CHAPTER FOUR
When he felt the solid ground of the courtyard under his feet,
Willems pulled himself up in his headlong rush and moved forward
with a moderate gait. He paced stiffly, looking with extreme
exactitude at Lingard's face; looking neither to the right nor to
the left but at the face only, as if there was nothing in the
world but those features familiar and dreaded; that white-haired,
rough and severe head upon which he gazed in a fixed effort of
his eyes, like a man trying to read small print at the full range
of human vision. As soon as Willems' feet had left the planks,
the silence which had been lifted up by the jerky rattle of his
footsteps fell down again upon the courtyard; the silence of the
cloudy sky and of the windless air, the sullen silence of the
earth oppressed by the aspect of coming turmoil, the silence of
the world collecting its faculties to withstand the storm.
Through this silence Willems pushed his way, and stopped about
six feet from Lingard. He stopped simply because he could go no
further. He had started from the door with the reckless purpose
of clapping the old fellow on the shoulder. He had no idea that
the man would turn out to be so tall, so big and so
unapproachable. It seemed to him that he had never, never in his
life, seen Lingard.
He tried to say--
"Do not believe . . ."
A fit of coughing checked his sentence in a faint splutter.
Directly afterwards he swallowed--as it were--a couple of
pebbles, throwing his chin up in the act; and Lingard, who looked
at him narrowly, saw a bone, sharp and triangular like the head
of a snake, dart up and down twice under the skin of his throat.
Then that, too, did not move. Nothing moved.
"Well," said Lingard, and with that word he came unexpectedly to
the end of his speech. His hand in his pocket closed firmly
round the butt of his revolver bulging his jacket on the hip, and
he thought how soon and how quickly he could terminate his
quarrel with that man who had been so anxious to deliver himself
into his hands--and how inadequate would be that ending! He
could not bear the idea of that man escaping from him by going
out of life; escaping from fear, from doubt, from remorse into
the peaceful certitude of death. He held him now. And he was
not going to let him go--to let him disappear for ever in the
faint blue smoke of a pistol shot. His anger grew within him.
He felt a touch as of a burning hand on his heart. Not on the
flesh of his breast, but a touch on his heart itself, on the
palpitating and untiring particle of matter that responds to
every emotion of the soul; that leaps with joy, with terror, or
with anger.
He drew a long breath. He could see before him the bare chest of
the man expanding and collapsing under the wide-open jacket. He
glanced aside, and saw the bosom of the woman near him rise and
fall in quick respirations that moved slightly up and down her
hand, which was pressed to her breast with all the fingers spread
out and a little curved, as if grasping something too big for its
span. And nearly a minute passed. One of those minutes when the
voice is silenced, while the thoughts flutter in the head, like
captive birds inside a cage, in rushes desperate, exhausting and
vain.
During that minute of silence Lingard's anger kept rising,
immense and towering, such as a crested wave running over the
troubled shallows of the sands. Its roar filled his cars; a roar
so powerful and distracting that, it seemed to him, his head must
burst directly with the expanding volume of that sound. He
looked at that man. That infamous figure upright on its feet,
still, rigid, with stony eyes, as if its rotten soul had departed
that moment and the carcass hadn't had the time yet to topple
over. For the fraction of a second he had the illusion and the
fear of the scoundrel having died there before the enraged glance
of his eyes. Willems' eyelids fluttered, and the unconscious and
passing tremor in that stiffly erect body exasperated Lingard
like a fresh outrage. The fellow dared to stir! Dared to wink,
to breathe, to exist; here, right before his eyes! His grip on
the revolver relaxed gradually. As the transport of his rage
increased, so also his contempt for the instruments that pierce
or stab, that interpose themselves between the hand and the
object of hate. He wanted another kind of satisfaction. Naked
hands, by heaven! No firearms. Hands that could take him by the
throat, beat down his defence, batter his face into shapeless
flesh; hands that could feel all the desperation of his
resistance and overpower it in the violent delight of a contact
lingering and furious, intimate and brutal.
