Chapter 5

_I. O._ (_brutally_) "And did you? Look here; you will have to wait until the general comes in for your camping arrangements. All I want is the telegraph-office."

_S. O._ "Of course we did not surrender. Why, we have made this place impregnable. There are three companies of my regiment here, to say nothing of the local town-guard."

_I. O._ "Oh, hang the town-guard! You trot along and find the chief of our staff. I have other things to think about. By the way, has the rest of the New Cavalry Brigade come in here? The Mount Nelson Light Horse--they are marching from Hanover Road?"

_S. O._ "No; but there is some ox-transport for you with the Supply column. How far back is your general?"

_I. O._ "About three miles. Thanks." (_Intelligence Officer and the Tiger canter on._)

_Tiger._ "Please, sir, did he say that the De Aar column was in?"

_I. O._ "Yes. Why?"

_T._ "Only the bulk of Rimington's--that is, Damant's--Guides are with it, and I should like to go and see them as soon as I have shown you the telegraph-office. I will also try and find out what young Pretorius was doing in here last night."

In five minutes a "clear-the-line" message was on its way to "Chief, Pretoria," to tell him that the concentration ordered two days ago had taken place. To us, following the fortunes of one small unit in the great move, it will appear that in our forty-eight hours' association with the New Cavalry Brigade everything has proceeded as could have been desired by the master-mind. But it was not so. Almost before the last of the horses had been detrained at Richmond Road, the whole nature of, and necessity for, the movement had changed. In short, everything had turned out as the brigadier had anticipated. Plumer, with the tenacity for which he is famous, had clung to the rear-guard of De Wet's column, snatching a waggon here and a tumbril there, until he himself could move no farther. De Wet had outlasted him, and had, moreover, seen that it would be useless to carry out his original programme. So he doubled and doubled again, with the result that the cleverly devised scheme of relays of driving columns was out of joint, and a dozen units were uselessly spread out over the veldt a hundred miles from the place in which the invader was catching his breath, within jeering distance of the column which had ran itself stone-cold in his pursuit. So within forty-eight hours of the start the whole plan had to be reconstructed. This reconstruction was explained to the New Cavalry Brigade through the medium of one hundred and four telegrams which were awaiting its arrival at Britstown. As the majority conveyed contradictory instructions, the piecing together of the real meaning partook of the nature of one of those drawing-room after-dinner games with which yawning guests at winter house-parties are beguiled. The first cover that was opened deprived the brigadier of his chief of the staff. That officer was ordered to proceed without delay to take up the command of a mobile column to be formed at Volksrust, the other end of the world--that is, the world with which we are at present concerned.

"Don't open any more till we have fed," said the brigadier. "A man with an empty stomach has no mind. We will have a fat high tea at the local Carlton, and then devise strategy."

A general in the field is a great man. But a general in a town at which half-a-dozen Colonial Corps have concentrated is of no account. In the street men pass him by without recognition, and in hotels private swashbucklers in smasher hats literally hustle him.

"This table is reserved for the commandant," said the ample hostess of the Britstown Carlton.

"Who is the commandant?" queried the brigadier.

"Major Jones," came the answer.

"Well, I'm----! this beats cock-fighting. This is the result of martial law and the control of the liquor licence!--a well-fed major reserves seats, while a hungry general stands!" and the general and staff of the New Cavalry Brigade occupied the reserved table, and became guests of the hotel in common with thirty dishevelled troopers, who had passed into the hotel, representing themselves to the dazed militia sentry at the door as officers. The food may not have been of the best, but it was in abundance; and in a quarter of an hour the brigadier was prepared to study his instructions.

_B._ "Now, Mr Intelligence, since they see fit to remove my chief of the staff, you have got to be maid-of-all-work. You and I have got to run this brigade until the brigade-major turns up. He must be a bit of a 'slow-bird,' I think, or he would have been here with the rest of my hoplites by this. Do you know anything about staff work?"

_Intelligence Officer._ "Nothing, sir!"

