"I have heard already twenty . . . a hundred times about your daughter.
What ab--about--that--that other one, Ai--ssa?"
"She! Oh! we kept her here. She was mad for a long time in a quiet sort of way. Father thought a lot of her. He gave her a house to live in, in my campong. She wandered about, speaking to n.o.body unless she caught sight of Abdulla, when she would have a fit of fury, and shriek and curse like anything. Very often she would disappear--and then we all had to turn out and hunt for her, because father would worry till she was brought back. Found her in all kinds of places. Once in the abandoned campong of Lakamba. Sometimes simply wandering in the bush. She had one favourite spot we always made for at first. It was ten to one on finding her there--a kind of a gra.s.sy glade on the banks of a small brook. Why she preferred that place, I can"t imagine! And such a job to get her away from there. Had to drag her away by main force. Then, as the time pa.s.sed, she became quieter and more settled, like. Still, all my people feared her greatly. It was my Nina that tamed her. You see the child was naturally fearless and used to have her own way, so she would go to her and pull at her sarong, and order her about, as she did everybody.
Finally she, I verily believe, came to love the child. Nothing could resist that little one--you know. She made a capital nurse. Once when the little devil ran away from me and fell into the river off the end of the jetty, she jumped in and pulled her out in no time. I very nearly died of fright. Now of course she lives with my serving girls, but does what she likes. As long as I have a handful of rice or a piece of cotton in the store she sha"n"t want for anything. You have seen her. She brought in the dinner with Ali."
"What! That doubled-up crone?"
"Ah!" said Almayer. "They age quickly here. And long foggy nights spent in the bush will soon break the strongest backs--as you will find out yourself soon."
"Dis . . . disgusting," growled the traveller.
He dozed off. Almayer stood by the bal.u.s.trade looking out at the bluish sheen of the moonlit night. The forests, unchanged and sombre, seemed to hang over the water, listening to the unceasing whisper of the great river; and above their dark wall the hill on which Lingard had buried the body of his late prisoner rose in a black, rounded ma.s.s, upon the silver paleness of the sky. Almayer looked for a long time at the clean-cut outline of the summit, as if trying to make out through darkness and distance the shape of that expensive tombstone. When he turned round at last he saw his guest sleeping, his arms on the table, his head on his arms.
"Now, look here!" he shouted, slapping the table with the palm of his hand.
The naturalist woke up, and sat all in a heap, staring owlishly.
"Here!" went on Almayer, speaking very loud and thumping the table, "I want to know. You, who say you have read all the books, just tell me . . . why such infernal things are ever allowed. Here I am! Done harm to n.o.body, lived an honest life . . . and a scoundrel like that is born in Rotterdam or some such place at the other end of the world somewhere, travels out here, robs his employer, runs away from his wife, and ruins me and my Nina--he ruined me, I tell you--and gets himself shot at last by a poor miserable savage, that knows nothing at all about him really.
Where"s the sense of all this? Where"s your Providence? Where"s the good for anybody in all this? The world"s a swindle! A swindle! Why should I suffer? What have I done to be treated so?"
He howled out his string of questions, and suddenly became silent.
The man who ought to have been a professor made a tremendous effort to articulate distinctly--
"My dear fellow, don"t--don"t you see that the ba-bare fac--the fact of your existence is off--offensive. . . . I--I like you--like . . ."
He fell forward on the table, and ended his remarks by an unexpected and prolonged snore.
Almayer shrugged his shoulders and walked back to the bal.u.s.trade.
He drank his own trade gin very seldom, but when he did, a ridiculously small quant.i.ty of the stuff could induce him to a.s.sume a rebellious att.i.tude towards the scheme of the universe. And now, throwing his body over the rail, he shouted impudently into the night, turning his face towards that far-off and invisible slab of imported granite upon which Lingard had thought fit to record G.o.d"s mercy and Willems" escape.
"Father was wrong--wrong!" he yelled. "I want you to smart for it. You must smart for it! Where are you, Willems? Hey? . . . Hey? . . . Where there is no mercy for you--I hope!"
"Hope," repeated in a whispering echo the startled forests, the river and the hills; and Almayer, who stood waiting, with a smile of tipsy attention on his lips, heard no other answer.