MY OWN DEAR WIFE,--

I reached the shores of the lake--which I now find is called Lawa ya

mweri--and the end of the Happy Valley on--as near as I can reckon--June

20. (The Stotts have no almanacs and are quite indifferent to dates,

times, seasons; they live under some enchantment, they tell me, since

they came here, like the legends of people carried off to Fairyland.) I

met Mr. Stott at Burungi, which now looks a flourishing station. The

Wagogo seem to me quite recalcitrant to Christianity, but the Stotts

have to keep this up as a depot for their traffic with the coast, and

they are helped in this by the German Government.... Stott and I

journeyed together through the Irangi country almost in state. The

Stotts have become enormously popular as "medicine men." They have

stopped epidemics of small-pox by vaccinating the people, have shown

them how to stay the ravages of the burrowing fleas, and they are making

a dead set against infanticide, having found one or two leading chiefs

sufficiently intelligent to appreciate the importance of a large

population. Formerly, as you may remember, there was such a prejudice

against female babies that they were often exposed to the hyenas outside

the tembe, and all children who came into the world by an irregular

presentation, or with a tooth already through the gum, likewise all

twins, were either thrown into the lake or abandoned to the carnivorous

ants or prowling carnivores. (There is a curious legend here--Stott

says--that sometimes these unhappy infants were picked up by female

baboons of the Chakma type and nursed by them with their own offspring.)

Well: you can imagine, having lived already in these parts, what the

infant death-rate amounted to. But the local chiefs having had the

whole theory exposed to them have sanctioned a crusade against

infanticide for any reason. The Wa-rangi have further been persuaded to

abandon the custom of burning alive women suspected of adultery. I did

not like to tell you at the time, but as we passed through the Irangi

country in November, '88, they were actually killing unfortunate women

in this manner. They believe that if a man goes out hunting and makes a

bad miss in throwing his spear or assegai at an elephant it is because

his wife is untrue to him at home! So when he returns from the chase

his wretched spouse is trussed up and bound to the top of a great pile

of brushwood.

Consequently, at several of the Irangi villages on our way up the Bubu

valley the women who were the wives of sporting duffers came out in

deputations to dance round the worthy Stott till they quite embarrassed

him; especially as the dances were of an indelicate nature.

The Stotts have now quite a nice-looking station to the south-east of

the main lake, on a grassy rise with the Mburu river on the south and a

much smaller salt lake on the east. This looks like sparkling ice under

the sun and is nearly solid--? salt--? soda. Its borders seem to be a

kind of salt lick for the game which is once more swarming and

singularly tame. There are no rhinos, fortunately, and the tricky

tempered elephants and buffaloes prefer the wooded regions farther north

and west. The lions, leopards and chitas are so glutted with food that

they leave the domestic cattle and human beings alone; and the myriad

zebras, antelopes, elands, bushbuck, giraffes, wart-hogs and ostriches

are quite willing to live at peace with mankind. Secretary birds and

saddle-billed storks are numerous and keep the snakes down; marabou

storks and vultures devour all the carrion and even the filth round the

native villages--so the country seems healthy. Enormous flocks of

crowned cranes and bustards look after the locusts and grasshoppers.

The flamingoes by the lake shore are as numerous as they were in our

time....

The Stotts' station is built after the fashion of the native houses of

the district: long, continuous, one-storied "tembes" forming a hollow

square, inside which the cattle and sheep are kept at night....

But what I am longing to describe is the country of Iraku. I went there

with Stott, you may remember, whilst we stayed waiting for news of poor

John Barnes. I was immensely taken with it then. But now I have seen it

more in detail I am enthusiastic. It resembles--I can't help saying--a

little Abyssinia--from all I have heard and read of Abyssinia, though it

is not at such great altitudes. Its natives are actually related in

speech and type to those of Southern Abyssinia. I should estimate the

average height at five thousand feet, with ridges, peaks and craters

touching seven or eight thousand; so that the temperature is almost

perfect--nights always cool, not to say cold. It is a fertile, fruitful

land of ups and downs, richly forested valleys, plenty of streams,

grassy uplands like the Berkshire downs: indeed a very English-looking

country. Somewhere here, not far from the escarpment and the Happy

Valley, we will have our home, dearest, and here you and Maud shall join

me as soon as ever you can come out. How I _long_ for that coming.

There are times when, in spite of the Stotts and their cheeriness, I

feel sick with melancholy and loneliness. The change from that English

life has been too abrupt. As soon as ever little Maud is weaned and

able to be left with your mother you must pack up and come. My Agents

in the City, Messrs. Troubridge, who pay you (I hope) your allowance

quarterly, have all my instructions as to your passage, and Maud's, your

outfit, etc. Once I can get you two out here I shall settle down

contentedly enough and make a fortune--I doubt not--on which, some day,

we can retire and live happily ever afterwards.

Meantime as I have written very fully, only show this letter to Maud and

say as little as possible about it to Sibyl, lest she repeat my account

of the Happy Valley to that scoundrel, Patterne. She says she never

sees him now, and she certainly ought not to after the reputation he has

left behind in East Africa; but as likely as not she will resume the

acquaintance, and he is the last sort of person I wish to meet in these

parts.... Mrs. Stott of course sends love to you and the kindest

greetings. Her enthusiasm for her Creator is unabated, because they

have so far had wonderful good fortune since they blundered into this

haven of rest and beauty in October, 1888. If one or other of them did

not have once in a way to go down to the coast they would enjoy--she

says--perfect health....

Your loving

ROGER.

*CHAPTER XVIII*

*FIVE YEARS LATER*

Roger Brentham has now lived consecutively for five years in the Happy

Valley; or, to be accurate, at Magara, in a natural fortress looking

down on it from the Iraku escarpment. Much of his work, however, lies

in the plains below, and he has a comfortable rest-house near the

Stotts' station--but not too near, for Kaya la Balalo[#]--as they have

named it--is now the centre of a considerable native village, a little

too noisy, dusty, and smelly for fastidious nerves and noses.

[#] "The City of God."

In these five years a great transformation has taken place in and around

the Happy Valley. A land settlement has been come to with the natives

and is duly laid down in a rough survey and in signed documents drawn up

in German and Swahili. The native villages, plantations, pasture ground

and reserves are clearly defined so that they may be placed outside the

scope of white encroachment; but in coming to this agreement, some

common-sense regard has been had for highly mineralized land not already

inhabited and suitable for profitable exploitation (with a share of the

profits going to the native community) and for the location of European

settlements, farms, mission stations, laboratories and experimental

plantations. In short, both parties are satisfied. There is sufficient

security for the investment of much white capital in this region of

undeveloped wealth; and the Negroes are reassured regarding their homes

and future prospects of expansion. They have been shrewd bargainers and

have had the Stotts as their advocates. The news of their fair and even

generous treatment has attracted considerable native immigration,

especially from the Nyamwezi countries; Brentham's Wa-nyamwezi porters

have been useful recruiting agents, and the district is well off for

labour. The native chiefs administer rough justice as between native

and native. Brentham and three of his German colleagues, as well as Mr.

