<h2><SPAN name="chap35"></SPAN>CHAPTER XXXV.<br/> THE CONCLUSION OF THE MATTER</h2>
<p>When the rain ceased and the moon began to shine, Jess was still fleeing like a
wild thing across the plain on the top of the mountain. She felt no sense of
exhaustion now or even of weariness; her only idea was to get away, right away
somewhere, where she could lose herself and nobody would ever see her again.
Presently she reached the top of Leeuwen Kloof, and recognising the spot in a
bewildered way she began to descend it. Here was a place where she might lie
till she died, for no one ever came there, except now and again some wandering
Kafir herd. On she sprang, from rock to rock, a wild and eerie figure, well in
keeping with the solemn and titanic sadness of the place.</p>
<p>Twice she fell, once right into the stream, but she took no heed, she did not
even seem to feel it. At last she was at the bottom, now creeping like a black
dot across the wide spaces of moonlight, and now swallowed up in the shadow.
There before her gaped the mouth of the little cave; her strength was leaving
her at last, and she was fain to crawl into it, broken-hearted, crazed,
and—<i>dying</i>.</p>
<p>“Oh, God forgive me! God forgive me!” she moaned as she sank upon
the rocky floor. “Bessie, I sinned against you, but I have washed away my
sin. I did it for you, Bessie love, not for myself. I had rather have died than
kill him for myself. You will marry John now, and you will never, never know
what I did for you. I am going to die. I know that. I am dying. Oh, if only I
could see his face once more before I die—before I die!”</p>
<p>Slowly the westering moonlight crept down the blackness of the rock. Now at
last it peeped into the little cave and played upon John’s sleeping face
lying within six feet of her. Her prayer had been granted; there was her lover
by her side.</p>
<p>With a start and a great sigh of doubt she recognised him. Was it a vision? Was
he dead? She dragged herself to him upon her hands and knees and listened for
his breathing, if perchance he still breathed and was not a wraith. Then it
came, strong and slow, the breath of a man in deep sleep.</p>
<p>So he lived. Should she try to wake him? What for? To tell him she was a
murderess and then to let him see her die? For instinct told her that nature
was exhausted; and she knew that she was certainly going—going fast. No,
a hundred times no!</p>
<p>Only she put her hand into her breast, and drawing out the pass on the back of
which she had written her last message to him, she thrust it between his
listless fingers. It should speak for her. Then she leant over him, and watched
his sleeping face, a very incarnation of infinite, despairing tenderness, and
love that is deeper than the grave. And as she watched, gradually her feet and
legs grew cold and numb, till at length she could feel nothing below her bosom.
She was dead nearly to the heart. Well, it was better so!</p>
<p>The rays of the moon faded slowly from the level of the little cave, and
John’s face grew dark to her darkening sight. She bent down and kissed
him once—twice—thrice.</p>
<p>At last the end came. There was a great flashing of light before her eyes, and
within her ears the roaring as of a thousand seas, and her head sank gently on
her lover’s breast as on a pillow; and there Jess died and passed upward
towards the wider life and larger liberty, or, at the least, downward into the
depths of rest.</p>
<p>Poor dark-eyed, deep-hearted Jess! This was the fruition of her love, and this
her bridal bed.</p>
<p>It was done. She had gone, taking with her the secret of her self-sacrifice and
crime, and the night-winds moaning amidst the rocks sang their requiem over
her. Here she first had learned her love, and here she closed its book on
earth.</p>
<p>She might have been a great and a good woman. She might even have been a happy
woman. But fate had ordained it otherwise. Women such as Jess are rarely happy
in the world. It is not worldly wise to stake all one’s fortune on a
throw, and lack the craft to load the dice. Well, her troubles are done with.
Think gently of her and let her pass in peace!</p>
<p>The hours grew on towards the evening, but John, the dead face of the woman he
had loved still pillowed on his breast, neither dreamed nor woke. There was a
strange and dreadful irony in the situation, an irony which sometimes finds its
counterpart in our waking life, but still the man slept, and the dead girl lay
till the night turned into the morning and the earth woke up as usual. The
sunbeams slid into the cave, and played indifferently upon the ashen face and
tangled curls, and on the broad chest of the living man whereon they rested. An
old baboon peeped round the rocky edge and manifested no surprise, only
indignation, at the intrusion of humanity, dead or alive, into his dominions.
