Chapter Seven.

Chapter Seven.War Calls.“Off thro’ the dark with the stare to rely on,(Alpha, Centauri, and something Orion).”When we met at the breakfast table the bloom of the dawn was on none of us. Mrs Valetta was pale and haggard as a murderess. Judy, cross and dishevelled, had a black smudge on her nose and was utterly out of tune with life because the boys had all mysteriously disappeared during the night, and she had been obliged to get the breakfast herself. I was not left long in ignorance of my own worn and unlovely appearance.“You look like a ghost, Deirdre,” said my sister-in-law. “No more midnight revels for you! Really, dear, you are dreadfully white and your lips have quite a blue tint. What on earth is the matter?”“I should think Miss Saurin’s heart must be seriously affected,” said Mrs Valetta dryly, but though she smiled her eyes gave me a look like a flash of lightning—so blue and angry and burning it was. I knew at last why she hated me. Judy glanced at me again with a shade of anxiety.“Oh, I hope not. Do you think you ought to see a doctor, Deirdre? Dr Abingdon here is quite clever they say, though he does look such an oldroué. But Jand, in Salisbury, is the best man. Even Dr Jim goes to him when he is ill.”“I am quite well, Judy.” I got up from the table and looked out of the window. I felt as if I could die of weariness and the sick blankness of life. Across the square near Anthony Kinsella’s hut a group of men stood talking animatedly. I turned away with my hand to my head. I wished I might never see any more men for a thousand years—and yet—“I am quite well, Judy, but my head aches. I think I will go for a long walk. Perhaps that will do me good.”“Well, I can’t offer to come with you, my dear. Apparently I am to have the pleasure of doing my own housework to-day—but I shall go out first and see if Colonel Blow can’t spare me one of the Government boys. It is ridiculous to be left like this.”Mrs Valetta was still standing in the dining-room with that dry smile on her lips when I passed through with my hat on, but she did not offer to accompany me.I walked and walked and walked—over the stubbly bleached grass, through the township, past the outermost huts, across the rutted dusty main road to the river that wound itself halfway round the town. When the freshness of the morning was long past, and the fierce heat of midday was beating down on me from above, and surging up through the soles of my shoes from the earth, I found at last a place of shelter on the sweeping sunlit plain. Between two upright boulders almost on the river bank there was a little cleft of shadow lined with moss and small, harsh-leaved fern, and there I flung myself down and unburdened my heart of its weight of tears. I wept until I had no more tears, until it seemed that last night’s moonlit madness must be washed away, all Anthony Kinsella’s scorching kisses from my lips, all his treachery from my memory. Only the young know the exquisite tragedy and solace of tears: of broken sobs that come shuddering up from the soul to the lips; that are of the body and yet most terribly of the spirit; that rack and choke and blur out the beauty of life; that afterwards bring a brief but exquisite peace.Yes, afterwards a certain peace stole over my wretched spirit; I could watch in an impersonal way a tiny purple lizard which lay flat upon a near stone searching me with beady, curious eyes; and I could feel my unprotected feet and ankles which had not found the shade aching and burning in the sun’s heat.But I knew it to be only the peace of utter weariness—the peace of a twilight hour after the first black, bitter rain of a stormy season that must be faced. The struggle, the pain, the strain would reassert themselves later. Still, I was glad of the respite. It gave me time to think, at least; to consider desperately what I should do, how I should bear myself, how I could best hide my pain from the world.It seemed to me then that I was very friendless and alone in that wide sun-scorched land of pale grasses and turquoise skies—far from my dead mother and my brother and the friends of my life. Fate had dumped me on the African veldt and suffering had overtaken me. All the things I had known and loved—pictures, books, marbles, dim churches, and magnificent music—seemed useless to help or comfort me. These things do not matter to Africa; and when one is dumped on a burning African plain they do not seem to matter to life.After long, painful thought I fell to trying to form some decision, some wretched plan by which to spare myself more wretchedness. First, I knew that I must see Anthony Kinsella at once. I must find out how deep the wound was he had dealt me before I could burn it out. I must meet him calmly, and calmly demand the truth from him. If these things I had heard were false then he must instantly proclaim the truth to every one, for I would not bear for myself or for him the sneers and suspicions of the world.If they were true, these things—true that he was married, true that he had been the lover of married women, that he had mocked me with false words—if it were true—ah! God, if it were true! I searched my heart for scorn and contempt to pour upon Anthony Kinsella from my eyes and at least from the expression of my lips,if it were true—and I could find none! I could not find scorn and hatred anywhere in me for the man to whom I had given my heart and soul a few hours before. I could not remember anything that I had ever seen him do or heard him say that merited my scorn. I had nothing against him but women’s scandalous tales. And surely, I thought, a man who was bad to the core as they said he was must have betrayed himself to me by some look or deed. But never, never! I could remember nothing but kind words, wise words, just words, quiet, deliberate, courageous actions (even his punishment of the driver I knew to be just), fearless smiles, straight, intent glances. And then, his burning, passionate words on my lips. Surely no lover’s words were ever more knightly than his. Swearing with our love to cleanse his heart of old sins—vowing by old creeds and lost dreams!Remembering these things, living them over and over again, I knew at last that I could never scorn Anthony Kinsella. It was not only that I loved as a lover. There was a look in his eyes that pulled at the mother-spirit in me and made my spirit croon a song over him and forgive him for the sake of his boyhood all the sins he had ever committed. There was a look about his mouth that made my spirit kneel to him. There was a note in his voice that when I remembered it saying “Deirdre, I love you!” drove spirit out altogether and left me only a flaming, glowing woman in the arms of the man I loved. I could never scorn him. But I could still doubt, and doubting, scorn myself. That was a new form of torture that assailed me; scorning myself for his easy triumph over my heart and lips. Then I could have torn the heart out of my breast and flung it into the river close by—it hurt so; then I could have crushed beneath the boulders that towered over me the hands that had flown so readily to his clasp—I hated them so; then I could have laid my proud head in the dust for the feet of women to trample over.Ah! I suffered through the terrible hours of that long day, lying there in the sunshine, my face to the hard brown bosom of the old witch who had already clawed and torn my heart. Over and over the dreary round of words and facts and doubts and fears my mind travelled, until it was sick and numbed and knew only one thing clearly, that I must see Anthony Kinsella. I had a wound that would kill me if it were not treated at once. It could not be covered over with the thin skin of indifference; there was poison in it; it must be seared out with a red-hot iron. Afterwards, perhaps it would heal.Slowly and vaguely I retraced my steps to the town. It was late in the afternoon. The sun was sinking, but the heat still came up overwhelmingly from under foot, and I felt faint for want of food. I had gone farther than I knew into the veldt, and I was almost fainting with exhaustion when at last I reached the first huts of the township. The sun had gone then, leaving the skies primrose coloured—a pale, lovely light, that yet had something ominous and sinister in it.To my vague astonishment I found the place humming like a beehive and alive with moving figures. Horses were being walked up and down the streets, saddled and loaded with rolls of blankets and provisions. Waggons stood before the doors of shops and hotels being loaded with boxes and cases of things. Men were rushing in and out of their huts, cleaning straps, shouting to each other and behaving in an odd way. They seemed to be doing everything for themselves. There was not a black boy to be seen. I never thought little Fort George could wear such an air of business, either. What could have happened? Even in my misery of mind I found room for curiosity at these things. Several men we had entertained the night before passed me, but they barely noticed me—merely lifted their hats and passed hastily on. I did not feel annoyed, but I knew there must be something very important in the wind to make them behave so indifferently, and, with such strength as I had left, I quickened my steps and arrived home in a few minutes.Mrs Valetta met me at the door. Her face was composed and cold as a stone, but very white.“What is it?” I asked fearfully. “What is the matter?”“Oh, nothing,” she said, and smiled with a ghostly, bitter smile. “Only the war at last! The final batch of horses have arrived and the men are off to Matabeleland.”I stood speechless. A vision of Anthony Kinsella’s face flashed across my mind. Now I knew why Mrs Valetta looked like that. I turned away from her, but she followed me into the house.“Where is Judy?”I could scarcely believe my ears at her answer:“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’tweneed 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 isnotto 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 Iknowhe’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 orlaagersin 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 impregnablelaager. When the waggons are out-spanned it takes not more than ten to fifteen minutes to form alaager, 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.Hehad not lost any Matabeleimpis, 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—yourchildren, 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.”

“Off thro’ the dark with the stare to rely on,(Alpha, Centauri, and something Orion).”

“Off thro’ the dark with the stare to rely on,(Alpha, Centauri, and something Orion).”

When we met at the breakfast table the bloom of the dawn was on none of us. Mrs Valetta was pale and haggard as a murderess. Judy, cross and dishevelled, had a black smudge on her nose and was utterly out of tune with life because the boys had all mysteriously disappeared during the night, and she had been obliged to get the breakfast herself. I was not left long in ignorance of my own worn and unlovely appearance.

“You look like a ghost, Deirdre,” said my sister-in-law. “No more midnight revels for you! Really, dear, you are dreadfully white and your lips have quite a blue tint. What on earth is the matter?”

“I should think Miss Saurin’s heart must be seriously affected,” said Mrs Valetta dryly, but though she smiled her eyes gave me a look like a flash of lightning—so blue and angry and burning it was. I knew at last why she hated me. Judy glanced at me again with a shade of anxiety.