Ewart Stott, hold commissions from the German Government as justices of

the peace, and there is a German commandant at a central post in the

Irangi country who presides over a Court of Appeal from their decisions.

But as a rule, these Concessionaires having originally inspired

confidence in von Wissmann's mind during his great pacification of

German East Africa are left pretty free to administer the area of their

large Concession and to keep order within its limits. This, with the

cordial co-operation of the native chiefs they find comparatively easy,

and in this the friendship between Roger and the outlying Masai tribes,

who have not forgotten the blood-brotherhood of 1888 has been very

useful. The Happy Valley has nothing to fear from Masai raids and has

at present no outside enemies.

Lucy and Maud joined Roger in the spring of 1892 and after four years'

happy life in this curiously secluded region--so cut off as it was from

African troubles, from wars between Arabs and Europeans raids of tribe

upon tribe, risings against the Germans, squabbles with British

pioneers--are now preparing to return to England. Lucy has had two more

children one born in 1893 and the other in 1895. She is anxious to take

them both home and place them in safety there; at the same time she

hungers for a sight of the older two whom she has not seen for over four

years. She is in fact a prey to that divided allegiance which has so

often marred the happiness of the wives of men engaged in Indian or

African work: a desire to be with their husbands, and yet an anxiety

about the health and bringing-up of their children in a barbaric

environment. The Stotts consider they have solved this question by

parting with their oldest child and letting their other children run the

African risks and grow up--if they survive--with only an African

outlook. They are true colonists in intention. But settlers like the

Brenthams always envisage an eventual retreat to the home country and an

English education for their children.

They are assembled on the open ground beyond the garden of their house

in Iraku, to take leave of their German associates in the Concession:

Herr Treuherz Hildebrandt (whose sentimental fore-name is usually

disguised under the initial T) and Dr. Wolfgang Wiese. Hildebrandt is

the mining engineer who is ascertaining the mineral wealth of the

mountain region bordering on the Happy Valley; Dr. Wiese, besides being

in case of need the physician and surgeon of the little European

community, is a very clever analytical chemist, botanist, zoologist and

horticulturist, one of those all-round men that Germany so often

produced before the war and so often contributed in still earlier days

to the opening up of the British Empire. He has arrived in haste from

his dwelling a mile distant to bid farewell to the gracious Mrs.

Brentham. Wiese is spectacled and bearded, a little shy in manner with

strangers, and inclined to melancholy when his thoughts turn to the

young wife who accompanied him to Africa about the time that Lucy and

Maud came out to join husband and brother. Less fortunate than they,

she had died from an attack of coast fever. Thereafter he had found

some mitigation of his loneliness in the pleasant home created by Lucy

and Maud, so that he regards them with affection and thinks they must be

the very best type of British women. As, however, he has work in

progress at his laboratory of crucial importance, his farewells are

prompt and soon concluded.

But his colleague, the mining engineer Hildebrandt, stays longer, being

very loath to part with Maud Brentham. He is tall, passably handsome,

soldierly, well-knit, a lint-white blond with violet-grey eyes like

Lucy's. Though he comes from Saxony he is more of the Friesland type,

in the contrast between his straw-yellow hair (mostly shaved to stubble,

it is true) and his dark-grey eyes. He has the further attraction to

which many women would succumb in being very musical (out of business

hours). In those days before gramophones he was a welcome guest for the

music which welled up in his brain and poured from his fingers. Roger

had managed with infinite difficulty to import and carry up on an

ox-cart a cottage piano of German make, and on this instrument

Hildebrandt would waft his listeners to other scenes--of far away and

long ago--with his waltzes, sonatas, minuets, marches, and songs without

words, sometimes playing by ear with that wonderful musician's memory;

sometimes, when he took things seriously, from the enormous supply of

printed music which a sympathetic company had allowed him to carry

up-country.

A year after their first meeting he had proposed to Maud, and had

renewed this offer of marriage on two other occasions. But she had been

firm in her refusal, though she appreciated his good looks and frank

manliness, and almost loved him for his music. But she declared the

difference in their ages--twelve years--was an insuperable objection;

secondly she did not wish to marry, so that she might always live with

Roger and Lucy and their children. If they failed her she would make a

career of her own--become a New Woman and agitate for women's rights.

"On top of all that, nothing would induce me to live in Germany, though

I've no doubt you are in the right, and it's the finest country in the

world. But I'm so interested in watching English developments. When we

have finished with Africa and made our pile we're going to settle at

home and improve our own country."

"Well then, if you'll marry me, I'll go and live in England with

you...."

But Maud has remained obdurate. In spite of this they have settled down

in course of time, and in battling together against the anxieties,

difficulties, and dangers of African colonization, into very good

comrades. Maud and Roger and even Lucy all speak German to some extent,

and the Germans of the Concession have an even greater facility in

English. Conversation is often a medley of both languages and much

laughter at each other's mistakes. Lucy contributes to the common stock

of entertainment very little in the way of talent. She is naturally

fond of music: sweet melodies, deep harmonies bring the tears into her

eyes; gay tunes make her want to dance; but she is no musician and no

dancer. Maud has a pleasant contralto voice and is a good accompanist.

Lucy's water-colour painting has long since been given up as a futility

in this age of universal talent. But she makes botanical collections

now with some deftness and ability under the instruction of Dr. Wiese,

whom in this direction she really helps. Yet considering she has borne

four healthy children in six years of marriage no one can ask much from

her in the way of accomplishment in the arts; and by the time she has

attended to her offspring's needs with the perfunctory help of

Halima--herself saddled with two brown hybrids, bearing extravagant

Portuguese names--mended their clothes and her husband's, and her own,

and generally directed the housekeeping, it is felt she has done her

duty to the little community. Nevertheless though she is not

particularly witty, original, or wise, and has no great physical

attraction for any one but her husband, and is prone at times to be

silent with a gentle melancholy, she has an inherent gift for making

people feel at home. She has a capacity for listening unweariedly to the

longest stories, and is a sympathetic confidant to any one in trouble.

So Bergwerksingenieur Hildebrandt said good-bye to her with nearly as

much sentiment as infused his voice and his hand-grip when he took leave

of his liebste Kamerad, "Meess Mowd" (Maud always said that his

pronunciation of her name robbed his courtship of all romance). He

looks indeed so sad at parting from these two dear Englishwomen that

Maud is nearly tempted to kiss him; only that he might have misconstrued

her motherliness.

The two children in the early morning--it is just after sunrise--are

laughing and crowing with the excitement of the forming _safari_ and the

coming start. The three-year-old boy, Ambrose, is named after his

grandfather; the baby girl has been called Sibyl at her mother's

request. In all probability Lucy had never even so much as suspected

that there was more than cousinly affection between her husband and Lady

Silchester: it would have taken something like ocular evidence to make

her doubt Roger's fidelity. At first Sibyl had frightened and humbled

her, but during the last year of their association, at Engledene, she

had been coolly kind and had shown something like gratitude for Lucy's

care of her ugly fretful little boy. Before Lucy had left to rejoin her

husband in East Africa, Sibyl had said: "I expect you'll have a lot more

children. If you have another girl, call it by my name. I should like

to be associated with a child of Roger's. Promise? Very well then: in

return I'll give an eye to little John and fat Maud whilst you are in

Africa. Indeed I cannot see why they shouldn't move over here from

Aldermaston, when your own people get tired of them; and share Clithy's

nursery.... At any rate come here on visits, and if they quarrel it will

do Clithy a world of good. His nurses give him too much sense of his

own importance."

