The Triumph of Hilary Blachland Part 9

"I think you are tired of it," she flashed. "I suppose you have a lot of black wives over yonder, like that disgusting old Pemberton and Young. That's why you're so fond of going into the Matabele country, and leaving me all alone for weeks."

"Apparently you know more about Pemberton's and Young's conjugal arrangements than I do, but let me a.s.sure you you're utterly wrong in your estimate of mine."

"I don't believe it. You are all of you alike, once you take to going among those beastly natives."

"You don't believe it? That I can't help, so there it stays. And now I've lazed long enough, I must rustle about and see to things."

Left there, Hermia watched his tall form, like a pillar of white, wending up the low kopje at the back of the stockade. He had become very reserved, very self-contained and inscrutable of late; so much so indeed, that it was almost impossible to gauge how much he knew or suspected. Now she felt uneasy, uncomfortable with a dim consciousness of having come off second best in the recent cut and thrust. Well, perhaps he was right. She was tired of the existing state of affairs-- perhaps a trifle tired of him.

And he? The kopje up which he had taken his way, ascended by an easy acclivity to a point which commanded an immense view to the south and westward. Range upon range of rolling slope and wooded ridge lay there outspread--vast and scarcely inhabited country, a land given over to wild game and a few shrinking, starving remnants of tribes living in daily fear of the sweep of the terrible Matabele besom. The evening was still, and golden, and beautiful, and, seated under a mahobo-hobo tree, Blachland lit his pipe, and began to think out the position.

So Hermia was tired of their life together! He had seen it coming on, and at first the knowledge had caused him some concern. He contrasted the lives of other pioneers, living all alone, or in native fashion, with two or three dusky-hued daughters of the land, in rough, uncivilised manner, growing more and more into the happy-go-lucky, soulless simplicity of life of the barbarous aborigines themselves,-- contrasted them with the life he himself led, its comfort, and refined companionship, and, until lately, love,--and, doing so, a qualm of regret tinged his mind. It was evanescent however. For he himself was growing tired of this mode of life. He had embarked on it when he and Hermia had reckoned the world well lost for each other's sake. Now, neither of them so reckoned any more; nay, further, to be perfectly candid with themselves, they wondered how they ever could have. Why not leave it then, move to some more cheerful and civilised quarter of the globe? To do so would be tantamount to leaving each other.

Hermia had taxed him with being jealous, and he had replied, and rightly, that he was past the capacity for any such foolishness. But he had no intention of remaining her dupe. That he had ample cause for jealousy in the matter just under discussion, he was well aware; but that was nothing to what he would meet with should they return to civilisation together. She could no more cleave to one, and one only, than she could fly over the moon. They had better part.

Over the vast roll of country beneath, stretching away into misty dimness, his glance swept. How would he take to civilisation again?

The old restlessness would come upon him. The wandering up-country life had got into his system. The other kind, too, was not so very great as to lure him back to it either. He supposed he had made a mess of things. Well, most people did one way and another, and it couldn't be helped.

Up the slope, through the spa.r.s.e bushes, a herd of cattle was threading--his cattle; and in the tall dark form of their driver he recognised Hlangulu, the Matabele. Mechanically, however, he took in this while his thoughts reverted to their former train. Would they miss each other? he wondered; or, rather, would he miss Hermia? That she would hardly waste a regret on him he knew, for he had long since discovered the shallow emptiness of her nature, and that what he had at one time taken for depth was the mere frenzied abandonment of a pa.s.sing pa.s.sion, wholly unrestrained and absorbing for the time being; but now, and indeed long since, burnt out. Turning, he looked back on the group of primitive buildings within the protecting stockade, his home. A stillness and peace seemed to brood over it in the evening light. He could make out Hermia's form crossing a section of the enclosure. He thought of the years they had been together. Had those years been happy? Well, hardly. Disillusionment had not been long in coming, and with its growth their brief and spurious happiness had faded. They did not quarrel, but it was a case of mutual toleration. And now, at last, he had returned one fine day to recognise that his place was filled by another. Decidedly the time had come for them to part.

"_Nkose_!"

