<SPAN name="startofbook"></SPAN>
<h1> TALES OF UNREST </h1>
<p><br/></p>
<h2> By Joseph Conrad </h2>
<p><br/></p>
<h3> "Be it thy course to being giddy minds With foreign quarrels." —SHAKESPEARE </h3>
<h4>
<br/> <br/> <b>TO ADOLF P. KRIEGER FOR THE SAKE OF OLD DAYS</b> <br/>
<br/>
</h4>
<hr />
<p><br/></p>
<h2> Contents </h2>
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<td>
<p><SPAN href="#link2H_4_0001"> AUTHOR'S NOTE </SPAN></p>
<p><SPAN href="#link2H_4_0003"> KARAIN, A MEMORY </SPAN></p>
<p><SPAN href="#link2H_4_0004"> THE IDIOTS </SPAN></p>
<p><SPAN href="#link2H_4_0005"> AN OUTPOST OF PROGRESS </SPAN></p>
<p><SPAN href="#link2H_4_0006"> THE RETURN </SPAN></p>
<p><SPAN href="#link2H_4_0007"> THE LAGOON </SPAN></p>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p><br/></p>
<hr />
<p><SPAN name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001"></SPAN> <br/> <br/></p>
<h2> AUTHOR'S NOTE </h2>
<p>Of the five stories in this volume, "The Lagoon," the last in order, is
the earliest in date. It is the first short story I ever wrote and marks,
in a manner of speaking, the end of my first phase, the Malayan phase with
its special subject and its verbal suggestions. Conceived in the same mood
which produced "Almayer's Folly" and "An Outcast of the Islands," it is
told in the same breath (with what was left of it, that is, after the end
of "An Outcast"), seen with the same vision, rendered in the same method—if
such a thing as method did exist then in my conscious relation to this new
adventure of writing for print. I doubt it very much. One does one's work
first and theorises about it afterwards. It is a very amusing and
egotistical occupation of no use whatever to any one and just as likely as
not to lead to false conclusions.</p>
<p>Anybody can see that between the last paragraph of "An Outcast" and the
first of "The Lagoon" there has been no change of pen, figuratively
speaking. It happened also to be literally true. It was the same pen: a
common steel pen. Having been charged with a certain lack of emotional
faculty I am glad to be able to say that on one occasion at least I did
give way to a sentimental impulse. I thought the pen had been a good pen
and that it had done enough for me, and so, with the idea of keeping it
for a sort of memento on which I could look later with tender eyes, I put
it into my waistcoat pocket. Afterwards it used to turn up in all sorts of
places—at the bottom of small drawers, among my studs in cardboard
boxes—till at last it found permanent rest in a large wooden bowl
containing some loose keys, bits of sealing wax, bits of string, small
broken chains, a few buttons, and similar minute wreckage that washes out
of a man's life into such receptacles. I would catch sight of it from time
to time with a distinct feeling of satisfaction till, one day, I perceived
with horror that there were two old pens in there. How the other pen found
its way into the bowl instead of the fireplace or wastepaper basket I
can't imagine, but there the two were, lying side by side, both encrusted
with ink and completely undistinguishable from each other. It was very
distressing, but being determined not to share my sentiment between two
pens or run the risk of sentimentalising over a mere stranger, I threw
them both out of the window into a flower bed—which strikes me now
as a poetical grave for the remnants of one's past.</p>
<p>But the tale remained. It was first fixed in print in the "Cornhill
Magazine", being my first appearance in a serial of any kind; and I have
lived long enough to see it guyed most agreeably by Mr. Max Beerbohm in a
volume of parodies entitled "A Christmas Garland," where I found myself in
very good company. I was immensely gratified. I began to believe in my
public existence. I have much to thank "The Lagoon" for.</p>
<p>My next effort in short-story writing was a departure—I mean a
departure from the Malay Archipelago. Without premeditation, without
sorrow, without rejoicing, and almost without noticing it, I stepped into
the very different atmosphere of "An Outpost of Progress." I found there a
different moral attitude. I seemed able to capture new reactions, new
suggestions, and even new rhythms for my paragraphs. For a moment I
fancied myself a new man—a most exciting illusion. It clung to me
for some time, monstrous, half conviction and half hope as to its body,
with an iridescent tail of dreams and with a changeable head like a
plastic mask. It was only later that I perceived that in common with the
rest of men nothing could deliver me from my fatal consistency. We cannot
escape from ourselves.</p>
<p>"An Outpost of Progress" is the lightest part of the loot I carried off
from Central Africa, the main portion being of course "The Heart of
Darkness." Other men have found a lot of quite different things there and
I have the comfortable conviction that what I took would not have been of
much use to anybody else. And it must be said that it was but a very small
amount of plunder. All of it could go into one's breast pocket when folded
neatly. As for the story itself it is true enough in its essentials. The
sustained invention of a really telling lie demands a talent which I do
not possess.</p>
<p>"The Idiots" is such an obviously derivative piece of work that it is
impossible for me to say anything about it here. The suggestion of it was
not mental but visual: the actual idiots. It was after an interval of long
groping amongst vague impulses and hesitations which ended in the
production of "The Nigger" that I turned to my third short story in the
order of time, the first in this volume: "Karain: A Memory."</p>
<p>Reading it after many years "Karain" produced on me the effect of
something seen through a pair of glasses from a rather advantageous
position. In that story I had not gone back to the Archipelago, I had only
turned for another look at it. I admit that I was absorbed by the distant
view, so absorbed that I didn't notice then that the motif of the story is
almost identical with the motif of "The Lagoon." However, the idea at the
back is very different; but the story is mainly made memorable to me by
the fact that it was my first contribution to "Blackwood's Magazine" and
that it led to my personal acquaintance with Mr. William Blackwood whose
guarded appreciation I felt nevertheless to be genuine, and prized
accordingly. "Karain" was begun on a sudden impulse only three days after
I wrote the last line of "The Nigger," and the recollection of its
difficulties is mixed up with the worries of the unfinished "Return," the
last pages of which I took up again at the time; the only instance in my
life when I made an attempt to write with both hands at once as it were.</p>
<p>Indeed my innermost feeling, now, is that "The Return" is a left-handed
production. Looking through that story lately I had the material
impression of sitting under a large and expensive umbrella in the loud
drumming of a heavy rain-shower. It was very distracting. In the general
uproar one could hear every individual drop strike on the stout and
distended silk. Mentally, the reading rendered me dumb for the remainder
of the day, not exactly with astonishment but with a sort of dismal
wonder. I don't want to talk disrespectfully of any pages of mine.
Psychologically there were no doubt good reasons for my attempt; and it
was worth while, if only to see of what excesses I was capable in that
sort of virtuosity. In this connection I should like to confess my
surprise on finding that notwithstanding all its apparatus of analysis the
story consists for the most part of physical impressions; impressions of
sound and sight, railway station, streets, a trotting horse, reflections
in mirrors and so on, rendered as if for their own sake and combined with
a sublimated description of a desirable middle-class town-residence which
somehow manages to produce a sinister effect. For the rest any kind word
about "The Return" (and there have been such words said at different
times) awakens in me the liveliest gratitude, for I know how much the
writing of that fantasy has cost me in sheer toil, in temper, and in
disillusion.</p>
<p>J. C. <br/> <br/></p>
<hr />
<p><br/></p>
<h1> TALES OF UNREST </h1>
<p><SPAN name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003"></SPAN></p>
<h2> KARAIN, A MEMORY </h2>
<p>I</p>
<p>We knew him in those unprotected days when we were content to hold in our
hands our lives and our property. None of us, I believe, has any property
now, and I hear that many, negligently, have lost their lives; but I am
sure that the few who survive are not yet so dim-eyed as to miss in the
befogged respectability of their newspapers the intelligence of various
native risings in the Eastern Archipelago. Sunshine gleams between the
lines of those short paragraphs—sunshine and the glitter of the sea.
A strange name wakes up memories; the printed words scent the smoky
atmosphere of to-day faintly, with the subtle and penetrating perfume as
of land breezes breathing through the starlight of bygone nights; a signal
fire gleams like a jewel on the high brow of a sombre cliff; great trees,
the advanced sentries of immense forests, stand watchful and still over
sleeping stretches of open water; a line of white surf thunders on an
empty beach, the shallow water foams on the reefs; and green islets
scattered through the calm of noonday lie upon the level of a polished
sea, like a handful of emeralds on a buckler of steel.</p>
<p>There are faces too—faces dark, truculent, and smiling; the frank
audacious faces of men barefooted, well armed and noiseless. They thronged
the narrow length of our schooner's decks with their ornamented and
barbarous crowd, with the variegated colours of checkered sarongs, red
turbans, white jackets, embroideries; with the gleam of scabbards, gold
rings, charms, armlets, lance blades, and jewelled handles of their
weapons. They had an independent bearing, resolute eyes, a restrained
manner; and we seem yet to hear their soft voices speaking of battles,
travels, and escapes; boasting with composure, joking quietly; sometimes
in well-bred murmurs extolling their own valour, our generosity; or
celebrating with loyal enthusiasm the virtues of their ruler. We remember
the faces, the eyes, the voices, we see again the gleam of silk and metal;
the murmuring stir of that crowd, brilliant, festive, and martial; and we
seem to feel the touch of friendly brown hands that, after one short
grasp, return to rest on a chased hilt. They were Karain's people—a
devoted following. Their movements hung on his lips; they read their
thoughts in his eyes; he murmured to them nonchalantly of life and death,
and they accepted his words humbly, like gifts of fate. They were all free
men, and when speaking to him said, "Your slave." On his passage voices
died out as though he had walked guarded by silence; awed whispers
followed him. They called him their war-chief. He was the ruler of three
villages on a narrow plain; the master of an insignificant foothold on the
earth—of a conquered foothold that, shaped like a young moon, lay
ignored between the hills and the sea.</p>
<p>From the deck of our schooner, anchored in the middle of the bay, he
indicated by a theatrical sweep of his arm along the jagged outline of the
hills the whole of his domain; and the ample movement seemed to drive back
its limits, augmenting it suddenly into something so immense and vague
that for a moment it appeared to be bounded only by the sky. And really,
looking at that place, landlocked from the sea and shut off from the land
by the precipitous slopes of mountains, it was difficult to believe in the
existence of any neighbourhood. It was still, complete, unknown, and full
of a life that went on stealthily with a troubling effect of solitude; of
a life that seemed unaccountably empty of anything that would stir the
thought, touch the heart, give a hint of the ominous sequence of days. It
appeared to us a land without memories, regrets, and hopes; a land where
nothing could survive the coming of the night, and where each sunrise,
like a dazzling act of special creation, was disconnected from the eve and
the morrow.</p>
<p>Karain swept his hand over it. "All mine!" He struck the deck with his
long staff; the gold head flashed like a falling star; very close behind
him a silent old fellow in a richly embroidered black jacket alone of all
the Malays around did not follow the masterful gesture with a look. He did
not even lift his eyelids. He bowed his head behind his master, and
without stirring held hilt up over his right shoulder a long blade in a
silver scabbard. He was there on duty, but without curiosity, and seemed
weary, not with age, but with the possession of a burdensome secret of
existence. Karain, heavy and proud, had a lofty pose and breathed calmly.
It was our first visit, and we looked about curiously.</p>
<p>The bay was like a bottomless pit of intense light. The circular sheet of
water reflected a luminous sky, and the shores enclosing it made an opaque
ring of earth floating in an emptiness of transparent blue. The hills,
purple and arid, stood out heavily on the sky: their summits seemed to
fade into a coloured tremble as of ascending vapour; their steep sides
were streaked with the green of narrow ravines; at their foot lay
rice-fields, plantain-patches, yellow sands. A torrent wound about like a
dropped thread. Clumps of fruit-trees marked the villages; slim palms put
their nodding heads together above the low houses; dried palm-leaf roofs
shone afar, like roofs of gold, behind the dark colonnades of tree-trunks;
figures passed vivid and vanishing; the smoke of fires stood upright above
the masses of flowering bushes; bamboo fences glittered, running away in
broken lines between the fields. A sudden cry on the shore sounded
plaintive in the distance, and ceased abruptly, as if stifled in the
downpour of sunshine. A puff of breeze made a flash of darkness on the
smooth water, touched our faces, and became forgotten. Nothing moved. The
sun blazed down into a shadowless hollow of colours and stillness.</p>
<p>It was the stage where, dressed splendidly for his part, he strutted,
incomparably dignified, made important by the power he had to awaken an
absurd expectation of something heroic going to take place—a burst
of action or song—upon the vibrating tone of a wonderful sunshine.
He was ornate and disturbing, for one could not imagine what depth of
horrible void such an elaborate front could be worthy to hide. He was not
masked—there was too much life in him, and a mask is only a lifeless
thing; but he presented himself essentially as an actor, as a human being
aggressively disguised. His smallest acts were prepared and unexpected,
his speeches grave, his sentences ominous like hints and complicated like
arabesques. He was treated with a solemn respect accorded in the
irreverent West only to the monarchs of the stage, and he accepted the
profound homage with a sustained dignity seen nowhere else but behind the
footlights and in the condensed falseness of some grossly tragic
situation. It was almost impossible to remember who he was—only a
petty chief of a conveniently isolated corner of Mindanao, where we could
in comparative safety break the law against the traffic in firearms and
ammunition with the natives. What would happen should one of the moribund
Spanish gun-boats be suddenly galvanized into a flicker of active life did
not trouble us, once we were inside the bay—so completely did it
appear out of the reach of a meddling world; and besides, in those days we
were imaginative enough to look with a kind of joyous equanimity on any
chance there was of being quietly hanged somewhere out of the way of
diplomatic remonstrance. As to Karain, nothing could happen to him unless
what happens to all—failure and death; but his quality was to appear
clothed in the illusion of unavoidable success. He seemed too effective,
too necessary there, too much of an essential condition for the existence
of his land and his people, to be destroyed by anything short of an
earthquake. He summed up his race, his country, the elemental force of
ardent life, of tropical nature. He had its luxuriant strength, its
fascination; and, like it, he carried the seed of peril within.</p>
<p>In many successive visits we came to know his stage well—the purple
semicircle of hills, the slim trees leaning over houses, the yellow sands,
the streaming green of ravines. All that had the crude and blended
colouring, the appropriateness almost excessive, the suspicious immobility
of a painted scene; and it enclosed so perfectly the accomplished acting
of his amazing pretences that the rest of the world seemed shut out
forever from the gorgeous spectacle. There could be nothing outside. It
was as if the earth had gone on spinning, and had left that crumb of its
surface alone in space. He appeared utterly cut off from everything but
the sunshine, and that even seemed to be made for him alone. Once when
asked what was on the other side of the hills, he said, with a meaning
smile, "Friends and enemies—many enemies; else why should I buy your
rifles and powder?" He was always like this—word-perfect in his
part, playing up faithfully to the mysteries and certitudes of his
surroundings. "Friends and enemies"—nothing else. It was impalpable
and vast. The earth had indeed rolled away from under his land, and he,
with his handful of people, stood surrounded by a silent tumult as of
contending shades. Certainly no sound came from outside. "Friends and
enemies!" He might have added, "and memories," at least as far as he
himself was concerned; but he neglected to make that point then. It made
itself later on, though; but it was after the daily performance—in
the wings, so to speak, and with the lights out. Meantime he filled the
stage with barbarous dignity. Some ten years ago he had led his people—a
scratch lot of wandering Bugis—to the conquest of the bay, and now
in his august care they had forgotten all the past, and had lost all
concern for the future. He gave them wisdom, advice, reward, punishment,
life or death, with the same serenity of attitude and voice. He understood
irrigation and the art of war—the qualities of weapons and the craft
of boat-building. He could conceal his heart; had more endurance; he could
swim longer, and steer a canoe better than any of his people; he could
shoot straighter, and negotiate more tortuously than any man of his race I
knew. He was an adventurer of the sea, an outcast, a ruler—and my
very good friend. I wish him a quick death in a stand-up fight, a death in
sunshine; for he had known remorse and power, and no man can demand more
from life. Day after day he appeared before us, incomparably faithful to
the illusions of the stage, and at sunset the night descended upon him
quickly, like a falling curtain. The seamed hills became black shadows
towering high upon a clear sky; above them the glittering confusion of
stars resembled a mad turmoil stilled by a gesture; sounds ceased, men
slept, forms vanished—and the reality of the universe alone remained—a
marvellous thing of darkness and glimmers.</p>
<p>II</p>
<p>But it was at night that he talked openly, forgetting the exactions of his
stage. In the daytime there were affairs to be discussed in state. There
were at first between him and me his own splendour, my shabby suspicions,
and the scenic landscape that intruded upon the reality of our lives by
its motionless fantasy of outline and colour. His followers thronged round
him; above his head the broad blades of their spears made a spiked halo of
iron points, and they hedged him from humanity by the shimmer of silks,
the gleam of weapons, the excited and respectful hum of eager voices.
Before sunset he would take leave with ceremony, and go off sitting under
a red umbrella, and escorted by a score of boats. All the paddles flashed
and struck together with a mighty splash that reverberated loudly in the
monumental amphitheatre of hills. A broad stream of dazzling foam trailed
behind the flotilla. The canoes appeared very black on the white hiss of
water; turbaned heads swayed back and forth; a multitude of arms in
crimson and yellow rose and fell with one movement; the spearmen upright
in the bows of canoes had variegated sarongs and gleaming shoulders like
bronze statues; the muttered strophes of the paddlers' song ended
periodically in a plaintive shout. They diminished in the distance; the
song ceased; they swarmed on the beach in the long shadows of the western
hills. The sunlight lingered on the purple crests, and we could see him
leading the way to his stockade, a burly bareheaded figure walking far in
advance of a straggling cortege, and swinging regularly an ebony staff
taller than himself. The darkness deepened fast; torches gleamed fitfully,
passing behind bushes; a long hail or two trailed in the silence of the
evening; and at last the night stretched its smooth veil over the shore,
the lights, and the voices.</p>
<p>Then, just as we were thinking of repose, the watchmen of the schooner
would hail a splash of paddles away in the starlit gloom of the bay; a
voice would respond in cautious tones, and our serang, putting his head
down the open skylight, would inform us without surprise, "That Rajah, he
coming. He here now." Karain appeared noiselessly in the doorway of the
little cabin. He was simplicity itself then; all in white; muffled about
his head; for arms only a kriss with a plain buffalo-horn handle, which he
would politely conceal within a fold of his sarong before stepping over
the threshold. The old sword-bearer's face, the worn-out and mournful face
so covered with wrinkles that it seemed to look out through the meshes of
a fine dark net, could be seen close above his shoulders. Karain never
moved without that attendant, who stood or squatted close at his back. He
had a dislike of an open space behind him. It was more than a dislike—it
resembled fear, a nervous preoccupation of what went on where he could not
see. This, in view of the evident and fierce loyalty that surrounded him,
was inexplicable. He was there alone in the midst of devoted men; he was
safe from neighbourly ambushes, from fraternal ambitions; and yet more
than one of our visitors had assured us that their ruler could not bear to
be alone. They said, "Even when he eats and sleeps there is always one on
the watch near him who has strength and weapons." There was indeed always
one near him, though our informants had no conception of that watcher's
strength and weapons, which were both shadowy and terrible. We knew, but
only later on, when we had heard the story. Meantime we noticed that, even
during the most important interviews, Karain would often give a start, and
interrupting his discourse, would sweep his arm back with a sudden
movement, to feel whether the old fellow was there. The old fellow,
impenetrable and weary, was always there. He shared his food, his repose,
and his thoughts; he knew his plans, guarded his secrets; and, impassive
behind his master's agitation, without stirring the least bit, murmured
above his head in a soothing tone some words difficult to catch.</p>
<p>It was only on board the schooner, when surrounded by white faces, by
unfamiliar sights and sounds, that Karain seemed to forget the strange
obsession that wound like a black thread through the gorgeous pomp of his
public life. At night we treated him in a free and easy manner, which just
stopped short of slapping him on the back, for there are liberties one
must not take with a Malay. He said himself that on such occasions he was
only a private gentleman coming to see other gentlemen whom he supposed as
well born as himself. I fancy that to the last he believed us to be
emissaries of Government, darkly official persons furthering by our
illegal traffic some dark scheme of high statecraft. Our denials and
protestations were unavailing. He only smiled with discreet politeness and
inquired about the Queen. Every visit began with that inquiry; he was
insatiable of details; he was fascinated by the holder of a sceptre the
shadow of which, stretching from the westward over the earth and over the
seas, passed far beyond his own hand's-breadth of conquered land. He
multiplied questions; he could never know enough of the Monarch of whom he
spoke with wonder and chivalrous respect—with a kind of affectionate
awe! Afterwards, when we had learned that he was the son of a woman who
had many years ago ruled a small Bugis state, we came to suspect that the
memory of his mother (of whom he spoke with enthusiasm) mingled somehow in
his mind with the image he tried to form for himself of the far-off Queen
whom he called Great, Invincible, Pious, and Fortunate. We had to invent
details at last to satisfy his craving curiosity; and our loyalty must be
pardoned, for we tried to make them fit for his august and resplendent
ideal. We talked. The night slipped over us, over the still schooner, over
the sleeping land, and over the sleepless sea that thundered amongst the
reefs outside the bay. His paddlers, two trustworthy men, slept in the
canoe at the foot of our side-ladder. The old confidant, relieved from
duty, dozed on his heels, with his back against the companion-doorway; and
Karain sat squarely in the ship's wooden armchair, under the slight sway
of the cabin lamp, a cheroot between his dark fingers, and a glass of
lemonade before him. He was amused by the fizz of the thing, but after a
sip or two would let it get flat, and with a courteous wave of his hand
ask for a fresh bottle. He decimated our slender stock; but we did not
begrudge it to him, for, when he began, he talked well. He must have been
a great Bugis dandy in his time, for even then (and when we knew him he
was no longer young) his splendour was spotlessly neat, and he dyed his
hair a light shade of brown. The quiet dignity of his bearing transformed
the dim-lit cuddy of the schooner into an audience-hall. He talked of
inter-island politics with an ironic and melancholy shrewdness. He had
travelled much, suffered not a little, intrigued, fought. He knew native
Courts, European Settlements, the forests, the sea, and, as he said
himself, had spoken in his time to many great men. He liked to talk with
me because I had known some of these men: he seemed to think that I could
understand him, and, with a fine confidence, assumed that I, at least,
could appreciate how much greater he was himself. But he preferred to talk
of his native country—a small Bugis state on the island of Celebes.
I had visited it some time before, and he asked eagerly for news. As men's
names came up in conversation he would say, "We swam against one another
when we were boys"; or, "We hunted the deer together—he could use
the noose and the spear as well as I." Now and then his big dreamy eyes
would roll restlessly; he frowned or smiled, or he would become pensive,
and, staring in silence, would nod slightly for a time at some regretted
vision of the past.</p>
<p>His mother had been the ruler of a small semi-independent state on the
sea-coast at the head of the Gulf of Boni. He spoke of her with pride. She
had been a woman resolute in affairs of state and of her own heart. After
the death of her first husband, undismayed by the turbulent opposition of
the chiefs, she married a rich trader, a Korinchi man of no family. Karain
was her son by that second marriage, but his unfortunate descent had
apparently nothing to do with his exile. He said nothing as to its cause,
though once he let slip with a sigh, "Ha! my land will not feel any more
the weight of my body." But he related willingly the story of his
wanderings, and told us all about the conquest of the bay. Alluding to the
people beyond the hills, he would murmur gently, with a careless wave of
the hand, "They came over the hills once to fight us, but those who got
away never came again." He thought for a while, smiling to himself. "Very
few got away," he added, with proud serenity. He cherished the
recollections of his successes; he had an exulting eagerness for
endeavour; when he talked, his aspect was warlike, chivalrous, and
uplifting. No wonder his people admired him. We saw him once walking in
daylight amongst the houses of the settlement. At the doors of huts groups
of women turned to look after him, warbling softly, and with gleaming
eyes; armed men stood out of the way, submissive and erect; others
approached from the side, bending their backs to address him humbly; an
old woman stretched out a draped lean arm—"Blessings on thy head!"
she cried from a dark doorway; a fiery-eyed man showed above the low fence
of a plantain-patch a streaming face, a bare breast scarred in two places,
and bellowed out pantingly after him, "God give victory to our master!"
Karain walked fast, and with firm long strides; he answered greetings
right and left by quick piercing glances. Children ran forward between the
houses, peeped fearfully round corners; young boys kept up with him,
gliding between bushes: their eyes gleamed through the dark leaves. The
old sword-bearer, shouldering the silver scabbard, shuffled hastily at his
heels with bowed head, and his eyes on the ground. And in the midst of a
great stir they passed swift and absorbed, like two men hurrying through a
great solitude.</p>
<p>In his council hall he was surrounded by the gravity of armed chiefs,
while two long rows of old headmen dressed in cotton stuffs squatted on
their heels, with idle arms hanging over their knees. Under the thatch
roof supported by smooth columns, of which each one had cost the life of a
straight-stemmed young palm, the scent of flowering hedges drifted in warm
waves. The sun was sinking. In the open courtyard suppliants walked
through the gate, raising, when yet far off, their joined hands above
bowed heads, and bending low in the bright stream of sunlight. Young
girls, with flowers in their laps, sat under the wide-spreading boughs of
a big tree. The blue smoke of wood fires spread in a thin mist above the
high-pitched roofs of houses that had glistening walls of woven reeds, and
all round them rough wooden pillars under the sloping eaves. He dispensed
justice in the shade; from a high seat he gave orders, advice, reproof.
Now and then the hum of approbation rose louder, and idle spearmen that
lounged listlessly against the posts, looking at the girls, would turn
their heads slowly. To no man had been given the shelter of so much
respect, confidence, and awe. Yet at times he would lean forward and
appear to listen as for a far-off note of discord, as if expecting to hear
some faint voice, the sound of light footsteps; or he would start half up
in his seat, as though he had been familiarly touched on the shoulder. He
glanced back with apprehension; his aged follower whispered inaudibly at
his ear; the chiefs turned their eyes away in silence, for the old wizard,
the man who could command ghosts and send evil spirits against enemies,
was speaking low to their ruler. Around the short stillness of the open
place the trees rustled faintly, the soft laughter of girls playing with
the flowers rose in clear bursts of joyous sound. At the end of upright
spear-shafts the long tufts of dyed horse-hair waved crimson and filmy in
the gust of wind; and beyond the blaze of hedges the brook of limpid quick
water ran invisible and loud under the drooping grass of the bank, with a
great murmur, passionate and gentle.</p>
<p>After sunset, far across the fields and over the bay, clusters of torches
could be seen burning under the high roofs of the council shed. Smoky red
flames swayed on high poles, and the fiery blaze flickered over faces,
clung to the smooth trunks of palm-trees, kindled bright sparks on the
rims of metal dishes standing on fine floor-mats. That obscure adventurer
feasted like a king. Small groups of men crouched in tight circles round
the wooden platters; brown hands hovered over snowy heaps of rice. Sitting
upon a rough couch apart from the others, he leaned on his elbow with
inclined head; and near him a youth improvised in a high tone a song that
celebrated his valour and wisdom. The singer rocked himself to and fro,
rolling frenzied eyes; old women hobbled about with dishes, and men,
squatting low, lifted their heads to listen gravely without ceasing to
eat. The song of triumph vibrated in the night, and the stanzas rolled out
mournful and fiery like the thoughts of a hermit. He silenced it with a
sign, "Enough!" An owl hooted far away, exulting in the delight of deep
gloom in dense foliage; overhead lizards ran in the attap thatch, calling
softly; the dry leaves of the roof rustled; the rumour of mingled voices
grew louder suddenly. After a circular and startled glance, as of a man
waking up abruptly to the sense of danger, he would throw himself back,
and under the downward gaze of the old sorcerer take up, wide-eyed, the
slender thread of his dream. They watched his moods; the swelling rumour
of animated talk subsided like a wave on a sloping beach. The chief is
pensive. And above the spreading whisper of lowered voices only a little
rattle of weapons would be heard, a single louder word distinct and alone,
or the grave ring of a big brass tray.</p>
<p>III</p>
<p>For two years at short intervals we visited him. We came to like him, to
trust him, almost to admire him. He was plotting and preparing a war with
patience, with foresight—with a fidelity to his purpose and with a
steadfastness of which I would have thought him racially incapable. He
seemed fearless of the future, and in his plans displayed a sagacity that
was only limited by his profound ignorance of the rest of the world. We
tried to enlighten him, but our attempts to make clear the irresistible
nature of the forces which he desired to arrest failed to discourage his
eagerness to strike a blow for his own primitive ideas. He did not
understand us, and replied by arguments that almost drove one to
desperation by their childish shrewdness. He was absurd and unanswerable.
Sometimes we caught glimpses of a sombre, glowing fury within him—a
brooding and vague sense of wrong, and a concentrated lust of violence
which is dangerous in a native. He raved like one inspired. On one
occasion, after we had been talking to him late in his campong, he jumped
up. A great, clear fire blazed in the grove; lights and shadows danced
together between the trees; in the still night bats flitted in and out of
the boughs like fluttering flakes of denser darkness. He snatched the
sword from the old man, whizzed it out of the scabbard, and thrust the
point into the earth. Upon the thin, upright blade the silver hilt,
released, swayed before him like something alive. He stepped back a pace,
and in a deadened tone spoke fiercely to the vibrating steel: "If there is
virtue in the fire, in the iron, in the hand that forged thee, in the
words spoken over thee, in the desire of my heart, and in the wisdom of
thy makers,—then we shall be victorious together!" He drew it out,
looked along the edge. "Take," he said over his shoulder to the old
sword-bearer. The other, unmoved on his hams, wiped the point with a
corner of his sarong, and returning the weapon to its scabbard, sat
nursing it on his knees without a single look upwards. Karain, suddenly
very calm, reseated himself with dignity. We gave up remonstrating after
this, and let him go his way to an honourable disaster. All we could do
for him was to see to it that the powder was good for the money and the
rifles serviceable, if old.</p>
<p>But the game was becoming at last too dangerous; and if we, who had faced
it pretty often, thought little of the danger, it was decided for us by
some very respectable people sitting safely in counting-houses that the
risks were too great, and that only one more trip could be made. After
giving in the usual way many misleading hints as to our destination, we
slipped away quietly, and after a very quick passage entered the bay. It
was early morning, and even before the anchor went to the bottom the
schooner was surrounded by boats.</p>
<p>The first thing we heard was that Karain's mysterious sword-bearer had
died a few days ago. We did not attach much importance to the news. It was
certainly difficult to imagine Karain without his inseparable follower;
but the fellow was old, he had never spoken to one of us, we hardly ever
had heard the sound of his voice; and we had come to look upon him as upon
something inanimate, as a part of our friend's trappings of state—like
that sword he had carried, or the fringed red umbrella displayed during an
official progress. Karain did not visit us in the afternoon as usual. A
message of greeting and a present of fruit and vegetables came off for us
before sunset. Our friend paid us like a banker, but treated us like a
prince. We sat up for him till midnight. Under the stern awning bearded
Jackson jingled an old guitar and sang, with an execrable accent, Spanish
love-songs; while young Hollis and I, sprawling on the deck, had a game of
chess by the light of a cargo lantern. Karain did not appear. Next day we
were busy unloading, and heard that the Rajah was unwell. The expected
invitation to visit him ashore did not come. We sent friendly messages,
but, fearing to intrude upon some secret council, remained on board. Early
on the third day we had landed all the powder and rifles, and also a
six-pounder brass gun with its carriage which we had subscribed together
for a present for our friend. The afternoon was sultry. Ragged edges of
black clouds peeped over the hills, and invisible thunderstorms circled
outside, growling like wild beasts. We got the schooner ready for sea,
intending to leave next morning at daylight. All day a merciless sun
blazed down into the bay, fierce and pale, as if at white heat. Nothing
moved on the land. The beach was empty, the villages seemed deserted; the
trees far off stood in unstirring clumps, as if painted; the white smoke
of some invisible bush-fire spread itself low over the shores of the bay
like a settling fog. Late in the day three of Karain's chief men, dressed
in their best and armed to the teeth, came off in a canoe, bringing a case
of dollars. They were gloomy and languid, and told us they had not seen
their Rajah for five days. No one had seen him! We settled all accounts,
and after shaking hands in turn and in profound silence, they descended
one after another into their boat, and were paddled to the shore, sitting
close together, clad in vivid colours, with hanging heads: the gold
embroideries of their jackets flashed dazzlingly as they went away gliding
on the smooth water, and not one of them looked back once. Before sunset
the growling clouds carried with a rush the ridge of hills, and came
tumbling down the inner slopes. Everything disappeared; black whirling
vapours filled the bay, and in the midst of them the schooner swung here
and there in the shifting gusts of wind. A single clap of thunder
detonated in the hollow with a violence that seemed capable of bursting
into small pieces the ring of high land, and a warm deluge descended. The
wind died out. We panted in the close cabin; our faces streamed; the bay
outside hissed as if boiling; the water fell in perpendicular shafts as
heavy as lead; it swished about the deck, poured off the spars, gurgled,
sobbed, splashed, murmured in the blind night. Our lamp burned low.
Hollis, stripped to the waist, lay stretched out on the lockers, with
closed eyes and motionless like a despoiled corpse; at his head Jackson
twanged the guitar, and gasped out in sighs a mournful dirge about
hopeless love and eyes like stars. Then we heard startled voices on deck
crying in the rain, hurried footsteps overhead, and suddenly Karain
appeared in the doorway of the cabin. His bare breast and his face
glistened in the light; his sarong, soaked, clung about his legs; he had
his sheathed kriss in his left hand; and wisps of wet hair, escaping from
under his red kerchief, stuck over his eyes and down his cheeks. He
stepped in with a headlong stride and looking over his shoulder like a man
pursued. Hollis turned on his side quickly and opened his eyes. Jackson
clapped his big hand over the strings and the jingling vibration died
suddenly. I stood up.</p>
<p>"We did not hear your boat's hail!" I exclaimed.</p>
<p>"Boat! The man's swum off," drawled out Hollis from the locker. "Look at
him!"</p>
<p>He breathed heavily, wild-eyed, while we looked at him in silence. Water
dripped from him, made a dark pool, and ran crookedly across the cabin
floor. We could hear Jackson, who had gone out to drive away our Malay
seamen from the doorway of the companion; he swore menacingly in the
patter of a heavy shower, and there was a great commotion on deck. The
watchmen, scared out of their wits by the glimpse of a shadowy figure
leaping over the rail, straight out of the night as it were, had alarmed
all hands.</p>
<p>Then Jackson, with glittering drops of water on his hair and beard, came
back looking angry, and Hollis, who, being the youngest of us, assumed an
indolent superiority, said without stirring, "Give him a dry sarong—give
him mine; it's hanging up in the bathroom." Karain laid the kriss on the
table, hilt inwards, and murmured a few words in a strangled voice.</p>
<p>"What's that?" asked Hollis, who had not heard.</p>
<p>"He apologizes for coming in with a weapon in his hand," I said, dazedly.</p>
<p>"Ceremonious beggar. Tell him we forgive a friend . . . on such a night,"
drawled out Hollis. "What's wrong?"</p>
<p>Karain slipped the dry sarong over his head, dropped the wet one at his
feet, and stepped out of it. I pointed to the wooden armchair—his
armchair. He sat down very straight, said "Ha!" in a strong voice; a short
shiver shook his broad frame. He looked over his shoulder uneasily, turned
as if to speak to us, but only stared in a curious blind manner, and again
looked back. Jackson bellowed out, "Watch well on deck there!" heard a
faint answer from above, and reaching out with his foot slammed-to the
cabin door.</p>
<p>"All right now," he said.</p>
<p>Karain's lips moved slightly. A vivid flash of lightning made the two
round stern-ports facing him glimmer like a pair of cruel and
phosphorescent eyes. The flame of the lamp seemed to wither into brown
dust for an instant, and the looking-glass over the little sideboard
leaped out behind his back in a smooth sheet of livid light. The roll of
thunder came near, crashed over us; the schooner trembled, and the great
voice went on, threatening terribly, into the distance. For less than a
minute a furious shower rattled on the decks. Karain looked slowly from
face to face, and then the silence became so profound that we all could
hear distinctly the two chronometers in my cabin ticking along with
unflagging speed against one another.</p>
<p>And we three, strangely moved, could not take our eyes from him. He had
become enigmatical and touching, in virtue of that mysterious cause that
had driven him through the night and through the thunderstorm to the
shelter of the schooner's cuddy. Not one of us doubted that we were
looking at a fugitive, incredible as it appeared to us. He was haggard, as
though he had not slept for weeks; he had become lean, as though he had
not eaten for days. His cheeks were hollow, his eyes sunk, the muscles of
his chest and arms twitched slightly as if after an exhausting contest. Of
course it had been a long swim off to the schooner; but his face showed
another kind of fatigue, the tormented weariness, the anger and the fear
of a struggle against a thought, an idea—against something that
cannot be grappled, that never rests—a shadow, a nothing,
unconquerable and immortal, that preys upon life. We knew it as though he
had shouted it at us. His chest expanded time after time, as if it could
not contain the beating of his heart. For a moment he had the power of the
possessed—the power to awaken in the beholders wonder, pain, pity,
and a fearful near sense of things invisible, of things dark and mute,
that surround the loneliness of mankind. His eyes roamed about aimlessly
for a moment, then became still. He said with effort—</p>
<p>"I came here . . . I leaped out of my stockade as after a defeat. I ran in
the night. The water was black. I left him calling on the edge of black
water. . . . I left him standing alone on the beach. I swam . . . he
called out after me . . . I swam . . ."</p>
<p>He trembled from head to foot, sitting very upright and gazing straight
before him. Left whom? Who called? We did not know. We could not
understand. I said at all hazards—</p>
<p>"Be firm."</p>
<p>The sound of my voice seemed to steady him into a sudden rigidity, but
otherwise he took no notice. He seemed to listen, to expect something for
a moment, then went on—</p>
<p>"He cannot come here—therefore I sought you. You men with white
faces who despise the invisible voices. He cannot abide your unbelief and
your strength."</p>
<p>He was silent for a while, then exclaimed softly—</p>
<p>"Oh! the strength of unbelievers!"</p>
<p>"There's no one here but you—and we three," said Hollis, quietly. He
reclined with his head supported on elbow and did not budge.</p>
<p>"I know," said Karain. "He has never followed me here. Was not the wise
man ever by my side? But since the old wise man, who knew of my trouble,
has died, I have heard the voice every night. I shut myself up—for
many days—in the dark. I can hear the sorrowful murmurs of women,
the whisper of the wind, of the running waters; the clash of weapons in
the hands of faithful men, their footsteps—and his voice! . . . Near
. . . So! In my ear! I felt him near . . . His breath passed over my neck.
