CHAPTER I. THE RECTORY BLIND

CHAPTER II. THE NEW YEAR FEAST

CHAPTER III. AUNT MARIA

CHAPTER IV. A YEAR LATER

CHAPTER V. WEDDED

CHAPTER VI. PARTED

CHAPTER VII. BARBARA’S SIN

CHAPTER VIII. THE ATONEMENT

SMITH AND THE PHARAOHS

CHAPTER I

Scientists, or some scientists—for occasionally one learned person

differs from other learned persons—tell us they know all that is worth

knowing about man, which statement, of course, includes woman. They

trace him from his remotest origin; they show us how his bones changed

and his shape modified, also how, under the influence of his needs and

passions, his intelligence developed from something very humble. They

demonstrate conclusively that there is nothing in man which the

dissecting-table will not explain; that his aspirations towards another

life have their root in the fear of death, or, say others of them, in

that of earthquake or thunder; that his affinities with the past are

merely inherited from remote ancestors who lived in that past, perhaps

a million years ago; and that everything noble about him is but the

fruit of expediency or of a veneer of civilisation, while everything

base must be attributed to the instincts of his dominant and primeval

nature. Man, in short, is an animal who, like every other animal, is

finally subdued by his environment and takes his colour from his

surroundings, as cattle do from the red soil of Devon. Such are the

facts, they (or some of them) declare; all the rest is rubbish.

At times we are inclined to agree with these sages, especially after it

has been our privilege to attend a course of lectures by one of them.

Then perhaps something comes within the range of our experience which

gives us pause and causes doubts, the old divine doubts, to arise again

deep in our hearts, and with them a yet diviner hope.

Perchance when all is said, so we think to ourselves, man _is_ something

more than an animal. Perchance he has known the past, the far past, and

will know the future, the far, far future. Perchance the dream is true,

and he does indeed possess what for convenience is called an immortal

soul, that may manifest itself in one shape or another; that may sleep

for ages, but, waking or sleeping, still remains itself, indestructible

as the matter of the Universe.

An incident in the career of Mr. James Ebenezer Smith might well

occasion such reflections, were any acquainted with its details, which

until this, its setting forth, was not the case. Mr. Smith is a person

who knows when to be silent. Still, undoubtedly it gave cause for

thought to one individual—namely, to him to whom it happened. Indeed,

James Ebenezer Smith is still thinking over it, thinking very hard

indeed.

J. E. Smith was well born and well educated. When he was a good-looking

and able young man at college, but before he had taken his degree,

trouble came to him, the particulars of which do not matter, and he was

thrown penniless, also friendless, upon the rocky bosom of the world.

No, not quite friendless, for he had a godfather, a gentleman connected

with business whose Christian name was Ebenezer. To him, as a last

resource, Smith went, feeling that Ebenezer owed him something in

return for the awful appellation wherewith he had been endowed in

baptism.

To a certain extent Ebenezer recognised the obligation. He did nothing

heroic, but he found his godson a clerkship in a bank of which he was

one of the directors—a modest clerkship, no more. Also, when he died

a year later, he left him a hundred pounds to be spent upon some

souvenir.

Smith, being of a practical turn of mind, instead of adorning himself

with memorial jewellery for which he had no use, invested the hundred

pounds in an exceedingly promising speculation. As it happened, he was

not misinformed, and his talent returned to him multiplied by ten. He

repeated the experiment, and, being in a position to know what he was

doing, with considerable success. By the time that he was thirty he

found himself possessed of a fortune of something over twenty-five

thousand pounds. Then (and this shows the wise and practical nature of

the man) he stopped speculating and put out his money in such a fashion

that it brought him a safe and clear four per cent.

By this time Smith, being an excellent man of business, was well up in

the service of his bank—as yet only a clerk, it is true, but one who

drew his four hundred pounds a year, with prospects. In short, he was

in a position to marry had he wished to do so. As it happened, he did

not wish—perhaps because, being very friendless, no lady who

attracted him crossed his path; perhaps for other reasons.

Shy and reserved in temperament, he confided only in himself. None, not

even his superiors at the bank or the Board of Management, knew how

well off he had become. No one visited him at the flat which he was

understood to occupy somewhere in the neighbourhood of Putney; he

belonged to no club, and possessed not a single intimate. The blow

which the world had dealt him in his early days, the harsh repulses and

the rough treatment he had then experienced, sank so deep into his

sensitive soul that never again did he seek close converse with his

kind. In fact, while still young, he fell into a condition of

old-bachelorhood of a refined type.

Soon, however, Smith discovered—it was after he had given up

speculating—that a man must have something to occupy his mind. He

tried philanthropy, but found himself too sensitive for a business

which so often resolves itself into rude inquiry as to the affairs of

other people. After a struggle, therefore, he compromised with his

conscience by setting aside a liberal portion of his income for

anonymous distribution among deserving persons and objects.

While still in this vacant frame of mind Smith chanced one day, when the

bank was closed, to drift into the British Museum, more to escape the

vile weather that prevailed without than for any other reason.

Wandering hither and thither at hazard, he found himself in the great

gallery devoted to Egyptian stone objects and sculpture. The place

bewildered him somewhat, for he knew nothing of Egyptology; indeed,

there remained upon his mind only a sense of wonderment not unmixed

with awe. It must have been a great people, he thought to himself, that

executed these works, and with the thought came a desire to know more

about them. Yet he was going away when suddenly his eye fell on the

sculptured head of a woman which hung upon the wall.

Smith looked at it once, twice, thrice, and at the third look he fell in

love. Needless to say, he was not aware that such was his condition. He

knew only that a change had come over him, and never, never could he

forget the face which that carven mask portrayed. Perhaps it was not

really beautiful save for its wondrous and mystic smile; perhaps the

lips were too thick and the nostrils too broad. Yet to him that face

was Beauty itself, beauty which drew him as with a cart-rope, and awoke

within him all kinds of wonderful imaginings, some of them so strange

and tender that almost they partook of the nature of memories. He

stared at the image, and the image smiled back sweetly at him, as

doubtless it, or rather its original—for this was but a plaster

cast—had smiled at nothingness in some tomb or hiding-hole for over

thirty centuries, and as the woman whose likeness it was had once smiled

upon the world.

A short, stout gentleman bustled up and, in tones of authority,

addressed some workmen who were arranging a base for a neighbouring

statue. It occurred to Smith that he must be someone who knew about

these objects. Overcoming his natural diffidence with an effort, he

raised his hat and asked the gentleman if he could tell him who was the

original of the mask.

The official—who, in fact, was a very great man in the

Museum—glanced at Smith shrewdly, and, seeing that his interest was

genuine, answered—

“I don’t know. Nobody knows. She has been given several names, but

none of them have authority. Perhaps one day the rest of the statue may

be found, and then we shall learn—that is, if it is inscribed. Most

likely, however, it has been burnt for lime long ago.”

ldquo;Then you can’t tell me anything about her?” said Smith.

“Well, only a little. To begin with, that’s a cast. The original is

in the Cairo Museum. Mariette found it, I believe at Karnac, and gave it

a name after his fashion. Probably she was a queen—of the eighteenth

dynasty, by the work. But you can see her rank for yourself from the

broken _uraeus_.” (Smith did not stop him to explain that he had not

the faintest idea what a _uraeus_ might be, seeing that he was utterly

unfamiliar with the snake-headed crest of Egyptian royalty.) “You

should go to Egypt and study the head for yourself. It is one of the

most beautiful things that ever was found. Well, I must be off. Good

day.”

And he bustled down the long gallery.

Smith found his way upstairs and looked at mummies and other things.

Somehow it hurt him to reflect that the owner of yonder sweet, alluring

face must have become a mummy long, long before the Christian era.

Mummies did not strike him as attractive.

He returned to the statuary and stared at his plaster cast till one of

the workmen remarked to his fellow that if he were the gent he’d go

and look at “a live’un” for a change.

Then Smith retired abashed.

On his way home he called at his bookseller’s and ordered “all the

best works on Egyptology”. When, a day or two later, they arrived in a

packing-case, together with a bill for thirty-eight pounds, he was

somewhat dismayed. Still, he tackled those books like a man, and, being

clever and industrious, within three months had a fair working

knowledge of the subject, and had even picked up a smattering of

hieroglyphics.

In January—that was, at the end of those three months—Smith

astonished his Board of Directors by applying for ten weeks’ leave, he

who had hitherto been content with a fortnight in the year. When

questioned he explained that he had been suffering from bronchitis, and

was advised to take a change in Egypt.

“A very good idea,” said the manager; “but I’m afraid

you’ll find it expensive. They fleece one in Egypt.”

“I know,” answered Smith; “but I’ve saved a little and

have only myself to spend it upon.”

So Smith went to Egypt and saw the original of the beauteous head and a

thousand other fascinating things. Indeed, he did more. Attaching

himself to some excavators who were glad of his intelligent assistance,

he actually dug for a month in the neighbourhood of ancient Thebes, but

without finding anything in particular.

It was not till two years later that he made his great discovery, that

which is known as Smith’s Tomb. Here it may be explained that the

state of his health had become such as to necessitate an annual visit

to Egypt, or so his superiors understood.

However, as he asked for no summer holiday, and was always ready to do

another man’s work or to stop overtime, he found it easy to arrange

for these winter excursions.

On this, his third visit to Egypt, Smith obtained from the

Director-General of Antiquities at Cairo a licence to dig upon his own

account. Being already well known in the country as a skilled

Egyptologist, this was granted upon the usual terms—namely, that the

Department of Antiquities should have a right to take any of the

objects which might be found, or all of them, if it so desired.

Such preliminary matters having been arranged by correspondence, Smith,

after a few days spent in the Museum at Cairo, took the night train to

Luxor, where he found his head-man, an ex-dragoman named Mahomet,

waiting for him and his fellaheen labourers already hired. There were

but forty of them, for his was a comparatively small venture. Three

hundred pounds was the amount that he had made up his mind to expend,

and such a sum does not go far in excavations.

During his visit of the previous year Smith had marked the place where

he meant to dig. It was in the cemetery of old Thebes, at the wild spot

not far from the temple of Medinet Habu, that is known as the Valley of

the Queens. Here, separated from the resting-places of their royal

lords by the bold mass of the intervening hill, some of the greatest

ladies of Egypt have been laid to rest, and it was their tombs that

Smith desired to investigate. As he knew well, some of these must yet

remain to be discovered. Who could say? Fortune favours the bold. It

might be that he would find the holy grave of that beauteous, unknown

Royalty whose face had haunted him for three long years!

For a whole month he dug without the slightest success. The spot that he

selected had proved, indeed, to be the mouth of a tomb. After

twenty-five days of laborious exploration it was at length cleared out,

and he stood in a rude, unfinished cave. The queen for whom it had been

designed must have died quite young and been buried elsewhere; or she

had chosen herself another sepulchre, or mayhap the rock had proved

unsuitable for sculpture.

Smith shrugged his shoulders and moved on, sinking trial pits and

trenches here and there, but still finding nothing. Two-thirds of his

time and money had been spent when at last the luck turned. One day,

towards evening, with some half-dozen of his best men he was returning

after a fruitless morning of labour, when something seemed to attract

him towards a little _wadi_, or bay, in the hillside that was filled

with tumbled rocks and sand. There were scores of such places, and this

one looked no more promising than any of the others had proved to be.

Yet it attracted him. Thoroughly dispirited, he walked past it twenty

paces or more, then turned.

“Where go you, sah?” asked his head-man, Mahomet.

He pointed to the recess in the cliff.

“No good, sah,” said Mahomet. “No tomb there. Bed-rock too

near top. Too much water run in there; dead queen like keep dry!”

But Smith went on, and the others followed obediently.

He walked down the little slope of sand and boulders and examined the

cliff. It was virgin rock; never a tool mark was to be seen. Already

the men were going, when the same strange instinct which had drawn him

to the spot caused him to take a spade from one of them and begin to

shovel away the sand from the face of the cliff—for here, for some

unexplained reason, were no boulders or _debris_. Seeing their master,

to whom they were attached, at work, they began to work too, and for

twenty minutes or more dug on cheerfully enough, just to humour him,

since all were sure that here there was no tomb. At length Smith

ordered them to desist, for, although now they were six feet down, the

rock remained of the same virgin character.

With an exclamation of disgust he threw out a last shovelful of sand.

The edge of his spade struck on something that projected. He cleared

away a little more sand, and there appeared a rounded ledge which

seemed to be a cornice. Calling back the men, he pointed to it, and

without a word all of them began to dig again. Five minutes more of

work made it clear that it was a cornice, and half an hour later there

appeared the top of the doorway of a tomb.

“Old people wall him up,” said Mahomet, pointing to the flat stones

set in mud for mortar with which the doorway had been closed, and to the

undecipherable impress upon the mud of the scarab seals of the officials

whose duty it had been to close the last resting-place of the royal

dead for ever.

“Perhaps queen all right inside,” he went on, receiving no answer

to his remark.

“Perhaps,” replied Smith, briefly. “Dig, man, dig!

Don’t waste time in talking.”

So they dug on furiously till at length Smith saw something which caused

him to groan aloud. There was a hole in the masonry—the tomb had been

broken into. Mahomet saw it too, and examined the top of the aperture

with his skilled eye.

“Very old thief,” he said. “Look, he try build up wall again,

but run away before he have time finish.” And he pointed to certain

flat stones which had been roughly and hurriedly replaced.

“Dig—dig!” said Smith.

Ten minutes more and the aperture was cleared. It was only just big

enough to admit the body of a man.

By now the sun was setting. Swiftly, swiftly it seemed to tumble down

the sky. One minute it was above the rough crests of the western hills

behind them; the next, a great ball of glowing fire, it rested on their

topmost ridge. Then it was gone. For an instant a kind of green spark

shone where it had been. This too went out, and the sudden Egyptian

night was upon them.

The fellaheen muttered among themselves, and one or two of them wandered

off on some pretext. The rest threw down their tools and looked at

Smith. “Men say they no like stop here. They afraid of ghost! Too

many _afreet_ live in these tomb. That what they say. Come back finish

to-morrow morning when it light. Very foolish people, these common

fellaheen,” remarked Mahomet, in a superior tone.

“Quite so,” replied Smith, who knew well that nothing that he could

offer would tempt his men to go on with the opening of a tomb after

sunset. “Let them go away. You and I will stop and watch the place

till morning.”

“Sorry, sah,” said Mahomet, “but I not feel quite well

inside; think I got fever. I go to camp and lie down and pray under

plenty blanket.”

“All right, go,” said Smith; “but if there is anyone who is

not a coward, let him bring me my big coat, something to eat and drink,

and the lantern that hangs in my tent. I will meet him there in the

valley.”

Mahomet, though rather doubtfully, promised that this should be done,

and, after begging Smith to accompany them, lest the spirit of whoever

slept in the tomb should work him a mischief during the night, they

departed quickly enough.

Smith lit his pipe, sat down on the sand, and waited. Half an hour later

he heard a sound of singing, and through the darkness, which was dense,

saw lights coming up the valley.

“My brave men,” he thought to himself, and scrambled up the slope

to meet them.

He was right. These were his men, no less than twenty of them, for with

a fewer number they did not dare to face the ghosts which they believed

haunted the valley after nightfall. Presently the light from the

lantern which one of them carried (not Mahomet, whose sickness had

increased too suddenly to enable him to come) fell upon the tall form

of Smith, who, dressed in his white working clothes, was leaning

against a rock. Down went the lantern, and with a howl of terror the

brave company turned and fled.

“Sons of cowards!” roared Smith after them, in his most vigorous

Arabic. “It is I, your master, not an _afreet_.”

They heard, and by degrees crept back again. Then he perceived that in

order to account for their number each of them carried some article.

Thus one had the bread, another the lantern, another a tin of sardines,

another the sardine-opener, another a box of matches, another a bottle

of beer, and so on. As even thus there were not enough things to go

round, two of them bore his big coat between them, the first holding it

by the sleeves and the second by the tail as though it were a

stretcher.

“Put them down,” said Smith, and they obeyed. “Now,” he

added, “run for your lives; I thought I heard two _afreets_ talking

up there just now of what they would do to any followers of the Prophet

who mocked their gods, if perchance they should meet them in their holy

place at night.”

This kindly counsel was accepted with much eagerness. In another minute

Smith was alone with the stars and the dying desert wind.

Collecting his goods, or as many of them as he wanted, he thrust them

into the pockets of the great-coat and returned to the mouth of the

tomb. Here he made his simple meal by the light of the lantern, and

afterwards tried to go to sleep. But sleep he could not. Something

always woke him. First it was a jackal howling amongst the rocks; next

a sand-fly bit him in the ankle so sharply that he thought he must have

been stung by a scorpion. Then, notwithstanding his warm coat, the cold

got hold of him, for the clothes beneath were wet through with

perspiration, and it occurred to him that unless he did something he

would probably contract an internal chill or perhaps fever. He rose and

walked about.

By now the moon was up, revealing all the sad, wild scene in its every

detail. The mystery of Egypt entered his soul and oppressed him. How

much dead majesty lay in the hill upon which he stood? Were they all

really dead, he wondered, or were those fellaheen right? Did their

spirits still come forth at night and wander through the land where

once they ruled? Of course that was the Egyptian faith according to

which the _Ka_, or Double, eternally haunted the place where its

earthly counterpart had been laid to rest. When one came to think of

it, beneath a mass of unintelligible symbolism there was much in the

Egyptian faith which it was hard for a Christian to disbelieve.

Salvation through a Redeemer, for instance, and the resurrection of the

body. Had he, Smith, not already written a treatise upon these points

of similarity which he proposed to publish one day, not under his own

name? Well, he would not think of them now; the occasion seemed

scarcely fitting—they came home too pointedly to one who was engaged

in violating a tomb.

His mind, or rather his imagination—of which he had plenty—went off

at a tangent. What sights had this place seen thousands of years ago!

Once, thousands of years ago, a procession had wound up along the

roadway which was doubtless buried beneath the sand whereon he stood

towards the dark door of this sepulchre. He could see it as it passed

in and out between the rocks. The priests, shaven-headed and robed in

leopards’ skins, or some of them in pure white, bearing the mystic

symbols of their office. The funeral sledge drawn by oxen, and on it

the great rectangular case that contained the outer and the inner

coffins, and within them the mummy of some departed Majesty; in the

Egyptian formula, “the hawk that had spread its wings and flown into

the bosom of Osiris,” God of Death. Behind, the mourners, rending the

air with their lamentations. Then those who bore the funeral furniture

and offerings. Then the high officers of State and the first priests of

Amen and of the other gods. Then the sister queens, leading by the hand

a wondering child or two. Then the sons of Pharaoh, young men carrying

the emblems of their rank.

Lastly, walking alone, Pharaoh himself in his ceremonial robes, his

apron, his double crown of linen surmounted by the golden snake, his

inlaid bracelets and his heavy, tinkling earrings. Pharaoh, his head

bowed, his feet travelling wearily, and in his heart—what thoughts?

Sorrow, perhaps, for her who had departed. Yet he had other queens and

fair women without count. Doubtless she was sweet and beautiful, but

sweetness and beauty were not given to her alone. Moreover, was she not

wont to cross his will and to question his divinity? No, surely it is

not only of her that he thinks, her for whom he had prepared this

splendid tomb with all things needful to unite her with the gods. Surely

he thinks also of himself and that other tomb on the farther side of

the hill whereat the artists labour day by day—yes, and have laboured

these many years; that tomb to which before so very long he too must

travel in just this fashion, to seek his place beyond the doors of

Death, who lays his equal hand on king and queen and slave.

The vision passed. It was so real that Smith thought he must have been

dreaming. Well, he was awake now, and colder than ever. Moreover, the

jackals had multiplied. There were a whole pack of them, and not far

away. Look! One crossed in the ring of the lamplight, a slinking,

yellow beast that smelt the remains of dinner. Or perhaps it smelt

himself. Moreover, there were bad characters who haunted these

mountains, and he was alone and quite unarmed. Perhaps he ought to put

out the light which advertised his whereabouts. It would be wise, and

yet in this particular he rejected wisdom. After all, the light was

some company.

Since sleep seemed to be out of the question, he fell back upon poor

humanity’s other anodyne, work, which has the incidental advantage of

generating warmth. Seizing a shovel, he began to dig at the doorway of

the tomb, whilst the jackals howled louder than ever in astonishment.

They were not used to such a sight. For thousands of years, as the old

moon above could have told, no man, or at least no solitary man, had

dared to rob tombs at such an unnatural hour.

When Smith had been digging for about twenty minutes something tinkled

on his shovel with a noise which sounded loud in that silence.

“A stone which may come in handy for the jackals,” he thought to

himself, shaking the sand slowly off the spade until it appeared. There

it was, and not large enough to be of much service. Still, he picked it

up, and rubbed it in his hands to clear off the encrusting dirt. When

he opened them he saw that it was no stone, but a bronze.

“Osiris,” reflected Smith, “buried in front of the tomb to

hallow the ground. No, an Isis. No, the head of a statuette, and a jolly

good one, too—at any rate, in moonlight. Seems to have been

gilded.” And, reaching out for the lamp, he held it over the object.

Another minute, and he found himself sitting at the bottom of the hole,

lamp in one hand and statuette, or rather head, in the other.

“The Queen of the Mask!” he gasped. “The same—the same!

By heavens, the very same!”

Oh, he could not be mistaken. There were the identical lips, a little

thick and pouted; the identical nostrils, curved and quivering, but a

little wide; the identical arched eyebrows and dreamy eyes set somewhat

far apart. Above all, there was the identical alluring and mysterious

smile. Only on this masterpiece of ancient art was set a whole crown of

_uraei_ surrounding the entire head. Beneath the crown and pressed back

behind the ears was a full-bottomed wig or royal head-dress, of which

the ends descended to the breasts. The statuette, that, having been

gilt, remained quite perfect and uncorroded, was broken just above the

middle, apparently by a single violent blow, for the fracture was very

clean.

At once it occurred to Smith that it had been stolen from the tomb by a

thief who thought it to be gold; that outside of the tomb doubt had

overtaken him and caused him to break it upon a stone or otherwise. The

rest was clear. Finding that it was but gold-washed bronze he had

thrown away the fragments, rather than be at the pains of carrying

them. This was his theory, probably not a correct one, as the sequel

seems to show.

Smith’s first idea was to recover the other portion. He searched quite

a long while, but without success. Neither then nor afterwards could it

be found. He reflected that perhaps this lower half had remained in the

thief’s hand, who, in his vexation, had thrown it far away, leaving

the head to lie where it fell. Again Smith examined this head, and more

closely. Now he saw that just beneath the breasts was a delicately cut

cartouche.

Being by this time a master of hieroglyphics, he read it without

trouble. It ran: “Ma-Mee, Great Royal Lady. Beloved of ——” Here

the cartouche was broken away.

“Ma-Mé, or it might be Ma-Mi,” he reflected. “I never

heard of a queen called Ma-Mé, or Ma-Mi, or Ma-Mu. She must be quite

new to history. I wonder of whom she was beloved? Amen, or Horus, or

Isis, probably. Of some god, I have no doubt, at least I hope so!”

He stared at the beautiful portrait in his hand, as once he had stared

at the cast on the Museum wall, and the beautiful portrait, emerging

from the dust of ages, smiled back at him there in the solemn moonlight

as once the cast had smiled from the museum wall. Only that had been

but a cast, whereas this was real. This had slept with the dead from

whose features it had been fashioned, the dead who lay, or who had

lain, within.

A sudden resolution took hold of Smith. He would explore that tomb, at

once and alone. No one should accompany him on this his first visit; it

would be a sacrilege that anyone save himself should set foot there

until he had looked on what it might contain.

Why should he not enter? His lamp, of what is called the

“hurricane” brand, was very good and bright, and would burn for

many hours. Moreover, there had been time for the foul air to escape

through the hole that they had cleared. Lastly, something seemed to

call on him to come and see. He placed the bronze head in his

breast-pocket over his heart, and, thrusting the lamp through the hole,

looked down. Here there was no difficulty, since sand had drifted in to

the level of the bottom of the aperture. Through it he struggled, to

find himself upon a bed of sand that only just left him room to push

himself along between it and the roof. A little farther on the passage

was almost filled with mud.

Mahomet had been right when, from his knowledge of the bed-rock, he said

that any tomb made in this place must be flooded. It _had_ been flooded

by some ancient rain-storm, and Smith began to fear that he would find

it quite filled with soil caked as hard as iron. So, indeed, it was to

a certain depth, a result that apparently had been anticipated by those

who hollowed it, for this entrance shaft was left quite undecorated.

Indeed, as Smith found afterwards, a hole had been dug beneath the

doorway to allow the mud to enter after the burial was completed. Only

a miscalculation had been made. The natural level of the mud did not

quite reach the roof of the tomb, and therefore still left it open.

After crawling for forty feet or so over this caked mud, Smith suddenly

found himself on a rising stair. Then he understood the plan; the tomb

itself was on a higher level.

Here began the paintings. Here the Queen Ma-Mee, wearing her crowns and

dressed in diaphanous garments, was presented to god after god. Between

her figure and those of the divinities the wall was covered with

hieroglyphs as fresh to-day as on that when the artist had limned them.

A glance told him that they were extracts from the Book of the Dead.

When the thief of bygone ages had broken into the tomb, probably not

very long after the interment, the mud over which Smith had just

crawled was still wet. This he could tell, since the clay from the

rascal’s feet remained upon the stairs, and that upon his fingers had

stained the paintings on the wall against which he had supported

himself; indeed, in one place was an exact impression of his hand,

showing its shape and even the lines of the skin.

At the top of the flight of steps ran another passage at a higher level,

which the water had never reached, and to right and left were the

beginnings of unfinished chambers. It was clear to him that this queen

had died young. Her tomb, as she or the king had designed it, was never

finished. A few more paces, and the passage enlarged itself into a hall

about thirty feet square. The ceiling was decorated with vultures,

their wings outspread, the looped Cross of Life hanging from their

talons. On one wall her Majesty Ma-Mee stood expectant while Anubis

weighed her heart against the feather of truth, and Thoth, the

Recorder, wrote down the verdict upon his tablets. All her titles were

given to her here, such as—“Great Royal Heiress, Royal Sister,

Royal Wife, Royal Mother, Lady of the Two Lands, Palm-branch of Love,

Beautiful-exceedingly.”

Smith read them hurriedly and noted that nowhere could he see the name

of the king who had been her husband. It would almost seem as though

this had been purposely omitted. On the other walls Ma-Mee, accompanied

by her _Ka_, or Double, made offerings to the various gods, or uttered

propitiatory speeches to the hideous demons of the underworld,

declaring their names to them and forcing them to say: “Pass on. Thou

art pure!”

Lastly, on the end wall, triumphant, all her trials done, she, the

justified Osiris, or Spirit, was received by the god Osiris, Saviour of

Spirits.

All these things Smith noted hurriedly as he swung the lamp to and fro

in that hallowed place. Then he saw something else which filled him

with dismay. On the floor of the chamber where the coffins had

been—for this was the burial chamber—lay a heap of black fragments

charred with fire. Instantly he understood. After the thief had done

his work he had burned the mummy-cases, and with them the body of the

queen. There could be no doubt that this was so, for look! among the

ashes lay some calcined human bones, while the roof above was blackened

with the smoke and cracked by the heat of the conflagration. There was

nothing left for him to find!

Oppressed with the closeness of the atmosphere, he sat down upon a

little bench or table cut in the rock that evidently had been meant to

receive offerings to the dead. Indeed, on it still lay the scorched

remains of some votive flowers. Here, his lamp between his feet, he

rested a while, staring at those calcined bones. See, yonder was the

lower jaw, and in it some teeth, small, white, regular and but little

worn. Yes, she had died young. Then he turned to go, for disappointment

and the holiness of the place overcame him; he could endure no more of

it that night.

Leaving the burial hall, he walked along the painted passage, the lamp

swinging and his eyes fixed upon the floor. He was disheartened, and

the paintings could wait till the morrow. He descended the steps and

came to the foot of the mud slope. Here suddenly he perceived,

projecting from some sand that had drifted down over the mud, what

seemed to be the corner of a reed box or basket. To clear away the sand

was easy, and—yes, it was a basket, a foot or so in length, such a

basket as the old Egyptians used to contain the funeral figures which

are called _ushaptis_, or other objects connected with the dead. It

looked as though it had been dropped, for it lay upon its side. Smith

opened it—not very hopefully, for surely nothing of value would have

been abandoned thus.

The first thing that met his eyes was a mummied hand, broken off at the

wrist, a woman’s little hand, most delicately shaped. It was withered

and paper-white, but the contours still remained; the long fingers were

perfect, and the almond-shaped nails had been stained with henna, as

was the embalmers’ fashion. On the hand were two gold rings, and for

those rings it had been stolen. Smith looked at it for a long while,

and his heart swelled within him, for here was the hand of that royal

lady of his dreams.

Indeed, he did more than look; he kissed it, and as his lips touched the

holy relic it seemed to him as though a wind, cold but scented, blew

upon his brow. Then, growing fearful of the thoughts that arose within

him, he hurried his mind back to the world, or rather to the

examination of the basket.

Here he found other objects roughly wrapped in fragments of mummy-cloth

that had been torn from the body of the queen. These it is needless to

describe, for are they not to be seen in the gold room of the Museum,

labelled “Bijouterie de la Reine Ma-Mé, XVIIIème Dynastie. Thebes

(Smith’s Tomb)”? It may be mentioned, however, that the set was

incomplete. For instance, there was but one of the great gold ceremonial

ear-rings fashioned like a group of pomegranate blooms, and the most

beautiful of the necklaces had been torn in two—half of it was

missing.

It was clear to Smith that only a portion of the precious objects which

were buried with the mummy had been placed in this basket. Why had

these been left where he found them? A little reflection made that

clear also. Something had prompted the thief to destroy the desecrated

body and its coffin with fire, probably in the hope of hiding his evil

handiwork. Then he fled with his spoil. But he had forgotten how

fiercely mummies and their trappings can burn. Or perhaps the thing was

an accident. He must have had a lamp, and if its flame chanced to touch

this bituminous tinder!

At any rate, the smoke overtook the man in that narrow place as he began

to climb the slippery slope of clay. In his haste he dropped the

basket, and dared not return to search for it. It could wait till the

morrow, when the fire would be out and the air pure. Only for this

desecrator of the royal dead that morrow never came, as was discovered

afterwards.

When at length Smith struggled into the open air the stars were paling

before the dawn. An hour later, after the sky was well up, Mahomet

(recovered from his sickness) and his myrmidons arrived.

“I have been busy while you slept,” said Smith, showing them the

mummied hand (but not the rings which he had removed from the shrunk

fingers), and the broken bronze, but not the priceless jewellery which

was hidden in his pockets.

For the next ten days they dug till the tomb and its approach were quite

clear. In the sand, at the head of a flight of steps which led down to

the doorway, they found the skeleton of a man, who evidently had been

buried there in a hurried fashion. His skull was shattered by the blow

of an axe, and the shaven scalp that still clung to it suggested that

he might have been a priest.

Mahomet thought, and Smith agreed with him, that this was the person who

had violated the tomb. As he was escaping from it the guards of the

holy place surprised him after he had covered up the hole by which he

had entered and purposed to return. There they executed him without

trial and divided up the plunder, thinking that no more was to be

found. Or perhaps his confederates killed him.

Such at least were the theories advanced by Mahomet. Whether they were

right or wrong none will ever know. For instance, the skeleton may not

have been that of the thief, though probability appears to point the

other way.

Nothing more was found in the tomb, not even a scarab or a mummy-bead.

Smith spent the remainder of his time in photographing the pictures and

copying the inscriptions, which for various reasons proved to be of

extraordinary interest. Then, having reverently buried the charred

bones of the queen in a secret place of the sepulchre, he handed it

over to the care of the local Guardian of Antiquities, paid off Mahomet

and the fellaheen, and departed for Cairo. With him went the wonderful

jewels of which he had breathed no word, and another relic to him yet

more precious—the hand of her Majesty Ma-Mee, Palm-branch of Love.

And now follows the strange sequel of this story of Smith and the queen

Ma-Mee.

CHAPTER II

Smith was seated in the sanctum of the distinguished Director-General of

Antiquities at the new Cairo Museum. It was a very interesting room.

Books piled upon the floor; objects from tombs awaiting examination,

lying here and there; a hoard of Ptolemaic silver coins, just dug up at

Alexandria, standing on a table in the pot that had hidden them for two

thousand years; in the corner the mummy of a royal child, aged six or

seven, not long ago discovered, with some inscription scrawled upon the

wrappings (brought here to be deciphered by the Master), and the

withered lotus-bloom, love’s last offering, thrust beneath one of the

pink retaining bands.

“A touching object,” thought Smith to himself. “Really, they

might have left the dear little girl in peace.”

Smith had a tender heart, but even as he reflected he became aware that

some of the jewellery hidden in an inner pocket of his waistcoat

(designed for bank-notes) was fretting his skin. He had a tender

conscience also.

Just then the Director, a French savant, bustled in, alert, vigorous,

full of interest.

“Ah, my dear Mr. Smith!” he said, in his excellent English.

“I am indeed glad to see you back again, especially as I understand

that you are come rejoicing and bringing your sheaves with you. They

tell me you have been extraordinarily successful. What do you say is

the name of this queen whose tomb you have found—Ma-Mee? A very

unusual name. How do you get the extra vowel? Is it for euphony, eh?

Did I not know how good a scholar you are, I should be tempted to

believe that you had misread it. Me-Mee, Ma-Mee! That would be pretty

in French, would it not? _Ma mie_—my darling! Well, I dare say she

was somebody’s _mie_ in her time. But tell me the story.”

Smith told him shortly and clearly; also he produced his photographs and

copies of inscriptions.

“This is interesting—interesting truly,” said the Director,

when he had glanced through them. “You must leave them with me to

study. Also you will publish them, is it not so? Perhaps one of the

Societies would help you with the cost, for it should be done in

facsimile. Look at this vignette! Most unusual. Oh, what a pity that

scoundrelly priest got off with the jewellery and burnt her Majesty’s

body!”

“He didn’t get off with all of it.”

“What, Mr. Smith? Our inspector reported to me that you found

nothing.”

“I dare say, sir; but your inspector did not know what I found.”

“Ah, you are a discreet man! Well, let us see.”

Slowly Smith unbuttoned his waistcoat. From its inner pocket and

elsewhere about his person he extracted the jewels wrapped in

mummy-cloth as he had found them. First he produced a sceptre-head of

gold, in the shape of a pomegranate fruit and engraved with the throne

name and titles of Ma-Mee.

“What a beautiful object!” said the Director. “Look! the

handle was of ivory, and that _sacré_ thief of a priest smashed it

out at the socket. It was fresh ivory then; the robbery must have taken

place not long after the burial. See, this magnifying-glass shows it.

Is that all?”

Smith handed him the surviving half of the marvellous necklace that had

been torn in two.

“I have re-threaded it,” he muttered, “but every bead is in

its place.”

“Oh, heavens! How lovely! Note the cutting of those cornelian heads of

Hathor and the gold lotus-blooms between—yes, and the enamelled flies

beneath. We have nothing like it in the Museum.”

So it went on.

“Is that all?” gasped the Director at last, when every object from

the basket glittered before them on the table.

“Yes,” said Smith. “That is—no. I found a broken

statuette hidden in the sand outside the tomb. It is of the queen, but I

thought perhaps you would allow me to keep this.”

“But certainly, Mr. Smith; it is yours indeed. We are not niggards

here. Still, if I might see it——”

From yet another pocket Smith produced the head. The Director gazed at

it, then he spoke with feeling.

“I said just now that you were discreet, Mr. Smith, and I have been

reflecting that you are honest. But now I must add that you are very

clever. If you had not made me promise that this bronze should be yours

before you showed it me—well, it would never have gone into that

pocket again. And, in the public interest, won’t you release me from

the promise?”

“_No_,” said Smith.

“You are perhaps not aware,” went on the Director, with a groan,

“that this is a portrait of Mariette’s unknown queen whom we are

thus able to identify. It seems a pity that the two should be separated;

a replica we could let you have.”

“I am quite aware,” said Smith, “and I will be sure to send

_you_ a replica, with photographs. Also I promise to leave the original

to some museum by will.”

The Director clasped the image tenderly, and, holding it to the light,

read the broken cartouche beneath the breasts.

