A steamer coming from the south to-day brought me your letter of last
March! I had got several of your postcards showing yourself and Lady
Landolphia in nurses' uniform and with dreadful smiles of glittering
teeth, and knew of course--heard, I mean--what you were doing for our
men out in South Africa. The letter was sent on by my Agents; I expect
it got hung up in the military censorship, and I must say I don't blame
them! Your unconscious criticisms of our generalship were pretty
pungent. I wonder I got it at all. But better late than never! After
I have read it a third time I shall burn it because there is one
classical tag I never forget: _Littera scripta manet_.
I see by the London papers of September you are not only back in
England--or rather Scotland--but entertaining as of yore at Glen
Sporran. And playing with the same old toys! How indefatigable you are
in your pursuit of power! How unwearied by the social routine, which
would drive me into exile or into murder. I should end by killing the
poor old _fantoches_--Vicky Long-i'-the-Tooth, Stacy Bream, and the
others--I forget their names--the Right Honble. gentleman who spat like
a cobra--only it was very kindly saliva, not at all venomous--and that
moral enthusiast over the Empire--Albert Something. I see by the same
paper he is now Lord Bewdly and has been uttering some beautiful
sentiments over the results expected from the Boer War.... You were
Stellenbosched, and with reason, because your hospitals and convalescent
homes were there (I see, by the bye, that Willowby Patterne, who came an
awful cropper at Driefontein and generally misconducted himself, was
also Stellenbosched by K. of K. I hope you did not foregather with
him?) ... Well, as I was saying, you were Stellenbosched and saw little
of the horrors of War. But I did, and I used often to wish that Albert
person could have been with me and seen the burning of the homesteads,
the cutting down of the fruit-trees, the fugitive women and little
children, the Boer boys of eleven and twelve dressed up for war like
their fathers and elder brothers and fighting for their homes. I saw one
of these boys--tousled yellow hair, nice grey eyes--in a buckskin suit
much too big for him, laid out to die by the road-side, just after we
had burnt his father's home. I don't suppose one of our chaps really
set out to kill him. But there it was; he had been shot through the
lungs and was gasping out his life, blood pouring out of his mouth at
each gasp. And yet he tried to smile and said something in Dutch about
his father being away.... Upon my word I should have liked to get the
Kaiser, old Kruger, ---- and ----[#] all strung up together on the site
of that farm. For they are the four men who together made this most
unnecessary war. I know what lots of our Tommies said when they heard
Kimberley was relieved!
[#] I shrink from perpetuating all Roger's indiscretions and impulsive
statements.--H.H.J.
As for me, I was laid out soon after with two bullets through my thigh.
But for Yusuf Ali and Anshuro, my two Somalis; and equally but for a
humane Boer (Colonel van Rensselaer), I should certainly have died. As
it was, the haemorrhage was stopped and a German doctor at the field
hospital nursed me through a bad attack of blood-poisoning. I shall
never, of course, be quite the same man again; but I still feel as
though there were a lot of push in me. Soon after my admission to the
hospital at Lydenburg, the Boers evacuated the place and in course of
time I was transported to Durban and invalided out of the army with the
rank of Major. I had already got a D.S.O., so _I_ can't complain. I
would fight any day for England against England's enemies, but--however,
no more grousing. Let's hope a new order of things is going to set in.
I certainly should like to cut my D.S.O. into three and give two equal
bits to Ali and Anshuro. You've no idea what those Somali boys were in
the matter of devotion, cheerfulness, astuteness! And yet they only
served me for the ordinary coast wages; though of course I'm going to
give them both a handsome donation when their time is up.
Well: here I am at a hospital once more. I must rest here and get my
leg quite sound before I start for up-country. I have been here for a
month, in telegraphic communication with Lucy and Maud, imploring them
not to come down to the coast to meet me. Lucy, I fear, is far from
strong; and Maud is simply indispensable to the carrying on of the work
up there. She has shown herself as good as a man. The two Australians I
put there have done their best, but they don't get on at all well with
the Germans. Their education has been very poor--I mean in
book-learning--they are rattling good in settlers' lore--and, of course,
they utterly refuse to understand German and openly gibe at it. Their
chief recommendation is that they are absolutely honest....
I lie here chafing and intensely anxious for my worst wound to heal. I
am told I ought to be thankful to have made such a wonderful recovery.
But I feel a month of Lucy's care for me and the bracing air of Iraku
would set me up altogether; and my mere presence at Magara put an end to
all these misunderstandings and bitternesses.
The Schraeders were rather aghast at my bolt for South Africa last year;
but stood it on the whole very well. Of course, I insisted on being
reduced to a third of my pay whilst I was absent. I retained just
enough salary to keep Lucy and Maud going, and maintain the
household....
The whole German attitude over this war has been a curious one, and so
have been its refractions on their attitude towards me. I hear that
after my departure for the war a strong move was got up to oust me from
the Managership. Now that I have returned wounded and a Major and a
D.S.O. (that was given me the other day, for capturing Colonel Boshaert
and three hundred men and a thousand cattle near Lydenburg--tell you all
about it one day) they can't say enough in my favour. I am almost
threatened with a triumphal procession home.... Engine from Tanga
wreathed with palm fronds, etc. Fortunately the train will take me half
the way back, and for the rest I can be carried in a Machila.
But there is little doubt that the mass of the Germans out here thought
we were going to be gravelled by the Boers and that Germania would step
into the shoes of Britannia. Undoubtedly the Kaiser for the past six
years has been fishing in troubled waters, trying to connect up German
South-West Africa with Boer territory, and planning to make Germany the
dominant power in South Africa; or, at any rate, the honest broker
between Boer and Briton....
Why the Dutch and the British should be as oil and water in South Africa
and elsewhere, I _can't_ think. But they are. The Dutchman in Africa
and Europe is just a rather finer built, better-looking Englishman or
Scotchman; but in language, mentality and above all in a curiously hard
attitude towards the Negro, he is Teutonic. The whole set of South
Africa is towards Germany.... That is why Rhodes lost his head....
Your affectionate
ROGER.
P.S. See you next year or year after, as soon as ever I have got
everything going here as it was before the war, and it is safe to come
away. I must go on with this until I can retire with a competency.
*CHAPTER XXI*
*THE MORALS OF THE HAPPY VALLEY*
"I am so glad, so _truly_ glad you are almost your old self again," said
Mrs. Stott, one brilliant morning in the spring of 1901, to Major
Brentham, who had been four months back at his home in Iraku. He did
indeed look as if he had in a measure recovered his good looks and
energy, though the right leg was still stiff and much riding or walking
brought on pain.
"It emboldens me to embark on a very disagreeable subject which I have
been saving up to discuss with you. We cannot evade it much longer;
so--if you have the patience--?"
"I am always patient with you, Mrs. Stott. There are few people I
respect more...."
"Thank you. Then I shall take up an hour or more of your time, if you
are not very busy. But how is Lucy?"
"Lucy is not well; anaemic, Dr. Wiese says. I should send her home,
only she refuses to go without me and I can't leave till next year. Dr.
Wiese does not insist on her going before then. He is trying a new
tonic which seems to be blood-making; it ought to be, because--though I
do not tell Lucy--it is made of blood--one of these new German
inventions. Wiese says if we would only do like the Masai and the Iraku:
tap the veins of our cattle and drink the hot blood--"
"Ugh! don't let's talk about it; it makes me sick. I'm almost a
vegetarian, you know. Couldn't we go into your study? It is delicious
here on the verandah, but I don't want to be overheard."
"Certainly: come this way."
"What _wonderful_ petunias, yours are! I never saw such glowing
colours. Your whole garden is a joy to the eye and a credit to the
Concession...."
