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_ 'It all begins with a remarkable exploit of a man called Brown,
who stole with complete success a Spanish schooner out of a small
bay near Zamboanga. Till I discovered the fellow my information
was incomplete, but most unexpectedly I did come upon him a few
hours before he gave up his arrogant ghost. Fortunately he was
willing and able to talk between the choking fits of asthma, and his
racked body writhed with malicious exultation at the bare thought
of Jim. He exulted thus at the idea that he had "paid out the
stuck-up beggar after all." He gloated over his action. I had to bear
the sunken glare of his fierce crow-footed eyes if I wanted to know;
and so I bore it, reflecting how much certain forms of evil are akin
to madness, derived from intense egoism, inflamed by resistance,
tearing the soul to pieces, and giving factitious vigour to the body.
The story also reveals unsuspected depths of cunning in the
wretched Cornelius, whose abject and intense hate acts like a subtle
inspiration, pointing out an unerring way towards revenge.
' "I could see directly I set my eyes on him what sort of a fool he
was," gasped the dying Brown. "He a man! Hell! He was a hollow
sham. As if he couldn't have said straight out, 'Hands off my
plunder!' blast him! That would have been like a man! Rot his superior
soul! He had me there--but he hadn't devil enough in him to make
an end of me. Not he! A thing like that letting me off as if I wasn't
worth a kick! . . ." Brown struggled desperately for breath. . . .
"Fraud. . . . Letting me off. . . . And so I did make an end of him
after all. . . ." He choked again. . . . "I expect this thing'll kill me,
but I shall die easy now. You . . . you here . . . I don't know your
name--I would give you a five-pound note if--if I had it--for the
news--or my name's not Brown. . . ." He grinned horribly. . . .
"Gentleman Brown."
'He said all these things in profound gasps, staring at me with
his yellow eyes out of a long, ravaged, brown face; he jerked his left
arm; a pepper-and-salt matted beard hung almost into his lap; a
dirty ragged blanket covered his legs. I had found him out in Bankok
through that busybody Schomberg, the hotel-keeper, who had,
confidentially, directed me where to look. It appears that a sort of
loafing, fuddled vagabond--a white man living amongst the natives
with a Siamese woman--had considered it a great privilege to give
a shelter to the last days of the famous Gentleman Brown. While
he was talking to me in the wretched hovel, and, as it were, fighting
for every minute of his life, the Siamese woman, with big bare legs
and a stupid coarse face, sat in a dark corner chewing betel stolidly.
Now and then she would get up for the purpose of shooing a chicken
away from the door. The whole hut shook when she walked. An
ugly yellow child, naked and pot-bellied like a little heathen god,
stood at the foot of the couch, finger in mouth, lost in a profound
and calm contemplation of the dying man.
'He talked feverishly; but in the middle of a word, perhaps, an
invisible hand would take him by the throat, and he would look at
me dumbly with an expression of doubt and anguish. He seemed
to fear that I would get tired of waiting and go away, leaving him
with his tale untold, with his exultation unexpressed. He died during
the night, I believe, but by that time I had nothing more to
learn.
'So much as to Brown, for the present.
'Eight months before this, coming into Samarang, I went as usual
to see Stein. On the garden side of the house a Malay on the verandah
greeted me shyly, and I remembered that I had seen him in Patusan,
in Jim's house, amongst other Bugis men who used to come in the
evening to talk interminably over their war reminiscences and to
discuss State affairs. Jim had pointed him out to me once as a
respectable petty trader owning a small seagoing native craft, who
had showed himself "one of the best at the taking of the stockade."
I was not very surprised to see him, since any Patusan trader venturing
as far as Samarang would naturally find his way to Stein's house. I
returned his greeting and passed on. At the door of Stein's room I
came upon another Malay in whom I recognised Tamb' Itam.
'I asked him at once what he was doing there; it occurred to me
that Jim might have come on a visit. I own I was pleased and excited
at the thought. Tamb' Itam looked as if he did not know what to say.
