The Judgment House Part 14

"Nevertheless, if you're wise you'll ship him back beyond the Vaal, my friend."

"It isn't Krool. I'll stake my life on that. He's as true to me as I am to myself; and, anyhow, there are things in this Krool couldn't know."

He tossed the paper into the fire and watched it burn.

He had talked over many, if not all, of these things with Jasmine, and with no one else; but Jasmine would not gossip. He had never known her to do so. Indeed, she had counselled extreme caution so often to himself that she would, in any case, be innocent of having babbled. But certainly there had been leakage--there had been leakage regarding most critical affairs. They were momentous enough to cause him to say reflectively now, as he watched the paper burn:

"You might as well carry dynamite in your pocket as that."

"You don't mind my coming to see you?" Barry asked, in an anxious tone.

He could not afford to antagonize Byng; in any case, his heart was against doing so; though, like an Irishman, he had risked everything by his maladroit and ill-mannered attack a little while ago.

"I wanted to warn you, so's you could be ready when Fleming jumped in,"

Barry continued.

"No; I'm much obliged, Barry," was Byng's reply, in a voice where trouble was well marked, however. "Wait a minute," he continued, as his visitor prepared to leave. "Go into the other room"--he pointed. "Glue your ear to the door first, then to the wall, and tell me if you can hear anything--any word I say."

Barry did as he was bidden. Presently Byng spoke in a tone rather louder than in ordinary conversation to an imaginary interlocutor for some minutes. Then Barry Whalen came back into the room.

"Well?" Byng asked. "Heard anything?"

"Not a word--scarcely a murmur."

"Quite so. The walls are thick, and those big mahogany doors fit like a glove. Nothing could leak through. Let's try the other door, leading into the hall." They went over to it. "You see, here's an inside baize-door as well. There's not room for a person to stand between the two. I'll go out now, and you stay. Talk fairly loud."

The test produced the same result.

"Maybe I talk in my sleep," remarked Byng, with a troubled, ironical laugh.

Suddenly there shot into Barry Whalen's mind a thought which startled him, which brought the colour to his face with a rush. For years he had suspected Krool, had considered him a danger. For years he had regarded Byng as culpable, for keeping as his servant one whom the Partners all believed to be a spy; but now another, a terrible thought came to him, too terrible to put into words--even in his own mind.

There were two other people besides Krool who were very close to Byng.

There was Mrs. Byng for one; there was also Adrian Fellowes, who had been for a long time a kind of handy-man of the great house, doing the hundred things which only a private secretary, who was also a kind of master-of-ceremonies and lord-in-waiting, as it were, could do. Yes, there was Adrian Fellowes, the private secretary; and there was Mrs.

Byng, who knew so much of what her husband knew! And the private secretary and the wife necessarily saw much of each other. What came to Barry's mind now stunned him, and he mumbled out some words of good-bye with an almost hang-dog look to his face; for he had a chivalrous heart and mind, and he was not p.r.o.ne to be malicious.

"We'll meet at eight, then?" said Byng, taking out his watch. "It's a quarter past seven now. Don't fuss, Barry. We'll nose out the spy, whoever he is, or wherever to be found. But we won't find him here, I think--not here, my friend."

Suddenly Barry Whalen turned at the door. "Oh, let's go back to the veld and the Rand!" he burst out, pa.s.sionately. "This is no place for us, Byng--not for either of us. You are getting flabby, and I'm spoiling my temper and my manners. Let's get out of this infernal jack-pot. Let's go where we'll be in the thick of the broiling when it comes. You've got a political head, and you've done more than any one else could do to put things right and keep them right; but it's no good. Nothing'll be got except where the red runs. And the red will run, in spite of all Jo or Milner or you can do. And when it comes, you and I will be sick if we're not there--yes, even you with your millions, Byng."

With moist eyes Byng grasped the hand of the rough-hewn comrade of the veld, and shook it warmly.

"England has got on your nerves, Barry," he said, gently. "But we're all right in London. The key-board of the big instrument is here."

"But the organ is out there, Byng, and it's the organ that makes the music, not the keys. We're all going to pieces here, every one of us. I see it. Herr Gott, I see it plain enough! We're in the wrong shop.

We're not buying or selling; we're being sold. Baas--big Baas, let's go where there's room to sling a stone; where we can see what's going on round us; where there's the long sight and the strong sight; where you can sell or get sold in the open, not in the alleyways; where you can have a run for your money."

