Part 2

‘Dwala malana!’--which means, ‘Glory to Him-of-Two-Names.’

They invited him with gestures to taste the dishes of fruit which lay about him; and he did so, to their great joy. The village had all turned out by now; torches flared and smoked on every side; and it was in a blaze of light and through a thick avenue of men, women and children that the Colonel was at last conducted to the temple which had been prepared for him. The noise of conchs and drums had no more terrors for him now, and he watched the dances with an intensity of interest that threw him at last into a state of hypnotic coma.

The village slept late next morning. When the Colonel awoke he went out, from force of habit, to prepare breakfast. The guardians who slept on the threshold sat up and watched his movements awhile in stupid amazement; his quiet exit by the window had failed at first to rouse them.

He was working impatiently and irritably: he was afraid of being late; nothing was in its place. There was no axe to chop the wood; he had to break it with his hands. There were no matches, no tins of beef. It took all the gestures of all the priests to make him understand that he must not work. In time he grew used to being waited on by others; he grew used to obeisances and reverence. It was a new interest, and not more puzzling than most things. One thing disturbed him. Outside the temple was posted the Royal Minstrel, who played only one tune on his pipe--the Royal Tune. At first the Colonel had been delighted with this tune, and had made the minstrel play it to him from morning till night. But he grew tired of it. Whenever he opened the door, or even so much as showed his head at a window, the minstrel fired off this thing; when he went outside the village on any errand the minstrel followed him playing it. It maddened him, and at last he broke the pipe over the minstrel’s head and slunk back into his temple, and was very miserable for the rest of the day. But the people were delighted with this kingly trait, and the minstrel sold the pieces for a large price.

A strict watch was kept over his movements at first for fear he should escape; but after a while this was relaxed, and he used to roam at will in the forest. He usually returned at night, but not always. He visited the gold-diggings, but was alarmed by the look of the diggers, who reminded him of the American; he was afraid they would put him into a hutch. In another part of the forest he found a white man with a large family. The women and children were greatly frightened; but the man invited him into the house and told him he was a Missionary. The Colonel stayed there two days, and was converted to Christianity.

Meanwhile the tribe was preparing for war. The women were sealed up hermetically in huts; the warriors danced and rubbed their muscles with mowa juice; and late one night they disappeared silently with shields and spears among the trees. Next day they appeared again, exultant, with loads of booty; the white men had been utterly routed.

The stupefaction of the succeeding orgies was partially dispelled after many days by the frenzy of inspired minstrels, who proclaimed the imminence of the second Golden Age, and the permanent establishment of the wise and beneficent empire of the great Prince Dwala, Him-of-Two-Names, over the whole of the island, and those eyots beyond which constituted the rest of the habitable world.

The power of actual motion was finally restored by the rattle of musketry in the grey light of one dawn, and the snapping of twigs overhead, followed by the appearance of men in khaki among the trees. Unarmed and unprepared, the villagers fled into the forest beyond, and not a soul remained but the old Dreamer, who was seeking new visions in the quiet recesses of his sleeping apartment, and the Colonel, who ensconced himself comfortably in the sago-tree to watch this new human phenomenon. Horses crouched and snorted, dragging guns up the last slope, with a cluster of men straining at each wheel; infantrymen advanced and halted and turned at a shouted word; and the Colonel sat and looked on as at a new dance performed for his amusement. He was delighted at the burning of the huts, which made the biggest flame he had ever seen; but he grew tired at last of the long pauses in the ballet; so he climbed down to the tank and splashed water over the officers.

IV

The royal prisoner was royally housed. After the jolting journey in the sultry covered wagon, to the steady tramp of the marching soldiers, and the frightened crying of the old Dreamer who crouched beside him, it was pleasant to be in these spacious rooms, to look from under the sun-blinds into the leafy garden, to sit on the wet stones and dabble in the black pool in the hall.

Prince Dwala was shut up in the Old Residence while the Colonial Office made up its mind what was to be done with him. Compassionate ladies sent him baskets full of flowers. The rest of the prisoners--the Dreamer and a rabble of braves hunted down in the hills--were huddled away in the jail.

