Part 8 (1/2)
In the meantime we were not left entirely unmolested. The Beaconsfield _Sanatorium_ continued to be the chief object of Boer solicitude.
Smokeless powder was being employed, and the boom of the particular guns in action was not audible, or, if audible, so faintly as to be mistaken for the Column's artillery. We had a man placed on the Conning Tower whose duty it was to blow a warning whistle at sight of the flame of the enemy's fuse. But the whistle--not always heard--was only too apt to be connected with a policeman in distress.
The forty-eight hours' ordeal was not repeated, and interest in eating matters was soon revived. The comparative calm of Sat.u.r.day incited us to have recourse to all sorts of tricks to unearth what was eatable. The Soup Kitchen was a huge success, and had they not been already well endowed with this world's goods the distinguished waiters in charge of the department might have waxed rich. Thousands of pints were served out daily; indeed there was never a supply sufficient to feed the mult.i.tudes that swarmed round the cauldrons containing this delicious _elixir_ of life. One of the most remarkable sights of the Siege was, not the gravity of doctors, lawyers, directors, etc., presenting tickets for soup--_that_ was piquant enough--but the number of young ladies, votaries of fas.h.i.+on, who emerged from the _melee_ bedraggled and flushed with their pails of _nectar_, to all appearances not only forgetful of the _convenances_, but beaming with smiles of triumph. It may have been because their charms were enhanced, artful wenches! Enhanced, in any case, their charms were.
The Kitchen was booming, but the generality of people had in their enthusiasm so far failed to observe that the quality of the soup had sadly deteriorated. It had been degenerating day by day. Condiments were no longer available; mealie meal was withheld, and the soup had thus become thinner and less seasoned. But the trade had been established, and business continued brisk. There was no compet.i.tion (unfortunately), and our newspaper kept a.s.suring us with unnecessary gush that horseflesh was excluded from the Kitchen, and that accidents were impossible. The meat used was strictly orthodox. The Press dilated speciously on the economy practised under the system and on its general advantageousness.
Universal confidence was reposed in the Soup Directorate.
But, alas and alack! one fatal day an evil-minded fellow got a lump of something solid in his jug, and instead of holding his peace he held a _post-mortem_ examination and essayed to prove by some Darwinian process of reasoning that the opaque thing was more apish than orthodox! Prior to the date of this inquest, however, people had grown so habituated to the soup that they could not give it up if they would. They went on dutifully consuming it--just as everybody still does his beer, the recent poisoning revelations notwithstanding. They ate all they could get of it; it was in truth an indispensable necessity. The Kitchen was a blessing--in disguise, the wits said--and the most aesthetic, though not without misgivings, in the end gave the broth the benefit of the doubt.
Only a small band of martyrs elected to bleed at the shrine of principle; they declined to stultify their stomachs with ”horse soup.”
This was a reckless a.s.sumption, indicative of a shocking disbelief in human nature; an inexpedient conclusion. They were all honourable men on the Kitchen Committee. What! all? the reader may exclaim. Well, all but one, perhaps--who told an interviewer in London that ”horseflesh made excellent soup!” But that was long afterwards; and, moreover, proved nothing. The gentleman in question no doubt acted discreetly, before unbosoming himself, in placing six thousand miles of sea between him and the Kitchen. For that matter greater iniquities than his have been condoned to give prejudice a fall.
The Italian and American Consuls had protested on behalf of their respective governments against the recent indiscriminate a.s.sault upon non-combatants. We were pleased to hope that the protests were not unavailing. They were in conformity with the spirit, if not with the letter, of International Law; and it was stated that the Boers desired to stand well with any and every nation that might possibly make real their Utopian dream of European intervention. Of course, they were doing well alone; it is conceivable that they now felt less the need of extraneous a.s.sistance. Their energy and enterprise betokened self-reliance; the will with which they used their picks and shovels was enigmatical to the British mind. They seemed metaphorically to defy all Europe and America. And the reply received by the Consuls was quite in accord with a consciousness on the Boer side of ”splendid isolation.” It suggested that they (the Boers) would esteem it a privilege to provide the protesters with an escort to convey them to a place of safety, if that would satisfy. It did _not_ satisfy, and there the correspondence ceased.
It was thus the week ended--the enemy active, vigorous, supercilious; while we in Kimberley felt fretful, hungry, and sick at heart; but too thoroughly inured to hards.h.i.+p to shrink from or even to question the duty of fighting the battle to the bitter end.
