CHAPTER SIX
As soon as Abdulla and his companions had left the enclosure,
Aissa approached Willems and stood by his side. He took no
notice of her expectant attitude till she touched him gently,
when he turned furiously upon her and, tearing off her face-veil,
trampled upon it as though it had been a mortal enemy. She
looked at him with the faint smile of patient curiosity, with the
puzzled interest of ignorance watching the running of a
complicated piece of machinery. After he had exhausted his rage,
he stood again severe and unbending looking down at the fire, but
the touch of her fingers at the nape of his neck effaced
instantly the hard lines round his mouth; his eyes wavered
uneasily; his lips trembled slightly. Starting with the
unresisting rapidity of a particle of iron--which, quiescent one
moment, leaps in the next to a powerful magnet--he moved forward,
caught her in his arms and pressed her violently to his breast.
He released her as suddenly, and she stumbled a little, stepped
back, breathed quickly through her parted lips, and said in a
tone of pleased reproof--
"O Fool-man! And if you had killed me in your strong arms what
would you have done?"
"You want to live . . . and to run away from me again," he said
gently. "Tell me--do you?"
She moved towards him with very short steps, her head a little on
one side, hands on hips, with a slight balancing of her body: an
approach more tantalizing than an escape. He looked on,
eager--charmed. She spoke jestingly.
"What am I to say to a man who has been away three days from me?
Three!" she repeated, holding up playfully three fingers before
Willems' eyes. He snatched at the hand, but she was on her guard
and whisked it behind her back.
"No!" she said. "I cannot be caught. But I will come. I am
coming myself because I like. Do not move. Do not touch me with
your mighty hands, O child!"
As she spoke she made a step nearer, then another. Willems did
not stir. Pressing against him she stood on tiptoe to look into
his eyes, and her own seemed to grow bigger, glistening and
tender, appealing and promising. With that look she drew the
man's soul away from him through his immobile pupils, and from
Willems' features the spark of reason vanished under her gaze and
was replaced by an appearance of physical well-being, an ecstasy
of the senses which had taken possession of his rigid body; an
ecstasy that drove out regrets, hesitation and doubt, and
proclaimed its terrible work by an appalling aspect of idiotic
beatitude. He never stirred a limb, hardly breathed, but stood
in stiff immobility, absorbing the delight of her close contact
by every pore.
"Closer! Closer!" he murmured.
Slowly she raised her arms, put them over his shoulders, and
clasping her hands at the back of his neck, swung off the full
length of her arms. Her head fell back, the eyelids dropped
slightly, and her thick hair hung straight down: a mass of ebony
touched by the red gleams of the fire. He stood unyielding under
the strain, as solid and motionless as one of the big trees of
the surrounding forests; and his eyes looked at the modelling of
her chin, at the outline of her neck, at the swelling lines of
her bosom, with the famished and concentrated expression of a
starving man looking at food. She drew herself up to him and
rubbed her head against his cheek slowly and gently. He sighed.
She, with her hands still on his shoulders, glanced up at the
placid stars and said--
"The night is half gone. We shall finish it by this fire. By
this fire you shall tell me all: your words and Syed Abdulla's
words; and listening to you I shall forget the three
days--because I am good. Tell me--am I good?"
He said "Yes" dreamily, and she ran off towards the big house.
When she came back, balancing a roll of fine mats on her head, he
had replenished the fire and was ready to help her in arranging a
couch on the side of it nearest to the hut. She sank down with a
quick but gracefully controlled movement, and he threw himself
full length with impatient haste, as if he wished to forestall
somebody. She took his head on her knees, and when he felt her
hands touching his face, her fingers playing with his hair, he
had an expression of being taken possession of; he experienced a
sense of peace, of rest, of happiness, and of soothing delight.
