LORD RAGNALL’S STORY
That night Hans slept at my house, or rather outside of it in the
garden, or upon the stoep, saying that he feared arrest if he went to
the town, because of his quarrel with the white man. As it happened,
however, the other party concerned never stirred further in the
business, probably because he was too drunk to remember who had knocked
him into the sluit or whether he had gravitated thither by accident.
On the following morning we renewed our discussion, debating in detail
every possible method of reaching the Kendah people by help of such
means as we could command. Like that of the previous night it proved
somewhat abortive. Obviously such a long and hazardous expedition ought
to be properly financed and—where was the money? At length I came to
the conclusion that if we went at all it would be best, in the
circumstances, for Hans and myself to start alone with a Scotch cart
drawn by oxen and driven by a couple of Zulu hunters, which we could
lade with ammunition and a few necessaries.
Thus lightly equipped we might work through Zululand and thence
northward to Beza-Town, the capital of the Mazitu, where we were sure
of a welcome. After that we must take our chance. It was probable that
we should never reach the district where these Kendah were supposed to
dwell, but at least I might be able to kill some elephants in the wild
country beyond Zululand.
While we were talking I heard the gun fired which announced the arrival
of the English mail, and stepping to the end of the garden, saw the
steamer lying at anchor outside the bar. Then I went indoors to write a
few business letters which, since I had become immersed in the affairs
of that unlucky gold mine, had grown to be almost a daily task with me.
I had got through several with many groanings, for none were agreeable
in their tenor, when Hans poked his head through the window in a silent
kind of a way as a big snake might do, and said: “Baas, I think there
are two baases out on the road there who are looking for you. Very fine
baases whom I don’t know.”
“Shareholders in the Bona Fide Gold Mine,” thought I to myself, then
added as I prepared to leave through the back door: “If they come here
tell them I am not at home. Tell them I left early this morning for the
Congo River to look for the sources of the Nile.”
“Yes, Baas,” said Hans, collapsing on to the stoep.
I went out through the back door, sorrowing that I, Allan Quatermain,
should have reached a rung in the ladder of life whence I shrank from
looking any stranger in the face, for fear of what he might have to say
to me. Then suddenly my pride asserted itself. After all what was there
of which I should be ashamed? I would face these irate shareholders as
I had faced the others yesterday.
I walked round the little house to the front garden which was planted
with orange trees, and up to a big moonflower bush, I believe _datura_
is its right name, that grew near the pomegranate hedge which separated
my domain from the road. There a conversation was in progress, if so it
may be called.
“_Ikona_” (that is: “I don’t know”), “_Inkoosi_” (i.e. “Chief”), said
some Kafir in a stupid drawl.
Thereon a voice that instantly struck me as familiar, answered:
“We want to know where the great hunter lives.”
“_Ikona_,” said the Kafir.
“Can’t you remember his native name?” asked another voice which was
also familiar to me, for I never forget voices though I am unable to
place them at once.
“The great hunter, Here-come-a-zany,” said the first voice
triumphantly, and instantly there flashed back upon my mind a vision of
the splendid drawing-room at Ragnall Castle and of an imposing
majordomo introducing into it two white-robed, Arab-looking men.
“Mr. Savage, by the Heavens!” I muttered. “What in the name of goodness
is he doing here?”
“There,” said the second voice, “your black friend has bolted, and no
wonder, for who can be called by such a name? If you had done what I
told you, Savage, and hired a white guide, it would have saved us a lot
of trouble. Why will you always think that you know better than anyone
else?”
“Seemed an unnecessary expense, my lord, considering we are travelling
incog., my lord.”
“How long shall we travel ‘incog.’ if you persist in calling me my lord
at the top of your voice, Savage? There is a house beyond those trees;
go in and ask where——”
By this time I had reached the gate which I opened, remarking quietly,
“How do you do, Lord Ragnall? How do you do, Mr. Savage? I thought that
I recognized your voices on the road and came to see if I was right.
Please walk in; that is, if it is I whom you wish to visit.”
