"That's it,is it?"growled Lingard in his moustache.Then in Malay,"It seems that you are angry,O Babalatchi!""No;I am not angry,Tuan,"answered Babalatchi,descending from the insecure heights of his indignation into the insincere depths of safe humility."I am not angry.What am I to be angry?I am only an Orang Laut,and I have fled before your people many times.Servant of this one--protected of another;I have given my counsel here and there for a handful of rice.What am I,to be angry with a white man?What is anger without the power to strike?But you whites have taken all:the land,the sea,and the power to strike!And there is nothing left for us in the islands but your white men's justice;your great justice that knows not anger."He got up and stood for a moment in the doorway,sniffing the hot air of the courtyard,then turned back and leaned against the stay of the ridge pole,facing Lingard who kept his seat on the chest.The torch,consumed nearly to the end,burned noisily.
Small explosions took place in the heart of the flame,driving through its smoky blaze strings of hard,round puffs of white smoke,no bigger than peas,which rolled out of doors in the faint draught that came from invisible cracks of the bamboo walls.The pungent taint of unclean things below and about the hut grew heavier,weighing down Lingard's resolution and his thoughts in an irresistible numbness of the brain.He thought drowsily of himself and of that man who wanted to see him--who waited to see him.Who waited!Night and day.Waited...Aspiteful but vaporous idea floated through his brain that such waiting could not be very pleasant to the fellow.Well,let him wait.He would see him soon enough.And for how long?Five seconds--five minutes--say nothing--say something.What?No!
Just give him time to take one good look,and then...
Suddenly Babalatchi began to speak in a soft voice.Lingard blinked,cleared his throat--sat up straight.
"You know all now,Tuan.Lakamba dwells in the stockaded house of Patalolo;Abdulla has begun to build godowns of plank and stone;and now that Omar is dead,I myself shall depart from this place and live with Lakamba and speak in his ear.I have served many.The best of them all sleeps in the ground in a white sheet,with nothing to mark his grave but the ashes of the hut in which he died.Yes,Tuan!the white man destroyed it himself.
With a blazing brand in his hand he strode around,shouting to me to come out--shouting to me,who was throwing earth on the body of a great leader.Yes;swearing to me by the name of your God and ours that he would burn me and her in there if we did not make haste...Hai!The white men are very masterful and wise.I dragged her out quickly!""Oh,damn it!"exclaimed Lingard--then went on in Malay,speaking earnestly."Listen.That man is not like other white men.You know he is not.He is not a man at all.He is...I don't know."Babalatchi lifted his hand deprecatingly.His eye twinkled,and his red-stained big lips,parted by an expressionless grin,uncovered a stumpy row of black teeth filed evenly to the gums.
"Hai!Hai!Not like you.Not like you,"he said,increasing the softness of his tones as he neared the object uppermost in his mind during that much-desired interview."Not like you,Tuan,who are like ourselves,only wiser and stronger.Yet he,also,is full of great cunning,and speaks of you without any respect,after the manner of white men when they talk of one another."Lingard leaped in his seat as if he had been prodded.
"He speaks!What does he say?"he shouted.
"Nay,Tuan,"protested the composed Babalatchi;"what matters his talk if he is not a man?I am nothing before you--why should Irepeat words of one white man about another?He did boast to Abdulla of having learned much from your wisdom in years past.
Other words I have forgotten.Indeed,Tuan,I have..."Lingard cut short Babalatchi's protestations by a contemptuous wave of the hand and reseated himself with dignity.
"I shall go,"said Babalatchi,"and the white man will remain here,alone with the spirit of the dead and with her who has been the delight of his heart.He,being white,cannot hear the voice of those that died...Tell me,Tuan,"he went on,looking at Lingard with curiosity--"tell me,Tuan,do you white people ever hear the voices of the invisible ones?""We do not,"answered Lingard,"because those that we cannot see do not speak.""Never speak!And never complain with sounds that are not words?"exclaimed Babalatchi,doubtingly."It may be so--or your ears are dull.We Malays hear many sounds near the places where men are buried.To-night I heard...Yes,even I have heard.
I do not want to hear any more,"he added,nervously.
"Perhaps I was wrong when I...There are things I regret.
