Chapter Thirteen.Discomfiture.“Well, girlie, and what d’you think of our prospective guest now that you’ve had time to form an opinion?” said Ben Halse, a few days after their arrival at Ezulwini.“Candidly,” answered Verna, “I think him one of the nicest and pleasantest men I ever met.”“Orthenicest?”“Perhaps that.”“Well, that’s lucky, because it’ll be much jollier for you to have some one fresh to talk to for the next few weeks. Shall we get Harry Stride along too—on the principle of the more the merrier?”“N-no; I don’t think in this case the more would be a bit the merrier, rather the reverse.”“Same here. But I thought perhaps a young un about might be jollier for you while we old ’uns yarned,” answered her father, with a spice of lurking mischief.“‘Old ’uns?’” echoed Verna, raising her eyebrows. “Why, you don’t call Mr Denhamold?”“Oh, that’s drawn you, has it?” cried Ben. “Quite right, dear. He isn’t old.”Under her father’s straight gaze and quizzical laugh Verna could not for the life of her restrain a slight change of colour.“I shall have to give you such a pinch, dear, if you talk like that,” she said. “One that’ll hurt.”The two were standing among the rose-bushes in the garden of the Nodwengu Hotel. It was a lovely morning, though Alp-like masses of cloud in the distance gave promise of thunder. Ben Halse had been detained longer than he had reckoned on, but had found it unnecessary to go on to Durban. In a day or two he expected to return home. The time at Ezulwini went by pleasantly enough. The trader had several old friends in the place, and Verna was in request for tennis, here or there. So, too, was Denham, who had at once been made free of the ready friendliness of a small community.“Talking of Denham,” went on Ben Halse, puffing at a newly lighted pipe that would only half draw, “it’s a rum thing, Verna, that just as you had been wondering what sort of chap he was he should have turned up here.”“Yes, isn’t it? But I hope he won’t find it too rough with us,” she added somewhat anxiously.“Not he. Didn’t he say he’d knocked about in South America? I expect it’s a sight rougher in parts there than here. He’s a man who takes things as they come, rely upon it. And he doesn’t put on an atom of ‘side.’”Incidentally, “side” istheunpardonable sin among our colonial brethren, and rightly so.“No, that he certainly doesn’t,” assented Verna decisively. “Oh, I dare say it’ll be all right.”At the same time she was wondering as to this anxiety on behalf of this particular guest’s comfort. She had never done so on behalf of any other, had never dreamed of giving any such consideration a second thought. They must just take them as they found them, or, if not, stay away, was her rule.“Why, here comes Harry Stride,” said Ben, looking up. “He seems a bit cross by the way he’s walking. You can nearly always tell a man’s mood by the way he walks. Hallo, Harry!”The young prospector turned to join them, only too delighted. He was a handsome and manly-looking young fellow, as Verna was not slow to recognise as she noted his tall form coming down the garden path.“Come from the club, Harry?” said the trader.“Yes, I couldn’t stick it any longer. That man Denham’s there, laying down the law, as usual. I’m fed up with Denham. It seems that a man has only to come out from home with enough coin, and crowd on enough ‘side,’ and—”“But this one doesn’t crowd on ‘side,’” interrupted Verna quietly.The other stared.“Oh, I beg your pardon,” he said. “I forgot he was a friend of yours. I ought to have remembered.”“We most of us suffer from lapse of memory at times, Harry,” said Ben Halse kindly. “Often two people don’t take to each other, and that through no fault on either side. Now the sun’s over the yard-arm and I’m going in to wet the bosun’s whistle. You join?”“No, thanks, Mr Halse. It’s rather too early for me.”“Sure? Well, I’ll have to do it alone, then. So long.” And he strolled off, leaving the two young people together.“What a splendid chap your father is, Verna,” began Stride, for on the strength of his former “refusal,” with which we heard him acquaint his partner, she conceded him the use of her Christian name—at any rate, in private. “So kind and tactful.”Verna smiled. The encomium holding good of herself, she refrained from lecturing him on the subject of the vilified Denham. As a matter of fact, since Stride’s arrival she had been about with him far more than with the other, so that really there was no ground for the younger man’s jealous irritation—as yet. As yet? Exactly. But he, for his part, was looking ahead. Would she not be under the same roof for an indefinite time with the objectionable stranger? He knew by experience that it was impossible to be under the same roof for an indefinite time with Verna Halse and go forth again heart-whole. And this stranger seemed to be “coiny,” and, to give the devil his due, was a fine-looking fellow, poor Stride allowed, whereas he himself hardly had a “fiver” to his name, and lived mainly on the great god Hope. In fact, remembering this he was inclined to abandon the resolution we heard him express to his partner—trying his luck again. It was hopeless. He had better make up his mind to throw up the sponge. But Verna’s next words acted upon him like a spur.“We start for home to-morrow,” she said.“No!”“Yes.” She could not help smiling a little at his crestfallen look. All the woman within her accepted the tribute, and at the same time felt pitiful towards him.“Do you know why I came over here now, Verna?” he burst forth suddenly, impulsively. “It was because I heard you would be here, and I couldn’t help trying my luck again.”His animated face and eager eyes held her. Yet her reply was unequivocal, though kind.“Your luck is elsewhere, Harry,” she answered softly but firmly. “Try it. I don’t want to hurt you, but there is no other way out.”He began to plead. He was at low ebb now, but luck might change. Beyond that he had expectations; nothing very great, but substantial. Would she not wait? And a great deal more he poured forth, there in the golden sunshine among the roses, and the bees humming from flower to flower, and the flitting butterflies. But Verna’s answer was the same steady shake of the head.“It’s of no use, Harry,” she said. “I like you very much, as you know, but not in that way. People are drawn towards each other—in that way—or they are not. I mean, you were talking about luck changing, and so on, but if you were ever such a millionaire I’m afraid it would make no difference in that way. Now do you see?”He said nothing. He looked at her with misery in his eyes. Never had she seemed so all-alluring as here under the burning midday sun, so cool and fresh and self-possessed. And it was hopeless.“Well, I suppose I’m nothing but a born idiot,” he said, but not resentfully.Verna laid a hand upon his arm.“No, you’re not,” she said. “Only—your luck is elsewhere. You’ll find it some day sooner or later, and remember my words.”Then she looked at him in astonishment, for a scowl had come over his face. Following his glance she saw the reason. Denham was walking along the path which led to the house. He must have seen them, but looked as if he had not, and passed on without any attempt to join them. Verna’s astonishment was dispelled, but she made no remark as to it or its cause. Tactfully she led Harry Stride on to other topics, and his jealous eyes noted that she made no excuse to return to the house, in fact, she drew him off down a little-used path under the trees; nor was it until an hour after that they returned, a little late for lunch, Verna declaring, publicly, that they had had a most delightful walk.Yes, but for all that, she and Denham would be for weeks beneath the same roof, thought poor Stride. How lucky some men were, how unlucky others. This one apparently had not a care in the world, and now he was going to rob him, Stride, of all that made life worth living. How he hated him, sitting there beside Verna, chatting easily to her.“What’s the matter with your appetite, Mr Stride?” remarked the hostess, noticing that he sent everything away almost untouched.“Oh, I don’t know, Mrs Shelford. It’s too hot, I suppose. Or it may be that I tried a new concoction at the club that some fellow left them a recipe for. It’s supposed to be an appetiser, but I thought it vile. Heard any more about Shelford coming back, by the way?”“I’m expecting him next week.”“Sorry, because I shall miss seeing him. Am starting back to-morrow.”The other smiled faintly to herself. She thought she knew what was wrong with Stride’s appetite.“You’re making a short stay this time,” she said.Harry mumbled something about “rough on Robson being left alone,” which caused the smile to deepen.“How are the niggers out your way, Stride?” asked a man who had only arrived that morning.“Getting bumptious. A boy of ours came at me with a pick-handle the other day because I threatened to hammer him. Only threatened, mind! hadn’t started in to do it. I did it then, though—had to, you know.”“I should think so,” said the hostess emphatically. “They want all the hammering they can get.”“Rather. Well, we cleared this dev—er—this chap out. When he got to a safe distance he turned round and sang out that it didn’t matter now, all the whites in the country were going to be made meat of directly, and he and some others would take particular care ofus. I got out a rifle, but that didn’t scare him. He knew I daren’t fire.”“Quite right. Mustn’t take the law into your own hands, Stride,” said Inspector James humorously. “Only, if you do, see that you abolish thecorpus delicti.”“Talking ofcorpus delicti,” said the man who had first spoken. “Is there anything in this rumour that a white man has been killed in the Makanya forest? I heard that something had been found that pointed to it, but not the remains of the chap himself.”“You mustn’t swallow every yarn you hear,” said James.“We’ve been killed at least three times this year already on those terms,” said Ben Halse.“I suppose I shall be included in the fourth,” laughed Denham, alluding to his approaching visit.Stride, however, had suddenly grown silent.The Ezulwini Club was not large, as we have said; however, it would sometimes get lively at night, but not always. To-night it was lively, very; the circulation of whiskies-and-sodas brisk.“Anything more been heard about that yarn from the Makanya?” began the man who had sprung the subject at the hotel table. Others asked, “What yarn?”“Youought to know something of it, Hallam,” went on the first speaker, the point of the emphasis being that the man addressed was an official holding an important post.“Why?” curtly.“Because you’re in a position to.”This was all the other wanted.“Exactly,” he retorted. “But if I’m in a position to know, I’m in a position not to tell. See?”There was a laugh, in which the offender, who at first looked resentful, joined.“What’s the joke?” asked James, who at that moment entered.“Joke? Oh, Slingsby’s putting up idiotic questions,” answered Hallam shortly. “Here, Mabule,” to the Bar-keeper, “set ’em up again—you know every one’s pet poison. What’s yours, Mr Denham? You’ll join?”“Thanks. All right,” answered Denham, who had come to the conclusion that the hospitality of this club required a strong head, which, fortunately, he possessed. But Harry Stride, less fortunate, did not.“I can tell you all about that yarn,” he broke in. “Slingsby’s not so wide of the mark either. Some one has come to grief in the Makanya, and a white man too, for I picked up a saddle in the Bobi drift, and it had a bullet hole through the flap, an unmistakable bullet hole.”“You picked it up?” said some one, while Inspector James, who was “in the know,” muttered to himself, “Damned silly young ass!”Then followed a considerable amount of questionings and discussion. When was this, and where, and how would it have happened, and what had he done with the saddle, and so forth? Hallam, it might have been noticed, stood out of the discussion altogether. Perhaps he was “in the know” also; at any rate, as an official, he was instinctively averse to making public property of this kind of thing. But Harry Stride had got outside of quite as many whiskies-and-sodas as were good for him, and the effect, coming on top of his then state of frothy mental tension, was disastrous. Now he said—“You must have crossed just above the Bobi drift, Mr Denham. I hear you came through the Makanya that way.”“Yes, I shouldn’t wonder if it was somewhere about there,” answered Denham easily. “But, you see, I didn’t know any of the names of drifts and so on. I just ‘drifted’ on.”“Were you alone?” queried Stride, with a marked emphasis on the last word, and looking the other full in the face.There could be no possible mistake as to the meaning. A scarcely perceptible start ran through those present. This was getting too thick altogether, was the general opinion.“Very much so, except when I could get hold of some black chap for a guide,” answered Denham, easily again. “I suppose, though, in the light of your discovery I must consider myself jolly lucky to have come through with a whole skin.”The ease and tactfulness of the answer saved the situation. The tension relaxed. Stride had been having a little too much whisky, was the consensus of opinion. But, by a strange instinct, one, or even two there present were not prepared to swear to themselves that there could be nothing in it.
