PART IV

CHAPTER ONE

The night was very dark. For the first time in many months the East

Coast slept unseen by the stars under a veil of motionless cloud that,

driven before the first breath of the rainy monsoon, had drifted slowly

from the eastward all the afternoon; pursuing the declining sun with

its masses of black and grey that seemed to chase the light with wicked

intent, and with an ominous and gloomy steadiness, as though conscious

of the message of violence and turmoil they carried. At the sun’s

disappearance below the western horizon, the immense cloud, in quickened

motion, grappled with the glow of retreating light, and rolling down

to the clear and jagged outline of the distant mountains, hung arrested

above the steaming forests; hanging low, silent and menacing over the

unstirring tree-tops; withholding the blessing of rain, nursing the

wrath of its thunder; undecided--as if brooding over its own power for

good or for evil.

Babalatchi, coming out of the red and smoky light of his little bamboo

house, glanced upwards, drew in a long breath of the warm and stagnant

air, and stood for a moment with his good eye closed tightly, as if

intimidated by the unwonted and deep silence of Lakamba’s courtyard.

When he opened his eye he had recovered his sight so far, that he could

distinguish the various degrees of formless blackness which marked the

places of trees, of abandoned houses, of riverside bushes, on the dark

background of the night.

The careworn sage walked cautiously down the deserted courtyard to the

waterside, and stood on the bank listening to the voice of the invisible

river that flowed at his feet; listening to the soft whispers, to the

deep murmurs, to the sudden gurgles and the short hisses of the swift

current racing along the bank through the hot darkness.

He stood with his face turned to the river, and it seemed to him that he

could breathe easier with the knowledge of the clear vast space before

him; then, after a while he leaned heavily forward on his staff, his

chin fell on his breast, and a deep sigh was his answer to the selfish

discourse of the river that hurried on unceasing and fast, regardless of

joy or sorrow, of suffering and of strife, of failures and triumphs that

lived on its banks. The brown water was there, ready to carry friends or

enemies, to nurse love or hate on its submissive and heartless bosom,

to help or to hinder, to save life or give death; the great and rapid

river: a deliverance, a prison, a refuge or a grave.

Perchance such thoughts as these caused Babalatchi to send another

mournful sigh into the trailing mists of the unconcerned Pantai. The

barbarous politician had forgotten the recent success of his plottings

in the melancholy contemplation of a sorrow that made the night blacker,

the clammy heat more oppressive, the still air more heavy, the dumb

solitude more significant of torment than of peace. He had spent the

night before by the side of the dying Omar, and now, after twenty-four

hours, his memory persisted in returning to that low and sombre reed

hut from which the fierce spirit of the incomparably accomplished pirate

took its flight, to learn too late, in a worse world, the error of

its earthly ways. The mind of the savage statesman, chastened by

bereavement, felt for a moment the weight of his loneliness with

keen perception worthy even of a sensibility exasperated by all the

refinements of tender sentiment that a glorious civilization brings in

its train, among other blessings and virtues, into this excellent world.

For the space of about thirty seconds, a half-naked, betel-chewing

pessimist stood upon the bank of the tropical river, on the edge of the

still and immense forests; a man angry, powerless, empty-handed, with a

cry of bitter discontent ready on his lips; a cry that, had it come out,

would have rung through the virgin solitudes of the woods, as true, as

great, as profound, as any philosophical shriek that ever came from the

depths of an easy-chair to disturb the impure wilderness of chimneys and

roofs.

For half a minute and no more did Babalatchi face the gods in the

sublime privilege of his revolt, and then the one-eyed puller of wires

became himself again, full of care and wisdom and far-reaching plans,

and a victim to the tormenting superstitions of his race. The night, no

matter how quiet, is never perfectly silent to attentive ears, and now

Babalatchi fancied he could detect in it other noises than those caused

by the ripples and eddies of the river. He turned his head sharply to

the right and to the left in succession, and then spun round quickly in

a startled and watchful manner, as if he had expected to see the blind

ghost of his departed leader wandering in the obscurity of the empty

courtyard behind his back. Nothing there. Yet he had heard a noise;

a strange noise! No doubt a ghostly voice of a complaining and angry

spirit. He listened. Not a sound. Reassured, Babalatchi made a few paces

towards his house, when a very human noise, that of hoarse coughing,

reached him from the river. He stopped, listened attentively, but now

without any sign of emotion, and moving briskly back to the waterside

stood expectant with parted lips, trying to pierce with his eye the

wavering curtain of mist that hung low over the water. He could see

nothing, yet some people in a canoe must have been very near, for he

heard words spoken in an ordinary tone.

“Do you think this is the place, Ali? I can see nothing.”

“It must be near here, Tuan,” answered another voice. “Shall we try the

bank?”

“No! . . . Let drift a little. If you go poking into the bank in the

dark you might stove the canoe on some log. We must be careful. . . .

Let drift! Let drift! . . . This does seem to be a clearing of

some sort. We may see a light by and by from some house or other. In

Lakamba’s campong there are many houses? Hey?”

“A great number, Tuan . . . I do not see any light.”

“Nor I,” grumbled the first voice again, this time nearly abreast of the

silent Babalatchi who looked uneasily towards his own house, the doorway

of which glowed with the dim light of a torch burning within. The

house stood end on to the river, and its doorway faced down-stream, so

Babalatchi reasoned rapidly that the strangers on the river could not

see the light from the position their boat was in at the moment. He

could not make up his mind to call out to them, and while he hesitated

he heard the voices again, but now some way below the landing-place

where he stood.

“Nothing. This cannot be it. Let them give way, Ali! Dayong there!”

That order was followed by the splash of paddles, then a sudden cry--

“I see a light. I see it! Now I know where to land, Tuan.”

There was more splashing as the canoe was paddled sharply round and came

back up-stream close to the bank.

“Call out,” said very near a deep voice, which Babalatchi felt sure must

belong to a white man. “Call out--and somebody may come with a torch. I

can’t see anything.”

The loud hail that succeeded these words was emitted nearly under the

silent listener’s nose. Babalatchi, to preserve appearances, ran with

long but noiseless strides halfway up the courtyard, and only then

shouted in answer and kept on shouting as he walked slowly back again

towards the river bank. He saw there an indistinct shape of a boat, not

quite alongside the landing-place.

“Who speaks on the river?” asked Babalatchi, throwing a tone of surprise

into his question.

“A white man,” answered Lingard from the canoe. “Is there not one torch

in rich Lakamba’s campong to light a guest on his landing?”

“There are no torches and no men. I am alone here,” said Babalatchi,

with some hesitation.

“Alone!” exclaimed Lingard. “Who are you?”

“Only a servant of Lakamba. But land, Tuan Putih, and see my face. Here

is my hand. No! Here! . . . By your mercy. . . . Ada! . . . Now you are

safe.”

“And you are alone here?” said Lingard, moving with precaution a few

steps into the courtyard. “How dark it is,” he muttered to himself--“one

would think the world had been painted black.”

“Yes. Alone. What more did you say, Tuan? I did not understand your

talk.”

“It is nothing. I expected to find here . . . But where are they all?”

“What matters where they are?” said Babalatchi, gloomily. “Have you come

to see my people? The last departed on a long journey--and I am alone.

Tomorrow I go too.”

“I came to see a white man,” said Lingard, walking on slowly. “He is not

gone, is he?”

“No!” answered Babalatchi, at his elbow. “A man with a red skin and hard

eyes,” he went on, musingly, “whose hand is strong, and whose heart is

foolish and weak. A white man indeed . . . But still a man.”

They were now at the foot of the short ladder which led to the

split-bamboo platform surrounding Babalatchi’s habitation. The faint

light from the doorway fell down upon the two men’s faces as they stood

looking at each other curiously.

“Is he there?” asked Lingard, in a low voice, with a wave of his hand

upwards.

Babalatchi, staring hard at his long-expected visitor, did not answer at

once. “No, not there,” he said at last, placing his foot on the lowest

rung and looking back. “Not there, Tuan--yet not very far. Will you sit

down in my dwelling? There may be rice and fish and clear water--not

from the river, but from a spring . . .”

“I am not hungry,” interrupted Lingard, curtly, “and I did not come here

to sit in your dwelling. Lead me to the white man who expects me. I have

no time to lose.”

“The night is long, Tuan,” went on Babalatchi, softly, “and there are

other nights and other days. Long. Very long . . . How much time it

takes for a man to die! O Rajah Laut!”

Lingard started.

“You know me!” he exclaimed.

“Ay--wa! I have seen your face and felt your hand before--many years

ago,” said Babalatchi, holding on halfway up the ladder, and bending

down from above to peer into Lingard’s upturned face. “You do not

remember--but I have not forgotten. There are many men like me: there is

only one Rajah Laut.”

He climbed with sudden agility the last few steps, and stood on the

platform waving his hand invitingly to Lingard, who followed after a

short moment of indecision.

The elastic bamboo floor of the hut bent under the heavy weight of the

old seaman, who, standing within the threshold, tried to look into the

smoky gloom of the low dwelling. Under the torch, thrust into the cleft

of a stick, fastened at a right angle to the middle stay of the ridge

pole, lay a red patch of light, showing a few shabby mats and a corner

of a big wooden chest the rest of which was lost in shadow. In the

obscurity of the more remote parts of the house a lance-head, a brass

tray hung on the wall, the long barrel of a gun leaning against the

chest, caught the stray rays of the smoky illumination in trembling

gleams that wavered, disappeared, reappeared, went out, came back--as if

engaged in a doubtful struggle with the darkness that, lying in wait in

distant corners, seemed to dart out viciously towards its feeble enemy.

The vast space under the high pitch of the roof was filled with a thick

cloud of smoke, whose under-side--level like a ceiling--reflected the

light of the swaying dull flame, while at the top it oozed out through

the imperfect thatch of dried palm leaves. An indescribable and

complicated smell, made up of the exhalation of damp earth below, of

the taint of dried fish and of the effluvia of rotting vegetable matter,

pervaded the place and caused Lingard to sniff strongly as he strode

over, sat on the chest, and, leaning his elbows on his knees, took his

head between his hands and stared at the doorway thoughtfully.

Babalatchi moved about in the shadows, whispering to an indistinct form

or two that flitted about at the far end of the hut. Without stirring

Lingard glanced sideways, and caught sight of muffled-up human shapes

that hovered for a moment near the edge of light and retreated suddenly

back into the darkness. Babalatchi approached, and sat at Lingard’s feet

on a rolled-up bundle of mats.

“Will you eat rice and drink sagueir?” he said. “I have waked up my

household.”

“My friend,” said Lingard, without looking at him, “when I come to

see Lakamba, or any of Lakamba’s servants, I am never hungry and never

thirsty. Tau! Savee! Never! Do you think I am devoid of reason? That

there is nothing there?”

He sat up, and, fixing abruptly his eyes on Babalatchi, tapped his own

forehead significantly.

“Tse! Tse! Tse! How can you talk like that, Tuan!” exclaimed Babalatchi,

in a horrified tone.

“I talk as I think. I have lived many years,” said Lingard, stretching

his arm negligently to take up the gun, which he began to examine

knowingly, cocking it, and easing down the hammer several times. “This

is good. Mataram make. Old, too,” he went on.

“Hai!” broke in Babalatchi, eagerly. “I got it when I was young. He

was an Aru trader, a man with a big stomach and a loud voice, and

brave--very brave. When we came up with his prau in the grey morning, he

stood aft shouting to his men and fired this gun at us once. Only once!”

. . . He paused, laughed softly, and went on in a low, dreamy voice. “In

the grey morning we came up: forty silent men in a swift Sulu prau; and

when the sun was so high”--here he held up his hands about three feet

apart--“when the sun was only so high, Tuan, our work was done--and

there was a feast ready for the fishes of the sea.”

“Aye! aye!” muttered Lingard, nodding his head slowly. “I see. You

should not let it get rusty like this,” he added.

He let the gun fall between his knees, and moving back on his seat,

leaned his head against the wall of the hut, crossing his arms on his

breast.

“A good gun,” went on Babalatchi. “Carry far and true. Better than

this--there.”

With the tips of his fingers he touched gently the butt of a revolver

peeping out of the right pocket of Lingard’s white jacket.

“Take your hand off that,” said Lingard sharply, but in a good-humoured

tone and without making the slightest movement.

Babalatchi smiled and hitched his seat a little further off.

For some time they sat in silence. Lingard, with his head tilted back,

looked downwards with lowered eyelids at Babalatchi, who was tracing

invisible lines with his finger on the mat between his feet. Outside,

they could hear Ali and the other boatmen chattering and laughing round

the fire they had lighted in the big and deserted courtyard.

“Well, what about that white man?” said Lingard, quietly.

It seemed as if Babalatchi had not heard the question. He went on

tracing elaborate patterns on the floor for a good while. Lingard waited

motionless. At last the Malay lifted his head.

“Hai! The white man. I know!” he murmured absently. “This white man or

another. . . . Tuan,” he said aloud with unexpected animation, “you are

a man of the sea?”

“You know me. Why ask?” said Lingard, in a low tone.

“Yes. A man of the sea--even as we are. A true Orang Laut,” went on

Babalatchi, thoughtfully, “not like the rest of the white men.”

“I am like other whites, and do not wish to speak many words when the

truth is short. I came here to see the white man that helped Lakamba

against Patalolo, who is my friend. Show me where that white man lives;

I want him to hear my talk.”

“Talk only? Tuan! Why hurry? The night is long and death is swift--as

you ought to know; you who have dealt it to so many of my people. Many

years ago I have faced you, arms in hand. Do you not remember? It was in

Carimata--far from here.”

“I cannot remember every vagabond that came in my way,” protested

Lingard, seriously.

“Hai! Hai!” continued Babalatchi, unmoved and dreamy. “Many years

ago. Then all this”--and looking up suddenly at Lingard’s beard, he

flourished his fingers below his own beardless chin--“then all this was

like gold in sunlight, now it is like the foam of an angry sea.”

“Maybe, maybe,” said Lingard, patiently, paying the involuntary tribute

of a faint sigh to the memories of the past evoked by Babalatchi’s

words.

He had been living with Malays so long and so close that the extreme

deliberation and deviousness of their mental proceedings had ceased to

irritate him much. To-night, perhaps, he was less prone to impatience

than ever. He was disposed, if not to listen to Babalatchi, then to let

him talk. It was evident to him that the man had something to say, and

he hoped that from the talk a ray of light would shoot through the thick

blackness of inexplicable treachery, to show him clearly--if only for

a second--the man upon whom he would have to execute the verdict of

justice. Justice only! Nothing was further from his thoughts than such

an useless thing as revenge. Justice only. It was his duty that justice

should be done--and by his own hand. He did not like to think how. To

him, as to Babalatchi, it seemed that the night would be long enough for

the work he had to do. But he did not define to himself the nature

of the work, and he sat very still, and willingly dilatory, under the

fearsome oppression of his call. What was the good to think about it?

It was inevitable, and its time was near. Yet he could not command his

memories that came crowding round him in that evil-smelling hut, while

Babalatchi talked on in a flowing monotone, nothing of him moving but

the lips, in the artificially inanimated face. Lingard, like an anchored

ship that had broken her sheer, darted about here and there on the rapid

tide of his recollections. The subdued sound of soft words rang around

him, but his thoughts were lost, now in the contemplation of the past

sweetness and strife of Carimata days, now in the uneasy wonder at the

failure of his judgment; at the fatal blindness of accident that had

caused him, many years ago, to rescue a half-starved runaway from a

Dutch ship in Samarang roads. How he had liked the man: his assurance,

his push, his desire to get on, his conceited good-humour and his

selfish eloquence. He had liked his very faults--those faults that had

so many, to him, sympathetic sides.

And he had always dealt fairly by him from the very beginning; and

he would deal fairly by him now--to the very end. This last thought

darkened Lingard’s features with a responsive and menacing frown. The

doer of justice sat with compressed lips and a heavy heart, while in the

calm darkness outside the silent world seemed to be waiting breathlessly

for that justice he held in his hand--in his strong hand:--ready to

strike--reluctant to move.

CHAPTER TWO

Babalatchi ceased speaking. Lingard shifted his feet a little, uncrossed

his arms, and shook his head slowly. The narrative of the events in

Sambir, related from the point of view of the astute statesman, the

sense of which had been caught here and there by his inattentive ears,

had been yet like a thread to guide him out of the sombre labyrinth of

his thoughts; and now he had come to the end of it, out of the tangled

past into the pressing necessities of the present. With the palms of his

hands on his knees, his elbows squared out, he looked down on Babalatchi

who sat in a stiff attitude, inexpressive and mute as a talking doll the

mechanism of which had at length run down.

“You people did all this,” said Lingard at last, “and you will be sorry

for it before the dry wind begins to blow again. Abdulla’s voice will

bring the Dutch rule here.”

Babalatchi waved his hand towards the dark doorway.

“There are forests there. Lakamba rules the land now. Tell me, Tuan, do

you think the big trees know the name of the ruler? No. They are born,

they grow, they live and they die--yet know not, feel not. It is their

land.”

“Even a big tree may be killed by a small axe,” said Lingard, drily.

“And, remember, my one-eyed friend, that axes are made by white hands.

You will soon find that out, since you have hoisted the flag of the

Dutch.”

“Ay--wa!” said Babalatchi, slowly. “It is written that the earth belongs

to those who have fair skins and hard but foolish hearts. The farther

away is the master, the easier it is for the slave, Tuan! You were too

near. Your voice rang in our ears always. Now it is not going to be so.

The great Rajah in Batavia is strong, but he may be deceived. He must

speak very loud to be heard here. But if we have need to shout, then he

must hear the many voices that call for protection. He is but a white

man.”

“If I ever spoke to Patalolo, like an elder brother, it was for your

good--for the good of all,” said Lingard with great earnestness.

“This is a white man’s talk,” exclaimed Babalatchi, with bitter

exultation. “I know you. That is how you all talk while you load your

guns and sharpen your swords; and when you are ready, then to those who

are weak you say: ‘Obey me and be happy, or die! You are strange, you

white men. You think it is only your wisdom and your virtue and your

happiness that are true. You are stronger than the wild beasts, but not

so wise. A black tiger knows when he is not hungry--you do not. He knows

the difference between himself and those that can speak; you do not

understand the difference between yourselves and us--who are men. You

are wise and great--and you shall always be fools.”

He threw up both his hands, stirring the sleeping cloud of smoke that

hung above his head, and brought the open palms on the flimsy floor on

each side of his outstretched legs. The whole hut shook. Lingard looked

at the excited statesman curiously.

“Apa! Apa! What’s the matter?” he murmured, soothingly. “Whom did I kill

here? Where are my guns? What have I done? What have I eaten up?”

Babalatchi calmed down, and spoke with studied courtesy.

“You, Tuan, are of the sea, and more like what we are. Therefore I speak

to you all the words that are in my heart. . . . Only once has the sea

been stronger than the Rajah of the sea.”

“You know it; do you?” said Lingard, with pained sharpness.

“Hai! We have heard about your ship--and some rejoiced. Not I. Amongst

the whites, who are devils, you are a man.”

“Trima kassi! I give you thanks,” said Lingard, gravely.

Babalatchi looked down with a bashful smile, but his face became

saddened directly, and when he spoke again it was in a mournful tone.

“Had you come a day sooner, Tuan, you would have seen an enemy die. You

would have seen him die poor, blind, unhappy--with no son to dig his

grave and speak of his wisdom and courage. Yes; you would have seen the

man that fought you in Carimata many years ago, die alone--but for one

friend. A great sight to you.”

“Not to me,” answered Lingard. “I did not even remember him till

you spoke his name just now. You do not understand us. We fight, we

vanquish--and we forget.”

“True, true,” said Babalatchi, with polite irony; “you whites are so

great that you disdain to remember your enemies. No! No!” he went on, in

the same tone, “you have so much mercy for us, that there is no room for

any remembrance. Oh, you are great and good! But it is in my mind that

amongst yourselves you know how to remember. Is it not so, Tuan?”

Lingard said nothing. His shoulders moved imperceptibly. He laid his gun

across his knees and stared at the flint lock absently.

“Yes,” went on Babalatchi, falling again into a mournful mood, “yes, he

died in darkness. I sat by his side and held his hand, but he could not

see the face of him who watched the faint breath on his lips. She, whom

he had cursed because of the white man, was there too, and wept with

covered face. The white man walked about the courtyard making many

noises. Now and then he would come to the doorway and glare at us who

mourned. He stared with wicked eyes, and then I was glad that he who was

dying was blind. This is true talk. I was glad; for a white man’s eyes

are not good to see when the devil that lives within is looking out

through them.”

“Devil! Hey?” said Lingard, half aloud to himself, as if struck with the

obviousness of some novel idea. Babalatchi went on:

“At the first hour of the morning he sat up--he so weak--and said

plainly some words that were not meant for human ears. I held his hand

tightly, but it was time for the leader of brave men to go amongst the

Faithful who are happy. They of my household brought a white sheet, and

I began to dig a grave in the hut in which he died. She mourned aloud.

The white man came to the doorway and shouted. He was angry. Angry with

her because she beat her breast, and tore her hair, and mourned with

shrill cries as a woman should. Do you understand what I say, Tuan?

That white man came inside the hut with great fury, and took her by the

shoulder, and dragged her out. Yes, Tuan. I saw Omar dead, and I saw her

at the feet of that white dog who has deceived me. I saw his face grey,

like the cold mist of the morning; I saw his pale eyes looking down at

Omar’s daughter beating her head on the ground at his feet. At the feet

of him who is Abdulla’s slave. Yes, he lives by Abdulla’s will. That is

why I held my hand while I saw all this. I held my hand because we are

now under the flag of the Orang Blanda, and Abdulla can speak into the

ears of the great. We must not have any trouble with white men. Abdulla

has spoken--and I must obey.”

“That’s it, is it?” growled Lingard in his moustache. Then in Malay, “It

seems that you are angry, O Babalatchi!”

“No; I am not angry, Tuan,” answered Babalatchi, descending from the

insecure heights of his indignation into the insincere depths of safe

humility. “I am not angry. What am I to be angry? I am only an Orang

Laut, and I have fled before your people many times. Servant of this

one--protected of another; I have given my counsel here and there for a

handful of rice. What am I, to be angry with a white man? What is anger

without the power to strike? But you whites have taken all: the land,

the sea, and the power to strike! And there is nothing left for us in

the islands but your white men’s justice; your great justice that knows

not anger.”

He got up and stood for a moment in the doorway, sniffing the hot air of

the courtyard, then turned back and leaned against the stay of the ridge

pole, facing Lingard who kept his seat on the chest. The torch, consumed

nearly to the end, burned noisily. Small explosions took place in the

heart of the flame, driving through its smoky blaze strings of hard,

round puffs of white smoke, no bigger than peas, which rolled out of

doors in the faint draught that came from invisible cracks of the bamboo

walls. The pungent taint of unclean things below and about the hut

grew heavier, weighing down Lingard’s resolution and his thoughts in an

irresistible numbness of the brain. He thought drowsily of himself and

of that man who wanted to see him--who waited to see him. Who waited!

Night and day. Waited. . . . A spiteful but vaporous idea floated

through his brain that such waiting could not be very pleasant to the

fellow. Well, let him wait. He would see him soon enough. And for how

long? Five seconds--five minutes--say nothing--say something. What? No!

Just give him time to take one good look, and then . . .

Suddenly Babalatchi began to speak in a soft voice. Lingard blinked,

cleared his throat--sat up straight.

“You know all now, Tuan. Lakamba dwells in the stockaded house of

Patalolo; Abdulla has begun to build godowns of plank and stone; and now

that Omar is dead, I myself shall depart from this place and live with

Lakamba and speak in his ear. I have served many. The best of them all

sleeps in the ground in a white sheet, with nothing to mark his grave

but the ashes of the hut in which he died. Yes, Tuan! the white man

destroyed it himself. With a blazing brand in his hand he strode around,

shouting to me to come out--shouting to me, who was throwing earth on

the body of a great leader. Yes; swearing to me by the name of your

God and ours that he would burn me and her in there if we did not make

haste. . . . Hai! The white men are very masterful and wise. I dragged

her out quickly!”

“Oh, damn it!” exclaimed Lingard--then went on in Malay, speaking

earnestly. “Listen. That man is not like other white men. You know he is

not. He is not a man at all. He is . . . I don’t know.”

Babalatchi lifted his hand deprecatingly. His eye twinkled, and his

red-stained big lips, parted by an expressionless grin, uncovered a

stumpy row of black teeth filed evenly to the gums.

“Hai! Hai! Not like you. Not like you,” he said, increasing the softness

of his tones as he neared the object uppermost in his mind during that

much-desired interview. “Not like you, Tuan, who are like ourselves,

only wiser and stronger. Yet he, also, is full of great cunning, and

speaks of you without any respect, after the manner of white men when

they talk of one another.”

Lingard leaped in his seat as if he had been prodded.

“He speaks! What does he say?” he shouted.

“Nay, Tuan,” protested the composed Babalatchi; “what matters his talk

if he is not a man? I am nothing before you--why should I repeat words

of one white man about another? He did boast to Abdulla of having

learned much from your wisdom in years past. Other words I have

forgotten. Indeed, Tuan, I have . . .”

Lingard cut short Babalatchi’s protestations by a contemptuous wave of

the hand and reseated himself with dignity.

“I shall go,” said Babalatchi, “and the white man will remain here,

alone with the spirit of the dead and with her who has been the delight

of his heart. He, being white, cannot hear the voice of those that

died. . . . Tell me, Tuan,” he went on, looking at Lingard with

curiosity--“tell me, Tuan, do you white people ever hear the voices of

the invisible ones?”

“We do not,” answered Lingard, “because those that we cannot see do not

speak.”

“Never speak! And never complain with sounds that are not words?”

exclaimed Babalatchi, doubtingly. “It may be so--or your ears are

dull. We Malays hear many sounds near the places where men are buried.

To-night I heard . . . Yes, even I have heard. . . . I do not want to

hear any more,” he added, nervously. “Perhaps I was wrong when I . . .

There are things I regret. The trouble was heavy in his heart when he

died. Sometimes I think I was wrong . . . but I do not want to hear

the complaint of invisible lips. Therefore I go, Tuan. Let the unquiet

spirit speak to his enemy the white man who knows not fear, or love,

or mercy--knows nothing but contempt and violence. I have been wrong! I

have! Hai! Hai!”

He stood for awhile with his elbow in the palm of his left hand, the

fingers of the other over his lips as if to stifle the expression of

inconvenient remorse; then, after glancing at the torch, burnt out

nearly to its end, he moved towards the wall by the chest, fumbled about

there and suddenly flung open a large shutter of attaps woven in a light

framework of sticks. Lingard swung his legs quickly round the corner of

his seat.

“Hallo!” he said, surprised.

The cloud of smoke stirred, and a slow wisp curled out through the new

opening. The torch flickered, hissed, and went out, the glowing end

falling on the mat, whence Babalatchi snatched it up and tossed it

outside through the open square. It described a vanishing curve of red

light, and lay below, shining feebly in the vast darkness. Babalatchi

remained with his arm stretched out into the empty night.

“There,” he said, “you can see the white man’s courtyard, Tuan, and his

house.”

“I can see nothing,” answered Lingard, putting his head through the

shutter-hole. “It’s too dark.”

“Wait, Tuan,” urged Babalatchi. “You have been looking long at the

burning torch. You will soon see. Mind the gun, Tuan. It is loaded.”

“There is no flint in it. You could not find a fire-stone for a hundred

miles round this spot,” said Lingard, testily. “Foolish thing to load

that gun.”

“I have a stone. I had it from a man wise and pious that lives in Menang

Kabau. A very pious man--very good fire. He spoke words over that stone

that make its sparks good. And the gun is good--carries straight and

far. Would carry from here to the door of the white man’s house, I

believe, Tuan.”

“Tida apa. Never mind your gun,” muttered Lingard, peering into the

formless darkness. “Is that the house--that black thing over there?” he

asked.

“Yes,” answered Babalatchi; “that is his house. He lives there by the

will of Abdulla, and shall live there till . . . From where you stand,

Tuan, you can look over the fence and across the courtyard straight at

the door--at the door from which he comes out every morning, looking

like a man that had seen Jehannum in his sleep.”

Lingard drew his head in. Babalatchi touched his shoulder with a groping

hand.

“Wait a little, Tuan. Sit still. The morning is not far off now--a

morning without sun after a night without stars. But there will be light

enough to see the man who said not many days ago that he alone has made

you less than a child in Sambir.”

He felt a slight tremor under his hand, but took it off directly and

began feeling all over the lid of the chest, behind Lingard’s back, for

the gun.

“What are you at?” said Lingard, impatiently. “You do worry about that

rotten gun. You had better get a light.”

“A light! I tell you, Tuan, that the light of heaven is very near,”

said Babalatchi, who had now obtained possession of the object of his

solicitude, and grasping it strongly by its long barrel, grounded the

stock at his feet.

“Perhaps it is near,” said Lingard, leaning both his elbows on the lower

cross-piece of the primitive window and looking out. “It is very black

outside yet,” he remarked carelessly.

Babalatchi fidgeted about.

“It is not good for you to sit where you may be seen,” he muttered.

“Why not?” asked Lingard.

“The white man sleeps, it is true,” explained Babalatchi, softly; “yet

he may come out early, and he has arms.”

“Ah! he has arms?” said Lingard.

“Yes; a short gun that fires many times--like yours here. Abdulla had to

give it to him.”

Lingard heard Babalatchi’s words, but made no movement. To the old

adventurer the idea that fire arms could be dangerous in other hands

than his own did not occur readily, and certainly not in connection with

Willems. He was so busy with the thoughts about what he considered

his own sacred duty, that he could not give any consideration to the

probable actions of the man of whom he thought--as one may think of an

executed criminal--with wondering indignation tempered by scornful pity.

While he sat staring into the darkness, that every minute grew thinner

before his pensive eyes, like a dispersing mist, Willems appeared to him

as a figure belonging already wholly to the past--a figure that could

come in no way into his life again. He had made up his mind, and the

thing was as well as done. In his weary thoughts he had closed this

fatal, inexplicable, and horrible episode in his life. The worst had

happened. The coming days would see the retribution.

He had removed an enemy once or twice before, out of his path; he had

paid off some very heavy scores a good many times. Captain Tom had been

a good friend to many: but it was generally understood, from Honolulu

round about to Diego Suarez, that Captain Tom’s enmity was rather more

than any man single-handed could easily manage. He would not, as he said

often, hurt a fly as long as the fly left him alone; yet a man does not

live for years beyond the pale of civilized laws without evolving for

himself some queer notions of justice. Nobody of those he knew had ever

cared to point out to him the errors of his conceptions.

It was not worth anybody’s while to run counter to Lingard’s ideas of

the fitness of things--that fact was acquired to the floating wisdom

of the South Seas, of the Eastern Archipelago, and was nowhere better

understood than in out-of-the-way nooks of the world; in those nooks

which he filled, unresisted and masterful, with the echoes of his noisy

presence. There is not much use in arguing with a man who boasts of

never having regretted a single action of his life, whose answer to a

mild criticism is a good-natured shout--“You know nothing about it.

I would do it again. Yes, sir!” His associates and his acquaintances

accepted him, his opinions, his actions like things preordained and

unchangeable; looked upon his many-sided manifestations with passive

wonder not unmixed with that admiration which is only the rightful due

of a successful man. But nobody had ever seen him in the mood he was in

now. Nobody had seen Lingard doubtful and giving way to doubt, unable to

make up his mind and unwilling to act; Lingard timid and hesitating one

minute, angry yet inactive the next; Lingard puzzled in a word, because

confronted with a situation that discomposed him by its unprovoked

malevolence, by its ghastly injustice, that to his rough but

unsophisticated palate tasted distinctly of sulphurous fumes from the

deepest hell.

The smooth darkness filling the shutter-hole grew paler and became

blotchy with ill-defined shapes, as if a new universe was being evolved

out of sombre chaos. Then outlines came out, defining forms without any

details, indicating here a tree, there a bush; a black belt of forest

far off; the straight lines of a house, the ridge of a high roof near

by. Inside the hut, Babalatchi, who lately had been only a persuasive

voice, became a human shape leaning its chin imprudently on the muzzle

of a gun and rolling an uneasy eye over the reappearing world. The day

came rapidly, dismal and oppressed by the fog of the river and by the

heavy vapours of the sky--a day without colour and without sunshine:

incomplete, disappointing, and sad.

Babalatchi twitched gently Lingard’s sleeve, and when the old seaman

had lifted up his head interrogatively, he stretched out an arm and a

pointing forefinger towards Willems’ house, now plainly visible to the

right and beyond the big tree of the courtyard.

“Look, Tuan!” he said. “He lives there. That is the door--his door.

Through it he will appear soon, with his hair in disorder and his mouth

full of curses. That is so. He is a white man, and never satisfied. It

is in my mind he is angry even in his sleep. A dangerous man. As Tuan

may observe,” he went on, obsequiously, “his door faces this opening,

where you condescend to sit, which is concealed from all eyes. Faces

it--straight--and not far. Observe, Tuan, not at all far.”

“Yes, yes; I can see. I shall see him when he wakes.”

“No doubt, Tuan. When he wakes. . . . If you remain here he can not see

you. I shall withdraw quickly and prepare my canoe myself. I am only a

poor man, and must go to Sambir to greet Lakamba when he opens his eyes.

I must bow before Abdulla who has strength--even more strength than you.

Now if you remain here, you shall easily behold the man who boasted to

Abdulla that he had been your friend, even while he prepared to fight

those who called you protector. Yes, he plotted with Abdulla for that

cursed flag. Lakamba was blind then, and I was deceived. But you, Tuan!

Remember, he deceived you more. Of that he boasted before all men.”

He leaned the gun quietly against the wall close to the window, and said

softly: “Shall I go now, Tuan? Be careful of the gun. I have put the

fire-stone in. The fire-stone of the wise man, which never fails.”

Lingard’s eyes were fastened on the distant doorway. Across his line

of sight, in the grey emptiness of the courtyard, a big fruit-pigeon

flapped languidly towards the forests with a loud booming cry, like

the note of a deep gong: a brilliant bird looking in the gloom of

threatening day as black as a crow. A serried flock of white rice birds

rose above the trees with a faint scream, and hovered, swaying in a

disordered mass that suddenly scattered in all directions, as if burst

asunder by a silent explosion. Behind his back Lingard heard a shuffle

of feet--women leaving the hut. In the other courtyard a voice was heard

complaining of cold, and coming very feeble, but exceedingly distinct,

out of the vast silence of the abandoned houses and clearings.

Babalatchi coughed discreetly. From under the house the thumping of

wooden pestles husking the rice started with unexpected abruptness. The

weak but clear voice in the yard again urged, “Blow up the embers, O

brother!” Another voice answered, drawling in modulated, thin sing-song,

“Do it yourself, O shivering pig!” and the drawl of the last words

stopped short, as if the man had fallen into a deep hole. Babalatchi

coughed again a little impatiently, and said in a confidential tone--

“Do you think it is time for me to go, Tuan? Will you take care of my

gun, Tuan? I am a man that knows how to obey; even obey Abdulla, who has

deceived me. Nevertheless this gun carries far and true--if you would

want to know, Tuan. And I have put in a double measure of powder, and

three slugs. Yes, Tuan. Now--perhaps--I go.”

When Babalatchi commenced speaking, Lingard turned slowly round and

gazed upon him with the dull and unwilling look of a sick man waking to

another day of suffering. As the astute statesman proceeded, Lingard’s

eyebrows came close, his eyes became animated, and a big vein stood out

on his forehead, accentuating a lowering frown. When speaking his last

words Babalatchi faltered, then stopped, confused, before the steady

gaze of the old seaman.

Lingard rose. His face cleared, and he looked down at the anxious

Babalatchi with sudden benevolence.

“So! That’s what you were after,” he said, laying a heavy hand on

Babalatchi’s yielding shoulder. “You thought I came here to murder him.

Hey? Speak! You faithful dog of an Arab trader!”

“And what else, Tuan?” shrieked Babalatchi, exasperated into sincerity.

“What else, Tuan! Remember what he has done; he poisoned our ears with

his talk about you. You are a man. If you did not come to kill, Tuan,

then either I am a fool or . . .”

He paused, struck his naked breast with his open palm, and finished in a

discouraged whisper--“or, Tuan, you are.”

Lingard looked down at him with scornful serenity. After his long and

painful gropings amongst the obscure abominations of Willems’ conduct,

the logical if tortuous evolutions of Babalatchi’s diplomatic mind

were to him welcome as daylight. There was something at last he could

understand--the clear effect of a simple cause. He felt indulgent

towards the disappointed sage.

“So you are angry with your friend, O one-eyed one!” he said slowly,

nodding his fierce countenance close to Babalatchi’s discomfited face.

“It seems to me that you must have had much to do with what happened in

Sambir lately. Hey? You son of a burnt father.”

“May I perish under your hand, O Rajah of the sea, if my words are not

true!” said Babalatchi, with reckless excitement. “You are here in the

midst of your enemies. He the greatest. Abdulla would do nothing without

him, and I could do nothing without Abdulla. Strike me--so that you

strike all!”

“Who are you,” exclaimed Lingard contemptuously--“who are you to

dare call yourself my enemy! Dirt! Nothing! Go out first,” he went on

severely. “Lakas! quick. March out!”

He pushed Babalatchi through the doorway and followed him down the short

ladder into the courtyard. The boatmen squatting over the fire turned

their slow eyes with apparent difficulty towards the two men; then,

unconcerned, huddled close together again, stretching forlornly their

hands over the embers. The women stopped in their work and with uplifted

pestles flashed quick and curious glances from the gloom under the

house.

“Is that the way?” asked Lingard with a nod towards the little

wicket-gate of Willems’ enclosure.

“If you seek death, that is surely the way,” answered Babalatchi in a

dispassionate voice, as if he had exhausted all the emotions. “He lives

there: he who destroyed your friends; who hastened Omar’s death; who

plotted with Abdulla first against you, then against me. I have been

like a child. O shame! . . . But go, Tuan. Go there.”

“I go where I like,” said Lingard, emphatically, “and you may go to the

devil; I do not want you any more. The islands of these seas shall sink

before I, Rajah Laut, serve the will of any of your people. Tau? But I

tell you this: I do not care what you do with him after to-day. And I

say that because I am merciful.”

“Tida! I do nothing,” said Babalatchi, shaking his head with bitter

apathy. “I am in Abdulla’s hand and care not, even as you do. No! no!”

he added, turning away, “I have learned much wisdom this morning. There

are no men anywhere. You whites are cruel to your friends and merciful

to your enemies--which is the work of fools.”

He went away towards the riverside, and, without once looking back,

disappeared in the low bank of mist that lay over the water and the

shore. Lingard followed him with his eyes thoughtfully. After awhile he

roused himself and called out to his boatmen--

“Hai--ya there! After you have eaten rice, wait for me with your paddles

in your hands. You hear?”

“Ada, Tuan!” answered Ali through the smoke of the morning fire that was

spreading itself, low and gentle, over the courtyard--“we hear!”

Lingard opened slowly the little wicket-gate, made a few steps into

the empty enclosure, and stopped. He had felt about his head the short

breath of a puff of wind that passed him, made every leaf of the big

tree shiver--and died out in a hardly perceptible tremor of branches and

twigs. Instinctively he glanced upwards with a seaman’s impulse. Above

him, under the grey motionless waste of a stormy sky, drifted low black

vapours, in stretching bars, in shapeless patches, in sinuous wisps and

tormented spirals. Over the courtyard and the house floated a round,

sombre, and lingering cloud, dragging behind a tail of tangled and filmy

streamers--like the dishevelled hair of a mourning woman.

CHAPTER THREE

“Beware!”

The tremulous effort and the broken, inadequate tone of the faint cry,

surprised Lingard more than the unexpected suddenness of the warning

conveyed, he did not know by whom and to whom. Besides himself there was

no one in the courtyard as far as he could see.

The cry was not renewed, and his watchful eyes, scanning warily the

misty solitude of Willems’ enclosure, were met everywhere only by the

stolid impassiveness of inanimate things: the big sombre-looking tree,

the shut-up, sightless house, the glistening bamboo fences, the damp and

drooping bushes further off--all these things, that condemned to look

for ever at the incomprehensible afflictions or joys of mankind, assert

in their aspect of cold unconcern the high dignity of lifeless matter

that surrounds, incurious and unmoved, the restless mysteries of the

ever-changing, of the never-ending life.

Lingard, stepping aside, put the trunk of the tree between himself

and the house, then, moving cautiously round one of the projecting

buttresses, had to tread short in order to avoid scattering a small heap

of black embers upon which he came unexpectedly on the other side. A

thin, wizened, little old woman, who, standing behind the tree, had been

looking at the house, turned towards him with a start, gazed with faded,

expressionless eyes at the intruder, then made a limping attempt to get

away. She seemed, however, to realize directly the hopelessness or the

difficulty of the undertaking, stopped, hesitated, tottered back slowly;

then, after blinking dully, fell suddenly on her knees amongst the white

ashes, and, bending over the heap of smouldering coals, distended her

sunken cheeks in a steady effort to blow up the hidden sparks into a

useful blaze. Lingard looked down on her, but she seemed to have made

up her mind that there was not enough life left in her lean body for

anything else than the discharge of the simple domestic duty, and,

apparently, she begrudged him the least moment of attention.

After waiting for awhile, Lingard asked--

“Why did you call, O daughter?”

“I saw you enter,” she croaked feebly, still grovelling with her

face near the ashes and without looking up, “and I called--the cry of

warning. It was her order. Her order,” she repeated, with a moaning

sigh.

“And did she hear?” pursued Lingard, with gentle composure.

Her projecting shoulder-blades moved uneasily under the thin stuff of

the tight body jacket. She scrambled up with difficulty to her feet,

and hobbled away, muttering peevishly to herself, towards a pile of dry

brushwood heaped up against the fence.

Lingard, looking idly after her, heard the rattle of loose planks that

led from the ground to the door of the house. He moved his head beyond

the shelter of the tree and saw Aissa coming down the inclined way into

the courtyard. After making a few hurried paces towards the tree, she

stopped with one foot advanced in an appearance of sudden terror, and

her eyes glanced wildly right and left. Her head was uncovered. A blue

cloth wrapped her from her head to foot in close slanting folds, with

one end thrown over her shoulder. A tress of her black hair strayed

across her bosom. Her bare arms pressed down close to her body, with

hands open and outstretched fingers; her slightly elevated shoulders and

the backward inclination of her torso gave her the aspect of one defiant

yet shrinking from a coming blow. She had closed the door of the house

behind her; and as she stood solitary in the unnatural and threatening

twilight of the murky day, with everything unchanged around her, she

appeared to Lingard as if she had been made there, on the spot, out

of the black vapours of the sky and of the sinister gleams of feeble

sunshine that struggled, through the thickening clouds, into the

colourless desolation of the world.

After a short but attentive glance towards the shut-up house, Lingard

stepped out from behind the tree and advanced slowly towards her. The

sudden fixity of her--till then--restless eyes and a slight twitch of

her hands were the only signs she gave at first of having seen him.

She made a long stride forward, and putting herself right in his path,

stretched her arms across; her black eyes opened wide, her lips parted

as if in an uncertain attempt to speak--but no sound came out to break

the significant silence of their meeting. Lingard stopped and looked at

her with stern curiosity. After a while he said composedly--

“Let me pass. I came here to talk to a man. Does he hide? Has he sent

you?”

She made a step nearer, her arms fell by her side, then she put them

straight out nearly touching Lingard’s breast.

“He knows not fear,” she said, speaking low, with a forward throw of

her head, in a voice trembling but distinct. “It is my own fear that has

sent me here. He sleeps.”

“He has slept long enough,” said Lingard, in measured tones. “I am

come--and now is the time of his waking. Go and tell him this--or else

my own voice will call him up. A voice he knows well.”

He put her hands down firmly and again made as if to pass by her.

“Do not!” she exclaimed, and fell at his feet as if she had been cut

down by a scythe. The unexpected suddenness of her movement startled

Lingard, who stepped back.

“What’s this?” he exclaimed in a wondering whisper--then added in a tone

of sharp command: “Stand up!”

She rose at once and stood looking at him, timorous and fearless; yet

with a fire of recklessness burning in her eyes that made clear her

resolve to pursue her purpose even to the death. Lingard went on in a

severe voice--

“Go out of my path. You are Omar’s daughter, and you ought to know that

when men meet in daylight women must be silent and abide their fate.”

“Women!” she retorted, with subdued vehemence. “Yes, I am a woman!

Your eyes see that, O Rajah Laut, but can you see my life? I also have

heard--O man of many fights--I also have heard the voice of fire-arms;

I also have felt the rain of young twigs and of leaves cut up by bullets

fall down about my head; I also know how to look in silence at angry

faces and at strong hands raised high grasping sharp steel. I also saw

men fall dead around me without a cry of fear and of mourning; and I

have watched the sleep of weary fugitives, and looked at night shadows

full of menace and death with eyes that knew nothing but watchfulness.

And,” she went on, with a mournful drop in her voice, “I have faced the

heartless sea, held on my lap the heads of those who died raving from

thirst, and from their cold hands took the paddle and worked so that

those with me did not know that one man more was dead. I did all this.

What more have you done? That was my life. What has been yours?”

The matter and the manner of her speech held Lingard motionless,

attentive and approving against his will. She ceased speaking, and from

her staring black eyes with a narrow border of white above and below, a

double ray of her very soul streamed out in a fierce desire to light

up the most obscure designs of his heart. After a long silence, which

served to emphasize the meaning of her words, she added in the whisper

of bitter regret--

“And I have knelt at your feet! And I am afraid!”

“You,” said Lingard deliberately, and returning her look with an

interested gaze, “you are a woman whose heart, I believe, is great

enough to fill a man’s breast: but still you are a woman, and to you, I,

Rajah Laut, have nothing to say.”

She listened bending her head in a movement of forced attention; and his

voice sounded to her unexpected, far off, with the distant and unearthly

ring of voices that we hear in dreams, saying faintly things startling,

cruel or absurd, to which there is no possible reply. To her he had

nothing to say! She wrung her hands, glanced over the courtyard with

that eager and distracted look that sees nothing, then looked up at the

hopeless sky of livid grey and drifting black; at the unquiet mourning

of the hot and brilliant heaven that had seen the beginning of her love,

that had heard his entreaties and her answers, that had seen his desire

and her fear; that had seen her joy, her surrender--and his defeat.

Lingard moved a little, and this slight stir near her precipitated her

disordered and shapeless thoughts into hurried words.

“Wait!” she exclaimed in a stifled voice, and went on disconnectedly and

rapidly--“Stay. I have heard. Men often spoke by the fires . . . men of

my people. And they said of you--the first on the sea--they said that to

men’s cries you were deaf in battle, but after . . . No! even while you

fought, your ears were open to the voice of children and women. They

said . . . that. Now I, a woman, I . . .”

She broke off suddenly and stood before him with dropped eyelids and

parted lips, so still now that she seemed to have been changed into a

breathless, an unhearing, an unseeing figure, without knowledge of fear

or hope, of anger or despair. In the astounding repose that came on

her face, nothing moved but the delicate nostrils that expanded and

collapsed quickly, flutteringly, in interrupted beats, like the wings of

a snared bird.

“I am white,” said Lingard, proudly, looking at her with a steady gaze

where simple curiosity was giving way to a pitying annoyance, “and men

you have heard, spoke only what is true over the evening fires. My ears

are open to your prayer. But listen to me before you speak. For yourself

you need not be afraid. You can come even now with me and you shall find

refuge in the household of Syed Abdulla--who is of your own faith. And

this also you must know: nothing that you may say will change my purpose

towards the man who is sleeping--or hiding--in that house.”

Again she gave him the look that was like a stab, not of anger but of

desire; of the intense, over-powering desire to see in, to see through,

to understand everything: every thought, emotion, purpose; every

impulse, every hesitation inside that man; inside that white-clad

foreign being who looked at her, who spoke to her, who breathed

before her like any other man, but bigger, red-faced, white-haired and

mysterious. It was the future clothed in flesh; the to-morrow; the day

after; all the days, all the years of her life standing there before her

alive and secret, with all their good or evil shut up within the breast

of that man; of that man who could be persuaded, cajoled, entreated,

perhaps touched, worried; frightened--who knows?--if only first he could

be understood! She had seen a long time ago whither events were tending.

She had noted the contemptuous yet menacing coldness of Abdulla; she

had heard--alarmed yet unbelieving--Babalatchi’s gloomy hints, covert

allusions and veiled suggestions to abandon the useless white man whose

fate would be the price of the peace secured by the wise and good who

had no need of him any more. And he--himself! She clung to him. There

was nobody else. Nothing else. She would try to cling to him always--all

the life! And yet he was far from her. Further every day. Every day he

seemed more distant, and she followed him patiently, hopefully, blindly,

but steadily, through all the devious wanderings of his mind. She

followed as well as she could. Yet at times--very often lately--she had

felt lost like one strayed in the thickets of tangled undergrowth of a

great forest. To her the ex-clerk of old Hudig appeared as remote, as

brilliant, as terrible, as necessary, as the sun that gives life to

these lands: the sun of unclouded skies that dazzles and withers; the

sun beneficent and wicked--the giver of light, perfume, and pestilence.

She had watched him--watched him close; fascinated by love, fascinated

by danger. He was alone now--but for her; and she saw--she thought she

saw--that he was like a man afraid of something. Was it possible? He

afraid? Of what? Was it of that old white man who was coming--who had

come? Possibly. She had heard of that man ever since she could remember.

The bravest were afraid of him! And now what was in the mind of this

old, old man who looked so strong? What was he going to do with the

light of her life? Put it out? Take it away? Take it away for ever!--for

ever!--and leave her in darkness:--not in the stirring, whispering,

expectant night in which the hushed world awaits the return of sunshine;

but in the night without end, the night of the grave, where nothing

breathes, nothing moves, nothing thinks--the last darkness of cold and

silence without hope of another sunrise.

She cried--“Your purpose! You know nothing. I must . . .”

He interrupted--unreasonably excited, as if she had, by her look,

inoculated him with some of her own distress.

“I know enough.”

She approached, and stood facing him at arm’s length, with both her

hands on his shoulders; and he, surprised by that audacity, closed and

opened his eyes two or three times, aware of some emotion arising

within him, from her words, her tone, her contact; an emotion unknown,

singular, penetrating and sad--at the close sight of that strange

woman, of that being savage and tender, strong and delicate, fearful and

resolute, that had got entangled so fatally between their two lives--his

own and that other white man’s, the abominable scoundrel.

“How can you know?” she went on, in a persuasive tone that seemed to

flow out of her very heart--“how can you know? I live with him all

the days. All the nights. I look at him; I see his every breath, every

glance of his eye, every movement of his lips. I see nothing else!

What else is there? And even I do not understand. I do not understand

him!--Him!--My life! Him who to me is so great that his presence hides

the earth and the water from my sight!”

Lingard stood straight, with his hands deep in the pockets of his

jacket. His eyes winked quickly, because she spoke very close to his

face. She disturbed him and he had a sense of the efforts he was making

to get hold of her meaning, while all the time he could not help telling

himself that all this was of no use.

She added after a pause--“There has been a time when I could understand

him. When I knew what was in his mind better than he knew it himself.

When I felt him. When I held him. . . . And now he has escaped.”

“Escaped? What? Gone away!” shouted Lingard.

“Escaped from me,” she said; “left me alone. Alone. And I am ever near

him. Yet alone.”

Her hands slipped slowly off Lingard’s shoulders and her arms fell

by her side, listless, discouraged, as if to her--to her, the savage,

violent, and ignorant creature--had been revealed clearly in that moment

the tremendous fact of our isolation, of the loneliness impenetrable and

transparent, elusive and everlasting; of the indestructible loneliness

that surrounds, envelopes, clothes every human soul from the cradle to

the grave, and, perhaps, beyond.

“Aye! Very well! I understand. His face is turned away from you,” said

Lingard. “Now, what do you want?”

“I want . . . I have looked--for help . . . everywhere . . . against

men. . . . All men . . . I do not know. First they came, the invisible

whites, and dealt death from afar . . . then he came. He came to me who

was alone and sad. He came; angry with his brothers; great amongst his

own people; angry with those I have not seen: with the people where men

have no mercy and women have no shame. He was of them, and great amongst

them. For he was great?”

Lingard shook his head slightly. She frowned at him, and went on in

disordered haste--

“Listen. I saw him. I have lived by the side of brave men . . . of

chiefs. When he came I was the daughter of a beggar--of a blind man

without strength and hope. He spoke to me as if I had been brighter than

the sunshine--more delightful than the cool water of the brook by which

we met--more . . .” Her anxious eyes saw some shade of expression pass

on her listener’s face that made her hold her breath for a second, and

then explode into pained fury so violent that it drove Lingard back

a pace, like an unexpected blast of wind. He lifted both his hands,

incongruously paternal in his venerable aspect, bewildered and soothing,

while she stretched her neck forward and shouted at him.

“I tell you I was all that to him. I know it! I saw it! . . . There are

times when even you white men speak the truth. I saw his eyes. I

felt his eyes, I tell you! I saw him tremble when I came near--when I

spoke--when I touched him. Look at me! You have been young. Look at me.

Look, Rajah Laut!”

She stared at Lingard with provoking fixity, then, turning her head

quickly, she sent over her shoulder a glance, full of humble fear, at

the house that stood high behind her back--dark, closed, rickety and

silent on its crooked posts.

Lingard’s eyes followed her look, and remained gazing expectantly at the

house. After a minute or so he muttered, glancing at her suspiciously--

“If he has not heard your voice now, then he must be far away--or dead.”

“He is there,” she whispered, a little calmed but still anxious--“he

is there. For three days he waited. Waited for you night and day. And

I waited with him. I waited, watching his face, his eyes, his lips;

listening to his words.--To the words I could not understand.--To the

words he spoke in daylight; to the words he spoke at night in his short

sleep. I listened. He spoke to himself walking up and down here--by the

river; by the bushes. And I followed. I wanted to know--and I could not!

He was tormented by things that made him speak in the words of his own

people. Speak to himself--not to me. Not to me! What was he saying? What

was he going to do? Was he afraid of you?--Of death? What was in

his heart? . . . Fear? . . . Or anger? . . . what desire? . . . what

sadness? He spoke; spoke; many words. All the time! And I could not

know! I wanted to speak to him. He was deaf to me. I followed him

everywhere, watching for some word I could understand; but his mind

was in the land of his people--away from me. When I touched him he was

angry--so!”

She imitated the movement of some one shaking off roughly an importunate

hand, and looked at Lingard with tearful and unsteady eyes.

After a short interval of laboured panting, as if she had been out of

breath with running or fighting, she looked down and went on--

“Day after day, night after night, I lived watching him--seeing nothing.

And my heart was heavy--heavy with the presence of death that dwelt

amongst us. I could not believe. I thought he was afraid. Afraid of you!

Then I, myself, knew fear. . . . Tell me, Rajah Laut, do you know the

fear without voice--the fear of silence--the fear that comes when there

is no one near--when there is no battle, no cries, no angry faces or

armed hands anywhere? . . . The fear from which there is no escape!”

She paused, fastened her eyes again on the puzzled Lingard, and hurried

on in a tone of despair--

“And I knew then he would not fight you! Before--many days ago--I went

away twice to make him obey my desire; to make him strike at his own

people so that he could be mine--mine! O calamity! His hand was false as

your white hearts. It struck forward, pushed by my desire--by his

desire of me. . . . It struck that strong hand, and--O shame!--it killed

nobody! Its fierce and lying blow woke up hate without any fear. Round

me all was lies. His strength was a lie. My own people lied to me and to

him. And to meet you--you, the great!--he had no one but me? But me

with my rage, my pain, my weakness. Only me! And to me he would not even

speak. The fool!”

She came up close to Lingard, with the wild and stealthy aspect of a

lunatic longing to whisper out an insane secret--one of those misshapen,

heart-rending, and ludicrous secrets; one of those thoughts that, like

monsters--cruel, fantastic, and mournful, wander about terrible and

unceasing in the night of madness. Lingard looked at her, astounded but

unflinching. She spoke in his face, very low.

“He is all! Everything. He is my breath, my light, my heart. . . . Go

away. . . . Forget him. . . . He has no courage and no wisdom any more

. . . and I have lost my power. . . . Go away and forget. There are other

enemies. . . . Leave him to me. He had been a man once. . . . You are

too great. Nobody can withstand you. . . . I tried. . . . I know now

. . . . I cry for mercy. Leave him to me and go away.”

The fragments of her supplicating sentences were as if tossed on the

crest of her sobs. Lingard, outwardly impassive, with his eyes fixed

on the house, experienced that feeling of condemnation, deep-seated,

persuasive, and masterful; that illogical impulse of disapproval which

is half disgust, half vague fear, and that wakes up in our hearts in the

presence of anything new or unusual, of anything that is not run

into the mould of our own conscience; the accursed feeling made up of

disdain, of anger, and of the sense of superior virtue that leaves us

deaf, blind, contemptuous and stupid before anything which is not like

ourselves.

He answered, not looking at her at first, but speaking towards the house

that fascinated him--

“_I_ go away! He wanted me to come--he himself did! . . . _You_ must go

away. You do not know what you are asking for. Listen. Go to your own

people. Leave him. He is . . .”

He paused, looked down at her with his steady eyes; hesitated, as if

seeking an adequate expression; then snapped his fingers, and said--

“Finish.”

She stepped back, her eyes on the ground, and pressed her temples

with both her hands, which she raised to her head in a slow and ample

movement full of unconscious tragedy. The tone of her words was gentle

and vibrating, like a loud meditation. She said--

“Tell the brook not to run to the river; tell the river not to run to

the sea. Speak loud. Speak angrily. Maybe they will obey you. But it is

in my mind that the brook will not care. The brook that springs out of

the hillside and runs to the great river. He would not care for your

words: he that cares not for the very mountain that gave him life; he

that tears the earth from which he springs. Tears it, eats it, destroys

it--to hurry faster to the river--to the river in which he is lost for

ever. . . . O Rajah Laut! I do not care.”

She drew close again to Lingard, approaching slowly, reluctantly, as if

pushed by an invisible hand, and added in words that seemed to be torn

out of her--

“I cared not for my own father. For him that died. I would have rather

. . . You do not know what I have done . . . I . . .”

“You shall have his life,” said Lingard, hastily.

They stood together, crossing their glances; she suddenly appeased, and

Lingard thoughtful and uneasy under a vague sense of defeat. And yet

there was no defeat. He never intended to kill the fellow--not after the

first moment of anger, a long time ago. The days of bitter wonder had

killed anger; had left only a bitter indignation and a bitter wish for

complete justice. He felt discontented and surprised. Unexpectedly he

had come upon a human being--a woman at that--who had made him disclose

his will before its time. She should have his life. But she must be

told, she must know, that for such men as Willems there was no favour

and no grace.

“Understand,” he said slowly, “that I leave him his life not in mercy

but in punishment.”

She started, watched every word on his lips, and after he finished

speaking she remained still and mute in astonished immobility. A

single big drop of rain, a drop enormous, pellucid and heavy--like a

super-human tear coming straight and rapid from above, tearing its way

through the sombre sky--struck loudly the dry ground between them in a

starred splash. She wrung her hands in the bewilderment of the new and

incomprehensible fear. The anguish of her whisper was more piercing than

the shrillest cry.

“What punishment! Will you take him away then? Away from me? Listen to

what I have done. . . . It is I who . . .”

“Ah!” exclaimed Lingard, who had been looking at the house.

“Don’t you believe her, Captain Lingard,” shouted Willems from the

doorway, where he appeared with swollen eyelids and bared breast. He

stood for a while, his hands grasping the lintels on each side of the

door, and writhed about, glaring wildly, as if he had been crucified

there. Then he made a sudden rush head foremost down the plankway that

responded with hollow, short noises to every footstep.

She heard him. A slight thrill passed on her face and the words that

were on her lips fell back unspoken into her benighted heart; fell back

amongst the mud, the stones--and the flowers, that are at the bottom of

every heart.

CHAPTER FOUR

When he felt the solid ground of the courtyard under his feet, Willems

pulled himself up in his headlong rush and moved forward with a moderate

gait. He paced stiffly, looking with extreme exactitude at Lingard’s

face; looking neither to the right nor to the left but at the face only,

as if there was nothing in the world but those features familiar and

dreaded; that white-haired, rough and severe head upon which he gazed in

a fixed effort of his eyes, like a man trying to read small print at

the full range of human vision. As soon as Willems’ feet had left the

planks, the silence which had been lifted up by the jerky rattle of his

footsteps fell down again upon the courtyard; the silence of the cloudy

sky and of the windless air, the sullen silence of the earth oppressed

by the aspect of coming turmoil, the silence of the world collecting its

faculties to withstand the storm. Through this silence Willems pushed

his way, and stopped about six feet from Lingard. He stopped simply

because he could go no further. He had started from the door with the

reckless purpose of clapping the old fellow on the shoulder. He had

no idea that the man would turn out to be so tall, so big and so

unapproachable. It seemed to him that he had never, never in his life,

seen Lingard.

He tried to say--

“Do not believe . . .”

A fit of coughing checked his sentence in a faint splutter. Directly

afterwards he swallowed--as it were--a couple of pebbles, throwing his

chin up in the act; and Lingard, who looked at him narrowly, saw a bone,

sharp and triangular like the head of a snake, dart up and down twice

under the skin of his throat. Then that, too, did not move. Nothing

moved.

“Well,” said Lingard, and with that word he came unexpectedly to the end

of his speech. His hand in his pocket closed firmly round the butt of

his revolver bulging his jacket on the hip, and he thought how soon and

how quickly he could terminate his quarrel with that man who had been so

anxious to deliver himself into his hands--and how inadequate would be

that ending! He could not bear the idea of that man escaping from him by

going out of life; escaping from fear, from doubt, from remorse into the

peaceful certitude of death. He held him now. And he was not going to

let him go--to let him disappear for ever in the faint blue smoke of a

pistol shot. His anger grew within him. He felt a touch as of a burning

hand on his heart. Not on the flesh of his breast, but a touch on his

heart itself, on the palpitating and untiring particle of matter that

responds to every emotion of the soul; that leaps with joy, with terror,

or with anger.

He drew a long breath. He could see before him the bare chest of the man

expanding and collapsing under the wide-open jacket. He glanced

aside, and saw the bosom of the woman near him rise and fall in quick

respirations that moved slightly up and down her hand, which was pressed

to her breast with all the fingers spread out and a little curved, as if

grasping something too big for its span. And nearly a minute passed. One

of those minutes when the voice is silenced, while the thoughts flutter

in the head, like captive birds inside a cage, in rushes desperate,

exhausting and vain.

During that minute of silence Lingard’s anger kept rising, immense and

towering, such as a crested wave running over the troubled shallows of

the sands. Its roar filled his cars; a roar so powerful and distracting

that, it seemed to him, his head must burst directly with the expanding

volume of that sound. He looked at that man. That infamous figure

upright on its feet, still, rigid, with stony eyes, as if its rotten

soul had departed that moment and the carcass hadn’t had the time yet

to topple over. For the fraction of a second he had the illusion and the

fear of the scoundrel having died there before the enraged glance of his

eyes. Willems’ eyelids fluttered, and the unconscious and passing tremor

in that stiffly erect body exasperated Lingard like a fresh outrage. The

fellow dared to stir! Dared to wink, to breathe, to exist; here, right

before his eyes! His grip on the revolver relaxed gradually. As

the transport of his rage increased, so also his contempt for the

instruments that pierce or stab, that interpose themselves between the

hand and the object of hate. He wanted another kind of satisfaction.

Naked hands, by heaven! No firearms. Hands that could take him by the

throat, beat down his defence, batter his face into shapeless flesh;

hands that could feel all the desperation of his resistance and

overpower it in the violent delight of a contact lingering and furious,

intimate and brutal.

He let go the revolver altogether, stood hesitating, then throwing his

hands out, strode forward--and everything passed from his sight. He

could not see the man, the woman, the earth, the sky--saw nothing, as if

in that one stride he had left the visible world behind to step into a

black and deserted space. He heard screams round him in that obscurity,

screams like the melancholy and pitiful cries of sea-birds that dwell on

the lonely reefs of great oceans. Then suddenly a face appeared within a

few inches of his own. His face. He felt something in his left hand. His

throat . . . Ah! the thing like a snake’s head that darts up and down

. . . He squeezed hard. He was back in the world. He could see the quick

beating of eyelids over a pair of eyes that were all whites, the grin of

a drawn-up lip, a row of teeth gleaming through the drooping hair of a

moustache . . . Strong white teeth. Knock them down his lying throat

. . . He drew back his right hand, the fist up to the shoulder, knuckles

out. From under his feet rose the screams of sea-birds. Thousands of

them. Something held his legs . . . What the devil . . . He delivered

his blow straight from the shoulder, felt the jar right up his arm,

and realized suddenly that he was striking something passive and

unresisting. His heart sank within him with disappointment, with rage,

with mortification. He pushed with his left arm, opening the hand with

haste, as if he had just perceived that he got hold by accident

of something repulsive--and he watched with stupefied eyes Willems

tottering backwards in groping strides, the white sleeve of his jacket

across his face. He watched his distance from that man increase, while

he remained motionless, without being able to account to himself for the

fact that so much empty space had come in between them. It should have

been the other way. They ought to have been very close, and . . . Ah! He

wouldn’t fight, he wouldn’t resist, he wouldn’t defend himself! A

cur! Evidently a cur! . . . He was amazed and aggrieved--profoundly,

bitterly--with the immense and blank desolation of a small child robbed

of a toy. He shouted--unbelieving:

“Will you be a cheat to the end?”

He waited for some answer. He waited anxiously with an impatience that

seemed to lift him off his feet. He waited for some word, some sign;

for some threatening stir. Nothing! Only two unwinking eyes glittered

intently at him above the white sleeve. He saw the raised arm detach

itself from the face and sink along the body. A white clad arm, with

a big stain on the white sleeve. A red stain. There was a cut on

the cheek. It bled. The nose bled too. The blood ran down, made one

moustache look like a dark rag stuck over the lip, and went on in a wet

streak down the clipped beard on one side of the chin. A drop of blood

hung on the end of some hairs that were glued together; it hung for a

while and took a leap down on the ground. Many more followed, leaping

one after another in close file. One alighted on the breast and glided

down instantly with devious vivacity, like a small insect running away;

it left a narrow dark track on the white skin. He looked at it, looked

at the tiny and active drops, looked at what he had done, with obscure

satisfaction, with anger, with regret. This wasn’t much like an act of

justice. He had a desire to go up nearer to the man, to hear him speak,

to hear him say something atrocious and wicked that would justify the

violence of the blow. He made an attempt to move, and became aware of a

close embrace round both his legs, just above the ankles. Instinctively,

he kicked out with his foot, broke through the close bond and felt at

once the clasp transferred to his other leg; the clasp warm, desperate

and soft, of human arms. He looked down bewildered. He saw the body of

the woman stretched at length, flattened on the ground like a dark blue

rag. She trailed face downwards, clinging to his leg with both arms in a

tenacious hug. He saw the top of her head, the long black hair streaming

over his foot, all over the beaten earth, around his boot. He couldn’t

see his foot for it. He heard the short and repeated moaning of her

breath. He imagined the invisible face close to his heel. With one kick

into that face he could free himself. He dared not stir, and shouted

down--

“Let go! Let go! Let go!”

The only result of his shouting was a tightening of the pressure of her

arms. With a tremendous effort he tried to bring his right foot up to

his left, and succeeded partly. He heard distinctly the rub of her body

on the ground as he jerked her along. He tried to disengage himself by

drawing up his foot. He stamped. He heard a voice saying sharply--

“Steady, Captain Lingard, steady!”

His eyes flew back to Willems at the sound of that voice, and, in the

quick awakening of sleeping memories, Lingard stood suddenly still,

appeased by the clear ring of familiar words. Appeased as in days of

old, when they were trading together, when Willems was his trusted and

helpful companion in out-of-the-way and dangerous places; when that

fellow, who could keep his temper so much better than he could himself,

had spared him many a difficulty, had saved him from many an act of

hasty violence by the timely and good-humoured warning, whispered or

shouted, “Steady, Captain Lingard, steady.” A smart fellow. He had

brought him up. The smartest fellow in the islands. If he had only

stayed with him, then all this . . . He called out to Willems--

“Tell her to let me go or . . .”

He heard Willems shouting something, waited for awhile, then glanced

vaguely down and saw the woman still stretched out perfectly mute and

unstirring, with her head at his feet. He felt a nervous impatience

that, somehow, resembled fear.

“Tell her to let go, to go away, Willems, I tell you. I’ve had enough of

this,” he cried.

“All right, Captain Lingard,” answered the calm voice of Willems, “she

has let go. Take your foot off her hair; she can’t get up.”

Lingard leaped aside, clean away, and spun round quickly. He saw her sit

up and cover her face with both hands, then he turned slowly on his

heel and looked at the man. Willems held himself very straight, but was

unsteady on his feet, and moved about nearly on the same spot, like a

tipsy man attempting to preserve his balance. After gazing at him for a

while, Lingard called, rancorous and irritable--

“What have you got to say for yourself?”

Willems began to walk towards him. He walked slowly, reeling a little

before he took each step, and Lingard saw him put his hand to his face,

then look at it holding it up to his eyes, as if he had there, concealed

in the hollow of the palm, some small object which he wanted to examine

secretly. Suddenly he drew it, with a brusque movement, down the front

of his jacket and left a long smudge.

“That’s a fine thing to do,” said Willems.

He stood in front of Lingard, one of his eyes sunk deep in the

increasing swelling of his cheek, still repeating mechanically the

movement of feeling his damaged face; and every time he did this he

pressed the palm to some clean spot on his jacket, covering the white

cotton with bloody imprints as of some deformed and monstrous hand.

Lingard said nothing, looking on. At last Willems left off staunching

the blood and stood, his arms hanging by his side, with his face stiff

and distorted under the patches of coagulated blood; and he seemed

as though he had been set up there for a warning: an incomprehensible

figure marked all over with some awful and symbolic signs of deadly

import. Speaking with difficulty, he repeated in a reproachful tone--

“That was a fine thing to do.”

“After all,” answered Lingard, bitterly, “I had too good an opinion of

you.”

“And I of you. Don’t you see that I could have had that fool over there

killed and the whole thing burnt to the ground, swept off the face of

the earth. You wouldn’t have found as much as a heap of ashes had I

liked. I could have done all that. And I wouldn’t.”

“You--could--not. You dared not. You scoundrel!” cried Lingard.

“What’s the use of calling me names?”

“True,” retorted Lingard--“there’s no name bad enough for you.”

There was a short interval of silence. At the sound of their rapidly

exchanged words, Aissa had got up from the ground where she had been

sitting, in a sorrowful and dejected pose, and approached the two men.

She stood on one side and looked on eagerly, in a desperate effort of

her brain, with the quick and distracted eyes of a person trying for her

life to penetrate the meaning of sentences uttered in a foreign

tongue: the meaning portentous and fateful that lurks in the sounds of

mysterious words; in the sounds surprising, unknown and strange.

Willems let the last speech of Lingard pass by; seemed by a slight

movement of his hand to help it on its way to join the other shadows of

the past. Then he said--

“You have struck me; you have insulted me . . .”

“Insulted you!” interrupted Lingard, passionately. “Who--what can insult

you . . . you . . .”

He choked, advanced a step.

“Steady! steady!” said Willems calmly. “I tell you I sha’n’t fight. Is

it clear enough to you that I sha’n’t? I--shall--not--lift--a--finger.”

As he spoke, slowly punctuating each word with a slight jerk of his

head, he stared at Lingard, his right eye open and big, the left small

and nearly closed by the swelling of one half of his face, that appeared

all drawn out on one side like faces seen in a concave glass. And they

stood exactly opposite each other: one tall, slight and disfigured; the

other tall, heavy and severe.

Willems went on--

“If I had wanted to hurt you--if I had wanted to destroy you, it was

easy. I stood in the doorway long enough to pull a trigger--and you know

I shoot straight.”

“You would have missed,” said Lingard, with assurance. “There is, under

heaven, such a thing as justice.”

The sound of that word on his own lips made him pause, confused, like an

unexpected and unanswerable rebuke. The anger of his outraged pride,

the anger of his outraged heart, had gone out in the blow; and there

remained nothing but the sense of some immense infamy--of something

vague, disgusting and terrible, which seemed to surround him on all

sides, hover about him with shadowy and stealthy movements, like a band

of assassins in the darkness of vast and unsafe places. Was there, under

heaven, such a thing as justice? He looked at the man before him with

such an intensity of prolonged glance that he seemed to see right

through him, that at last he saw but a floating and unsteady mist in

human shape. Would it blow away before the first breath of the breeze

and leave nothing behind?

The sound of Willems’ voice made him start violently. Willems was

saying--

“I have always led a virtuous life; you know I have. You always praised

me for my steadiness; you know you have. You know also I never stole--if

that’s what you’re thinking of. I borrowed. You know how much I repaid.

It was an error of judgment. But then consider my position there. I had

been a little unlucky in my private affairs, and had debts. Could I

let myself go under before the eyes of all those men who envied me? But

that’s all over. It was an error of judgment. I’ve paid for it. An error

of judgment.”

Lingard, astounded into perfect stillness, looked down. He looked down

at Willems’ bare feet. Then, as the other had paused, he repeated in a

blank tone--

“An error of judgment . . .”

“Yes,” drawled out Willems, thoughtfully, and went on with increasing

animation: “As I said, I have always led a virtuous life. More so than

Hudig--than you. Yes, than you. I drank a little, I played cards a

little. Who doesn’t? But I had principles from a boy. Yes, principles.

Business is business, and I never was an ass. I never respected fools.

They had to suffer for their folly when they dealt with me. The evil was

in them, not in me. But as to principles, it’s another matter. I kept

clear of women. It’s forbidden--I had no time--and I despised them. Now

I hate them!”

He put his tongue out a little; a tongue whose pink and moist end ran

here and there, like something independently alive, under his swollen

and blackened lip; he touched with the tips of his fingers the cut on

his cheek, felt all round it with precaution: and the unharmed side of

his face appeared for a moment to be preoccupied and uneasy about the

state of that other side which was so very sore and stiff.

He recommenced speaking, and his voice vibrated as though with repressed

emotion of some kind.

“You ask my wife, when you see her in Macassar, whether I have no reason

to hate her. She was nobody, and I made her Mrs. Willems. A half-caste

girl! You ask her how she showed her gratitude to me. You ask . . .

Never mind that. Well, you came and dumped me here like a load of

rubbish; dumped me here and left me with nothing to do--nothing good to

remember--and damn little to hope for. You left me here at the mercy of

that fool, Almayer, who suspected me of something. Of what? Devil only

knows. But he suspected and hated me from the first; I suppose because

you befriended me. Oh! I could read him like a book. He isn’t very

deep, your Sambir partner, Captain Lingard, but he knows how to be

disagreeable. Months passed. I thought I would die of sheer weariness,

of my thoughts, of my regrets And then . . .”

He made a quick step nearer to Lingard, and as if moved by the same

thought, by the same instinct, by the impulse of his will, Aissa also

stepped nearer to them. They stood in a close group, and the two men

could feel the calm air between their faces stirred by the light breath

of the anxious woman who enveloped them both in the uncomprehending, in

the despairing and wondering glances of her wild and mournful eyes.

CHAPTER FIVE

Willems turned a little from her and spoke lower.

“Look at that,” he said, with an almost imperceptible movement of his

head towards the woman to whom he was presenting his shoulder. “Look at

that! Don’t believe her! What has she been saying to you? What? I have

been asleep. Had to sleep at last. I’ve been waiting for you three days

and nights. I had to sleep some time. Hadn’t I? I told her to remain

awake and watch for you, and call me at once. She did watch. You can’t

believe her. You can’t believe any woman. Who can tell what’s inside

their heads? No one. You can know nothing. The only thing you can know

is that it isn’t anything like what comes through their lips. They live

by the side of you. They seem to hate you, or they seem to love you;

they caress or torment you; they throw you over or stick to you closer

than your skin for some inscrutable and awful reason of their own--which

you can never know! Look at her--and look at me. At me!--her infernal

work. What has she been saying?”

His voice had sunk to a whisper. Lingard listened with great attention,

holding his chin in his hand, which grasped a great handful of his white

beard. His elbow was in the palm of his other hand, and his eyes were

still fixed on the ground. He murmured, without looking up--

“She begged me for your life--if you want to know--as if the thing were

worth giving or taking!”

“And for three days she begged me to take yours,” said Willems quickly.

“For three days she wouldn’t give me any peace. She was never still. She

planned ambushes. She has been looking for places all over here where I

could hide and drop you with a safe shot as you walked up. It’s true. I

give you my word.”

“Your word,” muttered Lingard, contemptuously.

Willems took no notice.

“Ah! She is a ferocious creature,” he went on. “You don’t know . . .

I wanted to pass the time--to do something--to have something to think

about--to forget my troubles till you came back. And . . . look at her

. . . she took me as if I did not belong to myself. She did. I did not

know there was something in me she could get hold of. She, a savage.

I, a civilized European, and clever! She that knew no more than a wild

animal! Well, she found out something in me. She found it out, and I

was lost. I knew it. She tormented me. I was ready to do anything. I

resisted--but I was ready. I knew that too. That frightened me more than

anything; more than my own sufferings; and that was frightful enough, I

assure you.”

Lingard listened, fascinated and amazed like a child listening to a

fairy tale, and, when Willems stopped for breath, he shuffled his feet a

little.

“What does he say?” cried out Aissa, suddenly.

The two men looked at her quickly, and then looked at one another.

Willems began again, speaking hurriedly--

“I tried to do something. Take her away from those people. I went

to Almayer; the biggest blind fool that you ever . . . Then Abdulla

came--and she went away. She took away with her something of me which I

had to get back. I had to do it. As far as you are concerned, the change

here had to happen sooner or later; you couldn’t be master here for

ever. It isn’t what I have done that torments me. It is the why. It’s

the madness that drove me to it. It’s that thing that came over me. That

may come again, some day.”

“It will do no harm to anybody then, I promise you,” said Lingard,

significantly.

Willems looked at him for a second with a blank stare, then went on--

“I fought against her. She goaded me to violence and to murder. Nobody

knows why. She pushed me to it persistently, desperately, all the time.

Fortunately Abdulla had sense. I don’t know what I wouldn’t have done.

She held me then. Held me like a nightmare that is terrible and sweet.

By and by it was another life. I woke up. I found myself beside an

animal as full of harm as a wild cat. You don’t know through what I have

passed. Her father tried to kill me--and she very nearly killed him.

I believe she would have stuck at nothing. I don’t know which was more

terrible! She would have stuck at nothing to defend her own. And when

I think that it was me--me--Willems . . . I hate her. To-morrow she

may want my life. How can I know what’s in her? She may want to kill me

next!”

He paused in great trepidation, then added in a scared tone--

“I don’t want to die here.”

“Don’t you?” said Lingard, thoughtfully.

Willems turned towards Aissa and pointed at her with a bony forefinger.

“Look at her! Always there. Always near. Always watching, watching . . .

for something. Look at her eyes. Ain’t they big? Don’t they stare? You

wouldn’t think she can shut them like human beings do. I don’t believe

she ever does. I go to sleep, if I can, under their stare, and when I

wake up I see them fixed on me and moving no more than the eyes of a

corpse. While I am still they are still. By God--she can’t move them

till I stir, and then they follow me like a pair of jailers. They watch

me; when I stop they seem to wait patient and glistening till I am off

my guard--for to do something. To do something horrible. Look at them!

You can see nothing in them. They are big, menacing--and empty. The eyes

of a savage; of a damned mongrel, half-Arab, half-Malay. They hurt me!

I am white! I swear to you I can’t stand this! Take me away. I am white!

All white!”

He shouted towards the sombre heaven, proclaiming desperately under the

frown of thickening clouds the fact of his pure and superior descent.

He shouted, his head thrown up, his arms swinging about wildly; lean,

ragged, disfigured; a tall madman making a great disturbance about

something invisible; a being absurd, repulsive, pathetic, and droll.

Lingard, who was looking down as if absorbed in deep thought, gave him a

quick glance from under his eyebrows: Aissa stood with clasped hands. At

the other end of the courtyard the old woman, like a vague and decrepit

apparition, rose noiselessly to look, then sank down again with a

stealthy movement and crouched low over the small glow of the fire.

Willems’ voice filled the enclosure, rising louder with every word, and

then, suddenly, at its very loudest, stopped short--like water stops

running from an over-turned vessel. As soon as it had ceased the thunder

seemed to take up the burden in a low growl coming from the inland

hills. The noise approached in confused mutterings which kept on

increasing, swelling into a roar that came nearer, rushed down the

river, passed close in a tearing crash--and instantly sounded faint,

dying away in monotonous and dull repetitions amongst the endless

sinuosities of the lower reaches. Over the great forests, over all the

innumerable people of unstirring trees--over all that living people

immense, motionless, and mute--the silence, that had rushed in on the

track of the passing tumult, remained suspended as deep and complete as

if it had never been disturbed from the beginning of remote ages.

Then, through it, after a time, came to Lingard’s ears the voice of the

running river: a voice low, discreet, and sad, like the persistent and

gentle voices that speak of the past in the silence of dreams.

He felt a great emptiness in his heart. It seemed to him that there was

within his breast a great space without any light, where his thoughts

wandered forlornly, unable to escape, unable to rest, unable to die,

to vanish--and to relieve him from the fearful oppression of their

existence. Speech, action, anger, forgiveness, all appeared to him alike

useless and vain, appeared to him unsatisfactory, not worth the effort

of hand or brain that was needed to give them effect. He could not see

why he should not remain standing there, without ever doing anything, to

the end of time. He felt something, something like a heavy chain, that

held him there. This wouldn’t do. He backed away a little from Willems

and Aissa, leaving them close together, then stopped and looked at both.

The man and the woman appeared to him much further than they really

were. He had made only about three steps backward, but he believed for

a moment that another step would take him out of earshot for ever. They

appeared to him slightly under life size, and with a great cleanness of

outlines, like figures carved with great precision of detail and highly

finished by a skilful hand. He pulled himself together. The strong

consciousness of his own personality came back to him. He had a notion

of surveying them from a great and inaccessible height.

He said slowly: “You have been possessed of a devil.”

“Yes,” answered Willems gloomily, and looking at Aissa. “Isn’t it

pretty?”

“I’ve heard this kind of talk before,” said Lingard, in a scornful tone;

then paused, and went on steadily after a while: “I regret nothing. I

picked you up by the waterside, like a starving cat--by God. I regret

nothing; nothing that I have done. Abdulla--twenty others--no doubt

Hudig himself, were after me. That’s business--for them. But that you

should . . . Money belongs to him who picks it up and is strong enough

to keep it--but this thing was different. It was part of my life. . . .

I am an old fool.”

He was. The breath of his words, of the very words he spoke, fanned

the spark of divine folly in his breast, the spark that made him--the

hard-headed, heavy-handed adventurer--stand out from the crowd, from the

sordid, from the joyous, unscrupulous, and noisy crowd of men that were

so much like himself.

Willems said hurriedly: “It wasn’t me. The evil was not in me, Captain

Lingard.”

“And where else confound you! Where else?” interrupted Lingard, raising

his voice. “Did you ever see me cheat and lie and steal? Tell me that.

Did you? Hey? I wonder where in perdition you came from when I found you

under my feet. . . . No matter. You will do no more harm.”

Willems moved nearer, gazing upon him anxiously. Lingard went on with

distinct deliberation--

“What did you expect when you asked me to see you? What? You know me. I

am Lingard. You lived with me. You’ve heard men speak. You knew what you

had done. Well! What did you expect?”

“How can I know?” groaned Willems, wringing his hands; “I was alone in

that infernal savage crowd. I was delivered into their hands. After the

thing was done, I felt so lost and weak that I would have called the

devil himself to my aid if it had been any good--if he hadn’t put in

all his work already. In the whole world there was only one man that had

ever cared for me. Only one white man. You! Hate is better than being

alone! Death is better! I expected . . . anything. Something to expect.

Something to take me out of this. Out of her sight!”

He laughed. His laugh seemed to be torn out from him against his will,

seemed to be brought violently on the surface from under his bitterness,

his self-contempt, from under his despairing wonder at his own nature.

“When I think that when I first knew her it seemed to me that my whole

life wouldn’t be enough to . . . And now when I look at her! She did

it all. I must have been mad. I was mad. Every time I look at her I

remember my madness. It frightens me. . . . And when I think that of

all my life, of all my past, of all my future, of my intelligence, of my

work, there is nothing left but she, the cause of my ruin, and you whom

I have mortally offended . . .”

He hid his face for a moment in his hands, and when he took them away

he had lost the appearance of comparative calm and gave way to a wild

distress.

“Captain Lingard . . . anything . . . a deserted island . . . anywhere

. . . I promise . . .”

“Shut up!” shouted Lingard, roughly.

He became dumb, suddenly, completely.

The wan light of the clouded morning retired slowly from the courtyard,

from the clearings, from the river, as if it had gone unwillingly to

hide in the enigmatical solitudes of the gloomy and silent forests. The

clouds over their heads thickened into a low vault of uniform blackness.

The air was still and inexpressibly oppressive. Lingard unbuttoned his

jacket, flung it wide open and, inclining his body sideways a little,

wiped his forehead with his hand, which he jerked sharply afterwards.

Then he looked at Willems and said--

“No promise of yours is any good to me. I am going to take your conduct

into my own hands. Pay attention to what I am going to say. You are my

prisoner.”

Willems’ head moved imperceptibly; then he became rigid and still. He

seemed not to breathe.

“You shall stay here,” continued Lingard, with sombre deliberation. “You

are not fit to go amongst people. Who could suspect, who could guess,

who could imagine what’s in you? I couldn’t! You are my mistake. I shall

hide you here. If I let you out you would go amongst unsuspecting men,

and lie, and steal, and cheat for a little money or for some woman. I

don’t care about shooting you. It would be the safest way though. But

I won’t. Do not expect me to forgive you. To forgive one must have been

angry and become contemptuous, and there is nothing in me now--no anger,

no contempt, no disappointment. To me you are not Willems, the man I

befriended and helped through thick and thin, and thought much of . . .

You are not a human being that may be destroyed or forgiven. You are a

bitter thought, a something without a body and that must be hidden . . .

You are my shame.”

He ceased and looked slowly round. How dark it was! It seemed to him

that the light was dying prematurely out of the world and that the air

was already dead.

“Of course,” he went on, “I shall see to it that you don’t starve.”

“You don’t mean to say that I must live here, Captain Lingard?” said

Willems, in a kind of mechanical voice without any inflections.

“Did you ever hear me say something I did not mean?” asked Lingard. “You

said you didn’t want to die here--well, you must live . . . Unless you

change your mind,” he added, as if in involuntary afterthought.

He looked at Willems narrowly, then shook his head.

“You are alone,” he went on. “Nothing can help you. Nobody will. You are

neither white nor brown. You have no colour as you have no heart. Your

accomplices have abandoned you to me because I am still somebody to be

reckoned with. You are alone but for that woman there. You say you did

this for her. Well, you have her.”

Willems mumbled something, and then suddenly caught his hair with both

his hands and remained standing so. Aissa, who had been looking at him,

turned to Lingard.

“What did you say, Rajah Laut?” she cried.

There was a slight stir amongst the filmy threads of her disordered

hair, the bushes by the river sides trembled, the big tree nodded

precipitately over them with an abrupt rustle, as if waking with a

start from a troubled sleep--and the breath of hot breeze passed, light,

rapid, and scorching, under the clouds that whirled round, unbroken but

undulating, like a restless phantom of a sombre sea.

Lingard looked at her pityingly before he said--

“I have told him that he must live here all his life . . . and with

you.”

The sun seemed to have gone out at last like a flickering light away up

beyond the clouds, and in the stifling gloom of the courtyard the three

figures stood colourless and shadowy, as if surrounded by a black and

superheated mist. Aissa looked at Willems, who remained still, as though

he had been changed into stone in the very act of tearing his hair. Then

she turned her head towards Lingard and shouted--

“You lie! You lie! . . . White man. Like you all do. You . . . whom

Abdulla made small. You lie!”

Her words rang out shrill and venomous with her secret scorn, with her

overpowering desire to wound regardless of consequences; in her woman’s

reckless desire to cause suffering at any cost, to cause it by the sound

of her own voice--by her own voice, that would carry the poison of her

thought into the hated heart.

Willems let his hands fall, and began to mumble again. Lingard turned

his ear towards him instinctively, caught something that sounded like

“Very well”--then some more mumbling--then a sigh.

“As far as the rest of the world is concerned,” said Lingard, after

waiting for awhile in an attentive attitude, “your life is finished.

Nobody will be able to throw any of your villainies in my teeth;

nobody will be able to point at you and say, ‘Here goes a scoundrel of

Lingard’s up-bringing.’ You are buried here.”

“And you think that I will stay . . . that I will submit?” exclaimed

Willems, as if he had suddenly recovered the power of speech.

“You needn’t stay here--on this spot,” said Lingard, drily. “There are

the forests--and here is the river. You may swim. Fifteen miles up, or

forty down. At one end you will meet Almayer, at the other the sea. Take

your choice.”

He burst into a short, joyless laugh, then added with severe gravity--

“There is also another way.”

“If you want to drive my soul into damnation by trying to drive me to

suicide you will not succeed,” said Willems in wild excitement. “I will

live. I shall repent. I may escape. . . . Take that woman away--she is

sin.”

