“I will say one thing for you,” said Prudence. “You do know a lovely lot of stories. I daresay that’s why I like you.”
Three powers—Great Britain, France and the United States—maintained permanent diplomatic representatives at Debra-Dowa. It was not an important appointment. Mr. Schonbaum, the doyen, had adopted diplomacy late in life. Indeed the more formative years of his career had already passed be-fore he made up his mind, in view of the uncertainty of Central European exchanges, to become a citizen of the republic he represented. From the age of ten until the age of forty he had lived an active life variously engaged in journalism, electrical engineering, real estate, cotton broking, hotel management, shipping and theatrical promotion. At the outbreak of the European war he had retired first to the United States, and then, on their entry into the war, to Mexico. Soon after the declaration of peace he became an American citizen and amused himself in politics. Having subscribed largely to a successful Presidential campaign, he was offered his choice of several public preferments, of which the ministry at Debra- Dowa was by far the least prominent or lucrative. His European upbringing, however, had invested diplomacy with a glamour which his later acquaintance with the great world had never completely dimmed; he had made all the money he needed; the climate at Debra-Dowa was reputed to be healthy and the environment romantic. Accordingly he had chosen that post and had not regretted it, enjoying during the last eight years a popularity and prestige which he would hardly have attained among his own people.
The French Minister, M. Ballon, was a Free-mason.
His Britannic Majesty’s minister, Sir Samson Courteney, was a man of singular personal charm and wide culture whose comparative ill success in diplomatic life was attributable rather to inattention than to incapacity. As a very young man he had had great things predicted of him. He had passed his examinations with a series of papers of outstanding brilliance; he had powerful family connexions in the Foreign Office; but almost from the outset of his career it became apparent that he would disappoint expectations. As third secretary at Peking he devoted himself, to the exclusion of all other interests, to the construction of a cardboard model of the Summer Palace; transferred to Washington he conceived a sudden enthusiasm for bicycling and would disappear for days at a time to return dusty but triumphant with reports of some broken record for speed or endurance; the scandal caused by this hobby culminated in the discovery that he had entered his name for an international long distance championship. His uncles at the Foreign Office hastily shifted him to Copenhagen, marrying him, on his way through London, to the highly suitable daughter of a Liberal cabinet minister. It was in Sweden that his career was finally doomed. For some time past he had been noticeably silent at the dinner table when foreign languages were being spoken; now the shocking truth became apparent that he was losing his mastery even of French; many ageing diplomats, at loss for a word, Could twist the conversation and suit their opinions to their vocabulary; Sir Samson recklessly improvised or lapsed into a kind of pidgin English. The uncles were loyal. He was recalled to London and established in a department of the Foreign Office. Finally, at the age of fifty, when his daughter Prudence was thirteen years old, he was created a Knight of St. Michael and St. George and relegated to Azania. The appointment caused him the keenest delight. It would have astonished him to learn that any one considered him unsuccessful or that he was known throughout the service as the ‘Envoy Extraordinary.’ The Legation lay seven miles out of the capital; a miniature garden city in a stockaded compound, garrisoned by a troop of Indian cavalry. There was wireless communication with Aden and a telephone service of capricious activity, to the town. The road, however, was outrageous. For a great part of the year it was furrowed by watercourses, encum-bered with boulders, landslides and fallen trees, and ambushed by cut-throats. On this matter Sir Sam-son’s predecessor had addressed numerous remonstrances to the Azanian government with the result that several wayfarers were hanged under suspicion of brigandage; nothing, however, was done about the track; the correspondence continued and its conclusion was the most nearly successful achievement of Sir Samson’s career. Stirred by his appointment and zealous for his personal comfort, the En-voy Extraordinary had, for the first time in his life, thrown himself wholeheartedly into a question of public policy. He had read through the entire file bearing on the subject and within a week of presenting