Allan Quatermain · Chapter 15 (2/2)

In reply Sir Henry said, dryly, that he had thought she did not look quite herself on that day, whereat she flashed one of those quick glances of hers at him, which, if he had the feelings of a man, must have gone through him like a knife, and the subject dropped entirely. Indeed, after supper was over Nyleptha condescended to put us through an examination to see what we had learned, and to express herself well satisfied with the results. Indeed, she proceeded to give us, especially Sir Henry, a lesson on her own account, and very interesting we found it.

And all the while that we talked, or rather tried to talk, and laughed, Sorais would sit there in her carven ivory chair, and look at us and read us all like a book, only from time to time saying a few words, and smiling that quick ominous smile of hers which was more like a flash of summer lightning on a dark cloud than anything else. And as near to her as he dared would sit Good, worshipping through his eyeglass, for he really was getting seriously devoted to this sombre beauty, of whom, speaking personally, I felt terribly afraid. I watched her keenly, and soon I found out that for all her apparent impassibility she was at heart bitterly jealous of Nyleptha. Another thing I found out, and the discovery filled me with dismay; and that was, that she also was growing devoted to Sir Henry Curtis. Of course I could not be sure; it is not easy to read so cold and haughty a woman, but I noticed one or two little things, and, as elephant hunters know, dried grass shows which way the wind has set.

And so another three months passed over us, by which time we had all attained to a very considerable mastery of the Zu-Vendi language, which is an easy one to learn. And as the time went on we became great favourites with the people, and even with the courtiers, gaining an enormous reputation for cleverness, because, as I think I have said, Sir Henry was able to show them how to make glass, which was a national want; and also, by the help of a twenty-year almanac that we had with us, to predict various heavenly combinations which were quite unsuspected by the native astronomers. We even succeeded in demonstrating the principle of the steam-engine to a gathering of the learned men, who were filled with amazement; and several other things of the same sort we did. And so it came about that the people made up their minds that we must on no account be allowed to go out of the country (which indeed was an apparent impossibility even if we had wished it), and we were advanced to great honour and made officers to the bodyguards of the sister Queens, while permanent quarters were assigned to us in the palace, and our opinion was asked upon questions of national policy.

But blue as the sky seemed, there was a cloud, and a big one, on the horizon. We had, indeed, heard no more of those confounded hippopotami; but it is not on that account to be supposed that our sacrilege was forgotten, or the enmity of the great and powerful priesthood headed by Agon appeased. On the contrary, it was burning the more fiercely because it was necessarily suppressed, and what had perhaps begun in bigotry was ending in downright direct hatred born of jealousy. Hitherto the priests had been the wise men of the land, and were on this account, as well as from superstitious causes, looked on with peculiar veneration. But our arrival, with our outlandish wisdom and our strange inventions and hints of unimagined things, dealt a serious blow to this state of affairs, and, among the educated Zu-Vendi, went far towards destroying the priestly prestige. A still worse affront to them, however, was the favour with which we were regarded, and the trust that was reposed in us. All these things tended to make us excessively obnoxious to the great sacerdotal clan, the most powerful because the most united faction in the kingdom.

Another source of imminent danger to us was the rising envy of some of the great lords, headed by Nasta, whose antagonism to us had at best been but thinly veiled, and which now threatened to break out into open flame. Nasta had for some years been a candidate for Nyleptha’s hand in marriage; and when we appeared on the scene, I fancy, from all I could gather, that though there were still many obstacles in his path, success was by no means out of his reach. But now all this had changed; the coy Nyleptha smiled no more in his direction, and he was not slow to guess the cause. Infuriated and alarmed, he turned his attention to Sorais, only to find that he might as well try to woo a mountain side. With a bitter jest or two about his fickleness, that door was closed on him forever. So Nasta bethought himself of the thirty thousand wild swordsmen who would pour down at his bidding through the northern mountain passes, and no doubt vowed to adorn the gates of Milosis with our heads.

But first he determined, as we learned, to make one more attempt, and to demand the hand of Nyleptha in the open Court after the formal annual ceremony of the signing of the laws that had been proclaimed by the Queens during the year.

Of this astounding fact Nyleptha heard with simulated nonchalance, and with a little trembling of the voice herself informed us of it as we sat at supper on the night preceding the great ceremony of the law-signing.