Byng smiled benevolently. Yet something was stirring his senses strangely. The smell of the karoo was in his nostrils. "You're not ending up as you began, Barry," he replied. "You started off like an Israelite on the make, and you're winding up like Moody and Sankey."

"Well, I'm right now in the wind-up. I'm no better, I'm no worse, than the rest of our fellows, but I'm Irish--I can see. The Celt can always see, even if he can't act. And I see dark days coming for this old land. England is wallowing. It's all guzzle and feed and finery, and n.o.body cares a copper about anything that matters--"

"About Cape to Cairo, eh?"

"Byng, that was one of my idiocies. But you think over what I say, just the same. I'm right. We're rotten cotton stuff now in these isles.

We've got fatty degeneration of the heart, and in all the rest of the organs too."

Again Byng shook him by the hand warmly. "Well, Wallstein will give us a fat dinner to-night, and you can moralize with lime-light effects after the foie gras, Barry."

Closing the door slowly behind his friend, whom he had pa.s.sed into the hands of the dark-browed Krool, Byng turned again to his desk. As he did so he caught sight of his face in the mirror over the mantel-piece.

A shadow swept over it; his lips tightened.

"Barry was right," he murmured, scrutinizing himself. "I've degenerated. We've all degenerated. What's the matter, anyhow? What is the matter? I've got everything--everything--everything."

Hearing the door open behind him, he turned to see Jasmine in evening dress smiling at him. She held up a pink finger in reproof.

"Naughty boy," she said. "What's this I hear--that you have thrown me over--me--to go and dine with the Wallstein! It's nonsense! You can't go. Ian Stafford is coming to dine, as I told you."

His eyes beamed protectingly, affectionately, and yet, somehow, a little anxiously, on her "But I must go, Jasmine. It's the first time we've all been together since the Raid, and it's good we should be in the full circle once again. There's work to do--more than ever there was. There's a storm coming up on the veld, a real jagged lightning business, and men will get hurt, hosts beyond recovery. We must commune together, all of us. If there's the communion of saints, there's also the communion of sinners. Fleming is back, and Wolff is back, and Melville and Reuter and Hungerford are back, but only for a few days, and we all must meet and map things out. I forgot about the dinner. As soon as I remembered it I left a note on your dressing-table."

With sudden emotion he drew her to him, and buried his face in her soft golden hair. "My darling, my little jasmine-flower," he whispered, softly, "I hate leaving you, but--"

"But it's impossible, Ruddy, my man. How can I send Ian Stafford away?

It's too late to put him off."

"There's no need to put him off or to send him away--such old friends as you are. Why shouldn't he dine with you a deux? I'm the only person that's got anything to say about that."

She expressed no surprise, she really felt none. He had forgotten that, coming up from Scotland, he had told her of this dinner with his friends, and at the moment she asked Ian Stafford to dine she had forgotten it also; but she remembered it immediately afterwards, and she had said nothing, done nothing.

As Byng spoke, however, a curious expression emerged from the far depths of her eyes--emerged, and was instantly gone again to the obscurity whence it came. She had foreseen that he would insist on Stafford dining with her; but, while showing no surprise--and no perplexity--there was a touch of demureness in her expression as she answered:

"I don't want to seem too conventional, but--"

"There should be a little lat.i.tude in all social rules," he rejoined.

"What nonsense! You are prudish, Jasmine. Allow yourself some lat.i.tude."

"Lat.i.tude, not license," she returned. Having deftly laid on him the responsibility for this evening's episode, this excursion into the dangerous fields of past memory and sentiment and perjured faith, she closed the book of her own debit and credit with a smile of satisfaction.

"Let me look at you," he said, standing her off from him.

Holding her hand, he turned her round like a child to be inspected.

"Well, you're a dream," he added, as she released herself and swept into a curtsey, coquetting with her eyes as she did so. "You're wonderful in blue--a flower in the azure," he added. "I seem to remember that gown before--years ago--"

She uttered an exclamation of horror. "Good gracious, you wild and ruthless ruffian! A gown--this gown--years ago! My bonny boy, do you think I wear my gowns for years?"

"I wear my suits for years. Some I've had seven years. I've got a frock-coat I bought for my brother Jim's wedding, ten years ago, and it looks all right--a little small now, but otherwise 'most as good as new."

"What a lamb, what a babe, you are, Ruddy! Like none that ever lived.

Why, no woman wears her gowns two seasons, and some of them rather hate wearing them two times."