Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) (30 page)

“All right,” muttered Willems at last. “Don’t break my back over this infernal rail. I will be quiet.”

“Now you are reasonable,” said Lingard, much relieved. “What made you fly into that passion?” he asked, leading him back to the end of the jetty, and, still holding him prudently with one hand, he fumbled with the other for his whistle and blew a shrill and prolonged blast. Over the smooth water of the roadstead came in answer a faint cry from one of the ships at anchor.

“My boat will be here directly,” said Lingard. “Think of what you are going to do. I sail to-night.”

“What is there for me to do, except one thing?” said Willems, gloomily.

“Look here,” said Lingard; “I picked you up as a boy, and consider myself responsible for you in a way. You took your life into your own hands many years ago — but still . . .”

He paused, listening, till he heard the regular grind of the oars in the rowlocks of the approaching boat then went on again.

“I have made it all right with Hudig. You owe him nothing now. Go back to your wife. She is a good woman. Go back to her.”

“Why, Captain Lingard,” exclaimed Willems, “she . . .”

“It was most affecting,” went on Lingard, without heeding him. “I went to your house to look for you and there I saw her despair. It was heart-breaking. She called for you; she entreated me to find you. She spoke wildly, poor woman, as if all this was her fault.”

Willems listened amazed. The blind old idiot! How queerly he misunderstood! But if it was true, if it was even true, the very idea of seeing her filled his soul with intense loathing. He did not break his oath, but he would not go back to her. Let hers be the sin of that separation; of the sacred bond broken. He revelled in the extreme purity of his heart, and he would not go back to her. Let her come back to him. He had the comfortable conviction that he would never see her again, and that through her own fault only. In this conviction he told himself solemnly that if she would come to him he would receive her with generous forgiveness, because such was the praiseworthy solidity of his principles. But he hesitated whether he would or would not disclose to Lingard the revolting completeness of his humiliation. Turned out of his house — and by his wife; that woman who hardly dared to breathe in his presence, yesterday. He remained perplexed and silent. No. He lacked the courage to tell the ignoble story.

As the boat of the brig appeared suddenly on the black water close to the jetty, Lingard broke the painful silence.

“I always thought,” he said, sadly, “I always thought you were somewhat heartless, Willems, and apt to cast adrift those that thought most of you. I appeal to what is best in you; do not abandon that woman.”

“I have not abandoned her,” answered Willems, quickly, with conscious truthfulness. “Why should I? As you so justly observed, she has been a good wife to me. A very good, quiet, obedient, loving wife, and I love her as much as she loves me. Every bit. But as to going back now, to that place where I . . . To walk again amongst those men who yesterday were ready to crawl before me, and then feel on my back the sting of their pitying or satisfied smiles — no! I can’t. I would rather hide from them at the bottom of the sea,” he went on, with resolute energy. “I don’t think, Captain Lingard,” he added, more quietly, “I don’t think that you realize what my position was there.”

In a wide sweep of his hand he took in the sleeping shore from north to south, as if wishing it a proud and threatening good-bye. For a short moment he forgot his downfall in the recollection of his brilliant triumphs. Amongst the men of his class and occupation who slept in those dark houses he had been indeed the first.

“It is hard,” muttered Lingard, pensively. “But whose the fault? Whose the fault?”

“Captain Lingard!” cried Willems, under the sudden impulse of a felicitous inspiration, “if you leave me here on this jetty — it’s murder. I shall never return to that place alive, wife or no wife. You may just as well cut my throat at once.”

The old seaman started.

“Don’t try to frighten me, Willems,” he said, with great severity, and paused.

Above the accents of Willems’ brazen despair he heard, with considerable uneasiness, the whisper of his own absurd conscience. He meditated for awhile with an irresolute air.

“I could tell you to go and drown yourself, and be damned to you,” he said, with an unsuccessful assumption of brutality in his manner, “but I won’t. We are responsible for one another — worse luck. I am almost ashamed of myself, but I can understand your dirty pride. I can! By . . .”

He broke off with a loud sigh and walked briskly to the steps, at the bottom of which lay his boat, rising and falling gently on the slight and invisible swell.

“Below there! Got a lamp in the boat? Well, light it and bring it up, one of you. Hurry now!”

He tore out a page of his pocketbook, moistened his pencil with great energy and waited, stamping his feet impatiently.

