Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) (3 page)

Startled by the unexpected proposal, Almayer hesitated, and remained silent for a minute.  He was gifted with a strong and active imagination, and in that short space of time he saw, as in a flash of dazzling light, great piles of shining guilders, and realised all the possibilities of an opulent existence.  The consideration, the indolent ease of life — for which he felt himself so well fitted — his ships, his warehouses, his merchandise (old Lingard would not live for ever), and, crowning all, in the far future gleamed like a fairy palace the big mansion in Amsterdam, that earthly paradise of his dreams, where, made king amongst men by old Lingard’s money, he would pass the evening of his days in inexpressible splendour.  As to the other side of the picture — the companionship for life of a Malay girl, that legacy of a boatful of pirates — there was only within him a confused consciousness of shame that he a white man — Still, a convent education of four years! — and then she may mercifully die.  He was always lucky, and money is powerful!  Go through it.  Why not?  He had a vague idea of shutting her up somewhere, anywhere, out of his gorgeous future.  Easy enough to dispose of a Malay woman, a slave, after all, to his Eastern mind, convent or no convent, ceremony or no ceremony.

He lifted his head and confronted the anxious yet irate seaman.

“I — of course — anything you wish, Captain Lingard.”

“Call me father, my boy.  She does,” said the mollified old adventurer.  “Damme, though, if I didn’t think you were going to refuse.  Mind you, Kaspar, I always get my way, so it would have been no use.  But you are no fool.”

He remembered well that time — the look, the accent, the words, the effect they produced on him, his very surroundings.  He remembered the narrow slanting deck of the brig, the silent sleeping coast, the smooth black surface of the sea with a great bar of gold laid on it by the rising moon.  He remembered it all, and he remembered his feelings of mad exultation at the thought of that fortune thrown into his hands.  He was no fool then, and he was no fool now.  Circumstances had been against him; the fortune was gone, but hope remained.

He shivered in the night air, and suddenly became aware of the intense darkness which, on the sun’s departure, had closed in upon the river, blotting out the outlines of the opposite shore.  Only the fire of dry branches lit outside the stockade of the Rajah’s compound called fitfully into view the ragged trunks of the surrounding trees, putting a stain of glowing red half-way across the river where the drifting logs were hurrying towards the sea through the impenetrable gloom.  He had a hazy recollection of having been called some time during the evening by his wife.  To his dinner probably.  But a man busy contemplating the wreckage of his past in the dawn of new hopes cannot be hungry whenever his rice is ready.  Time he went home, though; it was getting late.

He stepped cautiously on the loose planks towards the ladder.  A lizard, disturbed by the noise, emitted a plaintive note and scurried through the long grass growing on the bank.  Almayer descended the ladder carefully, now thoroughly recalled to the realities of life by the care necessary to prevent a fall on the uneven ground where the stones, decaying planks, and half-sawn beams were piled up in inextricable confusion.  As he turned towards the house where he lived — ”my old house” he called it — his ear detected the splash of paddles away in the darkness of the river.  He stood still in the path, attentive and surprised at anybody being on the river at this late hour during such a heavy freshet.  Now he could hear the paddles distinctly, and even a rapidly exchanged word in low tones, the heavy breathing of men fighting with the current, and hugging the bank on which he stood.  Quite close, too, but it was too dark to distinguish anything under the overhanging bushes.

“Arabs, no doubt,” muttered Almayer to himself, peering into the solid blackness.  “What are they up to now?  Some of Abdulla’s business; curse him!”

The boat was very close now.

“Oh, ya!  Man!” hailed Almayer.

The sound of voices ceased, but the paddles worked as furiously as before.  Then the bush in front of Almayer shook, and the sharp sound of the paddles falling into the canoe rang in the quiet night.  They were holding on to the bush now; but Almayer could hardly make out an indistinct dark shape of a man’s head and shoulders above the bank.

“You Abdulla?” said Almayer, doubtfully.

A grave voice answered —

“Tuan Almayer is speaking to a friend.  There is no Arab here.”

Almayer’s heart gave a great leap.

“Dain!” he exclaimed.  “At last! at last!  I have been waiting for you every day and every night.  I had nearly given you up.”