His hands strayed upwards about her neck, and he drew her down so
as to have her face above his. Then he whispered--"I wish I
could die like this--now!" She looked at him with her big sombre
eyes, in which there was no responsive light. His thought was so
remote from her understanding that she let the words pass by
unnoticed, like the breath of the wind, like the flight of a
cloud. Woman though she was, she could not comprehend, in her
simplicity, the tremendous compliment of that speech, that
whisper of deadly happiness, so sincere, so spontaneous, coming
so straight from the heart--like every corruption. It was the
voice of madness, of a delirious peace, of happiness that is
infamous, cowardly, and so exquisite that the debased mind
refuses to contemplate its termination: for to the victims of
such happiness the moment of its ceasing is the beginning afresh
of that torture which is its price.
With her brows slightly knitted in the determined preoccupation
of her own desires, she said--
"Now tell me all. All the words spoken between you and Syed
Abdulla."
Tell what? What words? Her voice recalled back the
consciousness that had departed under her touch, and he became
aware of the passing minutes every one of which was like a
reproach; of those minutes that falling, slow, reluctant,
irresistible into the past, marked his footsteps on the way to
perdition. Not that he had any conviction about it, any notion
of the possible ending on that painful road. It was an
indistinct feeling, a threat of suffering like the confused
warning of coming disease, an inarticulate monition of evil made
up of fear and pleasure, of resignation and of revolt. He was
ashamed of his state of mind. After all, what was he afraid of?
Were those scruples? Why that hesitation to think, to speak of
what he intended doing? Scruples were for imbeciles. His clear
duty was to make himself happy. Did he ever take an oath of
fidelity to Lingard? No. Well then--he would not let any
interest of that old fool stand between Willems and Willems'
happiness. Happiness? Was he not, perchance, on a false track?
Happiness meant money. Much money. At least he had always
thought so till he had experienced those new sensations which . .
.
Aissa's question, repeated impatiently, interrupted his musings,
and looking up at her face shining above him in the dim light of
the fire he stretched his limbs luxuriously and obedient to her
desire, he spoke slowly and hardly above his breath. She, with
her head close to his lips, listened absorbed, interested, in
attentive immobility. The many noises of the great courtyard
were hushed up gradually by the sleep that stilled all voices and
closed all eyes. Then somebody droned out a song with a nasal
drawl at the end of every verse. He stirred. She put her hand
suddenly on his lips and sat upright. There was a feeble
coughing, a rustle of leaves, and then a complete silence took
possession of the land; a silence cold, mournful, profound; more
like death than peace; more hard to bear than the fiercest
tumult. As soon as she removed her hand he hastened to speak, so
insupportable to him was that stillness perfect and absolute in
which his thoughts seemed to ring with the loudness of shouts.
"Who was there making that noise?" he asked.
"I do not know. He is gone now," she answered, hastily. "Tell
me, you will not return to your people; not without me. Not with
me. Do you promise?"
"I have promised already. I have no people of my own. Have I
not told you, that you are everybody to me?"
"Ah, yes," she said, slowly, "but I like to hear you say that
again--every day, and every night, whenever I ask; and never to
be angry because I ask. I am afraid of white women who are
shameless and have fierce eyes." She scanned his features close
for a moment and added:
"Are they very beautiful? They must be."
"I do not know," he whispered, thoughtfully. "And if I ever did
know, looking at you I have forgotten."
"Forgotten! And for three days and two nights you have forgotten
me also! Why? Why were you angry with me when I spoke at first
of Tuan Abdulla, in the days when we lived beside the brook? You
remembered somebody then. Somebody in the land whence you come.
Your tongue is false. You are white indeed, and your heart is
full of deception. I know it. And yet I cannot help believing
you when you talk of your love for me. But I am afraid!"
He felt flattered and annoyed by her vehemence, and said--
"Well, I am with you now. I did come back. And it was you that
went away."
"When you have helped Abdulla against the Rajah Laut, who is the
first of white men, I shall not be afraid any more," she
whispered.
