The Angels Weep - Smith Wilbur. Страница 25

This close, her true beauty was apparent, less flamboyant than Vicky's perhaps, but the balance of her features and the depths beyond those golden-brown eyes were more disturbing.

She kissed Ralph, and the contact was as brief but even less sisterly than had been the elder twin's embrace, and as she drew back from it, she slanted her eyes with a pretence of innocence, that was more deadly than any brazening. Ralph broke the electric contact, and looked to Cathy, making a comical moue of resignation, and hoping that she still believed his studied avoidance of the twins was because he found them boisterous and childish.

Flushed and panting, Vicky released Jordan, placed her hands on her hips and asked Ralph, "Ralph, are you not going to present us to the company?" "Mr. Rhodes, may I present my sisters-in-law," said Ralph with relish.

"Oh, the famous Mr. Rhodes," Vicky gushed theatrically, but there were little green sparks in her eyes. "It is such an honour to meet the conqueror of the Matabele nation, because, you see, King Lobengula was a personal friend of our family." "Please excuse my sister, Mr. Rhodes." Elizabeth curtsied, and her expression was demure. "She intends no discourtesy, but our parents were the first missionaries to the Matabele, and our father sacrificed his life trying to help Lobengula while your troops were pursuing him to his death. My mother-" "Young lady, I am fully aware who your mother is," Mr. Rhodes forestalled her sharply.

"Oh good," Vicky chimed sweetly. "Then you will appreciate the gift that she asked me to present to you." Vicky reached into the deep pocket of her long skirt and brought out a thin volume. It was bound in cardboard, not morocco leather, and the quality of the yellow paper was coarse and matt. She laid it on the trestle-table in front of Mr. Rhodes, and when he saw the title his heavy jaw clamped closed. Even Ralph quailed slightly. He had counted on the twins providing an unsettling influence, but he had not expected them to be so instantly explosive.

The book was entitled Trooper Hackett of Matabeleland, by Robyn Ballantyne, for the twins" mother wrote and published under her maiden name. There was probably not a man in the stockade who had not already read the slim volume, or at least heard of its contents, and if Vicky had thrown a live mamba on the table, their consternation could not have been more intense.

The contents of the book were so dangerous that three reputable London publishers had rejected it, and finally Robyn St. John had published it privately and created an immediate sensation. In six months it had sold almost two hundred thousand copies, and had been treated to extensive reviews in almost every influential newspaper both at home in England and abroad in the colonies.

The frontispiece of the book set the tone for the text that followed. It was a murky photograph that depicted a dozen white men in BSA Company uniform standing under the spreading branches of a tall wild teak tree and looking up at the corpses of four semi-naked Matabele hanging by their necks from the topmost branches. There was no caption to the photograph, and the faces of the white men were too indistinct to be recognizable.

Now Mr. Rhodes reached out and opened the book at the gruesome illustration. "Those are four Matabele indunas who were wounded at the battle of Bembesi, and who committed suicide by hanging, rather than surrender to our forces," he growled. "They are not the victims of some atrocity as this scurrilous piece of offal implies." Mr. Rhodes closed the book with a snap, and Elizabeth exclaimed sweetly, "Oh, Mr. Rhodes, Mama will be so disappointed that you did not enjoy her little story." The book described the fictional adventures of Trooper Hackett of the BSA Company expeditionary force, and his whole-hearted participation in the slaughter of the Matabele with machine-gun fire, the pursuit and shooting down of the fleeing survivors, the burning of the kraals, the looting of Lobengula's cattle and the rape of the young Matabele girls. Then Trooper Hackett is separated from his squadron and spends the night alone on a wild kopje, and while huddled over his camp-fire a mysterious white stranger comes out of the night and joins him at the fire. Hackett remarks, "Ah, you have been in the wars, too, I see," leaning forward and inspecting the stranger's feet. "By God!

Both of them! And right through you must have had a bad time of it!"

And the stranger replies, "It all happened a very long time ago, then the reader is left in no doubt as to whom he is dealing with, especially when the author describes his beautiful gentle countenance and his all-seeing blue eyes. Abruptly the stranger breaks into a florid injunction to young Hackett.

"Take a message to England. Go to that great people and demand of them. "Where is the sword that was given into your hand, that with it you might enforce justice and deal out mercy? How came you to give it up into the hands of men whose search is gold, whose thirst is wealth, to whom the souls and bodies of their fellow men are counters in a game, men who have transformed the sword of a great people into a tool to burrow for gold, as the snouts of swine for earth nuts?"" It was little wonder, Ralph smiled to himself, that Mr. Rhodes pushed the book away and wiped the hand that had touched it on the lapel of his rumpled Norfolk jacket.

"Oh, Mr. Rhodes," murmured Vicky, angel-faced and wide-eyed. "At the least you must read the inscription that Mama dedicated to you."

She retrieved the , discarded volume, opened the flyleaf and read aloud, "For Cecil John Rhodes, without whose endeavours this book would never have been written."" Mr. Rhodes rose from his seat with ponderous dignity. "Ralph," he said quietly. "Thank you for your hospitality. Dr. Jim and I will be getting on to Bulawayo, I think. We have spent too long here as it is." Then he looked across at Jordan.

"The mules are well rested. Jordan, is there a moon tonight?" "There will be a good moon tonight," Jordan replied promptly, "and there are no clouds so we will have a good light for the road." "Can we be ready to leave by this evening, then?" It was a command, and Mr. Rhodes did not wait for a reply, but stalked out of the stockade towards his own tent, and the little doctor followed him stiffly. The moment they were gone, the twins burst into merry tinkling laughter and hugged each other ecstatically.

"Mama would have been proud of you, Victoria Isabel.-" "Well, I am not." Jordan's voice cut through their hilarity.