40+ Adventure Novels & Lost World Mysteries in One Premium Edition. Henry Rider Haggard

the church door open, had strolled in to see what was going on. Indeed, the marriage had been kept a profound secret; for since he had been blind, Ernest had developed a great dislike to being stared at. Nor, indeed, had he any liking for the system under which a woman proclaims with loud and unseemly rejoicings that she has found a man to marry her, and the clan of her relations celebrate her departure with a few outward and visible tears and much inward and spiritual joy.

      But among that small crowd, unobserved by any of them, quite close up in the shadow of one of the massive pillars, sat a veiled woman. She sat quite quiet and still; she might have been carved in stone; but as the service went on she raised her thick veil, and fixed her keen eyes upon the two who stood before the altar. As she did so, the lips of this shadowy lady trembled a little, and a mist of trouble rose from the unhealthy marshes of her mind and clouded her fine-cut features. Long and steadily she gazed, then dropped the veil again, and said beneath her breath:

      "Was it worth while for this? Well, I have seen him."

      Then this shadowy noble-looking lady rose, and glided from the church, bearing away with her the haunting burden of her sin.

      And Ernest? He stood there and said the responses in his clear manly voice; but even as he did so there rose before him the semblance of the little room in far-away Pretoria, and the vision which he had seen of this very church, and of a man standing where he himself stood now, and a lovely woman standing where stood Dorothy his wife. Well, it was gone, as all visions go--as we, who are but visions of a longer life, go too. It was gone--gone into that limbo of the past which is ever opening its insatiable maw and swallowing us and our joys and our sorrows--our virtues and our sins--making a meal of the atoms of to-day that it may support itself till the atoms of to-morrow are ready for its appetite.

      It was gone, and he was married, and Dorothy his wife stood there wreathed in smiles and blushes which he could not see, and Mr. Halford's voice, now grown weak and quavering, was formulating heartfelt congratulations, which were being repeated in the gigantic echo of Jeremy's deep tones, and in his uncles quick jerky utterances. So he took Dorothy his wife into his arms and kissed her, and she led him down the church to the old vestry, into which so many thousand newly-married couples had passed during the course of the last six centuries, and he signed his name where they placed his pen upon the parchment, wondering the while if he was signing it straight, and then went out, and was helped into the carriage, and driven home.

      Ernest and his wife went upon no honeymoon; they stopped quietly there at the old house, and began to accustom themselves to their new relationship. Indeed, to the outsider at any rate, there seemed to be little difference between it and the former one; for they could not be much more together now than they had been before. Yet in Dorothy's face there was a difference. A great peace, an utter satisfaction which had been wanting before, came down and brooded upon it, and made it beautiful. She both looked and was a happy woman.

      But to the Zulu Mazooku this state of affairs did not appear to be satisfactory.

      One day--it was three days after the marriage--Ernest and Dorothy were walking together outside the house, when Jeremy, coming in from a visit to a distant farm, advanced, and, joining them, began to converse on agricultural matters; for he was already becoming intensely and annoyingly technical. Presently, as they talked, they became aware of the sound of naked feet running swiftly over the grass.

      "That sounds like a Zulu dancing," said Ernest, quickly.

      It was a Zulu: it was Mazooku, but Mazooku transformed. It had been his fancy to bring a suit of war finery, such as he had worn when he was one of Cetywayo's soldiers, with him from Natal; and now he had donned it all, and stood before them, a striking yet an alarming figure. From his head a single beautiful grey feather, taken from the Bell crane, rose a good two feet into the air; around his waist hung a kilt of white ox-tails, and beneath his right knee and shoulder were small circles of white goat's hair. For the rest, he was naked. In his left hand he held a milk-white fighting-shield made of ox-hide, and in his right his great "bangwan," or stabbing assegai. Still as a statue he stood before them, his plume bending in the breeze; and Dorothy, looking with wondering eyes, marvelled at the broad chest scarred all over with assegai wounds, and the huge sinewy limbs. Suddenly he raised the spear, and saluted in sonorous tones:

      "Koos! Baba!"

