The royal prisoner was royally housed. After the jolting journey in the
sultry covered wagon, to the steady tramp of the marching soldiers,
and the frightened crying of the old Dreamer who crouched beside him,
it was pleasant to be in these spacious rooms, to look from under the
sun-blinds into the leafy garden, to sit on the wet stones and dabble
in the black pool in the hall.
Prince Dwala was shut up in the Old Residence while the Colonial Office
made up its mind what was to be done with him. Compassionate ladies
sent him baskets full of flowers. The rest of the prisoners--the
Dreamer and a rabble of braves hunted down in the hills--were huddled
away in the jail.
The Prince had many visitors. The Governor came, accompanied by
his staff, young men in cocked hats, who looked as tall and morose
as possible while the Governor lectured him. A young man came from
the ‘Pioneer’ and interviewed him as to his opinion of Western
civilisation; the Prince’s answers were disjointed, amounting to
little more than ejaculations, such as ‘iced drinks’ and ‘theaters’;
but his interest was evident, and the ‘Pioneer’ said that his views
on the subject were ‘quite equal to those of some of the best of our
Indian Princes.’ On the all-engrossing gold question he had been
diplomatically discreet, nor would he commit himself on the equally
difficult question of the British suzerainty over the Soochings.
He had numerous visits from Mr. Wyndham Cato, the Pro-Boer M.P., who
was staying with the Governor, having arrived in the course of a grand
tour of the Colonies, destined to supply him with ammunition for an
attack on the Government all along the line on the ‘native question.’
But for Mr. Cato, the case of the Soochings would never have attained
the importance it had. The Governor was disposed to treat the whole
thing as a hole-and-corner brawl, a question of police; he would have
bundled Dwala and his braves obscurely away into a penal settlement
if he had been left alone. Mr. Cato blew the bubble. Bouverie Street
and Whitehall, stimulated by telegrams, reacted one on the other. It
became a public matter. The Governor smiled benignly, and squared it
up to a larger scale. Thanks to Mr. Cato, Prince Dwala was a captive
Prince instead of an arrested malefactor. The Prince conceived a warm
affection for the little man, who let him try on his gold spectacles,
and showed him how his watch wound up.
‘I have very little influence with the Governor; I have done all I
can, and I am afraid that your deposition is certain,’ said Mr. Cato,
one day, as he and the Prince squatted side by side at the edge of the
pool--Mr. Cato folding little paper boats out of pieces of newspaper,
while the Prince stirred the water with his foot to make them bob
up and down. ‘But, even then, you will still be a Prince, and it is
better to be a native Prince than the hereditary tyrant of a so-called
civilised country, the heir of one of our mushroom dynasties of Europe,
whose only purpose in life is to help a self-elected aristocracy, as
vulgar as themselves, to grind down the sweating millions of honest
working folk. You will still receive your revenues, if there is any
justice left in this disjointed world of ours. I shall agitate to
the best of my power to get some addition to your income from our
niggardly Government. You will be a comparatively rich man, and if you
win your lawsuit you ought to do very well indeed. Nobody has a right
to prevent your going to London if you wish to. I am starting myself in
a few days, and if you will allow me, I shall be very glad to take you
with me.’
‘Not in a hutch?’
‘A “hutch”? Don’t be absurd. You won’t be a prisoner. You’ll travel as
I travel. And, until some suitable residence has been found for you, I
insist on your coming to stay with us at Hampstead. I am sure that my
aunt and the two sisters who live with me will welcome you most warmly.’
The lawsuit to which Mr. Cato alluded was one of his own contriving.
When the first load of gold from the mines was sold to the Bank, the
Solicitor-General for the Colony had put in a claim for a royalty,
which was met by the defence that the mine was outside the limits of
the colony. The miners set up concessions granted by the deceased
monarch of the Soochings. Mr. Cato, a republican at home, but a firm
upholder of the divine rights of ‘native’ princes, hired a lawyer on
behalf of Prince Dwala and claimed the mines as his personal property,
set aside from time immemorial for the maintenance of the dignity of
the Royal House. The tribe at large had never exercised more than the
right of hunting over them. He denied the validity of the concessions,
and asked for a declaration that the fee simple was vested in the
Prince.
V
Prince Dwala formed a frequent subject of conversation at the
Residence. Mr. Cato disagreed on every possible question with everybody
there; but they found him a charming visitor, and the process of
‘draain’ his leg,’ as the Scotch call it, was an unfailing amusement to
the younger members of the party.
He found them assembled round the breakfast table when he came out on
the veranda next morning, beaming round through his gold spectacles
with that benevolent smile with which he always began the day. Lady
Crampton sat at the end, behind a silver urn--a flighty, good-looking
creature, who might have passed for thirty. Besides her there were
Mademoiselle and the three girls; Dick Crampton, and Reggie the
nephew--secretaries both--deep in the batch of last month’s newspapers,
which had just arrived.
The Governor and his private secretary were still at work.
‘When’s the execution, Dick?’ said Reggie, helping himself to ham.
‘Half-past ten, old man; you’ve lots of time.’
‘The usual tortures, I suppose?’
‘Just the usual. The Mater’s been up for hours sharpenin’ the spikes of
the rack.’
‘Getting rusty, I suppose?’
‘Not they! They got blunted over all those land-tax defaulters last
week.’
Helen, the youngest girl, tossed her long hair over her cheeks and
exploded with laughter.
‘Soyez gentille, Hélène,’ said Mademoiselle: ‘les jeunes filles bien
élevées ne rient pas à table.’
Mr. Cato adjusted his spectacles, and stared with horror from face to
face.
‘What nonsense are those boys talkin’ down there?’ said Lady Crampton.
‘For Heaven’s sake don’t choke, Helen! Dick, you naughty boy, do try to
behave.’
‘You mind what the Mater says, Reggie.’
‘What was Her Excellency pleased to remark?’
‘She says you’re not to play the elephas mas gigas ass. Hello, Guv’;
good mornin’.’
His Excellency came in, tall and débonnaire, and sat down to breakfast.
After him came his private secretary, a pale and anxious young man, who
said little, and opened an egg as if he expected to find an important
despatch inside it.
‘Any news, Reggie?’ said the Governor, cheerfully rubbing his large
white hands together.
‘Fry’s hurt his finger.’
‘Bad luck to it!’
‘Well, Sir Henry,’ said Mr. Cato, beaming away, ‘I’m going to have a
_good talk_ with you after breakfast about Prince Dwala.’
‘Too busy, too busy, my dear Sir. You talk it over with Mr. Batts; _he_
knows all about everything.’
The private secretary looked up darkly, and gave a dry nod at Mr. Cato.
‘Rum chap that Prince,’ said Reggie: ‘looks uncommon like a monkey.’
Mr. Cato flushed with indignation.
‘_Please_ don’t talk like that, Mr. Crampton. I know you mean no harm;
but it’s just by little remarks like that that we Englishmen nourish
that narrow-minded contempt for natives to which we are all of us only
too prone.’
‘Dear little things, monkeys,’ murmured the tactful Lady Crampton: ‘my
sister used to keep one in Kensington, till it took to hidin’ food in
the beds, and had to be given to the Zoo.’
After breakfast Mr. Cato and Mr. Batts retired into a dark chamber, and
discussed the question of the Prince’s future. Mr. Batts sat like an
eminent specialist, with folded arms and pursed lips, while Mr. Cato
expounded his views. Mr. Batts held out great hopes of the Government
coming down handsomely.
‘My dear Sir, we couldn’t have chosen a better moment for the
application. The Colonial Office is bound to spend its grant by the end
of the financial year, under penalty of having it reduced in the next
Budget--it’s a Treasury rule. What I’m telling you is a secret, mind;
don’t let it go any further. Between you and me, my dear Sir, they’re
often glad if some expense of this kind turns up to put their surplus
into; and once they’ve got him over, it’s easy enough to get the item
renewed year by year. They like native potentates; it’s picturesque and
popular. As for preventing white men from going into their country,
that is a policy which I can’t accept. It’s opposed to the natives’ own
interest: their countries could never be developed without European
assistance.’
‘How do you mean “developed,” Mr. Batts?’
‘Well, take the question of gold, for instance. These lazy beggars the
Soochings would simply leave it lying useless in the ground, as far as
they are concerned. Mind you, I’m not saying that all these Jews and
foreigners who start the thing are the most desirable people to carry
civilisation among the savages. Providence works for good by very
funny means.’
‘But the gold belongs to the Soochings.’
‘Gold or any other commodity belongs by the law of nature to the man
who works it. It’s a reward for his industry. That’s in Mill. It’s not
by any means such an easy thing working a mine as you might think,
especially in a savage country. First of all, there’s the labour
difficulty to deal with.’
‘What do you mean by the “labour difficulty”?’
‘Getting labour, of course; native labour to work the mine.’
‘But what are the Europeans doing there, if they’re not going to
labour?’
‘You’ve evidently not studied the mining question, my dear Sir. Once
the prospecting is over, Europeans don’t _dig_. That would be very
primitive. They have their work pretty well cut out as it is, pegging
out their claims and looking after the men to see they don’t steal.
Of course they have to get natives to dig for them--Soochings in this
case.’
‘But why should the Soochings dig for them?’
‘Why should they, my dear Sir? Why, we’d pretty soon _make_ ’em! But
it’s no good arguing these big questions on first principles. We
simply follow the policy which has worked so well in other parts of
the world.... Now what’s your figure for the Prince’s salary from the
Colonial Office?’
‘Well, what do you say to a thousand a year?’
‘Oh, make it two, make it two. That Mandingo man gets two thousand; and
we don’t want to have our native princes priced lower than Africans.
It’s just these things which fix the status of a Colony in the eyes of
London people.’
‘Good; two thousand.’
‘And as big a lump down as we can screw out of them. I’ll instruct His
Excellency.’
‘Then he’ll get his ordinary revenue from his subjects?’
‘That won’t amount to much.’
‘And the royalties on the gold?’
‘Don’t count on that. I saw the Chief Justice last night; he’s going to
give it against you.’
‘I shall appeal.’
‘To the Privy Council? Well, well: one never knows what will happen
when a case gets to the Privy Council.’