A Frontier Mystery

Chapter Nineteen.

Concerning a Letter

Evening was closing in wet and gloomy. The lowering clouds swept along the high ground which shot in the great hollow, causing the cliffs to seem three times their real height in the ghostly murk. Added to this it was raw and cold, which had the effect of causing the inhabitants of the big kraal to hug their firesides. Here and there a form swathed in an ample green blanket might be seen moving from one hut to another, quickly to dive within the same, for your savage is a practical animal, and sees no fun in foregoing any of his comforts when no necessity exists for doing so – and the interior of the huts was warm and dry, and, without, it was neither.

I was alone at the waggons, Falkner not having yet returned. For this I was not sorry, for although Falkner and I had grown accustomed to each other, yet there were times when I could cheerfully accept a holiday from his presence.

Darker and darker it grew. The oxen were driven in and fastened to the trek chain for the night, and the boys, lying snug under the shelter they had rigged up by means of a large sail thrown over the buck waggon, leaving one side between the wheels open, were chatting in their rhythmical deep-voiced hum, and the fire they had built not far from the opening glowing more and more redly as the gloom deepened. Then their talk suddenly ceased, as out of the darkness appeared a tall figure, saluting.

“What have you there?” I said, as the new arrival began fumbling for something in his skin pouch.

“Incwadi ’Nkose,” he answered.

I own to a thrill of excited expectation very foreign to my normally placid way of taking things, for incwadi is the word for a letter or a token of any kind. I could hardly restrain my eagerness to open the packet carefully sewn up in oilskin, which the man now handed me. Aïda Sewin, then, had availed herself of the means of correspondence which I had arranged, but – what if this were not addressed to me after all, but only to Falkner? and at the thought my anticipations fell. Still it would be good to hear, anyhow. The rather startling incident of a few hours ago was driven clean from my mind now.

I climbed into the tent waggon and lighted the lantern which hung from the tent, and you may be sure it didn’t take me long to unroll the oilskin wrapping. Two letters it contained – one for Falkner and one for myself – the latter in the handwriting I knew, and one that a reader of character from handwriting would assuredly not have reported upon unfavourably. Having once satisfied myself on the point, I believe I was in no hurry to open it. The pleasures of anticipation, you see, counted for something with me still.

Then came another phase in the above. I drew from the envelope several sheets rather closely written. Why, this was too much luck. I glanced quickly through them to ascertain that the whole of it was for me, but resolved not to anticipate the contents in any way. More than ever was I glad now that Falkner had not returned. I could well do without his somewhat boisterous company for the next half-hour, or even longer. Then I spread open the sheets before me, and by the somewhat dim light of the waggon lantern began to read.

“Dear Mr Glanton, – I am taking advantage of the arrangement you so thoughtfully made, and only trust this will not miss you during your wanderings. Mother is writing to Falkner at the same time. I hope you have been able to make him useful, and that he has behaved himself generally well. He is a good sort of boy at bottom, but gets far too much spoilt among us all, as you must have observed, though I believe I am the one who spoils him least. At any rate a little roughing it will do him no harm.

“Things are very much as usual. We see a good deal of Mr Kendrew, who comes over when he can and is a great help.” – “Oh, the devil he is!” said I to myself at this point. “Just what I foresaw, confound it!” – “But we miss you very much, and are hoping soon to welcome you back after a thoroughly successful expedition.”

This was more comforting, I thought to myself, laying down the letter and conjuring up a recollection of the writer’s words, that last evening. She would look forward to my return, she had declared – would be disappointed if I did not go to see them immediately. Confound it, what was the matter with me, that I sat dreaming and building castles in the air? The rain fell upon the canvas of the waggon tent with monotonous drip, and a puff of raw air through the flap of the tied-down sail caused the light of the hanging lantern to flicker – but I was no longer in the gloomy wilds of Northern Zululand, on a rainy, chilly, and altogether abominable evening. I was again in the starlight glow as on that evening, listening to the sweet tones of the writer’s voice, and gazing at the beautiful, highbred face.

