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TALES OF UNREST

BY

JOSEPH CONRAD



"Be it thy course to being giddy minds
With foreign quarrels."
-- SHAKESPEARE



TO
ADOLF P. KRIEGER
FOR THE SAKE OF
OLD DAYS



CONTENTS

KARAIN: A MEMORY
THE IDIOTS
AN OUTPOST OF PROGRESS
THE RETURN
THE LAGOON



AUTHOR'S NOTE

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

"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."

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.

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.

J. C.





TALES OF UNREST



KARAIN A MEMORY


I

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.


II

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.


III

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.

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.

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.

"We did not hear your boat's hail!" I exclaimed.

"Boat! The man's swum off," drawled out Hollis from the locker. "Look
at him!"

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.

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.

"What's that?" asked Hollis, who had not heard.

"He apologizes for coming in with a weapon in his hand," I said,
dazedly.

"Ceremonious beggar. Tell him we forgive a friend . . . on such a
night," drawled out Hollis. "What's wrong?"

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.

"All right now," he said.

Karain's lips moved slightly. A vivid flash of lightning made the two
round sternports 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.

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--

"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 . . ."

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--

"Be firm."

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--

"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."

He was silent for a while, then exclaimed softly--

"Oh! the strength of unbelievers!"

"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.

"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."

He turned to me.

"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!"

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--

"Where is the danger?"

"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."

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.

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.


IV

This is, imperfectly, what he said--

"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.

"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.

"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.

"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.

"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.

"On the third night we two left our land together in a trading prau.

"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.'

"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!'

"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.

"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.

"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.

"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! . . ."

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.

"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.

"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.

"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!

"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.

"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!

"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!'

"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.

"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.

"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."


V

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.

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.

"I lived in the forest.

"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.

"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.

"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.'

"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.

"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? . . ."

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--

"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 . . ."

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--

"You must abide with your people. They need you. And there is
forgetfulness in life. Even the dead cease to speak in time."

"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--

"You won't soothe him with your platitudes."

Karain spoke to me.

"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!"

"Capital description," murmured Hollis, with the flicker of a smile.

Karain hung his head.

"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! . . ."

He seemed utterly exhausted.

"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."

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.

He lifted his head suddenly; we had imagined for a moment that he had
been dozing.

"Give me your protection--or your strength!" he cried. "A charm . . .
a weapon!"

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.

"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.

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!

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."

Probably we looked only surprised and stupid, for he glanced over his
shoulder, and said angrily--

"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!"

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.


VI

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.

"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 . . ."

He paused. Karain stared. A deep rumble was heard high up under the
deck. Jackson spoke seriously--

"Don't be so beastly cynical."

"Ah! You are without guile," said Hollis, sadly. "You will learn . . .
Meantime this Malay has been our friend . . ."

He repeated several times thoughtfully, "Friend . . . Malay. Friend,
Malay," as though weighing the words against one another, then went on
more briskly--

"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 . . ."

He turned to me sharply.

"You know him best," he said, in a practical tone. "Do you think he is
fanatical--I mean very strict in his faith?"

I stammered in profound amazement that "I did not think so."

"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.

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 . . .

Hollis rummaged in the box.

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.

"Ah! here it is," he said.

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.

"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 . . ."

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.

"This is the image of the Great Queen, and the most powerful thing the
white men know," he said, solemnly.

Karain covered the handle of his kriss in sign of respect, and stared
at the crowned head.

"The Invincible, the Pious," he muttered.

"She is more powerful than Suleiman the Wise, who commanded the genii,
as you know," said Hollis, gravely. "I shall give this to you."

He held the sixpence in the palm of his hand, and looking at it
thoughtfully, spoke to us in English.

"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."

"His people will be shocked," I murmured.

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.

"Hang it all!" said Hollis at last, "he is a good fellow. I'll give
him something that I shall really miss."

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.

"I shall make him a thing like those Italian peasants wear, you know."

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.

"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--

"He is young, but he is wise. Believe him!"

