Evening was closing in wet and gloomy. The lowering clouds swept along
the high ground which shot in the great hollow, causing the cliffs to
seem three times their real height in the ghostly murk. Added to this
it was raw and cold, which had the effect of causing the inhabitants of
the big kraal to hug their firesides. Here and there a form swathed in
an ample green blanket might be seen moving from one hut to another,
quickly to dive within the same, for your savage is a practical animal,
and sees no fun in foregoing any of his comforts when no necessity
exists for doing so--and the interior of the huts was warm and dry, and,
without, it was neither.
I was alone at the waggons, Falkner not having yet returned. For this I
was not sorry, for although Falkner and I had grown accustomed to each
other, yet there were times when I could cheerfully accept a holiday
from his presence.
Darker and darker it grew. The oxen were driven in and fastened to the
trek chain for the night, and the boys, lying snug under the shelter
they had rigged up by means of a large sail thrown over the buck waggon,
leaving one side between the wheels open, were chatting in their
rhythmical deep-voiced hum, and the fire they had built not far from the
opening glowing more and more redly as the gloom deepened. Then their
talk suddenly ceased, as out of the darkness appeared a tall figure,
saluting.
"What have you there?" I said, as the new arrival began fumbling for
something in his skin pouch.
"_Incwadi 'Nkose_," he answered.
I own to a thrill of excited expectation very foreign to my normally
placid way of taking things, for _incwadi_ is the word for a letter or a
token of any kind. I could hardly restrain my eagerness to open the
packet carefully sewn up in oilskin, which the man now handed me. Aida
Sewin, then, had availed herself of the means of correspondence which I
had arranged, but--what if this were not addressed to me after all, but
only to Falkner? and at the thought my anticipations fell. Still it
would be good to hear, anyhow. The rather startling incident of a few
hours ago was driven clean from my mind now.
I climbed into the tent waggon and lighted the lantern which hung from
the tent, and you may be sure it didn't take me long to unroll the
oilskin wrapping. Two letters it contained--one for Falkner and one for
myself--the latter in the handwriting I knew, and one that a reader of
character from handwriting would assuredly not have reported upon
unfavourably. Having once satisfied myself on the point, I believe I
was in no hurry to open it. The pleasures of anticipation, you see,
counted for something with me still.
Then came another phase in the above. I drew from the envelope several
sheets rather closely written. Why, this was too much luck. I glanced
quickly through them to ascertain that the whole of it was for me, but
resolved not to anticipate the contents in any way. More than ever was
I glad now that Falkner had not returned. I could well do without his
somewhat boisterous company for the next half-hour, or even longer.
Then I spread open the sheets before me, and by the somewhat dim light
of the waggon lantern began to read.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Dear Mr Glanton,--I am taking advantage of the arrangement you so
thoughtfully made, and only trust this will not miss you during your
wanderings. Mother is writing to Falkner at the same time. I hope you
have been able to make him useful, and that he has behaved himself
generally well. He is a good sort of boy at bottom, but gets far too
much spoilt among us all, as you must have observed, though I believe I
am the one who spoils him least. At any rate a little roughing it will
do him no harm.
"Things are very much as usual. We see a good deal of Mr Kendrew, who
comes over when he can and is a great help."--"Oh, the devil he is!"
said I to myself at this point. "Just what I foresaw, confound
it!"--"But we miss you very much, and are hoping soon to welcome you
back after a thoroughly successful expedition."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
This was more comforting, I thought to myself, laying down the letter
and conjuring up a recollection of the writer's words, that last
evening. She would look forward to my return, she had declared--would
be disappointed if I did not go to see them immediately. Confound it,
what was the matter with me, that I sat dreaming and building castles in
the air? The rain fell upon the canvas of the waggon tent with
monotonous drip, and a puff of raw air through the flap of the tied-down
sail caused the light of the hanging lantern to flicker--but I was no
longer in the gloomy wilds of Northern Zululand, on a rainy, chilly, and
altogether abominable evening. I was again in the starlight glow as on
that evening, listening to the sweet tones of the writer's voice, and
gazing at the beautiful, highbred face.
