When, finally, he had been forced to accept the true potential of the "Ridge of White Waters" and was on the very point of hurrying back to pick up what few properties were still available, a tragic accident had distracted him. His dearest friend, a fine and beautiful young man named Neville Pickering, his companion and "partner of many years, had been thrown from his horse and dragged.
Rhodes had stayed at Kimberley to nurse him, and then when Neville died, to mourn him. The great opportunities had slipped away from Rhodes in those weeks. Yet still he had at last founded his Consolidated Goldfields Company upon the reef, and though it was nothing like his De Beers Consolidated Mines Company, nor the gold empire that his old rival J. B. Robinson had built, yet at the end of the last financial year it had paid a dividend of 125 per cent.
His fortune was such that when, on a whim, he decided to pioneer the farming of deciduous fruit in southern Africa, he had instructed one of his managers to purchase the entire Franschhoek valley.
"Mr. Rhodes, it will cost a million pounds," the manager had demurred.
"I did not ask for your estimate," Rhodes replied testily. "I simply gave you an order buy id" That was his private life, but his public life was no less spectacular.
He was a privy councillor to the queen, and thus could speak directly to the men who steered the greatest empire the world had ever known. In truth, some of them were less than sympathetic to him.
Gladstone had once remarked, "I know only one thing about Mr. Rhodes.
He has made a great deal of money in a very short time. This does not fill me with any overwhelming confidence." The rest of the British nobility were less critical, and whenever he visited London, he was the darling of society, lords and dukes and earls flocked to him, for there were lucrative directorships on the Board of the BSA Company to be filled, and a single word from Mr. Rhodes could lead to a killing on the stock exchange.
Added to all this, Mr. Rhodes was the elected prime minister of Cape Colony, sure of the vote of every English-speaking citizen and through the good offices of his old friend Hofineyr and his Afrikander Bond, sure of most of the Dutch-speaking votes as well.
Thus, as he lolled on the green leather seat of his coach, dressed untidily in a rumpled high-buttoned suit, the knot of his Oriel College necktie slipping a little, he was at the very zenith of his wealth and power and influence.
Seated opposite him, Jordan Ballantyne was pretending to study the shorthand notes that Mr. Rhodes had just dictated, but over the pad he was watching his master with a shadow of concern in his sensitive long4ashed eyes. Although the flat brim of his hat kept Mr. Rhodes" eyes in shadow and prevented Jordan from reading any trace of pain in them, yet his colour was high and unhealthy, and though he spoke with all his old force, he was sweating more heavily than the early morning cool warranted.
Now he raised his voice, calling in that high, almost petulant tone, "Ballantyne!" And Zouga Ballantyne spurred his horse up beside the window and leaned attentively from the saddle.
"Tell me, my dear fellow," Rhodes demanded. "What is this new building to be?" He pointed at the freshly opened foundation trenches and the stacks of red burned brick piled on the corner plot at the intersection of two of Bulawayo's wide and dusty streets.
"That's the new synagogue," Zouga told him.
"So my Jews have come to stay!" Mr. Rhodes said with a smile, and Zouga suspected that Mr. Rhodes had known precisely what those foundations were for, but had asked the question to pave the way for his own witticism. "Then my new country will be all right, Ballantyne.
They are the birds of good omen, who would never roost in a tree marked for felling." Zouga chuckled dutifully, and they went on talking while Ralph Ballantyne, riding in the bunch, watched them with such interest that he neglected the lady riding beside him, until she tapped him on the forearm with her crop.
"I said, it will be interesting to see what happens when we reach Khami" Louise repeated, and Ralph's attention jerked back to his stepmother. She rode astride, the only woman he knew that did so, and though she wore ankle, length divided skirts, her seat was elegant and sure. Ralph had seen her out-ride his own father, beating him in a gruelling point-to-point race over rough terrain. That had been in Kimberley, before the trek to the north and this land, but the years had treated Louise kindly indeed. Ralph smiled to himself as he recalled the youthful crush he had been smitten with when he first saw her driving her phaeton and pair of golden palominos down Kimberley's crowded main street. That was so many years ago, and though she had married his father since then, he still felt a special affection for her that was definitely neither filial nor dutiful. She was only a few years older than he was, and the Blackfoot Indian blood in her veins gave her beauty a certain timeless element.
"I cannot imagine "that even Robyn, my honoured aunt and mother-in-law, would use the occasion of her youngest daughter's marriage for political advantage," Ralph said.
"Are you confident enough to wager on that, a guinea, say?" Louise asked with a flash of even white teeth, but Ralph threw back his head and laughed.
"I have learned my lesson I'll never bet against you again."
Then he dropped his voice. "Besides, I don't really have that much faith in my mother-in-law's restraint." "Then why on earth does Mr. Rhodes insist on going to the wedding? He must know what to expect."
"Well, firstly, he owns the land the Mission is built upon, and, secondly, he probably feels that the ladies of Khami Mission are depriving him of a valued possession." Ralph lifted his chin to indicate the bridegroom who rode a little ahead of the group. Harry Mellow had a flower in his button-hole, a gloss on his boots and a grin upon his lips.
"He hasn't lost him," Louise pointed out.
"He fired him as soon as he realized he couldn't talk Harry out of it." "But he is such a talented geologist, they say he can smell gold a mile away." "Mr. Rhodes does not approve of his young men marrying, no matter how talented." "Poor Harry, poor Vicky, what will they do?" "Oh, it's all arranged," Ralph beamed.
"You?" she hazarded. Who else?" "I should have known. In fact it would not surprise me to learn that you engineered the whole business," Louise accused, and Ralph looked pained.
"You do me a grave injustice, Mama." He knew she did not like that title and used it deliberately, to tease her. Then Ralph looked ahead and his expression changed like a bird-dog scenting the pheasant.
The wedding party had ridden out past the last new buildings and shanties of the town, onto the broad rutted wagon road. Coming towards them, up from the south, was a convoy of transport wagons. There were ten of them, so strung out that the furthest of them were marked only by columns of fine white dust rising above the flat-topped acacia trees. On the nearest wagon-tent Louise could already read the company name, RHO LANDS the shortened form of "Rhodesian Lands and Mining Co." which Ralph had chosen as the umbrella for his multitudinous business activities.