AN OUTCAST OF THE ISLANDS
CHAPTER ONE
When he stepped off the straight and narrow path of his peculiar honesty,it was with an inward assertion of unflinching resolve to fall back again into the monotonous but safe stride of virtue as soon as his little excursion into the wayside quagmires had produced the desired effect.It was going to be a short episode--a sentence in brackets,so to speak--in the flowing tale of his life:a thing of no moment,to be done unwillingly,yet neatly,and to be quickly forgotten.He imagined that he could go on afterwards looking at the sunshine,enjoying the shade,breathing in the perfume of flowers in the small garden before his house.He fancied that nothing would be changed,that he would be able as heretofore to tyrannize good-humouredly over his half-caste wife,to notice with tender contempt his pale yellow child,to patronize loftily his dark-skinned brother-in-law,who loved pink neckties and wore patent-leather boots on his little feet,and was so humble before the white husband of the lucky sister.Those were the delights of his life,and he was unable to conceive that the moral significance of any act of his could interfere with the very nature of things,could dim the light of the sun,could destroy the perfume of the flowers,the submission of his wife,the smile of his child,the awe-struck respect of Leonard da Souza and of all the Da Souza family.That family's admiration was the great luxury of his life.It rounded and completed his existence in a perpetual assurance of unquestionable superiority.He loved to breathe the coarse incense they offered before the shrine of the successful white man;the man that had done them the honour to marry their daughter,sister,cousin;the rising man sure to climb very high;the confidential clerk of Hudig &Co.They were a numerous and an unclean crowd,living in ruined bamboo houses,surrounded by neglected compounds,on the outskirts of Macassar.He kept them at arm's length and even further off,perhaps,having no illusions as to their worth.They were a half-caste,lazy lot,and he saw them as they were--ragged,lean,unwashed,undersized men of various ages,shuffling about aimlessly in slippers;motionless old women who looked like monstrous bags of pink calico stuffed with shapeless lumps of fat,and deposited askew upon decaying rattan chairs in shady corners of dusty verandahs;young women,slim and yellow,big-eyed,long-haired,moving languidly amongst the dirt and rubbish of their dwellings as if every step they took was going to be their very last.He heard their shrill quarrellings,the squalling of their children,the grunting of their pigs;he smelt the odours of the heaps of garbage in their courtyards:and he was greatly disgusted.But he fed and clothed that shabby multitude;those degenerate descendants of Portuguese conquerors;he was their providence;he kept them singing his praises in the midst of their laziness,of their dirt,of their immense and hopeless squalor:and he was greatly delighted.They wanted much,but he could give them all they wanted without ruining himself.In exchange he had their silent fear,their loquacious love,their noisy veneration.It is a fine thing to be a providence,and to be told so on every day of one's life.It gives one a feeling of enormously remote superiority,and Willems revelled in it.He did not analyze the state of his mind,but probably his greatest delight lay in the unexpressed but intimate conviction that,should he close his hand,all those admiring human beings would starve.His munificence had demoralized them.An easy task.Since he descended amongst them and married Joanna they had lost the little aptitude and strength for work they might have had to put forth under the stress of extreme necessity.They lived now by the grace of his will.This was power.Willems loved it.
In another,and perhaps a lower plane,his days did not want for their less complex but more obvious pleasures.He liked the simple games of skill--billiards;also games not so simple,and calling for quite another kind of skill--poker.He had been the aptest pupil of a steady-eyed,sententious American,who had drifted mysteriously into Macassar from the wastes of the Pacific,and,after knocking about for a time in the eddies of town life,had drifted out enigmatically into the sunny solitudes of the Indian Ocean.The memory of the Californian stranger was perpetuated in the game of poker--which became popular in the capital of Celebes from that time--and in a powerful cocktail,the recipe for which is transmitted--in the Kwang-tung dialect--from head boy to head boy of the Chinese servants in the Sunda Hotel even to this day.Willems was a connoisseur in the drink and an adept at the game.Of those accomplishments he was moderately proud.Of the confidence reposed in him by Hudig--the master--he was boastfully and obtrusively proud.This arose from his great benevolence,and from an exalted sense of his duty to himself and the world at large.He experienced that irresistible impulse to impart information which is inseparable from gross ignorance.There is always some one thing which the ignorant man knows,and that thing is the only thing worth knowing;it fills the ignorant man's universe.Willems knew all about himself.On the day when,with many misgivings,he ran away from a Dutch East-Indiaman in Samarang roads,he had commenced that study of himself,of his own ways,of his own abilities,of those fate-compelling qualities of his which led him toward that lucrative position which he now filled.Being of a modest and diffident nature,his successes amazed,almost frightened him,and ended--as he got over the succeeding shocks of surprise--by making him ferociously conceited.He believed in his genius and in his knowledge of the world.Others should know of it also;for their own good and for his greater glory.All those friendly men who slapped him on the back and greeted him noisily should have the benefit of his example.For that he must talk.He talked to them conscientiously.In the afternoon he expounded his theory of success over the little tables,dipping now and then his moustache in the crushed ice of the cocktails;in the evening he would often hold forth,cue in hand,to a young listener across the billiard table.The billiard balls stood still as if listening also,under the vivid brilliance of the shaded oil lamps hung low over the cloth;while away in the shadows of the big room the Chinaman marker would lean wearily against the wall,the blank mask of his face looking pale under the mahogany marking-board;his eyelids dropped in the drowsy fatigue of late hours and in the buzzing monotony of the unintelligible stream of words poured out by the white man.In a sudden pause of the talk the game would recommence with a sharp click and go on for a time in the flowing soft whirr and the subdued thuds as the balls rolled zig-zagging towards the inevitably successful cannon.