“I will see this thing through,” he muttered to himself. “And I will have it all square and ship-shape; see if I don’t! Are you going to bring that lamp, you son of a crippled mud-turtle? I am waiting.”

The gleam of the light on the paper placated his professional anger, and he wrote rapidly, the final dash of his signature curling the paper up in a triangular tear.

“Take that to this white Tuan’s house. I will send the boat back for you in half an hour.”

The coxswain raised his lamp deliberately to Willem’s face.

“This Tuan? Tau! I know.”

“Quick then!” said Lingard, taking the lamp from him — and the man went off at a run.

“Kassi mem! To the lady herself,” called Lingard after him.

Then, when the man disappeared, he turned to Willems.

“I have written to your wife,” he said. “If you do not return for good, you do not go back to that house only for another parting. You must come as you stand. I won’t have that poor woman tormented. I will see to it that you are not separated for long. Trust me!”

Willems shivered, then smiled in the darkness.

“No fear of that,” he muttered, enigmatically. “I trust you implicitly, Captain Lingard,” he added, in a louder tone.

Lingard led the way down the steps, swinging the lamp and speaking over his shoulder.

“It is the second time, Willems, I take you in hand. Mind it is the last. The second time; and the only difference between then and now is that you were bare-footed then and have boots now. In fourteen years. With all your smartness! A poor result that. A very poor result.”

He stood for awhile on the lowest platform of the steps, the light of the lamp falling on the upturned face of the stroke oar, who held the gunwale of the boat close alongside, ready for the captain to step in.

“You see,” he went on, argumentatively, fumbling about the top of the lamp, “you got yourself so crooked amongst those ‘longshore quill-drivers that you could not run clear in any way. That’s what comes of such talk as yours, and of such a life. A man sees so much falsehood that he begins to lie to himself. Pah!” he said, in disgust, “there’s only one place for an honest man. The sea, my boy, the sea! But you never would; didn’t think there was enough money in it; and now — look!”

He blew the light out, and, stepping into the boat, stretched quickly his hand towards Willems, with friendly care. Willems sat by him in silence, and the boat shoved off, sweeping in a wide circle towards the brig.

“Your compassion is all for my wife, Captain Lingard,” said Willems, moodily. “Do you think I am so very happy?”

“No! no!” said Lingard, heartily. “Not a word more shall pass my lips. I had to speak my mind once, seeing that I knew you from a child, so to speak. And now I shall forget; but you are young yet. Life is very long,” he went on, with unconscious sadness; “let this be a lesson to you.”

He laid his hand affectionately on Willems’ shoulder, and they both sat silent till the boat came alongside the ship’s ladder.

When on board Lingard gave orders to his mate, and leading Willems on the poop, sat on the breech of one of the brass six-pounders with which his vessel was armed. The boat went off again to bring back the messenger. As soon as it was seen returning dark forms appeared on the brig’s spars; then the sails fell in festoons with a swish of their heavy folds, and hung motionless under the yards in the dead calm of the clear and dewy night. From the forward end came the clink of the windlass, and soon afterwards the hail of the chief mate informing Lingard that the cable was hove short.

“Hold on everything,” hailed back Lingard; “we must wait for the land-breeze before we let go our hold of the ground.”

He approached Willems, who sat on the skylight, his body bent down, his head low, and his hands hanging listlessly between his knees.

“I am going to take you to Sambir,” he said. “You’ve never heard of the place, have you? Well, it’s up that river of mine about which people talk so much and know so little. I’ve found out the entrance for a ship of Flash’s size. It isn’t easy. You’ll see. I will show you. You have been at sea long enough to take an interest. . . . Pity you didn’t stick to it. Well, I am going there. I have my own trading post in the place. Almayer is my partner. You knew him when he was at Hudig’s. Oh, he lives there as happy as a king. D’ye see, I have them all in my pocket. The rajah is an old friend of mine. My word is law — and I am the only trader. No other white man but Almayer had ever been in that settlement. You will live quietly there till I come back from my next cruise to the westward. We shall see then what can be done for you. Never fear. I have no doubt my secret will be safe with you. Keep mum about my river when you get amongst the traders again. There’s many would give their ears for the knowledge of it. I’ll tell you something: that’s where I get all my guttah and rattans. Simply inexhaustible, my boy.”