Karain bent his head: Hollis threw lightly over it the dark-blue
ribbon and stepped back.

"Forget, and be at peace!" I cried.

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.

"Time to go on deck," said Jackson.

Hollis put on a coat, and we went up, Karain leading.

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.

"He is not there," I said, emphatically, to Karain. "He waits no more.
He has departed forever."

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.

"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!"

He turned to us.

"He has departed again--forever!" he cried.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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--

"Do you remember Karain?"

I nodded.

"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."

We walked on.

"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--"

I stood still and looked at him.

"Yes . . . I mean, whether the thing was so, you know . . . whether it
really happened to him. . . . What do you think?"

"My dear chap," I cried, "you have been too long away from home. What
a question to ask! Only look at all this."

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.

"Ye-e-e-s," said Jackson, meditatively.

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.

"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.

"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."

I think that, decidedly, he had been too long away from home.



THE IDIOTS

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--

"The idiot!"

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.

"Here he is," said the driver, again.

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.

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.

"Ah! there's another," said the man, with a certain satisfaction in
his tone, as if he had caught sight of something expected.

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.

"Those are twins," explained the driver.

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.

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--

"We shall see some more of them by-and-by."

"More idiots? How many of them are there, then?" I asked.

"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."

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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!"

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--

"When they sleep they are like other people's children."

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--

"We must see . . . consult people. Don't cry. . . . They won't all be
like that . . . surely! We must sleep now."

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.

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.

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.

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 . . ."

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--

"See what your God will do for us. Pay for some masses."

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.

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.

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--

"What do you think is there?"

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--

"Hey there! Come out!"

"Jean! Return! Return!" entreated his wife in low tones.

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.

"Hey! Come out!" shouted Jean-Pierre, loudly.

The nightingales ceased to sing.

"Nobody?" went on Jean-Pierre. "Nobody there. A swindle of the crows.
That's what this is. Nobody anywhere. I despise it. Allez! Houp!"

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--

"See? Nobody. I've been made a fool! Malheur! 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. . . ."

She burst out through the fingers that hid her face--

"Don't say that, Jean; don't say that, my man!"

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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--

"Mother!"

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.

Susan, soaked and muddy, stared the whole length of the room towards
the men at the far end. Her mother asked--

"What has happened? God guard us from misfortune!"

Susan moved her lips. No sound came. Madame Levaille stepped up to her
daughter, took her by the arm, looked into her face.

"In God's name," she said, shakily, "what's the matter? You have been
rolling in mud. . . . Why did you come? . . . Where's Jean?"

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--

"Enough of this! Out you go--you others! I close."

One of them observed, looking down at Susan collapsed on the seat:
"She is--one may say--half dead."

Madame Levaille flung the door open.

"Get out! March!" she cried, shaking nervously.

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.

"Speak, Susan. What is it? Speak!" entreated Madame Levaille, as soon
as the door was shut.

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--

"Does Jean know where you are? Where is Jean?"

"He knows . . . he is dead."

"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?"

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.

Suddenly, Susan said--

"I have killed him."

For a moment the mother stood still, almost unbreathing, but with
composed face. The next second she burst out into a shout--

"You miserable madwoman . . . they will cut your neck. . . ."

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--

"Why? Say! Say! Why?"

The other seemed to leap out of her strange apathy.

"Do you think I am made of stone?" she shouted back, striding towards
her mother.

"No! It's impossible. . . ." said Madame Levaille, in a convinced
tone.

"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?"

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--

"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!"

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.

"Nothing worse than in this," said Susan.

Her mother, umbrella in hand and trailing the shawl over the floor,
groaned profoundly.

"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."

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.

"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. . . ."

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.

"Susan!" she shouted from the doorstep.

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--

"Susan! You will kill yourself there."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. . . ."

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. . . .

Below her the night or the sea seemed to pronounce distinctly--

"Aha! I see you at last!"

She started, slipped, fell; and without attempting to rise, listened,
terrified. She heard heavy breathing, a clatter of wooden clogs. It
stopped.