“Oh, I hope not. Do you think you ought to see a doctor, Deirdre? Dr Abingdon here is quite clever they say, though he does look such an oldroué. But Jand, in Salisbury, is the best man. Even Dr Jim goes to him when he is ill.”

“I am quite well, Judy.” I got up from the table and looked out of the window. I felt as if I could die of weariness and the sick blankness of life. Across the square near Anthony Kinsella’s hut a group of men stood talking animatedly. I turned away with my hand to my head. I wished I might never see any more men for a thousand years—and yet—

“I am quite well, Judy, but my head aches. I think I will go for a long walk. Perhaps that will do me good.”

“Well, I can’t offer to come with you, my dear. Apparently I am to have the pleasure of doing my own housework to-day—but I shall go out first and see if Colonel Blow can’t spare me one of the Government boys. It is ridiculous to be left like this.”

Mrs Valetta was still standing in the dining-room with that dry smile on her lips when I passed through with my hat on, but she did not offer to accompany me.

I walked and walked and walked—over the stubbly bleached grass, through the township, past the outermost huts, across the rutted dusty main road to the river that wound itself halfway round the town. When the freshness of the morning was long past, and the fierce heat of midday was beating down on me from above, and surging up through the soles of my shoes from the earth, I found at last a place of shelter on the sweeping sunlit plain. Between two upright boulders almost on the river bank there was a little cleft of shadow lined with moss and small, harsh-leaved fern, and there I flung myself down and unburdened my heart of its weight of tears. I wept until I had no more tears, until it seemed that last night’s moonlit madness must be washed away, all Anthony Kinsella’s scorching kisses from my lips, all his treachery from my memory. Only the young know the exquisite tragedy and solace of tears: of broken sobs that come shuddering up from the soul to the lips; that are of the body and yet most terribly of the spirit; that rack and choke and blur out the beauty of life; that afterwards bring a brief but exquisite peace.

Yes, afterwards a certain peace stole over my wretched spirit; I could watch in an impersonal way a tiny purple lizard which lay flat upon a near stone searching me with beady, curious eyes; and I could feel my unprotected feet and ankles which had not found the shade aching and burning in the sun’s heat.

But I knew it to be only the peace of utter weariness—the peace of a twilight hour after the first black, bitter rain of a stormy season that must be faced. The struggle, the pain, the strain would reassert themselves later. Still, I was glad of the respite. It gave me time to think, at least; to consider desperately what I should do, how I should bear myself, how I could best hide my pain from the world.

It seemed to me then that I was very friendless and alone in that wide sun-scorched land of pale grasses and turquoise skies—far from my dead mother and my brother and the friends of my life. Fate had dumped me on the African veldt and suffering had overtaken me. All the things I had known and loved—pictures, books, marbles, dim churches, and magnificent music—seemed useless to help or comfort me. These things do not matter to Africa; and when one is dumped on a burning African plain they do not seem to matter to life.

After long, painful thought I fell to trying to form some decision, some wretched plan by which to spare myself more wretchedness. First, I knew that I must see Anthony Kinsella at once. I must find out how deep the wound was he had dealt me before I could burn it out. I must meet him calmly, and calmly demand the truth from him. If these things I had heard were false then he must instantly proclaim the truth to every one, for I would not bear for myself or for him the sneers and suspicions of the world.

If they were true, these things—true that he was married, true that he had been the lover of married women, that he had mocked me with false words—if it were true—ah! God, if it were true! I searched my heart for scorn and contempt to pour upon Anthony Kinsella from my eyes and at least from the expression of my lips,if it were true—and I could find none! I could not find scorn and hatred anywhere in me for the man to whom I had given my heart and soul a few hours before. I could not remember anything that I had ever seen him do or heard him say that merited my scorn. I had nothing against him but women’s scandalous tales. And surely, I thought, a man who was bad to the core as they said he was must have betrayed himself to me by some look or deed. But never, never! I could remember nothing but kind words, wise words, just words, quiet, deliberate, courageous actions (even his punishment of the driver I knew to be just), fearless smiles, straight, intent glances. And then, his burning, passionate words on my lips. Surely no lover’s words were ever more knightly than his. Swearing with our love to cleanse his heart of old sins—vowing by old creeds and lost dreams!

Remembering these things, living them over and over again, I knew at last that I could never scorn Anthony Kinsella. It was not only that I loved as a lover. There was a look in his eyes that pulled at the mother-spirit in me and made my spirit croon a song over him and forgive him for the sake of his boyhood all the sins he had ever committed. There was a look about his mouth that made my spirit kneel to him. There was a note in his voice that when I remembered it saying “Deirdre, I love you!” drove spirit out altogether and left me only a flaming, glowing woman in the arms of the man I loved. I could never scorn him. But I could still doubt, and doubting, scorn myself. That was a new form of torture that assailed me; scorning myself for his easy triumph over my heart and lips. Then I could have torn the heart out of my breast and flung it into the river close by—it hurt so; then I could have crushed beneath the boulders that towered over me the hands that had flown so readily to his clasp—I hated them so; then I could have laid my proud head in the dust for the feet of women to trample over.

Ah! I suffered through the terrible hours of that long day, lying there in the sunshine, my face to the hard brown bosom of the old witch who had already clawed and torn my heart. Over and over the dreary round of words and facts and doubts and fears my mind travelled, until it was sick and numbed and knew only one thing clearly, that I must see Anthony Kinsella. I had a wound that would kill me if it were not treated at once. It could not be covered over with the thin skin of indifference; there was poison in it; it must be seared out with a red-hot iron. Afterwards, perhaps it would heal.

Slowly and vaguely I retraced my steps to the town. It was late in the afternoon. The sun was sinking, but the heat still came up overwhelmingly from under foot, and I felt faint for want of food. I had gone farther than I knew into the veldt, and I was almost fainting with exhaustion when at last I reached the first huts of the township. The sun had gone then, leaving the skies primrose coloured—a pale, lovely light, that yet had something ominous and sinister in it.

To my vague astonishment I found the place humming like a beehive and alive with moving figures. Horses were being walked up and down the streets, saddled and loaded with rolls of blankets and provisions. Waggons stood before the doors of shops and hotels being loaded with boxes and cases of things. Men were rushing in and out of their huts, cleaning straps, shouting to each other and behaving in an odd way. They seemed to be doing everything for themselves. There was not a black boy to be seen. I never thought little Fort George could wear such an air of business, either. What could have happened? Even in my misery of mind I found room for curiosity at these things. Several men we had entertained the night before passed me, but they barely noticed me—merely lifted their hats and passed hastily on. I did not feel annoyed, but I knew there must be something very important in the wind to make them behave so indifferently, and, with such strength as I had left, I quickened my steps and arrived home in a few minutes.

Mrs Valetta met me at the door. Her face was composed and cold as a stone, but very white.

“What is it?” I asked fearfully. “What is the matter?”

“Oh, nothing,” she said, and smiled with a ghostly, bitter smile. “Only the war at last! The final batch of horses have arrived and the men are off to Matabeleland.”

I stood speechless. A vision of Anthony Kinsella’s face flashed across my mind. Now I knew why Mrs Valetta looked like that. I turned away from her, but she followed me into the house.

“Where is Judy?”

I could scarcely believe my ears at her answer:

“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’tweneed 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 isnotto 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 Iknowhe’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 orlaagersin 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 impregnablelaager. When the waggons are out-spanned it takes not more than ten to fifteen minutes to form alaager, 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.Hehad not lost any Matabeleimpis, 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—yourchildren, 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.”

“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.”