"You must believe what I say when I tell you that there never was
another woman; that there is nothing for me to regret, and
nothing but my enemies to remember."
"Where do you come from?" she said, impulsive and inconsequent,
in a passionate whisper. "What is that land beyond the great sea
from which you come? A land of lies and of evil from which
nothing but misfortune ever comes to us--who are not white. Did
you not at first ask me to go there with you? That is why I went
away."
"I shall never ask you again."
"And there is no woman waiting for you there?"
"No!" said Willems, firmly.
She bent over him. Her lips hovered above his face and her long
hair brushed his cheeks.
"You taught me the love of your people which is of the Devil,"
she murmured, and bending still lower, she said faintly, "Like
this?"
"Yes, like this!" he answered very low, in a voice that trembled
slightly with eagerness; and she pressed suddenly her lips to his
while he closed his eyes in an ecstasy of delight.
There was a long interval of silence. She stroked his head with
gentle touches, and he lay dreamily, perfectly happy but for the
annoyance of an indistinct vision of a well-known figure; a man
going away from him and diminishing in a long perspective of
fantastic trees, whose every leaf was an eye looking after that
man, who walked away growing smaller, but never getting out of
sight for all his steady progress. He felt a desire to see him
vanish, a hurried impatience of his disappearance, and he watched
for it with a careful and irksome effort. There was something
familiar about that figure. Why! Himself! He gave a sudden
start and opened his eyes, quivering with the emotion of that
quick return from so far, of finding himself back by the fire
with the rapidity of a flash of lightning. It had been half a
dream; he had slumbered in her arms for a few seconds. Only the
beginning of a dream--nothing more. But it was some time before
he recovered from the shock of seeing himself go away so
deliberately, so definitely, so unguardedly; and going
away--where? Now, if he had not woke up in time he would never
have come back again from there; from whatever place he was going
to. He felt indignant. It was like an evasion, like a prisoner
breaking his parole--that thing slinking off stealthily while he
slept. He was very indignant, and was also astonished at the
absurdity of his own emotions.
She felt him tremble, and murmuring tender words, pressed his
head to her breast. Again he felt very peaceful with a peace
that was as complete as the silence round them. He muttered--
"You are tired, Aissa."
She answered so low that it was like a sigh shaped into faint
words.
"I shall watch your sleep, O child!"
He lay very quiet, and listened to the beating of her heart.
That sound, light, rapid, persistent, and steady; her very life
beating against his cheek, gave him a clear perception of secure
ownership, strengthened his belief in his possession of that
human being, was like an assurance of the vague felicity of the
future. There were no regrets, no doubts, no hesitation now.
Had there ever been? All that seemed far away, ages ago--as
unreal and pale as the fading memory of some delirium. All the
anguish, suffering, strife of the past days; the humiliation and
anger of his downfall; all that was an infamous nightmare, a
thing born in sleep to be forgotten and leave no trace--and true
life was this: this dreamy immobility with his head against her
heart that beat so steadily.
He was broad awake now, with that tingling wakefulness of the
tired body which succeeds to the few refreshing seconds of
irresistible sleep, and his wide-open eyes looked absently at the
doorway of Omar's hut. The reed walls glistened in the light of
the fire, the smoke of which, thin and blue, drifted slanting in
a succession of rings and spirals across the doorway, whose empty
blackness seemed to him impenetrable and enigmatical like a
curtain hiding vast spaces full of unexpected surprises. This
was only his fancy, but it was absorbing enough to make him
accept the sudden appearance of a head, coming out of the gloom,
as part of his idle fantasy or as the beginning of another short
dream, of another vagary of his overtired brain. A face with
drooping eyelids, old, thin, and yellow, above the scattered
white of a long beard that touched the earth. A head without a
body, only a foot above the ground, turning slightly from side to
side on the edge of the circle of light as if to catch the
radiating heat of the fire on either cheek in succession. He
watched it in passive amazement, growing distinct, as if coming
nearer to him, and the confused outlines of a body crawling on
all fours came out, creeping inch by inch towards the fire, with
a silent and all but imperceptible movement. He was astounded at
the appearance of that blind head dragging that crippled body
behind, without a sound, without a change in the composure of the
sightless face, which was plain one second, blurred the next in
the play of the light that drew it to itself steadily. A mute
face with a kriss between its lips. This was no dream. Omar's
face. But why? What was he after?
