Chapter XIII: Part 13

The Queen-ant of an unusually large ant-hill on this little ball of rock and water having gone on her way to thank the Master Spirit of the Universe for a few additional years of life and power to do good---the while no doubt that Master Spirit, despite Its Unlimited Intelligence, was vexed and preoccupied at the way things were going in the constellation of Orion--a million times larger than the whole solar system; or at the accelerated currents of star-dust in the Milky Way, or the slow progress towards forming a cluster of sixty giant worlds made by the Nebula of Andromeda: the Schraeder partners were dispensing very elegant hospitality in the room behind the two windows they had taken at an Illustrated Newspaper Office in the Strand. They were essentially practical men, being German, with a Jewish quarter-strain and a French education. They could have entertained Roger and his wife and sister; a great Singer--who could not "place" Roger and therefore was cold to him; a great Actress rather past her prime; a great Essayist whose mental scope was limited by Oxford and the Athenaeum; and various other guests of intellectuality and distinction: they could have entertained their friends and acquaintance in the Piccadilly house of one of them and the Grosvenor Gardens house of another; or they could have thrown open their splendid City offices for the same purpose; but the view of the whole procession and especially of the Queen would not have been so near, so concentrated, as from windows on the first floor of the Strand at its narrowest. So in fixing up their plans two months beforehand it was here they were playing the lavish host.

The collation was of the most exquisite; the wines of the finest quality imparting the most insidious intoxication, so that you thought you were only being your natural self, though you put your elbows on the table and wondered that you had never hitherto been ranked as a great wit. The celebrated singer began to forget her secret grievance that she was not being entertained by Royalty and had not ridden in one of those carriages. She consoled herself by the assurance she would be at the Naval Review and the Garden Party and probably most of her fellow-guests would not. And then after all, if you did stoop to City entertainers, you could not do much better than the Schraeders, unless it were the Rothschilds. Baron Schraeder was the head of the family, and he had been made a Baron by Napoleon III, which was much more chic than a German title given by a petty German court. The Schraeders for several generations had been dilettanti, outside business; musicians of a certain talent; shrewd judges of cinque-cento art; abstruse ornithologists; members of the Zoological Society's Council; of a Jockey Club here and of a Cercle d'Escrime there. But to sustain this life of many facets they required unlimited money; and Roger Brentham just now was promising to become one of their most remarkable money-spinners. Mr. Eugene Schraeder was therefore, after one or two elegant fillings and sippings over Royal names, proposing ever so informally his good health, and that of his charming and devoted wife, and ... and ... he stammered a little over the characterization of Maud, who was the least genial member of the party and had shown herself a little blunt with the actress past her prime, who was now descending to whispered confidences of marital ill-treatment. "But our friend, Captain Brentham ... may I without indiscretion say he should, if he had all that was due to him, have been in the procession to-day as an actor rather than a spectator? Though our party would have lost one of its most interesting guests...." (The Essayist, whose nose has gone very red with the champagne and the Chateau Yquem, here looks at Roger for the first time with focussed eyes: is it possible that he could have done anything worth notice, outside Oxford and the Athenaeum?) "Our friend, Captain Brentham, first led the way of Imperial expansion in East Africa; he is now endeavouring to show us Germans how the wealth of our East African possessions should be developed and brought into the world's markets. Germany was not too proud to enlist the services of any man--or woman" (he bowed to the Actress and Singer) of ability. To be a German was in some ways to be a world-citizen. If they searched the glorious records of the British Empire they would find them studded with German names.... The British Empire of to-day stood grandly open to German enterprise; they would find in return that the German Empire overseas was ready to afford every opportunity to British colonizing and administrative genius. So there would be in German circles no grudging to Captain Brentham of a full meed of praise--from his firm, at any rate--for the truly remarkable discoveries he had made....

"You mustn't forget the credit due to Hildebrandt and Wiese and several other fellows," interpolated Brentham, desirous of doing the right thing--

"Just so--of your German colleagues: that is as it should be. But that brings me to the climax I was leading up to, rather wordily I fear. Dear friends (his voice a little tremulous with honest emotion) let us drink a final toast: _To Anglo-German Co-operation_; to the great Alliance of our two Nations founded on affinity of race and language, a common love of truth, a common devotion to Science, and I might add almost--a common dynasty" ... (rest lost in clapping).

The toast, however, was drunk somewhat sparingly and absent-mindedly. The Singer, Madame Violante (her married name was Violet Mackintosh), felt dangerously near hiccups (it was the plovers' eggs, she told herself) and she might have to sing to-night! How could she have been so mad? The Actress felt she had said rather too much about her husband to a total stranger, a middle-aged woman who now looked a mere parson's wife.

The Essayist had grown rather sulky because his hosts in this wholly unnecessary speechifying had made no reference to his own contribution to Anglo-German friendship, his _Place of Heine among Modern Poets_ and his _Synthesis of Lessing's Dramas_.

Then the party broke up, and the kindly Schraeders suggested, as any form of conveyance was totally unprocurable, they should have the hardihood (the gentlemen protecting the ladies) to walk back through the common People--whom the Police had described as uncommon good-natured and just a bit merry--to the Green Park and witness the dear Queen's return to Buckingham Palace.