Chapter Eight.Faith Calls.“We cannot grieve as they that have no hope.”A cloud of dark and brooding melancholy settled upon Fort George after the departure of the troops. The streets were silent. Many of the huts had their doors padlocked and rough plank shutters nailed over the windows. Never the familiar sound of a native voice was heard, nor the clatter of a horse’s hoof on the roads. The place had an indescribable air of loneliness and desertion. The men who were left behind were busy all day helping to build sand-bag barricades in front of the post-office, which was to be turned into a fort for our safety in case the town should be attacked later on if the fighting went against our men. All the Mashona boys had run away to their kraals, and there were no domestics or boys for public work, so the convicts, who were mostly Cape natives, were let out under a strong guard of white men and told off in gangs to do the work of digging earth to fill the sand-bags.The Fort George women who had their homes and their children to mind were busier than ever, having no servants; but the wretched Salisbury women, of whom whether I liked it or not I was obliged to consider myself part and parcel, had nothing whatsoever to do from morning to night. Fortunately or unfortunately for us, Mrs Brand in giving Judy a seat in her cart had been obliged to leave her Cape maid Adriana behind, and she had given the woman instructions to divide her services amongst us. On this account we did not feel the loss of servants much, but perhaps it might have been better if we had had something to do, even housework, for a more wretched quartette of idle people it would have been hard to find anywhere. Three of us at least had a secret that we desperately desired to hide from the others, and the fourth—Mrs Skeffington-Smythe—was quite the most maliciously curious woman ever born.Adriana, a big bustling creature well able to do the work of our small household, came and cooked in our kitchen and served the meals for all four of us in our little hut, and so there we were, everlastingly together, Mrs Valetta and I rarely speaking to each other, and Miss Cleeve and her friend always on the verge of a quarrel.The latter two professed a great and eternal attachment to each other, but Mrs Valetta disposed of their friendship thus:“Mrs Skeffy and Anna Cleeve make me tired. They simply stick together because they know so much about each other they daren’t quarrel, but a quarrel is bound to come one of these days and then their secrets will be flying about all over the place and we’ll have something to amuse us. Anna. Cleeve is far too clever a girl not to tire of Mrs Skeffington-Smythe, who is the silliest woman I have ever met. She thinks of nothing all day but polishing her nails and soaking her soul in Swinburne.”It usually rained heavily all the mornings and cleared up in the afternoons, and the first time we went round to the tennis-court in desperation for something to do we found that every sign of the markings had been washed away. No one had the heart to paint them on again even if the brush and whitewash could have been discovered, so we left it as we found it with the wind sweeping leaves and pieces of stick and paper across it and turning it into the most desolate spot in the town. We went home again and sat sullenly round the tea-table—four idle, wretched women! And I believed myself to be the most wretched of all. I don’t know how I bore the passing of the days. My heart was “a thing of stone in a valley lone.” To the pain of the blow Judy had dealt me, which still benumbed my spirit, was added the strain of waiting for Anthony Kinsella’s return from Linkwater. My tongue did me the service of saying all the everyday necessary things, and I ate and took part in life like the rest of them, but I could not sleep and I could not think, and it seemed to me that life would never be the same again.“I could never again be friends with the roses—I should hate sweet music.”I found myself listening to a conversation about Mrs Geach, which reminded me of nothing so much as an attack by three savage Indian squaws on some helpless victim fastened to the stake. It transpired that no one had seen her since the day before the departure of the Column, and though every one turned their eyes away from her in the street, or looked through her as if die were a spirit, here were three people very much annoyed because she now preferred to stay indoors and not be seen. The most charitable thing to be heard was a remark of Anna Cleeve’s:“Poor wretch! Life can’t be very interesting for her now George Rookwood has gone.”“What can she expect?” said Mrs Skeffington-Smythe with an air of the utmost virtue. “If a woman deliberately runs off the rails she must expect a smash-up.”“The smash-up is not the worst part of it, I imagine,” remarked Mrs Valetta. “No doubt there is plenty of compensating excitement aboutthat. It is in the cold grey years that come after that the full tale of misery is told. However, I don’t think she has reached that point yet.”“No, wait; some day George Rookwood will meet a girl and fall in love.”Mrs Skeffington-Smythe spoke in a pleasant gentle tone and her eyes took on the rapt look of one contemplating the tenderest kind of romance. Just about this time the doctor paid his daily visit, and one of his items of news concerned Mrs Rookwood. The men were charitable enough not to grudge her the name of the man for whom she had staked her all on the great chess-board of life.“As no one had seen anything of her since the departure of Rookwood,” said Dr Abingdon, “and the house showed no sign of being occupied, Blow thought it his business to call there this morning, and when he couldn’t make any one hear he proceeded to break in, and—what do you think?”Every one had put on a frozen face at the first mention of Mrs Rookwood, giving the doctor to understand that they considered it insufferable impertinence on his part to speak of such a person in their presence at all; but at his dramatic pause curiosity could not be restrained.“Well? What?” said Miss Cleeve.“Has she committed suicide?” cried Mrs Skeffington-Smythe.Mrs Valetta had the decency to curl her lip at them.“Not at all,” chuckled the doctor, delighted with his effect. “She’s simplynot there. Everything was found in tip-top order, and a note on the table addressed to Blow telling him not to bother or make any search as she was perfectly all right but had made up her mind to go on a journey. What do you think of that?”“But where can she be gone to?”“That’s the question! No one saw her go, but it now turns out that her horse was not commandeered because Rookwood reported that it had a sore foot. Well, sore foot or no sore foot it’s gone, and she’s gone with it.”“Well, she’s both clever and lucky to be out of this desolate hole,” commented Mrs Valetta.And she was right. For us the days grew greyer, emptier, and more forlorn. Walks outside the town were forbidden by the Commandant, who was Colonel Blow grown unrecognisably cross and surly. There were no walks inside the town except from house to house, and as we had never been on calling terms with the Fort George women there were no houses for us to go to.Mrs Skeffington-Smythe used to lie on the sofa most of the day, either polishing her already over-polished nails with a silver polisher or reading Swinburne’sPoems and Ballads, a copy of which she carried about with her eternally.Anna Cleeve would sit by her embroidering on linen, or writing up her journal, which she kept faithfully, saying she would some day write a history of the war. It should have made interesting reading if her pen was half as biting as her tongue.I wrote letters, and sometimes sketched—anything to appear to take in life the interest I had ceased to feel, and to get through the days until the patrol came back from Linkwater. Mrs Valetta sat always in Mrs-Pat-Campbellish attitudes, biting her lips and watching the world stand still, through half-closed eyes. When the others were not there I was sometimes obliged to listen to her acrid comments on them, and the world in general, and life grew a little greyer and drearier in the listening.I learned that Anna Cleeve was staying on a visit with some rather well-off cousins in Salisbury. Her uncle was an official of the Company. She had come out to Africa, said Mrs Valetta, with the pure and simple purpose all women have from their cradles up. She purposed to marry—and to marry well—some one with money enough to take her back to the country she loved.“A London girl! You know what that means. They never see any beauty away from Bond Street or outside of the Royal Academy. However, she is going to marry Herbert Stanfield, and he is well off enough to take her back. But she had better hurry up. She is twenty-five now, and looks thirty when things go wrong. I dare say you know she imagines herself in love with Anthony Kinsella.”Her oddly-coloured eyes flashed like a searchlight over me; but though my heart came into my throat in a suffocating way, I had my mask on and I think she could read nothing.“Do you think it quite fair to discuss other people’s private and rather sacred affairs, Mrs Valetta?”“Oh, fair? Perhaps not, but it will always be done while there are men and women in the world, and if you think that anything can be kept private and sacred in this country, my dear girl, you are greatly deluded. Every one knows and has discussed the matter of Anna Cleeve’s infatuation for Anthony Kinsella. Some people will even supply you with the conversation that occurred when she taxed him with being already married.”I felt the blood leaving my face. I dared not speak for fear of betraying to this cruel woman how much I was suffering.“Of course friendships between men and women are everyday affairs in this country. We are nearly all married and bored and trying to find some interest in life. But the married women don’t care about the girls annexing their privileges. And then there are some men with whom friendship is forbidden; Anthony Kinsella is one of them. However, Anna Cleeve’s friendship with him came to a wise end, and she is now engaged to her rich man. But I haven’t the slightest doubt as to where her heart is.”