The Angels Weep - Smith Wilbur - Страница 44

While we know how to wait." They were silent again, sitting with their shoulders just touching, and the fire had burned low before Bazo stirred.

"I will be gone by daylight, "he said. "Where?"Gandang asked.

"East to the Mashona." "For what reason?" "They also must prepare for the day." "You seek aid from Mashona dogs, from the very eaters of dirt? "I seek aid wherever it can be found," said Bazo simply.

"Tanase says that we will find allies beyond our borders, beyond the great river. She speaks even of allies from a land so cold that the waters there turn hard and white as salt." "Is there such a land?"

"I do not know. I know only that we must welcome any ally, from wherever they may come. For Lodzi's men are hard, fierce fighters. You and I both have learned that well." "the windows of the mule coach were open and the shutters were lowered so that Mr. Rhodes could converse freely with the men who rode in close A attendance upon each side.

They were the aristocracy of this new land, only a dozen or so of them, but between them they owned vast tracts of fertile, virgin country, sprawling herds of native cattle, and blocks of mineral claims beneath which lay dreams of uncountable wealth.

The man in the luxurious carriage, drawn by a team of five matched white mules, was their head. In his capacity as a private citizen, he enjoyed such wealth and power as was usually only commanded by kings.

His Company owned a land which was bigger than the United Kingdom and Ireland put together, which he administered by decree as a private estate. He controlled the world's production of diamonds through a cartel that he had made as powerful as an elected government. He owned outright the mines that produced ninety-five per cent of the world's diamonds. On the fabulous Witwatersrand gold fields, his influence was not as great as it might have been, for he had passed up many opportunities to acquire claims along the strike, where the gold-rich ban ket reef had once stood proud, above the surrounding grassland, sharp and black as a shark's dorsal fin, before the miners had whittled it away.

"I do not sense the power in this reef," he had said once, as he stood on the outcrop, staring at it moodily with those pale Messianic blue eyes. "I can sit on the lip of the great hole at Kimberley and I know just how many carats- are coming up with each load, but this-2 He had shaken his head and gone back to his horse, turning his back on 100 million pounds in pure gold.

When, finally, he had been forced to accept the true potential of the "Ridge of White Waters" and was on the very point of hurrying back to pick up what few properties were still available, a tragic accident had distracted him. His dearest friend, a fine and beautiful young man named Neville Pickering, his companion and "partner of many years, had been thrown from his horse and dragged.

Rhodes had stayed at Kimberley to nurse him, and then when Neville died, to mourn him. The great opportunities had slipped away from Rhodes in those weeks. Yet still he had at last founded his Consolidated Goldfields Company upon the reef, and though it was nothing like his De Beers Consolidated Mines Company, nor the gold empire that his old rival J. B. Robinson had built, yet at the end of the last financial year it had paid a dividend of 125 per cent.

His fortune was such that when, on a whim, he decided to pioneer the farming of deciduous fruit in southern Africa, he had instructed one of his managers to purchase the entire Franschhoek valley.

"Mr. Rhodes, it will cost a million pounds," the manager had demurred.

"I did not ask for your estimate," Rhodes replied testily. "I simply gave you an order buy id" That was his private life, but his public life was no less spectacular.

He was a privy councillor to the queen, and thus could speak directly to the men who steered the greatest empire the world had ever known. In truth, some of them were less than sympathetic to him.

Gladstone had once remarked, "I know only one thing about Mr. Rhodes.

He has made a great deal of money in a very short time. This does not fill me with any overwhelming confidence." The rest of the British nobility were less critical, and whenever he visited London, he was the darling of society, lords and dukes and earls flocked to him, for there were lucrative directorships on the Board of the BSA Company to be filled, and a single word from Mr. Rhodes could lead to a killing on the stock exchange.

Added to all this, Mr. Rhodes was the elected prime minister of Cape Colony, sure of the vote of every English-speaking citizen and through the good offices of his old friend Hofineyr and his Afrikander Bond, sure of most of the Dutch-speaking votes as well.

Thus, as he lolled on the green leather seat of his coach, dressed untidily in a rumpled high-buttoned suit, the knot of his Oriel College necktie slipping a little, he was at the very zenith of his wealth and power and influence.

Seated opposite him, Jordan Ballantyne was pretending to study the shorthand notes that Mr. Rhodes had just dictated, but over the pad he was watching his master with a shadow of concern in his sensitive long4ashed eyes. Although the flat brim of his hat kept Mr. Rhodes" eyes in shadow and prevented Jordan from reading any trace of pain in them, yet his colour was high and unhealthy, and though he spoke with all his old force, he was sweating more heavily than the early morning cool warranted.

Now he raised his voice, calling in that high, almost petulant tone, "Ballantyne!" And Zouga Ballantyne spurred his horse up beside the window and leaned attentively from the saddle.

"Tell me, my dear fellow," Rhodes demanded. "What is this new building to be?" He pointed at the freshly opened foundation trenches and the stacks of red burned brick piled on the corner plot at the intersection of two of Bulawayo's wide and dusty streets.

"That's the new synagogue," Zouga told him.

"So my Jews have come to stay!" Mr. Rhodes said with a smile, and Zouga suspected that Mr. Rhodes had known precisely what those foundations were for, but had asked the question to pave the way for his own witticism. "Then my new country will be all right, Ballantyne.