“Well, girlie, and what d’you think of our prospective guest now that you’ve had time to form an opinion?” said Ben Halse, a few days after their arrival at Ezulwini.
“Candidly,” answered Verna, “I think him one of the nicest and pleasantest men I ever met.”
“Orthenicest?”
“Perhaps that.”
“Well, that’s lucky, because it’ll be much jollier for you to have some one fresh to talk to for the next few weeks. Shall we get Harry Stride along too—on the principle of the more the merrier?”
“N-no; I don’t think in this case the more would be a bit the merrier, rather the reverse.”
“Same here. But I thought perhaps a young un about might be jollier for you while we old ’uns yarned,” answered her father, with a spice of lurking mischief.
“‘Old ’uns?’” echoed Verna, raising her eyebrows. “Why, you don’t call Mr Denhamold?”
“Oh, that’s drawn you, has it?” cried Ben. “Quite right, dear. He isn’t old.”
Under her father’s straight gaze and quizzical laugh Verna could not for the life of her restrain a slight change of colour.
“I shall have to give you such a pinch, dear, if you talk like that,” she said. “One that’ll hurt.”
The two were standing among the rose-bushes in the garden of the Nodwengu Hotel. It was a lovely morning, though Alp-like masses of cloud in the distance gave promise of thunder. Ben Halse had been detained longer than he had reckoned on, but had found it unnecessary to go on to Durban. In a day or two he expected to return home. The time at Ezulwini went by pleasantly enough. The trader had several old friends in the place, and Verna was in request for tennis, here or there. So, too, was Denham, who had at once been made free of the ready friendliness of a small community.
“Talking of Denham,” went on Ben Halse, puffing at a newly lighted pipe that would only half draw, “it’s a rum thing, Verna, that just as you had been wondering what sort of chap he was he should have turned up here.”
“Yes, isn’t it? But I hope he won’t find it too rough with us,” she added somewhat anxiously.
“Not he. Didn’t he say he’d knocked about in South America? I expect it’s a sight rougher in parts there than here. He’s a man who takes things as they come, rely upon it. And he doesn’t put on an atom of ‘side.’”
Incidentally, “side” istheunpardonable sin among our colonial brethren, and rightly so.
“No, that he certainly doesn’t,” assented Verna decisively. “Oh, I dare say it’ll be all right.”
At the same time she was wondering as to this anxiety on behalf of this particular guest’s comfort. She had never done so on behalf of any other, had never dreamed of giving any such consideration a second thought. They must just take them as they found them, or, if not, stay away, was her rule.
“Why, here comes Harry Stride,” said Ben, looking up. “He seems a bit cross by the way he’s walking. You can nearly always tell a man’s mood by the way he walks. Hallo, Harry!”
The young prospector turned to join them, only too delighted. He was a handsome and manly-looking young fellow, as Verna was not slow to recognise as she noted his tall form coming down the garden path.
“Come from the club, Harry?” said the trader.
“Yes, I couldn’t stick it any longer. That man Denham’s there, laying down the law, as usual. I’m fed up with Denham. It seems that a man has only to come out from home with enough coin, and crowd on enough ‘side,’ and—”
“But this one doesn’t crowd on ‘side,’” interrupted Verna quietly.
The other stared.
“Oh, I beg your pardon,” he said. “I forgot he was a friend of yours. I ought to have remembered.”
“We most of us suffer from lapse of memory at times, Harry,” said Ben Halse kindly. “Often two people don’t take to each other, and that through no fault on either side. Now the sun’s over the yard-arm and I’m going in to wet the bosun’s whistle. You join?”
“No, thanks, Mr Halse. It’s rather too early for me.”
“Sure? Well, I’ll have to do it alone, then. So long.” And he strolled off, leaving the two young people together.
“What a splendid chap your father is, Verna,” began Stride, for on the strength of his former “refusal,” with which we heard him acquaint his partner, she conceded him the use of her Christian name—at any rate, in private. “So kind and tactful.”
Verna smiled. The encomium holding good of herself, she refrained from lecturing him on the subject of the vilified Denham. As a matter of fact, since Stride’s arrival she had been about with him far more than with the other, so that really there was no ground for the younger man’s jealous irritation—as yet. As yet? Exactly. But he, for his part, was looking ahead. Would she not be under the same roof for an indefinite time with the objectionable stranger? He knew by experience that it was impossible to be under the same roof for an indefinite time with Verna Halse and go forth again heart-whole. And this stranger seemed to be “coiny,” and, to give the devil his due, was a fine-looking fellow, poor Stride allowed, whereas he himself hardly had a “fiver” to his name, and lived mainly on the great god Hope. In fact, remembering this he was inclined to abandon the resolution we heard him express to his partner—trying his luck again. It was hopeless. He had better make up his mind to throw up the sponge. But Verna’s next words acted upon him like a spur.
“We start for home to-morrow,” she said.
“No!”
“Yes.” She could not help smiling a little at his crestfallen look. All the woman within her accepted the tribute, and at the same time felt pitiful towards him.
“Do you know why I came over here now, Verna?” he burst forth suddenly, impulsively. “It was because I heard you would be here, and I couldn’t help trying my luck again.”
His animated face and eager eyes held her. Yet her reply was unequivocal, though kind.
“Your luck is elsewhere, Harry,” she answered softly but firmly. “Try it. I don’t want to hurt you, but there is no other way out.”
He began to plead. He was at low ebb now, but luck might change. Beyond that he had expectations; nothing very great, but substantial. Would she not wait? And a great deal more he poured forth, there in the golden sunshine among the roses, and the bees humming from flower to flower, and the flitting butterflies. But Verna’s answer was the same steady shake of the head.
“It’s of no use, Harry,” she said. “I like you very much, as you know, but not in that way. People are drawn towards each other—in that way—or they are not. I mean, you were talking about luck changing, and so on, but if you were ever such a millionaire I’m afraid it would make no difference in that way. Now do you see?”
He said nothing. He looked at her with misery in his eyes. Never had she seemed so all-alluring as here under the burning midday sun, so cool and fresh and self-possessed. And it was hopeless.
“Well, I suppose I’m nothing but a born idiot,” he said, but not resentfully.
Verna laid a hand upon his arm.
“No, you’re not,” she said. “Only—your luck is elsewhere. You’ll find it some day sooner or later, and remember my words.”
Then she looked at him in astonishment, for a scowl had come over his face. Following his glance she saw the reason. Denham was walking along the path which led to the house. He must have seen them, but looked as if he had not, and passed on without any attempt to join them. Verna’s astonishment was dispelled, but she made no remark as to it or its cause. Tactfully she led Harry Stride on to other topics, and his jealous eyes noted that she made no excuse to return to the house, in fact, she drew him off down a little-used path under the trees; nor was it until an hour after that they returned, a little late for lunch, Verna declaring, publicly, that they had had a most delightful walk.
Yes, but for all that, she and Denham would be for weeks beneath the same roof, thought poor Stride. How lucky some men were, how unlucky others. This one apparently had not a care in the world, and now he was going to rob him, Stride, of all that made life worth living. How he hated him, sitting there beside Verna, chatting easily to her.
“What’s the matter with your appetite, Mr Stride?” remarked the hostess, noticing that he sent everything away almost untouched.
“Oh, I don’t know, Mrs Shelford. It’s too hot, I suppose. Or it may be that I tried a new concoction at the club that some fellow left them a recipe for. It’s supposed to be an appetiser, but I thought it vile. Heard any more about Shelford coming back, by the way?”
“I’m expecting him next week.”
“Sorry, because I shall miss seeing him. Am starting back to-morrow.”
The other smiled faintly to herself. She thought she knew what was wrong with Stride’s appetite.
“You’re making a short stay this time,” she said.
Harry mumbled something about “rough on Robson being left alone,” which caused the smile to deepen.
“How are the niggers out your way, Stride?” asked a man who had only arrived that morning.
“Getting bumptious. A boy of ours came at me with a pick-handle the other day because I threatened to hammer him. Only threatened, mind! hadn’t started in to do it. I did it then, though—had to, you know.”
“I should think so,” said the hostess emphatically. “They want all the hammering they can get.”
“Rather. Well, we cleared this dev—er—this chap out. When he got to a safe distance he turned round and sang out that it didn’t matter now, all the whites in the country were going to be made meat of directly, and he and some others would take particular care ofus. I got out a rifle, but that didn’t scare him. He knew I daren’t fire.”
“Quite right. Mustn’t take the law into your own hands, Stride,” said Inspector James humorously. “Only, if you do, see that you abolish thecorpus delicti.”
“Talking ofcorpus delicti,” said the man who had first spoken. “Is there anything in this rumour that a white man has been killed in the Makanya forest? I heard that something had been found that pointed to it, but not the remains of the chap himself.”
“You mustn’t swallow every yarn you hear,” said James.
“We’ve been killed at least three times this year already on those terms,” said Ben Halse.
“I suppose I shall be included in the fourth,” laughed Denham, alluding to his approaching visit.
Stride, however, had suddenly grown silent.
The Ezulwini Club was not large, as we have said; however, it would sometimes get lively at night, but not always. To-night it was lively, very; the circulation of whiskies-and-sodas brisk.
“Anything more been heard about that yarn from the Makanya?” began the man who had sprung the subject at the hotel table. Others asked, “What yarn?”
“Youought to know something of it, Hallam,” went on the first speaker, the point of the emphasis being that the man addressed was an official holding an important post.
“Why?” curtly.
“Because you’re in a position to.”
This was all the other wanted.
“Exactly,” he retorted. “But if I’m in a position to know, I’m in a position not to tell. See?”
There was a laugh, in which the offender, who at first looked resentful, joined.
“What’s the joke?” asked James, who at that moment entered.
“Joke? Oh, Slingsby’s putting up idiotic questions,” answered Hallam shortly. “Here, Mabule,” to the Bar-keeper, “set ’em up again—you know every one’s pet poison. What’s yours, Mr Denham? You’ll join?”
“Thanks. All right,” answered Denham, who had come to the conclusion that the hospitality of this club required a strong head, which, fortunately, he possessed. But Harry Stride, less fortunate, did not.
