Part 31

"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.

I wonder how you got away? Lucy and Maud, I suppose, you have left behind. The Kaiser seems rather friendly to us, they all say, and is going to be pacified with Samoa and more pieces of West Africa. So I suppose your concession will be all right, whilst you are away, and the Germans won't do anything unkind to poor Lucy and Maud. Or have they returned to England? It is France who is showing her teeth, not Germany! Chocho has very rightly told her "to mend her manners." She is a pig ... she can't forgive our taking Egypt and turning back Marchand at Fashoda.

Even Spain has seized the opportunity to get her own back. It seems Lord Wiltshire called her a decaying nation during the war with the United States, and she has been saying through her press after each British defeat: "Who's the decaying nation now?" I must say she had some cause! Never were we more bitterly disappointed in our Generals—before Lord Roberts came out: They started off—some of the dear old trots, with Crimean whiskers, if you'll believe me—as pleased as Punch; and their silly young A.D.C.'s got the porters at Waterloo station to stick labels on their luggage "To Pretoria," "To Bloomfontain" (Is that how it's spelt?). And, of course, the only result of this boastfulness was that as soon as the old footlers got out there they fell into ambushes and lost their way and their men, and were deceived by guides, and the soldiers quite lost heart and got taken prisoners.

England in December! I shall never forget it! I couldn't sleep for nights and nights, and Vicky Masham told me the Queen's health received such a shock that she will never be quite the same again....

Of course, now we can breathe once more. As you are on the spot and I dare say in the thick of it all, I need not tell you how things have gone since Bobs and K. of K. came out.

Well, of course, with all this going on in South Africa you couldn't expect any loyal Englishwoman who wasn't positively tied down by home duties to remain at home. So I sent Clithy to Eton—he's nearly thirteen now—and kept on his governess to mother him when he comes from school, and also confided him to the general care of Maurice, whom he likes. By the bye, I've pensioned off old Flower now, or at least got rid of him with a premium, and Maurice is full Agent, and I've advised Maurice to take on as an assistant Harden, the County cricketer, your wife's brother-in-law! Well. Having done all this and girded up my loins, so to speak, I made interest with old General de Gobyns at the War Office—such an old darling—he served with Wellington, I believe—and came out here with Landolphia Birchall, to supervise hospitals and give a general eye to the sick and wounded, read to them, write letters home for them, change their bandages, if it isn't too complicated—and so on. It was partly the thought that you were out here that decided me to come. Don't forget if you are wounded or ill to let me know and I will try to come to you or get you put into one of my hospitals. That would be jolly!

Landolphia is a funny old party! She must be quite fifty. She was so ill crossing the Bay of Biscay. Owing to the disgraceful amount of room the staff officers took up on the steamer she and I were jammed together into one cabin. Where our maids were put, I don't know—in the stoke-hole I think. But we scarcely saw them all the voyage and when we landed Sophie gave me notice at once, only she can't get a passage home so she has had to let it stand over till I choose to return. Of course, under the circumstances, Landolphia could keep nothing back from me—she was so sea-sick; as she said, that she felt herself naked, face to face with her Maker. So everything had to be explained—her secrets of make-up, her sachets of peau d'espagne, her dress improvers and peculiar stays and adjusted shoes. I suppose (though I laughed inwardly till I ached, she looked so droll when she was taken to pieces) I must have been good to her in her dire affliction, for she's clung to me ever since, and says we are sisters without a secret between us. After all, with all these infirmities and "adjustments" she was a plucky old thing ever to come out. Now she thinks it an awful lark—

By the bye, she protests with tears in her eyes that her third husband is not a booky, he's a trainer, which, it appears, is a vastly superior calling. She also says she oughtn't to be judged so harshly over her marriages. The second husband, Captain Birchall, only lived with her for three months and then broke his neck in a point-to-point steeplechase. She lived twenty years with Augustus Gellibrand, and she really only married her present old man—Dawkins—because she got into such a tangle over her racing debts and he put them straight....

Do let me know if and when this gigantic letter reaches you!

Your devoted SIBYL.

As will be seen later, this frank outpouring did not come into Roger's hands for five or six months. Fortunately Sibyl had also sent him several picture postcards with photos of herself and Lady Landolphia dressed in nurses' costume, or a kind of hybrid costume between a nurse and a nun. These reached him at his Agents' in Durban. So he wrote to her from that place and was rather pleased to think she was in the same sub-continent as himself. It diminished slightly the acute form of home-sickness from which he suffered after first landing in Natal.

Once more he asked himself if he had done the right thing in volunteering for the South African War. His Agents at Durban, being German and Dutch, were at most coldly polite and there seemed to be no rush on the part of the authorities to enlist his services. In order to have two trusty servants who would take care of his baggage and perhaps follow him in campaigning—they would make most admirable scouts—he had brought with him to Durban two of his Somali gun-carriers. After landing with them at Durban and reporting himself to the military head-quarters as a former captain in the Indian Army, he had the deuce-and-all of a bother to get food and lodging for these wretched Somalis, who were at once classed by we ignorant Natalians as "just ordinary niggers" ... though why "just ordinary niggers" should be so ill-treated, he could not understand. No hotel would lodge or feed them except in a kind of pigsty with hog-wash for food, where the kitchen Kafirs abode. They might not go into a shop and buy food, or rather they might go in but no one would serve them. After dark they must have a "pass." They very narrowly escaped jail and the whip and disappearance for ever from his ken by defending themselves with all a Muslim's pride when cuffed and pushed and flouted.