Blachland looked up. His meditations must have run on, for the utterer of this sonorous salutation was he who, but a moment ago it seemed, was right away down there driving the cattle, yet he had had time to take them borne and return here himself.

"What is it, Hlangulu?"

The man dropped down into a squatting att.i.tude, and began to talk.

Blachland, who understood natives, let him run on about nothing in particular--the state of the country, the new settlements of the pioneers, the King, the decreasing of the game, and so forth,--for he knew something was coming. Presently it came.

"_Nkose_ is even as Umlimo. The dark mysteries of the Great bold no terrors for him?"

"Not any," was the laconic reply.

"Yet it is certain death to look into such."

"Death is certain, but the time of death, never. I have looked at 'certain death' before, yet here I am."

"_Au_, _Nkose_! What you desire is not possible, save by one way."

"And that way?"

"Is known to me alone."

"And you are going to make it known to me. Now, Hlangulu, men are men, and men have motives. Why are you going to do this?"

"What is that which is most desired by all white men, _Nkose_?"

"Gold."

"_Yeh-bo, Nkose_, and by black ones, too, if with it they can buy cattle and wives. _Hau_! In the abode of the mighty dead there is much of it."

Blachland didn't start, but his nerves were all a thrill. The man's words were plain enough. A quant.i.ty of treasure had been buried with the dead King. That was the interpretation.

"Is the gold like this, Hlangulu?" he said, producing a sovereign.

"_Eh-he, Nkose_!" a.s.sented the Matabele. "It is in a bag, so high,"-- holding his hand about a couple of feet from the ground.

Then they talked, the white man and the savage,--talked long and earnestly. The superst.i.tions of the latter precluded him from going near the dreaded sepulchre, let alone entering it. But for the former no such barrier existed. Hlangulu knew a way of getting him through the pickets: then he could accomplish a double purpose, explore the interior of the King's grave, and bring away the concealed wealth which lay there; and this they would share equally.

It was quite dark when they separated: Blachland all braced up by the prospect of a new and interesting adventure, which, coming when it did, was peculiarly welcome; Hlangulu to dream of an idyllic existence, in some far-away land where Lo Bengula's arm could not reach, where he could sit in his kraal and count his vast herds of cattle, and buy wives, young and new, whenever inclined.

CHAPTER NINE.

A WEIRD QUEST.

Away among the ma.s.ses of the wonderful Matopo range.

Huge granite piles rearing up skyward in every varied form of bizarre delineation, like the mighty waves of an angry sea suddenly petrified, the great flow of fallen stones covering the entire slope like the inflow of surf upon a slanting sh.o.r.e; the scanty trees, and tall, knife-edged tambuti gra.s.s in the valley bottoms, like seaweed in the rainy moisture of the dusking evening. Then a blue gleam of lightning along the grim granite faces; and a dull boom, re-echoed again and again as the thunder-peal is tossed from crag to crag in a hundred deep-toned reverberations.

Standing just within their ample shelter--which is formed by the overhang of a great boulder--Blachland gazes forth upon the weird and awe-inspiring solitude. Opposite, a huge castellated rock, many hundreds of feet in height, balances on its summit a mighty slab, which it seems would need but the touch of a finger to send crashing into the valley beneath; then a ridge of tumbled boulders; further down another t.i.tanic pile, reft clean through the centre by a chasm, in whose jaws is gripped tight the enormous wedge of stone which seems to have split it: and so on, till the eye is tired and the mind overawed by the stupendous grimness of these Dante-esque heights and valleys.

The adventure is in full swing now. Blachland and his strange guide have been out several days, travelling when possible only at night, and then keeping to the hills as much as practicable. And now they are nearing their goal.

And, looking at it calmly, it is a strange adventure indeed, almost an aimless one. The story of the buried gold Blachland is inclined to scout utterly. But no amount of questioning will shake the faith of his guide, and so, at last, he has come to believe in it himself. Indeed, otherwise, what motive would Hlangulu have for aiding and abetting that which, in his eyes, was nothing more nor less than a monstrous piece of sacrilege? He knew that savages are the most practical of mortals, and that it is entirely outside their code of ethics to go to a vast deal of trouble and risk without the prospect of adequate and substantial advantage to be gained thereby.

