‘He is returning to South Africa on the Italian Line,’ added Patricia; ‘Michael told me so yesterday and I think he said that the ship sails from Marseilles the day after tomorrow.’
Wisdon nodded. ‘Then he starts from London to-morrow morning. Those “Iti” boats beat the Union by a couple of days so he’ll be in Cape Town on—let’s see now—yes, the 12th February. There’s an Air Liner leaving on the Ist. I looked it up before I came along this evening. It’s an eight day trip so if we take that we’ll be in Jo’burg by the 8th, and inside the Union four clear days ahead of him.’
Henry nodded unhappily. ‘You feel then it is absolutely essential to fly?’
‘I’m dead certain of it. If we can put our inquiries through quick, then get down to Upington on the Orange River, not much comment is going to be caused by one party buying an out-span and setting off up country if they give out they’re going on a bit of a hunt. If another party turns up, like these Bennetts, who’ve never handled a gun in their lives, and then perhaps a third, all sorts of people are going to sit up and take notice, so it’s up to us to strain every nerve to get there—and two or three days’ march clear of the town—before the balloon goes up.’
‘All right Henry agreed, ‘since you consider it essential. At all events we shall be ahead of the Bennetts. The Union Castle boat does not get into Cape Town until the 13th.’
In consequence, five days later Patricia found herself boarding an Air Liner with her father and the boisterous, capable Mr. Wisdon, who seemed to have taken command of the party. Her feelings were extremely mixed. Apart from a few visits to the Continent she had never been out of England before and she was thrilled at the thought that she was now going to see something of a more spacious world. She was a little anxious that she might be air sick, but that was compensated for by the knowledge that she would be stopping in such exciting places as Egypt, The Soudan, Uganda and on the border of the Great Lakes. She was, however, by no means happy in the society of Mr. Wisdon, who seemed to have taken an embarrassing fancy to her in the last few days. After her father’s reticence it was plessant to have her opinion asked about the smallest details of their plans, but there was a suggestion of a desire for something more than mere friendliness in the way he presented her with large box of chocolates on his second visit to Surbiton, flowers on the third, and now more flowers, more chocolates and a sheaf of illustrated papers for the journey. He was, within a few years, as old as her father although, from the difference in their behaviour, they might have been generations apart. Her great difficulty lay in concealing her strong dislike for his personality and the way in which his bumptious joviality got on her nerves.
Before sailing Michael had written her a charming letter which was at present reposing in her bag, saying that he had hoped to find her name on the passenger list, but failing to do so he assumed that she was travelling by a later boat. He wished her every possible good luck and hoped very much that they would meet in South Africa, but he said no word of any serious accident to his mother, which seemed extraordinary. If there had been an accident she thought it odd that he should gaily set off for Africa, leaving his mother in such a state, yet how otherwise was the telegram to be accounted for, since Philbeach had never attempted to enter the house after all. Her woman’s curiosity still demanded an explanation of this seeming mystery. She revolved these problems from every angle in her mind but was at last compelled to give them up.
The journey was uneventful and, after the first two days, boring in the extreme. Hour after hour the plane roared on while brown, green, grey, and yellow stretches of land seemed to be ripped away from underneath them. The height was too great for them to distinguish much detail and, despite the swiftly changing latitude, the scenery proved incredibly monotonous; but the nights were a joy. Each evening they landed many hundred miles farther to the south and the varying costumes of the native servants, the strange new foods which were served at the Air Port Hotels, and the tropic nights with their countless stars and croaking tree frogs, kept Patricia in a glow of happy excitement. Even the heat on the Equator and the unwelcome attentions of Mr. Wisdon were not sufficient to mar her enjoyment seriously.
On the eighth day after leaving London they landed, in accordance with schedule, at Germiston, outside Johannesburg, and, driving into the town, put up at the Carlton Hotel. Their plans had already been completed before leaving England. Wisdon had a vague acquaintance with old Van Niekerk who was mentioned in the Will, and described him as ‘one of those damned Dutchmen, who think they’re the Salt of the Earth because their families happen to have lived out in South Africa for a couple of hundred years.’
