Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) (23 page)

“Oh, father!” she murmured faintly, and in that word there was expressed regret and fear and dawning hope.

“I shall never forgive you, Nina,” said Almayer, in a dispassionate voice.  “You have torn my heart from me while I dreamt of your happiness.  You have deceived me.  Your eyes that for me were like truth itself lied to me in every glance — for how long?  You know that best.  When you were caressing my cheek you were counting the minutes to the sunset that was the signal for your meeting with that man — there!”

He ceased, and they both sat silent side by side, not looking at each other, but gazing at the vast expanse of the sea.  Almayer’s words had dried Nina’s tears, and her look grew hard as she stared before her into the limitless sheet of blue that shone limpid, unwaving, and steady like heaven itself.  He looked at it also, but his features had lost all expression, and life in his eyes seemed to have gone out.  The face was a blank, without a sign of emotion, feeling, reason, or even knowledge of itself.  All passion, regret, grief, hope, or anger — all were gone, erased by the hand of fate, as if after this last stroke everything was over and there was no need for any record.

Those few who saw Almayer during the short period of his remaining days were always impressed by the sight of that face that seemed to know nothing of what went on within: like the blank wall of a prison enclosing sin, regrets, and pain, and wasted life, in the cold indifference of mortar and stones.

“What is there to forgive?” asked Nina, not addressing Almayer directly, but more as if arguing with herself.  “Can I not live my own life as you have lived yours?  The path you would have wished me to follow has been closed to me by no fault of mine.”

“You never told me,” muttered Almayer.

“You never asked me,” she answered, “and I thought you were like the others and did not care.  I bore the memory of my humiliation alone, and why should I tell you that it came to me because I am your daughter?  I knew you could not avenge me.”

“And yet I was thinking of that only,” interrupted Almayer, “and I wanted to give you years of happiness for the short day of your suffering.  I only knew of one way.”

“Ah! but it was not my way!” she replied.  “Could you give me happiness without life?  Life!” she repeated with sudden energy that sent the word ringing over the sea.  “Life that means power and love,” she added in a low voice.

“That!” said Almayer, pointing his finger at Dain standing close by and looking at them in curious wonder.

“Yes, that!” she replied, looking her father full in the face and noticing for the first time with a slight gasp of fear the unnatural rigidity of his features.

“I would have rather strangled you with my own hands,” said Almayer, in an expressionless voice which was such a contrast to the desperate bitterness of his feelings that it surprised even himself.  He asked himself who spoke, and, after looking slowly round as if expecting to see somebody, turned again his eyes towards the sea.

“You say that because you do not understand the meaning of my words,” she said sadly.  “Between you and my mother there never was any love.  When I returned to Sambir I found the place which I thought would be a peaceful refuge for my heart, filled with weariness and hatred — and mutual contempt.  I have listened to your voice and to her voice.  Then I saw that you could not understand me; for was I not part of that woman?  Of her who was the regret and shame of your life?  I had to choose — I hesitated.  Why were you so blind?  Did you not see me struggling before your eyes?  But, when he came, all doubt disappeared, and I saw only the light of the blue and cloudless heaven — ”

“I will tell you the rest,” interrupted Almayer:  “when that man came I also saw the blue and the sunshine of the sky.  A thunderbolt has fallen from that sky, and suddenly all is still and dark around me for ever.  I will never forgive you, Nina; and to-morrow I shall forget you!  I shall never forgive you,” he repeated with mechanical obstinacy while she sat, her head bowed down as if afraid to look at her father.