“How can you say such things?” I said, quivering with indignation. “What has it to do with you or me? You are probably doing Miss Cleeve a great injustice.”She answered in her usual dry and weary manner:“I may or I may not be. But I think it would be easier to fall in love with Tony Kinsella than out of it, don’t you?”I advanced no opinion. I had learned to expect her thrusts and to receive them without testifying. Nevertheless they added to my pain which was already more than I could bear.After four days the relief column returned from Linkwater.A watcher stationed in the tower told of its approach one afternoon, and in less than ten minutes the whole community was out too, watching and waiting. I went with the rest; it was impossible to do otherwise without making myself conspicuous, but I tied a big veil round my face for fear my mask should fail me at the moment I saw Anthony. Mrs Valetta came too and Anna Cleeve, pale as a bone, the former with her teeth dug into her lip in a way that was painful to watch. Not that I watched her. One look was enough to tell me not to look again, and I was occupied with my own misery.Anthony Kinsella riding carelessly with his right arm turned in on his hip was all I saw. A dark face with two blue points in it under a slouched felt hat: eyes that with one swift look dragged my glance to his over the heads of everybody, long before he rode in amongst us with his little band. In the midst of them was an untented cart drawn by oxen containing several women and children and a sick man. Every one crowded round the riders shaking hands, questioning, welcoming. The Commandant without delay had his arm round Anthony Kinsella’s shoulders and drew him into his office, closing the door. They were officials and had to attend to the business of the country. We were left to welcome the poor people in the cart—two sullen, sunburnt, colonial women, very Dutch and disagreeable, and a tribe of small brats. Huts had been prepared for them and the doctor had the sick man carried off to the hospital.Gerry Deshon and the rest of them hailed us cheerfully and dismounting proceeded to recount their adventures, which it transpired had not been of a wildly exciting order. They had seen nothing of the enemy, and instead of being pleased thereat were full of weariness and wrath.“Devil animpi!” they bitterly announced. “Not the scrag end of one. All we got for our pains was the pleasure of being chewed up by flies and skeeters, Dennison’s horse gone dead lame, and Stair with a sprained arm.”“Yes, and those blessed Dutchmen didn’t want to be rescued. They kicked at being taken away from their farms. Kinsella had his work cut out making them quit. The women cursed and the brats howled. Oh, it was dreamful!”“The most awful flat frosty business you ever saw!”“Never mind,” said the American, who had been called away to join the conclave in the office and now reappeared. “Never mind, my dears. We’re away off to the woods to-night.”“To-night!” Disgust and fatigue departed from the tea-coloured, begrimed visages.“To-night?”“Yea-bu, verily, verily, this very night. Kim has said it. If we get a big move on us we’ll be in time for the shine at Buluwayo yet. If we can’t catch up with the other column maybe we can cut across country and do a little stunt of our own. Kim knows this old map like the palm of his hand. Excuseme—I must go and look after the commissariat.”“And I must go and get some sleep or else I’ll freck.”“Me too.”Every one began to disappear in a great hurry.“Aren’t we going to get a word with Major Kinsella?” said Mrs Skeffington-Smythe to the postmaster, who stood sulking in the verandah. “I want to ask him to look after my husband and see that he is not too reckless.”“He has a forty-foot pile of letters and telegrams to go through with the Commandant.Hewon’t get much sleep before they start tonight.”Every one returned home, except Dr Marriott, who after listening to all that had been said went and leaned against the door of the office which enclosed Anthony and Colonel Blow. I would have liked to go and lean there with him.It was the custom for Anna Cleeve and Mrs Skeffington-Smythe to spend the early part of the afternoon resting in their tent, rejoining us later for tea, and Mrs Skeffington-Smythe was for this plan now for the heat was intense and one longed for shade and rest, but Miss Cleeve turned on her irritably.“Don’t talk to me about lying down, Nina, when every one else is standing up doing something. Let us go back to the hut. I suppose you’ll give us some tea, Nonie?”“Yes. Thank God for Adriana!” said Mrs Valetta fervently. “We may as well make use of her while we have her. Perhaps she too will scoot off in the night soon.”So we went back and sat down in the old sweet way—Mrs Skeffington-Smythe on the sofa, Anna on the stool by her side embroidering, and Mrs Valetta rocking herself in the rocking-chair. I with my everlasting sketch-book sketched a figure that sat carelessly on horseback with one hand turned in on the hip. But I kept my book out of the reach of other eyes.Adriana laid tea. There was a tense feeling in the room and expectation hung in the air. Anna Cleeve and I avoided each other’s glance, and when Mrs Skeffington-Smythe began to whine about her Monty once more, her friend gave her a look that was like the flash of a knife in the air.“Don’t begin that, Nina, for God’s sake—wait till you’re hurt.” Surprise dried Nina Skeffington-Smythe’s tears, and at the moment a man’s step was heard approaching. Anna Cleeve’s teeth dug into her lip again and I put my hand to my throat, for it seemed to have suddenly grown a great pulse there that was suffocating me. Mrs Valetta rushed to the door, and Dr Abingdon walked in bestowing a surprised leer upon her for this unusually ardent welcome. She would not or could not conceal her disappointment.“Oh! it’s onlyyou,” said she brutally, and even such a hardened old sinner was dashed for a moment. But I invited him to sit by me and have some tea, and he immediately regained hisaplomb. Nonie Valetta turned her back on us and stood by the window staring out. I poured the tea, and flat expressionless small talk circulated for a moment or two, but the doctor had some news for us.“From what Kinsella reports, Blow has given orders for the barricades to be finished to-night, and every one is to sleep inlaager.”“What! Leave our beds?” screamed Mrs Skeffington-Smythe rolling her striped eyes.“No, take them with you,” said the doctor.Mrs Valetta turned angrily on him.“Ridiculous! I don’t believe there is the faintest chance of an attack.”“It’s what they’re doing in Salisbury and Victoria. We’re very lucky if we don’t have to be shut up all day as well as all night. Pickets have been thrown out round the township, and at the first alarm every one is to sprint forlaager. Upon such an occasion I shall be the first man in.”He was interrupted by the footsteps of a new arrival—a boy called Curry this time—with an official document from which he read us the information that we had just receivedviva voce. We were instructed that the place was now under martial law, and that every one must explicitly obey the word of the Commandant or take the consequences. Furthermore, we were all to be inlaagerbefore sundown every evening. After reading his document very grandly Mr Curry invited himself to a cup of tea, which he swallowed hastily. He then departed in a bustling manner and the doctor followed in his wake. We were left to cogitate upon the charms oflaager.“Frightfully jolly!” said Anna Cleeve. “To be penned in every night with a lot of women and old men and screaming babies. I wish I had hung on to the back of Connie Brand’s cart.”We had heard that morning of the latter’s safe arrival with Judy in Salisbury.“It’ll be just as bad in Salisbury,” said Mrs Valetta gloomily. Mrs Skeffington-Smythe was rapidly making a calculation of the likely accommodation in thelaager.“There’s the court-house room, and the R.M.’s office, and the postmaster’s den behind the post-office—yes, and the Mining Commissioner’s room and that other little den behind the Magistrate’s office—the N.C.’s room. I suppose every one will crowd into the big court-room—thank Heaven I brought down my tent; we’ll have it pegged out in the yard, Anna, and lace ourselves in at night and be perfectly cool and comfy.”“E’um!” agreed Anna, whose thoughts were obviously elsewhere.“And if you secure the N.C.’s office, Mrs Valetta, we shall have a retiring-room as well for the evenings. I don’t see why we should have such a bad time after all.”“It’s six o’clock now,” said Mrs Valetta. “I should think we had better begin to collect our things and make arrangements, shouldn’t you, Miss Saurin?”I agreed, and Mrs Skeffington-Smythe stirred, but Anna Cleeve pushed her back into her place.“Oh, not yet, not yet. What’s the use of rushing? There’s tons of time. Let’s talk things over.”For a reason which we all very well knew, she was determined not to go.“I expect some one else will be in directly with more instructions—we might just as well wait and see.” She suddenly turned to Mrs Valetta. “You and Miss Saurin get ready, Nonie—never mind us.”Mrs Valetta made no move, but I presently rose and with an indifferent smile left them. What did it matter? If he did come I was only in the next room. I could hear his voice, at least, and perhaps it would be best so. Could I after all bear to meet him there, casually, under all those women’s eyes—Anna Cleeve’s searching glance, Nonie Valetta’s ice-cold stare?Perhaps it would be best after all, I thought, only to hear his voice; an opportunity would come later to speak to him. Surely he would make one!Even while I faltered, standing before the broken mirror and staring at my own pale reflection there, his hand was on the door, and he came in amongst them with a gay greeting for every one. Afterwards it seemed to my aching ears there was a moment of expectation, an almost imperceptible pause—as though he had glanced round the room looking for some one else. His words seemed to verify my thought.“I thought I should find every one here,” he said, and my heart leapt. Was there a curious inflection on the wordeveryone, or did I only imagine it? I could hear him stirring the tea they had given him, and the jingle of his spoon in the saucer afterwards, and the showers of questions and exclamations that fell upon him as he stood drinking. Very clearly I heard Mrs Valetta’s question, though it was in a soft and entreating voice I had never heard her use before:“Why are you going, Kim? Surely it is your duty to stay here and mind us.”“Yes,dostay,” implored Mrs Skeffington-Smythe. “It will make such a difference. How safe we’ll all feel!”Anna Cleeve said nothing, but I could feel herlooking. He laughed at their fears and fancies, waved off their compliments, and made light of everything.“There’s nothing to be afraid of, only do as Blow tells you. I don’t for a moment suppose there’s to be any fighting here or I wouldn’t go; there won’t be any fighting anywhere; the brutes are sure to run as soon as we come up with them; we shall be back in a week or two—you’ll see. I must go now. This is ‘Hail and Farewell!’ for the time being. We leave in about an hour’s time and I’ve a power of work to do yet.”Still he did not go. Still I stood staring into the mirror.“Oh, of course we shall come out and see you off,” they said.There was a little pause. He appeared to be on the point of leaving; a chain jingled and the creak of some leather strap he wore about him could be plainly heard. He struck his riding-boot with something he held in his hand. I stood rooted to the ground, staring—staring—at the pale passionate waiting face in the glass before me. What was I waiting for so passionately?