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The pen had spluttered, and that time he gave it up. There’s nothing more; he had seen a broad gulf that neither eye nor voice could span. I can understand this. He was overwhelmed by the inexplicable; he was overwhelmed by his own personality — the gift of that destiny which he had done his best to master.
“I send you also an old letter — a very old letter. It was found carefully preserved in his writing-case. It is from his father, and by the date you can see he must have received it a few days before he joined the Patna. Thus it must be the last letter he ever had from home. He had treasured it all these years. The good old par- son fancied his sailor-son. I’ve looked in at a sentence here and there. There is nothing in it except just affection. He tells his ‘dear James’ that the last long letter from him was very ‘honest and entertaining.’ He would not have him ‘judge men harshly or hastily.’ There are four pages of it, easy morality and family news. Tom had ‘taken orders.’ Carrie’s husband had ‘money losses.’ The old chap goes on equably trust- ing Providence and the established order of the universe, but alive to its small dangers and its small mercies. One can almost see him, grey -haired and serene in the inviolable shelter of his book-lined, faded, and com- fortable study, where for forty years he had consci- entiously gone over and over again the round of his little thoughts about faith and virtue, about the con- duct of life and the only proper manner of dying; where he had written so many sermons, where he sits talking to his boy, over there, on the other side of the earth. But what of the distance? Virtue is one all over the world, and there is only one faith, one conceivable con- duct of life, one manner of dying. He hopes his ‘dear James’ will never forget that ‘who once gives way to temptation, in the very instant hazards his total de-
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pravity and everlasting ruin. Therefore resolve fixedly never, through any possible motives, to do anything which you believe to be wrong.’ There is also some news of a favourite dog; and a pony, ‘which all you boys used to ride,’ had gone blind from old age and had to be shot. The old chap invokes Heaven’s blessing; the mother and all the girls then at home send their love. . . . No, there is nothing much in that
yellow frayed letter fluttering out of his cherishing grasp after so many years. It was never answered, but who can say what converse he may have held with all these placid, colourless forms of men and women peopling that quiet corner of the world as free of danger or strife as a tomb, and breathing equably the air of undisturbed rectitude. It seems amazing that he should belong to it, he to whom so many things ‘had come.’ Nothing ever came to them; they would never be taken unawares, and never be called upon to grapple with fate. Here they all are, evoked by the mild gossip of the father, all these brothers and sisters, bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, gazing with clear unconscious eyes, while I seem to see him, returned at last, no longer a mere white speck at the heart of an immense mystery, but of full stature, standing disregarded amongst their untroubled shapes, with a stern and romantic aspect, but always mute, dark — under a cloud.
“The story of the last events you shall find in the few pages enclosed here. You must admit that it is romantic beyond the wildest dreams of his boyhood, and yet there is to my mind a sort of profound and terrifying logic in it, as if it were our imagination alone that could set loose upon us the might of an over- whelming destiny. The imprudence of our thoughts recoils upon our heads; who toys with the sword shall perish by the sword. This astounding adventure, of
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which the most astounding part is that it is true, comes on as an unavoidable consequence. Something of the sort had to happen. You repeat this to yourself while you marvel that such a thing could happen in the year of grace before last. But it has happened — and there is no disputing its logic.
“I put it down here for you as though I had been an eyewitness. My information was fragmentary, but I’ve fitted the pieces together, and there is enough of them to make an intelligible picture. I wonder how he would have related it himself. He has confided so much in me that at times it seems as though he must come in presently and tell the story in his own words, in his careless yet feeling voice, with his offhand manner, a little puzzled, a little bothered, a little hurt, but now and then by a word or a phrase giving one of these glimpses of his very own self that were never any good for purposes of orientation. It’s difficult to believe he will never come. I shall never hear his voice again, nor shall I see his smooth tan-and-pink face with a white line on the forehead, and the youthful eyes darkened by excitement to a profound, unfathomable blue.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
“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 in- complete, 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.
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. . . 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 hear ... 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 Bangkok through that busybody Schomberg, the hotelkeeper, 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 ex- pression 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.
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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 recognized 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?’ 1 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
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Taint)’ It am 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 re- peated, 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 for- given 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.
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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 chande- lier 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 with- drawn 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 be- numbing 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 re- sentment filled me with pity for her — for him, too. I stood rooted to the spot after she had finished. Lean- ing on her arm, she stared with hard eyes, and the wind passed in gusts, the crystals kept on clicking in the
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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 accom- paniment 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
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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, greyhaired, 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 som- brely beyond my shoulder with black, clear, motionless eyes. 6 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 realized 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.