Yes, the world woke up as usual, and recked not and troubled not because Jess
was dead.</p>
<p>It is so accustomed to such sights.</p>
<p>At last John woke up also. He stretched his arms yawning, and for the first
time became aware of the weight upon his breast. He glanced down and saw dimly
at first—then more clearly.</p>
<p>There are some things into which it is wisest not to pry, and one of them is
the first agony of a strong man’s grief.</p>
<p>Happy was it for John that his brain did not give way in that lonely hour of
bottomless despair. But he lived through it, as we do live through such things,
and was sane and sound after it, though it left its mark upon his life.</p>
<p>Two hours later a gaunt, haggard figure stumbled down the hill-side towards the
site of Mooifontein, bearing something in his arms. The whole place was in
commotion. Here and there were knots of Boers talking excitedly, who, when they
saw the man coming, hurried up to learn who it was and what he carried. But
when they knew, they fell back awed and without a word, and John too passed
through them without a word. For a moment he hesitated, seeing that the house
was burnt down. Then he turned into the waggon-shed, and laid his burden down
on the saw-bench where Frank Muller had sat as judge upon the previous day.</p>
<p>Now at last John spoke in a hoarse voice: “Where is the old man?”</p>
<p>One of them pointed to the door of the little room.</p>
<p>“Open it!” he said, so fiercely that again they fell back and
obeyed him without a word.</p>
<p>“John! John!” cried Silas Croft, rising amazed from his seat upon a
sack. “Thank God—you have come back to us from the dead!” and
trembling with joy and surprise he would have fallen on his neck.</p>
<p>“Hush!” he answered; “I have brought the dead with me.”</p>
<p>And he led him to where Jess lay.</p>
<p>During the day all the Boers went away and left them alone. Now that Frank
Muller lay dead there was no thought among them of carrying out the sentence
upon their old neighbour. Besides, there was no warrant for the execution, even
had they desired so to do, for their commandant died leaving it unsigned. So
they held an informal inquest upon their leader’s body, and buried him in
the little graveyard that was walled in on the hill-side at the back of where
the house had stood, and planted with the four red gums, one at each corner.
Rather than be at the pains of hollowing another grave, they buried him in the
very place that he had caused to be dug to receive the body of Silas Croft.</p>
<p>Who had murdered Frank Muller was and remains a mystery among them to this day.
The knife was identified by natives about the farm as belonging to the
Hottentot Jantje, and a Hottentot had been seen running away from the place of
the deed and hunted for some way, but he could not be caught or heard of again.
Therefore many of them are of the opinion that he is the guilty man. Others,
again, believe that the crime rests upon the shoulders of the villainous
one-eyed Kafir, Hendrik, Muller’s own servant, who had also vanished. But
as they have never found either of them, and are not likely to do so, the point
remains a moot one. Nor, indeed, did they take any great pains to hunt for
them. Frank Muller was not a popular character, and the fact of a man coming to
a mysterious end does not produce any great sensation among a rough people and
in rough times.</p>
<p>On the following day, old Silas Croft, Bessie, and John Niel also buried their
dead in the little graveyard on the hill-side, and there Jess lies, with some
ten feet of earth only between her and the man upon whom she was the instrument
of vengeance. But they never knew this, or even guessed it. They never knew
indeed that she had been near Mooifontein on that awful night. Nobody knew it
except Jantje; and Jantje, haunted by the footfall of the pursuing Boers, was
gone from the ken of the white man far into the heart of Central Africa.</p>
<p>“John,” said the old man when they had filled in the grave,
“this is no country for Englishmen. Let us go home to England.”
John bowed his head in assent, for he could not speak. Fortunately means were
not wanting, although practically they were both ruined. The thousand pounds
that John had paid to Silas as the price of a third interest in the farm still
lay to the credit of the latter in the Standard Bank at Newcastle, in Natal,
together with another two hundred and fifty pounds in cash.</p>
<p>And so in due course they went.</p>
<p>Now what more is there to tell? Jess, to those who read what has been written
as it is meant to be read, was the soul of it all, and Jess—is dead. It
is useless to set a lifeless thing upon its feet, rather let us strive to
follow the soarings of the spirit. Jess is dead and her story at an end.</p>
<hr />
<p>So but one word more.</p>
<p>After some difficulty, John Niel, within three months of his arrival in
England, obtained employment as a land agent to a large estate in Rutlandshire,
which position he fills to this day, with credit to himself and such advantage
to the property as can be expected in these times. Also, in due course he
became the beloved husband of sweet Bessie Croft, and on the whole he may be
considered a happy man. At times, however, a sorrow overcomes him of which his
wife knows nothing, and for a while he is not himself.</p>
<p>He is not a man much addicted to sentiment or speculation, but sometimes when
his day’s work is done, and he strays to his garden gate and looks out at
the dim and peaceful English landscape beyond, and thence to the wide
star-strewn heavens above, he wonders if the hour will ever come when once more
he will see those dark and passionate eyes, and hear that sweet remembered
voice.</p>
<p>For John feels as near to his lost love now that she is dead as he felt while
she was yet alive. From time to time indeed he seems to know without
possibility of doubt that if, when death is done with, there should prove to be
an individual future for us suffering mortals, as he for one believes,
certainly he will find Jess waiting to greet him at its gates.</p>
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