VENGEANCE
For three or four minutes more Jess and Jantje whispered together,
after which the Hottentot rose and crept away to find out what was
passing among the Boers below, and watch when Frank Muller retired to
his tent. So soon as he had marked him down it was agreed that he was
to come back and report to Jess.
When he was gone Jess gave a sigh of relief. This stirring up of Jantje
to the boiling-point of vengeance had been a dreadful thing to nerve
herself to do, but now at any rate it was done, and Muller’s doom was
sealed. But what the end of it would be none could say. Practically she
would be a murderess, and she felt that sooner or later her guilt must
find her out, and then she could hope for little mercy. Still she had
no scruples, for after all Frank Muller’s would be a well-merited fate.
But when all was said and done, it was a dreadful thing to be forced to
steep her hands in blood, even for Bessie’s sake. If Muller were
removed Bessie would marry John, provided that John escaped the Boers,
and be happy, but what would become of herself? Robbed of her love and
with this crime upon her mind, what could she do even if she
escaped—except die? It would be better to die and never see him again,
for her sorrow and her shame were more than she could bear. Then Jess
began to think of John till all her poor bruised heart seemed to go out
towards him. Bessie could never love him as she did, she felt sure of
that, and yet Bessie was to have him by her all her life, and she—she
must go away. Well, it was the only thing to do. She would see this
deed done, and set her sister free, then if she happened to escape she
would go at once—go quite away where she would never be heard of again.
Thus at any rate she would have behaved like an honourable woman. She
sat up and put her hands to her face. It was burning hot though she was
wet through, and chilled to the bone with the raw damp of the night. A
fierce fever of mind and body had taken hold of her, worn out as she
was with emotion, hunger, and protracted exposure. But her brain was
clear enough; she never remembered its being so clear before. Every
thought that came into her mind seemed to present itself with startling
strength, standing out alone against a black background of nothingness,
not softened down and shaded one into another as thoughts generally
are. She seemed to see herself wandering away—alone, utterly alone,
alone for ever!—while in the far distance John stood holding Bessie by
the hand, gazing after her regretfully. Well, she would write to him,
since it must be so, and bid him one word of farewell. She could not go
without that, though how her letter was to reach John she knew not,
unless indeed Jantje could find him and deliver it. She had a pencil,
and in the breast of her dress was the Boer pass, the back of which,
stained as it was with water, would serve the purpose of paper. She
found it, and, bending forward towards the light, placed it on her
knees.
“Good-bye,” she wrote, “good-bye! We can never meet again, and it is
better that we never should in this world. I believe that there is
another. If there is I shall wait for you there if I have to wait ten
thousand years. If not, then good-bye for ever. Think of me sometimes,
for I have loved you very dearly, and as nobody will ever love you
again; and while I live in this or any other existence and am myself, I
shall always love you and you only. Don’t forget me. I never shall be
really dead to you until I am forgotten.—J.”
She lifted the paper from her knee, and without even re-reading what
she had written thrust the pass back into her bosom and was soon lost
in thought.
Ten minutes later Jantje, like a great snake in human form, came
creeping in to where she sat, his yellow face shining with the
raindrops.
“Well,” whispered Jess, looking up with a start, “have you done it?”
“No, missie, no. Baas Frank has but now gone to his tent. He has been
talking to the clergyman, something about Missie Bessie, I don’t know
what. I was near, but he talked low, and I could only hear the name.”
“Are all the Boers asleep?”
“All, missie, except the sentries.”
“Is there a sentry before Baas Frank’s tent?”
“No, missie, there is nobody near.”
“What is the time, Jantje?”
“About three hours and a half after sundown” (half-past ten).
“Let us wait half an hour, and then you must go.”
Accordingly they sat in silence. In silence they sat facing each other
and their own thoughts. Presently Jantje broke it by drawing the big
white-handled knife and commencing to sharpen it on a piece of leather.
The sight made Jess feel sick. “Put the knife up,” she said quickly,
“it is sharp enough.”
Jantje obeyed with a feeble grin, and the minutes passed on heavily.
“Now, Jantje,” she said at last, speaking huskily in her struggle to
overcome the spasmodic contractions of her throat, “it is time for you
to go.”
The Hottentot fidgeted about, and at last spoke.
“Missie must come with me!”
“Come with you!” answered Jess starting, “why?”
“Because the ghost of the old Englishwoman will be after me if I go
alone.”
“You fool!” said Jess angrily; then recollecting herself she added,
“Come, be a man, Jantje; think of your father and mother, and be a
man.”
