CHAPTER ONE
Almayer propped, alone on the verandah of his house, with both his
elbows on the table, and holding his head between his hands, stared
before him, away over the stretch of sprouting young grass in his
courtyard, and over the short jetty with its cluster of small canoes,
amongst which his big whale-boat floated high, like a white mother
of all that dark and aquatic brood. He stared on the river, past the
schooner anchored in mid-stream, past the forests of the left bank; he
stared through and past the illusion of the material world.
The sun was sinking. Under the sky was stretched a network of white
threads, a network fine and close-meshed, where here and there were
caught thicker white vapours of globular shape; and to the eastward,
above the ragged barrier of the forests, surged the summits of a chain
of great clouds, growing bigger slowly, in imperceptible motion, as if
careful not to disturb the glowing stillness of the earth and of the
sky. Abreast of the house the river was empty but for the motionless
schooner. Higher up, a solitary log came out from the bend above and
went on drifting slowly down the straight reach: a dead and wandering
tree going out to its grave in the sea, between two ranks of trees
motionless and living.
And Almayer sat, his face in his hands, looking on and hating all this:
the muddy river; the faded blue of the sky; the black log passing by on
its first and last voyage; the green sea of leaves--the sea that glowed
shimmered, and stirred above the uniform and impenetrable gloom of the
forests--the joyous sea of living green powdered with the brilliant dust
of oblique sunrays.
He hated all this; he begrudged every day--every minute--of his life
spent amongst all these things; he begrudged it bitterly, angrily, with
enraged and immense regret, like a miser compelled to give up some of
his treasure to a near relation. And yet all this was very precious to
him. It was the present sign of a splendid future.
He pushed the table away impatiently, got up, made a few steps
aimlessly, then stood by the balustrade and again looked at the
river--at that river which would have been the instrument for the making
of his fortune if . . . if . . .
“What an abominable brute!” he said.
He was alone, but he spoke aloud, as one is apt to do under the impulse
of a strong, of an overmastering thought.
“What a brute!” he muttered again.
The river was dark now, and the schooner lay on it, a black, a lonely,
and a graceful form, with the slender masts darting upwards from it
in two frail and raking lines. The shadows of the evening crept up the
trees, crept up from bough to bough, till at last the long sunbeams
coursing from the western horizon skimmed lightly over the topmost
branches, then flew upwards amongst the piled-up clouds, giving them
a sombre and fiery aspect in the last flush of light. And suddenly the
light disappeared as if lost in the immensity of the great, blue,
and empty hollow overhead. The sun had set: and the forests became
a straight wall of formless blackness. Above them, on the edge of
lingering clouds, a single star glimmered fitfully, obscured now and
then by the rapid flight of high and invisible vapours.
Almayer fought with the uneasiness within his breast. He heard Ali,
who moved behind him preparing his evening meal, and he listened with
strange attention to the sounds the man made--to the short, dry bang
of the plate put upon the table, to the clink of glass and the metallic
rattle of knife and fork. The man went away. Now he was coming back. He
would speak directly; and Almayer, notwithstanding the absorbing gravity
of his thoughts, listened for the sound of expected words. He heard
them, spoken in English with painstaking distinctness.
“Ready, sir!”
“All right,” said Almayer, curtly. He did not move. He remained pensive,
with his back to the table upon which stood the lighted lamp brought
by Ali. He was thinking: “Where was Lingard now? Halfway down the
river probably, in Abdulla’s ship. He would be back in about three
days--perhaps less. And then? Then the schooner would have to be got out
of the river, and when that craft was gone they--he and Lingard--would
remain here; alone with the constant thought of that other man, that
other man living near them! What an extraordinary idea to keep him
there for ever. For ever! What did that mean--for ever? Perhaps a year,
perhaps ten years. Preposterous! Keep him there ten years--or may be
twenty! The fellow was capable of living more than twenty years. And for
all that time he would have to be watched, fed, looked after. There was
nobody but Lingard to have such notions. Twenty years! Why, no! In less
than ten years their fortune would be made and they would leave this
place, first for Batavia--yes, Batavia--and then for Europe. England,
no doubt. Lingard would want to go to England. And would they leave that
man here? How would that fellow look in ten years? Very old probably.
Well, devil take him. Nina would be fifteen. She would be rich and very
pretty and he himself would not be so old then. . . .”
Almayer smiled into the night.
. . . Yes, rich! Why! Of course! Captain Lingard was a resourceful man,
and he had plenty of money even now. They were rich already; but not
enough. Decidedly not enough. Money brings money. That gold business was
good. Famous! Captain Lingard was a remarkable man. He said the gold was
there--and it was there. Lingard knew what he was talking about. But he
had queer ideas. For instance, about Willems. Now what did he want to
keep him alive for? Why?
“That scoundrel,” muttered Almayer again.
“Makan Tuan!” ejaculated Ali suddenly, very loud in a pressing tone.
Almayer walked to the table, sat down, and his anxious visage dropped
from above into the light thrown down by the lamp-shade. He helped
himself absently, and began to eat in great mouthfuls.
. . . Undoubtedly, Lingard was the man to stick to! The man undismayed,
masterful and ready. How quickly he had planned a new future when
Willems’ treachery destroyed their established position in Sambir! And
the position even now was not so bad. What an immense prestige that
Lingard had with all those people--Arabs, Malays and all. Ah, it was
good to be able to call a man like that father. Fine! Wonder how much
money really the old fellow had. People talked--they exaggerated surely,
but if he had only half of what they said . . .
He drank, throwing his head up, and fell to again.
. . . Now, if that Willems had known how to play his cards well, had he
stuck to the old fellow he would have been in his position, he would
be now married to Lingard’s adopted daughter with his future
assured--splendid . . .
“The beast!” growled Almayer, between two mouthfuls.
Ali stood rigidly straight with an uninterested face, his gaze lost in
the night which pressed round the small circle of light that shone on
the table, on the glass, on the bottle, and on Almayer’s head as he
leaned over his plate moving his jaws.
. . . A famous man Lingard--yet you never knew what he would do next.
It was notorious that he had shot a white man once for less than Willems
had done. For less? . . . Why, for nothing, so to speak! It was not even
his own quarrel. It was about some Malay returning from pilgrimage
with wife and children. Kidnapped, or robbed, or something. A stupid
story--an old story. And now he goes to see that Willems and--nothing.
Comes back talking big about his prisoner; but after all he said very
little. What did that Willems tell him? What passed between them?
The old fellow must have had something in his mind when he let that
scoundrel off. And Joanna! She would get round the old fellow. Sure.
Then he would forgive perhaps. Impossible. But at any rate he would
waste a lot of money on them. The old man was tenacious in his hates,
but also in his affections. He had known that beast Willems from a boy.
They would make it up in a year or so. Everything is possible: why did
he not rush off at first and kill the brute? That would have been more
like Lingard. . . .