The trouble was heavy in his heart when he died.Sometimes Ithink I was wrong...but I do not want to hear the complaint of invisible lips.Therefore I go,Tuan.Let the unquiet spirit speak to his enemy the white man who knows not fear,or love,or mercy--knows nothing but contempt and violence.I have been wrong!I have!Hai!Hai!"He stood for awhile with his elbow in the palm of his left hand,the fingers of the other over his lips as if to stifle the expression of inconvenient remorse;then,after glancing at the torch,burnt out nearly to its end,he moved towards the wall by the chest,fumbled about there and suddenly flung open a large shutter of attaps woven in a light framework of sticks.Lingard swung his legs quickly round the corner of his seat.
"Hallo!"he said,surprised.
The cloud of smoke stirred,and a slow wisp curled out through the new opening.The torch flickered,hissed,and went out,the glowing end falling on the mat,whence Babalatchi snatched it up and tossed it outside through the open square.It described a vanishing curve of red light,and lay below,shining feebly in the vast darkness.Babalatchi remained with his arm stretched out into the empty night.
"There,"he said,"you can see the white man's courtyard,Tuan,and his house.""I can see nothing,"answered Lingard,putting his head through the shutter-hole."It's too dark.""Wait,Tuan,"urged Babalatchi."You have been looking long at the burning torch.You will soon see.Mind the gun,Tuan.It is loaded.""There is no flint in it.You could not find a fire-stone for a hundred miles round this spot,"said Lingard,testily."Foolish thing to load that gun.""I have a stone.I had it from a man wise and pious that lives in Menang Kabau.A very pious man--very good fire.He spoke words over that stone that make its sparks good.And the gun is good--carries straight and far.Would carry from here to the door of the white man's house,I believe,Tuan.""Tida apa.Never mind your gun,"muttered Lingard,peering into the formless darkness."Is that the house--that black thing over there?"he asked.
"Yes,"answered Babalatchi;"that is his house.He lives there by the will of Abdulla,and shall live there till...From where you stand,Tuan,you can look over the fence and across the courtyard straight at the door--at the door from which he comes out every morning,looking like a man that had seen Jehannum in his sleep."Lingard drew his head in.Babalatchi touched his shoulder with a groping hand.
"Wait a little,Tuan.Sit still.The morning is not far off now--a morning without sun after a night without stars.But there will be light enough to see the man who said not many days ago that he alone has made you less than a child in Sambir."He felt a slight tremor under his hand,but took it off directly and began feeling all over the lid of the chest,behind Lingard's back,for the gun.
"What are you at?"said Lingard,impatiently."You do worry about that rotten gun.You had better get a light.""A light!I tell you,Tuan,that the light of heaven is very near,"said Babalatchi,who had now obtained possession of the object of his solicitude,and grasping it strongly by its long barrel,grounded the stock at his feet.
"Perhaps it is near,"said Lingard,leaning both his elbows on the lower cross-piece of the primitive window and looking out.
"It is very black outside yet,"he remarked carelessly.
Babalatchi fidgeted about.
"It is not good for you to sit where you may be seen,"he muttered.
"Why not?"asked Lingard.
"The white man sleeps,it is true,"explained Babalatchi,softly;"yet he may come out early,and he has arms.""Ah!he has arms?"said Lingard.
"Yes;a short gun that fires many times--like yours here.
Abdulla had to give it to him."
Lingard heard Babalatchi's words,but made no movement.To the old adventurer the idea that fire arms could be dangerous in other hands than his own did not occur readily,and certainly not in connection with Willems.He was so busy with the thoughts about what he considered his own sacred duty,that he could not give any consideration to the probable actions of the man of whom he thought--as one may think of an executed criminal--with wondering indignation tempered by scornful pity.While he sat staring into the darkness,that every minute grew thinner before his pensive eyes,like a dispersing mist,Willems appeared to him as a figure belonging already wholly to the past--a figure that could come in no way into his life again.He had made up his mind,and the thing was as well as done.In his weary thoughts he had closed this fatal,inexplicable,and horrible episode in his life.The worst had happened.The coming days would see the retribution.
He had removed an enemy once or twice before,out of his path;he had paid off some very heavy scores a good many times.Captain Tom had been a good friend to many:but it was generally understood,from Honolulu round about to Diego Suarez,that Captain Tom's enmity was rather more than any man single-handed could easily manage.He would not,as he said often,hurt a fly as long as the fly left him alone;yet a man does not live for years beyond the pale of civilized laws without evolving for himself some queer notions of justice.Nobody of those he knew had ever cared to point out to him the errors of his conceptions.
