by Grant Allen
We did not wait to see the rest. Taking advantage of this momentary diversion in our favour, we rode on at full speed to the top of the slope — I never knew before how hard I could pedal — and began to descend at a dash into the opposite hollow.
The sun had set by this time. There is no twilight in those latitudes. 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 attitude. 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 English! English!”
The men let their rifles drop, and rode down towards us. “Who are you?” I cried.
They saluted us, military fashion. “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 massacres — 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 niggers 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 pawns. 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
Unfashionable 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 pe
rforce 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 massacre 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.”
“Well, there you are, then! That’s just it! Your Jomini, or Hominy, or whatever you call him, not only understood Napoleon’s temperament, but understood war and understood tactics. It was all a question of the lie of the land, and strategy, and so forth. If I had been asked, I could never have answered a quarter as well as Jomini Piccolomini — could I, baby? Jomini would have been worth a good many me’s. There, there, a dear, motherless darling! Why, she crows just as if she hadn’t lost all her family!”
“But, Hilda, we must be serious. I count upon you to help us in this matter. We are still in danger. Even now these Matabele may attack and destroy us.”
She laid the child on her lap, and looked grave. “I know it, Hubert; but I must leave it now to you men. I am no tactician. Don’t take ME for one of Napoleon’s generals.”
“Still,” I said, “we have not only the Matabele to reckon with, recollect. There is Sebastian as well. And, whether you know your Matabele or not, you at least know your Sebastian.”
She shuddered. “I know him; yes, I know him.... But this case is so difficult. We have Sebastian — complicated by a rabble of savages, whose habits and manners I do not understand. It is THAT that makes the difficulty.”
“But Sebastian himself?” I urged. “Take him first, in isolation.”
She paused for a full minute, with her chin on her hand and her elbow on the table. Her brow gathered. “Sebastian?” she repeated. “Sebastian? — ah, there I might guess something. Well, of course, having once begun this attempt, and being definitely committed, as it were, to a policy of killing us, he will go through to the bitter end, no matter how many other lives it may cost. That is Sebastian’s method.”
“You don’t think, having once found out that I saw and recognised him, he would consider the game lost, and slink away to the coast again?”
“Sebastian? Oh, no; that is the absolute antipodes of his type and temperament.”
“He will never give up because of a temporary check, you think?”
“No, never. The man has a will of sheer steel — it may break, but it will not bend. Besides, consider: he is too deeply involved. You have seen him; you know; and he knows you know. You may bring this thing home to him. Then what is his plain policy? Why, to egg on the natives whose confidence he has somehow gained into making a further attack, and cutting off all Salisbury. If he had succeeded in getting you and me massacred at Klaas’s, as he hoped, he would no doubt have slunk off to the coast at once, leaving his black dupes to be shot down at leisure by Rhodes’s soldiers.”
“I see; but having failed in that?”
“Then he is bound to go through with it, and kill us if he can, even if he has to kill all Salisbury with us. That, I feel sure, is Sebastian’s plan. Whether he can get the Matabele to back him up in it or not is a different matter.”
“But taking Sebastian himself; alone?”
“Oh, Sebastian himself alone would naturally say: ‘Never mind Buluwayo! Concentrate round Salisbury, and kill off all there first; when that is done, then you can move on at your ease and cut them to pieces in Charter and Buluwayo.’ You see, he would have no interest in the movement, himself, once he had fairly got rid of us here. The Matabele are only the pieces in his game. It is ME he wants, not Salisbury. He would clear out of Rhodesia as soon as he had carried his point. But he would have to give some reasonable ground to the Matabele for his first advice; and it seems a reasonable ground to say, ‘Don’t leave Salisbury in your rear, so as to put yourselves between two fires. Capture the outpost first; that down, march on undistracted to the principal stronghold.’”
“Who is no tactician?” I murmured, half aloud.
She laughed. “That’s not tactics, Hubert; that’s plain common sense — and knowledge of Sebastian. Still, it comes to nothing. The question is not, ‘What would Sebastian wish?’ it is, ‘Could Sebastian persuade these angry black men to accept his guidance?’”
“Sebastian!” I cried; “Sebastian could persuade the very devil! I know the man’s fiery enthusiasm, his contagious eloquence. He thrilled me through, myself, with his electric personality, so that it took me six years — and your aid — to find him out at last. His very abstractness tells. Why, even in this war, you may be sure, he will be making notes all the time on the healing of wounds in tropical climates, contrasting the African with the European constitution.”
“Oh, yes; of course. Whatever he does, he will never forget the interests of science. He is true to his lady-love, to whomever else he plays false. That is his saving virtue.”
“And he will talk down the Matabele,” I went on, “even if he doesn’t know their language. But I suspect he does; for, you must remember, he was three years in South Africa as a young man, on a scientific expedition, collecting specimens. He can ride like a trooper; and he knows the country. His masterful ways, his austere face, will cow the natives. Then, again, he has the air of a prophet; and prophets always stir the negro. I can imagine with what air he will bid them drive out the intrusive white men who have usurped their land, and draw them flattering pictures of a new Matabele empire about to arise under a new chief, too strong for these gold-grubbing, diamond-hunting mobs from over sea to meddle with.”
She reflected once more. “Do you mean to say anything of our suspicions in Salisbury, Hubert?” she asked at last.
“It is useless,” I answered. “The Salisbury folk believe there is a white man at the bottom of this trouble already. They will try to catch him; that’s all that is necessary. If we said it was Sebastian, people would only laugh at us. They must understand Sebastian, as you and I understand him, before they would think such a move
credible. As a rule in life, if you know anything which other people do not know, better keep it to yourself; you will only get laughed at as a fool for telling it.”
“I think so, too. That is why I never say what I suspect or infer from my knowledge of types — except to a few who can understand and appreciate. Hubert, if they all arm for the defence of the town, you will stop here, I suppose, to tend the wounded?”
Her lips trembled as she spoke, and she gazed at me with a strange wistfulness. “No, dearest,” I answered at once, taking her face in my hands. “I shall fight with the rest. Salisbury has more need to-day of fighters than of healers.”
“I thought you would,” she answered, slowly. “And I think you do right.” Her face was set white; she played nervously with the baby. “I would not urge you; but I am glad you say so. I want you to stop; yet I could not love you so much if I did not see you ready to play the man at such a crisis.”
“I shall give in my name with the rest,” I answered.
“Hubert, it is hard to spare you — hard to send you to such danger. But for one other thing, I am glad you are going.... They must take Sebastian alive; they must NOT kill him.”
“They will shoot him red-handed if they catch him,” I answered confidently. “A white man who sides with the blacks in an insurrection!”
“Then YOU must see that they do not do it. They must bring him in alive, and try him legally. For me — and therefore for you — that is of the first importance.”
“Why so, Hilda?”
“Hubert, you want to marry me.” I nodded vehemently. “Well, you know I can only marry you on one condition — that I have succeeded first in clearing my father’s memory. Now, the only man living who can clear it is Sebastian. If Sebastian were to be shot, it could NEVER be cleared — and then, law of Medes and Persians, I could never marry you.”
“But how can you expect Sebastian, of all men, to clear it, Hilda?” I cried. “He is ready to kill us both, merely to prevent your attempting a revision; is it likely you can force him to confess his crime, still less induce him to admit it voluntarily?”