I leaped out without a cry. All about me men slept quietly. I ran to the
sea. He ran by my side without footsteps, whispering, whispering old words—whispering
into my ear in his old voice. I ran into the sea; I swam off to you, with
my kriss between my teeth. I, armed, I fled before a breath—to you.
Take me away to your land. The wise old man has died, and with him is gone
the power of his words and charms. And I can tell no one. No one. There is
no one here faithful enough and wise enough to know. It is only near you,
unbelievers, that my trouble fades like a mist under the eye of day."</p>
<p>He turned to me.</p>
<p>"With you I go!" he cried in a contained voice. "With you, who know so
many of us. I want to leave this land—my people . . . and him—there!"</p>
<p>He pointed a shaking finger at random over his shoulder. It was hard for
us to bear the intensity of that undisclosed distress. Hollis stared at
him hard. I asked gently—</p>
<p>"Where is the danger?"</p>
<p>"Everywhere outside this place," he answered, mournfully. "In every place
where I am. He waits for me on the paths, under the trees, in the place
where I sleep—everywhere but here."</p>
<p>He looked round the little cabin, at the painted beams, at the tarnished
varnish of bulkheads; he looked round as if appealing to all its shabby
strangeness, to the disorderly jumble of unfamiliar things that belong to
an inconceivable life of stress, of power, of endeavour, of unbelief—to
the strong life of white men, which rolls on irresistible and hard on the
edge of outer darkness. He stretched out his arms as if to embrace it and
us. We waited. The wind and rain had ceased, and the stillness of the
night round the schooner was as dumb and complete as if a dead world had
been laid to rest in a grave of clouds. We expected him to speak. The
necessity within him tore at his lips. There are those who say that a
native will not speak to a white man. Error. No man will speak to his
master; but to a wanderer and a friend, to him who does not come to teach
or to rule, to him who asks for nothing and accepts all things, words are
spoken by the camp-fires, in the shared solitude of the sea, in riverside
villages, in resting-places surrounded by forests—words are spoken
that take no account of race or colour. One heart speaks—another one
listens; and the earth, the sea, the sky, the passing wind and the
stirring leaf, hear also the futile tale of the burden of life.</p>
<p>He spoke at last. It is impossible to convey the effect of his story. It
is undying, it is but a memory, and its vividness cannot be made clear to
another mind, any more than the vivid emotions of a dream. One must have
seen his innate splendour, one must have known him before—looked at
him then. The wavering gloom of the little cabin; the breathless stillness
outside, through which only the lapping of water against the schooner's
sides could be heard; Hollis's pale face, with steady dark eyes; the
energetic head of Jackson held up between two big palms, and with the long
yellow hair of his beard flowing over the strings of the guitar lying on
the table; Karain's upright and motionless pose, his tone—all this
made an impression that cannot be forgotten. He faced us across the table.
His dark head and bronze torso appeared above the tarnished slab of wood,
gleaming and still as if cast in metal. Only his lips moved, and his eyes
glowed, went out, blazed again, or stared mournfully. His expressions came
straight from his tormented heart. His words sounded low, in a sad murmur
as of running water; at times they rang loud like the clash of a war-gong—or
trailed slowly like weary travellers—or rushed forward with the
speed of fear.</p>
<p>IV</p>
<p>This is, imperfectly, what he said—</p>
<p>"It was after the great trouble that broke the alliance of the four states
of Wajo. We fought amongst ourselves, and the Dutch watched from afar till
we were weary. Then the smoke of their fire-ships was seen at the mouth of
our rivers, and their great men came in boats full of soldiers to talk to
us of protection and peace. We answered with caution and wisdom, for our
villages were burnt, our stockades weak, the people weary, and the weapons
blunt. They came and went; there had been much talk, but after they went
away everything seemed to be as before, only their ships remained in sight
from our coast, and very soon their traders came amongst us under a
promise of safety. My brother was a Ruler, and one of those who had given
the promise. I was young then, and had fought in the war, and Pata Matara
had fought by my side. We had shared hunger, danger, fatigue, and victory.
His eyes saw my danger quickly, and twice my arm had preserved his life.
It was his destiny. He was my friend. And he was great amongst us—one
of those who were near my brother, the Ruler. He spoke in council, his
courage was great, he was the chief of many villages round the great lake
that is in the middle of our country as the heart is in the middle of a
man's body. When his sword was carried into a campong in advance of his
coming, the maidens whispered wonderingly under the fruit-trees, the rich
men consulted together in the shade, and a feast was made ready with
rejoicing and songs. He had the favour of the Ruler and the affection of
the poor. He loved war, deer hunts, and the charms of women. He was the
possessor of jewels, of lucky weapons, and of men's devotion. He was a
fierce man; and I had no other friend.</p>
<p>"I was the chief of a stockade at the mouth of the river, and collected
tolls for my brother from the passing boats. One day I saw a Dutch trader
go up the river. He went up with three boats, and no toll was demanded
from him, because the smoke of Dutch war-ships stood out from the open
sea, and we were too weak to forget treaties. He went up under the promise
of safety, and my brother gave him protection. He said he came to trade.
He listened to our voices, for we are men who speak openly and without
fear; he counted the number of our spears, he examined the trees, the
running waters, the grasses of the bank, the slopes of our hills. He went
up to Matara's country and obtained permission to build a house. He traded
and planted. He despised our joys, our thoughts, and our sorrows. His face
was red, his hair like flame, and his eyes pale, like a river mist; he
moved heavily, and spoke with a deep voice; he laughed aloud like a fool,
and knew no courtesy in his speech. He was a big, scornful man, who looked
into women's faces and put his hand on the shoulders of free men as though
he had been a noble-born chief. We bore with him. Time passed.</p>
<p>"Then Pata Matara's sister fled from the campong and went to live in the
Dutchman's house. She was a great and wilful lady: I had seen her once
carried high on slaves' shoulders amongst the people, with uncovered face,
and I had heard all men say that her beauty was extreme, silencing the
reason and ravishing the heart of the beholders. The people were dismayed;
Matara's face was blackened with that disgrace, for she knew she had been
promised to another man. Matara went to the Dutchman's house, and said,
'Give her up to die—she is the daughter of chiefs.' The white man
refused and shut himself up, while his servants kept guard night and day
with loaded guns. Matara raged. My brother called a council. But the Dutch
ships were near, and watched our coast greedily. My brother said, 'If he
dies now our land will pay for his blood. Leave him alone till we grow
stronger and the ships are gone.' Matara was wise; he waited and watched.
But the white man feared for her life and went away.</p>
<p>"He left his house, his plantations, and his goods! He departed, armed and
menacing, and left all—for her! She had ravished his heart! From my
stockade I saw him put out to sea in a big boat. Matara and I watched him
from the fighting platform behind the pointed stakes. He sat cross-legged,
with his gun in his hands, on the roof at the stern of his prau. The
barrel of his rifle glinted aslant before his big red face. The broad
river was stretched under him—level, smooth, shining, like a plain
of silver; and his prau, looking very short and black from the shore,
glided along the silver plain and over into the blue of the sea.</p>
<p>"Thrice Matara, standing by my side, called aloud her name with grief and
imprecations. He stirred my heart. It leaped three times; and three times
with the eyes of my mind I saw in the gloom within the enclosed space of
the prau a woman with streaming hair going away from her land and her
people. I was angry—and sorry. Why? And then I also cried out
insults and threats. Matara said, 'Now they have left our land their lives
are mind. I shall follow and strike—and, alone, pay the price of
blood.' A great wind was sweeping towards the setting sun over the empty
river. I cried, 'By your side I will go!' He lowered his head in sign of
assent. It was his destiny. The sun had set, and the trees swayed their
boughs with a great noise above our heads.</p>
<p>"On the third night we two left our land together in a trading prau.</p>
<p>"The sea met us—the sea, wide, pathless, and without voice. A
sailing prau leaves no track. We went south. The moon was full; and,
looking up, we said to one another, 'When the next moon shines as this
one, we shall return and they will be dead.' It was fifteen years ago.
Many moons have grown full and withered and I have not seen my land since.
We sailed south; we overtook many praus; we examined the creeks and the
bays; we saw the end of our coast, of our island—a steep cape over a
disturbed strait, where drift the shadows of shipwrecked praus and drowned
men clamour in the night. The wide sea was all round us now. We saw a
great mountain burning in the midst of water; we saw thousands of islets
scattered like bits of iron fired from a big gun; we saw a long coast of
mountain and lowlands stretching away in sunshine from west to east. It
was Java. We said, 'They are there; their time is near, and we shall
return or die cleansed from dishonour.'</p>
<p>"We landed. Is there anything good in that country? The paths run straight
and hard and dusty. Stone campongs, full of white faces, are surrounded by
fertile fields, but every man you meet is a slave. The rulers live under
the edge of a foreign sword. We ascended mountains, we traversed valleys;
at sunset we entered villages. We asked everyone, 'Have you seen such a
white man?' Some stared; others laughed; women gave us food, sometimes,
with fear and respect, as though we had been distracted by the visitation
of God; but some did not understand our language, and some cursed us, or,
yawning, asked with contempt the reason of our quest. Once, as we were
going away, an old man called after us, 'Desist!'</p>
<p>"We went on. Concealing our weapons, we stood humbly aside before the
horsemen on the road; we bowed low in the courtyards of chiefs who were no
better than slaves. We lost ourselves in the fields, in the jungle; and
one night, in a tangled forest, we came upon a place where crumbling old
walls had fallen amongst the trees, and where strange stone idols—carved
images of devils with many arms and legs, with snakes twined round their
bodies, with twenty heads and holding a hundred swords—seemed to
live and threaten in the light of our camp fire. Nothing dismayed us. And
on the road, by every fire, in resting-places, we always talked of her and
of him. Their time was near. We spoke of nothing else. No! not of hunger,
thirst, weariness, and faltering hearts. No! we spoke of him and her! Of
her! And we thought of them—of her! Matara brooded by the fire. I
sat and thought and thought, till suddenly I could see again the image of
a woman, beautiful, and young, and great and proud, and tender, going away
from her land and her people. Matara said, 'When we find them we shall
kill her first to cleanse the dishonour—then the man must die.' I
would say, 'It shall be so; it is your vengeance.' He stared long at me
with his big sunken eyes.</p>
<p>"We came back to the coast. Our feet were bleeding, our bodies thin. We
slept in rags under the shadow of stone enclosures; we prowled, soiled and
lean, about the gateways of white men's courtyards. Their hairy dogs
barked at us, and their servants shouted from afar, 'Begone!' Low-born
wretches, that keep watch over the streets of stone campongs, asked us who
we were. We lied, we cringed, we smiled with hate in our hearts, and we
kept looking here, looking there for them—for the white man with
hair like flame, and for her, for the woman who had broken faith, and
therefore must die. We looked. At last in every woman's face I thought I
could see hers. We ran swiftly. No! Sometimes Matara would whisper, 'Here
is the man,' and we waited, crouching. He came near. It was not the man—those
Dutchmen are all alike. We suffered the anguish of deception. In my sleep
I saw her face, and was both joyful and sorry . . . . Why? . . . I seemed
to hear a whisper near me. I turned swiftly. She was not there! And as we
trudged wearily from stone city to stone city I seemed to hear a light
footstep near me. A time came when I heard it always, and I was glad. I
thought, walking dizzy and weary in sunshine on the hard paths of white
men I thought, She is there—with us! . . . Matara was sombre. We
were often hungry.</p>
<p>"We sold the carved sheaths of our krisses—the ivory sheaths with
golden ferules. We sold the jewelled hilts. But we kept the blades—for
them. The blades that never touch but kill—we kept the blades for
her. . . . Why? She was always by our side. . . . We starved. We begged.
We left Java at last.</p>
<p>"We went West, we went East. We saw many lands, crowds of strange faces,
men that live in trees and men who eat their old people. We cut rattans in
the forest for a handful of rice, and for a living swept the decks of big
ships and heard curses heaped upon our heads. We toiled in villages; we
wandered upon the seas with the Bajow people, who have no country. We
fought for pay; we hired ourselves to work for Goram men, and were
cheated; and under the orders of rough white faces we dived for pearls in
barren bays, dotted with black rocks, upon a coast of sand and desolation.
And everywhere we watched, we listened, we asked. We asked traders,
robbers, white men. We heard jeers, mockery, threats—words of wonder
and words of contempt. We never knew rest; we never thought of home, for
our work was not done. A year passed, then another. I ceased to count the
number of nights, of moons, of years. I watched over Matara. He had my
last handful of rice; if there was water enough for one he drank it; I
covered him up when he shivered with cold; and when the hot sickness came
upon him I sat sleepless through many nights and fanned his face. He was a
fierce man, and my friend. He spoke of her with fury in the daytime, with
sorrow in the dark; he remembered her in health, in sickness. I said
nothing; but I saw her every day—always! At first I saw only her
head, as of a woman walking in the low mist on a river bank. Then she sat
by our fire. I saw her! I looked at her! She had tender eyes and a
ravishing face. I murmured to her in the night. Matara said sleepily
sometimes, 'To whom are you talking? Who is there?' I answered quickly,
'No one' . . . It was a lie! She never left me. She shared the warmth of
our fire, she sat on my couch of leaves, she swam on the sea to follow me.
. . . I saw her! . . . I tell you I saw her long black hair spread behind
her upon the moonlit water as she struck out with bare arms by the side of
a swift prau. She was beautiful, she was faithful, and in the silence of
foreign countries she spoke to me very low in the language of my people.
No one saw her; no one heard her; she was mine only! In daylight she moved
with a swaying walk before me upon the weary paths; her figure was
straight and flexible like the stem of a slender tree; the heels of her
feet were round and polished like shells of eggs; with her round arm she
made signs. At night she looked into my face. And she was sad! Her eyes
were tender and frightened; her voice soft and pleading. Once I murmured
to her, 'You shall not die,' and she smiled . . . ever after she smiled! .
. . She gave me courage to bear weariness and hardships. Those were times
of pain, and she soothed me. We wandered patient in our search. We knew
deception, false hopes; we knew captivity, sickness, thirst, misery,
despair . . . . Enough! We found them! . . ."</p>
<p>He cried out the last words and paused. His face was impassive, and he
kept still like a man in a trance. Hollis sat up quickly, and spread his
elbows on the table. Jackson made a brusque movement, and accidentally
touched the guitar. A plaintive resonance filled the cabin with confused
vibrations and died out slowly. Then Karain began to speak again. The
restrained fierceness of his tone seemed to rise like a voice from
outside, like a thing unspoken but heard; it filled the cabin and
enveloped in its intense and deadened murmur the motionless figure in the
chair.</p>
<p>"We were on our way to Atjeh, where there was war; but the vessel ran on a
sandbank, and we had to land in Delli. We had earned a little money, and
had bought a gun from some Selangore traders; only one gun, which was
fired by the spark of a stone; Matara carried it. We landed. Many white
men lived there, planting tobacco on conquered plains, and Matara . . .
But no matter. He saw him! . . . The Dutchman! . . . At last! . . . We
crept and watched. Two nights and a day we watched. He had a house—a
big house in a clearing in the midst of his fields; flowers and bushes
grew around; there were narrow paths of yellow earth between the cut
grass, and thick hedges to keep people out. The third night we came armed,
and lay behind a hedge.</p>
<p>"A heavy dew seemed to soak through our flesh and made our very entrails
cold. The grass, the twigs, the leaves, covered with drops of water, were
gray in the moonlight. Matara, curled up in the grass, shivered in his
sleep. My teeth rattled in my head so loud that I was afraid the noise
would wake up all the land. Afar, the watchmen of white men's houses
struck wooden clappers and hooted in the darkness. And, as every night, I
saw her by my side. She smiled no more! . . . The fire of anguish burned
in my breast, and she whispered to me with compassion, with pity, softly—as
women will; she soothed the pain of my mind; she bent her face over me—the
face of a woman who ravishes the hearts and silences the reason of men.
She was all mine, and no one could see her—no one of living mankind!
Stars shone through her bosom, through her floating hair. I was overcome
with regret, with tenderness, with sorrow. Matara slept . . . Had I slept?
Matara was shaking me by the shoulder, and the fire of the sun was drying
the grass, the bushes, the leaves. It was day. Shreds of white mist hung
between the branches of trees.</p>
<p>"Was it night or day? I saw nothing again till I heard Matara breathe
quickly where he lay, and then outside the house I saw her. I saw them
both. They had come out. She sat on a bench under the wall, and twigs
laden with flowers crept high above her head, hung over her hair. She had
a box on her lap, and gazed into it, counting the increase of her pearls.
The Dutchman stood by looking on; he smiled down at her; his white teeth
flashed; the hair on his lip was like two twisted flames. He was big and
fat, and joyous, and without fear. Matara tipped fresh priming from the
hollow of his palm, scraped the flint with his thumb-nail, and gave the
gun to me. To me! I took it . . . O fate!</p>
<p>"He whispered into my ear, lying on his stomach, 'I shall creep close and
then amok . . . let her die by my hand. You take aim at the fat swine
there. Let him see me strike my shame off the face of the earth—and
then . . . you are my friend—kill with a sure shot.' I said nothing;
there was no air in my chest—there was no air in the world. Matara
had gone suddenly from my side. The grass nodded. Then a bush rustled. She
lifted her head.</p>
<p>"I saw her! The consoler of sleepless nights, of weary days; the companion
of troubled years! I saw her! She looked straight at the place where I
crouched. She was there as I had seen her for years—a faithful
wanderer by my side. She looked with sad eyes and had smiling lips; she
looked at me . . . Smiling lips! Had I not promised that she should not
die!</p>
<p>"She was far off and I felt her near. Her touch caressed me, and her voice
murmured, whispered above me, around me. 'Who shall be thy companion, who
shall console thee if I die?' I saw a flowering thicket to the left of her
stir a little . . . Matara was ready . . . I cried aloud—'Return!'</p>
<p>"She leaped up; the box fell; the pearls streamed at her feet. The big
Dutchman by her side rolled menacing eyes through the still sunshine. The
gun went up to my shoulder. I was kneeling and I was firm—firmer
than the trees, the rocks, the mountains. But in front of the steady long
barrel the fields, the house, the earth, the sky swayed to and fro like
shadows in a forest on a windy day. Matara burst out of the thicket;
before him the petals of torn flowers whirled high as if driven by a
tempest. I heard her cry; I saw her spring with open arms in front of the
white man. She was a woman of my country and of noble blood. They are so!
I heard her shriek of anguish and fear—and all stood still! The
fields, the house, the earth, the sky stood still—while Matara
leaped at her with uplifted arm. I pulled the trigger, saw a spark, heard
nothing; the smoke drove back into my face, and then I could see Matara
roll over head first and lie with stretched arms at her feet. Ha! A sure
shot! The sunshine fell on my back colder than the running water. A sure
shot! I flung the gun after the shot. Those two stood over the dead man as
though they had been bewitched by a charm. I shouted at her, 'Live and
remember!' Then for a time I stumbled about in a cold darkness.</p>
<p>"Behind me there were great shouts, the running of many feet; strange men
surrounded me, cried meaningless words into my face, pushed me, dragged
me, supported me . . . I stood before the big Dutchman: he stared as if
bereft of his reason. He wanted to know, he talked fast, he spoke of
gratitude, he offered me food, shelter, gold—he asked many
questions. I laughed in his face. I said, 'I am a Korinchi traveller from
Perak over there, and know nothing of that dead man. I was passing along
the path when I heard a shot, and your senseless people rushed out and
dragged me here.' He lifted his arms, he wondered, he could not believe,
he could not understand, he clamoured in his own tongue! She had her arms
clasped round his neck, and over her shoulder stared back at me with wide
eyes. I smiled and looked at her; I smiled and waited to hear the sound of
her voice. The white man asked her suddenly. 'Do you know him?' I listened—my
life was in my ears! She looked at me long, she looked at me with
unflinching eyes, and said aloud, 'No! I never saw him before.' . . .
What! Never before? Had she forgotten already? Was it possible? Forgotten
already—after so many years—so many years of wandering, of
companionship, of trouble, of tender words! Forgotten already! . . . I
tore myself out from the hands that held me and went away without a word .
. . They let me go.</p>
<p>"I was weary. Did I sleep? I do not know. I remember walking upon a broad
path under a clear starlight; and that strange country seemed so big, the
rice-fields so vast, that, as I looked around, my head swam with the fear
of space. Then I saw a forest. The joyous starlight was heavy upon me. I
turned off the path and entered the forest, which was very sombre and very
sad."</p>
<p>V</p>
<p>Karain's tone had been getting lower and lower, as though he had been
going away from us, till the last words sounded faint but clear, as if
shouted on a calm day from a very great distance. He moved not. He stared
fixedly past the motionless head of Hollis, who faced him, as still as
himself. Jackson had turned sideways, and with elbow on the table shaded
his eyes with the palm of his hand. And I looked on, surprised and moved;
I looked at that man, loyal to a vision, betrayed by his dream, spurned by
his illusion, and coming to us unbelievers for help—against a
thought. The silence was profound; but it seemed full of noiseless
phantoms, of things sorrowful, shadowy, and mute, in whose invisible
presence the firm, pulsating beat of the two ship's chronometers ticking
off steadily the seconds of Greenwich Time seemed to me a protection and a
relief. Karain stared stonily; and looking at his rigid figure, I thought
of his wanderings, of that obscure Odyssey of revenge, of all the men that
wander amongst illusions faithful, faithless; of the illusions that give
joy, that give sorrow, that give pain, that give peace; of the invincible
illusions that can make life and death appear serene, inspiring,
tormented, or ignoble.</p>
<p>A murmur was heard; that voice from outside seemed to flow out of a
dreaming world into the lamp-light of the cabin. Karain was speaking.</p>
<p>"I lived in the forest.</p>
<p>"She came no more. Never! Never once! I lived alone. She had forgotten. It
was well. I did not want her; I wanted no one. I found an abandoned house
in an old clearing. Nobody came near. Sometimes I heard in the distance
the voices of people going along a path. I slept; I rested; there was wild
rice, water from a running stream—and peace! Every night I sat alone
by my small fire before the hut. Many nights passed over my head.</p>
<p>"Then, one evening, as I sat by my fire after having eaten, I looked down
on the ground and began to remember my wanderings. I lifted my head. I had
heard no sound, no rustle, no footsteps—but I lifted my head. A man
was coming towards me across the small clearing. I waited. He came up
without a greeting and squatted down into the firelight. Then he turned
his face to me. It was Matara. He stared at me fiercely with his big
sunken eyes. The night was cold; the heat died suddenly out of the fire,
and he stared at me. I rose and went away from there, leaving him by the
fire that had no heat.</p>
<p>"I walked all that night, all next day, and in the evening made up a big
blaze and sat down—to wait for him. He had not come into the light.
I heard him in the bushes here and there, whispering, whispering. I
understood at last—I had heard the words before, 'You are my friend—kill
with a sure shot.'</p>
<p>"I bore it as long as I could—then leaped away, as on this very
night I leaped from my stockade and swam to you. I ran—I ran crying
like a child left alone and far from the houses. He ran by my side,
without footsteps, whispering, whispering—invisible and heard. I
sought people—I wanted men around me! Men who had not died! And
again we two wandered. I sought danger, violence, and death. I fought in
the Atjeh war, and a brave people wondered at the valiance of a stranger.
But we were two; he warded off the blows . . . Why? I wanted peace, not
life. And no one could see him; no one knew—I dared tell no one. At
times he would leave me, but not for long; then he would return and
whisper or stare. My heart was torn with a strange fear, but could not
die. Then I met an old man.</p>
<p>"You all knew him. People here called him my sorcerer, my servant and
sword-bearer; but to me he was father, mother, protection, refuge and
peace. When I met him he was returning from a pilgrimage, and I heard him
intoning the prayer of sunset. He had gone to the holy place with his son,
his son's wife, and a little child; and on their return, by the favour of
the Most High, they all died: the strong man, the young mother, the little
child—they died; and the old man reached his country alone. He was a
pilgrim serene and pious, very wise and very lonely. I told him all. For a
time we lived together. He said over me words of compassion, of wisdom, of
prayer. He warded from me the shade of the dead. I begged him for a charm
that would make me safe. For a long time he refused; but at last, with a
sigh and a smile, he gave me one. Doubtless he could command a spirit
stronger than the unrest of my dead friend, and again I had peace; but I
had become restless, and a lover of turmoil and danger. The old man never
left me. We travelled together. We were welcomed by the great; his wisdom
and my courage are remembered where your strength, O white men, is
forgotten! We served the Sultan of Sula. We fought the Spaniards. There
were victories, hopes, defeats, sorrow, blood, women's tears . . . What
for? . . . We fled. We collected wanderers of a warlike race and came here
to fight again. The rest you know. I am the ruler of a conquered land, a
lover of war and danger, a fighter and a plotter. But the old man has
died, and I am again the slave of the dead. He is not here now to drive
away the reproachful shade—to silence the lifeless voice! The power
of his charm has died with him. And I know fear; and I hear the whisper,
'Kill! kill! kill!' . . . Have I not killed enough? . . ."</p>
<p>For the first time that night a sudden convulsion of madness and rage
passed over his face. His wavering glances darted here and there like
scared birds in a thunderstorm. He jumped up, shouting—</p>
<p>"By the spirits that drink blood: by the spirits that cry in the night: by
all the spirits of fury, misfortune, and death, I swear—some day I
will strike into every heart I meet—I . . ."</p>
<p>He looked so dangerous that we all three leaped to our feet, and Hollis,
with the back of his hand, sent the kriss flying off the table. I believe
we shouted together. It was a short scare, and the next moment he was
again composed in his chair, with three white men standing over him in
rather foolish attitudes. We felt a little ashamed of ourselves. Jackson
picked up the kriss, and, after an inquiring glance at me, gave it to him.
He received it with a stately inclination of the head and stuck it in the
twist of his sarong, with punctilious care to give his weapon a pacific
position. Then he looked up at us with an austere smile. We were abashed
and reproved. Hollis sat sideways on the table and, holding his chin in
his hand, scrutinized him in pensive silence. I said—</p>
<p>"You must abide with your people. They need you. And there is
forgetfulness in life. Even the dead cease to speak in time."</p>
<p>"Am I a woman, to forget long years before an eyelid has had the time to
beat twice?" he exclaimed, with bitter resentment. He startled me. It was
amazing. To him his life—that cruel mirage of love and peace—seemed
as real, as undeniable, as theirs would be to any saint, philosopher, or
fool of us all. Hollis muttered—</p>
<p>"You won't soothe him with your platitudes."</p>
<p>Karain spoke to me.</p>
<p>"You know us. You have lived with us. Why?—we cannot know; but you
understand our sorrows and our thoughts. You have lived with my people,
and you understand our desires and our fears. With you I will go. To your
land—to your people. To your people, who live in unbelief; to whom
day is day, and night is night—nothing more, because you understand
all things seen, and despise all else! To your land of unbelief, where the
dead do not speak, where every man is wise, and alone—and at peace!"</p>
<p>"Capital description," murmured Hollis, with the flicker of a smile.</p>
<p>Karain hung his head.</p>
<p>"I can toil, and fight—and be faithful," he whispered, in a weary
tone, "but I cannot go back to him who waits for me on the shore. No! Take
me with you . . . Or else give me some of your strength—of your
unbelief. . . . A charm! . . ."</p>
<p>He seemed utterly exhausted.</p>
<p>"Yes, take him home," said Hollis, very low, as if debating with himself.
"That would be one way. The ghosts there are in society, and talk affably
to ladies and gentlemen, but would scorn a naked human being—like
our princely friend. . . . Naked . . . Flayed! I should say. I am sorry
for him. Impossible—of course. The end of all this shall be," he
went on, looking up at us—"the end of this shall be, that some day
he will run amuck amongst his faithful subjects and send 'ad patres' ever
so many of them before they make up their minds to the disloyalty of
knocking him on the head."</p>
<p>I nodded. I thought it more than probable that such would be the end of
Karain. It was evident that he had been hunted by his thought along the
very limit of human endurance, and very little more pressing was needed to
make him swerve over into the form of madness peculiar to his race. The
respite he had during the old man's life made the return of the torment
unbearable. That much was clear.</p>
<p>He lifted his head suddenly; we had imagined for a moment that he had been
dozing.</p>
<p>"Give me your protection—or your strength!" he cried. "A charm . . .
a weapon!"</p>
<p>Again his chin fell on his breast. We looked at him, then looked at one
another with suspicious awe in our eyes, like men who come unexpectedly
upon the scene of some mysterious disaster. He had given himself up to us;
he had thrust into our hands his errors and his torment, his life and his
peace; and we did not know what to do with that problem from the outer
darkness. We three white men, looking at the Malay, could not find one
word to the purpose amongst us—if indeed there existed a word that
could solve that problem. We pondered, and our hearts sank. We felt as
though we three had been called to the very gate of Infernal Regions to
judge, to decide the fate of a wanderer coming suddenly from a world of
sunshine and illusions.</p>
<p>"By Jove, he seems to have a great idea of our power," whispered Hollis,
hopelessly. And then again there was a silence, the feeble plash of water,
the steady tick of chronometers. Jackson, with bare arms crossed, leaned
his shoulders against the bulkhead of the cabin. He was bending his head
under the deck beam; his fair beard spread out magnificently over his
chest; he looked colossal, ineffectual, and mild. There was something
lugubrious in the aspect of the cabin; the air in it seemed to become
slowly charged with the cruel chill of helplessness, with the pitiless
anger of egoism against the incomprehensible form of an intruding pain. We
had no idea what to do; we began to resent bitterly the hard necessity to
get rid of him.</p>
<p>Hollis mused, muttered suddenly with a short laugh, "Strength . . .
Protection . . . Charm." He slipped off the table and left the cuddy
without a look at us. It seemed a base desertion. Jackson and I exchanged
indignant glances. We could hear him rummaging in his pigeon-hole of a
cabin. Was the fellow actually going to bed? Karain sighed. It was
intolerable!</p>
<p>Then Hollis reappeared, holding in both hands a small leather box. He put
it down gently on the table and looked at us with a queer gasp, we
thought, as though he had from some cause become speechless for a moment,
or were ethically uncertain about producing that box. But in an instant
the insolent and unerring wisdom of his youth gave him the needed courage.
He said, as he unlocked the box with a very small key, "Look as solemn as
you can, you fellows."</p>
<p>Probably we looked only surprised and stupid, for he glanced over his
shoulder, and said angrily—</p>
<p>"This is no play; I am going to do something for him. Look serious.
Confound it! . . . Can't you lie a little . . . for a friend!"</p>
<p>Karain seemed to take no notice of us, but when Hollis threw open the lid
of the box his eyes flew to it—and so did ours. The quilted crimson
satin of the inside put a violent patch of colour into the sombre
atmosphere; it was something positive to look at—it was fascinating.</p>
<p>VI</p>
<p>Hollis looked smiling into the box. He had lately made a dash home through
the Canal. He had been away six months, and only joined us again just in
time for this last trip. We had never seen the box before. His hands
hovered above it; and he talked to us ironically, but his face became as
grave as though he were pronouncing a powerful incantation over the things
inside.</p>
<p>"Every one of us," he said, with pauses that somehow were more offensive
than his words—"every one of us, you'll admit, has been haunted by
some woman . . . And . . . as to friends . . . dropped by the way . . .
Well! . . . ask yourselves . . ."</p>
<p>He paused. Karain stared. A deep rumble was heard high up under the deck.
Jackson spoke seriously—</p>
<p>"Don't be so beastly cynical."</p>
<p>"Ah! You are without guile," said Hollis, sadly. "You will learn . . .
Meantime this Malay has been our friend . . ."</p>
<p>He repeated several times thoughtfully, "Friend . . . Malay. Friend,
Malay," as though weighing the words against one another, then went on
more briskly—</p>
<p>"A good fellow—a gentleman in his way. We can't, so to speak, turn
our backs on his confidence and belief in us. Those Malays are easily
impressed—all nerves, you know—therefore . . ."</p>
<p>He turned to me sharply.</p>
<p>"You know him best," he said, in a practical tone. "Do you think he is
fanatical—I mean very strict in his faith?"</p>
<p>I stammered in profound amazement that "I did not think so."</p>
<p>"It's on account of its being a likeness—an engraved image,"
muttered Hollis, enigmatically, turning to the box. He plunged his fingers
into it. Karain's lips were parted and his eyes shone. We looked into the
box.</p>
<p>There were there a couple of reels of cotton, a packet of needles, a bit
of silk ribbon, dark blue; a cabinet photograph, at which Hollis stole a
glance before laying it on the table face downwards. A girl's portrait, I
could see. There were, amongst a lot of various small objects, a bunch of
flowers, a narrow white glove with many buttons, a slim packet of letters
carefully tied up. Amulets of white men! Charms and talismans! Charms that
keep them straight, that drive them crooked, that have the power to make a
young man sigh, an old man smile. Potent things that procure dreams of
joy, thoughts of regret; that soften hard hearts, and can temper a soft
one to the hardness of steel. Gifts of heaven—things of earth . . .</p>
<p>Hollis rummaged in the box.</p>
<p>And it seemed to me, during that moment of waiting, that the cabin of the
schooner was becoming filled with a stir invisible and living as of subtle
breaths. All the ghosts driven out of the unbelieving West by men who
pretend to be wise and alone and at peace—all the homeless ghosts of
an unbelieving world—appeared suddenly round the figure of Hollis
bending over the box; all the exiled and charming shades of loved women;
all the beautiful and tender ghosts of ideals, remembered, forgotten,
cherished, execrated; all the cast-out and reproachful ghosts of friends
admired, trusted, traduced, betrayed, left dead by the way—they all
seemed to come from the inhospitable regions of the earth to crowd into
the gloomy cabin, as though it had been a refuge and, in all the
unbelieving world, the only place of avenging belief. . . . It lasted a
second—all disappeared. Hollis was facing us alone with something
small that glittered between his fingers. It looked like a coin.</p>
<p>"Ah! here it is," he said.</p>
<p>He held it up. It was a sixpence—a Jubilee sixpence. It was gilt; it
had a hole punched near the rim. Hollis looked towards Karain.</p>
<p>"A charm for our friend," he said to us. "The thing itself is of great
power—money, you know—and his imagination is struck. A loyal
vagabond; if only his puritanism doesn't shy at a likeness . . ."</p>
<p>We said nothing. We did not know whether to be scandalized, amused, or
relieved. Hollis advanced towards Karain, who stood up as if startled, and
then, holding the coin up, spoke in Malay.</p>
<p>"This is the image of the Great Queen, and the most powerful thing the
white men know," he said, solemnly.</p>
<p>Karain covered the handle of his kriss in sign of respect, and stared at
the crowned head.</p>
<p>"The Invincible, the Pious," he muttered.</p>
<p>"She is more powerful than Suleiman the Wise, who commanded the genii, as
you know," said Hollis, gravely. "I shall give this to you."</p>
<p>He held the sixpence in the palm of his hand, and looking at it
thoughtfully, spoke to us in English.</p>
<p>"She commands a spirit, too—the spirit of her nation; a masterful,
conscientious, unscrupulous, unconquerable devil . . . that does a lot of
good—incidentally . . . a lot of good . . . at times—and
wouldn't stand any fuss from the best ghost out for such a little thing as
our friend's shot. Don't look thunderstruck, you fellows. Help me to make
him believe—everything's in that."</p>
<p>"His people will be shocked," I murmured.</p>
<p>Hollis looked fixedly at Karain, who was the incarnation of the very
essence of still excitement. He stood rigid, with head thrown back; his
eyes rolled wildly, flashing; the dilated nostrils quivered.</p>
<p>"Hang it all!" said Hollis at last, "he is a good fellow. I'll give him
something that I shall really miss."</p>
<p>He took the ribbon out of the box, smiled at it scornfully, then with a
pair of scissors cut out a piece from the palm of the glove.</p>
<p>"I shall make him a thing like those Italian peasants wear, you know."</p>
<p>He sewed the coin in the delicate leather, sewed the leather to the
ribbon, tied the ends together. He worked with haste. Karain watched his
fingers all the time.</p>
<p>"Now then," he said—then stepped up to Karain. They looked close
into one another's eyes. Those of Karain stared in a lost glance, but
Hollis's seemed to grow darker and looked out masterful and compelling.
They were in violent contrast together—one motionless and the colour
of bronze, the other dazzling white and lifting his arms, where the
powerful muscles rolled slightly under a skin that gleamed like satin.