He was too indolent in the happy languor of the moment to answer
the question. It darted through his brain and passed out,
leaving him free to listen again to the beating of her heart; to
that precious and delicate sound which filled the quiet immensity
of the night. Glancing upwards he saw the motionless head of the
woman looking down at him in a tender gleam of liquid white
between the long eyelashes, whose shadow rested on the soft curve
of her cheek; and under the caress of that look, the uneasy
wonder and the obscure fear of that apparition, crouching and
creeping in turns towards the fire that was its guide, were
lost--were drowned in the quietude of all his senses, as pain is
drowned in the flood of drowsy serenity that follows upon a dose
of opium.
He altered the position of his head by ever so little, and now
could see easily that apparition which he had seen a minute
before and had nearly forgotten already. It had moved closer,
gliding and noiseless like the shadow of some nightmare, and now
it was there, very near, motionless and still as if listening;
one hand and one knee advanced; the neck stretched out and the
head turned full towards the fire. He could see the emaciated
face, the skin shiny over the prominent bones, the black shadows
of the hollow temples and sunken cheeks, and the two patches of
blackness over the eyes, over those eyes that were dead and could
not see. What was the impulse which drove out this blind cripple
into the night to creep and crawl towards that fire? He looked
at him, fascinated, but the face, with its shifting lights and
shadows, let out nothing, closed and impenetrable like a walled
door.
Omar raised himself to a kneeling posture and sank on his heels,
with his hands hanging down before him. Willems, looking out of
his dreamy numbness, could see plainly the kriss between the thin
lips, a bar across the face; the handle on one side where the
polished wood caught a red gleam from the fire and the thin line
of the blade running to a dull black point on the other. He felt
an inward shock, which left his body passive in Aissa's embrace,
but filled his breast with a tumult of powerless fear; and he
perceived suddenly that it was his own death that was groping
towards him; that it was the hate of himself and the hate of her
love for him which drove this helpless wreck of a once brilliant
and resolute pirate, to attempt a desperate deed that would be
the glorious and supreme consolation of an unhappy old age. And
while he looked, paralyzed with dread, at the father who had
resumed his cautious advance--blind like fate, persistent like
destiny--he listened with greedy eagerness to the heart of the
daughter beating light, rapid, and steady against his head.
He was in the grip of horrible fear; of a fear whose cold hand
robs its victim of all will and of all power; of all wish to
escape, to resist, or to move; which destroys hope and despair
alike, and holds the empty and useless carcass as if in a vise
under the coming stroke. It was not the fear of death--he had
faced danger before--it was not even the fear of that particular
form of death. It was not the fear of the end, for he knew that
the end would not come then. A movement, a leap, a shout would
save him from the feeble hand of the blind old man, from that
hand that even now was, with cautious sweeps along the ground,
feeling for his body in the darkness. It was the unreasoning
fear of this glimpse into the unknown things, into those motives,
impulses, desires he had ignored, but that had lived in the
breasts of despised men, close by his side, and were revealed to
him for a second, to be hidden again behind the black mists of
doubt and deception. It was not death that frightened him: it
was the horror of bewildered life where he could understand
nothing and nobody round him; where he could guide, control,
comprehend nothing and no one--not even himself.
