“I have been looking at the North, at my own country—­”

“Why do you not always remain there?” I exclaimed almost involuntarily, so painfully did the words strike me.

“Because they will not let me,” he replied.

“They?  Who?” I asked again.  “Surely you can do what you like?”

“You think so,” he said, “but you do not know; there are so many things; so many things.  And they want me here too, and there is this place ...”

He stopped, then relapsed once more into his deep meditation, leaving me wondering what was holding back this man who was reputed to do only what he chose.  Surely there would have been a far better, far nobler work for him to do there in that distant North which, after all, in spite of the beauties of Groote Schuur, was the only place for which he really cared.  There he could lead that absolutely free and untrammelled life which he loved; there his marvellous gifts could expand with the freedom necessary for them to shine in their best light for the good of others as well as for his own advantage.  In Rhodesia he was at least free, to a certain extent, from the parasites.

How could one help pitying him and regretting that his indomitable will did not extend to the courage of breaking from his past associations; that he did not carry his determination far enough to make up his mind to consecrate what was left of his life to the one task for which he was best fitted, that of making Rhodesia one of the most glorious possessions of the British crown.  Rhodes had done so much, achieved so much, had conceived such great things—­as, for instance, the daring inception of the Cape to Cairo Railway—­that it surely could have been possible for him to rise above the shackling weaknesses of his environment.

So many years have passed since the death of Rhodes that, now, one can judge him objectively.  To me, knowing him so well as I did, it seem that as his figure recedes into the background of history, it acquires more greatness.  He was a mystery to so many because few had been able to guess what it was that he really meant, or believed in, or hoped for.  Not a religious man by any means, he yet possessed that religion of nature which pervades the soul of anyone who has ever lived for long face to face with grandeurs and solitudes where human passions have no entrance.  It is the adoration of the Greatness Who created the beauty which no touch can defile, no tongue slander, and nobody destroy.  Under the stars, to which he confided so much of the thoughts which he had kept for himself in his youth and early manhood, Rhodes became a different man.  There in the silence of the night or the dawn of early morning, when he started for those long rides of which he was so fond, he became affectionate, kind, thoughtful and tender.  There he thought, he dreamt, he planned, and the result of these wanderings of his mind into regions far beyond those where the people around him could stray was that he revealed himself as God had made him and such as man hardly ever saw him.