Jackson moved near with the air of a man closing up to a chum in a tight
place. I said impressively, pointing to Hollis—</p>
<p>"He is young, but he is wise. Believe him!"</p>
<p>Karain bent his head: Hollis threw lightly over it the dark-blue ribbon
and stepped back.</p>
<p>"Forget, and be at peace!" I cried.</p>
<p>Karain seemed to wake up from a dream. He said, "Ha!" shook himself as if
throwing off a burden. He looked round with assurance. Someone on deck
dragged off the skylight cover, and a flood of light fell into the cabin.
It was morning already.</p>
<p>"Time to go on deck," said Jackson.</p>
<p>Hollis put on a coat, and we went up, Karain leading.</p>
<p>The sun had risen beyond the hills, and their long shadows stretched far
over the bay in the pearly light. The air was clear, stainless, and cool.
I pointed at the curved line of yellow sands.</p>
<p>"He is not there," I said, emphatically, to Karain. "He waits no more. He
has departed forever."</p>
<p>A shaft of bright hot rays darted into the bay between the summits of two
hills, and the water all round broke out as if by magic into a dazzling
sparkle.</p>
<p>"No! He is not there waiting," said Karain, after a long look over the
beach. "I do not hear him," he went on, slowly. "No!"</p>
<p>He turned to us.</p>
<p>"He has departed again—forever!" he cried.</p>
<p>We assented vigorously, repeatedly, and without compunction. The great
thing was to impress him powerfully; to suggest absolute safety—the
end of all trouble. We did our best; and I hope we affirmed our faith in
the power of Hollis's charm efficiently enough to put the matter beyond
the shadow of a doubt. Our voices rang around him joyously in the still
air, and above his head the sky, pellucid, pure, stainless, arched its
tender blue from shore to shore and over the bay, as if to envelop the
water, the earth, and the man in the caress of its light.</p>
<p>The anchor was up, the sails hung still, and half-a-dozen big boats were
seen sweeping over the bay to give us a tow out. The paddlers in the first
one that came alongside lifted their heads and saw their ruler standing
amongst us. A low murmur of surprise arose—then a shout of greeting.</p>
<p>He left us, and seemed straightway to step into the glorious splendour of
his stage, to wrap himself in the illusion of unavoidable success. For a
moment he stood erect, one foot over the gangway, one hand on the hilt of
his kriss, in a martial pose; and, relieved from the fear of outer
darkness, he held his head high, he swept a serene look over his conquered
foothold on the earth. The boats far off took up the cry of greeting; a
great clamour rolled on the water; the hills echoed it, and seemed to toss
back at him the words invoking long life and victories.</p>
<p>He descended into a canoe, and as soon as he was clear of the side we gave
him three cheers. They sounded faint and orderly after the wild tumult of
his loyal subjects, but it was the best we could do. He stood up in the
boat, lifted up both his arms, then pointed to the infallible charm. We
cheered again; and the Malays in the boats stared—very much puzzled
and impressed. I wondered what they thought; what he thought; . . . what
the reader thinks?</p>
<p>We towed out slowly. We saw him land and watch us from the beach. A figure
approached him humbly but openly—not at all like a ghost with a
grievance. We could see other men running towards him. Perhaps he had been
missed? At any rate there was a great stir. A group formed itself rapidly
near him, and he walked along the sands, followed by a growing cortege and
kept nearly abreast of the schooner. With our glasses we could see the
blue ribbon on his neck and a patch of white on his brown chest. The bay
was waking up. The smokes of morning fires stood in faint spirals higher
than the heads of palms; people moved between the houses; a herd of
buffaloes galloped clumsily across a green slope; the slender figures of
boys brandishing sticks appeared black and leaping in the long grass; a
coloured line of women, with water bamboos on their heads, moved swaying
through a thin grove of fruit-trees. Karain stopped in the midst of his
men and waved his hand; then, detaching himself from the splendid group,
walked alone to the water's edge and waved his hand again. The schooner
passed out to sea between the steep headlands that shut in the bay, and at
the same instant Karain passed out of our life forever.</p>
<p>But the memory remains. Some years afterwards I met Jackson, in the
Strand. He was magnificent as ever. His head was high above the crowd. His
beard was gold, his face red, his eyes blue; he had a wide-brimmed gray
hat and no collar or waistcoat; he was inspiring; he had just come home—had
landed that very day! Our meeting caused an eddy in the current of
humanity. Hurried people would run against us, then walk round us, and
turn back to look at that giant. We tried to compress seven years of life
into seven exclamations; then, suddenly appeased, walked sedately along,
giving one another the news of yesterday. Jackson gazed about him, like a
man who looks for landmarks, then stopped before Bland's window. He always
had a passion for firearms; so he stopped short and contemplated the row
of weapons, perfect and severe, drawn up in a line behind the black-framed
panes. I stood by his side. Suddenly he said—</p>
<p>"Do you remember Karain?"</p>
<p>I nodded.</p>
<p>"The sight of all this made me think of him," he went on, with his face
near the glass . . . and I could see another man, powerful and bearded,
peering at him intently from amongst the dark and polished tubes that can
cure so many illusions. "Yes; it made me think of him," he continued,
slowly. "I saw a paper this morning; they are fighting over there again.
He's sure to be in it. He will make it hot for the caballeros. Well, good
luck to him, poor devil! He was perfectly stunning."</p>
<p>We walked on.</p>
<p>"I wonder whether the charm worked—you remember Hollis's charm, of
course. If it did . . . Never was a sixpence wasted to better advantage!
Poor devil! I wonder whether he got rid of that friend of his. Hope so. .
. . Do you know, I sometimes think that—"</p>
<p>I stood still and looked at him.</p>
<p>"Yes . . . I mean, whether the thing was so, you know . . . whether it
really happened to him. . . . What do you think?"</p>
<p>"My dear chap," I cried, "you have been too long away from home. What a
question to ask! Only look at all this."</p>
<p>A watery gleam of sunshine flashed from the west and went out between two
long lines of walls; and then the broken confusion of roofs, the
chimney-stacks, the gold letters sprawling over the fronts of houses, the
sombre polish of windows, stood resigned and sullen under the falling
gloom. The whole length of the street, deep as a well and narrow like a
corridor, was full of a sombre and ceaseless stir. Our ears were filled by
a headlong shuffle and beat of rapid footsteps and by an underlying rumour—a
rumour vast, faint, pulsating, as of panting breaths, of beating hearts,
of gasping voices. Innumerable eyes stared straight in front, feet moved
hurriedly, blank faces flowed, arms swung. Over all, a narrow ragged strip
of smoky sky wound about between the high roofs, extended and motionless,
like a soiled streamer flying above the rout of a mob.</p>
<p>"Ye-e-e-s," said Jackson, meditatively.</p>
<p>The big wheels of hansoms turned slowly along the edge of side-walks; a
pale-faced youth strolled, overcome by weariness, by the side of his stick
and with the tails of his overcoat flapping gently near his heels; horses
stepped gingerly on the greasy pavement, tossing their heads; two young
girls passed by, talking vivaciously and with shining eyes; a fine old
fellow strutted, red-faced, stroking a white moustache; and a line of
yellow boards with blue letters on them approached us slowly, tossing on
high behind one another like some queer wreckage adrift upon a river of
hats.</p>
<p>"Ye-e-es," repeated Jackson. His clear blue eyes looked about,
contemptuous, amused and hard, like the eyes of a boy. A clumsy string of
red, yellow, and green omnibuses rolled swaying, monstrous and gaudy; two
shabby children ran across the road; a knot of dirty men with red
neckerchiefs round their bare throats lurched along, discussing filthily;
a ragged old man with a face of despair yelled horribly in the mud the
name of a paper; while far off, amongst the tossing heads of horses, the
dull flash of harnesses, the jumble of lustrous panels and roofs of
carriages, we could see a policeman, helmeted and dark, stretching out a
rigid arm at the crossing of the streets.</p>
<p>"Yes; I see it," said Jackson, slowly. "It is there; it pants, it runs, it
rolls; it is strong and alive; it would smash you if you didn't look out;
but I'll be hanged if it is yet as real to me as . . . as the other thing
. . . say, Karain's story."</p>
<p>I think that, decidedly, he had been too long away from home.</p>
<p><SPAN name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004"></SPAN></p>
<h2> THE IDIOTS </h2>
<p>We were driving along the road from Treguier to Kervanda. We passed at a
smart trot between the hedges topping an earth wall on each side of the
road; then at the foot of the steep ascent before Ploumar the horse
dropped into a walk, and the driver jumped down heavily from the box. He
flicked his whip and climbed the incline, stepping clumsily uphill by the
side of the carriage, one hand on the footboard, his eyes on the ground.
After a while he lifted his head, pointed up the road with the end of the
whip, and said—</p>
<p>"The idiot!"</p>
<p>The sun was shining violently upon the undulating surface of the land. The
rises were topped by clumps of meagre trees, with their branches showing
high on the sky as if they had been perched upon stilts. The small fields,
cut up by hedges and stone walls that zig-zagged over the slopes, lay in
rectangular patches of vivid greens and yellows, resembling the unskilful
daubs of a naive picture. And the landscape was divided in two by the
white streak of a road stretching in long loops far away, like a river of
dust crawling out of the hills on its way to the sea.</p>
<p>"Here he is," said the driver, again.</p>
<p>In the long grass bordering the road a face glided past the carriage at
the level of the wheels as we drove slowly by. The imbecile face was red,
and the bullet head with close-cropped hair seemed to lie alone, its chin
in the dust. The body was lost in the bushes growing thick along the
bottom of the deep ditch.</p>
<p>It was a boy's face. He might have been sixteen, judging from the size—perhaps
less, perhaps more. Such creatures are forgotten by time, and live
untouched by years till death gathers them up into its compassionate
bosom; the faithful death that never forgets in the press of work the most
insignificant of its children.</p>
<p>"Ah! there's another," said the man, with a certain satisfaction in his
tone, as if he had caught sight of something expected.</p>
<p>There was another. That one stood nearly in the middle of the road in the
blaze of sunshine at the end of his own short shadow. And he stood with
hands pushed into the opposite sleeves of his long coat, his head sunk
between the shoulders, all hunched up in the flood of heat. From a
distance he had the aspect of one suffering from intense cold.</p>
<p>"Those are twins," explained the driver.</p>
<p>The idiot shuffled two paces out of the way and looked at us over his
shoulder when we brushed past him. The glance was unseeing and staring, a
fascinated glance; but he did not turn to look after us. Probably the
image passed before the eyes without leaving any trace on the misshapen
brain of the creature. When we had topped the ascent I looked over the
hood. He stood in the road just where we had left him.</p>
<p>The driver clambered into his seat, clicked his tongue, and we went
downhill. The brake squeaked horribly from time to time. At the foot he
eased off the noisy mechanism and said, turning half round on his box—</p>
<p>"We shall see some more of them by-and-by."</p>
<p>"More idiots? How many of them are there, then?" I asked.</p>
<p>"There's four of them—children of a farmer near Ploumar here. . . .
The parents are dead now," he added, after a while. "The grandmother lives
on the farm. In the daytime they knock about on this road, and they come
home at dusk along with the cattle. . . . It's a good farm."</p>
<p>We saw the other two: a boy and a girl, as the driver said. They were
dressed exactly alike, in shapeless garments with petticoat-like skirts.
The imperfect thing that lived within them moved those beings to howl at
us from the top of the bank, where they sprawled amongst the tough stalks
of furze. Their cropped black heads stuck out from the bright yellow wall
of countless small blossoms. The faces were purple with the strain of
yelling; the voices sounded blank and cracked like a mechanical imitation
of old people's voices; and suddenly ceased when we turned into a lane.</p>
<p>I saw them many times in my wandering about the country. They lived on
that road, drifting along its length here and there, according to the
inexplicable impulses of their monstrous darkness. They were an offence to
the sunshine, a reproach to empty heaven, a blight on the concentrated and
purposeful vigour of the wild landscape. In time the story of their
parents shaped itself before me out of the listless answers to my
questions, out of the indifferent words heard in wayside inns or on the
very road those idiots haunted. Some of it was told by an emaciated and
sceptical old fellow with a tremendous whip, while we trudged together
over the sands by the side of a two-wheeled cart loaded with dripping
seaweed. Then at other times other people confirmed and completed the
story: till it stood at last before me, a tale formidable and simple, as
they always are, those disclosures of obscure trials endured by ignorant
hearts.</p>
<p>When he returned from his military service Jean-Pierre Bacadou found the
old people very much aged. He remarked with pain that the work of the farm
was not satisfactorily done. The father had not the energy of old days.
The hands did not feel over them the eye of the master. Jean-Pierre noted
with sorrow that the heap of manure in the courtyard before the only
entrance to the house was not so large as it should have been. The fences
were out of repair, and the cattle suffered from neglect. At home the
mother was practically bedridden, and the girls chattered loudly in the
big kitchen, unrebuked, from morning to night. He said to himself: "We
must change all this." He talked the matter over with his father one
evening when the rays of the setting sun entering the yard between the
outhouses ruled the heavy shadows with luminous streaks. Over the manure
heap floated a mist, opal-tinted and odorous, and the marauding hens would
stop in their scratching to examine with a sudden glance of their round
eye the two men, both lean and tall, talking in hoarse tones. The old man,
all twisted with rheumatism and bowed with years of work, the younger bony
and straight, spoke without gestures in the indifferent manner of
peasants, grave and slow. But before the sun had set the father had
submitted to the sensible arguments of the son. "It is not for me that I
am speaking," insisted Jean-Pierre. "It is for the land. It's a pity to
see it badly used. I am not impatient for myself." The old fellow nodded
over his stick. "I dare say; I dare say," he muttered. "You may be right.
Do what you like. It's the mother that will be pleased."</p>
<p>The mother was pleased with her daughter-in-law. Jean-Pierre brought the
two-wheeled spring-cart with a rush into the yard. The gray horse galloped
clumsily, and the bride and bridegroom, sitting side by side, were jerked
backwards and forwards by the up and down motion of the shafts, in a
manner regular and brusque. On the road the distanced wedding guests
straggled in pairs and groups. The men advanced with heavy steps, swinging
their idle arms. They were clad in town clothes; jackets cut with clumsy
smartness, hard black hats, immense boots, polished highly. Their women
all in simple black, with white caps and shawls of faded tints folded
triangularly on the back, strolled lightly by their side. In front the
violin sang a strident tune, and the biniou snored and hummed, while the
player capered solemnly, lifting high his heavy clogs. The sombre
procession drifted in and out of the narrow lanes, through sunshine and
through shade, between fields and hedgerows, scaring the little birds that
darted away in troops right and left. In the yard of Bacadou's farm the
dark ribbon wound itself up into a mass of men and women pushing at the
door with cries and greetings. The wedding dinner was remembered for
months. It was a splendid feast in the orchard. Farmers of considerable
means and excellent repute were to be found sleeping in ditches, all along
the road to Treguier, even as late as the afternoon of the next day. All
the countryside participated in the happiness of Jean-Pierre. He remained
sober, and, together with his quiet wife, kept out of the way, letting
father and mother reap their due of honour and thanks. But the next day he
took hold strongly, and the old folks felt a shadow—precursor of the
grave—fall upon them finally. The world is to the young.</p>
<p>When the twins were born there was plenty of room in the house, for the
mother of Jean-Pierre had gone away to dwell under a heavy stone in the
cemetery of Ploumar. On that day, for the first time since his son's
marriage, the elder Bacadou, neglected by the cackling lot of strange
women who thronged the kitchen, left in the morning his seat under the
mantel of the fireplace, and went into the empty cow-house, shaking his
white locks dismally. Grandsons were all very well, but he wanted his soup
at midday. When shown the babies, he stared at them with a fixed gaze, and
muttered something like: "It's too much." Whether he meant too much
happiness, or simply commented upon the number of his descendants, it is
impossible to say. He looked offended—as far as his old wooden face
could express anything; and for days afterwards could be seen, almost any
time of the day, sitting at the gate, with his nose over his knees, a pipe
between his gums, and gathered up into a kind of raging concentrated
sulkiness. Once he spoke to his son, alluding to the newcomers with a
groan: "They will quarrel over the land." "Don't bother about that,
father," answered Jean-Pierre, stolidly, and passed, bent double, towing a
recalcitrant cow over his shoulder.</p>
<p>He was happy, and so was Susan, his wife. It was not an ethereal joy
welcoming new souls to struggle, perchance to victory. In fourteen years
both boys would be a help; and, later on, Jean-Pierre pictured two big
sons striding over the land from patch to patch, wringing tribute from the
earth beloved and fruitful. Susan was happy too, for she did not want to
be spoken of as the unfortunate woman, and now she had children no one
could call her that. Both herself and her husband had seen something of
the larger world—he during the time of his service; while she had
spent a year or so in Paris with a Breton family; but had been too
home-sick to remain longer away from the hilly and green country, set in a
barren circle of rocks and sands, where she had been born. She thought
that one of the boys ought perhaps to be a priest, but said nothing to her
husband, who was a republican, and hated the "crows," as he called the
ministers of religion. The christening was a splendid affair. All the
commune came to it, for the Bacadous were rich and influential, and, now
and then, did not mind the expense. The grandfather had a new coat.</p>
<p>Some months afterwards, one evening when the kitchen had been swept, and
the door locked, Jean-Pierre, looking at the cot, asked his wife: "What's
the matter with those children?" And, as if these words, spoken calmly,
had been the portent of misfortune, she answered with a loud wail that
must have been heard across the yard in the pig-sty; for the pigs (the
Bacadous had the finest pigs in the country) stirred and grunted
complainingly in the night. The husband went on grinding his bread and
butter slowly, gazing at the wall, the soup-plate smoking under his chin.
He had returned late from the market, where he had overheard (not for the
first time) whispers behind his back. He revolved the words in his mind as
he drove back. "Simple! Both of them. . . . Never any use! . . . Well! May
be, may be. One must see. Would ask his wife." This was her answer. He
felt like a blow on his chest, but said only: "Go, draw me some cider. I
am thirsty!"</p>
<p>She went out moaning, an empty jug in her hand. Then he arose, took up the
light, and moved slowly towards the cradle. They slept. He looked at them
sideways, finished his mouthful there, went back heavily, and sat down
before his plate. When his wife returned he never looked up, but swallowed
a couple of spoonfuls noisily, and remarked, in a dull manner—</p>
<p>"When they sleep they are like other people's children."</p>
<p>She sat down suddenly on a stool near by, and shook with a silent tempest
of sobs, unable to speak. He finished his meal, and remained idly thrown
back in his chair, his eyes lost amongst the black rafters of the ceiling.
Before him the tallow candle flared red and straight, sending up a slender
thread of smoke. The light lay on the rough, sunburnt skin of his throat;
the sunk cheeks were like patches of darkness, and his aspect was
mournfully stolid, as if he had ruminated with difficulty endless ideas.
Then he said, deliberately—</p>
<p>"We must see . . . consult people. Don't cry. . . . They won't all be like
that . . . surely! We must sleep now."</p>
<p>After the third child, also a boy, was born, Jean-Pierre went about his
work with tense hopefulness. His lips seemed more narrow, more tightly
compressed than before; as if for fear of letting the earth he tilled hear
the voice of hope that murmured within his breast. He watched the child,
stepping up to the cot with a heavy clang of sabots on the stone floor,
and glanced in, along his shoulder, with that indifference which is like a
deformity of peasant humanity. Like the earth they master and serve, those
men, slow of eye and speech, do not show the inner fire; so that, at last,
it becomes a question with them as with the earth, what there is in the
core: heat, violence, a force mysterious and terrible—or nothing but
a clod, a mass fertile and inert, cold and unfeeling, ready to bear a crop
of plants that sustain life or give death.</p>
<p>The mother watched with other eyes; listened with otherwise expectant
ears. Under the high hanging shelves supporting great sides of bacon
overhead, her body was busy by the great fireplace, attentive to the pot
swinging on iron gallows, scrubbing the long table where the field hands
would sit down directly to their evening meal. Her mind remained by the
cradle, night and day on the watch, to hope and suffer. That child, like
the other two, never smiled, never stretched its hands to her, never
spoke; never had a glance of recognition for her in its big black eyes,
which could only stare fixedly at any glitter, but failed hopelessly to
follow the brilliance of a sun-ray slipping slowly along the floor. When
the men were at work she spent long days between her three idiot children
and the childish grandfather, who sat grim, angular, and immovable, with
his feet near the warm ashes of the fire. The feeble old fellow seemed to
suspect that there was something wrong with his grandsons. Only once,
moved either by affection or by the sense of proprieties, he attempted to
nurse the youngest. He took the boy up from the floor, clicked his tongue
at him, and essayed a shaky gallop of his bony knees. Then he looked
closely with his misty eyes at the child's face and deposited him down
gently on the floor again. And he sat, his lean shanks crossed, nodding at
the steam escaping from the cooking-pot with a gaze senile and worried.</p>
<p>Then mute affliction dwelt in Bacadou's farmhouse, sharing the breath and
the bread of its inhabitants; and the priest of the Ploumar parish had
great cause for congratulation. He called upon the rich landowner, the
Marquis de Chavanes, on purpose to deliver himself with joyful unction of
solemn platitudes about the inscrutable ways of Providence. In the vast
dimness of the curtained drawing-room, the little man, resembling a black
bolster, leaned towards a couch, his hat on his knees, and gesticulated
with a fat hand at the elongated, gracefully-flowing lines of the clear
Parisian toilette from which the half-amused, half-bored marquise listened
with gracious languor. He was exulting and humble, proud and awed. The
impossible had come to pass. Jean-Pierre Bacadou, the enraged republican
farmer, had been to mass last Sunday—had proposed to entertain the
visiting priests at the next festival of Ploumar! It was a triumph for the
Church and for the good cause. "I thought I would come at once to tell
Monsieur le Marquis. I know how anxious he is for the welfare of our
country," declared the priest, wiping his face. He was asked to stay to
dinner.</p>
<p>The Chavanes returning that evening, after seeing their guest to the main
gate of the park, discussed the matter while they strolled in the
moonlight, trailing their long shadows up the straight avenue of
chestnuts. The marquise, a royalist of course, had been mayor of the
commune which includes Ploumar, the scattered hamlets of the coast, and
the stony islands that fringe the yellow flatness of the sands. He had
felt his position insecure, for there was a strong republican element in
that part of the country; but now the conversion of Jean-Pierre made him
safe. He was very pleased. "You have no idea how influential those people
are," he explained to his wife. "Now, I am sure, the next communal
election will go all right. I shall be re-elected." "Your ambition is
perfectly insatiable, Charles," exclaimed the marquise, gaily. "But, ma
chere amie," argued the husband, seriously, "it's most important that the
right man should be mayor this year, because of the elections to the
Chamber. If you think it amuses me . . ."</p>
<p>Jean-Pierre had surrendered to his wife's mother. Madame Levaille was a
woman of business, known and respected within a radius of at least fifteen
miles. Thick-set and stout, she was seen about the country, on foot or in
an acquaintance's cart, perpetually moving, in spite of her fifty-eight
years, in steady pursuit of business. She had houses in all the hamlets,
she worked quarries of granite, she freighted coasters with stone—even
traded with the Channel Islands. She was broad-cheeked, wide-eyed,
persuasive in speech: carrying her point with the placid and invincible
obstinacy of an old woman who knows her own mind. She very seldom slept
for two nights together in the same house; and the wayside inns were the
best places to inquire in as to her whereabouts. She had either passed, or
was expected to pass there at six; or somebody, coming in, had seen her in
the morning, or expected to meet her that evening. After the inns that
command the roads, the churches were the buildings she frequented most.
Men of liberal opinions would induce small children to run into sacred
edifices to see whether Madame Levaille was there, and to tell her that
so-and-so was in the road waiting to speak to her about potatoes, or
flour, or stones, or houses; and she would curtail her devotions, come out
blinking and crossing herself into the sunshine; ready to discuss business
matters in a calm, sensible way across a table in the kitchen of the inn
opposite. Latterly she had stayed for a few days several times with her
son-in-law, arguing against sorrow and misfortune with composed face and
gentle tones. Jean-Pierre felt the convictions imbibed in the regiment
torn out of his breast—not by arguments but by facts. Striding over
his fields he thought it over. There were three of them. Three! All alike!
Why? Such things did not happen to everybody—to nobody he ever heard
of. One—might pass. But three! All three. Forever useless, to be fed
while he lived and . . . What would become of the land when he died? This
must be seen to. He would sacrifice his convictions. One day he told his
wife—</p>
<p>"See what your God will do for us. Pay for some masses."</p>
<p>Susan embraced her man. He stood unbending, then turned on his heels and
went out. But afterwards, when a black soutane darkened his doorway, he
did not object; even offered some cider himself to the priest. He listened
to the talk meekly; went to mass between the two women; accomplished what
the priest called "his religious duties" at Easter. That morning he felt
like a man who had sold his soul. In the afternoon he fought ferociously
with an old friend and neighbour who had remarked that the priests had the
best of it and were now going to eat the priest-eater. He came home
dishevelled and bleeding, and happening to catch sight of his children
(they were kept generally out of the way), cursed and swore incoherently,
banging the table. Susan wept. Madame Levaille sat serenely unmoved. She
assured her daughter that "It will pass;" and taking up her thick
umbrella, departed in haste to see after a schooner she was going to load
with granite from her quarry.</p>
<p>A year or so afterwards the girl was born. A girl. Jean-Pierre heard of it
in the fields, and was so upset by the news that he sat down on the
boundary wall and remained there till the evening, instead of going home
as he was urged to do. A girl! He felt half cheated. However, when he got
home he was partly reconciled to his fate. One could marry her to a good
fellow—not to a good for nothing, but to a fellow with some
understanding and a good pair of arms. Besides, the next may be a boy, he
thought. Of course they would be all right. His new credulity knew of no
doubt. The ill luck was broken. He spoke cheerily to his wife. She was
also hopeful. Three priests came to that christening, and Madame Levaille
was godmother. The child turned out an idiot too.</p>
<p>Then on market days Jean-Pierre was seen bargaining bitterly, quarrelsome
and greedy; then getting drunk with taciturn earnestness; then driving
home in the dusk at a rate fit for a wedding, but with a face gloomy
enough for a funeral. Sometimes he would insist on his wife coming with
him; and they would drive in the early morning, shaking side by side on
the narrow seat above the helpless pig, that, with tied legs, grunted a
melancholy sigh at every rut. The morning drives were silent; but in the
evening, coming home, Jean-Pierre, tipsy, was viciously muttering, and
growled at the confounded woman who could not rear children that were like
anybody else's. Susan, holding on against the erratic swayings of the
cart, pretended not to hear. Once, as they were driving through Ploumar,
some obscure and drunken impulse caused him to pull up sharply opposite
the church. The moon swam amongst light white clouds. The tombstones
gleamed pale under the fretted shadows of the trees in the churchyard.
Even the village dogs slept. Only the nightingales, awake, spun out the
thrill of their song above the silence of graves. Jean-Pierre said thickly
to his wife—</p>
<p>"What do you think is there?"</p>
<p>He pointed his whip at the tower—in which the big dial of the clock
appeared high in the moonlight like a pallid face without eyes—and
getting out carefully, fell down at once by the wheel. He picked himself
up and climbed one by one the few steps to the iron gate of the
churchyard. He put his face to the bars and called out indistinctly—</p>
<p>"Hey there! Come out!"</p>
<p>"Jean! Return! Return!" entreated his wife in low tones.</p>
<p>He took no notice, and seemed to wait there. The song of nightingales beat
on all sides against the high walls of the church, and flowed back between
stone crosses and flat gray slabs, engraved with words of hope and sorrow.</p>
<p>"Hey! Come out!" shouted Jean-Pierre, loudly.</p>
<p>The nightingales ceased to sing.</p>
<p>"Nobody?" went on Jean-Pierre. "Nobody there. A swindle of the crows.
That's what this is. Nobody anywhere. I despise it. <i>Allez! Houp!</i>"</p>
<p>He shook the gate with all his strength, and the iron bars rattled with a
frightful clanging, like a chain dragged over stone steps. A dog near by
barked hurriedly. Jean-Pierre staggered back, and after three successive
dashes got into his cart. Susan sat very quiet and still. He said to her
with drunken severity—</p>
<p>"See? Nobody. I've been made a fool! <i>Malheur!</i> Somebody will pay for
it. The next one I see near the house I will lay my whip on . . . on the
black spine . . . I will. I don't want him in there . . . he only helps
the carrion crows to rob poor folk. I am a man. . . . We will see if I
can't have children like anybody else . . . now you mind. . . . They won't
be all . . . all . . . we see. . . ."</p>
<p>She burst out through the fingers that hid her face—</p>
<p>"Don't say that, Jean; don't say that, my man!"</p>
<p>He struck her a swinging blow on the head with the back of his hand and
knocked her into the bottom of the cart, where she crouched, thrown about
lamentably by every jolt. He drove furiously, standing up, brandishing his
whip, shaking the reins over the gray horse that galloped ponderously,
making the heavy harness leap upon his broad quarters. The country rang
clamorous in the night with the irritated barking of farm dogs, that
followed the rattle of wheels all along the road. A couple of belated
wayfarers had only just time to step into the ditch. At his own gate he
caught the post and was shot out of the cart head first. The horse went on
slowly to the door. At Susan's piercing cries the farm hands rushed out.
She thought him dead, but he was only sleeping where he fell, and cursed
his men, who hastened to him, for disturbing his slumbers.</p>
<p>Autumn came. The clouded sky descended low upon the black contours of the
hills; and the dead leaves danced in spiral whirls under naked trees, till
the wind, sighing profoundly, laid them to rest in the hollows of bare
valleys. And from morning till night one could see all over the land black
denuded boughs, the boughs gnarled and twisted, as if contorted with pain,
swaying sadly between the wet clouds and the soaked earth. The clear and
gentle streams of summer days rushed discoloured and raging at the stones
that barred the way to the sea, with the fury of madness bent upon
suicide. From horizon to horizon the great road to the sands lay between
the hills in a dull glitter of empty curves, resembling an unnavigable
river of mud.</p>
<p>Jean-Pierre went from field to field, moving blurred and tall in the
drizzle, or striding on the crests of rises, lonely and high upon the gray
curtain of drifting clouds, as if he had been pacing along the very edge
of the universe. He looked at the black earth, at the earth mute and
promising, at the mysterious earth doing its work of life in death-like
stillness under the veiled sorrow of the sky. And it seemed to him that to
a man worse than childless there was no promise in the fertility of
fields, that from him the earth escaped, defied him, frowned at him like
the clouds, sombre and hurried above his head. Having to face alone his
own fields, he felt the inferiority of man who passes away before the clod
that remains. Must he give up the hope of having by his side a son who
would look at the turned-up sods with a master's eye? A man that would
think as he thought, that would feel as he felt; a man who would be part
of himself, and yet remain to trample masterfully on that earth when he
was gone? He thought of some distant relations, and felt savage enough to
curse them aloud. They! Never! He turned homewards, going straight at the
roof of his dwelling, visible between the enlaced skeletons of trees. As
he swung his legs over the stile a cawing flock of birds settled slowly on
the field; dropped down behind his back, noiseless and fluttering, like
flakes of soot.</p>
<p>That day Madame Levaille had gone early in the afternoon to the house she
had near Kervanion. She had to pay some of the men who worked in her
granite quarry there, and she went in good time because her little house
contained a shop where the workmen could spend their wages without the
trouble of going to town. The house stood alone amongst rocks. A lane of
mud and stones ended at the door. The sea-winds coming ashore on
Stonecutter's point, fresh from the fierce turmoil of the waves, howled
violently at the unmoved heaps of black boulders holding up steadily
short-armed, high crosses against the tremendous rush of the invisible. In
the sweep of gales the sheltered dwelling stood in a calm resonant and
disquieting, like the calm in the centre of a hurricane. On stormy nights,
when the tide was out, the bay of Fougere, fifty feet below the house,
resembled an immense black pit, from which ascended mutterings and sighs
as if the sands down there had been alive and complaining. At high tide
the returning water assaulted the ledges of rock in short rushes, ending
in bursts of livid light and columns of spray, that flew inland, stinging
to death the grass of pastures.</p>
<p>The darkness came from the hills, flowed over the coast, put out the red
fires of sunset, and went on to seaward pursuing the retiring tide. The
wind dropped with the sun, leaving a maddened sea and a devastated sky.
The heavens above the house seemed to be draped in black rags, held up
here and there by pins of fire. Madame Levaille, for this evening the
servant of her own workmen, tried to induce them to depart. "An old woman
like me ought to be in bed at this late hour," she good-humouredly
repeated. The quarrymen drank, asked for more. They shouted over the table
as if they had been talking across a field. At one end four of them played
cards, banging the wood with their hard knuckles, and swearing at every
lead. One sat with a lost gaze, humming a bar of some song, which he
repeated endlessly. Two others, in a corner, were quarrelling
confidentially and fiercely over some woman, looking close into one
another's eyes as if they had wanted to tear them out, but speaking in
whispers that promised violence and murder discreetly, in a venomous
sibillation of subdued words. The atmosphere in there was thick enough to
slice with a knife. Three candles burning about the long room glowed red
and dull like sparks expiring in ashes.</p>
<p>The slight click of the iron latch was at that late hour as unexpected and
startling as a thunder-clap. Madame Levaille put down a bottle she held
above a liqueur glass; the players turned their heads; the whispered
quarrel ceased; only the singer, after darting a glance at the door, went
on humming with a stolid face. Susan appeared in the doorway, stepped in,
flung the door to, and put her back against it, saying, half aloud—</p>
<p>"Mother!"</p>
<p>Madame Levaille, taking up the bottle again, said calmly: "Here you are,
my girl. What a state you are in!" The neck of the bottle rang on the rim
of the glass, for the old woman was startled, and the idea that the farm
had caught fire had entered her head. She could think of no other cause
for her daughter's appearance.</p>
<p>Susan, soaked and muddy, stared the whole length of the room towards the
men at the far end. Her mother asked—</p>
<p>"What has happened? God guard us from misfortune!"</p>
<p>Susan moved her lips. No sound came. Madame Levaille stepped up to her
daughter, took her by the arm, looked into her face.</p>
<p>"In God's name," she said, shakily, "what's the matter? You have been
rolling in mud. . . . Why did you come? . . . Where's Jean?"</p>
<p>The men had all got up and approached slowly, staring with dull surprise.
Madame Levaille jerked her daughter away from the door, swung her round
upon a seat close to the wall. Then she turned fiercely to the men—</p>
<p>"Enough of this! Out you go—you others! I close."</p>
<p>One of them observed, looking down at Susan collapsed on the seat: "She is—one
may say—half dead."</p>
<p>Madame Levaille flung the door open.</p>
<p>"Get out! March!" she cried, shaking nervously.</p>
<p>They dropped out into the night, laughing stupidly. Outside, the two
Lotharios broke out into loud shouts. The others tried to soothe them, all
talking at once. The noise went away up the lane with the men, who
staggered together in a tight knot, remonstrating with one another
foolishly.</p>
<p>"Speak, Susan. What is it? Speak!" entreated Madame Levaille, as soon as
the door was shut.</p>
<p>Susan pronounced some incomprehensible words, glaring at the table. The
old woman clapped her hands above her head, let them drop, and stood
looking at her daughter with disconsolate eyes. Her husband had been
"deranged in his head" for a few years before he died, and now she began
to suspect her daughter was going mad. She asked, pressingly—</p>
<p>"Does Jean know where you are? Where is Jean?"</p>
<p>"He knows . . . he is dead."</p>
<p>"What!" cried the old woman. She came up near, and peering at her
daughter, repeated three times: "What do you say? What do you say? What do
you say?"</p>
<p>Susan sat dry-eyed and stony before Madame Levaille, who contemplated her,
feeling a strange sense of inexplicable horror creep into the silence of
the house. She had hardly realised the news, further than to understand
that she had been brought in one short moment face to face with something
unexpected and final. It did not even occur to her to ask for any
explanation. She thought: accident—terrible accident—blood to
the head—fell down a trap door in the loft. . . . She remained
there, distracted and mute, blinking her old eyes.</p>
<p>Suddenly, Susan said—</p>
<p>"I have killed him."</p>
<p>For a moment the mother stood still, almost unbreathing, but with composed
face. The next second she burst out into a shout—</p>
<p>"You miserable madwoman . . . they will cut your neck. . . ."</p>
<p>She fancied the gendarmes entering the house, saying to her: "We want your
daughter; give her up:" the gendarmes with the severe, hard faces of men
on duty. She knew the brigadier well—an old friend, familiar and
respectful, saying heartily, "To your good health, Madame!" before lifting
to his lips the small glass of cognac—out of the special bottle she
kept for friends. And now! . . . She was losing her head. She rushed here
and there, as if looking for something urgently needed—gave that up,
stood stock still in the middle of the room, and screamed at her daughter—</p>
<p>"Why? Say! Say! Why?"</p>
<p>The other seemed to leap out of her strange apathy.</p>
<p>"Do you think I am made of stone?" she shouted back, striding towards her
mother.</p>
<p>"No! It's impossible . . ." said Madame Levaille, in a convinced tone.</p>
<p>"You go and see, mother," retorted Susan, looking at her with blazing
eyes. "There's no money in heaven—no justice. No! . . . I did not
know. . . . Do you think I have no heart? Do you think I have never heard
people jeering at me, pitying me, wondering at me? Do you know how some of
them were calling me? The mother of idiots—that was my nickname! And
my children never would know me, never speak to me. They would know
nothing; neither men—nor God. Haven't I prayed! But the Mother of
God herself would not hear me. A mother! . . . Who is accursed—I, or
the man who is dead? Eh? Tell me. I took care of myself. Do you think I
would defy the anger of God and have my house full of those things—that
are worse than animals who know the hand that feeds them? Who blasphemed
in the night at the very church door? Was it I? . . . I only wept and
prayed for mercy . . . and I feel the curse at every moment of the day—I
see it round me from morning to night . . . I've got to keep them alive—to
take care of my misfortune and shame. And he would come. I begged him and
Heaven for mercy. . . . No! . . . Then we shall see. . . . He came this
evening. I thought to myself: 'Ah! again!' . . . I had my long scissors. I
heard him shouting . . . I saw him near. . . . I must—must I? . . .
