CHAPTER THREE
"Beware!"
The tremulous effort and the broken, inadequate tone of the faint
cry, surprised Lingard more than the unexpected suddenness of the
warning conveyed, he did not know by whom and to whom. Besides
himself there was no one in the courtyard as far as he could see.
The cry was not renewed, and his watchful eyes, scanning warily
the misty solitude of Willems' enclosure, were met everywhere
only by the stolid impassiveness of inanimate things: the big
sombre-looking tree, the shut-up, sightless house, the glistening
bamboo fences, the damp and drooping bushes further off--all
these things, that condemned to look for ever at the
incomprehensible afflictions or joys of mankind, assert in their
aspect of cold unconcern the high dignity of lifeless matter that
surrounds, incurious and unmoved, the restless mysteries of the
ever-changing, of the never-ending life.
Lingard, stepping aside, put the trunk of the tree between
himself and the house, then, moving cautiously round one of the
projecting buttresses, had to tread short in order to avoid
scattering a small heap of black embers upon which he came
unexpectedly on the other side. A thin, wizened, little old
woman, who, standing behind the tree, had been looking at the
house, turned towards him with a start, gazed with faded,
expressionless eyes at the intruder, then made a limping attempt
to get away. She seemed, however, to realize directly the
hopelessness or the difficulty of the undertaking, stopped,
hesitated, tottered back slowly; then, after blinking dully, fell
suddenly on her knees amongst the white ashes, and, bending over
the heap of smouldering coals, distended her sunken cheeks in a
steady effort to blow up the hidden sparks into a useful blaze.
Lingard looked down on her, but she seemed to have made up her
mind that there was not enough life left in her lean body for
anything else than the discharge of the simple domestic duty,
and, apparently, she begrudged him the least moment of attention.
After waiting for awhile, Lingard asked--
"Why did you call, O daughter?"
"I saw you enter," she croaked feebly, still grovelling with her
face near the ashes and without looking up, "and I called--the
cry of warning. It was her order. Her order," she repeated,
with a moaning sigh.
"And did she hear?" pursued Lingard, with gentle composure.
Her projecting shoulder-blades moved uneasily under the thin
stuff of the tight body jacket. She scrambled up with difficulty
to her feet, and hobbled away, muttering peevishly to herself,
towards a pile of dry brushwood heaped up against the fence.
Lingard, looking idly after her, heard the rattle of loose planks
that led from the ground to the door of the house. He moved his
head beyond the shelter of the tree and saw Aissa coming down the
inclined way into the courtyard. After making a few hurried
paces towards the tree, she stopped with one foot advanced in an
appearance of sudden terror, and her eyes glanced wildly right
and left. Her head was uncovered. A blue cloth wrapped her from
her head to foot in close slanting folds, with one end thrown
over her shoulder. A tress of her black hair strayed across her
bosom. Her bare arms pressed down close to her body, with hands
open and outstretched fingers; her slightly elevated shoulders
and the backward inclination of her torso gave her the aspect of
one defiant yet shrinking from a coming blow. She had closed the
door of the house behind her; and as she stood solitary in the
unnatural and threatening twilight of the murky day, with
everything unchanged around her, she appeared to Lingard as if
she had been made there, on the spot, out of the black vapours of
the sky and of the sinister gleams of feeble sunshine that
struggled, through the thickening clouds, into the colourless
desolation of the world.
After a short but attentive glance towards the shut-up house,
Lingard stepped out from behind the tree and advanced slowly
towards her. The sudden fixity of her--till then--restless eyes
and a slight twitch of her hands were the only signs she gave at
first of having seen him. She made a long stride forward, and
putting herself right in his path, stretched her arms across; her
black eyes opened wide, her lips parted as if in an uncertain
attempt to speak--but no sound came out to break the significant
silence of their meeting. Lingard stopped and looked at her with
stern curiosity. After a while he said composedly--
"Let me pass. I came here to talk to a man. Does he hide? Has
he sent you?"
She made a step nearer, her arms fell by her side, then she put
them straight out nearly touching Lingard's breast.
"He knows not fear," she said, speaking low, with a forward throw
of her head, in a voice trembling but distinct. "It is my own
fear that has sent me here. He sleeps."
