After our escape from Agon and his crew we returned to our quarters in the palace and had a very good time. The two Queens, the nobles and the people vied with each other in doing us honour and showering gifts upon us. As for that painful little incident of the hippopotami it sank into oblivion, where we were quite content to leave it. Every day deputations and individuals waited on us to examine our guns and clothing, our chain shirts, and our instruments, especially our watches, with which they were much delighted. In short, we became quite the rage, so much so that some of the fashionable young among the Zu-Vendi began to copy the cut of some of our clothes, Sir Henry’s shooting jacket. One day, indeed, a deputation waited on us and, as usual, Good donned his full-dress uniform for the occasion. This deputation seemed somehow to be a different class to those who generally came to visit us. They were little men of an excessively polite, not to say servile, demeanour; and their attention appeared to be chiefly taken up with observing the details of Good’s full-dress uniform, of which they took notes and measurements. Good was much flattered at the time, not suspecting that he had to deal with the six leading tailors of Milosis. A fortnight afterwards, however, when on attending court as usual he had the pleasure of seeing some seven or eight Zu-Vendi ‘mashers’ arrayed in all the glory of a very fair imitation of his full-dress uniform, he changed his mind. I shall never forget his face of and disgust. It was after this, chiefly to avoid remark, and also because our clothes were wearing out and had to be saved up, that we resolved to adopt the native dress; and a very comfortable one we found it, though I am bound to say that I looked ridiculous in it, and as for Alphonse! Only Umslopogaas would have none of these things; when his moocha was worn out the fierce old Zulu made him a new one, and went about unconcerned, as grim and naked as his own battleaxe.
Meanwhile we pursued our study of the language and made very good progress. On the morning following our adventure in the temple, three grave and reverend signiors presented themselves armed with manuscript books, ink-horns and feather pens, and indicated that they had been sent to teach us. So, with the exception of Umslopogaas, we all to with a will, doing four hours a day. As for Umslopogaas, he would have none of that either. He did not wish to learn that ‘woman’s talk’, not he; and when one of the teachers advanced on him with a book and an ink-horn and waved them before him in a mild way, much as a churchwarden shakes the offertory bag under the nose of a rich but parishioner, he sprang up with a fierce oath and flashed Inkosi-kaas before the eyes of our learned friend, and there was an end of the attempt to teach him Zu-Vendi.
Thus we spent our mornings in useful occupation which grew more and more interesting as we proceeded, and the afternoons were given up to recreation. Sometimes we made trips, notably one to the gold mines and another to the marble both of which I wish I had space and time to describe; and sometimes we went out hunting with dogs trained for that purpose, and a very exciting sport it is, as the country is full of agricultural enclosures and our horses were magnificent. This is not to be wondered at, seeing that the royal stables were at our command, in addition to which we had four splendid saddle horses given to us by Nyleptha.
Sometimes, again, we went , a pastime that is in great favour among the Zu-Vendi, who generally fly their birds at a species of partridge which is for the swiftness and strength of its flight. When attacked by the this bird appears to lose its head, and, instead of seeking cover, flies high into the sky, thus offering wonderful sport. I have seen one of these partridges soar up almost out of sight when followed by the hawk. Still better sport is offered by a variety of snipe as big as a small woodcock, which is in this country, and which is flown at with a very small, , and highly-trained hawk with an almost red tail. The of the great snipe and the lightning rapidity of the flight and movements of the red-tailed hawk make the pastime a one. Another variety of the same amusement is the hunting of a very small species of with trained eagles; and it certainly is a marvellous sight to see the great bird soar and soar till he is nothing but a black in the sunlight, and then suddenly come dashing down like a cannon-ball upon some buck that is hidden in a patch of grass from everything but that piercing eye. Still finer is the spectacle when the eagle takes the buck running.
On other days we would pay visits to the country seats at some of the great lords’ beautiful places, and the villages clustering beneath their walls. Here we saw vineyards and corn-fields and well-kept park-like grounds, with such timber in them as filled me with delight, for I do love a good tree. There it stands so strong and sturdy, and yet so beautiful, a very type of the best sort of man. How proudly it lifts its bare head to the winter storms, and with what a full heart it rejoices when the spring has come again! How grand its voice is, too, when it talks with the wind: a thousand aeolian cannot equal the beauty of the sighing of a great tree in leaf. All day it points to the sunshine and all night to the stars, and thus passionless, and yet full of life, it endures through the centuries, come storm, come shine, drawing its from the cool of its mother earth, and as the slow years roll by, learning the great mysteries of growth and of decay. And so on and on through generations, outliving individuals, customs, dynasties—all save the landscape it and human nature—till the appointed day when the wind wins the long battle and rejoices over a space, or decay puts the last stroke to his fungus-fingered work.
Ah, one should always think twice before one cuts down a tree!