Then take! . . . And I struck him in the throat above the breastbone. . .
. I never heard him even sigh. . . . I left him standing. . . . It was a
minute ago. How did I come here?"</p>
<p>Madame Levaille shivered. A wave of cold ran down her back, down her fat
arms under her tight sleeves, made her stamp gently where she stood.
Quivers ran over the broad cheeks, across the thin lips, ran amongst the
wrinkles at the corners of her steady old eyes. She stammered—</p>
<p>"You wicked woman—you disgrace me. But there! You always resembled
your father. What do you think will become of you . . . in the other
world? In this . . . Oh misery!"</p>
<p>She was very hot now. She felt burning inside. She wrung her perspiring
hands—and suddenly, starting in great haste, began to look for her
big shawl and umbrella, feverishly, never once glancing at her daughter,
who stood in the middle of the room following her with a gaze distracted
and cold.</p>
<p>"Nothing worse than in this," said Susan.</p>
<p>Her mother, umbrella in hand and trailing the shawl over the floor,
groaned profoundly.</p>
<p>"I must go to the priest," she burst out passionately. "I do not know
whether you even speak the truth! You are a horrible woman. They will find
you anywhere. You may stay here—or go. There is no room for you in
this world."</p>
<p>Ready now to depart, she yet wandered aimlessly about the room, putting
the bottles on the shelf, trying to fit with trembling hands the covers on
cardboard boxes. Whenever the real sense of what she had heard emerged for
a second from the haze of her thoughts she would fancy that something had
exploded in her brain without, unfortunately, bursting her head to pieces—which
would have been a relief. She blew the candles out one by one without
knowing it, and was horribly startled by the darkness. She fell on a bench
and began to whimper. After a while she ceased, and sat listening to the
breathing of her daughter, whom she could hardly see, still and upright,
giving no other sign of life. She was becoming old rapidly at last, during
those minutes. She spoke in tones unsteady, cut about by the rattle of
teeth, like one shaken by a deadly cold fit of ague.</p>
<p>"I wish you had died little. I will never dare to show my old head in the
sunshine again. There are worse misfortunes than idiot children. I wish
you had been born to me simple—like your own. . . ."</p>
<p>She saw the figure of her daughter pass before the faint and livid
clearness of a window. Then it appeared in the doorway for a second, and
the door swung to with a clang. Madame Levaille, as if awakened by the
noise from a long nightmare, rushed out.</p>
<p>"Susan!" she shouted from the doorstep.</p>
<p>She heard a stone roll a long time down the declivity of the rocky beach
above the sands. She stepped forward cautiously, one hand on the wall of
the house, and peered down into the smooth darkness of the empty bay. Once
again she cried—</p>
<p>"Susan! You will kill yourself there."</p>
<p>The stone had taken its last leap in the dark, and she heard nothing now.
A sudden thought seemed to strangle her, and she called no more. She
turned her back upon the black silence of the pit and went up the lane
towards Ploumar, stumbling along with sombre determination, as if she had
started on a desperate journey that would last, perhaps, to the end of her
life. A sullen and periodic clamour of waves rolling over reefs followed
her far inland between the high hedges sheltering the gloomy solitude of
the fields.</p>
<p>Susan had run out, swerving sharp to the left at the door, and on the edge
of the slope crouched down behind a boulder. A dislodged stone went on
downwards, rattling as it leaped. When Madame Levaille called out, Susan
could have, by stretching her hand, touched her mother's skirt, had she
had the courage to move a limb. She saw the old woman go away, and she
remained still, closing her eyes and pressing her side to the hard and
rugged surface of the rock. After a while a familiar face with fixed eyes
and an open mouth became visible in the intense obscurity amongst the
boulders. She uttered a low cry and stood up. The face vanished, leaving
her to gasp and shiver alone in the wilderness of stone heaps. But as soon
as she had crouched down again to rest, with her head against the rock,
the face returned, came very near, appeared eager to finish the speech
that had been cut short by death, only a moment ago. She scrambled quickly
to her feet and said: "Go away, or I will do it again." The thing wavered,
swung to the right, to the left. She moved this way and that, stepped
back, fancied herself screaming at it, and was appalled by the unbroken
stillness of the night. She tottered on the brink, felt the steep
declivity under her feet, and rushed down blindly to save herself from a
headlong fall. The shingle seemed to wake up; the pebbles began to roll
before her, pursued her from above, raced down with her on both sides,
rolling past with an increasing clatter. In the peace of the night the
noise grew, deepening to a rumour, continuous and violent, as if the whole
semicircle of the stony beach had started to tumble down into the bay.
Susan's feet hardly touched the slope that seemed to run down with her. At
the bottom she stumbled, shot forward, throwing her arms out, and fell
heavily. She jumped up at once and turned swiftly to look back, her
clenched hands full of sand she had clutched in her fall. The face was
there, keeping its distance, visible in its own sheen that made a pale
stain in the night. She shouted, "Go away!"—she shouted at it with
pain, with fear, with all the rage of that useless stab that could not
keep him quiet, keep him out of her sight. What did he want now? He was
dead. Dead men have no children. Would he never leave her alone? She
shrieked at it—waved her outstretched hands. She seemed to feel the
breath of parted lips, and, with a long cry of discouragement, fled across
the level bottom of the bay.</p>
<p>She ran lightly, unaware of any effort of her body. High sharp rocks that,
when the bay is full, show above the glittering plain of blue water like
pointed towers of submerged churches, glided past her, rushing to the land
at a tremendous pace. To the left, in the distance, she could see
something shining: a broad disc of light in which narrow shadows pivoted
round the centre like the spokes of a wheel. She heard a voice calling,
"Hey! There!" and answered with a wild scream. So, he could call yet! He
was calling after her to stop. Never! . . . She tore through the night,
past the startled group of seaweed-gatherers who stood round their lantern
paralysed with fear at the unearthly screech coming from that fleeing
shadow. The men leaned on their pitchforks staring fearfully. A woman fell
on her knees, and, crossing herself, began to pray aloud. A little girl
with her ragged skirt full of slimy seaweed began to sob despairingly,
lugging her soaked burden close to the man who carried the light. Somebody
said: "The thing ran out towards the sea." Another voice exclaimed: "And
the sea is coming back! Look at the spreading puddles. Do you hear—you
woman—there! Get up!" Several voices cried together. "Yes, let us be
off! Let the accursed thing go to the sea!" They moved on, keeping close
round the light. Suddenly a man swore loudly. He would go and see what was
the matter. It had been a woman's voice. He would go. There were shrill
protests from women—but his high form detached itself from the group
and went off running. They sent an unanimous call of scared voices after
him. A word, insulting and mocking, came back, thrown at them through the
darkness. A woman moaned. An old man said gravely: "Such things ought to
be left alone." They went on slower, shuffling in the yielding sand and
whispering to one another that Millot feared nothing, having no religion,
but that it would end badly some day.</p>
<p>Susan met the incoming tide by the Raven islet and stopped, panting, with
her feet in the water. She heard the murmur and felt the cold caress of
the sea, and, calmer now, could see the sombre and confused mass of the
Raven on one side and on the other the long white streak of Molene sands
that are left high above the dry bottom of Fougere Bay at every ebb. She
turned round and saw far away, along the starred background of the sky,
the ragged outline of the coast. Above it, nearly facing her, appeared the
tower of Ploumar Church; a slender and tall pyramid shooting up dark and
pointed into the clustered glitter of the stars. She felt strangely calm.
She knew where she was, and began to remember how she came there—and
why. She peered into the smooth obscurity near her. She was alone. There
was nothing there; nothing near her, either living or dead.</p>
<p>The tide was creeping in quietly, putting out long impatient arms of
strange rivulets that ran towards the land between ridges of sand. Under
the night the pools grew bigger with mysterious rapidity, while the great
sea, yet far off, thundered in a regular rhythm along the indistinct line
of the horizon. Susan splashed her way back for a few yards without being
able to get clear of the water that murmured tenderly all around and,
suddenly, with a spiteful gurgle, nearly took her off her feet. Her heart
thumped with fear. This place was too big and too empty to die in.
To-morrow they would do with her what they liked. But before she died she
must tell them—tell the gentlemen in black clothes that there are
things no woman can bear. She must explain how it happened. . . . She
splashed through a pool, getting wet to the waist, too preoccupied to
care. . . . She must explain. "He came in the same way as ever and said,
just so: 'Do you think I am going to leave the land to those people from
Morbihan that I do not know? Do you? We shall see! Come along, you
creature of mischance!' And he put his arms out. Then, Messieurs, I said:
'Before God—never!' And he said, striding at me with open palms:
'There is no God to hold me! Do you understand, you useless carcase. I
will do what I like.' And he took me by the shoulders. Then I, Messieurs,
called to God for help, and next minute, while he was shaking me, I felt
my long scissors in my hand. His shirt was unbuttoned, and, by the
candle-light, I saw the hollow of his throat. I cried: 'Let go!' He was
crushing my shoulders. He was strong, my man was! Then I thought: No! . .
. Must I? . . . Then take!—and I struck in the hollow place. I never
saw him fall. . . . The old father never turned his head. He is deaf and
childish, gentlemen. . . . Nobody saw him fall. I ran out . . . Nobody
saw. . . ."</p>
<p>She had been scrambling amongst the boulders of the Raven and now found
herself, all out of breath, standing amongst the heavy shadows of the
rocky islet. The Raven is connected with the main land by a natural pier
of immense and slippery stones. She intended to return home that way. Was
he still standing there? At home. Home! Four idiots and a corpse. She must
go back and explain. Anybody would understand. . . .</p>
<p>Below her the night or the sea seemed to pronounce distinctly—</p>
<p>"Aha! I see you at last!"</p>
<p>She started, slipped, fell; and without attempting to rise, listened,
terrified. She heard heavy breathing, a clatter of wooden clogs. It
stopped.</p>
<p>"Where the devil did you pass?" said an invisible man, hoarsely.</p>
<p>She held her breath. She recognized the voice. She had not seen him fall.
Was he pursuing her there dead, or perhaps . . . alive?</p>
<p>She lost her head. She cried from the crevice where she lay huddled,
"Never, never!"</p>
<p>"Ah! You are still there. You led me a fine dance. Wait, my beauty, I must
see how you look after all this. You wait. . . ."</p>
<p>Millot was stumbling, laughing, swearing meaninglessly out of pure
satisfaction, pleased with himself for having run down that fly-by-night.
"As if there were such things as ghosts! Bah! It took an old African
soldier to show those clodhoppers. . . . But it was curious. Who the devil
was she?"</p>
<p>Susan listened, crouching. He was coming for her, this dead man. There was
no escape. What a noise he made amongst the stones. . . . She saw his head
rise up, then the shoulders. He was tall—her own man! His long arms
waved about, and it was his own voice sounding a little strange . . .
because of the scissors. She scrambled out quickly, rushed to the edge of
the causeway, and turned round. The man stood still on a high stone,
detaching himself in dead black on the glitter of the sky.</p>
<p>"Where are you going to?" he called, roughly.</p>
<p>She answered, "Home!" and watched him intensely. He made a striding,
clumsy leap on to another boulder, and stopped again, balancing himself,
then said—</p>
<p>"Ha! ha! Well, I am going with you. It's the least I can do. Ha! ha! ha!"</p>
<p>She stared at him till her eyes seemed to become glowing coals that burned
deep into her brain, and yet she was in mortal fear of making out the
well-known features. Below her the sea lapped softly against the rock with
a splash continuous and gentle.</p>
<p>The man said, advancing another step—</p>
<p>"I am coming for you. What do you think?"</p>
<p>She trembled. Coming for her! There was no escape, no peace, no hope. She
looked round despairingly. Suddenly the whole shadowy coast, the blurred
islets, the heaven itself, swayed about twice, then came to a rest. She
closed her eyes and shouted—</p>
<p>"Can't you wait till I am dead!"</p>
<p>She was shaken by a furious hate for that shade that pursued her in this
world, unappeased even by death in its longing for an heir that would be
like other people's children.</p>
<p>"Hey! What?" said Millot, keeping his distance prudently. He was saying to
himself: "Look out! Some lunatic. An accident happens soon."</p>
<p>She went on, wildly—</p>
<p>"I want to live. To live alone—for a week—for a day. I must
explain to them. . . . I would tear you to pieces, I would kill you twenty
times over rather than let you touch me while I live. How many times must
I kill you—you blasphemer! Satan sends you here. I am damned too!"</p>
<p>"Come," said Millot, alarmed and conciliating. "I am perfectly alive! . .
. Oh, my God!"</p>
<p>She had screamed, "Alive!" and at once vanished before his eyes, as if the
islet itself had swerved aside from under her feet. Millot rushed forward,
and fell flat with his chin over the edge. Far below he saw the water
whitened by her struggles, and heard one shrill cry for help that seemed
to dart upwards along the perpendicular face of the rock, and soar past,
straight into the high and impassive heaven.</p>
<p>Madame Levaille sat, dry-eyed, on the short grass of the hill side, with
her thick legs stretched out, and her old feet turned up in their black
cloth shoes. Her clogs stood near by, and further off the umbrella lay on
the withered sward like a weapon dropped from the grasp of a vanquished
warrior. The Marquis of Chavanes, on horseback, one gloved hand on thigh,
looked down at her as she got up laboriously, with groans. On the narrow
track of the seaweed-carts four men were carrying inland Susan's body on a
hand-barrow, while several others straggled listlessly behind. Madame
Levaille looked after the procession. "Yes, Monsieur le Marquis," she said
dispassionately, in her usual calm tone of a reasonable old woman. "There
are unfortunate people on this earth. I had only one child. Only one! And
they won't bury her in consecrated ground!"</p>
<p>Her eyes filled suddenly, and a short shower of tears rolled down the
broad cheeks. She pulled the shawl close about her. The Marquis leaned
slightly over in his saddle, and said—</p>
<p>"It is very sad. You have all my sympathy. I shall speak to the Cure. She
was unquestionably insane, and the fall was accidental. Millot says so
distinctly. Good-day, Madame."</p>
<p>And he trotted off, thinking to himself: "I must get this old woman
appointed guardian of those idiots, and administrator of the farm. It
would be much better than having here one of those other Bacadous,
probably a red republican, corrupting my commune."</p>
<p><SPAN name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005"></SPAN></p>
<h2> AN OUTPOST OF PROGRESS </h2>
<p>I</p>
<p>There were two white men in charge of the trading station. Kayerts, the
chief, was short and fat; Carlier, the assistant, was tall, with a large
head and a very broad trunk perched upon a long pair of thin legs. The
third man on the staff was a Sierra Leone nigger, who maintained that his
name was Henry Price. However, for some reason or other, the natives down
the river had given him the name of Makola, and it stuck to him through
all his wanderings about the country. He spoke English and French with a
warbling accent, wrote a beautiful hand, understood bookkeeping, and
cherished in his innermost heart the worship of evil spirits. His wife was
a negress from Loanda, very large and very noisy. Three children rolled
about in sunshine before the door of his low, shed-like dwelling. Makola,
taciturn and impenetrable, despised the two white men. He had charge of a
small clay storehouse with a dried-grass roof, and pretended to keep a
correct account of beads, cotton cloth, red kerchiefs, brass wire, and
other trade goods it contained. Besides the storehouse and Makola's hut,
there was only one large building in the cleared ground of the station. It
was built neatly of reeds, with a verandah on all the four sides. There
were three rooms in it. The one in the middle was the living-room, and had
two rough tables and a few stools in it. The other two were the bedrooms
for the white men. Each had a bedstead and a mosquito net for all
furniture. The plank floor was littered with the belongings of the white
men; open half-empty boxes, torn wearing apparel, old boots; all the
things dirty, and all the things broken, that accumulate mysteriously
round untidy men. There was also another dwelling-place some distance away
from the buildings. In it, under a tall cross much out of the
perpendicular, slept the man who had seen the beginning of all this; who
had planned and had watched the construction of this outpost of progress.
He had been, at home, an unsuccessful painter who, weary of pursuing fame
on an empty stomach, had gone out there through high protections. He had
been the first chief of that station. Makola had watched the energetic
artist die of fever in the just finished house with his usual kind of "I
told you so" indifference. Then, for a time, he dwelt alone with his
family, his account books, and the Evil Spirit that rules the lands under
the equator. He got on very well with his god. Perhaps he had propitiated
him by a promise of more white men to play with, by and by. At any rate
the director of the Great Trading Company, coming up in a steamer that
resembled an enormous sardine box with a flat-roofed shed erected on it,
found the station in good order, and Makola as usual quietly diligent. The
director had the cross put up over the first agent's grave, and appointed
Kayerts to the post. Carlier was told off as second in charge. The
director was a man ruthless and efficient, who at times, but very
imperceptibly, indulged in grim humour. He made a speech to Kayerts and
Carlier, pointing out to them the promising aspect of their station. The
nearest trading-post was about three hundred miles away. It was an
exceptional opportunity for them to distinguish themselves and to earn
percentages on the trade. This appointment was a favour done to beginners.
Kayerts was moved almost to tears by his director's kindness. He would, he
said, by doing his best, try to justify the flattering confidence, &c.,
&c. Kayerts had been in the Administration of the Telegraphs, and knew
how to express himself correctly. Carlier, an ex-non-commissioned officer
of cavalry in an army guaranteed from harm by several European Powers, was
less impressed. If there were commissions to get, so much the better; and,
trailing a sulky glance over the river, the forests, the impenetrable bush
that seemed to cut off the station from the rest of the world, he muttered
between his teeth, "We shall see, very soon."</p>
<p>Next day, some bales of cotton goods and a few cases of provisions having
been thrown on shore, the sardine-box steamer went off, not to return for
another six months. On the deck the director touched his cap to the two
agents, who stood on the bank waving their hats, and turning to an old
servant of the Company on his passage to headquarters, said, "Look at
those two imbeciles. They must be mad at home to send me such specimens. I
told those fellows to plant a vegetable garden, build new storehouses and
fences, and construct a landing-stage. I bet nothing will be done! They
won't know how to begin. I always thought the station on this river
useless, and they just fit the station!"</p>
<p>"They will form themselves there," said the old stager with a quiet smile.</p>
<p>"At any rate, I am rid of them for six months," retorted the director.</p>
<p>The two men watched the steamer round the bend, then, ascending arm in arm
the slope of the bank, returned to the station. They had been in this vast
and dark country only a very short time, and as yet always in the midst of
other white men, under the eye and guidance of their superiors. And now,
dull as they were to the subtle influences of surroundings, they felt
themselves very much alone, when suddenly left unassisted to face the
wilderness; a wilderness rendered more strange, more incomprehensible by
the mysterious glimpses of the vigorous life it contained. They were two
perfectly insignificant and incapable individuals, whose existence is only
rendered possible through the high organization of civilized crowds. Few
men realize that their life, the very essence of their character, their
capabilities and their audacities, are only the expression of their belief
in the safety of their surroundings. The courage, the composure, the
confidence; the emotions and principles; every great and every
insignificant thought belongs not to the individual but to the crowd: to
the crowd that believes blindly in the irresistible force of its
institutions and of its morals, in the power of its police and of its
opinion. But the contact with pure unmitigated savagery, with primitive
nature and primitive man, brings sudden and profound trouble into the
heart. To the sentiment of being alone of one's kind, to the clear
perception of the loneliness of one's thoughts, of one's sensations—to
the negation of the habitual, which is safe, there is added the
affirmation of the unusual, which is dangerous; a suggestion of things
vague, uncontrollable, and repulsive, whose discomposing intrusion excites
the imagination and tries the civilized nerves of the foolish and the wise
alike.</p>
<p>Kayerts and Carlier walked arm in arm, drawing close to one another as
children do in the dark; and they had the same, not altogether unpleasant,
sense of danger which one half suspects to be imaginary. They chatted
persistently in familiar tones. "Our station is prettily situated," said
one. The other assented with enthusiasm, enlarging volubly on the beauties
of the situation. Then they passed near the grave. "Poor devil!" said
Kayerts. "He died of fever, didn't he?" muttered Carlier, stopping short.
"Why," retorted Kayerts, with indignation, "I've been told that the fellow
exposed himself recklessly to the sun. The climate here, everybody says,
is not at all worse than at home, as long as you keep out of the sun. Do
you hear that, Carlier? I am chief here, and my orders are that you should
not expose yourself to the sun!" He assumed his superiority jocularly, but
his meaning was serious. The idea that he would, perhaps, have to bury
Carlier and remain alone, gave him an inward shiver. He felt suddenly that
this Carlier was more precious to him here, in the centre of Africa, than
a brother could be anywhere else. Carlier, entering into the spirit of the
thing, made a military salute and answered in a brisk tone, "Your orders
shall be attended to, chief!" Then he burst out laughing, slapped Kayerts
on the back and shouted, "We shall let life run easily here! Just sit
still and gather in the ivory those savages will bring. This country has
its good points, after all!" They both laughed loudly while Carlier
thought: "That poor Kayerts; he is so fat and unhealthy. It would be awful
if I had to bury him here. He is a man I respect." . . . Before they
reached the verandah of their house they called one another "my dear
fellow."</p>
<p>The first day they were very active, pottering about with hammers and
nails and red calico, to put up curtains, make their house habitable and
pretty; resolved to settle down comfortably to their new life. For them an
impossible task. To grapple effectually with even purely material problems
requires more serenity of mind and more lofty courage than people
generally imagine. No two beings could have been more unfitted for such a
struggle. Society, not from any tenderness, but because of its strange
needs, had taken care of those two men, forbidding them all independent
thought, all initiative, all departure from routine; and forbidding it
under pain of death. They could only live on condition of being machines.
And now, released from the fostering care of men with pens behind the
ears, or of men with gold lace on the sleeves, they were like those
lifelong prisoners who, liberated after many years, do not know what use
to make of their freedom. They did not know what use to make of their
faculties, being both, through want of practice, incapable of independent
thought.</p>
<p>At the end of two months Kayerts often would say, "If it was not for my
Melie, you wouldn't catch me here." Melie was his daughter. He had thrown
up his post in the Administration of the Telegraphs, though he had been
for seventeen years perfectly happy there, to earn a dowry for his girl.
His wife was dead, and the child was being brought up by his sisters. He
regretted the streets, the pavements, the cafes, his friends of many
years; all the things he used to see, day after day; all the thoughts
suggested by familiar things—the thoughts effortless, monotonous,
and soothing of a Government clerk; he regretted all the gossip, the small
enmities, the mild venom, and the little jokes of Government offices. "If
I had had a decent brother-in-law," Carlier would remark, "a fellow with a
heart, I would not be here." He had left the army and had made himself so
obnoxious to his family by his laziness and impudence, that an exasperated
brother-in-law had made superhuman efforts to procure him an appointment
in the Company as a second-class agent. Having not a penny in the world he
was compelled to accept this means of livelihood as soon as it became
quite clear to him that there was nothing more to squeeze out of his
relations. He, like Kayerts, regretted his old life. He regretted the
clink of sabre and spurs on a fine afternoon, the barrack-room witticisms,
the girls of garrison towns; but, besides, he had also a sense of
grievance. He was evidently a much ill-used man. This made him moody, at
times. But the two men got on well together in the fellowship of their
stupidity and laziness. Together they did nothing, absolutely nothing, and
enjoyed the sense of the idleness for which they were paid. And in time
they came to feel something resembling affection for one another.</p>
<p>They lived like blind men in a large room, aware only of what came in
contact with them (and of that only imperfectly), but unable to see the
general aspect of things. The river, the forest, all the great land
throbbing with life, were like a great emptiness. Even the brilliant
sunshine disclosed nothing intelligible. Things appeared and disappeared
before their eyes in an unconnected and aimless kind of way. The river
seemed to come from nowhere and flow nowhither. It flowed through a void.
Out of that void, at times, came canoes, and men with spears in their
hands would suddenly crowd the yard of the station. They were naked,
glossy black, ornamented with snowy shells and glistening brass wire,
perfect of limb. They made an uncouth babbling noise when they spoke,
moved in a stately manner, and sent quick, wild glances out of their
startled, never-resting eyes. Those warriors would squat in long rows,
four or more deep, before the verandah, while their chiefs bargained for
hours with Makola over an elephant tusk. Kayerts sat on his chair and
looked down on the proceedings, understanding nothing. He stared at them
with his round blue eyes, called out to Carlier, "Here, look! look at that
fellow there—and that other one, to the left. Did you ever such a
face? Oh, the funny brute!"</p>
<p>Carlier, smoking native tobacco in a short wooden pipe, would swagger up
twirling his moustaches, and surveying the warriors with haughty
indulgence, would say—</p>
<p>"Fine animals. Brought any bone? Yes? It's not any too soon. Look at the
muscles of that fellow third from the end. I wouldn't care to get a punch
on the nose from him. Fine arms, but legs no good below the knee. Couldn't
make cavalry men of them." And after glancing down complacently at his own
shanks, he always concluded: "Pah! Don't they stink! You, Makola! Take
that herd over to the fetish" (the storehouse was in every station called
the fetish, perhaps because of the spirit of civilization it contained)
"and give them up some of the rubbish you keep there. I'd rather see it
full of bone than full of rags."</p>
<p>Kayerts approved.</p>
<p>"Yes, yes! Go and finish that palaver over there, Mr. Makola. I will come
round when you are ready, to weigh the tusk. We must be careful." Then
turning to his companion: "This is the tribe that lives down the river;
they are rather aromatic. I remember, they had been once before here. D'ye
hear that row? What a fellow has got to put up with in this dog of a
country! My head is split."</p>
<p>Such profitable visits were rare. For days the two pioneers of trade and
progress would look on their empty courtyard in the vibrating brilliance
of vertical sunshine. Below the high bank, the silent river flowed on
glittering and steady. On the sands in the middle of the stream, hippos
and alligators sunned themselves side by side. And stretching away in all
directions, surrounding the insignificant cleared spot of the trading
post, immense forests, hiding fateful complications of fantastic life, lay
in the eloquent silence of mute greatness. The two men understood nothing,
cared for nothing but for the passage of days that separated them from the
steamer's return. Their predecessor had left some torn books. They took up
these wrecks of novels, and, as they had never read anything of the kind
before, they were surprised and amused. Then during long days there were
interminable and silly discussions about plots and personages. In the
centre of Africa they made acquaintance of Richelieu and of d'Artagnan, of
Hawk's Eye and of Father Goriot, and of many other people. All these
imaginary personages became subjects for gossip as if they had been living
friends. They discounted their virtues, suspected their motives, decried
their successes; were scandalized at their duplicity or were doubtful
about their courage. The accounts of crimes filled them with indignation,
while tender or pathetic passages moved them deeply. Carlier cleared his
throat and said in a soldierly voice, "What nonsense!" Kayerts, his round
eyes suffused with tears, his fat cheeks quivering, rubbed his bald head,
and declared. "This is a splendid book. I had no idea there were such
clever fellows in the world." They also found some old copies of a home
paper. That print discussed what it was pleased to call "Our Colonial
Expansion" in high-flown language. It spoke much of the rights and duties
of civilization, of the sacredness of the civilizing work, and extolled
the merits of those who went about bringing light, and faith and commerce
to the dark places of the earth. Carlier and Kayerts read, wondered, and
began to think better of themselves. Carlier said one evening, waving his
hand about, "In a hundred years, there will be perhaps a town here. Quays,
and warehouses, and barracks, and—and—billiard-rooms.
Civilization, my boy, and virtue—and all. And then, chaps will read
that two good fellows, Kayerts and Carlier, were the first civilized men
to live in this very spot!" Kayerts nodded, "Yes, it is a consolation to
think of that." They seemed to forget their dead predecessor; but, early
one day, Carlier went out and replanted the cross firmly. "It used to make
me squint whenever I walked that way," he explained to Kayerts over the
morning coffee. "It made me squint, leaning over so much. So I just
planted it upright. And solid, I promise you! I suspended myself with both
hands to the cross-piece. Not a move. Oh, I did that properly."</p>
<p>At times Gobila came to see them. Gobila was the chief of the neighbouring
villages. He was a gray-headed savage, thin and black, with a white cloth
round his loins and a mangy panther skin hanging over his back. He came up
with long strides of his skeleton legs, swinging a staff as tall as
himself, and, entering the common room of the station, would squat on his
heels to the left of the door. There he sat, watching Kayerts, and now and
then making a speech which the other did not understand. Kayerts, without
interrupting his occupation, would from time to time say in a friendly
manner: "How goes it, you old image?" and they would smile at one another.
The two whites had a liking for that old and incomprehensible creature,
and called him Father Gobila. Gobila's manner was paternal, and he seemed
really to love all white men. They all appeared to him very young,
indistinguishably alike (except for stature), and he knew that they were
all brothers, and also immortal. The death of the artist, who was the
first white man whom he knew intimately, did not disturb this belief,
because he was firmly convinced that the white stranger had pretended to
die and got himself buried for some mysterious purpose of his own, into
which it was useless to inquire. Perhaps it was his way of going home to
his own country? At any rate, these were his brothers, and he transferred
his absurd affection to them. They returned it in a way. Carlier slapped
him on the back, and recklessly struck off matches for his amusement.
Kayerts was always ready to let him have a sniff at the ammonia bottle. In
short, they behaved just like that other white creature that had hidden
itself in a hole in the ground. Gobila considered them attentively.
Perhaps they were the same being with the other—or one of them was.
He couldn't decide—clear up that mystery; but he remained always
very friendly. In consequence of that friendship the women of Gobila's
village walked in single file through the reedy grass, bringing every
morning to the station, fowls, and sweet potatoes, and palm wine, and
sometimes a goat. The Company never provisions the stations fully, and the
agents required those local supplies to live. They had them through the
good-will of Gobila, and lived well. Now and then one of them had a bout
of fever, and the other nursed him with gentle devotion. They did not
think much of it. It left them weaker, and their appearance changed for
the worse. Carlier was hollow-eyed and irritable. Kayerts showed a drawn,
flabby face above the rotundity of his stomach, which gave him a weird
aspect. But being constantly together, they did not notice the change that
took place gradually in their appearance, and also in their dispositions.</p>
<p>Five months passed in that way.</p>
<p>Then, one morning, as Kayerts and Carlier, lounging in their chairs under
the verandah, talked about the approaching visit of the steamer, a knot of
armed men came out of the forest and advanced towards the station. They
were strangers to that part of the country. They were tall, slight, draped
classically from neck to heel in blue fringed cloths, and carried
percussion muskets over their bare right shoulders. Makola showed signs of
excitement, and ran out of the storehouse (where he spent all his days) to
meet these visitors. They came into the courtyard and looked about them
with steady, scornful glances. Their leader, a powerful and
determined-looking negro with bloodshot eyes, stood in front of the
verandah and made a long speech. He gesticulated much, and ceased very
suddenly.</p>
<p>There was something in his intonation, in the sounds of the long sentences
he used, that startled the two whites. It was like a reminiscence of
something not exactly familiar, and yet resembling the speech of civilized
men. It sounded like one of those impossible languages which sometimes we
hear in our dreams.</p>
<p>"What lingo is that?" said the amazed Carlier. "In the first moment I
fancied the fellow was going to speak French. Anyway, it is a different
kind of gibberish to what we ever heard."</p>
<p>"Yes," replied Kayerts. "Hey, Makola, what does he say? Where do they come
from? Who are they?"</p>
<p>But Makola, who seemed to be standing on hot bricks, answered hurriedly,
"I don't know. They come from very far. Perhaps Mrs. Price will
understand. They are perhaps bad men."</p>
<p>The leader, after waiting for a while, said something sharply to Makola,
who shook his head. Then the man, after looking round, noticed Makola's
hut and walked over there. The next moment Mrs. Makola was heard speaking
with great volubility. The other strangers—they were six in all—strolled
about with an air of ease, put their heads through the door of the
storeroom, congregated round the grave, pointed understandingly at the
cross, and generally made themselves at home.</p>
<p>"I don't like those chaps—and, I say, Kayerts, they must be from the
coast; they've got firearms," observed the sagacious Carlier.</p>
<p>Kayerts also did not like those chaps. They both, for the first time,
became aware that they lived in conditions where the unusual may be
dangerous, and that there was no power on earth outside of themselves to
stand between them and the unusual. They became uneasy, went in and loaded
their revolvers. Kayerts said, "We must order Makola to tell them to go
away before dark."</p>
<p>The strangers left in the afternoon, after eating a meal prepared for them
by Mrs. Makola. The immense woman was excited, and talked much with the
visitors. She rattled away shrilly, pointing here and there at the forests
and at the river. Makola sat apart and watched. At times he got up and
whispered to his wife. He accompanied the strangers across the ravine at
the back of the station-ground, and returned slowly looking very
thoughtful. When questioned by the white men he was very strange, seemed
not to understand, seemed to have forgotten French—seemed to have
forgotten how to speak altogether. Kayerts and Carlier agreed that the
nigger had had too much palm wine.</p>
<p>There was some talk about keeping a watch in turn, but in the evening
everything seemed so quiet and peaceful that they retired as usual. All
night they were disturbed by a lot of drumming in the villages. A deep,
rapid roll near by would be followed by another far off—then all
ceased. Soon short appeals would rattle out here and there, then all
mingle together, increase, become vigorous and sustained, would spread out
over the forest, roll through the night, unbroken and ceaseless, near and
far, as if the whole land had been one immense drum booming out steadily
an appeal to heaven. And through the deep and tremendous noise sudden
yells that resembled snatches of songs from a madhouse darted shrill and
high in discordant jets of sound which seemed to rush far above the earth
and drive all peace from under the stars.</p>
<p>Carlier and Kayerts slept badly. They both thought they had heard shots
fired during the night—but they could not agree as to the direction.
In the morning Makola was gone somewhere. He returned about noon with one
of yesterday's strangers, and eluded all Kayerts' attempts to close with
him: had become deaf apparently. Kayerts wondered. Carlier, who had been
fishing off the bank, came back and remarked while he showed his catch,
"The niggers seem to be in a deuce of a stir; I wonder what's up. I saw
about fifteen canoes cross the river during the two hours I was there
fishing." Kayerts, worried, said, "Isn't this Makola very queer to-day?"
Carlier advised, "Keep all our men together in case of some trouble."</p>
<p>II</p>
<p>There were ten station men who had been left by the Director. Those
fellows, having engaged themselves to the Company for six months (without
having any idea of a month in particular and only a very faint notion of
time in general), had been serving the cause of progress for upwards of
two years. Belonging to a tribe from a very distant part of the land of
darkness and sorrow, they did not run away, naturally supposing that as
wandering strangers they would be killed by the inhabitants of the
country; in which they were right. They lived in straw huts on the slope
of a ravine overgrown with reedy grass, just behind the station buildings.
They were not happy, regretting the festive incantations, the sorceries,
the human sacrifices of their own land; where they also had parents,
brothers, sisters, admired chiefs, respected magicians, loved friends, and
other ties supposed generally to be human. Besides, the rice rations
served out by the Company did not agree with them, being a food unknown to
their land, and to which they could not get used. Consequently they were
unhealthy and miserable. Had they been of any other tribe they would have
made up their minds to die—for nothing is easier to certain savages
than suicide—and so have escaped from the puzzling difficulties of
existence. But belonging, as they did, to a warlike tribe with filed
teeth, they had more grit, and went on stupidly living through disease and
sorrow. They did very little work, and had lost their splendid physique.
Carlier and Kayerts doctored them assiduously without being able to bring
them back into condition again. They were mustered every morning and told
off to different tasks—grass-cutting, fence-building, tree-felling,
&c., &c., which no power on earth could induce them to execute
efficiently. The two whites had practically very little control over them.</p>
<p>In the afternoon Makola came over to the big house and found Kayerts
watching three heavy columns of smoke rising above the forests. "What is
that?" asked Kayerts. "Some villages burn," answered Makola, who seemed to
have regained his wits. Then he said abruptly: "We have got very little
ivory; bad six months' trading. Do you like get a little more ivory?"</p>
<p>"Yes," said Kayerts, eagerly. He thought of percentages which were low.</p>
<p>"Those men who came yesterday are traders from Loanda who have got more
ivory than they can carry home. Shall I buy? I know their camp."</p>
<p>"Certainly," said Kayerts. "What are those traders?"</p>
<p>"Bad fellows," said Makola, indifferently. "They fight with people, and
catch women and children. They are bad men, and got guns. There is a great
disturbance in the country. Do you want ivory?"</p>
<p>"Yes," said Kayerts. Makola said nothing for a while. Then: "Those workmen
of ours are no good at all," he muttered, looking round. "Station in very
bad order, sir. Director will growl. Better get a fine lot of ivory, then
he say nothing."</p>
<p>"I can't help it; the men won't work," said Kayerts. "When will you get
that ivory?"</p>
<p>"Very soon," said Makola. "Perhaps to-night. You leave it to me, and keep
indoors, sir. I think you had better give some palm wine to our men to
make a dance this evening. Enjoy themselves. Work better to-morrow.
