Adventure stories; Africa -- Fiction; Hunting guides -- Fiction; Quatermain, Allan (Fictitious character) -- Fiction
It was done, and I was broken-hearted, and broken-hearted I must wander
to the end. Those who have endured my loss will know my sorrow; it
cannot be written. In such peace and at such an hour may I also die!
Yes, it is a sad story, but wander where we will about the world we can
never go beyond the sound of the passing bell. For me, as for my father
before me, and for the millions who have been and who shall be, there
is but one word of comfort. “The Lord hath given, and the Lord hath
taken away.” Let us, then, bow our heads in hope, and add with a humble
heart, “Blessed be the name of the Lord.”
I buried her by her father’s side, and the weeping of the people who
had loved her went up to heaven. Even Indaba-zimbi wept, but I could
weep no more.
On the second night from her burial I could not sleep. I rose, dressed
myself, and went out into the night. The moon was shining brightly, and
by its rays I shaped my course towards the graveyard. I drew near
silently, and as I came I thought that I heard a sound of moaning on
the further side of the wall. I looked over it. Crouched by Stella’s
grave, and tearing at its sods with her hands, as though she would
unearth that which lay within, was _Hendrika_. Her face was wild and
haggard, her form was so emaciated that when the pelts she wore slipped
aside, the shoulder-blades seemed to project almost through her skin.
Suddenly she looked up and saw me. Laughing a dreadful maniac laugh,
she put her hand to her girdle and drew her great knife from it. I
thought that she was about to attack me, and prepared to defend myself
as I best could, for I was unarmed. But she made no effort to do so.
Lifting the knife on high, for a moment she held it glittering in the
moonlight, then plunged it into her own breast, and fell headlong to
the ground.
I sprang over the wall and ran to her. She was not yet dead. Presently
she opened her eyes, and I saw that the madness had gone out of them.
“Macumazahn,” she said, speaking in English and in a thick difficult
voice like one who half forgot and half remembered—“Macumazahn, I
remember now. I have been mad. Is she really dead, Macumazahn?”
“Yes,” I said, “she is dead, and you killed her.”
“I killed her!” the dying woman faltered, “and I loved her. Yes, yes, I
know now. I became a brute again and dragged her to the brutes, and now
once more I am a woman, and she is dead, and I killed her—because I
loved her so. I killed her who saved me from the brutes. I am not dead
yet, Macumazahn. Take me and torture me to death, slowly, very slowly.
It was jealousy of you that drove me mad, and I have killed her, and
now she never can forgive me.”
“Ask forgiveness from above,” I said, for Hendrika had been a
Christian, and the torment of her remorse touched me.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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