With her usual frank naturalness and absence of conventionality, Nidia
went to meet him in the doorway. Then, as he took her extended hands,
it seemed as though he were going to hold them for ever. Yet no word
had passed between them.
How well he looked! she was thinking. The light, not unpicturesque
attire there prevailing, and so becoming to a good-looking, well-made
man, suited him, she decided. She had first seen him in the ordinary
garments of urban civilisation. She had seen him last a tattered
fugitive, haggard and unshaven. Now the up-country costume--silk shirt
and leather belt, and riding-trousers with gaiters--endowed his lithe
well set-up form with an air of freedom and ease, and looking into the
clear-cut face and full grey eyes, framed by the wide, straight brim of
the up-country hat, she thought she had never seen him looking so well.
"How glad I am to see you again!" she said, "Ten thousand welcomes. Do
you know, I have been feeling ever since as if _I_ were responsible
for--for whatever had befallen you."
"Yes? Imagine, then, what _I_ must have felt at the thought of you,
alone in the mountains, not knowing what to do or where to turn. I
wonder it didn't drive me stark staring mad. Imagine it, Nidia. Just
try to imagine it! Words won't convey it."
"I did have a dreadful time. But I knew nothing would have kept you
from returning to me, had you been able. And then your boy, Pukele,
arrived, and took such care of me. I sent him out to find you, and he
said you had been among the Matabele, but had been able to leave them
again--"
"Who? My boy? Pukele?" repeated John Ames, wonderingly.
"Yes. He brought me out of the mountains. One day he went out to hunt.
I heard him, as I thought, fire a couple of shots, and came up to find
myself among friends again."
"Nidia," called a voice from within--a voice not untinged with
acerbity--"won't Mr Ames come inside?"
John Ames started, and the effect seemed to freeze him somewhat. The
coldness of the greeting extended to him as he complied, completed the
effect. Instinctively he set it down to its true cause.
"We met last under very different circumstances, didn't we, Mrs
Bateman?" he said easily. "None of us quite foresaw all that has
happened since."
"I should think not. The wonder is that one of us is alive to tell the
tale," was the rejoinder, in a tone which seemed to imply that no thanks
were due to John Ames that `one of us' was--in short, that he was
responsible for the whole rising.
"And do you remember my asking if there wasn't a chance of the natives
rising and killing us all?" said Nidia. "I have often thought of that.
What times we have been through!" with a little shudder. "Yet, in some
ways it seems almost like a dream. Doesn't it, Susie?"
"A dream we are not awakened from, unfortunately," was the reply. "We
don't seem through our troubles yet. Well, as for as we are concerned,
we soon shall be. I want to take Miss Commerell out of this wretched
country, Mr Ames, as soon as ever it can be managed. Don't you think
it the best plan?"
"I think you are both far safer where you are, since you ask me," he
answered. "Any amount of reinforcements are on their way, and meanwhile
the laager here, though uncomfortable, is absolutely safe, because
absolutely impregnable. Whereas the Mafeking road, if still open, is so
simply on sufferance of the rebels. Any day we may hear of the Mangwe
being blocked."
"I disagree with you entirely," came the decisive reply. "I hear, on
first-rate authority, that the coaches are running regularly, under
escort, and that the risk is very slight. I think that will be our best
plan. I suppose you will be joining one of the forces taking the field
as soon as possible, won't you, Mr Ames?"
If there was one thing that impressed itself upon John Ames when he
first entered, it was that this woman intended to make herself supremely
disagreeable; now he could not but own that she was thoroughly
succeeding, and, as we said, he had instinctively seen her bent. She
was, in fact, warning him off. The tone and manner, the obtrusive way
in which she was mapping out his own movements for him, stirred within
him a resentment he could hardly disguise, but her suggestion with
regard to disposing of those of Nidia struck him with a pang of dismay,
and that accentuated by considerations which will hereinafter appear.
Now he replied--
"My plans are so absolutely in the clouds that I can hardly say what I
may decide to do, Mrs Bateman. I might even decide to cut my
connection with this country. Take a run home to England, perhaps.
