Hilda Wade, a Woman with Tenacity of Purpose Part 25

The sun had set by this time. There is no twilight in those lat.i.tudes.

It grew dark at once. We could see now, in the plain all round, where black clouds of smoke had rolled before, one lurid red glare of burning houses, mixed with a sullen haze of tawny light from the columns of prairie fire kindled by the insurgents.

We made our way still onward across the open plain without one word towards Salisbury. The mare was giving out. She strode with a will; but her flanks were white with froth; her breath came short; foam flew from her nostrils.

As we mounted the next ridge, still distancing our pursuers, I saw suddenly, on its crest, defined against the livid red sky like a silhouette, two more mounted black men!

"It's all up, Hilda!" I cried, losing heart at last. "They are on both sides of us now! The mare is spent; we are surrounded!"

She drew rein and gazed at them. For a moment suspense spoke in all her att.i.tude. Then she burst into a sudden deep sigh of relief. "No, no,"

she cried; "these are friendlies!"

"How do you know?" I gasped. But I believed her.

"They are looking out this way, with hands shading their eyes against the red glare. They are looking away from Salisbury, in the direction of the attack. They are expecting the enemy. They MUST be friendlies! See, see! they have caught sight of us!"

As she spoke, one of the men lifted his rifle and half pointed it.

"Don't shoot! don't shoot!" I shrieked aloud. "We are Englis.h.!.+ Englis.h.!.+"

The men let their rifles drop, and rode down towards us. "Who are you?"

I cried.

They saluted us, military fas.h.i.+on. "Matabele police, sah," the leader answered, recognising me. "You are flying from Klaas's?"

"Yes," I answered. "They have murdered Klaas, with his wife and child.

Some of them are now following us."

The spokesman was a well-educated Cape Town negro. "All right sah," he answered. "I have forty men here right behind de kopje. Let dem come!

We can give a good account of dem. Ride on straight wit de lady to Salisbury!"

"The Salisbury people know of this rising, then?" I asked.

"Yes, sah. Dem know since five o'clock. Kaffir boys from Klaas's brought in de news; and a white man escaped from Rozenboom's confirm it. We have pickets all round. You is safe now; you can ride on into Salisbury witout fear of de Matabele."

I rode on, relieved. Mechanically, my feet worked to and fro on the pedals. It was a gentle down-gradient now towards the town. I had no further need for special exertion.

Suddenly, Hilda's voice came wafted to me, as through a mist. "What are you doing, Hubert? You'll be off in a minute!"

I started and recovered my balance with difficulty. Then I was aware at once that one second before I had all but dropped asleep, dog tired, on the bicycle. Worn out with my long day and with the nervous strain, I began to doze off, with my feet still moving round and round automatically, the moment the anxiety of the chase was relieved, and an easy down-grade gave me a little respite.

I kept myself awake even then with difficulty. Riding on through the lurid gloom, we reached Salisbury at last, and found the town already crowded with refugees from the plateau. However, we succeeded in securing two rooms at a house in the long street, and were soon sitting down to a much-needed supper.

As we rested, an hour or two later, in the ill-furnished back room, discussing this sudden turn of affairs with our host and some neighbours--for, of course, all Salisbury was eager for news from the scene of the ma.s.sacres--I happened to raise my head, and saw, to my great surprise... a haggard white face peering in at us through the window.

It peered round a corner, stealthily. It was an ascetic face, very sharp and clear-cut. It had a stately profile. The long and wiry grizzled moustache, the deep-set, hawk-like eyes, the acute, intense, intellectual features, all were very familiar. So was the outer setting of long, white hair, straight and silvery as it fell, and just curled in one wave-like inward sweep where it turned and rested on the stooping shoulders. But the expression on the face was even stranger than the sudden apparition. It was an expression of keen and poignant disappointment--as of a man whom fate has baulked of some well-planned end, his due by right, which mere chance has evaded.

"They say there's a white man at the bottom of all this trouble," our host had been remarking, one second earlier. "The n.i.g.g.e.rs know too much; and where did they get their rifles? People at Rozenboom's believe some black-livered traitor has been stirring up the Matabele for weeks and weeks. An enemy of Rhodes's, of course, jealous of our advance; a French agent, perhaps; but more likely one of these confounded Transvaal Dutchmen. Depend upon it, it's Kruger's doing."

As the words fell from his lips, I saw the face. I gave a quick little start, then recovered my composure.

