The Covenant: A Novel

by James A. Michener

  ‘Maud, I’ll be gone only a short time. He needs me.’

  ‘I need you,’ she replied. ‘And if you go, don’t count on my waiting for you forever.’

  ‘Maud!’ It was a cry she did not hear, for she had left the offices, and in her stead Frank had in his hands a sheaf of legal papers which he must study before sailing from Cape Town.

  Maud’s patience was to be severely tested, for not only did Rhodes keep his hold on Frank during this time, with its involved lawsuits and frenzied meetings, but he dragged him into another set of extensive negotiations in an attempt to strengthen his empire. He had exited from his troubles with more power and money than before; he had engaged in criminal acts against both the Boer republics and his own government, but had emerged almost unscathed. He did have to resign as prime minister of Cape Colony, but he retained his seat in Parliament permanently.

  He turned once more to his grand design. The map of Africa must be painted red; Rhodesia must be extended in all directions. German infiltrations must be halted and Belgium watched. He had a thousand schemes, plus a special one which lay entwined with his heart: this he discussed with Saltwood, whom he considered, all things in balance, to have been the very finest of his eighteen or so young gentlemen.

  ‘What do you think of it?’ he asked one morning during their second trip to London as he shoved at Frank a rumpled paper covered with ink scratches. It was the rough outline of a new last will and testament—seventh in line—explaining his involved plan for a perpetual trust. It would receive millions of pounds, to be doled out to bright young men in the British colonies and America to enable them to attend Oxford and there imbibe the instruction which would encourage them to go forth and make the world British.

  Mr. Rhodes proposed four large criteria for identifying the perfect man: scholastic achievement; success in manly sports; exhibition of moral force and leadership; and what he called ‘qualities of manhood,’ which included truth, courage, devotion to duty, sympathy for the weak, kindliness, unselfishness and fellowship. Young men who exhibited these qualities were to be handsomely endowed with scholarship funds and given every advantage in gaining a start in life.

  ‘Well?’ Rhodes asked impatiently.

  ‘You establish very high standards, sir.’

  ‘You met them. All my young gentlemen at Kimberley met them.’

  When this reference was added, Frank understood what Mr. Rhodes hoped to accomplish with his largesse: he wanted an endless supply of the young men who had served him so well—Neville, Richard, Edgar, Elmhirst, Gordon, Mountjoy, Johnny, and so on, through eternity, men with first names only, who did not bother with girls but who stood tall and tended the duties of empire. The list of attributes Mr. Rhodes had drawn up were those best calculated to produce just such men, and there would always be both a need and a place for them.

  But even as Frank studied this description of himself he had to be amused by one incongruous aspect. ‘What’s funny?’ Rhodes asked testily.

  ‘Your criteria,’ Frank said with a chuckle he could not repress. Tapping the paper, he said, ‘Mr. Rhodes, you wouldn’t qualify on a single item. You hate sports and ridicule us when we engage in them. You took nearly a decade to win your degree. You had little sympathy for the Matabele, until they were thrashed. And as for truth, I’ve heard you give quite wrong explanations of your acts. Courage you may have, but you weren’t in the front line when your revolution took place. And damnit all, you showed no kindliness to Maud. Not only would you fail to win one of your scholarships, you wouldn’t even be considered.’

  Laughing heartily, Rhodes reached for his will, waved it under Frank’s nose and said, ‘These criteria are not meant to identify men like me. We who move the world are not pleasant people, but we need pleasant, inoffensive people to help us. These scholarships will uncover such people.’ When Frank started to speak, Rhodes interrupted: ‘Stay with me, most precious of my young gentlemen, and we shall attain the dreams. You’re to administer the scholarships, you know.’ As he started to leave the room he turned back to say, ‘You’re to find me an endless supply of decent chaps just like yourself.’ Handing the will back to Frank, he said, ‘Think about it.’

  For some time Frank sat staring at the floor, anticipating the great times he could have in Oxford, administering the scholarships, but this opportunity vanished when two visitors to his hotel room changed everything.

