Jess 1887, p.30
Jess (1887), page 30
As he spoke he was slowly drawing nearer Bessie, whose face wore a half-fascinated expression. As he came the wretched woman gathered herself together and put out her hand to repulse him. “No, no,” she cried, “I hate you — I cannot be false to him, living or dead. I shall kill myself — I know I shall.”
He made no answer, but only came always nearer, till at last his strong arms closed round her shrinking form and drew her to him as easily as though she were a babe. And then all at once she seemed to yield. That embrace was the outward sign of his cruel mastery, and she struggled no more, mentally or physically.
“Will you marry me, darling — will you marry me?” he whispered, with his lips so close to the golden curls that Jess, straining her ears outside, could only just catch the words —
“Oh, I suppose so; but I shall die — it will kill me.”
He strained her to his heart and kissed her beautiful face again and again, until Jess heard the heavy footsteps of the returning sentry, and saw Muller leave go of her. Then Jantje caught Jess by the hand, dragging her away from the wall, and presently she was once more ascending the hill-side towards the Hottentot’s kennel. She had desired to find out how matters stood, and she had found out indeed. To attempt to portray the fury, the indignation, and the thirst to be avenged upon this fiend who had attempted to murder her and her lover, and had bought her dear sister’s honour at the price of their innocent old uncle’s life, would be impossible. Her weariness had left her; she was mad with all she had seen and heard, with the knowledge of what had been done and of what was about to be done. She even forgot her passion in it, and swore that Muller should never marry Bessie while she lived to prevent it. Had she been a bad woman herein she might have seen an opportunity, for Bessie once tied to Muller, John would be free to marry her, but this idea never even entered her mind. Whatever Jess’s errors may have been she was a self-sacrificing, honourable woman, and one who would have died rather than profit thus by circumstance. At length they reached the shelter again and crept into it.
“Light a candle,” said Jess.
Jantje hunted for and struck a match. The piece of candle they had been using, however, was nearly burnt out, so from the rubbish in the corner he produced a box full of “ends,” some of them three or four inches long. In the queer sort of way that trifles do strike us when the mind is undergoing a severe strain, Jess remembered instantly that for years she had been unable to discover what became of the odd bits of the candles used in the house. Now the mystery was explained.
“Go outside and leave me. I want to think,” she said.
The Hottentot obeyed, and seated upon the heap of skins, her forehead resting on her hand and her fingers buried in her silky rain-soaked hair, Jess began to review the position. It was evident to her that Frank Muller would be as good as his word. She knew him too well to doubt this for a moment. If Bessie did not marry him he would murder the old man, as he had tried to murder herself and John, only this time judicially, and then abduct her sister afterwards. She was the only price that he was prepared to take in exchange for her uncle’s life. But it was impossible to allow Bessie to be so sacrificed; the thought was horrible to her.
How, then, was it to be prevented?
She thought again of confronting Frank Muller and openly accusing him of her attempted murder, only, however, to dismiss the idea. Who would believe her? And if they did believe what good would it do? She would only be imprisoned and kept out of harm’s way, or possibly murdered out of hand. Then she thought of attempting to communicate with her uncle and Bessie, to tell them that John was, so far as she knew, alive, only to recognise the impossibility of doing so now that the sentry had returned. Besides, what object could be served? The knowledge that John was alive might, it is true, encourage Bessie to resist Muller, but then the death of the old man must certainly ensue. Dismissing this project from her mind Jess began to consider whether they could obtain assistance. Alas! it was impossible. The only people from whom she could hope for aid would be the natives, and now that the Boers had triumphed over the English — for this much she had gathered from her captors and from Jantje — it was very doubtful if the Kafirs would dare to assist her. Besides, at the best it would take twenty-four hours to collect a force, and by then help would come too late. The situation was hopeless. Nowhere could she see a ray of light.
“What,” Jess said aloud to herself—”what is there in the world that will stop a man like Frank Muller?”
And then of an instant the answer rose up in her brain as though by inspiration —
“Death!”
Death, and death alone, would stay him. For a minute she held the idea in her mind till she grew familiar with it, then it was driven out by another thought that followed swiftly on its track. Frank Muller must die, and die before the morning light. By no other possible means could the Gordian knot be cut, and both Bessie and her old uncle be saved. If he were dead he could not marry Bessie, and if he died with the warrant unsigned their uncle could not be executed. That was the terrible answer to her riddle.
Yet it was most just that he should die, for had he not murdered and attempted murder? Surely if ever a man deserved a swift and awful doom that man was Frank Muller.