“I am a man,” he answered sulkily, “and I will kill him like a man, but
what good is a man against the ghost of a dead Englishwoman? If I put
the knife into her she would only make faces, and fire would come out
of the hole. I will not go without you, missie.”
“You must go,” she said fiercely; “you shall go!”
“No, missie, I will not go alone,” he answered.
Jess looked at him and saw that Jantje meant what he said. He was
growing sulky, and the worst dispositioned donkey in the world is far,
far easier to deal with than a sulky Hottentot. She must either give up
the project or go with the man. Well, she was equally guilty one way or
the other, and being almost callous about detection, she might as well
go. She had no power left to make fresh plans. Her mind seemed to be
exhausted. Only she must keep out of the way at the last. She could not
bear to be near then.
“Well,” she said, “I will go with you, Jantje.”
“Good, missie, that is all right now. You can keep off the ghost of the
dead Englishwoman while I kill Baas Frank. But first he must be fast
asleep. Fast, fast asleep.”
Then slowly and with the uttermost caution once more they crept down
the hill. This time there was no sound to be heard except the regular
tramp of the sentries. But their present business did not take them to
the waggon-house; they left that on their right, and went on towards
the blue-gum avenue. When they were nearly opposite to the first tree
they halted in a patch of stones, and Jantje slipped forward to
reconnoitre. Presently he returned with the intelligence that all the
Boers who were with the waggon had gone to sleep, but that Muller was
still sitting in his tent thinking. Then they crept on, perfectly sure
that if they were not heard they would not be seen, curtained as they
were by the dense mist and darkness.
At length they reached the bole of the first big gum tree. Five paces
from this tree Frank Muller’s tent was pitched. There was a light in it
which caused the wet tent to glow in the mist, as though it had been
rubbed with phosphorus, and on this lurid canvas the shadow of Frank
Muller was gigantically limned. He was so placed that the lamp cast a
magnified reflection of his every feature and even of his expression
upon the screen before them. The attitude in which he sat was his
favourite one when he was plunged in thought, his hands resting on his
knees and his gaze fixed on vacancy. He was thinking of his triumph,
and of all that he had gone through to win it, and of all that it would
bring him. He held the trump cards now, and the game lay in his own
hand. He had triumphed, and yet over him hung the shadow of that curse
which dogs the presence of our accomplished desires. Too often, even
with the innocent, does the seed of our destruction lurk in the rich
blossom of our hopes, and much more is this so with the guilty. Somehow
this thought was present with him to-night, and in a rough
half-educated way he grasped its truth. Once more the saying of the old
Boer general rose in his mind: “I believe that there is a God—I believe
that God sets a limit to a man’s doings. If he is going too far, God
_kills him_.”
What a dreadful thing it would be if the old fool were right after all!
Supposing that there were a God, and God were to kill him to-night, and
hurry off his soul, if he had one, to some dim place of unending fear!
All his superstitions awoke at the thought, and he shivered so
violently that the shadow of the shiver caused the outlines of the
gigantic form upon the canvas to tremble visibly.
Then rising with an angry curse, Muller hastily threw off his outer
clothing, and having turned down but not extinguished the rough
parrafine lamp, he flung himself down upon the little camp bedstead,
which creaked and groaned beneath his weight like a thing in pain.
Now came silence, only broken by the drip, drip of the rain from the
gum leaves overhead, and the rattling of the boughs whenever a breath
of air stirred them. It was an eerie and depressing night, a night that
might well have tried the nerves of any strong man who, wet through and
worn out, was obliged to crouch upon the open veldt and endure it. How
much more awful was it then to the unfortunate woman who, half
broken-hearted, fever-stricken, and well-nigh crazed with the suffering
of mind and body, waited in it to see murder done! Slowly the minutes
passed, and at every raindrop or rustle of a bough her guilty
conscience summoned up a host of fears. But by the mere power of her
will she kept them down. She would go through with it. Yes, she would
go through with it. Surely he must be asleep by now!
They crept up to the tent and placed their ears within two inches of
his head. Yes, he was asleep; the sound of his breathing rose and fell
with the regularity of an infant’s.
Jess turned round and touched her companion upon the shoulder. He did
not move, but she felt that his arm was shaking.
“_Now_,” she whispered.
Still he hung back. It was evident to her that the long waiting had
taken the courage out of him.
“Be a man,” she whispered again, so low that the sound scarcely reached
his ears although her lips were almost touching them, “go, and mind you
strike home!”