his papers, reopened the question in a personal interview with the Prince Consort. Month after month he pressed forward the interchange of memoranda between Palace, Legation, Foreign Office and Office of Works (the posts of Lord Chamberlain, Foreign Secretary and Minister of Works were all, as it happened at that time, occupied by the Nestorian Metropolitan) until one memorable day, Prudence returned from her ride to say that a caravan of oxen, a load of stones and three chain-gangs of convicts had appeared on the road. Here, however, Sir Samson suffered a set back. The American commercial attache acted in his ample spare time as agent for a manufacturer of tractors, agricultural machinery and steam-rollers. At his representation the convicts were withdrawn and the Empress and her circle settled down to the choice of a steam-roller. She had always had a weakness for illustrated catalogues and after several weeks’ discussion had ordered a threshing machine, a lawn mower and a mechanical saw. About the steam-roller she could not make up her mind. The Metropolitan Archbishop (who was working with the American attache on a half commission basis), supported a very magnificent engine named Pennsylvania Monarch; the Prince Consort, whose personal allowance was compromised by any public extravagance, headed a party in favour of the more modest Kentucky Midget. Meanwhile guests to the British Legation were still in most seasons of the year obliged to ride out to dinner on mule-back, preceded by armed askar and boy with a lantern. It was widely believed that a decision was imminent, when the Empress’s death and the subsequent civil war postponed all immediate hope of improvement. The Envoy Extraordinary bore the reverse with composure but real pain.
He had taken the matter to heart and he felt hurt and disillusioned. The heap of stones at the roadside remained for him as a continual reproach, the monument to his single ineffective excursion into statesmanship.
In this isolation, life in the compound was placid and domestic. Lady Courteney devoted herself to gardening. The bags came out from London laden with bulbs and cuttings and soon there sprang up round the Legation a luxuriant English garden; lilac and lavender, privet and box, grass walks and croquet lawn, rockeries and wildernesses, herbaceous borders, bowers of rambler roses, puddles of water lilies and an immature maze.
William Bland, the honorary attache, lived with the Courteneys. The rest of the staff were married. The Second Secretary had clock golf and the Consul two tennis courts. They called each other by their Christian names, pottered in and out of each other’s bungalows and knew the details of each other’s housekeeping. The Oriental Secretary, Captain Walsh, alone maintained certain reserves. He suffered from recurrent malaria and was known to ill-treat his wife. But since he was the only member of the Legation who understood Sakuyu, he was a man of importance, being in frequent demand as arbiter in disputes between the domestic servants.
The unofficial British population of Debra-Dowa was small and rather shady. There was the manager of the bank and his wife (who was popularly believed to have an infection of Indian blood); two subordinate bank clerks; a shipper of hides who de-scribed himself as President of the Azanian Trading Association; a mechanic on the railway who was openly married to two Azanians; the Anglican Bishop of Debra-Dowa and a shifting community of canons and curates; the manager of the Eastern Exchange Telegraph Company; and General Connolly. Intercourse between them and the Legation was now limited to luncheon on Christmas Day to which all the more respectable were invited, and an annual garden party on the King’s Birthday which was attended by every one in the town from the Georgian Prince who managed the Perroquet Night Club to the Mormon Missionary. This aloofness from the affairs of the town was traditional to the Legation, being dictated partly by the difficulties of the road and partly by their inherent disinclination to mix with social inferiors. On Lady Courteney’s first arrival in Debra-Dowa she had attempted to break down these distinctions, saying that they were absurd in so small a community. General Connolly had dined twice at the Legation and a friendship seemed to be in bud when its flowering was abruptly averted by an informal call paid on him by Lady Courteney in his own quarters. She had been lunching with the Empress and turned aside on her way home to deliver an invitation to croquet. Sentries presented arms in the courtyard, a finely uniformed servant opened the door, but this dignified passage was interrupted by a resolute little negress in a magenta tea-gown who darted suddenly across the hall and barred her way to the drawing-room.