‘There’s a whole bunch of them,’ he had gone on to explain. ‘The Cloetes, the Marais, the De Villiers and the Van der Buls and a few more such who form a sort of aristocracy on their own. They’re not altogether Dutch either but have quite a good bit of French blood in them from the Huguenots who settled out here in seventeen something, and of course a bit of British too, because all the families have intermarried quite a lot, but they think of themselves only as South Africans, and they run the whole place from first to last. Some of them fought against us in the Boer War too but for all the good our winning that war did us we might just as well have stayed at home. All the lower-class farmers support these S.A. blokes at the elections. They get nearly all the seats in Parliament and in consequence collar every Government job that’s any good.’
‘Well, plenty of them fought with us in the last war and after all it is their country,’ Patricia had protested, which closed the conversation.
They knew, of course, from Bullett, that old Van Niekerk was dead, but being a member of such a prominent family they felt that it should be easy to trace his relatives, as they had the address at which he had lived in Pretoria.
Accordingly, on the morning following their arrival Wisdon, who had hired a car, drove them over to Pretoria. As they ran out through the fine suburbs of Johannesburg towards the north, Patricia and her father were astonished at the size of the town. Both had always thought of it as still a mining town with probably one or two streets of good shops and a few hotels and theatres. Neither had visualised it as the second largest city in Africa. To their surprise thousands and thousands of fine houses, each with its lovely garden, tennis court, and swimming pool—reminiscent, with their white fronts and red-tiled roofs in the Spanish or Dutch Colonial style, of pictures that they had seen of Hollywood—stretched for miles round the outskirts of the city.
The thirty miles of good road were soon eaten up and by eleven o’clock they entered the smaller, old world town of Pretoria, all exclaiming, as they ran up Church Street, at the beauty of the wonderful Union building dominating the town from its position on a hill-side to the north. The brown stone of its pillared porticos and long surfaces radiated the brilliant sunshine. In its setting of cypress trees and lovely gardens, it looked like a fairy palace.
Henry would not allow Patricia to drive up to it as she wished, insisting that business must come first. Having found the right number in the long street, which cuts through both town and suburb, they pulled up outside the Van Nierke. ks’ house.
Their inquiry from a native boy, dressed in white with a red sash like a foreign order running from his shoulders to its tasselled end on the hip, elicited the information that the house was now occupied by Mr. Cornelius Van Niekerk, the old man’s son.
On asking to see him they were shown into a wide, low, airy room giving on to a broad veranda. Masses of brightly coloured flowers were set about it in black, curiously designed pots of native ware, and Patricia was enchanted with the bright, cheerful colourfulness of the room.
After a few moments a tall, fair young man, dressed in a smart grey lounge suit, came in to them. With a pleasant smile and a quick wave of the hand he asked them to sit down and tell him what he could do for them.
Henry stated their business and asked if he had ever known his brother John. But young Van Niekerk sh
ook his head.
‘No, I never met him,’ he said in rather a high-pitched but very cultured voice. ‘But, of course, I’ve heard lots about him.’
‘Then I should be much obliged if you can tell me anything of his life out here that you may know,’ said Henry.
The little wrinkles round Van Niekerk’s bright blue eyes suddenly crinkled into a smile as he sprang up from his armchair and whipped a cablegram off the mantelpiece. ‘I’m sorry,’ he laughed. ‘I can’t tell you a single thing, and if you read that you will see why.’
Henry took it from him and as he scanned it his brows drew down into an angry frown. It read:
Van Niekerk, Jacaradas, Church Street, Pretoria, S.A. Was at Cape University with your cousin Paul. He will give you particulars of me. Regret by your father’s death you will not benefit under Will of late John Thomas Long. Inquiries may be made from you concerning source of Long’s wealth. In your own interests give no information until my arrival. Sailing January 29th. Proceeding Pretoria immediately. Sandy McDiamid.