Almayer laid down his spoon suddenly, and pushing his plate away, threw
himself back in the chair.
. . . Unsafe. Decidedly unsafe. He had no mind to share Lingard’s
money with anybody. Lingard’s money was Nina’s money in a sense. And
if Willems managed to become friendly with the old man it would be
dangerous for him--Almayer. Such an unscrupulous scoundrel! He would
oust him from his position. He would lie and slander. Everything would
be lost. Lost. Poor Nina. What would become of her? Poor child. For her
sake he must remove that Willems. Must. But how? Lingard wanted to be
obeyed. Impossible to kill Willems. Lingard might be angry. Incredible,
but so it was. He might . . .
A wave of heat passed through Almayer’s body, flushed his face, and
broke out of him in copious perspiration. He wriggled in his chair, and
pressed his hands together under the table. What an awful prospect!
He fancied he could see Lingard and Willems reconciled and going away
arm-in-arm, leaving him alone in this God-forsaken hole--in Sambir--in
this deadly swamp! And all his sacrifices, the sacrifice of his
independence, of his best years, his surrender to Lingard’s fancies and
caprices, would go for nothing! Horrible! Then he thought of his
little daughter--his daughter!--and the ghastliness of his supposition
overpowered him. He had a deep emotion, a sudden emotion that made him
feel quite faint at the idea of that young life spoiled before it had
fairly begun. His dear child’s life! Lying back in his chair he covered
his face with both his hands.
Ali glanced down at him and said, unconcernedly--“Master finish?”
Almayer was lost in the immensity of his commiseration for himself, for
his daughter, who was--perhaps--not going to be the richest woman in
the world--notwithstanding Lingard’s promises. He did not understand the
other’s question, and muttered through his fingers in a doleful tone--
“What did you say? What? Finish what?”
“Clear up meza,” explained Ali.
“Clear up!” burst out Almayer, with incomprehensible exasperation.
“Devil take you and the table. Stupid! Chatterer! Chelakka! Get out!”
He leaned forward, glaring at his head man, then sank back in his seat
with his arms hanging straight down on each side of the chair. And he
sat motionless in a meditation so concentrated and so absorbing, with
all his power of thought so deep within himself, that all expression
disappeared from his face in an aspect of staring vacancy.
Ali was clearing the table. He dropped negligently the tumbler into the
greasy dish, flung there the spoon and fork, then slipped in the plate
with a push amongst the remnants of food. He took up the dish, tucked up
the bottle under his armpit, and went off.
“My hammock!” shouted Almayer after him.
“Ada! I come soon,” answered Ali from the doorway in an offended tone,
looking back over his shoulder. . . . How could he clear the table
and hang the hammock at the same time. Ya-wa! Those white men were all
alike. Wanted everything done at once. Like children . . .
The indistinct murmur of his criticism went away, faded and died out
together with the soft footfall of his bare feet in the dark passage.
For some time Almayer did not move. His thoughts were busy at work
shaping a momentous resolution, and in the perfect silence of the house
he believed that he could hear the noise of the operation as if the work
had been done with a hammer. He certainly felt a thumping of strokes,
faint, profound, and startling, somewhere low down in his breast; and
he was aware of a sound of dull knocking, abrupt and rapid, in his ears.
Now and then he held his breath, unconsciously, too long, and had to
relieve himself by a deep expiration that whistled dully through his
pursed lips. The lamp standing on the far side of the table threw a
section of a lighted circle on the floor, where his out-stretched legs
stuck out from under the table with feet rigid and turned up like the
feet of a corpse; and his set face with fixed eyes would have been also
like the face of the dead, but for its vacant yet conscious aspect;
the hard, the stupid, the stony aspect of one not dead, but only buried
under the dust, ashes, and corruption of personal thoughts, of base
fears, of selfish desires.
“I will do it!”
Not till he heard his own voice did he know that he had spoken. It
startled him. He stood up. The knuckles of his hand, somewhat behind
him, were resting on the edge of the table as he remained still with one
foot advanced, his lips a little open, and thought: It would not do to
fool about with Lingard. But I must risk it. It’s the only way I can
see. I must tell her. She has some little sense. I wish they were a
thousand miles off already. A hundred thousand miles. I do. And if
it fails. And she blabs out then to Lingard? She seemed a fool. No;
probably they will get away. And if they did, would Lingard believe me?
Yes. I never lied to him. He would believe. I don’t know . . . Perhaps
he won’t. . . . “I must do it. Must!” he argued aloud to himself.
For a long time he stood still, looking before him with an intense gaze,
a gaze rapt and immobile, that seemed to watch the minute quivering of a
delicate balance, coming to a rest.
To the left of him, in the whitewashed wall of the house that formed
the back of the verandah, there was a closed door. Black letters were
painted on it proclaiming the fact that behind that door there was the
office of Lingard & Co. The interior had been furnished by Lingard when
he had built the house for his adopted daughter and her husband, and it
had been furnished with reckless prodigality. There was an office desk,
a revolving chair, bookshelves, a safe: all to humour the weakness of
Almayer, who thought all those paraphernalia necessary to successful
trading. Lingard had laughed, but had taken immense trouble to get the
things. It pleased him to make his protege, his adopted son-in-law,
happy. It had been the sensation of Sambir some five years ago. While
the things were being landed, the whole settlement literally lived on
the river bank in front of the Rajah Laut’s house, to look, to wonder,
to admire. . . . What a big meza, with many boxes fitted all over it and
under it! What did the white man do with such a table? And look, look, O
Brothers! There is a green square box, with a gold plate on it, a box
so heavy that those twenty men cannot drag it up the bank. Let us go,
brothers, and help pull at the ropes, and perchance we may see what’s
inside. Treasure, no doubt. Gold is heavy and hard to hold, O Brothers!
Let us go and earn a recompense from the fierce Rajah of the Sea who
shouts over there, with a red face. See! There is a man carrying a pile
of books from the boat! What a number of books. What were they for?
. . . And an old invalided jurumudi, who had travelled over many seas and
had heard holy men speak in far-off countries, explained to a small knot
of unsophisticated citizens of Sambir that those books were books of
magic--of magic that guides the white men’s ships over the seas, that
gives them their wicked wisdom and their strength; of magic that makes
them great, powerful, and irresistible while they live, and--praise be
to Allah!--the victims of Satan, the slaves of Jehannum when they die.