“Nothing could have stopped me from coming back here,” said the other, almost violently.  “Not even death,” he whispered to himself.

“This is a friend’s talk, and is very good,” said Almayer, heartily.  “But you are too far here.  Drop down to the jetty and let your men cook their rice in my campong while we talk in the house.”

There was no answer to that invitation.

“What is it?” asked Almayer, uneasily.  “There is nothing wrong with the brig, I hope?”

“The brig is where no Orang Blanda can lay his hands on her,” said Dain, with a gloomy tone in his voice, which Almayer, in his elation, failed to notice.

“Right,” he said.  “But where are all your men?  There are only two with you.”

“Listen, Tuan Almayer,” said Dain.  “To-morrow’s sun shall see me in your house, and then we will talk.  Now I must go to the Rajah.”

“To the Rajah!  Why?  What do you want with Lakamba?”

“Tuan, to-morrow we talk like friends.  I must see Lakamba to-night.”

“Dain, you are not going to abandon me now, when all is ready?” asked Almayer, in a pleading voice.

“Have I not returned?  But I must see Lakamba first for your good and mine.”

The shadowy head disappeared abruptly.  The bush, released from the grasp of the bowman, sprung back with a swish, scattering a shower of muddy water over Almayer, as he bent forward, trying to see.

In a little while the canoe shot into the streak of light that streamed on the river from the big fire on the opposite shore, disclosing the outline of two men bending to their work, and a third figure in the stern flourishing the steering paddle, his head covered with an enormous round hat, like a fantastically exaggerated mushroom.

Almayer watched the canoe till it passed out of the line of light.  Shortly after the murmur of many voices reached him across the water.  He could see the torches being snatched out of the burning pile, and rendering visible for a moment the gate in the stockade round which they crowded.  Then they went in apparently.  The torches disappeared, and the scattered fire sent out only a dim and fitful glare.

Almayer stepped homewards with long strides and mind uneasy.  Surely Dain was not thinking of playing him false.  It was absurd.  Dain and Lakamba were both too much interested in the success of his scheme.  Trusting to Malays was poor work; but then even Malays have some sense and understand their own interest.  All would be well — must be well.  At this point in his meditation he found himself at the foot of the steps leading to the verandah of his home.  From the low point of land where he stood he could see both branches of the river.  The main branch of the Pantai was lost in complete darkness, for the fire at the Rajah’s had gone out altogether; but up the Sambir reach his eye could follow the long line of Malay houses crowding the bank, with here and there a dim light twinkling through bamboo walls, or a smoky torch burning on the platforms built out over the river.  Further away, where the island ended in a low cliff, rose a dark mass of buildings towering above the Malay structures.  Founded solidly on a firm ground with plenty of space, starred by many lights burning strong and white, with a suggestion of paraffin and lamp-glasses, stood the house and the godowns of Abdulla bin Selim, the great trader of Sambir.  To Almayer the sight was very distasteful, and he shook his fist towards the buildings that in their evident prosperity looked to him cold and insolent, and contemptuous of his own fallen fortunes.

He mounted the steps of his house slowly.

In the middle of the verandah there was a round table.  On it a paraffin lamp without a globe shed a hard glare on the three inner sides.  The fourth side was open, and faced the river.  Between the rough supports of the high-pitched roof hung torn rattan screens.  There was no ceiling, and the harsh brilliance of the lamp was toned above into a soft half-light that lost itself in the obscurity amongst the rafters.  The front wall was cut in two by the doorway of a central passage closed by a red curtain.  The women’s room opened into that passage, which led to the back courtyard and to the cooking shed.  In one of the side walls there was a doorway.  Half obliterated words — ”Office: Lingard and Co.” — were still legible on the dusty door, which looked as if it had not been opened for a very long time.  Close to the other side wall stood a bent-wood rocking-chair, and by the table and about the verandah four wooden armchairs straggled forlornly, as if ashamed of their shabby surroundings.  A heap of common mats lay in one corner, with an old hammock slung diagonally above.  In the other corner, his head wrapped in a piece of red calico, huddled into a shapeless heap, slept a Malay, one of Almayer’s domestic slaves — ”my own people,” he used to call them.  A numerous and representative assembly of moths were holding high revels round the lamp to the spirited music of swarming mosquitoes.  Under the palm-leaf thatch lizards raced on the beams calling softly.  A monkey, chained to one of the verandah supports — retired for the night under the eaves — peered and grinned at Almayer, as it swung to one of the bamboo roof sticks and caused a shower of dust and bits of dried leaves to settle on the shabby table.  The floor was uneven, with many withered plants and dried earth scattered about.  A general air of squalid neglect pervaded the place.  Great red stains on the floor and walls testified to frequent and indiscriminate betel-nut chewing.  The light breeze from the river swayed gently the tattered blinds, sending from the woods opposite a faint and sickly perfume as of decaying flowers.

