The Covenant (119 page)

“No! No!” the director said in real panic. “My meeting with you is highly confidential.”

“What is it?” Frank asked.

“The princess. The Polish princess.”

“Who?”

“A lady of high rank. Berlin, Warsaw, St. Petersburg.”

“What’s she got to do with Mr. Rhodes?”

“Ah, that’s what we don’t know.” Nervously he began to unfold an incredible yarn: “I don’t know whether it’s a hoax or what. I don’t know whether Mr. Rhodes is in some kind of danger or not. In fact, I don’t know what I know.”

“Why not tell me what you think you know.”

“The Princess Radziwill—a real princess bearing a distinguished Polish name—for some time she’s been visiting us to talk about a shadowy trip to Cape Town. Says she has interests there. It develops that her interest is Mr. Rhodes. She never buys a ticket. She’s interested only in when Mr. Rhodes is sailing.”

“That seems harmless.”

“Yes, but yesterday, within fifteen minutes of your ordering the two tickets to Cape Town …”

“He did the ordering. Did it himself.”

“Even more suspicious. Someone in this hotel, or someone in our offices—someone notified Princess Radziwill. And as I said, within fifteen minutes she was in my office, wanting to know which stateroom he had and demanding the one next to it.”

“Now, that does pose problems,” Frank conceded. “Who is this woman? Young? Adventurous?”

“Not at all. She is the true Princess Radziwill. Well vetted in the Almanaca de Gotha. Not young at all. In her forties maybe, fifties, and looks it. May have been a great beauty once, but too much Polish and Russian cooking. Dark hair, no streaks of gray. Speaks acceptable English, but also French, German and, of course, Polish and Russian.”

“Has she any funds?”

“There’s my problem, Mr. Saltwood. I have absolutely nothing to go on, but from years of selling tickets for boat passages, I’d say the Princess Radziwill conforms in every detail to the typical woman passenger who is going to give us trouble. Why do I say this? I don’t really know. But that woman has financial problems.”

“Is there any chance that I might see her before we sail? Not talk to her, you understand. Just see her. Because we don’t want a scandal, do we?”

The managing director thought that he might summon her to the office at three, to confirm her passage, or something like that, and if Frank happened to chance by to pick up
his
tickets … “You wouldn’t approach my door, you understand. Just the outer office, like any ordinary passenger. You could see her as she exits.”

It was arranged, and from a shop across the street from the Union Line offices Frank watched a shortish, attractive, dark-haired woman step out of a cab and walk in to confirm her stateroom. Casually he crossed the street, moved to a counter, and engaged the young male clerk in conversation about a possible passage to Australia. From where he stood, he commanded a fine view of the manager’s office and had a good chance to study the Princess Radziwill of Poland.

She seemed gracious, well groomed, interested in the details of her forthcoming voyage. She talked with animation, and whenever he caught sight of her face, it seemed quite pleasant. If she was an agent in some conspiracy against his employer, she masked it well.

She rose rather sooner than he expected, walked briskly from the inner office, spotted Frank immediately, and walked straight up to him. “Frank Saltwood,” she said without hesitation. “I am Princess Radziwill. And you are the cousin of my good friend Sir Victor. Liberal party. Salisbury. I believe we’re to share the
Scot
together, this Friday. How very congenial.” With a slight bow she passed on.

Both the steamship management and young Saltwood deemed it best to inform Mr. Rhodes of this strange development, and he guffawed at their apprehensions. “I like
grandes dames
like that. I talk to them roughly, introducing more profanity with each turn of the conversation. After a while they leave me alone.”

Frank had a premonition that this cavalier treatment might not succeed with royalty as determined as the Princess Radziwill, and he boarded the Union Line ship with trepidation, which was justified a few hours later at the evening meal. He cautioned Mr. Rhodes: “We’ll go in late, after she’s chosen her table,” and they did so, but as they entered the salon Frank caught a glimpse of a lady in black waiting in the shadows, and no sooner had Mr. Rhodes taken his table, one
with spare chairs so that he might entertain business acquaintances during the long voyage, than Princess Radziwill swept into the room, crying in a soft, ladylike voice, “Oh, dear! Where shall I sit?”