As I spoke I studied them both, and observed that while Savage looked
much the same, although slightly out of place in these strange
surroundings, the time that had passed since we met had changed Lord
Ragnall a good deal. He was still a magnificent-looking man, one of
those whom no one that had seen him would ever forget, but now his
handsome face was stamped with some new seal of suffering. I felt at
once that he had become acquainted with grief. The shadow in his dark
eyes and a certain worn expression about the mouth told me that this
was so.
“Yes, Quatermain,” he said as he took my hand, “it is you whom I have
travelled seven thousand miles to visit, and I thank God that I have
been so fortunate as to find you. I feared lest you might be dead, or
perhaps far away in the centre of Africa where I should never be able
to track you down.”
“A week later perhaps you would not have found me, Lord Ragnall,” I
answered, “but as it happens misfortune has kept me here.”
“And misfortune has brought me here, Quatermain.”
Then before I had time to answer Savage came up and we went into the
house.
“You are just in time for lunch,” I said, “and as luck will have it
there is a good rock cod and a leg of oribé buck for you to eat. Boy,
set two more places.”
“One more place, if you please, sir,” said Savage. “I should prefer to
take my food afterwards.”
“You will have to get over that in Africa,” I muttered. Still I let him
have his way, with the result that presently the strange sight was seen
of the magnificent English majordomo standing behind my chair in the
little room and handing round the square-face as though it were
champagne. It was a spectacle that excited the greatest interest in my
primitive establishment and caused Hans with some native hangers-on to
gather at the window. However, Lord Ragnall took it as a matter of
course and I thought it better not to interfere.
When we had finished we went on to the stoep to smoke, leaving Savage
to eat his dinner, and I asked Lord Ragnall where his luggage was. He
replied that he had left it at the Customs. “Then,” I said, “I will
send a native with Savage to arrange about getting it up here. If you
do not mind my rough accommodation there is a room for you, and your
man can pitch a tent in the garden.”
After some demur he accepted with gratitude, and a little later Savage
and the native were sent off with a note to a man who hired out a
mule-cart.
“Now,” I said when the gate had shut behind them, “will you tell me why
you have come to Africa?”
“Disaster,” he replied. “Disaster of the worst sort.”
“Is your wife dead, Lord Ragnall?”
“I do not know. I almost hope that she is. At any rate she is lost to
me.”
An idea leapt to my mind to the effect that she might have run away
with somebody else, a thing which often happens in the world. But
fortunately I kept it to myself and only said,
“She was nearly lost once before, was she not?”
“Yes, when you saved her. Oh! if only you had been with us, Quatermain,
this would never have happened. Listen: About eighteen months ago she
had a son, a very beautiful child. She recovered well from the business
and we were as happy as two mortals could be, for we loved each other,
Quatermain, and God has blessed us in every way; we were so happy that
I remember her telling me that our great good fortune made her feel
afraid. One day last September when I was out shooting, she drove in a
little pony cart we had, with the nurse, and the child but no man, to
call on Mrs. Scroope who also had been recently confined. She often
went out thus, for the pony was an old animal and quiet as a sheep.
“By some cursed trick of fate it chanced that when they were passing
through the little town which you may remember near Ragnall, they met a
travelling menagerie that was going to some new encampment. At the head
of the procession marched a large bull elephant, which I discovered
afterwards was an ill-tempered brute that had already killed a man and
should never have been allowed upon the roads. The sight of the pony
cart, or perhaps a red cloak which my wife was wearing, as she always
liked bright colours, for some unknown reason seems to have infuriated
this beast, which trumpeted. The pony becoming frightened wheeled round
and overturned the cart right in front of the animal, but apparently
without hurting anybody. Then”—here he paused a moment and with an
effort continued—“that devil in beast’s shape cocked its ears,
stretched out its long trunk, dragged the baby from the nurse’s arms,
whirled it round and threw it high into the air, to fall crushed upon
the kerb. It sniffed at the body of the child, feeling it over with the
tip of its trunk, as though to make sure that it was dead. Next, once
more it trumpeted triumphantly, and without attempting to harm my wife
or anybody else, walked quietly past the broken cart and continued its
journey, until outside the town it was made fast and shot.”
