NOMA COMES TO HAFELA
Hokosa advanced to the verandah and bowed to the white man with grave
dignity.
“Be seated,” said Owen. “Will you not eat? though I have nothing to
offer you but these,” and he pushed the basket of fruits towards him,
adding, “The best of them, I fear, are already gone.”
“I thank you, no, Messenger; such fruits are not always wholesome at
this season of the year. I have known them to breed dysentery.”
“Indeed,” said Owen. “If so, I trust that I may escape. I have suffered
from that sickness, and I think that another bout of it would kill me.
In future I will avoid them. But what do you seek with me, Hokosa? Enter
and tell me,” and he led the way into a little sitting-room.
“Messenger,” said the wizard, with deep humility, “I am a proud man; I
have been a great man, and it is no light thing to me to humble myself
before the face of my conqueror. Yet I am come to this. To-day when I
was in audience with the king, craving a small boon of his graciousness,
he spoke to me sharp and bitter words. He told me that he had been
minded to put me on trial for my life because of various misdoings which
are alleged against me in the past, but that you had pleaded for me
and that for this cause he spared me. I come to thank you for your
gentleness, Messenger, for I think that had I been in your place I
should have whispered otherwise in the ear of the king.”
“Say no more of it, friend,” said Owen kindly, “We are all of us
sinners, and it is my place to push back your ancient sins, not to drag
them into the light of day and clamour for their punishment. It is true
I know that you plotted with the Prince Hafela to poison Umsuka the
King, for it was revealed to me. It chanced, however, that I was able
to recover Umsuka from his sickness, and Hafela is fled, so why should
I bring up the deed against you? It is true that you still practise
witchcraft, and that you hate and strive against the holy Faith which I
preach; but you were brought up to wizardry and have been the priest of
another creed, and these things plead for you.
“Also, Hokosa, I can see the good and evil struggling in your soul, and
I pray and I believe that in the end the good will master the evil;
that you who have been pre-eminent in sin will come to be pre-eminent
in righteousness. Oh! be not stubborn, but listen with your ear, and
let your heart be softened. The gate stands open, and I am the guide
appointed to show you the way without reward or fee. Follow them ere it
be too late, that in time to come when my voice is stilled you also may
be able to direct the feet of wanderers into the paths of peace. It is
the hour of prayer; come with me, I beg of you, and listen to some few
words of the message of my lips, and let your spirit be nurtured with
them, and the Sun of Truth arise upon its darkness.”
Hokosa heard, and before this simple eloquence his wisdom sank
confounded. More, his intelligence was stirred, and a desire came upon
him to investigate and examine the canons of a creed that could produce
such men as this. He made no answer, but waiting while Owen robed
himself, he followed him to the chapel. It was full of new-made
Christians who crowded even the doorways, but they gave place to him,
wondering. Then the service began--a short and simple service. First
Owen offered up some prayer for the welfare of the infant Church, for
the conversion of the unbelieving, for the safety of the king and the
happiness of the people. Then John, the Messenger’s first disciple, read
aloud from a manuscript a portion of the Scripture which his master had
translated. It was St. Paul’s exposition of the resurrection from the
dead, and the grandeur of its thoughts and language were by no means
lost upon Hokosa, who, savage and heathen though he might be, was also a
man of intellect.
The reading over, Owen addressed the congregation, taking for his text,
“Thy sin shall find thee out.” Being now a master of the language,
he preached very well and earnestly, and indeed the subject was not
difficult to deal with in the presence of an audience many of whose
pasts had been steeped in iniquities of no common kind. As he talked of
judgment to come for the unrepentant, some of his hearers groaned and
even wept; and when, changing his note, he dwelt upon the blessed future
state of those who earned forgiveness, their faces were lighted up with
joy.
But perhaps among all those gathered before him there were none more
deeply interested than Hokosa and one other, that woman to whom he
had sold the poison, and who, as it chanced, sat next to him. Hokosa,
watching her face as he was skilled to do, saw the thrusts of the
preacher go home, and grew sure that already in her jealous haste she
had found opportunity to sprinkle the medicine upon her rival’s food.
She believed it to be but a charm indeed, yet knowing that in using
such charms she had done wickedly, she trembled beneath the words of
denunciation, and rising at length, crept from the chapel.
“Truly, her sin will find her out,” thought Hokosa to himself, and
then in a strange half-impersonal fashion he turned his thoughts to
the consideration of his own case. Would _his_ sin find him out? he
wondered. Before he could answer that question, it was necessary first
to determine whether or no he had committed a sin. The man before
him--that gentle and yet impassioned man--bore in his vitals the seed
of death which he, Hokosa, had planted there. Was it wrong to have done
this? It depended by which standard the deed was judged. According to
his own code, the code on which he had been educated and which hitherto
he had followed with exactness, it was not wrong. That code taught
the necessity of self-aggrandisement, or at least and at all costs the
necessity of self-preservation. This white preacher stood in his path;
he had humiliated him, Hokosa, and in the end, either of himself or
through his influences, it was probable that he would destroy him.
Therefore he must strike before in his own person he received a mortal
blow, and having no other means at his command, he struck through
treachery and poison.
That was his law which for many generations had been followed and
respected by his class with the tacit assent of the nation. According to
this law, then, he had done no wrong. But now the victim by the altar,
who did not know that already he was bound upon the altar, preached a
new and a very different doctrine under which, were it to be believed,
he, Hokosa, was one of the worst of sinners. The matter, then, resolved
itself to this: which of these two rules of life was the right rule?