"He has slept long enough," said Lingard, in measured tones. "I
am come--and now is the time of his waking. Go and tell him
this--or else my own voice will call him up. A voice he knows
well."
He put her hands down firmly and again made as if to pass by her.
"Do not!" she exclaimed, and fell at his feet as if she had been
cut down by a scythe. The unexpected suddenness of her movement
startled Lingard, who stepped back.
"What's this?" he exclaimed in a wondering whisper--then added in
a tone of sharp command: "Stand up!"
She rose at once and stood looking at him, timorous and fearless;
yet with a fire of recklessness burning in her eyes that made
clear her resolve to pursue her purpose even to the death.
Lingard went on in a severe voice--
"Go out of my path. You are Omar's daughter, and you ought to
know that when men meet in daylight women must be silent and
abide their fate."
"Women!" she retorted, with subdued vehemence. "Yes, I am a
woman! Your eyes see that, O Rajah Laut, but can you see my
life? I also have heard--O man of many fights--I also have heard
the voice of fire-arms; I also have felt the rain of young twigs
and of leaves cut up by bullets fall down about my head; I also
know how to look in silence at angry faces and at strong hands
raised high grasping sharp steel. I also saw men fall dead
around me without a cry of fear and of mourning; and I have
watched the sleep of weary fugitives, and looked at night shadows
full of menace and death with eyes that knew nothing but
watchfulness. And," she went on, with a mournful drop in her
voice, "I have faced the heartless sea, held on my lap the heads
of those who died raving from thirst, and from their cold hands
took the paddle and worked so that those with me did not know
that one man more was dead. I did all this. What more have you
done? That was my life. What has been yours?"
The matter and the manner of her speech held Lingard motionless,
attentive and approving against his will. She ceased speaking,
and from her staring black eyes with a narrow border of white
above and below, a double ray of her very soul streamed out in a
fierce desire to light up the most obscure designs of his heart.
After a long silence, which served to emphasize the meaning of
her words, she added in the whisper of bitter regret--
"And I have knelt at your feet! And I am afraid!"
"You," said Lingard deliberately, and returning her look with an
interested gaze, "you are a woman whose heart, I believe, is
great enough to fill a man's breast: but still you are a woman,
and to you, I, Rajah Laut, have nothing to say."
She listened bending her head in a movement of forced attention;
and his voice sounded to her unexpected, far off, with the
distant and unearthly ring of voices that we hear in dreams,
saying faintly things startling, cruel or absurd, to which there
is no possible reply. To her he had nothing to say! She wrung
her hands, glanced over the courtyard with that eager and
distracted look that sees nothing, then looked up at the hopeless
sky of livid grey and drifting black; at the unquiet mourning of
the hot and brilliant heaven that had seen the beginning of her
love, that had heard his entreaties and her answers, that had
seen his desire and her fear; that had seen her joy, her
surrender--and his defeat. Lingard moved a little, and this
slight stir near her precipitated her disordered and shapeless
thoughts into hurried words.
"Wait!" she exclaimed in a stifled voice, and went on
disconnectedly and rapidly--"Stay. I have heard. Men often
spoke by the fires . . . men of my people. And they said of
you--the first on the sea--they said that to men's cries you were
deaf in battle, but after . . . No! even while you fought, your
ears were open to the voice of children and women. They said . .
. that. Now I, a woman, I . . ."
She broke off suddenly and stood before him with dropped eyelids
and parted lips, so still now that she seemed to have been
changed into a breathless, an unhearing, an unseeing figure,
without knowledge of fear or hope, of anger or despair. In the
astounding repose that came on her face, nothing moved but the
delicate nostrils that expanded and collapsed quickly,
flutteringly, in interrupted beats, like the wings of a snared
bird.
"I am white," said Lingard, proudly, looking at her with a steady
gaze where simple curiosity was giving way to a pitying
annoyance, "and men you have heard, spoke only what is true over
the evening fires. My ears are open to your prayer. But listen
to me before you speak. For yourself you need not be afraid. You
can come even now with me and you shall find refuge in the
household of Syed Abdulla--who is of your own faith. And this
also you must know: nothing that you may say will change my
purpose towards the man who is sleeping--or hiding--in that
house."