It was not worth anybody's while to run counter to Lingard's ideas of the fitness of things--that fact was acquired to the floating wisdom of the South Seas,of the Eastern Archipelago,and was nowhere better understood than in out-of-the-way nooks of the world;in those nooks which he filled,unresisted and masterful,with the echoes of his noisy presence.There is not much use in arguing with a man who boasts of never having regretted a single action of his life,whose answer to a mild criticism is a good-natured shout--"You know nothing about it.Iwould do it again.Yes,sir!"His associates and his acquaintances accepted him,his opinions,his actions like things preordained and unchangeable;looked upon his many-sided manifestations with passive wonder not unmixed with that admiration which is only the rightful due of a successful man.
But nobody had ever seen him in the mood he was in now.Nobody had seen Lingard doubtful and giving way to doubt,unable to make up his mind and unwilling to act;Lingard timid and hesitating one minute,angry yet inactive the next;Lingard puzzled in a word,because confronted with a situation that discomposed him by its unprovoked malevolence,by its ghastly injustice,that to his rough but unsophisticated palate tasted distinctly of sulphurous fumes from the deepest hell.
The smooth darkness filling the shutter-hole grew paler and became blotchy with ill-defined shapes,as if a new universe was being evolved out of sombre chaos.Then outlines came out,defining forms without any details,indicating here a tree,there a bush;a black belt of forest far off;the straight lines of a house,the ridge of a high roof near by.Inside the hut,Babalatchi,who lately had been only a persuasive voice,became a human shape leaning its chin imprudently on the muzzle of a gun and rolling an uneasy eye over the reappearing world.The day came rapidly,dismal and oppressed by the fog of the river and by the heavy vapours of the sky--a day without colour and without sunshine:incomplete,disappointing,and sad.
Babalatchi twitched gently Lingard's sleeve,and when the old seaman had lifted up his head interrogatively,he stretched out an arm and a pointing forefinger towards Willems'house,now plainly visible to the right and beyond the big tree of the courtyard.
"Look,Tuan!"he said."He lives there.That is the door--his door.Through it he will appear soon,with his hair in disorder and his mouth full of curses.That is so.He is a white man,and never satisfied.It is in my mind he is angry even in his sleep.A dangerous man.As Tuan may observe,"he went on,obsequiously,"his door faces this opening,where you condescend to sit,which is concealed from all eyes.Faces it--straight--and not far.Observe,Tuan,not at all far.""Yes,yes;I can see.I shall see him when he wakes.""No doubt,Tuan.When he wakes...If you remain here he can not see you.I shall withdraw quickly and prepare my canoe myself.I am only a poor man,and must go to Sambir to greet Lakamba when he opens his eyes.I must bow before Abdulla who has strength--even more strength than you.Now if you remain here,you shall easily behold the man who boasted to Abdulla that he had been your friend,even while he prepared to fight those who called you protector.Yes,he plotted with Abdulla for that cursed flag.Lakamba was blind then,and I was deceived.But you,Tuan!Remember,he deceived you more.Of that he boasted before all men."He leaned the gun quietly against the wall close to the window,and said softly:"Shall I go now,Tuan?Be careful of the gun.
I have put the fire-stone in.The fire-stone of the wise man,which never fails."Lingard's eyes were fastened on the distant doorway.Across his line of sight,in the grey emptiness of the courtyard,a big fruit-pigeon flapped languidly towards the forests with a loud booming cry,like the note of a deep gong:a brilliant bird looking in the gloom of threatening day as black as a crow.Aserried flock of white rice birds rose above the trees with a faint scream,and hovered,swaying in a disordered mass that suddenly scattered in all directions,as if burst asunder by a silent explosion.Behind his back Lingard heard a shuffle of feet--women leaving the hut.In the other courtyard a voice was heard complaining of cold,and coming very feeble,but exceedingly distinct,out of the vast silence of the abandoned houses and clearings.Babalatchi coughed discreetly.From under the house the thumping of wooden pestles husking the rice started with unexpected abruptness.The weak but clear voice in the yard again urged,"Blow up the embers,O brother!"Another voice answered,drawling in modulated,thin sing-song,"Do it yourself,O shivering pig!"and the drawl of the last words stopped short,as if the man had fallen into a deep hole.Babalatchi coughed again a little impatiently,and said in a confidential tone--"Do you think it is time for me to go,Tuan?Will you take care of my gun,Tuan?I am a man that knows how to obey;even obey Abdulla,who has deceived me.Nevertheless this gun carries far and true--if you would want to know,Tuan.And I have put in a double measure of powder,and three slugs.Yes,Tuan.
Now--perhaps--I go."
