Читать книгу By Veldt and Kopje - W. C. Scully - Страница 8

On the day after the transmission of the Magistrate’s message the different headmen concerned went round among their respective locations and warned the lepers to assemble at a certain spot near Izolo in ten days’ time. Mangèlè received the message in silence. His relations, who hated him for having prevented their spoliation of old Makanda, were delighted at the prospect of getting rid of him, but they wisely refrained from expressing their feelings on the subject in his presence.

Nosèmbè and Mangèlè were attached to each other in a manner somewhat rare among the uncivilised natives. She was the handsomest girl in the neighbourhood, and several other men besides Xaba had wished to marry her. She had never suspected for a moment that her lover was suffering from the dread, nameless disease that filled the bones with water, and when in the course of the next few days it came to be whispered that Mangèlè was one of those who had to go into confinement at Emjanyana, she laughed at the report. Later, Xaba spoke of it to her and she spat at him in her fury at the insult. When, however, she heard her father and brothers discussing the question of the return of the dowry cattle, she knew that the rumour was true, and her whole soul revolted at the injustice. Mangèlè was the strongest and handsomest man in the neighbourhood—why should he be locked up like a criminal because he happened to have a sore place upon his hand? She at once made up her mind that if her lover had to go, she would follow him into captivity.

Three days Nosèmbè waited in the hope that Mangèlè would visit her, but she waited in vain; so, on the fourth night, she arose from her mat after all the others had gone to sleep, crept out of the hut, and sped along the pathway which led over the divide beyond which his kraal was situated.

The night was sultry and the sky was brightly starlit as Nosèmbè glided between the patches of scrub which dappled the hillside at the back of the kraal. She knew the hut which Mangèlè occupied by himself; all she feared was that the dogs might give the alarm and some of the people come out and see her. As she crouched behind a bush the dogs suddenly set up a chorus of barking and rushed down the hillside on the opposite side of the kraal in pursuit of a supposed enemy. Here was her chance; she sprang up and ran swiftly down the slope to Mangèlè’s hut.

Mangèlè was sitting on a stone in front of the doorway, in an attitude expressive of the deepest dejection. His head was bowed upon the arms which rested upon his bent knees, and the corner of his blanket was drawn over it as though he could not bear even the light of the gentle stars. He heard Nosèmbè’s footstep, and lifted his sombre face. For a few seconds the two regarded each other silently; then the girl flung herself to the ground at the man’s feet and broke into a passion of tears.

Mangèlè lifted Nosèmbè from where she lay and clasped her closely to him. Her sobs ceased, but it was long before either spake a word. The girl was the first to break the silence.

“It is not true that you have to go to Emjanyana.”

“It is true.”

“But you are not sick,” she rejoined, passionately. “You are stronger than other men. And you have done no wrong. How, then, can they put you in prison?”

“I am sick,” he replied, in a heart-broken voice; “my bones are filling with water. It is right that I go away. I am a dead man.”

“Then I will go with you.”

“No, that cannot be,” he replied, in a voice broken by emotion; “no woman can go to Emjanyana unless she have ‘the sickness’; and then the men and women have to dwell apart.”

“Moimamo,” she wailed. “You cannot leave me—your child quickens even now. You have paid the dowry and I am your wife. I will sit at the gate at Emjanyana until they let me in.”

Day was almost breaking when Mangèlè led Nosèmbè back into the scrub to the footpath by which she had come. They bade each other farewell, after arranging to meet on the following night in the same way.

Nosèmbè had not gone very far before she met her father and two of her brothers, who, when they had discovered her absence, guessed where she had gone to and started out to seek for her. She met their railing and reproaches with the utmost composure. However, when night again came she found herself so carefully guarded that escape was impossible, so she was unable to keep the appointment with her lover.

Mangèlè waited the whole night through, hoping against hope that she would come. He correctly guessed the cause of her absence. When day broke he took his sticks and went forth to carry out a design he had formed in the course of his long vigil.

During the next forty-eight hours he personally visited every one of the lepers belonging to his clan in the district, and arranged with them to meet a day later in the vicinity of the Residency.

In the morning, just after the Magistrate had reached his office, he received a message asking him to meet the lepers under a certain tree, where, by tacit understanding, they had been accustomed to assemble on the rare occasions when they required to communicate direct with the authorities. Soon afterward he walked to the spot, which was situated in a kloof about three hundred yards distant.