In the evenings it was customary for Sir Henry, Good, and myself to dine, or rather sup, with their Majesties—not every night, indeed, but about three or four times a week, whenever they had not much company, or the affairs of state would allow of it. And I am bound to say that those little suppers were quite the most charming things of their sort that I ever had to do with. How true is the saying that the very highest in rank are always the most simple and . It is from your half-and-half sort of people that you get and vulgarity, the difference between the two being very much what one sees every day in England between the old, out-at-elbows, broken-down county family, and the overbearing, purse-proud people who come and ‘take the place’. I really think that Nyleptha’s greatest charm is her sweet , and her kindly genuine interest even in little things. She is the simplest woman I ever knew, and where her passions are not involved, one of the sweetest; but she can look queenly enough when she likes, and be as fierce as any too.
For instance, never shall I forget that scene when I for the first time was sure that she was really in love with Curtis. It came about in this way—all through Good’s weakness for ladies’ society. When we had been employed for some three months in learning Zu-Vendi, it struck Master Good that he was getting rather tired of the old gentlemen who did us the honour to lead us in the way that we should go, so he proceeded, without saying a word to anybody else, to inform them that it was a fact, but that we could not make any real progress in the deeper intricacies of a foreign language unless we were taught by ladies—young ladies, he was careful to explain. In his own country, he out, it was to choose the very best-looking and most charming girls who could be found to instruct any strangers who happened to come that way, etc.
All of this the old gentlemen swallowed open-mouthed. There was, they admitted, reason in what he said, since the contemplation of the beautiful, as their philosophy taught, induced a certain of mind similar to that produced upon the physical body by the healthful influences of sun and air. Consequently it was probable that we might absorb the Zu-Vendi tongue a little faster if suitable teachers could be found. Another thing was that, as the female sex was naturally , good practice would be gained in the viva voce department of our studies.
To all of this Good gravely , and the learned gentlemen departed, assuring him that their orders were to fall in with our wishes in every way, and that, if possible, our views should be met.
Imagine, therefore the surprise and disgust of myself, and I trust and believe Sir Henry, when, on entering the room where we were accustomed to carry on our studies the following morning, we found, instead of our usual venerable tutors, three of the best-looking young women whom Milosis could produce—and that is saying a good deal—who blushed and smiled and curtseyed, and gave us to understand that they were there to carry on our instruction. Then Good, as we gazed at one another in bewilderment, thought fit to explain, saying that it had slipped his memory before—but the old gentlemen had told him, on the previous evening, that it was absolutely necessary that our further education should be carried on by the other sex. I was overwhelmed, and appealed to Sir Henry for advice in such a crisis.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘you see the ladies are here, ain’t they? If we sent them away, don’t you think it might hurt their feelings, eh? One doesn’t like to be rough, you see; and they look regular , don’t they, eh?’
By this time Good had already begun his lessons with the handsomest of the three, and so with a sigh I yielded. That day everything went very well: the young ladies were certainly very clever, and they only smiled when we blundered. I never saw Good so to his books before, and even Sir Henry appeared to tackle Zu-Vendi with a renewed . ‘Ah,’ thought I, ‘will it always be thus?’
Next day we were much more lively, our work was pleasingly with questions about our native country, what the ladies were like there, etc., all of which we answered as best as we could in Zu-Vendi, and I heard Good assuring his teacher that her loveliness was to the beauties of Europe as the sun to the moon, to which she replied with a little toss of the head, that she was a plain teaching woman and nothing else, and that it was not kind ‘to deceive a poor girl so’. Then we had a little singing that was really charming, so natural and unaffected. The Zu-Vendi love-songs are most . On the third day we were all quite intimate. Good some of his previous love affairs to his fair teacher, and so moved was she that her sighs with his own. I with mine, a merry blue-eyed girl, upon Zu-Vendian art, and never saw that she was waiting for an opportunity to drop a of the tribe down my back, whilst in the corner Sir Henry and his governess appeared, so far as I could judge, to be going through a lesson framed on the great educational principles laid down by Wackford Squeers Esq., though in a very modified or rather spiritualized form. The lady softly repeated the Zu-Vendi word for ‘hand’, and he took hers; ‘eyes’, and he gazed deep into her brown ; ‘lips’, and—but just at that moment my young lady dropped the cockroach down my back and ran away laughing. Now if there is one thing I more than another it is , and moved quite beyond myself, and yet laughing at her , I took up the cushion she had been sitting on and threw it after her. Imagine then my shame—my horror, and my —when the door opened, and, attended by two guards only, in walked Nyleptha. The cushion could not be recalled (it missed the girl and hit one of the guards on the head), but I instantly and ineffectually tried to look as though I had not thrown it. Good ceased his sighing, and began to murder Zu-Vendi at the top of his voice, and Sir Henry whistled and looked silly. As for the poor girls, they were dumbfounded.
And Nyleptha! she drew herself up till her frame seemed to tower even above that of the tall guards, and her face went first red, and then pale as death.
‘Guards,’ she said in a quiet choked voice, and pointing at the fair but unconscious of Wackford Squeers, ‘ me that woman.’
The men hesitated, as well they might.
‘Will ye do my bidding,’ she said again in the same voice, ‘or will ye not?’
Then they advanced upon the girl with uplifted spears. By this time Sir Henry had recovered himself, and saw that the comedy was likely to turn into a tragedy.
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