"Pain is the lord of this world, nor is there any one who escapes from
its net."
Within the next few weeks many of our men came home. Not as we had
cheered them forth, in a gay band:
Brilliant and gallant and brave!
--But ragged, haggard, footsore, dragged by or dragging half-starved
horses; many of them with rheumatism planted for ever in their joints,
and malaria staring from their eyes.
Fort George was a busy place again. Wives worn with watching and
waiting in suspense, braced themselves afresh to the task of nursing
sick husbands, while those who had no men-folk of their own on the spot
were hastily _spanned-in_ by the hospital sisters who had more than they
could do in the over-crowded little hospital amongst the husbands and
sons and lovers of women far away. Most of these were "travellers who
had sold their lands to see other men's," as _Rosalind_ puts it, and
possessed of the accompanying qualifications--"rich eyes and empty
hands!" Many of them were just members of that great Legion of the Lost
ones always to be found in the advance-guard of pioneer bands--the men
who have strayed far from the fold of home and love and women-folk.
"The little black sheep who have gone astray.
The damned bad sorts who have lost their way."
The nursing to be done amongst these cases was of the most difficult
kind, for there was no co-operation from the patient. Most of them
didn't care a brass button whether they recovered or not. They were
tired, disappointed, _blase_ men, and their attitude towards life could
be summed up in one brief potent phrase that was often on their lips:
"Sick of it!"
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 _fiance_ 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.
Dick's idea was to take care of this property for Mrs Marriott, and to
put all his energy into enhancing its value for the benefit of the woman
who had been widowed for his sake. Incidentally, he wrote that he hoped
I would return with him to Salisbury. But my sister-in-law, who wrote
by the same mail, coldly advocated a return to Johannesburg and the wing
of Elizabet von Stohl.
"You can never live down the scandal that is being talked about you,"
she said. "There will always be a tale attached to you, and all the
fast men in the country will want to flirt with you on the strength of
it. Besides, what are you going to do when Tony Kinsella comes
back--_for he will come back of course_."
I thanked her much for that! Gladly I forgave her all the rest for the
sake of that last little sentence that had slipped with such conviction
from her pen. It was true that every one felt so about Anthony
Kinsella: he was such an alive, ardent personality, it was impossible to
believe him dead.
"_Of course_ he will come back," was what they all said. Claude Hunloke
went further.
"Tony Kinsella is a slick guy!" he announced. "I tell you he has got
cast-iron fastenings. Nothing can ever break him loose."
"And I know that it is true," I said to myself. "He will come back.
Then every one will know the truth about us"; and I crushed down doubt
and dismay. Africa put her gift into my heart and wrote her sign upon
my brow.
I was minding Tommy Dennison at about this time--a jaundiced-coloured
skeleton in a very bad way with black-water fever. He was one of the
patients who had overflowed from the hospital into a private hut for
special nursing. So I tended him under the instructions and supervision
of the hospital sisters, though if any one had a few months before
described "black-water" to me and told me I should ever nurse a case
without blenching and shrivelling at the task I should have announced a
false prophet. But it was even so. I sat by him through the wet, hot
days, listening to the drip of the rain from the thatch and the little
broken bits of an old song that was often, on his lips.
"Lay me low, my work is done,
I am weary, lay me low,
Where the wild flowers woo the sun.
Where the balmy breezes blow,
Where the butterfly takes wing,
Where the aspens drooping glow,
Where the young birds chirp and sing,
I am weary, let me go.
"I have striven hard and long
Always with a stubborn heart,
Taking, giving, blow for blow.
Brother, I have played my part,
And am weary, let me go."
At intervals he raved, fancying himself back at Buluwayo where he smelt
the King's kraal burning, and heard the kaffir dogs making night hideous
by their howling.
"Oh! will some of you fellows kill those dogs?--choke 'em--feed 'em do
anything, only let me sleep... _How_ many do you say? _six hundred of
them starving in the bush, left behind by Loben_... Six hundred!...
Into the valley of death... rode the six hundred!" Then back again to
his old song:
"When our work is done, 'tis best,
Brother, best that we should go,
I am weary, let me rest,
I am weary, let me go."
Always, always, day after day, sleeping and waking, he muttered those
lines with the persistency of the delirious. But one day he varied them
to:
"Lay me weary, I am low,
I am low--I've never done any work!"
and smiling at me with his fever-broken lips, closed his eyes for ever.
Just four months after he had sat upon the summit of Anthony Kinsella's
hut playing subtly upon the flute!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
My brother arrived the next day--the same old kindly tolerant debonair
Dick of old; but yet with some of his gaiety and boyishness wiped from
his face and replaced by a heavy look that it saddened me strangely to
see, for I had begun to recognise that look and knew that it meant care.
His eye had a strained expression, too; and when I saw that his arm
hung useless by his side, and that he came limping towards me, I burst
out crying.
"Oh, Dicky!" I cried. "They have shot you all to bits!"
But he only grinned.
"Nonsense, Goldie, I'm all right. What's a chipped arm and a game leg
if they're not the honours of war? Some of the fellows haven't a thing
to show for their trouble. These are my trophies. I'm proud of 'em. I
show 'em round."