"You're _right_. But the credit lies with Riemer, the plantation
manager; he gives it an eye. The Germans are wonderful horticulturists.
I don't think we sufficiently appreciate that fact at home. They are as
good as the Dutch. Now then, here we are in my sanctum--rather untidy,
I fear.... Take this chair..."
"No, it is too reclining. I _do_ like an upright straight-backed chair
when I want to speak out. My daughters say I'm like a character in one
of Dickens's books, who could never loll. They're wonderful readers and
remember everything they've read...."
"Well now, what's the trouble?"
"It's--it's--this--horrid--_sexual_ question I've come about. You know
what Ann Anderson is--I prefer to call her Ann Jamblin--I don't like the
two 'An's' together. Ann has a wonderful power for good, an energy in
righteousness, and is as nearly sinless as any woman can be. But she's
also got _such_ an insight into other people's sinfulness that she
spends much of her time denouncing their wrong-doing--too much, I think.
I tell her she's out here to convert the blacks, and for the time being
had better leave the whites alone. But she pays no heed to me--says her
mission is to all men. She simply won't let the Germans alone. We had
terrible rows sometimes when you were away, though your sister did what
she could to smooth things over. I admit some of them are utterly
wicked. There is that monster Stolzenberg--whom the Masai call 'The
Terror'--_Olduria_--. After he came to the Lake with his Ruga-ruga last
October and shot all the flamingoes...."
"WHAT?" roared Roger, leaping to his feet, and then wincing... "I never
heard this before...!"
"No? Well: sit down. You ought to rest your leg. Lucy didn't want you
to know. She thought it would upset you so--And indeed, it was a
shocking pity.... But you'd soon have noticed how few there are
left--even from here on a clear day.... I understand Stolzenberg sent a
huge consignment of their plumage to a firm he trades with in
Marseilles. And he has been going about to other lakes doing the same.
But I must stick to the point.... Where was I? Oh, yes! ... Ann, who
lives in our old station at Mwada, was awfully upset because she had
become so fond of these birds, besides being infuriated at Stolzenberg's
Ruga-ruga occasionally carrying off women. So she wrote him a letter
saying that if he showed himself in the Concession again she would take
a gun to him herself. She solemnly cursed him and called down Divine
punishment on his head. Unfortunately--for I think the whole thing was
_most_ unwise--she paid a Masai who came along to trade to deliver the
letter at Stolz's boma. The watchman at the gate made him come in and
give the letter himself, and Stolz having read it had the man's left
hand chopped off, tied it to his right, and said that was the answer to
the English Missionaries and that was how he'd treat any other
messengers sent to him.... The poor wretch arrived at Mwada a week
afterwards nearly dead with loss of blood.... Of course, the Masai have
again sworn vengeance against this monster: but what can they do? But
that is not our worst trouble. Before you went, and whilst you were
away, Ann took up the sex question. You know how set she was on the
elevation of the native women? You used to laugh about her corps of
Amazons, her 'Big-geru.' She hadn't been long with us before she began
to interest herself in the young women of Iraku.... Those of the
Wambugwe are, I must confess, _hopeless_ at present; I mean as regards
chastity. Poor things! They are corrupted and degraded from childhood.
But there is something superior--something of another race in the Iraku
and Fiome. You said once they were partly descended from some Gala
immigration of long ago?...
"Well, Ann, who is untirable, started a class of these Iraku young women
before she had been six months in the Happy Valley. The chiefs--I dare
say you remember speaking to some of them? ... _quite_ approved and sent
their young daughters. She taught them cooking and laundry work, plain
sewing, reading and writing. And now she finds, after they have been a
year or two at our schools, they go off and live with white men....!"
_Roger_: "I dare say they do, and have a much better time with them than
with their own men. But what white men? German, I suppose?..."
_Mrs. Stott_: "Ah, _there_ you touch my greatest sorrow. Yes. Every
German I know on this concession keeps a native woman, mostly from our
classes. But I fear--I fear--my nephew Phil and the clerk Stallibrass
as well--my two Australian boys--are not much more moral. Their
relations with the native women won't bear investigation. That is not
all ... and I have no right to be here as an accuser when I can't answer
for my own son, Edgar.... You remember you offered in 1897 to take him
home with you, and have him sent to an English school or college for a
year or two? I wish ... I wish ... we had consented. It was so good of
you. But we thought at the time that if children can grow up into
God-fearing men and women in Australia without leaving the back-blocks
or the bush, why not here, where the climate is good? Then there was
the question of the cost...."
_Roger_: "I suppose he has got all his education from you and his
father?"
_Mrs. Stott_: "Yes, indeed. The main thing, besides religion, was to
teach our children to read and write and do simple accounts. All they
wanted besides was to read the books we ordered out.... I'm sure you
can't say we have been indifferent to literature?"
_Roger_: "No--not of a certain kind ... but all of it, from what I have
seen, is rather old-fashioned and goody-goody...."
_Mrs. Stott_: "I don't agree. However, I won't stop to argue about it.
It matters little, since Edgar from the age of twelve or thirteen has
cared very little for reading. His passion is _sport_. And to think
how I ran down big-game shooting, when it was not vitally necessary for
our supplies! Of course, James is a good shot and a clever hunter, and
Edgar, after he was twelve, used to go out with him. He killed an
elephant to his own gun when he was only fifteen, and the tusks fetched
as much as L60! He _was_ proud. Now his one idea is to be away
shooting ... and trifling with these Iraku women. Oh!" (crying a
little). "_Can't_ you see how it _silences_ me? Ann talks about cutting
off a member that offends and says I should expel my own son from the
Mission for loose living.... I can't do that, and besides there's
nothing proved.... But I can't very well join her in her crusade against
... she _will_ use such plain words ... against fornication and unclean
living. I suppose we shall have to send Edgar away ... back to
Australia ... And then I fear much for his future. Thank goodness! He's
a total abstainer, so far.... Ought we to invite some young woman to
come out here for the mission, in the hope that he might marry her and
settle down?"
_Roger_: "Wouldn't be a bad idea, if you could insure her taking his
fancy. I haven't seen Master Edgar for months or taken much notice of
him since he came to man's estate. Struck me, he was growing up a
nice-looking lad...."
_Mrs. Stott_: "Indeed he is! It's his good looks that are his snare....
The native women run after him so...."
_Roger_: "Does he work for us or for the Mission?"
_Mrs. Stott_: "He is his father's assistant in the Carpentering school;
but he's too much given to larking with the boys, who look upon him as a
kind of hero. Of course, he speaks their language almost as if it came
natural to him. His real bent is for Natural History ... that's the
only excuse for his sport. We sell the collections he makes to the
Germans. One of your mining engineers has taught him photography. He
takes wonderful pictures of wild life. We posted some home to the
_Graphic_, and with the money they paid, Edgar sent to Unguja and bought
himself a snap-shot camera.... Am I keeping you from your work?"
_Roger_: "You are: but we don't often meet nowadays for a talk. Let's
thrash this matter out. Well?"
_Mrs. Stott_: "Well, I was going on to say, with all this Edgar's mind
is turning away from religion. We have hard work to get him to attend
our services... He even shocked his father the other day by saying he
was sick of the Bible.... I say, 'even,' because ever since my dear
James has been getting up these industrial schools you were so keen on,
he has become less and less spiritually minded, more and more interested
in the material things of this world. He only _pretends_ to care for
the Second Coming of Christ ... just to please me. He is much more
interested in his new turning lathe" ... (dabs her eyes and blows her
nose). "His prayers have become very trite. If it wasn't for my
daughters...."
