Black Mischief by Evelyn Waugh Read Free Book Online Page B

policy. He had read through the entire file bearing on the
subject and with-in a week of presenting his papers, re-opened 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
setback. The American commercial attaché acted, in his ample spare time, as
agents 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At his representation the convicts were withdrawn and the Empress and her circle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 attaché 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 Askaris and a 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 its
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 waterlilies and an immature maze.
    William
Bland, the honorary attaché, 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
others’ bungalows and knew the details of each others’ 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 described 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 everyone in the town,
from the Georgian Prince who managed the Perroquet Night