To him it seemed of the utmost importance that he should assure her of his intention of never forgiving.  He was convinced that his faith in her had been the foundation of his hopes, the motive of his courage, of his determination to live and struggle, and to be victorious for her sake.  And now his faith was gone, destroyed by her own hands; destroyed cruelly, treacherously, in the dark; in the very moment of success.  In the utter wreck of his affections and of all his feelings, in the chaotic disorder of his thoughts, above the confused sensation of physical pain that wrapped him up in a sting as of a whiplash curling round him from his shoulders down to his feet, only one idea remained clear and definite — not to forgive her; only one vivid desire — to forget her.  And this must be made clear to her — and to himself — by frequent repetition.  That was his idea of his duty to himself — to his race — to his respectable connections; to the whole universe unsettled and shaken by this frightful catastrophe of his life.  He saw it clearly and believed he was a strong man.  He had always prided himself upon his unflinching firmness.  And yet he was afraid.  She had been all in all to him.  What if he should let the memory of his love for her weaken the sense of his dignity?  She was a remarkable woman; he could see that; all the latent greatness of his nature — in which he honestly believed — had been transfused into that slight, girlish figure.  Great things could be done!  What if he should suddenly take her to his heart, forget his shame, and pain, and anger, and — follow her!  What if he changed his heart if not his skin and made her life easier between the two loves that would guard her from any mischance!  His heart yearned for her.  What if he should say that his love for her was greater than . . .

“I will never forgive you, Nina!” he shouted, leaping up madly in the sudden fear of his dream.

This was the last time in his life that he was heard to raise his voice.  Henceforth he spoke always in a monotonous whisper like an instrument of which all the strings but one are broken in a last ringing clamour under a heavy blow.

She rose to her feet and looked at him.  The very violence of his cry soothed her in an intuitive conviction of his love, and she hugged to her breast the lamentable remnants of that affection with the unscrupulous greediness of women who cling desperately to the very scraps and rags of love, any kind of love, as a thing that of right belongs to them and is the very breath of their life.  She put both her hands on Almayer’s shoulders, and looking at him half tenderly, half playfully, she said —

“You speak so because you love me.”

Almayer shook his head.

“Yes, you do,” she insisted softly; then after a short pause she added, “and you will never forget me.”

Almayer shivered slightly.  She could not have said a more cruel thing.

“Here is the boat coming now,” said Dain, his arm outstretched towards a black speck on the water between the coast and the islet.

They all looked at it and remained standing in silence till the little canoe came gently on the beach and a man landed and walked towards them.  He stopped some distance off and hesitated.

“What news?” asked Dain.

“We have had orders secretly and in the night to take off from this islet a man and a woman.  I see the woman.  Which of you is the man?”

“Come, delight of my eyes,” said Dain to Nina.  “Now we go, and your voice shall be for my ears only.  You have spoken your last words to the Tuan Putih, your father.  Come.”

She hesitated for a while, looking at Almayer, who kept his eyes steadily on the sea, then she touched his forehead in a lingering kiss, and a tear — one of her tears — fell on his cheek and ran down his immovable face.

“Goodbye,” she whispered, and remained irresolute till he pushed her suddenly into Dain’s arms.

“If you have any pity for me,” murmured Almayer, as if repeating some sentence learned by heart, “take that woman away.”

He stood very straight, his shoulders thrown back, his head held high, and looked at them as they went down the beach to the canoe, walking enlaced in each other’s arms.  He looked at the line of their footsteps marked in the sand.  He followed their figures moving in the crude blaze of the vertical sun, in that light violent and vibrating, like a triumphal flourish of brazen trumpets.  He looked at the man’s brown shoulders, at the red sarong round his waist; at the tall, slender, dazzling white figure he supported.  He looked at the white dress, at the falling masses of the long black hair.  He looked at them embarking, and at the canoe growing smaller in the distance, with rage, despair, and regret in his heart, and on his face a peace as that of a carved image of oblivion.  Inwardly he felt himself torn to pieces, but Ali — who now aroused — stood close to his master, saw on his features the blank expression of those who live in that hopeless calm which sightless eyes only can give.

The canoe disappeared, and Almayer stood motionless with his eyes fixed on its wake.  Ali from under the shade of his hand examined the coast curiously.  As the sun declined, the sea-breeze sprang up from the northward and shivered with its breath the glassy surface of the water.

“Dapat!” exclaimed Ali, joyously.  “Got him, master!  Got prau!  Not there!  Look more Tanah Mirrah side.  Aha!  That way!  Master, see?  Now plain.  See?”