When Babalatchi commenced speaking,Lingard turned slowly round and gazed upon him with the dull and unwilling look of a sick man waking to another day of suffering.As the astute statesman proceeded,Lingard's eyebrows came close,his eyes became animated,and a big vein stood out on his forehead,accentuating a lowering frown.When speaking his last words Babalatchi faltered,then stopped,confused,before the steady gaze of the old seaman.
Lingard rose.His face cleared,and he looked down at the anxious Babalatchi with sudden benevolence.
"So!That's what you were after,"he said,laying a heavy hand on Babalatchi's yielding shoulder."You thought I came here to murder him.Hey?Speak!You faithful dog of an Arab trader!""And what else,Tuan?"shrieked Babalatchi,exasperated into sincerity."What else,Tuan!Remember what he has done;he poisoned our ears with his talk about you.You are a man.If you did not come to kill,Tuan,then either I am a fool or..."He paused,struck his naked breast with his open palm,and finished in a discouraged whisper--"or,Tuan,you are."Lingard looked down at him with scornful serenity.After his long and painful gropings amongst the obscure abominations of Willems'conduct,the logical if tortuous evolutions of Babalatchi's diplomatic mind were to him welcome as daylight.
There was something at last he could understand--the clear effect of a simple cause.He felt indulgent towards the disappointed sage.
"So you are angry with your friend,O one-eyed one!"he said slowly,nodding his fierce countenance close to Babalatchi's discomfited face."It seems to me that you must have had much to do with what happened in Sambir lately.Hey?You son of a burnt father.""May I perish under your hand,O Rajah of the sea,if my words are not true!"said Babalatchi,with reckless excitement."You are here in the midst of your enemies.He the greatest.Abdulla would do nothing without him,and I could do nothing without Abdulla.Strike me--so that you strike all!""Who are you,"exclaimed Lingard contemptuously--"who are you to dare call yourself my enemy!Dirt!Nothing!Go out first,"he went on severely."Lakas!quick.March out!"He pushed Babalatchi through the doorway and followed him down the short ladder into the courtyard.The boatmen squatting over the fire turned their slow eyes with apparent difficulty towards the two men;then,unconcerned,huddled close together again,stretching forlornly their hands over the embers.The women stopped in their work and with uplifted pestles flashed quick and curious glances from the gloom under the house.
"Is that the way?"asked Lingard with a nod towards the little wicket-gate of Willems'enclosure.
"If you seek death,that is surely the way,"answered Babalatchi in a dispassionate voice,as if he had exhausted all the emotions."He lives there:he who destroyed your friends;who hastened Omar's death;who plotted with Abdulla first against you,then against me.I have been like a child.O shame!...
But go,Tuan.Go there."
"I go where I like,"said Lingard,emphatically,"and you may go to the devil;I do not want you any more.The islands of these seas shall sink before I,Rajah Laut,serve the will of any of your people.Tau?But I tell you this:I do not care what you do with him after to-day.And I say that because I am merciful.""Tida!I do nothing,"said Babalatchi,shaking his head with bitter apathy."I am in Abdulla's hand and care not,even as you do.No!no!"he added,turning away,"I have learned much wisdom this morning.There are no men anywhere.You whites are cruel to your friends and merciful to your enemies--which is the work of fools."He went away towards the riverside,and,without once looking back,disappeared in the low bank of mist that lay over the water and the shore.Lingard followed him with his eyes thoughtfully.
After awhile he roused himself and called out to his boatmen--"Hai--ya there!After you have eaten rice,wait for me with your paddles in your hands.You hear?""Ada,Tuan!"answered Ali through the smoke of the morning fire that was spreading itself,low and gentle,over the courtyard--"we hear!"Lingard opened slowly the little wicket-gate,made a few steps into the empty enclosure,and stopped.He had felt about his head the short breath of a puff of wind that passed him,made every leaf of the big tree shiver--and died out in a hardly perceptible tremor of branches and twigs.Instinctively he glanced upwards with a seaman's impulse.Above him,under the grey motionless waste of a stormy sky,drifted low black vapours,in stretching bars,in shapeless patches,in sinuous wisps and tormented spirals.Over the courtyard and the house floated a round,sombre,and lingering cloud,dragging behind a tail of tangled and filmy streamers--like the dishevelled hair of a mourning woman.
CHAPTER THREE
"Beware!"
The tremulous effort and the broken,inadequate tone of the faint cry,surprised Lingard more than the unexpected suddenness of the warning conveyed,he did not know by whom and to whom.Besides himself there was no one in the courtyard as far as he could see.