  The first was his cousin, Sir Victor Saltwood, M.P. for Salisbury. He was brief and harsh: ‘You’ve behaved like a damned fool, Frank. I sent you one of the finest young women this world could produce, and what in hell do you do but leave her and go off to some pile of rubble in what they call Rhodesia. And when you come back you get yourself nearly hanged. Your life was saved by that girl, and yet you abandoned her.’

  ‘Mr. Rhodes needed me. You’ve seen what happened in London.’

  ‘Needed you, yes, but dictate to you how your life should be lived? If you had any gumption, you’d tell him to go to hell, get aboard the next ship, and marry Maud Turner.’

  ‘I’m afraid I’ve lost her, Victor. I’ve hardly seen her these past years.’

  ‘You haven’t at all. She understands the pressure you were under. After you left her the first time she got herself involved with schools in the farm districts. She’s done a splendid job. Her father tells me she’s visited your folks at De Kraal, loves them, and is prepared to wait till you come to your senses. But she’s only human, Frank, and others want to marry her. She writes me that she’s giving you two months.’

  ‘She is!’ The world seemed to spin back from the abyss of loneliness which Frank had envisioned for himself. He had supposed that Maud was lost and his life was to be an endless extension of the present, but now his cousin was saying that he had been in communication …

  ‘I want to send a cable,’ he cried impulsively, and on the back of Mr. Rhodes’ proposed will be scribbled: Maud, Sailing home immediately. Marry me the day I arrive, please, please, and save my life.

  He was signing it when Mr. Rhodes returned to the room to fetch his will, but before he could reach for it, Frank thrust it at him, his words face up, and said, ‘Sir, I think you should be the first to know.’

  Displaying no emotion, the great financier read the proposed cable, smiled, and said to Sir Victor, ‘Stated in plain language.’ He summoned a bellhop and asked him to bring the manager of the hotel. When that gentleman arrived, Rhodes said, ‘See that this telegram is filed instanter. And book us two staterooms on the Scot sailing on Friday.’

  ‘No, sir,’ Frank said with a firmness that pleased his cousin. ‘I don’t want you arguing with me all the way to Cape Town. My mind’s quite made up, you know.’

  ‘Of course it is, and properly so. I wish to be present at the wedding.’ Turning to Sir Victor, he said, ‘The best, I think. This boy was the best of the lot.’

  ‘Was?’ Sir Victor repeated.

  ‘Yes. He won’t be working with me any more. I had plans for him, but times change, plans change.’ And he accompanied Sir Victor from the room, a bulky, tired man, only forty-six years old, whose weakened heart could not keep pace with his dreams.

  Frank’s second visitor was the managing director of the Union Line, which operated the mail ships to South Africa. It seemed strange that a man of such high position would be delivering the tickets, even to such a frequent customer as Mr. Rhodes, and Frank said so: ‘I know he travels back and forth at least once a year, but this is most considerate of you. I shall tell him.’

  ‘No! No!’ the director said in real panic. ‘My meeting with you is highly confidential.’

  ‘What is it?’ Frank asked.

  ‘The princess. The Polish princess.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘A lady of high rank. Berlin, Warsaw, St. Petersburg.’

  ‘What’s she got to do with Mr. Rhodes?’

  ‘Ah, that’s what we don’t know.’ Nervously he began to unfold an incredible yarn: ‘I don’t know
whether it’s a hoax or what. I don’t know whether Mr. Rhodes is in some kind of danger or not. In fact, I don’t know what I know.’

  ‘Why not tell me what you think you know.’

  ‘The Princess Radziwill—a real princess bearing a distinguished Polish name—for some time she’s been visiting us to talk about a shadowy trip to Cape Town. Says she has interests there. It develops that her interest is Mr. Rhodes. She never buys a ticket. She’s interested only in when Mr. Rhodes is sailing.’

  ‘That seems harmless.’

  ‘Yes, but yesterday, within fifteen minutes of your ordering the two tickets to Cape Town …’

  ‘He did the ordering. Did it himself.’

  ‘Even more suspicious. Someone in this hotel, or someone in our offices—someone notified Princess Radziwill. And as I said, within fifteen minutes she was in my office, wanting to know which stateroom he had and demanding the one next to it.’

