Almayer laughed spitefully.
“How delighted he will be,” he said, softly. “You will make two people happy. Two at least!” He laughed again, while Lingard looked at his shaking shoulders in consternation.
“I am jammed on a lee shore this time, if ever I was,” muttered Lingard.
“Send her back quick,” suggested Almayer, stifling another laugh.
“What are you sniggering at?” growled Lingard, angrily. “I’ll work it out all clear yet. Meantime you must receive her into this house.”
“My house!” cried Almayer, turning round.
“It’s mine too — a little isn’t it?” said Lingard. “Don’t argue,” he shouted, as Almayer opened his mouth. “Obey orders and hold your tongue!”
“Oh! If you take it in that tone!” mumbled Almayer, sulkily, with a gesture of assent.
“You are so aggravating too, my boy,” said the old seaman, with unexpected placidity. “You must give me time to turn round. I can’t keep her on board all the time. I must tell her something. Say, for instance, that he is gone up the river. Expected back every day. That’s it. D’ye hear? You must put her on that tack and dodge her along easy, while I take the kinks out of the situation. By God!” he exclaimed, mournfully, after a short pause, “life is foul! Foul like a lee forebrace on a dirty night. And yet. And yet. One must see it clear for running before going below — for good. Now you attend to what I said,” he added, sharply, “if you don’t want to quarrel with me, my boy.”
“I don’t want to quarrel with you,” murmured Almayer with unwilling deference. “Only I wish I could understand you. I know you are my best friend, Captain Lingard; only, upon my word, I can’t make you out sometimes! I wish I could . . .”
Lingard burst into a loud laugh which ended shortly in a deep sigh. He closed his eyes, tilting his head over the back of his armchair; and on his face, baked by the unclouded suns of many hard years, there appeared for a moment a weariness and a look of age which startled Almayer, like an unexpected disclosure of evil.
“I am done up,” said Lingard, gently. “Perfectly done up. All night on deck getting that schooner up the river. Then talking with you. Seems to me I could go to sleep on a clothes-line. I should like to eat something though. Just see about that, Kaspar.”
Almayer clapped his hands, and receiving no response was going to call, when in the central passage of the house, behind the red curtain of the doorway opening upon the verandah, they heard a child’s imperious voice speaking shrilly.
“Take me up at once. I want to be carried into the verandah. I shall be very angry. Take me up.”
A man’s voice answered, subdued, in humble remonstrance. The faces of Almayer and Lingard brightened at once. The old seaman called out —
“Bring the child. Lekas!”
“You will see how she has grown,” exclaimed Almayer, in a jubilant tone.
Through the curtained doorway Ali appeared with little Nina Almayer in his arms. The child had one arm round his neck, and with the other she hugged a ripe pumelo nearly as big as her own head. Her little pink, sleeveless robe had half slipped off her shoulders, but the long black hair, that framed her olive face, in which the big black eyes looked out in childish solemnity, fell in luxuriant profusion over her shoulders, all round her and over Ali’s arms, like a close-meshed and delicate net of silken threads. Lingard got up to meet Ali, and as soon as she caught sight of the old seaman she dropped the fruit and put out both her hands with a cry of delight. He took her from the Malay, and she laid hold of his moustaches with an affectionate goodwill that brought unaccustomed tears into his little red eyes.
“Not so hard, little one, not so hard,” he murmured, pressing with an enormous hand, that covered it entirely, the child’s head to his face.
“Pick up my pumelo, O Rajah of the sea!” she said, speaking in a high-pitched, clear voice with great volubility. “There, under the table. I want it quick! Quick! You have been away fighting with many men. Ali says so. You are a mighty fighter. Ali says so. On the great sea far away, away, away.”
She waved her hand, staring with dreamy vacancy, while Lingard looked at her, and squatting down groped under the table after the pumelo.
“Where does she get those notions?” said Lingard, getting up cautiously, to Almayer, who had been giving orders to Ali.
“She is always with the men. Many a time I’ve found her with her fingers in their rice dish, of an evening. She does not care for her mother though — I am glad to say. How pretty she is — and so sharp. My very image!”
Lingard had put the child on the table, and both men stood looking at her with radiant faces.
“A perfect little woman,” whispered Lingard. “Yes, my dear boy, we shall make her somebody. You’ll see!”
