The most amusing part of the story consists in its dénouement. The duped Frenchman, though full of wrath, was, nevertheless, quite up to the game. He kept silence, but proceeded to form his company as if nothing had been the matter. When it was about to be constituted and registered, he asked Mr. X— to become one of its directors, a demand that the latter could not very well refuse with decency. He therefore allowed his name to figure among those of the members of the board, and he used his best endeavours to push forward the shares of the concern of which he was pompously described on the prospectus as having been once the happy owner. As his name was one to conjure with the scrip went up to unheard-of prices, when both he and his supposed victim, the Frenchman, realised and retired from the venture, the richer by several hundreds of thousands of pounds. History does not say what became of the shareholders. As for Mr. X—, he now lives in Europe, and has still a reputation in South Africa.
This story is but one amongst hundreds, and it is little wonder that, surrounded as he was with men who indulged in this charming pastime of always trying to dupe their fellow creatures, Rhodes' moral sense relaxed. It is only surprising that he kept about him so much that was good and great, and that he did not succumb altogether to the contamination which affected everything and everybody around him. Happily for him he cherished his own ambitions, had his own dreams for companions, his absorption in the great work he had undertaken; these things were his salvation. Rhodesia became the principal field of Rhodes' activity, and the care with which he fostered its prosperity kept him too busy and interested to continue the quest for riches which had been his great, if not his principal, occupation during the first years of his stay in South Africa.
Although Cecil Rhodes was so happily placed that he had no need to bother over wealth, he was not so aloof to the glamour of politics. He had always felt the irk of his retirement after the Raid, and the hankering after a leading political position became more pronounced as the episode which shut the Parliamentary door behind him after he had passed through its portals faded in the mind of the people.
It was not surprising, therefore, to observe that politics once more took the upper hand amidst his preoccupations. It was, though, politics connected with the development of the country that bore his name more than with the welfare of the Cape Colony or of the Transvaal. It was only during the last two years of Rhodes' existence that his interest revived in the places connected with his first successes in life. Rhodes had been convinced that a war with the Boers would last only a matter of a few weeks—three months, as he prophesied when it broke out—and he was equally sure, though for what reason it is difficult to guess, that the war would restore him to his former position and power. The illusion lingered long enough to keep him in a state of excitement, during which, carried along by his natural enthusiasm, he indulged in several unconsidered steps, and when at last his hope was dispelled he accused everybody of being the cause of his disappointment. Never for a moment would he admit that he could have been mistaken, or that the war, which at a certain moment his intervention might possibly have avoided, had been the consequence of the mischievous act he had not prevented.
When the Bloemfontein Conference failed Rhodes was not altogether displeased. He had felt the affront of not being asked to attend; and, though his common sense told him that it would have been altogether out of the question for him to take part in it, as this would have been considered in the light of a personal insult by President Kruger, he would have liked to have been consulted by Sir Alfred Milner, as well as by the English Government, as to the course to be adopted during its deliberations. He was fully persuaded in his own mind that Sir Alfred Milner, being still a new arrival in South Africa, had not been able to grasp its complicated problems, and so had not adopted the best means to baffle the intrigues of President Kruger and the diplomacy of his clever colleague, President Steyn. At every tale which reached Cecil Rhodes concerning the difficulties encountered by Sir Alfred, he declared that he was "glad to be out of this mess." Yet it was not difficult to see that he passionately regretted not being allowed to watch from a seat at the council table the vicissitudes of this last attempt by conference to smooth over difficulties arising from the recklessness displayed by people in arrogantly rushing matters that needed careful examination.
| Photo: Ferneyhough |
| PRESIDENT KRUGER |
CHAPTER VI.
THE AFTERMATH OF THE RAID
Toward the close of the last chapter I referred to the Raid passing from the forefront of public memory. But though, as a fact, it became blurred in the mind of the people, as a factor in South African history its influence by no means diminished. Indeed, the aftermath of the Raid assumed far greater proportions as time went on. It influenced so entirely the further destinies of South Africa, and brought about such enmities and such bitterness along with it, that nothing short of a war could have washed away its impressions. Up to that fatal adventure the Jingo English elements, always viewed with distrust and dislike in the Transvaal as well as at the Cape, had been more or less held back in their desire to gain an ascendancy over the Dutch population, whilst the latter had accepted the Jingo as a necessary evil devoid of real importance, and only annoying from time to time.
After the Raid all the Jingoes who had hoped that its results would be to give them greater facilities of enrichment considered themselves personally aggrieved by its failure. They did just what Rhodes was always doing. The Boers and President Kruger had acted correctly in this enterprise of Doctor Jameson, but the Jingoes made them responsible for the results of its failure. They went about giving expression to feelings of the most violent hatred against the Boers, and railed at their wickedness in daring to stand up in defence of rights which the British Government had solemnly recognised. It became quite useless to tell those misguided individuals that the Cabinet at Westminster had from the very first blamed Rhodes for his share in what the English Press, with but few exceptions, had declared to be an entirely disgraceful episode. They pretended that people in London knew nothing about the true state of affairs in South Africa or the necessities of the country; that the British Government had always shown deplorable weakness in regard to the treatment meted out to its subjects in the Colonies, and that both Rhodes and Jameson were heroes whose names deserved to be handed down to posterity for the services which they had rendered to their country.