"Where the devil did you pass?" said an invisible man, hoarsely.

She held her breath. She recognized the voice. She had not seen him
fall. Was he pursuing her there dead, or perhaps . . . alive?

She lost her head. She cried from the crevice where she lay huddled,
"Never, never!"

"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. . . ."

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?"

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.

"Where are you going to?" he called, roughly.

She answered, "Home!" and watched him intensely. He made a striding,
clumsy leap on to another boulder, and stopped again, balancing
himself, then said--

"Ha! ha! Well, I am going with you. It's the least I can do. Ha! ha!
ha!"

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.

The man said, advancing another step--

"I am coming for you. What do you think?"

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--

"Can't you wait till I am dead!"

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.

"Hey! What?" said Millot, keeping his distance prudently. He was
saying to himself: "Look out! Some lunatic. An accident happens soon."

She went on, wildly--

"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!"

"Come," said Millot, alarmed and conciliating. "I am perfectly alive!
. . . Oh, my God!"

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.

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!"

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--

"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."

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."



AN OUTPOST OF PROGRESS


I

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."

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!"

"They will form themselves there," said the old stager with a quiet
smile.

"At any rate, I am rid of them for six months," retorted the
director.

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.

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."

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.

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 appoint-
ment 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.

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!"

Carlier, smoking native tobacco in a short wooden pipe, would swagger
up twirling his moustaches, and surveying the warriors with haughty
indulgence, would say--

"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."

Kayerts approved.

"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."

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."

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.

Five months passed in that way.

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.

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.

"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."

"Yes," replied Kayerts. "Hey, Makola, what does he say? Where do they
come from? Who are they?"

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."

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.

"I don't like those chaps--and, I say, Kayerts, they must be from the
coast; they've got firearms," observed the sagacious Carlier.

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."

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.

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.

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."


II

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.

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?"

"Yes," said Kayerts, eagerly. He thought of percentages which were
low.

"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."

"Certainly," said Kayerts. "What are those traders?"

"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?"

"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."

"I can't help it; the men won't work," said Kayerts. "When will you
get that ivory?"

"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."

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.

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!"

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.

"I can hardly believe it," said Kayerts, tearfully. "We took care of
them as if they had been our children."

"They went with the coast people," said Makola after a moment of
hesitation.

"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?"

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."

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.

"What did you give for it?" asked Kayerts, after surveying the lot
with satisfaction.

"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."

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.

"I did the best for you and the Company," said Makola, imperturbably.
"Why you shout so much? Look at this tusk."

"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!"

"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.

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.

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?"

"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."

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--

"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?"

"We can't touch it, of course," said Kayerts.

"Of course not," assented Carlier.

"Slavery is an awful thing," stammered out Kayerts in an unsteady
voice.

"Frightful--the sufferings," grunted Carlier with conviction.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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."

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."

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.

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!"

"For the sick," muttered Kayerts, without looking up.

"For the sick," mocked Carlier. "Bosh! . . . Well! I am sick."

"You are no more sick than I am, and I go without," said Kayerts in a
peaceful tone.

"Come! out with that sugar, you stingy old slave-dealer."

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--

"That joke is in very bad taste. Don't repeat it."

"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!"

"I forbid you to speak to me in that way," said Kayerts with a fair
show of resolution.

"You!--What?" shouted Carlier, jumping up.

Kayerts stood up also. "I am your chief," he began, trying to master
the shakiness of his voice.

"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."

"Hold your tongue. Go out of this room," screamed Kayerts. "I dismiss
you--you scoundrel!"

Carlier swung a stool. All at once he looked dangerously in earnest.
"You flabby, good-for-nothing civilian--take that!" he howled.

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."

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.

And now he ran. He ran fast enough to keep out of sight of the other
man.

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.

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!

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.

"Is this your revolver?" asked Makola, getting up.

"Yes," said Kayerts; then he added very quickly, "He ran after me to
shoot me--you saw!"

"Yes, I saw," said Makola. "There is only one revolver; where's his?"