While Lingard spoke Willems looked up quickly, but soon his head fell on his breast in the discouraging certitude that the knowledge he and Hudig had wished for so much had come to him too late. He sat in a listless attitude.

“You will help Almayer in his trading if you have a heart for it,” continued Lingard, “just to kill time till I come back for you. Only six weeks or so.”

Over their heads the damp sails fluttered noisily in the first faint puff of the breeze; then, as the airs freshened, the brig tended to the wind, and the silenced canvas lay quietly aback. The mate spoke with low distinctness from the shadows of the quarter-deck.

“There’s the breeze. Which way do you want to cast her, Captain Lingard?”

Lingard’s eyes, that had been fixed aloft, glanced down at the dejected figure of the man sitting on the skylight. He seemed to hesitate for a minute.

“To the northward, to the northward,” he answered, testily, as if annoyed at his own fleeting thought, “and bear a hand there. Every puff of wind is worth money in these seas.”

He remained motionless, listening to the rattle of blocks and the creaking of trusses as the head-yards were hauled round. Sail was made on the ship and the windlass manned again while he stood still, lost in thought. He only roused himself when a barefooted seacannie glided past him silently on his way to the wheel.

“Put the helm aport! Hard over!” he said, in his harsh sea-voice, to the man whose face appeared suddenly out of the darkness in the circle of light thrown upwards from the binnacle lamps.

The anchor was secured, the yards trimmed, and the brig began to move out of the roadstead. The sea woke up under the push of the sharp cutwater, and whispered softly to the gliding craft in that tender and rippling murmur in which it speaks sometimes to those it nurses and loves. Lingard stood by the taff-rail listening, with a pleased smile till the Flash began to draw close to the only other vessel in the anchorage.

“Here, Willems,” he said, calling him to his side, “d’ye see that barque here? That’s an Arab vessel. White men have mostly given up the game, but this fellow drops in my wake often, and lives in hopes of cutting me out in that settlement. Not while I live, I trust. You see, Willems, I brought prosperity to that place. I composed their quarrels, and saw them grow under my eyes. There’s peace and happiness there. I am more master there than his Dutch Excellency down in Batavia ever will be when some day a lazy man-of-war blunders at last against the river. I mean to keep the Arabs out of it, with their lies and their intrigues. I shall keep the venomous breed out, if it costs me my fortune.”

The Flash drew quietly abreast of the barque, and was beginning to drop it astern when a white figure started up on the poop of the Arab vessel, and a voice called out —

“Greeting to the Rajah Laut!”

“To you greeting!” answered Lingard, after a moment of hesitating surprise. Then he turned to Willems with a grim smile. “That’s Abdulla’s voice,” he said. “Mighty civil all of a sudden, isn’t he? I wonder what it means. Just like his impudence! No matter! His civility or his impudence are all one to me. I know that this fellow will be under way and after me like a shot. I don’t care! I have the heels of anything that floats in these seas,” he added, while his proud and loving glance ran over and rested fondly amongst the brig’s lofty and graceful spars.

CHAPTER FIVE

“It was the writing on his forehead,” said Babalatchi, adding a couple of small sticks to the little fire by which he was squatting, and without looking at Lakamba who lay down supported on his elbow on the other side of the embers. “It was written when he was born that he should end his life in darkness, and now he is like a man walking in a black night — with his eyes open, yet seeing not. I knew him well when he had slaves, and many wives, and much merchandise, and trading praus, and praus for fighting. Hai — ya! He was a great fighter in the days before the breath of the Merciful put out the light in his eyes. He was a pilgrim, and had many virtues: he was brave, his hand was open, and he was a great robber. For many years he led the men that drank blood on the sea: first in prayer and first in fight! Have I not stood behind him when his face was turned to the West? Have I not watched by his side ships with high masts burning in a straight flame on the calm water? Have I not followed him on dark nights amongst sleeping men that woke up only to die? His sword was swifter than the fire from Heaven, and struck before it flashed. Hai! Tuan! Those were the days and that was a leader, and I myself was younger; and in those days there were not so many fireships with guns that deal fiery death from afar. Over the hill and over the forest — O! Tuan Lakamba! they dropped whistling fireballs into the creek where our praus took refuge, and where they dared not follow men who had arms in their hands.”