“I can tell you all about that yarn,” he broke in. “Slingsby’s not so wide of the mark either. Some one has come to grief in the Makanya, and a white man too, for I picked up a saddle in the Bobi drift, and it had a bullet hole through the flap, an unmistakable bullet hole.”
“You picked it up?” said some one, while Inspector James, who was “in the know,” muttered to himself, “Damned silly young ass!”
Then followed a considerable amount of questionings and discussion. When was this, and where, and how would it have happened, and what had he done with the saddle, and so forth? Hallam, it might have been noticed, stood out of the discussion altogether. Perhaps he was “in the know” also; at any rate, as an official, he was instinctively averse to making public property of this kind of thing. But Harry Stride had got outside of quite as many whiskies-and-sodas as were good for him, and the effect, coming on top of his then state of frothy mental tension, was disastrous. Now he said—
“You must have crossed just above the Bobi drift, Mr Denham. I hear you came through the Makanya that way.”
“Yes, I shouldn’t wonder if it was somewhere about there,” answered Denham easily. “But, you see, I didn’t know any of the names of drifts and so on. I just ‘drifted’ on.”
“Were you alone?” queried Stride, with a marked emphasis on the last word, and looking the other full in the face.
There could be no possible mistake as to the meaning. A scarcely perceptible start ran through those present. This was getting too thick altogether, was the general opinion.
“Very much so, except when I could get hold of some black chap for a guide,” answered Denham, easily again. “I suppose, though, in the light of your discovery I must consider myself jolly lucky to have come through with a whole skin.”
The ease and tactfulness of the answer saved the situation. The tension relaxed. Stride had been having a little too much whisky, was the consensus of opinion. But, by a strange instinct, one, or even two there present were not prepared to swear to themselves that there could be nothing in it.
Chapter Fourteen.Forging the Blades.Malemba, the assegai-maker, sat plying his trade busily. Around him, interestedly watching the process, squatted several young Zulus.Malemba was an old man, and grizzled. He wore the ring, as well he might, for his trade was a profitable one, and he had wives and cattle galore. He had made assegais for the fighting men of Dingana and Mpande and Cetywayo, and as a skilled craftsman his repute was great. In those days his remuneration had been rendered in cattle or other kind, now it was in hard English money, and nothing else would satisfy him.Such blades he turned out, such splendid blades, keen as razors, the fluting in perfect symmetry—broad blades for close quarter, stabbing purposes; long, tapering ones, which would bring down a buck at forty yards if well thrown, or an enemy at the same distance. Why, Dingana had commanded them more than once, indeed when a more powerful but less skilful rival had sought his destruction that king had ordered the death of that rival instead. Cetywayo had even more keenly appreciated his skilful craftsmanship, so that Malemba might safely have put up a notice over his primitive forge: “Assegai-forger to the Royal Family.”His son, Umjozo, did the stick-making; and the binding of the blades, and the plaiting of the raw hide which should secure these within their hafts to last for all time, was a work of art in itself. By and by Birmingham-forged blades were imported, surreptitiously, by the traders; but the assegai turned out by old Malemba and his son never fell in reputation. It was to the imported article as the production of a crack firm of gun-makers would be to the cheap gun purchasable at six or seven pounds in an ironmonger’s shop. And yet it was forged mostly out of old scrap iron—cask-hoops, nuts, bolts, anything thrown away by the roadside, but carefully collected.For years Malemba’s trade had been in abeyance, if not practically extinct. There had been occasional rumours which threatened to call it forth again, but nothing had come of them. Well, it didn’t matter. He was a rich man, in short, a successful manufacturer who had made his pile and could afford to retire. And yet—and yet—the hard English money flowed into the country, and it represented everything that should render a man’s declining years comfortable and pleasant; and further, Malemba loved his craft, and took an artist’s pride in it; wherefore even his prosperity left something further to wish for.Then sporadic rumours began to creep about, and the atmosphere became charged. In the midst of which Malemba was sent for by a powerful chief, and offered such tempting inducements that he decided to open his forge again. And that chief was Sapazani.For Sapazani had wielded weapons of Malemba’s manufacture with his own hand, had wielded them to considerable purpose, too. He desired nothing so much as to wield them again.Sapazani, the ultra-conservative, had no use for assegais fabricated across the seas. He knew the balance and the temper of the home-made article to a nicety, especially that made by Mklemba. Wherefore he sent his invitation to the latter, and lo! under the noses of the civil officials and the half-dozen police who represented or carried out law and order in the district, Malemba’s forge was set up, and turned out its score of assegaisper diem. But the Lumisana district was a very wide, wild and, in parts, inaccessible tract, and in one of its most remote and inaccessible ranges was Malemba’s forge set up.“Ah, my sons,” said the old man, as he paused in his work to take snuff, while his assistants were arranging their primitive bellows. “Ah, my sons, I fear me that what I do is useless. What are these poor weapons beside the thunder and lightning wherewith the Amangisi and the Amabuna poured death upon each other from distances further than a man can see? How then will ye get near enough to use these?”“But, my father,” answered one of the spectators, “what if theizanusiputmútiupon us which render the white man’s bullets of no avail?”The old man chuckled, and his face crinkled up.“Will theizanusidoctor themselves and then stand up and let themselves be shot at?” he answered. “Will they do this?Ou!”This was a puzzler. His hearers were pretty sure they would do no such thing, yet so ingrained is this stale and flimsy superstition, that notwithstanding the numbers of times its utter fallacy had been proved, there is no getting it out of the native system.“I made blades for that Elephant who fell by ‘the stroke of Sopuza,’ when your fathers were children,” went on the old man, “Dingana, who scourged the Amabuna as a whip-lash scourges an ox, until he had to take flight when our nation was divided. But then the guns of the Amabuna shot but feebly and there was opportunity to run in and make an end. But now, when the white man’s bullets fall thick as the stones in the fiercest hail storm, what chance have ye with these?” pointing to a row of blades which awaited the binding. Whereby it will be seen that Malemba was progressive.Even this argument did not impress the group. They were inclined to make very light of it.“We will not allow them time to fire their bullets at all, my father,” laughed another of them. “We shall eat them up while they sleep.”“But will they sleep?” said the old man, his head on one side.“Will they not? They are asleep even now,” came the answer. “We need not even wait until night. They are scattered. We can take them at any time—when ‘the word’ is given.”“When ‘the word’ is given! Ah! ah! When the word is given.” And the old man chuckled darkly.“What means our father?”“What I mean? What if ‘the word’ is given too late? Or worse still—too soon?Ou!”“That will not be, my father. The chain is now forged, even as these blades. And the whites are scattered—scattered. They lie in our hands.”“Let them not lie there too long, or perchance they may spring out,” returned Malemba quizzically. “Well, I have nought to do with it, I who am old. I can but make you the weapons, it is for yourselves to wield them. And most of you have never learned the art. You were born too late.”A laugh went up at this. The old assegai-maker was looked upon with the greatest veneration. His wisdom was recognised and appreciated. But to these young bloods, fed up of late on conspiracy, and yearning to prove themselves worthy of their warrior ancestors, mere wisdom was at a slump just then.“I can but make you assegais,” repeated the old man. “I am too old to wield them.”And he resumed his work, crooning, to the strokes of the hammer, a snatch from an old war-song—“Nantsi ’ndaba—Indaba yemkonto!Ji-jji! Ji-jji!”(“That is the talk. The talk of the assegais.” “Ji-jji” is the stabbing hiss.)“These whites, they are not so powerful as we are told,” said one of the group. “I have been among them—have worked for them, where they dig the gold, the gold that is turned into round money that makes them rich—and us.Whau! They will do anything for money! Ha!”An evil laugh went round among his listeners.“Their women,” echoed another. “When ‘the word’ goes forth we shall take their women, when the rest are dead. It will make a pleasant change.”But the old assegai-maker went on crooning his old and appropriate war-song—“Nantsi ’ndaba—Indaba yemkonto.”“That is not much change, except for the worse,” said another. “Their women. A set of hut poles!” Whereat a great laugh went up from the gathering. “Sons of my father, I would not pay half a calf inlobolafor one white woman I have ever seen.”“Half a calf!Au! What of Izibu?” This, it will be remembered, was Verna Halse’s name.“Izibu?” returned the first speaker. “She is for one greater than we.”A gurgle of bass laughter ran through the group.“There are others at Ezulwini,” went on the one who had worked at the Rand. “Also at Malimati and Nongoma. It will be great to obtain wives we have paid nolobolafor. White wives! Ha! That will be a change indeed.”“You have got to get them first, my sons,” said the old assegai-maker. “I remember in the days of Dingana, when I was young, wives were plentiful even without payinglobola. That king had an open hand, and after an impi had returned from raiding the Amaswazi, or the Basutu, he would distribute the captive women with a free hand.Whau! I not only made assegais in those days, I wielded them.”“Baba!” (Father.)“Ye-bo! Twice did Dingana send me a wife, for he said that a man who could make assegais like mine deserved a share of what those assegais could procure. But that is now all a thing of bygone years. It is dead, dead and buried. We are the white man’s dogs to-day, and always shall be.”“And always shall be,Hau!” echoed his listeners. “And always shall be. My father, I think not.”“I am old, my sons, and I shall end my life peacefully,” answered the assegai-maker—“shall end my life as the white man’s dog. There are those among you who will end your lives in blood.”“Ha! And what then?” cried the man who had worked at the Rand. “We fight for our father and chief, and for—” and here he suddenly stopped. He would name no names, but all knew what was in his mind, and the same thought was in theirs. “I would I had lived in the time when we were a nation indeed, when our assegais bit deep and drank blood. My father lost his life in blood at Nodwengu, but he had washed his spear in the blood of the whites twice before that. And I, his son, I have to turn out and work at mending the white man’s roads.Hau!”“You will get all your chances of a death in blood—a glorious death in blood—presently, my sons,” said the old assegai-maker, his face puckered up quizzically. “The whites will take care of that.”“Au! I like not this talk,” growled one of the group, a much older man. “It is as if our father were putting badmútiupon the weapons he is making.”“Nomúti, good or bad, put I on them, Sekun-ya,” returned the old man tranquilly. “Themútiis for those who use them.”There was a laugh at this, and then the group fell to talking, and their topic was the former one—the capture of the white women in the coming rising. It was not a pleasant conversation. The man who had worked at the Rand was giving voluble impressions and even experiences of the great gold town, and his hearers listened delightedly. Such experiences, however, were not calculated to deepen their respect for the white man, or for his womenkind. The while the old assegai-maker worked on. At last he deposited the last blade to cool.“There, my sons. You will have as many as you can carry—when darkness falls,” he said. “Sapazani has an open hand, yet I would like to have what comes out of it before these are used, for thereafter nothing may there be to have. Say that unto the chief.”This they promised to do, amid much merriment. But the old sceptic did not controvert them; he merely reiterated—“Say it.”Suddenly a change came over the attitude of the group. They were suddenly silent, and sat tense and listening.“O’ Nongqai!” exclaimed more than one simultaneously.For to their keen ears was borne the far-away sound of horse-hoofs, and it was that of several horses. The inference was clear. A police patrol.The assegai-maker’s kraal was situated in a hollow on a densely bushed and rugged hillside. Even the smoke of his fire would hardly show above the tree-tops, yet it was just possible that the secret of its existence and of its whereabouts might have leaked out. But such a contingency had been provided against, and Malemba would have had ample time to conceal all traces of his craft by the time horses could make their way up that rugged hillside. Quickly the group had melted away and were speeding for a point whence they could overlook the country beneath.Three horsemen were advancing along the rough track down on the level, over two miles distant. The ordinary civilised gaze would have required glasses to make out their identity, but to the telescopic eyes of these savages that was plain enough. So plain that they could even distinguish the sergeant from the two troopers.One man was dispatched to warn Malemba, and the rest crouched there, and watched—watched with some anxiety. Were they coming up the hill? No, they held straight on, heading away in the direction of Ben Halse’s store. And the watchers laughed and chuckled among themselves.“O’ Nongqai! Three out of five here. Four there; ten elsewhere.Whau! We shall eat them up easily.”Nevertheless they continued to watch, even after the patrol was out of sight.
