'SUTTON'S FLYERS.'
Consider this--he had been bred i' the wars
Since he could draw a sword.
'Sutton's Flyers' were well known in the Sandy Tracts as the best
irregular cavalry in that part of the country. Formed originally in the
Mutiny, when spirits of an especial hardihood and enterprise gathered
instinctively around congenial leaders, they had retained ever since the
_prestige_ then acquired and a standard of chivalry which turned every
man in the regiment into something of a hero. Many a stalwart lad, bred
in the wild uplands of the Province, had felt his blood stirred within
him at the fame of exploits which appealed directly to instincts on
which the pacific British rule had for years put an unwelcome pressure.
Around the fire of many an evening meal, in many a gossiping bazaar, in
many a group at village well or ferry, the fame of the 'Flyers' was
recounted, and 'Sutton Sahib' became a household word by which military
enthusiasm could be speedily kindled to a blaze. With the lightest
possible equipage, wiry country-bred horses, and a profound disregard
for all baggage arrangements, Sutton had effected some marches which
earned him the credit of being supernaturally ubiquitous. Again and
again had Mutineer detachments, revelling in fancied security, found
that the dreaded horsemen, whom they fancied a hundred miles away and
marching in an opposite direction, had heard of their whereabouts and
were close upon their track. Then the suddenness of the attack, the
known prowess of the leader, the half-superstitious reverence which his
followers paid him, invested the troop with a tradition of
invincibility, and had secured them, on more than one occasion, a
brilliant success against odds which less fervent temperaments than
Sutton's might have felt it wrong to encounter, and which certainly made
success seem almost a miracle. To his own men Sutton was hardly less
than a god, and there were few of them on whom he could not safely
depend to gallop with him to their doom.
More than one of his officers had saved his life in hand-to-hand fight
by reckless exposure of their own; and his adjutant had dragged him,
stunned, crushed and bleeding, from under a fallen horse, and carried
him through a storm of bullets to a place of safety. All of them, on the
other hand, had experienced on a hundred occasions the benefit of his
imperturbable calmness, his inspiring confidence and unshaken will. Once
Sutton had gratified their pride--and perhaps, too, his own--by a
display of prowess which, if somewhat theatrical, was nevertheless
extremely effective. A fight was on hand, and the regiment was just
going into action, when a Mohammedan trooper, famed as a swordsman on
all the country-side, had ridden out from the enemy's lines, bawled out
a defiance of the English rule, couched in the filthiest and most
opprobrious terms, and dared Sutton to come out and fight, and let him
throw his carcase to the dogs. There are moments when instinct becomes
our safest, and indeed our only, guide. Sutton, for once in his life,
felt a gust of downright fury: he gave the order to halt and sheathe
swords, took his challenger at his word, rode out in front of his force
and had a fair hand-to-hand duel with the hostile champion. The
confronted troops looked on in breathless anxiety, while the fate of
either combatant depended on a turn of the sword, and each fought as
knowing that one or other was to die. Sutton at last saw his opportunity
for a stroke which won him the honours of the day. It cost him a
sabre-cut across his forehead, which to some eyes might have marred his
beauty for ever; but the foul-mouthed Mussulman lay dead on the field,
smitten through the heart, and Sutton rode back among his shouting
followers the acknowledged first swordsman of the day.
Such a man stood in no need of Felicia's panegyrics to seem very
impressive in the eyes of a girl like Maud. Despite his gentleness of
manner and the sort of domestic footing on which everybody at the
Vernons', down to the baby, evidently placed him, she felt a little
awed. She was inclined to be romantic; but it was rather alarming to
have a large, living, incarnate romance sitting next her at luncheon,
cutting slices of mutton, and asking her, with a curiosity that seemed
necessarily condescending, about all the details of the voyage. There
seemed something incongruous and painfully below the mark in having to
tell him that they had acted 'Woodcock's Little Game,' and had played
'Bon Jour, Philippe,' on board; and Maud, when the revelation became
necessary, made it with a blush. After luncheon, however, Sutton and the
little girls had a game of 'Post,' and Maud begun to console herself
with the reassuring conviction that, after all, he was but a man, and a
very pleasant one.
