Blue Fire

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  “When will you see him?” Susan asked.

  His fingers uncurled and rested limp upon the desk. The moment of force had drained from him. “There is no hurry. This will take some thinking about. I do not rush into things.”

  “But his book—” Susan began.

  “This book will not be written overnight. There is time.”

  She knew there was no time. If John Cornish was to be stopped, then it must be done at once. The further he carried his plans the more determined he might be to complete them. And Niklaas was not the man he had once been.

  “I think you ought to see him very soon,” she urged.

  He smiled at her unexpectedly. It was not a warm smile, but one that seemed coldly amused. It did not reassure her.

  “You will have to leave this matter to me, my dear. But enough of Cornish for now. I wonder if you would care to come with me for a drive this afternoon? The day is comfortably warm and I’d like to get out into the sun. There’s a spot in Cape Town that I often visit—the Rhodes Memorial. From it I can promise you an unsurpassed view of Cape Town. If you agree, I will pick you up this afternoon.”

  The sudden invitation surprised her. Perhaps he was merely offering her a distraction as adults sometimes did with a child. At any rate, she would go. Whatever small advantage she might have with him she meant to press.

  “Thank you, Father. I’ll be ready whenever you say,” she told him and rose to leave.

  The crack of the twelve-o’clock gun from Signal Hill reached her just as she started home. A plan was stirring in her mind and, even though she knew Dirk would not approve, she felt impelled to follow her instinct. After all, it was because she wanted to answer Dirk and set his doubts at rest that she must do this very thing.

  The moment she reached the Aerie she went to the phone and called John Cornish.

  11

  The van Pelt car, with Thomas at the wheel, followed the curving drive around the base of Devil’s Peak. Here the table was no longer visible and there were only great crags like the back of a dragon, with steep rock sides, encroached upon to some degree by determined stands of pine. In the clear thin sunshine of spring the Hottentots Holland Mountains were visible, their sharply notched peaks showing beyond False Bay.

  Susan remembered the story of their naming from her childhood. The Dutch settlers had known that the Hottentots looked upon their mountains with the same homesick longing with which the Dutch remembered Holland, so the name of Hottentots Holland had been given to the mountains. “Hottentot” itself meant “stammerer,” and was what the Dutch had called the Bushmen because of their odd language.

  There were tall blue gum trees along the drive, and carpeting the woodsy areas of the hillside were hundreds of arum lilies, growing wild. Once, when the trees opened and she could look upward, Susan caught a glimpse of white columns set splendidly apart on the crest of a small hill, with the dark peaks rising behind.

  Thomas turned his head. “There is the monument now, madam,” he said.

  Her heart quickened, not because of the beauty but because of her own uneasiness over what she had done—the result of which must now be faced.

  Niklaas van Pelt sat back in the seat beside Susan, his thin hands clasped upon the silver head of his cane. There was an air of alertness about him this afternoon as though all his senses except that of sight were sentient and open to every impression that touched them.

  This is my father, she thought—and felt nothing. Perhaps it was too late for any feeling between them, even though he claimed it was not her mother’s words about the diamond that had caused him to send for her.

  “Rhodes is not buried here, you know,” Niklaas said. “He chose his own burial place in Southern Rhodesia—a wild mountainous spot near Bulawayo. Not a place where many go. I visited it once as a young man.”

  The car turned onto a side road that climbed upward, and now the monument was hidden until the road turned again and came upon it in profile. Susan could see the tall white columns at the top, the broad flight of stone steps mounting toward them between a guard of eight bronze lions. At the foot of the steps a bronze figure rode a prancing horse high on a pedestal of its own. On either side were green lawns and terraces and the parasol-topped pines. Close above, as always, were the craggy peaks.

  Thomas parked the car and came around to open the door. Gently he helped Niklaas out and the old man stood leaning upon his cane until Susan stepped out to join him.

  “Go along on your errand, Thomas,” Niklaas said. “My daughter will give me her arm. And you’ll find us here when you return.”

