CHAPTER THREE
The opportunity and the temptation were too much for Willems, and
under the pressure of sudden necessity he abused that trust which
was his pride, the perpetual sign of his cleverness and a load
too heavy for him to carry. A run of bad luck at cards, the
failure of a small speculation undertaken on his own account, an
unexpected demand for money from one or another member of the Da
Souza family--and almost before he was well aware of it he was
off the path of his peculiar honesty. It was such a faint and
ill-defined track that it took him some time to find out how far
he had strayed amongst the brambles of the dangerous wilderness
he had been skirting for so many years, without any other guide
than his own convenience and that doctrine of success which he
had found for himself in the book of life--in those interesting
chapters that the Devil has been permitted to write in it, to
test the sharpness of men's eyesight and the steadfastness of
their hearts. For one short, dark and solitary moment he was
dismayed, but he had that courage that will not scale heights,
yet will wade bravely through the mud--if there be no other road.
He applied himself to the task of restitution, and devoted
himself to the duty of not being found out. On his thirtieth
birthday he had almost accomplished the task--and the duty had
been faithfully and cleverly performed. He saw himself safe.
Again he could look hopefully towards the goal of his legitimate
ambition. Nobody would dare to suspect him, and in a few days
there would be nothing to suspect. He was elated. He did not
know that his prosperity had touched then its high-water mark,
and that the tide was already on the turn.
Two days afterwards he knew. Mr. Vinck, hearing the rattle of
the door-handle, jumped up from his desk--where he had been
tremulously listening to the loud voices in the private
office--and buried his face in the big safe with nervous haste.
For the last time Willems passed through the little green door
leading to Hudig's sanctum, which, during the past half-hour,
might have been taken--from the fiendish noise within--for the
cavern of some wild beast. Willems' troubled eyes took in the
quick impression of men and things as he came out from the place
of his humiliation. He saw the scared expression of the punkah
boy; the Chinamen tellers sitting on their heels with unmovable
faces turned up blankly towards him while their arrested hands
hovered over the little piles of bright guilders ranged on the
floor; Mr. Vinck's shoulder-blades with the fleshy rims of two
red ears above. He saw the long avenue of gin cases stretching
from where he stood to the arched doorway beyond which he would
be able to breathe perhaps. A thin rope's end lay across his
path and he saw it distinctly, yet stumbled heavily over it as if
it had been a bar of iron. Then he found himself in the street
at last, but could not find air enough to fill his lungs. He
walked towards his home, gasping.
As the sound of Hudig's insults that lingered in his ears grew
fainter by the lapse of time, the feeling of shame was replaced
slowly by a passion of anger against himself and still more
against the stupid concourse of circumstances that had driven him
into his idiotic indiscretion. Idiotic indiscretion; that is how
he defined his guilt to himself. Could there be anything worse
from the point of view of his undeniable cleverness? What a
fatal aberration of an acute mind! He did not recognize himself
there. He must have been mad. That's it. A sudden gust of
madness. And now the work of long years was destroyed utterly.
What would become of him?
Before he could answer that question he found himself in the
garden before his house, Hudig's wedding gift. He looked at it
with a vague surprise to find it there. His past was so utterly
gone from him that the dwelling which belonged to it appeared to
him incongruous standing there intact, neat, and cheerful in the
sunshine of the hot afternoon. The house was a pretty little
structure all doors and windows, surrounded on all sides by the
deep verandah supported on slender columns clothed in the green
foliage of creepers, which also fringed the overhanging eaves of
the high-pitched roof. Slowly, Willems mounted the dozen steps
that led to the verandah. He paused at every step. He must tell
his wife. He felt frightened at the prospect, and his alarm
dismayed him. Frightened to face her! Nothing could give him a
better measure of the greatness of the change around him, and in
him. Another man--and another life with the faith in himself
gone. He could not be worth much if he was afraid to face that
woman.