“What an awful story!” I said with a gasp.
“Yes, but there is worse to follow. My poor wife went off her head,
with the shock I suppose, for no physical injury could be found upon
her. She did not suffer in health or become violent, quite the reverse
indeed for her gentleness increased. She just went off her head. For
hours at a time she would sit silent and smiling, playing with the
stones of that red necklace which those conjurers gave her, or rather
counting them, as a nun might do with the beads of her rosary. At
times, however, she would talk, but always to the baby, as though it
lay before her or she were nursing it. Oh! Quatermain, it was pitiful,
pitiful!
“I did everything I could. She was seen by three of the greatest
brain-doctors in England, but none of them was able to help. The only
hope they gave was that the fit might pass off as suddenly as it had
come. They said too that a thorough change of scene would perhaps be
beneficial, and suggested Egypt; that was in October. I did not take
much to the idea, I don’t know why, and personally should not have
acceded to it had it not been for a curious circumstance. The last
consultation took place in the big drawing-room at Ragnall. When it was
over my wife remained with her mother at one end of the room while I
and the doctors talked together at the other, as I thought quite out of
her earshot. Presently, however, she called to me, saying in a
perfectly clear and natural voice:
“‘Yes, George, I will go to Egypt. I should like to go to Egypt.’ Then
she went on playing with the necklace and talking to the imaginary
child.
“Again on the following morning as I came into her room to kiss her,
she exclaimed,
“‘When do we start for Egypt? Let it be soon.’
“With these sayings the doctors were very pleased, declaring that they
showed signs of a returning interest in life and begging me not to
thwart her wish.
“So I gave way and in the end we went to Egypt together with Lady
Longden, who insisted upon accompanying us although she is a wretched
sailor. At Cairo a large dahabeeyah that I had hired in advance, manned
by an excellent crew and a guard of four soldiers, was awaiting us. In
it we started up the Nile. For a month or more all went well; also to
my delight my wife seemed now and again to show signs of returning
intelligence. Thus she took some interest in the sculptures on the
walls of the temples, about which she had been very fond of reading
when in health. I remember that only a few days before the—the
catastrophe, she pointed out one of them to me, it was of Isis and the
infant Horus, saying, ‘Look, George, the holy Mother and the holy
Child,’ and then bowed to it reverently as she might have done to an
altar. At length after passing the First Cataract and the Island of
Philæ we came to the temple of Abu Simbel, opposite to which our boat
was moored. On the following morning we explored the temple at daybreak
and saw the sun strike upon the four statues which sit at its farther
end, spending the rest of that day studying the colossal figures of
Rameses that are carved upon its face and watching some cavalcades of
Arabs mounted upon camels travelling along the banks of the Nile.
“My wife was unusually quiet that afternoon. For hour after hour she
sat still upon the deck, gazing first at the mouth of the rock-hewn
temple and the mighty figures which guard it and then at the
surrounding desert. Only once did I hear her speak and then she said,
‘Beautiful, beautiful! Now I am at home.’ We dined and as there was no
moon, went to bed rather early after listening to the Sudanese singers
as they sang one of their weird chanties.
“My wife and her mother slept together in the state cabin of the
dahabeeyah, which was at the stern of the boat. My cabin, a small one,
was on one side of this, and that of the trained nurse on the other.
The crew and the guard were forward of the saloon. A gangway was fixed
from the side to the shore and over it a sentry stood, or was supposed
to stand. During the night a Khamsin wind began to blow, though lightly
as was to be expected at this season of the year. I did not hear it
for, as a matter of fact, I slept very soundly, as it appears did
everyone else upon the dahabeeyah, including the sentry as I suspect.
“The first thing I remember was the appearance of Lady Longden just at
daybreak at the doorway of my cabin and the frightened sound of her
voice asking if Luna, that is my wife, was with me. Then it transpired
that she had left her cabin clad in a fur cloak, evidently some time
before, as the bed in which she had been lying was quite cold.
