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General Turner had borne the brunt of the fighting from the evening of the 22nd. He had not had a moment's rest night or day, all the troops along the broken section having been placed under his command. On Sunday evening General Alderson was superseded by General Plumer. At dusk we succeeded in gathering together most of our men that were about brigade headquarters.
For a moment Abel Newt's heart seemed to stand still! An expression of some bitterness must have swept over his face, for Mrs. Plumer stepped toward him, as he stood with his hand upon the door, and said, "Are you unwell?" The cloud dissolved in a forced smile. "No, thank you; not at all!" and he looked surprised, as if he could not imagine why any one should think so.
A little less facetious, and a great deal more obstreperous, was fine rattling, rattleheaded Plumer. So tradition gave him out; and certain family features not a little sanctioned the opinion. He was uncle, bachelor-uncle, to the fine old whig still living, who has represented the county in so many successive parliaments, and has a fine old mansion near Ware.
He was immediately sent on to continue the pursuit in the Free State in co-operation with a column under Bethune, which marched directly across the veld to Fauresmith. Bethune was soon compelled to fall out, but Plumer held on for five days more without, however, lessening the distance between him and his quarry.
Everyone lay down where he stood, and it was a strange, troubled night, with horses stumbling about in the moonlight and blowing with astonishment into one's face. This morning, as some of us more than half expected, the enemy had cleared, but in consequence of a message received from Colonel Plumer asking us to meet and join him at a certain place we have turned from our original direction.
Sligo Moultrie can not help hearing every word, although he pares a peach and offers it to Miss Magot. "Miss Grace, do you remember what I said once of honest admiration that if it were eloquent it would be irresistible?" Grace Plumer bows an assent. "But that its mere consciousness a sort of silent eloquence is pure happiness to him who feels it?"
I borrow from Canon Ainger an interesting note on Walter Plumer, written in the eighteen-eighties, showing that Lamb was mistaken on other matters too: The present Mr. Plumer, of Allerton, Totness, a grandson of Richard Plumer of the South-Sea House, by no means acquiesces in the tradition here recorded as to his grandfather's origin.
Yet at the same time, although a leader of the bar and a United States Senator, he seems to have been oppressed with a sense of responsibility and even of inequality by this thin, black-eyed young lawyer from the back country. Mr. Plumer was a man of cool and excellent judgment, and he thought that Mr. Webster on this occasion was too excursive and declamatory.
How much share of this was due to Sir Herbert Plumer it is impossible for me to tell, though it is fair to give him credit for soundness of judgment in general ideas and in the choice of men.
Walter flourished in George the Second's days, and was the same who was summoned before the House of Commons about a business of franks, with the old Duchess of Marlborough. You may read of it in Johnson's Life of Cave. Cave came off cleverly in that business. It is certain our Plumer did nothing to discountenance the rumour.
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