“Who was it?” I asked impatiently.
“The face was the face of the ‘Lady of the Night,’ and of a truth she is well named.
“I waited, and Bougwan passed me also. Then I followed. So we went slowly and without a sound up the long chamber: first the woman, then Bougwan, and then I; and the woman saw not Bougwan, and Bougwan saw not me. At last the ‘Lady of the Night’ came to the curtains that shut off the sleeping place of the White Queen, and put out her left hand to part them. She passed through, and so did Bougwan, and so did I. At the far end of the room is the bed of the Queen, and on it she lay very fast asleep. I could hear her breathe, and see one white arm lying on the coverlid like a streak of snow on the dry grass. The ‘Lady of the Night’ doubled herself thus, and with the long knife lifted crept towards the bed. So straight did she gaze thereat that she never thought to look behind her. When she was quite close Bougwan touched her on the arm, and she caught her breath and turned, and I saw the knife flash, and heard it strike. Well was it for Bougwan that he had the skin of iron on him, or he had been pierced. Then for the first time he saw who the woman was, and without a word he fell back astonished and unable to speak. She, too, was astonished, and spoke not; but suddenly she laid her finger on her lip, thus, and walked towards and through the curtain, and with her went Bougwan. So close did she pass to me that her dress touched me, and I was nigh to slaying her as she went. In the first outer room she spoke to Bougwan in a whisper and clasping her hands thus she pleaded with him; but what she said I know not. And so they passed on to the second outer room, she pleading, and he shaking his head, and saying, ‘Nay, nay, nay.’ And it seemed to me that he was about to call the guard, when she stopped talking and looked at him with great eyes, and I saw that he was bewitched by her beauty. Then she stretched out her hand and he kissed it, whereon I gathered myself together to advance and take her, seeing that now had Bougwan become a woman, and no longer knew the good from the evil, when behold! she was gone.”
“Gone!” I ejaculated.
“Ay, gone; and there stood Bougwan staring at the wall like one asleep, and presently he went too, and I waited a while and came away also.”
“Art thou sure, Umslopogaas,” said I, “that thou hast not been a dreamer this night?”
In reply he opened his left hand, and produced about three inches of a blade of a dagger of the finest steel. “If I be, Macumazahn, behold what the dream left with me. The knife broke upon Bougwan’s bosom and as I passed I picked this up in the sleeping-place of the White Queen.”
XVIII
War! Red War
Telling Umslopogaas to wait, I tumbled into my clothes and went off with him to Sir Henry’s room, where the Zulu repeated his story word for word. It was a sight to watch Curtis’s face as he heard it.
“Great Heavens!” he said; “here have I been sleeping away while Nyleptha was nearly murdered—and all through me, too. What a fiend that Sorais must be! It would have served her well if Umslopogaas had cut her down in the act.”
“Ay,” said the Zulu. “Fear not; I should have slain her ere she struck; I was but waiting the moment.”
I said nothing; but I could not help thinking that many a thousand doomed lives would have been saved if he had meted out to Sorais the fate she meant for her sister. And, as the issue proved, I was right.
After he had told his tale Umslopogaas went off unconcernedly to get his morning meal, and Sir Henry and I fell to talking.
At first he was very bitter against Good, who, he said, was no longer to be trusted, having designedly allowed Sorais to escape by some secret stair when it was his duty to have handed her over to justice. Indeed he spoke in the most unmeasured terms on the matter. I let him run on awhile, reflecting to myself how easy we find it to be hard on the weaknesses of others, and how tender we are to our own.
“Really, my dear fellow,” I said at length, “one would never think, to hear you talk, that you were the man who had an interview with this same lady yesterday, and found it rather difficult to resist her fascinations, notwithstanding your ties to one of the loveliest and most loving women in the whole world. Now suppose it was Nyleptha who had tried to murder Sorais, and you had caught her, and she had pleaded with you, would you have been so very eager to hand her over to an open shame, and to death by fire? Just look at the matter through Good’s eyeglass for a minute before you denounce an old friend as a scoundrel.”
He listened to this jobation submissively, and then frankly acknowledged that he had spoken hardly. It is one of the best points in Sir Henry’s character that he is always ready to admit it when he is in the wrong.
But, though I spoke up thus for Good, I was not blind to the fact that, however natural his behaviour might be, it was obvious that he was being involved in a very awkward and disgraceful complication. A foul and wicked murder
