Chapter Seven.
War Calls.
“Off thro’ the dark with the stare to rely on,
(Alpha, Centauri, and something Orion).”
When we met at the breakfast table the bloom of the dawn was on none of us. Mrs Valetta was pale and haggard as a murderess. Judy, cross and dishevelled, had a black smudge on her nose and was utterly out of tune with life because the boys had all mysteriously disappeared during the night, and she had been obliged to get the breakfast herself. I was not left long in ignorance of my own worn and unlovely appearance.
“You look like a ghost, Deirdre,” said my sister-in-law. “No more midnight revels for you! Really, dear, you are dreadfully white and your lips have quite a blue tint. What on earth is the matter?”
“I should think Miss Saurin’s heart must be seriously affected,” said Mrs Valetta dryly, but though she smiled her eyes gave me a look like a flash of lightning—so blue and angry and burning it was. I knew at last why she hated me. Judy glanced at me again with a shade of anxiety.
“Oh, I hope not. Do you think you ought to see a doctor, Deirdre? Dr Abingdon here is quite clever they say, though he does look such an old roué. But Jand, in Salisbury, is the best man. Even Dr Jim goes to him when he is ill.”
“I am quite well, Judy.” I got up from the table and looked out of the window. I felt as if I could die of weariness and the sick blankness of life. Across the square near Anthony Kinsella’s hut a group of men stood talking animatedly. I turned away with my hand to my head. I wished I might never see any more men for a thousand years—and yet—
“I am quite well, Judy, but my head aches. I think I will go for a long walk. Perhaps that will do me good.”
“Well, I can’t offer to come with you, my dear. Apparently I am to have the pleasure of doing my own housework to-day—but I shall go out first and see if Colonel Blow can’t spare me one of the Government boys. It is ridiculous to be left like this.”
Mrs Valetta was still standing in the dining-room with that dry smile on her lips when I passed through with my hat on, but she did not offer to accompany me.
I walked and walked and walked—over the stubbly bleached grass, through the township, past the outermost huts, across the rutted dusty main road to the river that wound itself halfway round the town. When the freshness of the morning was long past, and the fierce heat of midday was beating down on me from above, and surging up through the soles of my shoes from the earth, I found at last a place of shelter on the sweeping sunlit plain. Between two upright boulders almost on the river bank there was a little cleft of shadow lined with moss and small, harsh-leaved fern, and there I flung myself down and unburdened my heart of its weight of tears. I wept until I had no more tears, until it seemed that last night’s moonlit madness must be washed away, all Anthony Kinsella’s scorching kisses from my lips, all his treachery from my memory. Only the young know the exquisite tragedy and solace of tears: of broken sobs that come shuddering up from the soul to the lips; that are of the body and yet most terribly of the spirit; that rack and choke and blur out the beauty of life; that afterwards bring a brief but exquisite peace.
Yes, afterwards a certain peace stole over my wretched spirit; I could watch in an impersonal way a tiny purple lizard which lay flat upon a near stone searching me with beady, curious eyes; and I could feel my unprotected feet and ankles which had not found the shade aching and burning in the sun’s heat.
But I knew it to be only the peace of utter weariness—the peace of a twilight hour after the first black, bitter rain of a stormy season that must be faced. The struggle, the pain, the strain would reassert themselves later. Still, I was glad of the respite. It gave me time to think, at least; to consider desperately what I should do, how I should bear myself, how I could best hide my pain from the world.
It seemed to me then that I was very friendless and alone in that wide sun-scorched land of pale grasses and turquoise skies—far from my dead mother and my brother and the friends of my life. Fate had dumped me on the African veldt and suffering had overtaken me. All the things I had known and loved—pictures, books, marbles, dim churches, and magnificent music—seemed useless to help or comfort me. These things do not matter to Africa; and when one is dumped on a burning African plain they do not seem to matter to life.
After long, painful thought I fell to trying to form some decision, some wretched plan by which to spare myself more wretchedness. First, I knew that I must see Anthony Kinsella at once. I must find out how deep the wound was he had dealt me before I could burn it out. I must meet him calmly, and calmly demand the truth from him. If these things I had heard were false then he must instantly proclaim the truth to every one, for I would not bear for myself or for him the sneers and suspicions of the world.
