Part 29

He entered his house. The presence of Lucy and Maud seemed as if it must be material, no: merely spiritual. He looked into their rooms. They had been considerately tidied before they left, and showed little sign of packing up and departure. Lucy was a good house-wife, he reflected, and she probably judged that in her absence he might want to entertain guests, colleagues come on business, Government officials. So that her room and his sister's were ready prepared for occupation. The nursery was a little more desolate. The toys had been given away to Halima's children. If ever Ambrose and Sibyl came back—and how unlikely that they would!—they would have grown far beyond the love of toys. Maud had left most of her songs on the top of the piano. She could get newer ones in England. The vases were filled with fresh flowers from bush and garden. Halima had put them there, faithful to her mistress's directions.

Halima now called him to his tea, on the verandah. The table was laid with all the care that Lucy was wont to bestow on it. Andrade the cook had baked a nice cake and even attempted something resembling a muffin—a kind of compromise between a muffin and a tea cake, due to a confounding of Maud's instructions. Roger's eyes filled with tears. Halima, departing with a brass tray, answered with two loud sobs in her facile grief. Yet a few years before she had been ready to abandon her mistress in distress when she was stranded in Mr. Callaway's unsavoury depot at Unguja. His eyes followed her portly form magnificently swathed in red Indian cottons, with tolerant good will. There was a good deal of the humbug about all these black people, but it was kindly humbug. He was grateful for this comprehension of his sorrow, for this effort to carry out his wife's instructions that the comforts and little elegancies of their home should be continued after her absence.

Then the tame Crowned cranes came below the verandah to be fed with bread and cake as Maud had encouraged them to do. His black-and-tan English terrier, confined for safety in the cook's quarters during his absence, had been released and now came tearing up the steps and rushing along the verandah till it was in contact with his lowered hand, volleying forth a long succession of eager barks of joy and whimpers of hysterical distress and relief at Master's absence and return....

In the evening after dinner Wiese, Hildebrandt and Riemer (Plantation Manager) came up to pay their respects to the Herr Direktor and give him an informal report of all that had occurred during his absence. They tactfully said little about his bereavement, though Hildebrandt heaved some theatrical sighs at the sight of Maud's music on the piano. But they had much to say in German and English that was interesting and encouraging. So they sat up late into the night talking and discussing. Andrade sent them up an impromptu supper, wine and beer were drunk in the moderation imposed by their then rarity—owing to transport difficulties—and when they finally departed at one in the morning, under the firmament of blazing stars, with lemon-yellow lanterns to light their path back to their respective quarters, the grass-widower betook himself to his couch in a more resigned frame of mind. There would be great doings, great strokes to hew out fortunes for all of them, within the next few months.

A fortnight afterwards, by swift runner from Kondoa, came a telegraphic message despatched from Saadani:

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

Thereafter followed long day-rides of inspection, an occasional week's absence from home studying possibilities in remote parts of the Concession, holding conferences with the Stotts, laying cases and possibilities of special difficulty before the German officer commanding at Kondoa. His talks with the Stotts were directed to several ends: urging the Stotts to get into the confidence of all the native tribes—Bantu, Hamitic, Nilotic—of the Concession's area and find out how far their interests might be subserved by the full exploitation of the animal, vegetable and mineral wealth of this patch of East Africa. "Unless we carry the natives with us," he would say, "this enterprise must eventually fail, wither up; because, boast of the climate as we may, the hard manual labour cannot be performed by white men: we must fall back on the native. Now half the men-natives in these parts are picturesque to look at, graceful figure and all that; but they shirk hard work. They prefer to loll about in the sun or to run after women. Can't you put some ambition into 'em? Teach them something besides these rotten hymns and prayers that are meaningless to them?"

"But we do," said Mrs. Stott. "You haven't looked over our school for two years, I believe. You seem to have got hymn-singing on the brain. Our hymns translated by us are not rubbish and the natives enjoy singing them...."