He felt a touch on his side. That contact, lighter than the
caress of a mother's hand on the cheek of a sleeping child, had
for him the force of a crushing blow. Omar had crept close, and
now, kneeling above him, held the kriss in one hand while the
other skimmed over his jacket up towards his breast in gentle
touches; but the blind face, still turned to the heat of the
fire, was set and immovable in its aspect of stony indifference
to things it could not hope to see. With an effort Willems took
his eyes off the deathlike mask and turned them up to Aissa's
head. She sat motionless as if she had been part of the sleeping
earth, then suddenly he saw her big sombre eyes open out wide in
a piercing stare and felt the convulsive pressure of her hands
pinning his arms along his body. A second dragged itself out,
slow and bitter, like a day of mourning; a second full of regret
and grief for that faith in her which took its flight from the
shattered ruins of his trust. She was holding him! She too! He
felt her heart give a great leap, his head slipped down on her
knees, he closed his eyes and there was nothing. Nothing! It
was as if she had died; as though her heart had leaped out into
the night, abandoning him, defenceless and alone, in an empty
world.
His head struck the ground heavily as she flung him aside in her
sudden rush. He lay as if stunned, face up and, daring not move,
did not see the struggle, but heard the piercing shriek of mad
fear, her low angry words; another shriek dying out in a moan.
When he got up at last he looked at Aissa kneeling over her
father, he saw her bent back in the effort of holding him down,
Omar's contorted limbs, a hand thrown up above her head and her
quick movement grasping the wrist. He made an impulsive step
forward, but she turned a wild face to him and called out over
her shoulder--
"Keep back! Do not come near! Do not. . . ."
And he stopped short, his arms hanging lifelessly by his side, as
if those words had changed him into stone. She was afraid of his
possible violence, but in the unsettling of all his convictions
he was struck with the frightful thought that she preferred to
kill her father all by herself; and the last stage of their
struggle, at which he looked as though a red fog had filled his
eyes, loomed up with an unnatural ferocity, with a sinister
meaning; like something monstrous and depraved, forcing its
complicity upon him under the cover of that awful night. He was
horrified and grateful; drawn irresistibly to her--and ready to
run away. He could not move at first--then he did not want to
stir. He wanted to see what would happen. He saw her lift, with
a tremendous effort, the apparently lifeless body into the hut,
and remained standing, after they disappeared, with the vivid
image in his eyes of that head swaying on her shoulder, the lower
jaw hanging down, collapsed, passive, meaningless, like the head
of a corpse.
Then after a while he heard her voice speaking inside, harshly,
with an agitated abruptness of tone; and in answer there were
groans and broken murmurs of exhaustion. She spoke louder. He
heard her saying violently--"No! No! Never!"
And again a plaintive murmur of entreaty as of some one begging
for a supreme favour, with a last breath. Then she said--
"Never! I would sooner strike it into my own heart."
She came out, stood panting for a short moment in the doorway,
and then stepped into the firelight. Behind her, through the
darkness came the sound of words calling the vengeance of heaven
on her head, rising higher, shrill, strained, repeating the curse
over and over again--till the voice cracked in a passionate
shriek that died out into hoarse muttering ending with a deep and
prolonged sigh. She stood facing Willems, one hand behind her
back, the other raised in a gesture compelling attention, and she
listened in that attitude till all was still inside the hut.
Then she made another step forward and her hand dropped slowly.
"Nothing but misfortune," she whispered, absently, to herself.
"Nothing but misfortune to us who are not white." The anger and
excitement died out of her face, and she looked straight at
Willems with an intense and mournful gaze.
He recovered his senses and his power of speech with a sudden
start.
"Aissa," he exclaimed, and the words broke out through his lips
with hurried nervousness. "Aissa! How can I live here? Trust
me. Believe in me. Let us go away from here. Go very far away!
Very far; you and I!"
He did not stop to ask himself whether he could escape, and how,
and where. He was carried away by the flood of hate, disgust,
and contempt of a white man for that blood which is not his
blood, for that race which is not his race; for the brown skins;
for the hearts false like the sea, blacker than night. This
feeling of repulsion overmastered his reason in a clear
conviction of the impossibility for him to live with her people.
