第23章 PART V(3)

"Let me have the gig at once,Mr.Swan--at once.I ask in Captain Lingard's name.I must have it.Matter of life and death."The mate was impressed by Almayer's agitation "You shall have it,sir...Man the gig there!Bear a hand,serang!...It's hanging astern,Mr.Almayer,"he said,looking down again."Get into it,sir.The men are coming down by the painter."By the time Almayer had clambered over into the stern sheets,four calashes were in the boat and the oars were being passed over the taffrail.The mate was looking on.Suddenly he said--"Is it dangerous work?Do you want any help?I would come...""Yes,yes!"cried Almayer."Come along.Don't lose a moment.

Go and get your revolver.Hurry up!hurry up!"Yet,notwithstanding his feverish anxiety to be off,he lolled back very quiet and unconcerned till the mate got in and,passing over the thwarts,sat down by his side.Then he seemed to wake up,and called out--"Let go--let go the painter!"

"Let go the painter--the painter!"yelled the bowman,jerking at it.

People on board also shouted "Let go!"to one another,till it occurred at last to somebody to cast off the rope;and the boat drifted rapidly away from the schooner in the sudden silencing of all voices.

Almayer steered.The mate sat by his side,pushing the cartridges into the chambers of his revolver.When the weapon was loaded he asked--"What is it?Are you after somebody?"

"Yes,"said Almayer,curtly,with his eyes fixed ahead on the river."We must catch a dangerous man.""I like a bit of a chase myself,"declared the mate,and then,discouraged by Almayer's aspect of severe thoughtfulness,said nothing more.

Nearly an hour passed.The calashes stretched forward head first and lay back with their faces to the sky,alternately,in a regular swing that sent the boat flying through the water;and the two sitters,very upright in the stern sheets,swayed rhythmically a little at every stroke of the long oars plied vigorously.

The mate observed:"The tide is with us.""The current always runs down in this river,"said Almayer.

"Yes--I know,"retorted the other;"but it runs faster on the ebb.Look by the land at the way we get over the ground!Afive-knot current here,I should say."

"H'm!"growled Almayer.Then suddenly:"There is a passage between two islands that will save us four miles.But at low water the two islands,in the dry season,are like one with only a mud ditch between them.Still,it's worth trying.""Ticklish job that,on a falling tide,"said the mate,coolly.

"You know best whether there's time to get through.""I will try,"said Almayer,watching the shore intently."Look out now!"He tugged hard at the starboard yoke-line.

"Lay in your oars!"shouted the mate.

The boat swept round and shot through the narrow opening of a creek that broadened out before the craft had time to lose its way.

"Out oars!...Just room enough,"muttered the mate.

It was a sombre creek of black water speckled with the gold of scattered sunlight falling through the boughs that met overhead in a soaring,restless arc full of gentle whispers passing,tremulous,aloft amongst the thick leaves.The creepers climbed up the trunks of serried trees that leaned over,looking insecure and undermined by floods which had eaten away the earth from under their roots.And the pungent,acrid smell of rotting leaves,of flowers,of blossoms and plants dying in that poisonous and cruel gloom,where they pined for sunshine in vain,seemed to lay heavy,to press upon the shiny and stagnant water in its tortuous windings amongst the everlasting and invincible shadows.

Almayer looked anxious.He steered badly.Several times the blades of the oars got foul of the bushes on one side or the other,checking the way of the gig.During one of those occurrences,while they were getting clear,one of the calashes said something to the others in a rapid whisper.They looked down at the water.So did the mate.

"Hallo!"he exclaimed."Eh,Mr.Almayer!Look!The water is running out.See there!We will be caught.""Back!back!We must go back!"cried Almayer.

"Perhaps better go on."

"No;back!back!"

He pulled at the steering line,and ran the nose of the boat into the bank.Time was lost again in getting clear.

"Give way,men!give way!"urged the mate,anxiously.

The men pulled with set lips and dilated nostrils,breathing hard.

"Too late,"said the mate,suddenly."The oars touch the bottom already.We are done."The boat stuck.The men laid in the oars,and sat,panting,with crossed arms.

"Yes,we are caught,"said Almayer,composedly."That is unlucky!"The water was falling round the boat.The mate watched the patches of mud coming to the surface.Then in a moment he laughed,and pointing his finger at the creek--"Look!"he said;"the blamed river is running away from us.