So there was at least this pleasant thing for them to look forward to,

even though Lucy's eyes were wet with tears at leaving Iraku. Engledene

Lodge as well as Church Farm would be open to them. Sibyl, more

ambitious than ever of cutting a dash, playing a part in modern history,

rivalling Lady Feenix, revenging herself for snubs by the Brinsley clan,

lived much in London and gave up Engledene to the quiet bringing-up of

her only child. When she went down there it was to rest and repair her

beauty, to transact humdrum estate business with Maurice Brentham.

Except for the autumn shooting parties she entertained very little at

Engledene. It was in Scotland and above all in London that she played

the lavish hostess and sought to undermine Cabinets and bring a new

recruit to the Opposition.

She was now thirty-four, and when animated only looked twenty-six.

Rumour had assigned her several love affairs, which out of England--on

the Riviera, at Paris, at Rome--were said to have been carried to the

borders of indiscretion. It had even been announced that "a marriage

had been arranged and would shortly take place," etc., between Lady

Silchester and Sir Elijah Tooley--but the announcement had been promptly

contradicted, and a month after occurred the first resounding crack in

the Tooley edifice....

It was curious how her personality projected itself across five thousand

miles of land and sea into Equatorial Africa; so that Lucy and perhaps

Roger should both have been thinking about her as they were preparing to

leave their home in this secluded region. Lucy thought of Sibyl

pleasantly as of one she no longer feared because she never desired to

cross her path as a rival, or contest her superiority. Sibyl would

offer her a temporary home in her home country where her children could

be riotously happy, and where Roger--even--might be tempted to join her

for a few months before resuming his strenuous life as a conqueror of

the wilderness. Roger had held out this hope to alleviate the sadness

of their approaching separation.

He was to accompany his wife and sister as far as Burungi; after which

he must return to the Iraku Hills to take full advantage of the

dry-season months for great projected developments of the planting and

mining industries. From Burungi, now quite an important centre of

traffic, whence well-made roads proceed coastwards, with rest-houses

every twenty miles, Lucy and Maud and the precious children would be

escorted to the coast port of their embarkation by the two German

sergeants, whose service Brentham has taken over from the Stotts. Their

journey might be broken by a few days' rest at Hangodi in the Nguru

country. Maud would like to see the scene of the tragedy and of Lucy's

induction into African life. Lucy would like to pay a visit of

sentiment to John Baines's grave and to live over again in a sense of

contrite reminiscence her brief experiences as a missionary's wife. She

wants to put herself back in time to where the outlook seemed hopeless,

and realize the wide horizon of happiness which now seems open before

her.

So--an hour late, with all these last thoughts, musing reflections and

leave-takings--Halima is howling with grief because she must remain

behind--the caravan starts on its first day's march. Lucy from delicacy

of constitution is unable to ride much, so she travels in a machila with

her baby. Maud bestrides a Maskat donkey and hopes when she returns

they will by that time have got horses safely through the tsetse belt,

into interior transport ... "you have so little initiative on a donkey,

it will never do anything unconventional." Ambrose being thought too

young to ride a donkey is handed over to his special guardian and chum,

a tall Manyamwezi porter who hoists him on to his broad shoulders. From

this elevation of six feet he surveys the landscape as the _safari_

swings along. Some German friend had given him the previous Christmas a

tin trumpet, and with blasts of this and shouts of glee he hails the

sight of game standing at gaze in the distance.

This would have annoyed any sportsman of the caravan had they been bent

on killing for the pot or the trophy; but his father lets him do this

unrebuked. He is not intending to transgress his own by-laws about game

preservation, and the caravan in these bountiful days has its food

supply ensured from station to station. Still Roger reflects musingly

as he rides up hill and down hill through the breadth of the Happy

Valley and up to the low ridge and water-partings which mark its limit

and the commencement of the long descent through Irangi, that in one

respect the glamour of the Happy Valley has already withered under the

practical need for developing its resources. Though there has been no

deliberate big-game slaughter in hecatombs as on the British side of the

frontier, the Grant's gazelles, the hartebeests and tsesebes, the

elands, zebra, and impala are never to be seen now grazing near the

road. They are retreating every year farther into the unprofitable

wastes away from the well-beaten tracks, noisy with the coming and going

of carriers, soldiers, native traders, or ivory hunters. These last,

under some degree of control, are even being encouraged to pursue the

elephants into the recesses of the hills and forests of the north; not

only to bring down as much ivory as possible, to sell, but because the

elephant has met civilization too abruptly. He has contemptuously

knocked down the laboriously erected telegraph posts, and has snapped

and tangled-up the copper wire. This in its derelict condition is too

sore a temptation to the native accustomed to regard copper wire as a

decorative article of the highest value ... so many cubits of copper

wire would buy a wife. So an edict has gone forth which Roger himself

could not protest against, that between Burungi and Kondoa any one,

native or European, may kill as many elephants as he pleases. The

native herdsmen, again, whom they pass on the road lazily minding the

cattle, sheep and goats, are no longer in the state of Paradisiac nudity

that characterized them on that first journey of Roger and Lucy down the

Happy Valley. No one has remonstrated with them on their nakedness: a

hint from Dame Fashion has been enough. The white men and the white

men's black followers have been clothed, so they too must wear old

uniforms, old coats, old trousers, something in the way of frowsy

coverings of their bronze bodies.

The vulgarization of Africa has begun. Never again will there be seen

in this region a condition of unspoilt Nature as it first showed itself

to the Brenthams. But as a set-off Roger draws Lucy's attention to the

telegraph line in course of re-erection, after the rude elephantine

protests. It is proceeding to a great German military post, but a

branch will presently be carried to Iraku--almost as soon as she is back

in Berkshire--and _then_ he and she will be in close touch. It will be

possible, at a cost of a few pounds, to telegraph to one another and

receive the answer in a day--two days at most.

It is four years since the Brenthams saw Burungi, for Roger's journeys,

meantime, have ranged farther and farther afield towards the

mysterious--still mysterious--region between the Happy Valley and the

shores of the Victoria Nyanza. Even then, when Roger rode there to meet

his wife and Maud on their journey inland--Maud's first introduction to

Real Africa--the desolate Burungi of 1888 was no longer recognizable,

with its wilderness of thorn bushes and baobabs on which gorged vultures

were perching, its lurking lions and hyenas, as the evening darkened,

its flitting, furtive, thievish Wagogo, the ruined station of the

Stotts, and no other visible sign of habitation. Even four years ago,

though the vultures were still there, it was to feed on the offal of a

well-supplied market-place, the thorn bushes had been burnt for firewood

or cut up for fences, and a corrugated iron hut on the Stotts' site,

though villainously hot in sunshine, provided shelter and security for

stores. Now there were brick houses and a number of grass huts on the

Mission enclosure near the river. There were half-finished Government

buildings in course of erection and many tents for the accommodation of

a staff of military officials and constantly saluting white civilians. A

number of clothed Wagogo, looking singularly mean in their

garments--though without them they were lithe and graceful

savages--were, under the raucous directions of a white

engineer-sergeant, laying down a light Decauville railway.