The Prince had many visitors. The Governor came, accompanied by his staff, young men in cocked hats, who looked as tall and morose as possible while the Governor lectured him. A young man came from the ‘Pioneer’ and interviewed him as to his opinion of Western civilisation; the Prince’s answers were disjointed, amounting to little more than ejaculations, such as ‘iced drinks’ and ‘theaters’; but his interest was evident, and the ‘Pioneer’ said that his views on the subject were ‘quite equal to those of some of the best of our Indian Princes.’ On the all-engrossing gold question he had been diplomatically discreet, nor would he commit himself on the equally difficult question of the British suzerainty over the Soochings.

He had numerous visits from Mr. Wyndham Cato, the Pro-Boer M.P., who was staying with the Governor, having arrived in the course of a grand tour of the Colonies, destined to supply him with ammunition for an attack on the Government all along the line on the ‘native question.’ But for Mr. Cato, the case of the Soochings would never have attained the importance it had. The Governor was disposed to treat the whole thing as a hole-and-corner brawl, a question of police; he would have bundled Dwala and his braves obscurely away into a penal settlement if he had been left alone. Mr. Cato blew the bubble. Bouverie Street and Whitehall, stimulated by telegrams, reacted one on the other. It became a public matter. The Governor smiled benignly, and squared it up to a larger scale. Thanks to Mr. Cato, Prince Dwala was a captive Prince instead of an arrested malefactor. The Prince conceived a warm affection for the little man, who let him try on his gold spectacles, and showed him how his watch wound up.

‘I have very little influence with the Governor; I have done all I can, and I am afraid that your deposition is certain,’ said Mr. Cato, one day, as he and the Prince squatted side by side at the edge of the pool--Mr. Cato folding little paper boats out of pieces of newspaper, while the Prince stirred the water with his foot to make them bob up and down. ‘But, even then, you will still be a Prince, and it is better to be a native Prince than the hereditary tyrant of a so-called civilised country, the heir of one of our mushroom dynasties of Europe, whose only purpose in life is to help a self-elected aristocracy, as vulgar as themselves, to grind down the sweating millions of honest working folk. You will still receive your revenues, if there is any justice left in this disjointed world of ours. I shall agitate to the best of my power to get some addition to your income from our niggardly Government. You will be a comparatively rich man, and if you win your lawsuit you ought to do very well indeed. Nobody has a right to prevent your going to London if you wish to. I am starting myself in a few days, and if you will allow me, I shall be very glad to take you with me.’

‘Not in a hutch?’

‘A “hutch”? Don’t be absurd. You won’t be a prisoner. You’ll travel as I travel. And, until some suitable residence has been found for you, I insist on your coming to stay with us at Hampstead. I am sure that my aunt and the two sisters who live with me will welcome you most warmly.’

The lawsuit to which Mr. Cato alluded was one of his own contriving. When the first load of gold from the mines was sold to the Bank, the Solicitor-General for the Colony had put in a claim for a royalty, which was met by the defence that the mine was outside the limits of the colony. The miners set up concessions granted by the deceased monarch of the Soochings. Mr. Cato, a republican at home, but a firm upholder of the divine rights of ‘native’ princes, hired a lawyer on behalf of Prince Dwala and claimed the mines as his personal property, set aside from time immemorial for the maintenance of the dignity of the Royal House. The tribe at large had never exercised more than the right of hunting over them. He denied the validity of the concessions, and asked for a declaration that the fee simple was vested in the Prince.

V

Prince Dwala formed a frequent subject of conversation at the Residence. Mr. Cato disagreed on every possible question with everybody there; but they found him a charming visitor, and the process of ‘draain’ his leg,’ as the Scotch call it, was an unfailing amusement to the younger members of the party.

He found them assembled round the breakfast table when he came out on the veranda next morning, beaming round through his gold spectacles with that benevolent smile with which he always began the day. Lady Crampton sat at the end, behind a silver urn--a flighty, good-looking creature, who might have passed for thirty. Besides her there were Mademoiselle and the three girls; Dick Crampton, and Reggie the nephew--secretaries both--deep in the batch of last month’s newspapers, which had just arrived.

The Governor and his private secretary were still at work.

‘When’s the execution, Dick?’ said Reggie, helping himself to ham.

