The Judgment House | Page 6

chance. Johannesburg--"
"Johannesburg isn't ready, Stafford. I know. That Jameson and the
Rand should coincide was the only chance. And they'll not coincide
now. It might have been--it was to have been--a revolution at
Johannesburg, with Dr. Jim to step in at the right minute. It's only a
filibustering business now, and Oom Paul will catch the filibuster, as
sure as guns. 'Gad, it makes me sick!"
"Europe will like it--much," remarked Ian Stafford, cynically, offering
Byng a lighted match.
Byng grumbled out an oath, then fixed his clear, strong look on
Stafford. "It's almost enough to make Germany and France forget 1870
and fall into each other's arms," he answered. "But that's your business,
you Foreign Office people's business. It's the fellows out there, friends
of mine, so many of them, I'm thinking of. It's the British kids that can't
be taught in their mother-tongue, and the men who pay all the taxes and
can't become citizens. It's the justice you can only buy; it's the foot of
Kruger on the necks of the subjects of his suzerain; it's eating dirt as
Englishmen have never had to eat it anywhere in the range of the Seven
Seas. And when they catch Dr. Jim, it'll be ten times worse. Yes, it'll be
at Doornkop, unless-- But, no, they'll track him, trap him, get him now.
Johannesburg wasn't ready. Only yesterday I had a cable that--" he
stopped short . . . "but they weren't ready. They hadn't guns enough, or
something; and Englishmen aren't good conspirators, not by a damned
sight! Now it'll be the old Majuba game all over again. You'll see."
"It certainly will set things back. Your last state will be worse than your
first," remarked Stafford.
Rudyard Byng drained off a glass of brandy and water at a gulp almost,
as Stafford watched him with inward adverse comment, for he never
touched wine or spirits save at meal-time, and the between-meal
swizzle revolted his Eesthetic sense. Byng put down the glass very
slowly, gazing straight before him for a moment without speaking.
Then he looked round. There was no one very near, though curious

faces were turned in his direction, as the grim news of the Raid was
passed from mouth to mouth. He came up close to Stafford and touched
his chest with a firm forefinger.
"Every egg in the basket is broken, Stafford. I'm sure of that. Dr. Jim'll
never get in now; and there'll be no oeufs a la coque for breakfast. But
there's an omelette to be got out of the mess, if the chef doesn't turn up
his nose too high. After all, what has brought things to this pass? Why,
mean, low tyranny and injustice. Why, just a narrow, jealous
race-hatred which makes helots of British men. Simple farmers, the
sentimental newspapers call them--simple Machiavellis in veldschoen!"
*
Stafford nodded assent. "But England is a very conventional chef," he
replied. "She likes the eggs for her omelette broken in the orthodox
way."
"She's not so particular where the eggs come from, is she?"
Stafford smiled as he answered: "There'll be a good many people in
England who won't sleep to-night some because they want Jameson to
get in; some because they don't; but most because they're thinking of
the millions of British money locked up in the Rand, with Kruger
standing over it with a sjambak, which he'll use. Last night at the opera
we had a fine example of presence of mind, when a lady burst into
flames on the stage. That spirited South African prima donna, the
Transvaal, is in flames. I wonder if she really will be saved, and who
will save her, and--"
A light, like the sun, broke over the gloomy and rather haggard face of
Rudyard Byng, and humour shot up into his eyes. He gave a low,
generous laugh, as he said with a twinkle: "And whether he does it at
some expense to himself--with his own overcoat, or with some one
else's cloak. Is that what you want to say?"
All at once the personal element, so powerful in most of us--even in
moments when interests are in existence so great that they should
obliterate all others--came to the surface. For a moment it almost made

Byng forget the crisis which had come to a land where he had done all
that was worth doing, so far in his life; which had burned itself into his
very soul; which drew him, sleeping or waking, into its arms of
memory and longing.
He had read only one paper that morning, and it--the latest attempt at
sensational journalism--had so made him blush at the flattering
references to himself in relation to the incident at the opera, that he had
opened no other. He had left his