"Don't know," whispered Kayerts in a voice that had become suddenly
very faint.

"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.

After meditating for a while, Makola said softly, pointing at the dead
man who lay there with his right eye blown out--

"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."

And he went away slowly to his expectant wife, leaving the two white
men alone on the verandah.

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.

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!"

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.

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--

"Steamer! Steamer! They can't see. They whistle for the station. I go
ring the bell. Go down to the landing, sir. I ring."

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.

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.

The Director shouted loudly to the steamer:

"There is nobody down to meet us; there may be something wrong, though
they are ringing. You had better come, too!"

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!"

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.



THE RETURN

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 parlourmaid 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

He said very distinctly, and looking at the carpet, "She's gone."

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 . . .

"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.

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.

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!

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!

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.

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.

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.

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 . . .

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.

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."

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

"How long do you intend to stay here?"

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:

"Must I go then?" And he knew he meant nothing of what he implied.

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:

"I don't understand--be so good as to . . ."

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.

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.

"If you have forgotten anything . . . of course . . . I . . ."

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.

"What is the good of this, Alvan? . . . You know why I came back.
. . . You know that I could not . . . "

He interrupted her with irritation.

"Then! what's this?" he asked, pointing downwards at the torn letter.

"That's a mistake," she said hurriedly, in a muffled voice.

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.

"A mistake . . ." he began, slowly, and then found himself unable to
say another word.

"Yes . . . it was honest," she said very low, as if speaking to the
memory of a feeling in a remote past.

He exploded.

"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? . . . "

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.

"You don't know the meaning of the word," he shouted.

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.

He said with villainous composure:

"At any rate it isn't enough for me. I want to know more--if you're
going to stay."

"There is nothing more to tell," she answered, sadly.

It struck him as so very true that he did not say anything. She went
on:

"You wouldn't understand. . . ."

"No?" he said, quietly. He held himself tight not to burst into howls
and imprecations.

"I tried to be faithful . . ." she began again.

"And this?" he exclaimed, pointing at the fragments of her letter.

"This--this is a failure," she said.

"I should think so," he muttered, bitterly.

"I tried to be faithful to myself--Alvan--and . . . and honest to
you. . . ."

"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?"

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.

"I want to know. Everybody knows, I suppose, but myself--and that's
your honesty!"

"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."

"The end--this thing has no end," he clamoured, unexpectedly. "Can't
you understand that? I can . . . The beginning . . ."

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.

"By Heavens!" he said, standing perfectly still in a peering attitude
and within less than a foot from her.

"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!"

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.

"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."

"And I let him," she murmured, catching his intonation, so that her
voice sounded unconscious, sounded far off and slavish, like an echo.

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. . . ."

He forgot himself so far as to gesticulate a little while he went on
with animation:

"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?"

Carried away by his feelings he took his head in both his hands and
repeated wildly:

"What have I done? . . . Tell me! What? . . ."

"Nothing," she said.

"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:

"What on earth did you expect me to do?"

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:

"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 . . ."

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.

"I thought it beneath me to suspect you," he said, loftily.

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.

"You ought to be perfectly frank with me," he said, slowly.

"You know everything," she answered, indistinctly, through her
fingers.

"This letter. . . . Yes . . . but . . ."

"And I came back," she exclaimed in a stifled voice; "you know
everything."

"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.

"For your sake," he repeated.

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--

"Have you been meeting him often?"

"Never!" she cried into the palms of her hands.

This answer seemed for a moment to take from him the power of speech.
His lips moved for some time before any sound came.

"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.

"When I made up my mind to go to him--I wrote," she said.

"But you didn't go to him," he took up in the same tone. "How far did
you go? What made you come back?"

"I didn't know myself," she murmured. Nothing of her moved but her
lips. He fixed her sternly.

"Did he expect this? Was he waiting for you?" he asked.

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--

"And I suppose he is waiting yet?" he asked, quickly.

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.

"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.

"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--

"You deceived me--now you make a fool of him . . . It's awful! Why?"