“‘Ma-Mé, Great Royal Lady. Beloved of ——’

Beloved of whom? Well, of Smith, for one. Take it, monsieur, and hide it

away at once, lest soon there should be another mummy in this

collection, a modern mummy called Smith; and, in the name of Justice,

let the museum which inherits it be not the British, but that of Cairo,

for this queen belongs to Egypt. By the way, I have been told that you

are delicate in the lungs. How is your health now? Our cold winds are

very trying. Quite good? Ah, that is excellent! I suppose that you have

no more articles that you can show me?”

“I have nothing more except a mummied hand, which I found in the

basket with the jewels. The two rings off it lie there. Doubtless it

was removed to get at that bracelet. I suppose you will not mind my

keeping the hand——”

“Of the beloved of Smith,” interrupted the Director drolly.

“No, I suppose not, though for my part I should prefer one that was

not quite so old. Still, perhaps _you_ will not mind my seeing it. That

pocket of yours still looks a little bulky; I thought that it contained

books!”

Smith produced a cigar-box; in it was the hand wrapped in cotton wool.

“Ah,” said the Director, “a pretty, well-bred hand. No doubt

this Ma-Mee was the real heiress to the throne, as she describes

herself. The Pharaoh was somebody of inferior birth, half-brother—she

is called ‘Royal Sister,’ you remember—son of one of the

Pharaoh’s slave-women, perhaps. Odd that she never mentioned him in

the tomb. It looks as though they didn’t get on in life, and that she

was determined to have done with him in death. Those were the rings

upon that hand, were they not?”

He replaced them on the fingers, then took off one, a royal signet in a

cartouche, and read the inscription on the other: “‘Bes Ank, Ank

Bes.’ ‘Bes the Living, the Living Bes.’

“Your Ma-Mee had some human vanity about her,” he added.

“Bes, among other things, as you know, was the god of beauty and of

the adornments of women. She wore that ring that she might remain

beautiful, and that her dresses might always fit, and her rouge never

cake when she was dancing before the gods. Also it fixes her period

pretty closely, but then so do other things. It seems a pity to rob

Ma-Mee of her pet ring, does it not? The royal signet will be enough

for us.”

With a little bow he gave the hand back to Smith, leaving the Bes ring

on the finger that had worn it for more than three thousand years. At

least, Smith was so sure it was the Bes ring that at the time he did

not look at it again.

Then they parted, Smith promising to return upon the morrow, which,

owing to events to be described, he did not do.

“Ah!” said the Master to himself, as the door closed behind his

visitor. “He’s in a hurry to be gone. He has fear lest I should

change my mind about that ring. Also there is the bronze. Monsieur Smith

was _ruse_ there. It is worth a thousand pounds, that bronze. Yet I do

not believe he was thinking of the money. I believe he is in love with

that Ma-Mee and wants to keep her picture. _Mon Dieu!_ A

well-established affection. At least he is what the English call an odd

fish, one whom I could never make out, and of whom no one seems to know

anything. Still, honest, I am sure—quite honest. Why, he might have

kept every one of those jewels and no one have been the wiser. And what

things! What a find! _Ciel!_ what a find! There has been nothing like

it for years. Benedictions on the head of Odd-fish Smith!”

Then he collected the precious objects, thrust them into an inner

compartment of his safe, which he locked and double-locked, and, as it

was nearly five o’clock, departed from the Museum to his private

residence in the grounds, there to study Smith’s copies and

photographs, and to tell some friends of the great things that had

happened.

When Smith found himself outside the sacred door, and had presented its

venerable guardian with a baksheesh of five piastres, he walked a few

paces to the right and paused a while to watch some native labourers

who were dragging a huge sarcophagus upon an improvised tramway. As

they dragged they sang an echoing rhythmic song, whereof each line

ended with an invocation to Allah.

Just so, reflected Smith, had their forefathers sung when, millenniums

ago, they dragged that very sarcophagus from the quarries to the Nile,

and from the Nile to the tomb whence it reappeared to-day, or when they

slid the casing blocks of the pyramids up the great causeway and smooth

slope of sand, and laid them in their dizzy resting-places. Only then

each line of the immemorial chant of toil ended with an invocation to

Amen, now transformed to Allah. The East may change its masters and its

gods, but its customs never change, and if to-day Allah wore the

feathers of Amen one wonders whether the worshippers would find the

difference so very great.

Thus thought Smith as he hurried away from the sarcophagus and those

blue-robed, dark-skinned fellaheen, down the long gallery that is filled

with a thousand sculptures. For a moment he paused before the wonderful

white statue of Queen Amenartas, then, remembering that his time was

short, hastened on to a certain room, one of those which opened out of

the gallery.

In a corner of this room, upon the wall, amongst many other beautiful

objects, stood that head which Mariette had found, whereof in past

years the cast had fascinated him in London. Now he knew whose head it

was; to him it had been given to find the tomb of her who had sat for

that statue. Her very hand was in his pocket—yes, the hand that had

touched yonder marble, pointing out its defects to the sculptor, or

perhaps swearing that he flattered her. Smith wondered who that

sculptor was; surely he must have been a happy man. Also he wondered

whether the statuette was also this master’s work. He thought so, but

he wished to make sure.

Near to the end of the room he stopped and looked about him like a

thief. He was alone in the place; not a single student or tourist could

be seen, and its guardian was somewhere else. He drew out the box that

contained the hand. From the hand he slipped the ring which the

Director-General had left there as a gift to himself. He would much

have preferred the other with the signet, but how could he say so,

especially after the episode of the statuette?

Replacing the hand in his pocket without looking at the ring—for his

eyes were watching to see whether he was observed—he set it upon his

little finger, which it exactly fitted. (Ma-Mee had worn both of them

upon the third finger of her left hand, the Bes ring as a guard to the

signet.) He had the fancy to approach the effigy of Ma-Mee wearing a

ring which she had worn and that came straight from her finger to his

own.

Smith found the head in its accustomed place. Weeks had gone by since he

looked upon it, and now, to his eyes, it had grown more beautiful than

ever, and its smile was more mystical and living. He drew out the

statuette and began to compare them point by point. Oh, no doubt was

possible! Both were likenesses of the same woman, though the statuette

might have been executed two or three years later than the statue. To

him the face of it looked a little older and more spiritual. Perhaps

illness, or some premonition of her end had then thrown its shadow on

the queen. He compared and compared. He made some rough measurements

and sketches in his pocket-book, and set himself to work out a canon of

proportions.

So hard and earnestly did he work, so lost was his mind that he never

heard the accustomed warning sound which announces that the Museum is

about to close. Hidden behind an altar as he was, in his distant,

shadowed corner, the guardian of the room never saw him as he cast a

last perfunctory glance about the place before departing till the

Saturday morning; for the morrow was Friday, the Mohammedan Sabbath, on

which the Museum remains shut, and he would not be called upon to

attend. So he went. Everybody went. The great doors clanged, were

locked and bolted, and, save for a watchman outside, no one was left in

all that vast place except Smith in his corner, engaged in sketching and

in measurements.

The difficulty of seeing, owing to the increase of shadow, first called

his attention to the fact that time was slipping away. He glanced at

his watch and saw that it was ten minutes to the hour.

“Soon be time to go,” he thought to himself, and resumed his work.

How strangely silent the place seemed! Not a footstep to be heard or the

sound of a human voice. He looked at his watch again, and saw that it

was six o’clock, not five, or so the thing said. But that was

impossible, for the Museum shut at five; evidently the desert sand had

got into the works. The room in which he stood was that known as Room

I, and he had noticed that its Arab custodian often frequented Room K

or the gallery outside. He would find him and ask what was the real

time.

Passing round the effigy of the wonderful Hathor cow, perhaps the finest

example of an ancient sculpture of a beast in the whole world, Smith

came to the doorway and looked up and down the gallery. Not a soul to

be seen. He ran to Room K, to Room H, and others. Still not a soul to

be seen. Then he made his way as fast as he could go to the great

entrance. The doors were locked and bolted.

“Watch must be right after all. I’m shut in,” he said to

himself. “However, there’s sure to be someone about somewhere.

Probably the _salle des ventes_ is still open. Shops don’t shut till

they are obliged.”

Thither he went, to find its door as firmly closed as a door can be. He

knocked on it, but a sepulchral echo was the only answer.

“I know,” he reflected. “The Director must still be in his

room. It will take him a long while to examine all that jewellery and

put it away.”

So for the room he headed, and, after losing his path twice, found it by

help of the sarcophagus that the Arabs had been dragging, which now

stood as deserted as it had done in the tomb, a lonesome and impressive

object in the gathering shadows. The Director’s door was shut, and

again his knockings produced nothing but an echo. He started on a tour

round the Museum, and, having searched the ground floors, ascended to

the upper galleries by the great stairway.

Presently he found himself in that devoted to the royal mummies, and,

being tired, rested there a while. Opposite to him, in a glass case in

the middle of the gallery, reposed Rameses II. Near to, on shelves in a

side case, were Rameses’ son, Meneptah, and above, his son, Seti II,

while in other cases were the mortal remains of many more of the

royalties of Egypt. He looked at the proud face of Rameses and at the

little fringe of white locks turned yellow by the embalmer’s spices,

also at the raised left arm. He remembered how the Director had told

him that when they were unrolling this mighty monarch they went away to

lunch, and that presently the man who had been left in charge of the

body rushed into the room with his hair on end, and said that the dead

king had lifted his arm and pointed at him.

Back they went, and there, true enough, was the arm lifted; nor were

they ever able to get it quite into its place again. The explanation

given was that the warmth of the sun had contracted the withered

muscles, a very natural and correct explanation.

Still, Smith wished that he had not recollected the story just at this

moment, especially as the arm seemed to move while he contemplated it

—a very little, but still to move.

He turned round and gazed at Meneptah, whose hollow eyes stared at him

from between the wrappings carelessly thrown across the parchment-like

and ashen face. There, probably, lay the countenance that had frowned

on Moses. There was the heart which God had hardened. Well, it was hard

enough now, for the doctors said he died of ossification of the

arteries, and that the vessels of the heart were full of lime!

Smith stood upon a chair and peeped at Seti II. above. His weaker

countenance was very peaceful, but it seemed to wear an air of

reproach. In getting down Smith managed to upset the heavy chair. The

noise it made was terrific. He would not have thought it possible that

the fall of such an article could produce so much sound. Satisfied with

his inspection of these particular kings, who somehow looked quite

different now from what they had ever done before—more real and

imminent, so to speak—he renewed his search for a living man.

On he went, mummies to his right, mummies to his left, of every style

and period, till he began to feel as though he never wished to see

another dried remnant of mortality. He peeped into the room where lay

the relics of Iouiya and Touiyou, the father and mother of the great

Queen Taia. Cloths had been drawn over these, and really they looked

worse and more suggestive thus draped than in their frigid and

unadorned blackness. He came to the coffins of the priest-kings of the

twentieth dynasty, formidable painted coffins with human faces. There

seemed to be a vast number of these priest-kings, but perhaps they were

better than the gold masks of the great Ptolemaic ladies which glinted

at him through the gathering gloom.

Really, he had seen enough of the upper floors. The statues downstairs

were better than all these dead, although it was true that, according

to the Egyptian faith, every one of those statues was haunted eternally

by the _Ka_, or Double, of the person whom it represented. He descended

the great stairway. Was it fancy, or did something run across the

bottom step in front of him—an animal of some kind, followed by a

swift-moving and indefinite shadow? If so, it must have been the Museum

cat hunting a Museum mouse. Only then what on earth was that very

peculiar and unpleasant shadow?

He called, “Puss! puss! puss!” for he would have been quite glad of

its company; but there came no friendly “miau” in response. Perhaps

it was only the _Ka_ of a cat and the shadow was—oh! never mind

what. The Egyptians worshipped cats, and there were plenty of their

mummies about on the shelves. But the shadow!

Once he shouted in the hope of attracting attention, for there were no

windows to which he could climb. He did not repeat the experiment, for

it seemed as though a thousand voices were answering him from every

corner and roof of the gigantic edifice.

Well, he must face the thing out. He was shut in a museum, and the

question was in what part of it he should camp for the night. Moreover,

as it was growing rapidly dark, the problem must be solved at once. He

thought with affection of the lavatory, where, before going to see the

Director, only that afternoon he had washed his hands with the

assistance of a kindly Arab who watched the door and gracefully

accepted a piastre. But there was no Arab there now, and the door, like

every other in this confounded place, was locked. He marched on to the

entrance.

Here, opposite to each other, stood the red sarcophagi of the great

Queen Hatshepu and her brother and husband, Thotmes III. He looked at

them. Why should not one of these afford him a night’s lodging? They

were deep and quiet, and would fit the human frame very nicely. For a

while Smith wondered which of these monarchs would be the more likely

to take offence at such a use of a private sarcophagus, and, acting on

general principles, concluded that he would rather throw himself on the

mercy of the lady.

Already one of his legs was over the edge of that solemn coffer, and he

was squeezing his body beneath the massive lid that was propped above

it on blocks of wood, when he remembered a little, naked, withered

thing with long hair that he had seen in a side chamber of the tomb of

Amenhotep II. in the Valley of Kings at Thebes. This caricature of

humanity many thought, and he agreed with them, to be the actual body

of the mighty Hatshepu as it appeared after the robbers had done with

it.

Supposing now, that when he was lying at the bottom of that sarcophagus,

sleeping the sleep of the just, this little personage should peep over

its edge and ask him what he was doing there! Of course the idea was

absurd; he was tired, and his nerves were a little shaken. Still, the

fact remained that for centuries the hallowed dust of Queen Hatshepu

had slept where he, a modern man, was proposing to sleep.

He scrambled down from the sarcophagus and looked round him in despair.

Opposite to the main entrance was the huge central hall of the Museum.

Now the cement roof of this hall had, he knew, gone wrong, with the

result that very extensive repairs had become necessary. So extensive

were they, indeed, that the Director-General had informed him that they

would take several years to complete. Therefore this hall was boarded

up, only a little doorway being left by which the workmen could enter.

Certain statues, of Seti II. and others, too large to be moved, were

also roughly boarded over, as were some great funeral boats on either

side of the entrance. The rest of the place, which might be two hundred

feet long with a proportionate breadth, was empty save for the colossi

of Amenhotep III. and his queen Taia that stood beneath the gallery at

its farther end.

It was an appalling place in which to sleep, but better, reflected

Smith, than a sarcophagus or those mummy chambers. If, for instance, he

could creep behind the deal boards that enclosed one of the funeral

boats he would be quite comfortable there. Lifting the curtain, he

slipped into the hall, where the gloom of evening had already settled.

Only the skylights and the outline of the towering colossi at the far

end remained visible. Close to him were the two funeral boats which he

had noted when he looked into the hall earlier on that day, standing at

the head of a flight of steps which led to the sunk floor of the

centre. He groped his way to that on the right. As he expected, the

projecting planks were not quite joined at the bow. He crept in between

them and the boat and laid himself down.

Presumably, being altogether tired out, Smith did ultimately fall

asleep, for how long he never knew. At any rate, it is certain that, if

so, he woke up again. He could not tell the time, because his watch was

not a repeater, and the place was as black as the pit. He had some

matches in his pocket, and might have struck one and even have lit his

pipe. To his credit be it said, however, he remembered that he was the

sole tenant of one of the most valuable museums in the world, and his

responsibilities with reference to fire. So he refrained from striking

that match under the keel of a boat which had become very dry in the

course of five thousand years.

Smith found himself very wide awake indeed. Never in all his life did he

remember being more so, not even in the hour of its great catastrophe,

or when his godfather, Ebenezer, after much hesitation, had promised

him a clerkship in the bank of which he was a director. His nerves

seemed strung tight as harp-strings, and his every sense was painfully

acute. Thus he could even smell the odour of mummies that floated down

from the upper galleries and the earthy scent of the boat which had

been buried for thousands of years in sand at the foot of the pyramid

of one of the fifth dynasty kings.

Moreover, he could hear all sorts of strange sounds, faint and far-away

sounds which at first he thought must emanate from Cairo without. Soon,

however, he grew sure that their origin was more local. Doubtless the

cement work and the cases in the galleries were cracking audibly, as is

the unpleasant habit of such things at night.

Yet why should these common manifestations be so universal and affect

him so strangely? Really, it seemed as though people were stirring all

about him. More, he could have sworn that the great funeral boat

beneath which he lay had become re-peopled with the crew that once it

bore.

He heard them at their business above him. There were trampings and a

sound as though something heavy were being laid on the deck, such, for

instance, as must have been made when the mummy of Pharaoh was set

there for its last journey to the western bank of the Nile. Yes, and

now he could have sworn again that the priestly crew were getting out

the oars.

Smith began to meditate flight from the neighbourhood of that place when

something occurred which determined him to stop where he was.

The huge hall was growing light, but not, as at first he hoped, with the

rays of dawn. This light was pale and ghostly, though very penetrating.

Also it had a blue tinge, unlike any other he had ever seen. At first

it arose in a kind of fan or fountain at the far end of the hall,

illumining the steps there and the two noble colossi which sat above.

But what was this that stood at the head of the steps, radiating glory?

By heavens! it was Osiris himself or the image of Osiris, god of the

Dead, the Egyptian saviour of the world!

There he stood, in his mummy-cloths, wearing the feathered crown, and

holding in his hands, which projected from an opening in the wrappings,

the crook and the scourge of power. Was he alive, or was he dead? Smith

could not tell, since he never moved, only stood there, splendid and

fearful, his calm, benignant face staring into nothingness.

Smith became aware that the darkness between him and the vision of this

god was peopled; that a great congregation was gathering, or had

gathered there. The blue light began to grow; long tongues of it shot

forward, which joined themselves together, illumining all that huge

hall.

Now, too, he saw the congregation. Before him, rank upon rank of them,

stood the kings and queens of Egypt. As though at a given signal, they

bowed themselves to the Osiris, and ere the tinkling of their ornaments

had died away, lo! Osiris was gone. But in his place stood another,

Isis, the Mother of Mystery, her deep eyes looking forth from beneath

the jewelled vulture-cap. Again the congregation bowed, and, lo! she

was gone. But in her place stood yet another, a radiant, lovely being,

who held in her hand the Sign of Life, and wore upon her head the

symbol of the shining disc—Hathor, Goddess of Love. A third time the

congregation bowed, and she, too, was gone; nor did any other appear in

her place.

The Pharaohs and their queens began to move about and speak to each

other; their voices came to his ears in one low, sweet murmur.

In his amaze Smith had forgotten fear. From his hiding-place he watched

them intently. Some of them he knew by their faces. There, for

instance, was the long-necked Khu-en-aten, talking somewhat angrily to

the imperial Rameses II. Smith could understand what he said, for this

power seemed to have been given to him. He was complaining in a high,

weak voice that on this, the one night of the year when they might

meet, the gods, or the magic images of the gods who were put up for

them to worship, should not include _his_ god, symbolized by the

“Aten,” or the sun’s disc.

“I have heard of your Majesty’s god,” replied Rameses;

“the priests used to tell me of him, also that he did not last long

after your Majesty flew to heaven. The Fathers of Amen gave you a bad

name; they called you ‘the heretic’ and hammered out your

cartouches. They were quite rare in my time. Oh, do not let your

Majesty be angry! So many of us have been heretics. My grandson, Seti,

there”—and he pointed to a mild, thoughtful-faced man—“for

example. I am told that he really worshipped the god of those Hebrew

slaves whom I used to press to build my cities. Look at that lady with

him. Beautiful, isn’t she? Observe her large, violet eyes! Well, she

was the one who did the mischief, a Hebrew herself. At least, they tell

me so.”

“I will talk with him,” answered Khu-en-aten. “It is more

than possible that we may agree on certain points. Meanwhile, let me

explain to your Majesty——”

“Oh, I pray you, not now. There is my wife.”

“Your wife?” said Khu-en-aten, drawing himself up. “Which

wife? I am told that your Majesty had many and left a large family;

indeed, I see some hundreds of them here to-night. Now, I—but let me

introduce Nefertiti to your Majesty. I may explain that she was my

_only_ wife.”

“So I have understood. Your Majesty was rather an invalid, were you

not? Of course, in those circumstances, one prefers the nurse whom one

can trust. Oh, pray, no offence! Nefertari, my love—oh, I beg pardon!

—Astnefert—Nefertari has gone to speak to some of her

children—let me introduce you to your predecessor, the Queen

Nefertiti, wife of Amenhotep IV.—I mean Khu-en-aten (he changed his

name, you know, because half of it was that of the father of the gods).

She is interested in the question of plural marriage. Good-bye! I wish

to have a word with my grandfather, Rameses I. He was fond of me as a

little boy.”

At this moment Smith’s interest in that queer conversation died away,

for of a sudden he beheld none other than the queen of his dreams,

Ma-Mee. Oh! there she stood, without a doubt, only ten times more

beautiful than he had ever pictured her. She was tall and somewhat

fair-complexioned, with slumbrous, dark eyes, and on her face gleamed

the mystic smile he loved. She wore a robe of simple white and a

purple-broidered apron, a crown of golden _uraei_ with turquoise eyes

was set upon her dark hair as in her statue, and on her breast and arms

were the very necklace and bracelets that he had taken from her tomb.

She appeared to be somewhat moody, or rather thoughtful, for she leaned

by herself against a balustrade, watching the throng without much

interest.

Presently a Pharaoh, a black-browed, vigorous man with thick lips, drew

near.

“I greet your Majesty,” he said.

She started, and answered: “Oh, it is you! I make my obeisance to your

Majesty,” and she curtsied to him, humbly enough, but with a

suggestion of mockery in her movements.

“Well, you do not seem to have been very anxious to find me, Ma-Mee,

which, considering that we meet so seldom——”

“I saw that your Majesty was engaged with my sister queens,” she

interrupted, in a rich, low voice, “and with some other ladies in the

gallery there, whose faces I seem to remember, but who I think were

_not_ queens. Unless, indeed, you married them after I was drawn

away.”

“One must talk to one’s relations,” replied the Pharaoh.

“Quite so. But, you see, I have no relations—at least, none whom I

know well. My parents, you will remember, died when I was young, leaving

me Egypt’s heiress, and they are still vexed at the marriage which I

made on the advice of my counsellors. But, is it not annoying? I have

lost one of my rings, that which had the god Bes on it. Some dweller on

the earth must be wearing it to-day, and that is why I cannot get it

back from him.”

“Him! Why ‘him’? Hush; the business is about to begin.”

“What business, my lord?”

“Oh, the question of the violation of our tombs, I believe.”

“Indeed! That is a large subject, and not a very profitable one, I

should say. Tell me, who is that?” And she pointed to a lady who had

stepped forward, a very splendid person, magnificently arrayed.

“Cleopatra the Greek,” he answered, “the last of

Egypt’s Sovereigns, one of the Ptolemys. You can always know her by

that Roman who walks about after her.”

“Which?” asked Ma-Mee. “I see several—also other men.

She was the wretch who rolled Egypt in the dirt and betrayed her. Oh, if

it were not for the law of peace by which we must abide when we meet

thus!”

“You mean that she would be torn to shreds, Ma-Mee, and her very soul

scattered like the limbs of Osiris? Well, if it were not for that law of

peace, so perhaps would many of us, for never have I heard a single

king among these hundreds speak altogether well of those who went

before or followed after him.”

“Especially of those who went before if they happen to have hammered

out their cartouches and usurped their monuments,” said the queen,

dryly, and looking him in the eyes.

At this home-thrust the Pharaoh seemed to wince. Making no answer, he

pointed to the royal woman who had mounted the steps at the end of the

hall.

Queen Cleopatra lifted her hand and stood thus for a while. Very

splendid she was, and Smith, on his hands and knees behind the boarding

of the boat, thanked his stars that alone among modern men it had been

his lot to look upon her rich and living loveliness. There she shone,

she who had changed the fortunes of the world, she who, whatever she

did amiss, at least had known how to die.

Silence fell upon that glittering galaxy of kings and queens and upon

all the hundreds of their offspring, their women, and their great

officers who crowded the double tier of galleries around the hall.

“Royalties of Egypt,” she began, in a sweet, clear voice which

penetrated to the farthest recesses of the place, “I, Cleopatra, the

sixth of that name and the last monarch who ruled over the Upper and the

Lower Lands before Egypt became a home of slaves, have a word to say to

your Majesties, who, in your mortal days, all of you more worthily

filled the throne on which once I sat. I do not speak of Egypt and its

fate, or of our sins—whereof mine were not the least—that brought

her to the dust. Those sins I and others expiate elsewhere, and of

them, from age to age, we hear enough. But on this one night of the

year, that of the feast of him whom we call Osiris, but whom other

nations have known and know by different names, it is given to us once

more to be mortal for an hour, and, though we be but shadows, to renew

the loves and hates of our long-perished flesh. Here for an hour we

strut in our forgotten pomp; the crowns that were ours still adorn our

brows, and once more we seem to listen to our people’s praise. Our

hopes are the hopes of mortal life, our foes are the foes we feared,

our gods grow real again, and our lovers whisper in our ears. Moreover,

this joy is given to us—to see each other as we are, to know as the

gods know, and therefore to forgive, even where we despise and hate.

Now I have done, and I, the youngest of the rulers of ancient Egypt,

call upon him who was the first of her kings to take my place.”

She bowed, and the audience bowed back to her. Then she descended the

steps and was lost in the throng. Where she had been appeared an old

man, simply-clad, long-bearded, wise-faced, and wearing on his grey

hair no crown save a plain band of gold, from the centre of which rose

the snake-headed _uraeus_ crest.

“Your Majesties who came after me,” said the old man, “I am

Menes, the first of the accepted Pharaohs of Egypt, although many of

those who went before me were more truly kings than I. Yet as the first

who joined the Upper and the Lower Lands, and took the royal style and

titles, and ruled as well as I could rule, it is given to me to talk

with you for a while this night whereon our spirits are permitted to

gather from the uttermost parts of the uttermost worlds and see each

other face to face. First, in darkness and in secret, let us speak of

the mystery of the gods and of its meanings. Next, in darkness and in

secret, let us speak of the mystery of our lives, of whence they come,

of where they tarry by the road, and whither they go at last. And

afterwards, let us speak of other matters face to face in light and

openness, as we were wont to do when we were men. Then hence to Thebes,

there to celebrate our yearly festival. Is such your will?”

“Such is our will,” they answered.

It seemed to Smith that dense darkness fell upon the place, and with it

a silence that was awful. For a time that he could not reckon, that

might have been years or might have been moments, he sat there in the

utter darkness and the utter silence.

At length the light came again, first as a blue spark, then in upward

pouring rays, and lastly pervading all. There stood Menes on the steps,

and there in front of him was gathered the same royal throng.

“The mysteries are finished,” said the old king. “Now, if any

have aught to say, let it be said openly.”

A young man dressed in the robes and ornaments of an early dynasty came

forward and stood upon the steps between the Pharaoh Menes and all

those who had reigned after him. His face seemed familiar to Smith, as

was the side lock that hung down behind his right ear in token of his

youth. Where had he seen him? Ah, he remembered. Only a few hours ago

lying in one of the cases of the Museum, together with the bones of the

Pharaoh Unas.

“Your Majesties,” he began, “I am the King Metesuphis. The

matter that I wish to lay before you is that of the violation of our

sepulchres by those men who now live upon the earth. The mortal bodies

of many who are gathered here to-night lie in this place to be stared

at and mocked by the curious. I myself am one of them, jawless, broken,

hideous to behold. Yonder, day by day, must my _Ka_ sit watching my

desecrated flesh, torn from the pyramid that, with cost and labour, I

raised up to be an eternal house wherein I might hide till the hour of

resurrection. Others of us lie in far lands. Thus, as he can tell you,

my predecessor, Man-kau-ra, he who built the third of the great

pyramids, the Pyramid of Her, sleeps, or rather wakes in a dark city,

called London, across the seas, a place of murk where no sun shines.

Others have been burnt with fire, others are scattered in small dust.

The ornaments that were ours are stole away and sold to the greedy; our

sacred writings and our symbols are their jest. Soon there will not be

one holy grave in Egypt that remains undefiled.”

“That is so,” said a voice from the company. “But four months

gone the deep, deep pit was opened that I had dug in the shadow of the

Pyramid of Cephren, who begat me in the world. There in my chamber I

slept alone, two handfuls of white bones, since when I died they did

not preserve the body with wrappings and with spices. Now I see those

bones of mine, beside which my Double has watched for these five

thousand years, hid in the blackness of a great ship and tossing on a

sea that is strewn with ice.”

“It is so,” echoed a hundred other voices.

“Then,” went on the young king, turning to Menes, “I ask of

your Majesty whether there is no means whereby we may be avenged on

those who do us this foul wrong.”

“Let him who has wisdom speak,” said the old Pharaoh.

A man of middle age, short in stature and of a thoughtful brow, who held

in his hand a wand and wore the feathers and insignia of the heir to

the throne of Egypt and of a high priest of Amen, moved to the steps.

Smith knew him at once from his statues. He was Khaemuas, son of

Rameses the Great, the mightiest magician that ever was in Egypt, who

of his own will withdrew himself from earth before the time came that

he should sit upon the throne.

“I have wisdom, your Majesties, and I will answer,” he said.

“The time draws on when, in the land of Death which is Life, the land

that we call Amenti, it will be given to us to lay our wrongs as to this

matter before Those who judge, knowing that they will be avenged. On

this night of the year also, when we resume the shapes we were, we have

certain powers of vengeance, or rather of executing justice. But our

time is short, and there is much to say and do before the sun-god Ra

arises and we depart each to his place. Therefore it seems best that we

should leave these wicked ones in their wickedness till we meet them

face to face beyond the world.”

Smith, who had been following the words of Khaemuas with the closest

attention and considerable anxiety, breathed again, thanking Heaven

that the engagements of these departed monarchs were so numerous and

pressing. Still, as a matter of precaution, he drew the cigar-box which

contained Ma-Mee’s hand from his pocket, and pushed it as far away

from him as he could. It was a most unlucky act. Perhaps the cigar-box

grated on the floor, or perhaps the fact of his touching the relic put

him into psychic communication with all these spirits. At any rate, he

became aware that the eyes of that dreadful magician were fixed upon

him, and that a bone had a better chance of escaping the search of a

Röntgen ray than he of hiding himself from their baleful glare.

“As it happens, however,” went on Khaemuas, in a cold voice,

“I now perceive that there is hidden in this place, and spying on us,

one of the worst of these vile thieves. I say to your Majesties that I

see him crouched beneath yonder funeral barge, and that he has with him

at this moment the hand of one of your Majesties, stolen by him from

her tomb at Thebes.”

Now every queen in the company became visibly agitated (Smith, who was

watching Ma-Mee, saw her hold up her hands and look at them), while all

the Pharaohs pointed with their fingers and exclaimed together, in a

voice that rolled round the hall like thunder:

“Let him be brought forth to judgment!”

Khaemuas raised his wand and, holding it towards the boat where Smith

was hidden, said:

“Draw near, Vile One, bringing with thee that thou hast stolen.”

Smith tried hard to remain where he was. He sat himself down and set his

heels against the floor. As the reader knows, he was always shy and

retiring by disposition, and never had these weaknesses oppressed him

more than they did just then. When a child his favourite nightmare had

been that the foreman of a jury was in the act of proclaiming him

guilty of some dreadful but unstated crime. Now he understood what that

nightmare foreshadowed. He was about to be convicted in a court of

which all the kings and queens of Egypt were the jury, Menes was Chief

Justice, and the magician Khaemuas played the _role_ of

Attorney-General.

In vain did he sit down and hold fast. Some power took possession of him

which forced him first to stretch out his arm and pick up the cigar-box

containing the hand of Ma-Mee, and next drew him from the friendly

shelter of the deal boards that were about the boat.

Now he was on his feet and walking down the flight of steps opposite to

those on which Menes stood far away. Now he was among all that throng

of ghosts, which parted to let him pass, looking at him as he went with

cold and wondering eyes. They were very majestic ghosts; the ages that

had gone by since they laid down their sceptres had taken nothing from

their royal dignity. Moreover, save one, none of them seemed to have

any pity for his plight. She was a little princess who stood by her

mother, that same little princess whose mummy he had seen and pitied in

the Director’s room with a lotus flower thrust beneath her bandages.

As he passed Smith heard her say:

“This Vile One is frightened. Be brave, Vile One!”

Smith understood, and pride came to his aid. He, a gentleman of the

modern world, would not show the white feather before a crowd of

ancient Egyptian ghosts. Turning to the child, he smiled at her, then

drew himself to his full height and walked on quietly. Here it may be

stated that Smith was a tall man, still comparatively young, and very

good-looking, straight and spare in frame, with dark, pleasant eyes and

a little black beard.

“At least he is a well-favoured thief,” said one of the queens to

another.

“Yes,” answered she who had been addressed. “I wonder that a

man with such a noble air should find pleasure in disturbing graves and

stealing the offerings of the dead,” words that gave Smith much cause

for thought. He had never considered the matter in this light.

Now he came to the place where Ma-Mee stood, the black-browed Pharaoh

who had been her husband at her side. On his left hand which held the

cigar-box was the gold Bes ring, and that box he felt constrained to

carry pressed against him just over his heart.

As he went by he turned his head, and his eyes met those of Ma-Mee. She

started violently. Then she saw the ring upon his hand and again

started still more violently.

“What ails your Majesty?” asked the Pharaoh.

“Oh, naught,” she answered. “Yet does this earth-dweller

remind you of anyone?”

“Yes, he does,” answered the Pharaoh. “He reminds me very

much of that accursed sculptor about whom we had words.”

“Do you mean a certain Horu, the Court artist; he who worked the image

that was buried with me, and whom you sent to carve your statues in the

deserts of Kush, until he died of fevers—or was it poison?”

“Aye; Horu and no other, may Set take and keep him!” growled the

Pharaoh.

Then Smith passed on and heard no more. Now he stood before the

venerable Menes. Some instinct caused him to bow to this Pharaoh, who

bowed back to him. Then he turned and bowed to the royal company, and

they also bowed back to him, coldly, but very gravely and courteously.

“Dweller on the world where once we had our place, and therefore

brother of us, the dead,” began Menes, “this divine priest and

magician”—and he pointed to Khaemuas—“declares that you

are one of those who foully violate our sepulchres and desecrate our

ashes. He declares, moreover, that at this very moment you have with

you a portion of the mortal flesh of a certain Majesty whose spirit is

present here. Say, now, are these things true?”

To his astonishment Smith found that he had not the slightest difficulty

in answering in the same sweet tongue.

“O King, they are true, and not true. Hear me, rulers of Egypt. It is

true that I have searched in your graves, because my heart has been

drawn towards you, and I would learn all that I could concerning you,

for it comes to me _now_ that once I was one of you—no king, indeed,

yet perchance of the blood of kings. Also—for I would hide nothing

even if I could—I searched for one tomb above all others.”

“Why, O man?” asked the Judge.

“Because a face drew me, a lovely face that was cut in stone.”

Now all that great audience turned their eyes towards him and listened

as though his words moved them.

“Did you find that holy tomb?” asked Menes. “If so, what did

you find therein?”

“Aye, Pharaoh, and in it I found these,” and he took from the box

the withered hand, from his pocket the broken bronze, and from his

finger the ring.

“Also I found other things which I delivered to the keeper of this

place, articles of jewellery that I seem to see to-night upon one who

is present here among you.”

“Is the face of this figure the face you sought?” asked the Judge.

“It is the lovely face,” he answered.

Menes took the effigy in his hand and read the cartouche that was

engraved beneath its breast.

“If there be here among us,” he said, presently, “one who

long after my day ruled as queen in Egypt, one who was named Ma-Mé, let

her draw near.”

Now from where she stood glided Ma-Mee and took her place opposite to

Smith.

“Say, O Queen,” asked Menes, “do you know aught of this

matter?”

“I know that hand; it was my own hand,” she answered. “I know

that ring; it was my ring. I know that image in bronze; it was my image.

Look on me and judge for yourselves whether this be so. A certain

sculptor fashioned it, the son of a king’s son, who was named Horu,

the first of sculptors and the head artist of my Court. There, clad in

strange garments, he stands before you. Horu, or the Double of Horu, he

who cut the image when I ruled in Egypt, is he who found the image and

the man who stands before you; or, mayhap, his Double cast in the same

mould.”

The Pharaoh Menes turned to the magician Khaemuas and said:—

“Are these things so, O Seer?”

“They are so,” answered Khaemuas. “This dweller on the earth

is he who, long ago, was the sculptor Horu. But what shall that avail?

He, once more a living man, is a violator of the hallowed dead. I say,

therefore, that judgment should be executed on his flesh, so that when

the light comes here to-morrow he himself will again be gathered to the

dead.”

