LINDELA.
A woman, young, tall, perfectly proportioned, light of colour, and with
the bright and pleasing expression common among the well-born of the
Ba-gcatya maidens, enhanced by large lustrous eyes, lips parted in a
smile half-startled, half-coquettish, revealing a row of teeth of
dazzling whiteness of unrivalled evenness. She wore a _mutya_ or skirt
of beautiful bead-work, and a soft robe of dressed fawn-skin but half
concealed the splendid outlines of her frame. Withal there was an aspect
of dignity in her erect carriage, and the pose of her head, which the
Grecian effect of the _impiti_, or cone into which her hair was gathered
above the scalp, went far to enhance. She was not alone--two other young
women, also attractive of aspect, being in attendance upon her, though
these held somewhat in the background.
"Greeting, Nyonyoba," she began, in a sweet and musical voice. "I was
startled for a moment--here where I expected to find none."
"To thee, greeting, daughter of the great," returned Laurence, for this
girl was a princess of the highest rank in the nation, being, in fact, a
daughter of Nondwana the king's brother--that same chief whose son's
accession to manhood was to be the occasion of his own departure to
another sphere. Nor was it, indeed, the first time these two had talked
together.
"And why are you sad and heavy of countenance, Nyonyoba? Was the hunt
bad--the game scarce?" she went on, with a quick searching glance into
his eyes.
"Not so," he answered. "Those who are with me bring on much ivory for
the king's treasury. For yourself, Lindela, I found a bright-plumaged
and rare bird, which I will stuff and set up for you."
The girl uttered a cry of delight, and her face brightened. It so
happened that Laurence was something of a taxidermist, and had already
stuffed a few birds and small animals for the chief's daughter, who was
as delighted with her increasing "museum" as any child could have been.
Now, in her unfeigned glee over the prospect of a new specimen, Lindela
looked extremely attractive; and noting it, an unconscious softness had
crept into the man's tone. Even the girls behind noticed it, and
whispered to each other, sniggering:
"_Hau! Isityeli!_ Quite a wooer! Nyonyoba is hoeing up new land."
"Withdraw a little from these, Lindela," he said in a lowered tone; "I
would talk."
The chief's daughter made a barely perceptible sign, but her attendants
understood it, and remained where they stood.
"The success or failure of a hunt is a small thing. Such does not render
a man heavy of countenance," he went on, when they were beyond earshot.
"What does, then?" said the girl, raising her large eyes swiftly to his.
"Sorrow--parting. Such are the things which make life dark. I have
dwelt long among your people, and at the prospect of leaving them my
heart is sore."
As the last words left his lips, Laurence learned in just one brief
flash of a second exactly what he wanted to know. But the look of
startled pain in Lindela's face gave way to one of surprise.
"Of leaving them?" she echoed. "Has the Great Great One, then, ordered
you to begone, Nyonyoba?"
"Not yet. But it will be so. Listen! At the full of the second moon."
A cry escaped her. She understood. For a moment the self-control of her
savage ancestors entirely forsook her. She became the child of
nature--all human.
"It shall not be! It shall not be!"
The passion, the abandonment in the soft, liquid Zulu tone--in the large
eyes, transforming the whole attractive face--touched even
him--penetrated even the scaly armour which encased his hardened heart.
Considerations of expediency no longer reigned there alone as he stood
face to face with the chief's daughter. She was a magnificent specimen
of womanhood, he decided, gazing with unfeigned admiration upon her
splendid frame, upon the unconscious grace of her every movement.
"If I go, I return not ever," he went on, resolved to strike while the
iron was hot--to strike as hard as he knew how. "Yet how to remain--for
the brother of the king is so great a chief that he who would approach
him with _lobola_[3] would need to own half the wealth of the Ba-gcatya
people. Now I, who owned much wealth, am yet poor to-day, for the
Ba-gcatya have killed all my slaves, and the king has taken my ivory and
goods."
The girl's eyes sparkled. Perhaps she too had learned something she
wanted to know; indeed, it must have been so, for her whole face was lit
up with a gladsome light, a wonderfully attractive light.
"Perchance the king will return some of it," she said. "Yet you are a
white man, and strong, Nyonyoba--are all white men like you, I
wonder?--and can overcome all difficulties. Listen! You shall not leave
us at the full of the second moon. Now, farewell--and--forget not my
name."[4]
There was a grandeur of resolution in her tone, in her glance, as she
uttered these last words, her lustrous eyes, wide and clear, meeting his
full. Laurence, standing there gazing after the tall, retreating form of
the chief's daughter, felt something like a sense of exultation stealing
over him. His scheme seemed already to glow with success. He had
suspected for some time that Lindela regarded him with more than favour;
and indeed, while weighing the prospect of casting in his lot with the
Ba-gcatya, he had already in his own mind marked her out to share it.
