I used to know Mrs. van Koopman well and to see her often.  I admired her much, not only on account of her great talents and of her powerful intellect, but also for the great dignity which she displayed all through the Boer War, when, suspected of favouring the Dutch cause to the extent of holding communications with the rebels all over the Cape Colony, she never committed any indiscretion or gave cause for any direct action against her.  For some time, by order of the military authorities, she was placed under police supervision, and her house was searched for papers and documents which, however, were not found—­as might have been foreseen.

All through these trying months she never wavered in her attitude nor in her usual mode of life, except that she saw fewer people than formerly—­not, as she used playfully to say, because she feared to be compromised, but because she did not wish to compromise others.  More than once during my visits I spoke to her of Mr. Rhodes and tried to induce her to relent in her resolution.  I even went so far as to tell her that her consent to meet him would, more than anything else, cause him to use all his influence, or what remained of it, in favour of a prompt settlement of the war in a peace honourable to both sides.  Mrs. van Koopman smiled, but remained immovable.  At last, seeing that I would not abandon the subject, she told me in tones which admitted of no discussion that she had far too much affection for Rhodes not to have been so entirely cut to the core by his duplicity in regard to her and by his whole conduct in that unfortunate matter of the Raid.  She could trust him no longer, she told me, and, consequently, a meeting with him would only give her unutterable pain and revive memories that had better remain undisturbed.  “Had I cared for him less I would not say so to you,” she added, “but you must know that of all sad things the saddest is the destruction of idols one has built for oneself.”

This attitude on the part of the one friend he had the greatest affection for was one of the many episodes which embittered Rhodes.

CHAPTER V.

RHODES AND THE RAID

After the Raid, faithful to his usual tactics of making others responsible for his own misdeeds, Cecil Rhodes grew to hate with ferocity all those whose silence and quiet disapproval reminded him of the fatal error into which he had been led.  He was loud in his expressions of resentment against Mr. Schreiner and the other members of the Afrikander party who had not been able to conceal from him their indignation at his conduct on the memorable occasion which ruined his own political life.  They had compelled him—­one judged by his demeanour—­to resign his office of Prime Minister at the very time when he was about to transform it into something far more important—­to use it as the stepping-stone to future grandeurs of which he already dreamt, although he had so far refrained from speaking about them to others.  Curious to say, however, he never blamed the authors of this political mistake, and never, in public at least, reproached Jameson for the disaster he had brought upon him.