After he had gone, Felicia, who was the most indiscreet of match-makers,
began one of her extravagant eulogiums. 'Like him!' she cried, in reply
to Maud's inquiry; 'like is not the word. He is the best, noblest,
bravest, and most chivalrous of beings.'
'Not the handsomest!' interrupted Maud, tempted by Felicia's enthusiasm
into feeling perversely indifferent.
'Yes, and the handsomest too,' Felicia said; 'tall, strong, with
beautiful features, and eyes as soft and tender as a woman's; indeed a
great deal softer than most women's.'
'Then,' objected Maud, 'why has he never' ----
'Because,' answered her companion, indignantly anticipating the
objection, 'there is no one half-a-quarter good enough for him.'
'Well,' said the other, by this time quite in a rebellious mood, 'all I
can say is, that I don't think him in the least good-looking. I don't
like that great scar across his forehead.'
'Don't you?' cried Felicia; and then she told her how the scar had come
there, and Maud could no longer pretend not to be interested.
The next day Sutton came with them for a drive, and Maud, who had by
this time shaken off her fears, began to find him decidedly interesting.
There was something extremely romantic in having a soldier, whose
reputation was already almost historical, the hero of a dozen brilliant
episodes, coming tame about the house, only too happy to do her bidding
or Felicia's, and apparently perfectly contented with their society.
Felicia was in the highest spirits, for she found her pet project
shaping itself with pleasant facility into a fair prospect of
realisation; and when Felicia was in high spirits they infected all
about her.
Sutton, innocently unconscious of the cause of her satisfaction, but
realising only that she wanted Maud amused and befriended, lent himself
with a ready zeal to further her wishes and let no leisure afternoon go
by without suggesting some new scheme of pleasure. Maud's quick,
impulsive, highly-strung temperament, her moods of joyousness or
depression, hardly less transient than the shadows that flit across the
fields in April, her keen appreciation of beauty and pathos, made her,
child as she was in most of her thoughts and ways, an interesting
companion to him. Her eagerness in enjoyment was a luxury to see; and
Sutton, a good observer, knew before long, almost better than herself,
what things she most enjoyed. Instead of the reluctant and unsympathetic
permission which her late instructress had accorded to her poetical
tastes, Sutton and Felicia completely understood what she felt, treated
her taste on each occasion with a flattering consideration, and led her
continually to 'fresh woods and pastures new,' where vistas of
loveliness, fairer far than any she had yet discovered, seemed to break
upon her.
Vernon's library, his one extravagance, was all that the most fastidious
scholar could desire; any choice edition of a favourite poet was on his
table almost before his English friends had got it. A beautiful book,
like a beautiful woman, deserves the best attire that art can give it,
and Maud felt a thrill of satisfaction at all the finery of gilt and
Russian leather in which she could now behold her well-beloved poems
arrayed. Sutton told her, with a decisiveness which carried conviction,
what things she would like and what she might neglect; and she soon
followed his directions with unquestioning faith. He used to come and
read to them sometimes, in a sweet, impressive manner, Maud felt; and
the passage, as he had read it, lived on in her thoughts with the
precise shade of feeling which his voice had given it.
One happy week was consecrated to the 'Idylls of the King,' and this had
been so especially delightful as to make a little epoch in her
existence--so rich was the picture--so great a revelation of
beauty--such depths of sorrow--such agonies of repentance--such calm,
quiet, ethereal scenes of loveliness.
More than once Sutton, in reading, had looked up suddenly and found her
eyes bent full upon him, and swimming with tears; and Maud had stooped
over her work, the sudden scarlet dyeing her cheek, yet almost too much
moved to care about detection.
How true, how real, how living it all seemed! Did it, in truth, belong
to the far-off, misty, fabulous kingdom over which the mystic Arthur
ruled, or was she herself Elaine, and Lancelot sitting close before her,
and all the harrowing story playing itself out in her own little
troubled world? Anyhow, it struck a chord which vibrated pleasurably,
yet with a half-painful vehemence, through her mind and filled it with
harmonies and discords unheard before. Certainly, she confessed to
herself, there was a something about Sutton that touched one to the
heart.