Produced by Judith Boss and David Widger
AN OUTCAST OF THE ISLANDS
by Joseph Conrad
_Pues el delito mayor Del hombre es haber nacito_ CALDERON
TO EDWARD LANCELOT SANDERSON
AUTHOR’S NOTE
“An Outcast of the Islands” is my second novel in the absolute sense of
the word; second in conception, second in execution, second as it were
in its essence. There was no hesitation, half-formed plan, vague idea,
or the vaguest reverie of anything else between it and “Almayer’s
Folly.” The only doubt I suffered from, after the publication of
“Almayer’s Folly,” was whether I should write another line for print.
Those days, now grown so dim, had their poignant moments. Neither in
my mind nor in my heart had I then given up the sea. In truth I was
clinging to it desperately, all the more desperately because, against
my will, I could not help feeling that there was something changed in my
relation to it. “Almayer’s Folly,” had been finished and done with. The
mood itself was gone. But it had left the memory of an experience that,
both in thought and emotion was unconnected with the sea, and I suppose
that part of my moral being which is rooted in consistency was badly
shaken. I was a victim of contrary stresses which produced a state of
immobility. I gave myself up to indolence. Since it was impossible for
me to face both ways I had elected to face nothing. The discovery of
new values in life is a very chaotic experience; there is a tremendous
amount of jostling and confusion and a momentary feeling of darkness. I
let my spirit float supine over that chaos.
A phrase of Edward Garnett’s is, as a matter of fact, responsible for
this book. The first of the friends I made for myself by my pen it
was but natural that he should be the recipient, at that time, of my
confidences. One evening when we had dined together and he had listened
to the account of my perplexities (I fear he must have been growing a
little tired of them) he pointed out that there was no need to determine
my future absolutely. Then he added: “You have the style, you have the
temperament; why not write another?” I believe that as far as one man
may wish to influence another man’s life Edward Garnett had a great
desire that I should go on writing. At that time, and I may say, ever
afterwards, he was always very patient and gentle with me. What strikes
me most however in the phrase quoted above which was offered to me in a
tone of detachment is not its gentleness but its effective wisdom. Had
he said, “Why not go on writing,” it is very probable he would have
scared me away from pen and ink for ever; but there was nothing either
to frighten one or arouse one’s antagonism in the mere suggestion to
“write another.” And thus a dead point in the revolution of my affairs
was insidiously got over. The word “another” did it. At about eleven
o’clock of a nice London night, Edward and I walked along interminable
streets talking of many things, and I remember that on getting home
I sat down and wrote about half a page of “An Outcast of the Islands”
before I slept. This was committing myself definitely, I won’t say to
another life, but to another book. There is apparently something in my
character which will not allow me to abandon for good any piece of work
I have begun. I have laid aside many beginnings. I have laid them aside
with sorrow, with disgust, with rage, with melancholy and even with
self-contempt; but even at the worst I had an uneasy consciousness that
I would have to go back to them.
“An Outcast of the Islands” belongs to those novels of mine that were
never laid aside; and though it brought me the qualification of “exotic
writer” I don’t think the charge was at all justified.
For the life of me I don’t see that there is the slightest exotic spirit
in the conception or style of that novel. It is certainly the most
_tropical_ of my eastern tales. The mere scenery got a great hold on
me as I went on, perhaps because (I may just as well confess that) the
story itself was never very near my heart.
It engaged my imagination much more than my affection. As to my feeling
for Willems it was but the regard one cannot help having for one’s own
creation. Obviously I could not be indifferent to a man on whose head I
had brought so much evil simply by imagining him such as he appears in
the novel--and that, too, on a very slight foundation.
The man who suggested Willems to me was not particularly interesting in
himself. My interest was aroused by his dependent position, his strange,
dubious status of a mistrusted, disliked, worn-out European living on
the reluctant toleration of that Settlement hidden in the heart of the
forest-land, up that sombre stream which our ship was the only white
men’s ship to visit. With his hollow, clean-shaved cheeks, a heavy grey
moustache and eyes without any expression whatever, clad always in a
spotless sleeping suit much be-frogged in front, which left his lean
neck wholly uncovered, and with his bare feet in a pair of straw
slippers, he wandered silently amongst the houses in daylight, almost as
dumb as an animal and apparently much more homeless. I don’t know
what he did with himself at night. He must have had a place, a hut,
a palm-leaf shed, some sort of hovel where he kept his razor and his
change of sleeping suits. An air of futile mystery hung over him,
something not exactly dark but obviously ugly. The only definite
statement I could extract from anybody was that it was he who had
“brought the Arabs into the river.” That must have happened many years
before. But how did he bring them into the river? He could hardly have
done it in his arms like a lot of kittens. I knew that Almayer founded
the chronology of all his misfortunes on the date of that fateful
advent; and yet the very first time we dined with Almayer there was
Willems sitting at table with us in the manner of the skeleton at the
feast, obviously shunned by everybody, never addressed by any one, and
for all recognition of his existence getting now and then from Almayer
a venomous glance which I observed with great surprise. In the course
of the whole evening he ventured one single remark which I didn’t catch
because his articulation was imperfect, as of a man who had forgotten
how to speak. I was the only person who seemed aware of the sound.
Willems subsided. Presently he retired, pointedly unnoticed--into the
forest maybe? Its immensity was there, within three hundred yards of
the verandah, ready to swallow up anything. Almayer conversing with my
captain did not stop talking while he glared angrily at the retreating
back. Didn’t that fellow bring the Arabs into the river! Nevertheless
Willems turned up next morning on Almayer’s verandah. From the bridge of
the steamer I could see plainly these two, breakfasting together, tete
a tete and, I suppose, in dead silence, one with his air of being no
longer interested in this world and the other raising his eyes now and
then with intense dislike.
It was clear that in those days Willems lived on Almayer’s charity. Yet
on returning two months later to Sambir I heard that he had gone on an
expedition up the river in charge of a steam-launch belonging to the
Arabs, to make some discovery or other. On account of the strange
reluctance that everyone manifested to talk about Willems it was
impossible for me to get at the rights of that transaction. Moreover, I
was a newcomer, the youngest of the company, and, I suspect, not judged
quite fit as yet for a full confidence. I was not much concerned about
that exclusion. The faint suggestion of plots and mysteries pertaining
to all matters touching Almayer’s affairs amused me vastly. Almayer was
obviously very much affected. I believe he missed Willems immensely. He
wore an air of sinister preoccupation and talked confidentially with
my captain. I could catch only snatches of mumbled sentences. Then one
morning as I came along the deck to take my place at the breakfast table
Almayer checked himself in his low-toned discourse. My captain’s face
was perfectly impenetrable. There was a moment of profound silence and
then as if unable to contain himself Almayer burst out in a loud vicious
tone:
“One thing’s certain; if he finds anything worth having up there they
will poison him like a dog.”
Disconnected though it was, that phrase, as food for thought, was
distinctly worth hearing. We left the river three days afterwards and I
never returned to Sambir; but whatever happened to the protagonist of
my Willems nobody can deny that I have recorded for him a less squalid
fate.