Menes bent his head upon his breast and pondered. Smith said nothing. To

him the whole play was so curious that he had no wish to interfere with

its development. If these ghosts wished to make him of their number,

let them do so. He had no ties on earth, and now when he knew full

surely that there was a life beyond this of earth he was quite prepared

to explore its mysteries. So he folded his arms upon his breast and

awaited the sentence.

But Ma-Mee did not wait. She raised her hand so swiftly that the

bracelets jingled on her wrists, and spoke out with boldness.

“Royal Khaemuas, prince and magician,” she said, “hearken to

one who, like you, was Egypt’s heir centuries before you were born,

one also who ruled over the Two Lands, and not so ill—which, Prince,

never was your lot. Answer me! Is all wisdom centred in your breast?

Answer me! Do you alone know the mysteries of Life and Death? Answer

me! Did your god Amen teach you that vengeance went before mercy?

Answer me! Did he teach you that men should be judged unheard? That

they should be hurried by violence to Osiris ere their time, and

thereby separated from the dead ones whom they loved and forced to

return to live again upon this evil Earth?

“Listen: when the last moon was near her full my spirit sat in my tomb

in the burying-place of queens. My spirit saw this man enter into my

tomb, and what he did there. With bowed head he looked upon my bones

that a thief of the priesthood had robbed and burnt within twenty years

of their burial, in which he himself had taken part. And what did this

man with those bones, he who was once Horu? I tell you that he hid them

away there in the tomb where he thought they could not be found again.

Who, then, was the thief and the violator? He who robbed and burnt my

bones, or he who buried them with reverence? Again, he found the jewels

that the priest of your brotherhood had dropped in his flight, when the

smoke of the burning flesh and spices overpowered him, and with them

the hand which that wicked one had broken off from the body of my

Majesty. What did this man then? He took the jewels. Would you have had

him leave them to be stolen by some peasant? And the hand? I tell you

that he kissed that poor dead hand which once had been part of the body

of my Majesty, and that now he treasures it as a holy relic. My spirit

saw him do these things and made report thereof to me. I ask you,

therefore, Prince, I ask you all, Royalties of Egypt—whether for such

deeds this man should die?”

Now Khaemuas, the advocate of vengeance, shrugged his shoulders and

smiled meaningly, but the congregation of kings and queens thundered an

answer, and it was:—

“_No!_”

Ma-Mee looked to Menes to give judgment. Before he could speak the

dark-browed Pharaoh who had named her wife strode forward and addressed

them.

“Her Majesty, Heiress of Egypt, Royal Wife, Lady of the Two Lands, has

spoken,” he cried. “Now let me speak who was the husband of her

Majesty. Whether this man was once Horu the sculptor I know not. If so

he was also an evil-doer who, by my decree, died in banishment in the

land of Kush. Whatever be the truth as to that matter, he admits that

he violated the tomb of her Majesty and stole what the old thieves had

left. Her Majesty says also—and he does not deny it—that he dared

to kiss her hand, and for a man to kiss the hand of a wedded Queen of

Egypt the punishment is death. I claim that this man should die to the

World before his time, that in a day to come again he may live and

suffer in the World. Judge, O Menes.”

Menes lifted his head and spoke, saying:—

“Repeat to me the law, O Pharaoh, under which a living man must die

for the kissing of a dead hand. In my day and in that of those who went

before me there was no such law in Egypt. If a living man, who was not

her husband, or of her kin, kissed the living hand of a wedded Queen of

Egypt, save in ceremony, then perchance he might be called upon to die.

Perchance for such a reason a certain Horu once was called upon to die.

But in the grave there is no marriage, and therefore even if he had

found her alive within the tomb and kissed her hand, or even her lips,

why should he die for the crime of love?

“Hear me, all; this is my judgment in the matter. Let the soul of that

priest who first violated the tomb of the royal Ma-Mee be hunted down

and given to the jaws of the Destroyer, that he may know the last

depths of Death, if so the gods declare. But let this man go from among

us unharmed, since what he did he did in reverent ignorance and because

Hathor, Goddess of Love, guided him from of old. Love rules this world

wherein we meet to-night, with all the worlds whence we have gathered

or whither we still must go. Who can defy its power? Who can refuse its

rites? Now hence to Thebes!”

There was a rushing sound as of a thousand wings, and all were gone.

No, not all, since Smith yet stood before the draped colossi and the

empty steps, and beside him, glorious, unearthly, gleamed the vision of

Ma-Mee.

“I, too, must away,” she whispered; “yet ere I go a word with

you who once were a sculptor in Egypt. You loved me then, and that love

cost you your life, you who once dared to kiss this hand of mine that

again you kissed in yonder tomb. For I was Pharaoh’s wife in name

only; understand me well, in name only; since that title of Royal

Mother which they gave me is but a graven lie. Horu, I never was a

wife, and when you died, swiftly I followed you to the grave. Oh, you

forget, but I remember! I remember many things. You think that the

priestly thief broke this figure of me which you found in the sand

outside my tomb. Not so. _I_ broke it, because, daring greatly, you had

written thereon, ‘Beloved,’ not ‘of _Horus_ the God,’ as you

should have done, but ‘of _Horu_ the Man.’ So when I came to be

buried, Pharaoh, knowing all, took the image from my wrappings and

hurled it away. I remember, too, the casting of that image, and how you

threw a gold chain I had given you into the crucible with the bronze,

saying that gold alone was fit to fashion me. And this signet that I

bear—it was you who cut it. Take it, take it, Horu, and in its place

give me back that which is on your hand, the Bes ring that I also wore.

Take it and wear it ever till you die again, and let it go to the grave

with you as once it went to the grave with me.

“Now hearken. When Ra the great sun arises again and you awake you

will think that you have dreamed a dream. You will think that in this

dream you saw and spoke with a lady of Egypt who died more than three

thousand years ago, but whose beauty, carved in stone and bronze, has

charmed your heart to-day. So let it be, yet know, O man, who once was

named Horu, that such dreams are oft-times a shadow of the truth. Know

that this Glory which shines before you is mine indeed in the land that

is both far and near, the land wherein I dwell eternally, and that what

is mine has been, is, and shall be yours for ever. Gods may change

their kingdoms and their names; men may live and die, and live again

once more to die; empires may fall and those who ruled them be turned to

forgotten dust. Yet true love endures immortal as the souls in which it

was conceived, and from it for you and me, the night of woe and

separation done, at the daybreak which draws on, there shall be born

the splendour and the peace of union. Till that hour foredoomed seek me

no more, though I be ever near you, as I have ever been. Till that most

blessed hour, Horu, farewell.”

She bent towards him; her sweet lips touched his brow; the perfume from

her breath and hair beat upon him; the light of her wondrous eyes

searched out his very soul, reading the answer that was written there.

He stretched out his arms to clasp her, and lo! she was gone.

It was a very cold and a very stiff Smith who awoke on the following

morning, to find himself exactly where he had lain down—namely, on a

cement floor beneath the keel of a funeral boat in the central hall of

the Cairo Museum. He crept from his shelter shivering, and looked at

this hall, to find it quite as empty as it had been on the previous

evening. Not a sign or a token was there of Pharaoh Menes and all those

kings and queens of whom he had dreamed so vividly.

Reflecting on the strange phantasies that weariness and excited nerves

can summon to the mind in sleep, Smith made his way to the great doors

and waited in the shadow, praying earnestly that, although it was the

Mohammedan Sabbath, someone might visit the Museum to see that all was

well.

As a matter of fact, someone did, and before he had been there a

minute—a watchman going about his business. He unlocked the place

carelessly, looking over his shoulder at a kite fighting with two

nesting crows. In an instant Smith, who was not minded to stop and

answer questions, had slipped past him and was gliding down the

portico, from monument to monument, like a snake between boulders,

still keeping in the shadow as he headed for the gates.

The attendant caught sight of him and uttered a yell of fear; then,

since it is not good to look upon an _afreet_, appearing from whence no

mortal man could be, he turned his head away. When he looked again

Smith was through those gates and had mingled with the crowd in the

street beyond.

The sunshine was very pleasant to one who was conscious of having

contracted a chill of the worst Egyptian order from long contact with a

damp stone floor. Smith walked on through it towards his hotel—it was

Shepheard’s, and more than a mile away—making up a story as he went

to tell the hall-porter of how he had gone to dine at Mena House by the

Pyramids, missed the last tram, and stopped the night there.

Whilst he was thus engaged his left hand struck somewhat sharply against

the corner of the cigar-box in his pocket, that which contained the

relic of the queen Ma-Mee. The pain caused him to glance at his fingers

to see if they were injured, and to perceive on one of them the ring he

wore. Surely, surely it was not the same that the Director-General had

given him! _That_ ring was engraved with the image of the god Bes. On

_this_ was cut the cartouche of her Majesty Ma-mee! And he had

dreamed—oh, he had dreamed——!

To this day Smith is wondering whether, in the hurry of the moment, he

made a mistake as to which of those rings the Director-General had

given him as part of his share of the spoil of the royal tomb he

discovered in the Valley of Queens. Afterwards Smith wrote to ask, but

the Director-General could only remember that he gave him one of the

two rings, and assured him that that inscribed “_Bes Ank, Ank

Bes_,” was with Ma-Mee’s other jewels in the Gold Room of the

Museum.

Also Smith is wondering whether any other bronze figure of an old

Egyptian royalty shows so high a percentage of gold as, on analysis,

the broken image of Ma-Mee was proved to do. For had she not seemed to

tell him a tale of the melting of a golden chain when that effigy was

cast?

Was it all only a dream, or was it—something more—by day and by

night he asks of Nothingness?

But, be she near or far, no answer comes from the Queen Ma-Mee, whose

proud titles were “Her Majesty the Good God, the justified Dweller in

Osiris; Daughter of Amen, Royal Heiress, Royal Sister, Royal Wife,

Royal Mother; Lady of the Two Lands; Wearer of the Double Crown; of the

White Crown, of the Red Crown; Sweet Flower of Love, Beautiful

Eternally.”

So, like the rest of us, Smith must wait to learn the truth concerning

many things, and more particularly as to which of those two circles of

ancient gold the Director-General gave him yonder at Cairo.

It seems but a little matter, yet it is more than all the worlds to him!

To the astonishment of his colleagues in antiquarian research, Smith has

never returned to Egypt. He explains to them that his health is quite

restored, and that he no longer needs this annual change to a more

temperate clime.

Now, _which_ of the two royal rings did the Director-General return to

Smith on the mummied hand of her late Majesty Ma-Mee?

MAGEPA THE BUCK

In a preface to a story of the early life of the late Allan Quatermain,

known in Africa as Macumazahn, which has been published under the name

of “Marie,” Mr. Curtis, the brother of Sir Henry Curtis, tells of

how he found a number of manuscripts that were left by Mr. Quatermain

in his house in Yorkshire. Of these “Marie” was one, but in

addition to it and sundry other completed records I, the Editor to whom

it was directed that these manuscripts should be handed for

publication, have found a quantity of unclassified notes and papers.

Some of these deal with matters that have to do with sport and game, or

with historical events, and some are memoranda of incidents connected

with the career of the writer, or with remarkable occurrences that he

had witnessed of which he does not speak elsewhere.

One of these notes—it is contained in a book much soiled and worn that

evidently its owner had carried about with him for years—reminds me of

a conversation that I had with Mr. Quatermain long ago when I was his

guest in Yorkshire. The note itself is short; I think that he must have

jotted it down within an hour or two of the event to which it refers.

It runs thus:—

“I wonder whether in the ‘Land Beyond’ any recognition is

granted for acts of great courage and unselfish devotion—a kind of

spiritual Victoria Cross. If so I think it ought to be accorded to that

poor old savage, Magepa, as it would be if I had any voice in the

matter. Upon my word he has made me feel proud of humanity. And yet he

was nothing but a ‘nigger,’ as so many call the Kaffirs.”

For a while I, the Editor, wondered to what this entry could allude.

Then of a sudden it all came back to me. I saw myself, as a young man,

seated in the hall of Quatermain’s house one evening after dinner.

With me were Sir Henry Curtis and Captain Good. We were smoking, and

the conversation had turned upon deeds of heroism. Each of us detailed

such acts as he could remember which had made the most impression on

him. When we had finished, old Allan said:—

“With your leave I’ll tell you a story of what I think was one of

the bravest things I ever saw. It happened at the beginning of the Zulu

War, when the troops were marching into Zululand. Now at that time, as

you know, I was turning an honest penny transport-riding for the

Government, or rather for the military authorities. I hired them three

wagons with the necessary voorloopers and drivers, sixteen good salted

oxen to each wagon, and myself in charge of the lot. They paid me,

well, never mind how much—I am rather ashamed to mention the amount.

The truth is that the Imperial officers bought in a dear market during

that Zulu War; moreover, things were not always straight. I could tell

you stories of folk, not all of them Colonials, who got rich quicker

than they ought, commissions and that kind of thing. But perhaps these

are better forgotten. As for me, I asked a good price for my wagons, or

rather for the hire of them, of a very well-satisfied young gentleman in

uniform who had been exactly three weeks in the country, and to my

surprise, got it. But when I went to those in command and warned them

what would happen if they persisted in their way of advance, then in

their pride they would not listen to the old hunter and

transport-rider, but politely bowed me out. If they had, there would

have been no Isandhlwana disaster.”

He brooded awhile, for, as I knew, this was a sore subject with him, one

on which he would rarely talk. Although he escaped himself, Quatermain

had lost friends on that fatal field. He went on:—

“To return to old Magepa. I had known him for many years. The first

time we met was in the battle of the Tugela. I was fighting for the

king’s son, Umbelazi the Handsome, in the ranks of the Tulwana

regiment—I mean to write all that story, for it should not be lost.

Well, as I have told you before, the Tulwana were wiped out; of the

three thousand or so of them I think only about fifty remained alive

after they had annihilated the three of Cetewayo’s regiments that set

upon them. But as it chanced Magepa was one who survived.

“I met him afterwards at old King Panda’s kraal and recognised him

as having fought by my side. Whilst I was talking to him the Prince

Cetewayo came by; to me he was civil enough, for he knew how I chanced

to be in the battle, but he glared at Magepa, and said:

“‘Why, Macumazahn, is not this man one of the dogs with which you

tried to bite me by the Tugela not long ago? He must be a cunning dog

also, one who can run fast, for how comes it that he lives to snarl

when so many will never bark again? _Ow!_ if I had my way I would find

a strip of hide to fit his neck.’

“‘Not so,’ I answered, ‘he has the King’s peace

and he is a brave man —braver than I am, anyway, Prince, seeing that I

ran from the ranks of the Tulwana, while he stood where he was.’

“‘You mean that your horse ran, Macumazahn. Well, since you like

this dog, I will not hurt him,’ and with a shrug he went his way.

“‘Yet soon or late he _will_ hurt me,’ said Magepa, when

the Prince had gone. ‘U’Cetewayo has a memory long as the shadow

thrown by a tree at sunset. Moreover, as he knows well, it is true that

I ran, Macumazahn, though not till all was finished and I could do no

more by standing still. You remember how, after we had eaten up the

first of Cetewayo’s regiments, the second charged us and we ate that

up also. Well, in that fight I got a tap on the head from a kerry. It

struck me on my man’s ring which I had just put on, for I think I was

the youngest soldier in that regiment of veterans. The ring saved me;

still, for a while I lost my mind and lay like one dead. When I found

it again the fight was over and Cetewayo’s people were searching for

our wounded that they might kill them. Presently they found me and saw

that there was no hurt on me.

“‘"Here is one who shams dead like a stink-cat,” said a big

fellow, lifting his spear.

“‘Then it was that I sprang up and ran, who was but just married

and desired to live. He struck at me, but I jumped over the spear, and

the others that they threw missed me. Then they began to hunt me, but,

Macumazahn, I who am named “The Buck,” because I am swifter of foot

than any man in Zululand, outpaced them all and got away safe.’

“‘Well done, Magepa,’ I said. ‘Still, remember the

saying of your people, “At last the strong swimmer goes with the

stream and the swift runner is run down.”’

“‘I know it, Macumazahn,’ he answered, with a nod, ‘and

perhaps in a day to come I shall know it better.’

“I took little heed of his words at the time, but more than thirty

years afterwards I remembered them.

“Such was my first acquaintance with Magepa. Now, friends, I will tell

you how it was renewed at the time of the Zulu War.

“As you know, I was attached to the centre column that advanced into

Zululand by Rorke’s Drift on the Buffalo River. Before war was

declared, or at any rate before the advance began, while it might have

been and many thought it would be averted, I was employed

transport-riding goods to the little Rorke’s Drift Station, that

which became so famous afterwards, and incidentally in collecting what

information I could of Cetewayo’s intentions. Hearing that there was

a kraal a mile or so the other side of the river, of which the people

were said to be very friendly to the English, I determined to visit it.

You may think this was rash, but I was so well known in Zululand, where

for many years, by special leave of the king, I was allowed to go

whither I would quite unmolested and, indeed, under the royal

protection, that I felt no fear for myself so long as I went alone.

“Accordingly one evening I crossed the drift and headed for a kloof in

which I was told the kraal stood. Ten minutes’ ride brought me in

sight of it. It was not a large kraal; there may have been six or eight

huts and a cattle enclosure surrounded by the usual fence. The

situation, however, was very pretty, a knoll of rising ground backed by

the wooded slopes of the kloof. As I approached, I saw women and

children running to the kraal to hide, and when I reached the gateway

for some time no one would come out to meet me. At length a small boy

appeared who informed me that the kraal was ‘empty as a gourd.’

“‘Quite so,’ I answered; ‘still, go and tell the

headman that Macumazahn wishes to speak with him.’

“The boy departed, and presently I saw a face that seemed familiar to

me peeping round the edge of the gateway. After a careful inspection

its owner emerged.

“He was a tall, thin man of indefinite age, perhaps between sixty and

seventy, with a finely-cut face, a little grey beard, kind eyes and very

well-shaped hands and feet, the fingers, which twitched incessantly,

being remarkably long.

“‘Greeting, Macumazahn,’ he said, ‘I see you do not

remember me. Well, think of the battle of the Tugela, and of the last

stand of the Tulwana, and of a certain talk at the kraal of our

Father-who-is-dead’ (that is King Panda), ‘and of how he who sits

in his place’ (he meant Cetewayo), ‘told you that if he had his way

he would find a hide rope to fit the neck of a certain one.’

“‘Ah!’ I said, ‘I know you now, you are Magepa the

Buck. So the Runner has not yet been run down.’

“‘No, Macumazahn, not yet, but there is still time. I think that

many swift feet will be at work ere long.’

“‘How have you prospered?’ I asked him.

“‘Well enough, Macumazahn, in all ways except one. I have three

wives, but my children have been few and are dead, except one daughter,

who is married and lives with me, for her husband, too, is dead. He was

killed by a buffalo, and she has not yet married again. But enter and

see.’

“So I went in and saw Magepa’s wives, old women all of them. Also,

at his bidding, his daughter, whose name was Gita, brought me some

_maas_, or curdled milk, to drink. She was a well-formed woman, very

like her father, but sad-faced, perhaps with a prescience of evil to

come. Clinging to her finger was a beautiful boy of something under two

years of age, who, when he saw Magepa, ran to him and threw his little

arms about his legs. The old man lifted the child and kissed him

tenderly, saying:

“‘It is well that this toddler and I should love one another,

Macumazahn, seeing that he is the last of my race. All the other

children here are those of the people who have come to live in my

shadow.’

“‘Where are their fathers?’ I asked, patting the little boy

who, his mother told me, was named Sinala, upon the cheek, an attention

that he resented.

“‘They have been called away on duty,’ answered Magepa

shortly; and I changed the subject.

“Then we began to talk about old times, and I asked him if he had any

oxen to sell, saying that this was my reason for visiting the kraal.

“‘Nay, Macumazahn,’ he answered in a meaning voice.

‘This year all the cattle are the king’s.’

“I nodded and replied that, as it was so, I had better be going,

whereon, as I half expected, Magepa announced that he would see me safe

to the drift. So I bade farewell to the wives and the widowed daughter,

and we started.

“As soon as we were clear of the kraal Magepa began to open his heart

to me.

“‘Macumazahn,’ he said, looking up at me earnestly, for I was

mounted, and he walked beside my horse, ‘there is to be war. Cetewayo

will not consent to the demands of the great White Chief from the

Cape,’—he meant Sir Bartle Frere—‘he will fight with

the English; only he will let them begin the fighting. He will draw them

on into Zululand and then overwhelm them with his impis and stamp them

flat, and eat them up; and I, who love the English, am very sorry. Yes,

it makes my heart bleed. If it were the Boers now, I should be glad,

for we Zulus hate the Boers; but the English we do not hate; even

Cetewayo likes them; still, he will eat them up if they attack him.’

“‘Indeed,’ I answered; and then as in duty bound I proceeded

to get what I could out of him, and that was not a little. Of course,

however, I did not swallow it all, since that I suspected that Magepa

was feeding me with news that he had been ordered to disseminate.

“Presently we came to the mouth of the kloof in which the kraal stood,

and here, for greater convenience of conversation, we halted, for I

thought it as well that we should not be seen in close talk on the open

plain beyond. The path here, I should add, ran past a clump of green

bushes; I remember they bore a white flower that smelt sweet, and were

backed by some tall grass, elephant-grass I think it was, among which

grew mimosa trees.

“‘Magepa,’ I said, ‘if in truth there is to be

fighting, why don’t you move over the river one night with your people

and cattle, and get into Natal?’

“‘I would if I could, Macumazahn, who have no stomach for this war

against the English. But there I should not be safe, since presently the

king will come into Natal too, or send thirty thousand assegais as his

messengers. Then what will happen to those who have left him?’

“‘Oh! if you think that,’ I answered, laughing, ‘you

had better stay where you are.’

“‘Also, Macumazahn, the husbands of those women at my kraal have

been called up to their regiments and if their wives fled to the English

they would be killed. Again, the king has sent for nearly all our

cattle “to keep them safe.” He fears lest we Border Zulus might

join our people in Natal, and that is why he is keeping our cattle

“safe.”’

“‘Life is more than cattle, Magepa. At least you might come.’

“‘What! And leave my people to be killed? Macumazahn, you did not

use to talk so. Still, hearken. Macumazahn, will you do me a service? I

will pay you well for it. I would get my daughter Gita and my little

grandson Sinala into safety. If I and my wives are wiped out it does

not matter, for we are old. But her I would save, and the boy I would

save, so that one may live who will remember my name. Now if I were to

send them across the drift, say at the dawn, not to-morrow and not the

next day, but the day after, would you receive them into your wagon and

deliver them safe to some place in Natal? I have money hidden, fifty

pieces of gold, and you may take half of these and also half of the

cattle if ever I live to get them back out of the keeping of the

king.’

“‘Never mind about the money, and we will speak of the cattle

afterwards,’ I said. ‘I understand that you wish to send your

daughter and your little grandson out of danger; and I think you wise,

very wise. When once the advance begins, if there is an advance, who

knows what may happen? War is a rough game, Magepa. It is not the

custom of you black people to spare women and children; and there will

be Zulus fighting on our side as well as on yours; do you

understand?’

“‘_Ow!_ I understand, Macumazahn. I have known the face of war

and seen many a little one like my grandson Sinala assegaied upon his

mother’s back.’

“‘Very good. But if I do this for you, you must do something for

me. Say, Magepa, does Cetewayo _really_ mean to fight, and if so, how?

Oh yes, I know all you have been telling me, but I want not words but

truth from the heart?’

“‘You ask secrets,’ said the old fellow, peering about him

into the gathering gloom. ‘Still, “a spear for a spear and a shield

for a shield,” as our saying runs. I have spoken no lie. The king

_does_ mean to fight, not because he wants to, but because the regiments

swear that they will wash their assegais; they who have never seen blood

since that battle of the Tugela in which we two played a part, and if

he will not suffer it, well, there are more of his race! Also he means

to fight thus,’ and he gave me some very useful information, that is,

information which would have been useful if those in authority had

deigned to pay any attention to it when I passed it on.

“Just as he had finished speaking I thought that I heard a sound in

the dense green bush behind us. It reminded me of the noise a man makes

when he tries to stifle a cough, and frightened me. For if we had been

overheard by a spy, Magepa was as good as dead, and the sooner I was

across the river the better.

“‘What’s that?’ I asked.

“‘A bush buck, Macumazahn. There are lots of them about here.’

“Not being satisfied, though it is true that buck do cough like this,

I turned my horse to the bush, seeking an opening. Thereon something

crashed away and vanished into the long grass. In those shadows, of

course, I could not see what it was, but such light as remained glinted

on what might have been the polished tip of the horn of an antelope

or—an assegai.

“‘I told you it was a buck, Macumazahn,’ said Magepa.

‘Still, if you smell danger, let us come away from the bush, though

the orders are that no white man is to be touched as yet.’

“Then, while we walked on towards the ford, he set out with great

detail, as Kaffirs do, the exact arrangements that he proposed to make

for the handing over of his daughter and her child into my care. I

remember that I asked him why he would not send her on the following

morning, instead of two mornings later. He answered because he expected

an outpost of scouts from one of the regiments at his kraal that night,

who would probably remain there over the morrow and perhaps longer.

While they were in the place it would be difficult, if not impossible,

for him to send away Gita and her son without exciting suspicion.

“Near the drift we parted, and I returned to our provisional camp and

wrote a beautiful report of all that I had learned, of which report, I

may add, no one took the slightest notice.

“I think it was the morning before that whereon I had arranged to meet

Gita and the little boy at the drift that just about dawn I went down to

the river for a wash. Having taken my dip, I climbed on to a flat rock

to dress myself, and looked at the billows of beautiful, pearly mist

which hid the face of the water, and considered—I almost said

listened to—the great silence, for as yet no live thing was stirring.

“Ah! if I had known of the hideous sights and sounds that were

destined to be heard ere long in this same haunt of perfect peace!

Indeed, at that moment there came a kind of hint or premonition of

them, since suddenly through the utter quiet broke the blood-curdling

wail of a woman. It was followed by other wails and shouts, distant and

yet distinct. Then the silence fell again.

“Now, I thought to myself, that noise might very well have come from

old Magepa’s kraal; luckily, however, sounds are deceptive in mist.

“Well, the end of it was that I waited there till the sun rose. The

first thing on which its bright beams struck was a mighty column of

smoke rising to heaven from where Magepa’s kraal had stood!

“I went back to my wagons very sad—so sad that I could scarcely eat

my breakfast. While I walked I wondered hard whether the light had

glinted upon the tip of a buck’s horn in that patch of green bush

with the sweet-smelling white flowers a night or two ago. Or had it

perchance fallen upon the point of the assegai of some spy who was

watching my movements! In that event yonder column of smoke and the

horrible cries that preceded it were easy to explain. For had not

Magepa and I talked secrets together, and in Zulu?

“On the following morning at dawn I attended at the drift in the faint

hope that Gita and her boy might arrive there as arranged. But nobody

came, which was not wonderful, seeing that Gita lay dead, stabbed

through and through, as I saw afterwards, (she made a good fight for

the child), and that her spirit had gone to wherever go the souls of

the brave-hearted, be they white or black. Only on the farther bank of

the river I saw some Zulu scouts who seemed to know my errand, for they

called to me, asking mockingly where was the pretty woman I had come to

meet?

“After that I tried to put the matter out of my head, which indeed was

full enough of other things, since now definite orders had arrived as to

the advance, and with these many troops and officers.

“It was just then that the Zulus began to fire across the river at

such of our people as they saw upon the bank. At these they took aim,

and, as a result, hit nobody. A raw Kaffir with a rifle, in my

experience, is only dangerous when he aims at nothing, for then the

bullet looks after itself and may catch you. To put a stop to this

nuisance a regiment of the friendly natives—there may have been

several hundred of them—was directed to cross the river and clear the

kloofs and rocks of the Zulu skirmishers who were hidden among them. I

watched them go off in fine style, and in the course of the afternoon

heard a good deal of shouting and banging of guns on the farther side

of the river.

“Towards evening someone told me that our _impi_, as he called it

grandiloquently, was returning victorious. Having at the moment nothing

else to do, I walked down to the river at a point where the water was

deep and the banks were high. Here I climbed to the top of a pile of

boulders, whence with my field-glasses I could sweep a great extent of

plain which stretched away on the Zululand side till at length it

merged into hills and bush.

“Presently I saw some of our natives marching homewards in a scattered

and disorganised fashion, but evidently very proud of themselves, for

they were waving their assegais and singing scraps of war-songs. A few

minutes later, a mile or more away, I caught sight of a man running.

“Watching him through the glasses I noted three things: First, that he

was tall; secondly, that he ran with extraordinary swiftness; and,

thirdly, that he had something tied upon his back. It was evident,

further, that he had good reason to run, since he was being hunted by a

number of our Kaffirs, of whom more and more continually joined the

chase. From every side they poured down upon him, trying to cut him off

and kill him, for as they got nearer I could see the assegais which

they threw at him flash in the sunlight.

“Very soon I understood that the man was running with a definite

object and to a definite point; he was trying to reach the river. I

thought the sight very pitiful, this one poor creature being hunted to

death by so many. Also I wondered why he did not free himself from the

bundle on his back, and came to the conclusion that he must be a

witch-doctor, and that the bundle contained his precious charms or

medicines.

“This was while he was yet a long way off, but when he came nearer,

within three or four hundred yards, of a sudden I caught the outline of

his face against a good background, and knew it for that of Magepa.

“‘My God!’ I said to myself, ‘it is old Magepa the

Buck, and the bundle in the mat will be his grandson, Sinala!’

“Yes, even then I felt certain that he was carrying the child upon his

back.

“What was I to do? It was impossible for me to cross the river at that

place, and long before I could get round by the ford all would be

finished. I stood up on my rock and shouted to those brutes of Kaffirs

to let the man alone. They were so excited that they did not hear my

words; at least, they swore afterwards that they thought I was

encouraging them to hunt him down.

“But Magepa heard me. At the moment he seemed to be failing, but the

sight of me appeared to give him fresh strength. He gathered himself

together and leapt forward at a really surprising speed. Now the river

was not more than three hundred yards away from him, and for the first

two hundred of these he quite outdistanced his pursuers, although they

were most of them young men and comparatively fresh. Then once more his

strength began to fail.

“Watching through the glasses, I could see that his mouth was wide

open, and that there was red foam upon his lips. The burden on his back

was dragging him down. Once he lifted his hands as though to loose it;

then with a wild gesture let them fall again.

“Two of the pursuers who had outpaced the others crept up to

him—lank, lean men of not more than thirty years of age. They had

stabbing spears in their hands, such as are used at close quarters, and

these of course they did not throw. One of them gained a little on the

other.

“Now Magepa was not more than fifty yards from the bank, with the

first hunter about ten paces behind him and coming up rapidly. Magepa

glanced over his shoulder and saw, then put out his last strength. For

forty yards he went like an arrow, running straight away from his

pursuers, until he was within a few feet of the bank, when he stumbled

and fell.

“‘He’s done,’ I said, and, upon my word, if I had had a

rifle in my hand I think I would have stopped one or both of those

bloodhounds and taken the consequences.

“But no! Just as the first man lifted his broad spear to stab him

through the back on which the bundle lay, Magepa leapt up and wheeled

round to take the thrust in the chest. Evidently he did not wish to be

speared in the back—for a certain reason. He took it sure enough, for

the assegai was wrenched out of the hand of the striker. Still, as he

was reeling backwards, it did not go through Magepa, or perhaps it hit

a bone. He drew out the spear and threw it at the man, wounding him.

Then he staggered on, back and back, to the edge of the little cliff.

“It was reached at last. With a cry of ‘Help me, Macumazahn!’

Magepa turned, and before the other man could spear him, leapt straight

into the deep water. He rose. Yes, the brave old fellow rose and struck

out for the other bank, leaving a little line of red behind him.

“I rushed, or rather sprang and rolled down to the edge of the stream

to where a point of shingle ran out into the water. Along this I

clambered, and beyond it up to my middle. Now Magepa was being swept

past me. I caught his outstretched hand and pulled him ashore.

“‘The boy!’ he gasped; ‘the boy! Is he dead?’

“I severed the lashings of the mat that had cut right into the old

fellow’s shoulders. Inside of it was little Sinala, spluttering out

water, but very evidently alive and unhurt, for presently he set up a

yell.

“‘No,’ I said, ‘he lives, and will live.’

“‘Then all is well, Macumazahn.’ (_A pause_.) ‘It

_was_ a spy in the bush, not a buck. He overheard our talk. The

King’s slayers came. Gita held the door of the hut while I took the

child, cut a hole through the straw with my assegai, and crept out at

the back. She was full of spears before she died, but I got away with

the boy. Till your Kaffirs found me I lay hid in the bush, hoping to

escape to Natal. Then I ran for the river, and saw you on the farther

bank. _I_ might have got away, but that child is heavy.’ (_A pause_.)

‘Give him food, Macumazahn, he must be hungry.’ (_A pause_.)

‘Farewell. That was a good saying of yours—the swift runner is

outrun at last. Ah! yet I did not run in vain.’ (_Another pause, the

last_.) Then he lifted himself upon one arm and with the other saluted,

first the boy Sinala and next me, muttering, ‘Remember your promise,

Macumazahn.’

“That is how Magepa the Buck died. I never saw anyone carrying weight

who could run quite so well as he,” and Quatermain turned his head

away as though the memory of this incident affected him somewhat.

“What became of the child Sinala?” I asked presently.

“Oh! I sent him to an institution in Natal, and afterwards was able to

get some of his property back for him. I believe that he is being

trained as an interpreter.”

THE BLUE CURTAINS

CHAPTER I

In his regiment familiarly they called him “Bottles,” nobody quite

knew why. It was, however, rumoured that he had been called

“Bottles” at Harrow on account of the shape of his nose. Not that

his nose was particularly like a bottle, but at the end of it was round

and large and thick. In reality, however, the sobriquet was more

ancient than that, for it had belonged to the hero of this story from

babyhood. Now, when a man has a nickname, it generally implies two

things: first, that he is good-tempered, and, secondly, that he is a

good fellow. Bottles, _alias_ John George Peritt, of a regiment it is

unnecessary to name, amply justified both these definitions, for a

kindlier-tempered or better fellow never breathed. But unless a thick

round nose, a pair of small light-coloured eyes, set under bushy brows,

and a large but not badly shaped mouth can be said to constitute

beauty, he was not beautiful. On the other hand, however, he was big

and well-formed, and a pleasant-mannered if a rather silent companion.

Many years ago Bottles was in love; all the regiment knew it, he was so

very palpably and completely in love. Over his bed in his tidy quarters

hung the photograph of a young lady who was known to be _the_ young

lady; which, when the regiment, individually and collectively, happened

to see it, left no doubt in its mind as to their comrade’s taste. It

was evident even from that badly-coloured photograph that Miss Madeline

Spenser had the makings of a lovely figure and a pair of wonderful

eyes. It was said, however, that she had not a sixpence; and as our

hero had but very few, the married ladies of the battalion used

frequently to speculate how Mr. Peritt would “manage” when it came

to matrimony.

At this date the regiment was quartered in Maritzburg, Natal, but its

term of foreign service had expired, and it expected to be ordered home

immediately.

One morning Bottles had been out buck hunting with the scratch pack kept

in those days by the garrison at Maritzburg. The run had been a good

one, and after a seven or eight-mile gallop over the open country they

had actually killed their buck—a beautiful Oribe. This was a thing

that did not often happen, and Bottles returned filled with joy and

pride with the buck fastened behind his saddle, for he was whip to the

pack. The hounds had met at dawn, and it was nine o’clock or so,

when, as he was riding hot and tired up the shadier side of broad and

dusty Church Street, a gun fired at the Fort beyond Government House

announced the arrival of the English mail.

With a beaming smile—for to him the English mail meant one if not two

letters from Madeline, and possibly the glad news of sailing orders—he

pushed on to his quarters, tubbed and dressed, and then went down to the

mess-house for breakfast, expecting to find the letters delivered. But

the mail was a heavy one, and he had ample time to eat his breakfast,

also to sit and smoke a pipe upon the pleasant verandah under the shade

of the bamboos and camellia bushes before the orderly arrived with the

bag. Bottles went at once into the room that opened on to the veranda

and stood by calmly, not being given to betraying his emotions, while

slowly and clumsily the mess sergeant sorted the letters. At last he

got his packet—it only consisted of some newspapers and a single

letter—and went away back to his seat on the veranda, feeling rather

disappointed, for he had expected to hear from his only brother as well

as from his lady-love. Having relit his pipe—for he was of a slow and

deliberate mind, and it rather enhances a pleasure to defer it a

little—and settled himself in the big chair opposite the camellia bush

just now covered with sealing-wax-like blooms, he opened his letter and

read:—

“My dear George——”

“Good heavens!” he thought to himself, “what can be the

matter? She always calls me ‘Darling Bottles!’”