Ignoring the chief steward, who hurried up to assist her, she let her hand fall upon one of the chairs at Rhodes’ table and asked gently, “Does this happen to be vacant?”

Frank started to say brusquely, “It’s taken, ma’am,” but before he could complete the sentence Mr. Rhodes said gallantly, but with obvious reluctance, “It seems to be free, madam,” at which she seated herself with great firmness, indicating that this would be her place for the duration of the voyage.

She was an enchanting woman, much younger in spirit than her years, informed on everything and willing to deliver final judgments on politicians, writers, musicians and the state of the world. When Mr. Rhodes attempted to stifle her with his routine profanity, she responded with animated discussions of her digestive system, her bowel movements and episodes in her sex life. Very quickly Mr. Rhodes retreated to more casual conversation.

From the first she demonstrated an intense dislike of Frank Saltwood, assessing him accurately as a bar to whatever designs she might have on Mr. Rhodes. She scorned any statement he made, ridiculed his Oxford insularity and lampooned his general deportment. Specifically she wanted to know why he wasn’t married, and when he tried to counter with questions about her own status, she deflated him with a forthright statement: “I am the daughter of a great Polish nobleman, but my father and I have always considered ourselves Russians first, Poles second. I am married to a Radziwill, one of the proudest Polish names, but he has treated me abominably, and I am soon to be divorced from him. I am forty-one years old.”

She intimated that she was also a famous authoress: “Five well-regarded books.”

When he made inquiries among the other passengers, he found that she was indeed a distinguished writer on political subjects and that she knew everyone in European society. Sensing that he doubted her statement about her writing, she appeared one noontime in the promenade café with two of her books, solid affairs dealing with European court life and its political intrigues. When she saw that Frank and, indirectly, Mr. Rhodes were sufficiently impressed, she said casually, “You know, of course, that my aunt, Evelina Rzewuska, was the wife and financial salvation of Honoré de Balzac.”

“Who was he?” asked a young man from Kimberley who had recently been invited to join the Rhodes circle.

“Oh, my God!” she screamed so loudly that people at other tables turned to look. This pleased her, and she appealed to them: “This young fool asks me who Honoré de Balzac was. It’s like asking an Englishman who William Shakespeare was.” And with this she launched upon a recitation, with wild gestures, of the entire sonnet:

When she was halfway through, Frank thought: What can this creature be up to? At the closing couplet he found out, for with a sudden drop in her voice, she gazed longingly at Mr. Rhodes and whispered:

After a few demonstrations like this, Frank was so deflated that she could speak right past him when she wished to address Mr. Rhodes. But if she humbled the younger man, she exalted the older, praising him extravagantly and placing herself in his way whenever she moved on deck. When he sat down on a deck chair, he found that she had acquired the one next to it, and if he sought to rest because of his increasing heart unease, there she was, prepared to argue politics with him.

“What does that woman want with me?” Rhodes asked Frank in some dismay at the end of the fifth day.

“I think she wants to marry you, sir.”

“She’s already married. Said so herself.”

“But she’s getting a divorce. Said so herself.” Rhodes caught the mockery in his young friend’s voice and burst into laughter. “You have only one commission, Frank. Protect me from that woman.”

Saltwood’s first stratagem backfired: “We’ll take our meals in your cabin. Let her have the table.” But before the first meal ended, the princess burst into the cabin, eyes aflutter, to assure herself that “dear Mr. Rhodes is not suffering.” Deftly she maneuvered Frank out of the stateroom, fluffed up the pillows, and sat close beside Mr. Rhodes to help him eat his meal.

“Frank!” came the anguished cry. “You said you’d bring the papers.” Grabbing anything at hand, Saltwood hurried back into the
room, where the beleaguered man said, “Sit here beside me,” and the princess was edged away.

