“Bloody tyrant!” Solly Loeb said bitterly as he stood in the Market Square with several other members of the Reform Committee awaiting the President’s arrival. The Market Square had been cleared of ox wagons for the occasion and a large platform had been erected to seat the Miner’s Committee and serve as the dais for the President’s speech. To one side a flagpole had been planted, and flying from it was the Vierkleur, the four-colored flag of the Transvaal Republic. Solly eyed the crowd gathering, crowding in toward the still-empty platform. “Ought to be the other way around,” he said sourly. “Instead of riding into Jo’burg, he should be ridden out. On a rail. With a nice coat of tar and feathers to keep him warm.”
“He will be, one of these days,” Lionel Phillips predicted.
“And a lot sooner than he suspects,” Colonel Frank Rhodes said. Colonel Rhodes was the Premier’s brother, visiting Johannesburg from Cape Town. He turned to Solly. “I suppose now that cyanide is an important adjunct for the gold-mining business, it’s all in the hands of the Boers?”
“D’you even need to ask? Of course it is. And the duty to bring it in is ridiculous. By the time bloody old Kruger gets through with us, with all his bloody taxes, we might as well go back to the amalgam process! We get all the gold from the rock, it’s true, but the taxes eat up most of the additional profits. The man is a bloody maniac!”
“Well,” Phillips said philosophically, “I suppose we at least ought to listen to the man. It may be the last time we get to hear him, if your plans go through,” he added with a smile.
“They’ll go through,” Solly said with assurance. “God! To think of Jo’burg without Kruger, and the Volksraad a thing of the past, together with their tax laws and imposts and anything else the damned man can think to hang around our necks!” Solly enjoyed being in the presence of such important men as his two companions, and was happy to agree to their principles, as well as having them listen to his opinions and undoubtedly respect them.
“I say,” Frank Rhodes said, changing the subject, “isn’t that your uncle, Barney Barnato, over there? With a baby in his arms and a striking beauty beside him? Don’t tell me anyone that lovely—” He broke off in some confusion.
“That’s him and his wife,” Solly said contemptuously. “My aunt Fay. She’s my age. And you don’t have to be careful about what you say about Barney to me. God knows what Fay ever saw in Barney Barnato. He certainly isn’t one of nature’s more handsome specimens.”
“He’s rich, though,” Phillips said.
“As I hear it, he wasn’t always rich,” Colonel Rhodes said, eyeing Fay admiringly. “Chap must have something…”
“He has luck,” Solly said shortly. “He also has a contempt for the Reform Committee.”
Rhodes frowned at the statement. “You mean he enjoys paying the excessive taxes?”
“No, he doesn’t like the taxes, but he’s a great believer in not rocking the boat. He says, ‘We’re making money. What the devil do you need the vote for?” he says. He forgets we could and should be making a devil of a lot more money than we are.”
Colonel Rhodes looked at Phillips a moment and then back at Solly. “What does your uncle think of… of… our plan?”
Solly stared at the man as if he were mad.
“He doesn’t know a thing about it, of course! Good God! Barney would be at Kruger’s doorstep with it in five minutes after he heard it. He would be violently against anything that might mean the slightest trouble. I know Barney better than anyone in the world, and I can tell you he’s far from being as smart as people give him credit for. He’s just been lucky. Oh, I’m sure he’ll be happy once it’s over and we have control of the Transvaal, when we’re a part of the Cape, but before then? He’d be the last man in the world to be told anything!”
“Then let’s just hope he doesn’t hear anything,” the colonel said, and turned to view Fay from a better angle.
Not far from the colonel, and completely unaware of his wife’s being scrutinized so carefully, Barney stood and waited for the arrival of President Kruger. He held Leah Primrose in his arms, and with Fay at his side was aware that he was standing with one outstanding beauty nuzzling his cheek, and the other holding his arm, and he was proud to be here with the two of them, to be seen with them, much rather than with the important people Solly chose to associate with. Barney was also anxious to hear what the President had to say. Contrary to Solly’s opinion, Barney was quite aware of the trouble brewing through some scheme or other of the Reform Committee, and while he knew nothing of the exact plans, nor did he particularly care to know, nor did he know of the depth of Solly’s involvement with the plans, he did know of the committee’s resentment against Kruger and the Volksraad. And he also felt that nothing good could possibly come from this sort of active opposition to the old man. Andries had told him of the meeting in Kruger’s living room, and Barney could only hope that Kruger was coming to Johannesburg with some concessions that would cool down the heated heads of the committee.
There was a parting of the crowd at the edge of the square, a wave that communicated itself through the crowd as people pressed back. Barney stood on tiptoe to see who was coming. It was President Paul Kruger, alone, handling the reins of an ancient oxcart, drawn by an aging and swaying span of oxen. He should have come by coach, Barney thought critically; while it was only thirty miles from Pretoria to Johannesburg, the old man probably took at least two days to make it and looked as if he had slept the night before in his clothes. Or if not by coach, he could at the least have come by trap, with outriders along, and a proper driver. It was undignified for the President to appear in that ancient oxcart. He was making a poor impression on the crowd, who were sniggering as the cart slowly made its way toward the platform, with Kruger sitting impassively in the center of the warped seat, holding the worn reins steadily with the middle fingers of his crippled left hand. But possibly he doesn’t care, Barney suddenly thought. Possibly he came by oxcart purposely, to show these people what he thought of them, what he considered proper protocol for them.
The Miner’s Committee had hurriedly gathered themselves together from the gossip they had been exchanging with friends in the square while awaiting Kruger’s arrival; they hurried up the steps to the platform and formed a welcoming line on it, ready to greet the President. Then, just as the President came to the platform and began to descend from the vehicle, one of the oxen spread his legs and decided to relieve himself. The sniggering grew to a roar of laughter as Kruger had to move quickly to avoid getting his trousers splashed. Someone in the crowd called out, “By God, the ox is political!” and the laughter rose even higher. Kruger’s face reddened, his big jaw under his chin-curtain beard tightened, but he held his temper and otherwise showed no reaction as he climbed the steps of the platform slowly and easily. He shook the hands extended to him by the committee one by one, the beady eyes on each side of his large squashed nose examining each face before him as if to memorize it for future use, or to estimate its sincerity. His crippled left hand — crippled when his four-pounder exploded as he shot at a charging rhinoceros when he was young — was held politely behind him, the fingers curled about the space where the thumb had been, hiding the grisly scar. He then stood a moment, looking contemplatively at the Vierkleur waving in the breeze, before taking the seat to which he was shown by the spokesman for the Miner’s Committee. The man, Carter Wellman, held up his hand for silence, waited while the sniggers diminished, and when the silence reached a point to permit speech, spoke.