And when he saw the room furnished, Almayer had felt proud. In his
exultation of an empty-headed quill-driver, he thought himself, by the
virtue of that furniture, at the head of a serious business. He had
sold himself to Lingard for these things--married the Malay girl of his
adoption for the reward of these things and of the great wealth that
must necessarily follow upon conscientious book-keeping. He found out
very soon that trade in Sambir meant something entirely different. He
could not guide Patalolo, control the irrepressible old Sahamin, or
restrain the youthful vagaries of the fierce Bahassoen with pen, ink,
and paper. He found no successful magic in the blank pages of his
ledgers; and gradually he lost his old point of view in the saner
appreciation of his situation. The room known as the office became
neglected then like a temple of an exploded superstition. At first, when
his wife reverted to her original savagery, Almayer, now and again, had
sought refuge from her there; but after their child began to speak, to
know him, he became braver, for he found courage and consolation in his
unreasoning and fierce affection for his daughter--in the impenetrable
mantle of selfishness he wrapped round both their lives: round himself,
and that young life that was also his.
When Lingard ordered him to receive Joanna into his house, he had a
truckle bed put into the office--the only room he could spare. The big
office desk was pushed on one side, and Joanna came with her little
shabby trunk and with her child and took possession in her dreamy,
slack, half-asleep way; took possession of the dust, dirt, and squalor,
where she appeared naturally at home, where she dragged a melancholy and
dull existence; an existence made up of sad remorse and frightened hope,
amongst the hopeless disorder--the senseless and vain decay of all these
emblems of civilized commerce. Bits of white stuff; rags yellow, pink,
blue: rags limp, brilliant and soiled, trailed on the floor, lay on the
desk amongst the sombre covers of books soiled, grimy, but stiff-backed,
in virtue, perhaps, of their European origin. The biggest set of
bookshelves was partly hidden by a petticoat, the waistband of which was
caught upon the back of a slender book pulled a little out of the row so
as to make an improvised clothespeg. The folding canvas bedstead stood
nearly in the middle of the room, stood anyhow, parallel to no wall, as
if it had been, in the process of transportation to some remote place,
dropped casually there by tired bearers. And on the tumbled blankets
that lay in a disordered heap on its edge, Joanna sat almost all day
with her stockingless feet upon one of the bed pillows that were somehow
always kicking about the floor. She sat there, vaguely tormented
at times by the thought of her absent husband, but most of the time
thinking tearfully of nothing at all, looking with swimming eyes at
her little son--at the big-headed, pasty-faced, and sickly Louis
Willems--who rolled a glass inkstand, solid with dried ink, about the
floor, and tottered after it with the portentous gravity of demeanour
and absolute absorption by the business in hand that characterize the
pursuits of early childhood. Through the half-open shutter a ray of
sunlight, a ray merciless and crude, came into the room, beat in the
early morning upon the safe in the far-off corner, then, travelling
against the sun, cut at midday the big desk in two with its solid and
clean-edged brilliance; with its hot brilliance in which a swarm of
flies hovered in dancing flight over some dirty plate forgotten there
amongst yellow papers for many a day. And towards the evening the
cynical ray seemed to cling to the ragged petticoat, lingered on it with
wicked enjoyment of that misery it had exposed all day; lingered on the
corner of the dusty bookshelf, in a red glow intense and mocking, till
it was suddenly snatched by the setting sun out of the way of the coming
night. And the night entered the room. The night abrupt, impenetrable
and all-filling with its flood of darkness; the night cool and merciful;
the blind night that saw nothing, but could hear the fretful whimpering
of the child, the creak of the bedstead, Joanna’s deep sighs as she
turned over, sleepless, in the confused conviction of her wickedness,
thinking of that man masterful, fair-headed, and strong--a man hard
perhaps, but her husband; her clever and handsome husband to whom she
had acted so cruelly on the advice of bad people, if her own people; and
of her poor, dear, deceived mother.
To Almayer, Joanna’s presence was a constant worry, a worry unobtrusive
yet intolerable; a constant, but mostly mute, warning of possible
danger. In view of the absurd softness of Lingard’s heart, every one in
whom Lingard manifested the slightest interest was to Almayer a natural
enemy. He was quite alive to that feeling, and in the intimacy of the
secret intercourse with his inner self had often congratulated himself
upon his own wide-awake comprehension of his position. In that way, and
impelled by that motive, Almayer had hated many and various persons at
various times. But he never had hated and feared anybody so much as he
did hate and fear Willems. Even after Willems’ treachery, which seemed
to remove him beyond the pale of all human sympathy, Almayer mistrusted
the situation and groaned in spirit every time he caught sight of
Joanna.
He saw her very seldom in the daytime. But in the short and opal-tinted
twilights, or in the azure dusk of starry evenings, he often saw, before
he slept, the slender and tall figure trailing to and fro the ragged
tail of its white gown over the dried mud of the riverside in front of
the house. Once or twice when he sat late on the verandah, with his feet
upon the deal table on a level with the lamp, reading the seven months’
old copy of the North China Herald, brought by Lingard, he heard the
stairs creak, and, looking round the paper, he saw her frail and meagre
form rise step by step and toil across the verandah, carrying with
difficulty the big, fat child, whose head, lying on the mother’s bony
shoulder, seemed of the same size as Joanna’s own. Several times she had
assailed him with tearful clamour or mad entreaties: asking about her
husband, wanting to know where he was, when he would be back; and ending
every such outburst with despairing and incoherent self-reproaches that
were absolutely incomprehensible to Almayer. On one or two occasions she
had overwhelmed her host with vituperative abuse, making him responsible
for her husband’s absence. Those scenes, begun without any warning,
ended abruptly in a sobbing flight and a bang of the door; stirred the
house with a sudden, a fierce, and an evanescent disturbance; like those
inexplicable whirlwinds that rise, run, and vanish without apparent
cause upon the sun-scorched dead level of arid and lamentable plains.
But to-night the house was quiet, deadly quiet, while Almayer stood
still, watching that delicate balance where he was weighing all his
chances: Joanna’s intelligence, Lingard’s credulity, Willems’
reckless audacity, desire to escape, readiness to seize an unexpected
opportunity. He weighed, anxious and attentive, his fears and his
desires against the tremendous risk of a quarrel with Lingard. . . .
Yes. Lingard would be angry. Lingard might suspect him of some
connivance in his prisoner’s escape--but surely he would not quarrel
with him--Almayer--about those people once they were gone--gone to the
devil in their own way. And then he had hold of Lingard through the
little girl. Good. What an annoyance! A prisoner! As if one could keep
him in there. He was bound to get away some time or other. Of course.
A situation like that can’t last. Anybody could see that. Lingard’s
eccentricity passed all bounds. You may kill a man, but you mustn’t
torture him. It was almost criminal. It caused worry, trouble, and
unpleasantness. . . . Almayer for a moment felt very angry with Lingard.
He made him responsible for the anguish he suffered from, for the
anguish of doubt and fear; for compelling him--the practical and
innocent Almayer--to such painful efforts of mind in order to find
out some issue for absurd situations created by the unreasonable
sentimentality of Lingard’s unpractical impulses.
“Now if the fellow were dead it would be all right,” said Almayer to the
verandah.
