A STRAY SHOT.
——A barren strand,
A petty fortress and a dubious hand——
The expedition, though in no way distinguishable from twenty others, did not prove such a mere promenade as Sutton had anticipated. The whole country-side was in a nasty, excitable mood. The news of Blunt's injudicious proceedings had spread far and wide, and the prospect of endangered rights turned the wavering scale with wild clans, whose loyalty at the best of times was anything but proof against a seeming danger or a fancied wrong.
Every landholder whose title Blunt had impugned proved a centre of disaffection; and even where there was no reason for hostility the example of unruliness was infectious. Many a stalwart hillsman, coerced for years into uncongenial tranquillity, felt the old pulses throb within him, and his heart beating high at the prospect of a fight; unearthed some primitive weapon—sword or matchlock or lance—from its hiding-place beneath the floor of his hut, mounted on a wiry pony and made his way over the mountains to the scene of action. Several more outrages, of which the District officers knew the significance too well, had already been reported. Everything predicted a storm, and a pretty severe one.
Indian life is like a strange, dark sea, full of invisible currents, strange tides, unsuspected and unexplained influences. The waters, which look so smooth and lifeless, may be stealing silently along and hurrying the hapless vessel to its doom. Magnetic streams, inappreciable to the nicest scrutiny, pour this way or that and disturb the most accurate calculations. Storms gather and lower and burst when all looks most serene; a little cloud rises in the quarter where danger is least expected, and in a few minutes the ship is tossing, a crushed and staggering wreck, in the midst of a tornado.
Just before the great outbreak of 1857 the ruler of India had occasion to remark on the absolute tranquillity of the Empire and on the peaceful prospects of a reign which stood, as the facts proved, on the very crisis of its fate, and whose annals were presently to be written in characters of blood. Men who live in such a world as this become sensitive to its symptoms, and adept at interpreting them. The magistrates knew well enough—they could scarcely have said why—that mischief was at work. Police officers on remote stations wrote uneasily and hinted at the advisability of reinforcements. Strange, weird beings, whose unkempt locks and half-crazy visages bespoke for them the prestige of especial sanctity, thronged about the bazaars, the wells, the spreading tree where travellers halted for rest and talk. A famous Fakir went through the District haranguing excited audiences on the kindred duties of piety and rebellion against an impious ruler. Then the first drops of the storm began to fall. One morning the collector of a neighbouring town was sitting in his verandah; in front a pair of saddled horses were being led up and down; by his side was a tea-table, with letters, business papers and the frugal repast which ushers in the Indian official's day. At his feet two little children sat at play. From inside a lady's voice cried that she would be ready for a start in two minutes. Presently an animated bundle of rags, hair and dirt, came grovelling up with a petition. The misery of the creature was its passport, and the sentry who stood by, at a signal from the officer, let it pass. Then came a whining, rambling, unintelligible story of grievance; and then, as the listener's eye for a moment wandered from the speaker, a sudden rush—the flash of a concealed dagger—a groan—a heavy fall, and the Englishman lay dead on the ground with a cruel Pathan knife-wound through his heart. The assassin stood fiercely at bar, exulting in his accomplished vow to slay a 'Feringhee,' and trying his best to stab the sentry who approached him. They cut him down as he stood; and before noon that day rumour had whispered in a hundred villages that Allah's will had been done, and that the Jehad, or Sacred War, was forthwith to commence.
To strike quickly, effectually, and with an air of absolute confidence in the result, is in such cases the safest policy. A symptom of hesitation, an hour's delay, would ensure disaster. The spark, which one moment might be stamped under foot, the next would be a consuming fire, forbidding all approach.
Sutton's business was, he well understood, to teach these lawless spirits (which no conqueror has ever yet succeeded in taming) a stern lesson of obedience, and to teach it them quickly, sharply, and in the mode most likely to impress the popular imagination. If all went well the business would be over in a week, and the refractory clansmen our good friends and subjects till temper, forgetfulness, or an official blunder produced another outburst. If things went ill—but this is a contingency upon which the administrators of British India cannot afford to calculate and which Sutton's temperament and good fortune alike had long accustomed him to ignore.
When he rode into the camp he found everything in readiness and everybody in the highest spirits. Boldero had impressed a fine array of camels and bullock-carts, and had organised a commissariat train more than sufficient for the wants of the expedition. The mule battery had arrived in perfect order. The little knot of officers who were to join the expedition gave a hearty welcome to a leader whose very presence seemed to them the best guarantee of success. In a minute the news spread through the camp that the 'Colonel Sahib' had arrived, and the men, whom he had led so often to victory, glowed at the thought that the well-loved and well-trusted leader was once again in the midst of them and that something stirring was certainly at hand. The little force was to encamp that night at the bottom of the pass along which for the next two days their route would lie; then they would come to a high level table-land, where the enemy was (so the scouts said) entrenched, and where the serious part of the business might be expected to begin.
Occasions such as these were the parts of Sutton's life in which hitherto he had felt himself most at home, and which he had, in fact, enjoyed the most keenly. He had been very successful, and had, he knew, been not undeserving of success. This was the thing in life which he could do pre-eminently well, and the doing it gave him a thrill of pleasure, which lasted all through the duller parts of his existence. Yet now things seemed changed to him. He had looked forward to this expedition with enthusiasm; it had taken in every way the shape which he wished; and now, when the hour was come, it had brought no sense of pleasure with it. Sutton was startled at his own lack of zeal. The lads who were having their first apprenticeship in actual soldiering, were, he felt, far more soldier-like about it than he was. He could not sleep that night, and strolled about the camp amid all the old accustomed sights and sounds; the long array of human sleeping forms, each one motionless and corpse-like; the lines of tethered horses; the sentinels pacing stolidly up and down and challenging the passer-by in the still, clear air; the bullocks encamped by their carts, serenely chewing through the peaceful hours undisturbed by the thought of pokes and shoves which awaited them on the morrow. It was all very familiar, and brought back many a like occasion of former years; and yet there was, Sutton knew, a difference: the world was no longer the same; a new current of thought and feeling had set in and disturbed all the old associations. His afternoon ride had metamorphosed his entire being. Maud's sweet impassioned air as she had wished him farewell; her serious, soft, pathetic tones; her last look as she turned to go, the sort of earnest rapture which her eyes bespoke; the unspoken pledge which had been exchanged between them; these were the matters which preoccupied his thoughts and left but scant room in them for the business which he had in hand. He found himself, accordingly, uninterested, unenthusiastic, and, for the first time in his life, completely sceptical as to the usefulness of his employment. Every man, philosophers tell us, is seized at some period of his career with a misgiving as to whether his life-task is not a delusion. Is it worth the long, painful endeavour, the patient waiting, the resolute hopefulness which a successful career demands? Life seems, as it did to the sailors of Ulysses, a wearisome, endless affair,