The letter went on, dealing now with everyday matter, in a bright,
natural, chatty style. The Major was in great form and delighted with
his garden and its development, thanks to some fine rains. The Scotts
had been over to see them a couple of times--and here followed some
banter at the expense of that worthy and neighbouring family, the head
of which--originally a waggon-maker's journeyman--was, incidentally,
addicted to too much grog, when he could get it--which wasn't often. At
Major Sewin's he could get it, and became comical, but always harmlessly
so. Things on the farm were going well, thanks to Ivondwe, who was
worth his weight in gold, and--I could read between the lines--was
practically running the place himself. Tyingoza had been over to see
them too, and seemed completely to have forgotten Falkner's liberty with
regard to his head-ring, for he had been exceedingly pleasant, and,
through Ivondwe, had said a great many nice things about me--reading
which I felt more than brotherly towards Tyingoza, and made up my mind
then and there to present him with something of large and practical
value when I should get up my next consignment of trade goods.
This had covered some three sheets, closely written, and there were
still quite as many more. Decidedly Miss Sewin was a good
correspondent. I had been going through her letter grudgingly, as if
the turning of every leaf should bring the end near. The sail was
lifted, and Tom's honest black face appeared, to ask some question. I
curtly told him to go to the devil, and resumed my reading.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"And now," went on the letter, "I am coming to something that I feel I
must tell you, and yet I hardly like to. It seems so ridiculous somehow
when one comes to put it down on paper, though if you were here, and we
could talk it over, well--it might not. You remember that last evening,
and what we were talking about when I asked you if some plan could not
be arranged under which I could write to you if I felt that we were in
need of your aid or advice? The idea rather originated with yourself if
you remember, in your usual kindness and forethought, so that
consideration alone emboldens me to write what might otherwise seem to
you only fanciful and foolish. You know, too, I am not inclined to
indulge in that sort of thing, so you will, I am sure, bear with me.
But I must begin.
"You remember that witch doctor, Ukozi, who came upon us suddenly at the
waterhole that same last evening, when my coin was lost? Well, he has
taken to coming here a great deal. At first my father used to get angry
with him and want to drive him away; you know, quite in the old style,
before you taught him--or tried to teach him--that the natives here were
not to be driven like our people in India used to be. But Ukozi didn't
seem to mind. He would go away chuckling, but the next day sure enough,
there he was again. Then father suddenly swung round and seemed to take
a fancy to him. He would talk to him by the hour--through Ivondwe
interpreting--and when we wondered, would tell us that he was getting
Ulcozi to teach him some of the native magic. Of course it seemed to us
absurd, but if we said anything of the sort father would get angry, so
the only thing was to let him go his own way. But when it came to his
going out at night with the witch doctor and coming back at all hours
thoroughly done up, why it seemed that the thing was going too far. He
has become very mysterious too. Once he let drop that Ukozi was going
to tell him all about the waterhole, and the strange thing that we saw
there, and then he became more angry still and vowed that he wouldn't be
interfered with--that here was a chance of learning something quite out
of the common, and he was going to take it whatever happened. Nothing
we can say or do seems to weigh with him in the least, and really, if it
didn't sound too absurd, I should say that this witch doctor had got him
right under his thumb. I asked Ivondwe about it quietly, but he was
very nice, and said that the old _Nkose_ was a wise man, yet there were
things that his wisdom had not yet reached, and now he would like to
learn them--that was all. There was nothing to trouble about. When he
had learnt what Ukozi could--or would--teach him--and that was not
much--then he would be the same as before. Now, Mr Glanton, you know
these people, and I ask you what does it all mean? My father is
altogether a changed man--how changed you would be the first to
recognise if you could see him. What, too, is the object; for Ukozi,
beyond getting something to eat, and tobacco now and then, does not seem
to ask for anything by way of payment, and I always thought the native
_isanusi_ was nothing if not acquisitive? But he is always here. For
want of a better expression he is getting upon my nerves, and not only
upon mine. It seems as if we were somehow being drawn within an
influence, and an influence the more weird and inexplicable that it is
through an agency that we should traditionally hold as something
inferior, and therefore quite absurd to take seriously. I mean a native
influence.