_Roger_: "Let me see: you have two daughters out here--Pretty girls....
They must be growing up...."
_Mrs. Stott_: "Yes. Carrie's nearly nineteen; and Lulu is sixteen. We
called her 'Luisa,' not from the English name, but because 'Luisa' means
'darkness' in Kagulu, and when she was born she had dark hair and dark
eyes ... she's fairer now.... And the way, then, seemed dark before
us.... I was very ill at the time...."
_Roger_: "And then the eldest of all is at home, I mean in England....?"
Mrs. Stott: "Yes. Rosamund, named after me. She's a school teacher in
Ireland, and practically a stranger to us. That's one of the sorrows of
our life out here. Not that we haven't many blessings to
counter-balance it--I'm sure the way we've kept our health in the Happy
Valley--But we have either to send our children away to England or
Australia, or bring them up here, with many disadvantages, it would be a
pity to bring Rosamund away from a career where she is doing very
well...."
_Roger_: "Quite so. Well then, we have only to deal with Carrie as a
possible wife to one of our young men...."
_Mrs. Stott_: "As a matter of fact, Riemer proposed to her a few months
ago. But Carrie is very particular; and besides, she wouldn't marry a
German...."
_Roger_: "What nonsense! In what way are they inferior to Englishmen or
Australians? I'm sure Riemer..."
_Mrs. Stott_ (tightening her lips): "Not to be thought of. Riemer is an
avowed atheist..."
_Roger_: "Oh, of course, if religion is to come in the way...."
_Mrs. Stott_: "It isn't only religion, there are other things. No.
Don't let my daughters come under discussion. Why couldn't the Germans
here send home for nice German girls to come out and marry them, or get
married when they next went on leave...?"
_Roger_: "Why not, indeed? I'll talk to them. Much better they should
do so. But then, what'll happen by and by is what _you_ don't want to
happen. The Germans will marry white women, have large families and
gradually push out the Negroes and turn this into a White Man's
country--unless the climate and the germ diseases forbid.... I'm not
sure myself that I don't favour a mixture of races and that the
Americans for example are not better suited to America because of their
strong underlying element of Indian blood--I suppose you would not like
it if the Germans married their concubines?"
_Mrs. Stott_: "As an Australian I am prejudiced against the mixture of
the races..."
_Roger_: "Well, but Dame Nature isn't, in her inconsequent way. First
she prompts the original human ancestors--your Adam and Eve--to
segregate and separate and differentiate into sub-species, almost. Then
she seems sorry for it, and does all she can to bring them together
again, prompts the White man to travel all over the world and mix his
blood freely with that of the other races. She has been redeeming the
Negro from his original blackness and apishness by sending white
immigrants into Africa for thousands of years--Egyptians, Carthaginians,
Romans, Greeks, Arabs, Indians; Portuguese, Dutch, French, English; to
say nothing of all the Mediterranean peoples who pressed into Africa in
prehistoric days. They have all mingled with the Negro in their time
and rehumanized him. You own to a _penchant_ for the Iraku people.
Why? Even for the Masai. Why do you really prefer them to the
out-and-out Negro type, like the Kindiga and Wambugwe? Because they
have a strain of ancient white blood in their veins. Same thing with
the Swahili. We like them because of the Arab intermixture. And yet we
talk and write a lot of rubbish about disliking the half-caste between a
European and a Negro--By the bye, since we are talking on this subject,
did I or did I not see a half-caste child in the compound of Schnitzler,
that mining engineer who is such a friend of Edgar's?"
_Mrs. Stott_: "You did, at least Schnitzler's native woman has had a
child by him--two years ago. And if you looked all through the
settlement you could find three other half-caste infants.... They make
no secret of it...."
_Roger_: "Why _should_ they? If they must form these unions, it is
better they should be sanctified by the production of children. I must
say it redeems the whole thing in my eyes; the Germans don't ignore
their half-caste children, but have them properly brought up. It is
better than what you call 'sinning in secret' and blushing at--or
repudiating the consequences.... This _maddening_ question of sexual
irregularities, which now seems to clog the progress of all European
Colonies, and to fill up the press of the United States and of
England--are they always writing about it in Australia?"
_Mrs. Stott_: "Strange to say, we never get any Australian papers. I
don't know whether Phil does either.... I seem to belong so very much
more to England or to north Ireland, where all my relations live...."
_Roger_: "... I often wish the Almighty or Nature or Chance--or whatever
it was that developed us out of lifeless matter--had not tried this
clever trick of the two sexes--I suppose it began a hundred million
years ago, in the union of two entirely different microbes. I wish we
had been allowed to go on increasing by fissure, by budding. Certainly
among the world-problems of to-day it is the most difficult to solve. I
sometimes feel irritated against Christianity for the fuss it makes
about Chastity. But I imagine it arose from the tremendous revulsion
that took place in the Eastern Mediterranean two thousand years ago
against an excessive sexual licence: just in those very countries where
the purest doctrines of self-restraint were afterwards preached. The
Christian ideal certainly seems the most likely to promote a good type
of human being, but it is very hard to live up to.... Yet what texts you
could find--in favour of Chastity--you missionaries--_if_ you only
realized the history of the Negro and did not go merely to the Old and
New Testament for your pegs to hang a sermon on. The Negro is in his
present inferior position because he has weakened his mental energy by
extravagant sexual indulgence--and limited his numbers. Do you find the
Happy Valley any less depraved than Nguru or Ugogo?"
Mrs. Stott: "I should _think not_. A little worse, if possible! I
assure you, Major Brentham, when we first arrived from Australia I had
_no conception_ there could _exist_ such _depravity, such_ vices. They
were referred to here and there in the Bible. But I did not know what
the references meant...."
_Roger_: "Well: there you are. _That_ is a justification for your being
here, as in other parts of Africa.... If you and we can only give the
Negro _something else to think of_. He is like our labouring class at
home. It is the only pleasure he knows of. Give him education,
ambition, sports, remunerative work, an interest, even, in better food,
in better houses, pictures, music, theatres..." (Mrs. Stott shudders.)
"Well: there you are, making a face at the theatre. You won't distract
the Negro--or the European--from indulging sexual desires by prayers and
hymns and the reading of ancient scriptures: _that's_ certain. I know
we differ there, and you must be already worn out with this lengthy
conversation. As you've stayed so long, stay a little longer and have
lunch with us? Lucy was only saying this morning she never sees you
nowadays. You can go and have a talk to her, while I glance through
these reports. See, by the bye, they give your donkey a feed, and put
it safely in the stable. The other day one of ours disappeared. Of
course, they said it was a leopard----"
At luncheon. The dining-room at Magara House is a fair-sized apartment,
with walls of well-smoothed cement surface of pinkish tone, due to red
ochre being mixed with the cement. On the walls are hung a few clever
pastel studies done by a talented German horticulturist who has an eye
for colour and design; there are trophies of shields and spears; there
is a dado of native matting; and a smooth floor surface of red _chunam_
plaster, made by Indian masons from the coast. In a pleasant bay which
looks on to the front verandah a magnificent lion's skin lies between
the window-seats....
A Swahili butler and footman clothed in long white _kansus_, with white
"open-work" skull-caps, and black, gold-embroidered _visibao_,[#] are
serving the luncheon, cooked admirably by the still surviving husband of
Halima, the Goanese Andrade. The meal consists of chicken broth,
flavoured with grated coco-nut and red chillies; curried prawns (out of
tins); kid cutlets and chip potatoes; Mango "fool"; and a _macedoine de
fruits_--fresh pineapple, bananas, sliced papaw, and oranges. [A little
Rhine wine flavoured the fruit-salad and was served at table with
Seltzer water.] Then, in the alcove with the lion skin [the door-window
opens on to the verandah with the petunia beds below in carmine and
purple blaze] the servants place Turkish coffee and cigarettes. Mrs.