But when the Jubilee fiss-fass-fuss had abated and before they went to Homburg and Aix, the partners sent for Roger and spoke to him with business-like generosity. He and his staff had made discoveries of value that might be almost called astounding. The capital of the Company would possibly be increased ten-fold--large subscriptions in Germany--exciting immense interest among the best people on this side. His original syndicate shares had become equivalent to 50,000 shares in the enlarged Company, and as they stood at a pound, why he would be worth, if he realized, L50,000. But, of course, he would not do such a thing till promises had been turned into performances--Meantime, they were prepared to raise his salary to L3,000 a year--he would probably have to entertain German officials considerably--and conclude an agreement for ten years.... "But if I have to entertain largely?" he queried, not above making as good a bargain as possible.... "My dear Captain Brentham! Don't let _that_ stand between us.... There shall be an entertainment allowance of five hundred a year. And we hope that that will induce you to take your charming lady back with you, and your sister, Miss Brentham. I assure you the encomiums passed on those ladies by our German friends out there have contributed not a little to...."

"All this is very kind of you. But I don't want to think I alone am being rewarded for discoveries which in some cases were entirely due to...."

"You will find when you go back your German colleagues have not been forgotten in the all-round increase of salaries.... And now; go and take a _good_ holiday and get well braced up before your return in the autumn...."

Roger took them at their word. He and Lucy, after revelling in the joys of parenthood in Berkshire, went off to spend a month with Sibyl at Glen Sporran. Lucy had long since grown used to Sibyl, so the prospect of the visit caused her no perturbation. She followed Maud's advice as to suitability of outfit and the number of evening frocks and tea-gowns. She was the only member of the party who did not bicycle or play bridge. Sibyl boasted of doing sixty miles a day without turning a hair; but the Rev. Stacy Bream nearly killed himself trying to emulate her feats of coasting downhill and pedalling uphill.

The Honble. Vicky Masham was there as of yore--a little longer in the tooth (she had got used to Sibyl's nickname by this time, and had forgiven it as Sibyl had helped her to pay her bridge debts)--. She hurt her ankle badly in a bicycle accident and had to lie up. Lucy, the only one at home, sat with her, did fancy work and burbled gently about her African experiences. The Honble. Victoria grew quite interested, regretted that Mrs. Brentham, born as she had been born, without the purple, and her husband not having pursued a British career, could not be brought to the dear Queen's notice.... The Queen took the _greatest interest_ in Africa....

Lucy, of course, after a few lessons abandoned any attempt to play bridge (people in 1897 debated whether bicycling, bridge, the Bible, or herbaceous borders had brought the greatest happiness to Britain: we, in after life, see it was the bicycle). She was scared by the subterranean forces it aroused and lit up in the angry eyes around her, the fortunes that were involved in the plunge of No Trumps, the awful penalties attendant on a revoke, the fate that hung on a finesse. So she wisely declined to play and talked--or rather listened--to the one who cut out; or if several tables were made up, she dispensed drinks and sweets and a sandwich supper. The Rev. Stacy Bream, vaguely nettled by her rival Christianity, glanced at her once, remembered years ago she had been Sibyl's butt, and inquired of Sibyl "who her people were, what her father was?"

"One of the best farmers in Berkshire," said Sibyl. "Mine is--or was--for I had to buy him up--one of the worst.... What was _your_ father, by the bye? It never occurred to me to ask you before...."

The Rev. Stacy's father had really been a very pushing Agent for a firm of Decorators and Wall-paper designers: so he replied with a sigh: "A great, _great_ traveller, dear lady; a man who loved Colour and Design better than his immortal soul, I fear.... It's to you to cut...."

But Sibyl had not confined her Highland house-party to these worn-out fribbles. Bream had his uses. He would be there to assoil a guest who might get shot in the shooting, and so perhaps save the unpleasantness of an inquest; and his stories of people on the fringe of Society were the equivalent and the accompaniment in midnight chat--just before you took your bedroom candle--of pate-de-foie sandwiches and cherry brandy. Vicky Masham kept you right with Queen Victoria; Lucy was a reminder to her not to make a fool of herself with Roger ... perhaps also there was a little gratitude in her hard nature for the good a year of Lucy's society had wrought in her little son's health and disposition. But she wanted--more than ever at thirty-six--to be a political woman, to make a difference in the world, hand her name down in history, change or shape history in fact. It had occurred to her, as it did to fifty other mature, handsome, well-placed women of ambition, to marry Cecil Rhodes; but the Jacobzoon Raid and still more the eager rivalry of other ladies, perfectly shameless in their frontal attacks on the Colossus, soon thwarted any such idea ... reduced it indeed, to such a ridiculous impossibility that it was only confided to her locked diary. She had fortunately withdrawn her half-promise from Sir Elijah Tooley at the very first hint that there was a crack in his reservoir of wealth. Otherwise--with a couple of millions of his money ... and he could have had his own suite of apartments, and she would have stopped him waxing his moustaches ... she might have over-turned her world.... Then there was Count Balanoff, the Russian Ambassador, a widower....

