Chapter Twenty Nine.
Judge and Executioner
No, it was not to last. Something seemed to break the spell – and that with the same magical suddenness wherewith it had come about. A roar of rage arose, terrible in its menace, thundering upon the stillness of the night. Many had run swiftly back to the huts, and now I could see them, and others, swarming forward, and in the moonlight the glint of assagais. They had returned to arm themselves.
It was a fearful moment. Every nerve within me thrilled, tingled, as revolver gripped, I half-turned my horse, to check, if possible, the onrushing mass. In a moment we should be cut to pieces. We were but two – two against hundreds. Nothing could save us. But Beryl, whose eyes were never removed for so much as a second from her august captive, whose weapon never deflected from straightly covering his form, cried out —
“The first spear thrown means the death of Kuliso!”
Her tones, clear and incisive, rose above the wild, bass hubbub of furious voices. A dead silence succeeded, even as before, and the forward rush became a foot’s pace. For they knew that she would keep her word.
Never shall I forget that scene, and assuredly it was one to stand forth in a man’s memory for the remainder of his life: the tall form of the savage chieftain stalking sullenly before that pitiless weapon; the resolute, ruthless figure of that beautiful yet terrific avenger of blood, sitting erect as she paced her horse forward with firm, controlling hand, and I, half turned in my saddle, with pistol pointed at the following-on crowd of exasperated barbarians.
This seemed effective, and they paused somewhat. Whether it was that they feared for Kuliso or themselves, or both, they forbore to rush us, and thus, with the crowd still following, but at a respectful distance, we gained the high “neck,” beyond which lay our own valley.
And now, behind us, a weird, low, long-drawn cry arose. It seemed to float along the midnight veldt, caught up, echoed forth, from point to point. Was it a rallying cry? If so the whole location would be aroused and upon us, and – what then? Yet at that moment my mind held but two thoughts – admiration for the intrepidity which had prompted and carried out this undertaking; the other the sense of a compelling force which was stronger than myself – that force, Beryl.
“Oh, keep straight on, Kuliso,” said the latter. “Do not stop, do not turn your head, or my bullet is certain to crash through the back of it. You know I never miss.”
The chief muttered savagely to himself, but he dared not disobey. Then he said —
“Has not our walk lasted long enough, Umlungase? Because, if so, I would prefer to return home.”
“There are two who will never return home, Kuliso. Soon there will be three,” came the answer.
“Hau! This is very dark talking – too dark. I know not what is meant.”
“You are a liar, Kuliso,” replied Beryl calmly. “A great chief of the House of Ndhlambe is a great liar. Ha! Do not stop. Again I warn you – do not stop.”
I thought that moment was Kuliso’s last. That terrible merciless look, which had temporarily frozen down, gleamed forth anew on Beryl’s face. I caught my breath. But again the instinct of self-preservation was stronger than his natural exasperation, and he stepped forward with renewed alacrity.
“We shall never get him in to Fort Lamport, or anything like as far,” I said, as the road thither lay but a short space in front of us. “He’ll be rescued, or give us the slip long before.”
“I don’t intend to take him to Fort Lamport, or anything like as far,” she answered shortly.
“But – where then?” I asked, thoroughly mystified.
“I am going to take him to look upon those he has murdered. Then I am going to shoot him dead – there, at the place where he has murdered them.”
I gasped.
“Great heavens, Beryl! you are never going to do anything so mad!”
“I am. What do you suppose I brought him all this way for – Be careful, Kuliso,” relapsing into Kafir. “My eyes are on you, although I’m talking. The bullet, too, is just as ready.”
To say that I was thunderstruck is to put it mildly. When I had agreed to our daring and desperate scheme, the arrest of the chief in the very thick of his own followers, I had never bargained for this. The idea was that by seizing him ourselves we could bring him to justice and thus prevent his escape, for if his said arrest were attempted in the ordinary way his followers would never give him up. They would resist any attempt to take him by force, as sure as such attempt were made. This would probably bring on a war, but not condign punishment upon Kuliso. I was filled with admiration for the promptitude and resolution with which she had forced him to accompany us, but that he was marching to his swift and certain doom had never entered my head – that Beryl had constituted herself his judge, jury and executioner, least of all. No, assuredly I had never bargained for this.