CHAPTER XVI
_Week ending 3rd February, 1900_
The fierceness of the a.s.sault to which we had been exposed was the great subject of discussion, but it was not until the sluggish pendulum of Siege time had again swung round to the Sabbath that we freely and without dread of interruption gave full expression to our feelings towards the foe. The inconsistency of a nation so profuse in Christian professions was much discussed, and ignoring our own shortcomings in the same respect, to say nothing of the essential cruelty of all wars, we readily requisitioned our best resources of invective--to show what charity really was. We had been living in stormy tea-cups for a long while; our fury was usually more ungovernable than this or that grievance warranted; but we had never before given way to such rhetorical excesses, against not only the Boers, but the Military, as well--Lord Methuen, the Mayor, the Colonel and his Staff. Even Lord Roberts was snapped at. They were all in turn metaphorically tarred and feathered.
But these, after all, were old offenders; their faults and idiosyncrasies had been reviewed often. The occasion demanded a new scapegoat; and we determined to find him. We looked across the broad expanse of veld and bitterly reflected on a destiny that circ.u.mscribed our freedom within the barriers of a town; that denied us even the wild freshness of morning uncontaminated by the _miasma_ of city streets. In this frame of mind we easily drifted into speculation on first causes.
We began to ask ourselves upon whose shoulders the blame primarily rested for conditions which made such slavery possible; how it came to pa.s.s that a few toy-guns and a handful of soldiers had been deemed sufficient to protect Kimberley; and finally to vote the error of judgment incompatible with good administration. And then we remembered that the Bond was a powerful organisation, that a Bond Ministry was in Office. The needed scapegoat, in the person of the Prime Minister, was thus easily discovered. He it was who pooh-poohed the necessity of _arming_ Kimberley, and we accordingly lost no time in setting him up in the game of Siege Aunt Sally as a popular target for our rancour. And pelted he was with right good will. The genial Mr. Quilp, when he found himself deserted by his obsequious flatterer, Sampson Bra.s.s, cried out in the seclusion of his apartment at the wharf: ”Oh, Sampson, Sampson, if I only had you here!” and he was considerably consoled by his operations with a hammer on the desk in front of him. The feelings of Mr. Quilp were understood, if not respected in Kimberley.
The name of the Prime Minister had not been long added to our ”little list” when a local liar led off mildly with intelligence of the Premier's resignation. We improved on this by a.s.suming that his resignation was obligatory--that he had been ”dismissed.” That he had been arrested was the fiction next resorted to; and finally it was blazoned forth that he had been dismissed from the world altogether.
After that he was let rest, and we returned to the misdemeanours of men, in and out of khaki, whose turns had not yet come. Let me observe in pa.s.sing that the Prime Minister was--as we learned subsequently--more sinned against than sinning. His _apologia_, and the extent to which he had been wronged and misrepresented are matters outside the scope of these memoirs. But they shed a lurid light on the picturesque _canards_ we swallowed--and digested with an ease that any ostrich would envy.
While engrossed in these denunciations of everything and everybody, Sunday glided by--glided, for the pendulum was not so slow on Sundays.
We prepared for the worst the Boers could do on the morrow--rumour said it was to be very bad--and were in no way disposed to be comforted by the message, on the seriousness of our position, which the Colonel was credited with having despatched to Lord Roberts. We were unenlivened by the talk we heard on all sides as to the probable effect of the Foreign Consuls' protests; in optimistic quarters it was felt that the protests would lead to ”intervention” of a kind rather different from that bargained for by brother Boer. The war, it was a.s.serted, might stop ”very suddenly.” Well, of course, it might stop in certain eventualities, or it might not; the sky might fall, but we might easily die (on the diet) _before_ it came down. The Boers toiling at their trenches outside cherished no illusions on these points. Their magazines had been blown up, but, the road to Bloemfontein being clear, they could replenish them. Plumer's proximity to Mafeking (notified in the afternoon) would have been of more significance in our eyes had not experience prejudiced us against faith in proximity value, Methuen's proximity to Kimberley, for example, aggravated our sorrows in a very special way.
On Monday Lord Methuen kept telling us from the wilderness that he was there and still alive. The vitality of the enemy, however, concerned us more. Operations were started early; three sh.e.l.ls presumably intended for the _Sanatorium_ landed in Beaconsfield. The first two fell harmlessly, and the charm a.s.sociated with the third was no less disappointing--to an outsider. The charm surrounding the life of Mr.