  The colored man touched his cap and went back to the car. Slowly father and daughter walked toward the parapet before the monument. Niklaas’s left hand rested lightly on Susan’s arm, the other used the cane as he moved easily and without hesitation.

  “I’m troubled about Thomas,” he said as they reached the cobbled expanse before a low semicircle of wall.

  Susan was only half listening. Uneasily she glanced up and down the steps, searched the shadows of the colonnade above with a swift glance. John Cornish was nowhere in sight and she could not help feeling a certain relief. Perhaps he would not come after all. He had not been certain that this was the right approach.

  Her father was still talking about Thomas when she began to listen again.

  “He should be a teacher by now. It’s in him to do splendid work along that line. But this chauffeuring and acting as a blind man’s eyes is achieving little for him. His bitterness is our own doing, I’m afraid.”

  “He seems to be in the same position that Willimina is in—the girl who works for us as a maid,” Susan said.

  “Willimina Kock?” her father repeated, sounding surprised.

  “Yes. Miss Bellman brought her to work for us on our second day here.”

  “That’s strange,” Niklaas said. “Mara never mentioned the fact to me. Willi is more or less engaged to Thomas, you know. Though marriage hasn’t seemed possible for them. Mainly, I gather, because of a certain obstinacy on Willi’s part. Or so Thomas says. Another reason for his state of resentment.”

  Susan recalled the flashes of spirit she had seen in Willimina. Gentle though she was, it was possible that she could be obstinate if she chose. Then, too, there was at times about the girl an evasiveness that Susan had been forced to recognize. Certainly she had not revealed the fact that she knew Thomas. But, then, there had been no reason for her to do so.

  Her father drew his hand from Susan’s arm and moved with certainty across the cobblestones until his cane touched the low parapet. In this open space the wind blew strongly upon them, and the great panorama of Cape Town and its suburbs lay fanned out below around the curve of the bay. Wind sighed in the pines, and somewhere there was the dripping sound of water. Niklaas turned toward the wind and it was as if he saw all that lay before him, as if he savored the grandeur of the view.

  At length he moved away from the wall. “Let’s climb to the top,” he said. “I want you to meet Mr. Rhodes.”

  They climbed the flight of granite steps, past the figure of “Energy” on the prancing horse, and started up the several levels toward the colonnade at the top. On either side the reclining lions guarded the way. Two small boys had climbed upon the back of one beast and sat astride, their young voices breaking the silence of the secluded place. At the top of the wide steps, enclosed by roofed columns, was the heart of the memorial: a bust of the man who had so loved and served South Africa, and himself as well. The man who had dreamed an empire into being. Rhodes’s head rested upon his hand and there was a distant brooding in his face.

  Softly Niklaas van Pelt began to recite, as if he read the words engraved below:

  THE IMMENSE AND

  BROODING

  SPIRIT STILL

  SHALL QUICKEN

  AND CONTROL

  LIVING HE WAS THE

  LAND AND DEAD

  HIS SOUL SHALL BE

  HER SOUL

  Wi
th a vividness that startled Susan, the words came ringing back to her over the years. All this was remembered, familiar. She had heard these words before. That other time she had stood here as a small girl, with her hand in her father’s. She had felt only love and trust and confidence in him that day. His eyes had been able to see the engraved words and his voice had been the voice of a younger man. Yet still the words rang as he spoke them and there was a love for this precious and beautiful land in his very forming of the words.

  “You knew him, didn’t you?” she asked softly.

  “Only to see him from a distance. I was a very young man at the time of his death, and I had been fighting on the other side with the Boers. I knew Paul Kruger better—I had at least spoken to him. Both men were giants. Who is to say which was the greater of the two. This one loved the land almost too possessively.”

  “You are no longer in sympathy with the Boers—the Afrikaners—are you?”

  “They are my people.” The ringing note had faded from his voice. “Far more so than the Englishman is, when it comes to blood, though I married an English woman.”

  He paused, listening. He had caught the sound of footsteps on the cobbles below and he turned to her inquiringly.