“Think better of it,” I urged. “Think better of it, and let us carry out our original plan and take him into the town.”
“It was never my original plan,” she answered, in the same low, monotonous tone. “Besides, to use your own words, we should never get him anything like as far. He’d be rescued or give us the slip long before. No. My original plan is the one I am going to carry out – Cross the road, Kuliso. That’s right. Keep straight on.”
“Beryl, you cannot do this thing yourself,” I urged earnestly. “We will manage to keep possession of him somehow, but – leave the rest to the hangman.”
“The hangman would never get him, in that case. The Government itself would find some pretext for letting him go, for fear of bringing on a war. Kenrick, you stood beside me when we found them– you, too, saw them. Have you so soon forgotten?”
“Forgotten? It would take more than a lifetime to forget that. Still, for your own sake do not do this. I believe you yourself will regret it afterwards. And then the law may call it murder. What then?”
“There isn’t a jury in the land that would convict me,” she said. “They would call it an act of justice. And it will be. I have thought it all out, you see.”
What was I to answer? She was very likely right in her surmise. I remembered Brian’s words, uttered the day after my arrival here – words to that very effect.
“Even then it will wear an ugly look,” I persisted. “We bring this man a considerable distance across country – the two of us – then shoot him in cold blood.”
“Has your blood cooled then, Kenrick?” she said. “Mine hasn’t, nor will it, until I see this murderer lying dead beside those he has killed.”
“Understand, I am not pleading for his life,” I went on, “only that you should not be his executioner. Besides, what if he is the wrong man? What if he should be speaking the truth after all when he says he knows nothing about it?”
“A chief is responsible for the acts of his followers, even under their own law. And he was not speaking the truth; he was lying. I know these people better than you do, Kenrick. If he knew nothing of – of – what has happened, do you think I could have frightened him into going with us? Not for a moment. He knew all about it, and encouraged it, if he did not actually instigate it. He is the principal murderer; afterwards I shall find out the others.”
“I was wrong in something I said just now,” she went on while I was thinking what next to urge. “I told you I had thought the matter all out. Well, I was wrong. There was one side of it that escaped me.”
“And that is?” I said eagerly, catching at a possible straw.
“Yourself.”
“Me?”
“Yes. I don’t want you to suffer for this in any way. You have helped me this far, Kenrick. Now go – and leave the rest to me. You are not supposed to know what I am about to do; and I’ll take care it shall never leak out that you did. Go back to the house and wait for me.”
“That’s so likely, isn’t it?” I answered. “Of course, under any circumstances I’d be sure to slink off and leave you in the middle of the veldt at night, surrounded by Kuliso’s cut-throats, watching an opportunity to revenge the death of their chief. That would be me all over, wouldn’t it?”
“If only I could see some way out of it – for you! Let me think.”
“No, Beryl. Don’t think. There’s nothing further to be said. Whatever this is we are in it together.”
It must not be supposed that during all this talk Beryl’s vigilance over her captive was relaxed for one single moment. Nor must it be supposed that I – that either of us – imagined that we were going to have things all our own way, and that Kuliso’s people had tamely left their chief to his fate.
We could not see them, but that they were keeping us under observation the whole way neither of us had a shadow of a doubt. But while keeping a sharp look-out, I was able to turn over the situation in my mind. If only Brian had been here. As it was, would he not hold me responsible for Beryl’s action, and any disastrous consequences which might ensue? Well, for that matter he could hardly do so, if only that he knew his sister well enough to know also that under the circumstances she would simply laugh at the advice or attempted control of anybody, and that had I discountenanced her project by refusing to accompany her she would simply have embarked on it alone, and then – putting the question on its lowest ground – what sort of figure should I have cut?
Now we were drawing near the fatal spot. We seemed to be moving in a dream – worse – a nightmare. The face of the murdered boy, swollen and ghastly, staring upward to the full broad moon, again seemed to come before my gaze – and that other face, calm, placid, as overtaken by death before a last moment of fleeting horror had had time to stamp it. My nerves were strung to the utmost tension. The Ndhlambe chief would now guess why he had been brought here, and that moment would be his last; for, thus rendered desperate, would he not make one last effort for life? All was still – still as death, save for the tread of the horses; yet momentarily I awaited the roar of the shot which should send Kuliso into that unseen world whither his victims had preceded him.
