Kimberley

“ I.D.B.’s, as that section of the Kimberley public who live by buying stolen diamonds are called, did not care to use it, unless they were prosperous and in the higher walks of their trade. It was situated near the Kimberley mine and the diamond market, and all day long it did a roaring trade. The crowd who thronged its doors was representative of Kimberley, for it contained men of many different races and types. Men came there dressed in every description of costume, from moleskins, flannel shirts, and slouch hats, to suits of London-made clothes sent out from home by West End tailors. ”

“ Until the discovery of the diamond deposits in what is now the Kimberley district, some forty years ago, the Irish immigrants had chiefly settled in the ports and along the coast. But among the crowds who went to seek their fortunes at the diamond fields were large numbers of adventurous Irishmen. The mission church established at Kimberley became the centre of a new bishopric in 1886, when the Vicariate of Kimberley, which for some time included the Orange Free State, was established, and an Irish Oblate, Father Anthony Gaughran, was appointed its first bishop. ”

“ Of course I had not forgotten that you have friends on the Western border, and no doubt you are anxious to meet one of them at least again. Don’t mind my chaff, Somerton. It’s the sign of true friendship when one’s friends remember one. As to your leaving for Kimberley, I certainly advise you to do so, for you are not likely to see much fun hero; and besides, anyone not belonging to the regulars or volunteers is to be rigorously excluded from General Buller’s camp. ”

“ A fund for the benefit of the families whose bread-winners had fallen in the defence of Kimberley was opened on Friday. The right man put the collection in motion; Mr. Rhodes, on behalf of De Beers, headed the list of subscriptions with ten thousand pounds. The Diamond Syndicate followed with two thousand. The Mayor, with the sanction of the Town Council, gave two hundred; and the citizens' "mites" were very decent indeed. ”

“ Wodehouse of Kimberley, Baron Wodehouse 1797, Baronet 1611.
"This family is very ancient, for they were gentlemen of good ranke in the time of King John, as it appeareth by many ancient grants and evidences of theirs which I have seen," wrote Peacham in his "Compleate Gentleman," in 1634. (p. 191.) The name is local, being derived from Wodehouse in Silfield, in this county; but as early as the reign of Henry III. the family had property in Kimberley, and in that of Henry IV. the manor was also inherited from the heiress of Fastolff. ”

“ Buller was roundly abused, and his staff also were included in a comprehensive denunciation; so that whoever was at fault in the Colenso collapse did not escape the wrath of Kimberley. As one of the Pitts (was it one of the Pitts?) has aptly said: "there are none of us infallible, not even the youngest of us." Not even Lord Methuen, as we had sadly discovered. The brightness of our Christmas prospects was beginning to fade.
It faded a great deal when typhoid fever broke out in the Light Horse camp. ”

“ Five, ten, twenty shillings, any sum would be given for a tin of anything, and such bribes (despite Martial Law) were frequently placed in the hollow of a merchant's hand, the while he was beseeched in a whisper to slip a friend a can of something carnal. But the grocer was adamant every time; he could not do it; and a display of principle is easy when it springs as much from necessity as from good emotions. The Military Authorities had been commandeering goods of all sorts—"bully beef" among the rest—and storing them away in the catacombs of Kimberley. ”

“ In Dec. 1868 Kimberley became lord privy seal in Gladstone's first administration and entered the cabinet for the first time, but in July 1870, when Granville became foreign secretary, Kimberley succeeded Granville at the colonial office. His administration witnessed the annexation of Griqualand West (27 Oct. 1871) , after the energy of the high commissioner, Sir Henry Barkly [q. v. Suppl. I] had thwarted the Free State Boers. On 17 Nov. the British flag was hoisted in the diamond fields, and the township was called Kimberley, after the colonial secretary. ”

“ In the days of the open mine-working at the De Beers and Kimberley mines, there existed a law which was the cause of much heart-burning and no little injustice among miners. A digger was compelled, under penalty of progressive fines, which either amounted to, or actually culminated in, confiscation of his claim, to keep pace in removing his "blue" with his next-door neighbour to such an extent as to preclude his ground falling into his neighbour's claim. Such a regulation was really a necessity, but, at the ”