If they were true, these things—true that he was married, true that he had been the lover of married women, that he had mocked me with false words—if it were true—ah! God, if it were true! I searched my heart for scorn and contempt to pour upon Anthony Kinsella from my eyes and at least from the expression of my lips, if it were true—and I could find none! I could not find scorn and hatred anywhere in me for the man to whom I had given my heart and soul a few hours before. I could not remember anything that I had ever seen him do or heard him say that merited my scorn. I had nothing against him but women’s scandalous tales. And surely, I thought, a man who was bad to the core as they said he was must have betrayed himself to me by some look or deed. But never, never! I could remember nothing but kind words, wise words, just words, quiet, deliberate, courageous actions (even his punishment of the driver I knew to be just), fearless smiles, straight, intent glances. And then, his burning, passionate words on my lips. Surely no lover’s words were ever more knightly than his. Swearing with our love to cleanse his heart of old sins—vowing by old creeds and lost dreams!
Remembering these things, living them over and over again, I knew at last that I could never scorn Anthony Kinsella. It was not only that I loved as a lover. There was a look in his eyes that pulled at the mother-spirit in me and made my spirit croon a song over him and forgive him for the sake of his boyhood all the sins he had ever committed. There was a look about his mouth that made my spirit kneel to him. There was a note in his voice that when I remembered it saying “Deirdre, I love you!” drove spirit out altogether and left me only a flaming, glowing woman in the arms of the man I loved. I could never scorn him. But I could still doubt, and doubting, scorn myself. That was a new form of torture that assailed me; scorning myself for his easy triumph over my heart and lips. Then I could have torn the heart out of my breast and flung it into the river close by—it hurt so; then I could have crushed beneath the boulders that towered over me the hands that had flown so readily to his clasp—I hated them so; then I could have laid my proud head in the dust for the feet of women to trample over.
Ah! I suffered through the terrible hours of that long day, lying there in the sunshine, my face to the hard brown bosom of the old witch who had already clawed and torn my heart. Over and over the dreary round of words and facts and doubts and fears my mind travelled, until it was sick and numbed and knew only one thing clearly, that I must see Anthony Kinsella. I had a wound that would kill me if it were not treated at once. It could not be covered over with the thin skin of indifference; there was poison in it; it must be seared out with a red-hot iron. Afterwards, perhaps it would heal.
Slowly and vaguely I retraced my steps to the town. It was late in the afternoon. The sun was sinking, but the heat still came up overwhelmingly from under foot, and I felt faint for want of food. I had gone farther than I knew into the veldt, and I was almost fainting with exhaustion when at last I reached the first huts of the township. The sun had gone then, leaving the skies primrose coloured—a pale, lovely light, that yet had something ominous and sinister in it.
To my vague astonishment I found the place humming like a beehive and alive with moving figures. Horses were being walked up and down the streets, saddled and loaded with rolls of blankets and provisions. Waggons stood before the doors of shops and hotels being loaded with boxes and cases of things. Men were rushing in and out of their huts, cleaning straps, shouting to each other and behaving in an odd way. They seemed to be doing everything for themselves. There was not a black boy to be seen. I never thought little Fort George could wear such an air of business, either. What could have happened? Even in my misery of mind I found room for curiosity at these things. Several men we had entertained the night before passed me, but they barely noticed me—merely lifted their hats and passed hastily on. I did not feel annoyed, but I knew there must be something very important in the wind to make them behave so indifferently, and, with such strength as I had left, I quickened my steps and arrived home in a few minutes.
Mrs Valetta met me at the door. Her face was composed and cold as a stone, but very white.
“What is it?” I asked fearfully. “What is the matter?”
“Oh, nothing,” she said, and smiled with a ghostly, bitter smile. “Only the war at last! The final batch of horses have arrived and the men are off to Matabeleland.”
I stood speechless. A vision of Anthony Kinsella’s face flashed across my mind. Now I knew why Mrs Valetta looked like that. I turned away from her, but she followed me into the house.
“Where is Judy?”