Here's the last drop of water clearing out round that bend."Almayer lifted his head.The water was gone,and he looked only at a curved track of mud--of mud soft and black,hiding fever,rottenness,and evil under its level and glazed surface.

"We are in for it till the evening,"he said,with cheerful resignation."I did my best.Couldn't help it.""We must sleep the day away,"said the mate."There's nothing to eat,"he added,gloomily.

Almayer stretched himself in the stern sheets.The Malays curled down between thwarts.

"Well,I'm jiggered!"said the mate,starting up after a long pause."I was in a devil of a hurry to go and pass the day stuck in the mud.Here's a holiday for you!Well!well!"They slept or sat unmoving and patient.As the sun mounted higher the breeze died out,and perfect stillness reigned in the empty creek.A troop of long-nosed monkeys appeared,and crowding on the outer boughs,contemplated the boat and the motionless men in it with grave and sorrowful intensity,disturbed now and then by irrational outbreaks of mad gesticulation.A little bird with sapphire breast balanced a slender twig across a slanting beam of light,and flashed in it to and fro like a gem dropped from the sky.His minute round eye stared at the strange and tranquil creatures in the boat.After a while he sent out a thin twitter that sounded impertinent and funny in the solemn silence of the great wilderness;in the great silence full of struggle and death.

CHAPTER THREE

On Lingard's departure solitude and silence closed round Willems;the cruel solitude of one abandoned by men;the reproachful silence which surrounds an outcast ejected by his kind,the silence unbroken by the slightest whisper of hope;an immense and impenetrable silence that swallows up without echo the murmur of regret and the cry of revolt.The bitter peace of the abandoned clearings entered his heart,in which nothing could live now but the memory and hate of his past.Not remorse.In the breast of a man possessed by the masterful consciousness of his individuality with its desires and its rights;by the immovable conviction of his own importance,of an importance so indisputable and final that it clothes all his wishes,endeavours,and mistakes with the dignity of unavoidable fate,there could be no place for such a feeling as that of remorse.

The days passed.They passed unnoticed,unseen,in the rapid blaze of glaring sunrises,in the short glow of tender sunsets,in the crushing oppression of high noons without a cloud.How many days?Two--three--or more?He did not know.To him,since Lingard had gone,the time seemed to roll on in profound darkness.All was night within him.All was gone from his sight.He walked about blindly in the deserted courtyards,amongst the empty houses that,perched high on their posts,looked down inimically on him,a white stranger,a man from other lands;seemed to look hostile and mute out of all the memories of native life that lingered between their decaying walls.His wandering feet stumbled against the blackened brands of extinct fires,kicking up a light black dust of cold ashes that flew in drifting clouds and settled to leeward on the fresh grass sprouting from the hard ground,between the shade trees.He moved on,and on;ceaseless,unresting,in widening circles,in zigzagging paths that led to no issue;he struggled on wearily with a set,distressed face behind which,in his tired brain,seethed his thoughts:restless,sombre,tangled,chilling,horrible and venomous,like a nestful of snakes.

From afar,the bleared eyes of the old serving woman,the sombre gaze of Aissa followed the gaunt and tottering figure in its unceasing prowl along the fences,between the houses,amongst the wild luxuriance of riverside thickets.Those three human beings abandoned by all were like shipwrecked people left on an insecure and slippery ledge by the retiring tide of an angry sea--listening to its distant roar,living anguished between the menace of its return and the hopeless horror of their solitude--in the midst of a tempest of passion,of regret,of disgust,of despair.The breath of the storm had cast two of them there,robbed of everything--even of resignation.The third,the decrepit witness of their struggle and their torture,accepted her own dull conception of facts;of strength and youth gone;of her useless old age;of her last servitude;of being thrown away by her chief,by her nearest,to use up the last and worthless remnant of flickering life between those two incomprehensible and sombre outcasts:a shrivelled,an unmoved,a passive companion of their disaster.

