[1] See the book called The Ivory Child.—EDITOR.
At length I woke up again, feeling much stronger, and saw the dog, Lost, watching me with its great tender eyes—oh! they talk of the eyes of women, but are they ever as beautiful as those of a loving dog? It lay by my low bed-stead, a rough affair fashioned of poles and strung with rimpis or strings of raw hide, and by it, stroking its head, sat the witch-doctoress, Nombé. I remember how pleasing she looked, a perfect type of the eternal feminine with her graceful, rounded shape and her continual, mysterious smile which suggested so much more than any mortal woman has to give.
“Good-day to you, Macumazahn,” she said in her gentle voice, “you have gone through much since last we met on the night before Goza took you away to Ulundi.”
Now remembering all, I was filled with indignation against this little humbug.
“The last time we met, Nombé,” I said, “was when you played the part of a woman who is dead in the Vale of Bones by the king’s kraal.”
She regarded me with a kindly commiseration, and answered, shaking her head—
“You have been very ill, Macumazahn, and your spirit still tricks you. I played the part of no woman in any valley by the king’s kraal, nor were my eyes rejoiced with the sight of you there or elsewhere till they brought you to this place, so changed that I should scarcely have known you.”
“You little liar!” I said rudely.
“Do the white people always name those liars who tell them true things they cannot understand?” she inquired with a sweet innocence. Then without waiting for an answer, she patted my hand as though I were a fretful child and gave me some soup in a gourd, saying, “Drink it, it is good. The lady Heddana made it herself in the white man’s fashion.”
I drank the soup, which was very good, and as I handed back the gourd, answered—