It had occurred to him that there might be another motive, and a sinister one. Hlangulu might be decoying him into the most out-of-the-way recesses of Matabeleland in order to make away with him treacherously; and the idea was not a pleasant one, in that, however on the alert he might be, there must always be times when a crafty and determined foe could strike him down when off his guard. But here, again, motive counted for something, and here, again, motive utterly failed, as we have said. He could not call to mind that Hlangulu had the faintest occasion to owe him any sort of a grudge, and, even if it were so, he would not go to work in any such roundabout fashion to pay it. There was nothing for it but to set the whole thing down to its real motive, cupidity to wit.

To this had succeeded another idea. What if this concealed gold were really there, and be succeeded in obtaining it? It was then that he would have to watch his guide and companion with a jealous eye. For the whole is greater than the half, and would this covetous savage remain content with the half? He resolved to keep his eyes very wide open indeed, during the return journey.

The return journey! It was rather early to think about that, for the perils of the enterprise were only about to begin. Turning back within their shelter now, he proceeded to question Hlangulu, who was squatting against a rock, smoking a pipe--to question him once more as to the surroundings of the King's grave.

But the man's answers were mere reiterations of all that he had said before. They would soon be within touch of the guards whom, in the ordinary way, it would be impossible to pa.s.s. The snake? Yes, there was no doubt but that it was the _itongo_, or ghost of the Great Great One who sat there. Many had seen it. He, Hlangulu, had seen it twice, and had retreated, covering his face, and calling out the _sibonga_ of the dead King. It was an immense black _mamba_, and had been seen to go in and out of the grave. It was as long and again half as long as Isipau himself, he declared, looking Blachland up and down.

The latter, remembering Sybrandt's narrative, concluded that there was something decidedly creepy in bearding a particularly vicious and deadly species of serpent within a narrow cleft of rock, the beast being about nine feet long at that--which is what Hlangulu's estimate would make it.

Under any circ.u.mstances it would be bad enough, but now with all the grim and eerie adjuncts thrown in, why the whole scheme seemed to bristle with peril. And what was there to gain by it? Well, the gold.

It must not be supposed, however, that the idea of obtaining this was cherished without a qualm. Did not the whole thing look uncommonly like an act of robbery, and the meanest kind of robbery too--the robbery of a grave? The gold was not his. It had been put there by those to whom it belonged. What right to it had he? As against this he set the fact that it was lying there utterly useless to any living soul; that if he did not take it, somebody else would; that the transfer of the whole of the Matabeleland to the British flag was only a question of time, and that, during the war which should be necessary to bring about this process, others would come to hear of this buried wealth, or light on it by chance, and then, would they be more scrupulous? Not one whit.

It will be remembered that he was all eagerness to effect this weird exploration even before he had the faintest inkling that the place concealed, or might conceal, anything more valuable than a few mouldering relics--a few trumpery articles of adornment, perhaps, which might be worth bringing away as curios. Yet, strange as it may seem, his later knowledge scarcely added to that eagerness.

A curious trait in Hilary Blachland's character was a secret horror of one day failing in nerve. He could recall at least one experience in his life when this had happened to him, and that at a critical juncture, and it had left an impression on him which he had never forgotten.

There were times when it haunted him with a ghostlike horror, and under its influence he would embark in some mad and dare-devil undertaking, utterly inconsequent because utterly without rhyme, reason, or necessity. It was as though he were consumed with a feverish desire to cultivate a reputation for intrepidity, though, as a matter of actual fact, his real motive was to satisfy himself on the point. As a matter of actual fact, too, he was as courageous as the average, and possessed of more than the average amount of resolution.

"We should be starting," said Hlangulu, coming to the entrance of their shelter, and sending a scrutinising look at the sky. "The rain has stopped, and the clouds will all blow apart. Then there will be a moon.

We shall arrive there before daybreak." And, without waiting for the other's consent or comment, he dived within again, and began putting together the few things they carried.