  “Someone is coming?”

  “Yes,” Susan said, “someone is coming.”

  John Cornish stood on the lower steps looking up at them. Susan made no move, caught up in her own sudden dread. Slowly he started up the great blocks of granite that made the steps. The two small boys climbed from their lion and ran downward past him, hurrying off to new explorations.

  She must warn her father. She must tell him that it was John Cornish coming up the steps toward him. But before she could manage her voice, Cornish himself spoke. His words were in Afrikaans and Susan recognized the “Oom Niklaas” by which he addressed her father. The old man beside her tensed and she saw his hand tighten on his cane. He stood where he was without moving, the mask of his face betraying nothing, though he spoke to her in a low voice.

  “You should have warned me,” he murmured.

  It was clear that he had not been deceived into thinking this a chance meeting.

  He waited as the other man climbed the steps below him, and he did not hold out his hand in greeting.

  “You were the friend of my son,” he said in English. “You were the one he trusted.”

  For the first time Susan noted a difference in John Cornish, a gentleness of manner she had not seen before.

  “Paul was my friend and I loved him,” Cornish said. “I loved his father as well. I would like you to know how it was. May I tell you?”

  Niklaas made a gesture of indifference and used his cane to guide himself along the level of a step until he reached the side of the monument. There he sat down on the high step above and waited, while Cornish came to stand just below him. Susan withdrew a little, gazing out across the wide vista of Cape Town.

  Cornish told his story simply. He explained how he had been caught in spite of himself in a trap from which there was no escape. He had not, he said, ever believed in Niklaas’s confession. It was his conviction that Niklaas van Pelt had been protecting someone. Now it was time for the truth to be known. There was no one left who could be hurt.

  “There is the girl,” Niklaas said.

  For the first time Susan broke in upon their talk. “I’m not important in this. The truth is important. I want to see my mother’s name cleared.”

  Her father nodded gravely. “There is no hurry. These are things I must think about. A book takes time to write—we cannot hasten this.”

  “I mean to hasten it,” Cornish said. “Since you would not answer my letters or agree to see me, I’ve been pushing the writing ahead.”

  The old man broke in abruptly. “What letters, John? I have received no letters.”

  There was sudden anger in the younger man’s eyes, but it was not directed at Niklaas. “I wrote you several. They were sent to you at Protea Hill. I have written you at least three times.”

  This was Dirk’s doing, Susan thought unhappily. Dirk’s orders to Mara, undoubtedly. But he had gone too far this time in protecting Niklaas. No matter how Dirk felt about John Cornish, it was for her father to decide whether or not to see him—not Dirk.

  “Had I received your letters, I would have paid you the courtesy of an answer,” Niklaas said. “I shall look into the matter. But tell me now why there is such need for haste.”

  “I want to leave South Africa as soon as I can,” John said. “I’ve no wish to stay here and see my country destroy itself by this insane course it’s taking. If you won’t help me, then I must go ahead on my own.”

  “You sound like a man filled with bitterness,” Niklaas said. “Yet you have known many Afrikaners in your lifetime. You know their worth.”

  John Cornish turned toward the colonnade above with a quick angry gesture. “This is one monument built by South Africa. But there is another. One that stands near Pretoria in the Transvaal—the Voortrekker Monument.”

  “I know it,” Niklaas said.

  Cornish went on, a ragged note in his voice as he described the great stone building crowning a hilltop in the rolling Pretoria country. So vivid and compelling were his words that Susan could almost see the vast structure standing foursquare and sturdy as the men who had built it. The huge square tower was surrounded by a circular outer wall of concrete set in the form of a laager of wagons guarding it as the voortrekkers had guarded themselves from attack behind real wagons. Inside on the walls of the ground floor were stone bas-reliefs, John said. All around the great circular room they ran, depicting the history of South Africa, showing graphically the sufferings of the settlers, the massacres, the battles, the triumphs.

  “A great history,” Niklaas said gravely. “A brave history.”

