YOU.
I've told him that I've visited you at the hospital.'
Call for my horse,
'I'm going to tell him,' Sean shouted. 'I'll tell him everything.
'No, you won't.' She answered him calmly.
'You did not save him at Colenso to destroy him now. You would destroy
him-and us. Please call for my horse. ' Sean whistled and they stood
together, not touching, not talking, not even looking at each other.
Until Mbejane emerged from the bush below the glade leading the
horses.
Sean lifted her into the saddle.
'When?' he asked quietly.
'Perhaps never,' she answered and swung the horse away.
She did not look back so Sean never saw the tears that streamed down
her face. The muffled drum of hooves drowned her sobs and she held her
back and her shoulders stiff so that he would not know.
The War Council ended long after dark and when his commandants had up
saddled and ridden away to their laagers among the hills, Jan Paulus
sat alone beside the fire.
He was tired, as though his brain was the cold, flabby body of an
octopus and its tentacles spread out to every extremity of his body.
He was lonely. Now at the head of five thousand men he was alone as he
had never been in the vast solitude of the open veld.
Because of the loneliness and because of the companionship she had
given him these past twenty years his thoughts turned to Henrietta, and
he smiled in the dari mess and felt the longing blunt the edge of his
determination.
I would like to go back to the farm, for a week only. Just to see that
they are all well. I would like to read to them from the Book and
watch the faces of the children in the lamplight. I would like to sit
with my sons on the stoep and hear the voices of Henrietta and the
girls as they work in the kitchen. I would like . . .
Abruptly he stood up from beside the fire. Ja, you would like !
to do this and you would like to do that! Go then!
Give yourself leave of absence as you refused it to so many others.
He clenched his jaw, biting into the stem of his pipe. Or else, sit
here and dream like an old woman while twenty-five thousand English
pour across the river.
He Strode out to the laager, and the earth tilted upwards beneath his
feet as he headed for the ridge Tomorrow, he thought.
Tomorrow.
God has been merciful that they did not rush the ridge two days ago
when I had three hundred men to hold it. But now I have five thousand
to their twenty-five-so let them come!
Suddenly, as he reached the crest, the valley of the Tugela lay below
him. Soft with moonlight so that the river was a black gash in the
land. He scowled as he saw the field of bivouac fires that straddled
the drift at Trichardt's farm.
They have crossed. May God forgive me that I had to let them cross,