What if I were so fortunate as to come in as your escort?"
This he said out of sheer devilment, and he was rewarded, for if ever a
human countenance betrayed disgust, repressed wrath, baffled scheming,
all at once, that countenance belonged to Susie Bateman at that moment
Nidia came to the rescue.
"You have not told us your adventures yet," she said. "I want to know
all that happened since you left me. I only hope none of these tiresome
men will come in and interrupt."
_All_ that happened! He could not tell her all, for he had pledged his
word to the Umlimo. The latter had predicted that he would meet with
every temptation to violate that pledge, and here was one of them. No,
not even to her could he reveal all. But he told her of his fall from
the dwala, his unconsciousness, and, leaving out that strange and
startling experience, he went on to tell her what the reader has yet to
learn--how he awoke in the broad light of day to find himself surrounded
by armed natives, friendly to himself, however, who, of course, acting
under orders from the Umlimo, had escorted him to within safe distance
of Bulawayo.
Unconsciously their tones--he narrating, she commenting upon the
narrative--became soft. Their glances, too, seemed to say something
more than words. Both, in fact, were back again in imagination, roaming
the wilds together, alone. They seemed to lose themselves in the
recollection, oblivious of the presence of a third party.
The said third party, however, was by no means oblivious of them. Her
ear weighed every tone, her keen eye noted every glance, every
expression, and she grew proportionately venomous. Yet, looking at the
man, she could hardly wonder at Nidia's preference, and the
uncomfortable consciousness was forced upon her that whoever might be
the object of it, this man or any other, her own feeling would be just
the same--one of acute powerless jealousy, to wit, that any should ever
stand before herself in her darling's preferences.
"Don't go," said Nidia, putting forth a hand to detain him, for his
story had run on late, and he was rising with an apology. "Stay and
have dinner with us. It's siege fare, but even then a little more
varied than our precarious ration under the rocks--not that one did not
positively enjoy that at the time," she added with a laugh. He joined
in.
"Did you? I'm sure I did. Considering we were without any adjuncts,
your cooking was marvellous, Nidia."
"Nidia" again! Heavens! It had come to that, then! Susie Bateman's
hair nearly rose on end.
"Well, you shall see if it is any better now," went on the girl, airily.
"Oh, I do hope none of those stupid men will drop in. I want to have a
nice long talk."
"You haven't found them so stupid up till now, Nidia," struck in Susie
Bateman. "Why, there isn't an evening some of them haven't been in to
cheer us up."
This for the benefit of John Ames, to whom the speaker divined it might
in some way not be palatable. He for his part noted that she did not
second the invitation, but he had reached that stage when he really
didn't care to consider any Susie Bateman overmuch. Wherefore he
accepted. But the latter, for her part, was resolved to pursue the
campaign, and that vigorously, and to this end she never left them for
one moment alone together. Likewise was she rather oftener than
necessary very emphatic in referring to "Miss Commerell;" and when,
later on, some of "those stupid men" did drop in, her joy was unbounded,
equally so that they stayed late enough to leave John Ames no pretext
for sitting them out.
Resisting a pressing invite to finish up the evening at the Silver
Grill, the latter went back to his quarters in by no means an elated
frame of mind. Yet he had to some extent foreseen what had happened.
Nidia had been kind and cordial to him, but there it was--as one of a
crowd. There was no longer that sweet day-to-day companionship, they
two isolated from the world. We repeat that he had foreseen this
eventuality, yet now that it had arrived he liked it not one whit the
more; nor was there consolation in the thought that here was another
confirmation of the general accuracy of his forecasting faculty.
Already he began to realise the Umlimo's forecast: "There will come a
time when you will look back upon these rough wanderings of yours--the
two of you--as a dream of paradise." Of a truth that strange being
possessed the gift of prophecy to an extraordinary degree.
Now, too, and in the days that followed, he found subject-matter for
some very serious thinking, and one of the main subjects of his thoughts
was that of the Umlimo. No abstraction, then, was this cult, such as he
and others had supposed. Probably it had been originally, but he who
now used the title had seized the opportunity of turning it into a most
formidable weapon against his enemies, in furtherance of one of the most
ruthless, daring, and far-reaching schemes of vengeance which the mind
of man could ever conceive and foster; and the object of this terrible
monomania, the man's own nationality. John Ames was in a quandary.
