The covenant - James A. Michener [401]
What Mr. Rhodes wanted to know was whether General de Groot had the capacity and the fire to resist an English attempt at taking over the Boer republics. 'He's said to be past sixty, much too old to be leading troops. But he's also said to be a very active man, good with horses and guns. Find out about him.'
'Then you're not interested in Zimbabwe? Not really?'
Mr. Rhodes changed his attitude completely. Grasping Saltwood by the shoulder, he said quietly, 'Frank, I'm interested in everything. I want to pursue everything. You're off to Zimbabwe in the morning. By way of Vrymeer.'
It was this variety of interests which almost destroyed the pleasant relationship between Mr. Rhodes and Frank, because that night a cable from London reached South Africa, informing Rhodes that a business friend of some importance was sending his niece on vacation to Cape Town and using her to deliver a packet of documents that he wanted Rhodes to study. Someone must meet the young woman, Maud Turner, not only to receive the documents, but also to see that she was properly ensconced.
No one knew anything about Miss Turner except that her uncle was powerful, but there was a strong suspicion that she must be rather unattractive, else why would her uncle be sending her to Cape Town? Through the years English families had developed the pleasant and prudent habit of managing by one device or another to ship their unmarriageable females either to India or to Australia, on the principle that 'if she can't get married out where the competition is so thin, she'll never make it.' This trickle of gaunt, unlovely creatures was regularly dispatched to the far colonies in hopes that most would never return, or at least, not till they had sons of a proper age for Eton or Harrow.
'You must attend her, Frank,' Rhodes said peremptorily.
'But I'm heading for Zimbabwe.'
'It can wait. It's been waiting three thousand years.'
So Frank Saltwood, now in his thirties, clean and trim, with the affectations of an Oxford education, boarded the smoky train at Kimberley and headed south over the empty spaces of the Great Karroo.
He realized from the start that this could be a much more dangerous mission than going north to Zimbabwe, because of the inviolate rule that governed Mr. Rhodes' young gentlemen: once a man displayed serious interest in a young woman, he was quarantined from decisions of importance, and if he actually married her, he could be fired that day. Indeed, Frank wondered if Mr. Rhodes' choice of him to attend Miss Turner had not been some kind of signal that his days in diamonds and gold were nearing an end. Because he enjoyed his work and wanted to continue it, he was determined to handle the young lady with aloofness, accept her documents, sign her into the Mount Nelson, and hurry back to Kimberley and his more important work. He certainly would not risk employment he'd liked for so many years by becoming entangled with a woman.
He had not counted on the duplicity of his Salisbury cousin, Sir Victor Saltwood, who had ascertained that young Frank was still without a wife or prospects of any. It was he who had gone to Maud Turner's uncle, proposing that his charming, gifted niece, twenty-three years old, be dispatched to Cape Town with papers for Cecil Rhodes, and it was he who drafted the cable which Rhodes received. Families of importance saw to it that their young men and women met marriageable people of their own kind, and if girls had to ship all the way to Australia or Cape Town, so be it. Sir Victor could not have devised that Frank himself should meet the ship, but he certainly expected him to meet Miss Turner sooner rather