He let go the revolver altogether, stood hesitating, then
throwing his hands out, strode forward--and everything passed
from his sight. He could not see the man, the woman, the earth,
the sky--saw nothing, as if in that one stride he had left the
visible world behind to step into a black and deserted space. He
heard screams round him in that obscurity, screams like the
melancholy and pitiful cries of sea-birds that dwell on the
lonely reefs of great oceans. Then suddenly a face appeared
within a few inches of his own. His face. He felt something in
his left hand. His throat . . . Ah! the thing like a snake's
head that darts up and down . . . He squeezed hard. He was back
in the world. He could see the quick beating of eyelids over a
pair of eyes that were all whites, the grin of a drawn-up lip, a
row of teeth gleaming through the drooping hair of a moustache .
. . Strong white teeth. Knock them down his lying throat . . .
He drew back his right hand, the fist up to the shoulder,
knuckles out. From under his feet rose the screams of sea-birds.
Thousands of them. Something held his legs . . . What the devil
. . . He delivered his blow straight from the shoulder, felt the
jar right up his arm, and realized suddenly that he was striking
something passive and unresisting. His heart sank within him
with disappointment, with rage, with mortification. He pushed
with his left arm, opening the hand with haste, as if he had just
perceived that he got hold by accident of something repulsive--
and he watched with stupefied eyes Willems tottering backwards in
groping strides, the white sleeve of his jacket across his face.
He watched his distance from that man increase, while he remained
motionless, without being able to account to himself for the fact
that so much empty space had come in between them. It should
have been the other way. They ought to have been very close, and
. . . Ah! He wouldn't fight, he wouldn't resist, he wouldn't
defend himself! A cur! Evidently a cur! . . . He was amazed and
aggrieved--profoundly--bitterly--with the immense and blank
desolation of a small child robbed of a toy. He shouted--
unbelieving:
"Will you be a cheat to the end?"
He waited for some answer. He waited anxiously with an
impatience that seemed to lift him off his feet. He waited for
some word, some sign; for some threatening stir. Nothing! Only
two unwinking eyes glittered intently at him above the white
sleeve. He saw the raised arm detach itself from the face and
sink along the body. A white clad arm, with a big stain on the
white sleeve. A red stain. There was a cut on the cheek. It
bled. The nose bled too. The blood ran down, made one moustache
look like a dark rag stuck over the lip, and went on in a wet
streak down the clipped beard on one side of the chin. A drop of
blood hung on the end of some hairs that were glued together; it
hung for a while and took a leap down on the ground. Many more
followed, leaping one after another in close file. One alighted
on the breast and glided down instantly with devious vivacity,
like a small insect running away; it left a narrow dark track on
the white skin. He looked at it, looked at the tiny and active
drops, looked at what he had done, with obscure satisfaction,
with anger, with regret. This wasn't much like an act of
justice. He had a desire to go up nearer to the man, to hear him
speak, to hear him say something atrocious and wicked that would
justify the violence of the blow. He made an attempt to move,
and became aware of a close embrace round both his legs, just
above the ankles. Instinctively, he kicked out with his foot,
broke through the close bond and felt at once the clasp
transferred to his other leg; the clasp warm, desperate and soft,
of human arms. He looked down bewildered. He saw the body of
the woman stretched at length, flattened on the ground like a
dark blue rag. She trailed face downwards, clinging to his leg
with both arms in a tenacious hug. He saw the top of her head,
the long black hair streaming over his foot, all over the beaten
earth, around his boot. He couldn't see his foot for it. He
heard the short and repeated moaning of her breath. He imagined
the invisible face close to his heel. With one kick into that
face he could free himself. He dared not stir, and shouted
down--
"Let go! Let go! Let go!"
The only result of his shouting was a tightening of the pressure
of her arms. With a tremendous effort he tried to bring his
right foot up to his left, and succeeded partly. He heard
distinctly the rub of her body on the ground as he jerked her
along. He tried to disengage himself by drawing up his foot. He
stamped. He heard a voice saying sharply--
"Steady, Captain Lingard, steady!"
