Part 34

At Tabora he heard disquieting news about the Happy Valley. It was reported that the British-Boer army under General Smuts, which had already taken the southern slopes of Kilimanjaro from the Germans, was about to start--had started, in fact--on a bold diversion. Led by one or two English sportsmen, they were evidently making for Lake Manyara and the Happy Valley, with the intention of cutting the Tanganyika railway in Ugogo and outflanking the German forces in the coast-belt. It was a bold scheme that only a great general would have thought of. The story, he thought, must be true. The stroke was imposed on our strategy by the geography of the country.....

After days and nights of meditation and many discussions with Wanyamwezi headmen, guides, and disarmed Askari (who had transferred their allegiance from the Germans to the Allies with the greatest willingness), Brentham sought the general commanding the Belgian forces at Tabora and expounded his plan and the reasons for his plan.

Sanction was obtained. Duly furnished with papers establishing his identity and his position as an intelligence officer serving with the Belgian forces, Roger started at the head of a hundred picked Wanyamwezi, with as little baggage as possible. He felt now primed for any hardship, any privation, when a certain number of days' marching would bring him back "home," as he instinctively framed it in his mind. Nevertheless, in case strength should give out he purchased two donkeys for himself and Omari, who now chiefly filled the role of cook, and therefore must not be walked off his legs.

Then they plunged into the untracked wilderness, the least known part of German East Africa, between northern Unyamwezi and the crater region at the head of Lake Manyara, where the British forces would probably impinge on the Happy Valley. Oh, that he might arrive there in time to prevent the accidental or needless destruction of priceless experimental machinery, and the outcome of researches undertaken in the general interests of the world; and intervene possibly between the harmless, bewildered natives and a soldiery which might not understand them! At first his caravan travelled thirty miles a day in a swinging stride through a cultivated country, a country of good roads, rest-houses and ordered prosperity. Thence it passed north-east and east into a trackless, little-populated region, a no-man's land, illimitable plains and tablelands of thin grass, dotted at rare intervals with granite boulders, blocks and upright _menhirs_ of naked stone, as yet the undeciphered hieroglyphics of a chapter in African geology. The dry watercourses sheltered clumps of ragged, lank, thin-stemmed Hyphame palms, and strange-looking euphorbias. The open country swarmed with game--countless zebras, herds of yellow hartebeest, red-brown impala, black-belted, golden-yellow, white-bellied Grant's gazelle, family parties of twenty or thirty black-and-white and grey ostriches, blue-grey, black-maned gnus (almost as numerous as the zebras), and troops of blotched giraffes like run-away telegraph poles as they fled with uniform trot before his expedition. Rhinoceroses, larger than any Roger had ever beheld, charged his caravan, but more as an idle sport than with malign intent.... "What a pity," thought Roger, after successful evasions of these snorting bulks, "we could not domesticate these monsters and turn their strength to account in warfare? A rhino cavalry regiment would carry away all the enemy's wire entanglements and prove as useful as armoured cars."

Only stopping an hour here and an hour there to secure meat for his caravan or incidentally to give some too persistent rhino its quietus, he pressed on til his expedition entered country covered by his recollections--the basin of a former vast sheet of water, ancillary, perhaps, to the Victoria Nyanza, now reduced to the furrowed courses of half-dry rivers and a long salt lake, its shores and portions of its surface sparkling with salt crystals in the sunshine, and its surcharged waters of salts and sodas in solution, a milky blue. There were people in this wilderness of broad valleys and abrupt escarpments, tribes already known to Roger, primitive Bushman-like folk, speaking languages full of clicks, going stark naked, without domestic animals or agriculture, nomad hunters with bows and arrows, straying from the culture of fifty thousand years ago into awakened Africa: where white nations were fighting for predominance with gas and steel, aeroplane and armoured car.

At last he sighted familiar ridges and entered remembered ravines and noble forests, and followed streams of fresh, cold water. There were now visible many signs of the handiwork, the energy of civilized man. At the same time they encountered the first fugitives fleeing from Iraku before the coming of a war so terrible that there was nothing like it in the black man's legends or imagination: flying rafts in the air hurling bombs, the bursting of shells, the leaden hail of machine-gunfire.

