“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?”