"You know," she said to Roger in one of her many smoking-room tete-a-tete confidences--"he is 'richissime,' and really rather decent, though he does dye his hair.... Gold mines in Siberia, turquoise mines in the Caucasus.... He seemed quite to _want_ to marry me, at one time.... Vicky Masham thinks it was the Queen who interposed. If he'd asked me and I'd accepted I should have made myself in no time the most talked-about woman in Europe. I'd have negotiated an alliance with Russia--always an idea of mine--and have paid the Kaiser out for his Kruger telegram--Why is it, Roger, there isn't a _rush_ to marry me? I've ten thousand a year for life; I'm only thirty-six, which nowadays is equivalent to twenty-six; I've a splendid constitution, my hair's my own and so are my teeth, my figure is perfect.... I might be an artist's model for the 'tout ensemble.' ... And yet ... (a pause for smoking).

"And it isn't as though the re-marriage of titled women was 'mal vu' at Court any longer.... There's Lady Landolphia Birchall. She's going to be married again in the autumn; this time to a 'booky'--for he really is nothing more, though he takes bets with the Prince. And she's turned fifty. But the Queen doesn't seem to mind...."

But to return to the theme from which this digression started. Sibyl had asked four great Imperialists down to Glen Sporran to make Roger's acquaintance: the Honble. Darcy Freebooter, Percy Bracket--Editor of the _Sentinel_--the Right Honble. J. Applebody Bland, and Albert Greystock, grandson of old Lord Bewdly. She would have liked to have captured Mr. Rudyard Kipling, but he had perversely gone to the United States, a region which lay outside Sibyl's calculations, since we could neither annex it nor protect it. She had even tried to include the great Choselwhit in the company, the mysterious idol before whom and whose non-committal eyeglass so much imperialistic incense was then burnt. But he had answered coldly, in an undistinguished handwriting, that he regretted a previous engagement.

"I don't mind admitting, it's _rather_ a snub," she said to her quite indifferent cousin, "and it _vexes_ me because he is the coming man. It is _he_ we must look to, to lead the Unionist, the Imperial Party; not those effete Brinsleys with their antiquated love of Free Trade and the Church of England.... I'm very much 'in' just now with Laura Sawbridge ... you know, that clever woman-writer and traveller. She says she can turn Chocho _round her little finger_. It was _he_ who sent her out to ... (rest whispered). Well, you see what _that_ means? Chocho is lying low, but he means to get even with old Kruger and paint the Transvaal red...."

Whether anything much, except distrust and disgust, resulted from bringing Roger Brentham within the same four walls, into the same shooting parties, bridge contests and bicycling excursions as these distinguished Imperialists, it is hardly worth inquiring. Imperialism is dead, and I, as an old Imperialist, am moribund, and most of the people mentioned are no longer of this world. Probably Roger thought Darcy Freebooter what all collateral younger sons of his stock had been for three centuries: it was described by his surname. Percy Bracket, he defined mentally as quite ignorant of the Empire he unceasingly boomed (not without a practical purpose, for he expected most company promoters to give him a block of paid-up shares or "let him in on the ground floor "). The Rt. Honble. Applebody Bland reminded Roger of Mr. Quale in _Bleak House_, whose mission it was to be enthusiastic about everybody else's mission ... and recalled to Lucy, by the jets of saliva which accompanied his easily provoked eloquence, her special African horror, the Spitting Cobra. And Albert Greystock was too good for this world. He believed any one who advocated enlarging the British Empire was a pure-souled missionary of civilization, incapable of a base greed for gain or other interested motive. He also believed that once a backward or savage country had been painted red on the map there was nothing more to be done or said. There it was: saved, happy, and gratefully contented.

These people all said in turn "it was _monstrous_"--a man who could in six years accomplish such encouraging results in a part of Africa unfortunately for the time being under Germany _must_ be brought back to British Administration. _Choselwhit_ must be seen, _Wiltshire_ button-holed, the _Rothschilds_ nudged, and _Rhodes_ got round....

Roger, however, was not going to risk the substance for the shadow or be disloyal in the slightest degree to the generous Schraeders. He would buckle-to, make his pile, bank it; and _then_, perhaps, weigh in, scatter the chaff and garner the grains of Imperialism. And of one thing he was jolly well sure--thinking back on his faithful Somalis, his cheery Wanyamwezi, on the well-mannered, manly Masai, the graceful Iraku, and the obedient Wambugwe: he would see that the Black men and Brown men reaped full advantage for the White man's intrusion into their domain. They should receive compensation for disturbance and be brought into partnership, not only of labour and effort, but of profit.

*CHAPTER XX*

*THE BOER WAR*

_From Lady Silchester to her cousin, Captain Roger Brentham._

Stellenbosch,
Cape Colony,
_March_ 25, 1900.

DEAR ROGER--

Your letter from Magara of last December reached me in London just as I was leaving with Landolphia Birchall (she kept her former name when she married the Booky ... and _quite right, too_--you _never_ know how a second or third marriage is going to turn out, and at any moment may want your old name back). We came out here to see something of the war at close quarters and to set up a hospital and a convalescent home for the sick and wounded officers and men.