Malemba, the assegai-maker, sat plying his trade busily. Around him, interestedly watching the process, squatted several young Zulus.
Malemba was an old man, and grizzled. He wore the ring, as well he might, for his trade was a profitable one, and he had wives and cattle galore. He had made assegais for the fighting men of Dingana and Mpande and Cetywayo, and as a skilled craftsman his repute was great. In those days his remuneration had been rendered in cattle or other kind, now it was in hard English money, and nothing else would satisfy him.
Such blades he turned out, such splendid blades, keen as razors, the fluting in perfect symmetry—broad blades for close quarter, stabbing purposes; long, tapering ones, which would bring down a buck at forty yards if well thrown, or an enemy at the same distance. Why, Dingana had commanded them more than once, indeed when a more powerful but less skilful rival had sought his destruction that king had ordered the death of that rival instead. Cetywayo had even more keenly appreciated his skilful craftsmanship, so that Malemba might safely have put up a notice over his primitive forge: “Assegai-forger to the Royal Family.”
His son, Umjozo, did the stick-making; and the binding of the blades, and the plaiting of the raw hide which should secure these within their hafts to last for all time, was a work of art in itself. By and by Birmingham-forged blades were imported, surreptitiously, by the traders; but the assegai turned out by old Malemba and his son never fell in reputation. It was to the imported article as the production of a crack firm of gun-makers would be to the cheap gun purchasable at six or seven pounds in an ironmonger’s shop. And yet it was forged mostly out of old scrap iron—cask-hoops, nuts, bolts, anything thrown away by the roadside, but carefully collected.
For years Malemba’s trade had been in abeyance, if not practically extinct. There had been occasional rumours which threatened to call it forth again, but nothing had come of them. Well, it didn’t matter. He was a rich man, in short, a successful manufacturer who had made his pile and could afford to retire. And yet—and yet—the hard English money flowed into the country, and it represented everything that should render a man’s declining years comfortable and pleasant; and further, Malemba loved his craft, and took an artist’s pride in it; wherefore even his prosperity left something further to wish for.
Then sporadic rumours began to creep about, and the atmosphere became charged. In the midst of which Malemba was sent for by a powerful chief, and offered such tempting inducements that he decided to open his forge again. And that chief was Sapazani.
For Sapazani had wielded weapons of Malemba’s manufacture with his own hand, had wielded them to considerable purpose, too. He desired nothing so much as to wield them again.
Sapazani, the ultra-conservative, had no use for assegais fabricated across the seas. He knew the balance and the temper of the home-made article to a nicety, especially that made by Mklemba. Wherefore he sent his invitation to the latter, and lo! under the noses of the civil officials and the half-dozen police who represented or carried out law and order in the district, Malemba’s forge was set up, and turned out its score of assegaisper diem. But the Lumisana district was a very wide, wild and, in parts, inaccessible tract, and in one of its most remote and inaccessible ranges was Malemba’s forge set up.
“Ah, my sons,” said the old man, as he paused in his work to take snuff, while his assistants were arranging their primitive bellows. “Ah, my sons, I fear me that what I do is useless. What are these poor weapons beside the thunder and lightning wherewith the Amangisi and the Amabuna poured death upon each other from distances further than a man can see? How then will ye get near enough to use these?”
“But, my father,” answered one of the spectators, “what if theizanusiputmútiupon us which render the white man’s bullets of no avail?”
The old man chuckled, and his face crinkled up.
“Will theizanusidoctor themselves and then stand up and let themselves be shot at?” he answered. “Will they do this?Ou!”
This was a puzzler. His hearers were pretty sure they would do no such thing, yet so ingrained is this stale and flimsy superstition, that notwithstanding the numbers of times its utter fallacy had been proved, there is no getting it out of the native system.
“I made blades for that Elephant who fell by ‘the stroke of Sopuza,’ when your fathers were children,” went on the old man, “Dingana, who scourged the Amabuna as a whip-lash scourges an ox, until he had to take flight when our nation was divided. But then the guns of the Amabuna shot but feebly and there was opportunity to run in and make an end. But now, when the white man’s bullets fall thick as the stones in the fiercest hail storm, what chance have ye with these?” pointing to a row of blades which awaited the binding. Whereby it will be seen that Malemba was progressive.
Even this argument did not impress the group. They were inclined to make very light of it.
“We will not allow them time to fire their bullets at all, my father,” laughed another of them. “We shall eat them up while they sleep.”
“But will they sleep?” said the old man, his head on one side.
“Will they not? They are asleep even now,” came the answer. “We need not even wait until night. They are scattered. We can take them at any time—when ‘the word’ is given.”
“When ‘the word’ is given! Ah! ah! When the word is given.” And the old man chuckled darkly.
“What means our father?”
“What I mean? What if ‘the word’ is given too late? Or worse still—too soon?Ou!”
“That will not be, my father. The chain is now forged, even as these blades. And the whites are scattered—scattered. They lie in our hands.”
“Let them not lie there too long, or perchance they may spring out,” returned Malemba quizzically. “Well, I have nought to do with it, I who am old. I can but make you the weapons, it is for yourselves to wield them. And most of you have never learned the art. You were born too late.”
A laugh went up at this. The old assegai-maker was looked upon with the greatest veneration. His wisdom was recognised and appreciated. But to these young bloods, fed up of late on conspiracy, and yearning to prove themselves worthy of their warrior ancestors, mere wisdom was at a slump just then.
“I can but make you assegais,” repeated the old man. “I am too old to wield them.”
And he resumed his work, crooning, to the strokes of the hammer, a snatch from an old war-song—
“Nantsi ’ndaba—Indaba yemkonto!Ji-jji! Ji-jji!”
“Nantsi ’ndaba—Indaba yemkonto!Ji-jji! Ji-jji!”
(“That is the talk. The talk of the assegais.” “Ji-jji” is the stabbing hiss.)
“These whites, they are not so powerful as we are told,” said one of the group. “I have been among them—have worked for them, where they dig the gold, the gold that is turned into round money that makes them rich—and us.Whau! They will do anything for money! Ha!”
An evil laugh went round among his listeners.
“Their women,” echoed another. “When ‘the word’ goes forth we shall take their women, when the rest are dead. It will make a pleasant change.”
But the old assegai-maker went on crooning his old and appropriate war-song—
“Nantsi ’ndaba—Indaba yemkonto.”
“Nantsi ’ndaba—Indaba yemkonto.”
“That is not much change, except for the worse,” said another. “Their women. A set of hut poles!” Whereat a great laugh went up from the gathering. “Sons of my father, I would not pay half a calf inlobolafor one white woman I have ever seen.”
“Half a calf!Au! What of Izibu?” This, it will be remembered, was Verna Halse’s name.
“Izibu?” returned the first speaker. “She is for one greater than we.”
A gurgle of bass laughter ran through the group.
“There are others at Ezulwini,” went on the one who had worked at the Rand. “Also at Malimati and Nongoma. It will be great to obtain wives we have paid nolobolafor. White wives! Ha! That will be a change indeed.”
“You have got to get them first, my sons,” said the old assegai-maker. “I remember in the days of Dingana, when I was young, wives were plentiful even without payinglobola. That king had an open hand, and after an impi had returned from raiding the Amaswazi, or the Basutu, he would distribute the captive women with a free hand.Whau! I not only made assegais in those days, I wielded them.”
“Baba!” (Father.)
“Ye-bo! Twice did Dingana send me a wife, for he said that a man who could make assegais like mine deserved a share of what those assegais could procure. But that is now all a thing of bygone years. It is dead, dead and buried. We are the white man’s dogs to-day, and always shall be.”
“And always shall be,Hau!” echoed his listeners. “And always shall be. My father, I think not.”
“I am old, my sons, and I shall end my life peacefully,” answered the assegai-maker—“shall end my life as the white man’s dog. There are those among you who will end your lives in blood.”
“Ha! And what then?” cried the man who had worked at the Rand. “We fight for our father and chief, and for—” and here he suddenly stopped. He would name no names, but all knew what was in his mind, and the same thought was in theirs. “I would I had lived in the time when we were a nation indeed, when our assegais bit deep and drank blood. My father lost his life in blood at Nodwengu, but he had washed his spear in the blood of the whites twice before that. And I, his son, I have to turn out and work at mending the white man’s roads.Hau!”
“You will get all your chances of a death in blood—a glorious death in blood—presently, my sons,” said the old assegai-maker, his face puckered up quizzically. “The whites will take care of that.”
“Au! I like not this talk,” growled one of the group, a much older man. “It is as if our father were putting badmútiupon the weapons he is making.”
“Nomúti, good or bad, put I on them, Sekun-ya,” returned the old man tranquilly. “Themútiis for those who use them.”
There was a laugh at this, and then the group fell to talking, and their topic was the former one—the capture of the white women in the coming rising. It was not a pleasant conversation. The man who had worked at the Rand was giving voluble impressions and even experiences of the great gold town, and his hearers listened delightedly. Such experiences, however, were not calculated to deepen their respect for the white man, or for his womenkind. The while the old assegai-maker worked on. At last he deposited the last blade to cool.
“There, my sons. You will have as many as you can carry—when darkness falls,” he said. “Sapazani has an open hand, yet I would like to have what comes out of it before these are used, for thereafter nothing may there be to have. Say that unto the chief.”
This they promised to do, amid much merriment. But the old sceptic did not controvert them; he merely reiterated—
“Say it.”
Suddenly a change came over the attitude of the group. They were suddenly silent, and sat tense and listening.
“O’ Nongqai!” exclaimed more than one simultaneously.
For to their keen ears was borne the far-away sound of horse-hoofs, and it was that of several horses. The inference was clear. A police patrol.