Which of them should a man follow to satisfy his conscience and to
secure his abiding welfare? Apart from the motives that swayed him, as a
mere matter of ethics, this problem interested Hokosa not a little, and
he went homewards determined to solve it if he might. That could be done
in one way only--by a close examination of both systems. The first he
knew well; he had practised it for nearly forty years. Of the second
he had but an inkling. Also, if he would learn more of it he must make
haste, seeing that its exponent in some short while would cease to be in
a position to set it out.
“I trust that you will come again,” said Owen to Hokosa as they left the
chapel.
“Yes, indeed, Messenger,” answered the wizard; “I will come every day,
and if you permit it, I will attend your private teachings also, for I
accept nothing without examination, and I greatly desire to study this
new doctrine of yours, root and flower and fruit.”
*****
On the morrow Noma started upon her journey. As the matrons who
accompanied her gave out with a somewhat suspicious persistency, its
ostensible object was to visit the Mount of Purification, and there by
fastings and solitude to purge herself of the sin of having given birth
to a stillborn child. For amongst savage peoples such an accident is
apt to be looked upon as little short of a crime, or, at the least, as
indicating that the woman concerned is the object of the indignation
of spirits who need to be appeased. To this Mount, Noma went, and there
performed the customary rites.
“Little wonder,” she thought to herself, “that the spirits were angry
with her, seeing that yonder in the burying-ground of kings she had
dared to break in upon their rest.”
From the Place of Purification she travelled on ten days’ journey with
her companions till they reached the mountain fastness where Hafela had
established himself. The town and its surroundings were of extraordinary
strength, and so well guarded that it was only after considerable
difficulty and delay that the women were admitted. Hearing of her
arrival and that she had words for him, Hafela sent for Noma at once,
receiving her by night and alone in his principal hut. She came and
stood before him, and he looked at her beauty with admiring eyes, for he
could not forget the woman whom the cunning of Hokosa had forced him to
put away.
“Whence come you, pretty one?” he asked, “and wherefore come you? Are
you weary of your husband, that you fly back to me? If so, you are
welcome indeed; for know, Noma, that I still love you.”
“Ay, Prince, I am weary of my husband sure enough; but I do not fly to
you, for he holds me fast to him with bonds that you cannot understand,
and fast to him while he lives I must remain.”
“What hinders, Noma, that having got you here I should keep you here?
The cunning and magic of Hokosa may be great, but they will need to be
still greater to win you from my arms.”
“This hinders, Prince, that you are playing for a higher stake than that
of a woman’s love, and if you deal thus by me and my husband, then of a
surety you will lose the game.”
“What stake, Noma?”
“The stake of the crown of the People of Fire.”
“And why should I lose if I take you as a wife?”
“Because Hokosa, seeing that I do not return and learning from his spies
why I do not return, will warn the king, and by many means bring all
your plans to nothing. Listen now to the words of Hokosa that he has
set between my lips to deliver to you”--and she repeated to him all the
message without fault or fail.
“Say it again,” he said, and she obeyed.
Then he answered:--
“Truly the skill of Hokosa is great, and well he knows how to set a
snare; but I think that if by his counsel I should springe the bird, he
will be too clever a man to keep upon the threshold of my throne. He
who sets one snare may set twain, and he who sits by the threshold may
desire to enter the house of kings wherein there is no space for two to
dwell.”
“Is this the answer that I am to take back to Hokosa?” asked Noma. “It
will scarcely bind him to your cause, Prince, and I wonder that you dare
to speak it to me who am his wife.”
“I dare to speak it to you, Noma, because, although you be his wife, all
wives do not love their lords; and I think that, perchance in days to
come, you would choose rather to hold the hand of a young king than that
of a witch-doctor sinking into eld. Thus shall you answer Hokosa: You
shall say to him that I have heard his words and that I find them very
good, and will walk along the path which he has made. Here before you I
swear by the oath that may not be broken--the sacred oath, calling down
ruin upon my head should I break one word of it--that if by his aid I
succeed in this great venture, I will pay him the price he asks. After
myself, the king, he shall be the greatest man among the people; he
shall be general of the armies; he shall be captain of the council
and head of the doctors, and to him shall be given half the cattle of
Nodwengo. Also, into his hand I will deliver all those who cling to this
faith of the Christians, and, if it pleases him, he shall offer them as
a sacrifice to his god. This I swear, and you, Noma, are witness to the
oath. Yet it may chance that after he, Hokosa, has gathered up all
this pomp and greatness, he himself shall be gathered up by Death, that
harvest-man whom soon or late will garner every ear;” and he looked at
her meaningly.
“It may be so, Prince,” she answered.
“It may be so,” he repeated, “and when----”
“When it is so, then, Prince, we will talk together, but not till then.
Nay, touch me not, for were he to command me, Hokosa has this power over
me that I must show him all that you have done, keeping nothing back.
Let me go now to the place that is made ready for me, and afterwards you
shall tell me again and more fully the words that I must say to Hokosa
my husband.”
*****
On the morrow Hafela held a secret council of his great men, and the
next day an embassy departed to Nodwengo the king, taking to him that
message which Hokosa, through Noma his wife, had put into the lips
of the prince. Twenty days later the embassy returned saying that it
pleased the king to grant the prayer of his brother Hafela, and bringing
with it the tidings that the white man, Messenger, had fallen sick, and
it was thought that he would die.
So in due course the women and children of the people of Hafela started
upon their journey towards the new land where it was given out that they
should live, and with them went Noma, purposing to leave them as they
drew near the gates of the Great Place of the king. A while after,
Hafela and his _impis_ followed with carriers bearing their fighting
shields in bundles, and having their stabbing spears rolled up in mats.