She Sat Up In Her Bed
With Her Hair In Curl Papers And A Revolver Beside Her, And Through
Her Open Door Shouted Advice To Her Lodgers.
But they were
unsympathetic, and reassured her only by banging their doors and
retiring with profane grumbling, and in a few moments the silence was
broken only by the voice of the justice as he fled down the main
street of Ventersburg offering his kingdom for a horse.
The next morning we rode out to the Sand River to see the Boer
positions near the drift, and met President Steyn in his Cape cart
coming from them on his way to the bridge. Ever since the occupation
of Bloemfontein, the London papers had been speaking of him as "the
Late President," as though he were dead. He impressed me, on the
contrary, as being very much alive and very much the President,
although his executive chamber was the dancing-hall of a hotel and
his roof-tree the hood of a Cape cart. He stood in the middle of the
road, and talked hopefully of the morrow. He had been waiting, he
said, to see the development of the enemy's attack, but the British
had not appeared, and, as he believed they would not advance that
day, he was going on to the bridge to talk to his burghers and to
consult with General Botha. He was much more a man of the world and
more the professional politician than President Kruger. I use the
words "professional politician" in no unpleasant sense, but meaning
rather that he was ready, tactful, and diplomatic. For instance, he
gave to whatever he said the air of a confidence reserved especially
for the ear of the person to whom he spoke. He showed none of the
bitterness which President Kruger exhibits toward the British, but
took the tone toward the English Government of the most critical and
mused tolerance. Had he heard it, it would have been intensely
annoying to any Englishman.
"I see that the London Chronicle," he said, "asks if, since I have
become a rebel, I do not lose my rights as a Barrister of the Temple?
Of course, we are no more rebels than the Spaniards were rebels
against the United States. By a great stretch of the truth, under
the suzerainty clause, the burghers of the Transvaal might be called
rebels, but a Free Stater - never! It is not the animosity of the
English which I mind," he added, thoughtfully, "but their depressing
ignorance of their own history."
His cheerfulness and hopefulness, even though one guessed they were
assumed, commanded one's admiration. He was being hunted out of one
village after another, the miles of territory still free to him were
hourly shrinking - in a few days he would be a refugee in the
Transvaal; but he stood in the open veldt with all his possessions in
the cart behind him, a president without a republic, a man without a
home, but still full of pluck, cheerful and unbeaten.
The farm-house of General Andrew Cronje stood just above the drift
and was the only conspicuous mark for the English guns on our side of
the river, so in order to protect it the general had turned it over
to the ambulance corps to be used as a hospital. They had lashed a
great Red Cross flag to the chimney and filled the clean shelves of
the generously built kitchen with bottles of antiseptics and bitter-
smelling drugs and surgeons' cutlery. President Steyn gave me a
letter to Dr. Rodgers Reid, who was in charge, and he offered us our
choice of the deserted bedrooms. It was a most welcome shelter, and
in comparison to the cold veldt the hospital was a haven of comfort.
Hundreds of cooing doves, stumbling over the roof of the barn, helped
to fill the air with their peaceful murmur. It was a strange
overture to a battle, but in time I learned to not listen for any
more martial prelude. The Boer does not make a business of war, and
when he is not actually fighting he pretends that he is camping out
for pleasure. In his laager there are no warlike sounds, no sentries
challenge, no bugles call. He has no duties to perform, for his
Kaffir boys care for his pony, gather his wood, and build his fire.
He has nothing to do but to wait for the next fight, and to make the
time pass as best he can. In camp the burghers are like a party of
children. They play games with each other, and play tricks upon each
other, and engage in numerous wrestling bouts, a form of contest of
which they seem particularly fond. They are like children also in
that they are direct and simple, and as courteous as the ideal child
should be. Indeed, if I were asked what struck me as the chief
characteristics of the Boer I should say they were the two qualities
which the English have always disallowed him, his simplicity rather
than his "cuteness," and his courtesy rather than his boorishness.
The force that waited at the drift by Cronje's farm as it lay spread
out on both sides of the river looked like a gathering of Wisconsin
lumbermen, of Adirondack guides and hunters halted at Paul Smith's,
like a Methodist camp-meeting limited entirely to men.
The eye sought in vain for rows of tents, for the horses at the
picket line, for the flags that marked the head-quarters, the
commissariat, the field telegraph, the field post-office, the A. S.
C., the R. M. A. C., the C. O., and all the other combinations of
letters of the military alphabet.
I remembered that great army of General Buller's as I saw it
stretching out over the basin of the Tugela, like the children of
Israel in number, like Tammany Hall in organization and discipline,
with not a tent-pin missing; with hospitals as complete as those
established for a hundred years in the heart of London; with search-
lights, heliographs, war balloons, Roentgen rays, pontoon bridges,
telegraph wagons, and trenching tools, farriers with anvils, major-
generals, mapmakers, "gallopers," intelligence departments, even
biographs and press-censors; every kind of thing and every kind of
man that goes to make up a British army corps.
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