J. C. 1919.
PART I
AN OUTCAST OF THE ISLANDS
CHAPTER ONE
When he stepped off the straight and narrow path of his peculiar
honesty, it was with an inward assertion of unflinching resolve to fall
back again into the monotonous but safe stride of virtue as soon as his
little excursion into the wayside quagmires had produced the desired
effect. It was going to be a short episode--a sentence in brackets, so
to speak--in the flowing tale of his life: a thing of no moment, to be
done unwillingly, yet neatly, and to be quickly forgotten. He imagined
that he could go on afterwards looking at the sunshine, enjoying the
shade, breathing in the perfume of flowers in the small garden before
his house. He fancied that nothing would be changed, that he would be
able as heretofore to tyrannize good-humouredly over his half-caste
wife, to notice with tender contempt his pale yellow child, to patronize
loftily his dark-skinned brother-in-law, who loved pink neckties and
wore patent-leather boots on his little feet, and was so humble before
the white husband of the lucky sister. Those were the delights of his
life, and he was unable to conceive that the moral significance of any
act of his could interfere with the very nature of things, could dim
the light of the sun, could destroy the perfume of the flowers, the
submission of his wife, the smile of his child, the awe-struck respect
of Leonard da Souza and of all the Da Souza family. That family’s
admiration was the great luxury of his life. It rounded and completed
his existence in a perpetual assurance of unquestionable superiority.
He loved to breathe the coarse incense they offered before the shrine of
the successful white man; the man that had done them the honour to marry
their daughter, sister, cousin; the rising man sure to climb very
high; the confidential clerk of Hudig & Co. They were a numerous and an
unclean crowd, living in ruined bamboo houses, surrounded by neglected
compounds, on the outskirts of Macassar. He kept them at arm’s length
and even further off, perhaps, having no illusions as to their worth.
They were a half-caste, lazy lot, and he saw them as they were--ragged,
lean, unwashed, undersized men of various ages, shuffling about
aimlessly in slippers; motionless old women who looked like monstrous
bags of pink calico stuffed with shapeless lumps of fat, and deposited
askew upon decaying rattan chairs in shady corners of dusty verandahs;
young women, slim and yellow, big-eyed, long-haired, moving languidly
amongst the dirt and rubbish of their dwellings as if every step
they took was going to be their very last. He heard their shrill
quarrellings, the squalling of their children, the grunting of their
pigs; he smelt the odours of the heaps of garbage in their courtyards:
and he was greatly disgusted. But he fed and clothed that shabby
multitude; those degenerate descendants of Portuguese conquerors; he was
their providence; he kept them singing his praises in the midst of their
laziness, of their dirt, of their immense and hopeless squalor: and he
was greatly delighted. They wanted much, but he could give them all they
wanted without ruining himself. In exchange he had their silent fear,
their loquacious love, their noisy veneration. It is a fine thing to be
a providence, and to be told so on every day of one’s life. It gives one
a feeling of enormously remote superiority, and Willems revelled in
it. He did not analyze the state of his mind, but probably his greatest
delight lay in the unexpressed but intimate conviction that, should
he close his hand, all those admiring human beings would starve. His
munificence had demoralized them. An easy task. Since he descended
amongst them and married Joanna they had lost the little aptitude and
strength for work they might have had to put forth under the stress of
extreme necessity. They lived now by the grace of his will. This was
power. Willems loved it. In another, and perhaps a lower plane, his days
did not want for their less complex but more obvious pleasures. He liked
the simple games of skill--billiards; also games not so simple, and
calling for quite another kind of skill--poker. He had been the
aptest pupil of a steady-eyed, sententious American, who had drifted
mysteriously into Macassar from the wastes of the Pacific, and, after
knocking about for a time in the eddies of town life, had drifted out
enigmatically into the sunny solitudes of the Indian Ocean. The memory
of the Californian stranger was perpetuated in the game of poker--which
became popular in the capital of Celebes from that time--and in
a powerful cocktail, the recipe for which is transmitted--in the
Kwang-tung dialect--from head boy to head boy of the Chinese servants in
the Sunda Hotel even to this day. Willems was a connoisseur in the drink
and an adept at the game. Of those accomplishments he was moderately
proud. Of the confidence reposed in him by Hudig--the master--he was
boastfully and obtrusively proud. This arose from his great benevolence,
and from an exalted sense of his duty to himself and the world at large.
He experienced that irresistible impulse to impart information which is
inseparable from gross ignorance. There is always some one thing which
the ignorant man knows, and that thing is the only thing worth knowing;
it fills the ignorant man’s universe. Willems knew all about himself.
On the day when, with many misgivings, he ran away from a Dutch
East-Indiaman in Samarang roads, he had commenced that study of
himself, of his own ways, of his own abilities, of those fate-compelling
qualities of his which led him toward that lucrative position which
he now filled. Being of a modest and diffident nature, his successes
amazed, almost frightened him, and ended--as he got over the succeeding
shocks of surprise--by making him ferociously conceited. He believed in
his genius and in his knowledge of the world. Others should know of it
also; for their own good and for his greater glory. All those friendly
men who slapped him on the back and greeted him noisily should have
the benefit of his example. For that he must talk. He talked to them
conscientiously. In the afternoon he expounded his theory of success
over the little tables, dipping now and then his moustache in the
crushed ice of the cocktails; in the evening he would often hold forth,
cue in hand, to a young listener across the billiard table. The billiard
balls stood still as if listening also, under the vivid brilliance of
the shaded oil lamps hung low over the cloth; while away in the shadows
of the big room the Chinaman marker would lean wearily against the
wall, the blank mask of his face looking pale under the mahogany
marking-board; his eyelids dropped in the drowsy fatigue of late hours
and in the buzzing monotony of the unintelligible stream of words poured
out by the white man. In a sudden pause of the talk the game would
recommence with a sharp click and go on for a time in the flowing soft
whirr and the subdued thuds as the balls rolled zig-zagging towards the
inevitably successful cannon. Through the big windows and the open doors
the salt dampness of the sea, the vague smell of mould and flowers from
the garden of the hotel drifted in and mingled with the odour of lamp
oil, growing heavier as the night advanced. The players’ heads dived
into the light as they bent down for the stroke, springing back again
smartly into the greenish gloom of broad lamp-shades; the clock ticked
methodically; the unmoved Chinaman continuously repeated the score in a
lifeless voice, like a big talking doll--and Willems would win the game.
With a remark that it was getting late, and that he was a married man,
he would say a patronizing good-night and step out into the long,
empty street. At that hour its white dust was like a dazzling streak of
moonlight where the eye sought repose in the dimmer gleam of rare oil
lamps. Willems walked homewards, following the line of walls overtopped
by the luxuriant vegetation of the front gardens. The houses right and
left were hidden behind the black masses of flowering shrubs. Willems
had the street to himself. He would walk in the middle, his shadow
gliding obsequiously before him. He looked down on it complacently.
The shadow of a successful man! He would be slightly dizzy with the
cocktails and with the intoxication of his own glory. As he often told
people, he came east fourteen years ago--a cabin boy. A small boy. His
shadow must have been very small at that time; he thought with a smile
that he was not aware then he had anything--even a shadow--which
he dared call his own. And now he was looking at the shadow of the
confidential clerk of Hudig & Co. going home. How glorious! How good
was life for those that were on the winning side! He had won the game
of life; also the game of billiards. He walked faster, jingling his
winnings, and thinking of the white stone days that had marked the path
of his existence. He thought of the trip to Lombok for ponies--that
first important transaction confided to him by Hudig; then he reviewed
the more important affairs: the quiet deal in opium; the illegal traffic
in gunpowder; the great affair of smuggled firearms, the difficult
business of the Rajah of Goak. He carried that last through by sheer
pluck; he had bearded the savage old ruler in his council room; he had
bribed him with a gilt glass coach, which, rumour said, was used as a
hen-coop now; he had over-persuaded him; he had bested him in every way.
That was the way to get on. He disapproved of the elementary dishonesty
that dips the hand in the cash-box, but one could evade the laws and
push the principles of trade to their furthest consequences. Some call
that cheating. Those are the fools, the weak, the contemptible. The
wise, the strong, the respected, have no scruples. Where there are
scruples there can be no power. On that text he preached often to the
young men. It was his doctrine, and he, himself, was a shining example
of its truth.
