The Man Who Did the Right Thing: A Romance
the war started. No! ..." (as Roger makes to advance) "... Stay where
you are or I shall have you arrested at once you ... you ... German ...
_spy_!" (Roger takes his revolver out of its leather case and sees that
it is loaded and ready.)
"Oh? I've got a revolver, too. If you make the slightest movement till
I tell you to go, and where to go, I shall shoot."
At this threat, the general purport of which he understands, Omari bin
Brahimu steps in front of his master and produces _his_ revolver.
Seeing this, Willowby Patterne calls in a rather quavering voice,
"Njooni, watu wangu, upesi; yupo adui! Upesi!"[#] Two men come from
the back premises, look from the white devil pacing up and down on the
verandah to the figures of Roger and Omari; and then, with a shout of
joy, fling themselves on Roger--not to arrest him as Willowby first
supposes, and so hesitates to shoot, but to kiss his hand, kneel at his
feet, utter incoherent cries of joy, the while Omari keeps his pistol
steadily aimed at the "Little Terror." They are two of Brentham's
Somali gun-bearers of seven years back, Yusuf Ali and Ashuro.
[#] "Come, my men, quick! Here is the enemy, quick!"
Willowby, longing to shoot and kill, yet letting I dare not wait upon I
would, disquieted that none of his Ruga-ruga obey his frantic whistling,
decides to make a bolt of it and rally them and the Nyasaland soldiers,
and so make a prompt end of Roger and the Somali traitors. (These men
had arrived at his station in Namanga, hangers-on of the large and
heterogeneous British force which was seeking a way across the
little-known region between Meru and the Happy Valley. They told
Patterne they had once been employed in Iraku on the Concession and
offered to help him to show the way. Believing they might be useful for
his own purposes in laying hands on the things he sought for, he had
taken them on; and here they were, saluting his rival and enemy like a
demi-god ... If he only got a chance to get hold of them! _He'd_ cut
the life out of them with a kiboko!....)
Whilst he hesitated whether to walk down the steps in a dignified way or
jump from the rails of the verandah into the flower-beds, his indecision
was terminated abruptly. Behind him a woman shrieked, and he felt
himself propelled by a vigorous push of stout arms down the stone steps
and almost on to the group of Roger, Omari and the two Somalis. These
might have laid hold of him, but a German lady, Frau Hildebrandt,
impeded their action. She unceremoniously pushed Patterne into a
parterre of petunias, whilst she too clasped Roger's hands in a frenzied
appeal, a rapturous greeting. "It is Herr Brentham! Ach lieber Gott!
Er wird verstehen. He will be our salvation. Ach mein Mann! Ach meine
kinder! Hilf! Hilf!"
Patterne rose to his feet, ran over flower-beds, through or over
dracaena hedges (since Roger's men blocked the garden gate), out of a
tangle of gardens and outhouses, across the green, to the public square
and market-place. Here he found groups of bewildered, sulky King's
African Rifles, and his own Ruga-ruga. He had been given an escort of
fifty Negro riflemen when, three days before, he had been detailed--at
his own request, having finished his job as guide--to "clear up" Iraku
and the European settlement of Wilhelmshoehe, professing to know every
inch of the ground. He had been told, of course, that unless resistance
was offered there was to be no looting; that any German women or
children were to be allowed to remain in their homes until they could be
officially dealt with, and all German men surrendering to be treated
humanely as prisoners of war, and marched under escort to the nearest
British camp. These instructions he had chosen to interpret in his own
way by killing Dr. Wiese and terrorizing Frau Hildebrandt into finding
him the information of which he was in search. He intended, of course,
to make himself master of the Concession, in the hope that he might be
recognized as owner after the War. There would certainly be several
years of confusion in which he might rule here and perhaps acquire all
the wealth he wanted.....
But the arrival--the resurrection almost--of Roger Brentham had so
queered his plans that he saw red. He would assemble all the men he
could get hold of and make a sudden rush on Magara House, and shoot,
shoot, shoot before Roger's party could put themselves in a position of
defence. He would declare Roger to be a traitor and a German Spy.
Provided he killed him, the _fait accompli_ would not be followed with
much of an inquiry at this very critical time....