‘Half-past ten, old man; you’ve lots of time.’

‘The usual tortures, I suppose?’

‘Just the usual. The Mater’s been up for hours sharpenin’ the spikes of the rack.’

‘Getting rusty, I suppose?’

‘Not they! They got blunted over all those land-tax defaulters last week.’

Helen, the youngest girl, tossed her long hair over her cheeks and exploded with laughter.

‘Soyez gentille, Hélène,’ said Mademoiselle: ‘les jeunes filles bien élevées ne rient pas à table.’

Mr. Cato adjusted his spectacles, and stared with horror from face to face.

‘What nonsense are those boys talkin’ down there?’ said Lady Crampton. ‘For Heaven’s sake don’t choke, Helen! Dick, you naughty boy, do try to behave.’

‘You mind what the Mater says, Reggie.’

‘What was Her Excellency pleased to remark?’

‘She says you’re not to play the elephas mas gigas ass. Hello, Guv’; good mornin’.’

His Excellency came in, tall and débonnaire, and sat down to breakfast. After him came his private secretary, a pale and anxious young man, who said little, and opened an egg as if he expected to find an important despatch inside it.

‘Any news, Reggie?’ said the Governor, cheerfully rubbing his large white hands together.

‘Fry’s hurt his finger.’

‘Bad luck to it!’

‘Well, Sir Henry,’ said Mr. Cato, beaming away, ‘I’m going to have a _good talk_ with you after breakfast about Prince Dwala.’

‘Too busy, too busy, my dear Sir. You talk it over with Mr. Batts; _he_ knows all about everything.’

The private secretary looked up darkly, and gave a dry nod at Mr. Cato.

‘Rum chap that Prince,’ said Reggie: ‘looks uncommon like a monkey.’

Mr. Cato flushed with indignation.

‘_Please_ don’t talk like that, Mr. Crampton. I know you mean no harm; but it’s just by little remarks like that that we Englishmen nourish that narrow-minded contempt for natives to which we are all of us only too prone.’

‘Dear little things, monkeys,’ murmured the tactful Lady Crampton: ‘my sister used to keep one in Kensington, till it took to hidin’ food in the beds, and had to be given to the Zoo.’

After breakfast Mr. Cato and Mr. Batts retired into a dark chamber, and discussed the question of the Prince’s future. Mr. Batts sat like an eminent specialist, with folded arms and pursed lips, while Mr. Cato expounded his views. Mr. Batts held out great hopes of the Government coming down handsomely.

‘My dear Sir, we couldn’t have chosen a better moment for the application. The Colonial Office is bound to spend its grant by the end of the financial year, under penalty of having it reduced in the next Budget--it’s a Treasury rule. What I’m telling you is a secret, mind; don’t let it go any further. Between you and me, my dear Sir, they’re often glad if some expense of this kind turns up to put their surplus into; and once they’ve got him over, it’s easy enough to get the item renewed year by year. They like native potentates; it’s picturesque and popular. As for preventing white men from going into their country, that is a policy which I can’t accept. It’s opposed to the natives’ own interest: their countries could never be developed without European assistance.’

‘How do you mean “developed,” Mr. Batts?’

‘Well, take the question of gold, for instance. These lazy beggars the Soochings would simply leave it lying useless in the ground, as far as they are concerned. Mind you, I’m not saying that all these Jews and foreigners who start the thing are the most desirable people to carry civilisation among the savages. Providence works for good by very funny means.’

‘But the gold belongs to the Soochings.’

‘Gold or any other commodity belongs by the law of nature to the man who works it. It’s a reward for his industry. That’s in Mill. It’s not by any means such an easy thing working a mine as you might think, especially in a savage country. First of all, there’s the labour difficulty to deal with.’

‘What do you mean by the “labour difficulty”?’

‘Getting labour, of course; native labour to work the mine.’

‘But what are the Europeans doing there, if they’re not going to labour?’

‘You’ve evidently not studied the mining question, my dear Sir. Once the prospecting is over, Europeans don’t _dig_. That would be very primitive. They have their work pretty well cut out as it is, pegging out their claims and looking after the men to see they don’t steal. Of course they have to get natives to dig for them--Soochings in this case.’

‘But why should the Soochings dig for them?’