“Where is Miss Saurin?” he said.At this a wave of pure happiness seemed to sweep over me and recede again, leaving me as weak and faint as if a real great wave of the sea had dashed itself against me. I leaned upon the dressing-table, trembling and helpless to move, and dimly in my throbbing head I heard the answers carelessly given that I was about somewhere, getting my things ready to go intolaager—busy doing something or other.A moment later he was gone, with I know not what thought in his heart. Those women had the wisdom not to come and look for me afterwards. I think my eyes would have struck them dead as they entered the room.In a little while I had recovered myself and went calmly on with my preparations. Judy’s rouge box, forgotten, stood open on the table. I had never used paint in my life, but at the sight of my white face in the mirror I dipped my finger into the red powder and made two little smears on my face before I re-entered the sitting room. Nonie Valetta was at the window again; the other two had gone.At seven o’clock ten horses were standing saddled and bridled in the square, and speculation was rife as to who the tenth was for. Maurice Stair had been put out of business by his sprained arm, so it had been decided that he could not go to the front, evidently some one had been chosen in his place. Wrath and envy mingled with curiosity was written upon the face of every stay-behind.Was it possible that Clinton (the man most unwillingly left in charge of our guns) was breaking away after all? they fiercely asked. Had Stair’s arm miraculously recovered? Was Bleksley an open rebel? Had the doctor suddenly become inspired with a lust for war?—but that was too far-fetched a supposition even for Mashonaland!The horse was gravely examined: an ancient beast with gnarled hocks, no tail, and a dappling of tiny dark blue pits on his grey hide, as though he had suffered with small-pox in some long-past year. But there was spirit in his eye, and some one murmured over him the mystic word “salted.”“Hewon’t die ofdik-kopthis journey!” was prophetically announced.The men were “riding light”; all that was on the horses was a blanket, a mackintosh sheet, and a wallet with food enough for two or three days.It was popularly stated that this little crowd had an excellent chance of meeting a Matabeleimpi, and being cut off before they had gone twenty miles. However, they came out of Swears’s, where most of them had been snatching a last hasty meal, laughing like schoolboys, and all the stay-behinds hung and clamoured after them, eyeing the horses wistfully, giving grandiloquent advice about everything, and complaining bitterly of their lot.To every one’s amazement it was seen that the tenth man was no other than Dr Marriott. Suddenly appearing he shambled on to the grey horse, mounted awkwardly and sat there, a moody drooping figure, looking as though he belonged to some other world than that of the gay jesting crowd around him; possibly he did; probably he was lost in strange dreams of the strange lands of which De Quincey has told us.Swift enquiries were as swiftly answered, and the whispered news flew round that, obsessed by his desire to go to the front, he had pleaded with Anthony Kinsella and not pleaded in vain. Anthony, against all advice, had consented to take him in the place of Stair. There was no lack of criticism on the mistaken weakness of Kim.“The fellow’s a waster—”“He will only be a drag—he’s a good-for-nothing!”“He’s dopey now—lost in pipe dreams.”“And he rides fourteen stone—his horse will freck by the way.”“No, that’s a mistake—he only rides eight and a half—he’s all leather and bones since he took to the juice of the poppy.”I looked round for Mrs Marriott, fearing she might overhear some of these frank comments, low-spoken as they were, but she was nowhere to be seen and at that moment Anthony Kinsella came on to the court-house verandah with Colonel Blow and another man. He was smiling at some remark of the latter, but as he ran down the steps the smile fell from him and his face took on the hard, dark, hawk-like look habitual to it. He strode in amongst the horses and seized his own. Laughter and good-byes still hung on the air, but he bade good-bye to no one; abruptly in that rough voice with a crake in it that thrilled and filled me with longing to be a man too, to spring upon a horse, and ride with him into the night, he terminated their laughter and farewells.“Cut this short, you fellows!”A moment later every one was in the saddle ready to start. He was the only one left standing. He stood there amongst them, suddenly still as though he had forgotten something and was trying to remember what it was; and he was staring, staring, over heads, past faces, through the scarlet rays of the sinking sun, straight into my eyes; and I was staring back into his.We took a long, long look at one another, and I think he read all that was in my heart for him; while what I saw told me that if all the world said otherwise I was to know that Anthony Kinsella was a true man and no knave. Those straight steady eyes were never the windows of a false soul. I had given myself to no traitor and liar, but to a brave and upright man, gentle and strong and fine.And he was going from me: only God and the old blind hag Fate knew if I should ever see him again. Mayhap this was our farewell, this passing of hearts through the eyes; and it was not enough. Body and spirit cried out for more—a touching of hands at least. His eyes called me, dragged me; it was as though he thrust his hand into my breast and laid hold of my bare heart drawing it out towards himself, and with it me. For I felt my feet moving—moving, and swiftly and straight I walked to him, into his open arms, and he kissed me on the lips, there before every one.“God keep you, my heart! Wait for me—and believe in me,” he said, and though his voice was low the words rang out clear and strong on the still air, for all to hear who listed. In that moment misery and distrust was wiped from my heart and from my life, as though it had never been.An instant later all was over, he was riding ahead of his little band, away into the sunset: and the men and the children were cheering, hands were waving, hats and handkerchiefs fluttering. Cheer upon cheer rang through the air, and voices came ringing back, until they grew fainter and fainter, and at last only the far-off thud of the horses’ feet was heard.Later I became aware that I was standing alone. The women I had come with had disappeared, and the few men left were looking at me curiously. None of them were men I knew. Suddenly I heard a woman laugh in a strange fashion. It was one of the sullen Dutch women Anthony had brought back from Linkwater. She stood amongst her Dutch friends and made a remark, speaking coarsely and pronouncing her words in a strangely raucous way:“Yah vot!... he’s very faskinating, darie Kinsella... Too bad he’s married already!”Again she laughed that coarse, rankling laugh, and this time one or two of her men friends joined her. I stood perfectly still as though I had heard nothing, as though I had been turned to stone. I was realising with a terrible coldness at my heart that the look of truth and honour I had read in Anthony Kinsella’s eyes had not been so plain to others. A message had come to me from his very soul; but it was to me only. I knew that all was well between us, that the way was open and fair before us, that I could believe and trust him to the death. But these others did not. They thought I had been kissed by some other woman’s husband!Well! It had to be so. They only thought—I knew. And I could afford to wait and prove my faith. He would be back soon. At that thought colour came back into my cheeks and blood to my heart. I lifted my head proudly and walked from them all.One of the Dutchmen made a remark in a loud, astonished voice:“Maar! ek ser for yoh! theseEngelschwomen have a damned cheek.”Before the next hour was out I was face to face with the fact that all the women I knew in the place meant to cut me. Mrs Valetta did not leave me long in doubt as to her intentions. On my return to the house, to collect my things for the night inlaager, she came to the door with a tempestuous face and over her head the eyes of Annabel Cleeve, with the gleam of a knife in them, met mine.“As your most unwilling chaperon,” Mrs Valetta burst out, “I have some right to ask you, Miss Saurin, for an explanation of your scandalous behaviour.”Tempest began to rage in me also, but I answered her civilly.“I do not for a moment admit that I have behaved scandalously, Mrs Valetta, but as you say that you have a right to an explanation will you kindly tell me what it is you want explained?”“Explained!” she cried violently. “You can never explain away your infamous conduct of the last half-hour—not if you live to be a hundred. Kissing a married man in that open and shameless manner! Your reputation is gone for ever.”“You think it would have been more pardonable if I had done it secretly?” I was driven to saying. She glared at me with the utmost fury.“You can’t jest it away, so don’t mislead yourself. You are done for forever in Mashonaland.”“I’m frightfully sorry for your poor sister-in-law,” Mrs Skeffington-Smythe chimed in pleasantly from her seat on the sofa. “She is so peculiarly sensitive about scandal.”Annabel Cleeve now contributed her little damnatory verse to the commination service.“It must be admitted that we live in a free and easy fashion up here: but neither the manners or morals of theQuartier Latinare ever likely to become popular.”I surveyed them with such calmness as I could for the moment command, this three-cornered attack being quite unexpected.“You are all exceedingly kind and charitable,” I said, “and your solicitude for my reputation is quite touching—”“Don’t talk of what you have not,” broke in Mrs Valetta vindictively. “If you ever had a reputation it is gone. You can’t kiss Tony Kinsella with impunity.”“I never do anything with impunity,” I said with burning cheeks but making a great effort to control my anger. “I kissed Anthony Kinsella as any girl may kiss the man she is going to many.”Anna Cleeve gasped as though she had received a blow, then she laughed and Mrs Valetta joined her, but their laughter made a jarring and unlovely jangle.“A man may not have two wives—even in theQuartier Latin, I believe,” sneered Miss Cleeve with her mouth awry, and Mrs Valetta broke in harshly:“It is ridiculous to pretend to be unenlightened on that point. I warned you that he was married and I shall let every one know that you were not in ignorance of the fact.”“I do not believe what you told me. It is not true,” I said, my anger breaking out at last. “And I refuse to discuss the matter further. There is not a grain of generosity amongst the three of you. You prefer to believe the worst; do so.” As I turned to leave the room and the house I stopped for an instant and faced them. My passionate words seemed to have stricken them dumb. “But do not believe that I do not know what my real crime is.”Nonie Valetta sat down suddenly on a chair and passed her handkerchief across her dry mouth. She looked like a haunted thing, and I was sorry for her. But Anna Cleeve faced me with sneering lips. Malice and some other bitter passion stared from her eyes, and she half whispered, half hissed, a word at me across the darkening room.“What?”“That Anthony Kinsella loves me.” The words had formed on my lips and I was ready to fling them at her: but I did not. I left the words unsaid and anger died down within me, for I could recognise despair when I saw it. It was not hard for me to imagine the torment of a woman who loved Anthony Kinsella and was passed by. I could afford to be generous: generosity was demanded of me.“Let it all pass,” I said gently, and turning from them opened the door and went out of the house.

