Part 9 (2/2)
”But, Mameena,” I gasped, for this girl's t.i.tanic ambition literally overwhelmed me, ”surely you are mad! How would you do all these things?”
”I am not mad,” she answered; ”I am only what is called great, and you know well enough that I can do them, not by myself, who am but a woman and tied with the ropes that bind women, but with you to cut those ropes and help me. I have a plan which will not fail. But, Mac.u.mazahn,” she added in a changed voice, ”until I know that you will be my partner in it I will not tell it even to you, for perhaps you might talk--in your sleep, and then the fire in my breast would soon go out--for ever.”
”I might talk now, for the matter of that, Mameena.”
”No; for men like you do not tell tales of foolish girls who chance to love them. But if that plan began to work, and you heard say that kings or princes died, it might be otherwise. You might say, 'I think I know where the witch lives who causes these evils'--in your sleep, Mac.u.mazahn.”
”Mameena,” I said, ”tell me no more. Setting your dreams on one side, can I be false to my friend, Saduko, who talks to me day and night of you?”
”Saduko! Piff!” she exclaimed, with that expressive gesture of her hand.
”And can I be false,” I continued, seeing that Saduko was no good card to play, ”to my friend, Umbezi, your father?”
”My father!” she laughed. ”Why, would it not please him to grow great in your shadow? Only yesterday he told me to marry you, if I could, for then he would find a stick indeed to lean on, and be rid of Saduko's troubling.”
Evidently Umbezi was a worse card even than Saduko, so I played another.
”And can I help you, Mameena, to tread a road that at the best must be red with blood?”
”Why not,” she asked, ”since with or without you I am destined to tread that road, the only difference being that with you it will lead to glory and without you perhaps to the jackals and the vultures? Blood! Piff!
What is blood in Zululand?”
This card also having failed, I tabled my last.
”Glory or no glory, I do not wish to share it, Mameena. I will not make war among a people who have entertained me hospitably, or plot the downfall of their Great Ones. As you told me just now, I am n.o.body--just one grain of sand upon a white sh.o.r.e--but I had rather be that than a haunted rock which draws the heavens' lightnings and is drenched with sacrifice. I seek no throne over white or black, Mameena, who walk my own path to a quiet grave that shall perhaps not be without honour of its own, though other than you seek. I will keep your counsel, Mameena, but, because you are so beautiful and so wise, and because you say you are fond of me--for which I thank you--I pray you put away these fearful dreams of yours that in the end, whether they succeed or fail, will send you s.h.i.+vering from the world to give account of them to the Watcher-on-high.”
”Not so, O Mac.u.mazana,” she said, with a proud little laugh. ”When your Watcher sowed my seed--if thus he did--he sowed the dreams that are a part of me also, and I shall only bring him back his own, with the flower and the fruit by way of interest. But that is finished. You refuse the greatness. Now, tell me, if I sink those dreams in a great water, tying about them the stone of forgetfulness and saying: 'Sleep there, O dreams; it is not your hour'--if I do this, and stand before you just a woman who loves and who swears by the spirits of her fathers never to think or do that which has not your blessing--will you love me a little, Mac.u.mazahn?”
Now I was silent, for she had driven me to the last ditch, and I knew not what to say. Moreover, I will confess my weakness--I was strangely moved. This beautiful girl with the ”fire in her heart,” this woman who was different from all other women that I had ever known, seemed to have twisted her slender fingers into my heart-strings and to be drawing me towards her. It was a great temptation, and I bethought me of old Zikali's saying in the Black Kloof, and seemed to hear his giant laugh.
She glided up to me, she threw her arms about me and kissed me on the lips, and I think I kissed her back, but really I am not sure what I did or said, for my head swam. When it cleared again she was standing in front of me, looking at me reflectively.
”Now, Mac.u.mazahn,” she said, with a little smile that both mocked and dazzled, ”the poor black girl has you, the wise, experienced white man, in her net, and I will show you that she can be generous. Do you think that I do not read your heart, that I do not know that you believe I am dragging you down to shame and ruin? Well, I spare you, Mac.u.mazahn, since you have kissed me and spoken words which already you may have forgotten, but which I do not forget. Go your road, Mac.u.mazahn, and I go mine, since the proud white man shall not be stained with my black touch. Go your road; but one thing I forbid you--to believe that you have been listening to lies, and that I have merely played off a woman's arts upon you for my own ends. I love you, Mac.u.mazahn, as you will never be loved till you die, and I shall never love any other man, however many I may marry. Moreover, you shall promise me one thing--that once in my life, and once only, if I wish it, you shall kiss me again before all men. And now, lest you should be moved to folly and forget your white man's pride, I bid you farewell, O Mac.u.mazana. When we meet again it will be as friends only.”
Then she went, leaving me feeling smaller than ever I felt in my life, before or since--even smaller than when I walked into the presence of old Zikali the Wise. Why, I wondered, had she first made a fool of me, and then thrown away the fruits of my folly? To this hour I cannot quite answer the question, though I believe the explanation to be that she did really care for me, and was anxious not to involve me in trouble and her plottings; also she may have been wise enough to see that our natures were as oil and water and would never blend.
CHAPTER V. TWO BUCKS AND THE DOE
It may be thought that, as a sequel to this somewhat remarkable scene in which I was absolutely bowled over--perhaps bowled out would be a better term--by a Kafir girl who, after bending me to her will, had the genius to drop me before I repented, as she knew I would do so soon as her back was turned, thereby making me look the worst of fools, that my relations with that young lady would have been strained. But not a bit of it. When next we met, which was on the following morning, she was just her easy, natural self, attending to my hurts, which by now were almost well, joking about this and that, inquiring as to the contents of certain letters which I had received from Natal, and of some newspapers that came with them--for on all such matters she was very curious--and so forth.
Impossible, the clever critic will say--impossible that a savage could act with such finish. Well, friend critic, that is just where you are wrong. When you come to add it up there's very little difference in all main and essential matters between the savage and yourself.
To begin with, by what exact right do we call people like the Zulus savages? Setting aside the habit of polygamy, which, after all, is common among very highly civilised peoples in the East, they have a social system not unlike our own. They have, or had, their king, their n.o.bles, and their commons. They have an ancient and elaborate law, and a system of morality in some ways as high as our own, and certainly more generally obeyed. They have their priests and their doctors; they are strictly upright, and observe the rites of hospitality.
Where they differ from us mainly is that they do not get drunk until the white man teaches them so to do, they wear less clothing, the climate being more genial, their towns at night are not disgraced by the sights that distinguish ours, they cherish and are never cruel to their children, although they may occasionally put a deformed infant or a twin out of the way, and when they go to war, which is often, they carry out the business with a terrible thoroughness, almost as terrible as that which prevailed in every nation in Europe a few generations ago.
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