_B._ "So much the better; you will then have a mind ripe for tuition. Now I will give you a lesson. You have two pockets in your tunic. The right pocket will be the receptacle for 'business' telegrams, the left for 'bunkum.' Now for the telegrams!"

It would be beyond the scope of this sketch to give the contents of the one hundred and four telegrams which had accumulated in forty-eight hours. It will suffice to state that ninety-seven were relegated to the "bunkum" pocket, and seven retained as conveying intelligent orders worthy of consideration. It is superfluous to mention that the whole of the messages sent by the local intelligence departments and by the De Wet expert were dismissed as "bunkum," often without perusal. As the brigadier pertinently remarked: "I suppose that the poor fellows have to justify their existence as members of the great brain-system of the army. The only means by which they come into prominence is by squandering the public money, and they only hurt those who take their information seriously. They do you no harm if you consistently ignore their existence, and don't worry to read their messages."

The sum-total of the messages of instruction which the brigadier had so quaintly filed as "business-material" was information from the Chief, Pretoria, that the plan of the operations was changed. That our general was to co-operate--a word of very elastic meaning, and responsible for much velvet-covered mutiny during the present campaign--with the columns in his neighbourhood which, over and above the skeleton of the New Cavalry Brigade, had concentrated that day at Britstown. A message in cipher gave an inkling of the plan which had risen phoenix-like out of the ashes of the original dispositions. De Wet, instead of being enticed south, was to be driven north into the loop of the Orange River between Prieska and Hopetown, where Charles Knox's column and a column of Kimberley swashbucklers would be ready for him. The Britstown columns, and the brigadier of the New Cavalry Brigade co-operating, would push north--wheel into line with the panting Plumer, now north of Strydenburg, and then "Forward away!" Now, just as the original scheme had, when on paper, presented a very reasonable and common-sense stratagem, so with the new incubation. But there were three main factors over which the gilt cap at Pretoria had no control, and which dished this, as they have dished ninety-nine out of every hundred of schemes which were undertaken during the guerilla war. The first of these three lay in the fact that the strategy was a conformation to the enemy's movements. This naturally gave him time to think and to develop his counter-move, with all advantages in the balance. No. 2 is to be found in the timidity of certain of the column commanders. Men who proverbially take every opportunity of sacrificing the main issue to pursue some subsidiary policy. Men whom De Wet loves, and whom he plays with, decoys, and bluffs until he achieves his object. Men whose heart will not take them, like Plumer, "slap-bang" along the course which must lead to heavy conclusions, if the enemy will fight; but who prefer to fritter away the _morale_ and efficiency of their columns in pursuing a phantom enemy. Choosing a country in which an enemy as sagacious as the Boer would never operate, these men are careful not to leave the security it affords, though their telegrams to headquarters build up the statistics which have misled our calculations throughout the war. The third reason is just as deplorable. It is the passive resistance evinced between column commanders, who are called upon to co-operate. These leaders, instead of sinking all differences in one common objective, work rather as if they were employed in a business competition. And why is this? Ask of the man in Pretoria with his hand on the tiller. Is not centralisation the cause of it all? Does not the centralisation of the guiding authority mean that all success is judged by personal results,--that the "brave" is selected for preferment who can claim to have the most scalps dangling from his waist-belt. This is the nature of the war for which the British nation is content to pay many millions a-month!

* * * * *

"Please, sir, can I speak to you a moment?" The Tiger stood in the doorway of the hotel dining-room.

"Anything serious?" asked the Intelligence officer.

"I have made a discovery."

"Can you spare me, sir?" (_to the Brigadier._)

"For half an hour. I am going down to the commandant's office to see the general. Meet me there in half an hour."

"What is it, Tiger?"

"I will now show you something which will open your eyes. Something which will show you how this game is worked. It is only about two minutes' walk from here."