He dared not enter the house through the open door of the
dining-room, but stood irresolute by the little work-table where
trailed a white piece of calico, with a needle stuck in it, as if
the work had been left hurriedly. The pink-crested cockatoo
started, on his appearance, into clumsy activity and began to
climb laboriously up and down his perch, calling "Joanna" with
indistinct loudness and a persistent screech that prolonged the
last syllable of the name as if in a peal of insane laughter.
The screen in the doorway moved gently once or twice in the
breeze, and each time Willems started slightly, expecting his
wife, but he never lifted his eyes, although straining his ears
for the sound of her footsteps. Gradually he lost himself in his
thoughts, in the endless speculation as to the manner in which
she would receive his news--and his orders. In this
preoccupationhe almost forgot the fear of her presence. No doubt
she will cry, she will lament, she will be helpless and
frightened and passive as ever. And he would have to drag that
limp weight on and on through the darkness of a spoiled life.
Horrible! Of course he could not abandon her and the child to
certain misery or possible starvation. The wife and the child of
Willems. Willems the successful, the smart; Willems the conf . .
. . Pah! And what was Willems now? Willems the. . . . He
strangled the half-born thought, and cleared his throat to stifle
a groan. Ah! Won't they talk to-night in the billiard-room--his
world, where he had been first--all those men to whom he had been
so superciliously condescending. Won't they talk with surprise,
and affected regret, and grave faces, and wise nods. Some of
them owed him money, but he never pressed anybody. Not he.
Willems, the prince of good fellows, they called him. And now
they will rejoice, no doubt, at his downfall. A crowd of
imbeciles. In his abasement he was yet aware of his superiority
over those fellows, who were merely honest or simply not found
out yet. A crowd of imbeciles! He shook his fist at the evoked
image of his friends, and the startled parrot fluttered its wings
and shrieked in desperate fright.
In a short glance upwards Willems saw his wife come round the
corner of the house. He lowered his eyelids quickly, and waited
silently till she came near and stood on the other side of the
little table. He would not look at her face, but he could see
the red dressing-gown he knew so well. She trailed through life
in that red dressing-gown, with its row of dirty blue bows down
the front, stained, and hooked on awry; a torn flounce at the
bottom following her like a snake as she moved languidly about,
with her hair negligently caught up, and a tangled wisp
straggling untidily down her back. His gaze travelled upwards
from bow to bow, noticing those that hung only by a thread, but
it did not go beyond her chin. He looked at her lean throat, at
the obtrusive collarbone visible in the disarray of the upper
part of her attire. He saw the thin arm and the bony hand
clasping the child she carried, and he felt an immense distaste
for those encumbrances of his life. He waited for her to say
something, but as he felt her eyes rest on him in unbroken
silence he sighed and began to speak.
It was a hard task. He spoke slowly, lingering amongst the
memories of this early life in his reluctance to confess that
this was the end of it and the beginning of a less splendid
existence. In his conviction of having made her happiness in the
full satisfaction of all material wants he never doubted for a
moment that she was ready to keep him company on no matter how
hard and stony a road. He was not elated by this certitude. He
had married her to please Hudig, and the greatness of his
sacrifice ought to have made her happy without any further
exertion on his part. She had years of glory as Willems' wife,
and years of comfort, of loyal care, and of such tenderness as
she deserved. He had guarded her carefully from any bodily hurt;
and of any other suffering he had no conception. The assertion
of his superiority was only another benefit conferred on her.
All this was a matter of course, but he told her all this so as
to bring vividly before her the greatness of her loss. She was
so dull of understanding that she would not grasp it else. And
now it was at an end. They would have to go. Leave this house,
leave this island, go far away where he was unknown. To the
English Strait-Settlements perhaps. He would find an opening
there for his abilities--and juster men to deal with than old
Hudig. He laughed bitterly.
"You have the money I left at home this morning, Joanna?" he
asked. "We will want it all now."