Under Almayer’s heavy tread the boards of the verandah creaked loudly.  The sleeper in the corner moved uneasily, muttering indistinct words.  There was a slight rustle behind the curtained doorway, and a soft voice asked in Malay, “Is it you, father?”

“Yes, Nina.  I am hungry.  Is everybody asleep in this house?”

Almayer spoke jovially and dropped with a contented sigh into the armchair nearest to the table.  Nina Almayer came through the curtained doorway followed by an old Malay woman, who busied herself in setting upon the table a plateful of rice and fish, a jar of water, and a bottle half full of genever.  After carefully placing before her master a cracked glass tumbler and a tin spoon she went away noiselessly.  Nina stood by the table, one hand lightly resting on its edge, the other hanging listlessly by her side.  Her face turned towards the outer darkness, through which her dreamy eyes seemed to see some entrancing picture, wore a look of impatient expectancy.  She was tall for a half-caste, with the correct profile of the father, modified and strengthened by the squareness of the lower part of the face inherited from her maternal ancestors — the Sulu pirates.  Her firm mouth, with the lips slightly parted and disclosing a gleam of white teeth, put a vague suggestion of ferocity into the impatient expression of her features.  And yet her dark and perfect eyes had all the tender softness of expression common to Malay women, but with a gleam of superior intelligence; they looked gravely, wide open and steady, as if facing something invisible to all other eyes, while she stood there all in white, straight, flexible, graceful, unconscious of herself, her low but broad forehead crowned with a shining mass of long black hair that fell in heavy tresses over her shoulders, and made her pale olive complexion look paler still by the contrast of its coal-black hue.

Almayer attacked his rice greedily, but after a few mouthfuls he paused, spoon in hand, and looked at his daughter curiously.

“Did you hear a boat pass about half an hour ago Nina?” he asked.

The girl gave him a quick glance, and moving away from the light stood with her back to the table.

“No,” she said, slowly.

“There was a boat.  At last!  Dain himself; and he went on to Lakamba.  I know it, for he told me so.  I spoke to him, but he would not come here to-night.  Will come to-morrow, he said.”

He swallowed another spoonful, then said —

“I am almost happy to-night, Nina.  I can see the end of a long road, and it leads us away from this miserable swamp.  We shall soon get away from here, I and you, my dear little girl, and then — ”

He rose from the table and stood looking fixedly before him as if contemplating some enchanting vision.

“And then,” he went on, “we shall be happy, you and I.  Live rich and respected far from here, and forget this life, and all this struggle, and all this misery!”

He approached his daughter and passed his hand caressingly over her hair.

“It is bad to have to trust a Malay,” he said, “but I must own that this Dain is a perfect gentleman — a perfect gentleman,” he repeated.

“Did you ask him to come here, father?” inquired Nina, not looking at him.

“Well, of course.  We shall start on the day after to-morrow,” said Almayer, joyously.  “We must not lose any time.  Are you glad, little girl?”

She was nearly as tall as himself, but he liked to recall the time when she was little and they were all in all to each other.

“I am glad,” she said, very low.

“Of course,” said Almayer, vivaciously, “you cannot imagine what is before you.  I myself have not been to Europe, but I have heard my mother talk so often that I seem to know all about it.  We shall live a — a glorious life.  You shall see.”

Again he stood silent by his daughter’s side looking at that enchanting vision.  After a while he shook his clenched hand towards the sleeping settlement.

“Ah! my friend Abdulla,” he cried, “we shall see who will have the best of it after all these years!”