"That's all very well," I said, still sniffling and mopping up my tears,
"but you've got a temperature too. I can see it by your eyes."
"Oh! a little bit slack. A pinch of quinine will put me right with the
world. But, Deirdre, I've some fierce news for you. What do you think
the last mail brought me but an announcement that your solicitor,
Morton, had skidooed with every rap of yours. Betty wrote to me in a
fearful state about it. You're bust, my child."
"Dick!"
"Yes, every red cent! We don't have a bit of luck about the dibs, you
and I. It turns out that he has only been keeping things going for the
last year or so, by borrowing money on your securities; then just as
things began to look too fishy, and discovery _had_ to come, he scooted
with the fragments that remained--about twelve baskets full I _don't_
think, and Chancery Lane knows him no more. But wait till I get after
him! Just wait till I have got things fixed up all right for Mrs
Marriott, and you and Judy! I'll get after him! Not that I suppose I
shall get much out of him, but still--"
The cold-blooded American who has been robbed of a dollar gleamed out of
one of Dick's eyes and a red Indian raging for the scalp of his foe
glared from the other.
"If he's got anything left he'll belch up all right when I get him!" he
announced with the conviction of a Nemesis. Presently he regained
calmness.
"You must come up and live with me and Judy," he said. "There are some
catamarans of women in the world, Deirdre, and I believe you've been up
against one or two, but they're not all like that. There are some jolly
nice women in Salisbury, and we'll put the rest to the rightabout, and
make them eat up their silly tales."
"Dear Dick," I said, "it takes a real reformed rake like you to be truly
generous. But I can't come to Salisbury."
"Why not? It isn't like you to run away from the music."
"I'm not going to. But I can't leave Fort George yet."
He looked troubled and wistful, but asked me more questions. He was too
much a believer it the family integrity. But after a day or two, most
of which he spent with Gerry Deshon and Colonel Blow, for I was still
much engaged at the hospital and had only the evenings for him, his
troubled looks disappeared. Eventually, having planned with Mrs
Marriott her secure future, he was ready to return to Salisbury.
"I shall have to get back, Deirdre; but you stay on here as long as you
think fit, with Mrs Burney. Blow and Deshon will mind you for me; and
when you're ready to come on to Salisbury send me a wire and I'll fetch
you."
A morning or two later I walked up and down with him in the early dawn,
before the post-office, waiting for the mails to be put into the coach
that was to carry him away. A few sard-coloured stars lingered
regretfully in the pale sky. Not until his foot was on the step of the
coach did he say the words I wished to hear from him, but would not ask
for.
"Goldie--of course I've heard everything, all about it--it seems to be a
queer tangle. If it were any other fellow I'd get after him--but
Kinsella is straight--as straight a man as there is in Africa. If he
has let you believe he is free, then you can take my oath he is."
I could have kissed his feet for those words, and the way he spoke
them--as though it was unquestionable that Anthony was still in the
world. I could not speak, my heart was too full. I could only look at
him gratefully through my tears. He patted me on the shoulder.
"Dear old girl, don't fret. He'll turn up." I did not have time to
fret: there was too much to do. Among other things I had Mrs Marriott
to pack up and send away to her English home to those who would tend and
love her and bring her safely through her coming trial. Her last words
to me from the coach were:
"Deirdre, I _know_ I shall have a son to take up life where poor Rupert
laid it down: and I think he can do it under no finer name than
Anthony."
"Thank you, dear," I cried, "and then you must come back here and give
him his father's heritage. It's going to be a splendid heritage. Dick
will see to that."
A week later we packed off the little woman whose husband still lay
unburied at Shangani. She was taking her small fatherless tribe to her
people down-country, and was then coming back to earn her living by
nursing. Saba Rookwood and her husband were travelling with the same
waggons. They had been married that morning, and were going away for a
time to return later and start farming and mining in the Buluwayo
district.
In the evening, Gerry Deshon, Colonel Blow, and I rode to their first
_outspan_, about twelve miles out from the town, and had supper with
them--a sad, affectionate little farewell supper, sitting round an old
black kettle that was propped up by two tall stones over the red embers
of the wood and _mis_ fire.
If any one had told me a few months before that I would sit at a
camp-fire, my eyes blurred with tears and my heart full of regrets at
parting with a dowdy, worn-faced little colonial woman who understood
nothing of life as I had known it; and another who had broken the moral
code and transgressed against the tenets of my religion, I should have
been both deeply offended and incredulous. Even if it could have been
explained to me that I should love and reverence the first woman because
the great forces of life--Love and Sorrow and Death--had touched and
beautified her, revealing to all her strong heart, and courage, and a
lovely belief in the mercy and wisdom of God, I should yet not entirely
have understood; nor that I could honour the second because I saw in her
a gentle, kind, and brave spirit, sweet in humiliation, and free of
malice and the small sins that devour the souls of so many women.
Africa had taught me a few things.