I could scarcely believe my ears at her answer:
“She left for Salisbury this morning with Mrs Brand. As soon as you had gone she went out to look for house-boys, and met Mrs Brand, who was rushing to tell us the news and that she had determined to make a dash for Salisbury in her Cape cart before any one commandeered her horses. Mrs Saurin being in a great state of mind about her husband of course begged to go with her, and they set off just after eleven while all the men were at the Court House attending a defence meeting called by Colonel Blow. It is rather daring of them to go off like that, but Constance Brand is a dauntless creature and they’ll be all right.”
“But have they gone alone?”
“They have Jim with them—one of George Brand’s Cape boys—quite trustworthy. All the Mashona boys ran away during the night; there’s not one left in the town. It is supposed that they got messages from their chiefs to return to their kraals. But it is not they who have risen, you know. They are poor friendly things without any fight in them. It is the Matabele whom we have to fear—cruel, ferocious brutes—”
“Did Judy leave no message for me?” I quite understood that Judy should want to get back to Dick, but it seemed to me a cold-blooded thing to leave me to my fate like this, and in the hands of Mrs Valetta!
“Oh, yes! She left a number of messages for you which I can’t remember. However, the gist of them all is that you must abide under my wing until you can rejoin her—I am to be your chaperon,” she finished, with her dry-lipped smile.
“I should think she and Mrs Brand are more in need of one than I.” My tone was glacial.
“Oh! they’ll be all right. The danger doesn’t lie in their direction but over to the north. Then there are a lot of Salisbury men leaving here tonight to join the Salisbury Column for the front, and Colonel Blow anticipates that they will pick up Mrs Brand’s cart very soon and see them safely in. The Port George men leave here to-morrow to join the Salisbury and Victoria Columns at the Iron Mine Hill.”
“All of them?” I asked dully. As a matter of course I knew that Anthony would be the first to go.
“All but the lame and the halt and the blind, who will stay behind to protect us,” said she.
Mrs Skeffington-Smythe and Anna Cleeve now arrived. The latter’s striped grey eyes were blurred with tears, and her lips were pale, but the soft pink bloom on her cheeks was stationary.
“Isn’t it terrible!” she cried. “Anthony Kinsella’s just ridden off with ten men.”
Mrs Valetta stood up abruptly.
“Where to?”
“To Linkwater. It appears there are three men and some Dutch women there who were warned long ago to come in, but would not.”
“But Linkwater is about seventy miles away.”
“I know,” wailed Mrs Skeffington-Smythe. “They will be gone four or five days, if they ever get back at all. It is in the direction of Buluwayo, you know, right in the danger zone. Isn’t it awful? They may easily get cut off and killed—just for the sake of two or three dirty Dutch people. To take off our best men like that! Tony Kinsella called for volunteers, and Gerry Deshon has gone, and young Dennison, Mr Hunloke, Mr Stair, and all the nicest men—utterly ridiculous, I call it, and so unkind. Don’t we need defending, I’d like to know?”
“Oh, we’ll be all right and so will they,” said Anna Cleeve, in an indifferent sort of way, but her eyes had a strained look. Mrs Skeffington-Smythe, who had seated herself on the sofa, carefully took from the front of her gown a little lace-edged handkerchief and a tiny hand-glass, and holding it up in front of her began to push back the tears into her eyes as fast as they came out. I never saw such an odd proceeding before, and I watched it with the greatest fascination. A big tear would gather and form on the lower eye-lashes, but before it had time to get through she would receive half of it on her handkerchief and push the rest of it back into her eyes, going from one to the other with the greatest speed. She never allowed any to escape and stain her cheeks—perhaps because there was a great deal of what looked like shoe-black mingled with the tears. All the time she was whimpering in a dismal voice:
“My poor Monty! I wired to him this morning that he is not to go to the front—he is not strong enough—but they said the wire was so busy my wire couldn’t go through to-day, and I know he’ll go—he’s so brave—he’s sure to do something frightfully distinguished and daring and get killed doing it. What will be the use of the Victoria Cross to me, I’d like to know, if I lose him?”