‘Why should they, my dear Sir? Why, we’d pretty soon _make_ ’em! But it’s no good arguing these big questions on first principles. We simply follow the policy which has worked so well in other parts of the world.... Now what’s your figure for the Prince’s salary from the Colonial Office?’

‘Well, what do you say to a thousand a year?’

‘Oh, make it two, make it two. That Mandingo man gets two thousand; and we don’t want to have our native princes priced lower than Africans. It’s just these things which fix the status of a Colony in the eyes of London people.’

‘Good; two thousand.’

‘And as big a lump down as we can screw out of them. I’ll instruct His Excellency.’

‘Then he’ll get his ordinary revenue from his subjects?’

‘That won’t amount to much.’

‘And the royalties on the gold?’

‘Don’t count on that. I saw the Chief Justice last night; he’s going to give it against you.’

‘I shall appeal.’

‘To the Privy Council? Well, well: one never knows what will happen when a case gets to the Privy Council.’

VI

Mr. Cato found his path unexpectedly smooth. The Colonial Secretary, delighted at shifting an awkward responsibility on to the shoulders of a political opponent, telegraphed a gracious acceptance of Mr. Cato’s offer to take charge of the Prince. The two thousand a year was promised without bargaining, with another two thousand down for initial expenses. The Colonial Court, it is true, had decided against the Sooching claim, but leave was given to appeal; and Mr. Cato took a lawyer and a packing-case full of evidence with him on board the P. & O. in order to carry the question before the Privy Council.

He had taken up the clubs for Prince Dwala on purely unselfish grounds, but he could not help feeling a personal satisfaction in the results of what he had done. His whole tour had been a success; now that he had seen the various kinds of native whom he had so long championed in Parliament, the rightness of his attitude came home to him with a picturesque forcibleness. He was like a dramatist who had seen all his plays acted one after the other for the first time. And now by this last lucky hit he had put himself over the heads of all his rivals in his own peculiar line of politics. Prince Dwala’s case would be famous; his colleagues would help him trounce the Government for this wicked gold war; the credit of it would be his; every question would come round to him for a final answer; the oppressed native would be sitting at home in his drawing-room. As he lay awake in his bunk he caught himself musing pleasurably over the social distinction which it might involve. Nonsense! A Prince is no better than any other man, or very little. Still, other people think so; it would be amusing to watch their demeanour.

It was no light matter being in charge of a Prince on board ship. Mr. Cato found it best during the daytime to keep him as much as possible in his cabin, where he sat looking patiently out of a port-hole, saying over new words and phrases he had heard, or making cigarettes with the little machine which Mr. Cato carried about with him--a contrivance which inspired him with far greater interest and awe than the complications of the engine-room. It was the best cabin on board, by-the-bye, for the Shanghai merchant had insisted on giving it up to the Prince. It was not that Dwala claimed any outward signs of respect--he was modesty itself; but his presence caused a certain _gêne_ among the other passengers, who were uncertain whether to rise from their seats or not when he entered the reading-room. Then he had no idea of punctuality, and naturally nobody liked to begin dinner until he came in. The sailors had no end of a job enticing him down from the crosstrees, where he had ensconced himself at the sound of the dinner-bell. Then again, the chief steward was nearly frightened out of his wits, when he leaned over his shoulder to offer him potatoes, at the way the Prince grabbed his plate and growled, under the impression that he wanted to take it away from him. The passengers saw but little of him till the last night of the voyage, when they insisted on his presiding at the concert in aid of the Sailors’ Orphanage. They were all immensely impressed by the grave attention with which he listened to the comic songs.

Mr. Cato was very busy all day going through the evidence with the lawyer; and half of every night he spent following the Prince in his swift rambles over the ship, seeing that he did not get into mischief. It was a relief when they landed at last in England.

VII

The first thing Mr. Cato did, when he had settled his guest comfortably at home in Hampstead, under the kindly care of his two sisters, was to go and call on Lord Griffinhoofe, his immediate political leader.

