Chapter Fourteen.
Manamandhla’s Strategy.
A week went by, and Thornhill got an answer to his letter. His son could not possibly get away just then. His partner was seriously ill, and as for business—why, if not as brisk as might be wished, there was quite enough of it to keep one man’s hands full. He was awfully sorry, but would take a run down as soon as ever he could break away. So wrote Hyland.
Thornhill was bitterly disappointed. He seemed to feel it far more than he had thought it possible for him to do. He would have given much at that juncture to have had the boy at his side, he told himself. He felt very isolated, very much alone. Edala, though now and then she broke out into fits of playfulness—and these, he suspected, were, more often than not, forced—yet kept up a sort of dutiful reserve towards him. There was no spontaneity in her affection, even when any sign of possession of any such sentiment did appear. Well, ingratitude was ingrained in the female. No one had better reason to realise that than himself.
And this unknown relative who had written to announce her being—nothing more had been heard of—or from—her. He had expected a wire by return notifying her start, but a week had gone by, ten days, then a fortnight and no wire, not even a letter. Did every member of the feminine persuasion imagine that the universe was built for her sole convenience? was his comment upon the omission to Edala.
The latter suggested that the telegram might have been twisted into a wrong meaning by some chuckle-headed operator; would it not be as well to send another? But her father was in no mood for doing anything of the kind.
“I don’t believe in that theory,” he said. “Here’s a feminine person who writes to know if I can take her in. I reply post haste that I can and welcome, and I hear no more about it. Well, she can stop away if she prefers it. I’m not going routing around to beseech her to come.”
Edala answered that she didn’t care either way. As a matter of fact though enthusiastic enough on the arrival of the unknown’s letter the thing had hung fire. And then, deep down in her innermost mind lay another reason. She would not have admitted it even to herself, but it was there for all that and—it spelt Elvesdon.
The latter had been a good deal over at Sipazi. He was an excellent and astute official, but somehow, while neglecting none of his duties, he had found time and opportunity to make frequent visits, and he was always welcome. Thornhill and his daughter treated him, in fact, as if they had known him all their lives, which caused him intense satisfaction.
He was interested in this girl—indeed by that time powerfully attracted. The fair refined face, the straight fearless eyes, the smile that would light up the whole expression, the merry peal of spontaneous laughter—all this had an effect upon him that was inexpressibly bewitching. He had never seen anyone like her before—no, not in the least like her. That picture of her, standing erect, wide-eyed and fearless, waiting to be of use in the struggle with the monster serpent, had never even begun to fade in his mind. She was grand.
Towards himself Edala for her part was undoubtedly attracted. She looked forward to his visits, and greeted him with unfeigned pleasure when he appeared. He talked so well, and never failed to interest and amuse her. He had been about and had seen so much, and moreover there was a subtle suggestion of strength about him that appealed to her vividly. To most of her male acquaintance Edala assumed a sort of unconscious attitude of stiffening up. The youthful side of it represented to her so many puppies whose eyes had yet to open; the more mature side so many prigs who bored or patronised her. This man did neither. He neither talked up to her, nor down—she would have despised him for the first and resented him for the second. He simply treated her as a rational being with a full share of intelligence and ideas—and no surer road could he have taken towards her approval.
Having said so much it is not surprising that Edala’s feelings as regarded her new relative’s proposed visit should, by this time, have undergone some degree of modification. This stranger—of whose very outward appearance she was entirely ignorant—might conceivably prove one too many, the more so that the stranger was what her father had just described as “a member of the feminine persuasion.” She was not in the least in love with Elvesdon; she was far too evenly balanced to let herself go like that at such short notice. But she felt a strong proprietary interest in him as a friend worth having; wherefore in the background lurked that cloud of half unconscious jealousy. Yet that very jealousy itself ought to have warned her.
Thornhill, watching developments, was anything but displeased. As a Civil servant Elvesdon was not likely to amass wealth, but he was a good official and likely to get on. His personal opinion of the man we have already set forth, and it he had seen no reason to modify. If the present excellent understanding between him and Edala came to anything more permanent, why so much the better.
A fortnight had gone by since Manamandhla’s craving for beef had so nearly brought that enterprising savage to an untimely end: and the Zulu had been comfortably dwelling on the place ever since and showed not the smallest symptom of moving. He made a show of helping here and there, as an excuse for drawing his—plentiful—rations, nor was he ever out of snuff, and he frequently enjoyed other luxuries. But for all this he knew he was living on a volcano.
Thornhill was getting desperate. For hours he would lie awake at night devising some scheme for ridding himself of his oppressor. If only that plan had been carried out on the mountain that day! If only old Patolo had arrived upon the scene half a minute later! It was no murder, he decided. A blackmailer was a pest to the human race. Extermination was only the just fate of such. This one was robbing him of his peace, therefore his destruction was as nothing to the price he had paid to purchase that peace. One day Manamandhla said:
“Nkose, my brother’s son is paying lobola for a girl, over there, in Zululand. He still needs two cows to complete the price, but the son of a richer man has offered one cow and a goat beyond the price he can pay. Shall he not therefore have the two cows—as Nkose has known me so long and is as our father?”
