The Covenant Part 60

'I'd like to slip back home as often as I can. I do cherish my English heritage.'

'Sounds reasonable.'

The decisions reached by Maud and Frank Saltwood represented those of many Englishmen in South Africa at that time. For them, some cathedral town like Salisbury was 'home,' Stonehenge their playground, Oxford or Cambridge their natural inheritance. No matter how diligently Frank handled his finances in Johannesburg or his political connivings at Cape Town, he and Maud would always be drawn back to Salisbury, spiritually if not physically; and whenever an opportunity for a trip to England arose, they would be eager to renew the umbilical tie.

The Van Doorns, on the other hand, never returned to Holland. Not one of them would have known his or her way around the ca.n.a.ls of Amsterdam; they rarely knew who was governing the land or what political disposition it had. And if they had gone, they would not have understood either the religion or the language. Huguenot descendants were the same: none of the Du Preez family remembered the Oudezijdsvoorburgwal or its significance to their ancestors; and even less, the French village of Caix where their history began; nor could they speak French. Both the Dutch Van Doorns and the Huguenot Du Preez were now Afrikaners, and proud to be so.

The Saltwoods were Europeans; the Boers were people of Africa.

The Saltwoods would always have a refuge to scurry back to if trouble erupted; the Boers would not. If a Saltwood behaved moderately well, the English queen might call him back to London for a knighthood, but if a De Groot performed heroically, no royalty in Amsterdam would know of it, much less seek to enn.o.ble him. Prudently the Saltwoods kept one foot in Salisbury; the Van Doorns kept both feet in Africa and did not even know of any alternative home to escape to. They rose or fell, lived or died according to what happened in Africa, and between these two types of people, the Europeans and the Afrikaners, the gulf would grow wider and wider.

Maud paid close attention to the wild rumors coming out of Cape Town regarding Mr. Rhodes and the Polish princess, and found naughty delight in the great man's discomfiture: 'Gossip says he told her she was not welcome at Groote Schuur and warned her to return to Europe.'

As the scandal worsened, Frank was forced to take notice, and he was grieved when the papers reported that the princess had forged Rhodes' name to bank paper to the extent of 23,000. 'Listen to this, Maud. "She seems to have copied his signature from a printed postcard sold in stationery stores." How b.l.o.o.d.y preposterous!'

'Who is this woman?' Maud asked.

'The most extraordinary liar I've ever met, except that everything she ever told me was true.' He delighted her with a brief sketch of the affair, explaining how the princess had maneuvered herself onto the Scot Scot and into Mr. Rhodes' astonished arms. Then he became serious: 'If she claims she has letters which incriminate him, I'd say she has them. If she claims the financial papers are not forgeries, but were given to her by Rhodes, I'd hesitate to call her a liar in court. This woman is ...' He fumbled for words, then came up with 'Stupendous.' He added that if the charge of forgery had to be ventilated in court, the entire Cape had better prepare itself for a hurricane. and into Mr. Rhodes' astonished arms. Then he became serious: 'If she claims she has letters which incriminate him, I'd say she has them. If she claims the financial papers are not forgeries, but were given to her by Rhodes, I'd hesitate to call her a liar in court. This woman is ...' He fumbled for words, then came up with 'Stupendous.' He added that if the charge of forgery had to be ventilated in court, the entire Cape had better prepare itself for a hurricane.

'Should you offer your a.s.sistance, Frank?'

'To whom?'

'To Mr. Rhodes, of course,' she snapped.

'But he fired me.' He broke into laughter and fell into a chair, dragging his wife along with him. As she perched on his lap he said, 'You know, of course, that he has never in his life allowed a married man to work as his private secretary. You got me discharged, and it was d.a.m.ned well worth it.'

'But if he needs you . . .'

