Page:Last Will and Testament of Cecil Rhodes.djvu/96

82 same experience, with the same result. No one can see a prisoner without an order from the Home Office.

Mr. Rhodes did not tell me what I learned only since his death, from Mr. Maguire, that the solitary occasion on which he ever entered Exeter Hall was when, together with Mr. Maguire, he attended an indignation meeting, called to protest against my imprisonment, which was addressed, among others, by Mrs. Josephine Butler and Mrs. Fawcett.

He left for Africa without seeing me; but on his return in 1889 he said he would not sail until he had met me and told me all his plans. Hence he had made Sir Charles Mills arrange this interview in order to talk to me about them all, and specially to discuss how he could help me to strengthen and extend my influence as editor.

Writing to my wife immediately after I had left him, I said:—

“Mr. Rhodes is my man.

“I have just had three hours’ talk with him.

“He is full of a far more gorgeous idea in connection with the paper than even I have had. I cannot tell you his scheme, because it is too secret. But it involves millions. He expects to own, before he dies, four or five millions, all of which he will leave to carry out the scheme of which the paper is an integral part. His ideas are federation, expansion, and consolidation of the Empire.

“He is about thirty-five, full of ideas, and regarding money only as a means to work his ideas. He believes more in wealth and endowments than I do. He is not religious in the ordinary sense, but has a deeply religious conception of his duty to the world, and thinks he can best serve it by working for England. He took to me; told me things he has told to no other man, save X. It seems all like a fairy dream.”

It is not very surprising that it had that appearance. Never before or since had I met a millionaire who calmly declared his intention to devote all his millions to carry out the ideas which I had devoted my life to propagate.

Mr. Rhodes was intensely sympathetic, and like most sympathetic people he would shut up like an oyster when he found that his ideas on “deep things” which were near to his heart moved listeners to cynicism or to sneers.