thee, Sorais.
'But not for that would I spare thy life, for thy offence has
been too heavy; it doth drag down the wide wings of my mercy
even to the ground. Also, while thou dost live the land will
never be at peace.
'Yet shalt thou not die, Sorais, because my dear lord here hath
begged thy life of me as a boon;
therefore as a boon and as a
marriage gift give I it to him, to do with even as he wills,
knowing that, though thou dost love him, he loves thee not, Sorais,
for all thy beauty. Nay, though thou art lovely as the night
in all her stars, O Lady of the Night, yet it is me his wife
whom he loves, and not thee, and
therefore do I give thy life
to him.'
Sorais flushed up to her eyes and said nothing, and I do not
think that I ever saw a man look more
miserable than did Sir
Henry at that moment. Somehow, Nyleptha's way of putting the
thing, though true and forcible enough, was not
altogether pleasant.
'I understand,' stammered Curtis, looking at Good, 'I understood
that he were attached -- eh -- attached to -- to the Queen Sorais.
I am -- eh -- not aware what the -- in short, the state of your
feelings may be just now; but if they happened to be that way
inclined, it has struck me that -- in short, it might put a satisfactory
end to an
unpleasant business. The lady also has ample private
estates, where I am sure she would be at liberty to live unmolested
as far as we are
concerned, eh, Nyleptha? Of course, I only
suggest.'
'So far as I am
concerned,' said Good,
colouring up, 'I am quite
willing to forget the past; and if the Lady of the Night thinks
me worth the
taking I will marry her tomorrow, or when she likes,
and try to make her a good husband.'
All eyes were now turned to Sorais, who stood with that same
slow smile upon her beautiful face which I had noticed the first
time that I ever saw her. She paused a little while, and cleared
her
throat, and then
thrice she curtseyed low, once to Nyleptha,
once to Curtis, and once to Good, and began to speak in measured tones.
'I thank thee, most
gracious Queen and royal sister, for the
loving-kindness thou hast shown me from my youth up, and especially
in that thou hast been pleased to give my person and my fate
as a gift to the Lord Incubu -- the King that is to be. May
prosperity, peace and plenty deck the life-path of one so merciful
and so tender, even as flowers do. Long mayst thou reign, O
great and
glorious Queen, and hold thy husband's love in both
thy hands, and many be the sons and daughters of thy beauty.
And I thank thee, my Lord Incubu -- the King that is to be --
I thank thee a thousand times in that thou hast been pleased
to accept that
gracious gift, and to pass it on to thy comrade
in arms and in adventure, the Lord Bougwan. Surely the act is
worthy of thy
greatness, my Lord Incubu. And now,
lastly, I
thank thee also, my Lord Bougwan, who in thy turn hast deigned
to accept me and my poor beauty. I thank thee a thousand times,
and I will add that thou art a good and honest man, and I put
my hand upon my heart and swear that I would that I could say
thee "yea". And now that I have rendered thanks to all in turn'
-- and again she smiled -- 'I will add one short word.
'Little can you understand of me, Queen Nyleptha and my lords,
if ye know not that for me there is no middle path; that I scorn
your pity and hate you for it; that I cast off your forgiveness
as though it were a serpent's sting; and that
standing here,
betrayed, deserted, insulted, and alone, I yet
triumph over you,
mock you, and defy you, one and all, and thus I answer you.'
And then, of a sudden, before anybody guessed what she intended
to do, she drove the little silver spear she carried in her hand
into her side with such a strong and steady aim that the keen
point projected through her back, and she fell prone upon the
pavement.
Nyleptha shrieked, and poor Good almost fainted at the sight,
while the rest of us rushed towards her. But Sorais of the Night
lifted herself upon her hand, and for a moment fixed her
gloriouseyes
intently on Curtis' face, as though there were some message
in the glance, then dropped her head and sighed, and with a sob
her dark but splendid spirit passed.
Well, they gave her a royal
funeral, and there was an end of her.
It was a month after the last act of the Sorais
tragedy that
a great
ceremony was held in the Flower Temple, and Curtis was
formally declared King-Consort of Zu-Vendis. I was too ill to
go myself; and indeed, I hate all that sort of thing, with the
crowds and the trumpet-blowing and banner-waving; but Good, who
was there (in his full-dress uniform), came back much impressed,
and told me that Nyleptha had looked lovely, and Curtis had borne
himself in a right royal fashion, and had been received with
acclamations that left no doubt as to his
popularity. Also he
told me that when the horse Daylight was led along in the procession,
the
populace had shouted 'Macumazahn, Macumazahn!' till they
were
hoarse, and would only be appeased when he, Good, rose in
his
chariot and told them that I was too ill to be present.
Afterwards, too, Sir Henry, or rather the King, came to see me,
looking very tired, and vowing that he had never been so bored
in his life; but I dare say that that was a slight exaggeration.
It is not in human nature that a man should be
altogether bored
on such an
extraordinary occasion; and, indeed, as I pointed
out to him, it was a marvellous thing that a man, who but little
more than one short year before had entered a great country as
an unknown
wanderer, should today be married to its beautiful
and
beloved Queen, and lifted,
amidst public rejoicings, to its
throne. I even went the length to exhort him in the future not
to be carried away by the pride and pomp of
absolute power, but
always to
strive to remember that he was first a Christian gentleman,
and next a public servant, called by Providence to a great and
almost
unprecedented trust. These remarks, which he might fairly
have resented, he was so good as to receive with
patience, and
even to thank me for making them.