“Very little chance of that now,” remarked Almayer, sadly.
“You do not know!” exclaimed Lingard, taking up the child again, and beginning to walk up and down the verandah. “I have my plans. I have — listen.”
And he began to explain to the interested Almayer his plans for the future. He would interview Abdulla and Lakamba. There must be some understanding with those fellows now they had the upper hand. Here he interrupted himself to swear freely, while the child, who had been diligently fumbling about his neck, had found his whistle and blew a loud blast now and then close to his ear — which made him wince and laugh as he put her hands down, scolding her lovingly. Yes — that would be easily settled. He was a man to be reckoned with yet. Nobody knew that better than Almayer. Very well. Then he must patiently try and keep some little trade together. It would be all right. But the great thing — and here Lingard spoke lower, bringing himself to a sudden standstill before the entranced Almayer — the great thing would be the gold hunt up the river. He — Lingard — would devote himself to it. He had been in the interior before. There were immense deposits of alluvial gold there. Fabulous. He felt sure. Had seen places. Dangerous work? Of course! But what a reward! He would explore — and find. Not a shadow of doubt. Hang the danger! They would first get as much as they could for themselves. Keep the thing quiet. Then after a time form a Company. In Batavia or in England. Yes, in England. Much better. Splendid! Why, of course. And that baby would be the richest woman in the world. He — Lingard — would not, perhaps, see it — although he felt good for many years yet — but Almayer would. Here was something to live for yet! Hey?
But the richest woman in the world had been for the last five minutes shouting shrilly — ”Rajah Laut! Rajah Laut! Hai! Give ear!” while the old seaman had been speaking louder, unconsciously, to make his deep bass heard above the impatient clamour. He stopped now and said tenderly —
“What is it, little woman?”
“I am not a little woman. I am a white child. Anak Putih. A white child; and the white men are my brothers. Father says so. And Ali says so too. Ali knows as much as father. Everything.”
Almayer almost danced with paternal delight.
“I taught her. I taught her,” he repeated, laughing with tears in his eyes. “Isn’t she sharp?”
“I am the slave of the white child,” said Lingard, with playful solemnity. “What is the order?”
“I want a house,” she warbled, with great eagerness. “I want a house, and another house on the roof, and another on the roof — high. High! Like the places where they dwell — my brothers — in the land where the sun sleeps.”
“To the westward,” explained Almayer, under his breath. “She remembers everything. She wants you to build a house of cards. You did, last time you were here.”
Lingard sat down with the child on his knees, and Almayer pulled out violently one drawer after another, looking for the cards, as if the fate of the world depended upon his haste. He produced a dirty double pack which was only used during Lingard’s visit to Sambir, when he would sometimes play — of an evening — with Almayer, a game which he called Chinese bezique. It bored Almayer, but the old seaman delighted in it, consi
dering it a remarkable product of Chinese genius — a race for which he had an unaccountable liking and admiration.
“Now we will get on, my little pearl,” he said, putting together with extreme precaution two cards that looked absurdly flimsy between his big fingers. Little Nina watched him with intense seriousness as he went on erecting the ground floor, while he continued to speak to Almayer with his head over his shoulder so as not to endanger the structure with his breath.
“I know what I am talking about. . . . Been in California in forty-nine. . . . Not that I made much . . . then in Victoria in the early days . . . . I know all about it. Trust me. Moreover a blind man could . . . Be quiet, little sister, or you will knock this affair down. . . . My hand pretty steady yet! Hey, Kaspar? . . . Now, delight of my heart, we shall put a third house on the top of these two . . . keep very quiet. . . . As I was saying, you got only to stoop and gather handfuls of gold . . . dust . . . there. Now here we are. Three houses on top of one another. Grand!”
He leaned back in his chair, one hand on the child’s head, which he smoothed mechanically, and gesticulated with the other, speaking to Almayer.
“Once on the spot, there would be only the trouble to pick up the stuff. Then we shall all go to Europe. The child must be educated. We shall be rich. Rich is no name for it. Down in Devonshire where I belong, there was a fellow who built a house near Teignmouth which had as many windows as a three-decker has ports. Made all his money somewhere out here in the good old days. People around said he had been a pirate. We boys — I was a boy in a Brixham trawler then — certainly believed that. He went about in a bath-chair in his grounds. Had a glass eye . . .”