But Hilda noted it. She looked up at me hastily. She was sitting with her back to the window, and therefore, of course, could not see the face itself, which indeed was withdrawn with a hurried movement, yet with a certain strange dignity, almost before I could feel sure of having seen it. Still, she caught my startled expression, and the gleam of surprise and recognition in my eye. She laid one hand upon my arm. "You have seen him?" she asked quietly, almost below her breath.

"Seen whom?"

"Sebastian."

It was useless denying it to HER. "Yes, I have seen him," I answered, in a confidential aside.

"Just now--this moment--at the back of the house--looking in at the window upon us?"

"You are right--as always."

She drew a deep breath. "He has played his game," she said low to me, in an awed undertone. "I felt sure it was he. I expected him to play; though what piece, I knew not; and when I saw those poor dead souls, I was certain he had done it--indirectly done it. The Matabele are his p.a.w.ns. He wanted to aim a blow at ME; and THIS was the way he chose to aim it."

"Do you think he is capable of that?" I cried. For, in spite of all, I had still a sort of lingering respect for Sebastian. "It seems so reckless--like the worst of anarchists--when he strikes at one head, to involve so many irrelevant lives in one common destruction."

Hilda's face was like a drowned man's.

"To Sebastian," she answered, shuddering, "the End is all; the Means are unessential. Who wills the End, wills the Means; that is the sum and substance of his philosophy of life. From first to last, he has always acted up to it. Did I not tell you once he was a snow-clad volcano?"

"Still, I am loth to believe--" I cried.

She interrupted me calmly. "I knew it," she said. "I expected it.

Beneath that cold exterior, the fires of his life burn fiercely still. I told you we must wait for Sebastian's next move; though I confess, even from HIM, I hardly dreamt of this one. But, from the moment when I opened the door on poor Tant Mettie's body, lying there in its red horror, I felt it must be he. And when you started just now, I said to myself in a flash of intuition--'Sebastian has come! He has come to see how his devil's work has prospered.' He sees it has gone wrong. So now he will try to devise some other."

I thought of the malign expression on that cruel white face as it stared in at the window from the outer gloom, and I felt convinced she was right. She had read her man once more. For it was the desperate, contorted face of one appalled to discover that a great crime attempted and successfully carried out has failed, by mere accident, of its central intention.

CHAPTER VIII

THE EPISODE OF THE EUROPEAN WITH THE KAFFIR HEART

Unfas.h.i.+onable as it is to say so, I am a man of peace. I belong to a profession whose province is to heal, not to destroy. Still there ARE times which turn even the most peaceful of us perforce into fighters--times when those we love, those we are bound to protect, stand in danger of their lives; and at moments like that, no man can doubt what is his plain duty. The Matabele revolt was one such moment. In a conflict of race we MUST back our own colour. I do not know whether the natives were justified in rising or not; most likely, yes; for we had stolen their country; but when once they rose, when the security of white women depended upon repelling them, I felt I had no alternative.

For Hilda's sake, for the sake of every woman and child in Salisbury, and in all Rhodesia, I was bound to bear my part in restoring order.

For the immediate future, it is true, we were safe enough in the little town; but we did not know how far the revolt might have spread; we could not tell what had happened at Charter, at Buluwayo, at the outlying stations. The Matabele, perhaps, had risen in force over the whole vast area which was once Lo-Bengula's country; if so, their first object would certainly be to cut us off from communication with the main body of English settlers at Buluwayo.

"I trust to you, Hilda," I said, on the day after the ma.s.sacre at Klaas's, "to divine for us where these savages are next likely to attack us."

She cooed at the motherless baby, raising one bent finger, and then turned to me with a white smile. "Then you ask too much of me," she answered. "Just think what a correct answer would imply! First, a knowledge of these savages' character; next, a knowledge of their mode of fighting. Can't you see that only a person who possessed my trick of intuition, and who had also spent years in warfare among the Matabele, would be really able to answer your question?"

"And yet such questions have been answered before now by people far less intuitive than you," I went on. "Why, I've read somewhere how, when the war between Napoleon the First and the Prussians broke out, in 1806, Jomini predicted that the decisive battle of the campaign would be fought near Jena; and near Jena it was fought. Are not YOU better than many Jominis?"

Hilda tickled the baby's cheek. "Smile, then, baby, smile!" she said, pouncing one soft finger on a gathering dimple. "And who WAS your friend Jomini?"

"The greatest military critic and tactician of his age," I answered.

"One of Napoleon's generals. I fancy he wrote a book, don't you know--a book on war--Des Grandes Operations Militaires, or something of that sort."