Life changed for all of us when Lyddie became engaged to Lyall Armitage.
He was Yorkshire born and bred, the youngest son of a solid family in the wool trade. Amos Armitage, Sons & CO Ltd, Spinners & Dyers, were a long-established firm, and its present head, Frederick Armitage, was well-known to Lyddie's father through their dealings at the Wool Exchange in Bradford. The two men were on the best of terms, both inside and outside business; the families moved in the same social circles and the Armitages' eldest son, Lyall's brother, had married a cousin of Lyddie's, so it appeared to be a suitable match from almost every point of view.
Nothing is perfect, however, and there was one big flaw in the arrangement, which was that Lyall, unlike his brothers, had declined to enter the family concern, much to the aggravation of his father, who totally failed to understand his lack of interest in the wool trade. At seventeen, he'd sailed out to Africa, the land of limitless opportunities, where fortunes were being made overnight in diamonds or gold. But it was in the wild and rich game country north of the Limpopo where he had settled and lived an active and adventurous life, often on the edge of danger, working as a big-game hunter, and later also as an interior trader. He led hunting expeditions and exported ivory and ebony, ostrich feathers, and the tobacco, coffee and cotton planted by the pioneers who'd flocked there and established towns such as Salisbury and Bulawayo. Operating from this last place, Lyall's eventual success had by now justified himself in the eyes of his father.
On this first visit home to England for several years, he had arrived laden with trophies: an hour ago he'd come up to Bridge End House for tea, bearing an elephant's foot made into a stand, now standing in the bay window of the dining room, holding an aspidistra in a brass pot.
There were five of us in the dining room that day: myself and Lyddie; Lyall Armitage; Mrs Crowther; and Ned, who was the
youngest of the family, grounded from his boarding school in Harrogate through a mumps epidemic, and though he was sixteen and fairly grown up on the whole, as impatient for his tea as though he hadn't eaten for months. But we wouldn't start until the head of the house came in. Meanwhile, Mrs Crowther, whose hands were rarely idle, made pleasant conversation while stabbing a fine steel crotchet hook into white cotton, creating a froth of fine lace destined to be a doyley for the Girls' Friendly Society sale of work. In front of the fireplace stood Lyall, in characteristic attitude, arms folded across his chest, one leg thrust forward. Lyddie sat nearby, intent on hearing more of the exploits, already legendary from his letters to his family who now, in the light of his success, relayed them to anyone who would listen, embellishing them in the process. Tales were being passed around of hunting expeditions into the bush, and his many dangerous encounters with wild beasts: how he'd shot his first lion when he was seventeen; escaped from a charging rhino; killed crocodiles; of his experiences confronting equally wild, unknown tribes with strange names. Lyall only smiled faintly and did his best to play down these tales of desperate adventure, but his far-seeing gaze, even as he spoke, seemed to be looking out over the dramatic wide views and the untrammelled far horizons of the veld's wide open spaces.
“I think it's that which makes Africa so special to you, Lyall. Being free,” murmured Lyddie, with a barely discernible sigh. I knew she was afraid that even now, in view of the difficulties ahead, he might change his mind about taking her back with him as his wife.
His eyes on her bent head, he took a deep breath and said quietly, “It's more than that. Being there is â being alive.” It was clear that he loved Africa with all his heart and soul, and from every word he spoke it was very obvious he hoped she would learn to love it, too. The last time she and Lyall had met, Lyddie had still been a schoolgirl, but now she'd matured into a lovely and lively young woman. He was lean and dark and burnt brown as a nut, an attractive if rather serious man, one who knew his own mind, and no doubt could have made his choice of a wife from any of a dozen women. But from the moment he'd looked
into Lyddie's laughing eyes it was obvious to everyone he was lost. She was, in any case, a blueprint for the sort of wife he needed â courageous and spirited, unafraid of the distance which would separate her from her parents and family and the safe and settled life she had been brought up to expect; and with enough British grit to face the edge of danger associated with the unknown and the hardships she would inevitably be exposed to. Indeed, she was afraid of nothing. Had she been a man, she might well have chosen for herself the life that Lyall had followed.
She, too, had fallen in love with her whole impetuous nature. She didn't always consider the consequences of her actions, but this time she had, and was prepared, if Lyall asked her, to follow wherever his interests dictated, ready to brush aside every objection. Lyall wasn't quite so sanguine about the outcome of his proposal as she was. He was afraid, she told me, that her father might think he didn't have the right to ask for her hand in the circumstances.
“But if that turns out to be the case, then he and I must beg to differ. He won't think that, though, will he, Hannah? Not my father? He'd never stand in the way of my happiness. I won't let him!”
It was true that Alfred Crowther could deny his only daughter nothing, but of course, as Lyall â and Lyddie, too, for that matter â well knew, he had good reason to be worried that this young man proposed to take her off to Africa after they were married. He could have forbidden her to marry Lyall, of course, but he was wise enough to see opposition would only strengthen Lyddie's determination â this daughter who could twist him round her little finger, but who he knew to his cost could be stubborn as a mule when she'd set her mind on anything. It was not perversity or heavy-handedness on his part which prompted his reluctance, however, nor even the thought of losing his daughter to another man, whom he in any case liked, it was simply his fears for her safety.
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“What's going to happen out there in South Africa, hm?” he demanded of Lyall, as we drew up to the table and addressed ourselves to what was before us. Nothing was ever allowed to
interfere with mealtimes in the Crowther household. Dinner we ate at half past twelve, and high tea we always had at six, after work was done. Today it was pork pie, cold meat and tomatoes, followed by buttered currant teacake, slabs of parkin, seed cake and the apple pie left over from dinner, should anyone still be hungry. “Are we going to let old Kruger and his Boers get away with it, then?”