As the Intelligence officer and the Tiger made their way down the main street, it would have required no great strain upon the imagination to have fancied that the town had recently been carried by assault, and the victorious troops allowed the licence consequent upon street fighting. Even in the few short hours of occupation debauchery had had its way. Drunkenness is the worst attribute of irregular soldiering upon five shillings a-day. If the Colonial has money he will drink. Where the average white man greets a friend and acquaintance with a hand-shake, the South African Colonial calls him to the nearest bar, and they drink their salutation. When half-a-dozen Colonial Corps "off the trek" meet in a wayside township, they turn it into an Inferno. Here they were crowding in and out of the houses in drunken hilarity. The townsfolk, delighted at their opportune arrival when Brand was at their gates, ply them with the spurious spirit which passes for whisky in South Africa. If the spirit is there, no amount of military precaution will prevent the Colonial trooper from securing it. You cannot place whole regiments--officers and men alike--under arrest. And when a Colonial regiment is "going large," in the majority of cases it would baffle any but an expert to distinguish officer from man. And while young men in smasher hats fall over each other in the streets, the sober British troops look solidly on and wonder. Some, it is true, fall away with the rioters. But they are few. Discipline and want of means buoy them at least upon a surface of virtue. Yet, be it said to the credit of these roysterers in town, the man who drinks the hardest in the afternoon will follow you the straightest in the morning!

The Intelligence officer and the Tiger had arrived at a little cottage on the outskirts of the town. A primitive yet pretty dwelling--a toy villa of tin.

"Go in," said the Tiger.

The Intelligence officer knocked and entered. He was met with a smile by the pretty Dutch girl with the great blue eyes, who had so played upon his feelings at Richmond Road.

"Miss Pretorius!"

FOOTNOTES:

[17] Water dam or pool.

[18] When out with a column men were often weeks before they knew what the Gazette had given them.

[19] Colloquial Hindustani--bullock hackney carriage.

[20] Boer method of assessing distances.

[21] Sitting-room.

[22] Village.

V.

A NEW CAST.

For the moment the Intelligence officer could ill disguise his astonishment. Here, standing in front of him, was the girl who had taught him his first lesson in staff jurisprudence. The memory of the incidents at the farmhouse, her petulance with the Tiger, her tears for her lover, had been almost effaced by the vicissitudes of the last forty-eight hours. If he had ever thought of the girl at all, it had been in the same spirit as a mariner recalls a passing ship, whose shapely lines were barely distinguishable in the night. His surprise was such that he could only marvel that while, travel-stained and dishevelled, he had arrived at Britstown with an effort, she had already reached that goal, and, to judge from the studied neatness of her attire, had reached it with consummate ease. Her smile and attitude as she held out her hand to her visitor expressed satisfaction at the meeting--a satisfaction tempered with a determination to show a front which should declare a full measure of resistance. Taking advantage of his officer's surprise, the Tiger discreetly withdrew.

_Intelligence Officer._ "Miss Pretorius,--how did you get here?"

_Miss Pretorius._ "Quite simply. Partly on horseback, partly in a Cape cart."

_I. O._ (_recovering somewhat_) "Naturally; I did not anticipate that you had walked. But with what object?"

_Miss P._ (_the corners of her pretty mouth sinking in defiance_) "I might easily have walked, and arrived before a British column. As to my object in coming here, surely your Africander spy has informed you?"

_I. O._ "If you mean the Tiger, he has told me nothing!"

_Miss P._ "And may I also ask something,--What authority have you to put me such a question? At the institution which prided itself in teaching me--an Africander girl--the manners and customs of the English, they were emphatic upon the impertinence of asking personal questions."

_I. O._ "I must apologise, Miss Pretorius. But the circumstances are hardly normal. We cannot get away from the fact that we are influenced against our better natures by an unfortunate state of war."