Night after night he went home thus, after a day of toil and pleasure,
drunk with the sound of his own voice celebrating his own prosperity. On
his thirtieth birthday he went home thus. He had spent in good company
a nice, noisy evening, and, as he walked along the empty street, the
feeling of his own greatness grew upon him, lifted him above the white
dust of the road, and filled him with exultation and regrets. He had not
done himself justice over there in the hotel, he had not talked enough
about himself, he had not impressed his hearers enough. Never mind. Some
other time. Now he would go home and make his wife get up and listen to
him. Why should she not get up?--and mix a cocktail for him--and listen
patiently. Just so. She shall. If he wanted he could make all the Da
Souza family get up. He had only to say a word and they would all come
and sit silently in their night vestments on the hard, cold ground of
his compound and listen, as long as he wished to go on explaining to
them from the top of the stairs, how great and good he was. They would.
However, his wife would do--for to-night.
His wife! He winced inwardly. A dismal woman with startled eyes and
dolorously drooping mouth, that would listen to him in pained wonder
and mute stillness. She was used to those night-discourses now. She had
rebelled once--at the beginning. Only once. Now, while he sprawled in
the long chair and drank and talked, she would stand at the further
end of the table, her hands resting on the edge, her frightened eyes
watching his lips, without a sound, without a stir, hardly breathing,
till he dismissed her with a contemptuous: “Go to bed, dummy.” She would
draw a long breath then and trail out of the room, relieved but unmoved.
Nothing could startle her, make her scold or make her cry. She did
not complain, she did not rebel. That first difference of theirs
was decisive. Too decisive, thought Willems, discontentedly. It had
frightened the soul out of her body apparently. A dismal woman! A
damn’d business altogether! What the devil did he want to go and saddle
himself. . . . Ah! Well! he wanted a home, and the match seemed to
please Hudig, and Hudig gave him the bungalow, that flower-bowered house
to which he was wending his way in the cool moonlight. And he had
the worship of the Da Souza tribe. A man of his stamp could carry off
anything, do anything, aspire to anything. In another five years those
white people who attended the Sunday card-parties of the Governor would
accept him--half-caste wife and all! Hooray! He saw his shadow dart
forward and wave a hat, as big as a rum barrel, at the end of an
arm several yards long. . . . Who shouted hooray? . . . He smiled
shamefacedly to himself, and, pushing his hands deep into his pockets,
walked faster with a suddenly grave face. Behind him--to the left--a
cigar end glowed in the gateway of Mr. Vinck’s front yard. Leaning
against one of the brick pillars, Mr. Vinck, the cashier of Hudig &
Co., smoked the last cheroot of the evening. Amongst the shadows of
the trimmed bushes Mrs. Vinck crunched slowly, with measured steps, the
gravel of the circular path before the house.
“There’s Willems going home on foot--and drunk I fancy,” said Mr. Vinck
over his shoulder. “I saw him jump and wave his hat.”
The crunching of the gravel stopped.
“Horrid man,” said Mrs. Vinck, calmly. “I have heard he beats his wife.”
“Oh no, my dear, no,” muttered absently Mr. Vinck, with a vague gesture.
The aspect of Willems as a wife-beater presented to him no interest. How
women do misjudge! If Willems wanted to torture his wife he would have
recourse to less primitive methods. Mr. Vinck knew Willems well, and
believed him to be very able, very smart--objectionably so. As he took
the last quick draws at the stump of his cheroot, Mr. Vinck reflected
that the confidence accorded by Hudig to Willems was open, under the
circumstances, to loyal criticism from Hudig’s cashier.
“He is becoming dangerous; he knows too much. He will have to be got rid
of,” said Mr. Vinck aloud. But Mrs. Vinck had gone in already, and after
shaking his head he threw away his cheroot and followed her slowly.
Willems walked on homeward weaving the splendid web of his future. The
road to greatness lay plainly before his eyes, straight and shining,
without any obstacle that he could see. He had stepped off the path
of honesty, as he understood it, but he would soon regain it, never
to leave it any more! It was a very small matter. He would soon put it
right again. Meantime his duty was not to be found out, and he trusted
in his skill, in his luck, in his well-established reputation that would
disarm suspicion if anybody dared to suspect. But nobody would dare!
True, he was conscious of a slight deterioration. He had appropriated
temporarily some of Hudig’s money. A deplorable necessity. But he judged
himself with the indulgence that should be extended to the weaknesses
of genius. He would make reparation and all would be as before; nobody
would be the loser for it, and he would go on unchecked toward the
brilliant goal of his ambition.
Hudig’s partner!
Before going up the steps of his house he stood for awhile, his feet
well apart, chin in hand, contemplating mentally Hudig’s future partner.
A glorious occupation. He saw him quite safe; solid as the hills;
deep--deep as an abyss; discreet as the grave.
CHAPTER TWO
The sea, perhaps because of its saltness, roughens the outside but keeps
sweet the kernel of its servants’ soul. The old sea; the sea of many
years ago, whose servants were devoted slaves and went from youth to age
or to a sudden grave without needing to open the book of life, because
they could look at eternity reflected on the element that gave the life
and dealt the death. Like a beautiful and unscrupulous woman, the sea
of the past was glorious in its smiles, irresistible in its anger,
capricious, enticing, illogical, irresponsible; a thing to love, a thing
to fear. It cast a spell, it gave joy, it lulled gently into boundless
faith; then with quick and causeless anger it killed. But its cruelty
was redeemed by the charm of its inscrutable mystery, by the immensity
of its promise, by the supreme witchery of its possible favour. Strong
men with childlike hearts were faithful to it, were content to live by
its grace--to die by its will. That was the sea before the time when the
French mind set the Egyptian muscle in motion and produced a dismal
but profitable ditch. Then a great pall of smoke sent out by countless
steam-boats was spread over the restless mirror of the Infinite. The
hand of the engineer tore down the veil of the terrible beauty in
order that greedy and faithless landlubbers might pocket dividends. The
mystery was destroyed. Like all mysteries, it lived only in the hearts
of its worshippers. The hearts changed; the men changed. The once loving
and devoted servants went out armed with fire and iron, and conquering
the fear of their own hearts became a calculating crowd of cold and
exacting masters. The sea of the past was an incomparably beautiful
mistress, with inscrutable face, with cruel and promising eyes. The sea
of to-day is a used-up drudge, wrinkled and defaced by the churned-up
wakes of brutal propellers, robbed of the enslaving charm of its
vastness, stripped of its beauty, of its mystery and of its promise.
Tom Lingard was a master, a lover, a servant of the sea. The sea took
him young, fashioned him body and soul; gave him his fierce aspect, his
loud voice, his fearless eyes, his stupidly guileless heart. Generously
it gave him his absurd faith in himself, his universal love of creation,
his wide indulgence, his contemptuous severity, his straightforward
simplicity of motive and honesty of aim. Having made him what he was,
womanlike, the sea served him humbly and let him bask unharmed in the
sunshine of its terribly uncertain favour. Tom Lingard grew rich on the
sea and by the sea. He loved it with the ardent affection of a lover,
he made light of it with the assurance of perfect mastery, he feared it
with the wise fear of a brave man, and he took liberties with it as a
spoiled child might do with a paternal and good-natured ogre. He was
grateful to it, with the gratitude of an honest heart. His greatest
pride lay in his profound conviction of its faithfulness--in the deep
sense of his unerring knowledge of its treachery.