Now, however, the thing had become imperative. In order to save not
merely his life, but to escape a fate which brooded over him with a
peculiarly haunting horror, he had got to do this thing, to take to
wife, according to the customs of the Ba-gcatya, the daughter of
Nondwana, the niece of the king. Then not a man in the nation dare raise
a hand against him; and the dour priesthood of the Spider might look
further for their victim--and might find in their selection one much
more remote from the throne.
And now that he was face to face with the prospect, it struck him as
anything but an unpleasing one. Such an alliance would place him among
the most powerful chiefs in the land. All the ambition in the
adventurer's soul warmed to the prospect. To be high in authority among
this fine race, part-ruler over this splendid country, sport in
abundance, and that of the most enthralling kind--war occasionally; to
dwell, too, in the strong revivifying air of these grand uplands! Why, a
man might live forever under such conditions.
And the other side of the picture--what was it? Even if he returned to
civilization--even if it were possible--he would now return almost as
poor as he had quitted it,--to the old squalid life, with its shifts and
straits. His whole soul sickened over the recollection. Nothing could
compensate for such--nothing. Besides, put nakedly, it amounted to this:
His experiences of respectability had been disastrous. They had been
such as to draw out all that was latently evil in his nature, and,
indeed, to implant within him traits which at one time he could never
have suspected himself capable of harbouring. Physically it had reduced
his system to the lowest. All things considered, he could not think that
the adventurous life--hard, unscrupulous, lawless as it was--had changed
him for the worse. It had developed many good traits, and had enabled
him to forget many evil ones.
"I would have speech with the king."
Those who sentinelled the gate of the great kraal, Imvungayo, conferred
a moment among themselves, and immediately two men were sent to learn
the royal pleasure as to the request. Laurence Stanninghame, awaiting
their return, was taciturn and moody, and as he gazed around his one
thought was lest his scheme should miscarry. The sun had just gone below
the western peaks, and a radiant afterglow lingered upon the dazzling
snow ridges, flooding some with a roseate hue, while others seemed dyed
blood-red. Long files of women, calabash on head, were wending up from
the stream, singing as they walked, or exchanging jests and laughter,
their soft, rich voices echoing melodiously upon the evening stillness.
Even the shrill "moo" of cattle, and the deep-toned voices of
men--mellowed by distance, came not inharmoniously from the smaller
kraals which lay scattered along the hillside; and but for the shining
spearheads and tufted shields of the armed guard in the great circle of
Imvungayo, the scene was a most perfect one of pastoral simplicity and
peace. And then, as the gray, pearly lights of evening, merging into the
sombre shades of twilight, drew a deepening veil over this scene of fair
and wondrous beauty, once more the words of Lindela, in all their
unhesitating reassurance, seemed to sound in this man's ears, rekindling
the fire of hope within his soul,--perchance rekindling fire of a
different nature.
"The Great Great One awaits you, Nyonyoba."
Laurence started from his reverie, and, accompanied by two of the
guards, proceeded across the great open space in silence. At the gate of
the _isigodhlo_, an inclosure made of the finest woven grass, and
containing the royal dwellings, he deposited his rifle on the ground,
and, deliberately unbuckling the strap of his revolver holster, placed
that weapon behind the other; and thus unarmed, according to strict Zulu
etiquette, he prepared to enter. An _inceku_, or royal household
servant, received him at the gate, and the guards having saluted and
withdrawn, he was ushered by the attendant into the king's presence.
The royal house, a large, dome-shaped, circular hut, differed in no
respect from the others, save that it was of somewhat greater size.
Laurence, standing upright within it, could make out three seated
figures, the shimmer of their head-rings and the occasional shine of
eyeballs being the only distinct feature about them. Then somebody threw
an armful of dry twigs upon the fire which burned in the centre, and as
the light crackled up he saw before him the king and the two fighting
indunas, Ngumunye and Silawayo.
"_Bayete!_" he exclaimed, lifting his hat courteously.
"I behold you, Nyonyoba," replied the king. "Welcome--be seated."
With a murmur of acknowledgment, Laurence subsided upon the grass mat
which had been placed for him by the _inceku_, who had followed him in.
Then there was silence for a few moments, while a couple of women
entered, bearing large clay bowls of _tywala_, or native beer; and the
liquor having been apportioned out according to etiquette, the
attendants withdrew, leaving Laurence alone with the king and the two
indunas.
"And the hunt, has it been propitious?" began Tyisandhlu presently.
"It has. Ten tusks of ivory are even now being brought in," replied
Laurence. "Also an unusually fine leopard skin which fell to my bullet,
and which I would beg the king to accept."
