The Man Who Did the Right Thing: A Romance
a cigarette from Roger and smokes it). "Talking of personality, isn't it
_extraordinary_ how _that_ can be affected through our stomachs;
chemically, so to speak? You saw that woman in the dark green dress,
who waved to me just now? Recognize her?" (Roger shakes his head)...
"_That_ is Cecilia Bosworth, the Marchioness of Bosworth, quite the
proudest woman in the Three kingdoms--enough in herself to provoke a
middle-class revolution. Her husband's remote ancestor was a by-blow of
the Plantagenets, a natural son of 'false fleeting Clarence.' He went
over to that usurper--I've always spoken up for Richard the Third--that
_usurper_, Henry the Seventh, at the battle of Bosworth, and so was
created Earl of Bosworth, and afterwards Elizabeth made his grandson a
marquis. Well, even you, as an African hermit, _must_ have heard of
that woman's insolence in Society? She even mocked at the Royal Family
and said her husband--a perfect oaf--was more Plantadge than they were
and the rightful king.... She wanted Prince Eddy to marry her daughter
and make things come right." (A pause ... smokes)...
"Well, when she came here six weeks ago, nobody was good enough to mix
with her; she went round blighting us all. My doctor said it was all
due to liver and he'd soon cure her. He put her on to _La Source
Salee_--and a slice of melon afterwards. And, _my dear_, she went
through _agonies_, I believe. I used to hear her _shrieking_ as she
passed along the corridor....
"But it's cured her. See what a pleasant nod she gave me just now? And
there she is, talking to those very pretty girls--and their father's
only a Leeds manufacturer.
"Well, how do you work _that_ problem out?"
_Roger_: "Give it up! ... But by the look in your eyes, I should say
_you've_ got the beginning of a temperature. Let me wheel you back to
the Hotel and call for Sophie. Then if you are good and obedient and
get an after-breakfast nap, I will come at three and take you and Vicky
out for a very gentle motor drive...."
Sibyl submits. The waiter assists with the chair till it is out of the
intricacies of the approach to the Breakfast Pavilion. Roger draws it
through the gay throng. The church bells of all denominations are
clanging in carillons, either because it is Sunday or because
Peace--this time--has been definitely assured by an exchange of
signatures. A few people raise their hats or wave hands to Sibyl,
though she is semi-disguised in smoked glasses and a diaphanous veil;
and numerous men nod to Colonel Brentham: who, panting, draws the
wheeled chair up to the perron of the hotel.
Here there is a pause while Sophie is sent for. Then the
disentanglement of the sick woman from the chair and from shawls, and
her slow walk, supported by Roger and her maid, to the ground floor
rooms where a white-capped nurse receives her.
Roger went to Germany at the end of September, when Sibyl was being
taken back to England by her son. He spent six weeks lecturing the
Germans on the advisability of joining Britain and France in a
world-wide understanding. His lectures were politely forbidden on
Prussian territory, which made South Germany all the more eager to hear
him. And when he left for England at the beginning of November, it was
with the assurance that a German representative deputation would come to
England in the spring of 1912 to promote an Anglo-German understanding.
On reaching London, however, he learnt that Sibyl had died two days
previously, at Engledene. In the last weeks of her agony she had been
much under morphia. Before she reached that stage she had insisted with
Maud and Vicky that Roger was _not_ to be bothered by bad reports of her
condition, as he was engaged in doing what he believed to be the right
thing.
*CHAPTER XXIV*
*ALL ENDS IN THE HAPPY VALLEY*
Colonel Brentham's anticipations of the Millennium to be achieved by the
adjustment of colonial ambitions were not to be realized. On the 28th
of June, 1914, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne was assassinated
in the Bosnian capital. Maurice Brentham, meeting his brother the same
day outside the Travellers' Club, asked what he thought of this bolt
from the blue........
"I think very badly of it," Roger replied. "Whether or not the plot was
engineered in Servia, it is clear from the sayings and antics of the
Russian minister in Belgrade that Russia is egging on Servia against
Austria and using her as a mask under which Russia may place herself
athwart German-Austrian ambitions in the Balkan peninsula, and bar the
way to Constantinople. She is, in fact, challenging directly the
substantial results of our agreements....
"Well and if she does, what will happen then?"
"The Great War we have been striving to avert."
When War was declared on August 4th, Brentham found himself in the
dilemma of many of his able-bodied, disengaged fellow-countrymen: what
service could he render to the British Empire at this crisis of its
fate? Like most of us he had a strong predilection as to the kind of
service he might best render. In his case it was to proceed as quickly
as possible to East Africa and watch over the fortunes of the Happy
Valley. John was already in India with his regiment; Ambrose had best
remain at Cambridge unless there was anything like Universal service;
Maud would take up hospital work and her nieces could help her.
He therefore proceeded to offer his services to the Secretary of State
for the Colonies. If Africa could not be kept out of the War area--as
he had at first hoped--then, if we did not occupy German East Africa,
the Germans would soon proceed to invade our adjacent possessions: in
short, a terrible struggle was about to take place for supremacy in the
Dark Continent between Britain, France, and Belgium on the one side and
Germany on the other. In such a struggle, surely his qualities as
geographer, linguist, and a person of great local influence ought to be
of value in the East African campaign?
