Mr. Trimblerigg then announced that he would do both. To the Administrative Council he adumbrated a scheme for the gradual development of the Chartered Company, with its dictatorial powers, into the Puto-Congo Free State Limited, with a supervised self-government of its own, mainly native but owing allegiance to the Company on which its commercial prosperity and development would still have to depend.
Matters were at a crisis, and were rapidly getting worse. Mr. Trimblerigg had made too great a reputation over Puto-Congo affairs to risk the loss of it on a mere policy of drift. Something clearly had to be done, large, spectacular, idealistic in aim, to cover up from view a record of failure which never ought to have seen the light. Not only must it be done; it must be done at once, and he was the man to do it.
The Administrative Council was wise in its generation. Without quite believing in Mr. Trimblerigg’s proposals it gave him a free hand; for as one of them said: ‘This is a matter over which he cannot afford to fail. If he does, he is done for. Give him rope enough, he may hang others, but he won’t hang himself; of that you may be quite sure.’
Without being quite sure, they made the experiment, and Mr. Trimblerigg, with full powers, went out as High Commissioner of the Chartered Company to sow the seed, plant the roots, or lay the foundations of the Puto-Congo Free State Limited. His mission was twofold—to save the Puto-Congo natives from themselves, and the shares of the Chartered Company from further depreciation. Incidentally he had also to save himself.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Kill and Cure
I CAN understand people liking Mr. Trimblerigg, I can understand them disliking him; I can understand them finding him incalculable and many of his actions puzzling (I used to do so myself); but I do not understand why they should ever have been puzzled as to his main motive, since his main motive was always himself.
Like everything else in life, character is a product, the inevitable outcome of its constituent parts. When I invented him, I gave Mr. Trimblerigg brains and a good head for business; I also gave him imagination and an emotional temperament. Why, then, should it be wondered at if he made a calculating use of his imaginative powers, or indulged his emotions with a good eye to business?
Could you find me any occasion on which the fervours of his oratory got in the way of his worldly advancement, or did anything but add size to his following, I would admit that his character puzzled me. But more and more I found this to be the rule—that the fervour of his prayers, public or private, meant the same thing; and whenever the encounter was a private one, and the fervour more than ordinary, then I knew that Mr. Trimblerigg was in a tight place, and that he had come to me not to admit that it was the place in which he deserved to be and to stay, but to ask me to get him out of it.
Crocodiles cry: it is their nature. But they do other things as well: they eat—not only people, but practically everything else in the world that lives and breathes and is at all eatable. I gave them a good digestion for that purpose. They are scavengers; and when they scavenge, they do not always wait till the about-to-become-nuisances die. They make, however, one exception: they do not eat their dentist. And so you may see a crocodile squatting patiently in the mud of the Nile or the Ganges, with jaws wide; while in that place of death a small and tasty bird—whose name I forget—picks his teeth for him.
Sentimentalists look on and say, ‘How beautiful! how wonderful!’ So it is; but not in the way they see it. There is no sentiment about it: it is merely the economy of life intelligently applied. The crocodile depends for his good digestion, and his ability to satisfy it, on the efficiency of his teeth; and as he cannot clean them himself he gets a small clean bird to do it for him.