The bomb had exploded, the tension in the room was extraordinary: members craned forward and held their breath so as not to miss a word.
Rhodes hesitated, and then:
"I don't think I could have heard. I couldn't be sure. No," he added, "all I understood was that he would go to Johannesburg if required by the people of Johannesburg."
Again Sir William Harcourt insisted.
"Was there such a proposal? I ask because this is very important."
Mr. Rhodes turned and replied sulkily, fighting desperately for time. "I don't see the importance of it."
Sir William Harcourt, though interrupted by Mr. Pope, one of the opposing counsel, persisted quietly;
"I am putting a most important question. Was it ever discussed between you and Dr. Jameson whether or not he should go direct to Pretoria and attack President Krueger's Government, instead of going to Johannesburg?"
Mr. Rhodes fumbled: "I really couldn't answer that definitely; it might have been said." Then, catching at a straw, "Ask Dr. Jameson."
"You are an even more important person than Dr. Jameson. I really must ask you."
"I have given you my answer; I cannot remember; I don't see the importance of it."
Sir William Vernon Harcourt: "There is a very important difference between going to assist an insurrection in Johannesburg and going to make an attack direct upon the government of Pretoria."
Rhodes admitted the proposal may have been discussed, though he couldn't remember it.
Thus Sir William Harcourt by his questions had brought out the fact which, indeed, was contained in a telegram of Jameson, that the objective of the raid was not decided when the doctor started; that Jameson had it in mind not to go to Johannesburg at all, but to make a dash for Eirene, the place where the Boers stored their arms and ammunition about seven miles from Pretoria, and thus attack Krueger's government at the heart and directly.
Everyone expected Sir William Harcourt to pursue his interrogatory on the morrow, but he did not, and I was deeply disappointed. The commission broke off for the day and the point was never touched on again.
For the life of me, I couldn't fathom the situation or guess the secret. I found it out afterwards, however, from Dilke, the best informed Member of Parliament. He told me what I have already explained in Chapter XIV, that when the German Emperor congratulated Krueger on having defeated the raid, Queen Victoria reproved him sharply and declared that he seemed to be trying to make her government responsible for it, whereas none of her ministers knew anything about the raid. The German Emperor apologized humbly for his mistake.
"But when the South African Committee stirred the whole matter up again,"
Dilke said, "a Conservative statesman called upon Sir William Vernon Harcourt and told him about the Queen's letter to the German Emperor, and his reply; and when he had recited the facts, the Conservative went on to point out that if Sir William Vernon Harcourt pursued his questions and demonstrated the complicity of Chamberlain, or, indeed, rendered Chamberlain's complicity probable, he would be proving the Queen to have told what was not the truth to the German Emperor. He left it to Sir William Vernon Harcourt's sense of what was fit and becoming whether he would continue his interrogatory or not. Sir William Vernon Harcourt thereupon abandoned his plan, and gave up the victory he might have won over Chamberlain."
The committee condemned severely Sir Graham Bower, the Imperial Secretary, who had betrayed his superior, Sir Hercules Robinson, but Chamberlain gave him a governorship at once. Thus is traitorism rewarded in England.
Much the same thing happened with Robinson. He made two or three distinct charges against Chamberlain, and on my way home in April, '96, at Cape Town, he gave me chapter and verse for these accusations, but begged me not to say anything about them till he had returned to London and seen me, as he intended to make them in person against Chamberlain.
When he came back I wrote to him, saying that I was ready to see him at any time he might wish, and he replied that he would give me an immediate appointment. Then he wrote again, putting me off in a letter with a very changed tone; and when I pressed him, he wrote saying he was very ill, too ill to see any one, although he had seen the Colonial Office and Chamberlain in the meantime. Suddenly he was made Lord Rosmead and nothing more was heard of his accusation against Chamberlain. The English often close mouths with titles.
CHAPTER IV
I must tell of some of my African adventures which took place shortly after I passed my fortieth birthday.
Africa-what gaudy memories the mere word calls to life: that first evening in the desert south of Biskra, with the grave Arabs sitting round, listening to the story-teller shaping the age-old tale to a new ending, acting the characters the while, mimicking villain and hero, slave and ruler, and with a magic of personality, making the drama live before our eyes.
Or that long ride up Table Mountain with Cecil Rhodes. I still see him standing-a greater Cortez-with his back to the Pacific, starting towards Cairo, six thousand miles away, dreaming of the immense central plateau, three times as large as the United States, as one empire.
That great central plateau where the air is light and dry, like champagne, and mere breathing's a joy; where the blessed sun reigns all through the long day, and the earth grows odorous under the hot embrace, and the sweat dries on the naked back in selvages of salt like the ripples on a sandy beach, while the night is cool and refreshing as the yellow moon comes up over the black forest and turns the camp into fairyland, while sweet airs breathe sleep on weary limbs.
And the freedom of it! Not the freedom of London: freedom to do as others do, dress as others dress, and speak as others speak, parroting phrases that were half lies when first coined, and smearing unctuous sentimentalities on dagger points; no, not that! Africa's freedom is of the wild and waste places of the earth, where one can be a man and can think his own thoughts and speak truth and live truth and stretch yokeless neck and free arms in God's sunlight.
Towards the end of February, 1896, I came to the conclusion that I understood South Africa, and as Rhodes was still absent in London, I determined to make my way up the country, at any rate as far as the Victoria Falls on the Zambesi, which I had always wanted to compare with Niagara. Accordingly, I organized an expedition and set off with one hundred and fifty carriers. I had as lieutenants two Boers, brothers, whom I had met in the Free State, and so long as they were with me, everything went fairly well. But their cruelty to the Negro carriers was almost diabolic, and one day, when the elder brother kicked a Negro and broke his leg and wanted to leave him to die in misery, I revolted. The end of it was that I paid them both for the entire trip and said "Goodbye" to them. We parted good friends, and the elder brother told me to keep my eyes skinned and see that the Negroes always boiled the drinking water or I'd get fever and come to grief. He turned out to be right. I thought kindness would be as efficacious as cruelty, but I was mistaken.
Still, I won through to the Zambesi, and one sunlit morning, for the first time, the great Victoria Falls that dwarf Niagara, burst on me, robed in rainbow mists, as if to hide the depths, while the great Zambesi stretched away to the right, a silver pathway to the far-off sea. The solitude, the scenery, the great river, and the falls, the wild animals of all sorts, and above all, the sense of living in the world as it was a hundred thousand years ago, made this experience the chief event in my life, separating the future from the past and giving me a new starting point.
I was two or three days exploring the falls from every point of view, and at night had divine rest in my tent. A day's journey away, fifteen miles or so north of the falls, and perhaps five hundred feet higher, I could still hear the roar and seemed to feel the earth quake.