He urged her passionately to fly with him because out of all that
abhorred crowd he wanted this one woman, but wanted her away from
them, away from that race of slaves and cut-throats from which
she sprang. He wanted her for himself--far from everybody, in
some safe and dumb solitude. And as he spoke his anger and
contempt rose, his hate became almost fear; and his desire of her
grew immense, burning, illogical and merciless; crying to him
through all his senses; louder than his hate, stronger than his
fear, deeper than his contempt--irresistible and certain like
death itself.
Standing at a little distance, just within the light--but on the
threshold of that darkness from which she had come--she listened,
one hand still behind her back, the other arm stretched out with
the hand half open as if to catch the fleeting words that rang
around her, passionate, menacing, imploring, but all tinged with
the anguish of his suffering, all hurried by the impatience that
gnawed his breast. And while she listened she felt a slowing
down of her heart-beats as the meaning of his appeal grew clearer
before her indignant eyes, as she saw with rage and pain the
edifice of her love, her own work, crumble slowly to pieces,
destroyed by that man's fears, by that man's falseness. Her
memory recalled the days by the brook when she had listened to
other words--to other thoughts--to promises and to pleadings for
other things, which came from that man's lips at the bidding of
her look or her smile, at the nod of her head, at the whisper of
her lips. Was there then in his heart something else than her
image, other desires than the desires of her love, other fears
than the fear of losing her? How could that be? Had she grown
ugly or old in a moment? She was appalled, surprised and angry
with the anger of unexpected humiliation; and her eyes looked
fixedly, sombre and steady, at that man born in the land of
violence and of evil wherefrom nothing but misfortune comes to
those who are not white. Instead of thinking of her caresses,
instead of forgetting all the world in her embrace, he was
thinking yet of his people; of that people that steals every
land, masters every sea, that knows no mercy and no truth--knows
nothing but its own strength. O man of strong arm and of false
heart! Go with him to a far country, be lost in the throng of
cold eyes and false hearts--lose him there! Never! He was
mad--mad with fear; but he should not escape her! She would keep
him here a slave and a master; here where he was alone with her;
where he must live for her--or die. She had a right to his love
which was of her making, to the love that was in him now, while
he spoke those words without sense. She must put between him and
other white men a barrier of hate. He must not only stay, but he
must also keep his promise to Abdulla, the fulfilment of which
would make her safe.
"Aissa, let us go! With you by my side I would attack them with
my naked hands. Or no! Tomorrow we shall be outside, on board
Abdulla's ship. You shall come with me and then I could . . .
If the ship went ashore by some chance, then we could steal a
canoe and escape in the confusion. . . . You are not afraid of
the sea . . . of the sea that would give me freedom . . ."
He was approaching her gradually with extended arms, while he
pleaded ardently in incoherent words that ran over and tripped
each other in the extreme eagerness of his speech. She stepped
back, keeping her distance, her eyes on his face, watching on it
the play of his doubts and of his hopes with a piercing gaze,
that seemed to search out the innermost recesses of his thought;
and it was as if she had drawn slowly the darkness round her,
wrapping herself in its undulating folds that made her indistinct
and vague. He followed her step by step till at last they both
stopped, facing each other under the big tree of the enclosure.
The solitary exile of the forests, great, motionless and solemn
in his abandonment, left alone by the life of ages that had been
pushed away from him by those pigmies that crept at his foot,
towered high and straight above their heads. He seemed to look
on, dispassionate and imposing, in his lonely greatness,
spreading his branches wide in a gesture of lofty protection, as
if to hide them in the sombre shelter of innumerable leaves; as
if moved by the disdainful compassion of the strong, by the
scornful pity of an aged giant, to screen this struggle of two
human hearts from the cold scrutiny of glittering stars.
