Who was Jumbo? Who was Maclean? The casualties of the massacre had included a “Soames Maclean, Esq., of Surrey,” but the board of inquiry report had given no explanation of who he was, or what he had been doing at Nyagatha, except to describe him as a visitor. Just an old friend? Nothing odd about that. But then the letter turned strange.
Your new interpretation, of which Maclean has advised me, I find very convincing and in no small measure disturbing! You are to be congratulated on perceiving something that should have been perfectly obvious to all of us and me in particular, but of course was not. (He was named after Mrs. Exeter's father!) Unfortunately, in this case insight, which should promote increase in understanding and alleviation of apprehension, has tended rather to promote proliferation of enigmas!
The only person Edward knew who had been named after his grandfather was himself, but why should that matter to Jumbo, whoever Jumbo was? The letter then mentioned him directly.
While friendship, gratitude, and personal respect all incline me to acquiesce, dear Jumbo, the awesome responsibilities of fatherhood dissuade me from permitting a personal interview. The boy is not yet old enough to understand the implications. Rest assured that he will be fully informed before the critical date, and while he will still be very young even then, the decision will be his alone. We have given the Kent group strict instructions not to reveal his whereabouts to anyone at all. You will understand that no personal slight is intended.
His mother agrees with me wholeheartedly in this. Perhaps we are being overcautious, but we both feel “better safe than sorry"!
You will be relieved to hear that I am still strongly in favor of breaking the chain. Soapy has been trying to convert me with all his customary eloquence, but so far without success.
Five days ago, in the middle of the Champs Élysées, Edward had realized that a man named Soames Maclean might very likely be known as “Soapy” behind his back, especially if he were noted for his eloquence.
I still disapprove of turning a world upside down. The effects of good intentions are well-known and my work here has merely hardened my conviction that paving with better intentions only makes the road descend more slowly. One cannot take away half of a culture and expect the remainder to thrive. I have at least kept out the worst of the busybodies and preserved as many of the indigenous customs as I dare.
For example, I have not prohibited warfare among the young men of Nyagatha, although all the other districts banned it at once. It is not war as the Europeans understand war, nor is it done for slavery or conquest. It is a ritual combat with shields and clubs that rarely results in serious injury to the men themselves and never harms women and children. It is very little rougher than a county rugby match, and it is the basis of their whole concept of manhood. In neighboring districts, the culture has virtually collapsed without it.
I doubt that information concerning my irregular activities can much longer be kept from the local powers in London. I shall be severely criticized, but that is of no consequence. I hope and believe that we have softened the inevitable blow.
As for religion, I need not tell you of the dangers of tampering there! Even a bad faith, if it provides stability, may be better than the turmoil...
There it stopped, in mid-sentence. His last words.
Criticized? Oh, guv'nor, how they criticized you! They tore you corpse to shreds in their elegant Whitehall meeting rooms. They hung your parts on bridges for the world to mock.
Three days after those words had been written, a white-faced boy had been hastily summoned to the Head's study at Fallow, but not before he had seen the morning papers. The telegram from London had arrived a couple of hours later. That had been bad enough. Much worse had been the letters from the dead that had trickled in over the next two months, full of cheerful plans for the journey Home and the family reunion. Every week another ship would dock and the wound would be reopened before it had even had a chance to scab. A year later, when a thin crust had begun to form so that his heart was not always a stone and he could even smile again without feeling guilty—then that awful board of inquiry report had started him bleeding all over again.
And a couple of months after that, even, some idiot, well-meaning, thoughtless lawyer had forwarded a box of his parents’ possessions that had somehow survived the fire. Fortunately, Holy Roly had forgotten to mention them. They had lain in his attic until a week ago. Edward had stopped a night in Kensington on his way to Paris, dropping off all the gear he had accumulated at Fallow. Only then had he discovered that box, and in it that extraordinary letter.
What did it all mean? Who was Jumbo? What was the Valley of the Kings? Mr. Oldcastle of the Colonial Office lived in Kent—was he somehow related to the Kent group mentioned? The only person who might be able to answer any of those questions was Mr. Oldcastle himself. Now he had time on his hands, Edward was going to send him a copy of the letter. The original he would keep forever, his father's last words.
A patter of feet and rush of voices in the corridor announced the start of visiting hours. Alice would be prompt, she always was. Edward put away his writing and crossed his fingers. How exactly did one bait breath?...
Alice had been the first good thing he had seen in England, come to Southampton to meet him, a poised young lady of fifteen standing on the docks with her aunt Griselda—Roland had been too busy to leave town. Edward had met him that evening and they had disliked each other on sight. Dislike had flowered rapidly to mutual contempt. Alice and Griselda had probably kept the frightened twelve-year-old from madness or suicide in his first few weeks of that strangely green, soggy, solid England, full of mists and pale faces.
He had gone up to Fallow in the autumn, and what had been a nightmare of alienation and homesickness for all the other new boys had been a blessed release for him. That winter Griselda had faded away altogether, a mousy, kindly woman unable to withstand her famous, fanatical, power-crazy husband. Roland had grown steadily worse ever since, shriller, more eccentric, more bigoted.
Alice had been an absent relation, rarely seen, but her letters and Edward's had flashed across England in a single day, not to be compared to the twelve-week round trip to Kenya, and he had been grateful for her and to her. Whenever the loneliness had overflowed, he had written to Alice, and two days later her replies had arrived, full of stern comfort and practical advice.
The years had crept by. In retrospect, he should have informed his parents how things stood between him and the Reverend Roland, but it would have seemed like tattling, so he never had. He had given no thought to words like tragedy, probate, executor.... Plans for the family reunion had been seeded, nourished, cultivated—and ultimately blasted by that inexplicable massacre just days before the Exeters were due to leave Nyagatha. The ship that should have brought them Home had brought details of their deaths.
Even before the disaster, Roland Exeter had displayed a driving ambition to convert his niece and nephew to his own brand of religious fervor. His brother's will had named him guardian of the orphaned boy and the twice-orphaned girl, and he had reacted like a missionary given a personal gift of two cannibals to win from the darkness.
Alice had left school by then. Her uncle had expected her to remain and keep house in the dread Kensington mausoleum which was home to both him and his Lighthouse Missionary Society. When she had moved out and set up her own establishment, he had denounced her as a scarlet woman, damned to hellfire for eternity. That was Roly's standard way of expressing disapproval.