The Man Who Did the Right Thing: A Romance

Iraku, and the obedient Wambugwe: he would see that the Black men and Brown men reaped full advantage for the White man's intrusion into their domain. They should receive compensation for disturbance and be brought into partnership, not only of labour and effort, but of profit. *CHAPTER XX* *THE BOER WAR* _From Lady Silchester to her cousin, Captain Roger Brentham._ Stellenbosch, Cape Colony, _March_ 25, 1900. DEAR ROGER-- Your letter from Magara of last December reached me in London just as I was leaving with Landolphia Birchall (she kept her former name when she married the Booky ... and _quite right, too_--you _never_ know how a second or third marriage is going to turn out, and at any moment may want your old name back). We came out here to see something of the war at close quarters and to set up a hospital and a convalescent home for the sick and wounded officers and men. I cannot tell you how _proud_ and _pleased_ I was you had _done the right thing_. People--especially that horror, Willowby Patterne ... my dear, he is going _bald as an egg_, with a _terribly_ pink neck, all due to some mistake in a hair-restorer, he says, but I say it is a vicious life--people were saying odious things about you the last year or two for developing German East Africa instead of one of our own colonies. But I knew--and always said--your heart was in the right place and that _once_ you saw old England was in a tight place you would come to her assistance. There is nothing like one's own country, after all, is there?--"_My_ country, right or wrong!"--one of the few ex-cabinet ministers who is running straight said last December at a meeting I got up at Reading. Some rude man in the audience called out, "But why don't you set it _right_? _Then_ we should know where we are." But you must expect such retorts from people who know nothing of foreign policy. I wonder how you got away? Lucy and Maud, I suppose, you have left behind. The Kaiser seems rather friendly to us, they all say, and is going to be pacified with Samoa and more pieces of West Africa. So I suppose your concession will be all right, whilst you are away, and the Germans won't do anything unkind to poor Lucy and Maud. Or have they returned to England? It is France who is showing her teeth, not Germany! Chocho has very rightly told her "to mend her manners." She is a _pig_ ... she can't forgive our taking Egypt and turning back Marchand at Fashoda. Even Spain has seized the opportunity to get her own back. It seems Lord Wiltshire called her a decaying nation during the war with the United States, and she has been saying through her press after each British defeat: "Who's the decaying nation _now_?" I must say she had some cause! Never were we more bitterly disappointed in our Generals--before Lord Roberts came out: They started off--some of the dear old trots, with Crimean whiskers, if you'll believe me--as pleased as Punch; and their silly young A.D.C.'s got the porters at Waterloo station to stick labels on their luggage "To Pretoria," "To Bloomfontain" (Is that how it's spelt?). And, of course, the only result of this boastfulness was that as soon as the old footlers got out there they fell into ambushes and lost their way and their men, and were deceived by guides, and the soldiers quite lost heart and got taken prisoners. England in December! I shall _never_ forget it! I couldn't sleep for _nights_ and _nights_, and Vicky Masham told me the Queen's health received such a shock that she will never be quite the same again.... Of course, now we can breathe once more. As you are on the spot and I dare say in the thick of it all, I need not tell you how things have gone since Bobs and K. of K. came out. Well, of course, with all this going on in South Africa you couldn't expect any loyal Englishwoman who wasn't positively tied down by home duties to remain at home. So I sent Clithy to Eton--he's nearly thirteen now--and kept on his governess to mother him when he comes from school, and also confided him to the general care of Maurice, whom he likes. By the bye, I've pensioned off old Flower now, or at least got rid of him with a premium, and Maurice is full Agent, and I've advised Maurice to take on as an assistant Harden, the County cricketer, your wife's brother-in-law! Well. Having done all this and girded up my loins, so to speak, I made interest with old General de Gobyns at the War Office--such an old darling--he served with Wellington, I believe--and came out here with Landolphia Birchall, to supervise hospitals and give a general eye to the sick and wounded, read to them, write letters home for them, change their bandages, if it isn't too complicated--and so on. It was partly the thought that you were out here that decided me to come. Don't forget if you are wounded or ill to let me know and I will try to come to you or get you put into one of my hospitals. That _would_ be jolly! Landolphia is a funny old party! She must be quite fifty. She was so ill crossing the Bay of Biscay. Owing to the disgraceful amount of room the staff officers took up on the steamer she and I were jammed together into one cabin. Where our maids were put, _I_ don't know--in the stoke-hole I think. But we scarcely saw them all the voyage and when we landed Sophie gave me notice at once, only she can't get a passage home so she has had to let it stand over till I choose to return. Of course, under the circumstances, Landolphia could keep nothing back from me--she was _so_ sea-sick; as she said, that she felt herself naked, face to face with her Maker. So everything had to be explained--her secrets of make-up, her sachets of peau d'espagne, her dress improvers and peculiar stays and adjusted shoes. I suppose (though I