There's plenty palm wine—gone a little sour."</p>
<p>Kayerts said "yes," and Makola, with his own hands carried big calabashes
to the door of his hut. They stood there till the evening, and Mrs. Makola
looked into every one. The men got them at sunset. When Kayerts and
Carlier retired, a big bonfire was flaring before the men's huts. They
could hear their shouts and drumming. Some men from Gobila's village had
joined the station hands, and the entertainment was a great success.</p>
<p>In the middle of the night, Carlier waking suddenly, heard a man shout
loudly; then a shot was fired. Only one. Carlier ran out and met Kayerts
on the verandah. They were both startled. As they went across the yard to
call Makola, they saw shadows moving in the night. One of them cried,
"Don't shoot! It's me, Price." Then Makola appeared close to them. "Go
back, go back, please," he urged, "you spoil all." "There are strange men
about," said Carlier. "Never mind; I know," said Makola. Then he
whispered, "All right. Bring ivory. Say nothing! I know my business." The
two white men reluctantly went back to the house, but did not sleep. They
heard footsteps, whispers, some groans. It seemed as if a lot of men came
in, dumped heavy things on the ground, squabbled a long time, then went
away. They lay on their hard beds and thought: "This Makola is
invaluable." In the morning Carlier came out, very sleepy, and pulled at
the cord of the big bell. The station hands mustered every morning to the
sound of the bell. That morning nobody came. Kayerts turned out also,
yawning. Across the yard they saw Makola come out of his hut, a tin basin
of soapy water in his hand. Makola, a civilized nigger, was very neat in
his person. He threw the soapsuds skilfully over a wretched little yellow
cur he had, then turning his face to the agent's house, he shouted from
the distance, "All the men gone last night!"</p>
<p>They heard him plainly, but in their surprise they both yelled out
together: "What!" Then they stared at one another. "We are in a proper fix
now," growled Carlier. "It's incredible!" muttered Kayerts. "I will go to
the huts and see," said Carlier, striding off. Makola coming up found
Kayerts standing alone.</p>
<p>"I can hardly believe it," said Kayerts, tearfully. "We took care of them
as if they had been our children."</p>
<p>"They went with the coast people," said Makola after a moment of
hesitation.</p>
<p>"What do I care with whom they went—the ungrateful brutes!"
exclaimed the other. Then with sudden suspicion, and looking hard at
Makola, he added: "What do you know about it?"</p>
<p>Makola moved his shoulders, looking down on the ground. "What do I know? I
think only. Will you come and look at the ivory I've got there? It is a
fine lot. You never saw such."</p>
<p>He moved towards the store. Kayerts followed him mechanically, thinking
about the incredible desertion of the men. On the ground before the door
of the fetish lay six splendid tusks.</p>
<p>"What did you give for it?" asked Kayerts, after surveying the lot with
satisfaction.</p>
<p>"No regular trade," said Makola. "They brought the ivory and gave it to
me. I told them to take what they most wanted in the station. It is a
beautiful lot. No station can show such tusks. Those traders wanted
carriers badly, and our men were no good here. No trade, no entry in
books: all correct."</p>
<p>Kayerts nearly burst with indignation. "Why!" he shouted, "I believe you
have sold our men for these tusks!" Makola stood impassive and silent. "I—I—will—I,"
stuttered Kayerts. "You fiend!" he yelled out.</p>
<p>"I did the best for you and the Company," said Makola, imperturbably. "Why
you shout so much? Look at this tusk."</p>
<p>"I dismiss you! I will report you—I won't look at the tusk. I forbid
you to touch them. I order you to throw them into the river. You—you!"</p>
<p>"You very red, Mr. Kayerts. If you are so irritable in the sun, you will
get fever and die—like the first chief!" pronounced Makola
impressively.</p>
<p>They stood still, contemplating one another with intense eyes, as if they
had been looking with effort across immense distances. Kayerts shivered.
Makola had meant no more than he said, but his words seemed to Kayerts
full of ominous menace! He turned sharply and went away to the house.
Makola retired into the bosom of his family; and the tusks, left lying
before the store, looked very large and valuable in the sunshine.</p>
<p>Carlier came back on the verandah. "They're all gone, hey?" asked Kayerts
from the far end of the common room in a muffled voice. "You did not find
anybody?"</p>
<p>"Oh, yes," said Carlier, "I found one of Gobila's people lying dead before
the huts—shot through the body. We heard that shot last night."</p>
<p>Kayerts came out quickly. He found his companion staring grimly over the
yard at the tusks, away by the store. They both sat in silence for a
while. Then Kayerts related his conversation with Makola. Carlier said
nothing. At the midday meal they ate very little. They hardly exchanged a
word that day. A great silence seemed to lie heavily over the station and
press on their lips. Makola did not open the store; he spent the day
playing with his children. He lay full-length on a mat outside his door,
and the youngsters sat on his chest and clambered all over him. It was a
touching picture. Mrs. Makola was busy cooking all day, as usual. The
white men made a somewhat better meal in the evening. Afterwards, Carlier
smoking his pipe strolled over to the store; he stood for a long time over
the tusks, touched one or two with his foot, even tried to lift the
largest one by its small end. He came back to his chief, who had not
stirred from the verandah, threw himself in the chair and said—</p>
<p>"I can see it! They were pounced upon while they slept heavily after
drinking all that palm wine you've allowed Makola to give them. A put-up
job! See? The worst is, some of Gobila's people were there, and got
carried off too, no doubt. The least drunk woke up, and got shot for his
sobriety. This is a funny country. What will you do now?"</p>
<p>"We can't touch it, of course," said Kayerts.</p>
<p>"Of course not," assented Carlier.</p>
<p>"Slavery is an awful thing," stammered out Kayerts in an unsteady voice.</p>
<p>"Frightful—the sufferings," grunted Carlier with conviction.</p>
<p>They believed their words. Everybody shows a respectful deference to
certain sounds that he and his fellows can make. But about feelings people
really know nothing. We talk with indignation or enthusiasm; we talk about
oppression, cruelty, crime, devotion, self-sacrifice, virtue, and we know
nothing real beyond the words. Nobody knows what suffering or sacrifice
mean—except, perhaps the victims of the mysterious purpose of these
illusions.</p>
<p>Next morning they saw Makola very busy setting up in the yard the big
scales used for weighing ivory. By and by Carlier said: "What's that
filthy scoundrel up to?" and lounged out into the yard. Kayerts followed.
They stood watching. Makola took no notice. When the balance was swung
true, he tried to lift a tusk into the scale. It was too heavy. He looked
up helplessly without a word, and for a minute they stood round that
balance as mute and still as three statues. Suddenly Carlier said: "Catch
hold of the other end, Makola—you beast!" and together they swung
the tusk up. Kayerts trembled in every limb. He muttered, "I say! O! I
say!" and putting his hand in his pocket found there a dirty bit of paper
and the stump of a pencil. He turned his back on the others, as if about
to do something tricky, and noted stealthily the weights which Carlier
shouted out to him with unnecessary loudness. When all was over Makola
whispered to himself: "The sun's very strong here for the tusks." Carlier
said to Kayerts in a careless tone: "I say, chief, I might just as well
give him a lift with this lot into the store."</p>
<p>As they were going back to the house Kayerts observed with a sigh: "It had
to be done." And Carlier said: "It's deplorable, but, the men being
Company's men the ivory is Company's ivory. We must look after it." "I
will report to the Director, of course," said Kayerts. "Of course; let him
decide," approved Carlier.</p>
<p>At midday they made a hearty meal. Kayerts sighed from time to time.
Whenever they mentioned Makola's name they always added to it an
opprobrious epithet. It eased their conscience. Makola gave himself a
half-holiday, and bathed his children in the river. No one from Gobila's
villages came near the station that day. No one came the next day, and the
next, nor for a whole week. Gobila's people might have been dead and
buried for any sign of life they gave. But they were only mourning for
those they had lost by the witchcraft of white men, who had brought wicked
people into their country. The wicked people were gone, but fear remained.
Fear always remains. A man may destroy everything within himself, love and
hate and belief, and even doubt; but as long as he clings to life he
cannot destroy fear: the fear, subtle, indestructible, and terrible, that
pervades his being; that tinges his thoughts; that lurks in his heart;
that watches on his lips the struggle of his last breath. In his fear, the
mild old Gobila offered extra human sacrifices to all the Evil Spirits
that had taken possession of his white friends. His heart was heavy. Some
warriors spoke about burning and killing, but the cautious old savage
dissuaded them. Who could foresee the woe those mysterious creatures, if
irritated, might bring? They should be left alone. Perhaps in time they
would disappear into the earth as the first one had disappeared. His
people must keep away from them, and hope for the best.</p>
<p>Kayerts and Carlier did not disappear, but remained above on this earth,
that, somehow, they fancied had become bigger and very empty. It was not
the absolute and dumb solitude of the post that impressed them so much as
an inarticulate feeling that something from within them was gone,
something that worked for their safety, and had kept the wilderness from
interfering with their hearts. The images of home; the memory of people
like them, of men that thought and felt as they used to think and feel,
receded into distances made indistinct by the glare of unclouded sunshine.
And out of the great silence of the surrounding wilderness, its very
hopelessness and savagery seemed to approach them nearer, to draw them
gently, to look upon them, to envelop them with a solicitude irresistible,
familiar, and disgusting.</p>
<p>Days lengthened into weeks, then into months. Gobila's people drummed and
yelled to every new moon, as of yore, but kept away from the station.
Makola and Carlier tried once in a canoe to open communications, but were
received with a shower of arrows, and had to fly back to the station for
dear life. That attempt set the country up and down the river into an
uproar that could be very distinctly heard for days. The steamer was late.
At first they spoke of delay jauntily, then anxiously, then gloomily. The
matter was becoming serious. Stores were running short. Carlier cast his
lines off the bank, but the river was low, and the fish kept out in the
stream. They dared not stroll far away from the station to shoot.
Moreover, there was no game in the impenetrable forest. Once Carlier shot
a hippo in the river. They had no boat to secure it, and it sank. When it
floated up it drifted away, and Gobila's people secured the carcase. It
was the occasion for a national holiday, but Carlier had a fit of rage
over it and talked about the necessity of exterminating all the niggers
before the country could be made habitable. Kayerts mooned about silently;
spent hours looking at the portrait of his Melie. It represented a little
girl with long bleached tresses and a rather sour face. His legs were much
swollen, and he could hardly walk. Carlier, undermined by fever, could not
swagger any more, but kept tottering about, still with a devil-may-care
air, as became a man who remembered his crack regiment. He had become
hoarse, sarcastic, and inclined to say unpleasant things. He called it
"being frank with you." They had long ago reckoned their percentages on
trade, including in them that last deal of "this infamous Makola." They
had also concluded not to say anything about it. Kayerts hesitated at
first—was afraid of the Director.</p>
<p>"He has seen worse things done on the quiet," maintained Carlier, with a
hoarse laugh. "Trust him! He won't thank you if you blab. He is no better
than you or me. Who will talk if we hold our tongues? There is nobody
here."</p>
<p>That was the root of the trouble! There was nobody there; and being left
there alone with their weakness, they became daily more like a pair of
accomplices than like a couple of devoted friends. They had heard nothing
from home for eight months. Every evening they said, "To-morrow we shall
see the steamer." But one of the Company's steamers had been wrecked, and
the Director was busy with the other, relieving very distant and important
stations on the main river. He thought that the useless station, and the
useless men, could wait. Meantime Kayerts and Carlier lived on rice boiled
without salt, and cursed the Company, all Africa, and the day they were
born. One must have lived on such diet to discover what ghastly trouble
the necessity of swallowing one's food may become. There was literally
nothing else in the station but rice and coffee; they drank the coffee
without sugar. The last fifteen lumps Kayerts had solemnly locked away in
his box, together with a half-bottle of Cognac, "in case of sickness," he
explained. Carlier approved. "When one is sick," he said, "any little
extra like that is cheering."</p>
<p>They waited. Rank grass began to sprout over the courtyard. The bell never
rang now. Days passed, silent, exasperating, and slow. When the two men
spoke, they snarled; and their silences were bitter, as if tinged by the
bitterness of their thoughts.</p>
<p>One day after a lunch of boiled rice, Carlier put down his cup untasted,
and said: "Hang it all! Let's have a decent cup of coffee for once. Bring
out that sugar, Kayerts!"</p>
<p>"For the sick," muttered Kayerts, without looking up.</p>
<p>"For the sick," mocked Carlier. "Bosh! . . . Well! I am sick."</p>
<p>"You are no more sick than I am, and I go without," said Kayerts in a
peaceful tone.</p>
<p>"Come! out with that sugar, you stingy old slave-dealer."</p>
<p>Kayerts looked up quickly. Carlier was smiling with marked insolence. And
suddenly it seemed to Kayerts that he had never seen that man before. Who
was he? He knew nothing about him. What was he capable of? There was a
surprising flash of violent emotion within him, as if in the presence of
something undreamt-of, dangerous, and final. But he managed to pronounce
with composure—</p>
<p>"That joke is in very bad taste. Don't repeat it."</p>
<p>"Joke!" said Carlier, hitching himself forward on his seat. "I am hungry—I
am sick—I don't joke! I hate hypocrites. You are a hypocrite. You
are a slave-dealer. I am a slave-dealer. There's nothing but slave-dealers
in this cursed country. I mean to have sugar in my coffee to-day, anyhow!"</p>
<p>"I forbid you to speak to me in that way," said Kayerts with a fair show
of resolution.</p>
<p>"You!—What?" shouted Carlier, jumping up.</p>
<p>Kayerts stood up also. "I am your chief," he began, trying to master the
shakiness of his voice.</p>
<p>"What?" yelled the other. "Who's chief? There's no chief here. There's
nothing here: there's nothing but you and I. Fetch the sugar—you
pot-bellied ass."</p>
<p>"Hold your tongue. Go out of this room," screamed Kayerts. "I dismiss you—you
scoundrel!"</p>
<p>Carlier swung a stool. All at once he looked dangerously in earnest. "You
flabby, good-for-nothing civilian—take that!" he howled.</p>
<p>Kayerts dropped under the table, and the stool struck the grass inner wall
of the room. Then, as Carlier was trying to upset the table, Kayerts in
desperation made a blind rush, head low, like a cornered pig would do, and
over-turning his friend, bolted along the verandah, and into his room. He
locked the door, snatched his revolver, and stood panting. In less than a
minute Carlier was kicking at the door furiously, howling, "If you don't
bring out that sugar, I will shoot you at sight, like a dog. Now then—one—two—three.
You won't? I will show you who's the master."</p>
<p>Kayerts thought the door would fall in, and scrambled through the square
hole that served for a window in his room. There was then the whole
breadth of the house between them. But the other was apparently not strong
enough to break in the door, and Kayerts heard him running round. Then he
also began to run laboriously on his swollen legs. He ran as quickly as he
could, grasping the revolver, and unable yet to understand what was
happening to him. He saw in succession Makola's house, the store, the
river, the ravine, and the low bushes; and he saw all those things again
as he ran for the second time round the house. Then again they flashed
past him. That morning he could not have walked a yard without a groan.</p>
<p>And now he ran. He ran fast enough to keep out of sight of the other man.</p>
<p>Then as, weak and desperate, he thought, "Before I finish the next round I
shall die," he heard the other man stumble heavily, then stop. He stopped
also. He had the back and Carlier the front of the house, as before. He
heard him drop into a chair cursing, and suddenly his own legs gave way,
and he slid down into a sitting posture with his back to the wall. His
mouth was as dry as a cinder, and his face was wet with perspiration—and
tears. What was it all about? He thought it must be a horrible illusion;
he thought he was dreaming; he thought he was going mad! After a while he
collected his senses. What did they quarrel about? That sugar! How absurd!
He would give it to him—didn't want it himself. And he began
scrambling to his feet with a sudden feeling of security. But before he
had fairly stood upright, a commonsense reflection occurred to him and
drove him back into despair. He thought: "If I give way now to that brute
of a soldier, he will begin this horror again to-morrow—and the day
after—every day—raise other pretensions, trample on me,
torture me, make me his slave—and I will be lost! Lost! The steamer
may not come for days—may never come." He shook so that he had to
sit down on the floor again. He shivered forlornly. He felt he could not,
would not move any more. He was completely distracted by the sudden
perception that the position was without issue—that death and life
had in a moment become equally difficult and terrible.</p>
<p>All at once he heard the other push his chair back; and he leaped to his
feet with extreme facility. He listened and got confused. Must run again!
Right or left? He heard footsteps. He darted to the left, grasping his
revolver, and at the very same instant, as it seemed to him, they came
into violent collision. Both shouted with surprise. A loud explosion took
place between them; a roar of red fire, thick smoke; and Kayerts, deafened
and blinded, rushed back thinking: "I am hit—it's all over." He
expected the other to come round—to gloat over his agony. He caught
hold of an upright of the roof—"All over!" Then he heard a crashing
fall on the other side of the house, as if somebody had tumbled headlong
over a chair—then silence. Nothing more happened. He did not die.
Only his shoulder felt as if it had been badly wrenched, and he had lost
his revolver. He was disarmed and helpless! He waited for his fate. The
other man made no sound. It was a stratagem. He was stalking him now!
Along what side? Perhaps he was taking aim this very minute!</p>
<p>After a few moments of an agony frightful and absurd, he decided to go and
meet his doom. He was prepared for every surrender. He turned the corner,
steadying himself with one hand on the wall; made a few paces, and nearly
swooned. He had seen on the floor, protruding past the other corner, a
pair of turned-up feet. A pair of white naked feet in red slippers. He
felt deadly sick, and stood for a time in profound darkness. Then Makola
appeared before him, saying quietly: "Come along, Mr. Kayerts. He is
dead." He burst into tears of gratitude; a loud, sobbing fit of crying.
After a time he found himself sitting in a chair and looking at Carlier,
who lay stretched on his back. Makola was kneeling over the body.</p>
<p>"Is this your revolver?" asked Makola, getting up.</p>
<p>"Yes," said Kayerts; then he added very quickly, "He ran after me to shoot
me—you saw!"</p>
<p>"Yes, I saw," said Makola. "There is only one revolver; where's his?"</p>
<p>"Don't know," whispered Kayerts in a voice that had become suddenly very
faint.</p>
<p>"I will go and look for it," said the other, gently. He made the round
along the verandah, while Kayerts sat still and looked at the corpse.
Makola came back empty-handed, stood in deep thought, then stepped quietly
into the dead man's room, and came out directly with a revolver, which he
held up before Kayerts. Kayerts shut his eyes. Everything was going round.
He found life more terrible and difficult than death. He had shot an
unarmed man.</p>
<p>After meditating for a while, Makola said softly, pointing at the dead man
who lay there with his right eye blown out—</p>
<p>"He died of fever." Kayerts looked at him with a stony stare. "Yes,"
repeated Makola, thoughtfully, stepping over the corpse, "I think he died
of fever. Bury him to-morrow."</p>
<p>And he went away slowly to his expectant wife, leaving the two white men
alone on the verandah.</p>
<p>Night came, and Kayerts sat unmoving on his chair. He sat quiet as if he
had taken a dose of opium. The violence of the emotions he had passed
through produced a feeling of exhausted serenity. He had plumbed in one
short afternoon the depths of horror and despair, and now found repose in
the conviction that life had no more secrets for him: neither had death!
He sat by the corpse thinking; thinking very actively, thinking very new
thoughts. He seemed to have broken loose from himself altogether. His old
thoughts, convictions, likes and dislikes, things he respected and things
he abhorred, appeared in their true light at last! Appeared contemptible
and childish, false and ridiculous. He revelled in his new wisdom while he
sat by the man he had killed. He argued with himself about all things
under heaven with that kind of wrong-headed lucidity which may be observed
in some lunatics. Incidentally he reflected that the fellow dead there had
been a noxious beast anyway; that men died every day in thousands; perhaps
in hundreds of thousands—who could tell?—and that in the
number, that one death could not possibly make any difference; couldn't
have any importance, at least to a thinking creature. He, Kayerts, was a
thinking creature. He had been all his life, till that moment, a believer
in a lot of nonsense like the rest of mankind—who are fools; but now
he thought! He knew! He was at peace; he was familiar with the highest
wisdom! Then he tried to imagine himself dead, and Carlier sitting in his
chair watching him; and his attempt met with such unexpected success, that
in a very few moments he became not at all sure who was dead and who was
alive. This extraordinary achievement of his fancy startled him, however,
and by a clever and timely effort of mind he saved himself just in time
from becoming Carlier. His heart thumped, and he felt hot all over at the
thought of that danger. Carlier! What a beastly thing! To compose his now
disturbed nerves—and no wonder!—he tried to whistle a little.
Then, suddenly, he fell asleep, or thought he had slept; but at any rate
there was a fog, and somebody had whistled in the fog.</p>
<p>He stood up. The day had come, and a heavy mist had descended upon the
land: the mist penetrating, enveloping, and silent; the morning mist of
tropical lands; the mist that clings and kills; the mist white and deadly,
immaculate and poisonous. He stood up, saw the body, and threw his arms
above his head with a cry like that of a man who, waking from a trance,
finds himself immured forever in a tomb. "Help! . . . . My God!"</p>
<p>A shriek inhuman, vibrating and sudden, pierced like a sharp dart the
white shroud of that land of sorrow. Three short, impatient screeches
followed, and then, for a time, the fog-wreaths rolled on, undisturbed,
through a formidable silence. Then many more shrieks, rapid and piercing,
like the yells of some exasperated and ruthless creature, rent the air.
Progress was calling to Kayerts from the river. Progress and civilization
and all the virtues. Society was calling to its accomplished child to
come, to be taken care of, to be instructed, to be judged, to be
condemned; it called him to return to that rubbish heap from which he had
wandered away, so that justice could be done.</p>
<p>Kayerts heard and understood. He stumbled out of the verandah, leaving the
other man quite alone for the first time since they had been thrown there
together. He groped his way through the fog, calling in his ignorance upon
the invisible heaven to undo its work. Makola flitted by in the mist,
shouting as he ran—</p>
<p>"Steamer! Steamer! They can't see. They whistle for the station. I go ring
the bell. Go down to the landing, sir. I ring."</p>
<p>He disappeared. Kayerts stood still. He looked upwards; the fog rolled low
over his head. He looked round like a man who has lost his way; and he saw
a dark smudge, a cross-shaped stain, upon the shifting purity of the mist.
As he began to stumble towards it, the station bell rang in a tumultuous
peal its answer to the impatient clamour of the steamer.</p>
<p>The Managing Director of the Great Civilizing Company (since we know that
civilization follows trade) landed first, and incontinently lost sight of
the steamer. The fog down by the river was exceedingly dense; above, at
the station, the bell rang unceasing and brazen.</p>
<p>The Director shouted loudly to the steamer:</p>
<p>"There is nobody down to meet us; there may be something wrong, though
they are ringing. You had better come, too!"</p>
<p>And he began to toil up the steep bank. The captain and the engine-driver
of the boat followed behind. As they scrambled up the fog thinned, and
they could see their Director a good way ahead. Suddenly they saw him
start forward, calling to them over his shoulder:—"Run! Run to the
house! I've found one of them. Run, look for the other!"</p>
<p>He had found one of them! And even he, the man of varied and startling
experience, was somewhat discomposed by the manner of this finding. He
stood and fumbled in his pockets (for a knife) while he faced Kayerts, who
was hanging by a leather strap from the cross. He had evidently climbed
the grave, which was high and narrow, and after tying the end of the strap
to the arm, had swung himself off. His toes were only a couple of inches
above the ground; his arms hung stiffly down; he seemed to be standing
rigidly at attention, but with one purple cheek playfully posed on the
shoulder. And, irreverently, he was putting out a swollen tongue at his
Managing Director.</p>
<p><SPAN name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006"></SPAN></p>
<h2> THE RETURN </h2>
<p>The inner circle train from the City rushed impetuously out of a black
hole and pulled up with a discordant, grinding racket in the smirched
twilight of a West-End station. A line of doors flew open and a lot of men
stepped out headlong. They had high hats, healthy pale faces, dark
overcoats and shiny boots; they held in their gloved hands thin umbrellas
and hastily folded evening papers that resembled stiff, dirty rags of
greenish, pinkish, or whitish colour. Alvan Hervey stepped out with the
rest, a smouldering cigar between his teeth. A disregarded little woman in
rusty black, with both arms full of parcels, ran along in distress, bolted
suddenly into a third-class compartment and the train went on. The
slamming of carriage doors burst out sharp and spiteful like a fusillade;
an icy draught mingled with acrid fumes swept the whole length of the
platform and made a tottering old man, wrapped up to his ears in a woollen
comforter, stop short in the moving throng to cough violently over his
stick. No one spared him a glance.</p>
<p>Alvan Hervey passed through the ticket gate. Between the bare walls of a
sordid staircase men clambered rapidly; their backs appeared alike—almost
as if they had been wearing a uniform; their indifferent faces were varied
but somehow suggested kinship, like the faces of a band of brothers who
through prudence, dignity, disgust, or foresight would resolutely ignore
each other; and their eyes, quick or slow; their eyes gazing up the dusty
steps; their eyes brown, black, gray, blue, had all the same stare,
concentrated and empty, satisfied and unthinking.</p>
<p>Outside the big doorway of the street they scattered in all directions,
walking away fast from one another with the hurried air of men fleeing
from something compromising; from familiarity or confidences; from
something suspected and concealed—like truth or pestilence. Alvan
Hervey hesitated, standing alone in the doorway for a moment; then decided
to walk home.</p>
<p>He strode firmly. A misty rain settled like silvery dust on clothes, on
moustaches; wetted the faces, varnished the flagstones, darkened the
walls, dripped from umbrellas. And he moved on in the rain with careless
serenity, with the tranquil ease of someone successful and disdainful,
very sure of himself—a man with lots of money and friends. He was
tall, well set-up, good-looking and healthy; and his clear pale face had
under its commonplace refinement that slight tinge of overbearing
brutality which is given by the possession of only partly difficult
accomplishments; by excelling in games, or in the art of making money; by
the easy mastery over animals and over needy men.</p>
<p>He was going home much earlier than usual, straight from the City and
without calling at his club. He considered himself well connected, well
educated and intelligent. Who doesn't? But his connections, education and
intelligence were strictly on a par with those of the men with whom he did
business or amused himself. He had married five years ago. At the time all
his acquaintances had said he was very much in love; and he had said so
himself, frankly, because it is very well understood that every man falls
in love once in his life—unless his wife dies, when it may be quite
praiseworthy to fall in love again. The girl was healthy, tall, fair, and
in his opinion was well connected, well educated and intelligent. She was
also intensely bored with her home where, as if packed in a tight box, her
individuality—of which she was very conscious—had no play. She
strode like a grenadier, was strong and upright like an obelisk, had a
beautiful face, a candid brow, pure eyes, and not a thought of her own in
her head. He surrendered quickly to all those charms, and she appeared to
him so unquestionably of the right sort that he did not hesitate for a
moment to declare himself in love. Under the cover of that sacred and
poetical fiction he desired her masterfully, for various reasons; but
principally for the satisfaction of having his own way. He was very dull
and solemn about it—for no earthly reason, unless to conceal his
feelings—which is an eminently proper thing to do. Nobody, however,
would have been shocked had he neglected that duty, for the feeling he
experienced really was a longing—a longing stronger and a little
more complex no doubt, but no more reprehensible in its nature than a
hungry man's appetite for his dinner.</p>
<p>After their marriage they busied themselves, with marked success, in
enlarging the circle of their acquaintance. Thirty people knew them by
sight; twenty more with smiling demonstrations tolerated their occasional
presence within hospitable thresholds; at least fifty others became aware
of their existence. They moved in their enlarged world amongst perfectly
delightful men and women who feared emotion, enthusiasm, or failure, more
than fire, war, or mortal disease; who tolerated only the commonest
formulas of commonest thoughts, and recognized only profitable facts. It
was an extremely charming sphere, the abode of all the virtues, where
nothing is realized and where all joys and sorrows are cautiously toned
down into pleasures and annoyances. In that serene region, then, where
noble sentiments are cultivated in sufficient profusion to conceal the
pitiless materialism of thoughts and aspirations Alvan Hervey and his wife
spent five years of prudent bliss unclouded by any doubt as to the moral
propriety of their existence. She, to give her individuality fair play,
took up all manner of philanthropic work and became a member of various
rescuing and reforming societies patronized or presided over by ladies of
title. He took an active interest in politics; and having met quite by
chance a literary man—who nevertheless was related to an earl—he
was induced to finance a moribund society paper. It was a semi-political,
and wholly scandalous publication, redeemed by excessive dulness; and as
it was utterly faithless, as it contained no new thought, as it never by
any chance had a flash of wit, satire, or indignation in its pages, he
judged it respectable enough, at first sight. Afterwards, when it paid, he
promptly perceived that upon the whole it was a virtuous undertaking. It
paved the way of his ambition; and he enjoyed also the special kind of
importance he derived from this connection with what he imagined to be
literature.</p>
<p>This connection still further enlarged their world. Men who wrote or drew
prettily for the public came at times to their house, and his editor came
very often. He thought him rather an ass because he had such big front
teeth (the proper thing is to have small, even teeth) and wore his hair a
trifle longer than most men do. However, some dukes wear their hair long,
and the fellow indubitably knew his business. The worst was that his
gravity, though perfectly portentous, could not be trusted. He sat,
elegant and bulky, in the drawing-room, the head of his stick hovering in
front of his big teeth, and talked for hours with a thick-lipped smile (he
said nothing that could be considered objectionable and not quite the
thing) talked in an unusual manner—not obviously irritatingly. His
forehead was too lofty—unusually so—and under it there was a
straight nose, lost between the hairless cheeks, that in a smooth curve
ran into a chin shaped like the end of a snow-shoe. And in this face that
resembled the face of a fat and fiendishly knowing baby there glittered a
pair of clever, peering, unbelieving black eyes. He wrote verses too.
Rather an ass. But the band of men who trailed at the skirts of his
monumental frock-coat seemed to perceive wonderful things in what he said.
Alvan Hervey put it down to affectation. Those artist chaps, upon the
whole, were so affected. Still, all this was highly proper—very
useful to him—and his wife seemed to like it—as if she also
had derived some distinct and secret advantage from this intellectual
connection. She received her mixed and decorous guests with a kind of
tall, ponderous grace, peculiarly her own and which awakened in the mind
of intimidated strangers incongruous and improper reminiscences of an
elephant, a giraffe, a gazelle; of a gothic tower—of an overgrown
angel. Her Thursdays were becoming famous in their world; and their world
grew steadily, annexing street after street. It included also Somebody's
Gardens, a Crescent—a couple of Squares.</p>
<p>Thus Alvan Hervey and his wife for five prosperous years lived by the side
of one another. In time they came to know each other sufficiently well for
all the practical purposes of such an existence, but they were no more
capable of real intimacy than two animals feeding at the same manger,
under the same roof, in a luxurious stable. His longing was appeased and
became a habit; and she had her desire—the desire to get away from
under the paternal roof, to assert her individuality, to move in her own
set (so much smarter than the parental one); to have a home of her own,
and her own share of the world's respect, envy, and applause. They
understood each other warily, tacitly, like a pair of cautious
conspirators in a profitable plot; because they were both unable to look
at a fact, a sentiment, a principle, or a belief otherwise than in the
light of their own dignity, of their own glorification, of their own
advantage. They skimmed over the surface of life hand in hand, in a pure
and frosty atmosphere—like two skilful skaters cutting figures on
thick ice for the admiration of the beholders, and disdainfully ignoring
the hidden stream, the stream restless and dark; the stream of life,
profound and unfrozen.</p>
<p>Alvan Hervey turned twice to the left, once to the right, walked along two
sides of a square, in the middle of which groups of tame-looking trees
stood in respectable captivity behind iron railings, and rang at his door.
A parlour-maid opened. A fad of his wife's, this, to have only women
servants. That girl, while she took his hat and overcoat, said something
which made him look at his watch. It was five o'clock, and his wife not at
home. There was nothing unusual in that. He said, "No; no tea," and went
upstairs.</p>
<p>He ascended without footfalls. Brass rods glimmered all up the red carpet.
On the first-floor landing a marble woman, decently covered from neck to
instep with stone draperies, advanced a row of lifeless toes to the edge
of the pedestal, and thrust out blindly a rigid white arm holding a
cluster of lights. He had artistic tastes—at home. Heavy curtains
caught back, half concealed dark corners. On the rich, stamped paper of
the walls hung sketches, water-colours, engravings. His tastes were
distinctly artistic. Old church towers peeped above green masses of
foliage; the hills were purple, the sands yellow, the seas sunny, the
skies blue. A young lady sprawled with dreamy eyes in a moored boat, in
company of a lunch basket, a champagne bottle, and an enamoured man in a
blazer. Bare-legged boys flirted sweetly with ragged maidens, slept on
stone steps, gambolled with dogs. A pathetically lean girl flattened
against a blank wall, turned up expiring eyes and tendered a flower for
sale; while, near by, the large photographs of some famous and mutilated
bas-reliefs seemed to represent a massacre turned into stone.</p>
<p>He looked, of course, at nothing, ascended another flight of stairs and
went straight into the dressing room. A bronze dragon nailed by the tail
to a bracket writhed away from the wall in calm convolutions, and held,
between the conventional fury of its jaws, a crude gas flame that
resembled a butterfly. The room was empty, of course; but, as he stepped
in, it became filled all at once with a stir of many people; because the
strips of glass on the doors of wardrobes and his wife's large pier-glass
reflected him from head to foot, and multiplied his image into a crowd of
gentlemanly and slavish imitators, who were dressed exactly like himself;
had the same restrained and rare gestures; who moved when he moved, stood
still with him in an obsequious immobility, and had just such appearances
of life and feeling as he thought it dignified and safe for any man to
manifest. And like real people who are slaves of common thoughts, that are
not even their own, they affected a shadowy independence by the
superficial variety of their movements. They moved together with him; but
they either advanced to meet him, or walked away from him; they appeared,
disappeared; they seemed to dodge behind walnut furniture, to be seen
again, far within the polished panes, stepping about distinct and unreal
in the convincing illusion of a room. And like the men he respected they
could be trusted to do nothing individual, original, or startling—nothing
unforeseen and nothing improper.</p>
<p>He moved for a time aimlessly in that good company, humming a popular but
refined tune, and thinking vaguely of a business letter from abroad, which
had to be answered on the morrow with cautious prevarication. Then, as he
walked towards a wardrobe, he saw appearing at his back, in the high
mirror, the corner of his wife's dressing-table, and amongst the glitter
of silver-mounted objects on it, the square white patch of an envelope. It
was such an unusual thing to be seen there that he spun round almost
before he realized his surprise; and all the sham men about him pivoted on
their heels; all appeared surprised; and all moved rapidly towards
envelopes on dressing-tables.</p>
<p>He recognized his wife's handwriting and saw that the envelope was
addressed to himself. He muttered, "How very odd," and felt annoyed. Apart
from any odd action being essentially an indecent thing in itself, the
fact of his wife indulging in it made it doubly offensive. That she should
write to him at all, when she knew he would be home for dinner, was
perfectly ridiculous; but that she should leave it like this—in
evidence for chance discovery—struck him as so outrageous that,
thinking of it, he experienced suddenly a staggering sense of insecurity,
an absurd and bizarre flash of a notion that the house had moved a little
under his feet. He tore the envelope open, glanced at the letter, and sat
down in a chair near by.</p>
<p>He held the paper before his eyes and looked at half a dozen lines
scrawled on the page, while he was stunned by a noise meaningless and
violent, like the clash of gongs or the beating of drums; a great aimless
uproar that, in a manner, prevented him from hearing himself think and
made his mind an absolute blank. This absurd and distracting tumult seemed
to ooze out of the written words, to issue from between his very fingers
that trembled, holding the paper. And suddenly he dropped the letter as
though it had been something hot, or venomous, or filthy; and rushing to
the window with the unreflecting precipitation of a man anxious to raise
an alarm of fire or murder, he threw it up and put his head out.</p>
<p>A chill gust of wind, wandering through the damp and sooty obscurity over
the waste of roofs and chimney-pots, touched his face with a clammy flick.
He saw an illimitable darkness, in which stood a black jumble of walls,
and, between them, the many rows of gaslights stretched far away in long
lines, like strung-up beads of fire. A sinister loom as of a hidden
conflagration lit up faintly from below the mist, falling upon a billowy
and motionless sea of tiles and bricks. At the rattle of the opened window
the world seemed to leap out of the night and confront him, while floating
up to his ears there came a sound vast and faint; the deep mutter of
something immense and alive. It penetrated him with a feeling of dismay
and he gasped silently. From the cab-stand in the square came distinct
hoarse voices and a jeering laugh which sounded ominously harsh and cruel.
It sounded threatening. He drew his head in, as if before an aimed blow,
and flung the window down quickly. He made a few steps, stumbled against a
chair, and with a great effort, pulled himself together to lay hold of a
certain thought that was whizzing about loose in his head.</p>
<p>He got it at last, after more exertion than he expected; he was flushed
and puffed a little as though he had been catching it with his hands, but
his mental hold on it was weak, so weak that he judged it necessary to
repeat it aloud—to hear it spoken firmly—in order to insure a
perfect measure of possession. But he was unwilling to hear his own voice—to
hear any sound whatever—owing to a vague belief, shaping itself
slowly within him, that solitude and silence are the greatest felicities
of mankind. The next moment it dawned upon him that they are perfectly
unattainable—that faces must be seen, words spoken, thoughts heard.