His eyes flew back to Willems at the sound of that voice, and, in
the quick awakening of sleeping memories, Lingard stood suddenly
still, appeased by the clear ring of familiar words. Appeased as
in days of old, when they were trading together, when Willems was
his trusted and helpful companion in out-of-the-way and dangerous
places; when that fellow, who could keep his temper so much
better than he could himself, had spared him many a difficulty,
had saved him from many an act of hasty violence by the timely
and good-humoured warning, whispered or shouted, "Steady, Captain
Lingard, steady." A smart fellow. He had brought him up. The
smartest fellow in the islands. If he had only stayed with him,
then all this . . . He called out to Willems--
"Tell her to let me go or . . ."
He heard Willems shouting something, waited for awhile, then
glanced vaguely down and saw the woman still stretched out
perfectly mute and unstirring, with her head at his feet. He
felt a nervous impatience that, somehow, resembled fear.
"Tell her to let go, to go away, Willems, I tell you. I've had
enough of this," he cried.
"All right, Captain Lingard," answered the calm voice of Willems,
"she has let go. Take your foot off her hair; she can't get up."
Lingard leaped aside, clean away, and spun round quickly. He saw
her sit up and cover her face with both hands, then he turned
slowly on his heel and looked at the man. Willems held himself
very straight, but was unsteady on his feet, and moved about
nearly on the same spot, like a tipsy man attempting to preserve
his balance. After gazing at him for a while, Lingard called,
rancorous and irritable--
"What have you got to say for yourself?"
Willems began to walk towards him. He walked slowly, reeling a
little before he took each step, and Lingard saw him put his hand
to his face, then look at it holding it up to his eyes, as if he
had there, concealed in the hollow of the palm, some small object
which he wanted to examine secretly. Suddenly he drew it, with a
brusque movement, down the front of his jacket and left a long
smudge.
"That's a fine thing to do," said Willems.
He stood in front of Lingard, one of his eyes sunk deep in the
increasing swelling of his cheek, still repeating mechanically
the movement of feeling his damaged face; and every time he did
this he pressed the palm to some clean spot on his jacket,
covering the white cotton with bloody imprints as of some
deformed and monstrous hand. Lingard said nothing, looking on.
At last Willems left off staunching the blood and stood, his arms
hanging by his side, with his face stiff and distorted under the
patches of coagulated blood; and he seemed as though he had been
set up there for a warning: an incomprehensible figure marked all
over with some awful and symbolic signs of deadly import.
Speaking with difficulty, he repeated in a reproachful tone--
"That was a fine thing to do."
"After all," answered Lingard, bitterly, "I had too good an
opinion of you."
"And I of you. Don't you see that I could have had that fool
over there killed and the whole thing burnt to the ground, swept
off the face of the earth. You wouldn't have found as much as a
heap of ashes had I liked. I could have done all that. And I
wouldn't."
"You--could--not. You dared not. You scoundrel!" cried Lingard.
"What's the use of calling me names?"
"True," retorted Lingard--"there's no name bad enough for you."
There was a short interval of silence. At the sound of their
rapidly exchanged words, Aissa had got up from the ground where
she had been sitting, in a sorrowful and dejected pose, and
approached the two men. She stood on one side and looked on
eagerly, in a desperate effort of her brain, with the quick and
distracted eyes of a person trying for her life to penetrate the
meaning of sentences uttered in a foreign tongue: the meaning
portentous and fateful that lurks in the sounds of mysterious
words; in the sounds surprising, unknown and strange.
Willems let the last speech of Lingard pass by; seemed by a
slight movement of his hand to help it on its way to join the
other shadows of the past. Then he said--
"You have struck me; you have insulted me . . ."
"Insulted you!" interrupted Lingard, passionately. "Who--what
can insult you . . . you . . ."
He choked, advanced a step.
"Steady! steady!" said Willems calmly. "I tell you I sha'n't
fight. Is it clear enough to you that I sha'n't?