  ‘Now, that does pose problems,’ Frank conceded. ‘Who is this woman? Young? Adventurous?’

  ‘Not at all. She is the true Princess Radziwill. Well vetted in the Almanaca de Gotha. Not young at all. In her forties maybe, fifties, and looks it. May have been a great beauty once, but too much Polish and Russian cooking. Dark hair, no streaks of gray. Speaks acceptable English, but also French, German and, of course, Polish and Russian.’

  ‘Has she any funds?’

  ‘There’s my problem, Mr. Saltwood. I have absolutely nothing to go on, but from years of selling tickets for boat passages, I’d say the Princess Radziwill conforms in every detail to the typical woman passenger who is going to give us trouble. Why do I say this? I don’t really know. But that woman has financial problems.’

  ‘Is there any chance that I might see her before we sail? Not talk to her, you understand. Just see her. Because we don’t want a scandal, do we?’

  The managing director thought that he might summon her to the office at three, to confirm her passage, or something like that, and if Frank happened to chance by to pick up his tickets … ‘You wouldn’t approach my door, you understand. Just the outer office, like any ordinary passenger. You could see her as she exits.’

  It was arranged, and from a shop across the street from the Union Line offices Frank watched a shortish, attractive, dark-haired woman step out of a cab and walk in to confirm her stateroom. Casually he crossed the street, moved to a counter, and engaged the young male clerk in conversation about a possible passage to Australia. From where he stood, he commanded a fine view of the manager’s office and had a good chance to study the Princess Radziwill of Poland.

  She seemed gracious, well groomed, interested in the details of her forthcoming voyage. She talked with animation, and whenever he caught sight of her face, it seemed quite pleasant. If she was an agent in some conspiracy against his employer, she masked it well.

  She rose rather sooner than he expected, walked briskly from the inner office, spotted Frank immediately, and walked straight up to him. ‘Frank Saltwood,’ she said without hesitation. ‘I am Princess Radziwill. And you are the cousin of my good friend Sir Victor. Liberal party. Salisbury. I believe we’re to share the Scot together, this Friday. How very congenial.’ With a slight bow she passed on.

  Both the steamship management and young Saltwood deemed it best to inform Mr. Rhodes of this strange development, and he guffawed at their apprehensions. ‘I like grandes dames like that. I talk to them roughly, introducing more profanity with each turn of the conversation. After a while they leave me alone.’

  Frank had a premonition that this cavalier treatment might not succeed with royalty as determined as the Princess Radziwill, and he boarded the Union Line ship with trepidation, which was justified a few hours later at the evening meal. He cautioned Mr. Rhodes: ‘We’ll go in late, after she’s chosen her table,’ and they did so, but as they entered the salon Frank caught a glimpse of a lady in black waiting in the shadows, and no sooner had Mr. Rhodes taken his table, one with spare chairs so that he might entertain business acquaintances during the long voyage, than Princess Radziwill swept into the room, crying in a soft, ladylike voice, ‘Oh, dear! Where shall I sit?’

  Ignoring the chief steward, who hurried up to assist her, she let her hand fall upon one of the chairs at Rhodes’ table and asked gently, ‘Does this happen to be vacant?’

  Frank started to say brusquely, ‘It’s taken, ma’am,’ but before he could complete the sentence Mr. Rhodes said gallantly, but with obvious reluctance, ‘It seems to be free, madam,’ at which she seated herself with great firmness, indicating that this would be her place for the duration of the voyage.

  She was an enchanting woman, much younger in spirit than her years, informed on everything and willing to deliver final judgments on politicians, writers, musicians and the state of the world. When Mr. Rhodes attempted to stifle her with his routine profanity, she responded with animated discussions of her digestive system, her bowel movements and episodes in her sex life. Very quickly Mr. Rhodes retreated to more casual conversation.

  From the first she demonstrated an intense dislike of Frank Saltwood, assessing him accurately as a bar to whatever designs she might have on Mr. Rhodes. She scorned any statement he made, ridiculed his Oxford insularity and lampooned his general deportment. Specifically she wanted to know why he wasn’t married, and when he tried to counter with questions about her own status, she deflated him with a forthright statement: ‘I am the daughter of a great Polish nobleman, but my father and I have always considered ourselves Russians first, Poles second. I am married to a Radziwill, one of the proudest Polish names, but he has treated me abominably, and I am soon to be divorced from him. I am forty-one years old.’