All these activities had not for the time being made Burungi less ugly,

and Roger hated the sight of the place. After a long conference with

the two civil-spoken German sergeants, who a year previously had been

truly thankful to exchange the military career for employment under his

Company, he went through the agony of good-bye--an agony he would not

protract by spending the night in this noisy, discomfortable place. He

compressed his embraces of wife and children--the latter mystified and

yowling with the dim realization of bereavement--his wringing of Maud's

hands, his directions to telegraph at every opportunity till they got on

board, and hang the cost--into two hours; after which, though only two

more hours of daylight remained, he rode away, back to their camp of the

previous night: knowing that further lingering might end in his deciding

to accompany these two dear women and prattling babes all the way to the

coast and perhaps all the way to England.

And it was essential to their future welfare that he should stay where

he was and not claim a holiday till certain results had been achieved

and certain proofs of easily exploited wealth had been obtained.

But it was a melancholy Roger who, six days afterwards, rode back into

the lovely amphitheatre in the Iraku hills where he had made his home.

His Maskat donkey showed signs of having being hard ridden; his carriers

averred that Master, ordinarily so considerate of their fatigue, so

jolly on the line of march, had spurred them on remorselessly, had

seemed to pass wakeful nights and had eaten his camp meals with poor

appetite. Roger himself felt a few more partings like this would make

his earthly life unbearable. Oh that there _were_ some truth in the

silly hymn chorus that the Stotts delighted in making their pupils sing:

"Here we meet to _part no more_, _part_ no more, _part_ no more!" He

should have been firm with Lucy and bade her stay till he himself was

ready to go. And yet when _would_ he be ready to go, with Phantom

Fortune always beckoning yet never disclosing the final hoard?

There was something in Lucy's face which restrained him from insisting

that she should stay. Dr. Wiese had hinted at a growing anaemia which

should be checked. Her dominating feeling was a fear that she might

lose the precious children born to her here in the wilderness and be

forgotten by those she had left behind. He must not take the thing too

tragically. If Hildebrandt continued to get these satisfactory assays

and could trace the gold-bearing reef a sufficient distance towards the

western limit of the Concession; or if on the other hand he could find

the matrix of the diamonds, and not merely these minute brilliants in

the gravel of the mountain streams, their main doubts and difficulties

would be relieved and he could depart for a holiday at home.

The return to his house was some alleviation of his bereavement. It was

so associated with the presence of wife and sister and of his babies.

The afternoon sun was behind him; it would soon drop below the blue

mountain wall which was a rampart of protection to the site he had

chosen for his European settlement. How often he and Lucy had stood here

in blue shadow and looked towards the sun-flooded east beyond the shade

of the escarpment, towards the Happy Valley! This was just such a close

to the day as they had loved to witness three hundred days out of the

three hundred and sixty-five of the year. To the north stretched the

lake of cobalt blue, with its irregular blush-tinted rim of flamingo

hosts. South-east of the lake beyond lush swamps and green plantations,

were the Umbugwe villages and the Stotts' large station--little points,

clusters, and pencils of brown and white. The whitest speck was the

Stotts' new Chapel. He had been present at its opening ceremony a month

ago--to gratify Mrs. Stott. Beyond lake and villages were the gathering

masses of mighty mountains, ending north-eastwards in the snow-tipped

pyramid of Meru--on this clear evening--in the supernatural snowy dome

of Kibo. What a prospect! And yet he would willingly exchange for it

the view over southern Berkshire from the down of Farleigh Wallop.

He entered his house. The presence of Lucy and Maud seemed as if it

must be material, no: merely spiritual. He looked into their rooms.

They had been considerately tidied before they left, and showed little

sign of packing up and departure. Lucy was a good house-wife, he

reflected, and she probably judged that in her absence he might want to

entertain guests, colleagues come on business, Government officials. So

that her room and his sister's were ready prepared for occupation. The

nursery was a little more desolate. The toys had been given away to

Halima's children. If ever Ambrose and Sibyl came back--and how unlikely

that they would!--they would have grown far beyond the love of toys.

Maud had left most of her songs on the top of the piano. She could get

newer ones in England. The vases were filled with fresh flowers from

bush and garden. Halima had put them there, faithful to her mistress's

directions.

Halima now called him to his tea, on the verandah. The table was laid

with all the care that Lucy was wont to bestow on it. Andrade the cook

had baked a nice cake and even attempted something resembling a

muffin--a kind of compromise between a muffin and a tea cake, due to a

confounding of Maud's instructions. Roger's eyes filled with tears.

Halima, departing with a brass tray, answered with two loud sobs in her

facile grief. Yet a few years before she had been ready to abandon her

mistress in distress when she was stranded in Mr. Callaway's unsavoury

depot at Unguja. His eyes followed her portly form magnificently

swathed in red Indian cottons, with tolerant good will. There was a

good deal of the humbug about all these black people, but it was kindly

humbug. He was grateful for this comprehension of his sorrow, for this

effort to carry out his wife's instructions that the comforts and little

elegancies of their home should be continued after her absence.

Then the tame Crowned cranes came below the verandah to be fed with

bread and cake as Maud had encouraged them to do. His black-and-tan

English terrier, confined for safety in the cook's quarters during his

absence, had been released and now came tearing up the steps and rushing

along the verandah till it was in contact with his lowered hand,

volleying forth a long succession of eager barks of joy and whimpers of

hysterical distress and relief at Master's absence and return....

In the evening after dinner Wiese, Hildebrandt and Riemer (Plantation

Manager) came up to pay their respects to the Herr Direktor and give him

an informal report of all that had occurred during his absence. They

tactfully said little about his bereavement, though Hildebrandt heaved

some theatrical sighs at the sight of Maud's music on the piano. But

they had much to say in German and English that was interesting and

encouraging. So they sat up late into the night talking and discussing.

Andrade sent them up an impromptu supper, wine and beer were drunk in

the moderation imposed by their then rarity--owing to transport

difficulties--and when they finally departed at one in the morning,

under the firmament of blazing stars, with lemon-yellow lanterns to

light their path back to their respective quarters, the grass-widower

betook himself to his couch in a more resigned frame of mind. There

would be great doings, great strokes to hew out fortunes for all of

them, within the next few months.

A fortnight afterwards, by swift runner from Kondoa, came a telegraphic

message despatched from Saadani:

Arrived here safely. Leave for Unguja to-morrow. God bless you.--LUCY

MAUD.

Thereafter followed long day-rides of inspection, an occasional week's

absence from home studying possibilities in remote parts of the

Concession, holding conferences with the Stotts, laying cases and

possibilities of special difficulty before the German officer commanding

at Kondoa. His talks with the Stotts were directed to several ends:

urging the Stotts to get into the confidence of all the native

tribes--Bantu, Hamitic, Nilotic--of the Concession's area and find out

how far their interests might be subserved by the full exploitation of

the animal, vegetable and mineral wealth of this patch of East Africa.