_Miss P._ (_petulantly_) "Oh, the war! That is just like you Englishmen--you paragons of manly virtue--you make the war a cloak for all your sins. It is such an upright war, therefore in its furtherance you can do no wrong--cannot even be unmannerly. It is this that has made you so beloved in the Republics; but how does your attitude hold good with me? I am a loyal British subject, living at peace with all men in a British colony. What right, therefore, have you to catechise me as to my goings and comings? I do not even live within the legitimate area of your so-called just war. I am only exposed to its rigours--that is, as far as the insolence of those who should be our defenders affects us women--because you English, in spite of your vaunted power and military magnitude, cannot defend us, your Africander dependants, from a few simple farmers. Where is your manhood, where the courtly bearing of the Englishman, of which I have heard so much--and seen so little?"

_I. O._ "Really, Miss Pretorius, if I may say so, I think that you exaggerate the case. Unfortunately we are at war. You claim consideration on the score of loyalty. Are you astonished that I should have mistaken your attitude towards us? Your two brothers only yesterday were in arms against us. One is wounded, the other a prisoner in our hands. Is it surprising that I regarded you as their accomplice in rebellion?"

_Miss P._ "I am surprised at nothing that an Englishman may do. But why should I be compromised because my brothers have taken up arms against you. Am I not of an age to formulate opinions of my own? or is it that you consider that we poor Africander girls have no intelligence, that our opinions must of necessity be bound up in those of our men-folk, that we have no mind above the duties of the drudging _hausfrau_? No, sir; I am an Africander loyalist--more loyal by far than the renegade white who brought you here. And if you wish to know the reason of my presence at Britstown, I am not averse to telling you, provided you will not claim to have the information as a right."

_I. O._ (_with a touch of penitence in his voice, which for a moment caused a smile to flicker round the corners of the girl's mouth_) "Of course, Miss Pretorius, I have no right. You will persist in misunderstanding me."

_Miss P._ "It is a simple problem. I am loyal, as I have said; but I am a daughter and sister first, patriot later. In a fit of meaningless bravado, tempered perhaps by some compulsion from over the border, my old father and brothers had joined a rebel commando. You, with a naïveté which I had hardly expected in you, and for which I liked you, told me the objective of your column--information which meant everything to me, and perhaps to you, for you looked as if you would have liked to have bitten your tongue out after you had parted with it. I, with the honest intention of saving my father and brothers from you, rode out to them that night. I then knew nothing of Lotter's and Hertzog's men. If it had not been for the fighting, I should be now back again at Richmond Road. As it is, my poor wounded father in the next room is sufficient reason for my presence here."

_I. O._ (_who, English-like, was all sympathy at once_) "Oh, it was your father then that you brought with you in the Cape cart. I hope that he is not badly wounded. May I see him?"

_Miss P._ "There would be no object in your seeing him, as he is at present asleep. No; he is, not severely wounded. He is shot through the shoulder,--luckily it has missed his lung."

_I. O._ (_with unaffected solicitude_) "I am indeed sorry for you, Miss Pretorius; those last forty-eight hours have been full of trouble for you. But I doubt if you know the worst!"

_Miss P._ (_suddenly paling, and losing for the moment her self-control_) "The worst!--surely you have not burned our farm? You are not burning farms in the Colony!"

_I. O._ "No, not your farm; but I am afraid your sweetheart has been badly hit!"

_Miss P._ (_with evident relief and surprise_) "My sweetheart!"

_I. O._ "Yes; the guide whom we took from your farm. He tried to escape, and was unfortunately shot."

_Miss P._ (_laughing outright_) "Oh, Stephanus! He is no sweetheart of mine. How could he be? He is only a bywoner!"

_I. O._ "But you told me that he was when I first suggested taking him with me!"

_Miss P._ "Did I? It was not the truth, then; it was only an addition to the part I was then playing."

_I. O._ "How do I know that you are not still playing a part?"

_Miss P._ "If I am, then it is a very sad one. No; you may trust me now. I have played my part, and if anything that I could do for you would stop this dreadful war, I would gladly help you!"

_I. O._ "You can help me, if you will; but after what you have said about my want of manners, I am afraid to ask you a question."