The little brig Flash was the instrument of Lingard’s fortune. They came
north together--both young--out of an Australian port, and after a very
few years there was not a white man in the islands, from Palembang to
Ternate, from Ombawa to Palawan, that did not know Captain Tom and
his lucky craft. He was liked for his reckless generosity, for his
unswerving honesty, and at first was a little feared on account of his
violent temper. Very soon, however, they found him out, and the word
went round that Captain Tom’s fury was less dangerous than many a man’s
smile. He prospered greatly. After his first--and successful--fight with
the sea robbers, when he rescued, as rumour had it, the yacht of some
big wig from home, somewhere down Carimata way, his great popularity
began. As years went on it grew apace. Always visiting out-of-the-way
places of that part of the world, always in search of new markets for
his cargoes--not so much for profit as for the pleasure of finding
them--he soon became known to the Malays, and by his successful
recklessness in several encounters with pirates, established the
terror of his name. Those white men with whom he had business, and who
naturally were on the look-out for his weaknesses, could easily see that
it was enough to give him his Malay title to flatter him greatly. So
when there was anything to be gained by it, and sometimes out of pure
and unprofitable good nature, they would drop the ceremonious “Captain
Lingard” and address him half seriously as Rajah Laut--the King of the
Sea.
He carried the name bravely on his broad shoulders. He had carried it
many years already when the boy Willems ran barefooted on the deck of
the ship Kosmopoliet IV. in Samarang roads, looking with innocent eyes
on the strange shore and objurgating his immediate surroundings with
blasphemous lips, while his childish brain worked upon the heroic idea
of running away. From the poop of the Flash Lingard saw in the early
morning the Dutch ship get lumberingly under weigh, bound for the
eastern ports. Very late in the evening of the same day he stood on the
quay of the landing canal, ready to go on board of his brig. The night
was starry and clear; the little custom-house building was shut up, and
as the gharry that brought him down disappeared up the long avenue of
dusty trees leading to the town, Lingard thought himself alone on the
quay. He roused up his sleeping boat-crew and stood waiting for them to
get ready, when he felt a tug at his coat and a thin voice said, very
distinctly--
“English captain.”
Lingard turned round quickly, and what seemed to be a very lean boy
jumped back with commendable activity.
“Who are you? Where do you spring from?” asked Lingard, in startled
surprise.
From a safe distance the boy pointed toward a cargo lighter moored to
the quay.
“Been hiding there, have you?” said Lingard. “Well, what do you want?
Speak out, confound you. You did not come here to scare me to death, for
fun, did you?”
The boy tried to explain in imperfect English, but very soon Lingard
interrupted him.
“I see,” he exclaimed, “you ran away from the big ship that sailed this
morning. Well, why don’t you go to your countrymen here?”
“Ship gone only a little way--to Sourabaya. Make me go back to the
ship,” explained the boy.
“Best thing for you,” affirmed Lingard with conviction.
“No,” retorted the boy; “me want stop here; not want go home. Get money
here; home no good.”
“This beats all my going a-fishing,” commented the astonished Lingard.
“It’s money you want? Well! well! And you were not afraid to run away,
you bag of bones, you!”
The boy intimated that he was frightened of nothing but of being sent
back to the ship. Lingard looked at him in meditative silence.
“Come closer,” he said at last. He took the boy by the chin, and turning
up his face gave him a searching look. “How old are you?”
“Seventeen.”
“There’s not much of you for seventeen. Are you hungry?”
“A little.”
“Will you come with me, in that brig there?”
The boy moved without a word towards the boat and scrambled into the
bows.
“Knows his place,” muttered Lingard to himself as he stepped heavily
into the stern sheets and took up the yoke lines. “Give way there.”
The Malay boat crew lay back together, and the gig sprang away from the
quay heading towards the brig’s riding light.
Such was the beginning of Willems’ career.
Lingard learned in half an hour all that there was of Willems’
commonplace story. Father outdoor clerk of some ship-broker in
Rotterdam; mother dead. The boy quick in learning, but idle in school.
The straitened circumstances in the house filled with small brothers and
sisters, sufficiently clothed and fed but otherwise running wild, while
the disconsolate widower tramped about all day in a shabby overcoat and
imperfect boots on the muddy quays, and in the evening piloted wearily
the half-intoxicated foreign skippers amongst the places of cheap
delights, returning home late, sick with too much smoking and
drinking--for company’s sake--with these men, who expected such
attentions in the way of business. Then the offer of the good-natured
captain of Kosmopoliet IV., who was pleased to do something for the
patient and obliging fellow; young Willems’ great joy, his still greater
disappointment with the sea that looked so charming from afar, but
proved so hard and exacting on closer acquaintance--and then this
running away by a sudden impulse. The boy was hopelessly at variance
with the spirit of the sea. He had an instinctive contempt for the
honest simplicity of that work which led to nothing he cared for.
Lingard soon found this out. He offered to send him home in an English
ship, but the boy begged hard to be permitted to remain. He wrote a
beautiful hand, became soon perfect in English, was quick at figures;
and Lingard made him useful in that way. As he grew older his trading
instincts developed themselves astonishingly, and Lingard left him
often to trade in one island or another while he, himself, made an
intermediate trip to some out-of-the-way place. On Willems expressing
a wish to that effect, Lingard let him enter Hudig’s service. He felt
a little sore at that abandonment because he had attached himself, in
a way, to his protege. Still he was proud of him, and spoke up for him
loyally. At first it was, “Smart boy that--never make a seaman though.”
Then when Willems was helping in the trading he referred to him as “that
clever young fellow.” Later when Willems became the confidential agent
of Hudig, employed in many a delicate affair, the simple-hearted old
seaman would point an admiring finger at his back and whisper to whoever
stood near at the moment, “Long-headed chap that; deuced long-headed
chap. Look at him. Confidential man of old Hudig. I picked him up in a
ditch, you may say, like a starved cat. Skin and bone. ‘Pon my word I
did. And now he knows more than I do about island trading. Fact. I am
not joking. More than I do,” he would repeat, seriously, with innocent
pride in his honest eyes.
From the safe elevation of his commercial successes Willems patronized
Lingard. He had a liking for his benefactor, not unmixed with some
disdain for the crude directness of the old fellow’s methods of conduct.
There were, however, certain sides of Lingard’s character for which
Willems felt a qualified respect. The talkative seaman knew how to
be silent on certain matters that to Willems were very interesting.
Besides, Lingard was rich, and that in itself was enough to compel
Willems’ unwilling admiration. In his confidential chats with Hudig,
Willems generally alluded to the benevolent Englishman as the “lucky
old fool” in a very distinct tone of vexation; Hudig would grunt an
unqualified assent, and then the two would look at each other in a
sudden immobility of pupils fixed by a stare of unexpressed thought.
“You can’t find out where he gets all that india-rubber, hey Willems?”
Hudig would ask at last, turning away and bending over the papers on his
desk.
“No, Mr. Hudig. Not yet. But I am trying,” was Willems’ invariable
reply, delivered with a ring of regretful deprecation.
“Try! Always try! You may try! You think yourself clever perhaps,”
rumbled on Hudig, without looking up. “I have been trading with him
twenty--thirty years now. The old fox. And I have tried. Bah!”
He stretched out a short, podgy leg and contemplated the bare instep and
the grass slipper hanging by the toes. “You can’t make him drunk?” he
would add, after a pause of stertorous breathing.
“No, Mr. Hudig, I can’t really,” protested Willems, earnestly.
“Well, don’t try. I know him. Don’t try,” advised the master, and,
bending again over his desk, his staring bloodshot eyes close to the
paper, he would go on tracing laboriously with his thick fingers the
slim unsteady letters of his correspondence, while Willems waited
respectfully for his further good pleasure before asking, with great
deference--
“Any orders, Mr. Hudig?”