Here he stood, possessed of most important knowledge, yet powerless to
divulge it; cognisant of a fact of most vital moment to those who
employed him, and whose pay he was receiving, yet tied and bound by his
pledged word.
There was one way out of this difficulty, and that way, not being an
unscrupulous man, he decided to take. He resigned his position in the
service of the Chartered Company. Even then his mind was by no means at
ease. There seemed still to be a duty to perform to humanity in
general. Were he to keep this knowledge to himself, how many lives
would be sacrificed which otherwise might have been saved? The capture
or death of the Umlimo--would it not be effectual to stop the rising?
and was he not in duty bound to further this end in the interests of his
fellow-countrymen? Conscience told him he might do this; for with all
the care and secrecy that had attended both his entrance to and exit
from the cave of mystery, he could not disguise from himself that, by
careful calculations as to time and locality, he might be able to find
the spot again. But then would rise before him his pledged word. He
had given it when in the power of this extraordinary being, when both
his own life and that of Nidia had lain in his hand, and he could not
now go back on it--no, not on any consideration. His countrymen must
take their chance. He had done all that could reasonably be expected of
him in resigning his position and its emoluments.
In doing this, however, it was pre-eminently a case of looking to virtue
as its own reward. Certainly it brought him no nearer the realisation
of his hopes; for so slender were his private means of existence, that
only by the exercise of the most rigid economy could he get along at
all, and the necessaries of life, be it remembered, were at famine
prices. Decidedly, indeed, his prospects were looking blacker and yet
more black.
And what of Nidia herself? As the days went by she seemed to draw no
nearer. Seldom now was he suffered to be alone with her, and then only
for a minute or so, when an ever-present feeling of _gene_ and flurry
would be there to mar the effect of any opportunity he might have had to
improve the occasion, and, indeed, he was beginning to regard matters as
hopeless. The persistent hostility of Mrs Bateman was ever on the
watch to defeat his every move; and as to this, even, there were times
when it seemed to him that Nidia was a trifle too acquiescent in the
latter's objectionable and scarcely concealed efforts at railing him
off. Then, too, Nidia was constantly surrounded by a knot of men, many
of them fine gallant-looking fellows, already distinguished for some
feat of intrepidity. There was the commander of the relief troop which
had brought her in, for instance, and Carbutt and Tarrant and several
others. He, John Ames, so far from being the one to bring her in, as he
used to pride himself would be the case, had merely imperilled her the
more by his own sheer incautious blundering. Sick at heart, he would
fain be lying where he had fallen--a battered, lifeless heap at the base
of the great _dwala_.
From this his thoughts would wander to the mysterious rock-dwelling, and
to him who inhabited it. Why, and with what object to serve, had the
Umlimo spared and tended him? That he might deliver his message to the
outside world? Well, he had done that. And then--and the very thought
sent a thrill as of needles and pins throughout his whole system. He
had delivered the one message, but what of the other enclosure, the one
which in some mysterious way concerned himself, the packet marked "B"?
He got it out and eyed it. The Umlimo's words were vividly imprinted in
his memory. "The time may come when you will see everything dark around
you, and there is no outlook, and life hardly worth prolonging. Then,
and then only, open it."
Solemn and weighty now did those words seem. Great Heaven! had not just
such a time come? Was not everything dark enough in all conscience, and
what outlook did life afford? Yes, he would do it. His heart beat fast
as he undid the sealed oilskin wrappings of the packet. What would it
contain, and how could such contents in any way conduce to his own
welfare? The last wrapping was off, revealing an enclosure. Only a
sealed letter, directed to the same names and address as that in the
packet marked "A"--a firm in Cape Town--of solicitors or agents, he
conjectured. One word of instructions accompanied this, one single
word--
"Forward."
"And that is all?" he said to himself, perhaps a trifle disappointedly,
turning the enclosure round and round. "Well, that's no trouble. I'll
go and do it."