He stirred a little, and scratching his nose thoughtfully, revelled in
a short flight of fancy, showing him his own image crouching in a big
boat, that floated arrested--say fifty yards off--abreast of Willems’
landing-place. In the bottom of the boat there was a gun. A loaded
gun. One of the boatmen would shout, and Willems would answer--from the
bushes. The rascal would be suspicious. Of course. Then the man would
wave a piece of paper urging Willems to come to the landing-place and
receive an important message. “From the Rajah Laut” the man would yell
as the boat edged in-shore, and that would fetch Willems out. Wouldn’t
it? Rather! And Almayer saw himself jumping up at the right moment,
taking aim, pulling the trigger--and Willems tumbling over, his head in
the water--the swine!
He seemed to hear the report of the shot. It made him thrill from
head to foot where he stood. . . . How simple! . . . Unfortunate . . .
Lingard . . . He sighed, shook his head. Pity. Couldn’t be done. And
couldn’t leave him there either! Suppose the Arabs were to get hold of
him again--for instance to lead an expedition up the river! Goodness
only knows what harm would come of it. . . .
The balance was at rest now and inclining to the side of immediate
action. Almayer walked to the door, walked up very close to it, knocked
loudly, and turned his head away, looking frightened for a moment at
what he had done. After waiting for a while he put his ear against the
panel and listened. Nothing. He composed his features into an agreeable
expression while he stood listening and thinking to himself: I hear her.
Crying. Eh? I believe she has lost the little wits she had and is crying
night and day since I began to prepare her for the news of her husband’s
death--as Lingard told me. I wonder what she thinks. It’s just like
father to make me invent all these stories for nothing at all. Out of
kindness. Kindness! Damn! . . . She isn’t deaf, surely.
He knocked again, then said in a friendly tone, grinning benevolently at
the closed door--
“It’s me, Mrs. Willems. I want to speak to you. I have . . . have . . .
important news. . . .”
“What is it?”
“News,” repeated Almayer, distinctly. “News about your husband. Your
husband! . . . Damn him!” he added, under his breath.
He heard a stumbling rush inside. Things were overturned. Joanna’s
agitated voice cried--
“News! What? What? I am coming out.”
“No,” shouted Almayer. “Put on some clothes, Mrs. Willems, and let me
in. It’s . . . very confidential. You have a candle, haven’t you?”
She was knocking herself about blindly amongst the furniture in that
room. The candlestick was upset. Matches were struck ineffectually. The
matchbox fell. He heard her drop on her knees and grope over the floor
while she kept on moaning in maddened distraction.
“Oh, my God! News! Yes . . . yes. . . . Ah! where . . . where . . .
candle. Oh, my God! . . . I can’t find . . . Don’t go away, for the love
of Heaven . . .”
“I don’t want to go away,” said Almayer, impatiently, through the
keyhole; “but look sharp. It’s coni . . . it’s pressing.”
He stamped his foot lightly, waiting with his hand on the door-handle.
He thought anxiously: The woman’s a perfect idiot. Why should I go away?
She will be off her head. She will never catch my meaning. She’s too
stupid.
She was moving now inside the room hurriedly and in silence. He waited.
There was a moment of perfect stillness in there, and then she spoke
in an exhausted voice, in words that were shaped out of an expiring
sigh--out of a sigh light and profound, like words breathed out by a
woman before going off into a dead faint--
“Come in.”
He pushed the door. Ali, coming through the passage with an armful
of pillows and blankets pressed to his breast high up under his chin,
caught sight of his master before the door closed behind him. He was so
astonished that he dropped his bundle and stood staring at the door for
a long time. He heard the voice of his master talking. Talking to that
Sirani woman! Who was she? He had never thought about that really. He
speculated for a while hazily upon things in general. She was a Sirani
woman--and ugly. He made a disdainful grimace, picked up the bedding,
and went about his work, slinging the hammock between two uprights of
the verandah. . . . Those things did not concern him. She was ugly,
and brought here by the Rajah Laut, and his master spoke to her in the
night. Very well. He, Ali, had his work to do. Sling the hammock--go
round and see that the watchmen were awake--take a look at the moorings
of the boats, at the padlock of the big storehouse--then go to sleep.
To sleep! He shivered pleasantly. He leaned with both arms over his
master’s hammock and fell into a light doze.
A scream, unexpected, piercing--a scream beginning at once in the
highest pitch of a woman’s voice and then cut short, so short that it
suggested the swift work of death--caused Ali to jump on one side
away from the hammock, and the silence that succeeded seemed to him
as startling as the awful shriek. He was thunderstruck with surprise.
Almayer came out of the office, leaving the door ajar, passed close
to his servant without taking any notice, and made straight for the
water-chatty hung on a nail in a draughty place. He took it down and
came back, missing the petrified Ali by an inch. He moved with long
strides, yet, notwithstanding his haste, stopped short before the door,
and, throwing his head back, poured a thin stream of water down his
throat. While he came and went, while he stopped to drink, while he did
all this, there came steadily from the dark room the sound of feeble and
persistent crying, the crying of a sleepy and frightened child. After he
had drunk, Almayer went in, closing the door carefully.
Ali did not budge. That Sirani woman shrieked! He felt an immense
curiosity very unusual to his stolid disposition. He could not take his
eyes off the door. Was she dead in there? How interesting and funny! He
stood with open mouth till he heard again the rattle of the door-handle.
Master coming out. He pivoted on his heels with great rapidity and made
believe to be absorbed in the contemplation of the night outside. He
heard Almayer moving about behind his back. Chairs were displaced. His
master sat down.
“Ali,” said Almayer.
His face was gloomy and thoughtful. He looked at his head man, who
had approached the table, then he pulled out his watch. It was going.
Whenever Lingard was in Sambir Almayer’s watch was going. He would set
it by the cabin clock, telling himself every time that he must really
keep that watch going for the future. And every time, when Lingard
went away, he would let it run down and would measure his weariness
by sunrises and sunsets in an apathetic indifference to mere hours; to
hours only; to hours that had no importance in Sambir life, in the tired
stagnation of empty days; when nothing mattered to him but the quality
of guttah and the size of rattans; where there were no small hopes to
be watched for; where to him there was nothing interesting, nothing
supportable, nothing desirable to expect; nothing bitter but the
slowness of the passing days; nothing sweet but the hope, the distant
and glorious hope--the hope wearying, aching and precious, of getting
away.
He looked at the watch. Half-past eight. Ali waited stolidly.
“Go to the settlement,” said Almayer, “and tell Mahmat Banjer to come
and speak to me to-night.”