Through the big windows and the open doors the salt dampness of the sea,the vague smell of mould and flowers from the garden of the hotel drifted in and mingled with the odour of lamp oil,growing heavier as the night advanced.The players'heads dived into the light as they bent down for the stroke,springing back again smartly into the greenish gloom of broad lamp-shades;the clock ticked methodically;the unmoved Chinaman continuously repeated the score in a lifeless voice,like a big talking doll--and Willems would win the game.With a remark that it was getting late,and that he was a married man,he would say a patronizing good-night and step out into the long,empty street.
At that hour its white dust was like a dazzling streak of moonlight where the eye sought repose in the dimmer gleam of rare oil lamps.Willems walked homewards,following the line of walls overtopped by the luxuriant vegetation of the front gardens.The houses right and left were hidden behind the black masses of flowering shrubs.Willems had the street to himself.He would walk in the middle,his shadow gliding obsequiously before him.
He looked down on it complacently.The shadow of a successful man!He would be slightly dizzy with the cocktails and with the intoxication of his own glory.As he often told people,he came east fourteen years ago--a cabin boy.A small boy.His shadow must have been very small at that time;he thought with a smile that he was not aware then he had anything--even a shadow--which he dared call his own.And now he was looking at the shadow of the confidential clerk of Hudig &Co.going home.How glorious!
How good was life for those that were on the winning side!He had won the game of life;also the game of billiards.He walked faster,jingling his winnings,and thinking of the white stone days that had marked the path of his existence.He thought of the trip to Lombok for ponies--that first important transaction confided to him by Hudig;then he reviewed the more important affairs:the quiet deal in opium;the illegal traffic in gunpowder;the great affair of smuggled firearms,the difficult business of the Rajah of Goak.He carried that last through by sheer pluck;he had bearded the savage old ruler in his council room;he had bribed him with a gilt glass coach,which,rumour said,was used as a hen-coop now;he had over-persuaded him;he had bested him in every way.That was the way to get on.He disapproved of the elementary dishonesty that dips the hand in the cash-box,but one could evade the laws and push the principles of trade to their furthest consequences.Some call that cheating.Those are the fools,the weak,the contemptible.
The wise,the strong,the respected,have no scruples.Where there are scruples there can be no power.On that text he preached often to the young men.It was his doctrine,and he,himself,was a shining example of its truth.
Night after night he went home thus,after a day of toil and pleasure,drunk with the sound of his own voice celebrating his own prosperity.On his thirtieth birthday he went home thus.He had spent in good company a nice,noisy evening,and,as he walked along the empty street,the feeling of his own greatness grew upon him,lifted him above the white dust of the road,and filled him with exultation and regrets.He had not done himself justice over there in the hotel,he had not talked enough about himself,he had not impressed his hearers enough.Never mind.
Some other time.Now he would go home and make his wife get up and listen to him.Why should she not get up?--and mix a cocktail for him--and listen patiently.Just so.She shall.If he wanted he could make all the Da Souza family get up.He had only to say a word and they would all come and sit silently in their night vestments on the hard,cold ground of his compound and listen,as long as he wished to go on explaining to them from the top of the stairs,how great and good he was.They would.
However,his wife would do--for to-night.