Brentham's arrival on the scene coincided with some suspension of hostilities; at any rate, as he hurried forward through the bungalows, factories, and gardens of Wilhelmshoehe, he heard no artillery; nothing more war-like than the occasional popping of a rifle and a few shouts. The roads, however, were thronged with fugitives making for the woods, some of whom greeted him rapturously as the _Bwana-mkubwa_ returning to his kingdom, a god emerging from a machine who would set everything right. Many of these stopped in their flight, turned back and followed his men. They even ran alongside his peevish donkey, regardless of its kicks, strove to kiss a disengaged hand, called him by his native names. The pace of the irritated ass became a trot, a canter, now they were on well-made roads. Roger glanced from side to side, saw old buildings he remembered, and new bungalows and factories he had never seen before. Several were burning. Negro soldiers in British khaki uniforms were either attempting to stay the flames or were frankly pillaging the houses. Several glanced up at him, irresolute. He seemed a British officer of high rank, but not of their regiment; a few saluted; a question put here and there elicited the fact that they understood Swahili.

From them he gathered that a very large British force had reached Lake Manyara from the north-east, from the big snow mountains, guided by several Englishmen, one of whom was called the "Little Terror" (Kicho kidogo), who had a small army of his own, very fierce men, not in uniform, "washenzi wabaya."[#] That the German men of the Happy Valley had fled before the English to some great German stronghold in the south; but that the "Little Terror" had been told off to search and occupy the country west of the line of march, and he was now engaged in giving the "washenzi" punishment.

[#] Wicked savages.

Roger, scarcely halting more than a minute here or a minute there to glean this information, rode eastward as rapidly as his tired donkey could be urged to go. The absolutely familiar scenery was not much altered for the lapse of seven years. The roads were even smoother and neater, the hedges of dracaena and scarlet-flowered Erythrina more luxuriant. There were brilliant flower-gardens round the bungalows. There was the Stotts' former Mission station and school. Beside it was a new chapel of florid Gothic architecture.

Dr. Wiese's house and laboratory. He paused, got off the donkey, and entered the front garden. There, to greet him, was Dr. Wiese himself, lying on his back on a bed of scarlet geraniums, dead, in a pool of congealing blood, with a swarm of flies buzzing about his shattered face. He could see a smashed door, a broken verandah post, and strewn papers, glass bottles, odds and ends of things remaining over from a looting of the house. This was too serious an episode to be passed by without investigation. Omari had by this time come up. And not far behind him were the returning refugees and his caravan of soldier-porters. He strode up to the dead man. Yes, it was Wiese, the physician-friend of many years, who had striven so hard to save Lucy from an insidious disease.... Shocking ... to see him like this after seven years! If _only_ he had arrived yesterday it might not have happened. He took the shortest cut over flower-beds, past broken-into aviaries, trampled botanic gardens with an infinitude of labels, to the laboratory, whence came a shouting and quarrelling.

In this building there were a few Nyasaland soldiers in khaki and a number of sinister-looking Ruga-ruga, like those who had once been in Stolzenberg's employ. Bottles were being smashed in the search for brandy, strange fumes filled the air, irrevocable damage was doubtless being done. Here and there, thrown on one side whilst they searched for treasure, were heaps of slaughtered turkeys, peafowl, Crowned cranes and guinea-fowl, which the looting soldiery had obtained from the poultry yards and aviaries round about.

Roger, possessed with a fury which transformed him at this stupid destruction, shouted military commands to the men in khaki and in rags. Mechanically they dropped their booty and were silent. Some of the Ruga-ruga recognized him as the _Bwana-mkubwa_ who had once reigned here, and had joined the "Wadachi"[#] in investigating the "Terror's" death and disappearance. Cowed by his presence, they obeyed an order to march out of the building and assemble with the soldiers in the public square of Magara there to await further orders. Revolver in hand, and well backed by his determined-looking Wanyamwezi, he said: "I will shoot any man among you whom I catch looting or destroying." Sullenly they slunk away.

[#] Germans.

Another mile's ride and here he was before his former home, his mouth and throat dry with apprehension. The formal garden in front of the house was beautifully neat, gay with flowers in better order even than in his days. Up the pebbled path which led to the verandah and the stone steps he walked with a beating heart. Oh, that he should be seeing it all again; and oh, that Lucy might come out through the French windows with her graceful, rather languid walk, to throw her arms around his neck and say: "Dearest; dear, _dear_ Roger; back at last!" Or that even trusty sister, Maud-- How was Maud faring? He had heard nothing of her since a letter reached him at Stanley Pool, nearly two years ago ... those terrible years of silence whilst he traversed Central Africa....

