Part 53 (1/2)
”Do you Boer spies carry cheque-books--upon Secret Service?”
”I am no Boer, but an honest, square-dealing Britisher. How often have I to tell you that? Do you suppose you are a prisoner here because I slewed on you? Wrong, by G.o.d! Perhaps I kept things back a bit for fear you would cut up, as women do, and go into screeching-fits. Sure now, that's what any man would have done.” His tone of injury was excellently feigned, and his lisp was simplicity itself. ”And to call me a dirty spy, when I got you first-hand information, and ran your letters through to Gueldersdorp, at the risk of my blooming neck.... Well, you'll be ashamed when you get back there and see those letters, that's what you will, sure!”
”The letters got through--yes. But did they get through in time to be of use?”
The little she-devil suspected the truth. He stroked his whiskers and sc.r.a.ped his foot upon the floor, and said in his blandest lisp:
”They got through in useful time. I'll kiss the Book and swear it, if you want me.”
How deal with a knave like this, who popped in and out of holes like a rabbit, and wriggled and writhed like a snake? Lady Hannah knew an immense yearning for the absent Bingo, husband of limited intellectual capacity, man of superior muscular development, doughty in the use of that primitive weapon of punishment, the doubled human fist.
”In useful time? Useful Gueldersdorp time or useful Tweipans time? That is what I want to get at.”
”Oh, h.e.l.l! how do I know?” He had turned sulky and scowling, but her blood was fairly up.
”I know that you have successfully swindled me out of five hundred pounds.
I know that when I met you on the train four months back you shaped your plans and baited a trap----”
”To catch a silly woman.” His scarlet lips rolled back from his tobacco-stained teeth. His jeering eyes were intolerable. ”Ay, maybe I did. And what's to say now?”
”I say you are a blackguard, Mr. Bough Van Busch!”
The dark face with the light eyes underwent a murderous change. He glanced over his shoulders right and left, and took a step towards her, carrying out the movement suddenly, as a tarantula darts upon its prey. Before the thick brown muscular fingers had choked the scream that rose in her throat, the key crashed in the lock, and the door was violently kicked open, admitting ...
No portrait is required of that burly, bald-browed, sharp-eyed, grizzle-bearded, square-jawed farmer, of the bronzed and sun-cracked countenance, implacable under the slouch-hat with the orange-leather band.
We know the old green overcoat, and coa.r.s.e corduroy breeches, and roughly tanned leather boots, with heavy, old-fas.h.i.+oned spurs, to have been the husk of a fierce, and indomitable, and relentless warrior, twinned with a quiet family-man of bucolic tastes and patriarchal habits.
Van Busch, broader by inches and taller by half a head, dwindled, seen in juxtaposition with this man of the iron will and the leader's temperament, to a flabby, dwarfish, and petty being. The fierce grey eyes took him in, and read him, and dropped him, and fastened on the little Englishwoman, as the great boots tramped heavily across the floor, and the great voice roared, speaking in the Taal:
”Pull up that blind! Voor den donder! Shall we be mice, that sit and squeak in the dark?”
Down came the Mevrouw Kink's square of glazed yellow calico, roller, cord, and all, at the impatient wrench of the big, heavy hand.... The window was blocked with heavy bodies, topped by brown, white, or yellow faces; the street was a sea of them, all staring with greedy, curious eyes at the little Englishwoman who was a prisoner, and the big man who ruled them by Fear. His angry grey eyes blazed at the gapers, and the crowd surged back a foot or two. Then the fierce eyes darted back at pale Lady Hannah, and the roaring voice began again:
”You who came here in disguise, with a false story and false hair----”
Lady Hannah jumped in her bedroom slippers, and crimsoned to her natural coiffure, as the missing transformation, appallingly out of wave, was plucked from the baggy pocket of the old green overcoat, and brandished before her astonished eyes. Struggling to restrain the dual impulse to shriek and clutch, no wonder she appeared a conscience-stricken creature in that great man's watchful eyes. His big voice shook her and shook the room as he thundered:
”Woman, you are no widow of a Duitscher drummer, but the vrouw of a field-cornet of the Army of Groot Brittanje. He holds a graafschap in Engeland”--a mistake on the part of the General's informant--”and is hand-in-glove with the Colonel Commandant at Gueldersdorp.” Not so far from the truth! thought Lady Hannah. ”Would he spy out the land, let him come himself next time. Boers hide not behind their wives' petticoats when there is such business to be done!”
In defence of blameless Bingo the hysterical little woman found voice to say:
”He--didn't know I was coming.”
”What says she?”
Before Van Busch could bestir himself to interpret, Lady Hannah had repeated her words in faulty Dutch.
”So! Engelsch mevrouws disobey their husbands, it seems?” Were the fierce, bloodshot grey eyes really capable of a twinkle? ”We Boers have a cure for that. Green reim, well laid on, after the third caution, teaches our wives to fib and deceive no more.”
”You're wrong, sir.”