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twice to make him obey my desire; to make him strike at his own people so
that he could be minemine! O calamity! His hand was false as your white
hearts. It struck forward, pushed by my desireby his desire of me. . . .
It struck that strong hand, andO shame!it killed nobody! Its fierce and
lying blow woke up hate without any fear.
Round me all was lies. His strength was a lie. My own people lied to me
and to him. And to meet youyou, the great!he had no one but me? But me
with my rage, my pain, my weakness. Only me! And to me he would not even
speak. The fool!"
She came up close to Lingard, with the wild and stealthy aspect of a lunatic
longing to whisper out an insane secretone of those misshapen, heartrending,
and ludicrous secrets; one of those thoughts that, like monsterscruel,
fantastic, and mournful, wander about terrible and unceasing in the night of
madness.
Lingard looked at her, astounded but unflinching. She spoke in his face,
very low.
"He is all! Everything. He is my breath, my light, my heart. . . . Go
away. . . . Forget him. . . . He has no courage and no wisdom any more . .
. and I have lost my power. . . . Go away and forget. There are other
enemies. . . . Leave him to me. He had been a man once. . . . You are too
great. Nobody can withstand you. . .
. I tried. . . . I know now. . . . I cry for mercy. Leave him to me and
go away."
The fragments of her supplicating sentences were as if tossed on the crest of
her sobs. Lingard, outwardly impassive, with his eyes fixed on the house,
experienced that feeling of condemnation, deepseated, persuasive, and
masterful; that illogical impulse of disapproval which is half disgust, half
vague fear, and that wakes up in our hearts in the presence of anything new
or unusual, of anything that is not run into the mould of our own
conscience; the accursed feeling made up of disdain, of anger, and of the
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sense of superior virtue that leaves us deaf, blind, contemptuous and stupid
before anything which is not like ourselves.
He answered, not looking at her at first, but speaking towards the house
that fascinated him "_I_ go away!
He wanted me to comehe himself did! . . . YOU must go away. You do not
know what you are asking for.
Listen. Go to your own people. Leave him. He is . . ."
He paused, looked down at her with his steady eyes; hesitated, as if seeking
an adequate expression; then snapped his fingers, and said
"Finish."
She stepped back, her eyes on the ground, and pressed her temples with both
her hands, which she raised to her head in a slow and ample movement full of
unconscious tragedy. The tone of her words was gentle and vibrating, like a
loud meditation. She said
An Outcast of the Islands
CHAPTER THREE
108
"Tell the brook not to run to the river; tell the river not to run to the
sea. Speak loud. Speak angrily. Maybe they will obey you. But it is in my
mind that the brook will not care. The brook that springs out of the
hillside and runs to the great river. He would not care for your words: he
that cares not for the very mountain that gave him life; he that tears the
earth from which he springs. Tears it, eats it, destroys itto hurry faster
to the riverto the river in which he is lost for ever. . . . O Rajah Laut!
I do not care."
She drew close again to Lingard, approaching slowly, reluctantly, as if
pushed by an invisible hand, and added in words that seemed to be torn out
of her
"I cared not for my own father. For him that died. I would have rather . . .
You do not know what I have done
. . . I . . ."
"You shall have his life," said Lingard, hastily.
They stood together, crossing their glances; she suddenly appeased, and
Lingard thoughtful and uneasy under a vague sense of defeat. And yet there
was no defeat. He never intended to kill the fellownot after the first
moment of anger, a long time ago. The days of bitter wonder had killed
anger; had left only a bitter indignation and a bitter wish for complete
justice. He felt discontented and surprised. Unexpectedly he had come upon
a human beinga woman at thatwho had made him disclose his will before its
time. She should have his life. But she must be told, she must know, that
for such men as Willems there was no favour and no grace.
"Understand," he said slowly, "that I leave him his life not in mercy but in
punishment."
She started, watched every word on his lips, and after he finished speaking
she remained still and mute in astonished immobility. A single big drop of
rain, a drop enormous, pellucid and heavylike a superhuman tear coming
straight and rapid from above, tearing its way through the sombre skystruck
loudly the dry ground between them in a starred splash. She wrung her hands
in the bewilderment of the new and incomprehensible fear. The anguish of
her whisper was more piercing than the shrillest cry.
"What punishment! Will you take him away then? Away from me? Listen to what
I have done. . . . It is I who
. . ."
"Ah!" exclaimed Lingard, who had been looking at the house.
"Don't you believe her, Captain Lingard," shouted Willems from the doorway,
where he appeared with swollen eyelids and bared breast. He stood for a
while, his hands grasping the lintels on each side of the door, and writhed
about, glaring wildly, as if he had been crucified there. Then he made a
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sudden rush head foremost down the plankway that responded with hollow, short
noises to every footstep.
She heard him. A slight thrill passed on her face and the words that were on
her lips fell back unspoken into her benighted heart; fell back amongst the
mud, the stonesand the flowers, that are at the bottom of every heart.
CHAPTER FOUR
When he felt the solid ground of the courtyard under his feet, Willems pulled
himself up in his headlong rush and moved forward with a moderate gait. He
paced stiffly, looking with extreme exactitude at Lingard's face;
looking neither to the right nor to the left but at the face only, as if
there was nothing in the world but those features familiar and dreaded; that
whitehaired, rough and severe head upon which he gazed in a fixed effort
An Outcast of the Islands
CHAPTER FOUR
109
of his eyes, like a man trying to read small print at the full range of
human vision. As soon as Willems' feet had left the planks, the silence
which had been lifted up by the jerky rattle of his footsteps fell down
again upon the courtyard; the silence of the cloudy sky and of the windless
air, the sullen silence of the earth oppressed by the aspect of coming
turmoil, the silence of the world collecting its faculties to withstand the
storm. Through this silence Willems pushed his way, and stopped about six
feet from Lingard. He stopped simply because he could go no further. He had
started from the door with the reckless purpose of clapping the old fellow
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