Complete Works

backwards to the seat. She fell on it; he jerked himself altogether out of his jacket, and she covered her face with the soiled rags. He put his lips close to her, asking —
    “For the last time, will you take the child and go?”
    She groaned behind the unclean ruins of his upper garment. She mumbled something. He bent lower to hear. She was saying —
    “I won’t. Order that woman away. I can’t look at her!”
    “You fool!”
    He seemed to spit the words at her, then, making up his mind, spun round to face Aissa. She was coming towards them slowly now, with a look of unbounded amazement on her face. Then she stopped and stared at him — who stood there, stripped to the waist, bare-headed and sombre.
    Some way off, Mahmat and his brother exchanged rapid words in calm undertones. . . . This was the strong daughter of the holy man who had died. The white man is very tall. There would be three women and the child to take in the boat, besides that white man who had the money . . . . The brother went away back to the boat, and Mahmat remained looking on. He stood like a sentinel, the leaf-shaped blade of his lance glinting above his head.
    Willems spoke suddenly.
    “Give me this,” he said, stretching his hand towards the revolver.
    Aissa stepped back. Her lips trembled. She said very low: “Your people?”
    He nodded slightly. She shook her head thoughtfully, and a few delicate petals of the flowers dying in her hair fell like big drops of crimson and white at her feet.
    “Did you know?” she whispered.
    “No!” said Willems. “They sent for me.”
    “Tell them to depart. They are accursed. What is there between them and you — and you who carry my life in your heart!”
    Willems said nothing. He stood before her looking down on the ground and repeating to himself: I must get that revolver away from her, at once, at once. I can’t think of trusting myself with those men without firearms. I must have it.
    She asked, after gazing in silence at Joanna, who was sobbing gently —
    “Who is she?”
    “My wife,” answered Willems, without looking up. “My wife according to our white law, which comes from God!”
    “Your law! Your God!” murmured Aissa, contemptuously.
    “Give me this revolver,” said Willems, in a peremptory tone. He felt an unwillingness to close with her, to get it by force.
    She took no notice and went on —
    “Your law . . . or your lies? What am I to believe? I came — I ran to defend you when I saw the strange men. You lied to me with your lips, with your eyes. You crooked heart! . . . Ah!” she added, after an abrupt pause. “She is the first! Am I then to be a slave?”
    “You may be what you like,” said Willems, brutally. “I am going.”
    Her gaze was fastened on the blanket under which she had detected a slight movement. She made a long stride towards it. Willems turned half round. His legs seemed to him to be made of lead. He felt faint and so weak that, for a moment, the fear of dying there where he stood, before he could escape from sin and disaster, passed through his mind in a wave of despair.
    She lifted up one corner of the blanket, and when she saw the sleeping child a sudden quick shudder shook her as though she had seen something inexpressibly horrible. She looked at Louis Willems with eyes fixed in an unbelieving and terrified stare. Then her fingers opened slowly, and a shadow seemed to settle on her face as if something obscure and fatal had come between her and the sunshine. She stood looking down, absorbed, as though she had watched at the bottom of a gloomy abyss the mournful procession of her thoughts.
    Willems did not move. All his faculties were concentrated upon the idea of his release. And it was only then that the assurance of it came to him with such force that he seemed to hear a loud voice shouting in the heavens that all was over, that in another five, ten minutes, he would step into another existence; that all this, the woman, the madness, the sin, the regrets, all would go, rush into the past, disappear, become as dust, as smoke, as drifting clouds — as nothing! Yes! All would vanish in the unappeasable past which would swallow up all — even the very memory of his temptation and of his downfall. Nothing mattered. He cared for nothing. He had forgotten Aissa, his wife, Lingard, Hudig — everybody, in the rapid vision of his hopeful future.
    After a while he heard Aissa saying —
    “A child! A child! What have I done to be made to