Quatermain, we searched everywhere; we searched for four days, but from
that hour to this no trace whatever of her has been found.”
“Have you any theory?” I asked.
“Yes, or at least all the experts whom we consulted have a theory. It
is that she slipped down the saloon in the dark, gained the deck and
thence fell or threw herself into the Nile, which of course would have
carried her body away. As you may have heard, the Nile is full of
bodies. I myself saw two of them during that journey. The Egyptian
police and others were so convinced that this was what had happened
that, notwithstanding the reward of a thousand pounds which I offered
for any valuable information, they could scarcely be persuaded to
continue the search.”
“You said that a wind was blowing and I understand that the shores are
sandy, so I suppose that all footprints would have been filled in?”
He nodded and I went on. “What is your own belief? Do you think she was
drowned?”
He countered my query with another of:
“What do _you_ think?”
“I? Oh! although I have no right to say so, I don’t think at all. I am
quite sure that she was _not_ drowned; that she is living at this
moment.”
“Where?”
“As to that you had better inquire of our friends, Harût and Marût,” I
answered dryly.
“What have you to go on, Quatermain? There is no clue.”
“On the contrary I hold that there are a good many clues. The whole
English part of the story in which we were concerned, and the threats
those mysterious persons uttered are the first and greatest of these
clues. The second is the fact that your hiring of the dahabeeyah
regardless of expense was known a long time before your arrival in
Egypt, for I suppose you did so in your own name, which is not exactly
that of Smith or Brown. The third is your wife’s sleep-walking
propensities, which would have made it quite easy for her to be drawn
ashore under some kind of mesmeric influence. The fourth is that you
had seen Arabs mounted on camels upon the banks of the Nile. The fifth
is the heavy sleep you say held everybody on board that particular
night, which suggests to me that your food may have been drugged. The
sixth is the apathy displayed by those employed in the search, which
suggests to me that some person or persons in authority may have been
bribed, as is common in the East, or perhaps frightened with threats of
bewitchment. The seventh is that a night was chosen when a wind blew
which would obliterate all spoor whether of men or of swiftly
travelling camels. These are enough to begin with, though doubtless if
I had time to think I could find others. You must remember too that
although the journey would be long, this country of the Kendah can
doubtless be reached from the Sudan by those who know the road, as well
as from southern or eastern Africa.”
“Then you think that my wife has been kidnapped by those villains,
Harût and Marût?”
“Of course, though villains is a strong term to apply to them. They
might be quite honest men according to their peculiar lights, as indeed
I expect they are. Remember that they serve a god or a fetish, or
rather, as they believe, a god _in_ a fetish, who to them doubtless is
a very terrible master, especially when, as I understand, that god is
threatened by a rival god.”
“Why do you say that, Quatermain?”
By way of answer I repeated to him the story which Hans said he had
heard from the old woman at Beza, the town of the Mazitu. Lord Ragnall
listened with the deepest interest, then said in an agitated voice:
“That is a very strange tale, but has it struck you, Quatermain, that
if your suppositions are correct, one of the most terrible
circumstances connected with my case is that our child should have
chanced to come to its dreadful death through the wickedness of an
elephant?”
“That curious coincidence has struck me most forcibly, Lord Ragnall. At
the same time I do not see how it can be set down as more than a
coincidence, since the elephant which slaughtered your child was
certainly not that called Jana. To suppose because there is a war
between an elephant-god and a child-god somewhere in the heart of
Africa, that therefore another elephant can be so influenced that it
kills a child in England, is to my mind out of all reason.”
That is what I said to him, as I did not wish to introduce a new horror
into an affair that was already horrible enough. But, recollecting that
these priests, Harût and Marût, believed the mother of this murdered
infant to be none other than the oracle of their worship (though how
this chanced passed my comprehension), and therefore the great enemy of
the evil elephant-god, I confess that at heart I felt afraid. If any
powers of magic, black or white or both, were mixed up with the matter
as my experiences in England seemed to suggest, who could say what
might be their exact limits? As, however, it has been demonstrated
again and again by the learned that no such thing as African magic
exists, this line of thought appeared to be too foolish to follow. So
passing it by I asked Lord Ragnall to continue.