“ Kim was white—a poor white of the very poorest. The half-caste woman who looked after him (she smoked opium and pretended to keep a second-hand furniture shop by the square where the ticca gharries stand) told the missionaries that she was Kim's mother's sister; but his mother had been nursemaid in a colonel's family and had married Kimball O'Hara, a young colour-sergeant of the Mavericks, an Irish regiment, who afterwards took a post on the Sind, Punjab, and Delhi railway, and his regiment went home without him. ”

“ Just listen to the ordinary story of the ordinary man and notice how out of his own mouth he condemns himself. I see that sort of posturing every day in weak-kneed men and women who want to enlist large sums of money to float magnificent schemes. Now you are honest with yourself and honest with me, and I see in this a vital difference."
They walked back through the garden and encountered Brother Francis who was taking the air. Kimberly stopped him. Nelson and Imogene joined the group. "Ah, Francis!" exclaimed Imogene, "have they caught you saying your beads?" ”

“ With you I bury every earthly hope; for I take God to witness, in you I have had all my earthly joy!" He walked away and never saw her face again.
The unintelligible service in the church did not rouse him from his torpor and he was only after a long time aware of a strange presence on the altar. Just at the last he looked up into the sanctuary. Little clouds of incense rising from a swinging thurible framed for an instant the face of a priest and Kimberly saw it was the archbishop.
The prelate stood before the tabernacle facing the little church filled with people. ”

“ You see there was nothing about the Lake itself to serve the purpose of a country club--no golf course, no polo field. All this stretch of the eastern shore is a part of The Towers estate, but Mr. Kimberly was good enough to set it apart for the rest of us--you have met Mr. Robert Kimberly?"
"Neither of the Mr. Kimberlys as yet."
"There is Charles now." Fritzie indicated a smooth-faced, youthful-looking man coming in through one of the veranda openings. "That is he speaking to Dolly. They call him the handsome Kimberly."
Alice smiled: "For a man that's rather a severe handicap, isn't it?" ”

“ The old lady is, after all, intensely human, and lives to look upon life.
Kim marked down a gaily ornamented ruth or family bullock-cart, with a broidered canopy of two domes, like a double-humped camel, which had just been drawn into the parao. Eight men made its retinue, and two of the eight were armed with rusty sabres—sure signs that they followed a person of distinction, for the common folk do not bear arms. An increasing cackle of complaints orders, and jests, and what to a European would have been bad language, came from behind the curtains. ”

“ It was equally beautiful to watch the people, little clumps of red and blue and pink and white and saffron, turning aside to go to their own villages, dispersing and growing small by twos and threes across the level plain. Kim felt these things, though he could not give tongue to his feelings, and so contented himself with buying peeled sugar-cane and spitting the pith generously about his path. From time to time the lama took snuff, and at last Kim could stand the silence no longer.
'This is a good land—the land of the South!' said he. 'The air is good; the water is good. ”

“ In the dawns they flared windy-red above stark blue, as Kedarnath and Badrinath—kings of that wilderness—took the first sunlight. All day long they lay like molten silver under the sun, and at evening put on their jewels again. At first they breathed temperately upon the travellers, winds good to meet when one crawled over some gigantic hog’s-back; but in a few days, at a height of nine or ten thousand feet, those breezes bit; and Kim kindly allowed a village of hillmen to acquire merit by giving him a rough blanket-coat. ”

“ Unable to bear longer this unwavering look, Kimberlin moved to one side, and then he was amazed to discover that the eyes of the pale man, instead of following him, remained fixed upon the spot where he had sat, or, rather, upon the wall behind it. A great dread beset the young man. ”

“ What can more than a million or two possibly be good for--unless to give away?'" Imogene looked with a droll smile into Kimberly's stolid face. "When he said, 'a million or two,' I thought of my wretched brother-in-law struggling along with thirty or forty that he hasn't yet managed to get rid of!"
"You don't think, then, he would accept a few of them?" suggested Kimberly.
"Suppose you try him some time," smiled Imogene as she walked with Kimberly to the card-table where Fritzie and Dora Morgan sat with Doane.
"Travelling agrees with you, Robert," observed Doane. ”