“My dear George,” he began again, “I hardly know how to begin

this letter—I can scarcely see the paper for crying, and when I think

of you reading it out in that horrid country it makes me cry more than

ever. There! I may as well get it out at once, for it does not improve

by keeping—it is all over between you and me, my dear, dear old

Bottles.”

“All over!” he gasped to himself.

“I hardly know how to tell the miserable story,” went on the

letter, “but as it must be told I suppose I had better begin from the

beginning. A month ago I went with my father and my aunt to the Hunt

Ball at Atherton, and there I met Sir Alfred Croston, a middle-aged

gentleman, who danced with me several times. I did not care about him

much, but he made himself very agreeable, and when I got home

aunt—you know her nasty way—congratulated me on my conquest. Well,

next day he came to call, and papa asked him to stop to dinner, and he

took me in, and before he went away he told me that he was coming to

stop at the George Inn to fish for trout in the lake. After that he

came here every day, and whenever I went out walking he always met me,

and really was kind and nice. At last one day he asked me to marry him,

and I was very angry and told him that I was engaged to a gentleman in

the army, who was in South Africa. He laughed, and said South Africa was

a long way off, and I hated him for it. That evening papa and aunt set

on me—you know they neither of them liked our engagement—and told

me that our affair was perfectly silly, and that I must be mad to

refuse such an offer. And so it went on, for he would not take ‘no’

for an answer; and at last, dear, I had to give in, for they gave me no

peace, and papa implored me to consent for his sake. He said the

marriage would be the making of him, and now I suppose I am engaged.

Dear, dear George, don’t be angry with me, for it is not my fault,

and I suppose after all we could not have got married, for we have so

little money. I do love you, but I can’t help myself. I hope you

won’t forget me, or marry anybody else—at least, not just at

present—for I cannot bear to think about it. Write to me and tell me

you won’t forget me, and that you are not angry with me. Do you want

your letters back? If you burn mine that will do. Good-bye, dear! If you

only knew what I suffer! It is all very well to talk like aunt does

about settlements and diamonds, but they can’t make up to me for you.

Good-bye, dear, I cannot write any more because my head aches

so.—Ever yours,

“Madeline Spenser.”

When George Peritt, _alias_ Bottles, had finished reading and re-reading

this letter, he folded it up neatly and put it, after his methodical

fashion, into his pocket. Then he sat and stared at the red camellia

blooms before him, that somehow looked as indistinct and misty as

though they were fifty yards off instead of so many inches.

“It is a great blow,” he said to himself. “Poor Madeline! How

she must suffer!”

Presently he rose and walked—rather unsteadily, for he felt much

upset—to his quarters, and, taking a sheet of notepaper, wrote the

following letter to catch the outgoing mail:—

“My dear Madeline,—I have got your letter putting an end to our

engagement. I don’t want to dwell on myself when you must have so much

to suffer, but I must say that it has been, and is, a great blow to me.

I have loved you for so many years, ever since we were babies, I think;

it does seem hard to lose you now after all. I thought that when we got

home I might get the adjutancy of a militia regiment, and that we might

have been married. I think we might have managed on five hundred a

year, though perhaps I have no right to expect you to give up comforts

and luxuries to which you are accustomed; but I am afraid that when one

is in love one is apt to be selfish. However, all that is done with

now, as, of course, putting everything else aside, I could not think of

standing in your way in life. I love you much too well for that, dear

Madeline, and you are too beautiful and delicate to be the wife of a

poor subaltern with little beside his pay. I can honestly say that I

hope you will be happy. I don’t ask you to think of me too often, as

that might make you less so, but perhaps sometimes when you are quiet

you will spare your old lover a thought or two, because I am sure

nobody could care for you more than I do. You need not be afraid that I

shall forget you or marry anybody else. I shall do neither the one nor

the other. I must close this now to catch the mail; I don’t know that

there is anything more to say. It is a hard trial—very; but it is no

good being weak and giving way, and it consoles me to think that you

are ‘bettering yourself’ as the servants say. Good-bye, dear

Madeline. May God bless you, is now and ever my earnest prayer.

“J. G. Peritt.”

Scarcely was this letter finished and hastily dispatched when a loud

voice was heard calling, “Bottles, Bottles, my boy, come rejoice with

me; the orders have come—we sail in a fortnight;” followed by the

owner of the voice, another subaltern, and our hero’s bosom friend.

“Why, you don’t seem very elated,” said he of the voice, noting

his friend’s dejected and somewhat dazed appearance.

“No—that is, not particularly. So you sail in a fortnight, do

you?”

“‘You sail?’ What do you mean? Why, we _all_ sail, of

course, from the colonel down to the drummer-boy.”

“I don’t think that I—I am going to sail, Jack,” was

the hesitating answer.

“Look here, old fellow, are you off your head, or have you been

liquoring up, or what?”

“No—that is, I don’t think so; certainly not the

first—the second, I mean.”

“Then what do you mean?”

“I mean that, in short, I am sending in my papers. I like this climate

—I, in short, am going to take to farming.”

“Sending in your papers! Going to take to farming! And in this

God-forsaken hole, too. You _must_ be screwed.”

“No, indeed. It is only ten o’clock.”

“And how about getting married, and the girl you are engaged to, and

whom you are looking forward so much to seeing. Is she going to take to

farming?”

Bottles winced visibly.

“No, you see—in short, we have put an end to that. I am not engaged

now.”

“Oh, indeed,” said the friend, and awkwardly departed.

CHAPTER II

Twelve years have passed since Bottles sent in his papers, and in twelve

years many things happen. Amongst them recently it had happened that

our hero’s only and elder brother had, owing to an unexpected

development of consumption among the expectant heirs, tumbled into a

baronetcy and eight thousand a year, and Bottles himself into a modest

but to him most ample fortune of as many hundred. When the news reached

him he was the captain of a volunteer corps engaged in one of the

numerous Basuto wars in the Cape Colony. He served the campaign out,

and then, in obedience to his brother’s entreaties and a natural

craving to see his native land, after an absence of nearly fourteen

years, resigned his commission and returned to England.

Thus it came to pass that the next scene of this little history opens,

not upon the South African veld, or in a whitewashed house in some

half-grown, hobbledehoy colonial town, but in a set of the most

comfortable chambers in the Albany, the local and appropriate

habitation of the bachelor brother aforesaid, Sir Eustace Peritt.

In a very comfortable arm-chair in front of a warm fire (for the month

is November) sits the Bottles of old days—bigger, uglier, shyer than

ever, and in addition, disfigured by an assegai wound through the

cheek. Opposite to him, and peering at him occasionally with fond

curiosity through an eyeglass, is his brother, a very different stamp

of man. Sir Eustace Peritt is a well-preserved, London-looking

gentleman, of apparently any age between thirty and fifty. His eye is

so bright, his figure so well preserved, that to judge from appearances

alone you would put him down to the former age. But when you come to

know him so as to be able to measure his consummate knowledge of the

world, and to have the opportunity of reflecting upon the good-natured

but profound cynicism which pleasantly pervades his talk as absolutely

as the flavour of lemon pervades rum punch, you would be inclined to

assign his natal day to a much earlier date. In reality he was forty,

neither more nor less, and had both preserved his youthful appearance

and gained the mellowness of his experience by a judicious use of the

opportunities of life.

“Well, my dear George,” said Sir Eustace, addressing his

brother—determined to take this occasion of meeting after so long a

time to be rid of the nickname “Bottles,” which he hated—“I

haven’t had such a pleasure for years.”

“As—as what?”

“As meeting you again, of course. When I saw you on the vessel I knew

you at once. You have not changed at all, unless expansion can be

called a change.”

“Nor have you, Eustace, unless contraction can be called a change.

Your waist used to be bigger, you know.”

“Ah, George, I drank beer in those days; it is one of those things of

which I have lived to see the folly. In fact, there are not many things

of which I have not lived to see the folly.”

“Except living itself, I suppose?”

“Exactly—except living. I have no wish to follow the example of our

poor cousins,” he answered with a sigh, “to whose considerate

behaviour, however,” he added, brightening, “we owe our present

improved position.” Then came a pause.

“Fourteen years is a long time, George; you must have had a rough time

of it.”

“Yes, pretty rough. I have seen a good deal of irregular service, you

know.”

“And never got anything out of it, I suppose?”

“Oh, yes; I have got my bread and butter, which is all I am worth.”

Sir Eustace looked at his brother doubtfully through his eyeglass.

“You are modest,” he said; “that does not do. You must have a

better opinion of yourself if you want to get on in the world.”

“I don’t want to get on. I am quite content to earn a living, and I

am modest because I have seen so many better men fare worse.”

“But now you need not earn a living any more. What do you propose to

do? Live in town? I can set you going in a very good lot. You will be

quite a lion with that hole in your cheek—by the way, you must tell

me the story. And then, you see, if anything happens to me you stand in

for the title and estates. That will be quite enough to float you.”

Bottles writhed uneasily in his chair. “Thank you, Eustace; but really

I must ask you—in short, I don’t want to be floated or anything of

the sort. I would rather go back to South Africa and my volunteer corps.

I would indeed. I hate strangers, and society, and all that sort of

thing. I’m not fit for it like you.”

“Then what do you mean to do—get married and live in the

country?”

Bottles coloured a little through his sun-tanned skin—a fact that did

not escape the eyeglass of his observant brother. “No, I am not going

to get married, certainly not.”

“By the way,” said Sir Eustace carelessly, “I saw your old

flame, Lady Croston, yesterday, and told her you were coming home. She

makes a charming widow.”

“_What!_” ejaculated his brother, slowly raising himself out

of his chair in astonishment. “Is her husband dead?”

“Dead? Yes, died a year ago, and a good riddance too. He appointed me

one of his executors; I am sure I don’t know why, for we never liked

each other. I think he was the most disagreeable fellow I ever knew.

They say he gave his wife a roughish time of it occasionally. Serve her

right, too.”

“Why did it serve her right?”

Sir Eustace shrugged his shoulders.

“When a heartless girl jilts the fellow she is engaged to in order to

sell herself to an elderly beast, I think she deserves all she gets.

This one did not get half enough; indeed, she has made a good thing of

it—better than she expected.”

His brother sat down again before he answered in a constrained voice,

“Don’t you think you are rather hard on her, Eustace?”

“Hard on her? No, not a bit of it. Of all the worthless women that I

know, I think Madeline Croston is the most worthless. Look how she

treated you.”

“Eustace,” broke in his brother almost sharply, “if you

don’t mind, I wish you would not talk of her like that to me. I

can’t—in short, I don’t like it.”

Sir Eustace’s eyeglass dropped out of Sir Eustace’s eye—he

had opened it so wide to stare at his brother. “Why, my dear

fellow,” he ejaculated, “you don’t mean to tell me you still

care for that woman?”

His brother twisted his great form about uncomfortably in the low chair

as he answered, “I don’t know, I’m sure, about caring for her,

but I don’t like to hear you say such things about her.”

Sir Eustace whistled softly. “I am sorry if I offended you, old

fellow,” he said. “I had no idea that it was still a sore point

with you. You must be a faithful people in South Africa. Here the

‘holy feelings of the heart’ are shorter lived. We wear out several

generations of them in twelve years.”

CHAPTER III

Bottles did not go to bed till late that night. Long after Sir Eustace

—who, always careful of his health, never stopped up late if he could

avoid it—had vanished, yawning, his brother sat smoking pipe after

pipe and thinking. He had sat many times in the same way on a wagon-box

in the African veld, or up where the moonlight turned the falls of the

Zambesi into a rushing cataract of silver, or alone in his tent when

all the camp was sleeping round him. It was a habit of this queer,

silent man to sit and think for hours at night, and arose to a great

extent from an incapacity to sleep, that was the weak point in his

constitution.

As for his meditations, they were various, but mostly the outcome of a

curious speculative side to his nature, which he never revealed to the

outside world. Dreams of a happiness of which heretofore his hard life

had given him no glimpse; semi-mystical, religious meditations upon the

great unknown around us; and grand schemes for the regeneration of

mankind—all formed part of them.

But there was one central thought, the fixed star of his mind, round

which all the others continually revolved, taking their light and

colour from it, and that was the thought of Madeline Croston, the woman

to whom he had been engaged. Years and years had passed since he had

seen her face, and yet it was always present to him. Beyond the

occasional mention of her name in some society paper—several of

which, by the way, he took in for years and conscientiously searched on

the chance of finding it—till this evening he had never even seen it

or heard it spoken; and yet with all the tenacity of his strong, deep

nature he clung to her dear memory. That she had left him to marry

another man weighed as nothing in the balance of his love. Once she had

loved him, and thereby he was repaid for the devotion of his life. He

had no ambitions. Madeline had been his great ambition; and when that

had fallen, all the others had fallen with it, even to the dust. He

simply did his duty, whatever it might be, as well as in him lay,

without fear of blame or hope of praise—shunning men, and never, if

he could avoid it, speaking to a woman, content to earn his livelihood,

and for the rest rendered colourless by his secret and pathetic

passion.

And now it appeared that Madeline was a widow, which meant—and his

heart beat fast at the thought—that she was a free woman. Madeline

was a free woman, and he was within a few minutes’ walk of her. No

thousands of miles of ocean rolled between them now. He rose, went to

the table, and consulted a Red book that lay on it. There was the

address—a house in Grosvenor Street. Overcome by an uncontrollable

impulse, he went out of the room. Going to his own he found his

mackintosh and a round hat, and softly left the house. It was then past

two in the morning, pouring with rain, and blowing hard.

He had been a little in London as a lad and remembered the main

thoroughfares, so had no great difficulty in finding his way up

Piccadilly till he came to Park Lane, into which the Red book told him

Grosvenor Square opened. But to find Grosvenor Street itself was a more

difficult matter, and at such a time on such a night there was

naturally nobody to ask—least of all a policeman. At last he found

it, and hurried on down the street with a quickening pulse. What he was

hurrying to he could not tell, but that over-mastering impulse forced

him on quicker and quicker yet.

Suddenly he halted, and examined the number of one of the houses by the

faint and struggling light from the nearest lamp. It was _her_ house;

now there was nothing between them but a few feet of space and fourteen

inches of brickwork. He crossed over to the other side of the street,

and looked up at the house, but could scarcely make it out through the

driving rain. There was no light in the house, and no sign of life

about the street. But there were both light and life in the heart of

this watcher. All the pulses of his blood were astir, keeping time with

the commotion of his mind. He stood there in the shadow, gazing at the

murky house, heedless of the bitter wind and pelting rain, and felt his

life and spirit pass out of his control into an unknown dominion. The

storm that raged around him was nothing to the convulsion of his inner

self in that hour of madness, which was yet happiness. Yet as it had

arisen thus suddenly, so with equal swiftness it died away, and left him

standing there with a chill sense of folly in his mind and of the

bitter weather in his body; for on such a night a mackintosh and a

dress coat were not adapted to keep the most ardent lover warm. He

shivered, and turning, made his way back to Albany, feeling heartily

ashamed of himself and his midnight expedition, and heartily glad that

no one knew of it except himself.

On the following day Bottles—for convenience’ sake we still call

him by his old nickname—was obliged to see a lawyer with reference to

the money which he had inherited, and to search for a box which had

gone astray aboard the steamer; also to buy a tall hat, such as he had

not worn for fourteen years; so that between one thing and another it

was half-past four before he got back to the Albany. Here he donned the

new hat, which did not fit very well, and a new black coat which fitted

so well that it seemed to cut into his large frame in every possible

direction, and departed, furiously struggling with a pair of gloves,

also new, for Grosvenor Street.

A quarter of an hour’s walk, for he knew the road this time, brought

him to the house. Glancing for a while at the spot where he had stood

on the previous night, he walked up the steps and pulled the bell.

Though he looked bold enough outwardly—indeed, rather imposing than

otherwise—with his broad shoulders and the great scar on his bronzed

face, his breast was full of terrors. In these, however, he had not

much time to indulge, for a footman, still decked in the trappings of

vicarious grief, opened the door with the most startling promptitude,

and he was ushered upstairs into a small but richly furnished room.

Madeline was not in the room, though to judge from the lace handkerchief

lying on the floor by a low chair, and the open novel on a little

wicker table alongside, she had not left it long. The footman departed,

saying, in a magnificent undertone, that “her ladyship” should be

informed, and left our hero to enjoy his sensations. Being one of those

people whom suspense of any sort makes fidgety, he employed himself in

looking at the pictures and china, even going so far as to walk to a

pair of very heavy blue velvet curtains that apparently communicated

with another room, and peep through them at a much larger apartment of

which the furniture was done up in ghostly-looking bags.

Retreating from this melancholy sight, finally he took up a position on

the hearthrug and waited. Would she be angry with him for coming? he

wondered. Would it recall things she had rather forget? But perhaps she

had already forgotten them—it was so long ago. Would she be very much

changed? Perhaps he should not know her. Perhaps—but here he happened

to lift his eyes, and there, standing between the two blue velvet

curtains, was Madeline, now a woman in the full splendour of a

remarkable beauty, and showing as yet, at any rate in that dull

November twilight, no traces of her years. There she stood, her large

dark eyes fixed upon him with a look of wistful curiosity, her shapely

lips just parted to speak, and her bosom gently heaving, as though with

trouble.

Poor Bottles! One look was enough. There was no chance of his attaining

the blessed haven of disillusionment. In five seconds he was farther

out to sea than ever. When she knew that he had seen her she dropped

her eyes a little—he saw the long curved lashes appear against her

cheek, and moved forward.

“How do you do?” she said softly, extending her slim, cool hand.

He took the hand and shook it, but for the life of him could think of

nothing to say. Not one of the little speeches he had prepared would

come into his mind. Yet the desperate necessity of saying something

forced itself upon him.

“How do you do?” he ejaculated with a jerk.

“It—it’s very cold, isn’t it?”

This remark was such an utter and ludicrous _fiasco_ that Lady Croston

could not choose but laugh a little.

“I see,” she said, “that you have not got over your

shyness.”

“It is a long while since we met,” he blurted out.

“I am very glad to see you,” was her simple answer. “Now sit

down and talk to me; tell me all about yourself. Stop; before you

begin—how very curious it is! Do you know I dreamed about you last

night—such a curious, painful dream. I dreamed that I was asleep in my

room—which indeed I was—and that it was blowing a gale and raining

in torrents—which I believe it was also—so there is nothing very

wonderful about that. But now comes the odd part. I dreamed that you

were standing out in the rain and wind and yet looking at me as though

you saw me. I could not see your face because you were in the dark, but

I knew it was you. Then I woke up with a start. It was a most vivid

dream. And now to-day you have come to see me after all these years.”

He shifted his legs uneasily. Considering the facts of the case, her

dream frightened him, which was not strange. Fortunately, at that

moment the impressive footman arrived with the tea-things and asked

whether he should light the lamps.

“No,” said Lady Croston; “put some wood on the fire.”

She knew that she looked her very best in those half-lights.

Then, when she had given him his tea, delighting him by remembering that

he did not like sugar, she fell to drawing him out about the wild life

he had been leading.

“By the way,” she said presently, “perhaps you can tell

me—a few days ago I bought a book for my boy”—she had two

children—“all about brave deeds and that sort of thing, and in it

there was a story of a volunteer officer in South Africa (the name was

not mentioned) which interested me very much. Did you ever hear of it?

It was this: The officer was in command of a fort containing a force

that was operating against a native chief. While he was away the chief

sent a flag of truce down to the fort, which was fired on by some of

the volunteers in the fort, because there was a man among the truce

party against whom they had a spite. Just afterwards the officer

returned, and was very angry that such a thing had been done by

Englishmen, whose duty it was, he said, to teach all the world what

honour meant.

“Now comes the brave part of the story. Without saying any more, and

notwithstanding the entreaties of his men, who knew that in all

probability he was going to a death by torture, for he was so brave

that the natives had set a great price upon him, wishing to kill him

and use his body for medicine, which they thought would make them as

brave as he was, that officer rode out far away into the mountains with

only an interpreter and a white handkerchief, till he came to the

chief’s stronghold. But when the natives saw him coming, holding up

his white handkerchief, they did not fire at him as his men had fired

at them, because they were so astonished at his bravery that they

thought he must be mad or inspired. So he came straight on to the walls

of the stronghold, called to the chief and begged his pardon for what

had happened, and then rode away again unharmed. Shortly afterwards,

the chief, having captured some of the officer’s volunteers, whom in

the ordinary course of affairs he would have tortured to death, sent

them back again untouched, with a message to the effect that he would

show the English officer that he was not the only man who could behave

‘like a gentleman.’ I should like to know that man. Do you know who

he was?”

Bottles looked uncomfortable, as well he might, for it was an incident

in his own career; but her praise and enthusiasm sent a flush of pride

into his face.

“I believe it was some fellow in the Basuto War,” he said,

prevaricating with peculiar awkwardness.

“Oh, then it _is_ a true story?”

“Yes—that is, it is partially true. There was nothing heroic about

it. It was a necessary act if our honour as fair opponents was to

continue to be worth anything.”

“But who was the man?” she asked, fixing her dark eyes on him

suspiciously.

“The man!” he stammered. “Oh, the man—well, in

short——” and he stopped.

“In short, _George_,” she put in, for the first time calling

him by his Christian name, “that man was _you_, and I am so proud of

you, George.”

It was very hateful to him in a way, for he loathed that kind of

personal adulation, even from her. He was so intensely modest he had

never even reported the incident in question; it had come out in some

roundabout way. Yet he could not but feel happy that she had found him

out. It was a great deal to him to have moved her, and her sparkling

eyes and heaving bosom showed that she was somewhat moved.

He looked up and his eyes caught hers; the room was nearly dark now, but

the bright flame from the wood the servant had put on the fire played

upon her face. His eyes caught hers, and there was a look in them from

which he could not escape, even if he had wished to do so. She had

thrown her head back so that the coronet of her glossy hair rested upon

the back of her low seat, and thus, without strain, could look straight

up into his face. He had risen, and was standing by the mantelpiece. A

slow, sweet smile grew upon the perfect face, and the dark eyes became

soft and luminous as though they shone through tears.

In another second it had ended, as she thought that it would end and had

intended that it should end. The great strong man was down—yes, down

on his knees before her, one trembling hand catching at the arm of her

chair, and the other clasping her tapering fingers. There was no

hesitation or awkwardness about him now, the greatness of his long-pent

passion inspired him, and he told her all without let or stop—all

that he had suffered for her sake throughout those lonely years, all

his wretched hopelessness, keeping nothing back.

Much she did not understand; such a passion as this was too deep to be

fathomed by her shallow lines, too soaring for her to net in her

world-straitened imagination. Once or twice even his exalted notions

made her smile: it seemed ridiculous, knowing the world as she did,

that any man should think thus of _any_ woman. Nor, when at length he

had finished, did she attempt an answer, feeling that her strength lay

in silence, for she had a poor case. At least, the only argument that

she used was a purely feminine one, but perfectly effective. She bent

her beautiful face towards him, and he kissed it again and again.

CHAPTER IV

The revulsion of feeling experienced by Bottles as he hurried back to

the Albany to dress for dinner—for he was to dine with his brother at

one of his clubs that night—was so extraordinary and overwhelming

that it took him, figuratively speaking, off his legs. As yet his mind,

so long accustomed to perpetual misfortune in this, the ruling passion

of his life, could not quite grasp his luck. That he should, after all,

have won back his lost Madeline seemed altogether too good to be true.

As it happened, Sir Eustace had asked one or two men to meet him,

amongst them an Under-Secretary for the Colonies, who, having to

prepare for a severe cross-examination in the House upon South African

affairs, had jumped at the opportunity of sucking the brains of a man

thoroughly acquainted with the subject. But the expectant

Under-Secretary was destined to meet with a grievous disappointment,

for out of Bottles came no good thing. For the most part of the dinner

he sat silent, only speaking when directly addressed, and then answering

so much at random that the Under-Secretary quickly came to the

conclusion that Sir Eustace’s brother was either a fool or that he

had drunk too much.

Sir Eustace himself saw that his brother’s taciturnity had spoilt his

little dinner, and his temper was not improved thereby. He was not

accustomed to have his dinners spoiled, and felt that, so far as the

Under-Secretary was concerned, he had put himself into a false

position.

“My dear George,” he said in a tone of bland exasperation when they

had got back to the Albany, “I wonder what can be the matter with you?

I told Atherleigh that you would be able to post him up thoroughly

about all this Bechuana mess, and he could not get a word out of

you.”

His brother absently filled his pipe before he answered:

“The Bechuanas? Oh, yes, I know all about them. I lived among them for

a year.”

“Then why on earth didn’t you tell him what you knew? You put me in

rather a false position.”

“I am very sorry, Eustace,” he answered humbly. “I will go

and see him if you like, and explain the thing to him to-morrow. The

fact of the matter is, I was thinking of something else.”

Sir Eustace interrogated him with a look.

“I was thinking,” he went on slowly, “about Mad—about

Lady Croston.”

“Oh!”

“I went to see her this afternoon, and I think, I hope, that I am

going to marry her.”

If Bottles expected that this great news would be received by his elder

brother as such news ought to be received—with congratulatory

rejoicing—he was destined to be disappointed.

“Good heavens!” ejaculated Sir Eustace shortly, letting his

eyeglass drop.

“Why do you say that, Eustace?” Bottles asked uneasily.

“Because—because,” answered his brother in the emphatic tone

which was his equivalent for strong language, “you must be mad to

think of such a thing.”

“Why must I be mad?”

“Because you, still a young man, with all your life before you,

deliberately propose to tie yourself up to a middle-aged and

_passée_ woman—she is extremely _passée_ by

daylight, let me tell you—who has already treated you like a dog, and

is burdened with a couple of children, and who, if she marries again,

will bring you very little except her luxurious tastes. But I expected

this. I thought she would try to catch you with those languishing black

eyes of hers. You are not the first; I know her of old.”

“If,” said his brother, rising in dudgeon, “you are going to

abuse Madeline to me, I think I had better say good night, for we shall

quarrel—which I would not do for anything.”

Sir Eustace shrugged his shoulders. “Those whom the gods wish to

destroy they first make mad,” he muttered, as he lit his hand candle.

“This is what comes of a course of South Africa.”

But Sir Eustace was an amenable man. His favourite motto was “Live and

let live”; and having given the matter his best consideration during

the lengthy process of shaving himself on the following morning, he

came to the conclusion, reluctantly enough it must be owned, that it

was evident that his brother meant to have his own way, and therefore

the best thing to be done was to fall in with his views and trust to

the chapter of accidents to bring the thing to naught. Sir Eustace, for

all his apparent worldliness and cynicism, was a good fellow at heart,

and cherished a warm affection for his awkward, taciturn brother. He

also cherished a great dislike for Lady Croston, whose character he

thoroughly understood. He saw a good deal of her, it is true, because

he happened to be one of the executors of her husband’s will; and

since he had come into the baronetcy it had struck him that she had

developed a considerable partiality for his society.

The idea of a marriage between his brother and his brother’s old flame

was in every way distasteful to him. In the first place, under her

husband’s will, Madeline would bring, comparatively speaking,

relatively little with her should she marry again. That was one

objection. Another, and still more forcible one from Sir Eustace’s

point of view, was that at her time of life she was not likely to

present the house of Peritt with an heir. Now, Sir Eustace had not the

slightest intention of marrying. Matrimony was, he considered, an

excellent institution, and necessary to the carrying on of the world in

a respectable manner, but it was not one with which he was anxious to

identify himself. Therefore, if his brother married at all, it was his

earnest desire that the union should bring children to inherit the

title and estates. Prominent above both these excellent reasons, stood

his intense distrust and dislike of the lady.

Needs must, however, when the devil (by whom he understood Madeline)

drives. He was not going to quarrel with his only brother and

presumptive heir because he chose to marry a woman who was not to his

taste. So he shrugged his shoulders—having finished his shaving and

his reflections together—and determined to put the best possible face

on his disappointment.

“Well, George,” he said to his brother at breakfast, “so you

are going to marry Lady Croston?”

Bottles looked up surprised. “Yes, Eustace,” he answered, “if

she will marry me.”

Sir Eustace glanced at him. “I thought the affair was settled,” he

said.

Bottles rubbed his big nose reflectively as he answered, “Well, no. I

don’t think that marriage was mentioned. But I suppose she means to

marry me. In short, I don’t see how she could mean anything else.”

Sir Eustace breathed more freely, guessing what had taken place. So

there was as yet no actual engagement.

“When are you going to see her again?”

“To-morrow. She is engaged all to-day.”

His brother took out a pocket-book and consulted it. “Then I am more

fortunate than you are,” he said; “I have an appointment with Lady

Croston this evening after dinner. Don’t look jealous, old fellow, it

is only about some executor’s business. I think I told you that I am

one of her husband’s executors, blessings on his memory. She is a

peculiar woman, your _inamorata_, and swears that she won’t trust her

lawyers, so I have to do all the dirty work myself, worse luck. You had

better come too.”

“Shan’t I be in the way?” asked Bottles doubtfully,

struggling feebly against the bribe.

“It is evident, my dear fellow, that you cannot be _de trop_. I

shall present my papers for signature and vanish. You ought to be

infinitely obliged to me for giving you such a chance. We will consider

that settled. We will dine together, and go round to Grosvenor Street

afterwards.”

Bottles agreed. Could he have seen the little scheme that was dawning in

his brother’s brain, perhaps he would not have assented so readily.

When her old lover went away reluctantly to dress for dinner on the

previous day, Madeline Croston sat down to have a good think, and the

result was not entirely satisfactory. It had been very pleasant to see

him, and his passionate declaration of enduring love thrilled her

through and through, and even woke an echo in her own breast. It made

her proud to think that this man, who, notwithstanding his ugliness and

awkwardness, was yet, her instinct told her, worth half a dozen smart

London fashionables, still loved her and had never ceased to love her.

Poor Bottles! she had been very fond of him once. They had grown up

together, and it really gave her some cruel hours when a sense of what

she owed to herself and her family had forced her to discard him.

She remembered, as she sat there this evening, how at the time she had

wondered if it was worth it—if life would not be brighter and happier

if she made up her mind to fight through it by her honest lover’s

side. Well, she could answer that question now. It had been well worth

it. She had not liked her husband, it is true; but on the whole she had

enjoyed a good time and plenty of money, and the power that money

brings. The wisdom of her later days had confirmed the judgment of her

youth. As regards Bottles himself, she had soon got over that fancy;

for years she had scarcely thought of him, till Sir Eustace told her

that he was coming home, and she had that curious dream about him. Now

he had come and made love to her, not in a civilised, philandering sort

of a way, such as she was accustomed to, but with a passion and a fire

and an utter self-abandonment which, while it thrilled her nerves with

a curious sensation of mingled pleasure and pain, not unlike that she

once experienced at a Spanish bull-fight when she saw a man tossed, was

yet extremely awkward to deal with and rather alarming.

Now, too, the old question had come up again, and what was to be done?

She had sheered him off the question that afternoon, but he would want

to marry her, she felt sure of that. If she consented, what were they

to live on? Her own juncture, in the event of her re-marriage, would be

cut down to a thousand a year—she had four now, and was pinched on

that; and as for Bottles, she knew what he had—eight hundred, for Sir

Eustace had told her. He was next heir to the baronetcy, it was true,

but Sir Eustace looked as though he would live for ever, and besides,

he might marry after all.

For a few minutes Lady Croston contemplated the possibility of existing

on eighteen hundred a year, and what Chancery would give her as

guardian of her children in a poky house somewhere down at Kensington.

Soon she realised that the thing was not to be done.

“Unless Sir Eustace will do something for him, it is very clear that

we cannot be married,” she said to herself with a sigh. “However, I

need not tell him that just yet, or he will be rushing back to South

Africa or something.”

CHAPTER V

Sir Eustace and his brother carried out their programme. They dined

together, and about half-past nine drove round to Grosvenor Street.

Here they were shown into the drawing-room by the solemn footman, who

informed Sir Eustace that her ladyship was upstairs in the nursery and

had left a message for him that she would be down presently.

“All right; there is no hurry,” said Sir Eustace absently, and the

man went downstairs.

Bottles, being nervous, was fidgeting round the room as usual, and his

brother, being very much at ease, was standing with his back to the

fire, and staring about him. Presently his glance lit upon the blue

velvet curtains which shut off the room they were in from the larger

saloon that had not been used since Lady Croston’s widowhood, and an

idea which had been floating about in his brain suddenly took definite

shape and form. He was a prompt man, and in another second he had acted

up to that idea.

“George,” he said in a quick, low voice, “listen to me, and

for Heaven’s sake don’t interrupt for a minute. You know that I do

not like the idea of your marrying Lady Croston. You know that I think

her worthless—no, wait a minute, don’t interrupt—I am only saying

what I think. You believe in her; you believe that she is in love with

you and will marry you, and have good reason to believe it, have you

not?”

Bottles nodded.

“Very well. Supposing that I can show you within half an hour that she

is perfectly ready to marry somebody else—myself, for

instance—would you still believe in her?”

Bottles turned pale. “The thing is impossible,” he said.

“That is not the question. Would you still believe in her, and would

you still marry her?”

“Great heavens! no.”

“Good. Then I tell you what I will do for you, and it will perhaps

give you some idea of how deeply I feel in the matter; I will sacrifice

myself.”

“Sacrifice yourself?”

“Yes. I mean that I will this very evening propose to Madeline Croston

under your nose, and I bet you five pounds she accepts me.”

“Impossible,” said Bottles again. “Besides, if she did you

don’t want to marry her.”

“Marry her! No, indeed. _I_ am not mad. I shall have to get out of

the scrape as best I can—always supposing my view of the lady is

correct.”

“Excuse me,” said Bottles with a gasp, “but I must ask

you—in short, have _you_ ever been on affectionate terms with

Madeline?”

“Never, on my honour.”

“And yet you think she will marry you if you ask her, even after what

took place with me yesterday?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Why?”

“Because, my boy,” replied Sir Eustace with a cynical smile,

“I have eight thousand a year and you have eight hundred—because I

have a title and you have none. That you may happen to be the better

fellow of the two will, I fear, not make up for those deficiencies.”

Bottles with a motion of his hand waved his brother’s courtly

compliment away, as it were, and turned on him with a set white face.

“I do not believe you, Eustace,” he said. “Do you understand

what you make out this lady to be when you say that she could kiss me

and tell me that she loved me—for she did both yesterday—and

promise to marry you to-day?”

Sir Eustace shrugged his shoulders. “I think that the lady in question

has done something like that before, George.”

“That was years ago and under pressure. Now, Eustace, you have made

this charge; you have upset my faith in Madeline, whom I hope to marry,

and I say, prove it—prove it if you can. I will stake my life you

cannot.”

“Don’t agitate yourself, my dear fellow; and as to betting, I would

not risk more than a fiver. Now oblige me by stepping behind those

velvet curtains—_a la_ ‘School for Scandal’—and listening

in perfect silence to my conversation with Lady Croston. She does not

know that you are here, so she will not miss you. You can escape when

you have had enough of it, for there is a door through on to the

landing, and as we came up I noticed that it was ajar. Or if you like

you can appear from between the curtains like an infuriated husband on

the stage and play whatever _role_ occasion may demand. Really the

situation has a laughable side. I should enjoy it immensely if _I_ were

behind the curtain too. Come, in you go.”

Bottles hesitated. “I can’t hide,” he said.

“Nonsense; remember how much depends on it. All is fair in love or

war. Quick; here she comes.”

Bottles grew flurried and yielded, scarcely knowing what he did. In

another second he was in the darkened room behind the curtains, through

the crack in which he could command the lighted scene before him, and

Sir Eustace was back at his place before the fire, reflecting that in

his ardour to extricate his brother from what he considered a suicidal

engagement he had let himself in for a very pretty undertaking. Suppose

she accepted him, his brother would be furious, and he would probably

have to go abroad to get out of the lady’s way; and suppose she

refused him, he would look a fool.

Meanwhile the sweep, sweep of Madeline’s dress as she passed down the

stairs was drawing nearer, and in another instant she was in the room.

She was beautifully dressed in silver-grey silk, plentifully trimmed

with black lace, and cut square back and front so as to show her

rounded shoulders. She wore no ornaments, being one of the few women

who are able to dispense with them, unless indeed a red camellia pinned

in the front of her dress can be called an ornament. Bottles, shivering

with shame and doubt behind his curtain, marked that red camellia, and

wondered of what it reminded him.