I had come out to her stiff with the arrogance of youth and well-being,
of pride that has never been assailed by suffering and disgrace; of
rectitude that has been untried by temptation; full of the disdainful
virtue of one who has known only the bright, beflowered paths of life,
and been well hedged and guarded from all that hurts and defiles. But
she had opened eyes in my soul that had been blind before, and had shown
me lives seared with pain and sin and scorched with the fires of passion
that were yet beautiful; of men who could fight down the beasts of
temptation and conquer the devils of vice; of men who could forget
self-interest to hold out a helping hand to the weak and the stumbling;
of men who could die in lone, silent places so that others might live in
safety and security; of women who could offer their all for the public
good, and lose it with a smile on their lips.
These were things I had read of and heard of and dreamed of perhaps.
But in this fierce, sad land they happened. Africa had shown them to me
happening in all their naked terror and beauty. In Europe I had known
pictures, and sculpture, add music, in all their finished and accepted
beauty. But here I had found the very elements of Art--deeds to inspire
sculpture, and all the tragedy that a violin in the hands of a master
tries to tell.
Riding home between the two men, along the dusty road, silver fretted
now under the glancing stars and a moon that hung in the heavens like a
great luminous pearl, I realised how changed I was, and how changed was
life for me. I think then for the first time it dawned upon me that the
claw of Africa was already deep in my heart, but that the throe it
caused was not all of pain.
When we got back to the town we found that some waggons we had met on
our way out had come in. They were drawn up in the front of one of the
shops, and left standing there for the night, but a little of the
unloading had been begun, and on one side of the road lay three enormous
packing cases. We reined in for a moment to look at them, and read the
address painted on each in large black letters. Afterwards we gazed at
each other and exchanged sad ironical smiles. Mrs Marriott's
_trousseau_ had arrived!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I think it was just three weeks afterwards that I heard of Dick's death.
The news came as an absolute shock to me, for I had not even known that
he was ill. It appeared that he had been suffering from fever ever
since his return from Fort George, but he had not allowed Judy, to tell
me because he thought it would add to my worries, also he hoped from day
to day to have better news to send. Instead, weakened by his wounds and
the privations undergone at the front, he suddenly got rapidly worse,
and almost before they realised in what desperate case he was, passed
quietly out one morning at dawn. When I heard, it was too late even to
see his face before they buried him, for the dead do not tarry long with
us in Africa, and I could not have reached Salisbury in less than three
or four days.
While I was still quivering under the blow, and as though it were not
enough, they came to tell me that Maurice Stair had come home--_alone_.
Walking like a woman in a dream I went to the hut where he was resting,
and heard the story he had to tell.
After much searching and enquiry among the Matabele who had come in to
lay down their arms, but were all averse to telling what part they had
taken in the past fighting, or to confess the solitary deeds of horror
many of them had committed, he had at last found certain natives willing
to lead him to other natives still away in the bush who had knowledge of
the disappearance of Anthony Kinsella. By inference, implication, and
insinuation--anything but direct information, for fear they should be
accused of complicity--these boys had told what they knew of the
affair--which was too much!
They said that after Britton had escaped to fetch help from the main
column, Anthony had gone on fighting, shooting with his revolver when
his rifle ammunition had given out, and attacking the natives with such
violence that all had fallen except one, who, wounded in the legs had
crawled to the bush, and from there had watched. He reported that
Anthony Kinsella had been hit on the head by one of the last bullets,
and seemed to have gone mad afterwards for he suddenly threw down his
revolver and leaving the body of Vincent (supposed by the natives to be
dead) had walked away into the bush, _laughing and singing_! Afterwards
some more natives had come up, and the wounded man had shewn them the
direction Kinsella had taken. They had followed his spoor, and come
upon him in the bush, unarmed--
Maurice Stair paused there, and turned his face away.
"You must tell me all," I said calmly and waited.
"They were ten to one--they killed him by the stream where he was
lying--they left nothing by which we could identify him--but the natives
took us without hesitation to the spot where the bones lay. We buried
them and put up a rough cross."
It seemed to me then as if my last hold to life was broken: as if the
last rock to cling to in a cruel, storm-racked sea had crumbled suddenly
away, and I went down for awhile under the waves of that sea; it washed
over my head and submerged me.
For three months I lay at the door of death, craving entry into the
place that held all I loved. But Africa had not done with me. She
dragged me back from the dark, healed my sick body with her sunshine,
and cooled my fevers with her sparkling air. She even after a time
began to lull my mind with a peace it had never known before. In
strange moments a kind of exquisitely bitter contentment possessed me at
having paid with the last drop of my heart's blood the price she exacts
from the children of civilisation who come walking with careless feet in
her wild secret places. Mocking and gay I had come to the cave of the
witch, and now she clawed me to her and held me tight in her bosom with
the hands of my dead. And not _my_ dead only: the hands of all those
men with whom I had laughed in the moonlight and afterwards waved to, in
farewell--they held me too, though they were hands no longer but pale
bones on the brown earth; they held me fast like the hands of dead
brothers and I could never leave the land where they lay. With the
strange prophetic knowledge that sometimes comes to one when the body is
weakened by illness, but the spirit's vision become wonderfully clear, I
knew at last that I could never leave this cruel land that had robbed me
of those I loved and given me instead a bitter peace and a strange
contentment in her wild, barren beauty.