All the words—all the thoughts!</p>
<p>He said very distinctly, and looking at the carpet, "She's gone."</p>
<p>It was terrible—not the fact but the words; the words charged with
the shadowy might of a meaning, that seemed to possess the tremendous
power to call Fate down upon the earth, like those strange and appalling
words that sometimes are heard in sleep. They vibrated round him in a
metallic atmosphere, in a space that had the hardness of iron and the
resonance of a bell of bronze. Looking down between the toes of his boots
he seemed to listen thoughtfully to the receding wave of sound; to the
wave spreading out in a widening circle, embracing streets, roofs,
church-steeples, fields—and travelling away, widening endlessly,
far, very far, where he could not hear—where he could not imagine
anything—where . . .</p>
<p>"And—with that . . . ass," he said again without stirring in the
least. And there was nothing but humiliation. Nothing else. He could
derive no moral solace from any aspect of the situation, which radiated
pain only on every side. Pain. What kind of pain? It occurred to him that
he ought to be heart-broken; but in an exceedingly short moment he
perceived that his suffering was nothing of so trifling and dignified a
kind. It was altogether a more serious matter, and partook rather of the
nature of those subtle and cruel feelings which are awakened by a kick or
a horse-whipping.</p>
<p>He felt very sick—physically sick—as though he had bitten
through something nauseous. Life, that to a well-ordered mind should be a
matter of congratulation, appeared to him, for a second or so, perfectly
intolerable. He picked up the paper at his feet, and sat down with the
wish to think it out, to understand why his wife—his wife!—should
leave him, should throw away respect, comfort, peace, decency, position
throw away everything for nothing! He set himself to think out the hidden
logic of her action—a mental undertaking fit for the leisure hours
of a madhouse, though he couldn't see it. And he thought of his wife in
every relation except the only fundamental one. He thought of her as a
well-bred girl, as a wife, as a cultured person, as the mistress of a
house, as a lady; but he never for a moment thought of her simply as a
woman.</p>
<p>Then a fresh wave, a raging wave of humiliation, swept through his mind,
and left nothing there but a personal sense of undeserved abasement. Why
should he be mixed up with such a horrid exposure! It annihilated all the
advantages of his well-ordered past, by a truth effective and unjust like
a calumny—and the past was wasted. Its failure was disclosed—a
distinct failure, on his part, to see, to guard, to understand. It could
not be denied; it could not be explained away, hustled out of sight. He
could not sit on it and look solemn. Now—if she had only died!</p>
<p>If she had only died! He was driven to envy such a respectable
bereavement, and one so perfectly free from any taint of misfortune that
even his best friend or his best enemy would not have felt the slightest
thrill of exultation. No one would have cared. He sought comfort in
clinging to the contemplation of the only fact of life that the resolute
efforts of mankind had never failed to disguise in the clatter and glamour
of phrases. And nothing lends itself more to lies than death. If she had
only died! Certain words would have been said to him in a sad tone, and
he, with proper fortitude, would have made appropriate answers. There were
precedents for such an occasion. And no one would have cared. If she had
only died! The promises, the terrors, the hopes of eternity, are the
concern of the corrupt dead; but the obvious sweetness of life belongs to
living, healthy men. And life was his concern: that sane and gratifying
existence untroubled by too much love or by too much regret. She had
interfered with it; she had defaced it. And suddenly it occurred to him he
must have been mad to marry. It was too much in the nature of giving
yourself away, of wearing—if for a moment—your heart on your
sleeve. But every one married. Was all mankind mad!</p>
<p>In the shock of that startling thought he looked up, and saw to the left,
to the right, in front, men sitting far off in chairs and looking at him
with wild eyes—emissaries of a distracted mankind intruding to spy
upon his pain and his humiliation. It was not to be borne. He rose
quickly, and the others jumped up, too, on all sides. He stood still in
the middle of the room as if discouraged by their vigilance. No escape! He
felt something akin to despair. Everybody must know. The servants must
know to-night. He ground his teeth . . . And he had never noticed, never
guessed anything. Every one will know. He thought: "The woman's a monster,
but everybody will think me a fool"; and standing still in the midst of
severe walnut-wood furniture, he felt such a tempest of anguish within him
that he seemed to see himself rolling on the carpet, beating his head
against the wall. He was disgusted with himself, with the loathsome rush
of emotion breaking through all the reserves that guarded his manhood.
Something unknown, withering and poisonous, had entered his life, passed
near him, touched him, and he was deteriorating. He was appalled. What was
it? She was gone. Why? His head was ready to burst with the endeavour to
understand her act and his subtle horror of it. Everything was changed.
Why? Only a woman gone, after all; and yet he had a vision, a vision quick
and distinct as a dream: the vision of everything he had thought
indestructible and safe in the world crashing down about him, like solid
walls do before the fierce breath of a hurricane. He stared, shaking in
every limb, while he felt the destructive breath, the mysterious breath,
the breath of passion, stir the profound peace of the house. He looked
round in fear. Yes. Crime may be forgiven; uncalculating sacrifice, blind
trust, burning faith, other follies, may be turned to account; suffering,
death itself, may with a grin or a frown be explained away; but passion is
the unpardonable and secret infamy of our hearts, a thing to curse, to
hide and to deny; a shameless and forlorn thing that tramples upon the
smiling promises, that tears off the placid mask, that strips the body of
life. And it had come to him! It had laid its unclean hand upon the
spotless draperies of his existence, and he had to face it alone with all
the world looking on. All the world! And he thought that even the bare
suspicion of such an adversary within his house carried with it a taint
and a condemnation. He put both his hands out as if to ward off the
reproach of a defiling truth; and, instantly, the appalled conclave of
unreal men, standing about mutely beyond the clear lustre of mirrors, made
at him the same gesture of rejection and horror.</p>
<p>He glanced vainly here and there, like a man looking in desperation for a
weapon or for a hiding place, and understood at last that he was disarmed
and cornered by the enemy that, without any squeamishness, would strike so
as to lay open his heart. He could get help nowhere, or even take counsel
with himself, because in the sudden shock of her desertion the sentiments
which he knew that in fidelity to his bringing up, to his prejudices and
his surroundings, he ought to experience, were so mixed up with the
novelty of real feelings, of fundamental feelings that know nothing of
creed, class, or education, that he was unable to distinguish clearly
between what is and what ought to be; between the inexcusable truth and
the valid pretences. And he knew instinctively that truth would be of no
use to him. Some kind of concealment seemed a necessity because one cannot
explain. Of course not! Who would listen? One had simply to be without
stain and without reproach to keep one's place in the forefront of life.</p>
<p>He said to himself, "I must get over it the best I can," and began to walk
up and down the room. What next? What ought to be done? He thought: "I
will travel—no I won't. I shall face it out." And after that resolve
he was greatly cheered by the reflection that it would be a mute and an
easy part to play, for no one would be likely to converse with him about
the abominable conduct of—that woman. He argued to himself that
decent people—and he knew no others—did not care to talk about
such indelicate affairs. She had gone off—with that unhealthy, fat
ass of a journalist. Why? He had been all a husband ought to be. He had
given her a good position—she shared his prospects—he had
treated her invariably with great consideration. He reviewed his conduct
with a kind of dismal pride. It had been irreproachable. Then, why? For
love? Profanation! There could be no love there. A shameful impulse of
passion. Yes, passion. His own wife! Good God! . . . And the indelicate
aspect of his domestic misfortune struck him with such shame that, next
moment, he caught himself in the act of pondering absurdly over the notion
whether it would not be more dignified for him to induce a general belief
that he had been in the habit of beating his wife. Some fellows do . . .
and anything would be better than the filthy fact; for it was clear he had
lived with the root of it for five years—and it was too shameful.
Anything! Anything! Brutality . . . But he gave it up directly, and began
to think of the Divorce Court. It did not present itself to him,
notwithstanding his respect for law and usage, as a proper refuge for
dignified grief. It appeared rather as an unclean and sinister cavern
where men and women are haled by adverse fate to writhe ridiculously in
the presence of uncompromising truth. It should not be allowed. That
woman! Five . . . years . . . married five years . . . and never to see
anything. Not to the very last day . . . not till she coolly went off. And
he pictured to himself all the people he knew engaged in speculating as to
whether all that time he had been blind, foolish, or infatuated. What a
woman! Blind! . . . Not at all. Could a clean-minded man imagine such
depravity? Evidently not. He drew a free breath. That was the attitude to
take; it was dignified enough; it gave him the advantage, and he could not
help perceiving that it was moral. He yearned unaffectedly to see morality
(in his person) triumphant before the world. As to her she would be
forgotten. Let her be forgotten—buried in oblivion—lost! No
one would allude . . . Refined people—and every man and woman he
knew could be so described—had, of course, a horror of such topics.
Had they? Oh, yes. No one would allude to her . . . in his hearing. He
stamped his foot, tore the letter across, then again and again. The
thought of sympathizing friends excited in him a fury of mistrust. He
flung down the small bits of paper. They settled, fluttering at his feet,
and looked very white on the dark carpet, like a scattered handful of
snow-flakes.</p>
<p>This fit of hot anger was succeeded by a sudden sadness, by the darkening
passage of a thought that ran over the scorched surface of his heart, like
upon a barren plain, and after a fiercer assault of sunrays, the
melancholy and cooling shadow of a cloud. He realized that he had had a
shock—not a violent or rending blow, that can be seen, resisted,
returned, forgotten, but a thrust, insidious and penetrating, that had
stirred all those feelings, concealed and cruel, which the arts of the
devil, the fears of mankind—God's infinite compassion, perhaps—keep
chained deep down in the inscrutable twilight of our breasts. A dark
curtain seemed to rise before him, and for less than a second he looked
upon the mysterious universe of moral suffering. As a landscape is seen
complete, and vast, and vivid, under a flash of lightning, so he could see
disclosed in a moment all the immensity of pain that can be contained in
one short moment of human thought. Then the curtain fell again, but his
rapid vision left in Alvan Hervey's mind a trail of invincible sadness, a
sense of loss and bitter solitude, as though he had been robbed and
exiled. For a moment he ceased to be a member of society with a position,
a career, and a name attached to all this, like a descriptive label of
some complicated compound. He was a simple human being removed from the
delightful world of crescents and squares. He stood alone, naked and
afraid, like the first man on the first day of evil. There are in life
events, contacts, glimpses, that seem brutally to bring all the past to a
close. There is a shock and a crash, as of a gate flung to behind one by
the perfidious hand of fate. Go and seek another paradise, fool or sage.
There is a moment of dumb dismay, and the wanderings must begin again; the
painful explaining away of facts, the feverish raking up of illusions, the
cultivation of a fresh crop of lies in the sweat of one's brow, to sustain
life, to make it supportable, to make it fair, so as to hand intact to
another generation of blind wanderers the charming legend of a heartless
country, of a promised land, all flowers and blessings . . .</p>
<p>He came to himself with a slight start, and became aware of an oppressive,
crushing desolation. It was only a feeling, it is true, but it produced on
him a physical effect, as though his chest had been squeezed in a vice. He
perceived himself so extremely forlorn and lamentable, and was moved so
deeply by the oppressive sorrow, that another turn of the screw, he felt,
would bring tears out of his eyes. He was deteriorating. Five years of
life in common had appeased his longing. Yes, long-time ago. The first
five months did that—but . . . There was the habit—the habit
of her person, of her smile, of her gestures, of her voice, of her
silence. She had a pure brow and good hair. How utterly wretched all this
was. Good hair and fine eyes—remarkably fine. He was surprised by
the number of details that intruded upon his unwilling memory. He could
not help remembering her footsteps, the rustle of her dress, her way of
holding her head, her decisive manner of saying "Alvan," the quiver of her
nostrils when she was annoyed. All that had been so much his property, so
intimately and specially his! He raged in a mournful, silent way, as he
took stock of his losses. He was like a man counting the cost of an
unlucky speculation—irritated, depressed—exasperated with
himself and with others, with the fortunate, with the indifferent, with
the callous; yet the wrong done him appeared so cruel that he would
perhaps have dropped a tear over that spoliation if it had not been for
his conviction that men do not weep. Foreigners do; they also kill
sometimes in such circumstances. And to his horror he felt himself driven
to regret almost that the usages of a society ready to forgive the
shooting of a burglar forbade him, under the circumstances, even as much
as a thought of murder. Nevertheless, he clenched his fists and set his
teeth hard. And he was afraid at the same time. He was afraid with that
penetrating faltering fear that seems, in the very middle of a beat, to
turn one's heart into a handful of dust. The contamination of her crime
spread out, tainted the universe, tainted himself; woke up all the dormant
infamies of the world; caused a ghastly kind of clairvoyance in which he
could see the towns and fields of the earth, its sacred places, its
temples and its houses, peopled by monsters—by monsters of
duplicity, lust, and murder. She was a monster—he himself was
thinking monstrous thoughts . . . and yet he was like other people. How
many men and women at this very moment were plunged in abominations—meditated
crimes. It was frightful to think of. He remembered all the streets—the
well-to-do streets he had passed on his way home; all the innumerable
houses with closed doors and curtained windows. Each seemed now an abode
of anguish and folly. And his thought, as if appalled, stood still,
recalling with dismay the decorous and frightful silence that was like a
conspiracy; the grim, impenetrable silence of miles of walls concealing
passions, misery, thoughts of crime. Surely he was not the only man; his
was not the only house . . . and yet no one knew—no one guessed. But
he knew. He knew with unerring certitude that could not be deceived by the
correct silence of walls, of closed doors, of curtained windows. He was
beside himself with a despairing agitation, like a man informed of a
deadly secret—the secret of a calamity threatening the safety of
mankind—the sacredness, the peace of life.</p>
<p>He caught sight of himself in one of the looking-glasses. It was a relief.
The anguish of his feeling had been so powerful that he more than half
expected to see some distorted wild face there, and he was pleasantly
surprised to see nothing of the kind. His aspect, at any rate, would let
no one into the secret of his pain. He examined himself with attention.
His trousers were turned up, and his boots a little muddy, but he looked
very much as usual. Only his hair was slightly ruffled, and that disorder,
somehow, was so suggestive of trouble that he went quickly to the table,
and began to use the brushes, in an anxious desire to obliterate the
compromising trace, that only vestige of his emotion. He brushed with
care, watching the effect of his smoothing; and another face, slightly
pale and more tense than was perhaps desirable, peered back at him from
the toilet glass. He laid the brushes down, and was not satisfied. He took
them up again and brushed, brushed mechanically—forgot himself in
that occupation. The tumult of his thoughts ended in a sluggish flow of
reflection, such as, after the outburst of a volcano, the almost
imperceptible progress of a stream of lava, creeping languidly over a
convulsed land and pitilessly obliterating any landmark left by the shock
of the earthquake. It is a destructive but, by comparison, it is a
peaceful phenomenon. Alvan Hervey was almost soothed by the deliberate
pace of his thoughts. His moral landmarks were going one by one, consumed
in the fire of his experience, buried in hot mud, in ashes. He was cooling—on
the surface; but there was enough heat left somewhere to make him slap the
brushes on the table, and turning away, say in a fierce whisper: "I wish
him joy . . . Damn the woman."</p>
<p>He felt himself utterly corrupted by her wickedness, and the most
significant symptom of his moral downfall was the bitter, acrid
satisfaction with which he recognized it. He, deliberately, swore in his
thoughts; he meditated sneers; he shaped in profound silence words of
cynical unbelief, and his most cherished convictions stood revealed
finally as the narrow prejudices of fools. A crowd of shapeless, unclean
thoughts crossed his mind in a stealthy rush, like a band of veiled
malefactors hastening to a crime. He put his hands deep into his pockets.
He heard a faint ringing somewhere, and muttered to himself: "I am not the
only one . . . not the only one." There was another ring. Front door!</p>
<p>His heart leaped up into his throat, and forthwith descended as low as his
boots. A call! Who? Why? He wanted to rush out on the landing and shout to
the servant: "Not at home! Gone away abroad!" . . . Any excuse. He could
not face a visitor. Not this evening. No. To-morrow. . . . Before he could
break out of the numbness that enveloped him like a sheet of lead, he
heard far below, as if in the entrails of the earth, a door close heavily.
The house vibrated to it more than to a clap of thunder. He stood still,
wishing himself invisible. The room was very chilly. He did not think he
would ever feel like that. But people must be met—they must be faced—talked
to—smiled at. He heard another door, much nearer—the door of
the drawing-room—being opened and flung to again. He imagined for a
moment he would faint. How absurd! That kind of thing had to be gone
through. A voice spoke. He could not catch the words. Then the voice spoke
again, and footsteps were heard on the first floor landing. Hang it all!
Was he to hear that voice and those footsteps whenever any one spoke or
moved? He thought: "This is like being haunted—I suppose it will
last for a week or so, at least. Till I forget. Forget! Forget!" Someone
was coming up the second flight of stairs. Servant? He listened, then,
suddenly, as though an incredible, frightful revelation had been shouted
to him from a distance, he bellowed out in the empty room: "What! What!"
in such a fiendish tone as to astonish himself. The footsteps stopped
outside the door. He stood openmouthed, maddened and still, as if in the
midst of a catastrophe. The door-handle rattled lightly. It seemed to him
that the walls were coming apart, that the furniture swayed at him; the
ceiling slanted queerly for a moment, a tall wardrobe tried to topple
over. He caught hold of something and it was the back of a chair. So he
had reeled against a chair! Oh! Confound it! He gripped hard.</p>
<p>The flaming butterfly poised between the jaws of the bronze dragon
radiated a glare, a glare that seemed to leap up all at once into a crude,
blinding fierceness, and made it difficult for him to distinguish plainly
the figure of his wife standing upright with her back to the closed door.
He looked at her and could not detect her breathing. The harsh and violent
light was beating on her, and he was amazed to see her preserve so well
the composure of her upright attitude in that scorching brilliance which,
to his eyes, enveloped her like a hot and consuming mist. He would not
have been surprised if she had vanished in it as suddenly as she had
appeared. He stared and listened; listened for some sound, but the silence
round him was absolute—as though he had in a moment grown completely
deaf as well as dim-eyed. Then his hearing returned, preternaturally
sharp. He heard the patter of a rain-shower on the window panes behind the
lowered blinds, and below, far below, in the artificial abyss of the
square, the deadened roll of wheels and the splashy trotting of a horse.
He heard a groan also—very distinct—in the room—close to
his ear.</p>
<p>He thought with alarm: "I must have made that noise myself;" and at the
same instant the woman left the door, stepped firmly across the floor
before him, and sat down in a chair. He knew that step. There was no doubt
about it. She had come back! And he very nearly said aloud "Of course!"—such
was his sudden and masterful perception of the indestructible character of
her being. Nothing could destroy her—and nothing but his own
destruction could keep her away. She was the incarnation of all the short
moments which every man spares out of his life for dreams, for precious
dreams that concrete the most cherished, the most profitable of his
illusions. He peered at her with inward trepidation. She was mysterious,
significant, full of obscure meaning —like a symbol. He peered,
bending forward, as though he had been discovering about her things he had
never seen before. Unconsciously he made a step towards her—then
another. He saw her arm make an ample, decided movement and he stopped.
She had lifted her veil. It was like the lifting of a vizor.</p>
<p>The spell was broken. He experienced a shock as though he had been called
out of a trance by the sudden noise of an explosion. It was even more
startling and more distinct; it was an infinitely more intimate change,
for he had the sensation of having come into this room only that very
moment; of having returned from very far; he was made aware that some
essential part of himself had in a flash returned into his body, returned
finally from a fierce and lamentable region, from the dwelling-place of
unveiled hearts. He woke up to an amazing infinity of contempt, to a droll
bitterness of wonder, to a disenchanted conviction of safety. He had a
glimpse of the irresistible force, and he saw also the barrenness of his
convictions—of her convictions. It seemed to him that he could never
make a mistake as long as he lived. It was morally impossible to go wrong.
He was not elated by that certitude; he was dimly uneasy about its price;
there was a chill as of death in this triumph of sound principles, in this
victory snatched under the very shadow of disaster.</p>
<p>The last trace of his previous state of mind vanished, as the
instantaneous and elusive trail of a bursting meteor vanishes on the
profound blackness of the sky; it was the faint flicker of a painful
thought, gone as soon as perceived, that nothing but her presence—after
all—had the power to recall him to himself. He stared at her. She
sat with her hands on her lap, looking down; and he noticed that her boots
were dirty, her skirts wet and splashed, as though she had been driven
back there by a blind fear through a waste of mud. He was indignant,
amazed and shocked, but in a natural, healthy way now; so that he could
control those unprofitable sentiments by the dictates of cautious
self-restraint. The light in the room had no unusual brilliance now; it
was a good light in which he could easily observe the expression of her
face. It was that of dull fatigue. And the silence that surrounded them
was the normal silence of any quiet house, hardly disturbed by the faint
noises of a respectable quarter of the town. He was very cool—and it
was quite coolly that he thought how much better it would be if neither of
them ever spoke again. She sat with closed lips, with an air of lassitude
in the stony forgetfulness of her pose, but after a moment she lifted her
drooping eyelids and met his tense and inquisitive stare by a look that
had all the formless eloquence of a cry. It penetrated, it stirred without
informing; it was the very essence of anguish stripped of words that can
be smiled at, argued away, shouted down, disdained. It was anguish naked
and unashamed, the bare pain of existence let loose upon the world in the
fleeting unreserve of a look that had in it an immensity of fatigue, the
scornful sincerity, the black impudence of an extorted confession. Alvan
Hervey was seized with wonder, as though he had seen something
inconceivable; and some obscure part of his being was ready to exclaim
with him: "I would never have believed it!" but an instantaneous revulsion
of wounded susceptibilities checked the unfinished thought.</p>
<p>He felt full of rancorous indignation against the woman who could look
like this at one. This look probed him; it tampered with him. It was
dangerous to one as would be a hint of unbelief whispered by a priest in
the august decorum of a temple; and at the same time it was impure, it was
disturbing, like a cynical consolation muttered in the dark, tainting the
sorrow, corroding the thought, poisoning the heart. He wanted to ask her
furiously: "Who do you take me for? How dare you look at me like this?" He
felt himself helpless before the hidden meaning of that look; he resented
it with pained and futile violence as an injury so secret that it could
never, never be redressed. His wish was to crush her by a single sentence.
He was stainless. Opinion was on his side; morality, men and gods were on
his side; law, conscience—all the world! She had nothing but that
look. And he could only say:</p>
<p>"How long do you intend to stay here?"</p>
<p>Her eyes did not waver, her lips remained closed; and for any effect of
his words he might have spoken to a dead woman, only that this one
breathed quickly. He was profoundly disappointed by what he had said. It
was a great deception, something in the nature of treason. He had deceived
himself. It should have been altogether different—other words—another
sensation. And before his eyes, so fixed that at times they saw nothing,
she sat apparently as unconscious as though she had been alone, sending
that look of brazen confession straight at him—with an air of
staring into empty space. He said significantly:</p>
<p>"Must I go then?" And he knew he meant nothing of what he implied.</p>
<p>One of her hands on her lap moved slightly as though his words had fallen
there and she had thrown them off on the floor. But her silence encouraged
him. Possibly it meant remorse—perhaps fear. Was she thunderstruck
by his attitude? . . . Her eyelids dropped. He seemed to understand ever
so much—everything! Very well—but she must be made to suffer.
It was due to him. He understood everything, yet he judged it
indispensable to say with an obvious affectation of civility:</p>
<p>"I don't understand—be so good as to . . ."</p>
<p>She stood up. For a second he believed she intended to go away, and it was
as though someone had jerked a string attached to his heart. It hurt. He
remained open-mouthed and silent. But she made an irresolute step towards
him, and instinctively he moved aside. They stood before one another, and
the fragments of the torn letter lay between them—at their feet—like
an insurmountable obstacle, like a sign of eternal separation! Around them
three other couples stood still and face to face, as if waiting for a
signal to begin some action—a struggle, a dispute, or a dance.</p>
<p>She said: "Don't—Alvan!" and there was something that resembled a
warning in the pain of her tone. He narrowed his eyes as if trying to
pierce her with his gaze. Her voice touched him. He had aspirations after
magnanimity, generosity, superiority—interrupted, however, by
flashes of indignation and anxiety—frightful anxiety to know how far
she had gone. She looked down at the torn paper. Then she looked up, and
their eyes met again, remained fastened together, like an unbreakable
bond, like a clasp of eternal complicity; and the decorous silence, the
pervading quietude of the house which enveloped this meeting of their
glances became for a moment inexpressibly vile, for he was afraid she
would say too much and make magnanimity impossible, while behind the
profound mournfulness of her face there was a regret—a regret of
things done—the regret of delay—the thought that if she had
only turned back a week sooner—a day sooner—only an hour
sooner. . . . They were afraid to hear again the sound of their voices;
they did not know what they might say—perhaps something that could
not be recalled; and words are more terrible than facts. But the tricky
fatality that lurks in obscure impulses spoke through Alvan Hervey's lips
suddenly; and he heard his own voice with the excited and sceptical
curiosity with which one listens to actors' voices speaking on the stage
in the strain of a poignant situation.</p>
<p>"If you have forgotten anything . . . of course . . . I . . ."</p>
<p>Her eyes blazed at him for an instant; her lips trembled—and then
she also became the mouth-piece of the mysterious force forever hovering
near us; of that perverse inspiration, wandering capricious and
uncontrollable, like a gust of wind.</p>
<p>"What is the good of this, Alvan? . . . You know why I came back. . . .
You know that I could not . . ."</p>
<p>He interrupted her with irritation.</p>
<p>"Then! what's this?" he asked, pointing downwards at the torn letter.</p>
<p>"That's a mistake," she said hurriedly, in a muffled voice.</p>
<p>This answer amazed him. He remained speechless, staring at her. He had
half a mind to burst into a laugh. It ended in a smile as involuntary as a
grimace of pain.</p>
<p>"A mistake . . ." he began, slowly, and then found himself unable to say
another word.</p>
<p>"Yes . . . it was honest," she said very low, as if speaking to the memory
of a feeling in a remote past.</p>
<p>He exploded.</p>
<p>"Curse your honesty! . . . Is there any honesty in all this! . . . When
did you begin to be honest? Why are you here? What are you now? . . .
Still honest? . . ."</p>
<p>He walked at her, raging, as if blind; during these three quick strides he
lost touch of the material world and was whirled interminably through a
kind of empty universe made up of nothing but fury and anguish, till he
came suddenly upon her face—very close to his. He stopped short, and
all at once seemed to remember something heard ages ago.</p>
<p>"You don't know the meaning of the word," he shouted.</p>
<p>She did not flinch. He perceived with fear that everything around him was
still. She did not move a hair's breadth; his own body did not stir. An
imperturbable calm enveloped their two motionless figures, the house, the
town, all the world—and the trifling tempest of his feelings. The
violence of the short tumult within him had been such as could well have
shattered all creation; and yet nothing was changed. He faced his wife in
the familiar room in his own house. It had not fallen. And right and left
all the innumerable dwellings, standing shoulder to shoulder, had resisted
the shock of his passion, had presented, unmoved, to the loneliness of his
trouble, the grim silence of walls, the impenetrable and polished
discretion of closed doors and curtained windows. Immobility and silence
pressed on him, assailed him, like two accomplices of the immovable and
mute woman before his eyes. He was suddenly vanquished. He was shown his
impotence. He was soothed by the breath of a corrupt resignation coming to
him through the subtle irony of the surrounding peace.</p>
<p>He said with villainous composure:</p>
<p>"At any rate it isn't enough for me. I want to know more—if you're
going to stay."</p>
<p>"There is nothing more to tell," she answered, sadly.</p>
<p>It struck him as so very true that he did not say anything. She went on:</p>
<p>"You wouldn't understand. . . ."</p>
<p>"No?" he said, quietly. He held himself tight not to burst into howls and
imprecations.</p>
<p>"I tried to be faithful . . ." she began again.</p>
<p>"And this?" he exclaimed, pointing at the fragments of her letter.</p>
<p>"This—this is a failure," she said.</p>
<p>"I should think so," he muttered, bitterly.</p>
<p>"I tried to be faithful to myself—Alvan—and . . . and honest
to you. . . ."</p>
<p>"If you had tried to be faithful to me it would have been more to the
purpose," he interrupted, angrily. "I've been faithful to you and you have
spoiled my life—both our lives . . ." Then after a pause the
unconquerable preoccupation of self came out, and he raised his voice to
ask resentfully, "And, pray, for how long have you been making a fool of
me?"</p>
<p>She seemed horribly shocked by that question. He did not wait for an
answer, but went on moving about all the time; now and then coming up to
her, then wandering off restlessly to the other end of the room.</p>
<p>"I want to know. Everybody knows, I suppose, but myself—and that's
your honesty!"</p>
<p>"I have told you there is nothing to know," she said, speaking unsteadily
as if in pain. "Nothing of what you suppose. You don't understand me. This
letter is the beginning—and the end."</p>
<p>"The end—this thing has no end," he clamoured, unexpectedly. "Can't
you understand that? I can . . . The beginning . . ."</p>
<p>He stopped and looked into her eyes with concentrated intensity, with a
desire to see, to penetrate, to understand, that made him positively hold
his breath till he gasped.</p>
<p>"By Heavens!" he said, standing perfectly still in a peering attitude and
within less than a foot from her.</p>
<p>"By Heavens!" he repeated, slowly, and in a tone whose involuntary
strangeness was a complete mystery to himself. "By Heavens—I could
believe you—I could believe anything—now!"</p>
<p>He turned short on his heel and began to walk up and down the room with an
air of having disburdened himself of the final pronouncement of his life—of
having said something on which he would not go back, even if he could. She
remained as if rooted to the carpet. Her eyes followed the restless
movements of the man, who avoided looking at her. Her wide stare clung to
him, inquiring, wondering and doubtful.</p>
<p>"But the fellow was forever sticking in here," he burst out, distractedly.
"He made love to you, I suppose—and, and . . ." He lowered his
voice. "And—you let him."</p>
<p>"And I let him," she murmured, catching his intonation, so that her voice
sounded unconscious, sounded far off and slavish, like an echo.</p>
<p>He said twice, "You! You!" violently, then calmed down. "What could you
see in the fellow?" he asked, with unaffected wonder. "An effeminate, fat
ass. What could you . . . Weren't you happy? Didn't you have all you
wanted? Now—frankly; did I deceive your expectations in any way?
Were you disappointed with our position—or with our prospects—perhaps?
You know you couldn't be—they are much better than you could hope
for when you married me. . . ."</p>
<p>He forgot himself so far as to gesticulate a little while he went on with
animation:</p>
<p>"What could you expect from such a fellow? He's an outsider—a rank
outsider. . . . If it hadn't been for my money . . . do you hear? . . .
for my money, he wouldn't know where to turn. His people won't have
anything to do with him. The fellow's no class—no class at all. He's
useful, certainly, that's why I . . . I thought you had enough
intelligence to see it. . . . And you . . . No! It's incredible! What did
he tell you? Do you care for no one's opinion—is there no
restraining influence in the world for you—women? Did you ever give
me a thought? I tried to be a good husband. Did I fail? Tell me—what
have I done?"</p>
<p>Carried away by his feelings he took his head in both his hands and
repeated wildly:</p>
<p>"What have I done? . . . Tell me! What? . . ."</p>
<p>"Nothing," she said.</p>
<p>"Ah! You see . . . you can't . . ." he began, triumphantly, walking away;
then suddenly, as though he had been flung back at her by something
invisible he had met, he spun round and shouted with exasperation:</p>
<p>"What on earth did you expect me to do?"</p>
<p>Without a word she moved slowly towards the table, and, sitting down,
leaned on her elbow, shading her eyes with her hand. All that time he
glared at her watchfully as if expecting every moment to find in her
deliberate movements an answer to his question. But he could not read
anything, he could gather no hint of her thought. He tried to suppress his
desire to shout, and after waiting awhile, said with incisive scorn:</p>
<p>"Did you want me to write absurd verses; to sit and look at you for hours—to
talk to you about your soul? You ought to have known I wasn't that sort. .
. . I had something better to do. But if you think I was totally blind . .
."</p>
<p>He perceived in a flash that he could remember an infinity of enlightening
occurrences. He could recall ever so many distinct occasions when he came
upon them; he remembered the absurdly interrupted gesture of his fat,
white hand, the rapt expression of her face, the glitter of unbelieving
eyes; snatches of incomprehensible conversations not worth listening to,
silences that had meant nothing at the time and seemed now illuminating
like a burst of sunshine. He remembered all that. He had not been blind.
Oh! No! And to know this was an exquisite relief: it brought back all his
composure.</p>
<p>"I thought it beneath me to suspect you," he said, loftily.</p>
<p>The sound of that sentence evidently possessed some magical power,
because, as soon as he had spoken, he felt wonderfully at ease; and
directly afterwards he experienced a flash of joyful amazement at the
discovery that he could be inspired to such noble and truthful utterance.
He watched the effect of his words. They caused her to glance to him
quickly over her shoulder. He caught a glimpse of wet eyelashes, of a red
cheek with a tear running down swiftly; and then she turned away again and
sat as before, covering her face with her hands.</p>
<p>"You ought to be perfectly frank with me," he said, slowly.</p>
<p>"You know everything," she answered, indistinctly, through her fingers.</p>
<p>"This letter. . . . Yes . . . but . . ."</p>
<p>"And I came back," she exclaimed in a stifled voice; "you know
everything."</p>
<p>"I am glad of it—for your sake," he said with impressive gravity. He
listened to himself with solemn emotion. It seemed to him that something
inexpressibly momentous was in progress within the room, that every word
and every gesture had the importance of events preordained from the
beginning of all things, and summing up in their finality the whole
purpose of creation.</p>
<p>"For your sake," he repeated.</p>
<p>Her shoulders shook as though she had been sobbing, and he forgot himself
in the contemplation of her hair. Suddenly he gave a start, as if waking
up, and asked very gently and not much above a whisper—</p>
<p>"Have you been meeting him often?"</p>
<p>"Never!" she cried into the palms of her hands.</p>
<p>This answer seemed for a moment to take from him the power of speech. His
lips moved for some time before any sound came.</p>
<p>"You preferred to make love here—under my very nose," he said,
furiously. He calmed down instantly, and felt regretfully uneasy, as
though he had let himself down in her estimation by that outburst. She
rose, and with her hand on the back of the chair confronted him with eyes
that were perfectly dry now. There was a red spot on each of her cheeks.</p>
<p>"When I made up my mind to go to him—I wrote," she said.</p>
<p>"But you didn't go to him," he took up in the same tone. "How far did you
go? What made you come back?"</p>
<p>"I didn't know myself," she murmured. Nothing of her moved but her lips.
He fixed her sternly.</p>
<p>"Did he expect this? Was he waiting for you?" he asked.</p>
<p>She answered him by an almost imperceptible nod, and he continued to look
at her for a good while without making a sound. Then, at last—</p>
<p>"And I suppose he is waiting yet?" he asked, quickly.</p>
<p>Again she seemed to nod at him. For some reason he felt he must know the
time. He consulted his watch gloomily. Half-past seven.</p>
<p>"Is he?" he muttered, putting the watch in his pocket. He looked up at
her, and, as if suddenly overcome by a sense of sinister fun, gave a
short, harsh laugh, directly repressed.</p>
<p>"No! It's the most unheard! . . ." he mumbled while she stood before him
biting her lower lip, as if plunged in deep thought. He laughed again in
one low burst that was as spiteful as an imprecation. He did not know why
he felt such an overpowering and sudden distaste for the facts of
existence—for facts in general—such an immense disgust at the
thought of all the many days already lived through. He was wearied.
Thinking seemed a labour beyond his strength. He said—</p>
<p>"You deceived me—now you make a fool of him . . . It's awful! Why?"</p>
<p>"I deceived myself!" she exclaimed.</p>
<p>"Oh! Nonsense!" he said, impatiently.</p>
<p>"I am ready to go if you wish it," she went on, quickly. "It was due to
you—to be told—to know. No! I could not!" she cried, and stood
still wringing her hands stealthily.</p>
<p>"I am glad you repented before it was too late," he said in a dull tone
and looking at his boots. "I am glad . . . some spark of better feeling,"
he muttered, as if to himself. He lifted up his head after a moment of
brooding silence. "I am glad to see that there is some sense of decency
left in you," he added a little louder. Looking at her he appeared to
hesitate, as if estimating the possible consequences of what he wished to
say, and at last blurted out—</p>
<p>"After all, I loved you. . . ."</p>
<p>"I did not know," she whispered.</p>
<p>"Good God!" he cried. "Why do you imagine I married you?"</p>
<p>The indelicacy of his obtuseness angered her.</p>
<p>"Ah—why?" she said through her teeth.</p>
<p>He appeared overcome with horror, and watched her lips intently as though
in fear.</p>
<p>"I imagined many things," she said, slowly, and paused. He watched,
holding his breath. At last she went on musingly, as if thinking aloud, "I
tried to understand. I tried honestly. . . . Why? . . . To do the usual
thing—I suppose. . . . To please yourself."</p>
<p>He walked away smartly, and when he came back, close to her, he had a
flushed face.</p>
<p>"You seemed pretty well pleased, too—at the time," he hissed, with
scathing fury. "I needn't ask whether you loved me."</p>
<p>"I know now I was perfectly incapable of such a thing," she said, calmly,
"If I had, perhaps you would not have married me."</p>
<p>"It's very clear I would not have done it if I had known you—as I
know you now."</p>
<p>He seemed to see himself proposing to her—ages ago. They were
strolling up the slope of a lawn. Groups of people were scattered in
sunshine. The shadows of leafy boughs lay still on the short grass. The
coloured sunshades far off, passing between trees, resembled deliberate
and brilliant butterflies moving without a flutter. Men smiling amiably,
or else very grave, within the impeccable shelter of their black coats,
stood by the side of women who, clustered in clear summer toilettes,
recalled all the fabulous tales of enchanted gardens where animated
flowers smile at bewitched knights. There was a sumptuous serenity in it
all, a thin, vibrating excitement, the perfect security, as of an
invincible ignorance, that evoked within him a transcendent belief in
felicity as the lot of all mankind, a recklessly picturesque desire to get
promptly something for himself only, out of that splendour unmarred by any
shadow of a thought. The girl walked by his side across an open space; no
one was near, and suddenly he stood still, as if inspired, and spoke. He
remembered looking at her pure eyes, at her candid brow; he remembered
glancing about quickly to see if they were being observed, and thinking
that nothing could go wrong in a world of so much charm, purity, and
distinction. He was proud of it. He was one of its makers, of its
possessors, of its guardians, of its extollers. He wanted to grasp it
solidly, to get as much gratification as he could out of it; and in view
of its incomparable quality, of its unstained atmosphere, of its nearness
to the heaven of its choice, this gust of brutal desire seemed the most
noble of aspirations. In a second he lived again through all these
moments, and then all the pathos of his failure presented itself to him
with such vividness that there was a suspicion of tears in his tone when
he said almost unthinkingly, "My God! I did love you!"</p>
<p>She seemed touched by the emotion of his voice. Her lips quivered a
little, and she made one faltering step towards him, putting out her hands
in a beseeching gesture, when she perceived, just in time, that being
absorbed by the tragedy of his life he had absolutely forgotten her very
existence. She stopped, and her outstretched arms fell slowly. He, with
his features distorted by the bitterness of his thought, saw neither her
movement nor her gesture. He stamped his foot in vexation, rubbed his head—then
exploded.</p>
<p>"What the devil am I to do now?"</p>
<p>He was still again. She seemed to understand, and moved to the door
firmly.</p>
<p>"It's very simple—I'm going," she said aloud.</p>
<p>At the sound of her voice he gave a start of surprise, looked at her
wildly, and asked in a piercing tone—</p>
<p>"You. . . . Where? To him?"</p>
<p>"No—alone—good-bye."</p>
<p>The door-handle rattled under her groping hand as though she had been
trying to get out of some dark place.</p>
<p>"No—stay!" he cried.</p>
<p>She heard him faintly. He saw her shoulder touch the lintel of the door.