Then in a flash it all came back, the scene of years and years ago—the

verandah in far-away Natal, with himself sitting on it, an open letter

in his hand and staring with all his eyes at the camellia bush covered

with bloom before him. It seemed a bad omen to him—that camellia in

Madeline’s bosom. Next second she was speaking.

“Oh, Sir Eustace, I owe you a thousand apologies. You must have been

here for quite ten minutes, for I heard the front door bang when you

came. But my poor little girl Effie is ill with a sore throat which has

made her feverish, and she absolutely refused to go to sleep unless she

had my hand to hold.”

“Lucky Effie,” said Sir Eustace, with his politest bow; “I am

sure I can understand her fancy.”

At the moment he was holding Madeline’s hand himself, and gave

emphasis to his words by communicating the gentlest possible pressure

to it as he let it fall. But knowing his habits, she did not take much

notice. Comparative strangers when Sir Eustace shook hands with them

were sometimes in doubt whether he was about to propose to them or to

make a remark upon the weather. Alas! it had always been the weather.

“I come as a man of business besides, and men of business are

accustomed to being kept waiting,” he went on.

“You are really very good, Sir Eustace, to take so much trouble about

my affairs.”

“It is a pleasure, Lady Croston.”

“Ah, Sir Eustace, you do not expect me to believe that,” laughed

the radiant creature at his side. “But if you only knew how I detest

lawyers, and what you spare me by the trouble you take, I am sure you

would not grudge me your time.”

“Do not talk of it, Lady Croston. I would do a great deal more than

that for you; in fact,” here he dropped his voice a little, “there

are few things that I would not do for you, _Madeline_.”

She raised her delicate eyebrows till they looked like notes of

interrogation, and blushed a little. This was quite a new style for Sir

Eustace. Was he in earnest? she wondered. Impossible!

“And now for business,” he continued; “not that there is much

business; as I understand it, you have only to sign this document, which

I have already witnessed, and the stock can be transferred.”

She signed the paper which he had brought in a big envelope almost

without looking at it, for she was thinking of Sir Eustace’s remark,

and he put it back in the envelope.

“Is that all the business, Sir Eustace?” she asked.

“Yes; quite all. Now I suppose that as I have done my duty I had

better go away.”

“I wish to Heaven he would!” groaned Bottles to himself behind the

curtains. He did not like his brother’s affectionate little ways or

Madeline’s tolerance of them.

“Indeed, no; you had better sit down and talk to me—that is, if you

have got nothing pleasanter to do.”

We can guess Sir Eustace’s prompt reply and Madeline’s smiling

reception of the compliment, as she seated herself in a low chair—that

same low chair she had occupied the day before.

“Now for it,” said Sir Eustace to himself. “I wonder how

George is getting on?”

“My brother tells me that he came to see you yesterday,” he began.

“Yes,” she answered, smiling again, but wondering in her heart how

much he had told him.

“Do you find him much changed?”

“Not much.”

“You used to be very fond of each other once, if I remember right?”

said he.

“Yes, once.”

“I often think how curious it is,” went on Sir Eustace in a

reflective tone, “to watch the various changes time brings about,

especially where the affections are concerned. One sees children at the

seaside making little mounds of sand, and they think, if they are very

young children, that they will find them there to-morrow. But they

reckon without their tide. To-morrow the sands will have swept as level

as ever, and the little boys will have to begin again. It is like that

with our youthful love affairs, is it not? The tide of time comes up

and sweeps them away, fortunately for ourselves. Now in your case, for

instance, it is, I think, a happy thing for both of you that your

sandhouse did not last. Is it not?”

Madeline sighed softly. “Yes, I suppose so,” she answered.

Bottles, behind the curtains, rapidly reviewed the past, and came to a

different conclusion.

“Well, that is all done with,” said Sir Eustace cheerfully.

Madeline did not contradict him; she did not see her way to doing so

just at present.

Then came a pause.

“Madeline,” said Sir Eustace presently, in a changed voice,

“I have something to say to you.”

“Indeed, Sir Eustace,” she answered, lifting her eyebrows again in

her note of interrogation manner, “what is it?”

“It is this, Madeline—I want to ask you to be my wife.”

The blue velvet curtains suddenly gave a jump as though they were

assisting at a spiritualistic _séance_.

Sir Eustace looked at the curtains with warning in his eye.

Madeline saw nothing.

“Really, Sir Eustace!”

“I dare say I surprise you,” went on this ardent lover; “my

suit may seem a sudden one, but in truth it is nothing of the sort.”

“O Lord, what a lie!” groaned the distracted Bottles.

“I thought, Sir Eustace,” murmured Madeline in her sweet low voice,

“that you told me not very long ago that you never meant to marry.”

“Nor did I, Madeline, because I thought there was no chance of my

marrying you” (“which I am sure I hope there isn’t,” he

added to himself). “But—but, Madeline, I love you.”

(“Heaven forgive me for that!”) “Listen to me, Madeline,

before you answer,” and he drew his chair closer to her own. “I

feel the loneliness of my position, and I want to get married. I think

that we should suit each other very well. At our age, now that our

youth is past” (he could not resist this dig, at which Madeline

winced), “probably neither of us would wish to marry anybody much our

junior. I have had many opportunities lately, Madeline, of seeing the

beauty of your character, and to the beauties of your person no man

could be blind. I can offer you a good position, a good fortune, and

myself, such as I am. Will you take me?” and he laid his hand upon

hers and gazed earnestly into her eyes.

“Really, Sir Eustace,” she murmured, “this is so very

unexpected and sudden.”

“Yes, Madeline, I know it is. I have no right to take you by storm in

this way, but I trust you will not allow my precipitancy to weight

against me. Take a little time to think it over—a week say” (“by

which time,” he reflected, “I hope to be in Algiers.”) “Only,

if you can, Madeline, tell me that I may hope.”

She made no immediate answer, but, letting her hands fall idly in her

lap, looked straight before her, her beautiful eyes fixed upon vacancy,

and her mind amply occupied in considering the pros and cons of the

situation. Then Sir Eustace took heart of grace; bending down, he

kissed the Madonna-like face. Still there was no response. Only very

gently she pushed him from her, whispering:

“Yes, Eustace, I think I shall be able to tell you that you may

hope.”

Bottles waited to see no more. With set teeth and flaming eyes he crept,

a broken man, through the door that led on to the landing, crept down

the stairs and into the hall. On the pegs were his hat and coat; he

took them and passed into the street.

“I have done a disgraceful thing,” he thought, “and I have

paid for it.”

Softly as the door closed Sir Eustace heard it; and then he too left the

room, murmuring, “I shall soon come for my answer, Madeline.”

When he reached the street his brother was gone.

CHAPTER VI

Sir Eustace did not go straight back to the Albany, but, calling a

hansom, drove down to his club.

“Well,” he thought to himself, “I have played a good many

curious parts in my time, but I never had to do with anything like this

before. I only hope George is not much cut up. His eyes ought to be

opened now. What a woman——” but we will not repeat Sir

Eustace’s comments upon the lady to whom he was nominally half

engaged.

At the club Sir Eustace met his friend the Under-Secretary, who had just

escaped from the House. Thanks to information furnished to him that

morning by Bottles, who had been despatched by Sir Eustace, in a

penitent mood, to the Colonial Office to see him, he had just succeeded

in confusing, if not absolutely in defeating, the impertinent people

who “wanted to know.” Accordingly he was jubilant, and greeted Sir

Eustace with enthusiasm, and they sat talking together for an hour or

more.

Then Sir Eustace, being, as has been said, of early habits, made his way

home.

In his sitting-room he found his brother smoking and contemplating the

fire.

“Hullo, old fellow!” he said, “I wish you had come to the

club with me. Atherleigh was there, and is delighted with you. What you

told him this morning enabled him to smash up his enemies, and as the

smashing lately has been rather the other way he is jubilant. He wants

you to go to see him again to-morrow. Oh, by the way, you made your

escape all right. I only hope I may be as lucky. Well, what do you

think of your lady-love now?”

“I think,” said Bottles slowly—“that I had rather not

say what I do think.”

“Well, you are not going to marry her now, I suppose?”

“No, I shall not marry her.”

“That is all right; but I expect that it will take _me_ all I know

to get clear of her. However, there are some occasions in life when one

is bound to sacrifice one’s own convenience, and this is one of them.

After all, she is really very pretty in the evening, so it might have

been worse.”

Bottles winced, and Sir Eustace took a cigarette.

“By the way, old fellow,” he said, as he settled himself in his

chair again, “I hope you are not put out with me over this. Believe

me, you have no cause to be jealous; she does not care a hang about me,

it is only the title and the money. If a fellow who was a lord and had

a thousand a year more proposed to her to-morrow she would chuck me up

and take him.”

“No; I am not angry with you,” said Bottles; “you meant

kindly, but I am angry with myself. It was not honourable to—in short,

play the spy upon a woman’s weakness.”

“You are very scrupulous,” yawned Sir Eustace; “all means are

fair to catch a snake. Dear me, I nearly exploded once or twice; it was

better than [yawn] any [yawn] play,” and Sir Eustace went to sleep.

Bottles sat still and stared at the fire.

Presently his brother woke up with a start. “Oh, you are there, are

you, Bottles?” (it was the first time he had called him by that name

since his return.) “Odd thing; but do you know that I was dreaming

that we were boys again, and trout-fishing in the old Cantlebrook

stream. I dreamt that I hooked a big fish, and you were so excited that

you jumped right into the river after it—you did once, you

remember—and the river swept you away and left me on the bank; most

unpleasant dream. Well, good night, old boy. I vote we go down and have

some trout-fishing together in the spring. God bless you!”

“Good night,” said Bottles, gazing affectionately after his

brother’s departing form.

Then he too rose and went to his bedroom. On a table stood a battered

old tin despatch-box—the companion of all his wanderings. He opened

it and took from it first a little bottle of chloral.

“Ah,” he said, “I shall want you if I am to sleep

again.” Setting the bottle down, he extracted from a dirty envelope

one or two letters and a faded photograph. It was the same that used to

hang over his bed in his quarters at Maritzburg. These he destroyed,

tearing them into small bits with his strong brown fingers.

Then he shut the box and sat down at the table to think, opening the

sluice-gates of his mind and letting the sea of misery flow in, as it

were.

This, then, was the woman whom he had forgiven and loved and honoured

for all these years. This was the end and this the reward of all his

devotion and of all his hopes. And he smiled in bitterness of his pain

and self-contempt.

What was he to do? Go back to South Africa? He had not the heart for it.

Live here? He could not. His existence had been wasted. He had lost his

delusion—the beautiful delusion of his life—and he felt as though

it would drive him mad, as the man whose shadow left him went mad.

He rose from the chair, opened the window, and looked out. It was a

clear frosty night, and the stars shone brightly. For some while he

stood looking at them; then he undressed himself. Generally, for he was

different to most men, he said his prayers. For years, indeed, he had

not missed doing so, any more than he had missed praying Providence in

them to watch over and bless his beloved Madeline. But to-night he said

no prayers. He could not pray. The three angels, Faith, Hope, and Love,

whose whisperings heretofore had been ever in his ears, had taken wing,

and left him as he played the eavesdropper behind those blue velvet

curtains.

So he swallowed his sleeping-draught and laid himself down to rest.

When Madeline Croston heard the news at a dinner-party on the following

evening she was much shocked, and made up her mind to go home early. To

this day she tells the story as a frightful warning against the

careless use of chloral.

LITTLE FLOWER

CHAPTER I

The Rev. Thomas Bull was a man of rock-like character with no more

imagination than a rock. Of good birth, good abilities, good principles

and good repute, really he ought to have been named not Thomas but John

Bull, being as he was a typical representative of the British middle

class. By nature a really religious man and, owing to the balance of

his mind, not subject to most of the weaknesses which often afflict

others, very early in his career he determined that things spiritual

were of far greater importance than things temporal, and that as

Eternity is much longer than Time, it was wise to devote himself to the

spiritual and leave the temporal to look after itself. There are quite a

number of good people, earnest believers in the doctrine of rewards and

punishments, who take that practical view. With such

“Repaid a thousand-fold shall be,”

is a favourite line of a favourite hymn.

It is true that his idea of the spiritual was limited. Perhaps it would

be more accurate to say that it was unlimited, since he accepted

without doubt or question everything that was to be found within the

four corners of what he had been taught. As a boy he had been noted for

his prowess in swallowing the largest pills.

“Don’t think,” he would say to his weaker brothers and

sisters, especially one of the latter whose throat seemed to be so

constituted that she was obliged to cut up these boluses with a pair of

scissors, “Don’t think, but gulp ‘em down!”

So it was with everything else in life; Thomas did not think, he gulped

it down. Thus in these matters of faith, if other young folk ventured

to talk of “allegory” or even to cast unhallowed doubts upon such

points as those of the exact method of the appearance on this earth of

their Mother Eve, or whether the sun actually did stand still at the

bidding of Joshua, or the ark, filled with countless pairs of living

creatures, floated to the top of Ararat, or Jonah, defying digestive

juices, in fact abode three days in the interior of a whale, Thomas

looked on them with a pitying smile and remarked that what had been

written by Moses and other accepted prophets was enough for him.

Indeed a story was told of him when he was a boy at school which well

exemplified this attitude. By way of lightening their labours a very

noted geologist who had the art of interesting youthful audiences and

making the rocks of the earth tell their own secular story, was brought

to lecture to his House. This eminent man lectured extremely well. He

showed how beyond a doubt the globe we inhabit, one speck of matter,

floating in the sea of space, had existed for millions upon millions of

years, and how by the evolutionary changes of countless ages it had at

length become fitted to be the habitation of men, who probably

themselves had lived and moved and had their being there for at least a

million of years, perhaps much longer.

At the conclusion of the entrancing story the boys were invited to ask

questions. Thomas Bull, a large, beetle-browed youth, rose at once and

inquired of their titled and aged visitor, a man of world-wide

reputation, why he thought it funny to tell them fairy tales. The old

gentleman, greatly interested, put on his spectacles, and while the

rest of the school gasped and the head master and other pedagogues

stared amazed, studied this strange lad, then said:

“I am outspoken myself, and I like those who speak out when they do so

from conviction; but, my young friend, why do you consider that

I—well, exaggerate?”

“Because the Bible says so,” replied Thomas unabashed. “The

Bible tells us that the world was made in six days, not in millions of

years, and that the sun and the moon and the stars were put in the sky

to light it; also that man was created four thousand years B.C.

Therefore, either you are wrong, sir, or the Bible is, and _I_ prefer

the Bible.”

The eminent scientist took off his spectacles and carefully put them

away, remarking:

“Most logical and conclusive. Pray, young gentleman, do not allow any

humble deductions of my own or others to interfere with your

convictions. Only I believe it was Archbishop Ussher, not the Bible,

who said that the world began about 4,000 B.C. I think that one day you

may become a great man—in your own way. Meanwhile I might suggest

that a certain sugaring of manners sweetens controversy.”

After this no more questions were asked, and the meeting broke up in

confusion.

From all of which it will be gathered that since none of us is perfect,

even in Thomas there were weak points. For instance, he had what is

known as a “temper,” also he was blessed with a good idea of

himself and his own abilities, and had a share of that intolerance by

which this is so often accompanied.

In due course Thomas Bull became a theological student. Rarely was there

such a student. He turned neither to left nor right, worked eight hours

a day when he did not work ten, and took the highest possible degrees

on every subject. Then he was ordained. About this time he chanced to

hear a series of sermons by a Colonial bishop that directed his mind

towards the mission-field. This was after he had served as a deacon in

an East End parish and become acquainted with savagery in its western

form.

He consulted with his friends and his superiors as to whether his true

call were not to the far parts of the earth. Unanimously they answered

that they thought so; so unanimously that a mild fellow-labourer whom

he bullied was stung to the uncharitable remark that almost it looked

as though they wanted to be rid of him. Perhaps they did; perhaps they

held that for energy so gigantic there was no fitting outlet in this

narrow land.

But as it chanced there was another to be consulted, for by this time

the Rev. Thomas Bull had become engaged to the only daughter of a

deceased London trader—in fact, he had been a shop-keeper upon a

large scale. This worthy citizen had re-married late in life, choosing,

or being chosen by a handsome and rather fashionable lady of a somewhat

higher class than his own, who was herself a widow. By her he had no

issue, his daughter, Dorcas, being the child of his first marriage. Mr.

Humphreys, for that was his name, made a somewhat peculiar will,

leaving all his fortune, which was considerable, to his young widow,

charged, however, with an annuity of 300 pounds settled on his daughter

Dorcas.

On the day before his death, however, he added a codicil which angered

Mrs. Humphreys very much when she saw it, to the effect that if she

re-married, three-fourths of the fortune were to pass to Dorcas at

once, and that she or her heirs were ultimately to receive it all upon

the decease of his wife.

The result of these testamentary dispositions was that one house,

although it chanced to be large, proved too small to hold Mrs.

Humphreys and her stepdaughter, Dorcas. The latter was a mild and timid

little creature with a turned-up nose, light-coloured fluffy hair and

an indeterminate mouth. Still there was a degree of annoyance and

fashionable scorn at which her spirit rose. The end of it was that she

went to live on her three hundred a year and to practise good works in

the East End, being laudably determined to make a career for herself,

which she was not in the least fitted to do.

Thus it was that Dorcas came into contact with the Rev. Thomas Bull.

From the first time she saw her future husband he dominated and

fascinated her. He was in the pulpit and really looked very handsome

there with his burly form, his large black eyes and his determined,

clean-shaven face. Moreover, he preached well in his own vigorous

fashion.

On this occasion he was engaged in denouncing the vices and pettiness of

modern woman—upper-class modern woman—of whom he knew nothing at

all, a topic that appealed to an East End congregation. He showed how

worthless was this luxurious stamp of females, what a deal they thought

of dress and of other more evil delights. He compared them to the

Florentines whom Savonarola (in his heart Thomas saw resemblances

between himself and that great if narrow man) scourged till they wept

in repentance and piled up their jewels and fripperies to be burned.

What do they do with their lives, he asked. Is there one in ten thousand

of them who would abandon her luxuries and go forth to spread the light

in the dark places of earth, or would even pinch herself to support

others who did? And so on for thirty minutes.

Dorcas, listening and, reflecting on her stepmother, thought how

marvellously true it all was. Had he known her personally, which so far

as she was aware was not the case, the preacher could not have

described her better. Also it was certain that Mrs. Humphreys and her

friends had not the slightest intention of spreading any kind of light,

unless it were that of their own eyes and jewels, or of going anywhere

to do so, except perhaps to Monte Carlo in the spring.

How noble too was the picture he painted of the life of self-sacrifice

and high endeavour that lay open to her sex. She would like to lead

that higher life, being in truth a good-hearted little thing full of

righteous impulses; only unfortunately she did not know how, for her

present mild and tentative efforts had been somewhat disappointing in

their fruits.

Then an inspiration seized her; she would consult Mr. Bull.

She did so, with results that might have been anticipated. Within three

months she and her mentor were engaged and within six married.

It was during those fervid weeks of engagement that the pair agreed, not

without a little hesitation upon the part of Dorcas, that in due course

he would become a missionary and set forth to convert the heathen in

what he called “Blackest Africa.” First, however, there was much to

be done; he must go through a long course of training; he must acquaint

himself with various savage languages, such as Swahili and Zulu, and so

must she.

Oh! how poor Dorcas, who was not very clever and had no gift of tongues

came to loathe those barbaric dialects. Still she worked away at them

like a heroine, confining herself ultimately, with a wise and practical

prescience, to learning words and sentences that dealt with domestic

affairs, such as “Light the fire.” “Put the kettle on to boil.”

“Sister, have you chopped the wood?” “Cease making so much noise

in the kitchen-hut.” “Wake me if you hear the lion eating our

cow.” And so forth.

For more than a year after their marriage these preliminaries continued

while Thomas worked like a horse, though it is true that Dorcas

slackened her attention to Swahili and Zulu grammar in the pressure of

more immediate affairs. Especially was this so after the baby was born,

a girl, flaxen-haired like her mother, whom Thomas christened by the

name of Tabitha, and who in after years became the “Little Flower”

of this history. Then as the time of departure drew near another thing

happened. Her stepmother, Mrs. Humphreys, insisted upon going to a ball

in Lent, where she caught a chill that developed into inflammation of

the lungs and killed her.

The result of this visitation of Providence, as Thomas called it, was

that Dorcas suddenly found herself a rich woman with an income of quite

2000 pounds a year, for her father had been wealthier than she knew.

Now temptation took hold of her. Why, she asked herself, should Thomas

depart to Africa to teach black people, when with his gifts and her

means he could stop at home comfortably and before very long become a

bishop, or at the least a dean?

Greatly daring, she propounded this matter to her husband, only to find

that she might better have tried to knock down a stone wall with her

head than induce him to change his plans. He listened to her

patiently—unless over-irritated, a perfectly exasperating patience

was one of his gifts—then said in a cold voice that he was astonished

at her.

“When you were poor,” he went on, “you vowed yourself to this

service, and now because we are rich you wish to turn traitor and become

a seeker after the fleshpots of Egypt. Never let me hear you mention

the matter again.”

“But there is the baby,” she exclaimed. “Africa is hot and

might not agree with her.”

“Heaven will look after the baby,” he answered.

“That’s just what I am afraid of,” wailed Dorcas.

Then they had their first quarrel, in the course of which, be it

admitted, she said one or two spiteful things. For instance, she

suggested that the real reason he wished to go abroad was because he

was so unpopular with his brother clergymen at home, and especially

with his superiors, to whom he was fond of administering lectures and

reproofs.

It ended, of course, in her being crushed as flat as is a broken-winged

butterfly that comes in the path of a garden roller. He stood up and

towered over her.

“Dorcas,” he said, “do what you will. Stay here if you wish,

and enjoy your money and your luxuries. I sail on the first of next

month for Africa. Because you are weak, do I cease to be strong?”

“I think not,” she replied, sobbing, and gave in.

So they sailed, first class—this was a concession, for he had intended

to go third—but without a nurse; on that point he stood firm.

“You must learn to look after your own children,” he said, a remark

at which she made a little face that meant more than he knew.

CHAPTER II

The career of Mr. and Mrs. Bull during the next eight years calls for

but little comment. Partly because Tabitha was delicate at first and

must be within reach of doctors, they lived for the most part at

various coast cities in Africa, where Thomas worked with his usual

fervour and earnestness, acquiring languages which he learned to speak

with considerable perfection, though Dorcas never did, and acquainting

himself thoroughly with the local conditions in so far as they affected

missionary enterprise.

He took no interest in anything else, not even in the history of the

natives, or their peculiar forms of culture, since for the most part

they have a secret culture of their own. All that was done with, he

said, a turned page of the black and barbarous past; it was his

business to write new things upon a new sheet. Perhaps it was for this

reason that Thomas Bull never really came to understand or enter into

the heart of a Zulu, or a Basuto, or a Swahili, or indeed of any

dark-skinned man, woman, or child. To him they were but brands to be

snatched from the burning, desperate and disagreeable sinners who must

be saved, and he set to work to save them with fearful vigour.

His wife, although her vocabulary was still extremely limited and much

eked out with English or Dutch words, got on much better with them.

“You know, Thomas,” she would say, “they have all sorts of

fine ideas which we don’t understand, and are not so bad in their way,

only you must find out what their way is.”

“I have found out,” he said grimly; “it is a very evil way,

the way of destruction. I wish you would not make such a friend of that

sly black nurse-girl who tells me a lie once out of every three times

she opens her mouth.”

For the rest Dorcas was fairly comfortable, as with their means she was

always able to have a nice house in whatever town they might be

stationed, where she could give tennis parties and even little lunches

and dinners, that is if her husband chanced to be away, as often he was

visiting up-country districts, or taking the duty there for another

missionary who was sick or on leave. Indeed, in these conditions she

came to like Africa fairly well, for she was a chilly little thing who

loved its ample, all-pervading sunshine, and made a good many friends,

especially among young men, to whom her helplessness and rather forlorn

little face appealed.

The women, too, liked her, for she was kindly and always ready to help

in case of poverty or other distresses. Luckily, in a way, she was her

own mistress, since her fortune came to her unfettered by any marriage

settlements; moreover, it was in the hands of trustees, so that the

principal could not be alienated. Therefore she had her own account and

her own cheque-book and used her spare money as she liked. More than

one poor missionary’s wife knew this and called her blessed, as

through her bounty they once again looked upon the shores of England or

were able to send a sick child home for treatment. But of these good

deeds Dorcas never talked, least of all to her husband. If he suspected

them, after one encounter upon some such matter, in which she developed

a hidden strength and purpose, he had the sense to remain silent.

So things went on for years, not unhappily on the whole, for as they

rolled by the child Tabitha grew acclimatised and much stronger. By

this time, although Dorcas loved her husband as all wives should,

obeying him in all, or at any rate in most things, she had come to

recognise that he and she were very differently constituted. Of course,

she knew that he was infinitely her superior, and indeed that of most

people. Like everybody else she admired his uprightness, his fixity of

purpose and his devouring energy and believed him to be destined to

great things. Still, to tell the truth, which she often confessed with

penitence upon her knees, on the whole she felt happier, or at any rate

more comfortable, during his occasional absences to which allusion has

been made, when she could have her friends to tea and indulge in human

gossip without being called “worldly.”

It only remains to add that her little girl Tabitha, a name she

shortened into Tabbie, was her constant joy, especially as she had no

other children. Tabbie was a bright, fair-haired little thing, clever,

too, with resource and a will of her own, an improved edition of

herself, but in every way utterly unlike her father, a fact that

secretly annoyed him. Everybody loved Tabitha, and Tabitha loved

everybody, not excepting the natives, who adored her. Between the

Kaffirs and Tabitha there was some strong natural bond of sympathy.

They understood one another.

At length came the blow.

It happened thus. Not far from the borders of Zululand but in the

country that is vaguely known as Portuguese Territory, was a certain

tribe of mixed Zulu and Basuto blood who were called the Ama-Sisa, that

is, the People of the Sisa. Now “Sisa” in the Zulu tongue has a

peculiar meaning which may be translated as “Sent Away.” It is said

that they acquired this name because the Zulu kings when they exercised

dominion over all that district were in the habit of despatching large

herds of the royal cattle to be looked after by these people, or in

their own idiom to be _sisa’d_, i.e. agisted, as we say in English of

stock that are entrusted to another to graze at a distance from the

owner’s home.

Some, however, gave another reason. In the territory of this tribe was a

certain spot of which we shall hear more later, where these same Zulu

kings were in the habit of causing offenders against their law or

customs to be executed. Such also, like the cattle, were “sent

away,” and from one of these two causes, whichever it may have been,

or perhaps from both, the tribe originally derived its name.

It was not a large tribe, perhaps there were three hundred and fifty

heads of families in it, or say something under two thousand souls in

all, descendants, probably, of a mild, peace-loving, industrious Basuto

stock on to which had been grafted a certain number of the dominant,

warlike Zulus who perhaps had killed out the men and possessed

themselves of the Basuto women and their cattle. The result was that

among this small people there were two strains, one of the bellicose

type, who practically remained Zulus, and the other of the milder and

more progressive Basuto stamp, who were in the majority.

Among these Sisas missionaries had been at work for a number of years,

with results that on the whole were satisfactory. More than half of

them had been baptised and were Christians of a sort; a church had been

built; a more or less modern system of agriculture had been introduced,

and the most of the population wore trousers or skirts, according to

sex. Recently, however, trouble had arisen over the old question of

polygamy. The missionaries would not tolerate more than one wife, while

the Zulu section of the tribe insisted upon the old prerogative of

plural marriage.

The dispute had ended in something like actual fighting, in the course

of which the church and the school were burnt, also the missionary’s

house. Because of these troubles this excellent man was forced to camp

out in the wet, for it was the rainy season, and catching a chill, died

suddenly of heart-failure following rheumatic fever just after he had

moved into his new habitation, which consisted of some rather glorified

native huts.

Subsequently to these events there came a petition from the chief of the

tribe, a man called Kosa, whose name probably derived from the Zulu

word Koos, which means chief or captain, addressed to the Church

authorities and asking that a new Teacher might be sent to take the

place of him who had died, also to rebuild the church and the school.

If this were not done, said the messengers, the tribe would relapse

into heathenism, since the Zulu and anti-Christian party headed by an

old witch-doctor, named Menzi, was strong and gaining ground.

This was an appeal that could not be neglected, since hitherto the Sisa

had been a spot of light in a dark place, as most of the surrounding

peoples, who were of the old Zulu stock, remained heathen. If that

light went out the chances were that they would continue to be so,

whereas if it went on burning another result might be hoped, since from

a spark a great fire may come. Therefore earnest search was made for a

suitable person to deal with so difficult and delicate a situation,

with the result that the lot fell upon the Rev. Thomas Bull.

Once his name was mentioned, it was acclaimed by all. He was the very

man, they said, bold, determined, filled with a Jesuit’s fiery zeal

(although it need scarcely be explained that he hated Jesuits as a cat

does mustard), one whom no witch-doctors would daunt, one, moreover,

who being blessed with this world’s goods would ask no pay, but on

the contrary would perhaps contribute a handsome sum towards the

re-building of the church. This, it may be explained, as the Mission

itself scarcely possessed a spare penny with which to bless itself, was

a point that could not be overlooked.

So Thomas was sent for and offered the post, after its difficulties and

drawbacks had been fairly but diplomatically explained to him. He did

not hesitate a minute, or at any rate five minutes; he took it at once,

feeling that his call had come; also that it was the very thing for

which he had been seeking. Up in that secluded spot in Portuguese

Territory he would, he reflected, be entirely on his own, a sort of

little bishop with no one to interfere with him, and able to have his

own way about everything, which in more civilised regions he found he

could not do. Here a set of older gentlemen, who were always appealing

to their experience of natives, continually put a spoke into his wheel,

bringing his boldest plans to naught. There it would be different. He

would fashion his own wheel and grind the witch-doctor with his

following to dust beneath its iron rim. He said that he would go at

once, and what is more, he promised a donation of 1,000 pounds towards

the rebuilding of the church and other burnt-out edifices.

“That is very generous of Bull,” remarked the Dean when he had left

the room.

“Yes,” said another dignitary, “only I think that the

undertaking must be looked upon as conditional. I understand, well, that

the money belongs to Mrs. Bull.”

“Probably she will endorse the bond as she is a liberal little

woman,” said the Dean, “and in any case our brother Bull, if I may

be pardoned a vulgarism, will knock the stuffing out of that pestilent

Menzi and his crowd.”

“Do you think so?” asked the other. “I am not so certain. I

have met old Menzi, and he is a tough nut to crack. He may ‘knock the

stuffing’ out of him. Bull, sound as he is, and splendid as he is in

many ways, does not, it seems to me, quite understand natives, or that

it is easier to lead them than to drive them.”

“Perhaps not,” said the Dean, “but in the case of these Sisas

it is rather a matter of Hobson’s choice, isn’t it?”

So this affair was settled, and in due course Thomas received his letter

of appointment as priest-in-charge of the Sisa station.

On his arrival home a few days later, where he was not expected till the

following week, Thomas was so pre-occupied that he scarcely seemed to

notice his wife’s affectionate greeting; even the fact that both she

and Tabitha were arrayed in smart and unmissionary-like garments

escaped him. Dorcas also looked pre-occupied, the truth being that she

had asked a few young people, officers and maidens of the place (alas!

as it chanced, among them were no clergy or their wives and daughters),

to play tennis that afternoon and some of them to stop to supper. Now

she was wondering how her austere spouse would take the news. He might

be cross and lecture her; when he was both cross and lectured the

combination was not agreeable.

A few formal enquiries as to health and a certain sick person were made

and answered. Dorcas assured him that they were both quite well,

Tabitha especially, and that she had visited the afflicted woman as

directed.

“And how was she, dear?” he asked.

“I don’t know, dear,” she answered. “You see, when I

got to the house I met Mrs. Tomley, the Rector’s wife, at the door,

and she said, rather pointedly I thought, that she and her husband were

looking after the case, and though grateful for the kind assistance you

had rendered, felt that they need not trouble us any more, as the

patient was a parishioner of theirs.”

“Did they?” said Thomas with a frown. “Considering all

things—well, let it be.”

Dorcas was quite content to do so, for she was aware that her

husband’s good-heartedness was apt to be interpreted as poaching by

some who should have known better, and that in fact the ground was

dangerous.

“I have something to tell you,” she began nervously, “about

an arrangement I have made for this afternoon.”

Mr. Bull, who was drinking a tumbler of water—he was a teetotaller and

non-smoker, and one of his grievances was that his wife found it

desirable to take a little wine for the Pauline reason—set it down

and said:

“Never mind your afternoon arrangements, my dear; they are generally

of a sort that can be altered, for _I_ have something to tell _you_,

something very important. My call has come.”

“Your call, dear. What call? I did not know that you expected

anyone—and, by the way——”

She got no further, for her husband interrupted.

“Do not be ridiculous, Dorcas. I said call—not caller, and I use

the word in its higher sense.”

“Oh! I understand, forgive me for being so stupid. Have they made you

a bishop?”

“A bishop——”

“I mean a dean, or an archdeacon, or something!” she went on

confusedly.

“No, Dorcas, they have not. I could scarcely expect promotion as yet,

though it is true that I thought—but never mind, others no doubt have

better claims and longer service. I have, however, been honoured with a

most responsible duty.”

“Indeed, dear. What duty?”

“I have been nominated priest-in-charge of the Sisa Station.”

“O-oh! and where is that? Is it anywhere near Durban, or perhaps

Maritzburg?”

“I don’t exactly know at present, though I understand that it is

about six days’ trek from Eshowe in Zululand, but over the border in

Portuguese territory. Indeed, I am not sure that one can trek all the

way, at least when the rivers are in flood. Then it is necessary to

cross one of them in a basket slung upon a rope, or if the river is not

too full, in a punt. At this season the basket is most used.”

“Great Heavens, Thomas! do you propose to put me and Tabbie in a

basket, like St. Paul, and did you remember that we have just taken on

this house for another year?”

“Of course I do. The families of missionaries must expect to face

hardships, from which it is true circumstances have relieved you up to

the present. It is therefore only right that they should begin now,

when Tabitha has become as strong as any child of her age that I know.

As for the house, I had forgotten all about it. It must be relet, or

failing that we must bear the loss, which fortunately we can well

afford.”

Dorcas looked at him and said nothing because words failed her, so he

went on hurriedly.

“By the way, love, I have taken a slight liberty with your name. It

appears that the church at Sisa, which I understand was quite a nice one

built with subscriptions obtained in England by one of my predecessors

who chanced to have influence or connections at home, has been recently

burnt down together with the mission-house. Now the house can wait,

since, of course, we can make shift for a year or two in some native

huts, but obviously we must have a church, and as the Society is

overdrawn it cannot help in the matter. Under these circumstances I

ventured to promise a gift of 1,000 pounds, which it is estimated will

cover the re-erection of both church and house.”

He paused awaiting a reply, but as Dorcas still said nothing, continued.

“You will remember that you told me quite recently that you found you

had 1,500 pounds to your credit, therefore I felt quite sure that you

would not grudge 1,000 pounds of it to enable me to fulfil this

duty—this semi-divine duty.”

“Oh!” said Dorcas. “As a matter of fact I intended to spend

that 1,000 pounds, or much of it, otherwise. There are some people here

whom I wanted to help, but fortunately I had not mentioned this to

them, so they will have to do without the money and their holiday; also

the children cannot be sent to school. And, by the way, how is Tabbie

to be educated in this far-away place?”

“I am sorry, dear, but after all private luxuries, including that of

benevolence, must give way to sacred needs, so I will write to the Dean

that the money will be forthcoming when it is needed. As for

Tabitha’s education, of course we will undertake it between us, at

any rate for the next few years.”

“Yes, Thomas, since you have passed your word, or rather my word, the

money will be forthcoming. But meanwhile, if you can spare me the odd

500 pounds, I suggest that I should stay here with Tabbie, who could

continue to attend the college as a day-scholar, while you get us some

place ready to live in among these savages, the Sneezers, or whatever

they are called.”

“My dear,” answered Thomas, “consider what you ask. You are

in perfect health and so is our child. Would it not, then, be a

downright scandal that you should stop here in luxury while your

husband went out to confront grave difficulties among the Sisas—not

the Sneezers—for I may tell you at once that the difficulties are

very grave? There is a noted witch-doctor amongst this people named

Menzi, who, I understand, is suspected of having burned down the

mission-house, and probably the church also, because he said that it

was ridiculous that an unmarried man like the late priest should have

so large a dwelling to live alone. This, of course, was but a cunning

excuse for his savage malevolence, but if another apparent celibate

arrives, he might repeat the argument and its application. Also often

these barbarians consider that a man who is not married _must_ be

insane! Therefore it is absolutely necessary that you and the child

should be present with me from the first.”