There they sat, twenty-four in number. Ten of them were women. All, with the exception of Mangèlè, were old. What an awful spectacle they afforded, these four-and-twenty human creatures; all save one crushed almost out of human semblance by the wheels of the chariot of pitiless, unregarding Nature. There, against the lovely background of graceful fern and fragrant clematis, beneath the twinkling, poplar-like leaves of the spreading erethryna-tree—through which the blue sky smiled—were huddled these poor sufferers without hope of relief, guiltless vessels marred by the mysterious hand of The Great Potter. Twisted limb and crumbling stump, visages from which the gracious human lines had been obliterated by a slow, fell process more awful than the snake’s fang or the lightning’s stroke.

Over what remained of nearly every countenance seemed to hover a suggestion of that strange, leonine look which was so strongly marked in the case of Mangèlè; and to the Magistrate it seemed as if this were the only relief from a horror almost too absolute to look upon for long and keep his senses. It was as though what Schopenhauer called “the genius of the genus” had arisen from the depths of being to protest mutely against this piteous desecration of its temple by unregarding Nature and iron-visaged Fate. It was the very sublimation of tragic pathos, in the presence of which pity seemed to die of its own intensity.

All but Mangèlè sat upon the ground and endeavoured to hide, so far as possible, their worst individual disfigurements, but he stood forth as though proudly conscious of his almost perfect symmetry, and met the Magistrate’s sympathetic glance with his sombre, lion-like gaze. Then, after the usual salutations, Mangèlè began his speech. As is usual with natives to whom oratory is an inborn art, his delivery was excellent and full of dignity.

“We, men and women who are dead, though living, come to our Father, the Government, to ask for a little thing.

“God, whom the White Man has taught us to know, smote us with this sickness which has filled our bones with water for marrow, and caused our quick flesh to rot slowly, like dead wood. We acknowledge that it is only right we should be separated from other men, so that we may not give the disease to those who are clean, but we cannot dwell apart from our kindred, our cattle and the fields wherein our fathers saw the corn growing when they were little children—therefore we wish to die now, this day. Then will the sickness die with us, and our Father, the Government, will not be put to any further trouble on our account.

“What we ask of the White Chief, our Magistrate, is this: that he now, before the sun has begun to fall, send hither his policemen with rifles, and bid them shoot us skilfully so that we may suffer little pain.

Then turning to his companions, who had heard him in silence, he added—

“My brothers and sisters—children of my Father—tell our Chief if I have spoken the right word.”

An eager murmur of assent followed.

“Yes, our Chief, he has spoken the one word which is in all our hearts: kill us here, but send us not to dwell apart from our homes and our kindred.”

It was some little time before the Magistrate was able to command his feelings sufficiently to admit of his speaking. When they saw that he was about to reply, his miserable hearers leant forward with every appearance of the keenest interest. In his heart he knew that what the poor creatures asked for was for them the best. His compassion was so deep that he could have slain them with his own hand.

“The word you have spoken,” he said, “has gone through my heart like the bullet you have asked for. What can I say for your comfort? Go, my poor brothers and sisters whom God has afflicted so sorely. In the place to which your Father, the Government, is sending you, neither hunger nor cold will afflict you; you will have many friends and your days will be passed in peace. The thing you ask for I may not give, for the Law allows it not. My heart will be with you in your exile.”

Then a wail of anguished protest went up from the miserable crowd—

“Law—what have we to do with the Law—we who are dead already? We cannot dwell in a strange place. Kill us and put us under the ground on which we have lived our lives. Send the policemen with the rifles to us here at this spot—we will not shrink.”

After the Magistrate had withdrawn, the poor creatures continued their lamentations for some time. Then they seemed to fall into a condition of apathy. Mangèlè sat silently apart, with the corner of his blanket drawn over his head. This, of late, had become his habitual attitude. Eventually he arose and called for attention—

“Listen, O brothers and sisters of the sickness; the thing which the Magistrate may not do on account of the Law we may yet do for ourselves … To-morrow night at sundown let us meet at the Wizard’s Rock. There we may die as painlessly as by a rifle. To-day and to-morrow let us look our last upon our kindred, our cattle, and the land our fathers dwelt in. To-morrow night we will go down with the sun.”