Ali went off muttering. He did not like his errand. Banjer and his two
brothers were Bajow vagabonds who had appeared lately in Sambir and had
been allowed to take possession of a tumbledown abandoned hut, on three
posts, belonging to Lingard & Co., and standing just outside their
fence. Ali disapproved of the favour shown to those strangers. Any kind
of dwelling was valuable in Sambir at that time, and if master did not
want that old rotten house he might have given it to him, Ali, who was
his servant, instead of bestowing it upon those bad men. Everybody
knew they were bad. It was well known that they had stolen a boat
from Hinopari, who was very aged and feeble and had no sons; and that
afterwards, by the truculent recklessness of their demeanour, they
had frightened the poor old man into holding his tongue about it. Yet
everybody knew of it. It was one of the tolerated scandals of Sambir,
disapproved and accepted, a manifestation of that base acquiescence in
success, of that inexpressed and cowardly toleration of strength, that
exists, infamous and irremediable, at the bottom of all hearts, in all
societies; whenever men congregate; in bigger and more virtuous places
than Sambir, and in Sambir also, where, as in other places, one man
could steal a boat with impunity while another would have no right to
look at a paddle.
Almayer, leaning back in his chair, meditated. The more he thought, the
more he felt convinced that Banjer and his brothers were exactly the men
he wanted. Those fellows were sea gipsies, and could disappear without
attracting notice; and if they returned, nobody--and Lingard least of
all--would dream of seeking information from them. Moreover, they had
no personal interest of any kind in Sambir affairs--had taken no
sides--would know nothing anyway.
He called in a strong voice: “Mrs. Willems!”
She came out quickly, almost startling him, so much did she appear as
though she had surged up through the floor, on the other side of the
table. The lamp was between them, and Almayer moved it aside, looking up
at her from his chair. She was crying. She was crying gently, silently,
in a ceaseless welling up of tears that did not fall in drops, but
seemed to overflow in a clear sheet from under her eyelids--seemed
to flow at once all over her face, her cheeks, and over her chin that
glistened with moisture in the light. Her breast and her shoulders were
shaken repeatedly by a convulsive and noiseless catching in her breath,
and after every spasmodic sob her sorrowful little head, tied up in
a red kerchief, trembled on her long neck, round which her bony hand
gathered and clasped the disarranged dress.
“Compose yourself, Mrs. Willems,” said Almayer.
She emitted an inarticulate sound that seemed to be a faint, a very far
off, a hardly audible cry of mortal distress. Then the tears went on
flowing in profound stillness.
“You must understand that I have told you all this because I am your
friend--real friend,” said Almayer, after looking at her for some time
with visible dissatisfaction. “You, his wife, ought to know the danger
he is in. Captain Lingard is a terrible man, you know.”
She blubbered out, sniffing and sobbing together.
“Do you . . . you . . . speak . . . the . . . the truth now?”
“Upon my word of honour. On the head of my child,” protested Almayer. “I
had to deceive you till now because of Captain Lingard. But I couldn’t
bear it. Think only what a risk I run in telling you--if ever Lingard
was to know! Why should I do it? Pure friendship. Dear Peter was my
colleague in Macassar for years, you know.”
“What shall I do . . . what shall I do!” she exclaimed, faintly, looking
around on every side as if she could not make up her mind which way to
rush off.
“You must help him to clear out, now Lingard is away. He offended
Lingard, and that’s no joke. Lingard said he would kill him. He will do
it, too,” said Almayer, earnestly.
She wrung her hands. “Oh! the wicked man. The wicked, wicked man!” she
moaned, swaying her body from side to side.
“Yes. Yes! He is terrible,” assented Almayer. “You must not lose any
time. I say! Do you understand me, Mrs. Willems? Think of your husband.
Of your poor husband. How happy he will be. You will bring him his
life--actually his life. Think of him.”
She ceased her swaying movement, and now, with her head sunk between
her shoulders, she hugged herself with both her arms; and she stared at
Almayer with wild eyes, while her teeth chattered, rattling violently
and uninterruptedly, with a very loud sound, in the deep peace of the
house.
“Oh! Mother of God!” she wailed. “I am a miserable woman. Will he
forgive me? The poor, innocent man. Will he forgive me? Oh, Mr. Almayer,
he is so severe. Oh! help me. . . . I dare not. . . . You don’t know
what I’ve done to him. . . . I daren’t! . . . I can’t! . . . God help
me!”
The last words came in a despairing cry. Had she been flayed alive she
could not have sent to heaven a more terrible, a more heartrending and
anguished plaint.
“Sh! Sh!” hissed Almayer, jumping up. “You will wake up everybody with
your shouting.”
She kept on sobbing then without any noise, and Almayer stared at her
in boundless astonishment. The idea that, maybe, he had done wrong by
confiding in her, upset him so much that for a moment he could not find
a connected thought in his head.
At last he said: “I swear to you that your husband is in such a position
that he would welcome the devil . . . listen well to me . . . the
devil himself if the devil came to him in a canoe. Unless I am much
mistaken,” he added, under his breath. Then again, loudly: “If you
have any little difference to make up with him, I assure you--I swear to
you--this is your time!”
The ardently persuasive tone of his words--he thought--would have
carried irresistible conviction to a graven image. He noticed with
satisfaction that Joanna seemed to have got some inkling of his meaning.
He continued, speaking slowly--
“Look here, Mrs. Willems. I can’t do anything. Daren’t. But I will tell
you what I will do. There will come here in about ten minutes a Bugis
man--you know the language; you are from Macassar. He has a large canoe;
he can take you there. To the new Rajah’s clearing, tell him. They are
three brothers, ready for anything if you pay them . . . you have some
money. Haven’t you?”
She stood--perhaps listening--but giving no sign of intelligence,
and stared at the floor in sudden immobility, as if the horror of the
situation, the overwhelming sense of her own wickedness and of her
husband’s great danger, had stunned her brain, her heart, her will--had
left her no faculty but that of breathing and of keeping on her feet.
Almayer swore to himself with much mental profanity that he had never
seen a more useless, a more stupid being.
“D’ye hear me?” he said, raising his voice. “Do try to understand. Have
you any money? Money. Dollars. Guilders. Money! What’s the matter with
you?”
Without raising her eyes she said, in a voice that sounded weak and
undecided as if she had been making a desperate effort of memory--
“The house has been sold. Mr. Hudig was angry.”
Almayer gripped the edge of the table with all his strength. He resisted
manfully an almost uncontrollable impulse to fly at her and box her
ears.
“It was sold for money, I suppose,” he said with studied and incisive
calmness. “Have you got it? Who has got it?”
She looked up at him, raising her swollen eyelids with a great effort,
in a sorrowful expression of her drooping mouth, of her whole besmudged
and tear-stained face. She whispered resignedly--
“Leonard had some. He wanted to get married. And uncle Antonio; he sat
at the door and would not go away. And Aghostina--she is so poor . . .
and so many, many children--little children. And Luiz the engineer. He
never said a word against my husband. Also our cousin Maria. She came
and shouted, and my head was so bad, and my heart was worse. Then cousin
Salvator and old Daniel da Souza, who . . .”