“Now, Porkie,” said Anna Cleeve, “I shall have to spank you if you don’t stop that. Monty won’t come to any harm—he’s just as well able to look after himself as any other selfish brute of a man. You are nothing but a little fretful porcupine. Don’t cry any more now, else I shan’t love you. Come back to the tent and lie down. What’s the matter with you is that you want rest.”
When they had gone Mrs Valetta said impatiently to me:
“Monty Skeffington-Smythe is a little drunken wretch, and the very best thing he could do would be to get killed decently. It would be the first fine act he ever performed and Nina Skeffington-Smythe knows it.”
“Then surely she has reason enough to weep,” said I, and to myself could only drearily repeat the words, “They will be gone four or five days, if they ever get back at all.”
The hour for the march into Matabeleland had struck. For months the British South Africa Company had, with the sanction of the English Government, been preparing to take the field against Lobengula, but the preparations had moved slowly for the waggons and horses needed for such an expedition had to be brought hundreds of miles, arms and stores had to be provided, and men who were not soldiers by profession got into fighting shape by those who were. I made the startling discovery that every man in Fort George had for months been rising in the cool hours of dawn to engage in drill, gun-practice, shooting, and manoeuvring with ox-waggons, the last quite an important feature of warfare with natives, the waggons being used to form forts or laagers in which to take shelter from native attacks and from which to attack in turn.
A convoy of waggons on the march can in two or three minutes be transformed into an almost impregnable laager. When the waggons are out-spanned it takes not more than ten to fifteen minutes to form a laager, bush it, and get all the horses inside.
So the men I had despised for idlers and loiterers were not so idle after all, it seemed! It is true that they had amused themselves in the afternoons and evenings, but they had been hard at it for many hours in the morning while I was still sleeping. Most of them, in fact, were not Fort George men at all, but came from camps and farms in the outlying districts, because on account of the offensive attitude of the Matabele it was no longer safe to be there. They had left all their regular occupations to come into town to get ready for war. Every one who was not a trooper commanded a troop. Every one had a part and place in the Government plan for invading Matabeleland, putting an end to an impossible situation, and making the country a safe and clean one for a white race. Having newly come to Mashonaland I did not know of all these internal workings and doings. Therefore I was more surprised than any one else to see the splendidly mounted and equipped body of men who were ready to start for Matabeleland the day after the orders to march came down.
Though it was as early as four o’clock in the morning every one in the town was up to see the men leave, and I, too, at the sound of the bugle, had risen from my sleepless bed, dressed hastily, and joined the crowd round the post-office. In the crush I found myself standing next to a woman in a grey skirt and pink cotton blouse, and recognised her as that Mrs Marriott of whom the astounding story of unarrived boxes had been told. After a little while I spoke to her about the men, making one or two ordinary remarks,—what fine fellows they were, and how happy they seemed to be off,—but she had a desperate look and answered me in a dull way, like a woman who only heard dimly what was being said to her. It occurred to me then that her husband was one of those about to ride away.
Most of the men who composed the Column had their wives and families in the place and business to attend to; in fact a great many of them were leaving behind everything they possessed in the world. Yet I never saw a merrier, jollier crowd, and the wives looked equally dauntless. Some of them had white lips but they smiled with them, and the children were prancing about everywhere, hooting with excitement. The only downcast faces to be seen were those of the men who were being left behind, our defenders, of whom Mrs Valetta had spoken so mockingly. I cast my eye round upon them. It was not true that they were the maimed and the halt and the blind, but certainly they were not the most attractive-looking men I had ever seen. Most of them wore unshaven faces and no coats, while their nether garments were what is known as hitched around them on a leather strap—some of them frankly repeating the process of hitching while they stood scowling enviously upon the lucky men who had horses and had been pronounced fit.
Colonel Blow had neither forgotten to shave nor to put on his collar, but the orders that had come down to him to stay at his post and look after the town of Fort George had changed him from a charming, nice man into a bear of the most unsociable kind. He looked capable of falling with fang and claw upon any one who ventured to speak to him. Among the rest of our defenders were the bearded pard, the parson, the postmaster whose genial face was also trimmed with scowls, and the doctor, whose gout prevented him from being a warrior but who frankly informed every one who was interested enough to listen that nothing would have induced him to go, gout or no gout. He was not looking for any Lobengulas, he said. He had not lost any Matabele impis, so why should he go and search for them?