Sir Henry bit his lip, and, do what he could to prevent it, plainly showed his agitation.

“And what answer will the Queen be pleased to give to the great Lord?” asked I, in a jesting manner.

“Answer, Macumazahn” (for we had elected to pass by our Zulu names in Zu-Vendis), she said, with a pretty shrug of her ivory shoulder. “Nay, I know not; what is a poor woman to do when the wooer has thirty thousand swords wherewith to urge his love?” and from under her long lashes she glanced at Curtis.

Just then we rose from the table to adjourn into another room. “Quatermain, a word, quick!” said Sir Henry to me. “Listen; I have never spoken about it, but surely you have guessed⁠—I love Nyleptha. What am I to do?”

Fortunately, I had more or less already taken the question into consideration, and was therefore able to give such answer as seemed the wisest to me.

“You must speak to Nyleptha tonight,” I said. “Now is your time⁠—now or never. Listen; in the sitting-chamber get near to her, and whisper to her to meet you at midnight by the Rademas statue at the end of the great hall. I will keep watch for you there. Now or never, Curtis.”

We passed on into the other room. Nyleptha was sitting, her hands before her, and a sad, anxious look upon her lovely face. A little way off was Sorais talking to Good in her slow, measured tones.

The time went on; in another quarter of an hour I knew that, according to their habit, the Queens would retire. As yet Sir Henry had had no chance of saying a word in private: indeed, though we saw much of the royal sisters, it was by no means easy to see them alone. I racked my brains, and at last an idea came to me.

“Will the Queen be pleased,” I said, bowing low before Sorais, “to sing unto her servants? Our hearts are heavy this night. Sing to us, O Lady of the Night” (Sorais’s favourite name among the people).

“My songs, Macumazahn, are not such as to lighten the heavy heart, yet will I sing if it pleases thee,” she answered, and she rose and went a few paces to a table, whereon lay an instrument not unlike a zither, and struck a few wandering chords.

Then suddenly, like the notes of some deep-throated bird, her rounded voice rang out in song so wildly sweet, and yet with so eerie and sad a refrain, that it made the very blood stand still. Up, up soared the golden notes, that seemed to melt far away, and then to grow again and travel on, laden with all the sorrow of the world and all the despair of the lost. It was a marvellous song, but I had not time to listen to it properly. However, I got the words of it afterwards, and here is a translation of its burden, so far as it admits of being translated at all:

As a desolate bird that through darkness its lost way is winging,

As a hand that is helplessly raised when Death’s sickle is swinging,

So is life! ay, the life that lends passion and breath to my singing.

As the nightingale’s song that is full of a sweetness unspoken,

As a spirit unbarring the gates of the skies for a token,

So is love! ay, the love that shall fall when his pinion is broken.

As the tramp of the legions when trumpets their challenge are sending,

As the shout of the Storm-god when lightnings the black sky are rending,

So is power! ay, the power that shall lie in the dust at its ending.

So short is our life; yet with space for all things to forsake us,

A bitter delusion, a dream from which nought can awake us,

Till Death’s dogging footsteps at morn or at eve shall o’ertake us.

Oh, the world is fair at the dawning⁠—dawning⁠—dawning,

But the red sun sinks in blood⁠—the red sun sinks in blood.

I only wish that I could write down the music too.

“Now, Curtis, now,” I whispered, when she began the second verse, and turned my back.

“Nyleptha,” he said⁠—for my nerves were so much on the stretch that I could hear every word, low as it was spoken, even through Sorais’s divine notes⁠—“Nyleptha, I must speak with thee this night; upon my life I must. Say me not nay, oh, say me not nay!”

“How can I speak with thee?” she answered, looking fixedly before her; “Queens are not like other people. I am surrounded and watched.”

“Listen, Nyleptha, thus: I will be before the statue of Rademas in the great hall at midnight. I have the countersign and can pass in. Macumazahn will be there to keep guard, and with him the Zulu. Oh come, my Queen; deny me not.”

“It is not seemly,” she murmured, “and tomorrow⁠—”

Just then the music began to die in the last wail of the refrain, and Sorais slowly turned her round.

“I will be there,” said Nyleptha, hurriedly; “on thy life see that thou fail me not.”