War's Brighter Side Part 17

Through war and pestilence, red siege and fire, Silent and self-contained he drew his breath.

Too brave for show of courage--his desire Truth as he saw it, even to the death.

RUDYARD KIPLING.

There is a pretty little cypress grove nestling under the shadow of one of the Ladysmith defences. A peaceful oasis--green where the land is parched and dry. It is G.o.d's acre. Before shaking the dust of Ladysmith from off my feet for ever, I turned my pony's head towards the green. The little animal seemed to know the way, and well he should, for the melancholy journey to the cemetery had been frequent during the latter period of the siege. I tied the pony to the rail and pa.s.sed in under the shadow of the cypresses. The interior of the enclosure was one stretch of new-turned earth. The turf seemed all exhausted. The dainty cemetery of three months ago had now the appearance of a badly harrowed field. In places a rough cross marked the last resting-place of the victims of war and pestilence, a few had the names just scrawled upon a chip of wood; the majority lay unnamed--the price of Empire keeping: a nameless grave!

I pa.s.sed down the clay trodden pathway. The brief legends ran--Egerton, Lafone, Watson, Field, Dalzel, d.i.c.k-Cunyngham, Digby Jones, Adams--but why name them? They were all men whom three months ago I had called my friends. Then I found the spot for which I searched--a plain wooden cross inscribed G. W. Steevens, and a date.

What an end--six feet of Ladysmith's miserable soil! It was too cruel.

My memory carried me back to the brave companion and upright colleague who was gone, and to the manner of his death--the man who had raced with the Cameron Highlanders for Mahmoud's zareba; who had stood with his hands in his pockets when it seemed that it must be but a matter of minutes before Wad Helu swallowed up Macdonald's Soudanese brigade.

The man who had scorned death on Elandslaagte's crest lay there a victim to pestilential Ladysmith. If the spare frame had been as stout as the heart which it contained, that miserable rat-hole could not have brought about the end. Poor Steevens--how he strove to live! For a month he lay and fought the battle for life. And then when all seemed well, and we looked for the day that we should have him back again, he quietly faded under a relapse.

Doctors could do no more, and at four in the afternoon of the fatal day it was evident that the end was near. Maud, who had nursed him with a devotion unsurpa.s.sed, was deputed to break the news. He came to the bedside and suggested that Steevens should dictate a wire to his people at home. The patient looked up suddenly, and in a moment was conscious of the sinister purport of the request. The conversation which ensued was something of the following:--

"Is it the end?"

Maud nodded a.s.sent.

"Will it be soon?"

Again Maud nodded a.s.sent.

Steevens turned wearily, and remarked, "Well, it is a strange sideway out!" Then there pa.s.sed over his face an expression which plainly read, "I will not die!"

He turned to Maud and said, almost gaily, "Let's have a drink."

Maud opened a new bottle of champagne and poured out half a gla.s.s.

Steevens sipped it, and noticing that Maud had no gla.s.s, remarked, "You are not drinking!"

He seemed better after the wine, and when the last message was dictated he was still struggling for life; but the disease had the upper hand, and he sank into unconsciousness which was never broken until he pa.s.sed away in the evening.

We buried him at midnight. As we took him down to the cypress grove, it seemed that the enemy paid tribute to our sorrow, for their searchlight played full upon the mournful cavalcade as it wound into the open.

SHOULD BEARDS BE WORN IN WAR?

BLOEMFONTEIN, _March 23, 1900_.

DEAR SIR,--A distinguished General Officer--who is also an exceedingly clever man--was issuing orders on one occasion. "I have no wish," said he, "to interfere with the time-honoured Custom which ordains that heroes may be dirty; but, until they become heroes, I see no reason why they should not try and look like soldiers. The troops under my command will, therefore, shave until they arrive at the actual front."

