FORMING A NEW COMMITTEE
Not until it became positively known at Harmony, towards the middle of
October, that the members of the Secret Committee had been sent away
to Bermuda, did Mrs. van Warmelo and Hansie breathe freely again.
The suspense of five full weeks was over at last, a suspense not to be
described, and never to be forgotten by those who endured it.
It did not seem possible to grasp the fact that those brave men had
escaped with their lives, and Hansie, looking up at the stars that
night, felt that she had learnt something of unspeakable value in the
relief and gratitude with which that period of concentrated suffering
had been followed.
Carlo looked up at the stars too, for he invariably followed his young
mistress's gaze, but on this occasion, seeing nothing unusual in that
vast expanse, he stood up on his hind legs before her and gave a short
bark of inquiry.
"They have gone, Carlo," she said. "I know you won't believe it, but
they have really gone, and if 'Gentleman Jim' knew anything about
this, he would surely say, 'I 'spose their time hadn't come yet,
little missie.' That's it, Carlo. Their time had not come yet. But
they have left things in a fearful muddle, and we will have to work as
we never worked before. The first thing to be done to-morrow morning
will be----"
She stopped suddenly--not even to her faithful Carlo could she confide
the secret plan which she had made for reorganising and
re-establishing on a safer footing the Secret Service of the Boers in
town.
She would form a new Committee, of five women this time, who would
carry on the work on the same lines which had been adopted by the
Secret Committee, and this plan, when she unfolded it to her mother
that night, was received with warm approval.
The first and last meeting was held at Harmony on October 15th and was
attended by Mrs. Malan, Mrs. Armstrong, Mrs. Honey, Mrs. van Warmelo,
and Hansie, who was appointed secretary.
Bound together by the sacred oath of fidelity and secrecy, these five
women vowed to serve their country and people, as an organised body of
workers, as long as they had the power to do so.
On the occasion of his next visit to the capital Captain Naudé was to
be informed of the formation of the new Committee, but for the rest
its very existence was to be kept a dead secret.
Mrs. van Warmelo told the members that she was in a position to
communicate with the President in Holland by every mail, and that the
methods employed by her would be revealed to them _after the war_.
With this they expressed themselves satisfied, willingly leaving the
matter of sending away dispatches from the field in Mrs. van Warmelo's
capable hands.
It was felt that the greatest responsibility resting on them at the
time was to have a suitable place of refuge ready to receive the
Captain when next he entered the town.
There was no house free from suspicion since the arrest of the
Committee, except--except--Harmony!
Harmony, surrounded as it was by British officers and their staffs, by
British troops and Military Mounted Police--Harmony was at last chosen
as the most suitable, the only spot in Pretoria in which the Captain
of the Secret Service could be harboured with any degree of safety.
It was arranged that he would immediately be brought to Harmony when
he came again, and in the meantime the Committee would be on the
look-out for an opportunity to send a warning and instructions out to
him not to approach the houses hitherto frequented by him.
For many weeks no spies belonging to his set came into town. No war
news of any description reached his friends, except one day the
information, conveyed we know not how, of the safe arrival at the
Skurvebergen of young Els, the spy who had been fired upon and was
missing from his companions on that eventful September 12th. That this
news gave his relatives and friends great joy and relief after the
intense anxiety gone through on his account, my readers will readily
understand.
* * * * *
The discovery of the White Envelope was not always a source of unmixed
satisfaction.
One of them, containing news of the betrayal and arrest of the
Committee, and sent to Alphen in the ordinary way, failed to reach
its destination. This caused the senders so much anxiety that for some
time they did not dare risk the sending of another. The letter might
have fallen into the hands of the censors and the secret be discovered
by them, in which event they were probably waiting quietly to catch up
further information.
It may have been only a coincidence, but at this time the plotters at
Harmony observed that the censorship on _their_ post had been
withdrawn altogether.
They knew only too well what this meant! And their hearts sank when
they thought of the White Envelope!
It meant, good reader, that there was a most disquieting increase in
the vigilance of the censor; it meant that their letters were opened
_by steam_, to throw them off their guard, and to encourage them to
write with greater frankness to their absent friends.
Mother and daughter felt the hair rising on their heads when they
thought of one of their precious White Envelopes being subjected to a
treatment of _steam_ by the censor, and of his exultation on beholding
the result.
As the days went by, their dread of him and his evil machinations
increased, for hardly a letter reached them that did not betray traces
of his handiwork--or unhandiwork, for he was not always judicious in
the quantity of glue used by him in reclosing the envelopes. He should
have been a little more economical in the use of Government property
if he really wished to hoodwink his enemies, and he would have saved
Mrs. van Warmelo the trouble of damping the envelopes afterwards where
they stuck, on the inside, to the letters.
While the steaming process was being carried on at the General Post
Office, no White Envelopes were taken to the censor, but they were
posted at Johannesburg by friends, and in this way the distant
correspondents were warned of danger, until it became evident that the
steam-censorship had been withdrawn and the old reassuring order of
things been established once more.
A week or two later another White Envelope from Holland reached
Harmony in safety, by which it was known that the secret was still
undiscovered, but the fate of the missing envelope remained a mystery
to the end, and was a constant reminder and warning to the
conspirators to be careful in the use of their priceless secret.
I am sure the Post Office officials had plenty to do during the war,
but there is no doubt that their labours were considerably lightened
by the "smugglers" who chose to dispense with the services of the
censors entirely. And then we must not forget the activities of the
spies and of their fellow-workers in town.
Quite a large private postal service was carried on by them, as we all
know, and every week, before the entry into Pretoria became so
difficult and dangerous, hundreds of letters were carried backwards
and forwards, to and from the commandos.
One man in town was in the habit of receiving great batches of these
smuggled letters, which he distributed to the various addresses, until
one day he was very nearly caught. He had just received a packet of
communications "from the front" and had opened it on his writing-table
in his quiet study, when the doors were opened unceremoniously and
some officials entered with a warrant to search his house. Carpets
were taken up, walls were tapped, furniture was overturned and
examined, books were removed from their shelves and every cranny
inspected with the greatest thoroughness, but the pile of letters
lying open on his writing-table, over which they had found him bending
when they entered the room, was passed over without so much as a
glance.
This may sound a bit unreal, unlikely, but there are similar cases on
record, which we know to be true beyond a doubt, and one of these I
must relate, because it so closely concerned our friends at Harmony
and so very nearly proved to be their undoing. They did not know it at
the time, but were told by Mrs. Cloete, after the war, that she had
sent all their uncensored, their "smuggled" letters, to her friend at
Capetown, Mrs. Koopmans de Wet, with instructions to read and return
them to her as soon as possible, which Mrs. Koopmans had done, with
the alarming news that her house had been thoroughly searched for
documents while the pile of letters was lying open on her
writing-table.
The authorities must have been "struck blind," she had said, for
though they had overhauled the place and had taken away with them
every suspicious-looking document, they had passed and repassed the
papers on her table without a word and with nothing more than a
superficial glance.
This information had alarmed Mrs. Cloete so much that she had
immediately packed every incriminating letter and all her White
Envelopes into a tin, which she secretly buried, with the help of her
German nurse, under one of the trees at Alphen.
And there they, or what is left of them after ten years, still lie,
for the spot has never again been found, although every effort was
made to do so.