  She intimated that she was also a famous authoress: ‘Five well-regarded books.’

  When he made inquiries among the other passengers, he found that she was indeed a distinguished writer on political subjects and that she knew everyone in European society. Sensing that he doubted her statement about her writing, she appeared one noontime in the promenade café with two of her books, solid affairs dealing with European court life and its political intrigues. When she saw that Frank and, indirectly, Mr. Rhodes were sufficiently impressed, she said casually, ‘You know, of course, that my aunt, Evelina Rzewuska, was the wife and financial salvation of Honoré de Balzac.’

  ‘Who was he?’ asked a young man from Kimberley who had recently been invited to join the Rhodes circle.

  ‘Oh, my God!’ she screamed so loudly that people at other tables turned to look. This pleased her, and she appealed to them: ‘This young fool asks me who Honoré de Balzac was. It’s like asking an Englishman who William Shakespeare was.’ And with this she launched upon a recitation, with wild gestures, of the entire sonnet:

  ‘When to the sessions of sweet silent thought

  I summon up remembrance of things past …’

  When she was halfway through, Frank thought: What can this creature be up to? At the closing couplet he found out, for with a sudden drop in her voice, she gazed longingly at Mr. Rhodes and whispered:

  ‘But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,

  All losses are restored and sorrows end.’

  After a few demonstrations like this, Frank was so deflated that she could speak right past him when she wished to address Mr. Rhodes. But if she humbled the younger man, she exalted the older, praising him extravagantly and placing herself in his way whenever she moved on deck. When he sat down on a deck chair, he found that she had acquired the one next to it, and if he sought to rest because of his increasing heart unease, there she was, prepared to argue politics with him.

  ‘What does that woman want with me?’ Rhodes asked Frank in some dismay at the end of the fifth day.

  ‘I think she wants to marry you, sir.’

  ‘She’s already married. Said so herself.’

  ‘But she’s getting a divorce. Said so herself.’ Rhodes caught the mockery in his young friend’s voice and burst into laughter
. ‘You have only one commission, Frank. Protect me from that woman.’

  Saltwood’s first stratagem backfired: ‘We’ll take our meals in your cabin. Let her have the table.’ But before the first meal ended, the princess burst into the cabin, eyes aflutter, to assure herself that ‘dear Mr. Rhodes is not suffering.’ Deftly she maneuvered Frank out of the stateroom, fluffed up the pillows, and sat close beside Mr. Rhodes to help him eat his meal.

  ‘Frank!’ came the anguished cry. ‘You said you’d bring the papers.’ Grabbing anything at hand, Saltwood hurried back into the room, where the beleaguered man said, ‘Sit here beside me,’ and the princess was edged away.

  The next afternoon, in their deck chairs, she chided Mr. Rhodes for having been so ungallant, and as she rose to spread a blanket for him she was seized with a mild fainting spell, which threw her gently into his arms.

  ‘Frank!’ he bellowed, and when Saltwood hurried up, he found his master embracing the inert body of the Polish princess.

  During the entire voyage this charade continued, for no matter what maneuver the two men devised, the princess knew how to outsmart them, and one evening when persons at the bar said in her hearing, ‘I do believe Mr. Rhodes, the woman hater, is having an affair with the princess,’ she smiled.

  It was when the Scot was one day out of Cape Town that Cecil Rhodes made the second great mistake of his life. In the presence of Frank Saltwood and two guests at his table he said casually to these business friends, ‘When we reach the Cape you must visit me at Groote Schurr.’

  ‘I shall be delighted!’ the princess said.

  He had scarcely unpacked his bags when a telegram arrived from the Mount Nelson Hotel announcing that the princess would be coming to dinner that night. At the meal, a party for the colony’s political leaders, she assigned herself the seat as mistress of the establishment, and before long, cryptic notices began appearing in the Cape Town newspapers, sent to them anonymously in a woman’s handwriting: