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She did not move. What need to understand the words when they are spoken in
such a voice? In that voice which did not seem to be his voicehis voice
when he spoke by the brook, when he was never angry and always smiling! Her
eyes were fixed upon the dark doorway, but her hands strayed mechanically
upwards;
she took up all her hair, and, inclining her head slightly over her
shoulder, wrung out the long black tresses, twisting them persistently,
while she stood, sad and absorbed, like one listening to an inward voicethe
voice of bitter, of unavailing regret. The thunder had ceased, the wind had
died out, and the rain fell perpendicular and steady through a great pale
clearnessthe light of remote sun coming victorious from amongst the
dissolving blackness of the clouds. She stood near the doorway. He was
therealone in the gloom of the dwelling. He was there. He spoke not. What
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was in his mind now? What fear? What desire? Not the desire of her as in
the days when he used to smile . . . How could she know? . . .
A sigh coming from the bottom of her heart, flew out into the world through
her parted lips. A sigh faint, profound, and broken; a sigh full of pain
and fear, like the sigh of those who are about to face the unknown:
to face it in loneliness, in doubt, and without hope. She let go her hair,
that fell scattered over her shoulders like a funeral veil, and she sank
down suddenly by the door. Her hands clasped her ankles; she rested her
head on her drawnup knees, and remained still, very still, under the
streaming mourning of her hair. She was thinking of him; of the days by the
brook; she was thinking of all that had been their loveand she sat in the
abandoned posture of those who sit weeping by the dead, of those who watch
and mourn over a corpse.
PART V
CHAPTER ONE
Almayer propped, alone on the verandah of his house, with both his elbows on
the table, and holding his head between his hands, stared before him, away
over the stretch of sprouting young grass in his courtyard, and over the
short jetty with its cluster of small canoes, amongst which his big
whaleboat floated high, like a white mother of all that dark and aquatic
brood. He stared on the river, past the schooner anchored in midstream,
past the forests of the left bank; he stared through and past the illusion
of the material world.
The sun was sinking. Under the sky was stretched a network of white threads,
a network fine and closemeshed, where here and there were caught thicker
white vapours of globular shape; and to the eastward, above the ragged
barrier of the forests, surged the summits of a chain of great clouds,
growing bigger slowly, in imperceptible motion, as if careful not to disturb
the glowing stillness of the earth and of the sky. Abreast of the house the
river was empty but for the motionless schooner. Higher up, a solitary log
came out from the bend above and went on drifting slowly down the straight
reach: a dead and wandering tree going out to its grave in the sea, between
two ranks of trees motionless and living.
And Almayer sat, his face in his hands, looking on and hating all this: the
muddy river; the faded blue of the sky; the black log passing by on its first
and last voyage; the green sea of leavesthe sea that glowed
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PART V
123
shimmered, and stirred above the uniform and impenetrable gloom of the
foreststhe joyous sea of living green powdered with the brilliant dust of
oblique sunrays.
He hated all this; he begrudged every dayevery minuteof his life spent
amongst all these things; he begrudged it bitterly, angrily, with enraged and
immense regret, like a miser compelled to give up some of his treasure to a
near relation. And yet all this was very precious to him. It was the
present sign of a splendid future.
He pushed the table away impatiently, got up, made a few steps aimlessly,
then stood by the balustrade and again looked at the riverat that river which
would have been the instrument for the making of his fortune if
. . . if . . .
"What an abominable brute!" he said.
He was alone, but he spoke aloud, as one is apt to do under the impulse of a
strong, of an overmastering thought.
"What a brute!" he muttered again.
The river was dark now, and the schooner lay on it, a black, a lonely, and a
graceful form, with the slender masts darting upwards from it in two frail
and raking lines. The shadows of the evening crept up the trees, crept up
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from bough to bough, till at last the long sunbeams coursing from the
western horizon skimmed lightly over the topmost branches, then flew upwards
amongst the piledup clouds, giving them a sombre and fiery aspect in the
last flush of light. And suddenly the light disappeared as if lost in the
immensity of the great, blue, and empty hollow overhead. The sun had set:
and the forests became a straight wall of formless blackness. Above them,
on the edge of lingering clouds, a single star glimmered fitfully, obscured
now and then by the rapid flight of high and invisible vapours.
Almayer fought with the uneasiness within his breast. He heard Ali, who
moved behind him preparing his evening meal, and he listened with strange
attention to the sounds the man madeto the short, dry bang of the plate put
upon the table, to the clink of glass and the metallic rattle of knife and
fork. The man went away.
Now he was coming back. He would speak directly; and Almayer,
notwithstanding the absorbing gravity of his thoughts, listened for the
sound of expected words. He heard them, spoken in English with painstaking
distinctness.
"Ready, sir!"
"All right," said Almayer, curtly. He did not move. He remained pensive,
with his back to the table upon which stood the lighted lamp brought by Ali.
He was thinking: Where was Lingard now? Halfway down the river probably, in
Abdulla's ship. He would be back in about three daysperhaps less. And
then? Then the schooner would have to be got out of the river, and when that
craft was gone theyhe and Lingardwould remain here; alone with the constant
thought of that other man, that other man living near them! What an
extraordinary idea to keep him there for ever. For ever! What did that
meanfor ever? Perhaps a year, perhaps ten years. Preposterous! Keep him
there ten yearsor may be twenty! The fellow was capable of living more than
twenty years. And for all that time he would have to be watched, fed,
looked after. There was nobody but Lingard to have such notions. Twenty
years! Why, no! In less than ten years their fortune would be made and
they would leave this place, first for Bataviayes, Bataviaand then for
Europe.
England, no doubt. Lingard would want to go to England. And would they
leave that man here? How would that fellow look in ten years? Very old
probably. Well, devil take him. Nina would be fifteen. She would be rich
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