Yesterday's Promise (16 page)

This Rogan had not been expecting.
Peter!
Peter had told Julien he'd found Henry's map. Rogan could hardly believe his ears.

Julien's eye wore an amused gleam now as his flaming rhetoric about building great empires cooled. He had the arrogant look of confidence of an expert chess player who had just called checkmate on his opponent.

“Don't be too outraged with Arcilla. Naturally, she had no intention of the news ever reaching me, but Peter, dedicated Company man that he is, came straight to me.”

Rogan was too disgusted with himself for having confided in Arcilla to be angry with her. He should have known better.

“Yes. I've had it for several years, in fact, just biding my time. Your knowing complicates matters, the way it has with Mornay. But I won't let this change my decision.”

Julien's patient smile was a facade. Rogan could see the temper beginning to boil behind his one eye.

“I congratulate you, Rogan. I never thought to look behind that worthless painting. I suppose that's why he placed it there, mentioning it in the will, knowing we wouldn't bother with it. He was smart to mention leaving you the map in his will too. Separating the map and the painting. It naturally led me in two very different directions. Very astute of him. And of you to find it. I'll make you a generous offer.”

“No offers, Uncle Julien.”

“You'll have to come around and face the inevitable sometime. There's no way you can escape it. I'll give you time to think it over. You're family. But in the end, my boy, we'll sit down and talk it over—or I will utterly destroy you. It's that simple.”

Rogan looked at him for a long moment. As desensitized as he was, Julien's calm, steady but coldly pointed gaze left him feeling sick. Julien
was absolutely ruthless and would go to any lengths to get what he wanted. He meant every word he said. Rogan knew Julien would seek to destroy him if he did not cooperate.

Rogan set his jaw. He thought of what Parnell had warned him about yesterday in his office. Parnell was right, after all. His brother knew Sir Julien. No doubt, he submitted out of fear.

But not Rogan. There was just enough stubbornness and iron in him to demand that he resist this ruthless ultimatum. If necessary, he would resist to the bitter end.

“I'll destroy Henry's map first.”

“Don't be a fool, Rogan.”

“I won't become another lackey like Parnell.”

“You blasted young buck! I could make you one of the most powerful men in all of South Africa. Do you realize what I'm offering you? You needn't work with Rhodes. You could share a full partnership with
me
. I'll even give you Darinda. A marriage to her would give you more shares in the diamonds.”

Rogan's contempt grew. This was not the kind of man he wished to be. Lording it over others, making them grovel by tempting them with their heart's desire until they buckled under and gave in, compromising their integrity. Julien was turning Parnell into a cowering slave who obeyed his every command. And years ago he had humiliated Uncle Henry as well. Everything that Julien Bley had become made Rogan recoil. He would not fall to one knee before Sir Julien Bley and—

Rogan heard a ruckus breaking out behind them. They turned, and Julien shaded his eyes.

Rogan saw Parnell hurrying from the De Beers building, with Darinda close behind. But ahead of them, coming straight toward Sir Julien, was the young Irishman John Sheehan, followed by what looked like three or four men in business suits—lawyers?

John, in spite of his limp, won the race and hailed Sir Julien with a loud voice. A crowd began to gather, and as Rogan watched Julien, he
could see distaste written on his face at the sight of Sheehan, but also something more—uncertainty.

Julien turned abruptly away and called to his driver and guard. Rogan looked on amazed at the scene that broke. The guard came forward, armed with a belted pistol and carrying a sjambok.

“Jorgen,” Julien called. “Remove this troubling Irishman from hounding me about that blasted coal.”

“No, wait, Mr. Bley,” John Sheehan called. “I want no trouble, sir. But I want justice. I pegged that claim on a bed of coal on the fifteenth of last month, and by law that file is in my name. Now your lawyers—”

“They are not my lawyers, Sheehan. They are Company lawyers.”