Maud Turner was the first of the famous Saltwood women; they formed a long line of strong-willed girls who had left secure homes in rural England, bringing with them to South Africa learning, musical ability, skill in drawing and high moral conscience. They accounted for the charity wards, the little schools tucked away in valleys, the libraries, the inadequate colleges, the books of reminiscences which would mean so much to later generations. Even during her stay in Cape Town, Maud Turner had already launched the Lady Anne Barnard Bowls Club, and near De Kraal she was using her own money to restore the ruins of Golan Mission. Women like her looked at their world, rolled up their sleeves, and tried to make it better.

Now Maud behaved with characteristic charity. Not forgetting that Mr. Rhodes had denigrated her and delayed her marriage for several years, she nevertheless told Frank, 'If that sad, confused man needs your help, we must offer it,' and they had already reached Grahamstown on their way to the Cape when a telegram intercepted them: need your help. rhodes.

When they entered Groote Schuur they found it occupied only by a cadre of male servants and a.s.sistants, one of whom said, 'That woman's chasing him all the time. He's run away to Muizenberg.' At that little seafront village, well to the south of Cape Town, the great man had sequestered himself in a small corrugated-roof cottage wedged against tall trees. Viewed from the outside, it seemed to contain a few meager rooms and no amenities; it was scarcely a proper setting for what was becoming a major tragedy.

Maud expected to work in the cottage, providing what comfort she could, but as she walked up the narrow footpath two young men appeared at the door of the cottage, obviously determined to prevent her entrance: 'No women allowed.'

'But he sent a telegram for us,' and she produced the paper.

'That meant Frank, not you. Mr. Rhodes would be most distraught if you were to force your way in.'

'I never force my way,' she said quietly, but the men were adamant: 'No women.' So she drove back to Cape Town and her husband moved inside.

He was shocked. Mr. Rhodes, not yet fifty, sagged in all directions. His jowls were heavy and unshaven; his mustache, never attractive, was less so when untrimmed; his reddish hair was uncombed and matted with sweat; his arms and legs lay inert; but it was his eyes that sent the most alarming signals, for they were sodden, lids drooping and pupils unfocused. He behaved like a man in his painful eighties, forlorn and distressed. The bright young men still surrounded him; they seemed to come in endless supply: 'Yes, Mr. Rhodes. Yes, Mr. Rhodes.' But they gave him little sustenance.

'Is that you, Frank?'

'It is, Mr. Rhodes. What can I do to help?'

'You've already helped a great deal. See the Phoenician bird in the corner? He watches over me.' It would be intolerable to tell him now that the stone masterpiece was not Phoenician.

Rasping sounds came from the bed. It was Rhodes trying to make an important statement: 'Frank, to protect my honor I've got to defend myself against that d.a.m.ned woman.'

There was now no time for courtesies or blandishments: 'Sir, I must advise you most firmly that in proper English society a gentleman never brings suit against a lady.'

'I've never given a d.a.m.n about English society. I'm not a gentleman. And that princess is certainly no lady. See the attorney-general, Frank, and urge him to file charges.'

'Oh, my G.o.d!' cried one of the young gentlemen. 'There she is again.'

And everyone in the cottage looked down the path to the roadway, where a woman dressed in stylish black, under an umbrella, walked slowly back and forth, staring at the cottage where the man she had wanted to marry lay dying.

'Drive her away!' Rhodes cried, but the young man said that they had tried this and the police had warned them that she had a right to walk on a public thoroughfare.

'But not to stare at me!' Rhodes wailed.

'She can walk and she can walk and she can look,' one of the young fellows said. 'All we can do is pray for rain.'

For weeks this tragicomedy continued. Rhodes lay in the cottage planning, while his lawyer and Frank Saltwood helped the attorney-general's office with their case against this brazen embezzler; she issued threatening releases to the newspapers and at dusk came down from Cape Town to walk back and forth, menacingly, silently before the cottage.

One evening Maud rode out to talk with the princess as she patrolled the roadway. 'Why do you torment him?'

'Because he has tormented me. He wants to send me to jail.'