It was immediately after this
ceremony that I caused myself to
be moved to the house where I am now
writing. It is a very pleasant
country seat,
situated about two miles from the Frowning City,
on to which it looks. That was five months ago, during the whole
of which time I have, being confined to a kind of couch, employed
my
leisure in compiling this history of our wanderings from my
journal and from our joint memories. It is
probable that it
will never be read, but it does not much matter whether it is
or not; at any rate, it has served to while away many hours of
suffering, for I have suffered a deal of pain
lately. Thank God,
however, there will not be much more of it.
It is a week since I wrote the above, and now I take up my pen
for the last time, for I know that the end is at hand. My brain
is still clear and I can manage to write, though with difficulty.
The pain in my lung, which has been very bad during the last
week, has suddenly quite left me, and been succeeded by a feeling
of
numbness of which I cannot mistake the meaning. And just
as the pain has gone, so with it all fear of that end has departed,
and I feel only as though I were going to sink into the arms
of an unutterable rest. Happily, contentedly, and with the same
sense of
security with which an
infant lays itself to sleep in
its mother's arms, do I lay myself down in the arms of the Angel
Death. All the tremors, all the heart-shaking fears which have
haunted me through a life that seems long as I looked back upon
it, have left me now; the storms have passed, and the Star of
our Eternal Hope shines clear and steady on the
horizon that
seems so far from man, and yet is so very near to me tonight.
And so this is the end of it -- a brief space of troubling,
a few
restless, fevered, anguished years, and then the arms of
that great Angel Death. Many times have I been near to them,
and now it is my turn at last, and it is well. Twenty-four hours
more and the world will be gone from me, and with it all its
hopes and all its fears. The air will close in over the space
that my form filled and my place know me no more; for the dull
breath of the world's
forgetfulness will first dim the brightness
of my memory, and then blot it out for ever, and of a truth I
shall be dead. So is it with us all. How many millions have
lain as I lie, and thought these thoughts and been forgotten!
-- thousands upon thousands of years ago they thought them, those
dying men of the dim past; and thousands on thousands of years
hence will their descendants think them and be in their turn
forgotten. 'As the
breath of the oxen in winter, as the quick
star that runs along the sky, as a little shadow that loses itself
at sunset,' as I once heard a Zulu called Ignosi put it, such
is the order of our life, the order that passeth away.
Well, it is not a good world -- nobody can say that it is, save
those who wilfully blind themselves to facts. How can a world
be good in which Money is the moving power, and Self-interest
the guiding star? The wonder is not that it is so bad, but that
there should be any good left in it.
Still, now that my life is over, I am glad to have lived, glad
to have known the dear
breath of woman's love, and that true
friendship which can even
surpass the love of woman, glad to
have heard the
laughter of little children, to have seen the
sun and the moon and the stars, to have felt the kiss of the
salt sea on my face, and watched the wild game trek down to the
water in the
moonlight. But I should not wish to live again!
Everything is changing to me. The darkness draws near, and the
light departs. And yet it seems to me that through that darkness
I can already see the shining
welcome of many a long-lost face.
Harry is there, and others; one above all, to my mind the sweetest
and most perfect woman that ever gladdened this grey earth.
But of her I have already written
elsewhere, and at length, so
why speak of her now? Why speak of her after this long silence,
now that she is again so near to me, now that I go where she
has gone?
The sinking sun is turning the golden roof of the great Temple
to a fiery flame, and my fingers tire.
So to all who have known me, or known of me, to all who can think
one kindly thought of the old
hunter, I stretch out my hand from
the
far-off shore and bid a long farewell.
And now into the hands of Almighty God, who sent it, do I commit
my spirit.
'I have spoken,' as the Zulus say.
CHAPTER XXIV
BY ANOTHER HAND
A year has elapsed since our most dear friend Allan Quatermain
wrote the words 'I have spoken' at the end of his record of
our adventures. Nor should I have ventured to make any additions
to the record had it not happened that by a most strange accident
a chance has
arisen of its being conveyed to England. The chance
is but a faint one, it is true; but, as it is not
probable that
another will arise in our lifetimes, Good and myself think that
we may as well avail ourselves of it, such as it is. During the
last six months several Frontier Commissions have been at work
on the various boundaries of Zu-Vendis, with a view of discovering
whether there exists any possible means of ingress or egress from
the country, with the result that a
channel of communication
with the outer world
hitherto overlooked has been discovered.
This
channel,
apparently the only one (for I have discovered that
it was by it that the native who
ultimately reached Mr Mackenzie's
mission station, and whose
arrival in the country, together with
the fact of his
expulsion -- for he did arrive about three
years before ourselves -- was for reasons of their own kept a
dead secret by the priests to whom he was brought), is about
to be
effectually closed. But before this is done, a messenger
is to be despatched
bearing with him this
manuscript, and also
one or two letters from Good to his friends, and from myself
to my brother George, whom it deeply grieves me to think I shall
never see again, informing them, as our next heirs, that they