Stott only drinks Seltzer water and declines a cigarette; but thoroughly
enjoys her lunch and congratulates Lucy on the flower-decorations of the
table....
[#] Sleeveless waistcoats.
"It's Hamisi, our butler, that deserves your praise. I get so easily
tired in these days that I seldom do the flowers as I used. I make up
for it by doing all the mending that Maud will let me have and writing
all the letters home. John and Maudie expect a full account of our
doings every month.... And dear sister Maud that is here, is always
busy over our accounts and Roger's business correspondence and her
poultry farming. You know whilst Roger was in South Africa she almost
took his place!"
"Oh, as to that," says Maud, who has a strong sense of justice, "you
must all admit Hildebrandt and Dr. Wiese both played up. I shall
_never_ forget how loyal they were to Roger ... they might have been
Englishmen ... and that, too, at a time when other Germans out here were
looking askance at us, and that horrible Stolzenberg was threatening to
raid the Concession and seize the mines..."
"By the bye," says Roger, "you never told me, either of you, about the
Flamingo outrage. There are many things I could forgive, but not that.
It was one of my great pleasures out here, going to see the Stotts and
watching the flamingoes on the lake shore. If I'd been here at the time
I should certainly have followed up the brute and shot him..."
"We didn't tell you because we wanted you to get well, and feared you
might do something violent before your leg was healed."
"Well, now that I know, I shall certainly lodge a strong complaint with
the German Commandant at Kondoa...."
"Ann Anderson has solemnly cursed him for his cruelty," said Mrs. Stott.
"She said so in the letter she sent him by the poor Masai whose hand he
chopped off. I think that, by the bye, is better worth taking up with
the authorities than the flamingo massacre. I'm afraid you won't find
many of the Germans sympathize with you there, though I must admit they
are a great loss to the scenery. But Ann said in the letter: 'If man
doesn't punish you, God will.'"
"Of course," said Roger, "it is a scandal the way the Germans tolerate
this monster, just because, like Patterne--I suppose _he_ hasn't turned
up again?..."
"Don't know."
"... Just because he lives on the outskirts of civilization in no man's
land. I shall try a ride on one of the Basuto ponies next week, go
first of all and see your old station of Mwada, interview Ann, remind
her of the parable of the Mote and the Beam, ask her to go slow ... with
these denunciations of moral frailty; and get some idea of the damage
done to the flamingoes. I expect my complaints may draw down on me
counter remonstrances from the Germans. I heard a growl the other day
from a Herr Inspektor of Native schools that you taught no German"
(addressing Mrs. Stott), "only Swahili and a little English. What could
you do in that respect? I should not like them to have any excuse for
interference with you...."
"Oh!" said Mrs. Stott, her face paling at the very thought, "after all
the _time, labour, money_--much of it _your_ money--that we've put into
Mission work in the Happy Valley. Oh, _why_ wasn't it taken over by the
English? ... I think it would _break my heart_ to leave it and begin
our work over again. We've got so fond of the people ..."
"Don't be down-hearted," said Roger, "I shall always stand up for them
as long as I'm here, and I have no intention of going--except for a
holiday--for ever so long.... _What a strange noise_...?!..."
A prolonged, distant rumble, like the sound a big avalanche makes in the
Alps: and before they could speculate on its meaning, the ground
trembled under their feet, the two-storied house seemed to sway this way
and that, and then settle itself with a jarring thud. Fine dust fell
from the ceiling; trophies of shields and spears came clattering down,
the glass and china on the table tinkled, the finger-bowls giving forth
a prolonged musical note. Outside, after a moment's hush, cocks crowed,
hens whooped, geese raised grating screams, peacocks honked and yelled,
turkeys gobbled and crowned cranes threw back their golden-crested heads
and uttered their resounding call.
"An earth tremor," said Roger in an even voice, for Lucy looked like
fainting. "A _very small_ earthquake; _nothing_ to be alarmed at,
though it turns one a bit sick inside. They don't often happen. This
is only the second I've experienced in ten years. You see, we live on
the border of a volcanic region. Here, _Lucy_! Pull yourself together.
Have a nip of brandy?...
"Better? Let's get out into the air, on the verandah, and see if any
damage has been done.... I hope it won't affect our mining
galleries...."
But no reports of damage from the earthquake came to hand. The natives
said that these shocks were sometimes followed by outbursts of gases,
smoke, steam from one or other of the craters in the north.
A week after Mrs. Stott's visit, Roger, accompanied by Maud to look
after him and see he did not overstrain himself, rode down into the
Happy Valley to Mwada station. Here they interviewed the redoubtable
Ann, now a square-built grey-haired matron of middle age and practically
no sexual charm. She had black eyes, glowering under black eyebrows, a
sallow complexion, and a thin-lipped mouth, with down-turned corners,
like the mouth of Queen Victoria when she was displeased. Ann listened
in grim silence to Major Brentham's hesitating remonstrances. When he
had finished she replied that it was more than flesh and blood could
stand that she should be spending her time and the Mission money
training up native girls to be Christian wives for Christian natives,
and as soon as they had learnt some civilization they were sought out
and snapped up by Germans, inside and outside the Concession. It wasn't
for that she had come out to Africa....
"I _do_ feel for you and will see what can be done," said Brentham; "but
at the same time we must remember we are not on British territory, where
they stand a good deal from the missionaries, but in _German_ Africa.
The Germans have made a handsome acknowledgment of what Mr. Stott has
done in the way of industrial teaching. Don't go and spoil it all by
being too ready to denounce these--these--irregularities! Things may
right themselves in time. It would be such a dreadful blow to the
Stotts if they were told to go, to leave the work of so many years...."
Ann would promise nothing, however. She would speak as the Spirit bade
her.... For the present her time was taken up with mission work among
the Wambugwe, who were _quite_ the worst heathens she had met with.
"Not only terribly depraved--they eat the corpses of their dead!!!--but
the dirtiest Negroes I have ever seen, and _wholly_ lacking in
spirituality."
"Well then," said Roger, "_there_ you've got your work cut out, for
several years. Meantime I will talk to our German friends...."
"_Friends_, indeed?" said Ann. "They're _no friends_ of _mine_!"
In spite of her fierceness of denunciation, she made both Roger and Maud
as comfortable as she could at her rather Spartan station, and became so
happy, friendly and even tearful during the evening with Maud, talking
over the little world of Reading and Basingstoke, Aldermaston and
Englefield, that evening prayers for once were intermitted. Her husband
sat mostly silent, listening respectfully. It was evident that he
worked very hard at material things during the day, that he stood much
in awe of his wife, and had completely lost his gift of extempore
prayer. Their one daughter was a thin, sickly, wistful little girl of
ten, very shy, and fonder of her father than of her mother. But
according to Ann she was already a good needlewoman, and helped in the
sewing classes. Kind Maud proposed she should be fetched one day and
taken to Magara for a week's stay. The air was so good there. Ann
consented a little reluctantly.
They rode their Basuto ponies to see if there were traces of
Stolzenberg's slaughter of the flamingoes. But the bodies had evidently
been carried away from the lake to be skinned and because the bones were
valuable; and the sole visible result of the raid was the absence of
adult birds in pink plumage. There only remained of the former serried
ranks a thin broken line of ugly immature flamingoes, dirty-white in
plumage, streaked with brown. They were dibbling timidly in the thick
waters of the lake; and this had also lost much of its former
beauty--though Stolzenberg was not responsible for the slow desiccation
of East Africa. The lake just now was no longer a uniform sheet of
cobalt, bordered with a grey-white fringe of salt and guano mixed; it
was reduced to two large areas of deep water with grey mud in between.