“For over a month,” he went on, “I stopped in Egypt waiting till
emissaries who had been sent to the chiefs of various tribes in the
Sudan and elsewhere, returned with the news that nothing whatsoever had
been seen of a white woman travelling in the company of natives, nor
had they heard of any such woman being sold as a slave. Also through
the Khedive, on whom I was able to bring influence to bear by help of
the British Government, I caused many harems in Egypt to be visited,
entirely without result. After this, leaving the inquiry in the hands
of the British Consul and a firm of French lawyers, although in truth
all hope had gone, I returned to England whither I had already sent
Lady Longden, broken-hearted, for it occurred to me as possible that my
wife might have drifted or been taken thither. But here, too, there was
no trace of her or of anybody who could possibly answer to her
description. So at last I came to the conclusion that her bones must
lie somewhere at the bottom of the Nile, and gave way to despair.”
“Always a foolish thing to do,” I remarked.
“You will say so indeed when you hear the end, Quatermain. My
bereavement and the sleeplessness which it caused preyed upon me so
much, for now that the child was dead my wife was everything to me,
that, I will tell you the truth, my brain became affected and like Job
I cursed God in my heart and determined to die. Indeed I should have
died by my own hand, had it not been for Savage. I had procured the
laudanum and loaded the pistol with which I proposed to shoot myself
immediately after it was swallowed so that there might be no mistake.
One night only a couple of months or so ago, Quatermain, I sat in my
study at Ragnall, with the doors locked as I thought, writing a few
final letters before I did the deed. The last of them was just finished
about twelve when hearing a noise, I looked up and saw Savage standing
before me. I asked him angrily how he came there (I suppose he must
have had another key to one of the other doors) and what he wanted.
Ignoring the first part of the question he replied:
“‘My lord, I have been thinking over our trouble’—he was with us in
Egypt—‘I have been thinking so much that it has got a hold of my sleep.
To-night as you said you did not want me any more and I was tired, I
went to bed early and had a dream. I dreamed that we were once more in
the shrubbery, as happened some years ago, and that the little African
gent who shot like a book, was showing us the traces of those two black
men, just as he did when they tried to steal her ladyship. Then in my
dream I seemed to go back to bed and that beastly snake which we found
lying under the parcel in the road seemed to follow me. When I had got
to sleep again, all in the dream, there it was standing on its tail at
the end of the bed, hissing till it woke me. Then it spoke in good
English and not in African as might have been expected.
“‘“Savage,” it said, “get up and dress yourself and go at once and tell
his lordship to travel to Natal and find Mr. Allan Quatermain” (you may
remember that was the African gentleman’s name, my lord, which, with so
many coming and going in this great house, I had quite forgotten, until
I had the dream). “Find Mr. Allan Quatermain,” that slimy reptile went
on, opening and shutting its mouth for all the world like a Christian
making a speech, “for he will have something to tell him as to that
which has made a hole in his heart that is now filled with the seven
devils. Be quick, Savage, and don’t stop to put on your shirt or your
tie”—I have not, my lord, as you may see. “He is shut up in the study,
but you know how to get into it. If he will not listen to you let him
look round the study and he will see something which will tell him that
this is a true dream.”
“‘Then the snake vanished, seeming to wriggle down the left bottom
bed-post, and I woke up in a cold sweat, my lord, and did what it had
told me.’
“Those were his very words, Quatermain, for I wrote them down
afterwards while they were fresh in my memory, and you see here they
are in my pocket-book.
“Well, I answered him, rather brusquely I am afraid, for a crazed man
who is about to leave the world under such circumstances does not show
at his best when disturbed almost in the very act, to the edge of which
long agony has brought him. I told him that all his dream of snakes
seemed ridiculous, which obviously it was, and was about to send him
away, when it occurred to me that the suggestion it conveyed that I
should put myself in communication with you was not ridiculous in view
of the part you had already played in the story.”
“Very far from ridiculous,” I interpolated.