The cry was not renewed,and his watchful eyes,scanning warily the misty solitude of Willems'enclosure,were met everywhere only by the stolid impassiveness of inanimate things:the big sombre-looking tree,the shut-up,sightless house,the glistening bamboo fences,the damp and drooping bushes further off--all these things,that condemned to look for ever at the incomprehensible afflictions or joys of mankind,assert in their aspect of cold unconcern the high dignity of lifeless matter that surrounds,incurious and unmoved,the restless mysteries of the ever-changing,of the never-ending life.
Lingard,stepping aside,put the trunk of the tree between himself and the house,then,moving cautiously round one of the projecting buttresses,had to tread short in order to avoid scattering a small heap of black embers upon which he came unexpectedly on the other side.A thin,wizened,little old woman,who,standing behind the tree,had been looking at the house,turned towards him with a start,gazed with faded,expressionless eyes at the intruder,then made a limping attempt to get away.She seemed,however,to realize directly the hopelessness or the difficulty of the undertaking,stopped,hesitated,tottered back slowly;then,after blinking dully,fell suddenly on her knees amongst the white ashes,and,bending over the heap of smouldering coals,distended her sunken cheeks in a steady effort to blow up the hidden sparks into a useful blaze.
Lingard looked down on her,but she seemed to have made up her mind that there was not enough life left in her lean body for anything else than the discharge of the simple domestic duty,and,apparently,she begrudged him the least moment of attention.
After waiting for awhile,Lingard asked--"Why did you call,O daughter?"
"I saw you enter,"she croaked feebly,still grovelling with her face near the ashes and without looking up,"and I called--the cry of warning.It was her order.Her order,"she repeated,with a moaning sigh.
"And did she hear?"pursued Lingard,with gentle composure.
Her projecting shoulder-blades moved uneasily under the thin stuff of the tight body jacket.She scrambled up with difficulty to her feet,and hobbled away,muttering peevishly to herself,towards a pile of dry brushwood heaped up against the fence.
Lingard,looking idly after her,heard the rattle of loose planks that led from the ground to the door of the house.He moved his head beyond the shelter of the tree and saw Aissa coming down the inclined way into the courtyard.After making a few hurried paces towards the tree,she stopped with one foot advanced in an appearance of sudden terror,and her eyes glanced wildly right and left.Her head was uncovered.A blue cloth wrapped her from her head to foot in close slanting folds,with one end thrown over her shoulder.A tress of her black hair strayed across her bosom.Her bare arms pressed down close to her body,with hands open and outstretched fingers;her slightly elevated shoulders and the backward inclination of her torso gave her the aspect of one defiant yet shrinking from a coming blow.She had closed the door of the house behind her;and as she stood solitary in the unnatural and threatening twilight of the murky day,with everything unchanged around her,she appeared to Lingard as if she had been made there,on the spot,out of the black vapours of the sky and of the sinister gleams of feeble sunshine that struggled,through the thickening clouds,into the colourless desolation of the world.
After a short but attentive glance towards the shut-up house,Lingard stepped out from behind the tree and advanced slowly towards her.The sudden fixity of her--till then--restless eyes and a slight twitch of her hands were the only signs she gave at first of having seen him.She made a long stride forward,and putting herself right in his path,stretched her arms across;her black eyes opened wide,her lips parted as if in an uncertain attempt to speak--but no sound came out to break the significant silence of their meeting.Lingard stopped and looked at her with stern curiosity.After a while he said composedly--"Let me pass.I came here to talk to a man.Does he hide?Has he sent you?"She made a step nearer,her arms fell by her side,then she put them straight out nearly touching Lingard's breast.
"He knows not fear,"she said,speaking low,with a forward throw of her head,in a voice trembling but distinct."It is my own fear that has sent me here.He sleeps.""He has slept long enough,"said Lingard,in measured tones."Iam come--and now is the time of his waking.Go and tell him this--or else my own voice will call him up.A voice he knows well."He put her hands down firmly and again made as if to pass by her.
"Do not!"she exclaimed,and fell at his feet as if she had been cut down by a scythe.The unexpected suddenness of her movement startled Lingard,who stepped back.
"What's this?"he exclaimed in a wondering whisper--then added in a tone of sharp command:"Stand up!"She rose at once and stood looking at him,timorous and fearless;yet with a fire of recklessness burning in her eyes that made clear her resolve to pursue her purpose even to the death.
Lingard went on in a severe voice--