Again she gave him the look that was like a stab, not of anger
but of desire; of the intense, over-powering desire to see in, to
see through, to understand everything: every thought, emotion,
purpose; every impulse, every hesitation inside that man; inside
that white-clad foreign being who looked at her, who spoke to
her, who breathed before her like any other man, but bigger,
red-faced, white-haired and mysterious. It was the future
clothed in flesh; the to-morrow; the day after; all the days, all
the years of her life standing there before her alive and secret,
with all their good or evil shut up within the breast of that
man; of that man who could be persuaded, cajoled, entreated,
perhaps touched, worried; frightened--who knows?--if only first
he could be understood! She had seen a long time ago whither
events were tending. She had noted the contemptuous yet menacing
coldness of Abdulla; she had heard--alarmed yet
unbelieving--Babalatchi's gloomy hints, covert allusions and
veiled suggestions to abandon the useless white man whose fate
would be the price of the peace secured by the wise and good who
had no need of him any more. And he--himself! She clung to him.
There was nobody else. Nothing else. She would try to cling to
him always--all the life! And yet he was far from her. Further
every day. Every day he seemed more distant, and she followed
him patiently, hopefully, blindly, but steadily, through all the
devious wanderings of his mind. She followed as well as she
could. Yet at times--very often lately--she had felt lost like
one strayed in the thickets of tangled undergrowth of a great
forest. To her the ex-clerk of old Hudig appeared as remote, as
brilliant, as terrible, as necessary, as the sun that gives life
to these lands: the sun of unclouded skies that dazzles and
withers; the sun beneficent and wicked--the giver of light,
perfume, and pestilence. She had watched him--watched him close;
fascinated by love, fascinated by danger. He was alone now--but
for her; and she saw--she thought she saw--that he was like a man
afraid of something. Was it possible? He afraid? Of what? Was
it of that old white man who was coming--who had come? Possibly.
She had heard of that man ever since she could remember. The
bravest were afraid of him! And now what was in the mind of this
old, old man who looked so strong? What was he going to do with
the light of her life? Put it out? Take it away? Take it away
for ever!--for ever!--and leave her in darkness:--not in the
stirring, whispering, expectant night in which the hushed world
awaits the return of sunshine; but in the night without end, the
night of the grave, where nothing breathes, nothing moves,
nothing thinks--the last darkness of cold and silence without
hope of another sunrise.
She cried--"Your purpose! You know nothing. I must . . ."
He interrupted--unreasonably excited, as if she had, by her look,
inoculated him with some of her own distress.
"I know enough."
She approached, and stood facing him at arm's length, with both
her hands on his shoulders; and he, surprised by that audacity,
closed and opened his eyes two or three times, aware of some
emotion arising within him, from her words, her tone, her
contact; an emotion unknown, singular, penetrating and sad--at
the close sight of that strange woman, of that being savage and
tender, strong and delicate, fearful and resolute, that had got
entangled so fatally between their two lives--his own and that
other white man's, the abominable scoundrel.
"How can you know?" she went on, in a persuasive tone that seemed
to flow out of her very heart--"how can you know? I live with
him all the days. All the nights. I look at him; I see his
every breath, every glance of his eye, every movement of his
lips. I see nothing else! What else is there? And even I do
not understand. I do not understand him!--Him!--My life! Him
who to me is so great that his presence hides the earth and the
water from my sight!"
Lingard stood straight, with his hands deep in the pockets of his
jacket. His eyes winked quickly, because she spoke very close to
his face. She disturbed him and he had a sense of the efforts he
was making to get hold of her meaning, while all the time he
could not help telling himself that all this was of no use.
She added after a pause--"There has been a time when I could
understand him. When I knew what was in his mind better than he
knew it himself. When I felt him. When I held him. . . . And
now he has escaped."
"Escaped? What? Gone away!" shouted Lingard.
"Escaped from me," she said; "left me alone. Alone. And I am
ever near him. Yet alone."
Her hands slipped slowly off Lingard's shoulders and her arms
fell by her side, listless, discouraged, as if to her--to her,
the savage, violent, and ignorant creature--had been revealed
clearly in that moment the tremendous fact of our isolation, of
the loneliness impenetrable and transparent, elusive and
everlasting; of the indestructible loneliness that surrounds,
envelopes, clothes every human soul from the cradle to the grave,
and, perhaps, beyond.