Then just what I had expected came to pass. Suddenly, and by a rapid, serpentine movement, the chief flung himself down, wriggling for the shade of a thick clump of bush we were passing, and simultaneously dark, sinuous forms started up in front, around us, seeming to spring from nowhere. Beryl’s pistol cracked, and then I saw a huge savage – naked, ochre-stained – poising a heavy knobkerrie for a throw. He could not, at that short distance, miss his mark – and that mark, Beryl. And he was behind her, and – she did not see him. It was all done in a second. I drove the spurs home, standing up in the stirrups to catch or ward off the murderous club as, with a whizz, it left his hand. I felt a sharp, fiery dig in the side, in my ears a jarring, roaring crash. My sight was scorched as with the blaze of a million fires, and then – blankness – oblivion!
Chapter Thirty.
“At Last!”
“Hush. Don’t talk yet. It’s too soon.”
A cool hand was laid upon my forehead, while another smoothed the pillows. Bending over me was the face that had been with me in the life for months – in imagination through all the unnameable horrors of my delirium. The large eyes were infinitely tender now, the serene face soft and pitiful.
“It was only my delirium then? It was not true, not real?”
But as I gasped out the question, for I was very weak, my glance lighted on the black heaviness of Beryl’s attire. Then I knew that it was true.
“Don’t talk any more or you will never get well. And you have got to get well.”
“And then you will leave me. I don’t want to get well.”
“I haven’t left you all these weeks, Kenrick, so am not likely to begin now,” she answered. “But if you don’t obey orders I will. So be quiet.”
This was irrefutable; besides, there was that in the sight of her, in her words, in her tones, which shed over me a kind of drowsy peace. I lay still, content to watch her as she sat by my bed doing some needlework, not forgetting every now and then, with watchful care, to brush away the flies that threatened to disturb me. Strange to say, I seemed to feel no curiosity as to the extent of my injuries, or as to what had happened, or even where I was. Her presence was all-sufficient, and soon I dropped off to sleep again.
I pass over the days of convalescence, the recollection of which is somewhat confused. Beryl was seldom absent from my bedside, and I retain a sort of consciousness of others stealing in to look at me. But on such occasions I feigned sleep. I didn’t want to see anybody else – anybody but her.
One morning I opened my eyes, feeling strangely well. The object of my unvarying first glance was not there. Her accustomed seat was occupied by Brian.
“Feel better, old chap?” he said, coming over to me. “That’s right. Pentridge said you’d take a sudden turn.”
“Pentridge? Oh, he’s been herding me then? But – Brian – where am I?” For almost for the first time I realised the strangeness of my surroundings.
“Why, you’re where you’ve been the last few weeks – at Fort Lamport – in the new cottage hospital. Pentridge wanted to turn out of his house, and put us all in there, but he’d only just got into it himself, and it’s all at sixes and sevens.”
The mention of Pentridge seemed to bring back all the old bitterness, and I lay still, not caring to talk any more. But Brian was not of the same mind.
“Do you know, Kenrick, again you have been a sort of Providence to us,” he said. “But for you, Beryl would have been killed stone dead – if you hadn’t stopped that kerrie. Nothing could have saved her. I saw it.”
“You saw it? No, I don’t quite follow.”
Then he told me what had happened. Old Dumela, fearful for our safety, had warned the neighbours, and had in process of doing so met Brian himself, returning home sooner than was expected. Further, by a piece of great good fortune, a patrol of Mounted Police was making its round, and, joining bands, they had come up in the very nick of time. There would have been nothing left of either of us a minute later, he declared. But that sudden move of mine had saved Beryl. I had received the weapon intended for her.
Well, I knew this of course, but was not aware that she did. Now her care for me stood explained. Its motive was gratitude, and I – well, I had been allowing a sweet new hope to take possession of my mind while I had been lying there, helpless and tended by her, the sight of her gladdening my eyes.
Then Brian went on to tell me the sequel to that fearful night. No one but myself had been seriously injured in the scrimmage. The quickness and unexpected manner of the move made by Kuliso had saved the chief’s life, although by a hair’s breadth, for the bullet from Beryl’s pistol had passed so close to his head as nearly to stun him by the concussion. He had been arrested, but discharged on the insufficiency of evidence connecting him with the murder; but his arrest had produced this amount of good, that his people, anxious for the safety of their chief, had given away the actual murderers, and these proved to be Sibuko, Maqala and one other, who were now awaiting trial.
