<h2><SPAN name="chap33"></SPAN>CHAPTER XXXIII.<br/> VENGEANCE</h2>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“Well,” whispered Jess, looking up with a start, “have you
done it?”</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>“Are all the Boers asleep?”</p>
<p>“All, missie, except the sentries.”</p>
<p>“Is there a sentry before Baas Frank’s tent?”</p>
<p>“No, missie, there is nobody near.”</p>
<p>“What is the time, Jantje?”</p>
<p>“About three hours and a half after sundown” (half-past ten).</p>
<p>“Let us wait half an hour, and then you must go.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>The sight made Jess feel sick. “Put the knife up,” she said
quickly, “it is sharp enough.”</p>
<p>Jantje obeyed with a feeble grin, and the minutes passed on heavily.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>The Hottentot fidgeted about, and at last spoke.</p>
<p>“Missie must come with me!”</p>
<p>“Come with you!” answered Jess starting, “why?”</p>
<p>“Because the ghost of the old Englishwoman will be after me if I go
alone.”</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>“You must go,” she said fiercely; “you shall go!”</p>
<p>“No, missie, I will not go alone,” he answered.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“Well,” she said, “I will go with you, Jantje.”</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <i>kills him</i>.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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!</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Jess turned round and touched her companion upon the shoulder. He did not move,
but she felt that his arm was shaking.</p>
<p>“<i>Now</i>,” she whispered.</p>
<p>Still he hung back. It was evident to her that the long waiting had taken the
courage out of him.</p>
<p>“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!”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“<i>Is it done?</i>” she whispered again.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>This pacified him a little, but no earthly power could persuade him to enter
the tent again.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <i>not</i>. 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <i>ghost of the woman he had murdered in the Vaal!</i> 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
<i>was</i> a living vengeance and a hell!</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>He was awake, and she could hesitate no more. . . .</p>
<p>He must have seen the flash of the falling steel, and——</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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!</p>
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