"Aye! Very well! I understand. His face is turned away from
you," said Lingard. "Now, what do you want?"
"I want . . . I have looked--for help . . . everywhere . . .
against men. . . . All men . . . I do not know. First they
came, the invisible whites, and dealt death from afar . . . then
he came. He came to me who was alone and sad. He came; angry
with his brothers; great amongst his own people; angry with those
I have not seen: with the people where men have no mercy and
women have no shame. He was of them, and great amongst them.
For he was great?"
Lingard shook his head slightly. She frowned at him, and went on
in disordered haste--
"Listen. I saw him. I have lived by the side of brave men . . .
of chiefs. When he came I was the daughter of a beggar--of a
blind man without strength and hope. He spoke to me as if I had
been brighter than the sunshine--more delightful than the cool
water of the brook by which we met--more . . ." Her anxious eyes
saw some shade of expression pass on her listener's face that
made her hold her breath for a second, and then explode into
pained fury so violent that it drove Lingard back a pace, like an
unexpected blast of wind. He lifted both his hands,
incongruously paternal in his venerable aspect, bewildered and
soothing, while she stretched her neck forward and shouted at
him.
"I tell you I was all that to him. I know it! I saw it! . . .
There are times when even you white men speak the truth. I saw
his eyes. I felt his eyes, I tell you! I saw him tremble when I
came near--when I spoke--when I touched him. Look at me! You
have been young. Look at me. Look, Rajah Laut!"
She stared at Lingard with provoking fixity, then, turning her
head quickly, she sent over her shoulder a glance, full of humble
fear, at the house that stood high behind her back--dark, closed,
rickety and silent on its crooked posts.
Lingard's eyes followed her look, and remained gazing expectantly
at the house. After a minute or so he muttered, glancing at her
suspiciously--
"If he has not heard your voice now, then he must be far away--or
dead."
"He is there," she whispered, a little calmed but still
anxious--"he is there. For three days he waited. Waited for you
night and day. And I waited with him. I waited, watching his
face, his eyes, his lips; listening to his words.--To the words I
could not understand.--To the words he spoke in daylight; to the
words he spoke at night in his short sleep. I listened. He
spoke to himself walking up and down here--by the river; by the
bushes. And I followed. I wanted to know--and I could not! He
was tormented by things that made him speak in the words of his
own people. Speak to himself--not to me. Not to me! What was
he saying? What was he going to do? Was he afraid of you?--Of
death? What was in his heart? . . . Fear? . . . Or anger? . .
. what desire? . . . what sadness? He spoke; spoke; many words.
All the time! And I could not know! I wanted to speak to him.
He was deaf to me. I followed him everywhere, watching for some
word I could understand; but his mind was in the land of his
people--away from me. When I touched him he was angry--so!"
She imitated the movement of some one shaking off roughly an
importunate hand, and looked at Lingard with tearful and unsteady
eyes.
After a short interval of laboured panting, as if she had been
out of breath with running or fighting, she looked down and went
on--
"Day after day, night after night, I lived watching him--seeing
nothing. And my heart was heavy--heavy with the presence of
death that dwelt amongst us. I could not believe. I thought he
was afraid. Afraid of you! Then I, myself, knew fear. . . .
Tell me, Rajah Laut, do you know the fear without voice--the fear
of silence--the fear that comes when there is no one near--when
there is no battle, no cries, no angry faces or armed hands
anywhere? . . . The fear from which there is no escape!"
She paused, fastened her eyes again on the puzzled Lingard, and
hurried on in a tone of despair--
"And I knew then he would not fight you! Before--many days
ago--I went away twice to make him obey my desire; to make him
strike at his own people so that he could be mine--mine! O
calamity! His hand was false as your white hearts. It struck
forward, pushed by my desire--by his desire of me. . . . It
struck that strong hand, and--O shame!--it killed nobody! Its
fierce and lying blow woke up hate without any fear. Round me
all was lies. His strength was a lie. My own people lied to me
and to him. And to meet you--you, the great!--he had no one but
me? But me with my rage, my pain, my weakness. Only me! And to
me he would not even speak. The fool!"