“Oh! is it?” said Dorcas, turning very pink. “Well, I am

sorry to say that just now it is absolutely necessary that I should be

absent from you, since I have a tennis party this afternoon—the

officers of the garrison are coming and about half a dozen girls—and

I must go to arrange about the tea.”

“A tennis party! A tennis party to those godless officers and probably

equally godless girls,” exclaimed her husband. “I am ashamed of

you, Dorcas, you should be occupied with higher things.”

Then at last the worm turned.

“Do you know, Thomas,” she answered, springing up, “that I am

inclined to be ashamed of you too, who I think should be occupied in

keeping your temper. You have accepted some strange mission without

consulting me, you have promised 1,000 pounds of my money without

consulting me, and now you scold me because I have a few young people

to play tennis and stop to supper. It is unchristian, it is

uncharitable, it is—too bad!” and sitting down again she burst into

tears.

The Rev. Thomas who by now was in a really regal rage, not knowing what

to say or do, glared about him. By ill-luck his eye fell upon a box of

cigarettes that stood upon the mantelpiece.

“What are those things doing here?” he asked. “I do not

smoke, so they cannot be for me. Is our money—I beg pardon—your

money which is so much needed in other directions to be wasted in

providing such unnecessaries—for officers and—idle girls?

Oh—bless it all,” and seizing the offending cigarettes he hurled

them through the open window, a scattered shower of white tubes which

some Kaffirs outside instantly proceeded to collect.

Then he rushed from the house, and Dorcas went to get ready for her

party. But first she sent a servant to buy another box of cigarettes.

It was her first act of rebellion against the iron rule of the Rev.

Thomas Bull.

CHAPTER III

In the end, as may be guessed, Dorcas, who was a good and faithful

little soul, accompanied her husband to the Sisa country. Tabitha went

also, rejoicing, having learned that in this happy land there was no

school. Dorcas found the journey awful, but really, had she but known

it, it was most fortunate, indeed ideal. Her husband, who was a little

anxious on the point, had made the best arrangements that were possible

on such an expedition.

The wagon in which they trekked was good and comfortable, and although

it was still the rainy season, fortune favoured them in the matter of

weather, so that when they came to the formidable river, they were

actually able to trek across it with the help of some oxen borrowed

from a missionary in that neighbourhood, without having recourse to the

dreaded rope-slung basket, or even to the punt.

Beyond the river they were met by some Christian Kaffirs of the Sisa

tribe, who were sent by the Chief Kosa to guide them through the

hundred miles or so of difficult country which still lay between them

and their goal. These men were pleasant-spoken but rather depressed

folk, clad in much-worn European clothes that somehow became them very

ill. They gave a melancholy account of the spiritual condition of the

Sisas, who since the death of their last pastor, they said, were

relapsing rapidly into heathenism under the pernicious influence of

Menzi, the witch-doctor. Therefore Kosa sent his greetings and prayed

the new Teacher to hurry to their aid and put a stop to this state of

things.

“Fear nothing,” said Thomas in a loud voice, speaking in Zulu,

which by now he knew very well. “I _will_ put a stop to it.”

Then they asked him his name. He replied that it was Thomas Bull, which

after the native fashion, having found out what bull meant in English,

they translated into a long appellation which, strictly rendered, meant

_Roaring-Leader-of-the-holy-Herd_. When he found this out, Thomas flatly

declined any such unchristian title, with the result that, anxious to

oblige, they christened him “Tombool,” and as “Tombool”

thenceforward he was known. (Dorcas objected to this name, but Tabitha

remarked sagely that at any rate it was better than “Tomfool.”)

This was to his face, but behind his back they called him _Inkunzi_,

which means bull, and in order to keep up the idea, designated poor

Dorcas _Isidanda_, that being interpreted signified a gentle-natured

cow. To Tabitha they gave a prettier name, calling her _Imba_ or Little

Flower.

At first Dorcas was quite pleased with her title, which sounded nice,

but when she came to learn what it meant it was otherwise.

“How can you expect me, Thomas, to live among a people who call me

‘a mild cow’?” she asked indignantly.

“Never mind, my dear,” he answered. “In their symbolical way

they are only signifying that you will feed them with the milk of human

kindness,” a reply which did not soothe her at all. In fact, of the

three the child alone was pleased, because she said that “Opening

Flower” was a prettier name than Tabbie, which reminded her of cats.

Thenceforward, following a track, for it could not be called a road,

they advanced slowly, first over a mountain pass on the farther side of

which the wagon nearly upset, and then across a great bush-clad plain

where there was much game and the lions roared round them at night,

necessitating great fires to frighten them away. These lions terrified

Dorcas, a town-bred woman who had never seen one of them except in the

Zoo, so much that she could scarcely sleep, but oddly enough Tabitha

was not disturbed by them.

“God will not let us be eaten by a lion, will He, Father?” she

asked in her simple faith.

“Certainly not,” he answered, “and if the brute tries to do

so I shall shoot it.”

“I’d rather trust to God, Father, because you know you can never

hit anything,” replied Tabitha.

Fortunately, however, it never became necessary for Thomas to show his

skill as a marksman, for when they got through the bushveld there were

no more lions.

On the fourth day after they left the river they found themselves upon

gentle sloping veld that by degrees led them upwards to high land where

it was cold and healthy and there were no mosquitoes. For two days they

trekked over these high lands, which seemed to be quite uninhabited

save by herds of feeding buck, till at length they attained their

crest, and below them saw a beautiful mimosa-clad plain which the

guides told them was the Sisa Country.

“The Promised Land at last! It makes me feel like another Moses,”

said Thomas, waving his arm.

“Oh, isn’t it lovely!” exclaimed Tabitha.

“Yes, dear,” answered her mother, “but—but I

don’t see any town.”

This indeed was the case because there was none, the Sisa kraal, for it

could not be dignified by any other name, being round a projecting

ridge and out of sight. For the rest the prospect was very fair, being

park-like in character, with dotted clumps of trees among which ran, or

rather wound, a silver stream that seemed to issue from between two

rocky koppies in the distance.

These koppies, the guides told them, were the gates of Sisa Town. They

neglected to add that it lay in a hot and unhealthy hill-ringed hollow

beyond them, the site having originally been chosen because it was

difficult to attack, being only approachable through certain passes.

Therefore it was a very suitable place in which to kraal the cattle of

the Zulu kings in times of danger. That day they travelled down the

declivity into the plain, where they camped. By the following afternoon

they came to the koppies through which the river ran, and asked its

name. The answer was _Ukufa_.

“_Ukufa?_” said Thomas. “Why, that means Death.”

“Yes,” was the reply, “because in the old days this river was

the River of Death where evil-doers were sent to be slain.”

“How horrible!” said Dorcas, for unfortunately she had overheard

and understood this conversation.

By the side of the river was a kind of shelf of rock that was used as a

road, and over this they bumped in their wagon, till presently they

were past the koppies and could see their future home beyond. It was a

plain some miles across, and entirely surrounded by precipitous hills,

the river entering it through a gorge to the north. In the centre of

this plain was another large koppie of which the river _Ukufa_, or

Death, washed one side. Around this koppie, amid a certain area of

cultivated land, stood the “town” of the Christian branch of the

Sisa. It consisted of groups of huts, ten or a dozen groups in all, set

on low ground near the river, which suggested that the population might

number anything between seven hundred and a thousand souls.

At the time that our party first saw it the sun was sinking, and had

disappeared behind the western portion of the barricade of hills.

Therefore the valley, if it may be so called, was plunged in a gloom

that seemed almost unnatural when compared with the brilliant sky

above, across which the radiant lights of an African sunset already

sped like arrows, or rather like red and ominous spears of flame.

“What a dreadful place!” exclaimed Dorcas. “Is our home to be

here?”

“I suppose so,” answered Thomas, who to tell the truth for once was

himself somewhat dismayed. “It does look a little gloomy, but after

all it is very sheltered, and home is what one makes it,” he added

sententiously.

Here the conversation was interrupted by the arrival of the Chief and

some of the Christian portion of the Sisa tribe, who having been warned

of its approach by messenger, to the number of a hundred and fifty or

so had advanced to meet the party.

They were a motley crowd clad in every kind of garment, ranging from a

moth-eaten General’s tunic to practically nothing at all. Indeed, one

tall, thin fellow sported only a battered helmet of rusty steel that had

drifted here from some European army, a _moocha_ or waistbelt of

catskins, and a pair of decayed tennis-shoes through which his toes

appeared. With them came what were evidently the remains of the church

choir, when there was a church, for they wore dirty fragments of

surplices and sang what seemed to be a hymn tune to the strains of a

decadent accordion.

The tune was long and ended in a kind of howl like to that of a

disappointed jackal. When at length it was finished the Chief Kosa

appeared. He was a middle-aged man, become prematurely old because he

had lived too fast in his pre-Christian days, or so report said. Now he

had a somewhat imbecile appearance, for his fingers twitched and when

he spoke his mouth jerked up at the corners; also he kept looking over

his shoulder as though he were afraid of something behind him.

Altogether he inspired Thomas with no confidence. Whatever else he

might be, clearly he was not a staff for a crusader to lean upon.

Still he came forward and made a very nice speech, as a high-bred native

noble, such as he was, can almost invariably do. With many pious

expressions he welcomed the new Teacher, saying that he and his people,

that is those of them who were Christians, would do their best to make

him happy.

Thomas thanked him in appropriate language, adding that he on his part

would do his best to promote their welfare and to save their souls.

Kosa replied that he was glad to hear it, because these needed saving,

since most of the Sisa people were now servants of the devil. Since the

last _Umfundisi_, or Teacher died, they had been walking the road to

hell at a very great pace, marrying many wives, drinking gin and

practising all kinds of witchcraft under the guidance of the _Isanusi_

or doctor, Menzi. This man, he added, had burned down the church and

the mission-house by his magic, though these had seemed to be destroyed

by lightning.

With a proud gesture Thomas announced that he would soon settle Menzi

and all his works, and that meanwhile, as the darkness was coming on,

he would be glad if Kosa would lead them to the place where they were

to sleep.

So they started, the accordion-man, playing execrably, leading the way,

and trekked for about a mile and a half till they came to the koppie in

the centre of the plain, reaching it by following the left bank of the

river that washed its western face.

Passing between a number of tumbled walls built of loose stones, that

once in bygone generations had sheltered the cattle of Chaka and other

Zulu kings, they reached a bay in the side of the koppie that may have

covered four acres of ground. Here by the edge of the river, but

standing a little above it, were the burnt-out ruins of a building that

by its shape had evidently been a church, and near to it other ruins of

a school and of a house which once was the mission-station.

As they approached they heard swelling from within those cracked and

melancholy walls the sound of a fierce, defiant chant which Thomas

guessed must be some ancient Zulu war-song, as indeed it was. It was a

very impressive song, chanted by many people, which informed the

listeners that those who sung it were the King’s oxen, born to kill

the King’s enemies, and to be killed for the King, and so forth; a

deep-noted, savage song that thrilled the blood, at the first sound of

which the accordion gave a feeble wail and metaphorically expired.

“Isn’t that beautiful music, Father. I never heard anything like

that before,” exclaimed Tabitha.

Before Thomas could answer, out from the ruined doorway of the Church

issued a band of men—there might have been a hundred of them—clad

in all the magnificent panoply of old-time Zulu warriors, with tall

plumes upon their heads, large shields upon their arms, kilts about

their middles, and fringes of oxtails hanging from their knees and

elbows. They formed into a double line and advanced, waving

broad-bladed assegais. Then at a signal they halted by the wagon and

uttered a deep-throated salute.

In front of their lines was a little withered old fellow who carried

neither shield nor spear, but only a black rod to which was bound the

tail of a _wildebeeste_. Except for his _moocha_ he was almost naked,

and into his grey hair was woven a polished ring of black gum, from

which hung several little bladders. Upon his scraggy neck was a

necklace of baboon’s teeth and amulets, whilst above the _moocha_ was

twisted a snake that might have been either alive or stuffed.

His face, though aged and shrunken, was fine-featured and full of

breeding, while his hands and feet were very small; his eyes were

brooding, the eyes of a mystic, but when his interest was excited their

glance was as sharp as a bradawl. Just now it was fixed on Thomas, who

felt as if it were piercing him through and through. The owner of the

eyes, as Thomas guessed at once, was Menzi, a witch-doctor very famous

in those parts.

“Why are these men armed with spears? It is against the law for

Kaffirs to carry spears,” he said to the Chief.

“This is Portuguese Territory; there is no law in Portuguese

Territory,” answered Kosa with a vacant stare.

“Then we might be all murdered here and no notice taken,” exclaimed

Thomas.

“Yes, Teacher. Many people have been murdered here: my father was

murdered, and I dare say I shall be.”

“Who by?”

Kosa made no answer, but his vacant eyes rested for a little while on

Menzi.

“Good God! what a country,” said Thomas to himself, looking at

Dorcas who was frightened. Then he turned to meet Menzi, who was

advancing towards them.

Casting a glance of contempt at Kosa, of whom he took no further notice,

Menzi saluted the new-comers by lifting his hand above his head. Then

with the utmost politeness he drew a snuff-box fashioned from the tip

of a buffalo-horn out of a slit in the lobe of his left ear, extracted

the wooden stopper and offered Thomas some snuff.

“Thank you, but I do not take that nastiness,” said Thomas.

Menzi sighed as though in disappointment, and having helped himself to a

little, re-stoppered the horn and thrust it back into the lobe of his

ear. Next he said, speaking in a gentle and refined voice:

“Greeting, Teacher, who, the messengers tell us, are called Tombool in

your own language and in ours _Inkunzi_. A good name, for in truth you

look like a bull. I am glad to see that you are made much more robust

than was the last Teacher, and therefore will live longer in this place

than he did. Though as for the lady-teacher——” and he glanced at

the delicate-looking Dorcas.

Thomas stared at this man, to whom already he had taken a strong

dislike. Then moved thereto either by a very natural outburst of

temper, or perchance by a flash of inspiration, he replied:

“Yes, I shall live longer than did my brother, who died here and has

gone to Heaven, and longer I think than you will.”

This personal remark seemed to take Menzi aback; indeed for a moment he

looked frightened. Recovering himself, however, he said:

“I perceive, Teacher Tombool, that like myself you are a witch-doctor

and a prophet. At present I do not know which of us will live the

longer, but I will consult my Spirits and tell you afterwards.”

“Pray do not trouble to do so on my account, for I do not believe in

your Spirits.”

“Of course you do not, Teacher. No doctor believes in another

doctor’s Spirits, since each has his own, and there are more Spirits

than there are doctors. Teacher Tombool, I greet you and tell you at

once that we are at war over this matter of Spirits. This tribe,

Teacher, is a cleft log, yes, it is split into two. The Chief there,

Kosa, sits on one half of the log with his Christians; I sit on the

other half with the rest, who are as our fathers were. So if you wish

to fight I shall fight with such weapons as I have. No, do not look at

the spears—not with spears. But, if you leave me and my following

alone, we shall leave you alone. If you are wise I think that you will

do well to walk your own road and suffer us to walk ours.”

“On the contrary,” answered Thomas, “I intend that all the

Sisa people shall walk one road, the road that leads to Heaven.”

“Is it so, Teacher?” Menzi replied with a mysterious smile.

Then he turned his head and looked at the darkling river that just here,

where it ran beneath an overhanging ledge of the koppie, was very deep

and still. Thomas felt that there was a world of meaning in his look,

though what it might be he did not know. Suddenly he remembered that

this river was named Death.

After Menzi had looked quite a long while, once more he saluted as

though in farewell, searching the faces of the three white people,

especially Tabitha’s, with his dreamy eyes and, letting them fall,

searching the ground also. Near to where he stood grew a number of veld

flowers, such as appear in their glory after the rains in Africa. Among

these was a rare and beautiful white lily. This lily Menzi plucked, and

stepping forward, presented it to Tabitha, saying:

“A flower for the Flower! A gift to a child from one who is

childless!”

Her father saw and meditated interference. But he was too late; Tabitha

had already taken the lily and was thanking Menzi in his own tongue,

which she knew well enough, having been brought up by Zulu nurses. He

smiled at her, saying:

“All Spirits, black or white, love flowers.”

Then for a third time he saluted, not the others, but Tabitha, with more

heartiness than before, and turning, departed, followed by his spearmen,

who also saluted Tabitha as they filed in front of her.

It was a strange sight to see these great plumed men lifting their broad

spears to the beautiful bright-haired child who stood there holding the

tall white lily in her hand as though it were a sceptre.

CHAPTER IV

When Menzi and his company had departed, vanishing round the corner of

the koppie, Thomas again asked the Chief where they were to sleep, an

urgent matter as darkness was now approaching.

Kosa answered with his usual vagueness that he supposed in the hut where

the late Teacher had died after the mission-house was burnt down. So

they trekked on a little way, passing beneath the shelf of rock that

has been mentioned as projecting from that side of the koppie which

overhung the stream, where there was just room for a wagon to travel

between the cliff and the water.

“What a dark road,” said Dorcas, and one of the Christian natives

who understood some English, having been the body-servant of the late

missionary—it was he with the accordion—replied in Zulu:

“Yes, Lady; this rock is called the Rock of Evildoers, because once

those accused of witchcraft and others were thrown from it by the order

of the King, to be eaten by the crocodiles in that pool. But,” he

added, brightening up, “do not be afraid, for there are no more Zulu

kings and we have hunted away the crocodiles, though it is true that

there are still plenty of wizards who ought to be thrown from the

rock,” and he looked over his shoulder in the direction Menzi had

taken, adding in a low voice, “You have just seen the greatest of

them, Lady.”

“How horrible!” said Dorcas for the second time.

A few yards farther on they emerged from this tunnel-like roadway and

found themselves travelling along the northern face of the koppie.

Here, surrounded by a fence, stood the Chief’s kraal, and just

outside of it a large, thatched hut with one or two smaller huts at its

back. It was a good hut of its sort, being built after the Basuto

fashion with a projecting roof and a doorway, and having a kind of

verandah floored with beaten lime.

“This was the Teacher’s house,” said Kosa as the wagon halted.

“I should like to look inside it at once,” remarked Dorcas

doubtfully, adding, “Why, what’s that?” and she pointed to a

suspicious-looking, oblong mound that was covered with weeds, over which

she had almost stumbled.

“That is the grave of the late Teacher, Lady. We buried him here

because Menzi’s people took up the bones of those who were in the

churchyard and threw them into the river,” explained Kosa.

Dorcas looked as though she were going to faint, but Thomas, rising to

the occasion, remarked:

“Come on, dear. The dead are always with us, and what better company

could we have than the dust of our sainted predecessor.”

“I would rather have his room,” murmured Dorcas, and gathering

herself together, proceeded to the hut.

Somebody opened the door with difficulty, and as it seemed to be very

dark within Thomas struck a match, by the light of which Dorcas peered

into the interior. Next second she fell back into his arms with a

little scream.

“Take me away!” she said. “The place is full of rats.”

He stared; it was quite true. There, sitting up upon the dead

missionary’s bed, was a singularly large rat that did not seem in the

least frightened by their appearance, whilst other creatures of the same

tribe scuttled about the floor and up the walls.

Dorcas slept, or did not sleep, that night in the wagon with Tabitha,

while Thomas took his rest beneath it as well as a drizzling rain that

was falling would allow.

Such was the beginning of the life of the Bull family in Sisa-Land, not

an encouraging beginning, it will be admitted, though no worse and

perhaps much better than that which many missionaries and their

families are called upon to face in various regions of the earth. What

horror is there that missionaries have not been called upon to endure?

St. Paul tells us of his trials, but they are paralleled, if not

surpassed, even in the present day.

Missionaries, however good, may not always be wise folk; the reader

might even think the Rev. Thomas Bull to be no perfect embodiment of

wisdom, sympathy or perhaps manners, but taking them as a class they

are certainly heroic folks, who endure many things for small reward, as

we reckon reward. In nothing perhaps do they show their heroism and

faith more greatly than in their persistent habit of conveying women

and young children into the most impossible places of the earth, there

to suffer many things, not exclusive, occasionally, of martyrdom. At

least the Protestant section of their calling does this; the Roman

Catholics are wiser. In renouncing marriage these save themselves from

many agonies, and having only their own lives and health at stake, are

perhaps better fitted to face rough work in rough places.

Even Thomas Bull, not a particularly sensitive person, was tempted more

than once to arrive at similar conclusions during his period of service

in Sisa-land, although neither he nor his wife or child was called upon

to face the awful extremities that have confronted others of his cloth;

for instance, another Thomas, one Owen, who was a missionary in

Zululand at the time when Dingaan, the King, massacred Retief and his

Boers beneath his eyes.

On the following morning Thomas crept out from beneath his wagon, not

refreshed, it is true, but filled with a renewed and even more fiery

zeal. During those damp hours of unrest he had reflected much and

brought the whole position into perspective, a clear if a narrow

perspective. The Chief with whom he had to deal evidently was a fool,

if not an imbecile, and the Christians who remained after a generation

of teaching were for the most part poor creatures, the weak-kneed

amongst this mixed-blood tribe, probably those of the milder Basuto

origin.

Such strength as remained in the people, who were, after all, but a

dwindling handful marooned in a distant spot, was to be found among

those of the old Zulu stock. They were descendants of the men sent by

the Kings Chaka and Dingaan to keep an eye upon the humble Basuto

slaves, whose duty it was to herd the royal cattle, the men, too, to

whom was entrusted the proud but hateful business of carrying out the

execution of persons that, for one reason or another, it was not

desirable to kill at home.

The individuals detailed for these duties were for the most part of high

blood, inconvenient persons, perhaps, whom it was desired to move to a

distance. Thus, as Thomas Bull soon learned, Menzi was said to be no

less a man than the grandson of the King Dingaan himself, one whose

father had developed troublesome ambitions, but whose life had been

spared because his mother was a favourite with the King.

Hence some of the grandson’s pride, which was enhanced by the fact

that in his youth he had been trained in medicine and magic by a

certain Zikali, alias “Opener-of-Roads,” who was said to have been

the greatest witch-doctor that ever lived in Zululand, and through him

had acquired, or perhaps developed inherent psychic gifts, that were in

any case considerable.

In the end, however, he had returned to his petty tribe, neglecting

larger opportunities, as Thomas learned, because of some woman to whom

he was attached at home. It seemed, however, that he might as well have

stayed away, since on his arrival he found that this woman had become

one of the Chief’s wives, for which reason he afterwards killed that

Chief, Kosa’s father, and possessed himself of the woman, who died

immediately afterwards, as Menzi suspected by poisoning. It was

principally for this reason that he hated Kosa, his enemy’s son, and

all who clung to him; and partly because of that hatred and the fear

that it engendered Kosa and his people had turned Christian, hoping to

protect themselves thus against Menzi and his wizardries. Also for this

dead woman’s sake, Menzi had never married again.

Thomas did not learn all these details, and others that need not be

mentioned, at once, but by the time he crept out from under that wagon

he had guessed enough to show that he was face to face with a very

tough proposition, and being the man he was, he girded his loins to

meet it, vowing that he would conquer Menzi or die in the attempt.

That very morning he called a council of the Christians and set to work

with a will. The first thing to do was to make the late missionary’s

huts habitable, which did not take long, and the next to commence the

rebuilding of the church. Thomas, true to his principles, insisted on

beginning with the church and letting the mission-house stand over,

although Dorcas, small blame to her, complained at being obliged to

live for an indefinite time in a hut like a Kaffir woman. However, as

usual, she was obliged to give way.

As it chanced, here there was little difficulty about building

operations, for stone and wood and _tambuki_ grass for thatching were

all at hand in plenty. Also the Basuto section of the Sisa, as is

common among that race, were clever masons and carpenters, some of them

having followed those trades in Natal and the more settled places in

Zululand, where dwellings had to be erected. Moreover, they possessed

wagons, and now that the dry season was approaching were able to fetch

stores of every kind from the borders of Natal. Lastly, thanks to

Dorcas’s banking account, money was by comparison no object, an

unusual circumstance where missionaries are concerned.

So all the week Thomas laboured at these matters and at making himself

acquainted with his congregation, and all Sunday he held open-air

services or taught in the ruins of the old church.

Thus in the midst of so many new interests matters went on not

uncomfortably, and Dorcas became more or less reconciled to her life.

Still she could never get over her loathing of the place which she

believed to be ill-omened, perhaps because of its gloomy aspect,

coupled with the name of the river and the uses to which it had been

put, after all not so very long ago. Naturally, also, this distaste was

accentuated by the unlucky circumstances of their arrival.

Tabitha, too, was really happy, since she loved this wild free life, and

having been brought up amongst Kaffirs and talking their language

almost as well as she did her own, soon she made many friends.

Perhaps it was a sense that the information would not be well received

by her father that prevented her from mentioning that the greatest of

those friends was the old witch-doctor, Menzi, whom she often met when

she was rambling about the place. Or it may have been pure accident,

since Thomas was too busy to bother about such trifles, while her

mother, who of course knew, kept her own counsel. The truth is that

though he was a heathen witch-doctor, Dorcas liked old Menzi better

than any other native in the district, because she said, quite truly,

that he was a gentleman, however sinful and hard-hearted he might be.

Moreover, with a woman’s perception she felt that if only he were a

friend, at a pinch he might be worth all the others put together, while

if he were an enemy, conversely the same applied.

So it came about that in the end there arose a very strange state of

affairs. Menzi hated Thomas and did all he could to thwart him. He

liked Dorcas and did all he could to help her, while the child Tabitha

he came to worship, for some reason he never revealed, which was hidden

in the depths of his secret soul; indeed ere long had she been his own

daughter he could not have loved her more. It was he who amongst many

other things gave her the pretty carved walking-stick of black and

white _umzimbeet_ wood, also the two young blue cranes and the kid that

afterwards were such pets of hers, and with them the beautiful white

feathers of a cock ostrich that had been killed on the veld. In the

same way it was he who sent milk and eggs to Dorcas when she was at her

wits’ end for both, which more than once were found mysteriously at

the door of their hut, and not any of his Christian flock, as Thomas

fondly imagined.

Thus things went on for a while.

Meanwhile Thomas found this same Menzi a stumbling-block and a rock of

offence. Whenever he tried to convert man, woman, or child he was

confronted with Menzi or the shadow of Menzi. Thus those with whom he

was arguing would ask him why he could not work miracles like Menzi.

Let him show them pictures in the fire, or tell them who had stolen

their goods or where they would find their strayed cattle, and perhaps

they would believe him. And so forth.

At length Thomas grew exasperated and announced publicly that he

credited nothing of this magic, and that Menzi was only a common cheat

who threw dust into their eyes. If Menzi could perform marvels, let him

show these marvels to him, Thomas, and to his wife, that they might

judge of them for themselves.

Apparently this challenge was repeated to the witch-doctor. At least one

morning a few days later, when Thomas went out accompanied by Dorcas and

Tabitha, to meet the Chief Kosa and others and to discuss with them

whether ultimately the mission-house should be rebuilt upon the old

site or elsewhere, he found a great concourse of people, all or nearly

all the tribe indeed, assembled on a level place where in the old days

stood one of the great kraals designed to hold the king’s cattle. Out

of the crowd emerged Kosa, looking rather sillier than usual, and of

him Thomas inquired why it was gathered. Was it to consult with him

about the mission-house?

“No, Teacher,” answered the Chief, “Menzi has heard that you

call him a cheat, and has come to show that he is none, assembling all

the people that they may judge between you and him.”

“I do not want to see his tricks,” said Thomas angrily. “Tell

him to go away.”

“Oh, Teacher!” replied Kosa, “that would not be wise, for

then everyone would believe that Menzi’s magic is so great that you

are afraid even to look upon it. It is better to let him try. Perhaps

if you pray hard he will fail, for his spirits will not always come

when he calls them.”

Thomas hesitated, then, being bold by nature, determined that he would

see the thing through. After all, Menzi was an impostor and nothing

else, and could work no more magic than he could himself. Here was a

providential opportunity to expose him. So followed by the others he

advanced into the crowd, which made way for him.

In an open space in its centre, sat Menzi wearing all his

witch-doctor’s trappings, bladders in his hair, snakeskins tied about

him, and the rest, but even in this grotesque attire still managing to

look dignified. With him were several acolytes or attendants, one of

them an old woman, also peculiarly arrayed and carrying hide bags that

contained their master’s medicines. He rose as they came, saluted

Thomas and smiled at Dorcas and Tabitha, very sweetly at the latter.

“O Teacher,” he said, “my ears hear that you say that I am a

liar and a cheat who have no wonders at my command; to whom the Spirits

never speak and who deceives the people. Now, Teacher, I have come here

that it may be seen whether you are right or I am right. If your magic

is greater than mine, then I can do nothing and I will eat the dust

before you. But if mine prevails, then perhaps all these will say that

you are the cheat, not I. Also it is true that I am not a great

magician as was my master, Zikali, the Opener-of-Roads, and cannot show

you things worthy to be seen. Nor will I smell out evil-doers, witches

and wizards, since then the people might kill them, and I think that

there are some here who deserve to die in the ancient fashion. No, I

will not do this, since it is not right that those with you,” here he

glanced at Dorcas and Tabitha, “should look upon the sight of blood,

even in this land where the White-man’s law has no power. Still there

are little things that may serve to amuse you for an hour and hurt no

one. Have any of you lost anything, for instance?”

“Yes, I have,” said Tabitha with a laugh.

“Is it so, Little Flower? Then be silent and do not say what you have

lost. Have you told any what you have lost?”

“No,” answered Tabitha, “because I was afraid I should be

scolded.”

“There, _Imba_, there, Little Flower, even that is too much, because

you see the old cheat might guess something from your words. Yes, he

might guess that it is something of value that you have lost, such as a

bracelet of gold, or the thing that ticks, on which you white people

read the time. Nay, be silent and do not let your face move lest I

should read it. Now let us see what it is that you have lost.”

Then he turned to his confederates, as Thomas called them, and began to

ask them questions which need not be set out in detail. Was it an

animal that the Little Flower had lost? No, it was not an animal, the

Spirits told him that it was not. Was it an article of dress? No, they

did not think it was an article of dress, yet the Spirits seemed to

suggest that it had something to do with dress. Was it a shoe? Was it

scissors? Was it a comb? Was it a needle? No, but it was something that

had to do with needles. What had to do with needles? Thread. Was it

thread? No, but something that had to do with thread. Was it a silver

shield which pushed the needle that drew the thread?

Here Tabitha could contain herself no longer, but clapped her hands and

cried out delightedly:

“Yes, that’s it. It’s my thimble.”

“Oh! very well,” said Menzi, “but it is easy to discover what

is lost and hard to find it.”

Then followed another long examination of the assessors or acolytes, or

witch-doctor’s chorus, by which it was established at length that the

thimble had been lost three days before, when Tabitha was sitting on a

stone sewing, that she believed it had fallen into a crevice of rocks,

and so forth.

After this the chorus was silent and Menzi himself took up the game,

apparently asking questions of the sky and putting his ear to the

ground for an answer.

At length he announced: (1) That the thimble was not among the rocks;

(2) That it was not lost at all.

“But it is, it is, you silly old man,” cried Tabitha excitedly.

“I have hunted everywhere, and I cried about it because I haven’t

got another, and can’t buy one here, and the needle hurts my

finger.”

Menzi contemplated her gravely as though he were looking her through and

through.

“It is _not_ lost, Little Flower. I see it; you have it now. Put

your hand into the pocket of your dress. What do you find there?”

“Nothing,” said Tabitha. “That is, nothing except a

hole.”

“Feel at the bottom of your dress, there on the right. No, a little

more to the front. What do you feel there?”

“Something hard,” said Tabitha.

“Take this knife and cut the lining of your dress where you feel the

hard thing. Ah! there is the silver shield which you have been carrying

about with you all these days.”

The crowd murmured approval. Dorcas exclaimed: “Well, I never!” and

Thomas looked first puzzled, then angry, then suspicious.

“Does the Teacher think that the Floweret and the old doctor have made

a plot together?” asked Menzi. “Can a sweet Flower make plots and

tell lies like the old doctor? Well, well, it is nothing. Now let us try

something better. My bags, my bags.”

Thomas made as though he would go away, but Menzi stopped him, saying:

“No, doubters must stay to see the end of their doubts. What shall I

do? Ah! I have it.”

Then from one of the bags he drew out a number of crooked black sticks

that looked like bent ebony rulers, and built them up criss-cross in a

little pile upon the ground. Next he found some bundles of fine dried

grass, which he thrust into the interstices between the sticks, as he

did so bidding one of his servants to run to the nearest hut and bring

a coal of fire upon a sherd.

“A match will not do,” he said. “White men have touched

it.”

Presently the burning ember arrived, and muttering something, Menzi blew

upon it as though to keep it alight.

“Now, White Teacher,” he said in a voice that had suddenly become

commanding, “think of something. Think of what you will, and I will

show it to you.”

“Indeed,” said Thomas with a smile. “I have thought of

something; now make good your words.”

Menzi thrust the ember into the haylike fibres and blew. They caught and

blazed up fiercely, making an extraordinarily large flame considering

the small amount of the kindling. The ebony-like sticks also began to

blaze. Menzi grew excited.

“My Spirit, come to me; my Spirit, come to me!” he cried. “O

my Spirit, show this White Teacher Tombool that I am not a cheat!”

He ran round and round the fire; he leapt into the air, then suddenly

shouted: “My Spirit has entered into me; my Snake is in my breast!”

All his excitement went; he grew quite calm, almost cataleptic. Holding

his thin hands over the fire, slowly he let them fall, and as he did so

the fierce flames died down.

“It’s going out,” said Tabitha.

Menzi smiled at her and lifted his hands again. Lo! the fire that seemed

to be dead leapt up after them in a fierce blaze. Again he dropped his

hands and the fire died away. Then he moved his arms to and fro and it

came back, following the motions of his arms as though he drew it by a

string.

“Have you thought, White Teacher? Have you thought?” he asked.

“Good! Arise, smoke!”

Behold, instead of the clear flame appeared a fan-shaped column of dense

white smoke, behind which Menzi vanished, all except his outstretched

hands.

“Look on to the smoke, White people, and do you, Little Flower, tell

me what you see there,” he called from behind this vaporous veil.

Tabitha stared, they all stared. Then she cried out:

“I see a room, I see an old man in a clergyman’s coat reading a

letter. Why, it is the Dean whom we used to know in Natal. There’s the

wart on his nose and the tuft of hair that hangs down over his eye, and

he’s reading a letter written by Father. I know the writing. It

begins, ‘My dear Dean, Providence has appointed me to a strange

place’——”

“Is that what you see also, Teacher?” asked Menzi. “And if

so, is it what you pictured in your thought?”

Thomas turned away and uttered something like a groan, for indeed he had

thought of the Dean and of the letter he had written to him a month

before.

“The Teacher is not satisfied,” said Menzi. “If he had seen

all he thought of, being so good and honest, he would tell us. There is

some mistake. My Spirit must have deceived me. Think of something else,

Teacher, and tell the lady, and the child Imba, and Kosa, and another,

what it is you are thinking of. Go aside and tell them where I cannot

hear.”

Thomas did so—in some way he felt compelled to do so.

“I am going to think of the church as I propose it shall be when

finished according to the plans I have made,” he said hoarsely. “I

am going to think of it with a belfry spire roofed with red tiles and a

clock in the tower, and I am going to think of the clock as pointing to

the exact hour of noon. Do you all understand? It is impossible that

this man should know of how I mean to build that spire and about the

clock, because until this moment no one knew except myself. If he can

show me that, I shall begin to believe that he is inspired by his

master, the devil. Do you all understand?”

They said they did, and Menzi called out:

“Be quick, White Teacher. Be quick, I grow tired. My Spirit grows

tired. The smoke grows tired. Come, come, come!”

They returned and stood in front of the fire, and in obedience to

Menzi’s motions once more the fan of smoke arose. On it grew

something nebulous, something uncertain that by degrees took the form

of a church. It was not very clear, perhaps because Thomas found it

difficult to conceive the exact shape of the church as it would be when

it was finished, or only conceived it bit by bit. One thing, however,

was very distinct in his mind, and that was the proposed spire and the

clock. As a result, there was the spire standing at the end of the

shadowy church vivid and distinct. And there was the clock with its two

copper hands exactly on the stroke of noon!

“Tell me what you see, Little Flower,” said Menzi in a hollow voice.

“I see what Father told me he would think of, a church and the spire

of the church, and the clock pointing to twelve.”

“Do you all see that,” asked Menzi, “and is it what the

Teacher said he would think about?”