The last cry of his appeal to her mercy rose loud, vibrated under
the sombre canopy, darted among the boughs startling the white
birds that slept wing to wing--and died without an echo,
strangled in the dense mass of unstirring leaves. He could not
see her face, but he heard her sighs and the distracted murmur of
indistinct words. Then, as he listened holding his breath, she
exclaimed suddenly--
"Have you heard him? He has cursed me because I love you. You
brought me suffering and strife--and his curse. And now you want
to take me far away where I would lose you, lose my life; because
your love is my life now. What else is there? Do not move," she
cried violently, as he stirred a little--"do not speak! Take
this! Sleep in peace!"
He saw a shadowy movement of her arm. Something whizzed past and
struck the ground behind him, close to the fire. Instinctively
he turned round to look at it. A kriss without its sheath lay by
the embers; a sinuous dark object, looking like something that
had been alive and was now crushed, dead and very inoffensive; a
black wavy outline very distinct and still in the dull red glow.
Without thinking he moved to pick it up, stooping with the sad
and humble movement of a beggar gathering the alms flung into the
dust of the roadside. Was this the answer to his pleading, to
the hot and living words that came from his heart? Was this the
answer thrown at him like an insult, that thing made of wood and
iron, insignificant and venomous, fragile and deadly? He held it
by the blade and looked at the handle stupidly for a moment
before he let it fall again at his feet; and when he turned round
he faced only the night:--the night immense, profound and quiet;
a sea of darkness in which she had disappeared without leaving a
trace.
He moved forward with uncertain steps, putting out both his hands
before him with the anguish of a man blinded suddenly.
"Aissa!" he cried--"come to me at once."
He peered and listened, but saw nothing, heard nothing. After a
while the solid blackness seemed to wave before his eyes like a
curtain disclosing movements but hiding forms, and he heard light
and hurried footsteps, then the short clatter of the gate leading
to Lakamba's private enclosure. He sprang forward and brought up
against the rough timber in time to hear the words, "Quick!
Quick!" and the sound of the wooden bar dropped on the other
side, securing the gate. With his arms thrown up, the palms
against the paling, he slid down in a heap on the ground.
"Aissa," he said, pleadingly, pressing his lips to a chink
between the stakes. "Aissa, do you hear me? Come back! I will
do what you want, give you all you desire--if I have to set the
whole Sambir on fire and put that fire out with blood. Only come
back. Now! At once! Are you there? Do you hear me? Aissa!"
On the other side there were startled whispers of feminine
voices; a frightened little laugh suddenly interrupted; some
woman's admiring murmur--"This is brave talk!" Then after a
short silence Aissa cried--
"Sleep in peace--for the time of your going is near. Now I am
afraid of you. Afraid of your fear. When you return with Tuan
Abdulla you shall be great. You will find me here. And there
will be nothing but love. Nothing else!--Always!--Till we die!"
He listened to the shuffle of footsteps going away, and staggered
to his feet, mute with the excess of his passionate anger against
that being so savage and so charming; loathing her, himself,
everybody he had ever known; the earth, the sky, the very air he
drew into his oppressed chest; loathing it because it made him
live, loathing her because she made him suffer. But he could not
leave that gate through which she had passed. He wandered a
little way off, then swerved round, came back and fell down again
by the stockade only to rise suddenly in another attempt to break
away from the spell that held him, that brought him back there,
dumb, obedient and furious. And under the immobilized gesture of
lofty protection in the branches outspread wide above his head,
under the high branches where white birds slept wing to wing in
the shelter of countless leaves, he tossed like a grain of dust
in a whirlwind--sinking and rising--round and round--always near
that gate. All through the languid stillness of that night he
fought with the impalpable; he fought with the shadows, with the
darkness, with the silence. He fought without a sound, striking
futile blows, dashing from side to side; obstinate, hopeless, and
always beaten back; like a man bewitched within the invisible
sweep of a magic circle.