"Unless we carry the natives with us," he would say, "this enterprise

must eventually fail, wither up; because, boast of the climate as we

may, the hard manual labour cannot be performed by white men: we must

fall back on the native. Now half the men-natives in these parts are

picturesque to look at, graceful figure and all that; but they shirk

hard work. They prefer to loll about in the sun or to run after women.

Can't you put some ambition into 'em? Teach them something besides

these rotten hymns and prayers that are meaningless to them?"

"But we do," said Mrs. Stott. "You haven't looked over our school for

two years, I believe. You seem to have got hymn-singing on the brain.

Our hymns translated by us are not rubbish and the natives enjoy singing

them...."

"I don't doubt they do, though I don't see what use it is. Neither they

nor the prayers prevent the Almighty from sending the flights of

locusts.... Or rather these appeals and this excessive praise do not

stimulate the Divine power to do _something_ to abate Africa's myriad

plagues. It is always poor Man--and most of all, poor _White_ man--who

has to work his brain and body to exhaustion to set right what Nature

perversely sets wrong. Here am I, trying to abate the grasshopper

plague in our tobacco plantations by encouraging the domestication of

the Crowned crane. Yet the natives won't take any interest in this

idea, though the Crowned cranes feed themselves and have charming

manners. Can't you push this matter in your schools? Couldn't you

preach a sermon on the uses of the Crowned crane?"

On another occasion he put a further difficulty before the Ewart Stotts.

"Look here! I'm going to take you again into my confidence. I want you

to find me an assistant, some one of your own kin in Australia who would

come out here at short notice on an agreement for three years--I even

want two men, one of them versed in shorthand and typewriting who could

be my secretary. I don't know any one in England who isn't either a

rotter or a potential rotter, or hasn't got a job already. There's my

brother Geoffrey, but he's a Commander now in the Navy, getting on fine,

and simply wouldn't think of chucking the service to come here. My

other brother is well suited as a land-agent. I want something

Australian, some one as like you two as possible. I don't mind a

moderate amount of religion, as long as it doesn't waste their time on

week-days, and they can't be too teetotal for my liking. No

Whisky-drinker need apply."

"Why, I believe we know of the very two, at any rate of the principal

one," said Mrs. Stott: "My nephew Phil Ewart. I haven't seen him since

he was a baby, but my brother's wife writes to me now and again and says

he's doing very well on a big sheep run in Queensland...."

"Well then, look here: let's draft a cablegram that I can send off from

the coast. I'll guarantee him a year's salary and, if he turns out

satisfactory, a three years' agreement--L500 a year. He can choose any

likely young fellow ... good character ... abstainer ... serve as clerk

... L200 a year commence ... take steamer Australia-Durban, and German

steamer Durban-Saadani, and so on, up-country. If I get 'em here by

November I can give em three months' trial before I set out for home....

_Must_ take a holiday next year and bring my wife out afterwards. Don't

like to leave this business without a Britisher in it to watch my

interests, don't you know, and advise me how things are going while I am

away."

So they arranged the matter between them. Then Mrs. Stott said: "I've a

funny proposition to make. A week ago I received a letter from Ann

Jamblin that was ... at Hangodi.... Ann Anderson she is now. She saw

Lucy there five weeks ago and was much touched at her calling on them.

Says she took a special fancy to your dear, sweet, pretty children. Her

own little girl is very ailing. Well, now she goes on to say old Mrs.

Doland, who was a great supporter of their Mission, has died and only

left the East African Mission L5,000. For this and other reasons the

Mission thinks of giving up Hangodi, as it is quite an isolated station

now, and all their others are in the British Sphere.... Well, to put it

quite plain, as you're impatient to be gone--oh, _I_ know by the way

you're tapping your gaiters--how would it be if your Concession or you

or some one advanced our Mission L150 for out-of-pocket expenses--so as

to move quickly, don't you know? And we sent word to Ann and her

husband to join us as soon as they had definite authority to evacuate

Hangodi. The German Government, I believe, are going to buy the

station. If we got Ann and her husband up here the couple of them would

strengthen our hands mightily and then we could give some of that

worldly instruction you're so anxious about. Or make it up in some way

of help. Strengthen the British element here. For although I don't hold

with your views about Providence one little bit, and believe the World

was made in six days and am surprised every now and again that you

aren't struck down for your audacity, not to say blasphemy, yet

something tells me you and we are really working for the same Divine

ends...."

Roger said the matter should certainly have his attention. (Before he

left for England the following Spring Ann and Eb were members of the

Stott Mission, and the Stotts were able to open another station and

school in the Iraku country.)

The months flew by through autumn, winter and spring. Roger established

a stud farm in the Happy Valley where he could locate a captured dozen

of zebra and interbreed with Maska donkeys ... perhaps a manageable,

large-bodied zebra-mule might solve some of their transport difficulties

in the regions of the tse-tse fly. He introduced shorthorn cattle from

South Africa to mingle with the native oxen and improve the milk supply.

He imported from Natal six Basuto ponies, two stallions and four mares.

He ordered three safety bicycles--the great new invention or combination

of inventions. He and his German engineers, reinforced by a clever

Swiss sent out by the German directorate, gave special consideration to

the waterfalls of Iraku, to harness them to turbines and produce

electric light. This power would feed electric dynamos when the

progress of the railway construction enabled such heavy things to reach

the Happy Valley. They laid out great coffee plantations and

experimented in tea and quinine. It was hoped the natives might take up

all these cultures in time, on their own account, as they had done that

of cacao on the Gold Coast and in the German Cameroons.

The day for his departure in the early spring came ever nearer and

nearer. The two Australians arrived, went down with fever, recovered

and eventually proved the right stuff, especially young Philip Ewart.

Mrs. Stott said she would see he did not get into mischief while the

Director was absent in England. She would also give an eye to the

Brenthams' house and the doings of Andrade and Halima as caretakers.

There was therefore little cause for anxiety on Roger's part as he made

his preparations for a six-months' absence, save the rumoured doings of

a certain Stolzenberg, a mysterious German hunter who, coming from the

British Sphere, had established himself near the north-west escarpment

of Lake Manyara, apparently on the border of the Happy Valley Concession

(Gluecklichesthals Konzession).

*CHAPTER XIX*

*TROUBLE WITH STOLZENBERG*

In those days--to parody a line of Holy Writ--it might be said, "To

every man, a crater or two"; if you were referring to the wilderness

which lay between Kilimanjaro and the southern Rift Valleys, and to the

strange adventurers who in the 'nineties ranged up and down the East

African interior between Baringo on the north and the Happy Valley on

the south, over a region of elevated steppe land, isolated mountains of

immense height, and extinct volcanoes. Some of these lawless men were

accumulating considerable wealth in ivory, sheep and cattle. They

wanted fortresses in which to live and store their plunder, or the spoil

of their chase, the elephant tusks, the rhino horns, the lion and

leopard skins, the black and white mantles of the long-haired colobus

monkeys, the ostrich plumes; even the roughly-cured skins of the rosy

flamingoes which were becoming an article of great demand in the plumage

trade. For this purpose the large and small craters of presumably

extinct volcanoes were ready to hand; as though Nature had anticipated

their wants. Most of these were surrounded on the inside by the nearly

continuous, circular wall of the crater, only broken down at one point

where the lava or nowadays a stream of water (the overflow of a little

crater lake) issued from the crater floor. Here with piled stones it

was easy to restrict the gap and hold the entrance against any savage

enemy without artillery. These defences were, of course, prepared

against the Masai and not with any idea of defying a White Government,

whose advent at that time seemed very problematical: at any rate a White

Government that would interfere to protect the natives, to obstruct

elephant killing, or regulate the movements of cattle between a

disease-infected area and one that still possessed uninfected flocks and

herds.