She swayed as if dazed. There was less than a second of suspense while
they both felt as if poised on the very edge of moral annihilation, ready
to fall into some devouring nowhere. Then, almost simultaneously, he
shouted, "Come back!" and she let go the handle of the door. She turned
round in peaceful desperation like one who deliberately has thrown away
the last chance of life; and, for a moment, the room she faced appeared
terrible, and dark, and safe—like a grave.</p>
<p>He said, very hoarse and abrupt: "It can't end like this. . . . Sit down;"
and while she crossed the room again to the low-backed chair before the
dressing-table, he opened the door and put his head out to look and
listen. The house was quiet. He came back pacified, and asked—</p>
<p>"Do you speak the truth?"</p>
<p>She nodded.</p>
<p>"You have lived a lie, though," he said, suspiciously.</p>
<p>"Ah! You made it so easy," she answered.</p>
<p>"You reproach me—me!"</p>
<p>"How could I?" she said; "I would have you no other—now."</p>
<p>"What do you mean by . . ." he began, then checked himself, and without
waiting for an answer went on, "I won't ask any questions. Is this letter
the worst of it?"</p>
<p>She had a nervous movement of her hands.</p>
<p>"I must have a plain answer," he said, hotly.</p>
<p>"Then, no! The worst is my coming back."</p>
<p>There followed a period of dead silence, during which they exchanged
searching glances.</p>
<p>He said authoritatively—</p>
<p>"You don't know what you are saying. Your mind is unhinged. You are beside
yourself, or you would not say such things. You can't control yourself.
Even in your remorse . . ." He paused a moment, then said with a doctoral
air: "Self-restraint is everything in life, you know. It's happiness, it's
dignity . . . it's everything."</p>
<p>She was pulling nervously at her handkerchief while he went on watching
anxiously to see the effect of his words. Nothing satisfactory happened.
Only, as he began to speak again, she covered her face with both her
hands.</p>
<p>"You see where the want of self-restraint leads to. Pain—humiliation—loss
of respect—of friends, of everything that ennobles life, that . . .
All kinds of horrors," he concluded, abruptly.</p>
<p>She made no stir. He looked at her pensively for some time as though he
had been concentrating the melancholy thoughts evoked by the sight of that
abased woman. His eyes became fixed and dull. He was profoundly penetrated
by the solemnity of the moment; he felt deeply the greatness of the
occasion. And more than ever the walls of his house seemed to enclose the
sacredness of ideals to which he was about to offer a magnificent
sacrifice. He was the high priest of that temple, the severe guardian of
formulas, of rites, of the pure ceremonial concealing the black doubts of
life. And he was not alone. Other men, too—the best of them—kept
watch and ward by the hearthstones that were the altars of that profitable
persuasion. He understood confusedly that he was part of an immense and
beneficent power, which had a reward ready for every discretion. He dwelt
within the invincible wisdom of silence; he was protected by an
indestructible faith that would last forever, that would withstand
unshaken all the assaults—the loud execrations of apostates, and the
secret weariness of its confessors! He was in league with a universe of
untold advantages. He represented the moral strength of a beautiful
reticence that could vanquish all the deplorable crudities of life—fear,
disaster, sin—even death itself. It seemed to him he was on the
point of sweeping triumphantly away all the illusory mysteries of
existence. It was simplicity itself.</p>
<p>"I hope you see now the folly—the utter folly of wickedness," he
began in a dull, solemn manner. "You must respect the conditions of your
life or lose all it can give you. All! Everything!"</p>
<p>He waved his arm once, and three exact replicas of his face, of his
clothes, of his dull severity, of his solemn grief, repeated the wide
gesture that in its comprehensive sweep indicated an infinity of moral
sweetness, embraced the walls, the hangings, the whole house, all the
crowd of houses outside, all the flimsy and inscrutable graves of the
living, with their doors numbered like the doors of prison-cells, and as
impenetrable as the granite of tombstones.</p>
<p>"Yes! Restraint, duty, fidelity—unswerving fidelity to what is
expected of you. This—only this—secures the reward, the peace.
Everything else we should labour to subdue—to destroy. It's
misfortune; it's disease. It is terrible—terrible. We must not know
anything about it—we needn't. It is our duty to ourselves—to
others. You do not live all alone in the world—and if you have no
respect for the dignity of life, others have. Life is a serious matter. If
you don't conform to the highest standards you are no one—it's a
kind of death. Didn't this occur to you? You've only to look round you to
see the truth of what I am saying. Did you live without noticing anything,
without understanding anything? From a child you had examples before your
eyes—you could see daily the beauty, the blessings of morality, of
principles. . . ."</p>
<p>His voice rose and fell pompously in a strange chant. His eyes were still,
his stare exalted and sullen; his face was set, was hard, was woodenly
exulting over the grim inspiration that secretly possessed him, seethed
within him, lifted him up into a stealthy frenzy of belief. Now and then
he would stretch out his right arm over her head, as it were, and he spoke
down at that sinner from a height, and with a sense of avenging virtue,
with a profound and pure joy as though he could from his steep pinnacle
see every weighty word strike and hurt like a punishing stone.</p>
<p>"Rigid principles—adherence to what is right," he finished after a
pause.</p>
<p>"What is right?" she said, distinctly, without uncovering her face.</p>
<p>"Your mind is diseased!" he cried, upright and austere. "Such a question
is rot—utter rot. Look round you—there's your answer, if you
only care to see. Nothing that outrages the received beliefs can be right.
Your conscience tells you that. They are the received beliefs because they
are the best, the noblest, the only possible. They survive. . . ."</p>
<p>He could not help noticing with pleasure the philosophic breadth of his
view, but he could not pause to enjoy it, for his inspiration, the call of
august truth, carried him on.</p>
<p>"You must respect the moral foundations of a society that has made you
what you are. Be true to it. That's duty—that's honour—that's
honesty."</p>
<p>He felt a great glow within him, as though he had swallowed something hot.
He made a step nearer. She sat up and looked at him with an ardour of
expectation that stimulated his sense of the supreme importance of that
moment. And as if forgetting himself he raised his voice very much.</p>
<p>"'What's right?' you ask me. Think only. What would you have been if you
had gone off with that infernal vagabond? . . . What would you have been?
. . . You! My wife! . . ."</p>
<p>He caught sight of himself in the pier glass, drawn up to his full height,
and with a face so white that his eyes, at the distance, resembled the
black cavities in a skull. He saw himself as if about to launch
imprecations, with arms uplifted above her bowed head. He was ashamed of
that unseemly posture, and put his hands in his pockets hurriedly. She
murmured faintly, as if to herself—</p>
<p>"Ah! What am I now?"</p>
<p>"As it happens you are still Mrs. Alvan Hervey—uncommonly lucky for
you, let me tell you," he said in a conversational tone. He walked up to
the furthest corner of the room, and, turning back, saw her sitting very
upright, her hands clasped on her lap, and with a lost, unswerving gaze of
her eyes which stared unwinking like the eyes of the blind, at the crude
gas flame, blazing and still, between the jaws of the bronze dragon.</p>
<p>He came up quite close to her, and straddling his legs a little, stood
looking down at her face for some time without taking his hands out of his
pockets. He seemed to be turning over in his mind a heap of words, piecing
his next speech out of an overpowering abundance of thoughts.</p>
<p>"You've tried me to the utmost," he said at last; and as soon as he said
these words he lost his moral footing, and felt himself swept away from
his pinnacle by a flood of passionate resentment against the bungling
creature that had come so near to spoiling his life. "Yes; I've been tried
more than any man ought to be," he went on with righteous bitterness. "It
was unfair. What possessed you to? . . . What possessed you? . . . Write
such a . . . After five years of perfect happiness! 'Pon my word, no one
would believe. . . . Didn't you feel you couldn't? Because you couldn't .
. . it was impossible—you know. Wasn't it? Think. Wasn't it?"</p>
<p>"It was impossible," she whispered, obediently.</p>
<p>This submissive assent given with such readiness did not soothe him, did
not elate him; it gave him, inexplicably, that sense of terror we
experience when in the midst of conditions we had learned to think
absolutely safe we discover all at once the presence of a near and
unsuspected danger. It was impossible, of course! He knew it. She knew it.
She confessed it. It was impossible! That man knew it, too—as well
as any one; couldn't help knowing it. And yet those two had been engaged
in a conspiracy against his peace—in a criminal enterprise for which
there could be no sanction of belief within themselves. There could not
be! There could not be! And yet how near to . . . With a short thrill he
saw himself an exiled forlorn figure in a realm of ungovernable, of
unrestrained folly. Nothing could be foreseen, foretold—guarded
against. And the sensation was intolerable, had something of the withering
horror that may be conceived as following upon the utter extinction of all
hope. In the flash of thought the dishonouring episode seemed to disengage
itself from everything actual, from earthly conditions, and even from
earthly suffering; it became purely a terrifying knowledge, an
annihilating knowledge of a blind and infernal force. Something desperate
and vague, a flicker of an insane desire to abase himself before the
mysterious impulses of evil, to ask for mercy in some way, passed through
his mind; and then came the idea, the persuasion, the certitude, that the
evil must be forgotten—must be resolutely ignored to make life
possible; that the knowledge must be kept out of mind, out of sight, like
the knowledge of certain death is kept out of the daily existence of men.
He stiffened himself inwardly for the effort, and next moment it appeared
very easy, amazingly feasible, if one only kept strictly to facts, gave
one's mind to their perplexities and not to their meaning. Becoming
conscious of a long silence, he cleared his throat warningly, and said in
a steady voice—</p>
<p>"I am glad you feel this . . . uncommonly glad . . . you felt this in
time. For, don't you see . . ." Unexpectedly he hesitated.</p>
<p>"Yes . . . I see," she murmured.</p>
<p>"Of course you would," he said, looking at the carpet and speaking like
one who thinks of something else. He lifted his head. "I cannot believe—even
after this—even after this—that you are altogether—altogether
. . . other than what I thought you. It seems impossible—to me."</p>
<p>"And to me," she breathed out.</p>
<p>"Now—yes," he said, "but this morning? And to-morrow? . . . This is
what . . ."</p>
<p>He started at the drift of his words and broke off abruptly. Every train
of thought seemed to lead into the hopeless realm of ungovernable folly,
to recall the knowledge and the terror of forces that must be ignored. He
said rapidly—</p>
<p>"My position is very painful—difficult . . . I feel . . ."</p>
<p>He looked at her fixedly with a pained air, as though frightfully
oppressed by a sudden inability to express his pent-up ideas.</p>
<p>"I am ready to go," she said very low. "I have forfeited everything . . .
to learn . . . to learn . . ."</p>
<p>Her chin fell on her breast; her voice died out in a sigh. He made a
slight gesture of impatient assent.</p>
<p>"Yes! Yes! It's all very well . . . of course. Forfeited—ah! Morally
forfeited—only morally forfeited . . . if I am to believe you . . ."</p>
<p>She startled him by jumping up.</p>
<p>"Oh! I believe, I believe," he said, hastily, and she sat down as suddenly
as she had got up. He went on gloomily—</p>
<p>"I've suffered—I suffer now. You can't understand how much. So much
that when you propose a parting I almost think. . . . But no. There is
duty. You've forgotten it; I never did. Before heaven, I never did. But in
a horrid exposure like this the judgment of mankind goes astray—at
least for a time. You see, you and I—at least I feel that—you
and I are one before the world. It is as it should be. The world is right—in
the main—or else it couldn't be—couldn't be—what it is.
And we are part of it. We have our duty to—to our fellow beings who
don't want to . . . to . . . er."</p>
<p>He stammered. She looked up at him with wide eyes, and her lips were
slightly parted. He went on mumbling—</p>
<p>". . . Pain. . . . Indignation. . . . Sure to misunderstand. I've suffered
enough. And if there has been nothing irreparable—as you assure me .
. . then . . ."</p>
<p>"Alvan!" she cried.</p>
<p>"What?" he said, morosely. He gazed down at her for a moment with a sombre
stare, as one looks at ruins, at the devastation of some natural disaster.</p>
<p>"Then," he continued after a short pause, "the best thing is . . . the
best for us . . . for every one. . . . Yes . . . least pain—most
unselfish. . . ." His voice faltered, and she heard only detached words.
". . . Duty. . . . Burden. . . . Ourselves. . . . Silence."</p>
<p>A moment of perfect stillness ensued.</p>
<p>"This is an appeal I am making to your conscience," he said, suddenly, in
an explanatory tone, "not to add to the wretchedness of all this: to try
loyally and help me to live it down somehow. Without any reservations—you
know. Loyally! You can't deny I've been cruelly wronged and—after
all—my affection deserves . . ." He paused with evident anxiety to
hear her speak.</p>
<p>"I make no reservations," she said, mournfully. "How could I? I found
myself out and came back to . . ." her eyes flashed scornfully for an
instant ". . . to what—to what you propose. You see . . . I . . . I
can be trusted . . . now."</p>
<p>He listened to every word with profound attention, and when she ceased
seemed to wait for more.</p>
<p>"Is that all you've got to say?" he asked.</p>
<p>She was startled by his tone, and said faintly—</p>
<p>"I spoke the truth. What more can I say?"</p>
<p>"Confound it! You might say something human," he burst out. "It isn't
being truthful; it's being brazen—if you want to know. Not a word to
show you feel your position, and—and mine. Not a single word of
acknowledgment, or regret—or remorse . . . or . . . something."</p>
<p>"Words!" she whispered in a tone that irritated him. He stamped his foot.</p>
<p>"This is awful!" he exclaimed. "Words? Yes, words. Words mean something—yes—they
do—for all this infernal affectation. They mean something to me—to
everybody—to you. What the devil did you use to express those
sentiments—sentiments—pah!—which made you forget me,
duty, shame!" . . . He foamed at the mouth while she stared at him,
appalled by this sudden fury. "Did you two talk only with your eyes?" he
spluttered savagely. She rose.</p>
<p>"I can't bear this," she said, trembling from head to foot. "I am going."</p>
<p>They stood facing one another for a moment.</p>
<p>"Not you," he said, with conscious roughness, and began to walk up and
down the room. She remained very still with an air of listening anxiously
to her own heart-beats, then sank down on the chair slowly, and sighed, as
if giving up a task beyond her strength.</p>
<p>"You misunderstand everything I say," he began quietly, "but I prefer to
think that—just now—you are not accountable for your actions."
He stopped again before her. "Your mind is unhinged," he said, with
unction. "To go now would be adding crime—yes, crime—to folly.
I'll have no scandal in my life, no matter what's the cost. And why? You
are sure to misunderstand me—but I'll tell you. As a matter of duty.
Yes. But you're sure to misunderstand me—recklessly. Women always do—they
are too—too narrow-minded."</p>
<p>He waited for a while, but she made no sound, didn't even look at him; he
felt uneasy, painfully uneasy, like a man who suspects he is unreasonably
mistrusted. To combat that exasperating sensation he recommenced talking
very fast. The sound of his words excited his thoughts, and in the play of
darting thoughts he had glimpses now and then of the inexpugnable rock of
his convictions, towering in solitary grandeur above the unprofitable
waste of errors and passions.</p>
<p>"For it is self-evident," he went on with anxious vivacity, "it is
self-evident that, on the highest ground we haven't the right—no, we
haven't the right to intrude our miseries upon those who—who
naturally expect better things from us. Every one wishes his own life and
the life around him to be beautiful and pure. Now, a scandal amongst
people of our position is disastrous for the morality—a fatal
influence—don't you see—upon the general tone of the class—very
important—the most important, I verily believe, in—in the
community. I feel this—profoundly. This is the broad view. In time
you'll give me . . . when you become again the woman I loved—and
trusted. . . ."</p>
<p>He stopped short, as though unexpectedly suffocated, then in a completely
changed voice said, "For I did love and trust you"—and again was
silent for a moment. She put her handkerchief to her eyes.</p>
<p>"You'll give me credit for—for—my motives. It's mainly loyalty
to—to the larger conditions of our life—where you—you!
of all women—failed. One doesn't usually talk like this—of
course—but in this case you'll admit . . . And consider—the
innocent suffer with the guilty. The world is pitiless in its judgments.
Unfortunately there are always those in it who are only too eager to
misunderstand. Before you and before my conscience I am guiltless, but any—any
disclosure would impair my usefulness in the sphere—in the larger
sphere in which I hope soon to . . . I believe you fully shared my views
in that matter—I don't want to say any more . . . on—on that
point—but, believe me, true unselfishness is to bear one's burdens
in—in silence. The ideal must—must be preserved—for
others, at least. It's clear as daylight. If I've a—a loathsome
sore, to gratuitously display it would be abominable—abominable! And
often in life—in the highest conception of life—outspokenness
in certain circumstances is nothing less than criminal. Temptation, you
know, excuses no one. There is no such thing really if one looks steadily
to one's welfare—which is grounded in duty. But there are the weak."
. . . His tone became ferocious for an instant . . . "And there are the
fools and the envious—especially for people in our position. I am
guiltless of this terrible—terrible . . . estrangement; but if there
has been nothing irreparable." . . . Something gloomy, like a deep shadow
passed over his face. . . . "Nothing irreparable—you see even now I
am ready to trust you implicitly—then our duty is clear."</p>
<p>He looked down. A change came over his expression and straightway from the
outward impetus of his loquacity he passed into the dull contemplation of
all the appeasing truths that, not without some wonder, he had so recently
been able to discover within himself. During this profound and soothing
communion with his innermost beliefs he remained staring at the carpet,
with a portentously solemn face and with a dull vacuity of eyes that
seemed to gaze into the blankness of an empty hole. Then, without stirring
in the least, he continued:</p>
<p>"Yes. Perfectly clear. I've been tried to the utmost, and I can't pretend
that, for a time, the old feelings—the old feelings are not. . . ."
He sighed. . . . "But I forgive you. . . ."</p>
<p>She made a slight movement without uncovering her eyes. In his profound
scrutiny of the carpet he noticed nothing. And there was silence, silence
within and silence without, as though his words had stilled the beat and
tremor of all the surrounding life, and the house had stood alone—the
only dwelling upon a deserted earth.</p>
<p>He lifted his head and repeated solemnly:</p>
<p>"I forgive you . . . from a sense of duty—and in the hope . . ."</p>
<p>He heard a laugh, and it not only interrupted his words but also destroyed
the peace of his self-absorption with the vile pain of a reality intruding
upon the beauty of a dream. He couldn't understand whence the sound came.
He could see, foreshortened, the tear-stained, dolorous face of the woman
stretched out, and with her head thrown over the back of the seat. He
thought the piercing noise was a delusion. But another shrill peal
followed by a deep sob and succeeded by another shriek of mirth positively
seemed to tear him out from where he stood. He bounded to the door. It was
closed. He turned the key and thought: that's no good. . . . "Stop this!"
he cried, and perceived with alarm that he could hardly hear his own voice
in the midst of her screaming. He darted back with the idea of stifling
that unbearable noise with his hands, but stood still distracted, finding
himself as unable to touch her as though she had been on fire. He shouted,
"Enough of this!" like men shout in the tumult of a riot, with a red face
and starting eyes; then, as if swept away before another burst of
laughter, he disappeared in a flash out of three looking-glasses, vanished
suddenly from before her. For a time the woman gasped and laughed at no
one in the luminous stillness of the empty room.</p>
<p>He reappeared, striding at her, and with a tumbler of water in his hand.
He stammered: "Hysterics—Stop—They will hear—Drink
this." She laughed at the ceiling. "Stop this!" he cried. "Ah!"</p>
<p>He flung the water in her face, putting into the action all the secret
brutality of his spite, yet still felt that it would have been perfectly
excusable—in any one—to send the tumbler after the water. He
restrained himself, but at the same time was so convinced nothing could
stop the horror of those mad shrieks that, when the first sensation of
relief came, it did not even occur to him to doubt the impression of
having become suddenly deaf. When, next moment, he became sure that she
was sitting up, and really very quiet, it was as though everything—men,
things, sensations, had come to a rest. He was prepared to be grateful. He
could not take his eyes off her, fearing, yet unwilling to admit, the
possibility of her beginning again; for, the experience, however
contemptuously he tried to think of it, had left the bewilderment of a
mysterious terror. Her face was streaming with water and tears; there was
a wisp of hair on her forehead, another stuck to her cheek; her hat was on
one side, undecorously tilted; her soaked veil resembled a sordid rag
festooning her forehead. There was an utter unreserve in her aspect, an
abandonment of safeguards, that ugliness of truth which can only be kept
out of daily life by unremitting care for appearances. He did not know
why, looking at her, he thought suddenly of to-morrow, and why the thought
called out a deep feeling of unutterable, discouraged weariness—a
fear of facing the succession of days. To-morrow! It was as far as
yesterday. Ages elapsed between sunrises—sometimes. He scanned her
features like one looks at a forgotten country. They were not distorted—he
recognized landmarks, so to speak; but it was only a resemblance that he
could see, not the woman of yesterday—or was it, perhaps, more than
the woman of yesterday? Who could tell? Was it something new? A new
expression—or a new shade of expression? or something deep—an
old truth unveiled, a fundamental and hidden truth—some unnecessary,
accursed certitude? He became aware that he was trembling very much, that
he had an empty tumbler in his hand—that time was passing. Still
looking at her with lingering mistrust he reached towards the table to put
the glass down and was startled to feel it apparently go through the wood.
He had missed the edge. The surprise, the slight jingling noise of the
accident annoyed him beyond expression. He turned to her irritated.</p>
<p>"What's the meaning of this?" he asked, grimly.</p>
<p>She passed her hand over her face and made an attempt to get up.</p>
<p>"You're not going to be absurd again," he said. "'Pon my soul, I did not
know you could forget yourself to that extent." He didn't try to conceal
his physical disgust, because he believed it to be a purely moral
reprobation of every unreserve, of anything in the nature of a scene. "I
assure you—it was revolting," he went on. He stared for a moment at
her. "Positively degrading," he added with insistence.</p>
<p>She stood up quickly as if moved by a spring and tottered. He started
forward instinctively. She caught hold of the back of the chair and
steadied herself. This arrested him, and they faced each other wide-eyed,
uncertain, and yet coming back slowly to the reality of things with relief
and wonder, as though just awakened after tossing through a long night of
fevered dreams.</p>
<p>"Pray, don't begin again," he said, hurriedly, seeing her open her lips.
"I deserve some little consideration—and such unaccountable
behaviour is painful to me. I expect better things. . . . I have the
right. . . ."</p>
<p>She pressed both her hands to her temples.</p>
<p>"Oh, nonsense!" he said, sharply. "You are perfectly capable of coming
down to dinner. No one should even suspect; not even the servants. No one!
No one! . . . I am sure you can."</p>
<p>She dropped her arms; her face twitched. She looked straight into his eyes
and seemed incapable of pronouncing a word. He frowned at her.</p>
<p>"I—wish—it," he said, tyrannically. "For your own sake also. .
. ." He meant to carry that point without any pity. Why didn't she speak?
He feared passive resistance. She must. . . . Make her come. His frown
deepened, and he began to think of some effectual violence, when most
unexpectedly she said in a firm voice, "Yes, I can," and clutched the
chair-back again. He was relieved, and all at once her attitude ceased to
interest him. The important thing was that their life would begin again
with an every-day act—with something that could not be
misunderstood, that, thank God, had no moral meaning, no perplexity—and
yet was symbolic of their uninterrupted communion in the past—in all
the future. That morning, at that table, they had breakfast together; and
now they would dine. It was all over! What had happened between could be
forgotten—must be forgotten, like things that can only happen once—death
for instance.</p>
<p>"I will wait for you," he said, going to the door. He had some difficulty
with it, for he did not remember he had turned the key. He hated that
delay, and his checked impatience to be gone out of the room made him feel
quite ill as, with the consciousness of her presence behind his back, he
fumbled at the lock. He managed it at last; then in the doorway he glanced
over his shoulder to say, "It's rather late—you know—" and saw
her standing where he had left her, with a face white as alabaster and
perfectly still, like a woman in a trance.</p>
<p>He was afraid she would keep him waiting, but without any breathing time,
he hardly knew how, he found himself sitting at table with her. He had
made up his mind to eat, to talk, to be natural. It seemed to him
necessary that deception should begin at home. The servants must not know—must
not suspect. This intense desire of secrecy; of secrecy dark, destroying,
profound, discreet like a grave, possessed him with the strength of a
hallucination—seemed to spread itself to inanimate objects that had
been the daily companions of his life, affected with a taint of enmity
every single thing within the faithful walls that would stand forever
between the shamelessness of facts and the indignation of mankind. Even
when—as it happened once or twice—both the servants left the
room together he remained carefully natural, industriously hungry,
laboriously at his ease, as though he had wanted to cheat the black oak
sideboard, the heavy curtains, the stiff-backed chairs, into the belief of
an unstained happiness. He was mistrustful of his wife's self-control,
unwilling to look at her and reluctant to speak, for it seemed to him
inconceivable that she should not betray herself by the slightest
movement, by the very first word spoken. Then he thought the silence in
the room was becoming dangerous, and so excessive as to produce the effect
of an intolerable uproar. He wanted to end it, as one is anxious to
interrupt an indiscreet confession; but with the memory of that laugh
upstairs he dared not give her an occasion to open her lips. Presently he
heard her voice pronouncing in a calm tone some unimportant remark. He
detached his eyes from the centre of his plate and felt excited as if on
the point of looking at a wonder. And nothing could be more wonderful than
her composure. He was looking at the candid eyes, at the pure brow, at
what he had seen every evening for years in that place; he listened to the
voice that for five years he had heard every day. Perhaps she was a little
pale—but a healthy pallor had always been for him one of her chief
attractions. Perhaps her face was rigidly set—but that marmoreal
impassiveness, that magnificent stolidity, as of a wonderful statue by
some great sculptor working under the curse of the gods; that imposing,
unthinking stillness of her features, had till then mirrored for him the
tranquil dignity of a soul of which he had thought himself—as a
matter of course—the inexpugnable possessor. Those were the outward
signs of her difference from the ignoble herd that feels, suffers, fails,
errs—but has no distinct value in the world except as a moral
contrast to the prosperity of the elect. He had been proud of her
appearance. It had the perfectly proper frankness of perfection—and
now he was shocked to see it unchanged. She looked like this, spoke like
this, exactly like this, a year ago, a month ago—only yesterday when
she. . . . What went on within made no difference. What did she think?
What meant the pallor, the placid face, the candid brow, the pure eyes?
What did she think during all these years? What did she think yesterday—to-day;
what would she think to-morrow? He must find out. . . . And yet how could
he get to know? She had been false to him, to that man, to herself; she
was ready to be false—for him. Always false. She looked lies,
breathed lies, lived lies—would tell lies—always—to the
end of life! And he would never know what she meant. Never! Never! No one
could. Impossible to know.</p>
<p>He dropped his knife and fork, brusquely, as though by the virtue of a
sudden illumination he had been made aware of poison in his plate, and
became positive in his mind that he could never swallow another morsel of
food as long as he lived. The dinner went on in a room that had been
steadily growing, from some cause, hotter than a furnace. He had to drink.
He drank time after time, and, at last, recollecting himself, was
frightened at the quantity, till he perceived that what he had been
drinking was water—out of two different wine glasses; and the
discovered unconsciousness of his actions affected him painfully. He was
disturbed to find himself in such an unhealthy state of mind. Excess of
feeling—excess of feeling; and it was part of his creed that any
excess of feeling was unhealthy—morally unprofitable; a taint on
practical manhood. Her fault. Entirely her fault. Her sinful
self-forgetfulness was contagious. It made him think thoughts he had never
had before; thoughts disintegrating, tormenting, sapping to the very core
of life—like mortal disease; thoughts that bred the fear of air, of
sunshine, of men—like the whispered news of a pestilence.</p>
<p>The maids served without noise; and to avoid looking at his wife and
looking within himself, he followed with his eyes first one and then the
other without being able to distinguish between them. They moved silently
about, without one being able to see by what means, for their skirts
touched the carpet all round; they glided here and there, receded,
approached, rigid in black and white, with precise gestures, and no life
in their faces, like a pair of marionettes in mourning; and their air of
wooden unconcern struck him as unnatural, suspicious, irremediably
hostile. That such people's feelings or judgment could affect one in any
way, had never occurred to him before. He understood they had no
prospects, no principles—no refinement and no power. But now he had
become so debased that he could not even attempt to disguise from himself
his yearning to know the secret thoughts of his servants. Several times he
looked up covertly at the faces of those girls. Impossible to know. They
changed his plates and utterly ignored his existence. What impenetrable
duplicity. Women—nothing but women round him. Impossible to know. He
experienced that heart-probing, fiery sense of dangerous loneliness, which
sometimes assails the courage of a solitary adventurer in an unexplored
country. The sight of a man's face—he felt—of any man's face,
would have been a profound relief. One would know then—something—could
understand. . . . He would engage a butler as soon as possible. And then
the end of that dinner—which had seemed to have been going on for
hours—the end came, taking him violently by surprise, as though he
had expected in the natural course of events to sit at that table for ever
and ever.</p>
<p>But upstairs in the drawing-room he became the victim of a restless fate,
that would, on no account, permit him to sit down. She had sunk on a low
easy-chair, and taking up from a small table at her elbow a fan with ivory
leaves, shaded her face from the fire. The coals glowed without a flame;
and upon the red glow the vertical bars of the grate stood out at her
feet, black and curved, like the charred ribs of a consumed sacrifice. Far
off, a lamp perched on a slim brass rod, burned under a wide shade of
crimson silk: the centre, within the shadows of the large room, of a fiery
twilight that had in the warm quality of its tint something delicate,
refined and infernal. His soft footfalls and the subdued beat of the clock
on the high mantel-piece answered each other regularly—as if time
and himself, engaged in a measured contest, had been pacing together
through the infernal delicacy of twilight towards a mysterious goal.</p>
<p>He walked from one end of the room to the other without a pause, like a
traveller who, at night, hastens doggedly upon an interminable journey.
Now and then he glanced at her. Impossible to know. The gross precision of
that thought expressed to his practical mind something illimitable and
infinitely profound, the all-embracing subtlety of a feeling, the eternal
origin of his pain. This woman had accepted him, had abandoned him—had
returned to him. And of all this he would never know the truth. Never. Not
till death—not after—not on judgment day when all shall be
disclosed, thoughts and deeds, rewards and punishments, but the secret of
hearts alone shall return, forever unknown, to the Inscrutable Creator of
good and evil, to the Master of doubts and impulses.</p>
<p>He stood still to look at her. Thrown back and with her face turned away
from him, she did not stir—as if asleep. What did she think? What
did she feel? And in the presence of her perfect stillness, in the
breathless silence, he felt himself insignificant and powerless before
her, like a prisoner in chains. The fury of his impotence called out
sinister images, that faculty of tormenting vision, which in a moment of
anguishing sense of wrong induces a man to mutter threats or make a
menacing gesture in the solitude of an empty room. But the gust of passion
passed at once, left him trembling a little, with the wondering,
reflective fear of a man who has paused on the very verge of suicide. The
serenity of truth and the peace of death can be only secured through a
largeness of contempt embracing all the profitable servitudes of life. He
found he did not want to know. Better not. It was all over. It was as if
it hadn't been. And it was very necessary for both of them, it was morally
right, that nobody should know.</p>
<p>He spoke suddenly, as if concluding a discussion.</p>
<p>"The best thing for us is to forget all this."</p>
<p>She started a little and shut the fan with a click.</p>
<p>"Yes, forgive—and forget," he repeated, as if to himself.</p>
<p>"I'll never forget," she said in a vibrating voice. "And I'll never
forgive myself. . . ."</p>
<p>"But I, who have nothing to reproach myself . . ." He began, making a step
towards her. She jumped up.</p>
<p>"I did not come back for your forgiveness," she exclaimed, passionately,
as if clamouring against an unjust aspersion.</p>
<p>He only said "oh!" and became silent. He could not understand this
unprovoked aggressiveness of her attitude, and certainly was very far from
thinking that an unpremeditated hint of something resembling emotion in
the tone of his last words had caused that uncontrollable burst of
sincerity. It completed his bewilderment, but he was not at all angry now.
He was as if benumbed by the fascination of the incomprehensible. She
stood before him, tall and indistinct, like a black phantom in the red
twilight. At last poignantly uncertain as to what would happen if he
opened his lips, he muttered:</p>
<p>"But if my love is strong enough . . ." and hesitated.</p>
<p>He heard something snap loudly in the fiery stillness. She had broken her
fan. Two thin pieces of ivory fell, one after another, without a sound, on
the thick carpet, and instinctively he stooped to pick them up. While he
groped at her feet it occurred to him that the woman there had in her
hands an indispensable gift which nothing else on earth could give; and
when he stood up he was penetrated by an irresistible belief in an enigma,
by the conviction that within his reach and passing away from him was the
very secret of existence—its certitude, immaterial and precious! She
moved to the door, and he followed at her elbow, casting about for a magic
word that would make the enigma clear, that would compel the surrender of
the gift. And there is no such word! The enigma is only made clear by
sacrifice, and the gift of heaven is in the hands of every man. But they
had lived in a world that abhors enigmas, and cares for no gifts but such
as can be obtained in the street. She was nearing the door. He said
hurriedly:</p>
<p>"'Pon my word, I loved you—I love you now."</p>
<p>She stopped for an almost imperceptible moment to give him an indignant
glance, and then moved on. That feminine penetration—so clever and
so tainted by the eternal instinct of self-defence, so ready to see an
obvious evil in everything it cannot understand—filled her with
bitter resentment against both the men who could offer to the spiritual
and tragic strife of her feelings nothing but the coarseness of their
abominable materialism. In her anger against her own ineffectual
self-deception she found hate enough for them both. What did they want?
What more did this one want? And as her husband faced her again, with his
hand on the door-handle, she asked herself whether he was unpardonably
stupid, or simply ignoble.</p>
<p>She said nervously, and very fast:</p>
<p>"You are deceiving yourself. You never loved me. You wanted a wife—some
woman—any woman that would think, speak, and behave in a certain way—in
a way you approved. You loved yourself."</p>
<p>"You won't believe me?" he asked, slowly.</p>
<p>"If I had believed you loved me," she began, passionately, then drew in a
long breath; and during that pause he heard the steady beat of blood in
his ears. "If I had believed it . . . I would never have come back," she
finished, recklessly.</p>
<p>He stood looking down as though he had not heard. She waited. After a
moment he opened the door, and, on the landing, the sightless woman of
marble appeared, draped to the chin, thrusting blindly at them a cluster
of lights.</p>
<p>He seemed to have forgotten himself in a meditation so deep that on the
point of going out she stopped to look at him in surprise. While she had
been speaking he had wandered on the track of the enigma, out of the world
of senses into the region of feeling. What did it matter what she had
done, what she had said, if through the pain of her acts and words he had
obtained the word of the enigma! There can be no life without faith and
love—faith in a human heart, love of a human being! That touch of
grace, whose help once in life is the privilege of the most undeserving,
flung open for him the portals of beyond, and in contemplating there the
certitude immaterial and precious he forgot all the meaningless accidents
of existence: the bliss of getting, the delight of enjoying; all the
protean and enticing forms of the cupidity that rules a material world of
foolish joys, of contemptible sorrows. Faith!—Love!—the
undoubting, clear faith in the truth of a soul—the great tenderness,
deep as the ocean, serene and eternal, like the infinite peace of space
above the short tempests of the earth. It was what he had wanted all his
life—but he understood it only then for the first time. It was
through the pain of losing her that the knowledge had come. She had the
gift! She had the gift! And in all the world she was the only human being
that could surrender it to his immense desire. He made a step forward,
putting his arms out, as if to take her to his breast, and, lifting his
head, was met by such a look of blank consternation that his arms fell as
though they had been struck down by a blow. She started away from him,
stumbled over the threshold, and once on the landing turned, swift and
crouching. The train of her gown swished as it flew round her feet. It was
an undisguised panic. She panted, showing her teeth, and the hate of
strength, the disdain of weakness, the eternal preoccupation of sex came
out like a toy demon out of a box.</p>
<p>"This is odious," she screamed.</p>
<p>He did not stir; but her look, her agitated movements, the sound of her
voice were like a mist of facts thickening between him and the vision of
love and faith. It vanished; and looking at that face triumphant and
scornful, at that white face, stealthy and unexpected, as if discovered
staring from an ambush, he was coming back slowly to the world of senses.