The assegai-maker’s kraal was situated in a hollow on a densely bushed and rugged hillside. Even the smoke of his fire would hardly show above the tree-tops, yet it was just possible that the secret of its existence and of its whereabouts might have leaked out. But such a contingency had been provided against, and Malemba would have had ample time to conceal all traces of his craft by the time horses could make their way up that rugged hillside. Quickly the group had melted away and were speeding for a point whence they could overlook the country beneath.
Three horsemen were advancing along the rough track down on the level, over two miles distant. The ordinary civilised gaze would have required glasses to make out their identity, but to the telescopic eyes of these savages that was plain enough. So plain that they could even distinguish the sergeant from the two troopers.
One man was dispatched to warn Malemba, and the rest crouched there, and watched—watched with some anxiety. Were they coming up the hill? No, they held straight on, heading away in the direction of Ben Halse’s store. And the watchers laughed and chuckled among themselves.
“O’ Nongqai! Three out of five here. Four there; ten elsewhere.Whau! We shall eat them up easily.”
Nevertheless they continued to watch, even after the patrol was out of sight.
Chapter Fifteen.The First Day.They were inspecting the great koodoo head in Ben Halse’s yard. Denham was delighted.“Why, it’s perfect,” he declared. “Perfect, simply perfect.”“Yes, I believe it’s an absolute record. But we’ll have to be a bit careful how we get it away; however, there’s no hurry about that.”“There’s an old saying, you know, Mr Halse,” said Denham: “‘short accounts make long friends.’ So you won’t mind taking over this now,” and he handed the other a folded cheque.Ben Halse opened it, and started. Then he handed it back.“It’s too much,” he said. “The head’s worth a good deal, but not as much as that. No.”“It’s worth it all to me,” was the answer. “Well, then, name your own figure.”Ben did so.“Right,” said Denham, “you shall have your way. But I’d rather have had mine,” he laughed.“A very common complaint,” answered his host. “What would you like to do this morning? In the afternoon Verna could take you down into the forest, or anywhere else you like. She’s busy this morning, and I have things to see to.”Denham declared that that would be a delightful programme. He could get through the morning easily enough, he said. They must on no account make a stranger of him, or put themselves out in any way. The while he had been keeping one ear open for Verna’s voice, which came to them, raised in snatches of song, from the other side of the house.It was the day after his arrival at the store. They had all travelled up together, having borrowed some extra harness and inspanned Denham’s horse as “unicorn,” so that the extra weight didn’t count so much, and he was conscious of having thoroughly enjoyed the journey. Nor would he try to disguise to himself the fact that this result was largely due to the presence of Ben Halse’s daughter.It had taken all of three days; two nights being got through in such scanty accommodation as could be obtained at lonely wayside stores similar to that of Ben himself, though infinitely rougher, and the third night camping in the veldt; during which, by the bye, Denham had started out of his sleep declaring that a whacking big spider had just run over his face, which was more than likely the case. But through heat and dust and discomfort Verna’s spirits never flagged, and her cheerfulness remained unruffled. Now a three days’ journey under such circumstances is a pretty good test of character, and her attitude throughout was thoroughly appreciated by her fellow-traveller and guest. She was unique, he decided, unique and splendid.He found her now engaged upon exactly the same homely occupation as that on which she was engaged on the occasion of our first making her acquaintance—bread-making, to wit.“Useful as always, Miss Halse,” he remarked. “Why, I don’t know how we should have got on coming along but for you.”She flashed a smile up at him.“How did you get on without me when you came along through the Makanya bush?” she said mischievously.If there was that in the allusion that brought a change into Denham’s face it was only momentary.“I had to then, worse luck,” he laughed. “But I managed it somehow.” Then they both laughed—easily, happily.Denham, looking down at her as she sat there, came to the conclusion that she was more charming than ever. The sheen of her abundant brown hair, carelessly but becomingly coiled, the dark semicircle of the eyelashes on the cheek, the strong, supple figure so splendidly outlined, the movement of the shapely arms as she kneaded the dough—why, this homely performance was a poem in itself. Then the staging—the fall of wooded slope to a deep down vista of plain below—dim in the noontide haze where on the right a darker line in contrast to the open green showed part of the great mysterious forest tract. Even the utterly unaesthetic dwelling-house hardly seemed to spoil the picture.“Well, and what is the subject of all this profound thought?” she asked suddenly, with a quick, bright, upward glance.He started, looked at her straight, and told her. Yet, somehow, he did it in such a way as to avoid banality, possibly because so naturally.“What did I tell you once before?” she said, but she changed colour ever so slightly. “That you must not pay me compliments. They don’t come well from you—I mean they are too petty.”It might have been his turn to answer with a “tu quoque.” But he did not. What he said was—“I was answering your question. I was describing the picture I had seen in my own mind. How could I have left out the principal figure in it?”Again she glanced up at him, was about to speak, then seemed to change her mind. If her personality had struck Denham as unique, the very same thing seemed to have struck her as regarded himself. The intellectual face, the tall, fine frame, the easy, cultured manner, half-a-score other things about him—all these rendered him a personality clean outside her own experience. Whereby it will be seen that the atmosphere around Ben Halse’s remote and primitive dwelling was, even at this early stage, charged with abundant potentialities.“And ‘the principal figure’ in it is all floury and generally dishevelled,” she said at last, with a light laugh.“That makes the charm of the study.”“Do you paint, then, Mr Denham, in addition to your other scientific accomplishments?”“No; I thought I could dabble in it at one time, but had too many serious irons in the fire. Still, I’m given to drawing mental pictures, and this is one of them, that’s all. By the way, your father was saying you were going to be kind enough to act as my guide this afternoon. Is that so?”“Oh yes. We were talking about it before you came out. Where would you like to go?”“That I leave entirely to you. By the way, yes. Will you show me the spot where you shot the record head?”“It’s rather far, I’m afraid, for one afternoon. However, we’ll see. Well, I’m through with this job now. I’ll put it inside. Look! there are some people coming to the store, I expect. Yes, they are. Come and see me shop-keep, Mr Denham.”She took the tin of dough into the kitchen, and returned in a second with some keys.Two women and a youth were approaching. Verna unlocked the door, and, as he entered, Denham looked curiously around and above at the multifold variety of trade goods. The atmosphere was inclined to be musty, and, by virtue of the nature of some of the things, not over-fragrant.The natives entered, rather shyly, giving the salute. They stared curiously at Denham. His fine physique and general bearing impressed them. There could only be one opinion as to what had brought him there. He had come to offer U’ Benlobolafor theInkosazana. But they would make a fine pair! This they told each other afterwards.“Well, what is wanted?” Verna asked.“Tobacco. Smoking tobacco such as white people use,” answered one of the women.“Sapazani’s ‘children’ indulging in white men’s customs? Ah, ah!” answered Verna, with a shake of the head. The woman looked somewhat subdued, and managed to convey that it was a thing they did not wish talked about.The while Denham was taking in the whole scene, keenly interested. Never had the liquid Zulu sounded so melodious as when it flowed from Verna’s lips, he decided to himself. Then other things were requisitioned. Yards of calico were unfolded, and critically examined by the intending purchaser. He watched the deftness and patience with which Verna handled the things and bore with the intending purchasers, who would look at the articles and then go and squat in a corner of the room and talk over the transaction with each other in an undertone. The boy was looking at him sideways, with staring eyeballs.“That’s their way,” said Verna, with a merry glance at him. “You can’t rush these people. If you did you’d lose all your trade.”“By Jove! but I never thought there could be so much poetry in handing things out over a counter,” he burst forth.“Thanks. But remember what I told you just now, also on a former occasion,” she answered, her eyes sparkling with fun. “You must not pay me compliments, especially ironical ones. I am only an up-country trader’s daughter, who helps her father, up to her little best.”“Upon my conscience there was nothing ironical about it,” he replied somewhat vehemently, “It was dead, sober earnest.”She smiled again and nodded; then turning to the native women suggested they had been a good while making up their minds. They took the hint, and the deal was concluded.Denham, the while, was in something of a maze. Most girls situated as she was would have rather tried to keep him off witnessing this phase of their everyday home life—in other words, would have tried all they knew to “sink the shop.” This one, on the contrary, had actually invited him to witness it, just as she might have invited him to come and have a look at the garden.“Well, Mr Denham,” said Verna, as the red-painted top-knots of the two women vanished round the doorpost, “and what do you think of me in my capacity of shop-girl?”“If I were to tell you I should lay myself open to another rebuke,” he answered, with a laugh in his eyes.“Have I been so hard on you as that? I didn’t mean to be. By the way, you are not smoking. Try some of this,” reaching down an open bag of Magaliesberg from a shelf.“Thanks. I say, what’s this?” looking at the bullet hole in the wall.“Oh, that’s nothing,” she answered rather shamefacedly. “At least, you heard all about it down at Ezulwini. Anyway, it’s nothing to brag about. Let’s go outside.”“Certainly,” acquiesced Denham, grasping, with ready tact, that she did not wish to pursue the subject. And he was right. Even as in the matter of shooting the koodoo she shrank from dwelling upon anything that would tend to set her forth in his eyes as a strong, self-reliant Amazon type of woman; more so now than then.“I wish I was more like other girls, Mr Denham,” she broke forth with that winning, breezy naturalness which had so struck him. “If I were musical, for instance, and all that, I could play to you of an evening. I’m afraid you must find the evenings so slow.”“I’ve only had one evening here, and I didn’t find that a bit slow,” he answered. “Incidentally, the other evenings we have spent together have been anything but slow.”“Together!” There was something in the word, and the way in which he said it, that struck curiously upon her ears.“I’m glad of that,” she answered. “One always thinks that anybody out from England, accustomed to the livelier sides of life, must become hideously bored in an out-of-the-way wilderness such as this really is.”“It’s a very beautiful wilderness, anyway,” he said, looking out over the great panorama of mountain and plain and forest, extending over fifty miles, and misty in the heat of the unclouded sunlight. “But that’s where you make the mistake. The very contrast is so infinitely restful. Not only restful, but invigorating. Slow! Think, for instance, of all the vividly interesting stories and reminiscences your father has been telling me since we first met, and especially during our journey here. Why, they make this wonderful country simply glow with life—and such life! The life which puts those ‘livelier sides of life’ you were just quoting into a dull, drab groove of monotony. No, don’t for a moment imagine there is the slightest possibility of a chance of my feeling bored.”There was a vehemence, an intensity, about this deliverance that rather astonished Verna. This man had another side, then? She had read him wrong, or at least not quite right, when she had just sized him up as an even, prosperous man of the world, one whose self-possession nothing could ruffle, a charming companion, but one past anything in the shape of a great enthusiasm. Now she began to realise that she had not seen every side of him, and the discovery in no way diminished her interest in him.“Well, that rather relieves me, from the responsibility point of view, at any rate,” she answered, flashing up at him one of those bright smiles of hers. “So now, on the strength of it, I’ll get you to excuse me. There’s a lot to do inside. But we’ll have such a jolly time of it this afternoon.” And with a bright nod she left him.Denham lit a fresh pipe, and strolled out a little way from the house. It seemed to him that something had been withdrawn. He missed Verna’s presence and gracious companionship. To the full consciousness of this he awoke with a start. He was too old and experienced to do anything that might seem like “hanging around” her, wherefore he took a walk. But as he looked out upon the panorama spread out in front and around, revelled in the glow of the ambient air, even found something to interest his naturalist soul, in the bushes or grass, he was still thinking—well, he had better not think. Yet, why should he not? The question pressed itself practically home to him. He was his own master, and in every way in a position to please himself. Why should he not do so?What a rare “find” this was! he told himself, his thoughts running on Verna. And if he missed her presence because she had been obliged to withdraw for an hour or so, what did it mean? A phrase ran uneasily through his mind, “Can’t bear her out of his sight.” And this was the first day of his arrival. No, assuredly it was time to pull himself together. And then, her brightly uttered words of parting, “We’ll have such a jolly time of it this afternoon.” Well, it should be no fault of his if they did not.