"I don't doubt they do, though I don't see what use it is. Neither they nor the prayers prevent the Almighty from sending the flights of locusts.... Or rather these appeals and this excessive praise do not stimulate the Divine power to do something to abate Africa's myriad plagues. It is always poor Man—and most of all, poor White man—who has to work his brain and body to exhaustion to set right what Nature perversely sets wrong. Here am I, trying to abate the grasshopper plague in our tobacco plantations by encouraging the domestication of the Crowned crane. Yet the natives won't take any interest in this idea, though the Crowned cranes feed themselves and have charming manners. Can't you push this matter in your schools? Couldn't you preach a sermon on the uses of the Crowned crane?"

On another occasion he put a further difficulty before the Ewart Stotts. "Look here! I'm going to take you again into my confidence. I want you to find me an assistant, some one of your own kin in Australia who would come out here at short notice on an agreement for three years—I even want two men, one of them versed in shorthand and typewriting who could be my secretary. I don't know any one in England who isn't either a rotter or a potential rotter, or hasn't got a job already. There's my brother Geoffrey, but he's a Commander now in the Navy, getting on fine, and simply wouldn't think of chucking the service to come here. My other brother is well suited as a land-agent. I want something Australian, some one as like you two as possible. I don't mind a moderate amount of religion, as long as it doesn't waste their time on week-days, and they can't be too teetotal for my liking. No Whisky-drinker need apply."

"Why, I believe we know of the very two, at any rate of the principal one," said Mrs. Stott: "My nephew Phil Ewart. I haven't seen him since he was a baby, but my brother's wife writes to me now and again and says he's doing very well on a big sheep run in Queensland...."

"Well then, look here: let's draft a cablegram that I can send off from the coast. I'll guarantee him a year's salary and, if he turns out satisfactory, a three years' agreement—L500 a year. He can choose any likely young fellow ... good character ... abstainer ... serve as clerk ... L200 a year commence ... take steamer Australia-Durban, and German steamer Durban-Saadani, and so on, up-country. If I get 'em here by November I can give em three months' trial before I set out for home.... Must take a holiday next year and bring my wife out afterwards. Don't like to leave this business without a Britisher in it to watch my interests, don't you know, and advise me how things are going while I am away."

So they arranged the matter between them. Then Mrs. Stott said: "I've a funny proposition to make. A week ago I received a letter from Ann Jamblin that was ... at Hangodi.... Ann Anderson she is now. She saw Lucy there five weeks ago and was much touched at her calling on them. Says she took a special fancy to your dear, sweet, pretty children. Her own little girl is very ailing. Well, now she goes on to say old Mrs. Doland, who was a great supporter of their Mission, has died and only left the East African Mission L5,000. For this and other reasons the Mission thinks of giving up Hangodi, as it is quite an isolated station now, and all their others are in the British Sphere.... Well, to put it quite plain, as you're impatient to be gone—oh, I know by the way you're tapping your gaiters—how would it be if your Concession or you or some one advanced our Mission L150 for out-of-pocket expenses—so as to move quickly, don't you know? And we sent word to Ann and her husband to join us as soon as they had definite authority to evacuate Hangodi. The German Government, I believe, are going to buy the station. If we got Ann and her husband up here the couple of them would strengthen our hands mightily and then we could give some of that worldly instruction you're so anxious about. Or make it up in some way of help. Strengthen the British element here. For although I don't hold with your views about Providence one little bit, and believe the World was made in six days and am surprised every now and again that you aren't struck down for your audacity, not to say blasphemy, yet something tells me you and we are really working for the same Divine ends...."

Roger said the matter should certainly have his attention. (Before he left for England the following Spring Ann and Eb were members of the Stott Mission, and the Stotts were able to open another station and school in the Iraku country.)

The months flew by through autumn, winter and spring. Roger established a stud farm in the Happy Valley where he could locate a captured dozen of zebra and interbreed with Maska donkeys ... perhaps a manageable, large-bodied zebra-mule might solve some of their transport difficulties in the regions of the tse-tse fly. He introduced shorthorn cattle from South Africa to mingle with the native oxen and improve the milk supply. He imported from Natal six Basuto ponies, two stallions and four mares. He ordered three safety bicycles—the great new invention or combination of inventions. He and his German engineers, reinforced by a clever Swiss sent out by the German directorate, gave special consideration to the waterfalls of Iraku, to harness them to turbines and produce electric light. This power would feed electric dynamos when the progress of the railway construction enabled such heavy things to reach the Happy Valley. They laid out great coffee plantations and experimented in tea and quinine. It was hoped the natives might take up all these cultures in time, on their own account, as they had done that of cacao on the Gold Coast and in the German Cameroons.