"Shall I risk disgracing myself for ever in your eyes by owning that I
am getting just a little bit frightened? Yes, frightened--I'm afraid
there's no other word for it--and the worst of it is I don't in the
least know what I am frightened of. It seems as if a something was
hanging over us--a something awful, and from which there is no escape.
You remember it was such a presentiment that made me say what I did the
last time you were here, and you reassured me on the subject of the
witch doctor at any rate. As to him, there is another strange
circumstance. Arlo, too, seems to have come under his influence. Arlo
who never could be got to take to any native, and now he is more
obedient to this Ukozi than to any of us; yet it is the obedience of
fear, for he whines and crouches when the witch doctor speaks to him.
Here, you will allow, is a real mystery.
"There are other things I might say, but I think I have said enough.
Again I hope you won't put me down as a weak-minded idiot frightened at
her own shadow. This country, you see, is so new and strange to us, and
our position is rather lonely; father, too, is ageing a good deal, so
there is some excuse if we feel a little--well, nervous, at times. As
it is I have put off writing to you until, as I reckon from what you
said, your time in Zululand must be nearly up, and then only that you
may not delay to come and see us immediately on your return.
"All send kind regards and are looking forward to welcoming you back,
but none more so than--
"Yours very sincerely,
"Aida Sewin.
"P.S.--I would rather you didn't mention anything of this to Falkner."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
This letter was, to say the least of it, puzzling. Carefully I read it
through again, and then it became obvious that the main drift of it was,
if not exactly an after-thought, at any rate not in the writer's mind to
communicate when she first began. Her contradictory accounts of her
father pointed to this. I made an effort to put behind me for the
present the feeling of exultation that I should be the one appealed to--
the rock of refuge, so to say--for I wanted to think out the drift of
the whole thing; and all my experience has gone to teach me that you
can't think, of two things at once without only half thinking of both of
them. The witch doctor's conduct was inexplicable viewed by the
ordinary light of common-sense motive. But I had lived long enough
among natives to know that I didn't really know them, which is
paradoxical yet true. I knew this much, that underlying their ordinary
and known customs there are others, to which no white man ever gains
access except by the purest accident--customs, it may be, to all
appearances utterly inconsequent or even ridiculous, but others again of
darker and more sinister import. Such are denied by them with laughter,
as too utterly absurd for existence, but they do exist for all that, and
the confiding European is lulled completely, thrown off the scent. And
now, putting four and four together, I wondered whether it was not
somewhere in this direction that I must search for Ukozi's motive.
As for the Major's craze, that didn't trouble me overmuch, if only that
I remembered that old gentlemen of the retired Anglo-Indian persuasion
were prone to take up fads, from the Lost Ten Tribes craze to Plymouth
Brethrenism. He had been struck by Ukozi's profession of occultism, and
probably hipped by the isolation of his own surroundings, had thrown
himself into it. I--and Falkner--would soon put that right, on our
return.
And yet, and yet--as I again took up Aida Sewin's letter in search it
might be of a further sidelight, the very real note of concern, not to
say alarm, which I read into it impressed me. It was as though I heard
a cry from her to hasten to her assistance. Well, I would do so. As I
have said, my trade with Majendwa's people had suddenly and
unaccountably broken down, but I had acquired quite a respectable lot of
cattle, all in excellent condition. I would have them all brought in on
the morrow and trek the next day for home. And having come to this
conclusion I heard the tramp of a horse outside, and Falkner's voice
lifted up in a resounding hail, which had the effect of setting all the
curs in the big kraal adjoining, on the stampede in such a fashion as to
remind me of Falkner's sprinting match on the first night of our
arrival.