I cannot tell you how _proud_ and _pleased_ I was you had _done the right thing_. People--especially that horror, Willowby Patterne ... my dear, he is going _bald as an egg_, with a _terribly_ pink neck, all due to some mistake in a hair-restorer, he says, but I say it is a vicious life--people were saying odious things about you the last year or two for developing German East Africa instead of one of our own colonies. But I knew--and always said--your heart was in the right place and that _once_ you saw old England was in a tight place you would come to her assistance. There is nothing like one's own country, after all, is there?--"_My_ country, right or wrong!"--one of the few ex-cabinet ministers who is running straight said last December at a meeting I got up at Reading. Some rude man in the audience called out, "But why don't you set it _right_? _Then_ we should know where we are." But you must expect such retorts from people who know nothing of foreign policy.

I wonder how you got away? Lucy and Maud, I suppose, you have left behind. The Kaiser seems rather friendly to us, they all say, and is going to be pacified with Samoa and more pieces of West Africa. So I suppose your concession will be all right, whilst you are away, and the Germans won't do anything unkind to poor Lucy and Maud. Or have they returned to England? It is France who is showing her teeth, not Germany! Chocho has very rightly told her "to mend her manners." She is a _pig_ ... she can't forgive our taking Egypt and turning back Marchand at Fashoda.

Even Spain has seized the opportunity to get her own back. It seems Lord Wiltshire called her a decaying nation during the war with the United States, and she has been saying through her press after each British defeat: "Who's the decaying nation _now_?" I must say she had some cause! Never were we more bitterly disappointed in our Generals--before Lord Roberts came out: They started off--some of the dear old trots, with Crimean whiskers, if you'll believe me--as pleased as Punch; and their silly young A.D.C.'s got the porters at Waterloo station to stick labels on their luggage "To Pretoria," "To Bloomfontain" (Is that how it's spelt?). And, of course, the only result of this boastfulness was that as soon as the old footlers got out there they fell into ambushes and lost their way and their men, and were deceived by guides, and the soldiers quite lost heart and got taken prisoners.

England in December! I shall _never_ forget it! I couldn't sleep for _nights_ and _nights_, and Vicky Masham told me the Queen's health received such a shock that she will never be quite the same again....

Of course, now we can breathe once more. As you are on the spot and I dare say in the thick of it all, I need not tell you how things have gone since Bobs and K. of K. came out.

Well, of course, with all this going on in South Africa you couldn't expect any loyal Englishwoman who wasn't positively tied down by home duties to remain at home. So I sent Clithy to Eton--he's nearly thirteen now--and kept on his governess to mother him when he comes from school, and also confided him to the general care of Maurice, whom he likes. By the bye, I've pensioned off old Flower now, or at least got rid of him with a premium, and Maurice is full Agent, and I've advised Maurice to take on as an assistant Harden, the County cricketer, your wife's brother-in-law! Well. Having done all this and girded up my loins, so to speak, I made interest with old General de Gobyns at the War Office--such an old darling--he served with Wellington, I believe--and came out here with Landolphia Birchall, to supervise hospitals and give a general eye to the sick and wounded, read to them, write letters home for them, change their bandages, if it isn't too complicated--and so on. It was partly the thought that you were out here that decided me to come. Don't forget if you are wounded or ill to let me know and I will try to come to you or get you put into one of my hospitals. That _would_ be jolly!

Landolphia is a funny old party! She must be quite fifty. She was so ill crossing the Bay of Biscay. Owing to the disgraceful amount of room the staff officers took up on the steamer she and I were jammed together into one cabin. Where our maids were put, _I_ don't know--in the stoke-hole I think. But we scarcely saw them all the voyage and when we landed Sophie gave me notice at once, only she can't get a passage home so she has had to let it stand over till I choose to return. Of course, under the circumstances, Landolphia could keep nothing back from me--she was _so_ sea-sick; as she said, that she felt herself naked, face to face with her Maker. So everything had to be explained--her secrets of make-up, her sachets of peau d'espagne, her dress improvers and peculiar stays and adjusted shoes. I suppose (though I laughed inwardly till I _ached_, she looked so droll when she was taken to pieces) I must have been good to her in her dire affliction, for she's clung to me ever since, and says we are sisters without a secret between us. After all, with all these infirmities and "adjustments" she was a plucky old thing ever to come out. Now she thinks it an awful lark--

By the bye, she protests with tears in her eyes that her third husband is _not_ a booky, he's a _trainer_, which, it appears, is a vastly superior calling. She also says she oughtn't to be judged so harshly over her marriages. The second husband, Captain Birchall, only lived with her for three months and then broke his neck in a point-to-point steeplechase. She lived twenty years with Augustus Gellibrand, and she really only married her present old man--Dawkins--because she got into such a tangle over her racing debts and he put them straight....

* * * * *

Do let me know if and when this gigantic letter reaches you!

Your devoted
SIBYL.

As will be seen later, this frank outpouring did not come into Roger's hands for five or six months. Fortunately Sibyl had also sent him several picture postcards with photos of herself and Lady Landolphia dressed in nurses' costume, or a kind of hybrid costume between a nurse and a nun. These reached him at his Agents' in Durban. So he wrote to her from that place and was rather pleased to think she was in the same sub-continent as himself. It diminished slightly the acute form of home-sickness from which he suffered after first landing in Natal.