To the river Willems turned his eyes like a captive that looks fixedly at the door of his cell.If there was any hope in the world it would come from the river,by the river.For hours together he would stand in sunlight while the sea breeze sweeping over the lonely reach fluttered his ragged garments;the keen salt breeze that made him shiver now and then under the flood of intense heat.He looked at the brown and sparkling solitude of the flowing water,of the water flowing ceaseless and free in a soft,cool murmur of ripples at his feet.The world seemed to end there.The forests of the other bank appeared unattainable,enigmatical,for ever beyond reach like the stars of heaven--and as indifferent.Above and below,the forests on his side of the river came down to the water in a serried multitude of tall,immense trees towering in a great spread of twisted boughs above the thick undergrowth;great,solid trees,looking sombre,severe,and malevolently stolid,like a giant crowd of pitiless enemies pressing round silently to witness his slow agony.He was alone,small,crushed.He thought of escape--of something to be done.What?A raft!He imagined himself working at it,feverishly,desperately;cutting down trees,fastening the logs together and then drifting down with the current,down to the sea into the straits.There were ships there--ships,help,white men.Men like himself.Good men who would rescue him,take him away,take him far away where there was trade,and houses,and other men that could understand him exactly,appreciate his capabilities;where there was proper food,and money;where there were beds,knives,forks,carriages,brass bands,cool drinks,churches with well-dressed people praying in them.He would pray also.The superior land of refined delights where he could sit on a chair,eat his tiffin off a white tablecloth,nod to fellows--good fellows;he would be popular;always was--where he could be virtuous,correct,do business,draw a salary,smoke cigars,buy things in shops--have boots...be happy,free,become rich.O God!What was wanted?Cut down a few trees.

No!One would do.They used to make canoes by burning out a tree trunk,he had heard.Yes!One would do.One tree to cut down...He rushed forward,and suddenly stood still as if rooted in the ground.He had a pocket-knife.

And he would throw himself down on the ground by the riverside.

He was tired,exhausted;as if that raft had been made,the voyage accomplished,the fortune attained.A glaze came over his staring eyes,over his eyes that gazed hopelessly at the rising river where big logs and uprooted trees drifted in the shine of mid-stream:a long procession of black and ragged specks.He could swim out and drift away on one of these trees.Anything to escape!Anything!Any risk!He could fasten himself up between the dead branches.He was torn by desire,by fear;his heart was wrung by the faltering of his courage.He turned over,face downwards,his head on his arms.He had a terrible vision of shadowless horizons where the blue sky and the blue sea met;or a circular and blazing emptiness where a dead tree and a dead man drifted together,endlessly,up and down,upon the brilliant undulations of the straits.No ships there.Only death.And the river led to it.

He sat up with a profound groan.

Yes,death.Why should he die?No!Better solitude,better hopeless waiting,alone.Alone.No!he was not alone,he saw death looking at him from everywhere;from the bushes,from the clouds--he heard her speaking to him in the murmur of the river,filling the space,touching his heart,his brain with a cold hand.He could see and think of nothing else.He saw it--the sure death--everywhere.He saw it so close that he was always on the point of throwing out his arms to keep it off.It poisoned all he saw,all he did;the miserable food he ate,the muddy water he drank;it gave a frightful aspect to sunrises and sunsets,to the brightness of hot noon,to the cooling shadows of the evenings.He saw the horrible form among the big trees,in the network of creepers in the fantastic outlines of leaves,of the great indented leaves that seemed to be so many enormous hands with big broad palms,with stiff fingers outspread to lay hold of him;hands gently stirring,or hands arrested in a frightful immobility,with a stillness attentive and watching for the opportunity to take him,to enlace him,to strangle him,to hold him till he died;hands that would hold him dead,that would never let go,that would cling to his body for ever till it perished--disappeared in their frantic and tenacious grasp.

And yet the world was full of life.All the things,all the men he knew,existed,moved,breathed;and he saw them in a long perspective,far off,diminished,distinct,desirable,unattainable,precious...lost for ever.Round him,ceaselessly,there went on without a sound the mad turmoil of tropical life.After he had died all this would remain!He wanted to clasp,to embrace solid things;he had an immense craving for sensations;for touching,pressing,seeing,handling,holding on,to all these things.All this would remain--remain for years,for ages,for ever.After he had miserably died there,all this would remain,would live,would exist in joyous sunlight,would breathe in the coolness of serene nights.What for,then?He would be dead.He would be stretched upon the warm moisture of the ground,feeling nothing,seeing nothing,knowing nothing;he would lie stiff,passive,rotting slowly;while over him,under him,through him--unopposed,busy,hurried--the endless and minute throngs of insects,little shining monsters of repulsive shapes,with horns,with claws,with pincers,would swarm in streams,in rushes,in eager struggle for his body;would swarm countless,persistent,ferocious and greedy--till there would remain nothing but the white gleam of bleaching bones in the long grass;in the long grass that would shoot its feathery heads between the bare and polished ribs.There would be that only left of him;nobody would miss him;no one would remember him.