His first clear thought was: I am married to that woman; and the next: she
will give nothing but what I see. He felt the need not to see. But the
memory of the vision, the memory that abides forever within the seer made
him say to her with the naive austerity of a convert awed by the touch of
a new creed, "You haven't the gift." He turned his back on her, leaving
her completely mystified. And she went upstairs slowly, struggling with a
distasteful suspicion of having been confronted by something more subtle
than herself—more profound than the misunderstood and tragic contest
of her feelings.</p>
<p>He shut the door of the drawing-room and moved at hazard, alone amongst
the heavy shadows and in the fiery twilight as of an elegant place of
perdition. She hadn't the gift—no one had. . . . He stepped on a
book that had fallen off one of the crowded little tables. He picked up
the slender volume, and holding it, approached the crimson-shaded lamp.
The fiery tint deepened on the cover, and contorted gold letters sprawling
all over it in an intricate maze, came out, gleaming redly. "Thorns and
Arabesques." He read it twice, "Thorns and Ar . . . . . . . ." The other's
book of verses. He dropped it at his feet, but did not feel the slightest
pang of jealousy or indignation. What did he know? . . . What? . . . The
mass of hot coals tumbled down in the grate, and he turned to look at them
. . . Ah! That one was ready to give up everything he had for that woman—who
did not come—who had not the faith, the love, the courage to come.
What did that man expect, what did he hope, what did he want? The woman—or
the certitude immaterial and precious! The first unselfish thought he had
ever given to any human being was for that man who had tried to do him a
terrible wrong. He was not angry. He was saddened by an impersonal sorrow,
by a vast melancholy as of all mankind longing for what cannot be
attained. He felt his fellowship with every man—even with that man—especially
with that man. What did he think now? Had he ceased to wait—and
hope? Would he ever cease to wait and hope? Would he understand that the
woman, who had no courage, had not the gift—had not the gift!</p>
<p>The clock began to strike, and the deep-toned vibration filled the room as
though with the sound of an enormous bell tolling far away. He counted the
strokes. Twelve. Another day had begun. To-morrow had come; the mysterious
and lying to-morrow that lures men, disdainful of love and faith, on and
on through the poignant futilities of life to the fitting reward of a
grave. He counted the strokes, and gazing at the grate seemed to wait for
more. Then, as if called out, left the room, walking firmly.</p>
<p>When outside he heard footsteps in the hall and stood still. A bolt was
shot—then another. They were locking up—shutting out his
desire and his deception from the indignant criticism of a world full of
noble gifts for those who proclaim themselves without stain and without
reproach. He was safe; and on all sides of his dwelling servile fears and
servile hopes slept, dreaming of success, behind the severe discretion of
doors as impenetrable to the truth within as the granite of tombstones. A
lock snapped—a short chain rattled. Nobody shall know!</p>
<p>Why was this assurance of safety heavier than a burden of fear, and why
the day that began presented itself obstinately like the last day of all—like
a to-day without a to-morrow? Yet nothing was changed, for nobody would
know; and all would go on as before—the getting, the enjoying, the
blessing of hunger that is appeased every day; the noble incentives of
unappeasable ambitions. All—all the blessings of life. All—but
the certitude immaterial and precious—the certitude of love and
faith. He believed the shadow of it had been with him as long as he could
remember; that invisible presence had ruled his life. And now the shadow
had appeared and faded he could not extinguish his longing for the truth
of its substance. His desire of it was naive; it was masterful like the
material aspirations that are the groundwork of existence, but, unlike
these, it was unconquerable. It was the subtle despotism of an idea that
suffers no rivals, that is lonely, inconsolable, and dangerous. He went
slowly up the stairs. Nobody shall know. The days would go on and he would
go far—very far. If the idea could not be mastered, fortune could
be, man could be—the whole world. He was dazzled by the greatness of
the prospect; the brutality of a practical instinct shouted to him that
only that which could be had was worth having. He lingered on the steps.
The lights were out in the hall, and a small yellow flame flitted about
down there. He felt a sudden contempt for himself which braced him up. He
went on, but at the door of their room and with his arm advanced to open
it, he faltered. On the flight of stairs below the head of the girl who
had been locking up appeared. His arm fell. He thought, "I'll wait till
she is gone"—and stepped back within the perpendicular folds of a
portiere.</p>
<p>He saw her come up gradually, as if ascending from a well. At every step
the feeble flame of the candle swayed before her tired, young face, and
the darkness of the hall seemed to cling to her black skirt, followed her,
rising like a silent flood, as though the great night of the world had
broken through the discreet reserve of walls, of closed doors, of
curtained windows. It rose over the steps, it leaped up the walls like an
angry wave, it flowed over the blue skies, over the yellow sands, over the
sunshine of landscapes, and over the pretty pathos of ragged innocence and
of meek starvation. It swallowed up the delicious idyll in a boat and the
mutilated immortality of famous bas-reliefs. It flowed from outside—it
rose higher, in a destructive silence. And, above it, the woman of marble,
composed and blind on the high pedestal, seemed to ward off the devouring
night with a cluster of lights.</p>
<p>He watched the rising tide of impenetrable gloom with impatience, as if
anxious for the coming of a darkness black enough to conceal a shameful
surrender. It came nearer. The cluster of lights went out. The girl
ascended facing him. Behind her the shadow of a colossal woman danced
lightly on the wall. He held his breath while she passed by, noiseless and
with heavy eyelids. And on her track the flowing tide of a tenebrous sea
filled the house, seemed to swirl about his feet, and rising unchecked,
closed silently above his head.</p>
<p>The time had come but he did not open the door. All was still; and instead
of surrendering to the reasonable exigencies of life he stepped out, with
a rebelling heart, into the darkness of the house. It was the abode of an
impenetrable night; as though indeed the last day had come and gone,
leaving him alone in a darkness that has no to-morrow. And looming vaguely
below the woman of marble, livid and still like a patient phantom, held
out in the night a cluster of extinguished lights.</p>
<p>His obedient thought traced for him the image of an uninterrupted life,
the dignity and the advantages of an uninterrupted success; while his
rebellious heart beat violently within his breast, as if maddened by the
desire of a certitude immaterial and precious—the certitude of love
and faith. What of the night within his dwelling if outside he could find
the sunshine in which men sow, in which men reap! Nobody would know. The
days, the years would pass, and . . . He remembered that he had loved her.
The years would pass . . . And then he thought of her as we think of the
dead—in a tender immensity of regret, in a passionate longing for
the return of idealized perfections. He had loved her—he had loved
her—and he never knew the truth . . . The years would pass in the
anguish of doubt . . . He remembered her smile, her eyes, her voice, her
silence, as though he had lost her forever. The years would pass and he
would always mistrust her smile, suspect her eyes; he would always
misbelieve her voice, he would never have faith in her silence. She had no
gift—she had no gift! What was she? Who was she? . . . The years
would pass; the memory of this hour would grow faint—and she would
share the material serenity of an unblemished life. She had no love and no
faith for any one. To give her your thought, your belief, was like
whispering your confession over the edge of the world. Nothing came back—not
even an echo.</p>
<p>In the pain of that thought was born his conscience; not that fear of
remorse which grows slowly, and slowly decays amongst the complicated
facts of life, but a Divine wisdom springing full-grown, armed and severe
out of a tried heart, to combat the secret baseness of motives. It came to
him in a flash that morality is not a method of happiness. The revelation
was terrible. He saw at once that nothing of what he knew mattered in the
least. The acts of men and women, success, humiliation, dignity, failure—nothing
mattered. It was not a question of more or less pain, of this joy, of that
sorrow. It was a question of truth or falsehood—it was a question of
life or death.</p>
<p>He stood in the revealing night—in the darkness that tries the
hearts, in the night useless for the work of men, but in which their gaze,
undazzled by the sunshine of covetous days, wanders sometimes as far as
the stars. The perfect stillness around him had something solemn in it,
but he felt it was the lying solemnity of a temple devoted to the rites of
a debasing persuasion. The silence within the discreet walls was eloquent
of safety but it appeared to him exciting and sinister, like the
discretion of a profitable infamy; it was the prudent peace of a den of
coiners—of a house of ill-fame! The years would pass—and
nobody would know. Never! Not till death—not after . . .</p>
<p>"Never!" he said aloud to the revealing night.</p>
<p>And he hesitated. The secret of hearts, too terrible for the timid eyes of
men, shall return, veiled forever, to the Inscrutable Creator of good and
evil, to the Master of doubts and impulses. His conscience was born—he
heard its voice, and he hesitated, ignoring the strength within, the
fateful power, the secret of his heart! It was an awful sacrifice to cast
all one's life into the flame of a new belief. He wanted help against
himself, against the cruel decree of salvation. The need of tacit
complicity, where it had never failed him, the habit of years affirmed
itself. Perhaps she would help . . . He flung the door open and rushed in
like a fugitive.</p>
<p>He was in the middle of the room before he could see anything but the
dazzling brilliance of the light; and then, as if detached and floating in
it on the level of his eyes, appeared the head of a woman. She had jumped
up when he burst into the room.</p>
<p>For a moment they contemplated each other as if struck dumb with
amazement. Her hair streaming on her shoulders glinted like burnished
gold. He looked into the unfathomable candour of her eyes. Nothing within—nothing—nothing.</p>
<p>He stammered distractedly.</p>
<p>"I want . . . I want . . . to . . . to . . . know . . ."</p>
<p>On the candid light of the eyes flitted shadows; shadows of doubt, of
suspicion, the ready suspicion of an unquenchable antagonism, the pitiless
mistrust of an eternal instinct of defence; the hate, the profound,
frightened hate of an incomprehensible—of an abominable emotion
intruding its coarse materialism upon the spiritual and tragic contest of
her feelings.</p>
<p>"Alvan . . . I won't bear this . . ." She began to pant suddenly, "I've a
right—a right to—to—myself . . ."</p>
<p>He lifted one arm, and appeared so menacing that she stopped in a fright
and shrank back a little.</p>
<p>He stood with uplifted hand . . . The years would pass—and he would
have to live with that unfathomable candour where flit shadows of
suspicions and hate . . . The years would pass—and he would never
know—never trust . . . The years would pass without faith and love.
. . .</p>
<p>"Can you stand it?" he shouted, as though she could have heard all his
thoughts.</p>
<p>He looked menacing. She thought of violence, of danger—and, just for
an instant, she doubted whether there were splendours enough on earth to
pay the price of such a brutal experience. He cried again:</p>
<p>"Can you stand it?" and glared as if insane. Her eyes blazed, too. She
could not hear the appalling clamour of his thoughts. She suspected in him
a sudden regret, a fresh fit of jealousy, a dishonest desire of evasion.
She shouted back angrily—</p>
<p>"Yes!"</p>
<p>He was shaken where he stood as if by a struggle to break out of invisible
bonds. She trembled from head to foot.</p>
<p>"Well, I can't!" He flung both his arms out, as if to push her away, and
strode from the room. The door swung to with a click. She made three quick
steps towards it and stood still, looking at the white and gold panels. No
sound came from beyond, not a whisper, not a sigh; not even a footstep was
heard outside on the thick carpet. It was as though no sooner gone he had
suddenly expired—as though he had died there and his body had
vanished on the instant together with his soul. She listened, with parted
lips and irresolute eyes. Then below, far below her, as if in the entrails
of the earth, a door slammed heavily; and the quiet house vibrated to it
from roof to foundations, more than to a clap of thunder.</p>
<p>He never returned.</p>
<p><SPAN name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007"></SPAN></p>
<h2> THE LAGOON </h2>
<p>The white man, leaning with both arms over the roof of the little house in
the stern of the boat, said to the steersman—</p>
<p>"We will pass the night in Arsat's clearing. It is late."</p>
<p>The Malay only grunted, and went on looking fixedly at the river. The
white man rested his chin on his crossed arms and gazed at the wake of the
boat. At the end of the straight avenue of forests cut by the intense
glitter of the river, the sun appeared unclouded and dazzling, poised low
over the water that shone smoothly like a band of metal. The forests,
sombre and dull, stood motionless and silent on each side of the broad
stream. At the foot of big, towering trees, trunkless nipa palms rose from
the mud of the bank, in bunches of leaves enormous and heavy, that hung
unstirring over the brown swirl of eddies. In the stillness of the air
every tree, every leaf, every bough, every tendril of creeper and every
petal of minute blossoms seemed to have been bewitched into an immobility
perfect and final. Nothing moved on the river but the eight paddles that
rose flashing regularly, dipped together with a single splash; while the
steersman swept right and left with a periodic and sudden flourish of his
blade describing a glinting semicircle above his head. The churned-up
water frothed alongside with a confused murmur. And the white man's canoe,
advancing upstream in the short-lived disturbance of its own making,
seemed to enter the portals of a land from which the very memory of motion
had forever departed.</p>
<p>The white man, turning his back upon the setting sun, looked along the
empty and broad expanse of the sea-reach. For the last three miles of its
course the wandering, hesitating river, as if enticed irresistibly by the
freedom of an open horizon, flows straight into the sea, flows straight to
the east—to the east that harbours both light and darkness. Astern
of the boat the repeated call of some bird, a cry discordant and feeble,
skipped along over the smooth water and lost itself, before it could reach
the other shore, in the breathless silence of the world.</p>
<p>The steersman dug his paddle into the stream, and held hard with stiffened
arms, his body thrown forward. The water gurgled aloud; and suddenly the
long straight reach seemed to pivot on its centre, the forests swung in a
semicircle, and the slanting beams of sunset touched the broadside of the
canoe with a fiery glow, throwing the slender and distorted shadows of its
crew upon the streaked glitter of the river. The white man turned to look
ahead. The course of the boat had been altered at right-angles to the
stream, and the carved dragon-head of its prow was pointing now at a gap
in the fringing bushes of the bank. It glided through, brushing the
overhanging twigs, and disappeared from the river like some slim and
amphibious creature leaving the water for its lair in the forests.</p>
<p>The narrow creek was like a ditch: tortuous, fabulously deep; filled with
gloom under the thin strip of pure and shining blue of the heaven. Immense
trees soared up, invisible behind the festooned draperies of creepers.
Here and there, near the glistening blackness of the water, a twisted root
of some tall tree showed amongst the tracery of small ferns, black and
dull, writhing and motionless, like an arrested snake. The short words of
the paddlers reverberated loudly between the thick and sombre walls of
vegetation. Darkness oozed out from between the trees, through the tangled
maze of the creepers, from behind the great fantastic and unstirring
leaves; the darkness, mysterious and invincible; the darkness scented and
poisonous of impenetrable forests.</p>
<p>The men poled in the shoaling water. The creek broadened, opening out into
a wide sweep of a stagnant lagoon. The forests receded from the marshy
bank, leaving a level strip of bright green, reedy grass to frame the
reflected blueness of the sky. A fleecy pink cloud drifted high above,
trailing the delicate colouring of its image under the floating leaves and
the silvery blossoms of the lotus. A little house, perched on high piles,
appeared black in the distance. Near it, two tall nibong palms, that
seemed to have come out of the forests in the background, leaned slightly
over the ragged roof, with a suggestion of sad tenderness and care in the
droop of their leafy and soaring heads.</p>
<p>The steersman, pointing with his paddle, said, "Arsat is there. I see his
canoe fast between the piles."</p>
<p>The polers ran along the sides of the boat glancing over their shoulders
at the end of the day's journey. They would have preferred to spend the
night somewhere else than on this lagoon of weird aspect and ghostly
reputation. Moreover, they disliked Arsat, first as a stranger, and also
because he who repairs a ruined house, and dwells in it, proclaims that he
is not afraid to live amongst the spirits that haunt the places abandoned
by mankind. Such a man can disturb the course of fate by glances or words;
while his familiar ghosts are not easy to propitiate by casual wayfarers
upon whom they long to wreak the malice of their human master. White men
care not for such things, being unbelievers and in league with the Father
of Evil, who leads them unharmed through the invisible dangers of this
world. To the warnings of the righteous they oppose an offensive pretence
of disbelief. What is there to be done?</p>
<p>So they thought, throwing their weight on the end of their long poles. The
big canoe glided on swiftly, noiselessly, and smoothly, towards Arsat's
clearing, till, in a great rattling of poles thrown down, and the loud
murmurs of "Allah be praised!" it came with a gentle knock against the
crooked piles below the house.</p>
<p>The boatmen with uplifted faces shouted discordantly, "Arsat! O Arsat!"
Nobody came. The white man began to climb the rude ladder giving access to
the bamboo platform before the house. The juragan of the boat said
sulkily, "We will cook in the sampan, and sleep on the water."</p>
<p>"Pass my blankets and the basket," said the white man, curtly.</p>
<p>He knelt on the edge of the platform to receive the bundle. Then the boat
shoved off, and the white man, standing up, confronted Arsat, who had come
out through the low door of his hut. He was a man young, powerful, with
broad chest and muscular arms. He had nothing on but his sarong. His head
was bare. His big, soft eyes stared eagerly at the white man, but his
voice and demeanour were composed as he asked, without any words of
greeting—</p>
<p>"Have you medicine, Tuan?"</p>
<p>"No," said the visitor in a startled tone. "No. Why? Is there sickness in
the house?"</p>
<p>"Enter and see," replied Arsat, in the same calm manner, and turning short
round, passed again through the small doorway. The white man, dropping his
bundles, followed.</p>
<p>In the dim light of the dwelling he made out on a couch of bamboos a woman
stretched on her back under a broad sheet of red cotton cloth. She lay
still, as if dead; but her big eyes, wide open, glittered in the gloom,
staring upwards at the slender rafters, motionless and unseeing. She was
in a high fever, and evidently unconscious. Her cheeks were sunk slightly,
her lips were partly open, and on the young face there was the ominous and
fixed expression—the absorbed, contemplating expression of the
unconscious who are going to die. The two men stood looking down at her in
silence.</p>
<p>"Has she been long ill?" asked the traveller.</p>
<p>"I have not slept for five nights," answered the Malay, in a deliberate
tone. "At first she heard voices calling her from the water and struggled
against me who held her. But since the sun of to-day rose she hears
nothing—she hears not me. She sees nothing. She sees not me—me!"</p>
<p>He remained silent for a minute, then asked softly—</p>
<p>"Tuan, will she die?"</p>
<p>"I fear so," said the white man, sorrowfully. He had known Arsat years
ago, in a far country in times of trouble and danger, when no friendship
is to be despised. And since his Malay friend had come unexpectedly to
dwell in the hut on the lagoon with a strange woman, he had slept many
times there, in his journeys up and down the river. He liked the man who
knew how to keep faith in council and how to fight without fear by the
side of his white friend. He liked him—not so much perhaps as a man
likes his favourite dog—but still he liked him well enough to help
and ask no questions, to think sometimes vaguely and hazily in the midst
of his own pursuits, about the lonely man and the long-haired woman with
audacious face and triumphant eyes, who lived together hidden by the
forests—alone and feared.</p>
<p>The white man came out of the hut in time to see the enormous
conflagration of sunset put out by the swift and stealthy shadows that,
rising like a black and impalpable vapour above the tree-tops, spread over
the heaven, extinguishing the crimson glow of floating clouds and the red
brilliance of departing daylight. In a few moments all the stars came out
above the intense blackness of the earth and the great lagoon gleaming
suddenly with reflected lights resembled an oval patch of night sky flung
down into the hopeless and abysmal night of the wilderness. The white man
had some supper out of the basket, then collecting a few sticks that lay
about the platform, made up a small fire, not for warmth, but for the sake
of the smoke, which would keep off the mosquitos. He wrapped himself in
the blankets and sat with his back against the reed wall of the house,
smoking thoughtfully.</p>
<p>Arsat came through the doorway with noiseless steps and squatted down by
the fire. The white man moved his outstretched legs a little.</p>
<p>"She breathes," said Arsat in a low voice, anticipating the expected
question. "She breathes and burns as if with a great fire. She speaks not;
she hears not—and burns!"</p>
<p>He paused for a moment, then asked in a quiet, incurious tone—</p>
<p>"Tuan . . . will she die?"</p>
<p>The white man moved his shoulders uneasily and muttered in a hesitating
manner—</p>
<p>"If such is her fate."</p>
<p>"No, Tuan," said Arsat, calmly. "If such is my fate. I hear, I see, I
wait. I remember . . . Tuan, do you remember the old days? Do you remember
my brother?"</p>
<p>"Yes," said the white man. The Malay rose suddenly and went in. The other,
sitting still outside, could hear the voice in the hut. Arsat said: "Hear
me! Speak!" His words were succeeded by a complete silence. "O Diamelen!"
he cried, suddenly. After that cry there was a deep sigh. Arsat came out
and sank down again in his old place.</p>
<p>They sat in silence before the fire. There was no sound within the house,
there was no sound near them; but far away on the lagoon they could hear
the voices of the boatmen ringing fitful and distinct on the calm water.
The fire in the bows of the sampan shone faintly in the distance with a
hazy red glow. Then it died out. The voices ceased. The land and the water
slept invisible, unstirring and mute. It was as though there had been
nothing left in the world but the glitter of stars streaming, ceaseless
and vain, through the black stillness of the night.</p>
<p>The white man gazed straight before him into the darkness with wide-open
eyes. The fear and fascination, the inspiration and the wonder of death—of
death near, unavoidable, and unseen, soothed the unrest of his race and
stirred the most indistinct, the most intimate of his thoughts. The
ever-ready suspicion of evil, the gnawing suspicion that lurks in our
hearts, flowed out into the stillness round him—into the stillness
profound and dumb, and made it appear untrustworthy and infamous, like the
placid and impenetrable mask of an unjustifiable violence. In that
fleeting and powerful disturbance of his being the earth enfolded in the
starlight peace became a shadowy country of inhuman strife, a battle-field
of phantoms terrible and charming, august or ignoble, struggling ardently
for the possession of our helpless hearts. An unquiet and mysterious
country of inextinguishable desires and fears.</p>
<p>A plaintive murmur rose in the night; a murmur saddening and startling, as
if the great solitudes of surrounding woods had tried to whisper into his
ear the wisdom of their immense and lofty indifference. Sounds hesitating
and vague floated in the air round him, shaped themselves slowly into
words; and at last flowed on gently in a murmuring stream of soft and
monotonous sentences. He stirred like a man waking up and changed his
position slightly. Arsat, motionless and shadowy, sitting with bowed head
under the stars, was speaking in a low and dreamy tone—</p>
<p>". . . for where can we lay down the heaviness of our trouble but in a
friend's heart? A man must speak of war and of love. You, Tuan, know what
war is, and you have seen me in time of danger seek death as other men
seek life! A writing may be lost; a lie may be written; but what the eye
has seen is truth and remains in the mind!"</p>
<p>"I remember," said the white man, quietly. Arsat went on with mournful
composure—</p>
<p>"Therefore I shall speak to you of love. Speak in the night. Speak before
both night and love are gone—and the eye of day looks upon my sorrow
and my shame; upon my blackened face; upon my burnt-up heart."</p>
<p>A sigh, short and faint, marked an almost imperceptible pause, and then
his words flowed on, without a stir, without a gesture.</p>
<p>"After the time of trouble and war was over and you went away from my
country in the pursuit of your desires, which we, men of the islands,
cannot understand, I and my brother became again, as we had been before,
the sword-bearers of the Ruler. You know we were men of family, belonging
to a ruling race, and more fit than any to carry on our right shoulder the
emblem of power. And in the time of prosperity Si Dendring showed us
favour, as we, in time of sorrow, had showed to him the faithfulness of
our courage. It was a time of peace. A time of deer-hunts and cock-fights;
of idle talks and foolish squabbles between men whose bellies are full and
weapons are rusty. But the sower watched the young rice-shoots grow up
without fear, and the traders came and went, departed lean and returned
fat into the river of peace. They brought news, too. Brought lies and
truth mixed together, so that no man knew when to rejoice and when to be
sorry. We heard from them about you also. They had seen you here and had
seen you there. And I was glad to hear, for I remembered the stirring
times, and I always remembered you, Tuan, till the time came when my eyes
could see nothing in the past, because they had looked upon the one who is
dying there—in the house."</p>
<p>He stopped to exclaim in an intense whisper, "O Mara bahia! O Calamity!"
then went on speaking a little louder:</p>
<p>"There's no worse enemy and no better friend than a brother, Tuan, for one
brother knows another, and in perfect knowledge is strength for good or
evil. I loved my brother. I went to him and told him that I could see
nothing but one face, hear nothing but one voice. He told me: 'Open your
heart so that she can see what is in it—and wait. Patience is
wisdom. Inchi Midah may die or our Ruler may throw off his fear of a
woman!' . . . I waited! . . . You remember the lady with the veiled face,
Tuan, and the fear of our Ruler before her cunning and temper. And if she
wanted her servant, what could I do? But I fed the hunger of my heart on
short glances and stealthy words. I loitered on the path to the
bath-houses in the daytime, and when the sun had fallen behind the forest
I crept along the jasmine hedges of the women's courtyard. Unseeing, we
spoke to one another through the scent of flowers, through the veil of
leaves, through the blades of long grass that stood still before our lips;
so great was our prudence, so faint was the murmur of our great longing.
The time passed swiftly . . . and there were whispers amongst women—and
our enemies watched—my brother was gloomy, and I began to think of
killing and of a fierce death. . . . We are of a people who take what they
want—like you whites. There is a time when a man should forget
loyalty and respect. Might and authority are given to rulers, but to all
men is given love and strength and courage. My brother said, 'You shall
take her from their midst. We are two who are like one.' And I answered,
'Let it be soon, for I find no warmth in sunlight that does not shine upon
her.' Our time came when the Ruler and all the great people went to the
mouth of the river to fish by torchlight. There were hundreds of boats,
and on the white sand, between the water and the forests, dwellings of
leaves were built for the households of the Rajahs. The smoke of
cooking-fires was like a blue mist of the evening, and many voices rang in
it joyfully. While they were making the boats ready to beat up the fish,
my brother came to me and said, 'To-night!' I looked to my weapons, and
when the time came our canoe took its place in the circle of boats
carrying the torches. The lights blazed on the water, but behind the boats
there was darkness. When the shouting began and the excitement made them
like mad we dropped out. The water swallowed our fire, and we floated back
to the shore that was dark with only here and there the glimmer of embers.
We could hear the talk of slave-girls amongst the sheds. Then we found a
place deserted and silent. We waited there. She came. She came running
along the shore, rapid and leaving no trace, like a leaf driven by the
wind into the sea. My brother said gloomily, 'Go and take her; carry her
into our boat.' I lifted her in my arms. She panted. Her heart was beating
against my breast. I said, 'I take you from those people. You came to the
cry of my heart, but my arms take you into my boat against the will of the
great!' 'It is right,' said my brother. 'We are men who take what we want
and can hold it against many. We should have taken her in daylight.' I
said, 'Let us be off'; for since she was in my boat I began to think of
our Ruler's many men. 'Yes. Let us be off,' said my brother. 'We are cast
out and this boat is our country now—and the sea is our refuge.' He
lingered with his foot on the shore, and I entreated him to hasten, for I
remembered the strokes of her heart against my breast and thought that two
men cannot withstand a hundred. We left, paddling downstream close to the
bank; and as we passed by the creek where they were fishing, the great
shouting had ceased, but the murmur of voices was loud like the humming of
insects flying at noonday. The boats floated, clustered together, in the
red light of torches, under a black roof of smoke; and men talked of their
sport. Men that boasted, and praised, and jeered—men that would have
been our friends in the morning, but on that night were already our
enemies. We paddled swiftly past. We had no more friends in the country of
our birth. She sat in the middle of the canoe with covered face; silent as
she is now; unseeing as she is now—and I had no regret at what I was
leaving because I could hear her breathing close to me—as I can hear
her now."</p>
<p>He paused, listened with his ear turned to the doorway, then shook his
head and went on:</p>
<p>"My brother wanted to shout the cry of challenge—one cry only—to
let the people know we were freeborn robbers who trusted our arms and the
great sea. And again I begged him in the name of our love to be silent.
Could I not hear her breathing close to me? I knew the pursuit would come
quick enough. My brother loved me. He dipped his paddle without a splash.
He only said, 'There is half a man in you now—the other half is in
that woman. I can wait. When you are a whole man again, you will come back
with me here to shout defiance. We are sons of the same mother.' I made no
answer. All my strength and all my spirit were in my hands that held the
paddle—for I longed to be with her in a safe place beyond the reach
of men's anger and of women's spite. My love was so great, that I thought
it could guide me to a country where death was unknown, if I could only
escape from Inchi Midah's fury and from our Ruler's sword. We paddled with
haste, breathing through our teeth. The blades bit deep into the smooth
water. We passed out of the river; we flew in clear channels amongst the
shallows. We skirted the black coast; we skirted the sand beaches where
the sea speaks in whispers to the land; and the gleam of white sand
flashed back past our boat, so swiftly she ran upon the water. We spoke
not. Only once I said, 'Sleep, Diamelen, for soon you may want all your
strength.' I heard the sweetness of her voice, but I never turned my head.
The sun rose and still we went on. Water fell from my face like rain from
a cloud. We flew in the light and heat. I never looked back, but I knew
that my brother's eyes, behind me, were looking steadily ahead, for the
boat went as straight as a bushman's dart, when it leaves the end of the
sumpitan. There was no better paddler, no better steersman than my
brother. Many times, together, we had won races in that canoe. But we
never had put out our strength as we did then—then, when for the
last time we paddled together! There was no braver or stronger man in our
country than my brother. I could not spare the strength to turn my head
and look at him, but every moment I heard the hiss of his breath getting
louder behind me. Still he did not speak. The sun was high. The heat clung
to my back like a flame of fire. My ribs were ready to burst, but I could
no longer get enough air into my chest. And then I felt I must cry out
with my last breath, 'Let us rest!' . . . 'Good!' he answered; and his
voice was firm. He was strong. He was brave. He knew not fear and no
fatigue . . . My brother!"</p>
<p>A murmur powerful and gentle, a murmur vast and faint; the murmur of
trembling leaves, of stirring boughs, ran through the tangled depths of
the forests, ran over the starry smoothness of the lagoon, and the water
between the piles lapped the slimy timber once with a sudden splash. A
breath of warm air touched the two men's faces and passed on with a
mournful sound—a breath loud and short like an uneasy sigh of the
dreaming earth.</p>
<p>Arsat went on in an even, low voice.</p>
<p>"We ran our canoe on the white beach of a little bay close to a long
tongue of land that seemed to bar our road; a long wooded cape going far
into the sea. My brother knew that place. Beyond the cape a river has its
entrance, and through the jungle of that land there is a narrow path. We
made a fire and cooked rice. Then we lay down to sleep on the soft sand in
the shade of our canoe, while she watched. No sooner had I closed my eyes
than I heard her cry of alarm. We leaped up. The sun was halfway down the
sky already, and coming in sight in the opening of the bay we saw a prau
manned by many paddlers. We knew it at once; it was one of our Rajah's
praus. They were watching the shore, and saw us. They beat the gong, and
turned the head of the prau into the bay. I felt my heart become weak
within my breast. Diamelen sat on the sand and covered her face. There was
no escape by sea. My brother laughed. He had the gun you had given him,
Tuan, before you went away, but there was only a handful of powder. He
spoke to me quickly: 'Run with her along the path. I shall keep them back,
for they have no firearms, and landing in the face of a man with a gun is
certain death for some. Run with her. On the other side of that wood there
is a fisherman's house—and a canoe. When I have fired all the shots
I will follow. I am a great runner, and before they can come up we shall
be gone. I will hold out as long as I can, for she is but a woman—that
can neither run nor fight, but she has your heart in her weak hands.' He
dropped behind the canoe. The prau was coming. She and I ran, and as we
rushed along the path I heard shots. My brother fired—once—twice—and
the booming of the gong ceased. There was silence behind us. That neck of
land is narrow. Before I heard my brother fire the third shot I saw the
shelving shore, and I saw the water again; the mouth of a broad river. We
crossed a grassy glade. We ran down to the water. I saw a low hut above
the black mud, and a small canoe hauled up. I heard another shot behind
me. I thought, 'That is his last charge.' We rushed down to the canoe; a
man came running from the hut, but I leaped on him, and we rolled together
in the mud. Then I got up, and he lay still at my feet. I don't know
whether I had killed him or not. I and Diamelen pushed the canoe afloat. I
heard yells behind me, and I saw my brother run across the glade. Many men
were bounding after him, I took her in my arms and threw her into the
boat, then leaped in myself. When I looked back I saw that my brother had
fallen. He fell and was up again, but the men were closing round him. He
shouted, 'I am coming!' The men were close to him. I looked. Many men.
Then I looked at her. Tuan, I pushed the canoe! I pushed it into deep
water. She was kneeling forward looking at me, and I said, 'Take your
paddle,' while I struck the water with mine. Tuan, I heard him cry. I
heard him cry my name twice; and I heard voices shouting, 'Kill! Strike!'
I never turned back. I heard him calling my name again with a great
shriek, as when life is going out together with the voice—and I
never turned my head. My own name! . . . My brother! Three times he called—but
I was not afraid of life. Was she not there in that canoe? And could I not
with her find a country where death is forgotten—where death is
unknown!"</p>
<p>The white man sat up. Arsat rose and stood, an indistinct and silent
figure above the dying embers of the fire. Over the lagoon a mist drifting
and low had crept, erasing slowly the glittering images of the stars. And
now a great expanse of white vapour covered the land: it flowed cold and
gray in the darkness, eddied in noiseless whirls round the tree-trunks and
about the platform of the house, which seemed to float upon a restless and
impalpable illusion of a sea. Only far away the tops of the trees stood
outlined on the twinkle of heaven, like a sombre and forbidding shore—a
coast deceptive, pitiless and black.</p>
<p>Arsat's voice vibrated loudly in the profound peace.</p>
<p>"I had her there! I had her! To get her I would have faced all mankind.
But I had her—and—"</p>
<p>His words went out ringing into the empty distances. He paused, and seemed
to listen to them dying away very far—beyond help and beyond recall.
Then he said quietly—</p>
<p>"Tuan, I loved my brother."</p>
<p>A breath of wind made him shiver. High above his head, high above the
silent sea of mist the drooping leaves of the palms rattled together with
a mournful and expiring sound. The white man stretched his legs. His chin
rested on his chest, and he murmured sadly without lifting his head—</p>
<p>"We all love our brothers."</p>
<p>Arsat burst out with an intense whispering violence—</p>
<p>"What did I care who died? I wanted peace in my own heart."</p>
<p>He seemed to hear a stir in the house—listened—then stepped in
noiselessly. The white man stood up. A breeze was coming in fitful puffs.
The stars shone paler as if they had retreated into the frozen depths of
immense space. After a chill gust of wind there were a few seconds of
perfect calm and absolute silence. Then from behind the black and wavy
line of the forests a column of golden light shot up into the heavens and
spread over the semicircle of the eastern horizon. The sun had risen. The
mist lifted, broke into drifting patches, vanished into thin flying
wreaths; and the unveiled lagoon lay, polished and black, in the heavy
shadows at the foot of the wall of trees. A white eagle rose over it with
a slanting and ponderous flight, reached the clear sunshine and appeared
dazzlingly brilliant for a moment, then soaring higher, became a dark and
motionless speck before it vanished into the blue as if it had left the
earth forever. The white man, standing gazing upwards before the doorway,
heard in the hut a confused and broken murmur of distracted words ending
with a loud groan. Suddenly Arsat stumbled out with outstretched hands,
shivered, and stood still for some time with fixed eyes. Then he said—</p>
<p>"She burns no more."</p>
<p>Before his face the sun showed its edge above the tree-tops rising
steadily. The breeze freshened; a great brilliance burst upon the lagoon,
sparkled on the rippling water. The forests came out of the clear shadows
of the morning, became distinct, as if they had rushed nearer—to
stop short in a great stir of leaves, of nodding boughs, of swaying
branches. In the merciless sunshine the whisper of unconscious life grew
louder, speaking in an incomprehensible voice round the dumb darkness of
that human sorrow. Arsat's eyes wandered slowly, then stared at the rising
sun.</p>
<p>"I can see nothing," he said half aloud to himself.</p>
<p>"There is nothing," said the white man, moving to the edge of the platform
and waving his hand to his boat. A shout came faintly over the lagoon and
the sampan began to glide towards the abode of the friend of ghosts.</p>
<p>"If you want to come with me, I will wait all the morning," said the white
man, looking away upon the water.</p>
<p>"No, Tuan," said Arsat, softly. "I shall not eat or sleep in this house,
but I must first see my road. Now I can see nothing—see nothing!
There is no light and no peace in the world; but there is death—death
for many. We are sons of the same mother—and I left him in the midst
of enemies; but I am going back now."</p>
<p>He drew a long breath and went on in a dreamy tone:</p>
<p>"In a little while I shall see clear enough to strike—to strike. But
she has died, and . . . now . . . darkness."</p>
<p>He flung his arms wide open, let them fall along his body, then stood
still with unmoved face and stony eyes, staring at the sun. The white man
got down into his canoe. The polers ran smartly along the sides of the
boat, looking over their shoulders at the beginning of a weary journey.
High in the stern, his head muffled up in white rags, the juragan sat
moody, letting his paddle trail in the water. The white man, leaning with
both arms over the grass roof of the little cabin, looked back at the
shining ripple of the boat's wake. Before the sampan passed out of the
lagoon into the creek he lifted his eyes. Arsat had not moved. He stood
lonely in the searching sunshine; and he looked beyond the great light of
a cloudless day into the darkness of a world of illusions.</p>
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