Mr. Cato’s party was divided at this time into many sections. An official leader had at one time been appointed, but in the confusion of politics the party had lost the papers and forgotten his name. The leadership was now divided among a number of eminent men, of whom Lord Griffinhoofe, ex-Cabinet Minister and member of one of the oldest and richest families in England, was not the least. It was generally understood that he would get an important portfolio when a Liberal Government should be formed, and the urbanity of his manner was held to fit him peculiarly for the Foreign Office.

London was out of town when Mr. Cato arrived. The Session was over; but Lord Griffinhoofe was known to have come back on business for a few weeks to his house in Piccadilly. Mr. Cato found the blinds down, and a charwoman washing the steps. He walked in unannounced and entered the well-known reception-room on the ground floor, disguised at present with a furniture of linen bags, enfolding monstrous shapes of large ornaments. Here he found a flushed female, with a bonnet on the side of her head, sitting on one of the long row of leather chairs. She smiled and wagged her feathers and roses at him pleasantly, assuring him that ‘the good gentleman’ would be ‘out in a jiffy.’ Mr. Cato seated himself modestly in a dark corner and waited.

After a little while the inner door opened, and Lord Griffinhoofe himself appeared--a large stout man, with peering short-sighted eyes. He smiled and nodded when he found himself confronted by a curtseying female. Then he cleared his throat, looked in three pockets for his eye-glasses, wiped them, and examined the dirty scrap of paper which he held in his hand.

‘Mrs. Waggs?’ he said.

‘Yes, my lord,’ said the smiling woman in the bonnet; ‘that’s my name, sir, after my dear ’usband who went to the bad.’

‘Well, and what can I do for you?’

‘Mrs. Waggs, my lord, that’s my name. I’ve come to be cook, ’earin’ as you was in want of a temp’ry from my good friend Mrs. ’Amilton, who washes the steps, pore thing, of a Saturday when the other lidy ’as to be at ’ome.’

Lord Griffinhoofe examined the paper very carefully, and cleared his throat again.

‘H’m! It’s very awkward. My wife’s away. I hardly know what to do. You’re a cook, you say?’

‘Mrs. Waggs, my lord. Good plain or fancy with the best of character’s, though short, bein’ a temp’ry.’

‘Can you ... can you dust things, Mrs. Waggs?’

‘Dust? Me dust? No thank you, my lord, not if I know it. Thank ’Eaven, I ’aven’t come down to a duster quite as yet. O no, thank you! Mrs. Waggs, plain or fancy, on the usual terms, but no dustin’, thank you! I’m not an ’ousemaid.’

‘It’s very awkward. So you want to be cook. Can you make pastry?’

‘Anythink in reason, my lord. One doesn’t ask too much of a pore woman with two children and an ’usband in trouble. Pastry is not my fort, nor ’ave I been accustomed to families where pastry was eaten on a large scale.’

‘Well, well. It’s very awkward. The fact is that I _have_ a cook already.’

‘And well you may, my lord, you that might ’ave dozens for the askin’.’ Mrs. Waggs burst into tears. ‘But it’s ’ard on a pore woman that’s trudged miles an’ miles without a drop o’ drink to look for a job, to be told the place is bespoke.’

‘There, there, don’t cry, Mrs. Waggs. I can’t turn my cook out to make a place for you, can I?’

‘An’ my pore ’usband in trouble, ’im that never did an ’ard day’s work in ’is life before.’

Clouds veiled the serenity of Lord Griffinhoofe’s countenance for a little while, then he passed his hand over his face and emerged with a bright idea.

‘How would it be if you saw the cook and had it out with _her_?’

Mrs. Waggs, paying no direct attention to this proposal, nor to the next proposal to come back in a few days and see what could be done then, but continuing merely to repeat her name and claims, Lord Griffinhoofe finally decided that the best thing he could do was to ring the bell and consult the housekeeper. A lean woman in black presented herself, glanced quickly round, and listened with sour submission while Lord Griffinhoofe explained the situation and its difficulties.

‘Shall I deal with the woman, my lord?’

‘I shall be extremely grateful, Mrs. Porter. I hardly know what to do myself.’

Three short steps brought the housekeeper in front of Mrs. Waggs.

‘Now then, out you go! March!’

Mrs. Waggs quailed and rose obediently.

‘Comin’ here in such a state--the idea!’

The housekeeper shut the front-door behind the visitor, and returned demurely the way she had come.