Rhodes was more tangible; it appeared to extend to the roof that covered him. The greater part of the day was peaceful; but the Military were the Military, war was their profession; and a fight with the foe being for the moment impracticable, they ingeniously set about renewing the strife with their erstwhile friends--who, like _Sancho Panza_, clamoured merely for something to eat. Our recent experiences had tended to moderate our claims in this regard; we had become inured to bad living; our const.i.tutions had had time to wax weak; our appet.i.tes were less hearty.
Matters appertaining to the stomach had reached a sad pa.s.s. Mealie meal, _ad lib._, was no longer possible, and porridge--well, the good that it had done lived after it, though we had never acknowledged the actual _doing_ of it. Rice was issued to Indians exclusively, and, albeit they got nothing else, they had on the whole rather the better of Europeans.
The exhaustion of our golden syrup made the children--young and ”over-grown”--weep. We had been reduced to the ignominy of cultivating a toleration of what was called treacle, and even that nauseous compound was drifting towards extinction. They were hard times for all who could eat their soup; they were harder still for those whom the look of it satisfied. To these latter a tribute of praise for consistency is due, whatever may be said of their sense. The pathos of it all was that we got plenty of tea. We had no milk, and because we needed in consequence all the more sugar we were given less; and as ”mealie-pap” had pride of place on the _menu_ the day's allowance of sugar was only too apt to be recklessly monopolised in giving _that_ a taste. We were observing a protracted lenten season, a more rigorous fast than any Church prescribes. The local Catholic Bishop appreciated the gravity of the situation when he suspended the Church's law against the use of meat on Fridays. Eat it when you can (which might be only one day in the week, Friday as likely as any other), this edict amounted to in effect.
But we had yet fourteen ounces of bread to preserve us, the whole of which ration was sometimes polished off by mid-day meal time. There could be no modification in that direction. Fourteen ounces of bread was needed to sustain life. But the Military apparently thought otherwise; they suddenly intimated that we must endeavour to keep its lamp aflame on ”ten!” The _Commissariat_ reckoned it possible; so the new ”Law” was set in motion without compunction. A number of Fingoes preferred to die at home for choice, and with leave of the Colonel made an effort to get there. Unhappily, they were not allowed a choice; the Boers drove them back ”to die with the English.” Unlike the Basutos, the Fingo tribe was not physically or geographically in a position to make reprisals for such indignities. Besides, the English, the Boers knew, would be bound to share their last crust with their black brethren, and they wanted us to get to the last crust stage at our earliest convenience.
Contrary to expectation, nothing exciting occurred on Tuesday. The enemy again concentrated their fire on the _Sanatorium_; they evidently esteemed starvation, however expedient as a means for shuffling off the common herd, a little too good for a thinker in Continents. According to doc.u.ments which had been found in the pocket of a Boer prisoner, Mr.
Rhodes was awaiting a favourable opportunity to escape in ”a big balloon!” This strange idea may have been responsible for the efforts made to lay the great balloonist.
A cricket match was played in the afternoon by twenty-two disciples of Tapley; and sundry flashes of congratulation--adulatory of our gallant stand--were exchanged between our Mayor and Port Elizabeth's. These messages were soothing, but none of us acknowledged it. Soft words, alas! only reminded us of parsnips. And soon we should be without bread.
The bread question was the topic of the hour, and gave rise to more acrimony than had any antecedent injustice. Such unwonted severity in the administration of Civil affairs was a strain on the loyalty of a people self-governed since they were born. The view was stoutly maintained that the situation was not so bad as to warrant the adoption of such drastic measures. They were straining the limits of human endurance too callously. Nothing could alter our resolve to dispute with the Boer every inch of the ground we defended. So much was agreed. But the tendency to famish us displayed by our Rulers was not calculated to improve the _morale_ of a civilian, or any, army. It did not bespeak the early relief of Kimberley. Actions like Kekewich's and Gorle's in the matter of bread fostered feelings of indifference. They would not stimulate the town's defenders to shoot better or to fight the more tenaciously in a crisis. With troops pouring into the country, wherefore the need of so much supererogation? A hungry man capable of demolis.h.i.+ng a ten ounce loaf--a siege product--in ten bites might well echo wherefore indeed!