Part 12 (1/2)
He looked at her sympathetically.
”How many brothers have you in the field?”
”G.o.d only knows,” she answered sadly. ”There were two left when last we heard of them. The third has been made a prisoner.”
The soldier took his leave and Hansie lost herself in reverie.
And when at last she roused herself, she wrote with rapid pen:
”Two Tommies have been in our garden, catching b.u.t.terflies----” We know the rest.
That afternoon about ten or twelve young people a.s.sembled in the garden and were later joined by several members of the Diplomatic Corps--Consul Cinatti, Consul Aubert, and Consul Nieuwenhuis, the most frequent visitors at Harmony.
_The_ topic of conversation was connected with General Botha's visit to Lord Kitchener in Middelburg, and when Hansie told her friends what she had heard from the soldier that morning, they expressed their conviction that every word he said must have been true.
And the latest _official_ war news, in rhyme, the dispatch from Kitchener to the Secretary of State for War, came in for its share of attention, occasioning no small amount of merriment.
Oh, happy afternoon! Oh, memories sweet! Oh, long departed days of good fellows.h.i.+p and mutual understanding! Bright spots of gold and crimson in our sky of lead!
Mrs. van Warmelo never at any time encouraged evening visitors. They were all early risers at Harmony and their life could not be adapted to the artificial, the unnatural strain of modern civilisation.
So the quiet evenings were spent by the mother in reading and writing, while the daughter gave herself up to the indulgence of her one great pa.s.sion, music. Scales and exercises, Schubert and Chopin, and invariably at the end--before retiring for the night--Beethoven, the Master, the King of Music.
CHAPTER XI
PRISONER OF WAR
How the routine of life at Harmony was broken in upon by news ”from the front” that April month in 1901, I shall endeavour to relate.
Hansie coming home one morning from a shopping expedition, found her mother in a state of suppressed excitement.
Everything was as much as possible ”suppressed” in those days--goodness only knows why, for surely it would have been better for the nervous and highly strung mind if an occasional outburst could have been permitted. Hansie suffered from the same complaint, and had to pay most dearly in after years for the suppression of her deepest feelings.
There is a Dutch saying which forcibly expresses that condition of tense self-control under circ.u.mstances of a particularly trying nature. We say we are ”living on our nerves,” and that describes the case better than anything I have ever heard.
Our heroines, like so many other sorely tried women in South Africa, were ”living on their nerves,” those wise, understanding nerves, so knowing and so delicate, which form the stronghold of the human frame.
The external symptoms of this state were only known by those who lived in close and constant intercourse with one another. Hansie therefore knew, by an inflection in her mother's voice, that something out of the way had happened when she said:
”I have had a note from General Maxwell.”
”Indeed! What does he say?”
”He writes that Dietlof has been made a prisoner, and he encloses a telegram from the a.s.sistant Provost-Marshal at Ventersdorp, in the name of General Babington, to say that Dietlof is well, as was Fritz when last seen. See for yourself.”