The next afternoon, in their deck chairs, she chided Mr. Rhodes for having been so ungallant, and as she rose to spread a blanket for him she was seized with a mild fainting spell, which threw her gently into his arms.

“Frank!” he bellowed, and when Saltwood hurried up, he found his master embracing the inert body of the Polish princess.

During the entire voyage this charade continued, for no matter what maneuver the two men devised, the princess knew how to outsmart them, and one evening when persons at the bar said in her hearing, “I do believe Mr. Rhodes, the woman hater, is having an affair with the princess,” she smiled.

It was when the
Scot
was one day out of Cape Town that Cecil Rhodes made the second great mistake of his life. In the presence of Frank Saltwood and two guests at his table he said casually to these business friends, “When we reach the Cape you must visit me at Groote Schurr.”

“I shall be delighted!” the princess said.

He had scarcely unpacked his bags when a telegram arrived from the Mount Nelson Hotel announcing that the princess would be coming to dinner that night. At the meal, a party for the colony’s political leaders, she assigned herself the seat as mistress of the establishment, and before long, cryptic notices began appearing in the Cape Town newspapers, sent to them anonymously in a woman’s handwriting:

Who was this cyclonic woman who had risked everything on a boat trip to South Africa in pursuit of the world’s richest bachelor? Princess Radziwill was everything she claimed to be, and one thing more. She was the daughter of one of Poland’s noblest families; her aunt had indeed been the salvation of Honoré de Balzac; she had written widely popular books; and she was divorcing her husband, a process that would require many years. But the salient fact was that she was almost penniless.

At forty-one, her hectic behavior had caused her expulsion from the courts of Europe, and several nations had denied her reentry. A waspish gossip, she had frittered away a dazzling life until members of her two families, who did have great wealth, wished to see her no more. With her pen she might have made herself a good life with respectable income, but this talent, too, she abused, and her publishers were weary of her broken promises and unfulfilled contracts. Like her talents, her beauty had begun to fade, and she sensed that she had only a few more good years, which she must use to advantage.

It was remarkable that at the nadir of her career she should have devised a plan so bold, with risks so tremendous, but one day as she was sitting in her mean Paris lodgings this splendid thought had come to her: Why not marry Cecil Rhodes? Unfree to marry because of her dragging divorce, without funds, with fewer good dresses than ever before in her life, she had nevertheless launched her assault. Now, at Groote Schurr, Rhodes’ fine Cape Dutch mansion that would become the equivalent of South Africa’s White House, she behaved like a first lady and made it clear that she intended assisting Mr. Rhodes in governing the nation.

“I need help,” the great man moaned one afternoon. “Beg Frank Saltwood to come back.”

In the hectic days when Princess Radziwill was intent on capturing Groote Schurr, Frank was having the tenderest experience of his life. Upon disembarking from
Scot
and bidding Cecil Rhodes farewell for what he assumed was the last time, since he had been dismissed, he caught a cab and hurried to the Mount Nelson Hotel, where Maud Turner had come to greet him. Ascertaining from the desk clerk where her room was located, he hurried through the stately lobby, bounded up a flight of oaken stairs, and thumped loudly at her door. Quickly it was opened and quickly he was down on his knees for anyone in the hallway to see: “Maud, can you forgive me?”

“Get up, you stupid boy.”

“Then you’ll have me?”

“Not if you act like this.” And with a swift reach of her hand she grabbed his wrist and pulled him into the room, then kicked the door shut with her heel. “I am so glad we found each other again,” she said, and she maneuvered Frank to the bed, telling him, when the impassioned interlude was over, “Now, damnit, you’ve got to marry me.”

They took the train up through the Karroo, then south to a small siding convenient to De Kraal. It consisted of an iron shed and stock ramp marked by a deeply carved sign erected by Frank’s father:
HILARY
. On the long journey Maud had discussed seriously the manner in which they should lead their lives: “Forget Mr. Rhodes completely. We’ll have no more to do with him. What kind of work can you do, Frank?”

“I know the business world. Bankers, diamonds, Parliament.”