“Yes, Doctor,” they answered.

“Then look once more, for _I_ will think of something. I will think

of that church falling. Look once more.”

They looked, and behold the shadowy fabric began to totter, then it

seemed to collapse, and last of all down went the spire and vanished in

the smoke.

“Have you seen anything, O people?” said Menzi, “for standing

behind this smoke I can see nothing. Mark that it is thick, since

through it I am invisible to you.”

This was true, since they could only perceive the tips of his

outstretched fingers appearing upon each side of the smoke-fan.

“Yes,” they answered, “we have seen a church fall down and

vanish.”

“That was my thought,” said Menzi; “have I not told you that

was the thought my Spirit gave me?”

“This is black magic, and you are a fiend!” shouted Thomas, and was

silent.

“Not so, Tombool, though it is true that I have gifts which you clever

White people do not understand,” answered Menzi.

By degrees the smoke melted away, and there on the ground were the ten

or twelve crooked pieces of ebony that they had seen consumed, now to

all appearance quite untouched by the flame. There too on their farther

side lay Menzi, shining with perspiration, and in a swoon or sleeping.

“Come away,” said Thomas shortly, and they turned to go, but at

this moment something happened.

Menzi, it will be remembered, had given Tabitha a kid of a long-haired

variety of goat peculiar to these parts. This little creature had

already grown attached to its mistress and walked about after her, in

the way which pet goats have. It had followed her that morning, but not

being interested in tricks or magic, engaged itself in devouring herbs

that grew amongst the tumbled stones of the old kraal.

Suddenly Menzi recovered from his faint or seizure and, looking up,

directed his attendants to return the magical ebony rods which burned

without being consumed to one of the hide bags that contained his

medicines. The assembly began to break up amidst a babel of excited

talk.

Tabitha looked round for her goat, and perceiving it at a little

distance, ran to fetch it, since the creature, being engaged in eating

something to its taste, would not come at her call. She seized it by

the neck to drag it away, with the result that its fore-feet,

obstinately set upon the wall, overturned a large stone, revealing a

great puff adder that was sleeping there.

The reptile thus disturbed instantly struck backwards after the fashion

of its species, so that its fangs, just missing Tabitha’s hands, sank

deep into the kid’s neck. She screamed and there was a great

disturbance. A native ran forward and pinned down the puff-adder with

his walking-stick of which the top was forked. The kid immediately fell

on to its side, and lay there bleeding and bleating. Tabitha began to

weep, calling out, “My goat is killed,” between her sobs.

Menzi, distinguishing her voice amid the tumult, asked what was the

matter. Someone told him, whereon he commanded that the kid should be

brought to him and the snake also. This was done, Tabitha following her

dying pet with her mother, for by now Thomas had departed, taking no

heed of these events, which perhaps he was too disturbed to notice.

“Save my goat! Save my goat, O Menzi!” implored Tabitha.

The old witch-doctor looked at the animal, also at the hideous

puff-adder that had been dragged along the ground in the fork of the

stick.

“It will be hard, Little Flower,” he said, “seeing that the

goat is bitten in the neck and this snake is very poisonous. Still for

your sake I will try, although I fear that it may prove but a waste of

good medicine.”

Then he took one of his bags and from it selected a certain packet

wrapped in a dried leaf, out of which he shook some grey powder.

Seizing the kid, which seemed to be almost dead, he made an incision in

its throat over the wound, and into it rubbed some of this powder. Next

he spat upon more of the powder, thus turning it into a paste, and

opening the kid’s mouth, thrust it down its throat, at the same time

muttering an invocation or spell.

“Now we must wait,” he said, letting the kid fall upon the ground,

where it lay to all appearance dead.

“Is that powder any good?” asked Dorcas rather aimlessly.

“Yes, it is very good, Lady; a medicine of power of which I alone have

the secret, a magic medicine. See, I will show you. Except the

_immamba_, the ring-snake that puffs out its head, this one is the most

deadly in our country. Yet I do not fear it. Look!”

Leaning forward, he seized the puff-adder, and drawing it from beneath

the fork, suffered it to strike him upon the breast, after which he

deliberately killed it with a stone. Then he took some of the grey

powder and rubbed it into the punctures; also put more of it into his

mouth, which he swallowed.

“Oh!” exclaimed Dorcas, “he will die,” and some of the

Christian Kaffirs echoed her remark.

But Menzi did not die at all. On the contrary, after shivering a few

times he was quite himself, and, indeed, seemed rather brighter than

before, like a jaded business man who has drunk a cocktail.

“No, Wife of Tombool,” he said, “I shall not die; every year

I doctor myself with this magic medicine that is called _Dawa_, after

which all the snakes in Sisa-Land—remember that they are many, Little

Flower—may bite me if they like.”

“Is it your magic or is it the medicine that protects you?” asked

Dorcas.

“Both, Lady. The medicine _Dawa_ is of no use without the magic

words, and the magic words are of no use without the medicine. Therefore

alone in all the land I can cure snake bites, who have both medicine

and magic. Look at your goat, Little Flower. Look at your goat!”

Tabitha looked, as did everyone else. The kid was rising to its feet. It

rose, it baa’d and presently began to frisk about its mistress, like

Menzi apparently rather brighter than before.

CHAPTER V

A year had gone by, during which time, by the most heroic exertions,

Thomas Bull had at length succeeded in rebuilding the church. There it

stood, a very nice mission-church, constructed of sun-dried bricks

neatly plastered over, cool and spacious within, for the thatched roof

was lofty, beautifully furnished (the font and the pulpit had been

imported from England), and finished off with the spire and clock of

his dreams, the latter also imported from England and especially

adjusted for a hot climate.

Moreover, there was a sweet and loud-throated bell upon which the clock

struck, with space allowed for the addition of others that must wait

till Thomas could make up his mind to approach Dorcas as to the

provision of the necessary funds. Yes, the church was finished, and the

Bishop of those parts had made a special journey to consecrate it at

the hottest season of the year, and as a reward for his energy had

contracted fever and nearly been washed away in a flooded river.

Only one thing was lacking, a sufficient congregation to fill this fine

church, which secretly the Bishop, who was a sensible man, thought

would have been of greater value had it been erected in any of several

other localities that he could have suggested. For alas! the Christian

community of Sisa-Land did not increase. Occasionally Thomas succeeded

in converting one of Menzi’s followers, and occasionally Menzi

snatched a lamb from the flock of Thomas, with the result that the

scales remained even neither going up nor down.

The truth was, of course, that the matter was chiefly one of race; those

of the Sisas in whom the Basuto blood preponderated became Christian,

while those who were of the stubborn Zulu stock, strengthened and

inspired by their prophet Menzi, remained unblushingly heathen.

Still Thomas did not despair. One day, he told himself, there would be a

great change, a veritable landslide, and he would see that church

filled with every Zulu in the district. Needless to say, he wished him

no ill, but Menzi was an old man, and before long it might please

Providence to gather that accursed wizard to his fathers. For that he

was a wizard of some sort Thomas no longer doubted, a person directly

descended from the Witch of Endor, or from some others of her company

who were mentioned in the Bible. There was ample authority for wizards,

and if they existed then why should they they not continue to do so?

Since he could not explain it, Thomas swallowed the magic, much as in

his boyhood he used to swallow the pills.

Yes, if only Menzi were removed by the will of Heaven, which really,

thought Thomas, must be outraged by such proceedings, his opportunity

would come, and “Menzi’s herd,” as the heathens were called in

Sisa-land, would be added to his own. The Bishop, it is true, was not

equally sanguine, but said nothing to discourage zeal so laudable and

so uncommon.

It was while his Lordship was recovering from the sharp bout of fever

which he had developed in a new and mosquito-haunted hut with a damp

floor that had been especially erected for his accommodation, that at

last the question of the re-building of the mission-house came to a

head, which it could not do while all the available local labour, to

say nothing of some hired from afar, was employed upon the church.

Thomas, it was true, wished to postpone it further, pointing out that a

school was most necessary, and that after all they had grown quite

accustomed to the huts and were fairly comfortable in them.

On this point, however, Dorcas was firm; indeed, it would not be too

much to say that, having already been disappointed once, she struck

with all the vigour of a trade-unionist. She explained that the

situation of the huts on the brink of the river was low and most

unhealthy, and that in them she was becoming a victim to recurrent

attacks of fever. He, Thomas, might be fever-proof, as indeed she

thought he was. It was true also that Tabitha had been extraordinarily

well and grown much ever since she came to Sisa-Land, which puzzled

her, inasmuch as the place was notoriously unhealthy for children, even

if they were of native blood. Indeed, in her agitation she added an

unwise remark to the effect that she could only explain their

daughter’s peculiar health by supposing that Menzi had laid a “good

charm” upon her, as all the natives believed, and he announced

publicly that he had done.

This made Thomas very angry, admittedly not without cause. Forgetting

his conversion to a belief in the reality of Menzi’s magic, he

talked in a loud voice about the disgrace of being infected with vile,

heathen superstitions, such as he had never thought to hear uttered by

his wife’s Christian lips. Dorcas, however, stuck to her point, and

enforced it by a domestic example, adding that the creatures which in

polite society are called “bed-pests,” that haunted the straw of

the huts, tormented her while Tabitha never had so much as a single

bite.

The end of it was that the matter of mission-house _versus_ huts was

referred to the Bishop for his opinion. As the teeth of his Lordship

were chattering with ague resulting, he knew full well, from the fever

he had contracted in the said huts, Dorcas found in him a most valuable

ally. He agreed that a mission-house ought to be built before the

school or anything else, and suggested that it should be placed in a

higher and better situation, above the mists that rose from the river

and the height to which mosquitoes fly.

Bowing to the judgment of his superior, which really he heard with

gratitude, although in his zeal and unselfishness he would have

postponed his own comfort and that of his family till other duties had

been fulfilled, Thomas replied that he knew only one such place which

would be near enough to the Chief’s town. It was on the koppie

itself, about fifty feet above the level of and overhanging the river,

where he had noted there was always a breeze, even on the hottest day,

since the conformation of this hill seemed to induce an unceasing

draught of air. He added that if his Lordship were well enough, they

might go to look at the site.

So they went, all of them. Ascending a sloping, ancient path that was

never precipitous, they came to the place, a flat tableland that

perhaps measured an acre and a half, which by some freak of nature had

been scooped out of the side of the koppie, and was backed by a

precipitous cliff in which were caves. The front part of this plateau,

that which approached to and overhung the river, was of virgin rock,

but the acre or so behind was filled with very rich soil that in the

course of centuries had been washed down from the sides of the koppie,

or resulted from the decomposition of its material.

“The very place,” said the Bishop. “The access is easy. The

house would stand here—no need to dig deep foundations in this stone,

and behind, when those trees have been cleared away, you could have a

beautiful and fertile garden where anything will grow. Also, look,

there is a stream of pure water running from some spring above. It is

an ideal site for a house, not more than three minutes’ walk from the

church below, the best I should say in the whole valley. And then,

consider the view.”

Everyone agreed, and they were leaving the place in high spirits,

Dorcas, who had household matters to attend, having already departed,

when whom should they encounter but Menzi seated on a stone just where

the path began to descend. Thomas would have passed him without notice

as one with whom he was not on speaking terms, but the Bishop, having

been informed by Tabitha who he was, was moved by curiosity to stop and

interchange some words with him, as knowing his tongue perfectly, he

could do.

“_Sakubona_” (that is, “good day”), he said

politely.

Menzi rose and saluted with his habitual courtesy, first the Bishop,

then the others, as usual reserving his sweetest smile for Tabitha.

“Great Priest,” he said at once, “I understand that the

Teacher Tombool intends to build his house upon this place.”

The Bishop wondered how on earth the man knew that, since the matter had

only just been decided by people talking in English, but answered that

perhaps he might do so.

“Great Priest,” went on Menzi in an earnest voice, “I pray

you to forbid the Teacher Tombool from doing anything of the sort.”

“Why, friend?” asked the Bishop.

“Because, Great Priest, this place is haunted by the spirits of the

dead, and those who live here will be haunted also. Hearken. I myself

when I was young have seen evil-doers brought from Zululand and hurled

from that rock, blinded and broken-armed, by order of the King. I say

that scores have been thrown thence to be devoured by the crocodiles in

the pool below. Will such a sight as this be pleasant for white eyes to

look upon, and will such cries as those of the evil-doers who have

‘gone down’ be nice for white ears to hear in the silence of the

night?”

“But, my good man,” said the Bishop, “what you say is

nonsense. These poor creatures are dead, ‘gone down’ as you say,

and do not return. We Christians have no belief in ghosts, or if they

exist we are protected from them.”

“None at all,” interposed Thomas boldly and speaking in Zulu.

“This man, my Lord, is at his old tricks. For reasons of his own he is

trying to frighten us; for my part I will not be frightened by a native

witch-doctor and his rubbish, even if he does deal with Satan. With your

permission I shall certainly build the mission-house here.”

“Quite right, of course, quite right,” said the Bishop, though

within himself he reflected that evidently the associations of the spot

were disagreeable, and that were he personally concerned, perhaps he

should be inclined to consider an alternative site. However, it was a

matter for Mr. Bull to decide.

“I hear that Tombool will not be turned from his purpose. I hear that

he will still build his house upon this rock. So be it. Let him do so

and see. But this I say, that Imba, the Floweret, shall not be haunted

by the _Isitunzi_ (the ghosts of the dead) who wail in the night,”

said Menzi.

He advanced to Tabitha, and holding his hands over her he cried out:

“Sweet eyes, be blind to the _Isitunzi_. Little ears, do not hear

their groans. Spirits, build a garden fence about this flower and keep

her safe from all night-prowling evil things. Imba, little Flower,

sleep softly while others lie awake and tremble.”

Then he turned and departed swiftly.

“Dear me!” said the Bishop. “A strange man, a very strange

man. I don’t know quite what to make of him.”

“I do,” answered Thomas, “he is a black-hearted villain who

is in league with the devil.”

“Yes, I dare say—I mean as to his being a villain, that is

according to our standards—but does your daughter—a clever and most

attractive little girl, by the way—think so? She seemed to look on him

with affection—one learns to read children’s eyes, you know. A very

strange man, I repeat. If we could see all his heart we should know lots

of things and understand more about these people than we do at present.

Has it ever struck you, Mr. Bull, how little we white people _do_

understand of the black man’s soul? Perhaps a child can see farther

into it than we can. What is the saying—‘a little child shall lead

them,’ is it not? Perhaps we do not make enough allowances. ‘Faith,

Hope and Charity, these three, but the greatest of these is

charity’—or love, which is the same thing. However, of course you

are quite right not to have been frightened by his silly talk about the

_Isitunzi_, it would never do to show fear or hesitation. Still, I am

glad that Mrs. Bull did not hear it; you may have noticed that she had

gone on ahead, and if I were you I should not repeat it to her, since

ladies are so nervous. Tabitha, my dear, don’t tell your mother

anything of all this.”

“No, Bishop,” answered Tabitha, “I never tell her all the

queer things that Menzi says to me when I meet him, or at least not many

of them.”

“I wish I had asked him if he had a cure for your local fever,”

said the Bishop with a laugh, “for against it, although I have taken

so much that my ears buzz, quinine cannot prevail.”

“He has given me one in a gourd, Bishop,” replied Tabitha

confidentially, “but I have never taken any, because you see I have

had no fever, and I haven’t told mother, for if I did she would tell

father” (Thomas had stridden ahead, and was out of hearing), “and

he might be angry because he doesn’t like Menzi, though I do. Will you

have some, Bishop? It is well corked up with clay, and Menzi said it

would keep for years.”

“Well, my dear,” answered the Bishop, “I don’t quite

know. There may be all sorts of queer things in Mr. Menzi’s medicine.

Still, he told you to drink it if necessary, and I am absolutely certain

that he does not wish to poison _you_. So perhaps I might have a try,

for really I feel uncommonly ill.”

So later on, with much secrecy, the gourd was produced, and the Bishop

had “a try.” By some strange coincidence he felt so much better

after it that he begged for the rest of the stuff to comfort him on his

homeward journey, which ultimately he accomplished in the best of

health.

That most admirable and wide-minded prelate departed, and so far as

history records was no more seen in Sisa-Land. But Thomas remained, and

set about the building of the house with his usual vigour. Upon the

Death Rock, as it was called, in course of time he erected an excellent

and most serviceable dwelling, not too large but large enough, having

every comfort and convenience that his local experience could suggest

and money could supply, since in this matter the cheque-book of the

suffering Dorcas was entirely at his service.

At length the house was finished, and with much rejoicing the Bull

family, deserting their squalid huts, moved into it at the commencement

of the hot season. After the first agitations of the change and of the

arrangement of the furniture newly-arrived by wagon, they settled down

very comfortably, directing all their energies towards the development

of the garden, which had already been brought into some rough order

during the building of the house.

One difficulty, however, arose at once. For some mysterious reason they

found that not a single native servant would sleep in the place, no,

not even Tabitha’s personal attendant, who adored her. Every soul of

them suddenly developed a sick mother or other relative who would

instantly expire if deprived of the comfort of their society after

dark. Or else they themselves became ailing at that hour, saying they

could not sleep upon a cliff like a rock-rabbit.

At any rate, for one cause or another off they went the very moment that

the sun vanished behind the western hills, nor did they re-appear until

it was well up above those that faced towards the east.

At least this happened for one night. On the following day, however, a

pleasant-looking woman named Ivana, whom they knew to be of good repute,

though of doubtful religion, as sometimes she came to church and

sometimes she did not, appeared and offered her services as

“night-dog”—that is what she called it—to Tabitha, saying that

she did not mind sleeping on a height. Since it was inconvenient to

have no one about the place from dark to dawn, and Dorcas did not

approve of Tabitha being left to sleep alone, the woman, whose

character was guaranteed by the Chief Kosa and the elders of the

church, was taken on at an indefinite wage. To the matter of pecuniary

reward, indeed, she seemed to be entirely indifferent.

For the rest she rolled herself in blankets, native fashion, and slept

across Tabitha’s door, keeping so good a watch that once when her

father wished to enter the room to fetch something after the child was

asleep, she would not allow even him to do so. When he tried to force a

way past her, suddenly Ivana became so threatening that he thought she

was about to spring at him. After this he wanted to dismiss her, but

Dorcas said it only showed that she was faithful, and that she had

better be left where she was, especially as there was no one to take

her place.

So things went on till the day of full moon. On that night Ivana

appeared to be much agitated, and insisted that Tabitha should go to

bed earlier than was usual. Also after she was asleep Dorcas noticed

that Ivana walked continually to and fro in front of the door of the

child’s room and up and down the veranda on to which its windows

opened, droning some strange song and waving a wand.

However, at the appointed hour, having said their prayers, Dorcas and

her husband went to bed.

“I wonder if there is anything strange about this place,” remarked

Dorcas. “It is so very odd that no native will stop here at night

except that half-wild Ivana.”

“Oh! I don’t know,” replied Thomas with a yawn, real or

feigned. “These people get all sorts of ideas into their silly heads.

Do stop twisting about and go to sleep.”

At last Dorcas did go to sleep, only to wake up again suddenly and with

great completeness just as the church clock below struck three, the

sound of which she supposed must have roused her. The brilliant

moonlight flooded the room, and as for some reason she felt creepy and

disturbed, Dorcas tried to occupy her mind by reflecting how

comfortable it looked with its new, imported furnishings, very

different from that horrible hut in which they had lived so long.

Then her thoughts drifted to more general matters. She was heartily

tired of Sisa-Land, and wished earnestly that her husband could get a

change of station, which the Bishop had hinted to her would not be

impossible—somewhere nearer to civilisation. Alas! he was so

obstinate that she feared nothing would move him, at any rate until he

had converted “Menzi’s herd,” who were also obstinate, and

remained as heathen as ever. Indeed why, with their ample means, should

they be condemned to perpetual exile in these barbarous places? Was

there not plenty of work to be done at home, where they might make

friends and live decently?

Putting herself and her own wishes aside, this existence was not fair to

Tabitha, who, as she saw, watching her with a mother’s eye, was

becoming impregnated with the native atmosphere. She who ought to be at

a Christian school now talked more Zulu than she did English, and was

beginning to look at things from the Zulu point of view and to use

their idioms and metaphors even when speaking her own tongue. She had

become a kind of little chieftainess among these folk, also, Christian

and heathen alike. Indeed, now most of them spoke of her as the Maiden

_Inkosikazi_, or Chieftainess, and accepted her slightest wish or order

as law, which was by no means the case where Dorcas herself and even

Thomas were concerned.

In fact, one or twice they had been driven to make a request through the

child, notably upon an important occasion that had to do with the

transport-riding of their furniture, to avoid its being left for a

couple of months on the farther side of a flooded river. The details do

not matter, but what happened was that when Tabitha intervened that

which had been declared to be impossible proved possible, and the

furniture arrived with wonderful celerity. Moreover, Tabitha made no

request; as Dorcas knew, though she hid it from Thomas, she sent for

the headmen, and when they were seated on the ground before her after

their fashion, Menzi among them, issued an order, saying:

“What! Are my parents and I to live like dogs without a kennel or

cattle that lack a winter kraal, because you are idle? Inspan the

wagons and fetch the things or I shall be angry. _Hamba_—Go!”

Thereon they rose and went without argument, only lifting their right

hands above their heads and murmuring, “_Ikosikaas! Umame!_

(Chieftainess! Mother!) we hear you.” Yes, they called Tabitha

“Mother!”

It was all very wrong, thought Dorcas, but she supposed, being a pious

little person, that she must bear her burden and trust to Providence to

free her from it, and she closed her eyes to wipe away a tear.

When Dorcas opened them again something very strange seemed to have

happened. She felt wide awake, and yet knew that she must be dreaming

because the room had disappeared. There was nothing in sight except the

bare rock upon which the house stood. For instance, she could see the

gorge behind as it used to be before they made it into a garden, for

she recognised some of the very trees that they had cut down. Moreover,

from one of the caves at the end of it issued a procession, a horrible

procession of fierce-looking, savage warriors, with spears and

knobkerries, who between them half dragged, half carried a young woman

and an elderly man.

They advanced. They passed within a few feet of her, and observing the

condition of the woman and the man, she saw that these must be led

because for a certain reason they could not see where to go,—oh!

never mind what she saw.

The procession reached the edge of the rock where the railing was, only

now the railing had gone like the house. Then for the first time Dorcas

heard, for hitherto all had seemed to happen in silence.

“Die, _Umtakati!_ Die, you wizard, as the King commands, and feed

the river-dwellers,” said a deep voice.

There followed a struggle, a horrible twisting of shapes, and the

elderly man vanished over the cliff, while a moment later from below

came the noise of a great splash.

Next the girl was haled forward, and the words of doom were repeated.

She seemed to break from her murderers and stagger to the edge of the

precipice, crying out:

“O Father, I come!”

Then, with one blood-curdling shriek, she vanished also, and again there

followed the sound of a great splash that slowly echoed itself to

silence.

All had passed away, leaving Dorcas paralysed with terror, and wet with

its dew, so that her night-gear clung to her body. The room was just as

it had been, filled with the soft moonlight and looking very

comfortable.

“Thomas!” gasped his wife, “wake up.”

“I _am_ awake,” he answered in his deep voice, which shook a

little. “I have had a bad dream.”

“What did you dream? Did you see two people thrown from the cliff?”

“Something of that sort.”

“Oh! Thomas, Thomas, I have been in hell. This place is haunted.

Don’t talk to me of dreams. Tabitha will have seen and heard too. She

will be driven mad. Come to her.”

“I think not,” answered Thomas.

Still he came.

At the door of Tabitha’s room they found the woman Ivana, wide-eyed,

solemn, silent.

“Have you seen or heard anything, Ivana?” asked Thomas.

“Yes, Teacher,” she answered, “I have seen what I expected to

see and heard what I expected to hear on this night of full moon, but I

am guarded and do not fear.”

“The child! The child!” said Dorcas.

“The _Inkosikazi_ Imba sleeps. Disturb her not.”

Taking no heed, they thrust past her into the room. There on her little

white bed lay Tabitha fast asleep, and looking like an angel in her

sleep, for a sweet smile played about her mouth, and while they watched

she laughed in her dreams. Then they looked at each other and went back

to their own chamber to spend the rest of the night as may be imagined.

Next morning when they emerged, very shaken and upset, the first person

they met was Ivana, who was waiting for them with their coffee.

“I have a message for you, Teacher and Lady. Never mind who sends it,

I have a message for you to which you will do well to give heed. Sleep

no more in this house on the night of full moon, though all other

nights will be good for you. Only the little Chieftainess Imba ought to

sleep in this house on the night of full moon.”

So indeed it proved to be. No suburban villa could have been more

commonplace and less disturbed than was their dwelling for twenty-seven

nights of every month, but on the twenty-eighth they found a change of

air desirable. Once it is true the stalwart Thomas, like Ajax, defied

the lightning, or rather other things that come from above—or from

below. But before morning he appeared at the hut beneath the koppie

announcing that he had come to see how they were getting on, and

shaking as though he had a bout of fever.

Dorcas asked him no questions (afterwards she gathered that he had been

favoured with quite a new and very varied midnight programme); but

Tabitha smiled in her slow way. For Tabitha knew all about this

business as she knew everything that passed in Sisa-Land. Moreover, she

laughed at them a little, and said that _she_ was not afraid to sleep

in the mission-house on the night of full moon.

What is more, she did so, which was naughty of her, for on one such

occasion she slipped back to the house when her parents were asleep,

followed only by her “night-dog,” the watchful Ivana, and returned

at dawn just as they had discovered that she was missing, singing and

laughing and jumping from stone to stone with the agility of her own

pet goat.

“I slept beautifully,” she cried, “and dreamed I was in

heaven all night.”

Thomas was furious and rated her till she wept. Then suddenly Ivana

became furious too and rated him.

Should he be wrath with the Little Chieftainess Imba, she asked him,

because the _Isitunzis_, the spirits of the dead, loved her as did

everything else? Did they not understand that the Floweret was unlike

them, one adored of dead and living, one to be cherished even in her

dreams, one whom “Heaven Above,” together with those who had

“gone below,” built round with a wall of spells?—and more of such

talk, which Thomas thought so horrible and blasphemous that he fled

before its torrent.

But when he came back calmer he said no more to Tabitha about her

escapade.

It was a long while afterwards, at the beginning of the great drought,

that another terrible thing happened. On a certain calm and beautiful

day Tabitha, who still grew and flourished, had taken some of the

Christian children to a spot on the farther side of the koppie, where

stood an old fortification originally built for purposes of defence.

Here, among the ancient walls, with the assistance of the natives, she

had made a kind of summer-house as children love to do, and in this

house, like some learned eastern pundit in a cell, a very pretty pundit

crowned with a wreath of flowers, she sat upon the ground and

instructed the infant mind of Sisa-Land.

She was supposed to be telling them Bible stories to prepare them for

their Sunday School examination, which, indeed, she did with

embellishments and in their own poetic and metaphorical fashion. The

particular tale upon which she was engaged, by a strange coincidence,

was that from the Acts which narrates how St. Paul was bitten by a

viper upon the Island of Melita, and how he shook it off into the fire

and took no hurt.

“He must have been like Menzi,” said Ivana, who was present,

whereon Tabitha’s other attendant, who was also with her as it was

daytime, started an argument, for being a Christian she was no friend to

Menzi, whom she called a “dirty old witch-doctor.”

Tabitha, who was used to these disputations, listened smiling, and while

she listened amused herself by trying to thrust a stone into a hole in

the side of her summer-house, which was formed by one of the original

walls of the old kraal.

Presently she uttered a scream, and snatched her arm out of the hole. To

it, or rather to her hand, was hanging a great hooded snake of the

cobra variety such as the Boers call _ringhals_. She shook it off, and

the reptile, after sitting up, spitting, hissing and expanding its

hood, glided back into the wall. Tabitha sat still, staring at her

lacerated finger, which Ivana seized and sucked.

Then, bidding one of the oldest of the children to take her place and

continue sucking, Ivana ran to a high rock a few yards away which

overlooked Menzi’s kraal, that lay upon a plain at a distance of

about a quarter of a mile, and called out in the low, ringing voice

that Kaffirs can command, which carries to an enormous distance.

“Awake, O Menzi! Come, O Doctor, and bring with you your _Dawa_. The

little Chieftainess is bitten in the finger by a hooded snake. The

Floweret withers! Imba dies!”

Almost instantly there was a disturbance in the kraal and Menzi

appeared, following by a man carrying a bag. He cried back in the same

strange voice:

“I hear. I come. Tie string or grass round the lady Imba’s finger

below the bite. Tie it hard till she screams with pain.”

Meanwhile the Christian nurse had rushed off over the crest of the

koppie to fetch Thomas and Dorcas, or either of them. As it chanced she

met them both walking to join Tabitha in her bower, and thus it came

about that they reached the place at the same moment as did old Menzi

bounding up the rocks like a _klipspringer_ buck, or a mountain sheep.

Hearing him, Thomas turned in the narrow gateway of the kraal and asked

wildly:

“What has happened, Witch-doctor?”

“This has happened, White-man,” answered Menzi, “the Floweret

has been bitten by a hooded snake and is about to die. Look at her,”

and he pointed to Tabitha, who notwithstanding the venom sucking and

the grass tied round her blackened finger, sat huddled-up, shivering

and half comatose.

“Let me pass, White-man, that I may save her if I can,” he went on.

“Get back,” said Thomas, “I will have none of your black

magic practised on my daughter. If she is to live God will save her.”

“What medicines have you, White-man?” asked Menzi.

“None, at least not here. Faith is my medicine.”

Dorcas looked at Tabitha. She was turning blue and her teeth were

chattering.

“Let the man do his best,” she said to Thomas. “There is no

other hope.”

“He shan’t touch her,” replied her husband obstinately.

Then Dorcas fired up, meek-natured though she was and accustomed though

she was to obey her husband’s will.

“I say that he shall,” she cried. “I know what he can do.

Don’t you remember the goat? I will not see my child die as a

sacrifice to your pride.”

“I have made up my mind,” answered Thomas. “If she dies it is

so decreed, and the spells and filth of a heathen cannot save her.”

Dorcas tried to thrust him aside with her feeble strength, but big and

burly, he stood in the path like a rock, blocking the way, with the

stone entrance walls of the little pleasure-house on either side of

him.

Suddenly the old Zulu, Menzi, became rather terrible; he drew himself

up; he seemed to swell in size; his thin face grew set and fierce.

“Out of the path, White-man!” he said, “or by Chaka’s

head I will kill you,” and from somewhere he produced a long,

thin-bladed knife of native iron fixed on a buck’s horn.

“Kill on, Wizard,” shouted Thomas. “Kill if you can.”

“Listen,” said Dorcas. “If our daughter dies because of you,

then I have done with you. We part for ever. Do you understand?”

“Yes, I understand,” he answered heavily. “So be it.”

Tabitha behind them made some convulsive noise. Thomas turned and looked

at her; she was slowly sinking down upon her side. His face changed.

All the rage and obstinacy went out of it.

“My child! Oh, my child!” he cried, “I cannot bear this. Love

is stronger than all. When I come up for judgment, may it be remembered

that love is stronger than all!”

Then he stepped out of the gateway, and sat down upon a stone hiding his

eyes with his hand.

Menzi threw down the knife and leapt in, followed by his servant who

bore his medicines, and the woman Ivana. He did his office; he uttered

his spells and invocations, he rubbed _Dawa_ into the wound, and

prising open the child’s clenched teeth, thrust more of it, a great

deal more, down her throat, while all three of them rubbed her cold

limbs.

About half an hour afterwards he came out of the place followed by

Ivana, who carried Tabitha in her strong arms; Tabitha was very weak,

but smiling, and with the colour returning to her cheeks. Of Thomas he

took no notice, but to Dorcas he said:

“Lady, I give you back your daughter. She is saved. Let her drink milk

and sleep.”

Then Thomas, whose judgment and charity were shaken for a while, spoke,

saying:

“As a man and a father I thank you, Witch-doctor, but know that as a

priest I swear that I will never have more to do with you, who, I am

sure, by your arts, can command these reptiles to work your will and

have planned all this to shame me. No, not even if you lay dying would

I come to visit you.”

Thus stormed Thomas in his wrath and humiliation, believing that he had

been the victim of a plot and not knowing that he would live bitterly

to regret his words.

“I see that you hate me, Teacher,” said Menzi, “and though

here I do not find the gentleness you preach, I do not wonder; it is

quite natural. Were I you I should do the same. But you are Little

Flower’s father—strange that she should have grown from such a

seed—and though we fight, for that reason I cannot hate you. Be not

disturbed. Perhaps it was the sucking of the wound and the grass tied

round her finger which saved her, not my spells and medicine. No, no, I

cannot hate you, although we fight for mastery, and you pelt me with

vile words, saying that I charmed a deadly _immamba_ to bite Little

Flower whom I love, that I might cure her and make a mock of you. Yet I

do hate that snake which bit the maiden Imba of its own wickedness, the

hooded _immamba_ that you believe to be my familiar, and it shall die.

Man,” here he turned to his servant, “and you, Ivana and the

others, pull down that wall.”

They leapt to do his bidding, and presently discovered the _ringhals_ in

its hole. Heedless of its fangs and writhings, Menzi sprang at it with a

Zulu curse, and seizing it, proceeded to kill it in a very slow and

cruel fashion.

CHAPTER VI

The great drought fell upon Sisa-Land like a curse from Heaven. For

month after month the sun beat fiercely, the sky was as brass, and no

rain fell. Even the dews seemed to depart. The springs dried up. The

river Ukufa, the river called Death, ceased to flow, so that water

could only be found in its deepest hollows. The pool beneath the Rock

of Evildoers, the Death Rock, sank till the bones of those who had been

murdered there many years before appeared as the crocodiles had left

them. Cattle died because there was no grass; cows ceased to give their

milk even where they could be partially fed and watered, so that the

little children died also. Even in the dampest situations the crops

withered, till at last it became certain that unless rain fell within a

month, before another cold season had gone by there would be starvation

everywhere. For the drought was widespread, and therefore corn could

not be sent from other districts, even if there were cattle to draw it.

Every day Thomas put up prayers for rain in the church, and on two

occasions held special services for this purpose. These were better

attended than any others had ever been, because his congregation felt

that the matter was extremely urgent, affecting them all, and that now

was the time when, whatever happened to the heathen, good Christians

like themselves should be rewarded.

However this did not chance, since the drought went on as fiercely as

before.

Menzi was, of course, a rain-doctor, a “Heaven-herd” of the highest

distinction; one who, it was reputed, could by his magic cause the most

brazen sky to melt in tears. His services had been called in by

neighbouring tribes, with the result, it was rumoured, that those

tribes had been rewarded with partial showers. Also with great ceremony

he had gone through his rites for the benefit of the heathen section of

the Sisa people. Behold! by some curious accident on the following day

a thunderstorm had come up, and with it a short deluge of rain which

sufficed to make it certain that the crops in those fields on which it

fell would keep alive, at any rate for a while.

But mark what happened. As is not uncommon in the case of thunder

showers, this rain fell upon the lands which the heathen cultivated on

one side of the koppie, whereas those that belonged to the Christian

section upon the other side received not a single drop. The unjust were

bedewed, the just were left dry as bones. All that they received was

the lightning, which killed an old man, one of the best Christians in

the place. The limits of the torrent might have been marked off with a

line. When it had passed, to the heathen right stood pools of water; to

the Christian left there was nothing but blowing dust.

Now these Christians, weak-kneed some of them, began to murmur,

especially those who, having passed through a similar experience in

their youth, remembered what starvation meant in that country.

Religion, they reflected, was all very well, but without mealies they

could not live, and without Kaffir corn there would be no beer. Indeed,

metaphorically, before long they passed from murmurs to shouting, and

their shouts said this: Menzi must be invited to celebrate a

rain-service in his own fashion for the benefit of the entire tribe.

Thomas argued in vain. He grew angry; he called them names which

doubtless they deserved; he said that they were spiritual outcasts. By

this time, being frantic, his flock did not care what he said. Either

Menzi must come, they explained, or they would turn heathen. The Great

One in the sky could work as well through Menzi as through him, Tombool

or anybody else. Menzi _must_ come.

Thomas threatened to excommunicate them all, a menace which did not

amount to much as they were already excommunicating themselves, and

when they remained obstinate, told them that he would have nothing to

do with this rain-making business, which was unholy and repugnant to

him. He told them, moreover, that he was certain that their wickedness

would bring some judgment upon them, in which he proved to be right.