      "Speak," said Ernest.

      "I speak, Mazimba, my father. I come to meet my father as a man meets a man. I come with spear and shield, but not in war. With my father I came from the land of the sun into this cold land, where the sun is as pale as the white faces it shines on. Is it not so, my father?"

      "I hear you."

      "With my father I came. Did you my father and I stand together for many a day? Did I not slay the two Basutos down in the land of Secocoeni, chief of the Bapedi, at my father's bidding? Did I not once save my father from the jaws of the wild beast that walks by night--from the fangs of the lion? Did I not stand by the side of my father at the place of the Little Hand, when all the plain of Isandhlwana was red with blood? Do I dream in the night, or was it so, my father?"

      "I hear you. It was so."

      "Then when the heavens above smelt out my father, and smote him with their fire, did I not say, 'Ah, my father, now art thou blind, and canst fight no more, and no more play the part of a man. Better that thou hadst died a man's death, O my father! But as thou art blind, lo! whither thou goest, thither I will go also and be my father's dog.' Did I not say this, O Mazimba, my father?"

      "Thou didst say it."

      "And so we sailed across the black water, thou, Mazimba, and I and the great Lion, like unto whom no man was ever born of woman, and came hither, and have lived for many moons the lives of women, have eaten and drunken, and have not fought or hunted, or known the pleasure of men. Is it not so, Mazimba, my father?"

      "Thou speakest truly, Mazooku; it is even so."

      "Yes, we sailed the black water in the smoking ship, sailed to the land of wonders, which is full of houses and trees, so that a man cannot breathe in it, or throw out his arms lest they should strike a wall; and, behold! there came an ancient one with a shining head wonderful to look on, and a girl Rosebud, small but very sweet, and greeted my father and the Lion, and led them away in the carriages which put the horses inside them, and set them in this place, where they may look for ever at the sadness of the sea.

      "And then, behold, the Rosebud said, 'What doth this black dog here? Shall a dog lead Mazimba by the hand? Begone, thou black dog, and walk in front or ride behind; it is I who will hold Mazimba's hand.'

      "Then my father, sinking deep in ease, and becoming a fat man, rich in oxen and waggons and corn, said to himself, 'I will take this Rosebud to wife.' So the Rosebud opened her petals, and closed them round my father, and became a rose; and now she sheds her fragrance round him day by day and night by night, and the black dog stands and howls outside the door.

      "Thus, my father, it came to pass that Mazooku, thy ox and thy dog, communed with his heart, and said: 'Here is no more any place for thee. Mazimba thy chief has no longer any need of thee, and behold! O Soldier in this land of women thou, too, shalt grow like a woman. So arise and go to thy father, and say to him, "O my father, years ago I put my hand between thy hands, and became a loyal man to thee; now I would withdraw it, and return to the land whence we came; for here I am not wanted, and here I cannot breathe."' I have spoken, O my father and my chief."

      "Mazooku, umdanda ga Ingoluvu, umfana ga Amazulu" (son of Ingoluvu, child of the Zulu race), answered Ernest, adopting the Zulu metaphor, his voice sounding wonderfully soft as the liquid tongue he spoke so well came rolling out, "thou hast been a good man to me and I have loved thee. But thou shalt go. Thou art right: now is my life the life of a woman; never again shall I hear the sound of rifles or the ringing of steel in war. And so thou goest, Mazooku. It is well. But at times thou wilt think of thy blind master Mazimba, and of Alston, the wise captain who sleeps, and of the Lion who threw the ox over his shoulder. Go, and be happy. Many be thy wives, many thy children, and countless thy cattle! The Lion shall take thee by the hand and lead thee to the sea, and shall give thee of my bounty wherewith to buy a little food when thou comest to thine own land, and