“To tell the truth,” went on Lord Ragnall, “I had already thought of
doing the same thing, but somehow beneath the pressure of my imminent
grief the idea was squeezed out of my mind, perhaps because you were so
far away and I did not know if I could find you even if I tried.
Pausing for a moment before I dismissed Savage, I rose from the desk at
which I was writing and began to walk up and down the room thinking
what I would do. I am not certain if you saw it when you were at
Ragnall, but it is a large room, fifty feet long or so though not very
broad. It has two fireplaces, in both of which fires were burning on
this night, and it was lit by four standing lamps besides that upon my
desk. Now between these fireplaces, in a kind of niche in the wall, and
a little in the shadow because none of the lamps was exactly opposite
to it, hung a portrait of my wife which I had caused to be painted by a
fashionable artist when first we became engaged.”
“I remember it,” I said. “Or rather, I remember its existence. I did
not see it because a curtain hung over the picture, which Savage told
me you did not wish to be looked at by anybody but yourself. At the
time I remarked to him, or rather to myself, that to veil the likeness
of a living woman in such a way seemed to me rather an ill-omened thing
to do, though why I should have thought it so I do not quite know.”
“You are quite right, Quatermain. I had that foolish fancy, a lover’s
freak, I suppose. When we married the curtain was removed although the
brass rod on which it hung was left by some oversight. On my return to
England after my loss, however, I found that I could not bear to look
upon this lifeless likeness of one who had been taken from me so
cruelly, and I caused it to be replaced. I did more. In order that it
might not be disturbed by some dusting housemaid, I myself made it fast
with three or four tin-tacks which I remember I drove through the
velvet stuff into the panelling, using a fireiron as a hammer. At the
time I thought it a good job although by accident I struck the nail of
the third finger of my left hand so hard that it came off. Look, it has
not quite finished growing again,” and he showed the finger on which
the new nail was still in process of formation.
“Well, as I walked up and down the room some impulse caused me to look
towards the picture. To my astonishment I saw that it was no longer
veiled, although to the best of my belief the curtain had been drawn
over it as lately as that afternoon; indeed I could have sworn that
this was so. I called to Savage to bring the lamp that stood upon my
table, and by its light made an examination. The curtain was drawn
back, very tidily, being fastened in its place clear of the little
alcove by means of a thin brass chain. Also along one edge of it, that
which I had nailed to the panelling, the tin-tacks were still in their
places; that is, three of them were, the fourth I found afterwards upon
the floor.
“‘She looks beautiful, doesn’t she, my lord,’ said Savage, ‘and please
God so we shall still find her somewhere in the world.’
“I did not answer him, or even remark upon the withdrawal of the
curtain, as to which indeed I never made an inquiry. I suppose that it
was done by some zealous servant while I was pretending to eat my
dinner—there were one or two new ones in the house whose names and
appearance I did not know. What impressed itself upon my mind was that
the face which I had never expected to see again on the earth, even in
a picture, was once more given to my eyes, it mattered not how. This,
in my excited state, for laudanum waiting to be swallowed and a pistol
at full cock for firing do not induce calmness in a man already almost
mad, at any rate until they have fulfilled their offices, did in truth
appear to me to be something of the nature of a sign such as that
spoken of in Savage’s idiotic dream, which I was to find if ‘I looked
round the study.’
“‘Savage,’ I said, ‘I don’t think much of your dreams about snakes that
talk to you, but I do think that it might be well to see Mr.
Quatermain. To-day is Sunday and I believe that the African mail sails
on Friday. Go to town early to-morrow and book passages.’
“Also I told him to see various gunsmiths and bid them send down a
selection of rifles and other weapons for me to choose from, as I did
not know whither we might wander in Africa, and to make further
necessary arrangements. All of these things he did, and—here we are.”
“Yes,” I answered reflectively, “here you are. What is more, here is
your luggage of which there seems to be enough for a regiment,” and I
pointed to a Scotch cart piled up with baggage and followed by a long
line of Kafirs carrying sundry packages upon their heads that,
marshalled by Savage, had halted at my gate.