An Outcast of the Islands

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"And the woman?"

"Oh! Lingard, of course, kept her and her ugly brat in Macassar. Sinful
waste of money--that! Devil only knows what became of them since father
went home. I had my daughter to look after. I shall give you a word to
Mrs. Vinck in Singapore when you go back. You shall see my Nina there.
Lucky man. She is beautiful, and I hear so accomplished, so . . ."

"I have heard already twenty . . . a hundred times about your daughter.
What ab--about--that--that other one, Ai--ssa?"

"She! Oh! we kept her here. She was mad for a long time in a quiet sort
of way. Father thought a lot of her. He gave her a house to live in,
in my campong. She wandered about, speaking to nobody unless she caught
sight of Abdulla, when she would have a fit of fury, and shriek and
curse like anything. Very often she would disappear--and then we all had
to turn out and hunt for her, because father would worry till she was
brought back. Found her in all kinds of places. Once in the abandoned
campong of Lakamba. Sometimes simply wandering in the bush. She had one
favourite spot we always made for at first. It was ten to one on finding
her there--a kind of a grassy glade on the banks of a small brook. Why
she preferred that place, I can't imagine! And such a job to get her
away from there. Had to drag her away by main force. Then, as the time
passed, she became quieter and more settled, like. Still, all my people
feared her greatly. It was my Nina that tamed her. You see the child was
naturally fearless and used to have her own way, so she would go to
her and pull at her sarong, and order her about, as she did everybody.
Finally she, I verily believe, came to love the child. Nothing could
resist that little one--you know. She made a capital nurse. Once when
the little devil ran away from me and fell into the river off the end
of the jetty, she jumped in and pulled her out in no time. I very nearly
died of fright. Now of course she lives with my serving girls, but does
what she likes. As long as I have a handful of rice or a piece of cotton
in the store she sha'n't want for anything. You have seen her. She
brought in the dinner with Ali."

"What! That doubled-up crone?"

"Ah!" said Almayer. "They age quickly here. And long foggy nights spent
in the bush will soon break the strongest backs--as you will find out
yourself soon."

"Dis . . . disgusting," growled the traveller.

He dozed off. Almayer stood by the balustrade looking out at the bluish
sheen of the moonlit night. The forests, unchanged and sombre, seemed
to hang over the water, listening to the unceasing whisper of the great
river; and above their dark wall the hill on which Lingard had buried
the body of his late prisoner rose in a black, rounded mass, upon
the silver paleness of the sky. Almayer looked for a long time at
the clean-cut outline of the summit, as if trying to make out through
darkness and distance the shape of that expensive tombstone. When he
turned round at last he saw his guest sleeping, his arms on the table,
his head on his arms.

"Now, look here!" he shouted, slapping the table with the palm of his
hand.

The naturalist woke up, and sat all in a heap, staring owlishly.

"Here!" went on Almayer, speaking very loud and thumping the table, "I
want to know. You, who say you have read all the books, just tell me
. . . why such infernal things are ever allowed. Here I am! Done harm to
nobody, lived an honest life . . . and a scoundrel like that is born in
Rotterdam or some such place at the other end of the world somewhere,
travels out here, robs his employer, runs away from his wife, and ruins
me and my Nina--he ruined me, I tell you--and gets himself shot at last
by a poor miserable savage, that knows nothing at all about him really.
Where's the sense of all this? Where's your Providence? Where's the good
for anybody in all this? The world's a swindle! A swindle! Why should I
suffer? What have I done to be treated so?"

He howled out his string of questions, and suddenly became silent.
The man who ought to have been a professor made a tremendous effort to
articulate distinctly--

"My dear fellow, don't--don't you see that the ba-bare fac--the fact of
your existence is off--offensive. . . . I--I like you--like . . ."

He fell forward on the table, and ended his remarks by an unexpected and
prolonged snore.

Almayer shrugged his shoulders and walked back to the balustrade.

He drank his own trade gin very seldom, but when he did, a ridiculously
small quantity of the stuff could induce him to assume a rebellious
attitude towards the scheme of the universe. And now, throwing his body
over the rail, he shouted impudently into the night, turning his face
towards that far-off and invisible slab of imported granite upon which
Lingard had thought fit to record God's mercy and Willems' escape.

"Father was wrong--wrong!" he yelled. "I want you to smart for it. You
must smart for it! Where are you, Willems? Hey? . . . Hey? . . . Where
there is no mercy for you--I hope!"

"Hope," repeated in a whispering echo the startled forests, the river
and the hills; and Almayer, who stood waiting, with a smile of tipsy
attention on his lips, heard no other answer.