“Hm! yes. Go to Bun-Hin yourself and see the dollars of that payment
counted and packed, and have them put on board the mail-boat for
Ternate. She’s due here this afternoon.”
“Yes, Mr. Hudig.”
“And, look here. If the boat is late, leave the case in Bun-Hin’s godown
till to-morrow. Seal it up. Eight seals as usual. Don’t take it away
till the boat is here.”
“No, Mr. Hudig.”
“And don’t forget about these opium cases. It’s for to-night. Use my own
boatmen. Transship them from the Caroline to the Arab barque,” went
on the master in his hoarse undertone. “And don’t you come to me with
another story of a case dropped overboard like last time,” he added,
with sudden ferocity, looking up at his confidential clerk.
“No, Mr. Hudig. I will take care.”
“That’s all. Tell that pig as you go out that if he doesn’t make the
punkah go a little better I will break every bone in his body,” finished
up Hudig, wiping his purple face with a red silk handkerchief nearly as
big as a counterpane.
Noiselessly Willems went out, shutting carefully behind him the little
green door through which he passed to the warehouse. Hudig, pen in hand,
listened to him bullying the punkah boy with profane violence, born
of unbounded zeal for the master’s comfort, before he returned to his
writing amid the rustling of papers fluttering in the wind sent down by
the punkah that waved in wide sweeps above his head.
Willems would nod familiarly to Mr. Vinck, who had his desk close to the
little door of the private office, and march down the warehouse with an
important air. Mr. Vinck--extreme dislike lurking in every wrinkle of
his gentlemanly countenance--would follow with his eyes the white figure
flitting in the gloom amongst the piles of bales and cases till it
passed out through the big archway into the glare of the street.
CHAPTER THREE
The opportunity and the temptation were too much for Willems, and under
the pressure of sudden necessity he abused that trust which was his
pride, the perpetual sign of his cleverness and a load too heavy for him
to carry. A run of bad luck at cards, the failure of a small speculation
undertaken on his own account, an unexpected demand for money from one
or another member of the Da Souza family--and almost before he was well
aware of it he was off the path of his peculiar honesty. It was such a
faint and ill-defined track that it took him some time to find out how
far he had strayed amongst the brambles of the dangerous wilderness he
had been skirting for so many years, without any other guide than his
own convenience and that doctrine of success which he had found for
himself in the book of life--in those interesting chapters that the
Devil has been permitted to write in it, to test the sharpness of men’s
eyesight and the steadfastness of their hearts. For one short, dark and
solitary moment he was dismayed, but he had that courage that will not
scale heights, yet will wade bravely through the mud--if there be no
other road. He applied himself to the task of restitution, and devoted
himself to the duty of not being found out. On his thirtieth birthday he
had almost accomplished the task--and the duty had been faithfully and
cleverly performed. He saw himself safe. Again he could look hopefully
towards the goal of his legitimate ambition. Nobody would dare to
suspect him, and in a few days there would be nothing to suspect. He
was elated. He did not know that his prosperity had touched then its
high-water mark, and that the tide was already on the turn.
Two days afterwards he knew. Mr. Vinck, hearing the rattle of the
door-handle, jumped up from his desk--where he had been tremulously
listening to the loud voices in the private office--and buried his face
in the big safe with nervous haste. For the last time Willems passed
through the little green door leading to Hudig’s sanctum, which, during
the past half-hour, might have been taken--from the fiendish noise
within--for the cavern of some wild beast. Willems’ troubled eyes took
in the quick impression of men and things as he came out from the place
of his humiliation. He saw the scared expression of the punkah boy; the
Chinamen tellers sitting on their heels with unmovable faces turned up
blankly towards him while their arrested hands hovered over the
little piles of bright guilders ranged on the floor; Mr. Vinck’s
shoulder-blades with the fleshy rims of two red ears above. He saw the
long avenue of gin cases stretching from where he stood to the arched
doorway beyond which he would be able to breathe perhaps. A thin rope’s
end lay across his path and he saw it distinctly, yet stumbled heavily
over it as if it had been a bar of iron. Then he found himself in the
street at last, but could not find air enough to fill his lungs. He
walked towards his home, gasping.
As the sound of Hudig’s insults that lingered in his ears grew fainter
by the lapse of time, the feeling of shame was replaced slowly by a
passion of anger against himself and still more against the stupid
concourse of circumstances that had driven him into his idiotic
indiscretion. Idiotic indiscretion; that is how he defined his guilt
to himself. Could there be anything worse from the point of view of his
undeniable cleverness? What a fatal aberration of an acute mind! He did
not recognize himself there. He must have been mad. That’s it. A sudden
gust of madness. And now the work of long years was destroyed utterly.
What would become of him?
Before he could answer that question he found himself in the garden
before his house, Hudig’s wedding gift. He looked at it with a vague
surprise to find it there. His past was so utterly gone from him that
the dwelling which belonged to it appeared to him incongruous standing
there intact, neat, and cheerful in the sunshine of the hot afternoon.
The house was a pretty little structure all doors and windows,
surrounded on all sides by the deep verandah supported on slender
columns clothed in the green foliage of creepers, which also fringed the
overhanging eaves of the high-pitched roof. Slowly, Willems mounted the
dozen steps that led to the verandah. He paused at every step. He
must tell his wife. He felt frightened at the prospect, and his alarm
dismayed him. Frightened to face her! Nothing could give him a better
measure of the greatness of the change around him, and in him. Another
man--and another life with the faith in himself gone. He could not be
worth much if he was afraid to face that woman.
He dared not enter the house through the open door of the dining-room,
but stood irresolute by the little work-table where trailed a white
piece of calico, with a needle stuck in it, as if the work had been left
hurriedly. The pink-crested cockatoo started, on his appearance, into
clumsy activity and began to climb laboriously up and down his perch,
calling “Joanna” with indistinct loudness and a persistent screech
that prolonged the last syllable of the name as if in a peal of insane
laughter. The screen in the doorway moved gently once or twice in the
breeze, and each time Willems started slightly, expecting his wife, but
he never lifted his eyes, although straining his ears for the sound of
her footsteps. Gradually he lost himself in his thoughts, in the endless
speculation as to the manner in which she would receive his news--and
his orders. In this preoccupation he almost forgot the fear of her
presence. No doubt she will cry, she will lament, she will be helpless
and frightened and passive as ever. And he would have to drag that limp
weight on and on through the darkness of a spoiled life. Horrible!
Of course he could not abandon her and the child to certain misery or
possible starvation. The wife and the child of Willems. Willems the
successful, the smart; Willems the conf . . . . Pah! And what was
Willems now? Willems the. . . . He strangled the half-born thought, and
cleared his throat to stifle a groan. Ah! Won’t they talk to-night in
the billiard-room--his world, where he had been first--all those men to
whom he had been so superciliously condescending. Won’t they talk with
surprise, and affected regret, and grave faces, and wise nods. Some of
them owed him money, but he never pressed anybody. Not he. Willems, the
prince of good fellows, they called him. And now they will rejoice, no
doubt, at his downfall. A crowd of imbeciles. In his abasement he was
yet aware of his superiority over those fellows, who were merely honest
or simply not found out yet. A crowd of imbeciles! He shook his fist at
the evoked image of his friends, and the startled parrot fluttered its
wings and shrieked in desperate fright.