The day for his departure in the early spring came ever nearer and nearer. The two Australians arrived, went down with fever, recovered and eventually proved the right stuff, especially young Philip Ewart. Mrs. Stott said she would see he did not get into mischief while the Director was absent in England. She would also give an eye to the Brenthams' house and the doings of Andrade and Halima as caretakers.

There was therefore little cause for anxiety on Roger's part as he made his preparations for a six-months' absence, save the rumoured doings of a certain Stolzenberg, a mysterious German hunter who, coming from the British Sphere, had established himself near the north-west escarpment of Lake Manyara, apparently on the border of the Happy Valley Concession (Gluecklichesthals Konzession).

CHAPTER XIX

TROUBLE WITH STOLZENBERG

In those days—to parody a line of Holy Writ—it might be said, "To every man, a crater or two"; if you were referring to the wilderness which lay between Kilimanjaro and the southern Rift Valleys, and to the strange adventurers who in the 'nineties ranged up and down the East African interior between Baringo on the north and the Happy Valley on the south, over a region of elevated steppe land, isolated mountains of immense height, and extinct volcanoes. Some of these lawless men were accumulating considerable wealth in ivory, sheep and cattle. They wanted fortresses in which to live and store their plunder, or the spoil of their chase, the elephant tusks, the rhino horns, the lion and leopard skins, the black and white mantles of the long-haired colobus monkeys, the ostrich plumes; even the roughly-cured skins of the rosy flamingoes which were becoming an article of great demand in the plumage trade. For this purpose the large and small craters of presumably extinct volcanoes were ready to hand; as though Nature had anticipated their wants. Most of these were surrounded on the inside by the nearly continuous, circular wall of the crater, only broken down at one point where the lava or nowadays a stream of water (the overflow of a little crater lake) issued from the crater floor. Here with piled stones it was easy to restrict the gap and hold the entrance against any savage enemy without artillery. These defences were, of course, prepared against the Masai and not with any idea of defying a White Government, whose advent at that time seemed very problematical: at any rate a White Government that would interfere to protect the natives, to obstruct elephant killing, or regulate the movements of cattle between a disease-infected area and one that still possessed uninfected flocks and herds.

It was to one of these craters—very red in colour—that Roger Brentham rode up at the end of March, 1897, after three days' difficult journey from the south. He halted his little safari of armed porters and his four Somali gun-men on a level tableland in front of the gap in the crater walls; a gap cleverly closed by a huge door of yew planks and a bridge of yew trunks thrown over the issuing brook, with stones piled on top to a height of twenty feet. There were obvious indications that the walls and woodwork were loopholed for gun-fire. He called several times loudly in Swahili and German to arouse an answer and rapped on the cumbrous door.

Presently a smaller door within the great one opened and there emerged a sullen-looking negro giant, probably a Makua from the south. [Such offer themselves for service in Unguja.] "Unatakaje?" he asked in Swahili. "I want to see your Bwana—I do not know his 'native' name," said Brentham, "but just take this 'karata' to him and he will read my name; and say I wish to see him. Meantime I will make a camp here."

The Makua doorkeeper or watchman returned within, and possibly an hour passed before anything further happened, during which Brentham had his tent erected, and arranged for his men—they were travelling very light—to make their sleeping-places around it.

The small door was again reopened and there stepped out a remarkable-looking man of over six feet, with enormous recurved moustaches, a sombrero hat, jackboots and a general swashbuckling air and a visible revolver in the broad belt that held up his breeches. He walked slowly towards Roger who advanced to meet him.

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

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

"It is ... for to-day—at any rate. Well: here I am. You come to tell me 'it is Easter Sunday, and Christ Is Risen,' like the Russians do?"

"Why, is it Easter Sunday? Dear me! I had no idea. If so, I might have chosen another time. Still, as I am here and as you are here—and I fancy you are often absent?—I should be obliged if we could have a talk, come to an understanding, don't you know?" (There was no answering friendliness in the fierce face that looked into his, the face of a perfectly ruthless man, eyes with bloodshot whites, wide mouth with pale flaccid lips, showing strong tobacco-stained teeth, prominent cheek bones, lowering brows, a massive jaw, and here and there an old duelling scar.)