And so this forsaken, helpless girl, crouching upon the ground a torn and bespattered fugitive in the miserable hiding-hole of a Hottentot, arraigned the powerful leader of men before the tribunal of her conscience, and without pity, if without wrath, passed upon him a sentence of extinction.
But who was to be the executioner? A dreadful thought flashed into her mind and made her heart stand still, but she dismissed it. No, she had not come to that! Her eyes wandering round the kennel lit upon Jantje’s assegais and sticks in the corner, and these gave her another inspiration. Jantje should do the deed.
John had told her one day when they were sitting together in “The Palatial” at Pretoria the whole of Jantje’s awful story about the massacre of his relatives by Frank Muller twenty years before, of which, indeed, she already knew something. It would be most fitting that this fiend should be removed from the face of the earth by the survivor of those unfortunates. That would be poetic justice, and justice is so rare in the world. But the question was, would he do it? The little man was a wonderful coward, that she knew, and had a great terror of Boers, and especially of Frank Muller.
“Jantje,” she whispered, stooping towards the bee-hole.
“Yah, missie,” answered a hoarse voice outside, and next second the Hottentot’s monkey-like face came creeping into the ring of light, followed by his even more monkey-like form.
“Sit down there, Jantje. I am lonely here and want to talk.”
He obeyed her, with a grin. “What shall we talk about, missie? Shall I tell you a story of the time when the beasts could speak, as I used to do years and years ago?”
“No, Jantje. Tell me about that stick — that long stick with a knob at the top, and the nicks cut on it. Has it not something to do with Frank Muller?”
The Hottentot’s face instantly grew evil. “Yah, yah, missie!” he said, reaching out a skinny claw and seizing the stick. “Look, this big notch, that is my father, Baas Frank shot him; and this next notch, that is my mother, Baas Frank shot her; and this next notch, that is my uncle, an old, old man, Baas Frank shot him also. And these small notches, they are when he has beaten me — yes, and other things too. And now I will make more notches, one for the house that is burnt, and one for the old Baas Croft, my own Baas, whom he is going to shoot, and one for Missie Bessie.” And Jantje drew from his side his large white-handled hunting-knife and began to cut them then and there upon the hard wood of the stick.
Jess knew this knife of old. It was Jantje’s peculiar treasure, the chief joy of his narrow little heart. He had brought it from a Zulu for a heifer which her uncle had given him in lieu of half a year’s wage. The Zulu had it from a half-caste whose kraal was beyond Delagoa Bay. As a matter of fact it was a Somali knife, manufactured from the soft native steel which takes an edge like a razor, and with a handle cut out of the tusk of a hippopotamus. For the rest, it was about a foot long, with three grooves running the length of the blade, and very heavy.
“Stop cutting notches, Jantje, and let me look at that knife.”
He obeyed, and put it into her hand.
“That knife would kill a man, Jantje,” she said.
“Yes, yes,” he answered: “no doubt it has killed many men.”
“It would kill Frank Muller, now, would it not?” she went on, suddenly bending forward and fixing her dark eyes upon the little man’s jaundiced orbs.
“Yah, yah,” he said starting back, “it would kill him dead. Ah! what a thing it would be to kill him!” he added, making a fierce sound, half grunt, half laugh.
“He killed your father, Jantje.”
“Yah, yah, he killed my father,” said Jantje, his eyes beginning to roll with rage.
“He killed your mother.”
“Yah, he killed my mother,” he repeated after her with eager ferocity.
“And your uncle. He killed your uncle.”
“And my uncle too,” he went on, shaking his fist and twitching his long toes as his hoarse voice rose to a subdued scream. “But he will die in blood — the old Englishwoman, his mother, said it when the devil was in her, and the devils never lie. Look! I draw Baas Frank’s circle in the dust with my foot; and listen, I say the words — I say the words,” and he muttered something rapidly; “an old, old witch-doctor taught me how to do it, and what to say. Once before I did it, and there was a stone in the circle, now there is no stone: look, the ends meet. He will die in blood; he will die soon. I know how to read the omen;” and he gnashed his teeth and sawed the air with his clenched fists.
“Yes, you are right, Jantje,” she said, still holding him with her dark eyes. “He will die in blood, and he will die to-night, and you will kill him, Jantje.”
The Hottentot started, and turned pale under his yellow skin.
“How?” he said; “how?”
“Bend forward, Jantje, and I will tell you how;” and Jess whispered for some minutes into his ear.
“Yes! yes! yes!” he said when she had done. “Oh, what a fine thing it is to be clever like the white people! I will kill him to-night, and then I can cut out the notches, and the spooks of my father and my mother and my uncle will stop howling round me in the dark as they do now, when I am asleep.”
CHAPTER XXXIII
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.”