In a short glance upwards Willems saw his wife come round the corner of
the house. He lowered his eyelids quickly, and waited silently till she
came near and stood on the other side of the little table. He would
not look at her face, but he could see the red dressing-gown he knew so
well. She trailed through life in that red dressing-gown, with its row
of dirty blue bows down the front, stained, and hooked on awry; a torn
flounce at the bottom following her like a snake as she moved languidly
about, with her hair negligently caught up, and a tangled wisp
straggling untidily down her back. His gaze travelled upwards from bow
to bow, noticing those that hung only by a thread, but it did not
go beyond her chin. He looked at her lean throat, at the obtrusive
collarbone visible in the disarray of the upper part of her attire. He
saw the thin arm and the bony hand clasping the child she carried,
and he felt an immense distaste for those encumbrances of his life. He
waited for her to say something, but as he felt her eyes rest on him in
unbroken silence he sighed and began to speak.
It was a hard task. He spoke slowly, lingering amongst the memories of
this early life in his reluctance to confess that this was the end of
it and the beginning of a less splendid existence. In his conviction of
having made her happiness in the full satisfaction of all material wants
he never doubted for a moment that she was ready to keep him company
on no matter how hard and stony a road. He was not elated by this
certitude. He had married her to please Hudig, and the greatness of his
sacrifice ought to have made her happy without any further exertion on
his part. She had years of glory as Willems’ wife, and years of comfort,
of loyal care, and of such tenderness as she deserved. He had guarded
her carefully from any bodily hurt; and of any other suffering he had
no conception. The assertion of his superiority was only another benefit
conferred on her. All this was a matter of course, but he told her all
this so as to bring vividly before her the greatness of her loss. She
was so dull of understanding that she would not grasp it else. And now
it was at an end. They would have to go. Leave this house, leave
this island, go far away where he was unknown. To the English
Strait-Settlements perhaps. He would find an opening there for his
abilities--and juster men to deal with than old Hudig. He laughed
bitterly.
“You have the money I left at home this morning, Joanna?” he asked. “We
will want it all now.”
As he spoke those words he thought he was a fine fellow. Nothing new
that. Still, he surpassed there his own expectations. Hang it all, there
are sacred things in life, after all. The marriage tie was one of them,
and he was not the man to break it. The solidity of his principles
caused him great satisfaction, but he did not care to look at his wife,
for all that. He waited for her to speak. Then he would have to console
her; tell her not to be a crying fool; to get ready to go. Go where?
How? When? He shook his head. They must leave at once; that was the
principal thing. He felt a sudden need to hurry up his departure.
“Well, Joanna,” he said, a little impatiently---“don’t stand there in a
trance. Do you hear? We must. . . .”
He looked up at his wife, and whatever he was going to add remained
unspoken. She was staring at him with her big, slanting eyes, that
seemed to him twice their natural size. The child, its dirty little
face pressed to its mother’s shoulder, was sleeping peacefully. The deep
silence of the house was not broken, but rather accentuated, by the
low mutter of the cockatoo, now very still on its perch. As Willems was
looking at Joanna her upper lip was drawn up on one side, giving to her
melancholy face a vicious expression altogether new to his experience.
He stepped back in his surprise.
“Oh! You great man!” she said distinctly, but in a voice that was hardly
above a whisper.
Those words, and still more her tone, stunned him as if somebody had
fired a gun close to his ear. He stared back at her stupidly.
“Oh! you great man!” she repeated slowly, glancing right and left as
if meditating a sudden escape. “And you think that I am going to starve
with you. You are nobody now. You think my mamma and Leonard would let
me go away? And with you! With you,” she repeated scornfully, raising
her voice, which woke up the child and caused it to whimper feebly.
“Joanna!” exclaimed Willems.
“Do not speak to me. I have heard what I have waited for all these
years. You are less than dirt, you that have wiped your feet on me. I
have waited for this. I am not afraid now. I do not want you; do not
come near me. Ah-h!” she screamed shrilly, as he held out his hand in an
entreating gesture--“Ah! Keep off me! Keep off me! Keep off!”
She backed away, looking at him with eyes both angry and frightened.
Willems stared motionless, in dumb amazement at the mystery of anger and
revolt in the head of his wife. Why? What had he ever done to her? This
was the day of injustice indeed. First Hudig--and now his wife. He felt
a terror at this hate that had lived stealthily so near him for years.
He tried to speak, but she shrieked again, and it was like a needle
through his heart. Again he raised his hand.
“Help!” called Mrs. Willems, in a piercing voice. “Help!”
“Be quiet! You fool!” shouted Willems, trying to drown the noise of
his wife and child in his own angry accents and rattling violently the
little zinc table in his exasperation.
From under the house, where there were bathrooms and a tool closet,
appeared Leonard, a rusty iron bar in his hand. He called threateningly
from the bottom of the stairs.
“Do not hurt her, Mr. Willems. You are a savage. Not at all like we,
whites.”
“You too!” said the bewildered Willems. “I haven’t touched her. Is this
a madhouse?” He moved towards the stairs, and Leonard dropped the bar
with a clang and made for the gate of the compound. Willems turned back
to his wife.
“So you expected this,” he said. “It is a conspiracy. Who’s that sobbing
and groaning in the room? Some more of your precious family. Hey?”
She was more calm now, and putting hastily the crying child in the big
chair walked towards him with sudden fearlessness.
“My mother,” she said, “my mother who came to defend me from you--man
from nowhere; a vagabond!”
“You did not call me a vagabond when you hung round my neck--before we
were married,” said Willems, contemptuously.
“You took good care that I should not hang round your neck after we
were,” she answered, clenching her hands, and putting her face close to
his. “You boasted while I suffered and said nothing. What has become of
your greatness; of our greatness--you were always speaking about? Now
I am going to live on the charity of your master. Yes. That is true. He
sent Leonard to tell me so. And you will go and boast somewhere else,
and starve. So! Ah! I can breathe now! This house is mine.”
“Enough!” said Willems, slowly, with an arresting gesture.
She leaped back, the fright again in her eyes, snatched up the child,
pressed it to her breast, and, falling into a chair, drummed insanely
with her heels on the resounding floor of the verandah.
“I shall go,” said Willems, steadily. “I thank you. For the first time
in your life you make me happy. You were a stone round my neck; you
understand. I did not mean to tell you that as long as you lived, but
you made me--now. Before I pass this gate you shall be gone from my
mind. You made it very easy. I thank you.”
He turned and went down the steps without giving her a glance, while she
sat upright and quiet, with wide-open eyes, the child crying querulously
in her arms. At the gate he came suddenly upon Leonard, who had been
dodging about there and failed to get out of the way in time.
“Do not be brutal, Mr. Willems,” said Leonard, hurriedly. “It is
unbecoming between white men with all those natives looking on.”
Leonard’s legs trembled very much, and his voice wavered between high
and low tones without any attempt at control on his part. “Restrain your
improper violence,” he went on mumbling rapidly. “I am a respectable man
of very good family, while you . . . it is regrettable . . . they all
say so . . .”
“What?” thundered Willems. He felt a sudden impulse of mad anger, and
before he knew what had happened he was looking at Leonard da Souza
rolling in the dust at his feet. He stepped over his prostrate
brother-in-law and tore blindly down the street, everybody making way
for the frantic white man.
When he came to himself he was beyond the outskirts of the town,
stumbling on the hard and cracked earth of reaped rice fields. How did
he get there? It was dark. He must get back. As he walked towards the
town slowly, his mind reviewed the events of the day and he felt a sense
of bitter loneliness. His wife had turned him out of his own house.
He had assaulted brutally his brother-in-law, a member of the Da Souza
family--of that band of his worshippers. He did. Well, no! It was some
other man. Another man was coming back. A man without a past, without
a future, yet full of pain and shame and anger. He stopped and looked
round. A dog or two glided across the empty street and rushed past him
with a frightened snarl. He was now in the midst of the Malay quarter
whose bamboo houses, hidden in the verdure of their little gardens, were
dark and silent. Men, women and children slept in there. Human beings.
