“I saw you kiss Kinsella the night he went, and of course I understood that a girl like you would not have done that except for one reason. So it can be of no use my telling you that I love you. Yet I want to tell you if you don’t mind, and to call you Deirdre once. May I, Deirdre?”
I really don’t remember what I said, but I was frightfully surprised and sorry. I don’t believe I said anything. Perhaps I sat and stared at him with my mouth open. I only know that we came out of it sworn friends.
Afterwards we climbed to the top of the highest of the rocks to get a view of the whole wide veldt lying shimmering in the sunshine with far-off hazes and veils of purple and amethyst, draped about the horizon like the robes of a god.
As we stood looking a cloud of dust appeared upon the road, and presently we made out the figure of a man on a light horse approaching the camp. He was coming from the west and, therefore, towards Fort George, and when we realised this we knew that he was not from the town, but from the front—some one with news.
Colonel Blow jumped up, and forgetting good manners and me ran for the edge of the rock and began to climb down as fast as he could. But I as swiftly followed him, and when he reached level ground I was there too. Then we took hands and frankly ran for the camp, stumbling over ruts and stones, and tripping in ant-bear holes, but covering the ground at a speed I had never achieved before except in an express train. But in spite of our haste the newcomer had arrived first, and we found him dismounted, standing at the head of a pale-coloured drooping horse, with every one in the camp clustered round him. I remember thinking that it was the first time I had ever seen a horse that looked so exactly like the pale-coloured horse Death is supposed to ride when he goes abroad. I wondered what made me think of it at that moment.
I did not recognise the man’s face as one I had ever seen; but when Mrs Burney rushed forward and flung her arms round his neck I realised that this was her husband, whom I had often seen before. Yes: it was Robert Burney the scout! Yet why should dust and fatigue and a stubbly beard so terribly alter a man as he was altered? It is true that his coat hung in tatters, we could see his bare feet through his ragged boots, and his cheek-bones seemed almost piercing through his cheeks. But as he stood there looking at us I realised that it was in his eyes that the change lay. I never saw a man with such hard, calm eyes. If it had been a woman who stood there with those eyes I should have believed that she had wept until she had no more tears, and could never weep again. But this man’s iron face, haggard and weary though it seemed, was not one that could be associated with tears. Yet it is true that when I looked into the fearless, still eyes of Robert Burney I thought of tears—tears that were frozen in the heart and would never be shed. Neither were they dumb, those eyes of his that were so calm. When we had looked at him in silence for a moment, some knowledge leaped out to us from them and entered into our very hearts, paling our faces and chilling our blood so that we stood there shivering in the warm sunshine while we waited for him to speak. Fear had us by the throat, and in the heart of every one “terror was lying still!”
Some name trembled on every lip, and each one of us longed to shout a question: but tongue clave to palate, lips were too dry to open. It was revealed to us in some strange way that Robert Burney had more to tell than the mere fate of one man.
At last he moistened with his tongue his cracked and dust-thickened lips, and spoke quietly:
“A lot of our fellows have been surrounded and cut up.”
No one cried out. No one fainted. We just stood there quietly round him, staring into his eyes and listening. No one wept, except Mrs Burney, who had her man safe back in her arms.