The war had been a disappointment in many ways. It is true that the work had been accomplished. The Matabele were broken and dispersed, and life in the country was now secure. But the war had not been the glorious campaign anticipated. The quiet honour of having done his duty belonged to every man of them; there was glory for few save those whose ears would never more hear blame or praise. There had been no big, wild, battles, force closing with force: only “potting and being potted” they complained.
“Sniped at from the bush when we weren’t looking! No loot, no sport, nothing but fever and sore feet, and hunger, and disgust, and lost pals!”
Ah! that was the rub! There lay the sting! When they thought of the thirty-four men whose bones lay bleaching in the rain beyond Shangani they turned their faces to the wall and some of them died. The price of the campaign had been too high!
The whole thing was one of Africa’s sweet little mirages, others told me as I sat by their beds—one of her charming little games, and her rotten cotton ways. In changing moods and tenses that varied from raving delirium to a painful clarity of thought their cry was unanimous and unchanging: “Sick of it!”
First and last and always they were sick of Africa, and “on the side” as Mr Hunloke phrased it, they were sick of “bucketting and being bucketted about all over the shop;” of bad whiskey; of no whiskey; of sore feet; of veldt sores; of fever; of mosquitoes; of never getting any letters from home; of getting letters from home that contained plenty of good advice but no tin; of the rottenness of the country; of the whole damned show; of life in general.
“There’s nothing in it,” they said, and uttering that bitter brief indictment more of them died. Others by slow degrees recovered and began to quote bits of, Barrack-Room Ballads and cynical lines from Adam Lindsay Gordon to the nurse in charge.
They are a poetical people—these black sheep and travellers. Nearly all of them carry about, hidden in the deeps of their hearts verses, tag-ends of sonnets, valiant lines from the men’s poets—Byron, Henley, Kipling, Gordon; and I learned to find it not strange that even on profane lips the lines were always of the strong and chivalrous and the pure in heart.
Mrs Valetta and I found ourselves in daily touch with each other at the hospital huts. We were the only ones left of the Salisbury group. Anna Cleeve had gone back, on hearing that her fiancé had arrived in Salisbury ill of fever, and later Mrs Skeffington-Smythe departed in the mail-coach, seated amongst a hundred parcels which she had been obliged to stage-manage herself, as Monty, appearing to think that martial law and marital responsibility ended together, had bestowed the favour of his company upon two strangers who owned a comfortable spring waggon and were bent on getting some sable-antelope shooting.
By the first coach that came down there had been a letter from Judy urging me to join her as soon as possible, but at the time it did not seem the best thing to do. There was no special work for me in Salisbury, while in Fort George there was much. Moreover, I had put out too many roots and fronds to be able to detach myself easily from the place where Anthony Kinsella had left me and told me to wait until he came. Judy’s letters became more pressing after the return to Salisbury of Mrs Skeffington-Smythe and Anna Cleeve. It transpired that with implacable malice they had given to all who cared to listen their version of my parting with Anthony Kinsella. Judy flew to pen and paper to let me know that my “infatuation for Tony Kinsella” was the most interesting topic of conversation in Salisbury, and that the kindest thing any one found to say was: “What a pity he is already married!”
Dick who had returned from Buluwayo wrote that he was coming down as soon as an injured hip and a broken arm would permit to see Mrs Marriott before she left for England, and tell her all he could about her husband’s splendid death. He had some plan to discuss with her, too, about the farm of six thousand acres which was her husband’s share as a volunteer. Each man who went to the front was entitled to a farm of that size, twenty gold claims, and a share of the cattle captured.