The letter went on, dealing now with everyday matter, in a bright, natural, chatty style. The Major was in great form and delighted with his garden and its development, thanks to some fine rains. The Scotts had been over to see them a couple of times – and here followed some banter at the expense of that worthy and neighbouring family, the head of which – originally a waggon-maker’s journeyman – was, incidentally, addicted to too much grog, when he could get it – which wasn’t often. At Major Sewin’s he could get it, and became comical, but always harmlessly so. Things on the farm were going well, thanks to Ivondwe, who was worth his weight in gold, and – I could read between the lines – was practically running the place himself. Tyingoza had been over to see them too, and seemed completely to have forgotten Falkner’s liberty with regard to his head-ring, for he had been exceedingly pleasant, and, through Ivondwe, had said a great many nice things about me – reading which I felt more than brotherly towards Tyingoza, and made up my mind then and there to present him with something of large and practical value when I should get up my next consignment of trade goods.

This had covered some three sheets, closely written, and there were still quite as many more. Decidedly Miss Sewin was a good correspondent. I had been going through her letter grudgingly, as if the turning of every leaf should bring the end near. The sail was lifted, and Tom’s honest black face appeared, to ask some question. I curtly told him to go to the devil, and resumed my reading.

“And now,” went on the letter, “I am coming to something that I feel I must tell you, and yet I hardly like to. It seems so ridiculous somehow when one comes to put it down on paper, though if you were here, and we could talk it over, well – it might not. You remember that last evening, and what we were talking about when I asked you if some plan could not be arranged under which I could write to you if I felt that we were in need of your aid or advice? The idea rather originated with yourself if you remember, in your usual kindness and forethought, so that consideration alone emboldens me to write what might otherwise seem to you only fanciful and foolish. You know, too, I am not inclined to indulge in that sort of thing, so you will, I am sure, bear with me. But I must begin.

“You remember that witch doctor, Ukozi, who came upon us suddenly at the waterhole that same last evening, when my coin was lost? Well, he has taken to coming here a great deal. At first my father used to get angry with him and want to drive him away; you know, quite in the old style, before you taught him – or tried to teach him – that the natives here were not to be driven like our people in India used to be. But Ukozi didn’t seem to mind. He would go away chuckling, but the next day sure enough, there he was again. Then father suddenly swung round and seemed to take a fancy to him. He would talk to him by the hour – through Ivondwe interpreting – and when we wondered, would tell us that he was getting Ulcozi to teach him some of the native magic. Of course it seemed to us absurd, but if we said anything of the sort father would get angry, so the only thing was to let him go his own way. But when it came to his going out at night with the witch doctor and coming back at all hours thoroughly done up, why it seemed that the thing was going too far. He has become very mysterious too. Once he let drop that Ukozi was going to tell him all about the waterhole, and the strange thing that we saw there, and then he became more angry still and vowed that he wouldn’t be interfered with – that here was a chance of learning something quite out of the common, and he was going to take it whatever happened. Nothing we can say or do seems to weigh with him in the least, and really, if it didn’t sound too absurd, I should say that this witch doctor had got him right under his thumb. I asked Ivondwe about it quietly, but he was very nice, and said that the old Nkose was a wise man, yet there were things that his wisdom had not yet reached, and now he would like to learn them – that was all. There was nothing to trouble about. When he had learnt what Ukozi could – or would – teach him – and that was not much – then he would be the same as before. Now, Mr Glanton, you know these people, and I ask you what does it all mean? My father is altogether a changed man – how changed you would be the first to recognise if you could see him. What, too, is the object; for Ukozi, beyond getting something to eat, and tobacco now and then, does not seem to ask for anything by way of payment, and I always thought the native isanusi was nothing if not acquisitive? But he is always here. For want of a better expression he is getting upon my nerves, and not only upon mine. It seems as if we were somehow being drawn within an influence, and an influence the more weird and inexplicable that it is through an agency that we should traditionally hold as something inferior, and therefore quite absurd to take seriously. I mean a native influence.

“Shall I risk disgracing myself for ever in your eyes by owning that I am getting just a little bit frightened? Yes, frightened – I’m afraid there’s no other word for it – and the worst of it is I don’t in the least know what I am frightened of. It seems as if a something was hanging over us – a something awful, and from which there is no escape. You remember it was such a presentiment that made me say what I did the last time you were here, and you reassured me on the subject of the witch doctor at any rate. As to him, there is another strange circumstance. Arlo, too, seems to have come under his influence. Arlo who never could be got to take to any native, and now he is more obedient to this Ukozi than to any of us; yet it is the obedience of fear, for he whines and crouches when the witch doctor speaks to him. Here, you will allow, is a real mystery.