Once more he asked himself if he had done the right thing in volunteering for the South African War. His Agents at Durban, being German and Dutch, were at most coldly polite and there seemed to be no rush on the part of the authorities to enlist his services. In order to have two trusty servants who would take care of his baggage and perhaps follow him in campaigning--they would make most admirable scouts--he had brought with him to Durban two of his Somali gun-carriers. After landing with them at Durban and reporting himself to the military head-quarters as a former captain in the Indian Army, he had the deuce-and-all of a bother to get food and lodging for these wretched Somalis, who were at once classed by we ignorant Natalians as "just ordinary niggers" ... though why "just ordinary niggers" should be so ill-treated, he could not understand. No hotel would lodge or feed them except in a kind of pigsty with hog-wash for food, where the kitchen Kafirs abode. They might not go into a shop and buy food, or rather they might go in but no one would serve them. After dark they must have a "pass." They very narrowly escaped jail and the whip and disappearance for ever from his ken by defending themselves with all a Muslim's pride when cuffed and pushed and flouted.

Roger very nearly--for that reason and for the mosquito-preserves of Durban then called "hotels"--turned tail and re-embarked for German East Africa; but fortunately there came along a Colonel who had not served under Wellington or even seen the Crimea, but was no older than Roger--42--and had known him in London.

"You're just the type of man we want, with your knowledge of the bush and of niggers...."

"No, don't call them that; it--it--riles me after the years I have worked with them...."

"Well, Negroes, the bonny Bantu, the blameless Ethiopians, if you will.... And you ought to be a master-hand at bush-fighting. We're going to get up a sort of mounted infantry, don't you know. You're just the man to be given a small command. You need not tell me you can't ride, can't get every ounce out of your mount, 'cos I know better; or that you can't manage horses so that those entrusted to your men don't die in three weeks. Didn't you once tell me you bred Basuto ponies in G.E.A.? Well, I'm here, there, and elsewhere, buying Basuto ponies. Just stay here and get your uniform and equipment--here, give this card to our Supply department--and then report to General Buller. I'm writing him fully about you.... Oh yes.... And as to your nigs. I mean your two high-bred Fuzzie-wuzzies. Of course, we don't employ Negro soldiers ... 'gainst the rules. But we engage thousands as batmen, transport-riders, grooms, and everything else. I'll fix it up somehow that you take your two darkies with you. They seem to know what I'm sayin'. What jolly teeth. They look hefty men and a dam' sight handsomer than some of the Johnnies you'll see on the Rand, when we've got Oom Paul on the run..."

So in course of time, Roger, first brevet-Major for gallantry in action, then a full Major--if there is such a simple rank no longer qualified with adjectives (but I know after his campaigns in the Transvaal he was always styled "Major" Brentham, till he was made a Colonel)--found his way (always attended by Yusuf Ali and Anshuro, his Somali batmen) into the eastern Transvaal at the period when President Kruger and the other members of his Government were leaving Pretoria for the Portuguese frontier.

In the month of August he took part in a concentration of British forces against two Boer commandos in the north-east Transvaal. This resulted in a technical victory for the British, but whilst the tide of battle rolled away northwards to seize Pietersburg, the Boers were left in possession of the site of the first skirmish. And in a sudden hush after great clamour Roger realized that he was lying in the shade of some bushes near a little _spruit_ of water, shot through the thigh and quite incapable of sitting up. The bullet or bullets had gone clean through the fleshy part of the right thigh and grazed the knee of the left leg. Happily they had not broken the thigh bone or cut the great artery. The Somalis, who had a magical faculty of turning up when most wanted, had come in handy as renderers of first aid, had stopped the haemorrhage. They now squatted on the ground beside their fainting master, fanned his sweating face, gave him water to drink and occasionally sprinkled his chest and forehead with water to ward off the deadly faintness....

A Boer Colonel came riding by, scanning closely the scene of the struggle. He claimed the unconscious Roger as his prisoner--out of pity--and whistled up carriers and a stretcher to bear him to the nearest dressing-station.

Here he was attended to by one of the numerous German doctors who had volunteered for service with the Boer armies.

_From Major Roger Brentham, D.S.O., to Lady Silchester._

British Hospital,
Unguja,
_Novr._ 27, 1900.

DEAREST SIBYL,--

A steamer coming from the south to-day brought me your letter of last March! I had got several of your postcards showing yourself and Lady Landolphia in nurses' uniform and with dreadful smiles of glittering teeth, and knew of course--heard, I mean--what you were doing for our men out in South Africa. The letter was sent on by my Agents; I expect it got hung up in the military censorship, and I must say I don't blame them! Your unconscious criticisms of our generalship were pretty pungent. I wonder I got it at all. But better late than never! After I have read it a third time I shall burn it because there is one classical tag I never forget: _Littera scripta manet_.