There were other odds and ends of human relics who were not for the front. I noticed one man, a tall fellow with a stoop in his broad shoulders and a ravaged face that still bore traces of rather extraordinary good looks, but his skin was a terrible yellow colour and his eyes were sunken pits in his face. He was such a striking tragedy that I could not refrain from putting a question about him to the woman at my side.
“What a splendid piece of wreckage!” I said in a low voice. “Why didn’t some one save him from the rocks, I wonder? Who is he, Mrs Marriott?”
In her dull quiet voice she answered two words:
“My husband.”
My face went hot with shame for my thoughtless cruelty.
“Oh, forgive me!” I stammered, remembering the tale that I had been told of the terrible tragedy of her finding after marriage that her husband was a slave to the morphia habit. I did not know what to say: the thing was so unpardonable, so irremediable. But her face showed no more than its usual expression of dull sadness.
“It doesn’t matter,” she replied, and continued to stare blankly before her.
At that moment my attention was wrenched away from her by the sound of a charming and musical voice. Some one was speaking—a rather short, thickset man, sitting heavily on his horse. He had a reddish face, large, bright, dark eyes, and an abnormally big forehead; and under his cocked-up-at-one-side hat he held his head bent forward in a curiously concentrated way as he spoke to the men, who all turned to him, listening like men in a trance. He had not spoken two words before I knew the American name for this ordinary-looking man with the magnetic presence and the charming and musical woman’s voice. He was a spell-binder.
“Men, I have to thank you, from Mr Rhodes, for the British South Africa Company, and for the British Empire, for the way in which you and the men all over Mashonaland have come forward to tackle this job. It is going to be a tough job—and not at all pretty—but we will stick to it, and I am confident of our ultimate success. We have right on our side. ‘Thrice-armed is he who hath his quarrel just’ you know and we have given Lobengula every opportunity to make good his promise to the Chartered Company, but over and over again he has betrayed our trust and broken his compact. He has crossed our boundaries, cut our telegraph wires, raided the chiefs under our protection, and lately, as you are aware, not content with wallowing in blood in his own kraals, he has been here to our very doors murdering the wretched natives who as our servants for the first time in their lives knew the sweet taste of liberty that is the right of every man that breathes. It has come to this—that our women and children are in danger; our mining and agricultural interests, dearly bought by fever and privation, are threatened; none of us can ever be safe away on a lonely farm or mine; we have proved the treachery of Lobengula, and we know that his people mean mischief. Well, it has got to end! We must either once and for all put down the power of the Matabele, or get out. I don’t think we mean to get out. This is too good a country to leave—and we have paid too dearly for our share in it. It is too fine a country to be nothing but the shambles of a bloody butcher; this wide, lovely land calls for some nobler destiny than to be the necropolis of the wretched Mashona nation. It is a white man’s country—a fit heritage for the children of British men and women—your children, and the children of the women who have not disdained to come up here and feel the rough edge of life; who do not grudge their men to the service of the Empire; who are here this morning not to weep, but to cheer you forth to victory. Goodbye, boys! I’ll meet you again at Buluwayo. In the name of Cecil Rhodes I give you Godspeed!”
He took the hat from his fine head and waved it to them smiling, then swiftly turned his horse’s head and rode away followed by his staff, amidst wild bursts of cheering.
A moment later, the children had broken into wild hurrahs, whips were cracking, and waggons streaking down the road in clouds of dust. Every one was waving hands and handkerchiefs to the men who rode away laughing in the morning sunshine.
“We cheered them forth,
Brilliant and gallant and brave.”
When all was over I saw Mrs Marriott walking listlessly away in the wake of her husband, who, now that the last groups were breaking up, had turned and was going towards his home. Some one near me remarked:
“It is too bad about poor Marriott—he almost begged on his knees to go, but Fitzgerald didn’t make any bones about telling him he would be no good. Of course it was quite true, but it doubled Marriott up like a knife between the ribs. I didn’t think he could feel like that still. Fitz might have been a little tenderer about it.”
The doctor slapped the speaker on the shoulders.
“My boy, there is nothing tender about war. That is why I am staying at home.”