Anyone who read the newspapers couldn't fail to be aware of the present troubles in South Africa â most of it stemming from the scramble for land there between the Boers, the native black peoples and the whites who had settled there; land rich in diamonds, gold and other precious minerals. We all knew by now, since the
Daily Mail
had told us so often, that the Afrikaans-speaking Boers were a stiff-necked, pigheaded, intensely religious people who believed they were the elect of God. Following the lead of their intransigent old leader, Kruger, the President of the Transvaal, they regarded the black Kaffirs on whose land they'd settled as ignorant savages, another species of being, while using them as slaves to perform the manual labour and menial tasks that were beneath a white man. More than that, however, the Boers, who were predominantly farmers cultivating their isolated tracts of farmlands out on the veld, considered themselves to be superior to other white men who'd settled there, most of them British â
Uitlanders,
they were called, foreigners, aliens â especially the British: Godless foreigners, who tended towards a dangerous liberality with the blacks and had actually abolished slavery.
“I don't believe there's any intention of letting them get away with anything, sir. But the situation is tense, and above all we need to be moderate. Our government could easily do something they might later regret.”
“That means we continue to sit back and do nothing, I suppose?” Alderman Crowther was a man softly spoken and comfortably built, with a long, melancholy face and old-fashioned Dundreary whiskers, but he had a pair of shrewd eyes that belied any tendency to self-indulgence, in himself or in others. “Rather than giving the Uitlanders some support against these beggars?”
“Nothing of the sort, I hope! Things have been allowed to
come to a disgraceful pass, that I'll grant you, but one day the Home Government might begin to see the sense of sending out a force to put them in order. Let's pray their shilly-shallying won't mean the decision comes too late.”
“Well, that remains to be seen,” opined Mr Crowther, who could never be described as an optimistic man. “One thing's absolutely certain â we can't let go of our suzerainty.”
Suzerainty, another unfamiliar word that had entered out vocabulary lately. Translated, it meant that we had first seized power from the Boer republics and then, in return for their help against the Zulus, had given them concessions to rule themselves independently â with the proviso that they were still under British sovereignty. This conditional restriction had rankled for years. The Afrikaners had never really accepted the loss of their full independence.
“Why can't we let them have their freedom?” I heard myself ask suddenly. “They founded the republics, after all. Those Uitlanders have no need to stay, if they don't like it â but I suppose they're making too much money to get out.”
They were all used to my sharpness and knew it meant very little â it was just the way Hannah was: outspoken, the same way Lyddie was headstrong and impulsive. I did, on the whole, try to curb my tongue, though. I must not lose my reputation for common sense in return for being seen as a vinegary old maid, like Miss Lumb, who made our dresses.
“A bargain's a bargain,” said Lyddie's father. “When I give my word to a man and put my name to a document, I don't renege on it the moment it suits me. Why should we allow them to do so?”
“At one time I was of your mind, Hannah,” added Lyall. “Independence for the Boers â until I found that license was all they wanted and understood by the word.” He became eloquent on the subject: these Uitlanders had made their money, right enough â some of them counted their fortunes in millions, and included amongst them was the prime minister of Cape Colony, a man called Cecil Rhodes, an ambitious Englishman who'd reached that office before he was forty, after buying up other men's diamond claims and forming the vast de Beers mining
company, besides having an enormous stake in the country's gold mines. The Boer rule in the Transvaal, however, was incredibly harsh in every way, but the Uitlanders' biggest grievance of all seemed to be that, despite all this and the exorbitant taxes they were subject to, they were not yet enfranchised. When it came to being unable to vote, on top of having to dig so deep into their pockets, they were understandably in a fighting mood â and demanding intervention by the Home Government.
“Opinion's fast gaining ground,” said Lyall, “that it's time to show the burghers they can't do just as they like â that if Kruger's overthrown, that'll be the end of the troubles â¦but Kruger's stubborn as an old goat and he and his Boers aren't so easily dismissed as all that.”
“That's what our history master, Mr Temple, thinks,” put in Ned, pausing long enough in the serious business of eating to interject a remark. “He says it's high time we kicked Brother Boer all around the Transvaal and booted him out. Pass the bread and butter, please, Lyddie.”
Lyall smiled rather grimly. “Your Mr Temple might find we'd bitten off rather more than we could chew if we did â I've had many years of dealings with âBrother Boer' and it's easy to underestimate his obstinacy, not to mention his ability to fight. They're an uncouth lot, only half civilised, for all their bible-punching â hang me, if I wouldn't sooner have a Kaffir than a Boer â but make no mistake, they'd be a hard nut to crack.”
“Well, it seems to me one side's as bad the other, and I call this âintervention' nothing more than meddling in their affairs,” I said. “Their independence seems a little price to pay to avert a war.”
There was a small silence. “Hannah Mary, quite contrary,” murmured Ned, under his breath but loud enough that his mother heard him, so he said no more, only winked at me to show me he meant no malice. I knew he was just ribbing. Ned and I were the best of friends and although he was a couple of years younger than me, he always took my part.
The family were used to Lyddie and me expressing our opinions on topics of the day, though I sometimes wondered if Mr Crowther had regretted leaving the care of his young ladies to a
graduate of Newnham college with views that were not always meek and womanly. On the other hand, Yorkshire folk were plain spoken and women were no exception to that.
“War, Hannah?” he asked now. “Who's talking of it coming to war? That would cost the country a pretty penny, and no mistake!”
He seemed less upset at the thought than might have been imagined, the alarming prospect being somewhat modified, I supposed, by thoughts of the millions of yards of khaki cloth and army blankets that would be needed in such an event.
“You're right,” said Lyall, “I don't subscribe to the idea that war's inevitable, either, but if â
if
it should come, I believe it would in any case be confined to the Transvaal and the Free State.”