His wife!He winced inwardly.A dismal woman with startled eyes and dolorously drooping mouth,that would listen to him in pained wonder and mute stillness.She was used to those night-discourses now.She had rebelled once--at the beginning.Only once.Now,while he sprawled in the long chair and drank and talked,she would stand at the further end of the table,her hands resting on the edge,her frightened eyes watching his lips,without a sound,without a stir,hardly breathing,till he dismissed her with a contemptuous:"Go to bed,dummy."She would draw a long breath then and trail out of the room,relieved but unmoved.Nothing could startle her,make her scold or make her cry.She did not complain,she did not rebel.That first difference of theirs was decisive.Too decisive,thought Willems,discontentedly.It had frightened the soul out of her body apparently.A dismal woman!
A damn'd business altogether!What the devil did he want to go and saddle himself...Ah!Well!he wanted a home,and the match seemed to please Hudig,and Hudig gave him the bungalow,that flower-bowered house to which he was wending his way in the cool moonlight.And he had the worship of the Da Souza tribe.Aman of his stamp could carry off anything,do anything,aspire to anything.In another five years those white people who attended the Sunday card-parties of the Governor would accept him--half-caste wife and all!Hooray!He saw his shadow dart forward and wave a hat,as big as a rum barrel,at the end of an arm several yards long...Who shouted hooray?...He smiled shamefacedly to himself,and,pushing his hands deep into his pockets,walked faster with a suddenly grave face.
Behind him--to the left--a cigar end glowed in the gateway of Mr.Vinck's front yard.Leaning against one of the brick pillars,Mr.Vinck,the cashier of Hudig &Co.,smoked the last cheroot of the evening.Amongst the shadows of the trimmed bushes Mrs.Vinck crunched slowly,with measured steps,the gravel of the circular path before the house.
"There's Willems going home on foot--and drunk I fancy,"said Mr.Vinck over his shoulder."I saw him jump and wave his hat."The crunching of the gravel stopped.
"Horrid man,"said Mrs.Vinck,calmly."I have heard he beats his wife.""Oh no,my dear,no,"muttered absently Mr.Vinck,with a vague gesture.The aspect of Willems as a wife-beater presented to him no interest.How women do misjudge!If Willems wanted to torture his wife he would have recourse to less primitive methods.Mr.Vinck knew Willems well,and believed him to be very able,very smart--objectionably so.As he took the last quick draws at the stump of his cheroot,Mr.Vinck reflected that the confidence accorded by Hudig to Willems was open,under the circumstances,to loyal criticism from Hudig's cashier.
"He is becoming dangerous;he knows too much.He will have to be got rid of,"said Mr.Vinck aloud.But Mrs.Vinck had gone in already,and after shaking his head he threw away his cheroot and followed her slowly.
Willems walked on homeward weaving the splendid web of his future.The road to greatness lay plainly before his eyes,straight and shining,without any obstacle that he could see.He had stepped off the path of honesty,as he understood it,but he would soon regain it,never to leave it any more!It was a very small matter.He would soon put it right again.Meantime his duty was not to be found out,and he trusted in his skill,in his luck,in his well-established reputation that would disarm suspicion if anybody dared to suspect.But nobody would dare!
True,he was conscious of a slight deterioration.He had appropriated temporarily some of Hudig's money.A deplorable necessity.But he judged himself with the indulgence that should be extended to the weaknesses of genius.He would make reparation and all would be as before;nobody would be the loser for it,and he would go on unchecked toward the brilliant goal of his ambition.
Hudig's partner!
Before going up the steps of his house he stood for awhile,his feet well apart,chin in hand,contemplating mentally Hudig's future partner.A glorious occupation.He saw him quite safe;solid as the hills;deep--deep as an abyss;discreet as the grave.
CHAPTER TWO
The sea,perhaps because of its saltness,roughens the outside but keeps sweet the kernel of its servants'soul.The old sea;the sea of many years ago,whose servants were devoted slaves and went from youth to age or to a sudden grave without needing to open the book of life,because they could look at eternity reflected on the element that gave the life and dealt the death.
Like a beautiful and unscrupulous woman,the sea of the past was glorious in its smiles,irresistible in its anger,capricious,enticing,illogical,irresponsible;a thing to love,a thing to fear.It cast a spell,it gave joy,it lulled gently into boundless faith;then with quick and causeless anger it killed.
