[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
The islands of these seas shall sink before I, Rajah Laut, serve the will of
any of your people. Tau? But I tell you this: I do not care what you do
with him after today. And I say that because I am merciful."
"Tida! I do nothing," said Babalatchi, shaking his head with bitter apathy.
"I am in Abdulla's hand and care not, even as you do. No! no!" he added,
turning away, "I have learned much wisdom this morning. There are no men
anywhere. You whites are cruel to your friends and merciful to your
enemieswhich is the work of fools."
He went away towards the riverside, and, without once looking back,
disappeared in the low bank of mist that lay over the water and the shore.
Page 109
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
Lingard followed him with his eyes thoughtfully. After awhile he roused
himself and called out to his boatmen
An Outcast of the Islands
CHAPTER TWO
102
"Haiya there! After you have eaten rice, wait for me with your paddles in
your hands. You hear?"
"Ada, Tuan!" answered Ali through the smoke of the morning fire that was
spreading itself, low and gentle, over the courtyard"we hear!"
Lingard opened slowly the little wicketgate, made a few steps into the empty
enclosure, and stopped. He had felt about his head the short breath of a
puff of wind that passed him, made every leaf of the big tree shiverand died
out in a hardly perceptible tremor of branches and twigs. Instinctively he
glanced upwards with a seaman's impulse. Above him, under the grey
motionless waste of a stormy sky, drifted low black vapours, in stretching
bars, in shapeless patches, in sinuous wisps and tormented spirals. Over
the courtyard and the house floated a round, sombre, and lingering cloud,
dragging behind a tail of tangled and filmy streamerslike the dishevelled
hair of a mourning woman.
CHAPTER THREE
"Beware!"
The tremulous effort and the broken, inadequate tone of the faint cry,
surprised Lingard more than the unexpected suddenness of the warning
conveyed, he did not know by whom and to whom. Besides himself there was no
one in the courtyard as far as he could see.
The cry was not renewed, and his watchful eyes, scanning warily the misty
solitude of Willems' enclosure, were met everywhere only by the stolid
impassiveness of inanimate things: the big sombrelooking tree, the shutup,
sightless house, the glistening bamboo fences, the damp and drooping bushes
further offall these things, that condemned to look for ever at the
incomprehensible afflictions or joys of mankind, assert in their aspect of
cold unconcern the high dignity of lifeless matter that surrounds, incurious
and unmoved, the restless mysteries of the everchanging, of the neverending
life.
Lingard, stepping aside, put the trunk of the tree between himself and the
house, then, moving cautiously round one of the projecting buttresses, had
to tread short in order to avoid scattering a small heap of black embers
upon which he came unexpectedly on the other side. A thin, wizened, little
old woman, who, standing behind the tree, had been looking at the house,
turned towards him with a start, gazed with faded, expressionless eyes at the
intruder, then made a limping attempt to get away. She seemed, however, to
realize directly the hopelessness or the difficulty of the undertaking,
stopped, hesitated, tottered back slowly; then, after blinking dully, fell
suddenly on her knees amongst the white ashes, and, bending over the heap of
smouldering coals, distended her sunken cheeks in a steady effort to blow up
the hidden sparks into a useful blaze. Lingard looked down on her, but she
seemed to have made up her mind that there was not enough life left in her
lean body for anything else than the discharge of the simple domestic duty,
and, apparently, she begrudged him the least moment of attention.
After waiting for awhile, Lingard asked
"Why did you call, O daughter?"
"I saw you enter," she croaked feebly, still grovelling with her face near
the ashes and without looking up, "and I calledthe cry of warning. It was
her order. Her order," she repeated, with a moaning sigh.
"And did she hear?" pursued Lingard, with gentle composure.
Her projecting shoulderblades moved uneasily under the thin stuff of the
tight body jacket. She scrambled
An Outcast of the Islands
Page 110
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
CHAPTER THREE
103
up with difficulty to her feet, and hobbled away, muttering peevishly to
herself, towards a pile of dry brushwood heaped up against the fence.
Lingard, looking idly after her, heard the rattle of loose planks that led
from the ground to the door of the house. He moved his head beyond the
shelter of the tree and saw Aissa coming down the inclined way into the
courtyard. After making a few hurried paces towards the tree, she stopped
with one foot advanced in an appearance of sudden terror, and her eyes
glanced wildly right and left. Her head was uncovered. A blue cloth
wrapped her from her head to foot in close slanting folds, with one end
thrown over her shoulder. A tress of her black hair strayed across her
bosom. Her bare arms pressed down close to her body, with hands open and
outstretched fingers; her slightly elevated shoulders and the backward
inclination of her torso gave her the aspect of one defiant yet shrinking
from a coming blow. She had closed the door of the house behind her; and as
she stood solitary in the unnatural and threatening twilight of the murky
day, with everything unchanged around her, she appeared to Lingard as if she
had been made there, on the spot, out of the black vapours of the sky and of
the sinister gleams of feeble sunshine that struggled, through the
thickening clouds, into the colourless desolation of the world.
After a short but attentive glance towards the shutup house, Lingard stepped
out from behind the tree and advanced slowly towards her. The sudden fixity
of hertill thenrestless eyes and a slight twitch of her hands were the only
signs she gave at first of having seen him. She made a long stride forward,
and putting herself right in his path, stretched her arms across; her black
eyes opened wide, her lips parted as if in an uncertain attempt to speakbut
no sound came out to break the significant silence of their meeting.
Lingard stopped and looked at her with stern curiosity. After a while he
said composedly
"Let me pass. I came here to talk to a man. Does he hide? Has he sent
you?"
She made a step nearer, her arms fell by her side, then she put them straight
out nearly touching Lingard's breast.
"He knows not fear," she said, speaking low, with a forward throw of her
head, in a voice trembling but distinct. "It is my own fear that has sent
me here. He sleeps."
"He has slept long enough," said Lingard, in measured tones. "I am comeand
now is the time of his waking. Go and tell him thisor else my own voice
will call him up. A voice he knows well."
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]