They were inspecting the great koodoo head in Ben Halse’s yard. Denham was delighted.
“Why, it’s perfect,” he declared. “Perfect, simply perfect.”
“Yes, I believe it’s an absolute record. But we’ll have to be a bit careful how we get it away; however, there’s no hurry about that.”
“There’s an old saying, you know, Mr Halse,” said Denham: “‘short accounts make long friends.’ So you won’t mind taking over this now,” and he handed the other a folded cheque.
Ben Halse opened it, and started. Then he handed it back.
“It’s too much,” he said. “The head’s worth a good deal, but not as much as that. No.”
“It’s worth it all to me,” was the answer. “Well, then, name your own figure.”
Ben did so.
“Right,” said Denham, “you shall have your way. But I’d rather have had mine,” he laughed.
“A very common complaint,” answered his host. “What would you like to do this morning? In the afternoon Verna could take you down into the forest, or anywhere else you like. She’s busy this morning, and I have things to see to.”
Denham declared that that would be a delightful programme. He could get through the morning easily enough, he said. They must on no account make a stranger of him, or put themselves out in any way. The while he had been keeping one ear open for Verna’s voice, which came to them, raised in snatches of song, from the other side of the house.
It was the day after his arrival at the store. They had all travelled up together, having borrowed some extra harness and inspanned Denham’s horse as “unicorn,” so that the extra weight didn’t count so much, and he was conscious of having thoroughly enjoyed the journey. Nor would he try to disguise to himself the fact that this result was largely due to the presence of Ben Halse’s daughter.
It had taken all of three days; two nights being got through in such scanty accommodation as could be obtained at lonely wayside stores similar to that of Ben himself, though infinitely rougher, and the third night camping in the veldt; during which, by the bye, Denham had started out of his sleep declaring that a whacking big spider had just run over his face, which was more than likely the case. But through heat and dust and discomfort Verna’s spirits never flagged, and her cheerfulness remained unruffled. Now a three days’ journey under such circumstances is a pretty good test of character, and her attitude throughout was thoroughly appreciated by her fellow-traveller and guest. She was unique, he decided, unique and splendid.
He found her now engaged upon exactly the same homely occupation as that on which she was engaged on the occasion of our first making her acquaintance—bread-making, to wit.
“Useful as always, Miss Halse,” he remarked. “Why, I don’t know how we should have got on coming along but for you.”
She flashed a smile up at him.
“How did you get on without me when you came along through the Makanya bush?” she said mischievously.
If there was that in the allusion that brought a change into Denham’s face it was only momentary.
“I had to then, worse luck,” he laughed. “But I managed it somehow.” Then they both laughed—easily, happily.
Denham, looking down at her as she sat there, came to the conclusion that she was more charming than ever. The sheen of her abundant brown hair, carelessly but becomingly coiled, the dark semicircle of the eyelashes on the cheek, the strong, supple figure so splendidly outlined, the movement of the shapely arms as she kneaded the dough—why, this homely performance was a poem in itself. Then the staging—the fall of wooded slope to a deep down vista of plain below—dim in the noontide haze where on the right a darker line in contrast to the open green showed part of the great mysterious forest tract. Even the utterly unaesthetic dwelling-house hardly seemed to spoil the picture.
“Well, and what is the subject of all this profound thought?” she asked suddenly, with a quick, bright, upward glance.
He started, looked at her straight, and told her. Yet, somehow, he did it in such a way as to avoid banality, possibly because so naturally.
“What did I tell you once before?” she said, but she changed colour ever so slightly. “That you must not pay me compliments. They don’t come well from you—I mean they are too petty.”
It might have been his turn to answer with a “tu quoque.” But he did not. What he said was—
“I was answering your question. I was describing the picture I had seen in my own mind. How could I have left out the principal figure in it?”
Again she glanced up at him, was about to speak, then seemed to change her mind. If her personality had struck Denham as unique, the very same thing seemed to have struck her as regarded himself. The intellectual face, the tall, fine frame, the easy, cultured manner, half-a-score other things about him—all these rendered him a personality clean outside her own experience. Whereby it will be seen that the atmosphere around Ben Halse’s remote and primitive dwelling was, even at this early stage, charged with abundant potentialities.
“And ‘the principal figure’ in it is all floury and generally dishevelled,” she said at last, with a light laugh.
“That makes the charm of the study.”
“Do you paint, then, Mr Denham, in addition to your other scientific accomplishments?”
“No; I thought I could dabble in it at one time, but had too many serious irons in the fire. Still, I’m given to drawing mental pictures, and this is one of them, that’s all. By the way, your father was saying you were going to be kind enough to act as my guide this afternoon. Is that so?”
“Oh yes. We were talking about it before you came out. Where would you like to go?”
“That I leave entirely to you. By the way, yes. Will you show me the spot where you shot the record head?”
“It’s rather far, I’m afraid, for one afternoon. However, we’ll see. Well, I’m through with this job now. I’ll put it inside. Look! there are some people coming to the store, I expect. Yes, they are. Come and see me shop-keep, Mr Denham.”
She took the tin of dough into the kitchen, and returned in a second with some keys.
Two women and a youth were approaching. Verna unlocked the door, and, as he entered, Denham looked curiously around and above at the multifold variety of trade goods. The atmosphere was inclined to be musty, and, by virtue of the nature of some of the things, not over-fragrant.
The natives entered, rather shyly, giving the salute. They stared curiously at Denham. His fine physique and general bearing impressed them. There could only be one opinion as to what had brought him there. He had come to offer U’ Benlobolafor theInkosazana. But they would make a fine pair! This they told each other afterwards.
“Well, what is wanted?” Verna asked.
“Tobacco. Smoking tobacco such as white people use,” answered one of the women.
“Sapazani’s ‘children’ indulging in white men’s customs? Ah, ah!” answered Verna, with a shake of the head. The woman looked somewhat subdued, and managed to convey that it was a thing they did not wish talked about.
The while Denham was taking in the whole scene, keenly interested. Never had the liquid Zulu sounded so melodious as when it flowed from Verna’s lips, he decided to himself. Then other things were requisitioned. Yards of calico were unfolded, and critically examined by the intending purchaser. He watched the deftness and patience with which Verna handled the things and bore with the intending purchasers, who would look at the articles and then go and squat in a corner of the room and talk over the transaction with each other in an undertone. The boy was looking at him sideways, with staring eyeballs.
“That’s their way,” said Verna, with a merry glance at him. “You can’t rush these people. If you did you’d lose all your trade.”
“By Jove! but I never thought there could be so much poetry in handing things out over a counter,” he burst forth.
“Thanks. But remember what I told you just now, also on a former occasion,” she answered, her eyes sparkling with fun. “You must not pay me compliments, especially ironical ones. I am only an up-country trader’s daughter, who helps her father, up to her little best.”
“Upon my conscience there was nothing ironical about it,” he replied somewhat vehemently, “It was dead, sober earnest.”
She smiled again and nodded; then turning to the native women suggested they had been a good while making up their minds. They took the hint, and the deal was concluded.
Denham, the while, was in something of a maze. Most girls situated as she was would have rather tried to keep him off witnessing this phase of their everyday home life—in other words, would have tried all they knew to “sink the shop.” This one, on the contrary, had actually invited him to witness it, just as she might have invited him to come and have a look at the garden.
“Well, Mr Denham,” said Verna, as the red-painted top-knots of the two women vanished round the doorpost, “and what do you think of me in my capacity of shop-girl?”
“If I were to tell you I should lay myself open to another rebuke,” he answered, with a laugh in his eyes.
“Have I been so hard on you as that? I didn’t mean to be. By the way, you are not smoking. Try some of this,” reaching down an open bag of Magaliesberg from a shelf.
“Thanks. I say, what’s this?” looking at the bullet hole in the wall.
“Oh, that’s nothing,” she answered rather shamefacedly. “At least, you heard all about it down at Ezulwini. Anyway, it’s nothing to brag about. Let’s go outside.”
“Certainly,” acquiesced Denham, grasping, with ready tact, that she did not wish to pursue the subject. And he was right. Even as in the matter of shooting the koodoo she shrank from dwelling upon anything that would tend to set her forth in his eyes as a strong, self-reliant Amazon type of woman; more so now than then.
“I wish I was more like other girls, Mr Denham,” she broke forth with that winning, breezy naturalness which had so struck him. “If I were musical, for instance, and all that, I could play to you of an evening. I’m afraid you must find the evenings so slow.”
“I’ve only had one evening here, and I didn’t find that a bit slow,” he answered. “Incidentally, the other evenings we have spent together have been anything but slow.”
“Together!” There was something in the word, and the way in which he said it, that struck curiously upon her ears.
“I’m glad of that,” she answered. “One always thinks that anybody out from England, accustomed to the livelier sides of life, must become hideously bored in an out-of-the-way wilderness such as this really is.”
“It’s a very beautiful wilderness, anyway,” he said, looking out over the great panorama of mountain and plain and forest, extending over fifty miles, and misty in the heat of the unclouded sunlight. “But that’s where you make the mistake. The very contrast is so infinitely restful. Not only restful, but invigorating. Slow! Think, for instance, of all the vividly interesting stories and reminiscences your father has been telling me since we first met, and especially during our journey here. Why, they make this wonderful country simply glow with life—and such life! The life which puts those ‘livelier sides of life’ you were just quoting into a dull, drab groove of monotony. No, don’t for a moment imagine there is the slightest possibility of a chance of my feeling bored.”
There was a vehemence, an intensity, about this deliverance that rather astonished Verna. This man had another side, then? She had read him wrong, or at least not quite right, when she had just sized him up as an even, prosperous man of the world, one whose self-possession nothing could ruffle, a charming companion, but one past anything in the shape of a great enthusiasm. Now she began to realise that she had not seen every side of him, and the discovery in no way diminished her interest in him.
“Well, that rather relieves me, from the responsibility point of view, at any rate,” she answered, flashing up at him one of those bright smiles of hers. “So now, on the strength of it, I’ll get you to excuse me. There’s a lot to do inside. But we’ll have such a jolly time of it this afternoon.” And with a bright nod she left him.
Denham lit a fresh pipe, and strolled out a little way from the house. It seemed to him that something had been withdrawn. He missed Verna’s presence and gracious companionship. To the full consciousness of this he awoke with a start. He was too old and experienced to do anything that might seem like “hanging around” her, wherefore he took a walk. But as he looked out upon the panorama spread out in front and around, revelled in the glow of the ambient air, even found something to interest his naturalist soul, in the bushes or grass, he was still thinking—well, he had better not think. Yet, why should he not? The question pressed itself practically home to him. He was his own master, and in every way in a position to please himself. Why should he not do so?
What a rare “find” this was! he told himself, his thoughts running on Verna. And if he missed her presence because she had been obliged to withdraw for an hour or so, what did it mean? A phrase ran uneasily through his mind, “Can’t bear her out of his sight.” And this was the first day of his arrival. No, assuredly it was time to pull himself together. And then, her brightly uttered words of parting, “We’ll have such a jolly time of it this afternoon.” Well, it should be no fault of his if they did not.
Chapter Sixteen.Drawing in.“Mr Denham, I think we’ll change the programme, shall we?” said Verna, as she came out, got up for the ride. “Instead of going down we’ll go up, if you don’t mind. Do you?”“Why, of course not. I am in your hands entirely.”The horses were waiting, saddled, the boy walking them up and down. Verna was in a sort of khaki-coloured riding habit, with a hat to match. In it was a subtle combination of the fashionable and civilised build with the congruous costume of the locality and surroundings that sat her altogether charmingly.“All right, then. I’ll take you where you will get a beautiful view; and the road is delightful. If you feel like getting off to look for a specimen, do so at any time. Now, will you put me into that saddle?”The smile she beamed at him recalled him to himself. The naked truth of it was that Denham had about shed himself, as a snake sheds its skin. He was a hard-headed man of the world—a keen, successful financier, yet by now he was dimly realising that he scarcely knew himself. Experiences came back to him—crowded up galore; yet it seemed to be reserved for him that he should meet, in the wilds of Zululand—and the wilds of Zululand can be very wild indeed, even up to date—an experience utterly outside of all that had gone before.“Thanks,” she said, gathering up her reins. “Now we must go exactly where we like, and do exactly what we like. We are going to make an easy afternoon of it.”“Certainly,” he answered. “I am very much in luck’s way. I never reckoned on being taken so much care of.”“No? Well, you shall be. But I don’t think you require much taking care of after having picked your way all through the Makanya bush alone.”That allusion again. Denham felt a droop all of a sudden. Yet it was only momentary. He had been alone with Verna practically the whole day. Ben Halse had not returned for the midday dinner, and they had got through ità deux. Thus together alone, the situation had set him thinking a great deal. In fancy he had pictured her sitting opposite him, as in that plain, rather primitive room, for any time, and the idea was pleasing.Their way lay upward, the track so narrow in parts that they had to ride one behind the other, an arrangement fatal to conversation, for you cannot conveniently shout back over your shoulder. Now it led through some deep kloof, where the tall forest trees shut out the light of the sun, and the green depths were stirred by mysterious noises; now up a rocky steep, but ever at a foot’s pace. Verna was leading the way, and the other was admiring with all his might the poise of her splendid figure, sitting her horse so perfectly and gracefully; and though the surrounding bush was teeming with all sorts of strange life, dear to the naturalist, this one, for once, forgot to notice it, so engrossed was he in the contemplation of his guide.“This is where I wanted to bring you,” said the latter at last. “We’ll hitch up the horses here and walk the rest of the path.”They had emerged upon an open gully, high up on the range. A short climb, and they gained a great natural window in a tooth-shaped rock which overlooked a vast, tumbled mass of crag and valley and crater. Forest and open country lay spread out beneath, extending away in billowy roll for miles upon miles into dim, misty distance.“By Jove! but it’s splendid!” cried Denham, as he gazed out over this. “I vote we sit here a bit and look at it.”“I thought you’d like it,” she answered. “Yes, let’s have a rest.”They sat down within the great rock-window, drinking in the splendid air, the world, as it were, at their feet. But somehow, and all of a sudden, a constraint, a silence, seemed to have fallen between them. It was perfectly unaccountable on any ground whatever, still it was there all the same. Could it be that by some mysterious phase of telepathy both were thinking the same thing? and that each knew that the other knew it? For there existed a tremendous mutual “draw” between these two, and yet they had only known each other a few days.Then by some equally sudden and unaccountable phase of telepathy the constraint was mutually broken. The same idea had come into both their minds. It would never do to let this sort of thing take a hold on them thus early. Verna began to point out various landmarks, near and far.“Look,” she said, turning from the open view, and pointing to a particularly tumbled and bushy range of hills about six miles off. “That’s where Sapazani’s kraal is. We’ll ride over some day and pay him a visit. How would you like that?”“Very much indeed. I’d like to study these fellows a bit. They seem interesting. By the way, do you know what I’ve done, Miss Halse?”“What?”“Why, I’ve buried myself. I mean that I’ve put myself clean out of communication with the old country, except on the part of one confidential man in my business, and even he can’t communicate beyond Durban. How’s that for a prime way of taking a change?”“Quite good. But what about the business side of it?”“Oh, that’s all right. I’ve thoroughly fixed up all that. But it’s rather a joke, you know, effecting a complete disappearance.”Then he went on to tell her a good deal about himself, yet without seeming to do so egotistically, of his early struggles, of his now assured position, of many an incident and more than one crisis in his life. To all of which she listened with vivid interest, with appreciation and sympathy.“I am boring you, I’m afraid—” he broke off.“No, indeed. I am very much interested. What a hole and corner sort of life mine must seem to you!”“Do you know you are a very great puzzle to me?”—he had nearly said “Verna.”“Yes. Why?”“You might have been everywhere, seen everything, from the way in which you talk. How on earth did you pick it up?—and you say you have never been outside Natal, except to the Rand.”“Well, it’s true,” she answered, looking pleased. “I accept your verdict—as another compliment—and feel only proud.”The constraint was broken down between them now, and they talked on and freely. There was that in the fact of her companion having told her so much about his life that wonderfully fascinated Verna. What was there about her that this strong, capable man of the world should take her into his confidence, especially on such short acquaintance? More and more she felt drawn towards him. How strange it must have been, she was thinking, before this new companionship had come into her life! And yet it was barely more than a week old.And Denham? As he sat there chatting easily, the rings of blue smoke floating off lazily upon the still air, he too was thinking—and thinking pretty much the same thing. Again this new experience had come to him just at the right time. There was nothing to mar his enjoyment of it. A very short while earlier—well—there might have been. But not now. Yet while they talked he was studying his companion keenly. There was no posing, no little coquettish touches. She was perfectly natural.“What a splendid thing it is to feel quite easy in one’s mind!” he went on, in pursuance of the subject of having, as he said, “buried” himself. “I can afford to feel that way just now, and it’s real luxury. I haven’t always been able to, no, not by any means.”He broke off suddenly, then, as though moved by some strange impulse, went on—“I wonder what moved me to tell you so much about myself. It wasn’t for the mere love of talking.”“Of course not. I was so interested—am, I ought to have said.” Verna’s eyes grew wonderfully soft as they met his. “It might, too, have been a certain sympathy.”“That’s it,” he answered. “There was one thing I did not tell you, though. I wonder if I ever shall.”“That rests with yourself,” she answered. “But why should you?”“Upon my soul I don’t know.”They were looking straight at each other. The atmosphere seemed highly charged. To Verna, in her then frame of mind, the enigmatical nature of the remark opened all sorts of possibilities. She was strongly taunted to reply, “Yes, tell me now, whatever it is.” But she remembered their short acquaintance, and the fact that this man was only a passing guest to make whose stay a pleasant one was only a part of her duty. The sympathetic vein cooled, then hardened.Somehow her mood communicated itself to the other, perhaps another sign of the unconscious bond of sympathy between them. What had he so nearly done? he asked himself. Let out one of the most momentous secrets that could lie on any man, and to an acquaintance of a few days. But somehow the last expression rang hollow in his mind. Yet still, here was he, a hard-headed, experienced man of the world. He must not allow himself to be thrown off his balance under the influences of sunlight and air, and the drawing sympathy of a very rare and alluring personality. So they drifted off upon ordinary topics again, and at last Verna suggested it was time to be going home.“Well, you have brought me to a lovely spot, for a first ride,” said Denham, as they took their way down the hill. “If you go on as you have begun I may be in danger of camping in these parts altogether. Hallo,” he broke off. “It’s as well we came down when we did. That fellow might have gone off with our horses.”“He wouldn’t have,” answered Verna. “They are more like the old-time Zulus up here, when you could leave everything about and not a thing would disappear. Now, of course, civilisation has spoiled most of them.”The man referred to, who had been squatting with his back towards them, now rose. He was a tall Zulu, and ringed; and he carried a small shield and a large assegai, the latter of which he had no business under the laws of the ruling race to be carrying at all. And Denham could not repress a start, for this was the same man he had run against twice at Ezulwini—and once before. He felt thoughtful. There seemed to be some design behind the fellow’s sporadic appearance.“Who are you?” said Verna. “Not of Sapazani? I know all his ‘children.’”“Inkosazana!”“What is your name?”“Mandevu.”“Mandevu!” she echoed thoughtfully. “Ah, now I remember.”“Inkosazana!”“Where from?”The man looked at her, and shook his head whimsically. He was rather a good-looking savage, decided Denham, especially now that he had discarded European clothing.“From nowhere,” he answered, but with a curious glance at Denham, which the latter understood, and it set him thinking more deeply than ever. He remembered the bad character given him by Inspector James. He likewise remembered something else. Things were thickening up a bit. Verna talked a little longer, and then the Zulu resumed his way, when they followed his example.“Is that your name among them?” asked Denham, as they rode along. “Inkosazana?”“No,” answered Verna, laughing merrily. “It’s only a title. Inkosikazi is ‘chieftainess,’ and would be used for the principal wife of a chief. Inkosazana is a diminutive of it, and would be used for a chief’s daughters. In a word ‘Miss.’”“I see. I shall really have to learn—under your tuition.”“You really will,” she answered. And then they talked on as they rode home in the drooping day; and the evening lights shed full and varying upon the roll of landscape, the voices of wild Nature coming up from mysterious forest depths on either side, and the presence of this splendid girl beside him set Denham again thinking that this first day was nearly, if not quite, the most marvellous experience he had yet known.Ben Halse had returned before they had. At table Verna was giving an account of their ride, mentioning, of course, their meeting with the Zulu. Denham could not help noticing that his host’s interest quickened at once.“Mandevu!” he repeated. “What’s he doing in these parts, I wonder? Did he say, Verna?”“Not he. He was as close as an oyster.”“Why, he was at Ezulwini the other day.”“Who is he, Mr Halse?” asked Denham. “A chief?”“In a small way, yes. But—Well, this is a rum part of the world—far more so than you’d think, coming in upon it from the outside, and there are rum things done every other day that nobody knows anything about. I wouldn’t tell every one that, but, then, we seem to be standing in together, you and I, or rather the three of us. So I don’t mind letting on that the presence of Mandevu in these parts just now does set me thinking a bit.”Denham didn’t care to push his inquiries, not then, at any rate. But the appearance of the mysterious Zulu had sethimthinking too. Of which, however, he said nothing to his host.
