The first portion of this pleasant programme was fulfilled. For a year Roger rode from factory to mine, from coffee plantation to the fields and sheds where pineapples were grown, cut, and canned. He made good suggestions about their cattle, about war, unceasing war on the tse-tse fly, which—it was feared—was entering the Valley. He viewed with satisfaction his success over the crossing of Maskat donkey and Basuto pony mares with zebra stallions, and considered it proved that the resulting mules might become a valuable factor in East African transport. He inspected the new ostrich farms, the new smelting works and the primitive ceramics where native women turned out excellent pottery for home use. He decided that further explorations for gold should be undertaken in Ilamba, and that a fresh reef should be opened up in western Iraku. They would waste no more money looking for the matrix of the diamonds—diamonds might go hang, there were plenty of them in German South-West Africa.
But this wolframite with its product tungsten: that was worth following up with persistence. It was more and more needed for the application of electricity and for the latest developments of metallurgy, and would alone make the Concession of great monetary value.
At the beginning of 1909 a cloud came over their happiness, contentment, and sense of security in the future. In the first place the Austrian annexation of Bosnia and its accompanying defiance of Russia by the shining-armoured Kaiser had inspired British statesmen with hand-in-the-breast-of-the-frock-coat speeches of the Pecksniffian brand; the harder to bear since we were engaged about that time in pushing Turkey out of Arabia and manipulating the partition of Persia. This, once again, soured the relations between Englishmen and Germans. Then, the value of the Happy Valley Concession, insisted on by Roger in his despatches to the Directorate in Leipzig, had reached the comprehension of the All-Highest and of the Imperial Cabinet. To these august personages it seemed incongruous and detrimental to German all-self-sufficiency that such an important portion of Germany's most important colony should be managed by an Englishman, and that an English Industrial Mission should contain a female of such measureless audacity as a certain "Ann Anderson" who had dared to write a letter to the All-Highest, complaining of sexual licence on the part of Germans in East Africa. Let there be an end of this! The Englishman must go, the Industrial Mission must be replaced by some subservient Roman Catholic teaching fraternity from the Rhineland, which would attend to its prescribed functions of instructing the Negroes how to use their hands and in a limited degree their brains, and call nothing German in question, least of all the policy approved by the Kaiser's Kolonialminister. As to the Schräders: they meant well: they had tried to ride the German and the English horses abreast: a clever circus trick, but one that no longer consorted with Imperial aims. They were worthy financiers, but they had become too international, with their offices in Paris, London, and Johannesburg, as well as in Leipzig and Berlin....
These august decisions had to be conveyed to Roger by the greatly disappointed Schräders, who had sought so perseveringly to co-ordinate the enterprise of the British Empire with that of Germany and France—internationalists before the proper time. They knew, of course, that Major Brentham purposed resigning his local Direction of the Concession in 1909, but they had half hoped he might have continued in Europe much the same function as a member of the Board. As it was, they had to ask him to go, instead of acquiescing reluctantly in his departure. And quite decidedly they had to request that all relations between the Concession and the Stott Mission be severed.
From the Imperial authority in East Africa the Ewart Stotts received the curt order to wind up the affairs of their mission and hand over their buildings and plantations to the Brotherhood of the Heliger Jesu of Bingen-am-Rhein. They would be paid compensation for the actual outlay of their own moneys, and their teachers and subordinates would be granted the equivalent of a year's salary, at existing rates.
This not-to-be-appealed-against edict caused the Stotts the acutest sorrow and dismay; and Ann Anderson the most unbridled anger. Roger, however, counselled resignation and moderation of utterance. Let them take the compensation, get all they could out of the Imperial authorities, and migrate to neighbouring British territories, if they were still keen on Mission work.
"After all," he said, "I am going too, and you must feel, even if Hildebrandt is to succeed me, it would be difficult for you to remain here without my backing. Hildebrandt—and you all say you like his wife and that she is in sympathy with you—promises me that if he does succeed as Manager, he will do all he can for the natives and endeavour to get your policy continued by the Catholic teachers.... Go home and have a good rest. Go to England and take stock of what people are saying and doing. Get Ann to take lodgings for you somewhere in Berkshire ... see the best of England.... Then, if you decide to come back to East Africa you could start another Industrial Mission on British territory among the Masai and the Nandi who would seem much the same as the people you are now leaving...."
Ann, however, made her departure sensational. After handing over the keys of Mwada Station to the Catholic Mission she marched out to the centre of the market-place, on a hillock overlooking the lake; and in the presence of a large crowd of Masai and Wambugwe she solemnly cursed the Kaiser in Masai, Kimbugwe and English. It took more than nine years for the curse in full measure to take effect; but then the Kaiser was a much more important personage in the history of Africa than the occupant of the Red Crater, and the Devil no doubt fought far harder to save him.
In the spring of 1909 Lucy was again attacked by pernicious anæmia, and Dr. Wiese's remedies failed this time to arrest its encroachments. "There is only one thing," he said, melancholy with foreboding at the departure of his English friends—"only one thing to save Mrs. Brentham from dying, and that is to send her quickly out of Africa on to a home-going steamer. The sea air may stimulate the recovery of the blood and help her to regain strength."
Roger therefore hurried through his preparations for handing over his work to Hildebrandt. It was thought better that with them should go the two Australians, so that the staff might be entirely German. Maud superintended the packing of their personal effects. Roger decided, partly out of liking for the Hildebrandts, partly from a horror he had of stripping the home where he and Lucy and Maud had been so happy, to present the Hildebrandts with its furniture and garnishings, and to take away as little luggage as possible. He did this almost with a kind of foreseeing that he might some day return. Maud felt very much parting with the Crowned cranes. Together with pea-fowl they are the most intelligent, inquisitive, well-mannered pets that the bird-world can produce.