How different from what Roger had seen in the glamour of 1888!
Away from the lake shore, in a detour through the foot-hills, they met a
few wandering Masai on their way to trade at the Mission station. They
greeted Roger with acclamations of friendship and much spitting.
Without an interpreter he could not understand them, but they kept
pointing to the north-west and evidently referring to the wicked
Stolzenberg under their name of _Oleduria_ ("The Terror"); and at the
same time to "God"--_Engai_. They talked with the satisfied tone of a
thing now settled, and went on their way to interview the Woman-chief
who was their medical adviser, and would-be converter.
"They may have heard of Ann's letter," said Roger, "and believe her
curse is coming off. Do you see where they were pointing? ... That
curious cloud that seems to be rising high in the air, rising and
falling, as though one of the craters were showing signs of activity?"
As soon as he returned to Magara, Roger drew up a formal complaint
against Stolzenberg, addressed to the officer commanding in Irangi. He
set forth the long tale of misdeeds on the part of "The Terror" during
the past ten years and urged the German authority for the good name of
the Empire to arrest and try this bandit. If this were not done, he
would be compelled to place all the facts before the German directors of
the Concessionaire Company whose employes' people and property suffered
so much from Stolzenberg's raids and violence. The maiming of the Masai
messenger was a concrete case, whatever might be thought of the offence
in slaughtering the flamingoes, birds whose guano was one of the
Concession's assets.
A fortnight later a military force of one hundred Askari and two
twelve-pounder mountain guns arrived at Wilhelmshoehe--as the entire
scattered settlement of the Concession in the Iraku Hills was called (at
the request of the Schraeders: the Stotts never got nearer the
pronunciation than "Williamshoe"). The force was commanded by two
smart-looking German lieutenants and a white Feldwebel. The
lieutenants, who saluted Brentham as Herr Major, said they were to act
under his orders. He was commissioned as a magistrate to proceed to the
Red Crater and arrest Adolf Stolzenberg, but not supposed to take any
part in the fighting, if force was to be used. That was _their_
business. The Herr Oberst who had sent them remembered that Major
Brentham had been wounded in the South African War, and hoped he would
take care of himself; if his health was not equal to the journey, then
the nearest German district commissioner would go instead. But Roger,
in spite of his wife's pleadings and Maud's warnings, was keen to see
the thing through. Besides, he could serve as guide. So in course of
time the expedition found itself drawn up on the grassy plateau and
facing the heavy wooden door and stone wall. A summons to open in the
name of the law was shouted by the Feldwebel, who had an immense voice.
There was no response. Then the guns, put into position, came into play
and shattered the door to fragments. One of the lieutenants and half
the force marched in.... Half an hour elapsed.... Then the lieutenant
reappeared with rather a scared face.
"We can only suppose either that Stolzenberg fled some time ago, or that
his settlement has simply been engulfed by some appalling volcanic
action. Come in and see!"
Roger and the rest of the force followed. Inside the Red Crater, which
enclosed a space about a mile in diameter, very little could at first be
seen but clouds of sulphurous vapours, which when wafted in their
direction nearly stifled them; and clouds of steam where the little
stream from the hidden pool at the further end of the crater fell into
some gulf of heat----
They advanced cautiously; the wind took a different turn, and at last
the rashest pioneers among them discerned the ground falling away
abruptly over a sharp-cut edge into Hell--as a Dante might have deemed
it. The sulphurous fumes drove them back. The inevitable
conclusion--confirmed in time--was that the crater had reopened
immediately beneath Stolzenberg's settlement. Houses, people, cattle
had all been plunged into the bowels of the earth, hundreds of feet
below to a fiery furnace. Those humans and cattle who were nearer the
crater walls at the time had possibly been choked and killed by the
gases. Indeed, on their way out, they saw here and there, at the bases
of the red walls, dead cattle lying stiff, all four legs in the air.
Evidently, inquisitive Masai, after the earthquake, had climbed the
crater-rim from the outside and seen enough to guess that the white
Woman-chief's curse had come home, and the great enemy of the Masai and
his murderous band of raiders had gone suddenly to an awful doom.
*CHAPTER XXII*
*EIGHT YEARS HAVE PASSED BY*
Eight years have passed since Roger Brentham staggered, half stupefied
with sulphur fumes, from the Red Crater; satisfied with a great sense of
relief and no pity, that Stolzenberg and his raiding Ruga-ruga had come
to a deserved end.
"The Terror" having been wiped out in a way which brought an enormous
accession of prestige to Mrs. Anderson of the Ewart-Stott Industrial
Mission, the Happy Valley Concession was relieved for a time of any
active enemy. Willowby Patterne, who had again taken up his abode on
his Namanga property (after having once more passed through the Divorce
Court--this time at the instance of a deluded but determined American
wife), may have been disposed to fish in waters of his own troubling,
have itched to share in the immense wealth now pouring out from the
region where Roger had forestalled him. But meantime he had been a
little sobered by Stolzenberg's tragic end. So he devoted himself for
these eight years to shooting enormous quantities of big-game on the
scarcely inhabited tracts of northern German East Africa. The Germans
remonstrated with him at times for his breaches of their perfunctory
Game Regulations; but an equal disregard for these attempts to save the
fauna was shown by German hunters. Willowby imported and exported most
of his goods and supplies, all his hides and ivory by German railway
routes, sent them to be sold in German markets, and took care to be on
good terms with German frontier officials. So his baleful activities
were not materially interfered with. On the British side of the frontier
he was also regarded with lenience for reasons not specified. He was
popular among the East African planters because he kept the native in
his proper place and evaded the "silly" restrictions on unlimited
"sport." Apart from his matrimonial affairs, which were a source of
recurrent, rather piquant scandal, he was not without a certain prestige
in England. He had made his ranching property pay considerable profits
out of the chase and cattle-breeding, and had thus pacified his most
pressing creditors. He earned other large sums by acting, for three
months in the dry season, as guide and arranger of big-game "shoots" to
excessively rich Americans who wanted the thrill of firing into the
brown of dense herds of antelope and zebra, getting perchance a maned
lion without too much danger, or similarly bringing down an elephant of
medium size (they would buy tusks "to go with it" from Patterne's
store), or a record rhino (Patterne supplied the "record" horn; the poor
specimen killed by the millionaire was given to the Andorobo trackers to
eat).
Having accidentally brought to light several new varieties or
sub-species of antelope among the thousands he shot for their hides and
horns, he was deemed a great "naturalist" in the Cromwell Road Museum;
and Roger's anger whenever his name was mentioned--calling up as it did
many a mental picture of lifeless wastes of prairie strewn with
bone-heaps where once rioted a wonderful and harmless Zoological
gardens--was put down to jealousy of Patterne's marksmanship.
Twice in these eight years Roger had been to England. In 1902 he had
escorted his wife and sister home, and stayed there six months to make
his children's acquaintance. In 1906 he and Maud, who kept house for
him at Magara in Lucy's absence, again returned for a long holiday; and
in the following year brought Lucy back with them for a last stay in the
Happy Valley--a last stay, because Roger calculated on retiring from the
management of the Concession in 1909. He would then sell out his
shares, and on the proceeds would be wealthy enough to leave Africa to
younger men and devote himself to home politics. No more, after 1909,
would Lucy be torn in two in her affections, longing to be by her
husband, pining in fact without him; yet miserable at the idea of her
children growing up outside her care and supervision.
