The Angels Weep - Smith Wilbur - Страница 76
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Ralph Ballantyne felt a sense of awe at the magnitude of the prospect that faced him, a prospect of power and wealth such as he had never dreamed of until this moment. He almost missed the question, and looked up when Mr. Rhodes repeated it.
"I said, how soon can you leave for Kimberley to take charge of the shipments, Ralph?" "Tomorrow," Ralph replied evenly.
"I knew we could rely upon you," Mr. Rhodes nodded.
Ralph had lingered deliberately to be the last to leave King's Lynn.
Now he and his father stood on the veranda and watched the dust column raised by Mr. Rhodes" mule coach dwindling away down the hill.
Ralph leaned against one of the whitewashed pillars that supported the roof, with his sun browned muscular arms folded across his chest and his eyes crinkled against the spiralling smoke of the cheroot between his teeth.
"You aren't naive enough to accept young Percy's estimate of the Boers, are you, Papa?" Zouga chuckled. "Slow, suspicious, malevolent and all that nonsense." He shook his head. "They ride hard and shoot straight, they have fought every black tribe south of the Limpopo-" "Not to mention our own soldiers," Ralph reminded him. "Majuba Hill, 1881, General Calley and ninety of his men are buried on the peak, the Boers didn't lose a single man." "They are good soldiers," Zouga admitted, "but we will have surprise on our side." "However, you do agree that it will be an act of international banditry, Papa?" Ralph removed the cheroot from his mouth and tapped off the ash. "We won't have one shred of moral justification for it." Ralph watched the scar on Zouga's cheek turn white as bone-china. It was an infallible barometer of his mood.
"I do not understand," Zouga said, but they both knew he understood perfectly.
"It's robbery," Ralph persisted. "Not just a little footpaddery, but robbery on the grand scale. We are plotting to steal a country."
"Did we then steal this land from the Matabele?" Zouga demanded.
"That was different," Ralph smiled. "They were pagan savages, but here we are planning to overthrow a government of fellow Christians."
"When we consider the greater good of the Empire," Zouga's scar had turned from icy white to crimson.
"Empire, Papa?" Ralph was still smiling. "If there are two people who should be entirely honest with each other, they are you and me.
Look. at me, and tell me straight that there will be no profit in it for us other than the satisfaction of having done our duty to the Empire." But Zouga did not look at him. "I am a soldier-" "Yes," Ralph cut him short. "But you are also a rancher who has just come through the rinderpest. You managed to sell five thousand head of cattle, but we both know that was not enough. How much do you owe, Papa?" After a moment's hesitation, Zouga told him grudgingly. "Thirty thousand pounds." "Do you have any expectation of paying off those debts?" "No."
"Not unless we take the Transvaal?" Zouga did not reply, but the scar faded and he sighed.
"All right," Ralph told him. "I just wanted to be certain that I was not alone in my motives." "You will go through with it?" Zouga asked.
"Don't worry, Papa. We'll come out of it, I promise you that."
Ralph pushed himself away from the pillar, and called to the grooms to bring his horse.
From the saddle he looked down at his father and for the first time noticed how the weariness of age had faded the green of his eyes.
"My boy, just because some of us will be rewarded for our endeavours, it does not mean that the enterprise is not a noble one.
We are the servants of the Empire, and faithful servants are entitled to a fair wage." Ralph reached down and clasped his shoulder, then he picked up the reins and rode down the hill through the acacia forests.
The railhead was feeling its way up the escarpment, like a cautious adder, often following the ancient elephant roads, for these huge beasts had pioneered the easiest gradients and the gentlest passes. It had left the swollen baobabs and yellow fever trees of the Limpopo basin far below and the forests were lovelier, the air sweeter, and the streams clearer and colder.
Ralph's base camp had moved up with the railhead into one of the secluded valleys, just out of earshot of the hammers of the gangs driving the steel spikes into the teak railway sleepers. The spot had many of the charms of the remote wilderness. In the evenings a herd of sable antelope came down to feed in the grass glade below the camp, and the barking of baboons from the hills roused them each dawn. Yet the telegraph hut at the railhead was ten minutes" stroll away, around the foot of the wooded hill, and the locomotive bringing up the rails and sleepers from Kimberley delivered as well the latest copy of The Diamond Fields Advertiser, and any other small luxuries that the camp required.
In an emergency Cathy would have the railway overseer and any men of his gang to call upon, while the camp itself was protected by twenty loyal Matabele servants and Isazi, the little Zulu driver, who pointed out modestly that he alone was worth twenty more of the bravest Matabele. In the unlikely event of Cathy becoming lonely or bored, the Harkness Mine was only thirty miles away, and Harry and Vicky promised to ride across every weekend.
"Can't we come with you, Daddy?" Jonathan pleaded. "I could help you, really I could." Ralph lifted him into his lap. "One of us has to stay and look after Mama," he explained. "You are the only one I can trust." "We can take her with us," Jonathan suggested eagerly, and Ralph had a vision of his wife and child in the midst of an armed revolution, with barricades in the streets and Boer commandos ravaging the countryside.
"That would be very nice, Jon-Jon," Ralph agreed, "but what about the new baby? What happens if the stork arrives here while we are all away and there is nobody to sign for your little sister?" " Jonathan scowled. He was already developing a healthy dislike for this not yet arrived but eternally present female personage. She seemed to stand squarely in the way of every pleasant prospect or exciting plan, both parents managed to introduce his darling sister into almost every conversation, and his mother spent much of the time formerly devoted to Master Jonathan's interests in knitting and sewing or just sitting smiling to herself. She no longer went out riding with him each morning and evening, nor indulged in those rowdy romps which he enjoyed so heartily. Jonathan had in fact already consulted Isazi on the possibility of getting a message to the stork and telling him not to bother, that they had changed their minds. However, Isazi had not been very encouraging, although he had promised to have a word with the local witch doctor on Jonathan's behalf.
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