'Did you forge the seven papers?'

'I have been Mr. Rhodes' staunchest supporter. He owes me enormous sums.'

'Didn't he pay your hotel bill when the Mount Nelson threatened to evict you?' Before the princess could respond, she added, 'And when you accepted the money, didn't you promise that you'd leave South Africa?'

'I did leave,' she protested like an insulted innocent, 'but I came back.'

'Princess, what can you hope to achieve by this ridiculous behavior?'

'Prison, I suppose. But men who ignore women, or treat them badly they must be taught a lesson. When I'm through with Cecil Rhodes the entire world will be laughing at him.'

'They're already laughing at you. Have you seen the cartoons?'

'Cartoons are for today,' she huffed. 'I am for history.'

Maud achieved nothing, and when she drove off, the princess was still stalking back and forth in the shadows, casting a witch-like spell on the cottage and its inhabitants.

Despite all that the two Saltwoods tried to do to bring sanity into this mad affair, the criminal trial moved forward, complicated by civil trials on lesser matters, and the day came when the two protagonists faced each other before a judge sitting with his clerks at Groote Schuur, since Rhodes was too ill to appear in a regular Cape Town court. They met in bitterness, they testified in bitterness, with Rhodes stating categorically that he had never signed any papers on behalf of the princess, and that if she had peddled such promissory notes to the bankers and money lenders of Cape Town, she had done so as a forger.

His testimony, ungracious and unforgiving, condemned the woman to imprisonment; her testimony, malicious and biting, condemned him as a fool. Worse, it condemned him to death.

After appearing before the judge, he retreated to the miserable cottage, where Frank ordered a hole knocked in the bedroom wall so that Rhodes could catch the air for which he gasped continuously. If he lay down, he could not breathe; if he sat up, he could not rest. Still the princess marched back and forth, keeping her death watch; knowing that she could not escape incarceration, she showed no mercy. She would haunt this ungracious, unforgiving man to his death.

'Please go away,' Frank pleaded with her one night.

'This is my only freedom.'

'Have you any money left? Any at all?'

Im a pauper. I haven't enough to eat. I shall welcome the security of prison, for all my friends have abandoned me, a princess of the Russian court.' She p.r.o.nounced the word Rrrosshian. Rrrosshian.

He gave her two pounds and told her to go to the Muizenberg Pavilion and eat, but she continued her vigil.

The breath of air Rhodes sought in that dreadfully hot March never reached him, and when he felt that death would overtake him before the criminal trial reached a conclusion, he dismissed her from his mind completely. Asking for his beloved atlas, he talked with Frank about those portions of his plans still to be realized: 'You must make the map red. Look how much we've done so far.'

When his hand fell upon Rhodesia, he looked up almost pitifully and asked, 'They never change the name of a country, do they?'

'No,' Frank said. 'That will always be Rhodesia. Your monument.'

But then Rhodes' eyes could not avoid the areas which represented his gnawing defeats: South-West Africa had fallen to the Germans; Mozambique still rested in Portuguese hands; the d.a.m.ned Belgians had proved their hearts were made of concrete. But worst of all, while Rhodes was suffering torment from the princess, a far greater agony had raged around him, for Boer and Englishman had finally come to fratricidal blows on the South African veld. His unwavering goal, the union of those two groups, seemed more impossible than ever, but his final words to Frank addressed that problem: 'Dear boy, when this war is over, spend your life trying to unite Boer and Englishman.'

When Rhodes died, Frank was in Cape Town giving a deposition in the trial, and when he heard of the death he felt an overwhelming sense of failure: he had tried to protect this great man from his blunders and from this fiasco with the princess, but he had accomplished little. He was told that Rhodes had died just at sunset on 26 March 1902, forty-nine years old, consumed by the volcanic fires that had driven him. As he died he uttered his own sardonic epitaph: 'So little done, so much to do.'