This witty sentence provides me with an admirable text for a sermon on a subject very near my heart. Our troops have, indeed, proved themselves heroes. Whatever may be the opinion expressed now and hereafter upon many things in the conduct of this war, upon one thing there can be no dissentient voice--I refer to the splendid heroism of our troops. Yes, sir, they are heroes. But why, oh! why do they not try and look like soldiers too? Why should the erstwhile smart Guardsman, the dandy Highlander, the dapper Horseman, adopt the facial disguise of a poacher out of luck, or rather--for the beard is not a good one--of a member of the criminal cla.s.ses previous to the Sat.u.r.day evening's ablutions? Surely soap can be purchased, razors ground, and water heated.

It is universally admitted that one of the chief duties of a soldier is to be smart in his appearance, and the fact that on active service there may be some difficulty is surely no excuse for its neglect. In all other periods of the world's history shaving was looked upon as one of the chiefest necessities in time of war. Napoleon's Old Guard shaved, as is well known, throughout the entire retreat from Moscow; there was not a hair upon the faces of Hannibal's legions the day after the famous crossing of the Alps, while Caesar's well-known order, "Ut barbas tondeant," must be familiar to every schoolboy. I might come down to our own times and quote the Queen's Regulations, but I refrain from doing so lest I should be accused of priggishness.

It is, I do not hesitate to say, horrible to me to see the unkempt appearance of those who might be--and are at other times--the finest-looking troops in the world. I feel inclined to say, in the words of Scripture, "Tarry ye at Jericho until (and after) your beards be grown."

I hope, sir, you will forgive this somewhat lengthy letter, but the subject is, as I have said already, very near my heart. No one ever has looked well in a beard, and no one ever will, and until our officers recognise this fact and set an example of spruceness for their men to follow, the army in South Africa must remain an eyesore to all who share the opinions of

Your obedient servant, FIELD OFFICER.

CHAPTER X

I VISIT MISS BLOEMFONTEIN

_And I also here discuss that irreconcilable maiden, Lord Stanley, and our own behaviour._

We published in the next issue, No. II, of March 26th, a letter by "Miss Uitlander" (p.r.o.nounced in that country "Aitlander"). It was as genuine a production of the young womanhood of the town as that of "Miss Bloemfontein" had been, and it would have been wholly to our liking had it been as exceptional and bold a bit of work as the other, for it was, naturally, very pro-English. Suffice it to say that it answered and contradicted the Boer sentiments with vigour.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Miss Bloemfontein._

(_A Portrayal of a Type, by Lester Ralph._)]

This reminded us that we were to enjoy no more communications from the sprightly and talented Miss Bloemfontein. Most gallantly we had resolved to allow her the last word and there end the correspondence; but she had remained silent, leaving us with that "last word" which we, like simpletons, had never doubted that she would claim as hers by right of her womanhood. She was laughing at the predicament in which she had abandoned us, for she was wide awake at all points.

She had done me the honour to ask me to call upon her and--in this the laugh was on my side--then had repented of it. She repented because, in my reply to her communication, I had addressed her as "sweetheart"

and had called her "dear." It had happened that when she wrote to the paper she let a few close friends into the secret, and these, when they read my lover's terms addressed to her, made haste to twit her upon the publicity of these verbal caresses, so that from rose-and-pearl she became peony red and hot of cheeks, and not nearly as desirous of seeing me as before my second letter saw the light.

However, I went to her home and found it very prettily appointed and comfortable, with an admiring family gathered around their girlish idol who had been to London, and who sang sweetly, played the piano deftly, and seemed to have read at least a little upon many subjects.

She was, I should say, seventeen or eighteen, a pure blonde, still very girlish both in face and figure. I spent a pleasant hour in her company, and an English officer who called there at the same time endeavoured to persuade her to make up a party for afternoon tea at his regimental camp near the town. But her mother had announced that she could not bear to walk in the streets and see the British soldiers disfiguring the once hallowed scenery of the place, so it was perhaps, no wonder that Miss Bloemfontein declined to take afternoon tea with those enemies.

