There followed many blank days. Week after week went by without news of any kind coming in. We only knew that our men were all together now, and marching on to Matabeleland. The question with us was to kill time and fearsome thought, and to kill time was a nearly impossible thing to do. Amusements there were none, of course, and occupations had to be invented. An interest in life had to be borne within, for in the external life of the town nothing happened to excite interest. The men, it is true, were kept always on the qui vive by the indefatigable Commandant, and when they were not drilling on the square or practising with the Hotchkiss they were away on patrol and picket duty. Even if they had not been so busy they were not a very interesting crowd; I imagine the men left behind to look after the women seldom are. They may be the real heroes; but they don’t look like it; and I don’t fancy they feel like it. The cause of their being left behind in the first place is generally physical unfitness or some domestic or official reason that puts them out of conceit with themselves, and out of love with life in general. Even a man like Colonel Blow, left in charge of a town in a position of great responsibility and trust, grew morose and surly, thinking of the excitement he was missing at the front and the fighting he was hopelessly out of. It was said that on its being decided that he was to be left behind he spent a whole day wiring appeals to Dr Jim and Mr Rhodes, and in the intervals walking round and round his office shouting bad words about “a lot of women and children any one could look after!” Not very flattering to the women and children, of course, but one could quite understand the attitude of mind and believe that in the same case one would say the same thing. There must be something gloriously exciting in riding through starry nights and sunlit days to fight for your country and your rights. There is nothing at all glorious in sitting safe and snug at home killing time until good news comes in.
I was very sorry for pale, handsome Maurice Stair with his crippled arm. He could not even go out on patrol or picket duty, because it was impossible for him to carry a gun. He always sought me when he had a spare half-hour, and afterwards I used to feel quite exhausted from the prolonged effort of trying to cheer him up. It was like trying to pull a heavy bucket up a well and never quite succeeding in getting it to the top. He often said:
“Thank God for you, anyway; the only sound, sweet spot in the rottenest apple I’ve ever put my teeth into.”
I would laugh at this exaggeration of my usefulness in trying to jeer him out of the blues: but I felt I deserved some praise for such work.
“Absurd! You know very well you adore this country, like all the rest of the men, and would never be happy in a ‘boiled’ shirt again.”
“Oh, wouldn’t I? Try me! If it were not for one person I would leave Fort George to-day and show Africa the cleanest pair of heels she ever saw step on to a Cape liner.”
He looked at me so embarrassingly on this occasion that I did not care to ask him who the person was. I said:
“Yes, and you would be back within a year, trying to sneak in by the East Coast route, hoping no one would notice you’d been away.”
But he would deny the Witch unceasingly, saying that she had no lure for him—all because he was longing to be in the thick of things with the other men, and because of the tormenting thought that he was staying behind like a woman while history was being made within a few hundred miles.
Certainly it was hard on a high-spirited boy, ambitious, with fighting blood in his veins. All his people had been soldiers for generations, he told me, but for some reason his uncle had not wished him to enter the army, and so he had sought life in places where at least there were always chances of irregular fighting. And now that a chance had come along—here he was! It really was bad luck, and I comforted him as best I might. But I had my own troubles to bear.