“Higher, Higher!” called out Nina, pulling the old seaman’s beard.
“You do worry me — don’t you?” said Lingard, gently, giving her a tender kiss. “What? One more house on top of all these? Well! I will try.”
The child watched him breathlessly. When the difficult feat was accomplished she clapped her hands, looked on steadily, and after a while gave a great sigh of content.
“Oh! Look out!” shouted Almayer.
The structure collapsed suddenly before the child’s light breath. Lingard looked discomposed for a moment. Almayer laughed, but the little girl began to cry.
“Take her,” said the old seaman, abruptly. Then, after Almayer went away with the crying child, he remained sitting by the table, looking gloomily at the heap of cards.
“Damn this Willems,” he muttered to himself. “But I will do it yet!”
He got up, and with an angry push of his hand swept the cards off the table. Then he fell back in his chair.
“Tired as a dog,” he sighed out, closing his eyes.
CHAPTER FOUR
Consciously or unconsciously, men are proud of their firmness, steadfastness of purpose, directness of aim. They go straight towards their desire, to the accomplishment of virtue — sometimes of crime — in an uplifting persuasion of their firmness. They walk the road of life, the road fenced in by their tastes, prejudices, disdains or enthusiasms, generally honest, invariably stupid, and are proud of never losing their way. If they do stop, it is to look for a moment over the hedges that make them safe, to look at the misty valleys, at the distant peaks, at cliffs and morasses, at the dark forests and the hazy plains where other human beings grope their days painfully away, stumbling over the bones of the wise, over the unburied remains of their predecessors who died alone, in gloom or in sunshine, halfway from anywhere. The man of purpose does not understand, and goes on, full of contempt. He never loses his way. He knows where he is going and what he wants. Travelling on, he achieves great length without any breadth, and battered, besmirched, and weary, he touches the goal at last; he grasps the reward of his perseverance, of his virtue, of his healthy optimism: an untruthful tombstone over a dark and soon forgotten grave.
Lingard had never hesitated in his life. Why should he? He had been a most successful trader, and a man lucky in his fights, skilful in navigation, undeniably first in seamanship in those seas. He knew it. Had he not heard the voice of common consent?
The voice of the world that respected him so much; the whole world to him — for to us the limits of the universe are strictly defined by those we know. There is nothing for us outside the babble of praise and blame on familiar lips, and beyond our last acquaintance there lies only a vast chaos; a chaos of laughter and tears which concerns us not; laughter and tears unpleasant, wicked, morbid, contemptible — because heard imperfectly by ears rebellious to strange sounds. To Lingard — simple himself — all things were simple. He seldom read. Books were not much in his way, and he had to work hard navigating, trading, and also, in obedience to his benevolent instincts, shaping stray lives he found here and there under his busy hand. He remembered the Sunday-school teachings of his native village and the discourses of the black-coated gentleman connected with the Mission to Fishermen and Seamen, whose yawl-rigged boat darting through rain-squalls amongst the coasters wind-bound in Falmouth Bay, was part of those precious pictures of his youthful days that lingered in his memory. “As clever a sky-pilot as you could wish to see,” he would say with conviction, “and the best man to handle a boat in any weather I ever did meet!” Such were the agencies that had roughly shaped his young soul before he went away to see the world in a southern-going ship — before he went, ignorant and happy, heavy of hand, pure in heart, profane in speech, to give himself up to the great sea that took his life and gave him his fortune. When thinking of his rise in the world — commander of ships, then shipowner, then a man of much capital, respected wherever he went, Lingard in a word, the Rajah Laut — he was amazed and awed by his fate, that seemed to his ill-informed mind the most wondrous known in the annals of men. His experience appeared to him immense and conclusive, teaching him the lesson of the simplicity of life. In life — as in seamanship — there were only two ways of doing a thing: the right way and the wrong way. Common sense and experience taught a man the way that was right. The other was for lubbers and fools, and led, in seamanship, to loss of spars and sails or shipwreck; in life, to loss of money and consideration, or to an unlucky knock on the head. He did not consider it his duty to be angry with rascals. He was only angry with things he could not understand, but for the weaknesses of humanity he could find a contemptuous tolerance. It being manifest that he was wise and lucky — otherwise how could he have been as successful in life as he had been? — he had an inclination to set right the lives of other people, just as he could hardly refrain — in defiance of nautical etiquette — from interfering with his chief officer when the crew was sending up a new topmast, or generally when busy about, what he called, “a heavy job.” He was meddlesome with perfect modesty; if he knew a thing or two there was no merit in it. “Hard knocks taught me wisdom, my boy,” he used to say, “and you had better take the advice of a man who has been a fool in his time. Have another.” And “my boy” as a rule took the cool drink, the advice, and the consequent help which Lingard felt himself bound in honour to give, so as to back up his opinion like an honest man. Captain Tom went sailing from island to island, appearing unexpectedly in various localities, beaming, noisy, anecdotal, commendatory or comminatory, but always welcome.