Nonsense!It could not be.There were ways out of this.

Somebody would turn up.Some human beings would come.He would speak,entreat--use force to extort help from them.He felt strong;he was very strong.He would...The discouragement,the conviction of the futility of his hopes would return in an acute sensation of pain in his heart.He would begin again his aimless wanderings.He tramped till he was ready to drop,without being able to calm by bodily fatigue the trouble of his soul.There was no rest,no peace within the cleared grounds of his prison.There was no relief but in the black release of sleep,of sleep without memory and without dreams;in the sleep coming brutal and heavy,like the lead that kills.To forget in annihilating sleep;to tumble headlong,as if stunned,out of daylight into the night of oblivion,was for him the only,the rare respite from this existence which he lacked the courage to endure--or to end.

He lived,he struggled with the inarticulate delirium of his thoughts under the eyes of the silent Aissa.She shared his torment in the poignant wonder,in the acute longing,in the despairing inability to understand the cause of his anger and of his repulsion;the hate of his looks;the mystery of his silence;the menace of his rare words--of those words in the speech of white people that were thrown at her with rage,with contempt,with the evident desire to hurt her;to hurt her who had given herself,her life--all she had to give--to that white man;to hurt her who had wanted to show him the way to true greatness,who had tried to help him,in her woman's dream of everlasting,enduring,unchangeable affection.From the short contact with the whites in the crashing collapse of her old life,there remained with her the imposing idea of irresistible power and of ruthless strength.She had found a man of their race--and with all their qualities.All whites are alike.But this man's heart was full of anger against his own people,full of anger existing there by the side of his desire of her.And to her it had been an intoxication of hope for great things born in the proud and tender consciousness of her influence.She had heard the passing whisper of wonder and fear in the presence of his hesitation,of his resistance,of his compromises;and yet with a woman's belief in the durable steadfastness of hearts,in the irresistible charm of her own personality,she had pushed him forward,trusting the future,blindly,hopefully;sure to attain by his side the ardent desire of her life,if she could only push him far beyond the possibility of retreat.She did not know,and could not conceive,anything of his--so exalted--ideals.She thought the man a warrior and a chief,ready for battle,violence,and treachery to his own people--for her.What more natural?Was he not a great,strong man?Those two,surrounded each by the impenetrable wall of their aspirations,were hopelessly alone,out of sight,out of earshot of each other;each the centre of dissimilar and distant horizons;standing each on a different earth,under a different sky.She remembered his words,his eyes,his trembling lips,his outstretched hands;she remembered the great,the immeasurable sweetness of her surrender,that beginning of her power which was to last until death.He remembered the quaysides and the warehouses;the excitement of a life in a whirl of silver coins;the glorious uncertainty of a money hunt;his numerous successes,the lost possibilities of wealth and consequent glory.She,a woman,was the victim of her heart,of her woman's belief that there is nothing in the world but love--the everlasting thing.He was the victim of his strange principles,of his continence,of his blind belief in himself,of his solemn veneration for the voice of his boundless ignorance.

In a moment of his idleness,of suspense,of discouragement,she had come--that creature--and by the touch of her hand had destroyed his future,his dignity of a clever and civilized man;had awakened in his breast the infamous thing which had driven him to what he had done,and to end miserably in the wilderness and be forgotten,or else remembered with hate or contempt.He dared not look at her,because now whenever he looked at her his thought seemed to touch crime,like an outstretched hand.She could only look at him--and at nothing else.What else was there?She followed him with a timorous gaze,with a gaze for ever expecting,patient,and entreating.And in her eyes there was the wonder and desolation of an animal that knows only suffering,of the incomplete soul that knows pain but knows not hope;that can find no refuge from the facts of life in the illusory conviction of its dignity,of an exalted destiny beyond;in the heavenly consolation of a belief in the momentous origin of its hate.

For the first three days after Lingard went away he would not even speak to her.She preferred his silence to the sound of hated and incomprehensible words he had been lately addressing to her with a wild violence of manner,passing at once into complete apathy.And during these three days he hardly ever left the river,as if on that muddy bank he had felt himself nearer to his freedom.He would stay late;he would stay till sunset;he would look at the glow of gold passing away amongst sombre clouds in a bright red flush,like a splash of warm blood.It seemed to him ominous and ghastly with a foreboding of violent death that beckoned him from everywhere--even from the sky.