John, as it was, showed himself devoted to the splendiferous and
dazzling "Aunt Sibyl"; and even Fat Maud (no longer a dumpling, but
still distinguished by this adjective from the other Maud, thirty-five
years older, and spare of build) ... even Fat Maud preferred Englefield
as a home to the humbler Church Farm at Aldermaston; and adopted a
rather patronizing tone towards the quiet, pale-faced, languid, timid
mother who had rusticated so many years in the wilds of Africa that she
was ignorant of free-wheel bicycles, motor-cars, gramophones, two-step
dances, ping-pong, hockey, and diabolo.
During these eight years Mrs. Bazzard's persistent letters to Sir Bennet
Molyneux had their reward. Her Spencer was removed from malarial,
out-of-the-world East Africa and made Consul-General at Halicarnassus,
to preside with judicial functions over a Consular Court in Asia Minor,
on L900 a year and allowances. Mrs. Bazzard foresaw for herself a
glorious early autumn to her life, as a leading lady in the Levant, with
an occasional dress from Paris, a prominence in Levantine Society, a
possible visit of the Royal yacht to this old-world Turkish harbour
where Herodotos once lived and wrote; and inevitably a knighthood on
retirement for the re-animated doll, the Spencer into whom she had
really infused new stuffing. "Oh, that _dearest_ Mother might live"--in
Bayswater, it would not do to have her at Halicarnassus--"to refer to
her daughter as 'Lady Bazzard'!"
She has long ceased to take much interest in the Brenthams, once Roger
Brentham--with whom she believes herself to have had a serious and
compromising flirtation in 1887, and sometimes hints as much to her
Spencer when his interest in her flags--no longer has his name in lists
of officials likely to get between Spencer and a Mediterranean post.
She is, however, a little annoyed from time to time to see he is not
socially dead ... that highly placed officials actually notice him. For
instance, the Bazzards when at home in 1902 could not obtain, try they
ever so hard, a place in the Abbey to see King Edward crowned. But
Roger saw the ceremony from a modest nook inside the nave; saw Sibyl in
ermine and crimson velvet and ostrich plumes, nodding right and left to
acquaintances and wreathed in smiles, pass before him with other peers
and peeresses to her appointed place; and probably owed his seat to the
intervention of the African Department of the Foreign Office, or to a
request from the President of the Royal Geographical Society, as the
recognition due to a distinguished explorer.
He had forgotten by now any rancour he might have retained for the
Foreign Office, and would drop in at the African Department from time to
time for a chat with "Rosy" Walrond--who was proposing to go to Unguja
to tighten things up, and intended to come and stay with him in the
Happy Valley and see with his own incredulous eyes the Red Crater and
its bottomless pit, and the lovely maidens of Iraku who were the cause
of Mrs. Anderson's heartbreak. Or with Ted Parsons--about to be named
Consul-General at Naples; or kind old Snarley Yow, who said he wished
now he had done like Roger: chucked the F.O. and a possible pension of
L700 a year and gone in for an African Concession like the Happy
Valley--suit him down to the ground.
The remarkable success of the Happy Valley--the one bright spot in
"German East," where there was never a native rising and whence came a
regular output of minerals, precious metals, precious stones; coffee,
fibre, rubber, cotton, tanning-bark, hides, poultry and potatoes; the
steady standing of its pound shares at forty marks on the German
exchanges, and the purring approval of the Schraeders: caused Roger to
be increasingly consulted in British Colonial circles outside the
Colonial Office. Diplomatists took an interest in him, and adjusted
their monocles at parties to see him better. The Foreign Office
published as a White Paper a Report drawn up at their request on the Big
Game of East Africa and its international importance. Was he to be a
means of solving the nascent Anglo-German rivalry by suggesting a
combination of effort in Colonization? The Schraeders hoped so.
Mrs. Bazzard was really vexed to see one day in the weekly edition of
the _Times_ that on March 25, 1903, Major Roger Brentham, D.S.O.,
together with other guests whose names meant nothing to her, dined with
Lady Silchester to meet the Right Honble. Josiah Choselwhit, etc., etc.
Sibyl at this time still believed Chocho to be the coming man, the
Premier who would set the British Empire right, bring about an Imperial
Customs Union and a Federation directed from London, and calm defiance
to the rest of the world. She was one of the earliest of the
B.M.G.'s.[#] Roger was of the opposite school, a school which at best
achieves a cool popularity amongst thinkers. He wanted to bring about a
moral union, so to speak, between the British Empire, Germany and the
United States, a pooling of their resources; and Universal peace: to
ensure which France should be retroceded a portion of Alsace-Lorraine,
and Germany allowed to grow into a great African Power. There were many
faults in the German conception of how Negro Africa should be
administered; but the same faults were to be seen in British Africa; the
same reforms would apply to both regimes.
[#] _Vide_ the columns of the contemporary _Morning Post_.
But Brentham, though he had distinguished himself in the fight with the
Boers for the overlordship of South Africa, had disapproved of the
policy of the Raid and had said so, and written caustically on the
subject. His views in some other directions, especially on Free Trade
with Africa, were diametrically opposed to those of the Idol of the
Midlands; so that Sibyl's attempt to bring them together at her board in
the hope that the Colonial Office might give scope to her cousin's
abilities, was frustrated at the very start. Chocho said very little to
Roger, and Roger, being anything but a self-pusher, said very little to
Chocho.
During these eight years Lucy's father, approaching and passing the age
of seventy, continued to farm at Aldermaston with vigour and geniality
and less and less conservatism. Lucy's mother was hale and hearty, with
apple-red cheeks, and placidly thankful to the Lord who had arranged all
the affairs of her family so well--never mind what happened to _other_
families: perhaps it was their fault. Lucy's sister Clara, who had
married Marden the Cricketer, was amassing year by year an enormous
family of alternate boys and girls, and, as Sibyl said, it would be
interesting to encourage her to go on till she had passed the normal,
and then exhibit her with her progeny at a County Show. Her husband
proved an assistant Agent for the Silchester estate of progressively
increasing worth, and let cricket go to the wall--or to Australia. His
boss, the Head Agent, Maurice Brentham, lived much in London and in
Staffordshire, supervising the affairs of the estate in those
directions; and managing them so well that when young Silchester came of
age he would be among the wealthiest of our peers and able to write and
produce mystic operas--if he so willed--or subsidize a whole Russian
ballet--without feeling the cost. Maurice had never married. His
excuse was the prolificness of Mr. and Mrs. Marden, the sufficiency of
Roger's family, and the seven children (already) of his brother Captain
Geoffrey Brentham, R.N. Geoffrey was a great begetter: almost like some
hero of the Greek classics. He apparently only spent one month at home
in every fifteen; yet his wife did little more--especially during these
eight years--than lie-in, nurse, short-coat and wean one child;
conceive, lie-in, nurse and short-coat another. Meantime her husband
took enormous pains over naval marksmanship, and agitated himself over
the quarrels of the Admirals. Mrs. Geoffrey was the daughter of a Naval
Chaplain with very pronounced views on family prayer and the
uncriticizable nature of the Bible; and on quite illusory grounds she
decided that Roger and his missionary wife, Maud, Sibyl--who, she was
sure, was the real cause of Maurice not marrying--were all rather wicked
and not worth knowing: so, fortunately, she absolves me from any concern
in her affairs.
Similarly I can dispose of Sibyl's father by saying that he died from a
wandering clot in 1905, and that Sibyl only showed perfunctory regret:
he had become a bore of the first water, obsessed by the belief that if
only he had had capital behind him, his ideas about farming would have
revolutionized British agriculture. Sibyl's mother, unwavering in her
attachment to her spouse, whom she only remembered as the handsome young
captain fresh from gallant service in suppressing the Indian Mutiny, who
had won her affections in 1859, died also, soon after her husband,
probably from some form of cancer. Aunt Christabel--the Honble. Mrs.
