THE royal prisoner was royally housed. After the jolting journey in the sultry covered wagon, to the steady tramp of the marching soldiers, and the frightened crying of the old Dreamer who crouched beside him, it was pleasant to be in these spacious rooms, to look from under the sun-blinds into the leafy garden, to sit on the wet stones and dabble in the black pool in the hall.
Prince Dwala was shut up in the Old Residence while the Colonial Office made up its mind what was to be done with him. Compassionate ladies sent him baskets full of flowers. The rest of the prisoners—the Dreamer and a rabble of braves hunted down in the hills—were huddled away in the jail.
The Prince had many visitors. The Governor came, accompanied by his staff, young men in cocked hats, who looked as tall and morose as possible while the Governor lectured him. A young man came from the ‘Pioneer’ and interviewed him as to his opinion of Western civilisation; the Prince’s answers were disjointed, amounting to little more than ejaculations, such as ‘iced drinks’ and ‘theaters’; but his interest was evident, and the ‘Pioneer’ said that his views on the subject were ‘quite equal to those of some of the best of our Indian Princes.’ On the all-engrossing gold question he had been diplomatically discreet, nor would he commit himself on the equally difficult question of the British suzerainty over the Soochings.
He had numerous visits from Mr. Wyndham Cato, the Pro-Boer M.P., who was staying with the Governor, having arrived in the course of a grand tour of the Colonies, destined to supply him with ammunition for an attack on the Government all along the line on the ‘native question.’ But for Mr. Cato, the case of the Soochings would never have attained the importance it had. The Governor was disposed to treat the whole thing as a hole-and-corner brawl, a question of police; he would have bundled Dwala and his braves obscurely away into a penal settlement if he had been left alone. Mr. Cato blew the bubble. Bouverie Street and Whitehall, stimulated by telegrams, reacted one on the other. It became a public matter. The Governor smiled benignly, and squared it up to a larger scale. Thanks to Mr. Cato, Prince Dwala was a captive Prince instead of an arrested malefactor. The Prince conceived a warm affection for the little man, who let him try on his gold spectacles, and showed him how his watch wound up.
‘I have very little influence with the Governor; I have done all I can, and I am afraid that your deposition is certain,’ said Mr. Cato, one day, as he and the Prince squatted side by side at the edge of the pool—Mr. Cato folding little paper boats out of pieces of newspaper, while the Prince stirred the water with his foot to make them bob up and down. ‘But, even then, you will still be a Prince, and it is better to be a native Prince than the hereditary tyrant of a so-called civilised country, the heir of one of our mushroom dynasties of Europe, whose only purpose in life is to help a self-elected aristocracy, as vulgar as themselves, to grind down the sweating millions of honest working folk. You will still receive your revenues, if there is any justice left in this disjointed world of ours. I shall agitate to the best of my power to get some addition to your income from our niggardly Government. You will be a comparatively rich man, and if you win your lawsuit you ought to do very well indeed. Nobody has a right to prevent your going to London if you wish to. I am starting myself in a few days, and if you will allow me, I shall be very glad to take you with me.’
‘Not in a hutch?’
‘A “hutch”? Don’t be absurd. You won’t be a prisoner. You’ll travel as I travel. And, until some suitable residence has been found for you, I insist on your coming to stay with us at Hampstead. I am sure that my aunt and the two sisters who live with me will welcome you most warmly.’
The lawsuit to which Mr. Cato alluded was one of his own contriving. When the first load of gold from the mines was sold to the Bank, the Solicitor-General for the Colony had put in a claim for a royalty, which was met by the defence that the mine was outside the limits of the colony. The miners set up concessions granted by the deceased monarch of the Soochings. Mr. Cato, a republican at home, but a firm upholder of the divine rights of ‘native’ princes, hired a lawyer on behalf of Prince Dwala and claimed the mines as his personal property, set aside from time immemorial for the maintenance of the dignity of the Royal House. The tribe at large had never exercised more than the right of hunting over them. He denied the validity of the concessions, and asked for a declaration that the fee simple was vested in the Prince.