Luck at the Diamond Fields

by Dalrymple J. Belgrave

It had existed, as far as any one could remember, from the early days of the Fields, and had been increased and intensified by a hundred matters of grievance. It is only in a small community, where there is not much change of thought, and where a fresh face is not very often seen, that bitter personal hatred can grow luxuriantly, and the rancorous ill-will between those two men had become part of themselves, adding a sort of enjoyment to their lives, and influencing many of their actions. Men knew and counted upon the fact that one of them would oppose the other in every possible way, and those who were on bad terms with the one could always reckon on the support and friendship of the other.

It was as much owing to their being respectively directors of the Long Hope and the New Colonial Mining Companies, as to anything else, that the disastrous litigation, which eventually swamped both companies, broke out and was carried on to the bitter end. It was owing to some one suggesting to Bowker that it was the cherished ambition of Dr Gorman to represent Kimberley in the House of Assembly, that the former first took to politics, and began that distinguished public career which we at the Diamond Fields believed was attracting the attention of Europe, while the latter, who had no more ambition to become a member of the Legislative Assembly than to be a bishop, when his enemy issued his address, at once came forward and began to canvass the constituency on his own account.

That election was memorable in the annals of the Diamond Fields for years, and was fought with a spirit which a journal that made a good thing out of it said was creditable to both parties, and bore witness to the healthy vitality of the Diamond Fields. Money was thrown about with a splendid recklessness, and some men, who had the foresight to put their Kaffir workmen on the register, made a good thing out of the rise in the value of free and independent voters.

There was no other candidate who stood a ghost of a chance while there were two seats, so the fight between the two was only for the honour of being senior member, but it was none the less brisk on that account. Bowker won, and then both parties got up petitions against each other’s return on account of gross bribery and corruption, and succeeded in turning each other out.

From that day they were the prominent leaders in local politics, in fact they helped to form the two parties who became the Guelphs and Ghibbelines of the Diamond Fields.

Bowker was supposed to own the ‘Assagai,’ a satirical journal that had a stormy existence for some months, and the doctor was believed to have found the money for the ‘Knobkerri,’ and to have imported its editor, a broken-down London journalist, whose power of invective, until he matured the incipient delirium tremens he brought out with him, was the terror of Mr Bowker and his party.

When the former journal devoted a series of articles to the doctor’s former life, and to the incidents connected with the suspicious death of his half-aunt, Bowker was believed to have inspired the attack; while the biography of Bowker, giving a graphic account of his being tarred and feathered on the Ovens Gold Field in Australia, in connection with a charge of petty theft, which sent up the circulation of the ‘Knobkerri’ to a figure never before or afterwards reached by a newspaper on the Diamond Fields, was put down to the doctor. Bowker, who achieved a great reputation in colonial politics by his command of language, saying “that he recognised the contemptible handiwork of the medical assassin’s dastardly brain.” The enmity between these two men increased with the prosperity of the Diamond Fields, but did not go down with the shares when the bad times came.

Through good times and bad the feud between them became more bitter. When things were at their worst, the one felt that the other’s bad fortune made up to a certain extent for his own. When things began to mend, Bowker felt that his satisfaction at finding himself on the breast of the wave of returning prosperity was diminished by seeing his old enemy floating in with him. But with Bowker’s shares the doctor’s house property rose in value, and when at length the latter, having become weary of the dust of the Fields, determined to shake it off his feet for ever, and return home, he felt that the knowledge that he was leaving Bowker behind him a prosperous man, who in a year or two would follow him with a larger fortune, spoilt much of his self-satisfaction.

Bowker, on the other hand, heard with considerable chagrin of the other’s intended departure; he felt that in a way he would miss him, and thought that life would be dull now there was little chance of seeing his enemy come to grief, and now it seemed certain on the whole that his career on the Diamond Fields might be summed up as a successful one.

One evening some days before Gorman was to leave Kimberley, he was with some of us in the card-room of the club. We had been playing some mild game of limited loo. We were discussing whether we should go on playing or leave off, no one taking much interest in the game, when Bowker came into the room with a look in his face which showed that he had been taking a fair amount of drink. At that time he was not on speaking terms with Gorman, but for all that, as he came into the room he stared more at him than any one else, and seemed to speak to him when he asked what game we were playing.