Almayer had listened to her speechless with rage. He thought: I must
give money now to that idiot. Must! Must get her out of the way now
before Lingard is back. He made two attempts to speak before he managed
to burst out--
“I don’t want to know their blasted names! Tell me, did all those
infernal people leave you anything? To you! That’s what I want to know!”
“I have two hundred and fifteen dollars,” said Joanna, in a frightened
tone.
Almayer breathed freely. He spoke with great friendliness--
“That will do. It isn’t much, but it will do. Now when the man comes I
will be out of the way. You speak to him. Give him some money; only
a little, mind! And promise more. Then when you get there you will be
guided by your husband, of course. And don’t forget to tell him that
Captain Lingard is at the mouth of the river--the northern entrance. You
will remember. Won’t you? The northern branch. Lingard is--death.”
Joanna shivered. Almayer went on rapidly--
“I would have given you money if you had wanted it. ‘Pon my word! Tell
your husband I’ve sent you to him. And tell him not to lose any time.
And also say to him from me that we shall meet--some day. That I could
not die happy unless I met him once more. Only once. I love him, you
know. I prove it. Tremendous risk to me--this business is!”
Joanna snatched his hand and before he knew what she would be at,
pressed it to her lips.
“Mrs. Willems! Don’t. What are you . . .” cried the abashed Almayer,
tearing his hand away.
“Oh, you are good!” she cried, with sudden exaltation, “You are noble
. . . I shall pray every day . . . to all the saints . . . I shall . . .”
“Never mind . . . never mind!” stammered out Almayer, confusedly,
without knowing very well what he was saying. “Only look out for
Lingard. . . . I am happy to be able . . . in your sad situation . . .
believe me. . . .”
They stood with the table between them, Joanna looking down, and her
face, in the half-light above the lamp, appeared like a soiled carving
of old ivory--a carving, with accentuated anxious hollows, of old, very
old ivory. Almayer looked at her, mistrustful, hopeful. He was saying
to himself: How frail she is! I could upset her by blowing at her. She
seems to have got some idea of what must be done, but will she have the
strength to carry it through? I must trust to luck now!
Somewhere far in the back courtyard Ali’s voice rang suddenly in angry
remonstrance--
“Why did you shut the gate, O father of all mischief? You a watchman!
You are only a wild man. Did I not tell you I was coming back? You . . .”
“I am off, Mrs. Willems,” exclaimed Almayer. “That man is here--with my
servant. Be calm. Try to . . .”
He heard the footsteps of the two men in the passage, and without
finishing his sentence ran rapidly down the steps towards the riverside.
CHAPTER TWO
For the next half-hour Almayer, who wanted to give Joanna plenty of
time, stumbled amongst the lumber in distant parts of his enclosure,
sneaked along the fences; or held his breath, flattened against grass
walls behind various outhouses: all this to escape Ali’s inconveniently
zealous search for his master. He heard him talk with the head
watchman--sometimes quite close to him in the darkness--then moving off,
coming back, wondering, and, as the time passed, growing uneasy.
“He did not fall into the river?--say, thou blind watcher!” Ali was
growling in a bullying tone, to the other man. “He told me to fetch
Mahmat, and when I came back swiftly I found him not in the house. There
is that Sirani woman there, so that Mahmat cannot steal anything, but it
is in my mind, the night will be half gone before I rest.”
He shouted--
“Master! O master! O mast . . .”
“What are you making that noise for?” said Almayer, with severity,
stepping out close to them.
The two Malays leaped away from each other in their surprise.
“You may go. I don’t want you any more tonight, Ali,” went on Almayer.
“Is Mahmat there?”
“Unless the ill-behaved savage got tired of waiting. Those men know
not politeness. They should not be spoken to by white men,” said Ali,
resentfully.
Almayer went towards the house, leaving his servants to wonder where he
had sprung from so unexpectedly. The watchman hinted obscurely at powers
of invisibility possessed by the master, who often at night . . . Ali
interrupted him with great scorn. Not every white man has the power.
Now, the Rajah Laut could make himself invisible. Also, he could be
in two places at once, as everybody knew; except he--the useless
watchman--who knew no more about white men than a wild pig! Ya-wa!
And Ali strolled towards his hut, yawning loudly.
As Almayer ascended the steps he heard the noise of a door flung to,
and when he entered the verandah he saw only Mahmat there, close to the
doorway of the passage. Mahmat seemed to be caught in the very act of
slinking away, and Almayer noticed that with satisfaction. Seeing the
white man, the Malay gave up his attempt and leaned against the wall. He
was a short, thick, broad-shouldered man with very dark skin and a wide,
stained, bright-red mouth that uncovered, when he spoke, a close row
of black and glistening teeth. His eyes were big, prominent, dreamy and
restless. He said sulkily, looking all over the place from under his
eyebrows--
“White Tuan, you are great and strong--and I a poor man. Tell me what is
your will, and let me go in the name of God. It is late.”
Almayer examined the man thoughtfully. How could he find out whether
. . . He had it! Lately he had employed that man and his two brothers as
extra boatmen to carry stores, provisions, and new axes to a camp of
rattan cutters some distance up the river. A three days’ expedition. He
would test him now in that way. He said negligently--
“I want you to start at once for the camp, with surat for the Kavitan.
One dollar a day.”
The man appeared plunged in dull hesitation, but Almayer, who knew his
Malays, felt pretty sure from his aspect that nothing would induce the
fellow to go. He urged--
“It is important--and if you are swift I shall give two dollars for the
last day.”
“No, Tuan. We do not go,” said the man, in a hoarse whisper.
“Why?”
“We start on another journey.”
“Where?”
“To a place we know of,” said Mahmat, a little louder, in a stubborn
manner, and looking at the floor.
Almayer experienced a feeling of immense joy. He said, with affected
annoyance--
“You men live in my house and it is as if it were your own. I may want
my house soon.”
Mahmat looked up.
“We are men of the sea and care not for a roof when we have a canoe that
will hold three, and a paddle apiece. The sea is our house. Peace be
with you, Tuan.”
He turned and went away rapidly, and Almayer heard him directly
afterwards in the courtyard calling to the watchman to open the gate.
Mahmat passed through the gate in silence, but before the bar had been
put up behind him he had made up his mind that if the white man ever
wanted to eject him from his hut, he would burn it and also as many of
the white man’s other buildings as he could safely get at. And he began
to call his brothers before he was inside the dilapidated dwelling.
“All’s well!” muttered Almayer to himself, taking some loose Java
tobacco from a drawer in the table. “Now if anything comes out I am
clear. I asked the man to go up the river. I urged him. He will say so
himself. Good.”
He began to charge the china bowl of his pipe, a pipe with a long cherry
stem and a curved mouthpiece, pressing the tobacco down with his thumb
and thinking: No. I sha’n’t see her again. Don’t want to. I will give
her a good start, then go in chase--and send an express boat after
father. Yes! that’s it.
He approached the door of the office and said, holding his pipe away
from his lips--
“Good luck to you, Mrs. Willems. Don’t lose any time. You may get along
by the bushes; the fence there is out of repair. Don’t lose time. Don’t
forget that it is a matter of . . . life and death. And don’t forget
that I know nothing. I trust you.”
He heard inside a noise as of a chest-lid falling down. She made a few
steps. Then a sigh, profound and long, and some faint words which he
did not catch. He moved away from the door on tiptoe, kicked off his
slippers in a corner of the verandah, then entered the passage puffing
at his pipe; entered cautiously in a gentle creaking of planks and
turned into a curtained entrance to the left. There was a big room. On
the floor a small binnacle lamp--that had found its way to the house
years ago from the lumber-room of the Flash--did duty for a night-light.
It glimmered very small and dull in the great darkness. Almayer walked
to it, and picking it up revived the flame by pulling the wick with his
fingers, which he shook directly after with a grimace of pain. Sleeping
shapes, covered--head and all--with white sheets, lay about on the mats
on the floor. In the middle of the room a small cot, under a square
white mosquito net, stood--the only piece of furniture between the four
walls--looking like an altar of transparent marble in a gloomy temple. A
woman, half-lying on the floor with her head dropped on her arms, which
were crossed on the foot of the cot, woke up as Almayer strode over
her outstretched legs. She sat up without a word, leaning forward, and,
clasping her knees, stared down with sad eyes, full of sleep.
Almayer, the smoky light in one hand, his pipe in the other, stood
before the curtained cot looking at his daughter--at his little Nina--at
that part of himself, at that small and unconscious particle of humanity
that seemed to him to contain all his soul. And it was as if he had been
bathed in a bright and warm wave of tenderness, in a tenderness greater
than the world, more precious than life; the only thing real, living,
sweet, tangible, beautiful and safe amongst the elusive, the distorted
and menacing shadows of existence. On his face, lit up indistinctly by
the short yellow flame of the lamp, came a look of rapt attention
while he looked into her future. And he could see things there! Things
charming and splendid passing before him in a magic unrolling of
resplendent pictures; pictures of events brilliant, happy, inexpressibly
glorious, that would make up her life. He would do it! He would do it.
He would! He would--for that child! And as he stood in the still night,
lost in his enchanting and gorgeous dreams, while the ascending, thin
thread of tobacco smoke spread into a faint bluish cloud above his head,
he appeared strangely impressive and ecstatic: like a devout and mystic
worshipper, adoring, transported and mute; burning incense before a
shrine, a diaphanous shrine of a child-idol with closed eyes; before a
pure and vaporous shrine of a small god--fragile, powerless, unconscious
and sleeping.
When Ali, roused by loud and repeated shouting of his name, stumbled
outside the door of his hut, he saw a narrow streak of trembling gold
above the forests and a pale sky with faded stars overhead: signs of the
coming day. His master stood before the door waving a piece of paper in
his hand and shouting excitedly--“Quick, Ali! Quick!” When he saw his
servant he rushed forward, and pressing the paper on him objurgated him,
in tones which induced Ali to think that something awful had happened,
to hurry up and get the whale-boat ready to go immediately--at once,
at once--after Captain Lingard. Ali remonstrated, agitated also, having
caught the infection of distracted haste.
“If must go quick, better canoe. Whale-boat no can catch, same as small
canoe.”
“No, no! Whale-boat! whale-boat! You dolt! you wretch!” howled Almayer,
with all the appearance of having gone mad. “Call the men! Get along
with it. Fly!”
And Ali rushed about the courtyard kicking the doors of huts open to put
his head in and yell frightfully inside; and as he dashed from hovel
to hovel, men shivering and sleepy were coming out, looking after him
stupidly, while they scratched their ribs with bewildered apathy. It was
hard work to put them in motion. They wanted time to stretch themselves
and to shiver a little. Some wanted food. One said he was sick. Nobody
knew where the rudder was. Ali darted here and there, ordering, abusing,
pushing one, then another, and stopping in his exertions at times to
wring his hands hastily and groan, because the whale-boat was much
slower than the worst canoe and his master would not listen to his
protestations.
Almayer saw the boat go off at last, pulled anyhow by men that were
cold, hungry, and sulky; and he remained on the jetty watching it down
the reach. It was broad day then, and the sky was perfectly cloudless.
Almayer went up to the house for a moment. His household was all astir
and wondering at the strange disappearance of the Sirani woman, who had
taken her child and had left her luggage. Almayer spoke to no one, got
his revolver, and went down to the river again. He jumped into a
small canoe and paddled himself towards the schooner. He worked very
leisurely, but as soon as he was nearly alongside he began to hail
the silent craft with the tone and appearance of a man in a tremendous
hurry.
“Schooner ahoy! schooner ahoy!” he shouted.
A row of blank faces popped up above the bulwark. After a while a man
with a woolly head of hair said--
“Sir!”
“The mate! the mate! Call him, steward!” said Almayer, excitedly, making
a frantic grab at a rope thrown down to him by somebody.
In less than a minute the mate put his head over. He asked, surprised--
“What can I do for you, Mr. Almayer?”
“Let me have the gig at once, Mr. Swan--at once. I ask in Captain
Lingard’s name. I must have it. Matter of life and death.”
The mate was impressed by Almayer’s agitation
“You shall have it, sir. . . . Man the gig there! Bear a hand, serang!
. . . It’s hanging astern, Mr. Almayer,” he said, looking down again.
“Get into it, sir. The men are coming down by the painter.”
By the time Almayer had clambered over into the stern sheets, four
calashes were in the boat and the oars were being passed over the
taffrail. The mate was looking on. Suddenly he said--
“Is it dangerous work? Do you want any help? I would come . . .”
“Yes, yes!” cried Almayer. “Come along. Don’t lose a moment. Go and get
your revolver. Hurry up! hurry up!”
Yet, notwithstanding his feverish anxiety to be off, he lolled back
very quiet and unconcerned till the mate got in and, passing over the
thwarts, sat down by his side. Then he seemed to wake up, and called
out--
“Let go--let go the painter!”
“Let go the painter--the painter!” yelled the bowman, jerking at it.
People on board also shouted “Let go!” to one another, till it occurred
at last to somebody to cast off the rope; and the boat drifted rapidly
away from the schooner in the sudden silencing of all voices.
Almayer steered. The mate sat by his side, pushing the cartridges into
the chambers of his revolver. When the weapon was loaded he asked--
“What is it? Are you after somebody?”
“Yes,” said Almayer, curtly, with his eyes fixed ahead on the river. “We
must catch a dangerous man.”
“I like a bit of a chase myself,” declared the mate, and then,
discouraged by Almayer’s aspect of severe thoughtfulness, said nothing
more.
