“Aïda Sewin.
“P.S.—I would rather you didn’t mention anything of this to Falkner.”
This letter was, to say the least of it, puzzling. Carefully I read it through again, and then it became obvious that the main drift of it was, if not exactly an after-thought, at any rate not in the writer’s mind to communicate when she first began. Her contradictory accounts of her father pointed to this. I made an effort to put behind me for the present the feeling of exultation that I should be the one appealed to—the rock of refuge, so to say—for I wanted to think out the drift of the whole thing; and all my experience has gone to teach me that you can’t think, of two things at once without only half thinking of both of them. The witch doctor’s conduct was inexplicable viewed by the ordinary light of common-sense motive. But I had lived long enough among natives to know that I didn’t really know them, which is paradoxical yet true. I knew this much, that underlying their ordinary and known customs there are others, to which no white man ever gains access except by the purest accident—customs, it may be, to all appearances utterly inconsequent or even ridiculous, but others again of darker and more sinister import. Such are denied by them with laughter, as too utterly absurd for existence, but they do exist for all that, and the confiding European is lulled completely, thrown off the scent. And now, putting four and four together, I wondered whether it was not somewhere in this direction that I must search for Ukozi’s motive.
As for the Major’s craze, that didn’t trouble me overmuch, if only that I remembered that old gentlemen of the retired Anglo-Indian persuasion were prone to take up fads, from the Lost Ten Tribes craze to Plymouth Brethrenism. He had been struck by Ukozi’s profession of occultism, and probably hipped by the isolation of his own surroundings, had thrown himself into it. I—and Falkner—would soon put that right, on our return.
And yet, and yet—as I again took up Aïda Sewin’s letter in search it might be of a further sidelight, the very real note of concern, not to say alarm, which I read into it impressed me. It was as though I heard a cry from her to hasten to her assistance. Well, I would do so. As I have said, my trade with Majendwa’s people had suddenly and unaccountably broken down, but I had acquired quite a respectable lot of cattle, all in excellent condition. I would have them all brought in on the morrow and trek the next day for home. And having come to this conclusion I heard the tramp of a horse outside, and Falkner’s voice lifted up in a resounding hail, which had the effect of setting all the curs in the big kraal adjoining, on the stampede in such a fashion as to remind me of Falkner’s sprinting match on the first night of our arrival.