Part 46 (1/2)
”Well, what have you got to say?”
The bellow of the town batteries, with the clack--clack--clack! of the Hotchkiss that had been removed from the armoured train and mounted on the North Fort, reduced the tirade to pantomime.
”This is a bad, a very bad, place for the son of my mother.” The lean brown right hand swept upwards to the thick canopy of white smoke that the s.h.i.+fting breeze rolled back from the Cemetery Earthworks. ”The food of coa.r.s.e grain is diet for camels, and the water stinks very greatly.
Moreover, it is better for thy slave to die amongst defilements than to carry buckets and be chased by devils in iron pots thirsting for the blood of men. Aie--aie!”
One of the enemy's Maxim-Nordenfelts had loosed off a group of the gaily-painted little sh.e.l.ls. With the reduplicated rattle of the detonation, they pa.s.sed over the laager, bursting as they went, sending their fan-shaped showers of splinters broadcast. Slatternly women and scared children bolted for their burrows. Rasu the Sweeper dived frantically between the fore and hind wheels of a waggon, praying to all the G.o.ds of the low-caste to ward off those wicked little bits of rending metal....
”Anyone hurt?” called Saxham.
”No one, I think,” called back the strong sweet voice of the Mother-Superior, who had come out of a hovel, where she was tending some sick. There was a glint in her deep eyes as she regarded Saxham's thorough handiwork that told her approval of castigation well deserved. Then:
”Maharaj! Oh, Maharaj! Succour in calamity! Aid for the dying! Hai, hai, behold how I bleed!”
The red-turbaned martyr rolled in the unclean litter, elevating a stick-like brown leg, in the lean, muscular calf of which one of the smallest of the wicked little splinters had, as Rasu the Sweeper dived for the waggon, found a home.
”That has saved you a well-earned hiding, so thank your stars for it. Let the Kaffir see to it that he insults no more English ladies, or he shall pay for every word with an inch of skin. Now put up your leg.” Saxham whipped out the splinter with a little pair of tweezers, deftly cleansed and dressed the wound, bandaged it, and, dismissing Rasu the Sweeper with a caution, was coming across to the Reverend Mother when a chorus of cries and piercing shrieks broke forth:
”Mijn jongen! mijn jongen!”
She was a bulky Dutch vrouw, with a dishevelled head of coa.r.s.e black hair, and a dirty cotton gown, and dirty bare feet in bulgy shoes that were trodden down at heel. But with her livid, purple face and protruding, bloodshot eyeb.a.l.l.s uplifted to the drifting cloud of greenish lyddite vapour that thinned away overhead, she was great and terrible, and the very incarnation of Maternity Bereft.
One huge arm gripped the little body to her broad, panting bosom. She had called him, and he had not answered; she had sought and found him, just as he had slidden off the box-seat, where he had been playing driver of the ox-span, lying curled up against the dashboard, the little whip of stick and string he had been at pains to make only yesterday fallen from the lax, childish hand. The fair hair on the left temple was dabbled in blood, that trickled from the tiny three-cornered bluish hole. His eyes were open, as if in wonder at the sudden darkness that had fallen at bright midday; the smile had frozen on the parted, innocent lips....
Oh, look at this, Premier and President! Look at this, my Lords and Commons and militant Burghers of Republican States! Grave Ministers who decide in Cabinet Councils that the prestige of the Government you represent is at stake, and that the bedraggled honour of the Country can only be washed clean in one red river, flowing from the veins of Humanity, look, look here! You who l.u.s.t for Sovereignty, hiding rapacious Ambitions and base l.u.s.t for gold behind the splendid ermined folds of the Imperial purple. You who resented Suzerainty, coveting to keep in your hands riches that you could not use, resources that your ignorance could not develop, greedy to have and hold what you wrested from the Sons of Ham, lest white men should s.n.a.t.c.h it back from you again; and prating of Liberty and Freedom while the necks of three races of men were bending under the yoke of an oligarchy more imperious, more pitiless, more covetous, besotted, brutal, and ignorant than any other that the spotted records of History can show--look here, look here!
Nations that rush to dreadful War, loosing the direful threefold plague of Iron, Fire, and Disease to scourge and brand and desolate the once smiling face of your Mother Earth, pause as you roll onwards in desolating cataclysms of armed and desperate men, and forgetting the bloodstained she-devil you misname Glory, look here, in the Name of One who loved and suffered little children, rating their innocent bodies and spotless souls at such high value that Little Dierck and his countless brother-and-sister-babes that have perished of Iron, Fire, and Disease, as of Terror and Famine, Death's twin henchmen, shall weigh in the balance against Crowned Heads and Lords and Commons and Presidents and Representatives and Deputies, until they kick the beam!
Should there be War? Of course there should be War! you say.
Have you seen War? Perhaps, even as I have. And, having seen it, dare you justify the shedding, by men who hold the Christian Faith, of these spilled-out oceans of Christian blood?
That question will be settled when the Trumpet of the Great Angel sounds, and the Sea and the Earth shall give up their dead, and everyone shall answer for his deeds before the Throne of G.o.d. And until then, look to it that if you war in any cause, the cause be a just one.
”My Dierck! My little Dierck! O G.o.d! G.o.d!----”
Standing with that tragic purple mask turned upwards to the silent sky, and the wild eyes blazing, and the great fist at the end of the uplifted arm brandished in the Face of Heaven itself, the Boer mother demanded of her Maker why this thing had been done?
”He was so good. Never a fib since last I gave him the ox-reim end to taste. Never a lump of sugar or a cookie or a plum pilfered--he would take them as bold as bra.s.s before your face if you didn't give. He said the night-prayer regularly. For the morning, Lord, Thou knowest boys want to be up and at mischief as soon as they have rubbed the sleep out of their eyes--'tis only natural. And the father a G.o.d-fearing man, and me a woman of piety. For when have I backslidden before Thee? If any of mine have hung back when I told them to loop and do a thing, or sneaked off and hid when we were inspanned for the kerk-going, did I fail to whack them as a mother should? Nooit, nooit! And now--Death has fallen out of the sky upon the Benjamin of my bosom. Oh, blasted be the eyesight and withered be the hand of the man that sighted and laid and fired the gun!”
She cursed the Kaiser's blue-and-white-uniformed gunner in every function of his body and every corner of his soul, waking and sleeping, dying and dead, with fluent Scriptural curses. The crowded faces about her went white. Some of the women were crying, others shook their heads:
”Thim that puts the Bad Black Wish on odhers finds sorra knock harrd at their dure,” said an Irish voice oracularly. ”An' who but herself did be callin' down all manner av' misfortune on ivery wan that cra.s.sed her?”
”It's a judgment--my opinion,” agreed the thin young woman who had been peeling potatoes, and who wore a wisp of draggled c.r.a.pe round a soiled rush hat. ”Never a sh.e.l.l busted but you'd a-heered her say she hoped that one had sent another parcel of verdant rooineks to h.e.l.l. And me sitting over against her with c.r.a.pe on for my husband and baby. 'Tis a judgment, that's what I say.”
”Oh, hush, Mrs. Lennan!” said the Mother-Superior. ”Be pitiful and forget.