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, pa.s.sed 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 a.s.segais 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 ma.s.sacre 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 hoa.r.s.e 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 k.n.o.b 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 hoa.r.s.e 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 x.x.xIII
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 pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.s, 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 n.o.body 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 pa.s.s 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 n.o.body near."