When the Princess Catherine Rzewuska Radziwill heard of Rhodes' death she was only forty-four, disgraced, penniless, and facing a two-year sentence in one of Cape Town's worst prisons. She said of Rhodes: 'I wanted only to help this lonely, miserable man. Had he attended to me, he might have been saved.'

In prison, her first demand was for a book of rules, which she mastered with such diligence that she became a notorious 'jailhouse lawyer,' arguing for the rights of all prisoners. Long before her sentence was completed, the warden pet.i.tioned the court that she be set free: 'Whenever I see her coming at me with that book of rules, I am threatened with twitches.'

The conniving princess would not accept freedom unless the government provided her with first-cla.s.s steamship pa.s.sage to London, and enough cash to allow her to live in a respectable London hotel for half a year. Since the senior authorities were also developing twitches, they bowed to her demands, then requisitioned a tug to ensure that she got aboard. To the Afrikaner lawyer who had enthusiastically defended her against the Colossus, they said, 'Do not give her a penny of the money. Hand it in a sealed envelope to the captain of the ship, to be delivered only when the vessel is far out to sea.'

She wrote more books, thirty in all; she lectured; when Prince Radziwill, her husband, finally died, she quickly married a Swedish gentleman whom no one ever saw; she was condemned by Russia to perpetual exile; and by some bizarre set of accidents she landed in New York, which she loved. As Princess Radziwill, she became the darling of royalty-hungry Americans and lived off them in various ingenious ways. Never once during her long stay in that country did anyone uncover the fact that she had spent nearly two years in a South African prison as an embezzler.

Finally she wrote her autobiography, not one chapter of which was true; she enchanted new generations of New York society; and in 1941, at the age of eighty-three, she sat propped up in bed writing long letters to the rulers of Europe advising them how best to prosecute World War II. She signed her p.r.o.nouncements: Princess Catherine Radziwilland when she died she was surrounded by three American ladies-in-waiting.

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From the throats of a hundred Boers, young and old, fair-faced and weather-beaten, came a merry song that carried far beyond the great barn at Vrymeer in which they were celebrating. The melody was that of an American Civil War song, 'Just Before the Battle, Mother,' but the Afrikaner version, popular in the eighties, had to do with love, not war: the throats of a hundred Boers, young and old, fair-faced and weather-beaten, came a merry song that carried far beyond the great barn at Vrymeer in which they were celebrating. The melody was that of an American Civil War song, 'Just Before the Battle, Mother,' but the Afrikaner version, popular in the eighties, had to do with love, not war: 'When will our marriage be, Gertjie?

Why are you so very quiet?

We've been betrothed so long, Gertjie!

Now's the time for us to wed.

Come then, Gertjie, for I shall not Be kept any longer on a string.

Perhaps you think I cannot die, But my years are pa.s.sing on!'

The grizzled warrior Paulus de Groot could not remember when last he had seen so many happy couples. 'Tonight, Jakob,' he shouted to the owner of the barn, 'there's many a heart will be lost under the stars of Vrymeer.' Van Doorn grinned back through a haze of smoke and dust.

General de Groot, as all thought of him, was guest of honor at the party, and with good reason, for in this very week back in February 1881 he had stormed Majuba Hill to thrash the English. And now, from fifty miles away and farther, as if it were Nachtmaal, Boers had packed their wagons and gathered up their families for a ride to Vrymeer.

The Van Doorn women, with Ouma Sybilla de Groot enthroned at their kitchen table, had prepared enough food for a commando. An ox was roasted on a spit opposite the barn; nearby were tables of bredies, vegetables, sweet dishes: tarts, koekies, pumpkin fritters, konfyts, and Jakob's contribution, the crock of bread pudding sensibly flanked by two bucketfuls of the same. Of course, there was a determined group who praised the pudding but pa.s.sed it by in favor of the barrel of peach brandy.