"I will not do anything to encourage or recognise their presence," she said.

"When your mother is not looking, I am going to whisper something to you," I remarked. "Now is my time. It is this: You are a little fraud; you are no Boer at all."

I intended to continue by explaining that a girl so clever and well read, and who lived amid such refined surroundings, could not possibly sympathise with the rude and ignorant people of the veldt. But she suspected that I meant something different.

"You mean because I am a Jewess," she said.

And then came the most comical closing of this very peculiar episode.

She, who elected herself to be the champion of the Boers, was a Jewess, and I, who wooed her supposed sisterhood as an English adorer, am an American.

Ah, well, little Miss Bloemfontein, I was at least genuine in standing up for liberty, justice, and the highest principles of good government. They are the prizes that are guarded by my flag as well as by the one which floats over your town. And if you were as earnest in your sympathy for the Boers it was either because you had been deceived by them as to the causes of the war and the issues at stake, or else it was because your loyalty to the friends of a lifetime outweighed all else. May we not, then, part here with mutual esteem and respect?

In this number we published two contributions by Mr. Kipling, a second one of the "Fables for the Staff" and some "Kopje-book Maxims." All of us tried to a.s.sist at the framing of these maxims, but, though we suggested two or three (Mr. Landon being the most fertile at the time) Mr. Kipling shaped them all in his own way and with a readiness and ease which excelled any work of composition that I have ever seen done by any writer in all my experience. It was said of him three or four years ago that he was then writing too much, but it will always seem to us that his difficulty must be in restraining himself, and in publis.h.i.+ng only the best that wells from his mind.

Another peculiarity that we noticed was that he would, by preference, carry forward two or three ma.n.u.scripts at once and would write, now at one, and presently at another. The "Kopje-book maxims" reveal this breadth and variety of his mental processes to whoever is able to understand the fine shadings of the meanings of them all, and to those who can comprehend the fact that they were literally "dashed off" hot, like sparks under a smith's hammer. If these mere playthings of his pen, done as part of our merry and careless morning's work, were forced to stand as specimen products of the methods of this master writer, an injustice to him would follow. The point is that his methods are the same, and his mind works with similar freedom and celerity, at all times, and at whatever he does; at least so far as we were able to judge. But what he wrote for THE FRIEND was finished and published on the instant without the after-polis.h.i.+ng and refinement of the flawless work which has made him world-famous.

In this same number we printed an interesting forecast of the future of the Free State by Mr. Fred J. Engelbach. An officer sent us a jocular account of the amazingly plucky work being done by the Ordnance Survey--and particularly of one feat by Major Jackson, R.E.

We also published, from my pen, a short warning to the soldiers not to drink the water out of certain wells which had for years been known to contain the germs of enteric. I learned the fact during my visit to my "sweetheart," Miss Bloemfontein, and as I look back, now, upon that paragraph I almost shudder to think how little we dreamed that in a few weeks 7,000 men of our force would be down with that dread disease.

I have referred to the fact that Lord Stanley came every day at noon to overlook what we had done. I would ask for nothing more amusing than to have heard his gossip at the Residency upon the manner in which he found THE FRIEND to be conducted and produced. The truth was that we had finished everything for the day, except the interminable proof-reading, by the time he reached what the country editor grandiloquently refers to as "our sanctum sanctorum." In consequence he always caught us just as we were looking up from our desks and taking a deep breath of relief.

We who have been bred in this profession may not realise just what applause is to an actor, or what there may be to a mariner in the movement and breath of the ocean; but we fully realise that journalism is perhaps the only calling that men find as full of fun as it is of hard work. The company of bright minds, certain to be sanguine and optimistic, the excitement produced by unexpected news, the rush to prepare it most attractively and against time, the thousand unpublishable conceits and views and arguments that leap to the mind and are discussed in council, the freaks and blunders of the reporters and contributors--all these elements are in the cup of joy that a journalist drinks off every day.