Jenkyns in private life--also died within this period, somewhere in
lodgings--Bath? Both deaths occurred at awkward junctures when big
political parties had to be put off at a moment's notice; and therefore
wrung from Sibyl not only a few tears of sorrow and remorse--_Had_ she
been quite kind to either? Would she, too, live to be old, boring,
unlovely, and consequently unloved?--but also exclamations of annoyance
at people who chose the supreme moments of the season, when Royalty was
once again showing an interest in you, to take to their beds and die.
Old Mr. Baines, the proprietor of the Aerated Beverages Manufactory at
Tilehurst, died of diabetes in 1906. He left his money--a few thousand
pounds--on trust to John, the eldest son of Captain and Mrs. Roger
Brentham, subject to a life interest for Mrs. Baines. His spouse had
led him a life, as he expressed it, since her son's death in 1888. She
had passed from the most narrow-minded piety to a raging disbelief in
all churches, sects, and creeds. The "raging" was chiefly inward or
expressed through her pen in "open" letters to clergymen,
philanthropists, or scandalized county journals. Otherwise she
maintained a Trappist silence, neglected the house-keeping, injured the
business by scaring away customers. At length in 1901 she took to
denying in a loud voice at Reading markets and other assemblages of
crowds (as in her letters to the _Berks Observer_ and the _Newbury
Times_), the very existence of a God; and then public opinion obliged
her husband to have her put away into an asylum.
Curiously enough she offered little opposition to this measure. She
asked for, and was allowed, a large quantity of books, and became with
the aid of new spectacles an omnivorous reader. She gave little
trouble. Her husband made a liberal payment to the asylum, but as this
ceased at his death, and the Trustees showed a mean desire for economy,
it occurred to the medical man in charge--not without a conscience--to
re-examine Mrs. Baines and see if she really was mad. As a result he
pronounced her restored to sanity. She made no comment on her release,
faithful to her vow of silence, but with the help of her trustees she
purchased a small cottage on the Bath Road near Theale. The sight of the
enormous motor traffic and the bicycle accidents seemed to amuse her.
Roger, during his 1906-7 holiday in England, at Lucy's wish went to see
her, to be satisfied she was properly cared for. She received him in
grim silence, offered a Windsor chair, and listened taciturnly to his
stammering, apologetic inquiries. When he stopped speaking she drew
blotter, pen, and ink towards her, and wrote in a bold hand on a sheet
of notepaper: "The British people are _not_ the Ten Lost Tribes of
Israel; more fools they, if they were. I agree with you about Religion.
I forgive Lucy. I am glad little John is to have my money when I die,
but I shall live as long as I can to find out the Truth. Don't come any
more."
She then conducted him to the door--it was in the shocking summer of
1907--pointed to the grey sky of a cold, dripping July and to the ruined
hay crops in an adjacent field, to the green corn beaten to the earth
and to a collision between a motor cyclist and a push-bike on the Bath
Road. Then her long, furrowed lips curved into an awful smile--a smile
perhaps her dead son had never seen--her angry eyes and her crooked,
uplifted finger expressed a derisive query as to the existence of any
Providential concern for the welfare of Man.
Therewith she returned to her books and the studies she had taken up so
late in life. Possibly she is living still at eighty-two.
During these eight years, Lucy's health, after some fluctuations, had
decidedly improved; and when her husband was preparing to return in the
autumn of 1907 for his final round-up of the Happy Valley Concession,
she insisted on accompanying him. It would be for less than two years;
Maud was coming too; and the children would be most of their time at
school. Rather with misgivings Roger agreed. Provided she kept her
health, it would indeed be a delightful conclusion to the great
adventure of their lives. They would revel for the last time in the
beauty of Iraku and the Happy Valley, their Crowned cranes and pea-fowl,
their tame gazelles and duikers, their quaint menagerie of monkeys;
their wonderful flower garden--Iraku grew everything: orchids and
mignonette, roses and lilies, petunias and pelargoniums, _Strelitsia
reginae_ and _Disa uniflora_.... He would wind up his financial
connexion with the Concession and retire from it a rich man, perhaps
retaining a sleeping partnership in its concerns: for it was entangled
with his heart-strings.
Then, all clear for Europe, after a cycle of Cathay. They would motor
from Iraku to the nearest railway station on one or other of the lines
that now penetrated the interior, secure the best cabins on the
luxurious steamers of the D.O.A. line, and thus retrace the route of
their first voyage, when love was incipient, but when their future
seemed dark and uncertain. They would be lovers again on this voyage,
but this time open and unashamed, and Maud should pretend to play the
part of a green-eyed Mrs. Bazzard.
The first portion of this pleasant programme was fulfilled. For a year
Roger rode from factory to mine, from coffee plantation to the fields
and sheds where pineapples were grown, cut, and canned. He made good
suggestions about their cattle, about war, unceasing war on the tse-tse
fly, which--it was feared--was entering the Valley. He viewed with
satisfaction his success over the crossing of Maskat donkey and Basuto
pony mares with zebra stallions, and considered it proved that the
resulting mules might become a valuable factor in East African
transport. He inspected the new ostrich farms, the new smelting works
and the primitive ceramics where native women turned out excellent
pottery for home use. He decided that further explorations for gold
should be undertaken in Ilamba, and that a fresh reef should be opened
up in western Iraku. They would waste no more money looking for the
matrix of the diamonds--diamonds might go hang, there were plenty of
them in German South-West Africa.
But this wolframite with its product tungsten: _that_ was worth
following up with persistence. It was more and more needed for the
application of electricity and for the latest developments of
metallurgy, and would alone make the Concession of great monetary value.
At the beginning of 1909 a cloud came over their happiness, contentment,
and sense of security in the future. In the first place the Austrian
annexation of Bosnia and its accompanying defiance of Russia by the
shining-armoured Kaiser had inspired British statesmen with
hand-in-the-breast-of-the-frock-coat speeches of the Pecksniffian brand;
the harder to bear since we were engaged about that time in pushing
Turkey out of Arabia and manipulating the partition of Persia. This,
once again, soured the relations between Englishmen and Germans. Then,
the value of the Happy Valley Concession, insisted on by Roger in his
despatches to the Directorate in Leipzig, had reached the comprehension
of the All-Highest and of the Imperial Cabinet. To these august
personages it seemed incongruous and detrimental to German
all-self-sufficiency that such an important portion of Germany's most
important colony should be managed by an Englishman, and that an English
Industrial Mission should contain a female of such measureless audacity
as a certain "Ann Anderson" who had dared to write a letter to the
All-Highest, complaining of sexual licence on the part of Germans in
East Africa. Let there be an end of this! The Englishman must go, the
Industrial Mission must be replaced by some subservient Roman Catholic
teaching fraternity from the Rhineland, which would attend to its
prescribed functions of instructing the Negroes how to use their hands
and in a limited degree their brains, and call nothing German in
question, least of all the policy approved by the Kaiser's
Kolonialminister. As to the Schraeders: they meant well: they had tried
to ride the German and the English horses abreast: a clever circus
trick, but one that no longer consorted with Imperial aims. They were
worthy financiers, but they had become too international, with their
offices in Paris, London, and Johannesburg, as well as in Leipzig and
Berlin....