"I deceived myself!" she exclaimed.

"Oh! Nonsense!" he said, impatiently.

"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.

"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--

"After all, I loved you. . . ."

"I did not know," she whispered.

"Good God!" he cried. "Why do you imagine I married you?"

The indelicacy of his obtuseness angered her.

"Ah--why?" she said through her teeth.

He appeared overcome with horror, and watched her lips intently as
though in fear.

"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."

He walked away smartly, and when he came back, close to her, he had a
flushed face.

"You seemed pretty well pleased, too--at the time," he hissed, with
scathing fury. "I needn't ask whether you loved me."

"I know now I was perfectly incapable of such a thing," she said,
calmly, "If I had, perhaps you would not have married me."

"It's very clear I would not have done it if I had known you--as I
know you now."

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!"

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.

"What the devil am I to do now?"

He was still again. She seemed to understand, and moved to the door
firmly.

"It's very simple--I'm going," she said aloud.

At the sound of her voice he gave a start of surprise, looked at her
wildly, and asked in a piercing tone--

"You. . . . Where? To him?"

"No--alone--good-bye."

The door-handle rattled under her groping hand as though she had been
trying to get out of some dark place.

"No--stay!" he cried.

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.

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--

"Do you speak the truth?"

She nodded.

"You have lived a lie, though," he said, suspiciously.

"Ah! You made it so easy," she answered.

"You reproach me--me!"

"How could I?" she said; "I would have you no other--now."

"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?"

She had a nervous movement of her hands.

"I must have a plain answer," he said, hotly.

"Then, no! The worst is my coming back."

There followed a period of dead silence, during which they exchanged
searching glances.

He said authoritatively--

"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."

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.

"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.

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.

"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!"

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.

"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. . . ."

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.

"Rigid principles--adherence to what is right," he finished after a
pause.

"What is right?" she said, distinctly, without uncovering her face.

"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. . . ."

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.

"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."

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.

"'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! . . ."

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--

"Ah! What am I now?"

"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.

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.

"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?"

"It was impossible," she whispered, obediently.

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--

"I am glad you feel this . . . uncommonly glad . . . you felt this in
time. For, don't you see . . ." Unexpectedly he hesitated.

"Yes . . . I see," she murmured.

"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."

"And to me," she breathed out.

"Now--yes," he said, "but this morning? And to-morrow? . . . This is
what . . ."

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--

"My position is very painful--difficult . . . I feel . . ."

He looked at her fixedly with a pained air, as though frightfully
oppressed by a sudden inability to express his pent-up ideas.

"I am ready to go," she said very low. "I have forfeited everything
. . . to learn . . . to learn . . ."

Her chin fell on her breast; her voice died out in a sigh. He made a
slight gesture of impatient assent.

"Yes! Yes! It's all very well . . . of course. Forfeited--ah!
Morally forfeited--only morally forfeited . . . if I am to believe
you . . ."

She startled him by jumping up.

"Oh! I believe, I believe," he said, hastily, and she sat down as
suddenly as she had got up. He went on gloomily--

"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."

He stammered. She looked up at him with wide eyes, and her lips were
slightly parted. He went on mumbling--

". . . Pain. . . . Indignation. . . . Sure to misunderstand. I've
suffered enough. And if there has been nothing irreparable--as you
assure me . . . then . . ."

"Alvan!" she cried.

"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.

"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."

A moment of perfect stillness ensued.

"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.

"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."

He listened to every word with profound attention, and when she ceased
seemed to wait for more.

"Is that all you've got to say?" he asked.

She was startled by his tone, and said faintly--

"I spoke the truth. What more can I say?"

"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."

"Words!" she whispered in a tone that irritated him. He stamped his
foot.

"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.

"I can't bear this," she said, trembling from head to foot. "I am
going."

They stood facing one another for a moment.

"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.

"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."

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.

"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. . . ."

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.

"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."

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:

"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. . . ."

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.