But at the rumour of his approach it was neither his living sister nor the wraith of his dead wife that emerged from the open doorway: it was the sinister figure of Willowby Patterne: like himself in khaki: thinner, yellower, greyer, wickeder-looking than he had seen him ten or twelve years ago.

"Had a presentiment we should meet here," said Patterne, trying with a hand that shook to fix an insolent eyeglass in a bloodshot eye. "Though no one knew what had become of you since you bolted from England when the war started. No! ..." (as Roger makes to advance) "... Stay where you are or I shall have you arrested at once you ... you ... German ... _spy_!" (Roger takes his revolver out of its leather case and sees that it is loaded and ready.)

"Oh? I've got a revolver, too. If you make the slightest movement till I tell you to go, and where to go, I shall shoot."

At this threat, the general purport of which he understands, Omari bin Brahimu steps in front of his master and produces _his_ revolver. Seeing this, Willowby Patterne calls in a rather quavering voice, "Njooni, watu wangu, upesi; yupo adui! Upesi!"[#] Two men come from the back premises, look from the white devil pacing up and down on the verandah to the figures of Roger and Omari; and then, with a shout of joy, fling themselves on Roger--not to arrest him as Willowby first supposes, and so hesitates to shoot, but to kiss his hand, kneel at his feet, utter incoherent cries of joy, the while Omari keeps his pistol steadily aimed at the "Little Terror." They are two of Brentham's Somali gun-bearers of seven years back, Yusuf Ali and Ashuro.

[#] "Come, my men, quick! Here is the enemy, quick!"

Willowby, longing to shoot and kill, yet letting I dare not wait upon I would, disquieted that none of his Ruga-ruga obey his frantic whistling, decides to make a bolt of it and rally them and the Nyasaland soldiers, and so make a prompt end of Roger and the Somali traitors. (These men had arrived at his station in Namanga, hangers-on of the large and heterogeneous British force which was seeking a way across the little-known region between Meru and the Happy Valley. They told Patterne they had once been employed in Iraku on the Concession and offered to help him to show the way. Believing they might be useful for his own purposes in laying hands on the things he sought for, he had taken them on; and here they were, saluting his rival and enemy like a demi-god ... If he only got a chance to get hold of them! _He'd_ cut the life out of them with a kiboko!....)

Whilst he hesitated whether to walk down the steps in a dignified way or jump from the rails of the verandah into the flower-beds, his indecision was terminated abruptly. Behind him a woman shrieked, and he felt himself propelled by a vigorous push of stout arms down the stone steps and almost on to the group of Roger, Omari and the two Somalis. These might have laid hold of him, but a German lady, Frau Hildebrandt, impeded their action. She unceremoniously pushed Patterne into a parterre of petunias, whilst she too clasped Roger's hands in a frenzied appeal, a rapturous greeting. "It is Herr Brentham! Ach lieber Gott! Er wird verstehen. He will be our salvation. Ach mein Mann! Ach meine kinder! Hilf! Hilf!"

Patterne rose to his feet, ran over flower-beds, through or over dracaena hedges (since Roger's men blocked the garden gate), out of a tangle of gardens and outhouses, across the green, to the public square and market-place. Here he found groups of bewildered, sulky King's African Rifles, and his own Ruga-ruga. He had been given an escort of fifty Negro riflemen when, three days before, he had been detailed--at his own request, having finished his job as guide--to "clear up" Iraku and the European settlement of Wilhelmshoehe, professing to know every inch of the ground. He had been told, of course, that unless resistance was offered there was to be no looting; that any German women or children were to be allowed to remain in their homes until they could be officially dealt with, and all German men surrendering to be treated humanely as prisoners of war, and marched under escort to the nearest British camp. These instructions he had chosen to interpret in his own way by killing Dr. Wiese and terrorizing Frau Hildebrandt into finding him the information of which he was in search. He intended, of course, to make himself master of the Concession, in the hope that he might be recognized as owner after the War. There would certainly be several years of confusion in which he might rule here and perhaps acquire all the wealth he wanted.....

But the arrival--the resurrection almost--of Roger Brentham had so queered his plans that he saw red. He would assemble all the men he could get hold of and make a sudden rush on Magara House, and shoot, shoot, shoot before Roger's party could put themselves in a position of defence. He would declare Roger to be a traitor and a German Spy. Provided he killed him, the _fait accompli_ would not be followed with much of an inquiry at this very critical time....

