"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."