He lifted his head and repeated solemnly:

"I forgive you . . . from a sense of duty--and in the hope . . ."

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.

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!"

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.

"What's the meaning of this?" he asked, grimly.

She passed her hand over her face and made an attempt to get up.

"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.

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.

"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. . . ."

She pressed both her hands to her temples.

"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."

She dropped her arms; her face twitched. She looked straight into his
eyes and seemed incapable of pronouncing a word. He frowned at her.

"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.

"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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

He spoke suddenly, as if concluding a discussion.

"The best thing for us is to forget all this."

She started a little and shut the fan with a click.

"Yes, forgive--and forget," he repeated, as if to himself.

"I'll never forget," she said in a vibrating voice. "And I'll never
forgive myself. . . ."

"But I, who have nothing to reproach myself . . ." He began, making a
step towards her. She jumped up.

"I did not come back for your forgiveness," she exclaimed,
passionately, as if clamouring against an unjust aspersion.

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:

"But if my love is strong enough . . ." and hesitated.

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:

"'Pon my word, I loved you--I love you now."

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.

She said nervously, and very fast:

"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."

"You won't believe me?" he asked, slowly.

"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.

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.

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.

"This is odious," she screamed.

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.

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!

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 . . .

"Never!" he said aloud to the revealing night.

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.

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.

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.

He stammered distractedly.

"I want . . . I want . . . to . . . to . . . know . . ."

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.

"Alvan . . . I won't bear this . . ." She began to pant suddenly,
"I've a right--a right to--to--myself . . ."

He lifted one arm, and appeared so menacing that she stopped in a
fright and shrank back a little.

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. . . .

"Can you stand it?" he shouted, as though she could have heard all his
thoughts.

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:

"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--

"Yes!"

He was shaken where he stood as if by a struggle to break out of
invisible bonds. She trembled from head to foot.

"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.

He never returned.



THE LAGOON

The white man, leaning with both arms over the roof of the little
house in the stern of the boat, said to the steersman--

"We will pass the night in Arsat's clearing. It is late."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The steersman, pointing with his paddle, said, "Arsat is there. I see
his canoe fast between the piles."

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?

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.

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."

"Pass my blankets and the basket," said the white man, curtly.

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--

"Have you medicine, Tuan?"

"No," said the visitor in a startled tone. "No. Why? Is there sickness
in the house?"

"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.

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.

"Has she been long ill?" asked the traveller.

"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!"

He remained silent for a minute, then asked softly--

"Tuan, will she die?"

"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.

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.

Arsat came through the doorway with noiseless steps and squatted down
by the fire. The white man moved his outstretched legs a little.

"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!"

He paused for a moment, then asked in a quiet, incurious tone--

"Tuan . . . will she die?"

The white man moved his shoulders uneasily and muttered in a
hesitating manner--

"If such is her fate."

"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?"

"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.

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.

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.

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--

". . . 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!"

"I remember," said the white man, quietly. Arsat went on with mournful
composure--

"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."

A sigh, short and faint, marked an almost imperceptible pause, and
then his words flowed on, without a stir, without a gesture.

"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."

He stopped to exclaim in an intense whisper, "O Mara bahia! O
Calamity!" then went on speaking a little louder:

"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."

He paused, listened with his ear turned to the doorway, then shook
his head and went on:

"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!"

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.

Arsat went on in an even, low voice.

"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!"

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.

Arsat's voice vibrated loudly in the profound peace.

"I had her there! I had her! To get her I would have faced all
mankind. But I had her--and--"

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--

"Tuan, I loved my brother."

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--

"We all love our brothers."

Arsat burst out with an intense whispering violence--

"What did I care who died? I wanted peace in my own heart."

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--

"She burns no more."

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.

"I can see nothing," he said half aloud to himself.

"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.

"If you want to come with me, I will wait all the morning," said the
white man, looking away upon the water.

"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."

He drew a long breath and went on in a dreamy tone:

"In a little while I shall see clear enough to strike--to strike. But
she has died, and . . . now . . . darkness."

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.