It was to one of these craters--very red in colour--that Roger Brentham

rode up at the end of March, 1897, after three days' difficult journey

from the south. He halted his little _safari_ of armed porters and his

four Somali gun-men on a level tableland in front of the gap in the

crater walls; a gap cleverly closed by a huge door of yew planks and a

bridge of yew trunks thrown over the issuing brook, with stones piled on

top to a height of twenty feet. There were obvious indications that the

walls and woodwork were loopholed for gun-fire. He called several times

loudly in Swahili and German to arouse an answer and rapped on the

cumbrous door.

Presently a smaller door within the great one opened and there emerged a

sullen-looking negro giant, probably a Makua from the south. [Such

offer themselves for service in Unguja.] "Unatakaje?" he asked in

Swahili. "I want to see your Bwana--I do not know his 'native' name,"

said Brentham, "but just take this 'karata' to him and he will read my

name; and say I wish to see him. Meantime I will make a camp here."

The Makua doorkeeper or watchman returned within, and possibly an hour

passed before anything further happened, during which Brentham had his

tent erected, and arranged for his men--they were travelling very

light--to make their sleeping-places around it.

The small door was again reopened and there stepped out a

remarkable-looking man of over six feet, with enormous recurved

moustaches, a sombrero hat, jackboots and a general swashbuckling air

and a visible revolver in the broad belt that held up his breeches. He

walked slowly towards Roger who advanced to meet him.

"Did you come to see me?" he asked in English.

"I did," said Roger; "that is, if your name is Stolzenberg?"

"It is ... for to-day--at any rate. Well: here I am. You come to tell

me 'it is Easter Sunday, and Christ Is Risen,' like the Russians do?"

"Why, is it Easter Sunday? Dear me! I had no idea. If so, I might

have chosen another time. Still, as I _am_ here and as you _are_

here--and I fancy you are often absent?--I should be obliged if we could

have a talk, come to an understanding, don't you know?" (There was no

answering friendliness in the fierce face that looked into his, the face

of a perfectly ruthless man, eyes with bloodshot whites, wide mouth with

pale flaccid lips, showing strong tobacco-stained teeth, prominent cheek

bones, lowering brows, a massive jaw, and here and there an old duelling

scar.)

"An unnerstanding?" he said sneeringly. "What about? _I_ unnerstand

you. I know who you are, now I see your card. You are Captain

Brentham. Once you were Consul ... at ... Unguja. Then you run away

with missionary's wife--and--you are ... no more Consul. You do

somesing shocking, _nicht wahr_? It is so easy to shock your

Gover'ment--and now von Wissmann--that Morphinsaeufer--he gif you a

Concession. An' I suppose you come now to say I trespass on your

Concession? Very well then, I _do_, an' I don' care a damn for you or

for any Gover'ment you like to name. I make this my home six, seven

years ago and no one come to turn me out now, unless they fight me

first.

"I haven't come to turn you out," said Roger. Stolzenberg laughs noisily

and contemptuously.... "It's not my business to do so. I have come with

a very small following to make your acquaintance, to find out for myself

what you were like and to see whether it was possible to deal with

you..." (As he is talking he sees that through the open doorway of the

stronghold there are issuing a large number of armed black men, dressed

like the coast people--perhaps a hundred), "to deal with you as one

white man might deal with another. But before I can even put our

case--our Concession's case--before you, you commence by insulting me

and making a lying statement about my wife--and you probably now intend

threatening me by an attack with your Askari[#]--who I see are gathering

up behind you."

[#] Soldiers.

"These men," said Stolzenberg, glancing round at them and shouting an

order to them to be seated, "are only there to make sure. You

Britishers are always up to some trick. I thought just to show you I

stand no nonsense. As to what I say ... a-bout Meeses ... Brentham, I

... only ... say ... what your ... own country-men say on coast. But

let that pass. What is this unnerstanding you propose to me--a

Partnership? Well, I am open to a bargain. What is it to be? What

terms do you offer?"

"I haven't come here to discuss any such thing. I came to say this. As

you ask the question, this extraordinary place--I suppose it is the

crater of a volcano?--does not lie within our limits. You are not

trespassing on our property. But for the past nine months or so we have

had many complaints about you or about your men. You raid the natives,

you take the Masai cattle and apparently drive them into this

stronghold. You even kidnap the Iraku women...."

"I do _not_ kidnap.... They come here of their own pleasure ... they

are free to go if they like. But they like my men much better than their

own husbands who cannot gif them closs or beads...."

"And finally," continued Roger, almost choking with the effort to speak

in a level voice and not send a fist smashing into the large face that

bends over his so threateningly, "finally, you drove away by force two

of our prospecting parties at the north end of the Lake and..."

"Those men," shouted Stolzenberg ... "they ... they come just to spy out

my defences ... but look here. You and I are big fools--p'raps I am

bigger fool than you.... I lose my temper first, I say things a-bout a

la-dy which perhaps are not true.... I apologize.... Nutting they say

on the coast is true! Look at the lies they tell about me!" (a

boisterous laugh). "They say at Mombasa I am biggest blaggard unhung.

That is--what you say? ex-agger-a-ted? And look at the lies Bri-tish

missionaries tell about my friend, Doctor Peters. It is that make me so

angry just now. German Gover'ment belief these lies and send my good

friend away. And then there is a fine Englishman I know, a nobleman in

your country, a Sir--Sir Wil-low-by Pat-terne. You would hardly belief

the things they say a-bout him--always be-hind his back...."

"So you know Willowby Patterne," said Roger (greatly interested).

"I haf seen him once or twice," replied Stolzenberg, becoming

suspicious. "But you do not come here, I sup-pose, to talk about him?

You come to make my acquaintance. Well: you haf made it. Now you leaf

me alone and I will leaf you alone. I ... what you say? I 'will not

return your call'? My quarrel with the Masai is not _your_ business. I

haf--what do we say? I haf 'vendetta' against the Masai. When I first

come out to East Africa on my own business I fit out a _safari_ and

travel to Kenya to buy ivory. I do no harm to Masai, but they attack my

camp, they kill a young German man with me, my _very great_ friend; they

kill most of my men--and see! They try to kill me" (pulls up shirt and

shows long scar over ribs on left side), "and they kill my dogs. Only

when they see Kikuyu coming down in large war party do they leaf off

stabbing and go away with most of my trade goods. The Kikuyu carry me

up to their village and save my life--I haf always been good friend to

Kikuyu since.--You ask them! Well now, I get my own back. Whenever I

see Masai now, I shoot. I put fear of death into them...."

