第 三十七 章 · ‘It all begins with a remarkable exploit of a man called Brown, who

. ‘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 an 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.