But his Ruga-ruga were slow to respond, having recognized Roger as a
redoubtable warrior. And the Nyasaland regulars flatly refused to march
to the attack. Patterne was not one of their regular officers, and they
insisted that an English Colonel having taken possession of this country
they should all rejoin the main army and lay the case before their
commanding officer. So Patterne, gathered his loads together, awoke his
weary porters (who had taken advantage of the halt to gorge themselves
with food after their severe privations) and departed down the Valley in
the direction of the rapidly advancing armies. He felt he could not
halt or eat or sleep till he had taken vengeance on the man who had so
persistently baulked him; he would denounce him as a spy, as a traitor
... perhaps--oh joy!--get him court-martialled and shot; at any rate,
collared and marched out of East Africa.
But he never even reached the head-quarters of the army now entering
Irangi. Roger, anticipating his intentions, had rapidly written an
account of his actions in turning Patterne out of Magara House, had
explained who he was, the route he had followed, and his intention to
remain in charge of the Concession till he was ordered to leave it by
the proper authority. The Somalis travelling twice as quickly as
Patterne's _safari_, and travelling with as much secrecy as speed,
delivered the letter to the nearest British officer in high command.
Some say that on the return journey they took a pot shot at Patterne as
he was halting to whip some of his laggard porters; others that Patterne
was speared in Ufiome by Masai camp-followers of the main army, who had
suffered by some of his raids in the past, or who transferred to the
"Little Terror" the vendetta they had carried on with his ally, the Big
Terror of the Red Crater. In any case, "he perished miserably," as they
used to write in pre-Wells histories. He never was heard of again,
after he left the Happy Valley. His escort of Nyasaland soldiers quietly
rejoined their regiment, then in the thick of fighting at Kondoa-Irangi;
and no one cared enough about Sir Willowby Patterne to put any
questions. His Ruga-ruga dispersed as plunderers on their own account,
till they were rounded up sharply and a few of them shot for looting.
The "Little Terror" ceased all at once to terrify, and the baronetcy,
after a year's delay and presumption of death, passed to a distant
relative, who was the reverend headmaster of a public school.
Roger, meantime, gradually restored the Happy Valley to something of its
former peace and quietness. He harboured the Catholic missionaries and
the German women and children there till provision could be made for
their withdrawal. His proceedings were approved and sanctioned by a
Boer General commanding a wing of the British invading army, who by one
of those coincidences so common in this incredible war, not only played
a great part in conquering German East Africa for the Empire he himself
had steadily fought against for three years, but turned out to be the
very identical van Rensselaer who had picked up Roger as a prisoner and
saved his life in 1900.
As soon as the Happy Valley was brought into telegraphic communication
with the coast and with England, Roger cabled to his sister his
whereabouts and his intentions to remain in the Happy Valley till its
political fate was decided. In return he learnt of the death of his two
sons, and the fact that his two daughters had felt impelled to
marry--Maud ("Fatima"), Lord Silchester, and Sibyl ("Goosey") a wounded
officer--without waiting to hear from a father presumably lost in
Central Africa.
So Colonel Roger Brentham at the end of the war decided that the England
of the Armistice and the Peace and the Reconstruction period was no
country for him to live in, with its coal strikes, railway strikes,
engineer strikes, police strikes, taxi-drivers' strikes, dockers'
strikes, bakers' strikes, stage-hands' strikes and electricians'
strikes; its Irish atrocities and reprisals; its futurist art; its
paper-strewn highways and byways and beauty-spots; its bottle-throwing
chars-a-bancs; man-slaughtering motors; Albert Hall Victory Balls; jazz
dances; betting scandals; high prices; and low standards of political
morality. Preferable, far, was the Happy Valley, where relations
between black, white, and brown were well adjusted, where great wealth
was being quietly produced to the proportionate profit of all concerned
in the production; where protection was not only accorded to all human
beings, but also to all beasts and birds not directly harmful to human
interests.
So, after regularizing his position with the Colonial Office and the
"enemy" shareholders, he asked his sister Maud to join him, and replaced
the Stotts and Ann Anderson in their industrial mission stations.
And in the Happy Valley he may remain another ten years yet, till he
becomes a walking compendium of information on the past and present of
East Africa.
When he is 72 and Maud is 74--a wonder as regards resistance to African
germ diseases---it is just possible they may not wish to leave their
bones in an African grave. They may take passages in an Aerobus to
Hendon and thence slip down to Aldermaston by motor and up to Farleigh;
and after glancing round at a rejuvenated England and a pacified
Ireland, after appraising the intelligence and beauty of Roger's
grand-children--especially the son and heir of Lord Silchester--may
finally retire in some season of abnormal cold and unconquerable
influenza to cedar-shaded Aldermaston churchyard, where the vestiges of
Lucy and Sibyl await them.
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