Part 5 (2/2)

Others were irritable and strenuous, bitter in their denunciations of the Johannesburg conspirators, who had bungled their side of the business and who had certainly shown no rashness. At any rate, whatever the merits of their case, no one in England accused the Johannesburgers of foolhardy courage or impa.s.sioned daring. They were so busy in trying to induce Jameson to go back that they had no time to go forward themselves. It was not that they lost their heads, their hearts were the disappearing factors.

At this gloomy meeting in his house, Byng did not join either of the two sections who represented the more extreme views and the unpolitical minds. There was a small section, of which he was one, who were not cleverer financially than their friends, but who had political sense and intuition; and these, to their credit, were more concerned, at this dark moment, for the political and national consequences of the Raid, than for the certain set-back to the mining and financial enterprises of the Rand. A few of the richest of them were the most hopeless politically--ever ready to sacrifice principle for an extra dividend of a quarter per cent.; and, in their inmost souls, ready to bow the knee to Oom Paul and his unwholesome, undemocratic, and corrupt government, if only the dividends moved on and up.

Byng was not a great genius, and he had never given his natural political talent its full chance; but his soul was bigger than his pocket. He had a pa.s.sionate love for the land--for England--which had given him birth; and he had a decent pride in her honour and good name.

So it was that he had almost savagely challenged some of the sordid deliberations of this stern conference. In a full-blooded and manly appeal he begged them ”to get on higher ground.” If he could but have heard it, it would have cheered the heart of the broken and discredited pioneer of Empire at Capetown, who had received his death-warrant, to take effect within five years, in the little cottage at Muizenberg by the sea; as great a soul in posse as ever came from the womb of the English mother; who said as he sat and watched the tide flow in and out, and his own tide of life ebbed, ”Life is a three days' trip to the sea-sh.o.r.e: one day in going, one day in settling down, and one day in packing up again.”

Byng had one or two colleagues who, under his inspiration, also took the larger view, and who looked ahead to the consequences yet to flow from the fiasco at Doornkop, which became a tragedy. What would happen to the conspirators of Johannesburg? What would happen to Jameson and Willoughby and Bobby White and Raleigh Grey? Who was to go to South Africa to help in holding things together, and to prevent the worst happening, if possible? At this point they had arrived when they saw--

... The dull dank morn stare in, Like a dim drowned face with oozy eyes.

A more miserable morning seldom had broken, even in England.

”I will go. I must go,” remarked Byng at last, though there was a strange sinking of the heart as he said it. Even yet the perfume of Jasmine's cloak stole to his senses to intoxicate them. But it was his duty to offer to go; and he felt that he could do good by going, and that he was needed at Johannesburg. He, more than all of them, had been in open conflict with Oom Paul in the the past, had fought him the most vigorously, and yet for him the old veldschoen Boer had some regard and much respect, in so far as he could respect a Rooinek at all.

”I will go,” Byng repeated, and looked round the table at haggard faces, at ashen faces, at the faces of men who had smoked to quiet their nerves, or drunk hard all night to keep up their courage. How many times they had done the same in olden days, when the millions were not yet arrived, and their only luxury was companions.h.i.+p and champagne--or something less expensive.

As Byng spoke, Krool entered the room with a great coffee-pot and a dozen small white bowls. He heard Byng's words, and for a moment his dark eyes glowed with a look of evil satisfaction. But his immobile face showed nothing, and he moved like a spirit among them his lean hand putting a bowl before each person, like a servitor of Death pa.s.sing the hemlock-brew.

At his entrance there was instant silence, for, secret as their conference must be, this half-caste, this Hottentot-Boer, must hear nothing and know nothing. Not one of them but resented his being Byng's servant. Not one but felt him a danger at any time, and particularly now. Once Barry Whalen, the most outwardly brusque and apparently frank of them all, had urged Byng to give Krool up, but without avail; and now Barry eyed the half-caste with a resentful determination. He knew that Krool had heard Byng's words, for he was sitting opposite the double doors, and had seen the malicious eyes light up. Instantly, however, that light vanished. They all might have been wooden men, and Krool but a wooden servitor, so mechanical and concentrated were his actions. He seemed to look at n.o.body; but some of them shrank a little as he leaned over and poured the brown, steaming liquid and the hot milk into the bowls. Only once did the factotum look at anybody directly, and that was at Byng just as he was about to leave the room.

Then Barry Whalen saw him glance searchingly at his master's face in a mirror, and again that baleful light leaped up in his eyes.

When he had left the room, Barry Whalen said, impulsively: ”Byng, it's all d.a.m.n foolery your keeping that fellow about you. It's dangerous, 'specially now.”

”Coffee's good, isn't it? Think there's poison in it?” Byng asked with a contemptuous little laugh. ”Sugar--what?” He pushed the great bowl of sugar over the polished table towards Barry.

”Oh, he makes you comfortable enough, but--”

”But he makes you uncomfortable, Barry? Well, we're bound to get on one another's nerves one way or another in this world when the east wind blows; and if it isn't the east wind, it's some other wind. We're living on a planet which has to take the swipes of the universe, because it has permitted that corrupt, quarrelsome, and pernicious beast, man, to populate the hemispheres. Krool is staying on with me, Barry.”

”We're in heavy seas, and we don't want any wreckers on the sh.o.r.e,” was the moody and nervously indignant reply.

”Well, Krool's in the heavy seas, all right, too--with me.”

Barry Whalen persisted. ”We're in for complications, Byng. England has to take a hand in the game now with a vengeance. We don't want any spies. He's more Boer than native.”

”There'll be nothing Krool can get worth spying for. If we keep our mouths shut to the outside world, we'll not need fear any spies. I'm not afraid of Krool. We'll not be sold by him. Though some one inside will sell us perhaps--as the Johannesburg game was sold by some one inside.”

There was a painful silence, and more than one man looked at his fellows furtively.

”We will do nothing that will not bear the light of day, and then we need not fear any spying,” continued Byng.

”If we have secret meetings and intentions which we don't make public, it is only what governments themselves have; and we keep them quiet to prevent any one taking advantage of us; but our actions are justifiable. I'm going to do nothing I'm ashamed of; and when it's necessary, or when and if it seems right to do so, I'll put all my cards on the table. But when I do, I'll see that it's a full hand--if I can.”

There was a silence for a moment after he had ended, then some one said:

”You think it's best that you should go? You want to go to Johannesburg?”

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