The last in her most arch and quizzical manner.
“It’s a poor time you’ve chosen to look at it in, Miss Commerell,” remarked Hollingworth. “Rinderpest has about done for us all, and bar that the whole show has been as dry as chips.”
“Yet, it’s all very interesting to me, at any rate,” she returned. “And the savages. I can hardly believe they are the wicked ferocious beings you all make out, poor, patient, put-upon looking mortals! Some of the old men have such really fine faces, and their voices are so soft and kindly—though, of course, I can’t understand a word they say,” she broke off, with a whimsical candour that made everybody laugh.
Hollingworth whistled.
“‘Soft and kindly!’ Why, they are just about as sulky and discontented as they can well be—though, poor devils, one can hardly blame them. It must be hard, rough luck to see their cattle shot down by hundreds—by thousands—under their very noses. Of course they abuse the Government for giving them back the cattle with one hand only to take it away with the other. It’s only what we should do ourselves.”
“I should think so. Poor things! Really, Mr Hollingworth, I think you seem to have treated them all very badly.”
Such a sentiment was not popular in Matabeleland then, nor, for the matter of that, has it ever been. In fact, it is about as heterodox an utterance as though some rash wight were to pronounce the former realm of Lo Bengula a non-gold-producing country. But it was impossible to be angry with the owner of the voice that now made it.
“I don’t know that we have, Miss Commerell,” replied Hollingworth. “Indeed, I think, on the whole, we haven’t. Now, I can always get boys enough—so can my neighbours—and that’s the best test. A nigger won’t stop a week with anybody who treats him badly.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean that way, Mr Hollingworth. I meant as a nation.”
“Even there, Lo Bengula and the old chiefs didn’t rule them with sugar and honey, let me tell you. But, squarely, I believe they did prefer the kicks of Lo Ben to the halfpence of the Chartered Company; and I suppose it’s natural. A nigger’s ways are not a white man’s ways, and never will be.”