"This is an interesting bit of biography," said Brentham, "but I thought

those lawless days were gone by. I haven't heard the Masai version of

your story. Perhaps they had some excuse. At any rate, they were not

the same clan as the Masai round here, friends of mine for years; and

you've no right to make war on them. Outside our concession, that's not

_my_ affair. Your Government----"

"Do not say _my_ Gover'ment," roared Stolzenberg. "It is not mine. I do

not ask for it! I am my own gover'ment. I was in these countries

before ever came any German or any British Gover'ment."

"Well then, the Government of this region, the Government that has got

the most right to govern ... I say--No! you _must_ hear me out before I

go--what you may do outside our concession is between you and them. But

if after this warning you interfere with our people, the people inside

this Concession I am managing, and in which I'm a magistrate, you'll run

up against _me_, and I shall shoot you at sight like you do the

Masai...."

"All right! Haf a drink before you go?"

"No, I won't," said Roger. And wheeling round on his listening men, he

shouted: "Pigeni kambi. Maneno yamekwisha. Twende zetu." Then, so that

his leave-taking might lose none of its abruptness, he strode to where

his Maskat donkey was tethered, released it, jumped into the saddle, and

rode slowly away till he was out of sight, below the space of level

ground. There he waited till his men had rejoined him with their light

loads. The first to arrive were the four Somali gun-men. They had long

since learnt to speak Swahili and they said, laughing, in relief that

the palaver had ended without recourse to firearms: "Ulimshinda na

maneno, Bwana mkubwa, ulimshinda, yule Mdachi. Walakini, ukiondoka,

akasema watu wake. 'Simchuki, yule Mwingrezi. Mwanaume.'"[#]

[#] "You conquered him with words, Great Master, you defeated him, that

German. But when you left he said to his people: 'I don't hate him,

that Englishman. He is a man.'"

Roger rode away musing from this encounter, or rather rode and walked

over an exceedingly rough country with scarcely a native path or sign of

habitation, a country depopulated doubtless by former wars and raids of

tribe on tribe: for it was well watered.

The tall clumps of Euphorbias gave the red landscape a sinister look,

for their articulated branches looked like a conjunction of gigantic

scorpions, bodies meeting together and stinging tails erected in the

air; the fleshy-leaved aloes of deep bottle-green sent up blood-red

stalks of blood-red tubular flowers; on the higher ground there were

many rust-red or red-lead-coloured "red-hot pokers"--what the initiated

call Kniphofias. The country somehow suggested blood and iron; for the

old and faded Euphorbias might have been cut out of rusty metal, and

iron ore was so obviously permeating the rocks.

He mused on the violence to which Africa always seemed a prey. The

reign of law in East Africa in both the British and German spheres

seemed to be preceded by the reign of the outlaws. He knew enough as a

traveller and an ex-official, and as a resident in the lands bordering

on the British sphere, to be aware that just then the British hinterland

was a prey to German and British, Austrian, American, South African and

even Goanese-Indian buccaneers, who obeyed no laws or injunctions of the

feeble Chartered Company or of the weak young Protectorate Government

which followed.

Some of these outlaws had come to East Africa with a voluble Austrian

crank and two Russian anarchists who tried to found an impossible Utopia

in South Galaland, the Colony of Freiheit--the main principle of which

was that the oppressed white people of Central and Eastern Europe were

to be free to do as they liked here and take all they wanted, while the

natives of East Africa were to be their serfs. The natives of that part

of East Africa--the proud Galas--who did not even know a _good_ white

man when they saw him, or allow him to live--soon settled the hash of

the Freiheiters, many of whom (there were three hundred in all) died of

malarial fever. The remnant that escaped across the Tana became a

scourge of inner East Africa; and a faint flavour of their

unscrupulousness still remains. At the time of Roger's musing ride back

from Stolzenberg's red Crater-fortress to his home at Magara on the

Iraku escarpment there were about a dozen of these pioneers of

civilization still remaining in activity. A few had made moderate

competencies and had returned to Central Europe to abandon Communism in

favour of State and Church, and to make respectable marriages with

high-born damsels. The greater devils, the altogether

branded-with-the-brand-of-Cain that remained would one by one either

enter some company's service, not too scrupulous as to antecedents, or

die bloody and terrible deaths. Meantime, they shot enormous numbers of

elephants, made themselves chiefs of nomad tribes, started harems of

twenty or thirty bought or snatched damsels (who thought the whole

episode rather a lark), accumulated great herds of cattle, sheep, goats

and Masai donkeys. Later, as things became more defined, frontiers more

precise, laws more clearly formulated and regulations--my own for

example--more vexatious, they turned themselves into smugglers and

professional lawbreakers. They conveyed out of British into German

territory forbidden ivory of female elephants; they brought from the

German sphere cattle that might be affected with some germ disease and

were therefore forbidden to enter British territory; they disposed of

rhinoceros horns that were in excess of the miserly allowance granted to

big-game slaughterers; they carried on a brisk slave trade by enrolling

hundreds of labourers in German East Africa and conveying them hundred

of miles into British East Africa and disposing of them at a premium to

the many associations and enterprises requiring the black man's strong

arm and patient labour; and they redressed the balance by raiding

unnoticed districts under the British flag and transporting the

inhabitants to German East Africa to be enrolled as labourers under

military discipline.

A few of them were unmitigated scoundrels, two or three had a maniac's

blood-lust for killing beautiful creatures of little use when killed; or

delighted in inflicting cruelties on the natives "to show their power."

Many a blameless Government or Company's official proceeding up-country

has been surprised at the hatred which flamed out at his approach, he

guiltless of any unkindness or injustice. One or other of these

masterless men were the cause of the treacherous attack on his caravan,

or the loss of his life in an ambush which had to be expensively avenged

by a military expedition.

Yet if there was the left wing of his Legion of the Damned which drew up

at the foot of the gallows, there was the right wing, headed by Sir

Willowby Patterne, which remained in touch with good society and even

dined, coming and going, at the Administrator's table or with Sir Bennet

Molyneux at home. Nothing to their actual discredit was proved against

them. And East Africa was five thousand miles from Mayfair.

Patterne, whose first shooting expedition of 1890-91 had resulted in

quite a nice little profit from the ivory it obtained, took up

definitely an East African career. He had at first tried to get himself

commissioned for the interior of the Chartered Company's territory. But

its directors were well-intentioned, shrewd men and his home reputation

barred the way. Yet he could not very well--being a Baronet of

far-reaching connexions--be denied access to this loosely governed

region, whither he came every two or three years. After his first

journey and the court cases it aroused at Unguja, he was not such a fool

as to continue his savage treatment of his carriers and servants or he

would soon have been unable to recruit a caravan. On the contrary he

paid well and gave a liberal food allowance, and within limits his

enforcement of a rather Prussian discipline exacted the respect of the

Negro, who appreciates arbitrary power if it is not accompanied by

meanness in money matters. His reckless slaughter of game made him even

popular with his expeditions because it gave the men a surfeit of meat,

and trophies to turn into amulets.