“We cannot grieve as they that have no hope.”

“We cannot grieve as they that have no hope.”

A cloud of dark and brooding melancholy settled upon Fort George after the departure of the troops. The streets were silent. Many of the huts had their doors padlocked and rough plank shutters nailed over the windows. Never the familiar sound of a native voice was heard, nor the clatter of a horse’s hoof on the roads. The place had an indescribable air of loneliness and desertion. The men who were left behind were busy all day helping to build sand-bag barricades in front of the post-office, which was to be turned into a fort for our safety in case the town should be attacked later on if the fighting went against our men. All the Mashona boys had run away to their kraals, and there were no domestics or boys for public work, so the convicts, who were mostly Cape natives, were let out under a strong guard of white men and told off in gangs to do the work of digging earth to fill the sand-bags.

The Fort George women who had their homes and their children to mind were busier than ever, having no servants; but the wretched Salisbury women, of whom whether I liked it or not I was obliged to consider myself part and parcel, had nothing whatsoever to do from morning to night. Fortunately or unfortunately for us, Mrs Brand in giving Judy a seat in her cart had been obliged to leave her Cape maid Adriana behind, and she had given the woman instructions to divide her services amongst us. On this account we did not feel the loss of servants much, but perhaps it might have been better if we had had something to do, even housework, for a more wretched quartette of idle people it would have been hard to find anywhere. Three of us at least had a secret that we desperately desired to hide from the others, and the fourth—Mrs Skeffington-Smythe—was quite the most maliciously curious woman ever born.

Adriana, a big bustling creature well able to do the work of our small household, came and cooked in our kitchen and served the meals for all four of us in our little hut, and so there we were, everlastingly together, Mrs Valetta and I rarely speaking to each other, and Miss Cleeve and her friend always on the verge of a quarrel.

The latter two professed a great and eternal attachment to each other, but Mrs Valetta disposed of their friendship thus:

“Mrs Skeffy and Anna Cleeve make me tired. They simply stick together because they know so much about each other they daren’t quarrel, but a quarrel is bound to come one of these days and then their secrets will be flying about all over the place and we’ll have something to amuse us. Anna. Cleeve is far too clever a girl not to tire of Mrs Skeffington-Smythe, who is the silliest woman I have ever met. She thinks of nothing all day but polishing her nails and soaking her soul in Swinburne.”

It usually rained heavily all the mornings and cleared up in the afternoons, and the first time we went round to the tennis-court in desperation for something to do we found that every sign of the markings had been washed away. No one had the heart to paint them on again even if the brush and whitewash could have been discovered, so we left it as we found it with the wind sweeping leaves and pieces of stick and paper across it and turning it into the most desolate spot in the town. We went home again and sat sullenly round the tea-table—four idle, wretched women! And I believed myself to be the most wretched of all. I don’t know how I bore the passing of the days. My heart was “a thing of stone in a valley lone.” To the pain of the blow Judy had dealt me, which still benumbed my spirit, was added the strain of waiting for Anthony Kinsella’s return from Linkwater. My tongue did me the service of saying all the everyday necessary things, and I ate and took part in life like the rest of them, but I could not sleep and I could not think, and it seemed to me that life would never be the same again.

“I could never again be friends with the roses—I should hate sweet music.”

“I could never again be friends with the roses—I should hate sweet music.”

I found myself listening to a conversation about Mrs Geach, which reminded me of nothing so much as an attack by three savage Indian squaws on some helpless victim fastened to the stake. It transpired that no one had seen her since the day before the departure of the Column, and though every one turned their eyes away from her in the street, or looked through her as if die were a spirit, here were three people very much annoyed because she now preferred to stay indoors and not be seen. The most charitable thing to be heard was a remark of Anna Cleeve’s:

“Poor wretch! Life can’t be very interesting for her now George Rookwood has gone.”

“What can she expect?” said Mrs Skeffington-Smythe with an air of the utmost virtue. “If a woman deliberately runs off the rails she must expect a smash-up.”

“The smash-up is not the worst part of it, I imagine,” remarked Mrs Valetta. “No doubt there is plenty of compensating excitement aboutthat. It is in the cold grey years that come after that the full tale of misery is told. However, I don’t think she has reached that point yet.”

“No, wait; some day George Rookwood will meet a girl and fall in love.”

Mrs Skeffington-Smythe spoke in a pleasant gentle tone and her eyes took on the rapt look of one contemplating the tenderest kind of romance. Just about this time the doctor paid his daily visit, and one of his items of news concerned Mrs Rookwood. The men were charitable enough not to grudge her the name of the man for whom she had staked her all on the great chess-board of life.

“As no one had seen anything of her since the departure of Rookwood,” said Dr Abingdon, “and the house showed no sign of being occupied, Blow thought it his business to call there this morning, and when he couldn’t make any one hear he proceeded to break in, and—what do you think?”

Every one had put on a frozen face at the first mention of Mrs Rookwood, giving the doctor to understand that they considered it insufferable impertinence on his part to speak of such a person in their presence at all; but at his dramatic pause curiosity could not be restrained.

“Well? What?” said Miss Cleeve.

“Has she committed suicide?” cried Mrs Skeffington-Smythe.

Mrs Valetta had the decency to curl her lip at them.

“Not at all,” chuckled the doctor, delighted with his effect. “She’s simplynot there. Everything was found in tip-top order, and a note on the table addressed to Blow telling him not to bother or make any search as she was perfectly all right but had made up her mind to go on a journey. What do you think of that?”

“But where can she be gone to?”

“That’s the question! No one saw her go, but it now turns out that her horse was not commandeered because Rookwood reported that it had a sore foot. Well, sore foot or no sore foot it’s gone, and she’s gone with it.”

“Well, she’s both clever and lucky to be out of this desolate hole,” commented Mrs Valetta.

And she was right. For us the days grew greyer, emptier, and more forlorn. Walks outside the town were forbidden by the Commandant, who was Colonel Blow grown unrecognisably cross and surly. There were no walks inside the town except from house to house, and as we had never been on calling terms with the Fort George women there were no houses for us to go to.

Mrs Skeffington-Smythe used to lie on the sofa most of the day, either polishing her already over-polished nails with a silver polisher or reading Swinburne’sPoems and Ballads, a copy of which she carried about with her eternally.

Anna Cleeve would sit by her embroidering on linen, or writing up her journal, which she kept faithfully, saying she would some day write a history of the war. It should have made interesting reading if her pen was half as biting as her tongue.

I wrote letters, and sometimes sketched—anything to appear to take in life the interest I had ceased to feel, and to get through the days until the patrol came back from Linkwater. Mrs Valetta sat always in Mrs-Pat-Campbellish attitudes, biting her lips and watching the world stand still, through half-closed eyes. When the others were not there I was sometimes obliged to listen to her acrid comments on them, and the world in general, and life grew a little greyer and drearier in the listening.

I learned that Anna Cleeve was staying on a visit with some rather well-off cousins in Salisbury. Her uncle was an official of the Company. She had come out to Africa, said Mrs Valetta, with the pure and simple purpose all women have from their cradles up. She purposed to marry—and to marry well—some one with money enough to take her back to the country she loved.

“A London girl! You know what that means. They never see any beauty away from Bond Street or outside of the Royal Academy. However, she is going to marry Herbert Stanfield, and he is well off enough to take her back. But she had better hurry up. She is twenty-five now, and looks thirty when things go wrong. I dare say you know she imagines herself in love with Anthony Kinsella.”

Her oddly-coloured eyes flashed like a searchlight over me; but though my heart came into my throat in a suffocating way, I had my mask on and I think she could read nothing.

“Do you think it quite fair to discuss other people’s private and rather sacred affairs, Mrs Valetta?”

“Oh, fair? Perhaps not, but it will always be done while there are men and women in the world, and if you think that anything can be kept private and sacred in this country, my dear girl, you are greatly deluded. Every one knows and has discussed the matter of Anna Cleeve’s infatuation for Anthony Kinsella. Some people will even supply you with the conversation that occurred when she taxed him with being already married.”

I felt the blood leaving my face. I dared not speak for fear of betraying to this cruel woman how much I was suffering.

“Of course friendships between men and women are everyday affairs in this country. We are nearly all married and bored and trying to find some interest in life. But the married women don’t care about the girls annexing their privileges. And then there are some men with whom friendship is forbidden; Anthony Kinsella is one of them. However, Anna Cleeve’s friendship with him came to a wise end, and she is now engaged to her rich man. But I haven’t the slightest doubt as to where her heart is.”

“How can you say such things?” I said, quivering with indignation. “What has it to do with you or me? You are probably doing Miss Cleeve a great injustice.”

She answered in her usual dry and weary manner:

“I may or I may not be. But I think it would be easier to fall in love with Tony Kinsella than out of it, don’t you?”

I advanced no opinion. I had learned to expect her thrusts and to receive them without testifying. Nevertheless they added to my pain which was already more than I could bear.

After four days the relief column returned from Linkwater.

A watcher stationed in the tower told of its approach one afternoon, and in less than ten minutes the whole community was out too, watching and waiting. I went with the rest; it was impossible to do otherwise without making myself conspicuous, but I tied a big veil round my face for fear my mask should fail me at the moment I saw Anthony. Mrs Valetta came too and Anna Cleeve, pale as a bone, the former with her teeth dug into her lip in a way that was painful to watch. Not that I watched her. One look was enough to tell me not to look again, and I was occupied with my own misery.

Anthony Kinsella riding carelessly with his right arm turned in on his hip was all I saw. A dark face with two blue points in it under a slouched felt hat: eyes that with one swift look dragged my glance to his over the heads of everybody, long before he rode in amongst us with his little band. In the midst of them was an untented cart drawn by oxen containing several women and children and a sick man. Every one crowded round the riders shaking hands, questioning, welcoming. The Commandant without delay had his arm round Anthony Kinsella’s shoulders and drew him into his office, closing the door. They were officials and had to attend to the business of the country. We were left to welcome the poor people in the cart—two sullen, sunburnt, colonial women, very Dutch and disagreeable, and a tribe of small brats. Huts had been prepared for them and the doctor had the sick man carried off to the hospital.

Gerry Deshon and the rest of them hailed us cheerfully and dismounting proceeded to recount their adventures, which it transpired had not been of a wildly exciting order. They had seen nothing of the enemy, and instead of being pleased thereat were full of weariness and wrath.