Almayer followed Ali’s forefinger with his eyes for a long time in vain.  At last he sighted a triangular patch of yellow light on the red background of the cliffs of Tanjong Mirrah.  It was the sail of the prau that had caught the sunlight and stood out, distinct with its gay tint, on the dark red of the cape.  The yellow triangle crept slowly from cliff to cliff, till it cleared the last point of land and shone brilliantly for a fleeting minute on the blue of the open sea.  Then the prau bore up to the southward: the light went out of the sail, and all at once the vessel itself disappeared, vanishing in the shadow of the steep headland that looked on, patient and lonely, watching over the empty sea.

Almayer never moved.  Round the little islet the air was full of the talk of the rippling water.  The crested wavelets ran up the beach audaciously, joyously, with the lightness of young life, and died quickly, unresistingly, and graciously, in the wide curves of transparent foam on the yellow sand.  Above, the white clouds sailed rapidly southwards as if intent upon overtaking something.  Ali seemed anxious.

“Master,” he said timidly, “time to get house now.  Long way off to pull.  All ready, sir.”

“Wait,” whispered Almayer.

Now she was gone his business was to forget, and he had a strange notion that it should be done systematically and in order.  To Ali’s great dismay he fell on his hands and knees, and, creeping along the sand, erased carefully with his hand all traces of Nina’s footsteps.  He piled up small heaps of sand, leaving behind him a line of miniature graves right down to the water.  After burying the last slight imprint of Nina’s slipper he stood up, and, turning his face towards the headland where he had last seen the prau, he made an effort to shout out loud again his firm resolve to never forgive.  Ali watching him uneasily saw only his lips move, but heard no sound.  He brought his foot down with a stamp.  He was a firm man — firm as a rock.  Let her go.  He never had a daughter.  He would forget.  He was forgetting already.

Ali approached him again, insisting on immediate departure, and this time he consented, and they went together towards their canoe, Almayer leading.  For all his firmness he looked very dejected and feeble as he dragged his feet slowly through the sand on the beach; and by his side — invisible to Ali — stalked that particular fiend whose mission it is to jog the memories of men, lest they should forget the meaning of life.  He whispered into Almayer’s ear a childish prattle of many years ago.  Almayer, his head bent on one side, seemed to listen to his invisible companion, but his face was like the face of a man that has died struck from behind — a face from which all feelings and all expression are suddenly wiped off by the hand of unexpected death.

* * * * *

They slept on the river that night, mooring their canoe under the bushes and lying down in the bottom side by side, in the absolute exhaustion that kills hunger, thirst, all feeling and all thought in the overpowering desire for that deep sleep which is like the temporary annihilation of the tired body.  Next day they started again and fought doggedly with the current all the morning, till about midday they reached the settlement and made fast their little craft to the jetty of Lingard and Co.  Almayer walked straight to the house, and Ali followed, paddles on shoulder, thinking that he would like to eat something.  As they crossed the front courtyard they noticed the abandoned look of the place.  Ali looked in at the different servants’ houses: all were empty.  In the back courtyard there was the same absence of sound and life.  In the cooking-shed the fire was out and the black embers were cold.  A tall, lean man came stealthily out of the banana plantation, and went away rapidly across the open space looking at them with big, frightened eyes over his shoulder.  Some vagabond without a master; there were many such in the settlement, and they looked upon Almayer as their patron.  They prowled about his premises and picked their living there, sure that nothing worse could befall them than a shower of curses when they got in the way of the white man, whom they trusted and liked, and called a fool amongst themselves.  In the house, which Almayer entered through the back verandah, the only living thing that met his eyes was his small monkey which, hungry and unnoticed for the last two days, began to cry and complain in monkey language as soon as it caught sight of the familiar face.  Almayer soothed it with a few words and ordered Ali to bring in some bananas, then while Ali was gone to get them he stood in the doorway of the front verandah looking at the chaos of overturned furniture.  Finally he picked up the table and sat on it while the monkey let itself down from the roof-stick by its chain and perched on his shoulder.  When the bananas came they had their breakfast together; both hungry, both eating greedily and showering the skins round them recklessly, in the trusting silence of perfect friendship.  Ali went away, grumbling, to cook some rice himself, for all the women about the house had disappeared; he did not know where.  Almayer did not seem to care, and, after he finished eating, he sat on the table swinging his legs and staring at the river as if lost in thought.