CHAPTER XXXIV.
BAD TIMES IN THE PLAINS.
Where nature sickens, and each air is death.
While the fortunate Elysians were thus bravely keeping up their own andone another's spirits by a round of gaieties, the people in the Plainswere busy with a round of work of quite a different description. Cholerahaving broken out, all leave in the infected regiments had beencancelled, and many a luckless officer had come back to his cantonment,grumbling at a curtailed holiday and the stern mandate which recalledhim just as he had reached the snow scenery of which he had dreamed formonths, or established himself in some happy hunting-ground for a twomonths' campaign against ibex or bison. Back they all came, however,poor fellows, to take their equal chance with rank and file against anenemy of whom even the bravest men are not ashamed to be afraid.
The prevalence of illness and the precautions ordered to prevent itsincrease entailed a deal of extra labour, and kept all the officersbusily employed. The hospitals required constant visiting, for the menwere moody and disheartened, and stood in need of all the encouragementthat their leaders could give them. Sutton, always thinking of every onebut himself, had ordered two of his 'boys' away to an outpost fortymiles off, nominally to look after a turbulent Zamindar, really to beout of harm's way. This threw all the more work on his hands, and it waswork that he felt himself specially capable of doing with good effect.His visits at the hospital were, he knew, eagerly looked for, and a fewkind words from the Colonel Sahib often inspired cheerfulness and hopeat a moment when gloom and despondency were telling with mortal effecton men's minds and bodies. His regiment had already lost several men,and they had died happy in the thought that the well-loved leader wasever close at hand, and ever on the look-out for something to alleviatetheir suffering. Many a gaunt visage, with death already written in eachghastly feature, lighted up with sudden brightness as he came, and, whenexhaustion had gone too far for speech, smiled him a heartfeltbenediction of gratitude and love. The scene was, indeed, one full ofpathos, even to a less interested looker-on than the Colonel. It washorrible to see these sturdy, joyous, much-enduring, dare-devil trooperslying so utterly prostrated, unnerved and helpless. Death, it seemed,should have come to them in the form of steel or bullet, the thrust oflance, the crashing sword-cut or wild cavalry charge; not as apestilence, creeping on them unawares and slaying them in their beds.Sutton, who had looked death in the face a hundred times with perfectindifference, began to understand why people feared it. After all someaspects of life are, he felt, too delightful to leave without a sigh.For the last few months he had been, for the first time in his life,completely happy. A new era had begun for him, new vistas of pleasurehad opened up. All that had gone before had been duty, excitement, hardwork; not, indeed, without its enjoyment, but, after all, something farfrom happiness in the sense in which Sutton had now begun to understandit. Fighting was all well enough, and the hazardous ambition of asoldier's career delightfully spirit-stirring; but it was not here thatthe real end of life was to be found. Sutton's real end of life was nowthe little being who was flirting away at the Hills, in happyforgetfulness of all but the present moment. Sutton, however, thought ofher only as he had seen her, tender, affectionate, devoted to himself.Since the half-quarrel about her departure for the Hills and thereconciliation which followed it, his life with her had been one ofperfect happiness. Maud had been raised by her conquest over herselfinto a sweeter, nobler mood, and was more than ever mistress of herhusband's heart. Her departure, peremptorily insisted on by her husband,had none the less cost them both a bitter pang; though Sutton promisedthat it should be for a few weeks at the utmost, a promise which cheeredMaud more than it did himself, as she knew not, as he did, how easilyits fulfilment might be rendered impossible. So Sutton went about hiswork in his own determined, loyal fashion, but with his heart no longerin it. His treasure was elsewhere and his heart with it. The collectionof materials for his Report gave him a deal of trouble and involved manyweary rides. He had to see District officers, Zamindars, policeinspectors, heads of villages, spies, and then to determine what thereal necessities of the case were and where the posts should be fixed.Everything depended on his work being well, wisely, and thoroughly done.The responsibility weighed on him: the peace, safety, prosperity of awhole District was hanging on his judgment. This is the kind of workwhich tries conscientious and loyal men far more than physical exertion.Then the cholera, which had shown symptoms of abatement, broke out allof a sudden with more violence than ever, and it became apparent thatSutton's regiment was thoroughly infected. Then all real hopes of hisgetting up to the Hills for the present, at any rate, had to beabandoned; but of this he said nothing to his wife. It was of no use todistress her beforehand with bad news, which she would be certain tolearn quite soon enough.
One evening, when Sutton had returned, thoroughly tired with a long, hotexpedition, the orderly, whose task it was to bring him the returns ofthe sick for the day, told him that in the list of seizures for thatafternoon was a Pathan boy, who had been picked up years before by someof the troopers in a suddenly deserted village, and who had lived as apet child of the regiment ever since. Sutton had been kind to the lad,had defrayed such small charges as his maintenance in the linesinvolved, and had secured him the beginning of an education in theregimental school. Sutton on hearing the news went off at once to thehospital. Already the disease had made fearful progress, and he saw in amoment that the boy was in the most critical condition. He bent over theexhausted, helpless form, and said a few kind words of hopefulness andsympathy. The boy listened with glistening eyes and lips quivering withagitation; and as Sutton turned to go he sprang up in bed, forgetful ofeverything but the master-feeling which overpowered him, and clasped hisprotector round the neck with a single outburst of affection: 'Ma-Bap,''My father and mother!'
Two hours later they came to say that the boy was dead, and before thenext morning Sutton began to be aware that that last embrace had been adeadly one, and that the dread malady had laid its hand upon himself.