“Devil animpi!” they bitterly announced. “Not the scrag end of one. All we got for our pains was the pleasure of being chewed up by flies and skeeters, Dennison’s horse gone dead lame, and Stair with a sprained arm.”

“Yes, and those blessed Dutchmen didn’t want to be rescued. They kicked at being taken away from their farms. Kinsella had his work cut out making them quit. The women cursed and the brats howled. Oh, it was dreamful!”

“The most awful flat frosty business you ever saw!”

“Never mind,” said the American, who had been called away to join the conclave in the office and now reappeared. “Never mind, my dears. We’re away off to the woods to-night.”

“To-night!” Disgust and fatigue departed from the tea-coloured, begrimed visages.

“To-night?”

“Yea-bu, verily, verily, this very night. Kim has said it. If we get a big move on us we’ll be in time for the shine at Buluwayo yet. If we can’t catch up with the other column maybe we can cut across country and do a little stunt of our own. Kim knows this old map like the palm of his hand. Excuseme—I must go and look after the commissariat.”

“And I must go and get some sleep or else I’ll freck.”

“Me too.”

Every one began to disappear in a great hurry.

“Aren’t we going to get a word with Major Kinsella?” said Mrs Skeffington-Smythe to the postmaster, who stood sulking in the verandah. “I want to ask him to look after my husband and see that he is not too reckless.”

“He has a forty-foot pile of letters and telegrams to go through with the Commandant.Hewon’t get much sleep before they start tonight.”

Every one returned home, except Dr Marriott, who after listening to all that had been said went and leaned against the door of the office which enclosed Anthony and Colonel Blow. I would have liked to go and lean there with him.

It was the custom for Anna Cleeve and Mrs Skeffington-Smythe to spend the early part of the afternoon resting in their tent, rejoining us later for tea, and Mrs Skeffington-Smythe was for this plan now for the heat was intense and one longed for shade and rest, but Miss Cleeve turned on her irritably.

“Don’t talk to me about lying down, Nina, when every one else is standing up doing something. Let us go back to the hut. I suppose you’ll give us some tea, Nonie?”

“Yes. Thank God for Adriana!” said Mrs Valetta fervently. “We may as well make use of her while we have her. Perhaps she too will scoot off in the night soon.”

So we went back and sat down in the old sweet way—Mrs Skeffington-Smythe on the sofa, Anna on the stool by her side embroidering, and Mrs Valetta rocking herself in the rocking-chair. I with my everlasting sketch-book sketched a figure that sat carelessly on horseback with one hand turned in on the hip. But I kept my book out of the reach of other eyes.

Adriana laid tea. There was a tense feeling in the room and expectation hung in the air. Anna Cleeve and I avoided each other’s glance, and when Mrs Skeffington-Smythe began to whine about her Monty once more, her friend gave her a look that was like the flash of a knife in the air.

“Don’t begin that, Nina, for God’s sake—wait till you’re hurt.” Surprise dried Nina Skeffington-Smythe’s tears, and at the moment a man’s step was heard approaching. Anna Cleeve’s teeth dug into her lip again and I put my hand to my throat, for it seemed to have suddenly grown a great pulse there that was suffocating me. Mrs Valetta rushed to the door, and Dr Abingdon walked in bestowing a surprised leer upon her for this unusually ardent welcome. She would not or could not conceal her disappointment.

“Oh! it’s onlyyou,” said she brutally, and even such a hardened old sinner was dashed for a moment. But I invited him to sit by me and have some tea, and he immediately regained hisaplomb. Nonie Valetta turned her back on us and stood by the window staring out. I poured the tea, and flat expressionless small talk circulated for a moment or two, but the doctor had some news for us.

“From what Kinsella reports, Blow has given orders for the barricades to be finished to-night, and every one is to sleep inlaager.”

“What! Leave our beds?” screamed Mrs Skeffington-Smythe rolling her striped eyes.

“No, take them with you,” said the doctor.

Mrs Valetta turned angrily on him.

“Ridiculous! I don’t believe there is the faintest chance of an attack.”

“It’s what they’re doing in Salisbury and Victoria. We’re very lucky if we don’t have to be shut up all day as well as all night. Pickets have been thrown out round the township, and at the first alarm every one is to sprint forlaager. Upon such an occasion I shall be the first man in.”

He was interrupted by the footsteps of a new arrival—a boy called Curry this time—with an official document from which he read us the information that we had just receivedviva voce. We were instructed that the place was now under martial law, and that every one must explicitly obey the word of the Commandant or take the consequences. Furthermore, we were all to be inlaagerbefore sundown every evening. After reading his document very grandly Mr Curry invited himself to a cup of tea, which he swallowed hastily. He then departed in a bustling manner and the doctor followed in his wake. We were left to cogitate upon the charms oflaager.

“Frightfully jolly!” said Anna Cleeve. “To be penned in every night with a lot of women and old men and screaming babies. I wish I had hung on to the back of Connie Brand’s cart.”

We had heard that morning of the latter’s safe arrival with Judy in Salisbury.

“It’ll be just as bad in Salisbury,” said Mrs Valetta gloomily. Mrs Skeffington-Smythe was rapidly making a calculation of the likely accommodation in thelaager.

“There’s the court-house room, and the R.M.’s office, and the postmaster’s den behind the post-office—yes, and the Mining Commissioner’s room and that other little den behind the Magistrate’s office—the N.C.’s room. I suppose every one will crowd into the big court-room—thank Heaven I brought down my tent; we’ll have it pegged out in the yard, Anna, and lace ourselves in at night and be perfectly cool and comfy.”

“E’um!” agreed Anna, whose thoughts were obviously elsewhere.

“And if you secure the N.C.’s office, Mrs Valetta, we shall have a retiring-room as well for the evenings. I don’t see why we should have such a bad time after all.”

“It’s six o’clock now,” said Mrs Valetta. “I should think we had better begin to collect our things and make arrangements, shouldn’t you, Miss Saurin?”

I agreed, and Mrs Skeffington-Smythe stirred, but Anna Cleeve pushed her back into her place.

“Oh, not yet, not yet. What’s the use of rushing? There’s tons of time. Let’s talk things over.”

For a reason which we all very well knew, she was determined not to go.

“I expect some one else will be in directly with more instructions—we might just as well wait and see.” She suddenly turned to Mrs Valetta. “You and Miss Saurin get ready, Nonie—never mind us.”

Mrs Valetta made no move, but I presently rose and with an indifferent smile left them. What did it matter? If he did come I was only in the next room. I could hear his voice, at least, and perhaps it would be best so. Could I after all bear to meet him there, casually, under all those women’s eyes—Anna Cleeve’s searching glance, Nonie Valetta’s ice-cold stare?

Perhaps it would be best after all, I thought, only to hear his voice; an opportunity would come later to speak to him. Surely he would make one!

Even while I faltered, standing before the broken mirror and staring at my own pale reflection there, his hand was on the door, and he came in amongst them with a gay greeting for every one. Afterwards it seemed to my aching ears there was a moment of expectation, an almost imperceptible pause—as though he had glanced round the room looking for some one else. His words seemed to verify my thought.

“I thought I should find every one here,” he said, and my heart leapt. Was there a curious inflection on the wordeveryone, or did I only imagine it? I could hear him stirring the tea they had given him, and the jingle of his spoon in the saucer afterwards, and the showers of questions and exclamations that fell upon him as he stood drinking. Very clearly I heard Mrs Valetta’s question, though it was in a soft and entreating voice I had never heard her use before:

“Why are you going, Kim? Surely it is your duty to stay here and mind us.”

“Yes,dostay,” implored Mrs Skeffington-Smythe. “It will make such a difference. How safe we’ll all feel!”

Anna Cleeve said nothing, but I could feel herlooking. He laughed at their fears and fancies, waved off their compliments, and made light of everything.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of, only do as Blow tells you. I don’t for a moment suppose there’s to be any fighting here or I wouldn’t go; there won’t be any fighting anywhere; the brutes are sure to run as soon as we come up with them; we shall be back in a week or two—you’ll see. I must go now. This is ‘Hail and Farewell!’ for the time being. We leave in about an hour’s time and I’ve a power of work to do yet.”

Still he did not go. Still I stood staring into the mirror.

“Oh, of course we shall come out and see you off,” they said.

There was a little pause. He appeared to be on the point of leaving; a chain jingled and the creak of some leather strap he wore about him could be plainly heard. He struck his riding-boot with something he held in his hand. I stood rooted to the ground, staring—staring—at the pale passionate waiting face in the glass before me. What was I waiting for so passionately?

“Where is Miss Saurin?” he said.

At this a wave of pure happiness seemed to sweep over me and recede again, leaving me as weak and faint as if a real great wave of the sea had dashed itself against me. I leaned upon the dressing-table, trembling and helpless to move, and dimly in my throbbing head I heard the answers carelessly given that I was about somewhere, getting my things ready to go intolaager—busy doing something or other.

A moment later he was gone, with I know not what thought in his heart. Those women had the wisdom not to come and look for me afterwards. I think my eyes would have struck them dead as they entered the room.

In a little while I had recovered myself and went calmly on with my preparations. Judy’s rouge box, forgotten, stood open on the table. I had never used paint in my life, but at the sight of my white face in the mirror I dipped my finger into the red powder and made two little smears on my face before I re-entered the sitting room. Nonie Valetta was at the window again; the other two had gone.