8
The Knobkerrie of the Zulu Induna
After his production of the telegram Mr. Van Niekerk insisted that they should join him at morning tea, inquired politely as to their journey out, and mentioned a number of interesting things that they should certainly see while they were in South Africa. But he remained absolutely firm in his decision to give them no information whatsoever with regard to the late John Thomas Long.
When they left his house Patricia had her way, and they drove up to the Unigebouw, after which they spent a couple of hours in the town and, having lunched at Turkestra’s, returned to Johannesburg. Patricia would have liked to stay longer in Pretoria but Wisdon was feeling the heat, for the town, ringed in by hills on every side, was sultry to such a degree that he was anxious to get back to the higher altitude of Johannesburg. Van Niekerk having refused them his assistance, they were a little worried now that Sandy might have cabled the other beneficiaries and that they would meet with similiar opposition from them. Henry pointed out, however that Van Niekerk had probably been influenced by the fact that McDiamid was a friend of his cousin’s, whereas it was not likely that he would have any pull of that kind with Mrs. Aileen Orkney or Joe-Jack Mahout.
It was decided that, Durban being so much nearer than Cape Town, they should endeavour to trace the Indian barman before attending to Mrs. Orkney and so the following morning they set off to motor to the coast.
The first part of their journey lay through the heart of the Gold Fields which have brought the great Metropolis into being. Vast, flat-topped heaps of sand like miniature mountains loomed up a mile or so distant from each other in every direction. In colour they varied from the palest silver to a deep brown gold, having a peculiar beauty of their own in the strong sunshine. Wisdon told the others that the giant dumps composed the residue of the millions of tons of rock which had been hewn and pounded from the great Witwatersrand, or Ridge of the White Waters that ran beneath them, in the forty years since its first discovery.
When they had passed through the mining area the country became dull and uninteresting. Long stretches of coarse grass, baked brown by the relentless sun, alternated with patches of mealies and Kaffir corn. Patricia, who had expected to see tropical vegetation and strange animal life, was horribly disappointed. Hardly a tree was to be seen, and except for a funny little bird called, she learned, a Sakabula which could hardly fly more than a dozen yards owing to the weight of a tail at least eight times the length of its body, no living thing, other than a few cattle and an occasional native, was to be seen. The dreary landscape reminded her rather of Salisbury Plain as she had seen it after a year of exceptional drought. Wisdon, however, told her that Johannesburg was situated on the high veldt, nearly six thousand feet above sea level, but that when they got down to the coast by Durban she would see plenty of real sub-tropical scenery.
At the little town of Volksrust which they reached about twelve o’clock, they passed out of the Transvaal, entered the Province of Natal, and pushed on as far as Newcastle for luncheon. In the afternoon the driving became much more difficult, since the road had no sort of resemblance to the fine Johannesburg-Pretoria highway upon which they had been the day before. It was little better than a sandy track with deep ruts and occasional patches of loose stones. When they reached the Glencoe district they found that it had been raining in the morning, and every now and again they encountered stretches where the moisture had turned the surface of the track into red slime. Henry was scandalised that any civilised people could allow a main road between two such important cities to remain in such a shocking state and Wisdon said gruffly:
‘Scandal’s the word all right! The Government own the railways here so they deliberately neglect the roads in the hope of forcing people to travel by train. All I hope is that we’re able to get through at all.’
As they passed Majuba they were not averaging more than ten miles an hour and in places the car skidded from side to side in a most alarming fashion. Fortunately Wisdon had had the forethought to put chains on his tyres before leaving Newcastle and so they got through all right. It was not until half-past six that they managed to reach Ladysmith, where he insisted on stopping for a couple of large whiskies which he very badly needed.