One evening he remained by the riverside long after sunset,regardless of the night mist that had closed round him,had wrapped him up and clung to him like a wet winding-sheet.Aslight shiver recalled him to his senses,and he walked up the courtyard towards his house.Aissa rose from before the fire,that glimmered red through its own smoke,which hung thickening under the boughs of the big tree.She approached him from the side as he neared the plankway of the house.He saw her stop to let him begin his ascent.In the darkness her figure was like the shadow of a woman with clasped hands put out beseechingly.He stopped--could not help glancing at her.In all the sombre gracefulness of the straight figure,her limbs,features--all was indistinct and vague but the gleam of her eyes in the faint starlight.He turned his head away and moved on.He could feel her footsteps behind him on the bending planks,but he walked up without turning his head.He knew what she wanted.She wanted to come in there.He shuddered at the thought of what might happen in the impenetrable darkness of that house if they were to find themselves alone--even for a moment.He stopped in the doorway,and heard her say--"Let me come in.Why this anger?Why this silence?...Let me watch ..by your side...Have I not watched faithfully?

Did harm ever come to you when you closed your eyes while I was by?...I have waited...I have waited for your smile,for your words...I can wait no more...Look at me...speak to me.Is there a bad spirit in you?A bad spirit that has eaten up your courage and your love?Let me touch you.

Forget all...All.Forget the wicked hearts,the angry faces...and remember only the day I came to you...to you!O my heart!O my life!"The pleading sadness of her appeal filled the space with the tremor of her low tones,that carried tenderness and tears into the great peace of the sleeping world.All around them the forests,the clearings,the river,covered by the silent veil of night,seemed to wake up and listen to her words in attentive stillness.After the sound of her voice had died out in a stifled sigh they appeared to listen yet;and nothing stirred among the shapeless shadows but the innumerable fireflies that twinkled in changing clusters,in gliding pairs,in wandering and solitary points--like the glimmering drift of scattered star-dust.

Willems turned round slowly,reluctantly,as if compelled by main force.Her face was hidden in her hands,and he looked above her bent head,into the sombre brilliance of the night.It was one of those nights that give the impression of extreme vastness,when the sky seems higher,when the passing puffs of tepid breeze seem to bring with them faint whispers from beyond the stars.

The air was full of sweet scent,of the scent charming,penetrating.and violent like the impulse of love.He looked into that great dark place odorous with the breath of life,with the mystery of existence,renewed,fecund,indestructible;and he felt afraid of his solitude,of the solitude of his body,of the loneliness of his soul in the presence of this unconscious and ardent struggle,of this lofty indifference,of this merciless and mysterious purpose,perpetuating strife and death through the march of ages.For the second time in his life he felt,in a sudden sense of his significance,the need to send a cry for help into the wilderness,and for the second time he realized the hopelessness of its unconcern.He could shout for help on every side--and nobody would answer.He could stretch out his hands,he could call for aid,for support,for sympathy,for relief--and nobody would come.Nobody.There was no one there--but that woman.

His heart was moved,softened with pity at his own abandonment.

His anger against her,against her who was the cause of all his misfortunes,vanished before his extreme need for some kind of consolation.Perhaps--if he must resign himself to his fate--she might help him to forget.To forget!For a moment,in an access of despair so profound that it seemed like the beginning of peace,he planned the deliberate descent from his pedestal,the throwing away of his superiority,of all his hopes,of old ambitions,of the ungrateful civilization.For a moment,forgetfulness in her arms seemed possible;and lured by that possibility the semblance of renewed desire possessed his breast in a burst of reckless contempt for everything outside himself--in a savage disdain of Earth and of Heaven.He said to himself that he would not repent.The punishment for his only sin was too heavy.There was no mercy under Heaven.He did not want any.He thought,desperately,that if he could find with her again the madness of the past,the strange delirium that had changed him,that had worked his undoing,he would be ready to pay for it with an eternity of perdition.He was intoxicated by the subtle perfumes of the night;he was carried away by the suggestive stir of the warm breeze;he was possessed by the exaltation of the solitude,of the silence,of his memories,in the presence of that figure offering herself in a submissive and patient devotion;coming to him in the name of the past,in the name of those days when he could see nothing,think of nothing,desire nothing--but her embrace.