But his Ruga-ruga were slow to respond, having recognized Roger as a redoubtable warrior. And the Nyasaland regulars flatly refused to march to the attack. Patterne was not one of their regular officers, and they insisted that an English Colonel having taken possession of this country they should all rejoin the main army and lay the case before their commanding officer. So Patterne, gathered his loads together, awoke his weary porters (who had taken advantage of the halt to gorge themselves with food after their severe privations) and departed down the Valley in the direction of the rapidly advancing armies. He felt he could not halt or eat or sleep till he had taken vengeance on the man who had so persistently baulked him; he would denounce him as a spy, as a traitor ... perhaps--oh joy!--get him court-martialled and shot; at any rate, collared and marched out of East Africa.

But he never even reached the head-quarters of the army now entering Irangi. Roger, anticipating his intentions, had rapidly written an account of his actions in turning Patterne out of Magara House, had explained who he was, the route he had followed, and his intention to remain in charge of the Concession till he was ordered to leave it by the proper authority. The Somalis travelling twice as quickly as Patterne's _safari_, and travelling with as much secrecy as speed, delivered the letter to the nearest British officer in high command. Some say that on the return journey they took a pot shot at Patterne as he was halting to whip some of his laggard porters; others that Patterne was speared in Ufiome by Masai camp-followers of the main army, who had suffered by some of his raids in the past, or who transferred to the "Little Terror" the vendetta they had carried on with his ally, the Big Terror of the Red Crater. In any case, "he perished miserably," as they used to write in pre-Wells histories. He never was heard of again, after he left the Happy Valley. His escort of Nyasaland soldiers quietly rejoined their regiment, then in the thick of fighting at Kondoa-Irangi; and no one cared enough about Sir Willowby Patterne to put any questions. His Ruga-ruga dispersed as plunderers on their own account, till they were rounded up sharply and a few of them shot for looting. The "Little Terror" ceased all at once to terrify, and the baronetcy, after a year's delay and presumption of death, passed to a distant relative, who was the reverend headmaster of a public school.

Roger, meantime, gradually restored the Happy Valley to something of its former peace and quietness. He harboured the Catholic missionaries and the German women and children there till provision could be made for their withdrawal. His proceedings were approved and sanctioned by a Boer General commanding a wing of the British invading army, who by one of those coincidences so common in this incredible war, not only played a great part in conquering German East Africa for the Empire he himself had steadily fought against for three years, but turned out to be the very identical van Rensselaer who had picked up Roger as a prisoner and saved his life in 1900.

As soon as the Happy Valley was brought into telegraphic communication with the coast and with England, Roger cabled to his sister his whereabouts and his intentions to remain in the Happy Valley till its political fate was decided. In return he learnt of the death of his two sons, and the fact that his two daughters had felt impelled to marry--Maud ("Fatima"), Lord Silchester, and Sibyl ("Goosey") a wounded officer--without waiting to hear from a father presumably lost in Central Africa.

So Colonel Roger Brentham at the end of the war decided that the England of the Armistice and the Peace and the Reconstruction period was no country for him to live in, with its coal strikes, railway strikes, engineer strikes, police strikes, taxi-drivers' strikes, dockers' strikes, bakers' strikes, stage-hands' strikes and electricians' strikes; its Irish atrocities and reprisals; its futurist art; its paper-strewn highways and byways and beauty-spots; its bottle-throwing chars-a-bancs; man-slaughtering motors; Albert Hall Victory Balls; jazz dances; betting scandals; high prices; and low standards of political morality. Preferable, far, was the Happy Valley, where relations between black, white, and brown were well adjusted, where great wealth was being quietly produced to the proportionate profit of all concerned in the production; where protection was not only accorded to all human beings, but also to all beasts and birds not directly harmful to human interests.

So, after regularizing his position with the Colonial Office and the "enemy" shareholders, he asked his sister Maud to join him, and replaced the Stotts and Ann Anderson in their industrial mission stations.

And in the Happy Valley he may remain another ten years yet, till he becomes a walking compendium of information on the past and present of East Africa.

When he is 72 and Maud is 74--a wonder as regards resistance to African germ diseases---it is just possible they may not wish to leave their bones in an African grave. They may take passages in an Aerobus to Hendon and thence slip down to Aldermaston by motor and up to Farleigh; and after glancing round at a rejuvenated England and a pacified Ireland, after appraising the intelligence and beauty of Roger's grand-children--especially the son and heir of Lord Silchester--may finally retire in some season of abnormal cold and unconquerable influenza to cedar-shaded Aldermaston churchyard, where the vestiges of Lucy and Sibyl await them.

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