"Is Tuan Jim inside?" I asked impatiently. "No," he mumbled,
hanging his head for a moment, and then with sudden earnestness,
"He would not fight. He would not fight," he repeated twice. As
he seemed unable to say anything else, I pushed him aside and went
in,
'Stein, tall and stooping, stood alone in the middle of the room
between the rows of butterfly cases. "Ach! is it you, my friend?"
he said sadly, peering through his glasses. A drab sack-coat of alpaca
hung, unbuttoned, down to his knees. He had a Panama hat on his
head, and there were deep furrows on his pale cheeks. "What's the
matter now?" I asked nervously. "There's Tamb' Itam there. . . ."
"Come and see the girl. Come and see the girl. She is here," he
said, with a half-hearted show of activity. I tried to detain him, but
with gentle obstinacy he would take no notice of my eager questions.
"She is here, she is here," he repeated, in great perturbation. "They
came here two days ago. An old man like me, a stranger--sehen
Sie--cannot do much. . . . Come this way. . . . Young hearts are
unforgiving. . . ." I could see he was in utmost distress. . . . "The
strength of life in them, the cruel strength of life. . . ." He mumbled,
leading me round the house; I followed him, lost in dismal and
angry conjectures. At the door of the drawing-room he barred my
way. "He loved her very much," he said interrogatively, and I
only nodded, feeling so bitterly disappointed that I would not trust
myself to speak. "Very frightful," he murmured. "She can't understand
me. I am only a strange old man. Perhaps you . . . she knows you. Talk
to her. We can't leave it like this. Tell her to forgive him. It was
very frightful." "No doubt," I said, exasperated at being in the dark;
"but have you forgiven him?" He looked at me queerly. "You shall
hear," he said, and opening the door, absolutely pushed me in.
'You know Stein's big house and the two immense reception-rooms,
uninhabited and uninhabitable, clean, full of solitude and of shining
things that look as if never beheld by the eye of man? They are cool
on the hottest days, and you enter them as you would a scrubbed cave
underground. I passed through one, and in the other I saw the girl
sitting at the end of a big mahogany table, on which she rested her
head, the face hidden in her arms. The waxed floor reflected her dimly
as though it had been a sheet of frozen water. The rattan screens were
down, and through the strange greenish gloom made by the foliage of
the trees outside a strong wind blew in gusts, swaying the long
draperies of windows and doorways. Her white figure seemed shaped in
snow; the pendent crystals of a great chandelier clicked above her
head like glittering icicles. She looked up and watched my approach.
I was chilled as if these vast apartments had been the cold abode of
despair.
'She recognised me at once, and as soon as I had stopped, looking
down at her: "He has left me," she said quietly; "you always leave
us--for your own ends." Her face was set. All the heat of life seemed
withdrawn within some inaccessible spot in her breast. "It would
have been easy to die with him," she went on, and made a slight
weary gesture as if giving up the incomprehensible. "He would not!
It was like a blindness--and yet it was I who was speaking to him;
it was I who stood before his eyes; it was at me that he looked all
the time! Ah! you are hard, treacherous, without truth, without
compassion. What makes you so wicked? Or is it that you are all
mad?"
'I took her hand; it did not respond, and when I dropped it, it
hung down to the floor. That indifference, more awful than tears,
cries, and reproaches, seemed to defy time and consolation. You
felt that nothing you could say would reach the seat of the still and
benumbing pain.
'Stein had said, "You shall hear." I did hear. I heard it all,
listening with amazement, with awe, to the tones of her inflexible
weariness. She could not grasp the real sense of what she was telling
me, and her resentment filled me with pity for her--for him too. I
stood rooted to the spot after she had finished. Leaning on her arm,
she stared with hard eyes, and the wind passed in gusts, the crystals
kept on clicking in the greenish gloom. She went on whispering to
herself: "And yet he was looking at me! He could see my face, hear
my voice, hear my grief! When I used to sit at his feet, with my
cheek against his knee and his hand on my head, the curse of cruelty
and madness was already within him, waiting for the day. The day
came! . . . and before the sun had set he could not see me any
more--he was made blind and deaf and without pity, as you all are.
He shall have no tears from me. Never, never. Not one tear. I will
not! He went away from me as if I had been worse than death. He
fled as if driven by some accursed thing he had heard or seen in his
sleep. . . ."