It was only since his return to Sambir that the old seaman had for the first time known doubt and unhappiness, The loss of the Flash — planted firmly and for ever on a ledge of rock at the north end of Gaspar Straits in the uncertain light of a cloudy morning — shook him considerably; and the amazing news which he heard on his arrival in Sambir were not made to soothe his feelings. A good many years ago — prompted by his love of adventure — he, with infinite trouble, had found out and surveyed — for his own benefit only — the entrances to that river, where, he had heard through native report, a new settlement of Malays was forming. No doubt he thought at the time mostly of personal gain; but, received with hearty friendliness by Patalolo, he soon came to like the ruler and the people, offered his counsel and his help,
and — knowing nothing of Arcadia — he dreamed of Arcadian happiness for that little corner of the world which he loved to think all his own. His deep-seated and immovable conviction that only he — he, Lingard — knew what was good for them was characteristic of him and, after all, not so very far wrong. He would make them happy whether or no, he said, and he meant it. His trade brought prosperity to the young state, and the fear of his heavy hand secured its internal peace for many years.
He looked proudly upon his work. With every passing year he loved more the land, the people, the muddy river that, if he could help it, would carry no other craft but the Flash on its unclean and friendly surface. As he slowly warped his vessel up-stream he would scan with knowing looks the riverside clearings, and pronounce solemn judgment upon the prospects of the season’s rice-crop. He knew every settler on the banks between the sea and Sambir; he knew their wives, their children; he knew every individual of the multi-coloured groups that, standing on the flimsy platforms of tiny reed dwellings built over the water, waved their hands and shouted shrilly: “O! Kapal layer! Hai!” while the Flash swept slowly through the populated reach, to enter the lonely stretches of sparkling brown water bordered by the dense and silent forest, whose big trees nodded their outspread boughs gently in the faint, warm breeze — as if in sign of tender but melancholy welcome. He loved it all: the landscape of brown golds and brilliant emeralds under the dome of hot sapphire; the whispering big trees; the loquacious nipa-palms that rattled their leaves volubly in the night breeze, as if in haste to tell him all the secrets of the great forest behind them. He loved the heavy scents of blossoms and black earth, that breath of life and of death which lingered over his brig in the damp air of tepid and peaceful nights. He loved the narrow and sombre creeks, strangers to sunshine: black, smooth, tortuous — like byways of despair. He liked even the troops of sorrowful-faced monkeys that profaned the quiet spots with capricious gambols and insane gestures of inhuman madness. He loved everything there, animated or inanimated; the very mud of the riverside; the very alligators, enormous and stolid, basking on it with impertinent unconcern. Their size was a source of pride to him. “Immense fellows! Make two of them Palembang reptiles! I tell you, old man!” he would shout, poking some crony of his playfully in the ribs: “I tell you, big as you are, they could swallow you in one gulp, hat, boots and all! Magnificent beggars! Wouldn’t you like to see them? Wouldn’t you! Ha! ha! ha!” His thunderous laughter filled the verandah, rolled over the hotel garden, overflowed into the street, paralyzing for a short moment the noiseless traffic of bare brown feet; and its loud reverberations would even startle the landlord’s tame bird — a shameless mynah — into a momentary propriety of behaviour under the nearest chair. In the big billiard-room perspiring men in thin cotton singlets would stop the game, listen, cue in hand, for a while through the open windows, then nod their moist faces at each other sagaciously and whisper: “The old fellow is talking about his river.”
Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) Page 36