I see by the London papers of September you are not only back in England--or rather Scotland--but entertaining as of yore at Glen Sporran. And playing with the same old toys! How indefatigable you are in your pursuit of power! How unwearied by the social routine, which would drive me into exile or into murder. I should end by killing the poor old _fantoches_--Vicky Long-i'-the-Tooth, Stacy Bream, and the others--I forget their names--the Right Honble. gentleman who spat like a cobra--only it was very kindly saliva, not at all venomous--and that moral enthusiast over the Empire--Albert Something. I see by the same paper he is now Lord Bewdly and has been uttering some beautiful sentiments over the results expected from the Boer War.... You were Stellenbosched, and with reason, because your hospitals and convalescent homes were there (I see, by the bye, that Willowby Patterne, who came an awful cropper at Driefontein and generally misconducted himself, was also Stellenbosched by K. of K. I hope you did not foregather with him?) ... Well, as I was saying, you were Stellenbosched and saw little of the horrors of War. But I did, and I used often to wish that Albert person could have been with me and seen the burning of the homesteads, the cutting down of the fruit-trees, the fugitive women and little children, the Boer boys of eleven and twelve dressed up for war like their fathers and elder brothers and fighting for their homes. I saw one of these boys--tousled yellow hair, nice grey eyes--in a buckskin suit much too big for him, laid out to die by the road-side, just after we had burnt his father's home. I don't suppose one of our chaps really set out to kill him. But there it was; he had been shot through the lungs and was gasping out his life, blood pouring out of his mouth at each gasp. And yet he tried to smile and said something in Dutch about his father being away.... Upon my word I should have liked to get the Kaiser, old Kruger, ---- and ----[#] all strung up together on the site of that farm. For they are the four men who together made this most unnecessary war. I know what lots of our Tommies said when they heard Kimberley was relieved!

[#] I shrink from perpetuating all Roger's indiscretions and impulsive statements.--H.H.J.

As for me, I was laid out soon after with two bullets through my thigh. But for Yusuf Ali and Anshuro, my two Somalis; and equally but for a humane Boer (Colonel van Rensselaer), I should certainly have died. As it was, the haemorrhage was stopped and a German doctor at the field hospital nursed me through a bad attack of blood-poisoning. I shall never, of course, be quite the same man again; but I still feel as though there were a lot of push in me. Soon after my admission to the hospital at Lydenburg, the Boers evacuated the place and in course of time I was transported to Durban and invalided out of the army with the rank of Major. I had already got a D.S.O., so _I_ can't complain. I would fight any day for England against England's enemies, but--however, no more grousing. Let's hope a new order of things is going to set in. I certainly should like to cut my D.S.O. into three and give two equal bits to Ali and Anshuro. You've no idea what those Somali boys were in the matter of devotion, cheerfulness, astuteness! And yet they only served me for the ordinary coast wages; though of course I'm going to give them both a handsome donation when their time is up.

Well: here I am at a hospital once more. I must rest here and get my leg quite sound before I start for up-country. I have been here for a month, in telegraphic communication with Lucy and Maud, imploring them not to come down to the coast to meet me. Lucy, I fear, is far from strong; and Maud is simply indispensable to the carrying on of the work up there. She has shown herself as good as a man. The two Australians I put there have done their best, but they don't get on at all well with the Germans. Their education has been very poor--I mean in book-learning--they are rattling good in settlers' lore--and, of course, they utterly refuse to understand German and openly gibe at it. Their chief recommendation is that they are absolutely honest....

I lie here chafing and intensely anxious for my worst wound to heal. I am told I ought to be thankful to have made such a wonderful recovery. But I feel a month of Lucy's care for me and the bracing air of Iraku would set me up altogether; and my mere presence at Magara put an end to all these misunderstandings and bitternesses.

The Schraeders were rather aghast at my bolt for South Africa last year; but stood it on the whole very well. Of course, I insisted on being reduced to a third of my pay whilst I was absent. I retained just enough salary to keep Lucy and Maud going, and maintain the household....

The whole German attitude over this war has been a curious one, and so have been its refractions on their attitude towards me. I hear that after my departure for the war a strong move was got up to oust me from the Managership. Now that I have returned wounded and a Major and a D.S.O. (that was given me the other day, for capturing Colonel Boshaert and three hundred men and a thousand cattle near Lydenburg--tell you all about it one day) they can't say enough in my favour. I am almost threatened with a triumphal procession home.... Engine from Tanga wreathed with palm fronds, etc. Fortunately the train will take me half the way back, and for the rest I can be carried in a Machila.

But there is little doubt that the mass of the Germans out here thought we were going to be gravelled by the Boers and that Germania would step into the shoes of Britannia. Undoubtedly the Kaiser for the past six years has been fishing in troubled waters, trying to connect up German South-West Africa with Boer territory, and planning to make Germany the dominant power in South Africa; or, at any rate, the honest broker between Boer and Briton....

Why the Dutch and the British should be as oil and water in South Africa and elsewhere, I _can't_ think. But they are. The Dutchman in Africa and Europe is just a rather finer built, better-looking Englishman or Scotchman; but in language, mentality and above all in a curiously hard attitude towards the Negro, he is Teutonic. The whole set of South Africa is towards Germany.... That is why Rhodes lost his head....

Your affectionate
ROGER.

P.S. See you next year or year after, as soon as ever I have got everything going here as it was before the war, and it is safe to come away. I must go on with this until I can retire with a competency.

*CHAPTER XXI*

*THE MORALS OF THE HAPPY VALLEY*

"I am so glad, so _truly_ glad you are almost your old self again," said Mrs. Stott, one brilliant morning in the spring of 1901, to Major Brentham, who had been four months back at his home in Iraku. He did indeed look as if he had in a measure recovered his good looks and energy, though the right leg was still stiff and much riding or walking brought on pain.

"It emboldens me to embark on a very disagreeable subject which I have been saving up to discuss with you. We cannot evade it much longer; so--if you have the patience--?"

