Part 27

What was it that brought back the Red Crater to his mind, the sinister face and powerful figure of Stolzenberg; or the German Commandant in the fort at Kondoa? Whose was the thin, aquiline, insolent face with its riotous smile that held his gaze across the narrow Strand, the face of a tall man in ultra-fashionable cut of clothes, standing up amid a bower of Gaiety girls with four or five extra-smart young City men--stock-brokers, no doubt, Company promoters, or the solicitors of Company promoters--? It was Willowby Patterne he had been staring at for several minutes; and Sir Willowby was flicking a greeting to him with the manicured hand which had drawn the trigger on so many lovely beasts, or had lifted the Kiboko with such a cunning twist to lay its lash on the naked skin of some defaulting native porter....

He had to concentrate his thoughts before he replied to the greeting with a grave bow--had to remember that he had once played semi-host to this man at a Scotch shooting lodge; hated him mostly on hearsay unproved evidence, and chiefly on apprehension as to future maleficence, rather than on positive wrongs to himself.

Then he gave his consideration once more to the passing pageant.

Thrum ... thrum ... thrum ... thrum ... in between the bursts of military music went the steady marching of the Imperial troops. There was the pick of the regiments of the British line; there were samples of Indian infantry--bearded Sikhs, grinning Gurkhas, handsome Panjabis--Surely that was young Pearsall-Smith at the head of one of these detachments? He had heard of his distinguishing himself in the Nyasaland wars against the Arabs--and he winced to think he had no part in this ceremonial, he could point of late to no service to the Crown and Empire--was it his fault? If he had gone to Norway or to South America, could he have achieved anything that might have brought him into the procession of to-day? What splendid Indian cavalry. That Indian prince leading them had once given him some tiger shooting when he was a young A.D.C. to Sir Griffith Gaunt. Ah! Here was Africa in the procession--Hausas from Nigeria, Sudanese from Egypt; these bronzed, well-seated, rather insolent-looking white men were mounted police from the Cape, from Bechuanaland, from Natal.

These gaudy zouave uniforms and Christy minstrels' faces were a contingent from the West Indian regiments that had figured in so many West African wars. And now came well-set-up Turkish police from Cyprus, well-drilled Chinese police from Hong Kong; even solemn-looking Dyaks from Borneo, who were believed to have given up head-hunting in favour of constabulary work at the Bornean ports.

And carriages containing permanent officials--he thought he recognized Sir Bennet Molyneux in one, possibly attached to the person of some foreign prince, some German or Russian Grand Duke. And Ministers of State saluted by the happy crowd with good-humoured cheers and a few serio-comic groans. That one who aroused such an outburst of cheering was the great Choselwhit, Josiah Choselwhit, Secretary of State for the Colonies, in Windsor uniform with the customary eyeglass. His hosts, the Schraeders, joined lustily in the hurrahs, as did the City men opposite; Choselwhit was supposed to have brought grist to the City mills and to be the mainstay of the British Empire in which Germans as well as British made such millions of money....

And ... and ... and ... At last, after many preliminary princes and princesses, Queen Victoria herself; a little figure swathed in much black clothing but with filmy white around the rosy face and yellow-white hair.... She progressed very slowly--so it seemed to Roger--past their windows. The Schraeder brothers positively brayed their international loyalty, so that their voices were even heard by her above the deafening clamour. She turned her somewhat haughty profile and clear blue eyes towards their balcony with its flamboyant draperies and symbols, as if she searched for some face she knew to whom she might address a smile of acknowledgment; but finding none, turned her gaze to the Gaiety girls and the shouting young men who had invited Patterne as their guest. To these pretty actresses, showing real emotion, she did address a royal smile, which caused one of them to give way to real tears. Then Roger found himself gazing at the back of her bonnet with its white ostrich plume, illogically disappointed that there had been no smile for him, he who would have served her so gladly had her ministers let him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*CHAPTER XX*

*THE BOER WAR*

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

Stellenbosch, Cape Colony, _March_ 25, 1900.

DEAR ROGER--

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

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