  Cornish went on relentlessly. “From a railing in the center of the floor you look down through a wide opening to a quiet, empty room below. Empty except for the marble tomb enshrined there engraved with the words ‘ONS VIR JOU, SUIDE AFRIKA’—‘We for you, South Africa.’ Down there too in that quiet room there’s a niche in the wall where an everlasting lamp burns—a torch that signifies the light of civilization that was carried forth by the voortrekker movement.”

  Again Niklaas nodded. “A worthy memorial to history.”

  “These were brave men, and if it were only that I wouldn’t quarrel with it,” Cornish said. “But the monument has been used to turn a knife in the wounds of memory. It says in effect, ‘These cruelties were done to your fathers—never forget them. The black man is your enemy—never forgive him. The Englishman is your enemy—hate him.’ These are the meanings being urged on descendants of the voortrekkers today. The lamp has been buried in that pile of concrete. For South Africa the light is going out.”

  Niklaas van Pelt sat with his hands clasped upon the head of his cane, his sightless eyes behind their glasses fixed as if on some inner vision and he made the younger man no answer.

  With an exclamation of impatience, Cornish walked along the level of one step and back again. Then he bent toward Niklaas as if he wanted to reach past the guard of those dark glasses and make him see the truth.

  “All Africa is on the move. Do you think a handful of white men can stop the tide?”

  “This country belongs to white men,” Niklaas said calmly. “White men settled it and built it into what it is now. It is our only homeland.”

  “I suppose that’s true enough. Nevertheless, the only way the white man can continue to live here is to accept the fact that we’re all, black and white alike, natives of South Africa. Not Afrikaner or English. Not white. Not colored, or Malay, or Indian, or black—but South Africans together. Don’t you see that you no longer have any choice? It is this or chaos.”

  “You are almost an American now,” Niklaas said. “You live in a glass house. How can you point a finger at others?”

  Forgetting herself, Susan broke in. “Why shouldn’t we point our fingers
wherever we see prejudice? Lots of us point quickly enough at what exists in our own country—in the North as well as in the South. Racial discrimination ought to be condemned anywhere it exists, no matter by whom!”

  Cornish smiled gravely. “I agree. America may move slowly, but at least it moves ahead. The national law is on the side of the angels. Here the movement is only backward.”

  Susan drew closer on the stone steps, absorbed by the argument. Her father seemed to be baiting the other man almost coldly as if he tried deliberately to anger him.

  “There’s the matter of education,” Niklaas pointed out. “You can’t expect the black man from the reservation to stand beside the educated white man or understand the white man’s world.”

  “Whose fault is that?” Cornish demanded. “Lack of education is always the excuse given by those who’ve not made enough effort to educate. Time catches up with them. The education must come now. Don’t think I’m unaware of the complexities of the situation, but I can’t help remembering something I heard Rebecca West say not so long ago: that it would be to the glory and honor of South Africa for its people to work together and solve the problem, however difficult. But I see no evidence around me that South Africans mean to rise to the challenge.”

  “While it may be our own fault and the fault of a good deal of historic hostility,” Niklaas said, “we nevertheless have a tiger by the tail. How do you propose that we let it go without being devoured?”

  Cornish did not answer, but stood looking up at the bust of Rhodes above them.

  Niklaas turned his blind face toward the other man and there was unexpected sadness in his voice. “You speak of a challenge, yet you, who are a young man, will run away from it.”

  John looked startled. “I’ve no wish to see the night close in when there’s nothing I can do that will hold it off. I’m getting out. I came here to right a personal wrong that I helped to perpetrate years ago. So, whether you like it or not, I will get on with my book. There will be a chapter about Niklaas van Pelt. I know the story well enough. Those early days of yours in the diamond mines. The later days when you worked for your country in Parliament. The courage with which you met disgrace and took the blame for someone else’s guilt. There are a good many friends of Niklaas van Pelt to be found in South Africa today. They’ll give me the story. I’ll write it and go away.”