She came up close to Lingard, with the wild and stealthy aspect
of a lunatic longing to whisper out an insane secret--one of
those misshapen, heart-rending, and ludicrous secrets; one of
those thoughts that, like monsters--cruel, fantastic, and
mournful, wander about terrible and unceasing in the night of
madness. Lingard looked at her, astounded but unflinching. She
spoke in his face, very low.
"He is all! Everything. He is my breath, my light, my heart. .
. . Go away. . . . Forget him. . . . He has no courage and no
wisdom any more . . . and I have lost my power. . . . Go away and
forget. There are other enemies. . . . Leave him to me. He had
been a man once. . . . You are too great. Nobody can withstand
you. . . . I tried. . . . I know now. . . . I cry for mercy.
Leave him to me and go away."
The fragments of her supplicating sentences were as if tossed on
the crest of her sobs. Lingard, outwardly impassive, with his
eyes fixed on the house, experienced that feeling of
condemnation, deep-seated, persuasive, and masterful; that
illogical impulse of disapproval which is half disgust, half
vague fear, and that wakes up in our hearts in the presence of
anything new or unusual, of anything that is not run into the
mould of our own conscience; the accursed feeling made up of
disdain, of anger, and of the sense of superior virtue that
leaves us deaf, blind, contemptuous and stupid before anything
which is not like ourselves.
He answered, not looking at her at first, but speaking towards
the house that fascinated him--
"_I_ go away! He wanted me to come--he himself did! . . . YOU
must go away. You do not know what you are asking for. Listen.
Go to your own people. Leave him. He is . . ."
He paused, looked down at her with his steady eyes; hesitated, as
if seeking an adequate expression; then snapped his fingers, and
said--
"Finish."
She stepped back, her eyes on the ground, and pressed her temples
with both her hands, which she raised to her head in a slow and
ample movement full of unconscious tragedy. The tone of her
words was gentle and vibrating, like a loud meditation. She
said--
"Tell the brook not to run to the river; tell the river not to
run to the sea. Speak loud. Speak angrily. Maybe they will
obey you. But it is in my mind that the brook will not care.
The brook that springs out of the hillside and runs to the great
river. He would not care for your words: he that cares not for
the very mountain that gave him life; he that tears the earth
from which he springs. Tears it, eats it, destroys it--to hurry
faster to the river--to the river in which he is lost for ever. .
. . O Rajah Laut! I do not care."
She drew close again to Lingard, approaching slowly, reluctantly,
as if pushed by an invisible hand, and added in words that seemed
to be torn out of her--
"I cared not for my own father. For him that died. I would have
rather . . . You do not know what I have done . . . I . . ."
"You shall have his life," said Lingard, hastily.
They stood together, crossing their glances; she suddenly
appeased, and Lingard thoughtful and uneasy under a vague sense
of defeat. And yet there was no defeat. He never intended to
kill the fellow--not after the first moment of anger, a long time
ago. The days of bitter wonder had killed anger; had left only a
bitter indignation and a bitter wish for complete justice. He
felt discontented and surprised. Unexpectedly he had come upon a
human being--a woman at that--who had made him disclose his will
before its time. She should have his life. But she must be
told, she must know, that for such men as Willems there was no
favour and no grace.
"Understand," he said slowly, "that I leave him his life not in
mercy but in punishment."
She started, watched every word on his lips, and after he
finished speaking she remained still and mute in astonished
immobility. A single big drop of rain, a drop enormous, pellucid
and heavy--like a super-human tear coming straight and rapid from
above, tearing its way through the sombre sky--struck loudly the
dry ground between them in a starred splash. She wrung her hands
in the bewilderment of the new and incomprehensible fear. The
anguish of her whisper was more piercing than the shrillest cry.
"What punishment! Will you take him away then? Away from me?
Listen to what I have done. . . . It is I who . . ."
"Ah!" exclaimed Lingard, who had been looking at the house.
"Don't you believe her, Captain Lingard," shouted Willems from
the doorway, where he appeared with swollen eyelids and bared
breast. He stood for a while, his hands grasping the lintels on
each side of the door, and writhed about, glaring wildly, as if
he had been crucified there. Then he made a sudden rush head
foremost down the plankway that responded with hollow, short
noises to every footstep.
She heard him. A slight thrill passed on her face and the words
that were on her lips fell back unspoken into her benighted
heart; fell back amongst the mud, the stones--and the flowers,
that are at the bottom of every heart.
