"
"She mean when you your reverend uncle," said Jeekie, wagging his great
head, "she think you identical man."
"What troubles you, Vernoon," the Asika asked softly, then added
anything but softly to Jeekie, "Translate, you dog, and be swift."
So Jeekie translated in a great hurry, telling her what Alan had said,
and adding on his own account that he, silly white man that he was,
could not understand how, as she was quite a young woman, she could have
seen him before she was born. If that were so, she would be old and ugly
now, not beautiful as she was.
"I never saw you before, and you never saw me, Lady, yet you talk as
though we had been friends," broke in Alan in his halting Asiki.
"So we were in the spirit, Vernoon. It was she who went before me who
loved that white man whose face was as your face is, but her ghost
lives on in me and tells me the tale. There have been many Asikas, for
thousands of years they have ruled in this land, yet but one spirit
belongs to them all; it is the string upon which the beads of their
lives are threaded. White man, I, whom you think young, know everything
back to the beginning of the world, back to the time when I was a monkey
woman sitting in those cedar trees, and if you wish, I can tell it you.
Pages:
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238