Not for nothing, then, had my suspicions been aroused by the sight of these two scoundrels hanging about the place, and now I told Brian about it. He sighed.
“Yes,” he said. “It’s the first and only time I knew the dear old dad commit a serious error of judgment, and heavily he’s paid for it. By the way, the double funeral came off here – and was hugely attended. All the world seemed to have rolled up. Do you know, Kenrick, I can hardly stick it on the farm now. You’ve no idea what it’s like without him.”
He broke off. And then for some minutes we two grown men were simply not able to speak.
“It’s a fortunate thing Beryl did not succeed in shooting that villain Kuliso,” he said at last. “Not that he didn’t richly deserve it, but – I don’t like to think what the result might have been. The law is a very hard-and-fast customer to deal with.”
“Yes. I pointed that out to her at the time. But what could I do?”
“Nothing – simply nothing. If I had been there I might have done very much the same sort of thing as she did.”
“What’s this? Our patient seems to have taken a jump forward,” said Pentridge, entering at that moment. “Not been making him talk a lot, have you, Brian?”
“No fear. I’ve been doing all the talking,” was the answer. “Only telling him about things.”
“Let me congratulate you, Holt, on the abnormal thickness of your skull,” laughed Pentridge. “Otherwise a shattered egg-shell would have been the word instead of a tidy bout of brain fever, not to mention a well-delivered assegai jab beneath the fifth rib.”
“You seem to have patched me up, though, to some purpose,” I said. And after a few cheery remarks he left me, with a parting injunction to Brian not to let me talk.
But after that I made no more “jumps forward.” On the contrary, I was going back. I grew listless and seemed to feel no interest in anything, and my prevailing thought was that it was a pity I had returned to life at all. I even expostulated with Beryl for her attention to me. Pentridge was puzzled.
“I can’t make it out at all,” I overheard him say one day during a whispered conversation with Beryl. “We ought to have had him on his legs again by now; but he seems determined to cheat me, and that in the wrong direction. Has he anything on his mind, do you know, Miss Matterson?”
“Well, in point of fact, I think he has,” she answered with some hesitation. “Of a business nature, he gave me to understand. Of course, I am telling you this in strict confidence, and only then because it might be a guide to you in the treatment of his case.”
“Ah! Now I wonder if it would do him any good if he were allowed to see his letters.”
“It might.”
“All right. Let him have them when he wakes. May do him good, and nothing can do him more harm than brooding over an idea. Good-bye.”
I lay with my eyes closed for some time after Pentridge had gone out, thinking over the irony of the situation; for I called to mind our conversation in the garden, and how the position was now exactly that which I had laughingly conjured up. Then I pretended to wake.
“Would you like to see your letters, Kenrick? The doctor says you may now.”
I yawned.
“Very kind of him. I don’t suppose they’re worth the trouble. If there’s anything of importance in them it’s sure to be bad news or worse. Well, let’s have them, Beryl.”
There were three, somewhat old as to date. Two were of no importance; but the third! As I glanced dizzily through it, my head swam and the blood rushed to my face, for I was still weak. I dropped back on the pillows.
“Read it, Beryl,” I gasped. “Read it for me – for I can’t see. Read every word, date and all.”
She glanced at me anxiously. Then, rightly judging that it would be better to comply than keep me in a state of agonising suspense, she read it.
Then I, drinking in every word, was hardly able to believe my ears, for the letter was from my agents and expressive of great regret for any inconvenience and anxiety to which their former communication might have put me. They could not conceive how such a mistake could have occurred, but the fact was the funds by some error had not been paid in to the defaulting firm, though only just in time had this course been avoided. Consequently they themselves now held the sum in question awaiting my disposal, and begged to remain, etc., etc.
My little all was saved!
“Read it again, Beryl. Read it again. And be particular as to dates.”
She obeyed, and even while she did so her hand dropped upon mine as it lay on the counterpane.
“Oh, Kenrick, I am so glad. I can’t tell you how glad I am. Only, remember, my instinct was a true one. Did I not tell you how everything would come right?”
“Yes. But it hasn’t. I mean not for me.”