As he spoke those words he thought he was a fine fellow. Nothing
new that. Still, he surpassed there his own expectations. Hang
it all, there are sacred things in life, after all. The marriage
tie was one of them, and he was not the man to break it. The
solidity of his principles caused him great satisfaction, but he
did not care to look at his wife, for all that. He waited for
her to speak. Then he would have to console her; tell her not to
be a crying fool; to get ready to go. Go where? How? When? He
shook his head. They must leave at once; that was the principal
thing. He felt a sudden need to hurry up his departure.
"Well, Joanna," he said, a little impatiently---"don't stand
there in a trance. Do you hear? We must. . . ."
He looked up at his wife, and whatever he was going to add
remained unspoken. She was staring at him with her big, slanting
eyes, that seemed to him twice their natural size. The child,
its dirty little face pressed to its mother's shoulder, was
sleeping peacefully. The deep silence of the house was not
broken, but rather accentuated, by the low mutter of the
cockatoo, now very still on its perch. As Willems was looking at
Joanna her upper lip was drawn up on one side, giving to her
melancholy face a vicious expression altogether new to his
experience. He stepped back in his surprise.
"Oh! You great man!" she said distinctly, but in a voice that
was hardly above a whisper.
Those words, and still more her tone, stunned him as if somebody
had fired a gun close to his ear. He stared back at her
stupidly.
"Oh! you great man!" she repeated slowly, glancing right and left
as if meditating a sudden escape. "And you think that I am going
to starve with you. You are nobody now. You think my mamma and
Leonard would let me go away? And with you! With you," she
repeated scornfully, raising her voice, which woke up the child
and caused it to whimper feebly.
"Joanna!" exclaimed Willems.
"Do not speak to me. I have heard what I have waited for all
these years. You are less than dirt, you that have wiped your
feet on me. I have waited for this. I am not afraid now. I do
not want you; do not come near me. Ah-h!" she screamed shrilly,
as he held out his hand in an entreating gesture--"Ah! Keep off
me! Keep off me! Keep off!"
She backed away, looking at him with eyes both angry and
frightened. Willems stared motionless, in dumb amazement at the
mystery of anger and revolt in the head of his wife. Why? What
had he ever done to her? This was the day of injustice indeed.
First Hudig--and now his wife. He felt a terror at this hate
that had lived stealthily so near him for years. He tried to
speak, but she shrieked again, and it was like a needle through
his heart. Again he raised his hand.
"Help!" called Mrs. Willems, in a piercing voice. "Help!"
"Be quiet! You fool!" shouted Willems, trying to drown the noise
of his wife and child in his own angry accents and rattling
violently the little zinc table in his exasperation.
From under the house, where there were bathrooms and a tool
closet, appeared Leonard, a rusty iron bar in his hand. He
called threateningly from the bottom of the stairs.
"Do not hurt her, Mr. Willems. You are a savage. Not at all
like we, whites."
"You too!" said the bewildered Willems. "I haven't touched her.
Is this a madhouse?" He moved towards the stairs, and Leonard
dropped the bar with a clang and made for the gate of the
compound. Willems turned back to his wife.
"So you expected this," he said. "It is a conspiracy. Who's that
sobbing and groaning in the room? Some more of your precious
family. Hey?"
She was more calm now, and putting hastily the crying child in
the big chair walked towards him with sudden fearlessness.
"My mother," she said, "my mother who came to defend me from
you--man from nowhere; a vagabond!"
"You did not call me a vagabond when you hung round my
neck--before we were married," said Willems, contemptuously.
"You took good care that I should not hang round your neck after
we were," she answered, clenching her hands, and putting her face
close to his. "You boasted while I suffered and said nothing.
What has become of your greatness; of our greatness--you were
always speaking about? Now I am going to live on the charity of
your master. Yes. That is true. He sent Leonard to tell me so.
And you will go and boast somewhere else, and starve. So! Ah!