The outrageous impudence of this demand hardly surprised Thornhill, who, of course, was fully aware that the needs of the ‘brother’s son’ did not exist. He gazed fixedly at the Zulu for some moments and the faces of both men were like stone.
“I think I will give you the two cows, Manamandhla, but you can take them away yourself and—not come back. Do you hear—not come back?”
The speaker’s expression was savage and threatening. He felt cornered.
“Au! Not come back?” repeated the Zulu, softly.
“Not come back. Go all over the world, but this place is the most deadly dangerous spot in it—for you. I solemnly advise you not to return to it. This evening I will give you the two cows—for your brother’s son’s lobola”—he interpolated with a sneer, “and you can go back to Zululand and stay there.”
“Nkose!”
This conversation took place at the back of the house and the concluding remarks were overheard by Edala. She had never heard her father’s voice raised in that tone for many years, and now as she connected the circumstance a dreadful suspicion came into her mind. This Zulu knew too much, and now he was being bribed and threatened in about equal proportions in order in induce him to make himself scarce. Her father’s reply that the man was useful, had struck her as hollow and half-hearted at the time it was made.
“I have a bit of good news for you, child,” said Thornhill that evening. “Your aversion, Manamandhla, is going—if he hasn’t already gone.”
“A good thing too,” answered the girl, to whom it was no news. “I hope you won’t let him come back.”
“I think not,” said Thornhill, with a dry laugh. “We have had enough of each other.”
Edala had been observing the change in her father of late, and now she studied him more closely than ever. The harassed, worried look that had been upon him had suddenly dropped off; simultaneously with the departure of Manamandhla—she did not fail to observe. He became his old calm, even-minded self. But a week later the Zulu returned.
“I would like to serve Nkose a little longer,” was his tranquil explanation, when tackled by Thornhill. The latter looked at him in silence for a few minutes. To the Zulu this deliberation gave no anxiety.
“You can stay then,” was the reply, uttered grimly.
“Nkose is my father. He will care for me. Were I dead there are two others, two of my own blood, who know that there are ‘mouths’ on Sipazi which swallow up men—who know which one it is that gives not back that which it swallows—but yet that which it swallows could be brought back with long lines. And I—whau, I know of one of these ‘mouths’ which gives back that which it swallows, but gives them back lame for the rest of life.”
Here was a contingency that had clean escaped Thornhill’s calculations. However, he showed no sign of being perturbed by the statement. Was it true? A little reflection convinced him that in all probability it was not. Manamandhla would never be such a fool as to share a momentous secret—a, to him, valuable secret—with another, let alone with two others. But he would pretend to believe it, all the same; so would the blackmailer be thrown the more off his guard.
“Did your brother’s son succeed with the additional two cows, Manamandhla?” he said, airily, taking no notice of the Zulu’s last remark.
“Nearly. Not quite. It is in the air still. Nkose, two more would complete the lobola, for the girl is fine and much sought after, and her father—whau! he is miserly and loves cattle much.”
“Yet I think one more will content him. We will talk further about it.” And Thornhill laughing to himself turned away.
“So we have got that beast back again? I thought he had gone for good,” said Edala, her straight, clear glance full on her father’s face.
“Meaning Manamandhla? So did I, but I don’t think he’ll stay long—no, not long.”
Still she kept her glance upon him, and though the words were spoken easily, naturally, and without any outward intonation of significance, it seemed to Thornhill that the girl read his thoughts, his intent. She, like himself, could school her face, yet not altogether. Its expression now seemed to reveal horror, loathing, repulsion—yet not for Manamandhla. Reading it, something moved him to say:
“I have been thinking things over, Edala, and perhaps, after all, I can see my way towards letting you carry out your cherished wish—that of going to Europe to study art seriously. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
She made no answer. He had expected her to brighten up at the suggestion.
“You are not happy here, and I—well perhaps I am getting more than a little tired of living in an atmosphere of chronic suspicion and repulse. And yet, child, the time may come—and come too late—when you will bitterly regret the care of a father who has been to you as very few fathers within my experience have ever been to their children—in fact, I can hardly recall the case of one. But there—ingratitude is only to be expected, in fact nothing else could be under all the circumstances.”
This with intense bitterness. His self control had momentarily broken down. The girl, who had begun to soften, grew hard again.
“I don’t know that I’ve anything to be so thankful and appreciative over—under all the circumstances,” she said, with a scathing emphasis on the echo of his words. He looked at her fixedly, sadly.
“Not now, but that will come. That will come—perhaps when it is too late.”
His tone was quiet, and there was a sad conviction of prophecy in the words that again softened her—almost frightened her—as he turned away. In a moment a huge impulse moved her to go after him and declare that she had no wish whatever to leave him; that she would give no thought in the world to any consideration but himself; that she had been horribly hard and ungrateful and selfish; but assuredly some demoniacal influence was floating in the air just then, for the impulse passed. And her father, too, was striving to harden his heart. Why not? A man never ceased to gain in experience of life and human nature even if he lived to a hundred; and he himself was only in his prime. Why then break his heart over that which was only to have been expected?
By an effort he dismissed the subject from his mind. The latter then reverted to the subject of Manamandhla, and the result of his meditations boded no good to that ill-advised Zulu.