“Oh, I know all about those lawyers. The Wolf Pack, Mr. Rhodes calls 'em, and
wolves
they do seem—”

“I beg your pardon!” one of the lawyers said with aggrieved dignity. He turned to Julien. “We have tried to show Mr. Sheehan that he is not in conformity with the mining laws instituted by Mr. Rhodes, but he refuses to listen, Sir Julien.”

“The law remains, regardless.” Julien turned to John Sheehan. “The date for filing on that claim was twenty-fours too late. There is nothing to be done about that. I advise you to prospect elsewhere.”

“Twenty-four hours too late! Too late for what? It's still my claim.”

“Nevertheless, that's what the legal authorities are saying, Sheehan. The best thing you can do is get over it and get back to farming. Now, young man, you are blocking my path, and I wish to get in my coach. Step aside, or I shall have Jorgen forcibly remove you.”

Sheehan turned a pasty white beneath his brown skin.

“You won't get by with this. Thieves, that's what you are. You and the whole lot of your smooth-talking business-suited vultures. I discovered that bed of coal. I filed on time, and I'll not be taking no for an answer. You're stealing me blind, that's what you're doing.”

Julien gave him a cold look and without a word reached an arm out to brush him out of his path. But Sheehan grabbed his arm in a heat of emotion.

“You lying cheat!”

Rogan had made a move to come between them, to pull John aside. But the guard's whip was faster. The whistle of the sjambok cut through the morning heat and caught John Sheehan around the shoulders and jerked him abruptly back.

Sheehan lay stunned in the silty dust, blood seeping through his shirt.

At that moment Parnell tried to keep Darinda from coming forward to look at the man in the dust. She broke free and rushed to Julien, as though she thought it was he and not John down on the ground. When she saw the Irishman lying in a crumpled heap, his bad leg twisted grotesquely, she stepped back, her arms going rigid at her side. She stared at him, then looked at Julien with a blank face. Then she turned to the guard, and her face went rigid.

“You beast!” she cried. “What have you done?”

“Stay out of this, Darinda,” Julien stated. “Get into the coach. Parnell, help her in.”

But she stepped toward the guard and tried to wrench the whip away. The Afrikaner staunchly held on as she attempted to take it. Parnell rushed in between them and pulled her away, escorting her against her will to the coach, and all the while, Darinda let him know her fury at the brutality she had just witnessed. A moment later the coach door slammed shut, keeping Parnell and Darinda out of sight of the gaping onlookers.

Rogan grabbed the guard's arm and ripped the sjambok free, hurling it beyond reach into the dust. Jorgen seemed about to jump him, but Julien shouted a command. The Dutchman's chilling blue eyes spat hatred at Rogan, who wished Jorgen would disobey Julien so he could thrash him.

Jorgen dutifully backed off and was leading Julien away toward the coach when Sheehan managed to crawl onto all fours and call out after Julien.

“You can't get by with this, sir!”

Rogan's blood turned cold when Julien turned and looked down at the defeated and bleeding Irishman and “smiled.”

“I have already gotten by with it. You need to buy yourself a pair of spectacles. When you signed that paper in the office this morning, you signed away all rights to the claim. It now belongs to the Company.”

Rogan watched Julien walk to his shiny black coach, back straight. Rogan was still staring when the coach drove away, kicking up fine dust.

“All right, you pack of jackals,” the main foreman called to the diamond diggers, “mind your business and get back to work. The day is just beginning.”

The crowd drifted away, and few were left when Rogan turned to John. Rogan's heart sank like a rock. Never had he seen a more pitiable expression as the one on John Sheehan's smudged face.

“He beat me,” Sheehan whispered from a dry throat. “I signed that paper, aright. Signed it right in front of the Wolf Pack, just as sure as I'm sitting here.”

Rogan clenched his jaw and went to lift him to his feet. Sheehan's weak knee nearly buckled again, and Rogan held him steady.

Rogan brought him over to a rock and lowered him upon it.

Someone brought a bucket of water and sloshed it across Sheehan's back and shoulders where the whip had cut the flesh. The sun had dried the blood, and the shirt stuck as Sheehan tried to tend to his wound.