_Miss P._ "I have forgiven you that; and now that you do not claim the right to question me, I do not mind answering you if I can!"

_I. O._ "How, if your object was to save your father, did it happen that Lotter was informed of our presence at Richmond Road?"

_Miss P._ "I expected that you would ask that. I did not tell him personally, nor would I in any circumstances have done so. But the fact that I arrived in great haste in the small hours of the morning had a peculiar meaning to the commando, and it was not necessary for me to open my mouth. I daresay to-night there will be one hundred Africander girls in the saddle in different parts of the Colony. When the urgency is great, a girl is more reliable than a Kaffir. It is one of our means of communication. There; is not that an admission worthy of a loyal Africander?"

_I. O._ (_holding out his hand_) "Good-bye, Miss Pretorius."

* * * * *

It would have been difficult to analyse the Intelligence officer's feelings as he strode back along the Britstown main street to keep his appointment with his brigadier. He was at a loss to understand two things,--the anomalism of his second meeting with the Pretorius girl, and the latter's attitude towards the Tiger. He could not divest himself of a feeling of suspicion that all was not quite as it appeared. There is no walk in life which breeds distrust in one's fellows so rapidly as that of military Intelligence. And although the Intelligence officer had only formed an atom in this great structure of British incompetency in South Africa for two days, yet sufficient had been borne in upon him during this period to cause him uneasiness as to the sincerity of motive in those that moved round him. It is said that the only person that a race-horse trainer will trust is his wife, and that as long as he trusts her he remains an unsuccessful man. We cannot say what truth there may be in this ancient turf adage; but we do know that administrative work successfully performed in the Intelligence Department of an army in the field leads a man to place the lowest estimate upon the integrity of his fellows. The first lesson is of an inverse nature, and compels a man, however he may dislike the procedure, to believe those who move about him to be knaves, until he has had opportunity to test their honesty. Young in his knowledge of the people against whom he had been warring for eighteen months, the Intelligence officer was exceedingly puzzled at the strange anomaly presented by the Africander girl he had just left. He could not help feeling that this daughter of a nation which he had led himself, if not to despise, at least to depreciate, had fathomed him in two short interviews, while he had penetrated little beyond the surface of her feminine attractions and lively wit. He was puzzled at the outcome of his interview, even perhaps a little alarmed at the manner in which he had been treated--shocked at the erroneous estimate which he had formed of Dutch women after eighteen months in their midst. But this rebuff had served its purpose: it had sown in him the seeds of that appreciation of our enemy which will have to generally exist if we are ultimately to live in peace and concord, united as fellow-subjects, with the people of South Africa.

* * * * *

It was now already dark, and the Intelligence officer had some little difficulty in finding the house in which the general had taken up his headquarters. The main street was still full of revellers, bursting with Colonial _bonhomie_, but strangely lacking in topographical information. In fact it seemed doubtful if the general's house would ever be found, and the weary Intelligence officer was rapidly losing his temper, when chance again came to his aid. A horseman came galloping down the street. A little man in civilian attire--all slouch-hat and gaiter. He seemed to be in a desperate hurry, as he was flogging his tired and mud-bespattered animal unmercifully with his _sjambok_. It was a beaten horse; and just as it came level with the Intelligence officer, it stumbled, half recovered itself, and then fell heavily in a woeful heap. The Intelligence officer pulled the little civilian on to his feet, with a soft admonition about the riding of beaten horses. The civilian shook himself, and turned to his prostrate horse with a curse. But the poor beast had no intention of rising again. It had lain down to die.

"It can't be helped; the news I bring will be worth a horse or two anyhow. I must leave it, saddle and all, until I have seen the general."

"Do you know where to find him?" hazarded the Intelligence officer. "I am looking for his house now."

_Civilian._ "Well, I ought to; I've not run a store in this town for five years not to know my way about. But who may you be?"

_Intelligence Officer._ "I'm staff officer to one of the columns which came in to-day. I've been trying to find headquarters this last ten minutes."