A hooked dart of fire tore in two the darkness of the distant horizon

and lit up the gloom of the earth with a dazzling and ghastly flame.

Then the thunder was heard far away, like an incredibly enormous voice

muttering menaces.

Lingard said--

“I don’t care what happens, but I may tell you that without that woman

your life is not worth much--not twopence. There is a fellow here who

. . . and Abdulla himself wouldn’t stand on any ceremony. Think of that!

And then she won’t go.”

He began, even while he spoke, to walk slowly down towards the little

gate. He didn’t look, but he felt as sure that Willems was following

him as if he had been leading him by a string. Directly he had passed

through the wicket-gate into the big courtyard he heard a voice, behind

his back, saying--

“I think she was right. I ought to have shot you. I couldn’t have been

worse off.”

“Time yet,” answered Lingard, without stopping or looking back. “But,

you see, you can’t. There is not even that in you.”

“Don’t provoke me, Captain Lingard,” cried Willems.

Lingard turned round sharply. Willems and Aissa stopped. Another forked

flash of lightning split up the clouds overhead, and threw upon their

faces a sudden burst of light--a blaze violent, sinister and fleeting;

and in the same instant they were deafened by a near, single crash of

thunder, which was followed by a rushing noise, like a frightened sigh

of the startled earth.

“Provoke you!” said the old adventurer, as soon as he could make himself

heard. “Provoke you! Hey! What’s there in you to provoke? What do I

care?”

“It is easy to speak like that when you know that in the whole world--in

the whole world--I have no friend,” said Willems.

“Whose fault?” said Lingard, sharply.

Their voices, after the deep and tremendous noise, sounded to them very

unsatisfactory--thin and frail, like the voices of pigmies--and they

became suddenly silent, as if on that account. From up the courtyard

Lingard’s boatmen came down and passed them, keeping step in a single

file, their paddles on shoulder, and holding their heads straight with

their eyes fixed on the river. Ali, who was walking last, stopped before

Lingard, very stiff and upright. He said--

“That one-eyed Babalatchi is gone, with all his women. He took

everything. All the pots and boxes. Big. Heavy. Three boxes.”

He grinned as if the thing had been amusing, then added with an

appearance of anxious concern, “Rain coming.”

“We return,” said Lingard. “Make ready.”

“Aye, aye, sir!” ejaculated Ali with precision, and moved on. He had

been quartermaster with Lingard before making up his mind to stay in

Sambir as Almayer’s head man. He strutted towards the landing-place

thinking proudly that he was not like those other ignorant boatmen, and

knew how to answer properly the very greatest of white captains.

“You have misunderstood me from the first, Captain Lingard,” said

Willems.

“Have I? It’s all right, as long as there is no mistake about my

meaning,” answered Lingard, strolling slowly to the landing-place.

Willems followed him, and Aissa followed Willems.

Two hands were extended to help Lingard in embarking. He stepped

cautiously and heavily into the long and narrow canoe, and sat in the

canvas folding-chair that had been placed in the middle. He leaned back

and turned his head to the two figures that stood on the bank a

little above him. Aissa’s eyes were fastened on his face in a visible

impatience to see him gone. Willems’ look went straight above the canoe,

straight at the forest on the other side of the river.

“All right, Ali,” said Lingard, in a low voice.

A slight stir animated the faces, and a faint murmur ran along the

line of paddlers. The foremost man pushed with the point of his paddle,

canted the fore end out of the dead water into the current; and the

canoe fell rapidly off before the rush of brown water, the stern rubbing

gently against the low bank.

“We shall meet again, Captain Lingard!” cried Willems, in an unsteady

voice.

“Never!” said Lingard, turning half round in his chair to look at

Willems. His fierce red eyes glittered remorselessly over the high back

of his seat.

“Must cross the river. Water less quick over there,” said Ali.

He pushed in his turn now with all his strength, throwing his body

recklessly right out over the stern. Then he recovered himself just in

time into the squatting attitude of a monkey perched on a high shelf,

and shouted: “Dayong!”

The paddles struck the water together. The canoe darted forward and went

on steadily crossing the river with a sideways motion made up of its own

speed and the downward drift of the current.

Lingard watched the shore astern. The woman shook her hand at him, and

then squatted at the feet of the man who stood motionless. After a while

she got up and stood beside him, reaching up to his head--and Lingard

saw then that she had wetted some part of her covering and was trying to

wash the dried blood off the man’s immovable face, which did not seem

to know anything about it. Lingard turned away and threw himself back in

his chair, stretching his legs out with a sigh of fatigue. His head

fell forward; and under his red face the white beard lay fan-like on his

breast, the ends of fine long hairs all astir in the faint draught

made by the rapid motion of the craft that carried him away from his

prisoner--from the only thing in his life he wished to hide.

In its course across the river the canoe came into the line of Willems’

sight and his eyes caught the image, followed it eagerly as it glided,

small but distinct, on the dark background of the forest. He could see

plainly the figure of the man sitting in the middle. All his life he had

felt that man behind his back, a reassuring presence ready with help,

with commendation, with advice; friendly in reproof, enthusiastic

in approbation; a man inspiring confidence by his strength, by his

fearlessness, by the very weakness of his simple heart. And now that man

was going away. He must call him back.

He shouted, and his words, which he wanted to throw across the river,

seemed to fall helplessly at his feet. Aissa put her hand on his arm in

a restraining attempt, but he shook it off. He wanted to call back his

very life that was going away from him. He shouted again--and this time

he did not even hear himself. No use. He would never return. And he

stood in sullen silence looking at the white figure over there, lying

back in the chair in the middle of the boat; a figure that struck him

suddenly as very terrible, heartless and astonishing, with its unnatural

appearance of running over the water in an attitude of languid repose.

For a time nothing on earth stirred, seemingly, but the canoe, which

glided up-stream with a motion so even and smooth that it did not convey

any sense of movement. Overhead, the massed clouds appeared solid and

steady as if held there in a powerful grip, but on their uneven surface

there was a continuous and trembling glimmer, a faint reflection of the

distant lightning from the thunderstorm that had broken already on the

coast and was working its way up the river with low and angry growls.

Willems looked on, as motionless as everything round him and above him.

Only his eyes seemed to live, as they followed the canoe on its course

that carried it away from him, steadily, unhesitatingly, finally, as if

it were going, not up the great river into the momentous excitement of

Sambir, but straight into the past, into the past crowded yet empty,

like an old cemetery full of neglected graves, where lie dead hopes that

never return.

From time to time he felt on his face the passing, warm touch of an

immense breath coming from beyond the forest, like the short panting of

an oppressed world. Then the heavy air round him was pierced by a sharp

gust of wind, bringing with it the fresh, damp feel of the falling rain;

and all the innumerable tree-tops of the forests swayed to the left

and sprang back again in a tumultuous balancing of nodding branches and

shuddering leaves. A light frown ran over the river, the clouds stirred

slowly, changing their aspect but not their place, as if they had

turned ponderously over; and when the sudden movement had died out in

a quickened tremor of the slenderest twigs, there was a short period

of formidable immobility above and below, during which the voice of the

thunder was heard, speaking in a sustained, emphatic and vibrating

roll, with violent louder bursts of crashing sound, like a wrathful and

threatening discourse of an angry god. For a moment it died out, and

then another gust of wind passed, driving before it a white mist which

filled the space with a cloud of waterdust that hid suddenly from

Willems the canoe, the forests, the river itself; that woke him up from

his numbness in a forlorn shiver, that made him look round despairingly

to see nothing but the whirling drift of rain spray before the

freshening breeze, while through it the heavy big drops fell about him

with sonorous and rapid beats upon the dry earth. He made a few hurried

steps up the courtyard and was arrested by an immense sheet of water

that fell all at once on him, fell sudden and overwhelming from the

clouds, cutting his respiration, streaming over his head, clinging to

him, running down his body, off his arms, off his legs. He stood gasping

while the water beat him in a vertical downpour, drove on him slanting

in squalls, and he felt the drops striking him from above, from

everywhere; drops thick, pressed and dashing at him as if flung from all

sides by a mob of infuriated hands. From under his feet a great vapour

of broken water floated up, he felt the ground become soft--melt under

him--and saw the water spring out from the dry earth to meet the water

that fell from the sombre heaven. An insane dread took possession of

him, the dread of all that water around him, of the water that ran down

the courtyard towards him, of the water that pressed him on every side,

of the slanting water that drove across his face in wavering sheets

which gleamed pale red with the flicker of lightning streaming through

them, as if fire and water were falling together, monstrously mixed,

upon the stunned earth.

He wanted to run away, but when he moved it was to slide about painfully

and slowly upon that earth which had become mud so suddenly under his

feet. He fought his way up the courtyard like a man pushing through

a crowd, his head down, one shoulder forward, stopping often, and

sometimes carried back a pace or two in the rush of water which his

heart was not stout enough to face. Aissa followed him step by step,

stopping when he stopped, recoiling with him, moving forward with him

in his toilsome way up the slippery declivity of the courtyard, of that

courtyard, from which everything seemed to have been swept away by the

first rush of the mighty downpour. They could see nothing. The tree, the

bushes, the house, and the fences--all had disappeared in the thickness

of the falling rain. Their hair stuck, streaming, to their heads; their

clothing clung to them, beaten close to their bodies; water ran off

them, off their heads over their shoulders. They moved, patient,

upright, slow and dark, in the gleam clear or fiery of the falling

drops, under the roll of unceasing thunder, like two wandering ghosts

of the drowned that, condemned to haunt the water for ever, had come up

from the river to look at the world under a deluge.

On the left the tree seemed to step out to meet them, appearing vaguely,

high, motionless and patient; with a rustling plaint of its innumerable

leaves through which every drop of water tore its separate way with

cruel haste. And then, to the right, the house surged up in the

mist, very black, and clamorous with the quick patter of rain on its

high-pitched roof above the steady splash of the water running off the

eaves. Down the plankway leading to the door flowed a thin and pellucid

stream, and when Willems began his ascent it broke over his foot as

if he were going up a steep ravine in the bed of a rapid and shallow

torrent. Behind his heels two streaming smudges of mud stained for an

instant the purity of the rushing water, and then he splashed his way up

with a spurt and stood on the bamboo platform before the open door under

the shelter of the overhanging eaves--under shelter at last!

A low moan ending in a broken and plaintive mutter arrested Willems on

the threshold. He peered round in the half-light under the roof and saw

the old woman crouching close to the wall in a shapeless heap, and while

he looked he felt a touch of two arms on his shoulders. Aissa! He had

forgotten her. He turned, and she clasped him round the neck instantly,

pressing close to him as if afraid of violence or escape. He stiffened

himself in repulsion, in horror, in the mysterious revolt of his heart;

while she clung to him--clung to him as if he were a refuge from misery,

from storm, from weariness, from fear, from despair; and it was on the

part of that being an embrace terrible, enraged and mournful, in which

all her strength went out to make him captive, to hold him for ever.

He said nothing. He looked into her eyes while he struggled with her

fingers about the nape of his neck, and suddenly he tore her hands

apart, holding her arms up in a strong grip of her wrists, and bending

his swollen face close over hers, he said--

“It is all your doing. You . . .”

She did not understand him--not a word. He spoke in the language of his

people--of his people that know no mercy and no shame. And he was angry.

Alas! he was always angry now, and always speaking words that she could

not understand. She stood in silence, looking at him through her patient

eyes, while he shook her arms a little and then flung them down.

“Don’t follow me!” he shouted. “I want to be alone--I mean to be left

alone!”

He went in, leaving the door open.

She did not move. What need to understand the words when they are spoken

in such a voice? In that voice which did not seem to be his voice--his

voice when he spoke by the brook, when he was never angry and always

smiling! Her eyes were fixed upon the dark doorway, but her hands

strayed mechanically upwards; she took up all her hair, and, inclining

her head slightly over her shoulder, wrung out the long black tresses,

twisting them persistently, while she stood, sad and absorbed, like one

listening to an inward voice--the voice of bitter, of unavailing

regret. The thunder had ceased, the wind had died out, and the rain fell

perpendicular and steady through a great pale clearness--the light of

remote sun coming victorious from amongst the dissolving blackness of

the clouds. She stood near the doorway. He was there--alone in the gloom

of the dwelling. He was there. He spoke not. What was in his mind now?

What fear? What desire? Not the desire of her as in the days when he

used to smile . . . How could she know? . . .

A sigh coming from the bottom of her heart, flew out into the world

through her parted lips. A sigh faint, profound, and broken; a sigh

full of pain and fear, like the sigh of those who are about to face the

unknown: to face it in loneliness, in doubt, and without hope. She let

go her hair, that fell scattered over her shoulders like a funeral veil,

and she sank down suddenly by the door. Her hands clasped her ankles;

she rested her head on her drawn-up knees, and remained still, very

still, under the streaming mourning of her hair. She was thinking of

him; of the days by the brook; she was thinking of all that had been

their love--and she sat in the abandoned posture of those who sit

weeping by the dead, of those who watch and mourn over a corpse.