Nearly an hour passed. The calashes stretched forward head first and lay
back with their faces to the sky, alternately, in a regular swing
that sent the boat flying through the water; and the two sitters, very
upright in the stern sheets, swayed rhythmically a little at every
stroke of the long oars plied vigorously.
The mate observed: “The tide is with us.”
“The current always runs down in this river,” said Almayer.
“Yes--I know,” retorted the other; “but it runs faster on the ebb. Look
by the land at the way we get over the ground! A five-knot current here,
I should say.”
“H’m!” growled Almayer. Then suddenly: “There is a passage between two
islands that will save us four miles. But at low water the two islands,
in the dry season, are like one with only a mud ditch between them.
Still, it’s worth trying.”
“Ticklish job that, on a falling tide,” said the mate, coolly. “You know
best whether there’s time to get through.”
“I will try,” said Almayer, watching the shore intently. “Look out now!”
He tugged hard at the starboard yoke-line.
“Lay in your oars!” shouted the mate.
The boat swept round and shot through the narrow opening of a creek that
broadened out before the craft had time to lose its way.
“Out oars! . . . Just room enough,” muttered the mate.
It was a sombre creek of black water speckled with the gold of scattered
sunlight falling through the boughs that met overhead in a soaring,
restless arc full of gentle whispers passing, tremulous, aloft amongst
the thick leaves. The creepers climbed up the trunks of serried trees
that leaned over, looking insecure and undermined by floods which had
eaten away the earth from under their roots. And the pungent, acrid
smell of rotting leaves, of flowers, of blossoms and plants dying in
that poisonous and cruel gloom, where they pined for sunshine in vain,
seemed to lay heavy, to press upon the shiny and stagnant water in its
tortuous windings amongst the everlasting and invincible shadows.
Almayer looked anxious. He steered badly. Several times the blades of
the oars got foul of the bushes on one side or the other, checking the
way of the gig. During one of those occurrences, while they were getting
clear, one of the calashes said something to the others in a rapid
whisper. They looked down at the water. So did the mate.
“Hallo!” he exclaimed. “Eh, Mr. Almayer! Look! The water is running out.
See there! We will be caught.”
“Back! back! We must go back!” cried Almayer.
“Perhaps better go on.”
“No; back! back!”
He pulled at the steering line, and ran the nose of the boat into the
bank. Time was lost again in getting clear.
“Give way, men! give way!” urged the mate, anxiously.
The men pulled with set lips and dilated nostrils, breathing hard.
“Too late,” said the mate, suddenly. “The oars touch the bottom already.
We are done.”
The boat stuck. The men laid in the oars, and sat, panting, with crossed
arms.
“Yes, we are caught,” said Almayer, composedly. “That is unlucky!”
The water was falling round the boat. The mate watched the patches of
mud coming to the surface. Then in a moment he laughed, and pointing his
finger at the creek--
“Look!” he said; “the blamed river is running away from us. Here’s the
last drop of water clearing out round that bend.”
Almayer lifted his head. The water was gone, and he looked only at a
curved track of mud--of mud soft and black, hiding fever, rottenness,
and evil under its level and glazed surface.
“We are in for it till the evening,” he said, with cheerful resignation.
“I did my best. Couldn’t help it.”
“We must sleep the day away,” said the mate. “There’s nothing to eat,”
he added, gloomily.
Almayer stretched himself in the stern sheets. The Malays curled down
between thwarts.
“Well, I’m jiggered!” said the mate, starting up after a long pause.
“I was in a devil of a hurry to go and pass the day stuck in the mud.
Here’s a holiday for you! Well! well!”
They slept or sat unmoving and patient. As the sun mounted higher the
breeze died out, and perfect stillness reigned in the empty creek. A
troop of long-nosed monkeys appeared, and crowding on the outer boughs,
contemplated the boat and the motionless men in it with grave and
sorrowful intensity, disturbed now and then by irrational outbreaks of
mad gesticulation. A little bird with sapphire breast balanced a slender
twig across a slanting beam of light, and flashed in it to and fro like
a gem dropped from the sky. His minute round eye stared at the strange
and tranquil creatures in the boat. After a while he sent out a thin
twitter that sounded impertinent and funny in the solemn silence of the
great wilderness; in the great silence full of struggle and death.
CHAPTER THREE
On Lingard’s departure solitude and silence closed round Willems; the
cruel solitude of one abandoned by men; the reproachful silence which
surrounds an outcast ejected by his kind, the silence unbroken by the
slightest whisper of hope; an immense and impenetrable silence that
swallows up without echo the murmur of regret and the cry of revolt.
The bitter peace of the abandoned clearings entered his heart, in which
nothing could live now but the memory and hate of his past. Not remorse.
In the breast of a man possessed by the masterful consciousness of
his individuality with its desires and its rights; by the immovable
conviction of his own importance, of an importance so indisputable and
final that it clothes all his wishes, endeavours, and mistakes with the
dignity of unavoidable fate, there could be no place for such a feeling
as that of remorse.
The days passed. They passed unnoticed, unseen, in the rapid blaze of
glaring sunrises, in the short glow of tender sunsets, in the crushing
oppression of high noons without a cloud. How many days? Two--three--or
more? He did not know. To him, since Lingard had gone, the time seemed
to roll on in profound darkness. All was night within him. All was gone
from his sight. He walked about blindly in the deserted courtyards,
amongst the empty houses that, perched high on their posts, looked down
inimically on him, a white stranger, a man from other lands; seemed
to look hostile and mute out of all the memories of native life that
lingered between their decaying walls. His wandering feet stumbled
against the blackened brands of extinct fires, kicking up a light black
dust of cold ashes that flew in drifting clouds and settled to leeward
on the fresh grass sprouting from the hard ground, between the shade
trees. He moved on, and on; ceaseless, unresting, in widening circles,
in zigzagging paths that led to no issue; he struggled on wearily with
a set, distressed face behind which, in his tired brain, seethed his
thoughts: restless, sombre, tangled, chilling, horrible and venomous,
like a nestful of snakes.
From afar, the bleared eyes of the old serving woman, the sombre gaze
of Aissa followed the gaunt and tottering figure in its unceasing prowl
along the fences, between the houses, amongst the wild luxuriance of
riverside thickets. Those three human beings abandoned by all were
like shipwrecked people left on an insecure and slippery ledge by the
retiring tide of an angry sea--listening to its distant roar, living
anguished between the menace of its return and the hopeless horror of
their solitude--in the midst of a tempest of passion, of regret, of
disgust, of despair. The breath of the storm had cast two of them there,
robbed of everything--even of resignation. The third, the decrepit
witness of their struggle and their torture, accepted her own dull
conception of facts; of strength and youth gone; of her useless old
age; of her last servitude; of being thrown away by her chief, by her
nearest, to use up the last and worthless remnant of flickering life
between those two incomprehensible and sombre outcasts: a shrivelled, an
unmoved, a passive companion of their disaster.