one idea which had so completely possessed him. For him, he thought with bitter satisfaction, love was gone forever; let him rather feed on the memory of his first and only passion, than find a debasing consolation in some lower standard of affection.
But although still brooding on his disappointment, and spending many solitary hours in vain conjectures about the fate of Olivia, of whom and her husband nothing had been heard since their flight, youth will still assert itself; with returning health this artificial dejection gave way to a more natural frame of mind; and Yorke sometimes felt angry with himself to find that he was not hugging his passion as he intended to do, but was looking forward like all his fellow-passengers with pleasurable excitement to the prospect of returning to England, his spirits rising daily and his appetite improving as the steamer clove her way into cooler latitudes. But an incident occurred on the voyage which turned back forcibly for a time the current of his thoughts into the old channel.
A party of the homeward-bound passengers had taken advantage of a two-days delay in the transit through Egypt to stop at Cairo; and Yorke, who was of the party, not feeling strong enough yet to join the rest in an excursion to the Pryamids, was standing at the window of the hotel in the early morning, after the others had set out, watching the beginning of a Cairo day, when a couple of regiments of Egyptian cavalry came by on their way to exercise on the plain beyond the city. To Yorke the sight was sufficiently interesting; and as they passed by he noted their appearance with critical eye, admitting with scrupulous fairness the superiority of the horses to those of the Indian cavalry, but concluding with much satisfaction that the latter were vastly superior in the physique and appearance of the men. How my old regiment would ride these fellows down, to be sure, or my new one either! he said to himself. The colonel of the leading regiment, too, apparently a foreigner, was a portly-looking middle-aged man, who sat his horse like a sack. "I don't fancy that worthy gentleman would have a long tether of office if he came under the orders of Sir Hugh," ejaculated Yorke mentally; "one can't expect much from a regiment with such an old muff at the head of it." The officer who rode at the head of the second regiment was, however, a very different sort of man; and Yorke's eye was caught at once by his erect, soldier-like figure, and the splendid horse he rode — still more, as he came near, by his handsome, resolute face. The officer was so dark-complexioned that Yorke was puzzled at first to guess whether he was a European, but suddenly was struck by the resemblance to well-known features. Except for the long black beard, the man looked the very double of Kirke; nay, surely it must be Kirke himself, — and Yorke hurried out of the room, and ran along the corridor and down the staircase; but by the time he reached the entrance-door of the hotel the rear of the regiment was passing by, and the leading files were hidden from view.
The hotel-manager was standing at the entrance smoking an early cigar, and nodded affably to his visitor. "A fine sight that, isn't it?" he observed, as if the cavalry reflected considerable credit on the hotel and himself; "but I suppose you have seen a good deal of the same sort of thing in your part of the world?"
Yorke asked him if some of the officers were not Europeans.
Oh yes, was the answer, "the pacha employs a lot of Europeans in all kinds of ways, army and everything else. That was a European who rode at the head of the second regiment, which had just gone by leastways — an American, which was the same thing — a Colonel Wood.
An American! repeated Yorke, wondering whether he could be mistaken; how did the manager know that?
Why, because he gave himself out as such, to be sure; the manager knew him well enough; he kept himself to himself pretty much, but he often came to the hotel to dine or lunch, at times when there were no Indian travellers going through.
Did the manager know how long he had been in the Egyptian service? Yes, to be sure he did; about two years. Was he married? No, certainly not; at any rate he had left his wife in America, added the manager with a laugh. Cairo wasn't much of a place for European ladies, he reckoned, nor American ones neither. The colonel was living in lodgings by the barracks, and used to get his wine from them [meaning the hotel], and there was no lady living with him, that was quite certain. "But you seem interested about the gentleman," continued the manager, looking at Yorke curiously; there are some rum customers in the Egyptian army, I can tell you;" and Yorke hastened to turn the conversation.
The parade-ground was said to be too far off for a convalescent to walk there under a Cairo sun, and Yorke went up to his room to await the return of the regiments. They must, however, have chosen another route for the march back, for they did not come past the hotel again; but Yorke felt no doubt that it was Kirke he had seen. No American of that stamp would be idling at Cairo with a tremendous war going on at home; the time, too, of his appearance in the country coincided with Kirke's flight from India; besides, although his face was altered, there could be no mistaking that figure and seat on horseback; he could have recognized him among a thousand. And Yorke's thoughts flew back to the time when Falkland and he first made out Kirke from the residency roof — on the eventful day of Falklands death — riding in front of his men on the plain beyond the trees; and he thought how clearly Kirke's appearance was stamped on his recollection, as he rode up to the residency on the same evening, flushed yet cool, while the excited members of the garrison pressed round him to grasp his hand, — and his measured manner of speaking as he announced the sad news that Falkland had fallen — Falkland, whose death at the moment of relief had so dimmed the joy of victory. But although eager to speak with his old comrade, and still more to hear some news of his wife, Yorke abstained from seeking him out; Kirke probably still regarded him as an enemy, and certainly would not wish to be recognized. And Yorke started that evening with his companions for Alexandria with ample food for his thoughts during the rest of the voyage — old sensations of joy and pain aroused again which had been almost laid to rest.