I--shall--not--lift--a--finger."
As he spoke, slowly punctuating each word with a slight jerk of
his head, he stared at Lingard, his right eye open and big, the
left small and nearly closed by the swelling of one half of his
face, that appeared all drawn out on one side like faces seen in
a concave glass. And they stood exactly opposite each other: one
tall, slight and disfigured; the other tall, heavy and severe.
Willems went on--
"If I had wanted to hurt you--if I had wanted to destroy you, it
was easy. I stood in the doorway long enough to pull a
trigger--and you know I shoot straight."
"You would have missed," said Lingard, with assurance. "There
is, under heaven, such a thing as justice."
The sound of that word on his own lips made him pause, confused,
like an unexpected and unanswerable rebuke. The anger of his
outraged pride, the anger of his outraged heart, had gone out in
the blow; and there remained nothing but the sense of some
immense infamy--of something vague, disgusting and terrible,
which seemed to surround him on all sides, hover about him with
shadowy and stealthy movements, like a band of assassins in the
darkness of vast and unsafe places. Was there, under heaven,
such a thing as justice? He looked at the man before him with
such an intensity of prolonged glance that he seemed to see right
through him, that at last he saw but a floating and unsteady mist
in human shape. Would it blow away before the first breath of
the breeze and leave nothing behind?
The sound of Willems' voice made him start violently. Willems was
saying--
"I have always led a virtuous life; you know I have. You always
praised me for my steadiness; you know you have. You know also I
never stole--if that's what you're thinking of. I borrowed. You
know how much I repaid. It was an error of judgment. But then
consider my position there. I had been a little unlucky in my
private affairs, and had debts. Could I let myself go under
before the eyes of all those men who envied me? But that's all
over. It was an error of judgment. I've paid for it. An error
of judgment."
Lingard, astounded into perfect stillness, looked down. He
looked down at Willems' bare feet. Then, as the other had
paused, he repeated in a blank tone--
"An error of judgment . . ."
"Yes," drawled out Willems, thoughtfully, and went on with
increasing animation: "As I said, I have always led a virtuous
life. More so than Hudig--than you. Yes, than you. I drank a
little, I played cards a little. Who doesn't? But I had
principles from a boy. Yes, principles. Business is business,
and I never was an ass. I never respected fools. They had to
suffer for their folly when they dealt with me. The evil was in
them, not in me. But as to principles, it's another matter. I
kept clear of women. It's forbidden--I had no time--and I
despised them. Now I hate them!"
He put his tongue out a little; a tongue whose pink and moist end
ran here and there, like something independently alive, under his
swollen and blackened lip; he touched with the tips of his
fingers the cut on his cheek, felt all round it with precaution:
and the unharmed side of his face appeared for a moment to be
preoccupied and uneasy about the state of that other side which
was so very sore and stiff.
He recommenced speaking, and his voice vibrated as though with
repressed emotion of some kind.
"You ask my wife, when you see her in Macassar, whether I have no
reason to hate her. She was nobody, and I made her Mrs. Willems.
A half-caste girl! You ask her how she showed her gratitude to
me. You ask . . . Never mind that. Well, you came and dumped
me here like a load of rubbish; dumped me here and left me with
nothing to do--nothing good to remember--and damn little to hope
for. You left me here at the mercy of that fool, Almayer, who
suspected me of something. Of what? Devil only knows. But he
suspected and hated me from the first; I suppose because you
befriended me. Oh! I could read him like a book. He isn't very
deep, your Sambir partner, Captain Lingard, but he knows how to
be disagreeable. Months passed. I thought I would die of sheer
weariness, of my thoughts, of my regrets And then . . ."
He made a quick step nearer to Lingard, and as if moved by the
same thought, by the same instinct, by the impulse of his will,
Aissa also stepped nearer to them. They stood in a close group,
and the two men could feel the calm air between their faces
stirred by the light breath of the anxious woman who enveloped
them both in the uncomprehending, in the despairing and wondering
glances of her wild and mournful eyes.