But its cruelty was redeemed by the charm of its inscrutable mystery,by the immensity of its promise,by the supreme witchery of its possible favour.Strong men with childlike hearts were faithful to it,were content to live by its grace--to die by its will.That was the sea before the time when the French mind set the Egyptian muscle in motion and produced a dismal but profitable ditch.Then a great pall of smoke sent out by countless steam-boats was spread over the restless mirror of the Infinite.The hand of the engineer tore down the veil of the terrible beauty in order that greedy and faithless landlubbers might pocket dividends.The mystery was destroyed.Like all mysteries,it lived only in the hearts of its worshippers.The hearts changed;the men changed.The once loving and devoted servants went out armed with fire and iron,and conquering the fear of their own hearts became a calculating crowd of cold and exacting masters.The sea of the past was an incomparably beautiful mistress,with inscrutable face,with cruel and promising eyes.The sea of to-day is a used-up drudge,wrinkled and defaced by the churned-up wakes of brutal propellers,robbed of the enslaving charm of its vastness,stripped of its beauty,of its mystery and of its promise.
Tom Lingard was a master,a lover,a servant of the sea.The sea took him young,fashioned him body and soul;gave him his fierce aspect,his loud voice,his fearless eyes,his stupidly guileless heart.Generously it gave him his absurd faith in himself,his universal love of creation,his wide indulgence,his contemptuous severity,his straightforward simplicity of motive and honesty of aim.Having made him what he was,womanlike,the sea served him humbly and let him bask unharmed in the sunshine of its terribly uncertain favour.Tom Lingard grew rich on the sea and by the sea.He loved it with the ardent affection of a lover,he made light of it with the assurance of perfect mastery,he feared it with the wise fear of a brave man,and he took liberties with it as a spoiled child might do with a paternal and good-natured ogre.He was grateful to it,with the gratitude of an honest heart.His greatest pride lay in his profound conviction of its faithfulness--in the deep sense of his unerring knowledge of its treachery.
The little brig Flash was the instrument of Lingard's fortune.
They came north together--both young--out of an Australian port,and after a very few years there was not a white man in the islands,from Palembang to Ternate,from Ombawa to Palawan,that did not know Captain Tom and his lucky craft.He was liked for his reckless generosity,for his unswerving honesty,and at first was a little feared on account of his violent temper.Very soon,however,they found him out,and the word went round that Captain Tom's fury was less dangerous than many a man's smile.He prospered greatly.After his first--and successful--fight with the sea robbers,when he rescued,as rumour had it,the yacht of some big wig from home,somewhere down Carimata way,his great popularity began.As years went on it grew apace.Always visiting out-of-the-way places of that part of the world,always in search of new markets for his cargoes--not so much for profit as for the pleasure of finding them--he soon became known to the Malays,and by his successful recklessness in several encounters with pirates,established the terror of his name.Those white men with whom he had business,and who naturally were on the look-out for his weaknesses,could easily see that it was enough to give him his Malay title to flatter him greatly.So when there was anything to be gained by it,and sometimes out of pure and unprofitable good nature,they would drop the ceremonious "Captain Lingard"and address him half seriously as Rajah Laut--the King of the Sea.
He carried the name bravely on his broad shoulders.He had carried it many years already when the boy Willems ran barefooted on the deck of the ship Kosmopoliet IV.in Samarang roads,looking with innocent eyes on the strange shore and objurgating his immediate surroundings with blasphemous lips,while his childish brain worked upon the heroic idea of running away.From the poop of the Flash Lingard saw in the early morning the Dutch ship get lumberingly under weigh,bound for the eastern ports.
Very late in the evening of the same day he stood on the quay of the landing canal,ready to go on board of his brig.The night was starry and clear;the little custom-house building was shut up,and as the gharry that brought him down disappeared up the long avenue of dusty trees leading to the town,Lingard thought himself alone on the quay.He roused up his sleeping boat-crew and stood waiting for them to get ready,when he felt a tug at his coat and a thin voice said,very distinctly--"English captain."
Lingard turned round quickly,and what seemed to be a very lean boy jumped back with commendable activity.
"Who are you?Where do you spring from?"asked Lingard,in startled surprise.
From a safe distance the boy pointed toward a cargo lighter moored to the quay.
"Been hiding there,have you?"said Lingard."Well,what do you want?Speak out,confound you.You did not come here to scare me to death,for fun,did you?"The boy tried to explain in imperfect English,but very soon Lingard interrupted him.
"I see,"he exclaimed,"you ran away from the big ship that sailed this morning.Well,why don't you go to your countrymen here?""Ship gone only a little way--to Sourabaya.Make me go back to the ship,"explained the boy.
"Best thing for you,"affirmed Lingard with conviction.
"No,"retorted the boy;"me want stop here;not want go home.
Get money here;home no good."
