The Angels Weep - Smith Wilbur - Страница 64

It was already crossing the points at the southern end of the yards and running out into the open country. The locomotive was hauling four coaches, steam spurted from the pistons of the driving wheels with each stroke. The signal arm was down and the lights were green. The locomotive was picking up speed swiftly.

"Come boy," Ralph encouraged the bay, swinging it towards the barbed-wire fence beside the track. The horse steadied himself, pricking his ears forward as he judged the wire. Then he went for it boldly. "Oh good boy." Ralph lifted him with hands and knees.

They flew over it with two feet to spare and landed neatly. There was flat open ground ahead, and the railway tracks curved slightly.

Ralph aimed to cut the curve. He lay against the horse's neck, watching the stony ground for holes. Five hundred yards ahead the train was pulling gradually away from them, but the bay ran on gamely.

Then the locomotive hit the gradient of the Magersfontein Hills and the huffing of the boiler changed its beat and slowed. They caught it a quarter of a mile from the crest, and Ralph pushed the bay in close enough for him to lean from the saddle and grab the handrail of the rear balcony on the last coach. Ralph swung across the gap and scrambled up onto the balcony. He looked back. The bay was already grazing contentedly on the Karroo bush beside the tracks.

"Somehow, I knew you were coming." Ralph turned quickly. Jordan was standing in the door of the coach. "I even had a bed made up for you in one of the guest compartments." "Where is he?" Ralph demanded.

"Waiting for you in the saloon. He watched your daredevil riding with interest. I won a guinea on you." Ostensibly the train was for the use of all the directors of De Beers, though none of them, apart from the Chairman of the Board, had yet shown the temerity to exercise that right.

The exteriors of the coaches and the locomotive were varnished in chocolate brown and gold. The interiors were as luxurious as unlimited expenditure could make them, from the fitted Wilton carpets and cut-glass chandeliers in the saloon to the solid gold and onyx fittings in the bathrooms.

Mr. Rhodes was stumped in a buttoned calf-leather chair beside the wide picture window in his private car. There were sheaves of paper on the Italian gold-embossed leather top of his bureau, and a crystal glass of whisky at his elbow. He looked tired and ill. His face was bloated and blotched with livid purple. There was more silver than ruddy gold in his moustache and wavy hair now, but his eyes were still that pale fanatical blue and his voice high and sharp.

"Sit down, Ballantyne," he said. "Jordan, get your brother a drink." Jordan placed a silver tray with a ship's decanter, a Stuart crystal glass and a matching claret jug of water on the table beside Ralph. While he did so, Mr. Rhodes addressed himself once more to the papers in front of him.

"What is the most important asset of any nation, Ballantyne?" he demanded suddenly, without looking up again. "Diamonds?" suggested Ralph mockingly, and he heard Jordan draw breath sharply behind him.

Then," said Mr. Rhodes, as though he had not heard. "Young, bright men, imbued during the most susceptible period of their lives with the grand design. Young men like you, Ralph, Englishmen with all the manly virtues." Mr. Rhodes paused. "I am endowing a series of scholarships in my will. I want these young men to be chosen carefully and sent to Oxford University." For the first time he looked up at Ralph. "You see, it is utterly unacceptable that a man's noblest thoughts should cease, merely because the man dies. These will be my living thoughts.

Through these young men, I shall live for ever." "How will you select them?" Ralph asked, intrigued despite himself by this design for immortality, devised by a giant with a crippled heart.

"I am working on that now." Rhodes rearranged the papers on his bureau. "Literary and scholastic achievement, of course, success at manly sports, powers of leadership." "Where would you find them?" For the moment, Ralph had set aside his anger and frustration. "From England, all of them?" "No, no," Mr. Rhodes shook his shaggy leonine head. "From every corner of the Empire Africa, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, even from America. Thirteen from America each year, one for every state." Ralph suppressed a smile. The colossus Of Africa, Of whom Mark Twain had written "When he stands on Table Mountain, his shadow falls on the Zambezi', had blind spots in his vast scheming mind. He still believed that America consisted of the original thirteen states. Such small imperfections gave Ralph courage to face him, to oppose him. He did not touch the decanter at his elbow. He would need all his wits to find any other weakness to exploit.

"And after men?" Rhodes asked. "What is the next most precious asset of a new land? Diamonds, as you suggest, or gold perhaps?" He shook his head. "It is the power that drives the railways, that turns the mine head gears that fuels the blast furnaces, the power that makes all the wheels go round. Coal." Then they were both silent, staring at each other. Ralph felt every muscle in his body under stress, the hackles at the back of his neck rising in an atavistic passion. The young bull facing up to the herd bull in their first trial of strength.

"It is very simple, Ralph, the coal deposits in Wankie's country must be retained in responsible hands." "The hands of the British South Africa Company?" Ralph asked grimly.

Mr. Rhodes did not have to reply. He merely went on staring into Ralph's eyes.

"By what means will you take them?" Ralph broke the silence.

"By any means that are necessary." "Legal or otherwise?" "Come on, Ralph, you know it is totally within my power to legalize anything I do in Rhodesia." Not Matabeleland or Mashonaland, Ralph noted, but Rhodesia. The megalomanic dream of grandeur was complete. "Of course, you will be compensated land, gold claims whatever you choose.

What will it be, Ralph?" Ralph shook his head. "I want the coal deposits that I discovered and that I pegged. They are mine. I will fight you for them." Rhodes sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose.