Chapter Twenty Nine.
...And the Odd Trick.
John Ames stared at this communication till his eyes were dizzy, and a wild rush of joy surged through his being. Its genuineness he could not doubt. The bank paper, the bank seal—even the signature of the letter he knew by name. Now he was no longer a penniless nobody, but the possessor of what was really a small fortune. Why, indeed, should any false pride stand in the way of his acceptance of it? People received bequests, even from unknown testators—received them thankfully; why should not he? The testator was living, yet practically dead to his kind. Again, there was a sort of appeal in the very wording of this strange communication. Why should he wreck his life’s happiness upon any rock of false pride? He could now press his suit upon, at any rate, independent terms.
Then, to dash his exultation, in came that ugly thought again. Could it really be that that odious woman was deputed by Nidia? Horrible! What was this sudden access to competence in such a case? “A brilliant future mapped out for her.” Even now, under his changed fortunes, such was not within his reach to offer her. John Ames was a proud man and a sensitive one. Could it be that his ideal had stopped down from her pedestal? Then, by a comic twist of thought, came back that conversation down by the blue sea at Camp’s Bay. This pedestal to let! Yes, it was comical.
But again, by another twist of thought, came back that day in all its idyllic aspects; in all the golden glow of love and faith, and vague, indefinable hope. Came back also that parting in the solitudes of a grim wilderness, that pressure of the hands, that last long look into the eyes. Surely there was truth; there, far from artificial restraints, was the soul laid bare. John Ames became sane again.
Yet it was in no great exaltation of mind that he wended his way, a couple of days later, to the dwelling occupied by Mrs Bateman. He had declared he would enter it no more, but now, under the circumstances, he would do so once. He would be firm and decided, too, in the attainment of his object, and that was to see Nidia alone. He would take no denial.
This time, however, he was spared the necessity of further conflict. Nidia was there to welcome him, and she was alone. She looked at him searchingly, and her eyes were grave.
“What is the matter?” she said. “You are looking careworn and anxious. Why?”
“Am I? Oh, it’s nothing. Some active service will soon send that away.”
“Active service?”
“Yes. I’m going to volunteer.”
“Haven’t you had enough of that yet?”
“I haven’t had any. My active service up till now has been strictly confined to running away, and uncommonly ‘active’ service it has been, let me assure you.”
“Running away?” she repeated. “Yes; it is the sort of running away that one has a particular admiration for. Running away on foot, for instance, with about a thousand savages a hundred yards behind, so that a wounded comrade may ride away on one’s horse.”
He flushed. That wretched Shackleton had been firing off that stale yarn here too. Of course, it would look as though he himself had inspired it.
“Don’t look annoyed,” said Nidia, softly; “because I haven’t half done. ‘Running away,’ too, in order to take care of a certain helpless fugitive belonging to the helpless sex, who would otherwise certainly have been murdered, or certainly have come to some miserable end a dozen times over, is another kind of flight which appeals.”
“Oh, for Heaven’s sake leave that part of it! It was no thanks to me and my blundering asinine stupidity that you came in safe at all.”
“No. But, you see, I happen to hold a different opinion. And now, John, I have a little sore grievance against you, and I want to work it off. We don’t see much of you now. Why not?”
“Well, ‘we’ don’t want to. Do you happen to know that only a couple of days ago I was requested not to come here any more?”
“Do I happen to know? Why, of course I don’t. This is the first I’ve heard of it,” answered Nidia, speaking quickly and with some indignation. “I did not even know you had been here a couple of days ago. I only know how I have missed you since.”
“It is hardly fair, though, to give that as a reason. There may be others. One is, perhaps, that I thought you might have too much of a not very good thing; that you might have had enough of me during all the time we were together, and change is congenial sometimes. Again, perhaps, it is that I have not been feeling particularly cheerful of late, and feared to inflict it upon you.”
Nidia’s face, which at first had taken on a hurt look, now grew very soft.
“What have you been troubled about? Can you not tell me? Me, remember?”
The very tone was a caress. But somehow it recalled the abominable hint thrown out by Mrs Bateman that very morning—the imputation that had stung and insulted him to the very core of his finest feelings—and the recollection hardened him.
“Whatever I have been troubled about will trouble me as long as life itself,” he answered, looking her in the eyes full and straight. “But I did not come here to whine to you, trouble or not. I came to say good-bye.”
“Good-bye?”
“Yes. I have volunteered for active service, and am under orders to be in readiness to take the field at a moment’s notice.”
“Then you may consider those orders cancelled. You are under orders to remain where you are until further notice.”
“What?” he said, looking down at her where she stood, for he had risen preparatory to taking his leave. “To remain where I am? What do you mean, Nidia?”
“I mean that you can’t go, and I don’t intend that you shall. Heavens, what do you want to go getting yourself killed for? Wasn’t it bad enough when you nearly did—when I—when we—all thought you were? You have got to stay here and take care of me.”
What was this? Nidia’s self-possession breaking down so signally? Were his eyes and ears utterly deceiving him? There was what sounded suspiciously like the catch of a sob in her voice, and in her eyes that same look of appeal, of wistfulness, he had seen there when they bade each other that last farewell in the wilds of the Matopos. His face flushed beneath its bronze, then went white; but his voice was firm as ever as he imprisoned her with his arms.
“To take care of you? Then I must do so for life, Nidia.”
“Yes; I think you had better, as you know how to do it so well,” she replied, raising her lips.
It was their first kiss; but it was even as the welding of two souls. It was their first kiss, but for a very brief space the only one. With no further necessity for self-containment, John Ames seemed to pour forth his whole soul, his whole nature, in adoration of this girl, the first sight of whom had turned the whole current of his thoughts and inner life. All of this Nidia learned, and was infinitely, radiantly happy.
“Shall I tell you something—darling?” she said. “Strange as it may sound, I have never loved anybody before—have never felt the slightest inclination to. But when I saw you, I knew the possibility was there. You were—are—so different to everybody else. I missed you so frightfully when you left to come up here. There, I never told you that before. And all the time we were out together in the mountains I loved being with you—felt so safe with you, somehow, and—Oh!”
The last ejaculation was evoked by the appearance of a third party on the scene. In the doorway stood Mrs Bateman, speechless, her high-featured countenance livid with amazement, rage, and baffled spite.
“Come here, Susie, and say, ‘Bless you, my children,’” called out Nidia, a lovely blush coming over her face, as she realised the very near propinquity in which she stood to the other occupant of the room, who, for his part, said nothing.
But there came no answer. The other turned and walked away in silence. She had thrown her king and her ace, but the odd trick remained, and this John Ames held.
Shiminya, the sorcerer, was seated in his múti kraal on the Umgwane river, but he was not alone. With him sat Nanzicele, ex-sergeant of the native police.
From the tone of their voices they seemed not on very good terms. Not to put too fine a point upon it, they were quarrelling.
Now, the cause of the difference lay in the fact that Nanzicele aspired to join the ranks of the Abantwana ’Mlimo. Shiminya, on the other hand, was resolved that the hierarchy of the Great Abstraction would be better without him, and was breaking this resolve as gently as might be.
But Nanzicele had been drinking. He had obtained some gin among certain overlooked loot of a sacked store, and Nanzicele, foiled in his objects, and half drunk, was a very unpleasant customer indeed, not to say a sufficiently formidable one.
Now he was raising his voice threateningly, jeering Shiminya, and more than hinting that he was a rank impostor—he and all his cloth. The seer’s snake-like eyes sparkled with vindictive hate, for he was no more fond of being reviled and insulted than other and commoner mortals.
Another consideration actuating this precious pair was that each was in a position to give the other away. Both knew that the result of the rising was but a question of time, and each had an idea that he might purchase safety at the expense of the other.
A large bowl of tywala was on the ground between them. Suddenly, as Shiminya stooped to raise this, his confederate whirled up his stick, intending to bring it down upon the sorcerer’s head in such wise that the Umlimo would be without one of his most valuable myrmidons. But the move was not quick enough. The blow, instead of shattering skull, came down on shoulder, with numbing, crushing effect. Lithe as an eel, Shiminya twisted, and sprang to his feet. At him sprang Nanzicele. The sorcerer had no weapon to hand. The big Matabele, pressing him hard against the thorn fence, had him at his mercy.
Not quite. As the second blow descended, something entered Nanzicele’s side, sharp, fiery, scathing. Then Shiminya fell, his limbs squirming in spasmodic quiver, and from his relaxed grasp there fell a small knife. This Nanzicele pushed aside with his foot, uttering a contemptuous grunt.
“Au! That does not kill,” he growled, surveying his ribs, whence the blood flowed freely, but from a mere flesh-wound. Then shifting his knobstick into his left hand, the vengeful savage seized a broad-bladed assegai, and plunged it into the vitals of his prostrate confederate.
“Yeh-bo!” he cried. “Fare thee well, Shiminya. The Umtwana ’Mlimo can bleed as well as an ordinary man—can die! Hlala-gahle Umtwana ’Mlimo!”
The body of the sorcerer lay motionless. Gazing upon it for a moment, Nanzicele turned away to the huts. There was plunder there, plenty of it, and for some little while he turned his attention thitherward, finding and appropriating to his own use a good many things of vast value in his eyes, arms and ammunition, wearing apparel, tobacco, and what not. But as he opened one of the huts there darted out against his legs something grey and hairy and snarling, nearly upsetting him with the shock and the scare. Before he had recovered from his startled surprise the thing had vanished and now Nanzicele deemed it time to do likewise.
The sun’s rays grew longer and longer, throwing shadows over the ill-omened abode of dark dealings, and the motionless body that lay there. Then the body was motionless no longer. The limbs moved; next the head was raised, but feebly. Shiminya sat up.
“Ah, ah! The Umtwana ’Mlimo is not so easy to kill, Nanzicele; and thou—for this thou shalt die a thousand deaths,” he murmured.
He reached over for the tywala bowl, but it had been upset in the scuffle and was empty. Parched with a feverish and burning thirst, the sorcerer dragged himself on hands and knees to the hut wherein he knew there was more of the liquor. He reached it at length, trailing broad splashes of blood behind him. Creeping within, he found the great calabash. It was empty. Nanzicele had drained it.
In a tremble of exhaustion Shiminya sank to the ground. The cold dews of death were upon his face. The awful coldness throughout his frame, the result of a prodigious loss of blood, became an agony. Air! A great craving for air was upon him. His brain reeled, and his lungs gasped. He felt as though he could no longer move.
Then the door was darkened, and something brushed in. With a superhuman effort he collected his energies.
“Hamba, Lupiswana!” he gurgled. “Hamba-ke!”
But the brute took no notice of the voice before which it was wont to cower and tremble. It crouched, snarling. Then it put its head down and licked the blood-gouts which had fallen upon the ground from the veins of its evil master.
The latter began to experience some of the agonies he had delighted to witness in his victims. The savage beast had tasted blood—his blood. And he himself was too weak to have resisted the onslaught of a rat.
Again he called, trying to infuse strength into his voice. But the crafty beast knew his state exactly, it had learnt to gauge helplessness in the case of too many other victims, perhaps. It only crawled a little nearer, still growling.
For a while they lay thus, man and beast, mutually eyeing each other. The eyes of the former were becoming glazed with the agony of utter weakness but active apprehension. Those of the latter glared yellow and baleful in the semi-gloom of the hut. It was a horrid sight.
“Hamba, Lupiswana!” repeated the sorcerer, instinctively groping for a weapon. But with a shrill snarl the brute was at his throat, tearing and worrying, and, although a small animal, so furious was its frenzy over this new and copious feast of blood, that it shook the light form of the wizard, almost as it would have done that of a newly dropped fawn. And then in the semi-gloom was the horrible spectacle of a man with his throat half torn out, feebly battling with the enraged furious beast covered with blood and uttering its guttural snarls, as it tore and clawed at his already lacerated vitals. But the struggle did not last. The grim “familiar spirit” had triumphed over its evil master. Shiminya the sorcerer lay dead in his múti kraal, and the horrible brute lay growling and snarling as it gorged itself to repletion upon his mangled body.
And Nanzicele? Exultant, yet somewhat fearing, he decamped with his booty; but he did not get far. A dizziness and griping pain was upon him, and he sank down in the river-bed, by a water-hole. What was it? His wound was slight. Ha! The knife! Yes. A greenish froth was on the surface of his wound. The knife was poisoned.
His agonies now were hardly less than those of his slayer, and his thirst became intense. Crawling to a water-hole, he staggered over it to drink, then drew back appalled. He could not drink there, at any rate. It was the very hole into which he had helped throw the unfortunate girl Nompiza. Her decomposing lineaments seemed to glower at him from the surface of the water as he bent over to drink. With a raucous yell he flung himself back, and then, in a paroxysm of agonised convulsions, the rebel and treacherous murderer yielded up the ghost.
He too, you see, had thought to hold the trump card over his confederate, but it was the latter who held the odd trick. Yet better for both, swifter and more merciful, would have been the noosed rope of the white man’s justice than the end which had overtaken them.