'Her steady eyes seemed to strain after the shape of a man torn
out of her arms by the strength of a dream. She made no sign to my
silent bow. I was glad to escape.
'I saw her once again, the same afternoon. On leaving her I had
gone in search of Stein, whom I could not find indoors; and I
wandered out, pursued by distressful thoughts, into the gardens,
those famous gardens of Stein, in which you can find every plant
and tree of tropical lowlands. I followed the course of the canalised
stream, and sat for a long time on a shaded bench near the ornamental
pond, where some waterfowl with clipped wings were diving and splashing
noisily. The branches of casuarina trees behind me swayed lightly,
incessantly, reminding me of the soughing of fir trees at home.
'This mournful and restless sound was a fit accompaniment to
my meditations. She had said he had been driven away from her by
a dream,--and there was no answer one could make her--there
seemed to be no forgiveness for such a transgression. And yet is not
mankind itself, pushing on its blind way, driven by a dream of its
greatness and its power upon the dark paths of excessive cruelty
and of excessive devotion? And what is the pursuit of truth, after
all?
'When I rose to get back to the house I caught sight of Stein's
drab coat through a gap in the foliage, and very soon at a turn of
the path I came upon him walking with the girl. Her little hand
rested on his forearm, and under the broad, flat rim of his Panama
hat he bent over her, grey-haired, paternal, with compassionate and
chivalrous deference. I stood aside, but they stopped, facing me.
His gaze was bent on the ground at his feet; the girl, erect and slight
on his arm, stared sombrely beyond my shoulder with black, clear,
motionless eyes. "Schrecklich," he murmured. "Terrible! Terrible!
What can one do?" He seemed to be appealing to me, but her youth,
the length of the days suspended over her head, appealed to me
more; and suddenly, even as I realised that nothing could be said,
I found myself pleading his cause for her sake. "You must forgive
him," I concluded, and my own voice seemed to me muffled, lost
in un irresponsive deaf immensity. "We all want to be forgiven," I
added after a while.
' "What have I done?" she asked with her lips only.
' "You always mistrusted him," I said.
' "He was like the others," she pronounced slowly.
' "Not like the others," I protested, but she continued evenly,
without any feeling--
' "He was false." And suddenly Stein broke in. "No! no! no! My
poor child! . . ." He patted her hand lying passively on his sleeve.
"No! no! Not false! True! True! True!" He tried to look into her
stony face. "You don't understand. Ach! Why you do not understand?
. . . Terrible," he said to me. "Some day she _shall_ understand."
' "Will you explain?" I asked, looking hard at him. They moved on.
'I watched them. Her gown trailed on the path, her black hair
fell loose. She walked upright and light by the side of the tall man,
whose long shapeless coat hung in perpendicular folds from the
stooping shoulders, whose feet moved slowly. They disappeared
beyond that spinney (you may remember) where sixteen different
kinds of bamboo grow together, all distinguishable to the learned
eye. For my part, I was fascinated by the exquisite grace and beauty
of that fluted grove, crowned with pointed leaves and feathery
heads, the lightness, the vigour, the charm as distinct as a voice of
that unperplexed luxuriating life. I remember staying to look at it
for a long time, as one would linger within reach of a consoling
whisper. The sky was pearly grey. It was one of those overcast
days so rare in the tropics, in which memories crowd upon one,
memories of other shores, of other faces.
'I drove back to town the same afternoon, taking with me Tamb' Itam
and the other Malay, in whose seagoing craft they had escaped
in the bewilderment, fear, and gloom of the disaster. The shock of
it seemed to have changed their natures. It had turned her passion
into stone, and it made the surly taciturn Tamb' Itam almost
loquacious. His surliness, too, was subdued into puzzled humility,
as though he had seen the failure of a potent charm in a supreme
moment. The Bugis trader, a shy hesitating man, was very clear in
the little he had to say. Both were evidently over-awed by a sense of
deep inexpressible wonder, by the touch of an inscrutable mystery.'
There with Marlow's signature the letter proper ended. The
privileged reader screwed up his lamp, and solitary above the billowy
roofs of the town, like a lighthouse-keeper above the sea, he turned
to the pages of the story. _
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