laughed inwardly till I _ached_, she looked so droll when she was taken to pieces) I must have been good to her in her dire affliction, for she's clung to me ever since, and says we are sisters without a secret between us. After all, with all these infirmities and "adjustments" she was a plucky old thing ever to come out. Now she thinks it an awful lark-- By the bye, she protests with tears in her eyes that her third husband is _not_ a booky, he's a _trainer_, which, it appears, is a vastly superior calling. She also says she oughtn't to be judged so harshly over her marriages. The second husband, Captain Birchall, only lived with her for three months and then broke his neck in a point-to-point steeplechase. She lived twenty years with Augustus Gellibrand, and she really only married her present old man--Dawkins--because she got into such a tangle over her racing debts and he put them straight.... * * * * * Do let me know if and when this gigantic letter reaches you! Your devoted SIBYL. As will be seen later, this frank outpouring did not come into Roger's hands for five or six months. Fortunately Sibyl had also sent him several picture postcards with photos of herself and Lady Landolphia dressed in nurses' costume, or a kind of hybrid costume between a nurse and a nun. These reached him at his Agents' in Durban. So he wrote to her from that place and was rather pleased to think she was in the same sub-continent as himself. It diminished slightly the acute form of home-sickness from which he suffered after first landing in Natal. Once more he asked himself if he had done the right thing in volunteering for the South African War. His Agents at Durban, being German and Dutch, were at most coldly polite and there seemed to be no rush on the part of the authorities to enlist his services. In order to have two trusty servants who would take care of his baggage and perhaps follow him in campaigning--they would make most admirable scouts--he had brought with him to Durban two of his Somali gun-carriers. After landing with them at Durban and reporting himself to the military head-quarters as a former captain in the Indian Army, he had the deuce-and-all of a bother to get food and lodging for these wretched Somalis, who were at once classed by we ignorant Natalians as "just ordinary niggers" ... though why "just ordinary niggers" should be so ill-treated, he could not understand. No hotel would lodge or feed them except in a kind of pigsty with hog-wash for food, where the kitchen Kafirs abode. They might not go into a shop and buy food, or rather they might go in but no one would serve them. After dark they must have a "pass." They very narrowly escaped jail and the whip and disappearance for ever from his ken by defending themselves with all a Muslim's pride when cuffed and pushed and flouted. Roger very nearly--for that reason and for the mosquito-preserves of Durban then called "hotels"--turned tail and re-embarked for German East Africa; but fortunately there came along a Colonel who had not served under Wellington or even seen the Crimea, but was no older than Roger--42--and had known him in London. "You're just the type of man we want, with your knowledge of the bush and of niggers...." "No, don't call them that; it--it--riles me after the years I have worked with them...." "Well, Negroes, the bonny Bantu, the blameless Ethiopians, if you will.... And you ought to be a master-hand at bush-fighting. We're going to get up a sort of mounted infantry, don't you know. You're just the man to be given a small command. You need not tell me you can't ride, can't get every ounce out of your mount, 'cos I know better; or that you can't manage horses so that those entrusted to your men don't die in three weeks. Didn't you once tell me you bred Basuto ponies in G.E.A.? Well, I'm here, there, and elsewhere, buying Basuto ponies. Just stay here and get your uniform and equipment--here, give this card to our Supply department--and then report to General Buller. I'm writing him fully about you.... Oh yes.... And as to your nigs. I mean your two high-bred Fuzzie-wuzzies. Of course, we don't employ Negro soldiers ... 'gainst the rules. But we engage thousands as batmen, transport-riders, grooms, and everything else. I'll fix it up somehow that you take your two darkies with you. They seem to know what I'm sayin'. What jolly teeth. They look hefty men and a dam' sight handsomer than some of the Johnnies you'll see on the Rand, when we've got Oom Paul on the run..." So in course of time, Roger, first brevet-Major for gallantry in action, then a full Major--if there is such a simple rank no longer qualified with adjectives (but I know after his campaigns in the Transvaal he was always styled "Major" Brentham, till he was made a Colonel)--found his way (always attended by Yusuf Ali and Anshuro, his Somali batmen) into the eastern Transvaal at the period when President Kruger and the other members of his Government were leaving Pretoria for the Portuguese frontier. In the month of August he took part in a concentration of British forces against two Boer commandos in the north-east Transvaal. This resulted in a technical victory for the British, but whilst the tide of battle rolled away northwards to seize Pietersburg, the Boers were left in possession of the site of the first skirmish. And in a sudden hush after great clamour Roger realized that he was lying in the shade of some bushes near a little _spruit_ of water, shot through the thigh and quite incapable of sitting up. The bullet or bullets had gone clean through the fleshy part of the right thigh and grazed the knee of the left leg. Happily they had not broken the thigh bone or cut the great artery. The Somalis, who had a magical faculty of turning up when most