Patricia and her father, meanwhile, took a stroll up the main street of the little town and were interested to find a photographer’s shop which had in its window a number of faded photographs of young men with long moustaches and broad-brimmed hats, grouped in various postures about oldfashioned guns and redoubts, taken at the time of the famous Siege.
At seven o’clock they set out again. A slight drizzle began as the short twilight deepened into darkness. After half an hour they passed the Tugela River at Colenso and an hour later pulled up at Estcourt where they decided to stay the night.
They were all thoroughly glad of the warmth and cheerfulness in the Plough Hotel after their long day, and Patricia was enchanted, when she entered the dining-room, to see on every table tall bunches of the long-stemmed cosmos flowers, white, mauve and purple, which she had noticed on their journey growing in great patches, a weed among the mealie fields.
Wisdon made for the bar directly after dinnner but Henry and his daughter decided on an early night, as they were to set off again at nine the following morning.
They woke to a day of drizzling rain and the Longs found the scenery even more depressing than on the previous day. As they entered the uplands of Natal large banks of white mist obscured all but an occasional view, and often encompassed them entirely. But when they reached Howick Falls it lifted a little and, running down the long gradients into Pietermaritzburg, they at last saw something of the desolate grandeur of the valley of a Thousand Hills.
Owing to the mist their going had been slow again in the morning, so they had an early lunch in the capital of Natal and pressed on to Durban, then in the last fifty miles of their journey Patricia was able to see palm trees and pawpaws, and banana and mango plantations, with the blue sea of the Indian Ocean stretching away in the far distance.
They drove at once to the Royal and having booked their rooms inquired at the office for Joe-Jack Mahout. They learned that he had left the hotel several years previously. Owing to recent inquiries made by a London lawyer, however, the hotel people were able to furnish them with his present address—a house in the Indian quarter on the shores of the land-locked bay beyond Albert Park; so they drove out there immediately.
The way lay through the wharfs and factories in the commercial quarter of the town and then along low-lying marsh ground round the curve of the Bay which looked like a great lake. In one place the Longs noted a white Indian Temple decorated with elephant heads and ornate carving in the true Hindu style. It seemed queerly incongruous in this country of whites and negroes, lying apparently unattended on the waste ground below the level of the road, but a mile farther on they saw the reason for its presence. Long lines of ramshackle tumbledown bungalows and
shacks, in the last stage of disrepair and squalor, seethed with a multitude of whiteveiled women, turbaned men and screaming, quarrelling Indian children.
No names or numbers appeared on any of these crowded properties and it was only after prolonged inquiries at various tin-roofed stores, all displaying the same strange assortment of goods from calico knickers to mouldy lemons, that they discovered Mahout’s dwelling. A fat, oily-looking woman, from whose ears dangled a couple of gold ornaments like chair springs, waddled out to meet them, accompanied by a horde of noisy, lank-haired children. To Wisdon’s questioning she answered that Joe-Jack was no longer there, great fortune had descended on him in his old age and no more than a week before he had moved to more spacious quarters. It seemed that Joe-Jack Mahout was now the envy and admiration of the entire Asiatic population of Durban, numbering some fifty thousand souls, and their informant assured them that had they asked for him by name, instead of inquiring for his old address, the first child in the street could have led them to his new residence. She gabbled quick directions and, ten minutes later, they pulled up outside a long bungalow which was in the process of receiving a new coat of paint. Here disappointment awaited them.
Joe-Jack Mahout’s seventh son received them in a room crammed with gaudy carpets, beaten brasses, shawls, filigree silver-ware and other Eastern finery; all obviously quite recently acquired. He smirked and bowed and smirked again washing his yellow hands with invisible soap, but informed them that his altogether admirable parent was not at home. Joe-Jack’s first purchase on receiving the five thousand pounds had been a motor car, and in it he had gone off that day to visit his miserable poverty-stricken brother. He would however, his son thought, have returned by the following afternoon.
The Fabulous Valley Page 6
