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.”
Three
The Wizard’s Rock derives its name from the circumstance that in the old days—before the advent of civilised government—it was the place of execution of those hapless creatures who were condemned for the supposed practice of witchcraft.
Before the rule of the European in South Africa there was, among the natives, a strong recrudescence from time to time of the lamentable belief that the land was full of malevolent wizards and witches, who spent most of their time in weaving deadly spells against man and beast. The consequences were terrible; men and women were put to death upon the flimsiest suspicion; torture of the most horrible kind was freely resorted to, and the wildest confession wrung from the agonised lips of some was taken as absolute confirmation of the most preposterous apprehensions.
Not more than thirty years ago many a dolorous procession