"This beats all my going a-fishing,"commented the astonished Lingard."It's money you want?Well!well!And you were not afraid to run away,you bag of bones,you!"The boy intimated that he was frightened of nothing but of being sent back to the ship.Lingard looked at him in meditative silence.
"Come closer,"he said at last.He took the boy by the chin,and turning up his face gave him a searching look."How old are you?""Seventeen."
"There's not much of you for seventeen.Are you hungry?""A little."
"Will you come with me,in that brig there?"The boy moved without a word towards the boat and scrambled into the bows.
"Knows his place,"muttered Lingard to himself as he stepped heavily into the stern sheets and took up the yoke lines."Give way there."The Malay boat crew lay back together,and the gig sprang away from the quay heading towards the brig's riding light.
Such was the beginning of Willems'career.
Lingard learned in half an hour all that there was of Willems'commonplace story.Father outdoor clerk of some ship-broker in Rotterdam;mother dead.The boy quick in learning,but idle in school.The straitened circumstances in the house filled with small brothers and sisters,sufficiently clothed and fed but otherwise running wild,while the disconsolate widower tramped about all day in a shabby overcoat and imperfect boots on the muddy quays,and in the evening piloted wearily the half-intoxicated foreign skippers amongst the places of cheap delights,returning home late,sick with too much smoking and drinking--for company's sake--with these men,who expected such attentions in the way of business.Then the offer of the good-natured captain of Kosmopoliet IV.,who was pleased to do something for the patient and obliging fellow;young Willems'
great joy,his still greater disappointment with the sea that looked so charming from afar,but proved so hard and exacting on closer acquaintance--and then this running away by a sudden impulse.The boy was hopelessly at variance with the spirit of the sea.He had an instinctive contempt for the honest simplicity of that work which led to nothing he cared for.
Lingard soon found this out.He offered to send him home in an English ship,but the boy begged hard to be permitted to remain.
He wrote a beautiful hand,became soon perfect in English,was quick at figures;and Lingard made him useful in that way.As he grew older his trading instincts developed themselves astonishingly,and Lingard left him often to trade in one island or another while he,himself,made an intermediate trip to some out-of-the-way place.On Willems expressing a wish to that effect,Lingard let him enter Hudig's service.He felt a little sore at that abandonment because he had attached himself,in a way,to his protege.Still he was proud of him,and spoke up for him loyally.At first it was,"Smart boy that--never make a seaman though."Then when Willems was helping in the trading he referred to him as "that clever young fellow."Later when Willems became the confidential agent of Hudig,employed in many a delicate affair,the simple-hearted old seaman would point an admiring finger at his back and whisper to whoever stood near at the moment,"Long-headed chap that;deuced long-headed chap.
Look at him.Confidential man of old Hudig.I picked him up in a ditch,you may say,like a starved cat.Skin and bone.'Pon my word I did.And now he knows more than I do about island trading.Fact.I am not joking.More than I do,"he would repeat,seriously,with innocent pride in his honest eyes.
From the safe elevation of his commercial successes Willems patronized Lingard.He had a liking for his benefactor,not unmixed with some disdain for the crude directness of the old fellow's methods of conduct.There were,however,certain sides of Lingard's character for which Willems felt a qualified respect.The talkative seaman knew how to be silent on certain matters that to Willems were very interesting.Besides,Lingard was rich,and that in itself was enough to compel Willems'
unwilling admiration.In his confidential chats with Hudig,Willems generally alluded to the benevolent Englishman as the "lucky old fool"in a very distinct tone of vexation;Hudig would grunt an unqualified assent,and then the two would look at each other in a sudden immobility of pupils fixed by a stare of unexpressed thought.
"You can't find out where he gets all that india-rubber,hey Willems?"Hudig would ask at last,turning away and bending over the papers on his desk.
"No,Mr.Hudig.Not yet.But I am trying,"was Willems'invariable reply,delivered with a ring of regretful deprecation.
"Try!Always try!You may try!You think yourself clever perhaps,"rumbled on Hudig,without looking up."I have been trading with him twenty--thirty years now.The old fox.And Ihave tried.Bah!"
He stretched out a short,podgy leg and contemplated the bare instep and the grass slipper hanging by the toes."You can't make him drunk?"he would add,after a pause of stertorous breathing.
"No,Mr.Hudig,I can't really,"protested Willems,earnestly.
"Well,don't try.I know him.Don't try,"advised the master,and,bending again over his desk,his staring bloodshot eyes close to the paper,he would go on tracing laboriously with his thick fingers the slim unsteady letters of his correspondence,while Willems waited respectfully for his further good pleasure before asking,with great deference--"Any orders,Mr.Hudig?"