"You are a great hunter, Nyonyoba--a very great one. _Whau!_ The
Ba-gcatya will become too rich if you tarry long among us," said
Tyisandhlu quizzically, but evidently pleased at the news. "We shall
soon be able to arm the whole nation with the fire-weapons, now that we
have so much ivory to trade with the northern peoples."
Something in the words struck Laurence. "If you tarry long among us,"
the king had said. Even these were ominous, and made in favour of the
sinister design he had so accidentally discovered. Yet could this
courtly hospitality, of which he was the object, indeed cover such a
horrible purpose? Well, he dare not bolster himself up with any hope to
the contrary, for now many and many an incident returned to his mind,
little understood at the time, but, in the light of the conversation he
had overheard, as clear as noonday. The fear, the anxiety, too, which
had flashed over the face of Lindela at his significant words, proved
that the ordeal through which it was designed to pass him was a real and
a terrible one. Through her, and her only, lay his chance of escaping
it.
"I am glad the king is pleased," he went on, "for I would fain tarry
among the Ba-gcatya forever. And, becoming one of that people, shall not
all my efforts turn towards rendering it a great people?"
A hum of astonishment escaped the two indunas, and Laurence thought to
detect the same significant look on both their faces. Then he added:
"And those whom I have already taught in the use of the fire-weapon,
they are strong in it, and reliable?"
"That is so," assented Tyisandhlu.
"And I have taught many the ways of the chase, no less than the more
skilled ways of war--that too is true, O Burning Wind?"
"That too is true," repeated the king.
"Good. And now I would crave a boon. While the People of the Spider have
become more formidable in war, while the ivory comes pouring into the
king's treasury, faster than ever it did before, so that soon there will
be enough to buy fire-weapons for the whole nation, I who brought all
this to pass remain poor--am the poorest in the nation--and--the
daughters of the Ba-gcatya are fair--exceeding fair."
"_Whau!_" exclaimed the two indunas simultaneously, with their hands to
their mouths. But Tyisandhlu said nothing, though a very humorous gleam
seemed to steal over his fine features in the firelight.
"The daughters of the Ba-gcatya are exceeding fair," repeated Laurence,
"but I, the poorest man in the nation, cannot take wives. For how shall
I go to the father of a girl and say, 'Lo, I desire thy daughter to
wife, but my slaves have been killed, and my other possessions are now
the property of the king; yet inasmuch as I cannot offer _lobola_,
having nothing, give her to me on the same terms?' My house will not
grow great in that way. Say now, Ndabezita, will it?"
"I think not, Nyonyoba," answered the king, struggling to repress a
laugh. "Yet perhaps a way may be found out of that difficulty, for in
truth thou hast done us good service already. But we will talk further
as to this matter in the future. For the present, here waits outside one
who will show thee what thou wilt be glad to see."
Quick to take this hint of dismissal, Laurence now arose, saluted the
king, and retired, not ill-pleased so far with the results of his
interview. For in the circumlocutory native way of dealing with matters
of importance, Tyisandhlu had received with favour his request,
preferred after the same method, that some of his possessions should be
restored to him. Then he would offer _lobola_ for Lindela, and----
"I accompany you farther, Nyonyoba, at the word of the Great Great One,
by whose light we live."
The voice of the _inceku_ who had ushered him forth broke in upon his
meditations. This man, instead of leaving him at the gate of the
_isigodhlo_, still kept at his side, and Laurence, manifesting no
curiosity, having picked up his weapons where he had left them,
accompanied his guide in silence.
They passed out of Imvungayo, and after walking nearly a mile came to a
large kraal, which Laurence recognized as that of Nondwana, the king's
brother. And now, for the first time, he felt a thrill of interest surge
through him. Nondwana's kraal! Had Tyisandhlu, divining his wishes,
indeed forestalled them? But this idea was as quickly dismissed as
formulated. The king had probably ordered that one or two of the
Ba-gcatya girls should be allotted to him--possibly chosen from those in
attendance upon the royal wives. His parting remark seemed to point that
way.
"Enter," said the _inceku_, halting before one of the huts. "Enter, and
good go with thee. I return to the king. Fare thee well!"
Laurence bent down and pushed back the wicker slab that formed the door
of the hut, and, having crawled through the low, beehive-like entrance,
stood upright within, and instinctively kicked the fire into a blaze.
And then, indeed, was amazement--wild, incredulous, bewildering
amazement--his dominant feeling, for by the light thus obtained he saw
that the hut was tenanted by two persons. No feminine voice, however,
was raised to bid him welcome in the soft tongue of the Ba-gcatya, but a
loud, full-flavoured, masculine English one:
"Stanninghame--by the great Lord Harry! Oh, kind Heavens, am I drunk or
dreaming?"
FOOTNOTES:
[3] Payment of cattle made to the father of a girl sought in marriage.
[4] "Lindela" means to "wait for"--in the sense of "to watch for," hence
the full significance of the parting remark.