It was a day the people of Vrymeer would not forget, and children bounded through the paradise like a troop of frisky baboons. Nothing was more exciting for a dozen robust little Boers than their encounter with the offspring of the Nxumalo family. Together they explored the secrets of Vrymeer, running screaming from the barn to the cave where the Bushmen's rhinoceros galloped. After a shouting circuit, they ran to the lake, tossed aside their clothes, and jumped in.

At nightfall the tallow candles along the walls of the barn were lit, the ant-hill floor gleamed, and a noisy trio of guitar, violin and concertina went to work. Even Ouma Sybilla managed, just once, to step out and do a few turns, not with her husband, who was tending the peach brandy, but with a young man who had his eye on Johanna van Doorn and thought courtesy to the old queen-buffalo would improve his chances.

The dancing was really for the young couples, and the floor was continuously crowded, for if the violin grew tired, the guitar and concertina kept going; and sometimes the squash-box performed alone. Johanna had agonized for some days over what to wear, and her efforts had proved most successful: she had donned a long skirt whose bottom hem was filled with kernels of corn to give it weight and make it flare out when she pirouetted.

'Watch your millstone, young fellow!' De Groot roared suddenly. 'You're grinding too rough.' He meant that the partner swinging Johanna had her dress so nearly parallel to the floor that bits of grain were flying loose.

It was past midnight and the concertina played a little more slowly as groups talked quietly or hummed old songs and Jakob mentioned the one sober question of this festive day: 'How long have our families lived here, Paulus?'

The general reflected: 'Fifty-eight years.'

'We should be grateful.'

'What for?' the old warrior asked.

'Many things, Paulus. Mostly we've been able to hold on to our ways ... keep the Englishmen from changing us. But with so many Uitlanders moving in . . .'

'Oom Paulit's his job to watch the English. If he wants to see you, like the telegram said, it must be important.'

'Ja, my Generaal!'

Earlier that week Jakob had been summoned to meet with President Kruger in Pretoria; he would take the train Monday morning, for he knew that something serious was brewing.

Jakob found the great man on the stoep, deep wrinkles in his face, a black top hat perched on his head and a tightly b.u.t.toned coat covering his enormous belly. He did not rise to greet one of his most trusted burghers but showed his pleasure at the visit.

Jakob, there are troubles, there are dangers we must face,' he said, indicating a chair.

'The English, Oom Paul?'

'Always the English. They mean to steal our republics, them and the Uitlanders.'

'Not while this Van Doorn has a breath. We'll never allow that.'

'Nice words, Jakob. Nice words.' He spat over the edge of the stoep. 'I have a task for you, broeder. You have family at the Cape, not so? Van Doorns of Trianon. I want you to visit them. Hear what they have to say. What's on their minds if the English take up arms.'

'There's been talk of rebellion down there. Against the English government.'

'Ja, ja. But what do the people really think?' He rocked back and forth. 'Talk isn't enough. Where will the Van Doorns, the Du Preez, the Hofmeyrs stand the day we have to fight for our lives?'

'We'll need them all,' Jakob said.

'You are visiting family down there. Understand? You're not Oom Paul's official. Talk with anyone you like, but keep away from government people. We have enough troubles with them already.'

'I understand, Oom Paul.'

'Ja, now that's good, Jakob. Let's have some coffee while you tell me about Paulus de Groot. How's the old devil these days?'

Jakob was fifty-five years old that February, a man of medium height, heavy build and deliberate movement. He was delighted at the prospect of traveling to the Cape in a first-cla.s.s carriage and at government expense, for he had never seen the Trianon of his ancestors and looked forward to meeting its occupants.

He conducted his interviews in Cape Town first, and was pleased to find that the wealthy Du Preez had not forgotten their links with his family. They were most congenial when recalling those days when the first De Pres shared the Trianon vineyards with the Van Doorns. 'We've both moved a long way.' But when he discovered their att.i.tude toward partic.i.p.ation in a possible war, he was unhappy to learn that they had no interest whatever in taking up arms to defend the Boers.