Then at last she heard him softly draw the great knife from the sheath,
and in another second he had glided from her side. Presently she saw
the line of light that streamed upon the darkness through the opening
of the tent broaden a little, and by this she knew that he was creeping
in upon his dreadful errand. Then she turned her head and put her
fingers in her ears. But even so she could see a long line of shadow
travelling across the skirt of the tent. So she shut her eyes also, and
waited sick at heart, for she did not dare to move.
Presently—it might have been five minutes or only half a minute
afterwards, for she had lost count of time—Jess felt somebody touch her
on the arm. It was Jantje.
“_Is it done?_” she whispered again.
He shook his head and drew her away from the tent. In going her foot
caught one of the guy-ropes and stirred it slightly.
“I could not do it, missie,” he said. “He is asleep and looks just like
a child. When I lifted the knife he smiled in his sleep and all the
strength went out of my arm, so that I could not strike. And then
before I grew strong again the spook of the old Englishwoman came and
hit me in the back, and I ran away.”
If a look could have blasted a human being Jantje would assuredly have
been blasted then. The man’s cowardice maddened Jess, but whilst she
still choked with wrath a duiker buck, which had come down from its
stony home to feed upon the rose-bushes, suddenly sprang with a crash
almost from their feet, passing away like a grey gleam into the utter
darkness.
Jess started, then recovered herself, guessing what it was, but the
miserable Hottentot, overcome with terror, fell upon the ground
groaning out that it was the spook of the old Englishwoman. He had
dropped the knife as he fell, and Jess, seeing the imminent peril in
which they were placed, knelt down, found it, and hissed into his ear
that if he were not quiet she would kill him.
This pacified him a little, but no earthly power could persuade him to
enter the tent again.
What was to be done? What could she do? For two minutes or more she
buried her face in her wet hands and thought wildly and despairingly.
Then a dark and dreadful determination entered her mind. The man Muller
should not escape. Bessie should not be sacrificed to him. Rather than
that, she would do the deed herself.
Without a word she rose, animated by the tragic agony of her purpose
and the force of her despair, and glided towards the tent, the great
knife in her hand. Now, ah! all too soon, she was inside of it, and
stood for a second to allow her eyes to grow accustomed to the light.
Presently she began to see, first the outline of the bed, then the
outline of the manly form stretched upon it, then both bed and man
distinctly. Jantje had said that he was sleeping like a child. He might
have been; now he was _not_. On the contrary, his face was convulsed
like the face of one in an extremity of fear, and great beads of sweat
stood upon his brow. It was as though he knew his danger, and yet was
utterly powerless to avoid it. He lay upon his back. One heavy arm, his
left, hung over the side of the bed, the knuckles of the hand resting
on the ground; the other was thrown back, and his head was pillowed
upon it. The clothing had slipped away from his throat and massive
chest, which were quite bare.
Jess stood and gazed. “For Bessie’s sake, for Bessie’s sake!” she
murmured; then impelled by a force that seemed to move of itself she
crept slowly, slowly, to the right-hand side of the bed.
At this moment Muller woke, and his opening eyes fell full upon her
face. Whatever his dream had been, what he now saw was far more
terrible, for bending over him was the _ghost of the woman he had
murdered in the Vaal!_ There she was, risen from her river grave, torn,
dishevelled, water yet dripping from her hands and hair. Those sunk and
marble cheeks, those dreadful flaming eyes could belong to no human
being, but only to a spirit. It was the spirit of Jess Croft, of the
woman whom he had slain, come back to tell him that there _was_ a
living vengeance and a hell!
Their eyes met, and no creature will ever know the agony of terror that
he tasted of before the end came. She saw his face sink in and turn
ashen grey while the cold sweat ran from every pore. He was awake, but
fear paralysed him, he could not speak or move.
He was awake, and she could hesitate no more. . . .
He must have seen the flash of the falling steel, and——
Jess was outside the tent again, the red knife in her hand. She flung
the accursed thing from her. That shriek must have awakened every soul
within a mile. Already she could faintly hear the stir of men down by
the waggon, and the patter of the feet of Jantje running for his life.
Then she too turned, and fled straight up the hill. She knew not
whither, she cared not where! None saw her or followed her, the hunt
had broken away to the left after Jantje. Her heart was lead and her
brain a rocking sea of fire, whilst before her, around her, and behind
her yelled all the conscience-created furies that run Murder to his
lair.
On she flew, one sight only before her eyes, one sound only in her
ears. On over the hill, far into the rain and the night!