“How? Instead of being ruined, as you thought, you are just where you were before. Isn’t that coming right?”
“No. I want a great deal more than that. I want – you.”
I was looking her straight in the face. A flush came into it, and there was the sweetest, tenderest glow in her eyes. It seemed that the hand which rested in mine returned the pressure.
“Beryl – darling – my love for you has been steadily growing since we first became inmates of the same house. I was on the point of telling you so when that idiot Trask came clattering in upon us that day we were riding back from Stacey’s. Then, afterwards, as you know, there were other things that made the time not an opportune one; and the day before you returned home I got the news that made me think I was a beggar.”
“Yes. And you took to behaving very strangely towards me then, as I think I told you.”
“Shall I tell you something, dearest? I was beastly jealous of Pentridge.”
“Were you? Well, you needn’t be ever again. Shall I tell you something, dearest – only as a secret? He asked me to marry him.”
“The day he left?”
She nodded.
“I thought he would,” I said. “And – why didn’t you?”
“Because I greatly preferred some one else.”
“Who is the ‘some one else’?”
“If you will promise not to talk any more – you have already talked a great deal too much – I’ll tell you. You will? Well, then – ” and the look upon her face was to my eyes simply heavenly, as she bent down her sweet lips to my ear, touched it with them, and whispered just one word: “You.”
I hardly know what the next few moments contained, except that it was far too radiantly blissful to put into mere words. Then looking down upon me, her cool hand lovingly moving over my forehead and temples, she said —
“Now you will be quick and get well – for my sake, won’t you, Kenrick dear?”
“Rather! Pentridge may consider the cure complete. My mind is clear now, at any rate.” And then I stopped, feeling rather ashamed of my exhilaration and happiness, considering how recent was the blow which had fallen, and said so. But she reassured me.
“It is just as the dear old dad would have wished,” she said. “He had such an opinion of you, Kenrick. Now – where is your promise? You were not to talk any more, do you remember?”
“But I have hardly said anything yet. And – I want to.”
“Haven’t you? You have been delirious, remember, dearest, and when people are delirious they say a great deal.” And with a glad, mischievous laugh, again she bent down her lips to mine.
I gained strength daily now, almost hourly. But Pentridge wondered not at the sudden change when he learned how it had been brought about. He congratulated us in a cordial, manly way, poor chap. Yes, he was a fine fellow, was Pentridge.
We had a sad and painful time of it, Beryl and I, at the trial of the three murderers, for we had to give evidence, and that meant a re-opening of the old wounds. But Sibuko and Maqala and the other Kafir were sentenced to be hanged; and hanged they were, in the gaol at Fort Lamport, a couple of weeks or so afterwards. With their richly-deserved fate the vendetta which culminated in this last tragedy was closed; for Kuliso, strange to say, conceived such a vast admiration and respect for Beryl’s magnificent intrepidity on that fatal night, that he made it known among his tribesmen that all further acts of hostility or molestation towards us, of any kind, were to cease; and as he still emphatically disclaimed any knowledge of or complicity in the sad tragedy, we gave him the benefit of the doubt, and dwelt side by side, at any rate on neighbourly terms.
For after Beryl and I were married – quietly, by reason of what had gone before – as Brian showed not the smallest intention of following our example, we continued to make our home at Gonya’s Kloof, and our partnership in farming concerns prospered exceedingly, and in our home circle we were as happy as the still lingering shadow of bereavement would allow us to be. And it was a shadow. Poor little George! We missed his merry impudence a good many times a day, and as for the wise, kind father and friend – why, for long the recollection of him was blank indeed; and long it was before Time even began to heal the wound which that recollection had left.
Well, that is my story. I don’t know that it is much of a story, but it’s a true one, and that I, Kenrick Holt, should ever have been brought to write a story at all seems passing strange, most of all to myself; indeed, I never should have, had it not been for a friend of mine who used to come and stay at our place, and shoot. He was always keen on reminiscences – if local and tragic all the better – and my own romance appealed to him to such an extent that he was continually urging me to turn it into a book; which was sporting of him, for he was very much in the book-writing line himself – especially with reference to my now adopted country – and might easily have used it himself, turning it to account on behalf of his own pocket. However, he was too much of a sportsman for that, so – here it is.
Finis.