“There are other things I might say, but I think I have said enough. Again I hope you won’t put me down as a weak-minded idiot frightened at her own shadow. This country, you see, is so new and strange to us, and our position is rather lonely; father, too, is ageing a good deal, so there is some excuse if we feel a little – well, nervous, at times. As it is I have put off writing to you until, as I reckon from what you said, your time in Zululand must be nearly up, and then only that you may not delay to come and see us immediately on your return.

“All send kind regards and are looking forward to welcoming you back, but none more so than —

“Yours very sincerely,

“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.

Chapter Twenty.

Falkner Shows His Hand – And His Teeth

I put the letter into my pocket, flung on a mackintosh and dived outside again. The rain was still coming down in a steady pour, and the cloud of vapour rising from the horse’s heaving flanks steamed up redly against the firelight. Falkner was in high spirits. A reebok was tied behind his saddle and Jan Boom was carrying the carcase of a klipspringer, and a few unconsidered trifles in the way of partridges.

“You haven’t been out for nothing?” I said, glancing at the spoil.

“Rather not. I’ve had a ripping day of it, but – trot out the grog, old man. Phew! it’s cold. For the last hour I’ve hardly been able to feel my feet in the stirrups.”

“Likely. Here, you’d better tumble into the waggon and get into dry togs. Then we’ll have scoff. By the way, the post has come.”

“Post? See here. Who are you getting at, Glanton? Post!”

“Not at anybody. Here’s a letter, from your aunt I believe.”

“By Jove! I thought you were humbugging. Oh well, that’ll keep – till after scoff at any rate, and I’m starving.”

I had made up my mind to say nothing to him of Aïda Sewin’s letter unless his own communication should contain some reference to it. Soon he was in dry clothes, and the klipspringer was sizzling on the fire, which the boys had managed to shelter ingeniously with the aid of some stones and a bit of old sail. Then, in a trice, the grill being ready, we fell to with a will, seated on the edge of the kartel, our metal plates in our laps, and the rain splashing down upon the waggon tent, while we were warm and dry, if somewhat cramped, within.

“This is jolly and snug, and no mistake,” pronounced Falkner, “and grilled klipspringer makes right radiant scoff. Here, put the bottle across – it’s on your side. And I say, Glanton, I came across a devilish rum thing to-day – a devilish nasty thing. It turned me quite sick, ’pon my word it did. By the way, what were you blazing at soon after we parted? I heard a couple of shots.”

“Oh, it was another klipspringer. But a mere snap, not a fair chance,” I answered, not intending to let him into my secret experience. “What was it you came across?” I went on, feeling rather curious, for he had turned quite serious, as though impressed by some very unpleasant recollection.

“Why! it was about two hours away from here, or might have been rather more – this afternoon just after I’d boned that reebok – a nice clear shot he gave me – a longish one too. Well, away beyond the second line of krantzes over that side, we stumbled suddenly upon a small kraal, where they were none too civil – didn’t seem the least glad to see us, to put it mildly. Well, we didn’t stop, but as we moved on they objected to us going the way we wanted, and in fact the way we eventually came. I rather lost my temper, for they became beastly bumptious, you know, and at one time made as if they’d try to prevent us.”

“You didn’t get punching any of their heads, I hope,” I interrupted, rather sharply.

“No, no. But upon my soul I felt inclined to. First of all they began lying about there being no road there, and so forth, but I knew they were lying, so made up my mind to go that way. Jan Boom didn’t want to either – and those two boys who started with us wouldn’t go any further, said we shouldn’t want them any more, and that we could find our own way back now. Well, I was of the same opinion, so on we came. But at one time I began to think they had been right. It was awful the scramble we had over the rocks and boulders. Jan Boom had turned beastly sulky too, and kept wanting to go back himself, but I’m an obstinate beggar, you know, Glanton, and when once I’ve made up my mind to do a thing I’ll do it – What are you grinning at?”