Rogan stood thinking, his fevered mind struggling with a deep anger he found difficult to shake.

Julien Bley was powerful and rich, yet unsatisfied, seeking to quench an insatiable thirst. John Sheehan was a humble Irish immigrant who had stumbled upon a coal deposit that would have etched his name in stone and made him a wealthy and respected figure in history. Now he sat beaten, bloody, and at rock bottom, his hopes dashed. Cheated from his claim by clever lawyers working for the invincible De Beers Consolidated Mining Company. Two men. Two very different roads. Rogan knew with a certainty that he would not follow the crushing footsteps of Uncle Julien. He did not want to be consumed by the same
greed and lust for power, inevitably using the same ruthless tactics to get what he wanted.

Nor did he wish to be like Sheehan, beaten and licking his wounds.

Strangely, at that moment, he thought of Evy. She deserved a man of honor, a man who, if he gained wealth and power, could be respected by men like Sheehan for honesty and fairness in all his dealings. Right there Rogan resolved to forever turn away from the wiles of men like Julien. What Julien had extolled as virtues, Rogan clearly saw as despicable vices that had distorted and twisted his uncle into the tyrant he had become. Unlike his uncle, Rogan would make his search into the Zambezi to find Henry's claim, “fair and square,” as Sheehan liked to say it. There would be no injustice. And the last thing he would do was to treat his fellowman the way Julien and his henchmen did.

“What happened, Johnny lad? What happened to you?”

Rogan looked to see John's uncle hurrying up toward them.

“Oh no, Johnny. What'd he do to ye? What happened?”

“It's all right, Uncle. Just get me back to the farm… I'll be all right. We will be starting over, is all. We'll make it…”

Rogan watched the two hobble away, arms wrapped around each other so neither would fall. A young man with a broken dream and an old man with no dream at all. Gerald Sheehan had his Johnny boy, and for the old man that seemed to be enough. Poor and broken they were, but he decided they had more of the real treasures of life than Sir Julien as his gilt-edged coach disappeared down De Beers Road. Inside, they wore sparkling diamonds, but their hearts were as bruised as Sheehan's shoulders and back. A concoction mixed up by Gerald Sheehan and applied to his nephew's lash cut would heal the laceration in time. But what would heal the empty heart of Julien? What would destroy the idolatrous shrine to diamonds that his uncle had built over the years? Rogan shook his head at the thought that Parnell was trapped too and blinded by Darinda. Was it really Darinda he wanted, or was it what Julien said she could bring him in the way of diamond shares in the future?

And Darinda?

“Mr. Rogan!”

He turned as Derwent Brown hurried toward him unaware of all that had just occurred, a grin on his face.

Rogan relaxed, recalling the quiet, pleasant supper he'd shared with Derwent and Alice last night in their modest bungalow in Kimberly. Even Alice had changed some since her days in Grimston Way, though gold dust still shone the brightest in her visions of the future. Rogan had liked the way Derwent had prayed, thanking God for their supper before they ate the roast chicken. He remembered the verse Derwent had slipped unobtrusively into his prayer at the dinner table. “What profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?”

A profound question with a profound answer—nothing. Rogan reached down as Derwent chattered and scooped up a fistful of warm dry silt. As he let it fall through his tanned fingers, and the wind carried it away, he heard the distinct sound of picks and shovels chipping away in the Big Hole.

“Mr. Rogan, you're not listening,” Derwent said.

“What did you say?”

“Mr. Mornay's changed his mind.”

Rogan looked at him, becoming aware at last.

“What do you mean he's changed his mind?”

“About working for you. He's quit working for Sir Julien and says he'll lower his wage. Says if you're interested, he's waiting outside the Kimberly Club to talk to you. He'll begin arranging the expedition to the Zambezi just as soon as you and he come to an agreement.”

Rogan looked at him, surprised at the sudden turn of events. He smiled at Derwent and slapped him on the back, and they took off down De Beers Road toward the hotel.

The expedition was on! And he had survived the first battle with Sir Julien.