Patterne at last became tolerated as an inevitable concomitant of the

march of civilization, and acquired citizenship in British East Africa

by staking out a vague "concession" near the north-west corner of the

Kilimanjaro slopes on the edge of the German frontier. It was in this

way and in this neighbourhood that he got to know Adolf Stolzenberg,

whom he helped in his raids against the Masai; less by direct

participation than by furnishing him with arms and ammunition and by

disposing of his captured cattle.

"What do you know about this curious personage, Stolzenberg?" asked

Roger of his two friends, Hildebrandt and Wiese, when he had returned to

Magara from his visit to the Red Crater.

"Only what we hear people say," replied Hildebrandt. "Some say he is

just a Sous African German who do some bad sing in Sous Africa and com

up here ten, twelf year ago to join the Denhardts. Ozzers say he com

from Germany long before, wiz Dr. Fischer, and zat he was natural son of

our old Emperor Wilhelm One. First, Emperor put him in army, and

several times pay his debts, and zen when he kill anozzer officer in

duel he pack him off to Africa and say, 'Never let me see your face

again.' But p'raps zat is only story invented by ze man himself.

Somtimes I sink our Government use him in som way. I dare say your

Government do ze same by zis ozzer man you hate so, Vill-o-bee Patterne.

What a fonny name! Your English names are somtimes more fonny zan ours!"

The German Commandant, consulted by Roger (who in April, 1897, was on

his way to the coast after having made everything safe behind him), was

rather noncommittal about Stolzenberg. The conversation was in German,

punctuated with phrases of Swahili on the part of the Commandant, who

was proud of having acquired a smattering of this African tongue. He

was rather non-committal about the denizen of the Red Crater. He was a

"derben Kerl" ... "Simba yule, kabisa," the terror of the Masai. He

kept the Masai occupied in that quarter while the Germans tackled the

Wa-hehe on the south. He must be given some latitude ... the Commandant

would see he did not impinge on the Concession ... perhaps he might be

persuaded to take command of a large irregular force against the

Wa-hehe....

"'_Divide et impera_,' sehen Sie? Em glas Rheinwein, nicht so? Und

Soda? Ein lang-trinken in der Englische phrase...."

It seemed incongruous that this scene--the rather stiff German major, in

strict, white, military uniform and an encumbering sword, a black

sentry, not far away, walking with a plap, plap, plap of his bare feet

up and down the prescribed number of paces; a plainly furnished,

white-washed room in a square fort with pretentious crenellations along

its high white walls; the oleograph portrait of Kaiser Wilhelm II; the

camp table, the Rhine wine in long-necked bottles, the enamelled iron

tumblers and the soda siphons; and the click of a typewriter in the next

apartment--should come up before his mental vision as he sat with Lucy

and Maud and the Schraeder partners on a balcony in the Strand, waiting

for Queen Victoria to pass to her Jubilee thanksgiving at St. Paul's!

Why should he think of Adolf Stolzenberg then?

He was but part of the African nightmare which he would fain roll up and

forget. A few weeks of England had put Africa's nose out of joint. To

work for the redemption of a tiny portion of German Africa when such

gigantic developments of British Africa were dawning in the imagination

of far-seeing men, or when an evolution still more important was taking

place in his own land, in the Far East, in America....

What was it that brought back the Red Crater to his mind, the sinister

face and powerful figure of Stolzenberg; or the German Commandant in the

fort at Kondoa? Whose was the thin, aquiline, insolent face with its

riotous smile that held his gaze across the narrow Strand, the face of a

tall man in ultra-fashionable cut of clothes, standing up amid a bower

of Gaiety girls with four or five extra-smart young City

men--stock-brokers, no doubt, Company promoters, or the solicitors of

Company promoters--? It was Willowby Patterne he had been staring at

for several minutes; and Sir Willowby was flicking a greeting to him

with the manicured hand which had drawn the trigger on so many lovely

beasts, or had lifted the Kiboko with such a cunning twist to lay its

lash on the naked skin of some defaulting native porter....

He had to concentrate his thoughts before he replied to the greeting

with a grave bow--had to remember that he had once played semi-host to

this man at a Scotch shooting lodge; hated him mostly on hearsay

unproved evidence, and chiefly on apprehension as to future maleficence,

rather than on positive wrongs to himself.

Then he gave his consideration once more to the passing pageant.

Thrum ... thrum ... thrum ... thrum ... in between the bursts of

military music went the steady marching of the Imperial troops. There

was the pick of the regiments of the British line; there were samples of

Indian infantry--bearded Sikhs, grinning Gurkhas, handsome

Panjabis--Surely that was young Pearsall-Smith at the head of one of

these detachments? He had heard of his distinguishing himself in the

Nyasaland wars against the Arabs--and he winced to think he had no part

in this ceremonial, he could point of late to no service to the Crown

and Empire--was it his fault? If he had gone to Norway or to South

America, could he have achieved anything that might have brought him

into the procession of to-day? What splendid Indian cavalry. That

Indian prince leading them had once given him some tiger shooting when

he was a young A.D.C. to Sir Griffith Gaunt. Ah! Here was Africa in the

procession--Hausas from Nigeria, Sudanese from Egypt; these bronzed,

well-seated, rather insolent-looking white men were mounted police from

the Cape, from Bechuanaland, from Natal.

These gaudy zouave uniforms and Christy minstrels' faces were a

contingent from the West Indian regiments that had figured in so many

West African wars. And now came well-set-up Turkish police from Cyprus,

well-drilled Chinese police from Hong Kong; even solemn-looking Dyaks

from Borneo, who were believed to have given up head-hunting in favour

of constabulary work at the Bornean ports.

And carriages containing permanent officials--he thought he recognized

Sir Bennet Molyneux in one, possibly attached to the person of some

foreign prince, some German or Russian Grand Duke. And Ministers of

State saluted by the happy crowd with good-humoured cheers and a few

serio-comic groans. That one who aroused such an outburst of cheering

was the great Choselwhit, Josiah Choselwhit, Secretary of State for the

Colonies, in Windsor uniform with the customary eyeglass. His hosts,

the Schraeders, joined lustily in the hurrahs, as did the City men

opposite; Choselwhit was supposed to have brought grist to the City

mills and to be the mainstay of the British Empire in which Germans as

well as British made such millions of money....

And ... and ... and ... At last, after many preliminary princes and

princesses, Queen Victoria herself; a little figure swathed in much

black clothing but with filmy white around the rosy face and

yellow-white hair.... She progressed very slowly--so it seemed to

Roger--past their windows. The Schraeder brothers positively brayed

their international loyalty, so that their voices were even heard by her

above the deafening clamour. She turned her somewhat haughty profile

and clear blue eyes towards their balcony with its flamboyant draperies

and symbols, as if she searched for some face she knew to whom she might

address a smile of acknowledgment; but finding none, turned her gaze to

the Gaiety girls and the shouting young men who had invited Patterne as

their guest. To these pretty actresses, showing real emotion, she did

address a royal smile, which caused one of them to give way to real

tears. Then Roger found himself gazing at the back of her bonnet with

its white ostrich plume, illogically disappointed that there had been no

smile for him, he who would have served her so gladly had her ministers

let him.

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.