These august decisions had to be conveyed to Roger by the greatly
disappointed Schraeders, who had sought so perseveringly to co-ordinate
the enterprise of the British Empire with that of Germany and
France--internationalists before the proper time. They knew, of course,
that Major Brentham purposed resigning his local Direction of the
Concession in 1909, but they had half hoped he might have continued in
Europe much the same function as a member of the Board. As it was, they
had to ask him to go, instead of acquiescing reluctantly in his
departure. And quite decidedly they had to request that all relations
between the Concession and the Stott Mission be severed.
From the Imperial authority in East Africa the Ewart Stotts received the
curt order to wind up the affairs of their mission and hand over their
buildings and plantations to the Brotherhood of the Heliger Jesu of
Bingen-am-Rhein. They would be paid compensation for the actual outlay
of their own moneys, and their teachers and subordinates would be
granted the equivalent of a year's salary, at existing rates.
This not-to-be-appealed-against edict caused the Stotts the acutest
sorrow and dismay; and Ann Anderson the most unbridled anger. Roger,
however, counselled resignation and moderation of utterance. Let them
take the compensation, get all they could out of the Imperial
authorities, and migrate to neighbouring British territories, if they
were still keen on Mission work.
"After all," he said, "I am going too, and you must feel, even if
Hildebrandt is to succeed me, it would be difficult for you to remain
here without my backing. Hildebrandt--and you all say you like his wife
and that she is in sympathy with you--promises me that if he does
succeed as Manager, he will do all he can for the natives and endeavour
to get your policy continued by the Catholic teachers.... Go home and
have a good rest. Go to England and take stock of what people are
saying and doing. Get Ann to take lodgings for you somewhere in
Berkshire ... see the _best_ of England.... _Then_, if you decide to
come back to East Africa you could start another Industrial Mission on
British territory among the Masai and the Nandi who would seem much the
same as the people you are now leaving...."
Ann, however, made her departure sensational. After handing over the
keys of Mwada Station to the Catholic Mission she marched out to the
centre of the market-place, on a hillock overlooking the lake; and in
the presence of a large crowd of Masai and Wambugwe she solemnly cursed
the Kaiser in Masai, Kimbugwe and English. It took more than nine years
for the curse in full measure to take effect; but then the Kaiser was a
much more important personage in the history of Africa than the occupant
of the Red Crater, and the Devil no doubt fought far harder to save him.
In the spring of 1909 Lucy was again attacked by pernicious anaemia, and
Dr. Wiese's remedies failed this time to arrest its encroachments.
"There is only one thing," he said, melancholy with foreboding at the
departure of his English friends--"only one thing to save Mrs. Brentham
from dying, and that is to send her quickly out of Africa on to a
home-going steamer. The sea air may stimulate the recovery of the blood
and help her to regain strength."
Roger therefore hurried through his preparations for handing over his
work to Hildebrandt. It was thought better that with them should go the
two Australians, so that the staff might be entirely German. Maud
superintended the packing of their personal effects. Roger decided,
partly out of liking for the Hildebrandts, partly from a horror he had
of stripping the home where he and Lucy and Maud had been so happy, to
present the Hildebrandts with its furniture and garnishings, and to take
away as little luggage as possible. He did this almost with a kind of
foreseeing that he might some day return. Maud felt very much parting
with the Crowned cranes. Together with pea-fowl they are the most
intelligent, inquisitive, well-mannered pets that the bird-world can
produce.
The journey to the coast port where the steamer would call was
accomplished in a motor ride of three days. Even to the dying and
little-regarding Lucy this was in striking contrast to the three-weeks
to four-weeks' journey up-country in her novitiate; with its crushing
fatigues, discomforts and frequent dangers. No more skulls and skeletons
of recent raids, no more intrusive lions, no need to fall among soldier
ants, no water famines and atrocious smells; no tedious waiting in hot
sun or drenching rain, while an unstable tent was being fumblingly put
up and a camp bed put together. When the motor halted for the night
Lucy was transferred by kind hands, as in a dream to a clean, sweet,
cool couch in a decent bedroom. When it was morning, after a breakfast
she scarcely seemed to taste, she was placed in a flying-bed--as the
motor seemed--and so the dream journey went on till she was aware of
being in a boat and then hoisted up into the air in a bed, and finally
put to rest in a cool cabin. Dream figures would pass through this
half-real environment. John Baines seemed sometimes to stand by her bed
or help her into the motor; Maud became confused with Ann, but surely a
much gentler Ann? There was Brother Bayley, looking for her to read
slowly through the Book of Exodus, so that he might translate it, phrase
after phrase, into Kagulu....
Once on the great steamer of the Deutsch Ostafrikansche Linie there
seemed a ray of hope. They had deck cabins allotted to them. Two
German Staff officers pretended they were _just_ as comfortable on the
tier below, and it would be a _pleasure_ to help in Mrs. Brentham's
recovery. She was quite a personage in the history of East Africa....
The steamer's captain, himself a married man, was kindness embodied. He
broke through any regulations there might be to the contrary and had a
section of the deck screened off opposite their cabins, so that no other
passengers might pass through this open-air, shaded parlour in which the
sick woman lay on a couch in a half-dream, even in a happy dream. Her
day-bed or couch was screwed to the deck so that it would not be jarred
or dislodged by movements of the vessel. Here she could lie all day or
all night; her husband and her sister-in-law--such a formal term should
not have been applied to Maud, she said; "sister in very truth"--could
take their meal alongside where she lay.
At Unguja there came on board the new British Agent, Sir Edward Walrond,
of the Foreign Office, to take farewell of Brentham since the latter
could not leave his wife. He seemed to pass in and out of Lucy's
dream---a pleasantly cynical person who only expressed sympathy with
Roger by a hand-grip and laughed away the idea of Mrs. Brentham not
being able to land at Naples and see the sights there, "with Ted Parsons
to take you round--he is becoming _very_ Pompeian in manner, I'm told."
... Walrond sends on board all the fruit and delicacies he can think of,
which might tempt Mrs. Brentham's appetite.
Archdeacon Gravening, who married her to John and then to Roger, comes
off to see her. He is quite the old man now, the veteran of the
Anglican Mission always there whatever Missionary Bishops come and go,
always writing down Bantu languages, always trying to kill some secret
sorrow of his own. He is alone with Lucy, kneels down for a few minutes
by her day-bed, takes her hand, prays silently, says aloud: "My poor,
poor child: I pray with all my heart you may surmount this weakness and
live to be loved by your children. Think sometimes, when you are well
and happy in England, of the lonely old man who married you to your good
husband. I always said Brentham had done the right thing."
Then he lays some flowers between her hands that the Anglican Sisters
have sent her. Lucy in her dream thinks they are marrying her again to
Roger, and laughs at the absurdity of their not knowing she has been his
faithful wife for--for--it is all so confusing--oh, ever so many
years....
Out in the open sea, the fresh boisterous air of he monsoon gives a
flickering stimulation to the enfeebled brain and body, even causes a
certain irritability and impatience, rare to her gentleness. "Roger!
_Can't_ they take me _quickly_ home? Can't they make the ship go
faster?..."
"My darling, she is going at a splendid rate; we shall be at Aden in
four days. Aden! You remember Aden? Where we took Emilia Bazzard with
us to spend that day, and saw the cisterns? I want you to get _ever_ so
much better in those four days, because I must leave you then...."
Hastens to add, as her hold on his hand tightens: "Oh, only for a couple
of hours whilst Maud takes my place, because I want to pay off our four
Somalis on shore. If I gave them all their money on the ship they might
gamble it away or have it stolen. You remember the Somalis? Our old
faithfuls--been with us for--what is it? Eighteen years. Wonderful!
They travelled down with us from Magara--often carried you out of the
motor or into the boat. Every day they come for your news."