"An unnerstanding?" he said sneeringly. "What about? I unnerstand you. I know who you are, now I see your card. You are Captain Brentham. Once you were Consul ... at ... Unguja. Then you run away with missionary's wife—and—you are ... no more Consul. You do somesing shocking, nicht wahr? It is so easy to shock your Gover'ment—and now von Wissmann—that Morphinsaeufer—he gif you a Concession. An' I suppose you come now to say I trespass on your Concession? Very well then, I do, an' I don' care a damn for you or for any Gover'ment you like to name. I make this my home six, seven years ago and no one come to turn me out now, unless they fight me first.

"I haven't come to turn you out," said Roger. Stolzenberg laughs noisily and contemptuously.... "It's not my business to do so. I have come with a very small following to make your acquaintance, to find out for myself what you were like and to see whether it was possible to deal with you..." (As he is talking he sees that through the open doorway of the stronghold there are issuing a large number of armed black men, dressed like the coast people—perhaps a hundred), "to deal with you as one white man might deal with another. But before I can even put our case—our Concession's case—before you, you commence by insulting me and making a lying statement about my wife—and you probably now intend threatening me by an attack with your Askari[#]—who I see are gathering up behind you."

[#] Soldiers.

"These men," said Stolzenberg, glancing round at them and shouting an order to them to be seated, "are only there to make sure. You Britishers are always up to some trick. I thought just to show you I stand no nonsense. As to what I say ... a-bout Meeses ... Brentham, I ... only ... say ... what your ... own country-men say on coast. But let that pass. What is this unnerstanding you propose to me—a Partnership? Well, I am open to a bargain. What is it to be? What terms do you offer?"

"I haven't come here to discuss any such thing. I came to say this. As you ask the question, this extraordinary place—I suppose it is the crater of a volcano?—does not lie within our limits. You are not trespassing on our property. But for the past nine months or so we have had many complaints about you or about your men. You raid the natives, you take the Masai cattle and apparently drive them into this stronghold. You even kidnap the Iraku women...."

"I do not kidnap.... They come here of their own pleasure ... they are free to go if they like. But they like my men much better than their own husbands who cannot gif them closs or beads...."

"And finally," continued Roger, almost choking with the effort to speak in a level voice and not send a fist smashing into the large face that bends over his so threateningly, "finally, you drove away by force two of our prospecting parties at the north end of the Lake and..."

"Those men," shouted Stolzenberg ... "they ... they come just to spy out my defences ... but look here. You and I are big fools—p'raps I am bigger fool than you.... I lose my temper first, I say things a-bout a la-dy which perhaps are not true.... I apologize.... Nutting they say on the coast is true! Look at the lies they tell about me!" (a boisterous laugh). "They say at Mombasa I am biggest blaggard unhung. That is—what you say? ex-agger-a-ted? And look at the lies Bri-tish missionaries tell about my friend, Doctor Peters. It is that make me so angry just now. German Gover'ment belief these lies and send my good friend away. And then there is a fine Englishman I know, a nobleman in your country, a Sir—Sir Wil-low-by Pat-terne. You would hardly belief the things they say a-bout him—always be-hind his back...."

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

"I haf seen him once or twice," replied Stolzenberg, becoming suspicious. "But you do not come here, I sup-pose, to talk about him? You come to make my acquaintance. Well: you haf made it. Now you leaf me alone and I will leaf you alone. I ... what you say? I 'will not return your call'? My quarrel with the Masai is not your business. I haf—what do we say? I haf 'vendetta' against the Masai. When I first come out to East Africa on my own business I fit out a safari and travel to Kenya to buy ivory. I do no harm to Masai, but they attack my camp, they kill a young German man with me, my very great friend; they kill most of my men—and see! They try to kill me" (pulls up shirt and shows long scar over ribs on left side), "and they kill my dogs. Only when they see Kikuyu coming down in large war party do they leaf off stabbing and go away with most of my trade goods. The Kikuyu carry me up to their village and save my life—I haf always been good friend to Kikuyu since.—You ask them! Well now, I get my own back. Whenever I see Masai now, I shoot. I put fear of death into them...."