Part 46 (1/2)

There was a hideous commonplaceness in the tone which struck a chill to Stafford's heart.

”No doubt there is always some one you want to kill. Now listen, Krool.

You think you've got a hold over me--over Mrs. Byng. You threaten.

Well, I have pa.s.sed through the fire of the coroner's inquest. I have nothing to fear. You have. I saw you in the street as you watched. You came behind me--”

He remembered now the footsteps that paused when he did, the figure behind his in the dark, as he watched for Jasmine to come out from Fellowes' rooms, and he determined to plunge once more.

”I recognized you, and I saw you in the Strand just before that. I did not speak at the inquest, because I wanted no scandal. If I had spoken, you would have been arrested. Whatever happened your chances were worse than those of any one. You can't frighten me, or my friends in there, or the Baas, or Mrs. Byng. Look after your own skin. You are the vile sc.u.m of the earth,”--he determined to take a strong line now, since he had made a powerful impression on the creature before him--”and you will do what the Baas likes, not what you like. He saved your life. Bad as you are, the Baas is your Baas for ever and ever, and what he wants to do with you he will do. When his eyes look into yours, you will think the lightning speaks. You are his slave. If he hates you, you will die; if he curses you, you will wither.”

He played upon the superst.i.tious element, the native strain again. It was deeper in Krool than anything else.

”Do you think you can defy them?” Stafford went on, jerking a finger towards the other room. ”They are from the veld. They will have you as sure as the crack of a whip. This is England, but they are from the veld. On the veld you know what they would do to you. If you speak against the Baas, it is bad for you; if you speak against the Baas'

vrouw it will be ten times worse. Do you hear?”

There was a strange silence, in which Stafford could feel Krool's soul struggling in the dark, as it were--a struggle as of black spirits in the grey dawn.

”I wait the Baas speak,” Krool said at last, with a s.h.i.+ver.

There was no time for Stafford to answer. Wallstein entered the room hurriedly. ”Byng has come. He has been told about him,” he said in French to Stafford, and jerking his head towards Krool.

Stafford rose. ”It's all right,” he answered in the same language. ”I think things will be safe now. He has a wholesome fear of the Baas.”

He turned to Krool. ”If you say to the Baas what you have said to me about Mr. Fellowes or about the Baas's vrouw, you will have a bad time.

You will think that wild hawks are picking out your vitals. If you have sense, you will do what I tell you.”

Krool's eyes were on the door through which Wallstein had come. His gaze was fixed and tortured. Stafford had suddenly roused in him some strange superst.i.tious element. He was like a creature of a lower order awaiting the approach of the controlling power. It was, however, the door behind him which opened, and he gave a start of surprise and terror. He knew who it was. He did not turn round, but his head bent forward, as though he would take a blow from behind, and his eyes almost closed. Stafford saw with a curious meticulousness the long eyelashes touch the grey cheek.

”There's no fight in him now,” he said to Byng in French. ”He was getting nasty, but I've got him in order. He knows too much. Remember that, Byng.”

Byng's look was as that of a man who had pa.s.sed through some chamber of torture, but the flabbiness had gone suddenly from his face, and even from his figure, though heavy lines had gathered round the mouth and scarred the forehead. He looked worn and much thinner, but there was a look in his eyes which Stafford had never seen there--a new look of deeper seeing, of revelation, of realization. With all his ability and force, Byng had been always much of a boy, so little at one with the hidden things--the springs of human conduct, the contradictions of human nature, the worst in the best of us, the forces that emerge without warning in all human beings, to send them on untoward courses and at sharp tangents to all the habits of their existence and their character. In a real sense he had been very primitive, very objective in all he thought and said and did. With imagination, and a sensitive organization out of keeping with his immense physique, it was still only a visualizing sense which he had, only a thing that belongs to races such as those of which Krool had come.

A few days of continuous suffering begotten by a cataclysm, which had rent asunder walls of life enclosing vistas he had never before seen; these had transformed him. Pain had given him dignity of a savage kind, a grim quiet which belonged to conflict and betokened grimmer purpose.

In the eyes was the darkness of the well of despair; but at his lips was iron resolution.

In reply to Stafford he said quietly: ”All right, I understand. I know how to deal with Krool.”

As Stafford withdrew, Byng came slowly down the room till he stood at the end of the table opposite to Krool.

Standing there, he looked at the Boer with hard eyes.

”I know all, Krool,” he said. ”You sold me and my country--you tried to sell me and my country to Oom Paul. You dog, that I s.n.a.t.c.hed from the tiger death, not once but twice.”

”It is no good. I am a Hottentot. I am for the Boer, for Oom Paul. I would have die for you, but--”

”But when the chance came to betray the thing I cared for more than I would twenty lives--my country--you tried to sell me and all who worked with me.”

”It would be same to you if the English go from the Vaal,” said the half-caste, huskily, not looking into the eyes fixed on him. ”But it matter to me that the Boer keep all for himself what he got for himself. I am half Boer. That is why.”

”You defend it--tell me, you defend it?”