I can breathe now! This house is mine."
"Enough!" said Willems, slowly, with an arresting gesture.
She leaped back, the fright again in her eyes, snatched up the
child, pressed it to her breast, and, falling into a chair,
drummed insanely with her heels on the resounding floor of the
verandah.
"I shall go," said Willems, steadily. "I thank you. For the
first time in your life you make me happy. You were a stone
round my neck; you understand. I did not mean to tell you that
as long as you lived, but you made me--now. Before I pass this
gate you shall be gone from my mind. You made it very easy. I
thank you."
He turned and went down the steps without giving her a glance,
while she sat upright and quiet, with wide-open eyes, the child
crying querulously in her arms. At the gate he came suddenly
upon Leonard, who had been dodging about there and failed to get
out of the way in time.
"Do not be brutal, Mr. Willems," said Leonard, hurriedly. "It is
unbecoming between white men with all those natives looking on."
Leonard's legs trembled very much, and his voice wavered between
high and low tones without any attempt at control on his part.
"Restrain your improper violence," he went on mumbling rapidly.
"I am a respectable man of very good family, while you . . . it
is regrettable . . . they all say so . . ."
"What?" thundered Willems. He felt a sudden impulse of mad
anger, and before he knew what had happened he was looking at
Leonard da Souza rolling in the dust at his feet. He stepped
over his prostrate brother-in-law and tore blindly down the
street, everybody making way for the frantic white man.
When he came to himself he was beyond the outskirts of the town,
stumbling on the hard and cracked earth of reaped rice fields.
How did he get there? It was dark. He must get back. As he
walked towards the town slowly, his mind reviewed the events of
the day and he felt a sense of bitter loneliness. His wife had
turned him out of his own house. He had assaulted brutally his
brother-in-law, a member of the Da Souza family--of that band of
his worshippers. He did. Well, no! It was some other man.
Another man was coming back. A man without a past, without a
future, yet full of pain and shame and anger. He stopped and
looked round. A dog or two glided across the empty street and
rushed past him with a frightened snarl. He was now in the midst
of the Malay quarter whose bamboo houses, hidden in the verdure
of their little gardens, were dark and silent. Men, women and
children slept in there. Human beings. Would he ever sleep, and
where? He felt as if he was the outcast of all mankind, and as
he looked hopelessly round, before resuming his weary march, it
seemed to him that the world was bigger, the night more vast and
more black; but he went on doggedly with his head down as if
pushing his way through some thick brambles. Then suddenly he
felt planks under his feet and, looking up, saw the red light at
the end of the jetty. He walked quite to the end and stood
leaning against the post, under the lamp, looking at the
roadstead where two vessels at anchor swayed their slender
rigging amongst the stars. The end of the jetty; and here in one
step more the end of life; the end of everything. Better so.
What else could he do? Nothing ever comes back. He saw it
clearly. The respect and admiration of them all, the old habits
and old affections finished abruptly in the clear perception of
the cause of his disgrace. He saw all this; and for a time he
came out of himself, out of his selfishness--out of the constant
preoccupation of his interests and his desires--out of the temple
of self and the concentration of personal thought.
His thoughts now wandered home. Standing in the tepid stillness
of a starry tropical night he felt the breath of the bitter east
wind, he saw the high and narrow fronts of tall houses under the
gloom of a clouded sky; and on muddy quays he saw the shabby,
high-shouldered figure--the patient, faded face of the weary man
earning bread for the children that waited for him in a dingy
home. It was miserable, miserable. But it would never come
back. What was there in common between those things and Willems
the clever, Willems the successful. He had cut himself adrift
from that home many years ago. Better for him then. Better for
them now. All this was gone, never to come back again; and
suddenly he shivered, seeing himself alone in the presence of
unknown and terrible dangers.
For the first time in his life he felt afraid of the future,
because he had lost his faith, the faith in his own success. And
he had destroyed it foolishly with his own hands!