Would he ever sleep, and where? He felt as if he was the outcast of all
mankind, and as he looked hopelessly round, before resuming his weary
march, it seemed to him that the world was bigger, the night more vast
and more black; but he went on doggedly with his head down as if pushing
his way through some thick brambles. Then suddenly he felt planks under
his feet and, looking up, saw the red light at the end of the jetty. He
walked quite to the end and stood leaning against the post, under the
lamp, looking at the roadstead where two vessels at anchor swayed their
slender rigging amongst the stars. The end of the jetty; and here in one
step more the end of life; the end of everything. Better so. What else
could he do? Nothing ever comes back. He saw it clearly. The respect
and admiration of them all, the old habits and old affections finished
abruptly in the clear perception of the cause of his disgrace. He
saw all this; and for a time he came out of himself, out of his
selfishness--out of the constant preoccupation of his interests and his
desires--out of the temple of self and the concentration of personal
thought.
His thoughts now wandered home. Standing in the tepid stillness of a
starry tropical night he felt the breath of the bitter east wind, he saw
the high and narrow fronts of tall houses under the gloom of a clouded
sky; and on muddy quays he saw the shabby, high-shouldered figure--the
patient, faded face of the weary man earning bread for the children
that waited for him in a dingy home. It was miserable, miserable. But it
would never come back. What was there in common between those things and
Willems the clever, Willems the successful. He had cut himself adrift
from that home many years ago. Better for him then. Better for them now.
All this was gone, never to come back again; and suddenly he shivered,
seeing himself alone in the presence of unknown and terrible dangers.
For the first time in his life he felt afraid of the future, because he
had lost his faith, the faith in his own success. And he had destroyed
it foolishly with his own hands!
CHAPTER FOUR
His meditation which resembled slow drifting into suicide was
interrupted by Lingard, who, with a loud “I’ve got you at last!” dropped
his hand heavily on Willems’ shoulder. This time it was the old seaman
himself going out of his way to pick up the uninteresting waif--all
that there was left of that sudden and sordid shipwreck. To Willems,
the rough, friendly voice was a quick and fleeting relief followed by a
sharper pang of anger and unavailing regret. That voice carried him
back to the beginning of his promising career, the end of which was very
visible now from the jetty where they both stood. He shook himself free
from the friendly grasp, saying with ready bitterness--
“It’s all your fault. Give me a push now, do, and send me over. I have
been standing here waiting for help. You are the man--of all men. You
helped at the beginning; you ought to have a hand in the end.”
“I have better use for you than to throw you to the fishes,” said
Lingard, seriously, taking Willems by the arm and forcing him gently to
walk up the jetty. “I have been buzzing over this town like a bluebottle
fly, looking for you high and low. I have heard a lot. I will tell you
what, Willems; you are no saint, that’s a fact. And you have not been
over-wise either. I am not throwing stones,” he added, hastily, as
Willems made an effort to get away, “but I am not going to mince
matters. Never could! You keep quiet while I talk. Can’t you?”
With a gesture of resignation and a half-stifled groan Willems submitted
to the stronger will, and the two men paced slowly up and down the
resounding planks, while Lingard disclosed to Willems the exact manner
of his undoing. After the first shock Willems lost the faculty of
surprise in the over-powering feeling of indignation. So it was Vinck
and Leonard who had served him so. They had watched him, tracked his
misdeeds, reported them to Hudig. They had bribed obscure Chinamen,
wormed out confidences from tipsy skippers, got at various boatmen,
and had pieced out in that way the story of his irregularities. The
blackness of this dark intrigue filled him with horror. He could
understand Vinck. There was no love lost between them. But Leonard!
Leonard!
“Why, Captain Lingard,” he burst out, “the fellow licked my boots.”
“Yes, yes, yes,” said Lingard, testily, “we know that, and you did your
best to cram your boot down his throat. No man likes that, my boy.”
“I was always giving money to all that hungry lot,” went on Willems,
passionately. “Always my hand in my pocket. They never had to ask
twice.”
“Just so. Your generosity frightened them. They asked themselves
where all that came from, and concluded that it was safer to throw you
overboard. After all, Hudig is a much greater man than you, my friend,
and they have a claim on him also.”
“What do you mean, Captain Lingard?”
“What do I mean?” repeated Lingard, slowly. “Why, you are not going to
make me believe you did not know your wife was Hudig’s daughter. Come
now!”
Willems stopped suddenly and swayed about.
“Ah! I understand,” he gasped. “I never heard . . . Lately I thought
there was . . . But no, I never guessed.”
“Oh, you simpleton!” said Lingard, pityingly. “‘Pon my word,” he
muttered to himself, “I don’t believe the fellow knew. Well! well!
Steady now. Pull yourself together. What’s wrong there. She is a good
wife to you.”
“Excellent wife,” said Willems, in a dreary voice, looking far over the
black and scintillating water.
“Very well then,” went on Lingard, with increasing friendliness.
“Nothing wrong there. But did you really think that Hudig was marrying
you off and giving you a house and I don’t know what, out of love for
you?”
“I had served him well,” answered Willems. “How well, you know
yourself--through thick and thin. No matter what work and what risk, I
was always there; always ready.”
How well he saw the greatness of his work and the immensity of that
injustice which was his reward. She was that man’s daughter!
In the light of this disclosure the facts of the last five years of his
life stood clearly revealed in their full meaning. He had spoken first
to Joanna at the gate of their dwelling as he went to his work in
the brilliant flush of the early morning, when women and flowers are
charming even to the dullest eyes. A most respectable family--two women
and a young man--were his next-door neighbours. Nobody ever came to
their little house but the priest, a native from the Spanish islands,
now and then. The young man Leonard he had met in town, and was
flattered by the little fellow’s immense respect for the great Willems.
He let him bring chairs, call the waiters, chalk his cues when playing
billiards, express his admiration in choice words. He even condescended
to listen patiently to Leonard’s allusions to “our beloved father,” a
man of official position, a government agent in Koti, where he died of
cholera, alas! a victim to duty, like a good Catholic, and a good man.
It sounded very respectable, and Willems approved of those feeling
references. Moreover, he prided himself upon having no colour-prejudices
and no racial antipathies. He consented to drink curacoa one afternoon
on the verandah of Mrs. da Souza’s house. He remembered Joanna that day,
swinging in a hammock. She was untidy even then, he remembered, and that
was the only impression he carried away from that visit. He had no time
for love in those glorious days, no time even for a passing fancy, but
gradually he fell into the habit of calling almost every day at that
little house where he was greeted by Mrs. da Souza’s shrill voice
screaming for Joanna to come and entertain the gentleman from Hudig
& Co. And then the sudden and unexpected visit of the priest. He
remembered the man’s flat, yellow face, his thin legs, his propitiatory
smile, his beaming black eyes, his conciliating manner, his veiled hints
which he did not understand at the time. How he wondered what the man
wanted, and how unceremoniously he got rid of him. And then came vividly
into his recollection the morning when he met again that fellow coming
out of Hudig’s office, and how he was amused at the incongruous visit.
And that morning with Hudig! Would he ever forget it? Would he ever
forget his surprise as the master, instead of plunging at once into
business, looked at him thoughtfully before turning, with a furtive
smile, to the papers on the desk? He could hear him now, his nose in the
paper before him, dropping astonishing words in the intervals of wheezy
breathing.
“Heard said . . . called there often . . . most respectable ladies . . .
knew the father very well . . . estimable . . . best thing for a young
man . . . settle down. . . . Personally, very glad to hear . . . thing
arranged. . . . Suitable recognition of valuable services. . . . Best
thing--best thing to do.”