"I am always patient with you, Mrs. Stott. There are few people I respect more...."

"Thank you. Then I shall take up an hour or more of your time, if you are not very busy. But how is Lucy?"

"Lucy is not well; anaemic, Dr. Wiese says. I should send her home, only she refuses to go without me and I can't leave till next year. Dr. Wiese does not insist on her going before then. He is trying a new tonic which seems to be blood-making; it ought to be, because--though I do not tell Lucy--it is made of blood--one of these new German inventions. Wiese says if we would only do like the Masai and the Iraku: tap the veins of our cattle and drink the hot blood--"

"Ugh! don't let's talk about it; it makes me sick. I'm almost a vegetarian, you know. Couldn't we go into your study? It is delicious here on the verandah, but I don't want to be overheard."

"Certainly: come this way."

"What _wonderful_ petunias, yours are! I never saw such glowing colours. Your whole garden is a joy to the eye and a credit to the Concession...."

"You're _right_. But the credit lies with Riemer, the plantation manager; he gives it an eye. The Germans are wonderful horticulturists. I don't think we sufficiently appreciate that fact at home. They are as good as the Dutch. Now then, here we are in my sanctum--rather untidy, I fear.... Take this chair..."

"No, it is too reclining. I _do_ like an upright straight-backed chair when I want to speak out. My daughters say I'm like a character in one of Dickens's books, who could never loll. They're wonderful readers and remember everything they've read...."

"Well now, what's the trouble?"

"It's--it's--this--horrid--_sexual_ question I've come about. You know what Ann Anderson is--I prefer to call her Ann Jamblin--I don't like the two 'An's' together. Ann has a wonderful power for good, an energy in righteousness, and is as nearly sinless as any woman can be. But she's also got _such_ an insight into other people's sinfulness that she spends much of her time denouncing their wrong-doing--too much, I think. I tell her she's out here to convert the blacks, and for the time being had better leave the whites alone. But she pays no heed to me--says her mission is to all men. She simply won't let the Germans alone. We had terrible rows sometimes when you were away, though your sister did what she could to smooth things over. I admit some of them are utterly wicked. There is that monster Stolzenberg--whom the Masai call 'The Terror'--_Olduria_--. After he came to the Lake with his Ruga-ruga last October and shot all the flamingoes...."

"WHAT?" roared Roger, leaping to his feet, and then wincing... "I never heard this before...!"

"No? Well: sit down. You ought to rest your leg. Lucy didn't want you to know. She thought it would upset you so--And indeed, it was a shocking pity.... But you'd soon have noticed how few there are left--even from here on a clear day.... I understand Stolzenberg sent a huge consignment of their plumage to a firm he trades with in Marseilles. And he has been going about to other lakes doing the same. But I must stick to the point.... Where was I? Oh, yes! ... Ann, who lives in our old station at Mwada, was awfully upset because she had become so fond of these birds, besides being infuriated at Stolzenberg's Ruga-ruga occasionally carrying off women. So she wrote him a letter saying that if he showed himself in the Concession again she would take a gun to him herself. She solemnly cursed him and called down Divine punishment on his head. Unfortunately--for I think the whole thing was _most_ unwise--she paid a Masai who came along to trade to deliver the letter at Stolz's boma. The watchman at the gate made him come in and give the letter himself, and Stolz having read it had the man's left hand chopped off, tied it to his right, and said that was the answer to the English Missionaries and that was how he'd treat any other messengers sent to him.... The poor wretch arrived at Mwada a week afterwards nearly dead with loss of blood.... Of course, the Masai have again sworn vengeance against this monster: but what can they do? But that is not our worst trouble. Before you went, and whilst you were away, Ann took up the sex question. You know how set she was on the elevation of the native women? You used to laugh about her corps of Amazons, her 'Big-geru.' She hadn't been long with us before she began to interest herself in the young women of Iraku.... Those of the Wambugwe are, I must confess, _hopeless_ at present; I mean as regards chastity. Poor things! They are corrupted and degraded from childhood. But there is something superior--something of another race in the Iraku and Fiome. You said once they were partly descended from some Gala immigration of long ago?...

"Well, Ann, who is untirable, started a class of these Iraku young women before she had been six months in the Happy Valley. The chiefs--I dare say you remember speaking to some of them? ... _quite_ approved and sent their young daughters. She taught them cooking and laundry work, plain sewing, reading and writing. And now she finds, after they have been a year or two at our schools, they go off and live with white men....!"

_Roger_: "I dare say they do, and have a much better time with them than with their own men. But what white men? German, I suppose?..."

_Mrs. Stott_: "Ah, _there_ you touch my greatest sorrow. Yes. Every German I know on this concession keeps a native woman, mostly from our classes. But I fear--I fear--my nephew Phil and the clerk Stallibrass as well--my two Australian boys--are not much more moral. Their relations with the native women won't bear investigation. That is not all ... and I have no right to be here as an accuser when I can't answer for my own son, Edgar.... You remember you offered in 1897 to take him home with you, and have him sent to an English school or college for a year or two? I wish ... I wish ... we had consented. It was so good of you. But we thought at the time that if children can grow up into God-fearing men and women in Australia without leaving the back-blocks or the bush, why not here, where the climate is good? Then there was the question of the cost...."