The end of it was that Menzi was summoned, and arrived with a triumphant

smile, saying that he was certain he could put everything in order, and

that soon they would have plenty of rain, that is, if they all attended

his invocations and made him presents suitable to so great an occasion.

The result was that they did attend them, man, woman and child, seated

in a circle in that same old kraal where the witch-doctor had so

marvellously shown pictures upon the smoke. Each of them also brought

his gift in his hand, or, if it were a living thing, drove it before

him.

Thomas went down and addressed them in the midst of a sullen silence,

calling them wicked and repeating his belief that they would bring a

judgment on their own heads, they who were worshipping Baal and making

offerings to his priest.

After he had talked himself hoarse, Menzi said mildly that if the

Teacher Tombool had finished he would get to business. Why should the

Teacher be angry because he, Menzi, offered to do what the Teacher

could not—save the land from starving? And as for the gifts to

himself, did not White Teachers also receive pay and offerings at

certain feasts?

Then, making a gesture of despair, Thomas returned to his house, and

with Dorcas and Tabitha watched the savage ceremony from the edge of

the cliff that overhung the river, or rather what had been the river.

He could not see much of it because they were too far away, but he

perceived those apostate Christians prostrating themselves at Menzi’s

order, probably, he reflected, to make prayers to the devil. In fact

they were not doing this, but only repeating Menzi’s magical chants

with appropriate gestures, as for countless ages their forefathers had

done upon similar occasions.

Next an unfortunate black goat was dragged forward by the horns, a very

thin black goat, and its throat was cut over a little fire, a sacrifice

that suggested necromancy of the most Satanic sort.

After this Thomas and his family went back into the house and shut the

windows, that they might not hear the unholy shoutings of the misguided

mob. When they went out again Menzi had departed, and so had the

others. The place was empty.

The following day was Sunday, and Thomas locked the church on the inner

side, and read the service with Dorcas and Tabitha for sole

congregation. It was a melancholy business, for some sense of evil

seemed to hang over all three of them, also over everybody else, for

the Christians went about with dejected looks and not one person spoke

to them. Only Ivana came at night as usual to sleep with Tabitha,

though even she said nothing.

Next morning they woke up to find the heavens black with clouds, heavy,

ominous clouds; the truth being that the drought was drawing to its

natural end. Thomas noted this, and reflected bitterly how hard it was

that this end should not have come twenty-four hours earlier. But so

events had been decreed and he was helpless.

By midday it began to rain, lightly at first, and from his rock he could

see the people, looking unnatural and distorted in that strange gloom,

for the clouds had descended almost to the earth, rushing about,

holding out their hands as though to clasp the blessed moisture and

talking excitedly one to the other. Soon they were driven into their

huts, for the rain turned into a kind of waterspout. Never had such

rain been known in Sisa-Land.

All that afternoon it poured, and all the night with ever-increasing

violence; yes, and all the following morning, so that by noon

Thomas’s rain-gauge showed that over twelve inches had fallen in

about twenty-four hours, and it was still raining. Water rushed down

from the koppie; even their well-built house could not keep out the

wet, and, to the despair of Dorcas, several of the rooms were flooded

and some of the new furniture was spoiled. The river beneath had become

a raging torrent, and was rising every hour. Already it was over its

banks, and the water had got into the huts of the Chief’s kraal and

the village round it, so that their occupants were obliged to seek

safety upon the lower rocks of the koppie, where they sat shivering in

the wet.

Night came at last, and through the darkness they heard cries as of

people in distress. The long hours wore away till dawn, a melancholy

dawn, for still it rained, though more lightly now, and no sun could be

seen.

“Father,” cried Tabitha, who, clad in oilskins, had gone a little

way down the road, “come here and look.”

He went. The child pointed to the village below, or rather what had been

the village, for now there was none. It had gone and with it Kosa’s

kraal; the site was a pool, the huts had vanished, all of them, and

some of the roofs lay upon the sides of the koppie, looking like

overturned coracles. Only the church and the graveyard remained, for

those stood on slightly higher ground by the banks of the river.

A little while later a miserable and dejected crowd arrived at the

mission-house, wrapped up in blankets or anything else that they had

managed to save.

“What do you want?” asked Thomas.

“Teacher,” replied the Chief Kosa, with twitching face and rolling

eyes, “we want you to come down to the church and pray for us. Our

houses are gone, our fields are washed away. We want you to come to

pray for us, for more rain is gathering on the hills and we are

afraid.”

“You mean that you are cold and wish to take refuge in the church, of

which I have the key. You have sought rain and now you have got rain,

such rain as you deserve. Why do you complain? Go to your witch-doctor

and ask him to save you.”

“Teacher, come down to the church and pray for us,” they wailed.

In the end Thomas went, for his heart was moved to pity, and Dorcas and

Tabitha went with him.

They entered the church, wading to it through several inches of water,

and the service of intercession began, attended by every Christian in

the place—except a few who were drowned—a miserable and heartily

repentant crowd.

While it was still in progress suddenly there was a commotion, and Menzi

himself rushed into the church. It was the first time he had ever

entered there.

“Come forth!” he cried. “Come forth if you would save your

lives. The water has eaten away the ground underneath this Heaven-house.

It falls! I say it falls!”

Then he peered about him in the shadowed place till he found Tabitha.

Leaping at her, he threw his long thin arms round her and bore her from

the church. The others began to follow swiftly, and as Menzi passed the

door carrying Tabitha, there came a dreadful rending sound, and one of

the walls opened, letting in the light.

All fled forth, Thomas still in his surplice and his soul filled with

bitterness, for as he went it came into his mind that this must be a

farewell to that cherished church reared with so much love, cost and

labour.

Outside the building on a patch of higher land, an upthrown plateau of

rock, where presently all gathered beyond the reach of the waters,

stood Menzi and Tabitha. Thomas looked at him and said:

“Doubtless you think that your spells have worked well, Witch-doctor,

for see the ruin about us. Yet I hold otherwise, and say, ‘Wait till

the end!’ To set a rock rolling down a hill is easy for those who

have the strength. But who knows on whom it will fall at last?”

“You speak foolishly, Teacher,” answered Menzi. “I do not

think that my spells have worked well, for something stronger than I am

has spoiled them. Mayhap it is you, Teacher, or the _Great-Great_ whom

you serve in your own fashion. I do not know, but I pray you to

remember that long since on the smoke of my magic fire I showed you

what would come about if you re-built the Heaven-house upon this place.

But you said I was a cheat and would not be warned. Therefore things

have gone as the Spirits appointed that they should go. Your Christians

made me gifts and asked me to bring rain and it has come in plenty, and

with it other things, more than you asked. Look,” and he pointed

downwards.

The church was falling. Its last foundations were washed away. Down it

came with a mighty crash, to melt into the flood that presently filled

the place where it had been. Its collapse and the noise of it were

terrible, so terrible that the Christians gathered on the rock uttered

a heart-rending wail of woe. The spire, being built upon a deeper bed

because of its weight, stood longer than the rest of the fabric, but

presently it went also.

Thrice it seemed to bow towards them, then it fell like a child’s

castle. Reckoning its height with his eye, Thomas saw that it could not

reach them where they stood, and so did the others, therefore no one

stirred. As the tower collapsed the clock sounded the first stroke of

the hour, then suddenly became silent for ever and vanished beneath the

waters, a mass of broken metal.

But the bell on which it had struck was hurled forward by the sway of

the fall like a stone from a sling. It sped towards them through the

air, a great dark object. Men ran this way and that, so that it fell

upon the rock where none stood. It fell; it flew to pieces like an

exploding shell, and its fragments hurtled over them with a screaming

sound. Yet as it chanced the tongue or clapper of it took a lower

course, perhaps because it was heavier, and rushing onwards like a

thrown spear, struck Menzi full upon the chest, crushing in his breast

bone.

They bore him up to the mission-house, since there was nowhere else

whither he could be taken. Here they laid him on a bed, leaving the

woman, Ivana, to watch him, for they had no skill to deal with such

injuries as his. Indeed, they thought him dead.

For a long while Menzi lay senseless, but after night had fallen his

mind returned to him and he bade Ivana bring Tabitha to him, Tabitha

and no one else. If she could not or would not come, then Ivana must

bring no one else, for if she did he would curse her and die at once.

There were discussions and remonstrances, but in the end Tabitha was

allowed to go, for after all a fellow-creature was dying, and this was

his last wish. She came, and Menzi received her smiling. Yes, he smiled

and saluted her with shaking but uplifted arm, naming her _Inkosikazi_

and _Umame_, or Mother.

“Welcome, Maiden Imba. Welcome, Little Flower,” he said. “I

wish to say good-bye to you and to bless you; also to endow you with my

Spirit, that it may guard you throughout your life till you are as I

am. I have hated some of the others, but I have always loved you,

Little Flower.”

“And I have loved you too, Menzi,” said Tabitha, with a sob.

“I know, I know! We witch-doctors read hearts. But do not weep, Little

Flower. Why should you for such as I, a black man, a mere savage cheat,

as your father named me? Yet I have not been altogether a cheat, O

Imba, though sometimes I used tricks like other doctors, for I have a

strength of my own which your white people will never understand,

because they are too young to understand. It only comes to the old folk

who have been since the beginning of the world, and remain as they were

at the beginning. I have been wicked, Little Flower, according to your

white law. I have killed men and done many other things that are

according to the law of my own people, and by that law I look for

judgment. Yet, O Imba, I will say this—that I believe your law to be

higher and better than my law. Has it not been shown to-day, since of

all that were gathered on the rock yonder I alone was struck down and

in the hour of my victory? The strongest law must be the best law, is

it not so? Tell me, Little Flower, would it please you if I died a

Christian?”

“Yes, very much,” said Tabitha, fixing upon this point at once and

by instinct avoiding all the other very doubtful disputations. “I will

bring my father.”

“Nay, nay, Little Flower. Your father, the Teacher Tombool, swore in

his wrath that he would not come to visit me even if I lay dying, and

now that I am dying he shall keep his oath and repent of it day by day

till he too is dying. If I am to die a Christian, you must make me one

this moment; _you_ and no other. Otherwise I go hence a heathen as I

have lived. If you bring your father here I will die at once before he

can touch me, as I have power to do.”

Then Tabitha, who although so young had strength and understanding and

knew, if she thwarted him, that Menzi would do as he threatened, took

water and made a certain Sign upon the brow of that old witch-doctor,

uttering also certain words that she had often heard used in church at

baptisms.

Perhaps she was wrong; perhaps she transgressed and took too much upon

her. Still, being by nature courageous, she ran the risk and did these

things as afterwards Ivana testified to the followers of Menzi.

“Thank you, Little Flower,” said Menzi. “I do not suppose

that this Christian magic will do me any good, but that you wished it is

enough. It will be a rope to tie us together, Little Flower. Also I have

another thought. When it is known that I became a Christian at the last

then, if _you_ bid them, Little Flower, the ‘heathen-herd’ will

follow where the bull Menzi went before them. They are but broken sherds

and scorched sticks” (i.e. rubbish) “but they will follow and that

will please you, Little Flower, and your father also.”

Here Menzi’s breath failed, but recovering it, he continued:

“Hearken! O Imba! I give my people into your hand; now let your hand

bend the twig as you would have it grow. Make them Christian if you

will, or leave them heathen if you will; I care nothing. They are yours

to drive upon whatever path you choose to set their feet, _yours_, O

Imba, not Tombool’s. Also, I, who lack heirs, give you my cattle, all

of them. Ivana, make known my words, and with them the curse of Menzi,

the King’s child, the _Umazisi_, the Seer, on any who dare to

disobey. Say to those of my House and to my people that henceforth the

Maiden Imba is their lady and their mother.”

Again he paused a little, then went on:

“Now I charge my Spirit to watch over you, Little Flower, till you die

and we come to talk over these matters otherwhere, and my Spirit as it

departs tells me that it will watch well, and that you will be a very

happy woman, Little Flower.”

He shut his eyes and lay still a while. Then he opened them again and

said:

“O Imba, tell your father, the Teacher Tombool, from me that he does

not understand us black people, whom he thinks so common, as you

understand us, Little Flower, and that he would be wise to go to

minister to white ones.”

After this, once more he smiled at Tabitha and then shut his eyes again

for the last time, and that was the end of the witch-doctor Menzi.

It may be added that after he had rebuilt the church for the second

time, and numbered all the “Menzi-herd” among his congregation,

which he did now that “the bull of the herd” was dead, as Menzi had

foretold that he would, if Tabitha, whom he had “wrapped with his

blanket,” decreed it, Thomas took the sage advice of his departed

enemy.

Now, in the after years, he is the much respected if somewhat feared

bishop of white settlers in a remote Dominion of the Crown.

Thomas to-day knows more than he used to know, but one thing he has

never learned, namely that it was the hand of a maid, yes, the little

hidden hand of Tabitha, that drove all “Menzi’s herd” into the

gates of the “Heavenly Kraal,” as some of them named his church.

For Tabitha knew when to be silent. Perhaps the Kaffirs, whose minds she

could read as an open book, taught her this; or perhaps it was one of

the best gifts to her of old Menzi’s “Spirit,” into whose care he

passed her with so much formality.

This is the story of the great fight between Thomas Bull the missionary

and Menzi the witch-doctor, who was led by his love of a little child

whither he never wished to go; not for his own soul’s sake, but just

because of that little child.

Menzi did not care about his soul, but, being so strange a man, for some

reason that he never explained, for Tabitha, his “Little Flower,”

he cared very much indeed. That was why he became a Christian at the

last, since in his darkened, spell-bound heart he believed that if he

did not, when she too “went down” he would never find her again.

ONLY A DREAM

Footprints—footprints—the footprints of one dead. How ghastly they

look as they fall before me! Up and down the long hall they go, and I

follow them. _Pit, pat_ they fall, those unearthly steps, and beneath

them starts up that awful impress. I can see it grow upon the marble, a

damp and dreadful thing.

Tread them down; tread them out; follow after them with muddy shoes, and

cover them up. In vain. See how they rise through the mire! Who can

tread out the footprints of the dead?

And so on, up and down the dim vista of the past, following the sound of

the dead feet that wander so restlessly, stamping upon the impress that

will not be stamped out. Rave on, wild wind, eternal voice of human

misery; fall, dead footsteps, eternal echo of human memory; stamp, miry

feet; stamp into forgetfulness that which will not be forgotten.

And so on, on to the end.

Pretty ideas these for a man about to be married, especially when they

float into his brain at night like ominous clouds into a summer sky,

and he is going to be married to-morrow. There is no mistake about

it—the wedding, I mean. To be plain and matter-of-fact, why there

stand the presents, or some of them, and very handsome presents they

are, ranged in solemn rows upon the long table. It is a remarkable

thing to observe when one is about to make a really satisfactory

marriage how scores of unsuspected or forgotten friends crop up and

send little tokens of their esteem. It was very different when I married

my first wife, I remember, but then that match was not

satisfactory—just a love-match, no more.

There they stand in solemn rows, as I have said, and inspire me with

beautiful thoughts about the innate kindness of human nature,

especially the human nature of our distant cousins. It is possible to

grow almost poetical over a silver teapot when one is going to be

married to-morrow. On how many future mornings shall I be confronted

with that tea-pot? Probably for all my life; and on the other side of

the teapot will be the cream jug, and the electro-plated urn will hiss

away behind them both. Also the chased sugar basin will be in front,

full of sugar, and behind everything will be my second wife.

“My dear,” she will say, “will you have another cup of

tea?” and probably I shall have another cup.

Well, it is very curious to notice what ideas will come into a man’s

head sometimes. Sometimes something waves a magic wand over his being,

and from the recesses of his soul dim things arise and walk. At

unexpected moments they come, and he grows aware of the issues of his

mysterious life, and his heart shakes and shivers like a

lightning-shattered tree. In that drear light all earthly things seem

far, and all unseen things draw near and take shape and awe him, and he

knows not what is true and what is false, neither can he trace the edge

that marks off the Spirit from the Life. Then it is that the footsteps

echo, and the ghostly footprints will not be stamped out.

Pretty thoughts again! and how persistently they come! It is one

o’clock and I will go to bed. The rain is falling in sheets outside.

I can hear it lashing against the window panes, and the wind wails

through the tall wet elms at the end of the garden. I could tell the

voice of those elms anywhere; I know it as well as the voice of a

friend. What a night it is; we sometimes get them in this part of

England in October. It was just such a night when my first wife died,

and that is three years ago. I remember how she sat up in her bed.

“Ah! those horrible elms,” she said; “I wish you would have

them cut down, Frank; they cry like a woman,” and I said I would, and

just after that she died, poor dear. And so the old elms stand, and I

like their music. It is a strange thing; I was half broken-hearted, for

I loved her dearly, and she loved me with all her life and strength,

and now—I am going to be married again.

“Frank, Frank, don’t forget me!” Those were my wife’s

last words; and, indeed, though I am going to be married again

to-morrow, I have not forgotten her. Nor shall I forget how Annie

Guthrie (whom I am going to marry now) came to see her the day before

she died. I know that Annie always liked me more or less, and I think

that my dear wife guessed it. After she had kissed Annie and bid her a

last good-bye, and the door had closed, she spoke quite suddenly:

“There goes your future wife, Frank,” she said; “you should have

married her at first instead of me; she is very handsome and very good,

and she has two thousand a year; _she_ would never have died of a

nervous illness.” And she laughed a little, and then added:

“Oh, Frank dear, I wonder if you will think of me before you marry

Annie Guthrie. Wherever I am I shall be thinking of you.”

And now that time which she foresaw has come, and Heaven knows that I

have thought of her, poor dear. Ah! those footsteps of one dead that

will echo through our lives, those woman’s footprints on the marble

flooring which will not be stamped out. Most of us have heard and seen

them at some time or other, and I hear and see them very plainly

to-night. Poor dead wife, I wonder if there are any doors in the land

where you have gone through which you can creep out to look at me

to-night? I hope that there are none. Death must indeed be a hell if

the dead can see and feel and take measure of the forgetful

faithlessness of their beloved. Well, I will go to bed and try to get a

little rest. I am not so young or so strong as I was, and this wedding

wears me out. I wish that the whole thing were done or had never been

begun.

What was that? It was not the wind, for it never makes that sound here,

and it was not the rain, since the rain has ceased its surging for a

moment; nor was it the howling of a dog, for I keep none. It was more

like the crying of a woman’s voice; but what woman can be abroad on

such a night or at such an hour—half-past one in the morning?

There it is again—a dreadful sound; it makes the blood turn chill, and

yet has something familiar about it. It is a woman’s voice calling

round the house. There, she is at the window now, and rattling it, and,

great heavens! she is calling me.

“Frank! Frank! Frank!” she calls.

I strive to stir and unshutter that window, but before I can get there

she is knocking and calling at another.

Gone again, with her dreadful wail of “Frank! Frank!” Now I hear

her at the front door, and, half mad with a horrible fear, I run down

the long, dark hall and unbar it. There is nothing there—nothing but

the wild rush of the wind and the drip of the rain from the portico.

But I can hear the wailing voice going round the house, past the patch

of shrubbery. I close the door and listen. There, she has got through

the little yard, and is at the back door now. Whoever it is, she must

know the way about the house. Along the hall I go again, through a

swing door, through the servants’ hall, stumbling down some steps

into the kitchen, where the embers of the fire are still alive in the

grate, diffusing a little warmth and light into the dense gloom.

Whoever it is at the door is knocking now with her clenched hand against

the hard wood, and it is wonderful, though she knocks so low, how the

sound echoes through the empty kitchens.

There I stood and hesitated, trembling in every limb; I dared not open

the door. No words of mine can convey the sense of utter desolation

that overpowered me. I felt as though I were the only living man in the

whole world.

“_Frank! Frank!_” cries the voice with the dreadful familiar

ring in it. “Open the door; I am so cold. I have so little time.”

My heart stood still, and yet my hands were constrained to obey. Slowly,

slowly I lifted the latch and unbarred the door, and, as I did so, a

great rush of air snatched it from my hands and swept it wide. The

black clouds had broken a little overhead, and there was a patch of

blue, rain-washed sky with just a star or two glimmering in it

fitfully. For a moment I could only see this bit of sky, but by degrees

I made out the accustomed outline of the great trees swinging furiously

against it, and the rigid line of the coping of the garden wall beneath

them. Then a whirling leaf hit me smartly on the face, and

instinctively I dropped my eyes on to something that as yet I could not

distinguish—something small and black and wet.

“What are you?” I gasped. Somehow I seemed to feel that it was not

a person—I could not say, _Who_ are you?

“Don’t you know me?” wailed the voice, with the far-off

familiar ring about it. “And I mayn’t come in and show myself. I

haven’t the time. You were so long opening the door, Frank, and I am

so cold—oh, so bitterly cold! Look there, the moon is coming out, and

you will be able to see me. I suppose that you long to see me, as I

have longed to see you.”

As the figure spoke, or rather wailed, a moonbeam struggled through the

watery air and fell on it. It was short and shrunken, the figure of a

tiny woman. Also it was dressed in black and wore a black covering over

the whole head, shrouding it, after the fashion of a bridal veil. From

every part of this veil and dress the water fell in heavy drops.

The figure bore a small basket on her left arm, and her hand—such a

poor thin little hand—gleamed white in the moonlight. I noticed that

on the third finger was a red line, showing that a wedding-ring had

once been there. The other hand was stretched towards me as though in

entreaty.

All this I saw in an instant, as it were, and as I saw it, horror seemed

to grip me by the throat as though it were a living thing, for as the

voice had been familiar, so was the form familiar, though the

churchyard had received it long years ago. I could not speak—I could

not even move.

“Oh, don’t you know me yet?” wailed the voice; “and I

have come from so far to see you, and I cannot stop. Look, look,” and

she began to pluck feverishly with her poor thin hand at the black veil

that enshrouded her. At last it came off, and, as in a dream, I saw

what in a dim frozen way I had expected to see—the white face and

pale yellow hair of my dead wife. Unable to speak or to stir, I gazed

and gazed. There was no mistake about it, it was she, ay, even as I had

last seen her, white with the whiteness of death, with purple circles

round her eyes and the grave-cloth yet beneath her chin. Only her eyes

were wide open and fixed upon my face; and a lock of the soft yellow

hair had broken loose, and the wind tossed it.

“You know me now, Frank—don’t you, Frank? It has been so hard

to come to see you, and so cold! But you are going to be married

to-morrow, Frank; and I promised—oh, a long time ago—to think of

you when you were going to be married wherever I was, and I have kept

my promise, and I have come from where I am and brought a present with

me. It was bitter to die so young! I was so young to die and leave you,

but I had to go. Take it—take it; be quick, I cannot stay any longer.

_I could not give you my life, Frank, so I have brought you my

death—take it!_”

The figure thrust the basket into my hand, and as it did so the rain

came up again, and began to obscure the moonlight.

“I must go, I must go,” went on the dreadful, familiar voice, in a

cry of despair. “Oh, why were you so long opening the door? I wanted

to talk to you before you married Annie; and now I shall never see you

again—never! never! _never!_ I have lost you for ever! ever!

_ever!_”

As the last wailing notes died away the wind came down with a rush and a

whirl and the sweep as of a thousand wings, and threw me back into the

house, bringing the door to with a crash after me.

I staggered into the kitchen, the basket in my hand, and set it on the

table. Just then some embers of the fire fell in, and a faint little

flame rose and glimmered on the bright dishes on the dresser, even

revealing a tin candlestick, with a box of matches by it. I was

well-nigh mad with the darkness and fear, and, seizing the matches, I

struck one, and held it to the candle. Presently it caught, and I

glanced round the room. It was just as usual, just as the servants had

left it, and above the mantelpiece the eight-day clock ticked away

solemnly. While I looked at it it struck two, and in a dim fashion I

was thankful for its friendly sound.

Then I looked at the basket. It was of very fine white plaited work with

black bands running up it, and a chequered black-and-white handle. I

knew it well. I have never seen another like it. I bought it years ago

at Madeira, and gave it to my poor wife. Ultimately it was washed

overboard in a gale in the Irish Channel. I remember that it was full

of newspapers and library books, and I had to pay for them. Many and

many is the time that I have seen that identical basket standing there

on that very kitchen table, for my dear wife always used it to put

flowers in, and the shortest cut from that part of the garden where her

roses grew was through the kitchen. She used to gather the flowers, and

then come in and place her basket on the table, just where it stood now,

and order the dinner.

All this passed through my mind in a few seconds as I stood there with

the candle in my hand, feeling indeed half dead, and yet with my mind

painfully alive. I began to wonder if I had gone asleep, and was the

victim of a nightmare. No such thing. I wish it had only been a

nightmare. A mouse ran out along the dresser and jumped on to the

floor, making quite a crash in the silence.

What was in the basket? I feared to look, and yet some power within me

forced me to it. I drew near to the table and stood for a moment

listening to the sound of my own heart. Then I stretched out my hand

and slowly raised the lid of the basket.

“I could not give you my life, so I have brought you my death!”

Those were her words. What could she mean—what could it all mean? I

must know or I would go mad. There it lay, whatever it was, wrapped up

in linen.

Ah, heaven help me! It was a small bleached human skull!

A dream! After all, only a dream by the fire, but what a dream! And I am

to be married to-morrow.

_Can_ I be married to-morrow?

BARBARA WHO CAME BACK

CHAPTER I

THE RECTORY BLIND

This is the tale of Barbara, Barbara who came back to save a soul alive.

The Reverend Septimus Walrond was returning from a professional visit to

a distant cottage of his remote and straggling parish upon the coast of

East Anglia. His errand had been sad, to baptise the dying infant of a

fisherman, which just as the rite was finished wailed once feebly and

expired in his arms. The Reverend Septimus was weeping over the sorrows

of the world. Tears ran down his white but rounded face, for he was

stout of habit, and fell upon his clerical coat that was green with age

and threadbare with use. Although the evening was so cold he held his

broad-brimmed hat in his hand, and the wind from the moaning sea tossed

his snow-white hair. He was talking to himself, as was his fashion on

these lonely walks.

“I think that fresh milk would have saved that child,” he said,

“but how was poor Thomas to buy fresh milk at fourpence a quart? Laid

up for three months as he has been and with six children, how was he to

buy fresh milk? I ought to have given it to him. I could have done

without these new boots till spring, damp feet don’t matter to an old

man. But I thought of my own comfort—the son that doth so easily

beset me—and so many to clothe and feed at home and poor Barbara, my

darling Barbara, hanging between life and death.”

He sobbed and wiped away his tears with the back of his hand, then began

to pray, still aloud.

“O God of pity, in the name of the loving and merciful Christ, help me

and poor Thomas in our troubles.”

“I ought to have put Thomas’s name first—my selfishness

again,” he ejaculated, then went on:

“Give consolation to Thomas who loved his baby, and if it pleases Thee

in Thy infinite wisdom and foresight, spare my dearest Barbara’s

life, that she may live out her days upon the earth and perhaps in her

turn give life to others. I know I should not ask it; I know it is

better that she should go and be with Thee in the immortal home Thou

hast prepared for us unhappy, suffering creatures. Yet—pity my poor

human weakness—I do ask it. Or if Thou decreest otherwise, then take

me also, O God, for I can bear no more. Four children gone! I can bear

no more, O God.”

He sobbed again and wiped away another tear, then muttered:

“My selfishness, always my selfishness! With six remaining to be

looked after, that is counting Barbara if she still lives, I dare to

ask to be relieved of the burdens of the flesh! Pitiful Christ, visit

not my wickedness on me or on others, and O Thou that didst raise the

daughter of Jairus, save my sweet Barbara and comfort the heart of poor

Thomas. I will have faith. I _will_ have faith.”

He thrust his hat upon his head, pulling it down over his ears because

of the rough wind, and walked forward quite jauntily for a few yards.

“What a comfort these new boots are,” he said. “If I had

stepped into that pool with the old ones my left foot would be wet

through now. Let me thank God for these new boots. Oh! how can I, when

I remember that the price of them should have been spent in milk for

the poor baby? If I were really a Christian I ought to take them off

and walk barefoot, as the old pilgrims used to do. They say it is

healthy, and I tried to think so because it is cheap, though I am sure

that this was the beginning of poor little Cicely’s last illness.

With her broken chilblains she could not stand the snow; at any rate,

the chill struck upwards. Well, she has been in bliss three years,

three whole years, and how thankful I ought to be for that. How glad she

will be to see Barbara too, if it pleases God in His mercy to take

Barbara; she always was her favourite sister. I ought to remember that;

I ought to remember that what I lose here I gain there, that my store

is always growing in Heaven. But I can’t, for I am a man still. Oh!

curse it all! I can’t, and like Job I wish I’d never been born. Job

got a new family and was content, but that’s their Eastern way.

It’s different with us Englishmen.”

He stumbled on for a hundred yards or more, vacuously, almost drunkenly,

for the hideous agony that he was enduring half paralysed his brain,

and by its very excess was bringing him some temporary relief. He

looked at the raging sea to his right, and in a vague fashion wished

that it had swallowed him. He looked at the kind earth of the ploughed

field to his left, and wished vividly, for the idea was more familiar,

that six feet of it lay above him. Then he remembered that just beyond

that sand-heap he had found a plover’s nest with two eggs in it fifty

years ago when he was a boy, and had taken one egg and left the other,

or rather had restored it because the old bird screamed so pitifully

about him. In some strange manner that little, long-forgotten act of

righteousness brought a glow of comfort to his tormented spirit. Perhaps

God would deal so by him.

In its way the evening was very beautiful. The cold November day was

dying into night. Clear, clear was the sky save for some black and

heavy snow clouds that floated on it driven before the easterly wind

that piped through the sere grasses and blew the plovers over him as

though they were dead leaves. Where the sun had vanished long bars of

purple lay above the horizon; to his excited fancy they looked like the

gateway of another and a better world, set, as the old Egyptians

dreamed, above the uttermost pylons of the West. What lay there beyond

the sun? Oh! what lay beyond the sun? Perhaps, even now, Barbara knew!

A figure appeared standing upon a sand dune between the pathway and the

sea. Septimus was short-sighted and could not tell who it was, but in

this place at this hour doubtless it must be a parishioner, perhaps one

waiting to see him upon some important matter. He must forget his

private griefs. He must strive to steady his shaken mind and attend to

his duties. He drew himself together and walked on briskly.

“I wish I had not been obliged to give away Jack,” he said.

“He was a great companion, and somehow I always met people with more

confidence when he was with me; he seemed to take away my shyness. But

the license was seven-and-sixpence, and I haven’t got

seven-and-sixpence; also he has an excellent home with that stuffy old

woman, if a dull one, for he must miss his walk. Oh! it’s you,

Anthony. What are you doing here at this time of night? Your father

told me you had a bad cold and there’s so much sickness about. You

should be careful, Anthony, you know you’re not too strong, none of

you Arnotts are. Well, I suppose you are shooting, and most young men

will risk a great deal in order to kill God’s other creatures.”

The person addressed, a tall, broad-shouldered, rather pale young man of

about twenty-one, remarkable for his large brown eyes and a certain

sweet expression which contrasted somewhat oddly with the general

manliness of his appearance, lifted his cap and answered:

“No, Mr. Walrond, I am not shooting to-night. In fact, I was waiting

here to meet you.”

“What for, Anthony? Nothing wrong up at the Hall, I hope.”

“No, Mr. Walrond; why should there be anything wrong there?”

“I don’t know, I am sure, only as a rule people don’t wait

for the parson unless there is something amiss, and there seems to be so

much misfortune in this parish just now. Well, what is it, my boy?”

“I want to know about Barbara, Mr. Walrond. They tell me she is very

bad, but I can’t get anything definite from the others, I mean from

her sisters. They don’t seem to be sure, and the doctor wouldn’t

say when I asked him.”

The Reverend Septimus looked at Anthony and Anthony looked at the

Reverend Septimus, and in that look they learned to understand each

other. The agony that was eating out this poor father’s heart was not

peculiar to him; another shared it. In what he would have called his

“wicked selfishness” the Reverend Septimus felt almost grateful for

this sudden revelation. If it is a comfort to share our joys, it is a

still greater comfort to share our torments.

“Walk on with me, Anthony,” he said. “I must hurry, I have

every reason to hurry. Had it not been a matter of duty I would not have

left the house, but, so to speak, a clergyman has many children; he

cannot prefer one before the other.”

“Yes, yes,” said Anthony, “but what about Barbara? Oh! please

tell me at once.”

“I can’t tell you, Anthony, because I don’t know. From here

to the crest of Gunter’s Hill,” and he pointed to an eminence in

front of them, “is a mile and a quarter. When we get to the crest of

Gunter’s Hill perhaps we shall know. I left home two hours ago, and

then Barbara lay almost at the point of death; insensible.”

“Insensible,” muttered Anthony. “Oh! my God,

insensible.”

“Yes,” went on the clergyman in a voice of patient resignation.

“I don’t understand much about such things, but the inflammation

appears to have culminated that way. Now either she will never wake

again, or if she wakes she may live. At least that is what they tell

me, but they may be wrong. I have so often known doctors to be

wrong.”

They walked on together in silence twenty yards or more. Then he added

as though speaking to himself:

“When we reach the top of Gunter’s Hill perhaps we shall learn. We

can see her window from there, and if she had passed away I bade them

pull the blind down; if she was about the same, to pull it half down,

and if she were really better, to leave it quite up. I have done that

for two nights now, so that I might have a little time to prepare

myself. It is a good plan, though very trying to a father’s heart.

Yesterday I stood for quite a while with my eyes fixed upon the ground,

not daring to look and learn the truth.”

Anthony groaned, and once more the old man went on:

“She is a very unselfish girl, Barbara, or perhaps I should say was,

perhaps I should say was. That is how she caught this horrible

inflammation. Three weeks ago she and her sister Janey went for a long

walk to the Ness, to—to—oh! I forget why they went. Well, it came

on to pour with rain; and just as they had started for home,

fortunately, or rather unfortunately, old Stevens the farmer overtook

them on his way back from market and offered them a lift. They got into

the cart and Barbara took off the mackintosh that her aunt gave her

last Christmas—it is the only one in the house, since such things are

too costly for me to buy—and put it over Janey, who had a cold. It

was quite unnecessary, for Janey was warmly wrapped up, while Barbara

had nothing under the mackintosh except a summer dress. That is how she

caught the chill.”

Anthony made no comment, and again they walked forward without speaking,

perhaps for a quarter of a mile. Then the horror of the suspense became

intolerable to him. Without a word he dashed forward, sped down the

slope and up that of the opposing Gunter’s Hill, more swiftly perhaps

than he had ever run before, although he was a very quick runner.

“He’s gone,” murmured Septimus. “I wonder why! I

suppose that I walk too slowly for him. I cannot walk so fast as I used

to do, and he felt the wind cold.”

Then he dismissed the matter from his half-dazed mind and stumbled on

wearily, muttering his disjointed prayers.

Thus in due course he began to climb the little slope of Gunter’s

Hill. The sun had set, but there was still a red glow in the sky, and

against this glow he perceived the tall figure of Anthony standing

quite still. When he was about a hundred yards away the figure suddenly

collapsed, as a man does if he is shot. The Reverend Septimus put his

hand to his heart and caught his breath.

“I know what that means,” he said. “He was watching the

window, and they have just pulled down the blind. I suppose he must be

fond of her and it—affects him. Oh! if I were younger I think this

would kill me, but, thank God! as one draws near the end of the road

the feet harden; one does not feel the thorns so much. ‘The Lord gave

and the Lord hath taken away, bl—bl—yes, I _will_ say it—blessed

be the Name of the Lord.’ I should remember that she is so much

better where she is; that this is a very hard world; indeed, sometimes

I think it is not a world, but a hell. Oh! Barbara, my sweet

Barbara!” and he struggled forward blindly beating at the rough wind

with his hands as though it were a visible foe, and so at last came to

the crest of the hill where Anthony Arnott lay prone upon his face.

So sure was Septimus of the cause of his collapse that he did not even

trouble to look at the Rectory windows in the hollow near the church

two hundred yards or so away. He only looked at Anthony, saying:

“Poor lad, poor lad! I wonder how I shall get him home; I must fetch

some help.”

As he spoke, Anthony sat up and said, “You see, you see!”

“See what?”

“The blind; _it is quite up_. When I got here it was half down, then

someone pulled it up. That’s what finished me. I felt as though I had

been hit on the head with a stick.”

The Reverend Septimus stared, then suddenly sank to his knees and

returned thanks in his simple fashion.

“Don’t let us be too certain, Anthony,” he exclaimed at

length. “There may be a mistake, or perhaps this is only a respite

which will prolong the suspense. Often such things happen to torment

us; I mean that they are God’s way of trying and purifying our poor

sinful hearts.”