“Mr Denham, I think we’ll change the programme, shall we?” said Verna, as she came out, got up for the ride. “Instead of going down we’ll go up, if you don’t mind. Do you?”
“Why, of course not. I am in your hands entirely.”
The horses were waiting, saddled, the boy walking them up and down. Verna was in a sort of khaki-coloured riding habit, with a hat to match. In it was a subtle combination of the fashionable and civilised build with the congruous costume of the locality and surroundings that sat her altogether charmingly.
“All right, then. I’ll take you where you will get a beautiful view; and the road is delightful. If you feel like getting off to look for a specimen, do so at any time. Now, will you put me into that saddle?”
The smile she beamed at him recalled him to himself. The naked truth of it was that Denham had about shed himself, as a snake sheds its skin. He was a hard-headed man of the world—a keen, successful financier, yet by now he was dimly realising that he scarcely knew himself. Experiences came back to him—crowded up galore; yet it seemed to be reserved for him that he should meet, in the wilds of Zululand—and the wilds of Zululand can be very wild indeed, even up to date—an experience utterly outside of all that had gone before.
“Thanks,” she said, gathering up her reins. “Now we must go exactly where we like, and do exactly what we like. We are going to make an easy afternoon of it.”
“Certainly,” he answered. “I am very much in luck’s way. I never reckoned on being taken so much care of.”
“No? Well, you shall be. But I don’t think you require much taking care of after having picked your way all through the Makanya bush alone.”
That allusion again. Denham felt a droop all of a sudden. Yet it was only momentary. He had been alone with Verna practically the whole day. Ben Halse had not returned for the midday dinner, and they had got through ità deux. Thus together alone, the situation had set him thinking a great deal. In fancy he had pictured her sitting opposite him, as in that plain, rather primitive room, for any time, and the idea was pleasing.
Their way lay upward, the track so narrow in parts that they had to ride one behind the other, an arrangement fatal to conversation, for you cannot conveniently shout back over your shoulder. Now it led through some deep kloof, where the tall forest trees shut out the light of the sun, and the green depths were stirred by mysterious noises; now up a rocky steep, but ever at a foot’s pace. Verna was leading the way, and the other was admiring with all his might the poise of her splendid figure, sitting her horse so perfectly and gracefully; and though the surrounding bush was teeming with all sorts of strange life, dear to the naturalist, this one, for once, forgot to notice it, so engrossed was he in the contemplation of his guide.
“This is where I wanted to bring you,” said the latter at last. “We’ll hitch up the horses here and walk the rest of the path.”
They had emerged upon an open gully, high up on the range. A short climb, and they gained a great natural window in a tooth-shaped rock which overlooked a vast, tumbled mass of crag and valley and crater. Forest and open country lay spread out beneath, extending away in billowy roll for miles upon miles into dim, misty distance.
“By Jove! but it’s splendid!” cried Denham, as he gazed out over this. “I vote we sit here a bit and look at it.”
“I thought you’d like it,” she answered. “Yes, let’s have a rest.”
They sat down within the great rock-window, drinking in the splendid air, the world, as it were, at their feet. But somehow, and all of a sudden, a constraint, a silence, seemed to have fallen between them. It was perfectly unaccountable on any ground whatever, still it was there all the same. Could it be that by some mysterious phase of telepathy both were thinking the same thing? and that each knew that the other knew it? For there existed a tremendous mutual “draw” between these two, and yet they had only known each other a few days.
Then by some equally sudden and unaccountable phase of telepathy the constraint was mutually broken. The same idea had come into both their minds. It would never do to let this sort of thing take a hold on them thus early. Verna began to point out various landmarks, near and far.
“Look,” she said, turning from the open view, and pointing to a particularly tumbled and bushy range of hills about six miles off. “That’s where Sapazani’s kraal is. We’ll ride over some day and pay him a visit. How would you like that?”
“Very much indeed. I’d like to study these fellows a bit. They seem interesting. By the way, do you know what I’ve done, Miss Halse?”
“What?”
“Why, I’ve buried myself. I mean that I’ve put myself clean out of communication with the old country, except on the part of one confidential man in my business, and even he can’t communicate beyond Durban. How’s that for a prime way of taking a change?”
“Quite good. But what about the business side of it?”
“Oh, that’s all right. I’ve thoroughly fixed up all that. But it’s rather a joke, you know, effecting a complete disappearance.”
Then he went on to tell her a good deal about himself, yet without seeming to do so egotistically, of his early struggles, of his now assured position, of many an incident and more than one crisis in his life. To all of which she listened with vivid interest, with appreciation and sympathy.
“I am boring you, I’m afraid—” he broke off.
“No, indeed. I am very much interested. What a hole and corner sort of life mine must seem to you!”
“Do you know you are a very great puzzle to me?”—he had nearly said “Verna.”
“Yes. Why?”
“You might have been everywhere, seen everything, from the way in which you talk. How on earth did you pick it up?—and you say you have never been outside Natal, except to the Rand.”
“Well, it’s true,” she answered, looking pleased. “I accept your verdict—as another compliment—and feel only proud.”
The constraint was broken down between them now, and they talked on and freely. There was that in the fact of her companion having told her so much about his life that wonderfully fascinated Verna. What was there about her that this strong, capable man of the world should take her into his confidence, especially on such short acquaintance? More and more she felt drawn towards him. How strange it must have been, she was thinking, before this new companionship had come into her life! And yet it was barely more than a week old.
And Denham? As he sat there chatting easily, the rings of blue smoke floating off lazily upon the still air, he too was thinking—and thinking pretty much the same thing. Again this new experience had come to him just at the right time. There was nothing to mar his enjoyment of it. A very short while earlier—well—there might have been. But not now. Yet while they talked he was studying his companion keenly. There was no posing, no little coquettish touches. She was perfectly natural.
“What a splendid thing it is to feel quite easy in one’s mind!” he went on, in pursuance of the subject of having, as he said, “buried” himself. “I can afford to feel that way just now, and it’s real luxury. I haven’t always been able to, no, not by any means.”
He broke off suddenly, then, as though moved by some strange impulse, went on—
“I wonder what moved me to tell you so much about myself. It wasn’t for the mere love of talking.”
“Of course not. I was so interested—am, I ought to have said.” Verna’s eyes grew wonderfully soft as they met his. “It might, too, have been a certain sympathy.”
“That’s it,” he answered. “There was one thing I did not tell you, though. I wonder if I ever shall.”
“That rests with yourself,” she answered. “But why should you?”
“Upon my soul I don’t know.”
They were looking straight at each other. The atmosphere seemed highly charged. To Verna, in her then frame of mind, the enigmatical nature of the remark opened all sorts of possibilities. She was strongly taunted to reply, “Yes, tell me now, whatever it is.” But she remembered their short acquaintance, and the fact that this man was only a passing guest to make whose stay a pleasant one was only a part of her duty. The sympathetic vein cooled, then hardened.
Somehow her mood communicated itself to the other, perhaps another sign of the unconscious bond of sympathy between them. What had he so nearly done? he asked himself. Let out one of the most momentous secrets that could lie on any man, and to an acquaintance of a few days. But somehow the last expression rang hollow in his mind. Yet still, here was he, a hard-headed, experienced man of the world. He must not allow himself to be thrown off his balance under the influences of sunlight and air, and the drawing sympathy of a very rare and alluring personality. So they drifted off upon ordinary topics again, and at last Verna suggested it was time to be going home.
“Well, you have brought me to a lovely spot, for a first ride,” said Denham, as they took their way down the hill. “If you go on as you have begun I may be in danger of camping in these parts altogether. Hallo,” he broke off. “It’s as well we came down when we did. That fellow might have gone off with our horses.”
“He wouldn’t have,” answered Verna. “They are more like the old-time Zulus up here, when you could leave everything about and not a thing would disappear. Now, of course, civilisation has spoiled most of them.”
The man referred to, who had been squatting with his back towards them, now rose. He was a tall Zulu, and ringed; and he carried a small shield and a large assegai, the latter of which he had no business under the laws of the ruling race to be carrying at all. And Denham could not repress a start, for this was the same man he had run against twice at Ezulwini—and once before. He felt thoughtful. There seemed to be some design behind the fellow’s sporadic appearance.
“Who are you?” said Verna. “Not of Sapazani? I know all his ‘children.’”
“Inkosazana!”
“What is your name?”
“Mandevu.”
“Mandevu!” she echoed thoughtfully. “Ah, now I remember.”
“Inkosazana!”
“Where from?”
The man looked at her, and shook his head whimsically. He was rather a good-looking savage, decided Denham, especially now that he had discarded European clothing.
“From nowhere,” he answered, but with a curious glance at Denham, which the latter understood, and it set him thinking more deeply than ever. He remembered the bad character given him by Inspector James. He likewise remembered something else. Things were thickening up a bit. Verna talked a little longer, and then the Zulu resumed his way, when they followed his example.
“Is that your name among them?” asked Denham, as they rode along. “Inkosazana?”
“No,” answered Verna, laughing merrily. “It’s only a title. Inkosikazi is ‘chieftainess,’ and would be used for the principal wife of a chief. Inkosazana is a diminutive of it, and would be used for a chief’s daughters. In a word ‘Miss.’”
“I see. I shall really have to learn—under your tuition.”
“You really will,” she answered. And then they talked on as they rode home in the drooping day; and the evening lights shed full and varying upon the roll of landscape, the voices of wild Nature coming up from mysterious forest depths on either side, and the presence of this splendid girl beside him set Denham again thinking that this first day was nearly, if not quite, the most marvellous experience he had yet known.
Ben Halse had returned before they had. At table Verna was giving an account of their ride, mentioning, of course, their meeting with the Zulu. Denham could not help noticing that his host’s interest quickened at once.
“Mandevu!” he repeated. “What’s he doing in these parts, I wonder? Did he say, Verna?”
“Not he. He was as close as an oyster.”
“Why, he was at Ezulwini the other day.”
“Who is he, Mr Halse?” asked Denham. “A chief?”
“In a small way, yes. But—Well, this is a rum part of the world—far more so than you’d think, coming in upon it from the outside, and there are rum things done every other day that nobody knows anything about. I wouldn’t tell every one that, but, then, we seem to be standing in together, you and I, or rather the three of us. So I don’t mind letting on that the presence of Mandevu in these parts just now does set me thinking a bit.”
Denham didn’t care to push his inquiries, not then, at any rate. But the appearance of the mysterious Zulu had sethimthinking too. Of which, however, he said nothing to his host.