_Roger_: "I suppose he has got all his education from you and his father?"

_Mrs. Stott_: "Yes, indeed. The main thing, besides religion, was to teach our children to read and write and do simple accounts. All they wanted besides was to read the books we ordered out.... I'm sure you can't say we have been indifferent to literature?"

_Roger_: "No--not of a certain kind ... but all of it, from what I have seen, is rather old-fashioned and goody-goody...."

_Mrs. Stott_: "I don't agree. However, I won't stop to argue about it. It matters little, since Edgar from the age of twelve or thirteen has cared very little for reading. His passion is _sport_. And to think how I ran down big-game shooting, when it was not vitally necessary for our supplies! Of course, James is a good shot and a clever hunter, and Edgar, after he was twelve, used to go out with him. He killed an elephant to his own gun when he was only fifteen, and the tusks fetched as much as L60! He _was_ proud. Now his one idea is to be away shooting ... and trifling with these Iraku women. Oh!" (crying a little). "_Can't_ you see how it _silences_ me? Ann talks about cutting off a member that offends and says I should expel my own son from the Mission for loose living.... I can't do that, and besides there's nothing proved.... But I can't very well join her in her crusade against ... she _will_ use such plain words ... against fornication and unclean living. I suppose we shall have to send Edgar away ... back to Australia ... And then I fear much for his future. Thank goodness! He's a total abstainer, so far.... Ought we to invite some young woman to come out here for the mission, in the hope that he might marry her and settle down?"

_Roger_: "Wouldn't be a bad idea, if you could insure her taking his fancy. I haven't seen Master Edgar for months or taken much notice of him since he came to man's estate. Struck me, he was growing up a nice-looking lad...."

_Mrs. Stott_: "Indeed he is! It's his good looks that are his snare.... The native women run after him so...."

_Roger_: "Does he work for us or for the Mission?"

_Mrs. Stott_: "He is his father's assistant in the Carpentering school; but he's too much given to larking with the boys, who look upon him as a kind of hero. Of course, he speaks their language almost as if it came natural to him. His real bent is for Natural History ... that's the only excuse for his sport. We sell the collections he makes to the Germans. One of your mining engineers has taught him photography. He takes wonderful pictures of wild life. We posted some home to the _Graphic_, and with the money they paid, Edgar sent to Unguja and bought himself a snap-shot camera.... Am I keeping you from your work?"

_Roger_: "You are: but we don't often meet nowadays for a talk. Let's thrash this matter out. Well?"

_Mrs. Stott_: "Well, I was going on to say, with all this Edgar's mind is turning away from religion. We have hard work to get him to attend our services... He even shocked his father the other day by saying he was sick of the Bible.... I say, 'even,' because ever since my dear James has been getting up these industrial schools you were so keen on, he has become less and less spiritually minded, more and more interested in the material things of this world. He only _pretends_ to care for the Second Coming of Christ ... just to please me. He is much more interested in his new turning lathe" ... (dabs her eyes and blows her nose). "His prayers have become very trite. If it wasn't for my daughters...."

_Roger_: "Let me see: you have two daughters out here--Pretty girls.... They must be growing up...."

_Mrs. Stott_: "Yes. Carrie's nearly nineteen; and Lulu is sixteen. We called her 'Luisa,' not from the English name, but because 'Luisa' means 'darkness' in Kagulu, and when she was born she had dark hair and dark eyes ... she's fairer now.... And the way, then, seemed dark before us.... I was very ill at the time...."

_Roger_: "And then the eldest of all is at home, I mean in England....?"

Mrs. Stott: "Yes. Rosamund, named after me. She's a school teacher in Ireland, and practically a stranger to us. That's one of the sorrows of our life out here. Not that we haven't many blessings to counter-balance it--I'm sure the way we've kept our health in the Happy Valley--But we have either to send our children away to England or Australia, or bring them up here, with many disadvantages, it would be a pity to bring Rosamund away from a career where she is doing very well...."

_Roger_: "Quite so. Well then, we have only to deal with Carrie as a possible wife to one of our young men...."

_Mrs. Stott_: "As a matter of fact, Riemer proposed to her a few months ago. But Carrie is very particular; and besides, she wouldn't marry a German...."

_Roger_: "What nonsense! In what way are they inferior to Englishmen or Australians? I'm sure Riemer..."

_Mrs. Stott_ (tightening her lips): "Not to be thought of. Riemer is an avowed atheist..."

_Roger_: "Oh, of course, if religion is to come in the way...."

_Mrs. Stott_: "It isn't only religion, there are other things. No. Don't let my daughters come under discussion. Why couldn't the Germans here send home for nice German girls to come out and marry them, or get married when they next went on leave...?"

_Roger_: "Why not, indeed? I'll talk to them. Much better they should do so. But then, what'll happen by and by is what _you_ don't want to happen. The Germans will marry white women, have large families and gradually push out the Negroes and turn this into a White Man's country--unless the climate and the germ diseases forbid.... I'm not sure myself that I don't favour a mixture of races and that the Americans for example are not better suited to America because of their strong underlying element of Indian blood--I suppose you would not like it if the Germans married their concubines?"

_Mrs. Stott_: "As an Australian I am prejudiced against the mixture of the races..."