And he believed! What credulity! What an ass! Hudig knew the father!
Rather. And so did everybody else probably; all except himself. How
proud he had been of Hudig’s benevolent interest in his fate! How proud
he was when invited by Hudig to stay with him at his little house in the
country--where he could meet men, men of official position--as a friend.
Vinck had been green with envy. Oh, yes! He had believed in the best
thing, and took the girl like a gift of fortune. How he boasted to Hudig
of being free from prejudices. The old scoundrel must have been laughing
in his sleeve at his fool of a confidential clerk. He took the girl,
guessing nothing. How could he? There had been a father of some kind
to the common knowledge. Men knew him; spoke about him. A lank man of
hopelessly mixed descent, but otherwise--apparently--unobjectionable.
The shady relations came out afterward, but--with his freedom from
prejudices--he did not mind them, because, with their humble dependence,
they completed his triumphant life. Taken in! taken in! Hudig had found
an easy way to provide for the begging crowd. He had shifted the burden
of his youthful vagaries on to the shoulders of his confidential clerk;
and while he worked for the master, the master had cheated him; had
stolen his very self from him. He was married. He belonged to that
woman, no matter what she might do! . . . Had sworn . . . for all life!
. . . Thrown himself away. . . . And that man dared this very morning
call him a thief! Damnation!
“Let go, Lingard!” he shouted, trying to get away by a sudden jerk from
the watchful old seaman. “Let me go and kill that . . .”
“No you don’t!” panted Lingard, hanging on manfully. “You want to kill,
do you? You lunatic. Ah!--I’ve got you now! Be quiet, I say!”
They struggled violently, Lingard forcing Willems slowly towards the
guard-rail. Under their feet the jetty sounded like a drum in the quiet
night. On the shore end the native caretaker of the wharf watched the
combat, squatting behind the safe shelter of some big cases. The next
day he informed his friends, with calm satisfaction, that two drunken
white men had fought on the jetty.
It had been a great fight. They fought without arms, like wild beasts,
after the manner of white men. No! nobody was killed, or there would
have been trouble and a report to make. How could he know why they
fought? White men have no reason when they are like that.
Just as Lingard was beginning to fear that he would be unable to
restrain much longer the violence of the younger man, he felt Willems’
muscles relaxing, and took advantage of this opportunity to pin him, by
a last effort, to the rail. They both panted heavily, speechless, their
faces very close.
“All right,” muttered Willems at last. “Don’t break my back over this
infernal rail. I will be quiet.”
“Now you are reasonable,” said Lingard, much relieved. “What made you
fly into that passion?” he asked, leading him back to the end of the
jetty, and, still holding him prudently with one hand, he fumbled with
the other for his whistle and blew a shrill and prolonged blast. Over
the smooth water of the roadstead came in answer a faint cry from one of
the ships at anchor.
“My boat will be here directly,” said Lingard. “Think of what you are
going to do. I sail to-night.”
“What is there for me to do, except one thing?” said Willems, gloomily.
“Look here,” said Lingard; “I picked you up as a boy, and consider
myself responsible for you in a way. You took your life into your own
hands many years ago--but still . . .”
He paused, listening, till he heard the regular grind of the oars in the
rowlocks of the approaching boat then went on again.
“I have made it all right with Hudig. You owe him nothing now. Go back
to your wife. She is a good woman. Go back to her.”
“Why, Captain Lingard,” exclaimed Willems, “she . . .”
“It was most affecting,” went on Lingard, without heeding him. “I
went to your house to look for you and there I saw her despair. It was
heart-breaking. She called for you; she entreated me to find you. She
spoke wildly, poor woman, as if all this was her fault.”
Willems listened amazed. The blind old idiot! How queerly he
misunderstood! But if it was true, if it was even true, the very idea of
seeing her filled his soul with intense loathing. He did not break
his oath, but he would not go back to her. Let hers be the sin of that
separation; of the sacred bond broken. He revelled in the extreme purity
of his heart, and he would not go back to her. Let her come back to him.
He had the comfortable conviction that he would never see her again,
and that through her own fault only. In this conviction he told himself
solemnly that if she would come to him he would receive her with
generous forgiveness, because such was the praiseworthy solidity of his
principles. But he hesitated whether he would or would not disclose to
Lingard the revolting completeness of his humiliation. Turned out of his
house--and by his wife; that woman who hardly dared to breathe in his
presence, yesterday. He remained perplexed and silent. No. He lacked the
courage to tell the ignoble story.
As the boat of the brig appeared suddenly on the black water close to
the jetty, Lingard broke the painful silence.
“I always thought,” he said, sadly, “I always thought you were somewhat
heartless, Willems, and apt to cast adrift those that thought most of
you. I appeal to what is best in you; do not abandon that woman.”
“I have not abandoned her,” answered Willems, quickly, with conscious
truthfulness. “Why should I? As you so justly observed, she has been a
good wife to me. A very good, quiet, obedient, loving wife, and I love
her as much as she loves me. Every bit. But as to going back now, to
that place where I . . . To walk again amongst those men who yesterday
were ready to crawl before me, and then feel on my back the sting of
their pitying or satisfied smiles--no! I can’t. I would rather hide from
them at the bottom of the sea,” he went on, with resolute energy. “I
don’t think, Captain Lingard,” he added, more quietly, “I don’t think
that you realize what my position was there.”
In a wide sweep of his hand he took in the sleeping shore from north to
south, as if wishing it a proud and threatening good-bye. For a short
moment he forgot his downfall in the recollection of his brilliant
triumphs. Amongst the men of his class and occupation who slept in those
dark houses he had been indeed the first.
“It is hard,” muttered Lingard, pensively. “But whose the fault? Whose
the fault?”
“Captain Lingard!” cried Willems, under the sudden impulse of a
felicitous inspiration, “if you leave me here on this jetty--it’s
murder. I shall never return to that place alive, wife or no wife. You
may just as well cut my throat at once.”
The old seaman started.
“Don’t try to frighten me, Willems,” he said, with great severity, and
paused.
Above the accents of Willems’ brazen despair he heard, with considerable
uneasiness, the whisper of his own absurd conscience. He meditated for
awhile with an irresolute air.
“I could tell you to go and drown yourself, and be damned to you,” he
said, with an unsuccessful assumption of brutality in his manner, “but
I won’t. We are responsible for one another--worse luck. I am almost
ashamed of myself, but I can understand your dirty pride. I can!
By . . .”
He broke off with a loud sigh and walked briskly to the steps, at the
bottom of which lay his boat, rising and falling gently on the slight
and invisible swell.
“Below there! Got a lamp in the boat? Well, light it and bring it up,
one of you. Hurry now!”
He tore out a page of his pocketbook, moistened his pencil with great
energy and waited, stamping his feet impatiently.
“I will see this thing through,” he muttered to himself. “And I will
have it all square and ship-shape; see if I don’t! Are you going to
bring that lamp, you son of a crippled mud-turtle? I am waiting.”
The gleam of the light on the paper placated his professional anger, and
he wrote rapidly, the final dash of his signature curling the paper up
in a triangular tear.
“Take that to this white Tuan’s house. I will send the boat back for you
in half an hour.”
The coxswain raised his lamp deliberately to Willem’s face.
“This Tuan? Tau! I know.”
“Quick then!” said Lingard, taking the lamp from him--and the man went
off at a run.
“Kassi mem! To the lady herself,” called Lingard after him.
Then, when the man disappeared, he turned to Willems.
“I have written to your wife,” he said. “If you do not return for good,
you do not go back to that house only for another parting. You must come
as you stand. I won’t have that poor woman tormented. I will see to it
that you are not separated for long. Trust me!”
Willems shivered, then smiled in the darkness.