“ Robert Kimberly with Imogene on his arm entered from the opposite side of the room and walked across the floor to take her to her husband. His face was darker than that of Charles and heavier eyebrows rendered his expression less alert. Fritzie waved a hand at Imogene, who answered with her fan and greeted Alice.
"And there comes Mrs. Nelson--the pale brunette. Heroic woman, I call her. She has been fighting her advancing weight for ten years. Isn't she trim? Heavens, she ought to be. She lives in Paris half the time and does nothing but dress and flirt." ”

“ The Colonel himself, riding on a horse, at the head of the finest regiment in the world, would attend to Kim,—little Kim that should have been better off than his father. Nine hundred first-class devils, whose god was a Red Bull on a green field, would attend to Kim, if they had not forgotten O'Hara—poor O'Hara that was gang-foreman on the Ferozepore line. Then he would weep bitterly in the broken rush chair on the veranda. So it came about after his death that the woman sewed parchment, paper, and birth-certificate into a leather amulet-case which she strung round Kim's neck. ”

“ After long, sweet sleep under the dry stars came the lordly, leisurely passage through a waking village—begging-bowl held forth in silence, but eyes roving in defiance of the Law from sky's edge to sky's edge. Then would Kim return soft-footed through the soft dust to his master under the shadow of a mango tree or the thinner shade of a white Doon siris, to eat and drink at ease. At mid-day, after talk and a little wayfaring, they slept; meeting the world refreshed when the air was cooler. ”

“ The Kamboh plied Kim with ten thousand questions as to the lama's walk and work in life, and received some curious answers. Kim was content to be where he was, to look out upon the flat Northwestern landscape, and to talk to the changing mob of fellow-passengers. Even to-day, tickets and ticket-clipping are dark oppression to Indian rustics. They do not understand why, when they have paid for a magic piece of paper, strangers should punch great pieces out of the charm. ”

“ Robert Kimberly joined Baumann and Edward Nelson. "You have not told me yet, Robert," Baumann began, "how you put in your time here in the country."
"I have a good secretary and do a great deal of my work here, Gustav."
"But one does not always work. What else? I remember," he continued, turning to Nelson, "the stories my father used to tell about the Kimberlys--your father, Robert, and especially your Uncle John." Baumann radiated interest in everything American. "Those men were busy men. Not alone sugar-refining, but horses, steamboats, opera-houses, women--always, always some excitement." ”

“ But I imagine the interest has waned," said Kimberly. "When a man took his life in his hand on such a venture the excitement gave it a double zest--the reflection that you were an outlaw but prepared, if necessary, to pay the price with your life. Nowadays, the husband has fallen lower than the libertine. If you break up his home--he sues you. There is nothing hair-raising in that. Will you dance, Gustav?"
"I want very much to dance. Your women dance better than ours."
"Why, your women dance beautifully. Nelson will find you a partner," suggested Kimberly. "I must hunt up Mrs. Nelson. ”

“ A red bull and a colonel on a horse will come, but first, my father said, come the two men making ready the ground for these matters. That is how, my father said, they always did; and it is always so when men work magic.'
If the woman had sent Kim up to the local Jadoo-Gher with those papers, he would, of course, have been taken over by the Provincial Lodge and sent to the Masonic Orphanage in the Hills; but what she had heard of magic she distrusted. Kim, too, held views of his own. ”

“ Hurree Babu stepped back a pace or two into the crowd at the entrance of Benares station and—was gone. Kim drew a deep breath and hugged himself all over. The nickel-plated revolver he could feel in the bosom of his sad-coloured robe, the amulet was on his neck; begging-gourd, rosary, the ghost-dagger (Mr. Lurgan had forgotten nothing) were all to hand, with medicine, paint-box, and compass, and in a worn old purse-belt embroidered with porcupine quill-patterns lay a month's pay. Kings could be no richer. ”