At seven o’clock ten horses were standing saddled and bridled in the square, and speculation was rife as to who the tenth was for. Maurice Stair had been put out of business by his sprained arm, so it had been decided that he could not go to the front, evidently some one had been chosen in his place. Wrath and envy mingled with curiosity was written upon the face of every stay-behind.

Was it possible that Clinton (the man most unwillingly left in charge of our guns) was breaking away after all? they fiercely asked. Had Stair’s arm miraculously recovered? Was Bleksley an open rebel? Had the doctor suddenly become inspired with a lust for war?—but that was too far-fetched a supposition even for Mashonaland!

The horse was gravely examined: an ancient beast with gnarled hocks, no tail, and a dappling of tiny dark blue pits on his grey hide, as though he had suffered with small-pox in some long-past year. But there was spirit in his eye, and some one murmured over him the mystic word “salted.”

“Hewon’t die ofdik-kopthis journey!” was prophetically announced.

The men were “riding light”; all that was on the horses was a blanket, a mackintosh sheet, and a wallet with food enough for two or three days.

It was popularly stated that this little crowd had an excellent chance of meeting a Matabeleimpi, and being cut off before they had gone twenty miles. However, they came out of Swears’s, where most of them had been snatching a last hasty meal, laughing like schoolboys, and all the stay-behinds hung and clamoured after them, eyeing the horses wistfully, giving grandiloquent advice about everything, and complaining bitterly of their lot.

To every one’s amazement it was seen that the tenth man was no other than Dr Marriott. Suddenly appearing he shambled on to the grey horse, mounted awkwardly and sat there, a moody drooping figure, looking as though he belonged to some other world than that of the gay jesting crowd around him; possibly he did; probably he was lost in strange dreams of the strange lands of which De Quincey has told us.

Swift enquiries were as swiftly answered, and the whispered news flew round that, obsessed by his desire to go to the front, he had pleaded with Anthony Kinsella and not pleaded in vain. Anthony, against all advice, had consented to take him in the place of Stair. There was no lack of criticism on the mistaken weakness of Kim.

“The fellow’s a waster—”

“He will only be a drag—he’s a good-for-nothing!”

“He’s dopey now—lost in pipe dreams.”

“And he rides fourteen stone—his horse will freck by the way.”

“No, that’s a mistake—he only rides eight and a half—he’s all leather and bones since he took to the juice of the poppy.”

I looked round for Mrs Marriott, fearing she might overhear some of these frank comments, low-spoken as they were, but she was nowhere to be seen and at that moment Anthony Kinsella came on to the court-house verandah with Colonel Blow and another man. He was smiling at some remark of the latter, but as he ran down the steps the smile fell from him and his face took on the hard, dark, hawk-like look habitual to it. He strode in amongst the horses and seized his own. Laughter and good-byes still hung on the air, but he bade good-bye to no one; abruptly in that rough voice with a crake in it that thrilled and filled me with longing to be a man too, to spring upon a horse, and ride with him into the night, he terminated their laughter and farewells.

“Cut this short, you fellows!”

A moment later every one was in the saddle ready to start. He was the only one left standing. He stood there amongst them, suddenly still as though he had forgotten something and was trying to remember what it was; and he was staring, staring, over heads, past faces, through the scarlet rays of the sinking sun, straight into my eyes; and I was staring back into his.

We took a long, long look at one another, and I think he read all that was in my heart for him; while what I saw told me that if all the world said otherwise I was to know that Anthony Kinsella was a true man and no knave. Those straight steady eyes were never the windows of a false soul. I had given myself to no traitor and liar, but to a brave and upright man, gentle and strong and fine.

And he was going from me: only God and the old blind hag Fate knew if I should ever see him again. Mayhap this was our farewell, this passing of hearts through the eyes; and it was not enough. Body and spirit cried out for more—a touching of hands at least. His eyes called me, dragged me; it was as though he thrust his hand into my breast and laid hold of my bare heart drawing it out towards himself, and with it me. For I felt my feet moving—moving, and swiftly and straight I walked to him, into his open arms, and he kissed me on the lips, there before every one.

“God keep you, my heart! Wait for me—and believe in me,” he said, and though his voice was low the words rang out clear and strong on the still air, for all to hear who listed. In that moment misery and distrust was wiped from my heart and from my life, as though it had never been.

An instant later all was over, he was riding ahead of his little band, away into the sunset: and the men and the children were cheering, hands were waving, hats and handkerchiefs fluttering. Cheer upon cheer rang through the air, and voices came ringing back, until they grew fainter and fainter, and at last only the far-off thud of the horses’ feet was heard.

Later I became aware that I was standing alone. The women I had come with had disappeared, and the few men left were looking at me curiously. None of them were men I knew. Suddenly I heard a woman laugh in a strange fashion. It was one of the sullen Dutch women Anthony had brought back from Linkwater. She stood amongst her Dutch friends and made a remark, speaking coarsely and pronouncing her words in a strangely raucous way:

“Yah vot!... he’s very faskinating, darie Kinsella... Too bad he’s married already!”

Again she laughed that coarse, rankling laugh, and this time one or two of her men friends joined her. I stood perfectly still as though I had heard nothing, as though I had been turned to stone. I was realising with a terrible coldness at my heart that the look of truth and honour I had read in Anthony Kinsella’s eyes had not been so plain to others. A message had come to me from his very soul; but it was to me only. I knew that all was well between us, that the way was open and fair before us, that I could believe and trust him to the death. But these others did not. They thought I had been kissed by some other woman’s husband!

Well! It had to be so. They only thought—I knew. And I could afford to wait and prove my faith. He would be back soon. At that thought colour came back into my cheeks and blood to my heart. I lifted my head proudly and walked from them all.

One of the Dutchmen made a remark in a loud, astonished voice:

“Maar! ek ser for yoh! theseEngelschwomen have a damned cheek.”

Before the next hour was out I was face to face with the fact that all the women I knew in the place meant to cut me. Mrs Valetta did not leave me long in doubt as to her intentions. On my return to the house, to collect my things for the night inlaager, she came to the door with a tempestuous face and over her head the eyes of Annabel Cleeve, with the gleam of a knife in them, met mine.

“As your most unwilling chaperon,” Mrs Valetta burst out, “I have some right to ask you, Miss Saurin, for an explanation of your scandalous behaviour.”

Tempest began to rage in me also, but I answered her civilly.

“I do not for a moment admit that I have behaved scandalously, Mrs Valetta, but as you say that you have a right to an explanation will you kindly tell me what it is you want explained?”

“Explained!” she cried violently. “You can never explain away your infamous conduct of the last half-hour—not if you live to be a hundred. Kissing a married man in that open and shameless manner! Your reputation is gone for ever.”

“You think it would have been more pardonable if I had done it secretly?” I was driven to saying. She glared at me with the utmost fury.

“You can’t jest it away, so don’t mislead yourself. You are done for forever in Mashonaland.”

“I’m frightfully sorry for your poor sister-in-law,” Mrs Skeffington-Smythe chimed in pleasantly from her seat on the sofa. “She is so peculiarly sensitive about scandal.”

Annabel Cleeve now contributed her little damnatory verse to the commination service.

“It must be admitted that we live in a free and easy fashion up here: but neither the manners or morals of theQuartier Latinare ever likely to become popular.”

I surveyed them with such calmness as I could for the moment command, this three-cornered attack being quite unexpected.

“You are all exceedingly kind and charitable,” I said, “and your solicitude for my reputation is quite touching—”

“Don’t talk of what you have not,” broke in Mrs Valetta vindictively. “If you ever had a reputation it is gone. You can’t kiss Tony Kinsella with impunity.”

“I never do anything with impunity,” I said with burning cheeks but making a great effort to control my anger. “I kissed Anthony Kinsella as any girl may kiss the man she is going to many.”

Anna Cleeve gasped as though she had received a blow, then she laughed and Mrs Valetta joined her, but their laughter made a jarring and unlovely jangle.

“A man may not have two wives—even in theQuartier Latin, I believe,” sneered Miss Cleeve with her mouth awry, and Mrs Valetta broke in harshly:

“It is ridiculous to pretend to be unenlightened on that point. I warned you that he was married and I shall let every one know that you were not in ignorance of the fact.”

“I do not believe what you told me. It is not true,” I said, my anger breaking out at last. “And I refuse to discuss the matter further. There is not a grain of generosity amongst the three of you. You prefer to believe the worst; do so.” As I turned to leave the room and the house I stopped for an instant and faced them. My passionate words seemed to have stricken them dumb. “But do not believe that I do not know what my real crime is.”

Nonie Valetta sat down suddenly on a chair and passed her handkerchief across her dry mouth. She looked like a haunted thing, and I was sorry for her. But Anna Cleeve faced me with sneering lips. Malice and some other bitter passion stared from her eyes, and she half whispered, half hissed, a word at me across the darkening room.

“What?”

“That Anthony Kinsella loves me.” The words had formed on my lips and I was ready to fling them at her: but I did not. I left the words unsaid and anger died down within me, for I could recognise despair when I saw it. It was not hard for me to imagine the torment of a woman who loved Anthony Kinsella and was passed by. I could afford to be generous: generosity was demanded of me.

“Let it all pass,” I said gently, and turning from them opened the door and went out of the house.

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