The Colonial Office replied coldly that it had handed over the whole
question of attack and defence in East Africa to the War Office. To the
War Office he therefore repaired one very warm day at the end of August.
With the greatest difficulty he obtained access to the Secretary of
State for War, then the most powerful person in the kingdom. He faced
those "desert eyes" like the optics of a harpy eagle, and made a
stammering, voluble proffer of his services, which gradually slackened
under the stare and the silence. When he paused to invite a reply, the
great man interjected: "How old are you?"
"Fifty-six, Sir."
"_Much_ too old.... Couldn't stand ... strain of campaign.... Besides
... all arranged with Indian War Department.... They mightn't like
their Intelligence Division ... interfered with.... No doubt contingency
long foreseen ... plan of campaign cut-and-dried.... Sorry.... We must
make use of you elsewhere.... Send you America ... or recruiting,
p'raps.... Scotland, Ireland, Canada. Let you know later.... Good
morning...."
Roger, fearful of being caught in the machine as some little wheel or
cog of no importance, lay low, considered, inquired and made his plans,
thinking of nothing but how to reach and save the Happy Valley.
Passports and visas were still matters of trifling importance. The
direct route to East Africa was closed to him; fighting had already
begun, rather disastrously for the British. But the Belgians were
preparing for a great war-effort against German East Africa. Roger
made, his way to Antwerp ... saw the Belgian Minister for the Congo, saw
the grave and courteous young King ... was given permission to accompany
the Belgian forces assembling on Tanganyika....
Then: picture him having reached the mouth of the Congo, late on in 1914
... a little rusty for this adventure in Equatorial Africa. No one with
him as assistant, servant, valet. His son John had been as far back as
the preceding July marked down for service with the first Indian
contingent which would in case of war be dispatched across the Indian
Ocean to take part in the mismanaged attack on Tanga. Can you picture
Brentham in those dreary weeks of waiting at Boma, the Congo
capital--hothouse heat, mosquitoes, sand, dense forest, rancid smell of
palm oil--unutterably lonely, asking himself torturingly "whether he had
done the right thing"? Ought he not to have stayed at home, fought in
Flanders? Looked after Ambrose, waited for orders from Lord Kitchener?
Was he absolutely single-minded in his attachment to the Happy Valley?
Had he chosen the right way to get there quickest?
At last they were off up-river to take the train to Stanley Pool. The
Belgian officers with whom he travelled were one and all nice fellows,
_bons compagnons_, intelligent, respectful of this grave English
colonel's knowledge of Africa; but a little puzzled _quand meme_ at his
Quixotry, a little reserved. "Il parait qu'il a vecu longtemps avec les
Boches," he overheard one of them saying in the mess, as he was
sauntering in. It seemed to convey a doubt as to his good faith.... At
Leopoldville, he encountered a stately-looking Negro in a familiar
costume--long white _kanzu_, small white open-work skull-cap--speaking
in Swahili. With what joy he recognized that once familiar tongue can
only be appreciated by those who have known the nostalgia of East
Africa. He addressed the man in Kiswahili and was greeted with respect
and interest. A bargain was struck with his employer, and the man,
Omari bin Brahimu, originally a boy recruit for Stanley, entered
Brentham's service, to accompany him to East Africa. Half the misery of
the adventure was now over. Here was a potential nurse in sickness, an
efficient valet, a packer, steward, if-need-be cook, gun-bearer,
counsellor, interpreter, and ever present help in trouble....
Colonel Brentham soon showed the Belgians he was not there as an
encumbrance, as a tiresome elderly guest. His knowledge of Bantu
tongues enabled him to pick up a smattering of Bangala, the _lingua
franca_ of the Congolese soldiery. He worked in his shirtsleeves and in
football shorts at every emergency, knew something about steamer
engines, shot for the pot, drilled recruits, and evidently knew the
Germans' position and resources thoroughly. By the time the swelling
contingent of reinforcements had reached Stanley Falls he, was voted the
nicest Englishman--_point de morgue, simple et instruit, ban garcon
jusqu'au bout des angles_--they had ever met. Between Stanley Falls and
Tanganyika he was very ill and nearly died of black-water fever; but
pulled through, thanks to Omari's nursing, and reached Ujiji a yellow
spectre, after the Belgians had in several actions on the lake and on
shore gained possession of Tanganyika. They had been marvellously
helped by a naval contingent sent out by the British Admiralty through
Nyasaland. It was a joy which conduced to Brentham's recovery to meet
the brave, jolly, resourceful British naval officers and picked seamen.
In some way it righted his own position. He felt less a lonely Don
Quixote, a solitary specimen of the British allies of Belgium.
The year 1915 had been the nadir of his life. Cut off from all news--he
was not to know for another year that his sons were both dead, John,
shot through the head in a maize plantation outside Tanga, and Ambrose,
who had enlisted a month after his father's departure, blown to pieces
by a shell at Ypres; not to know how his sister and his daughters were
faring; whether the British Empire still stood firm, and what people
said or thought about his own disappearance. He was often sick, tired,
lonely, with little to read, and his thoughts a torture to him; for they