Complete Works

even last into your old age.  What have I been?  A slave all my life, and I have cooked rice for a man who had no courage and no wisdom.  Hai!  I! even I, was given in gift by a chief and a warrior to a man that was neither.  Hai!  Hai!”
    She wailed to herself softly, lamenting the lost possibilities of murder and mischief that could have fallen to her lot had she been mated with a congenial spirit.  Nina bent down over Mrs. Almayer’s slight form and scanned attentively, under the stars that had rushed out on the black sky and now hung breathless over that strange parting, her mother’s shrivelled features, and looked close into the sunken eyes that could see into her own dark future by the light of a long and a painful experience.  Again she felt herself fascinated, as of old, by her mother’s exalted mood and by the oracular certainty of expression which, together with her fits of violence, had contributed not a little to the reputation for witchcraft she enjoyed in the settlement.
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    “I was a slave, and you shall be a queen,” went on Mrs. Almayer, looking straight before her; “but remember men’s strength and their weakness.  Tremble before his anger, so that he may see your fear in the light of day; but in your heart you may laugh, for after sunset he is your slave.”
    “A slave!  He!  The master of life!  You do not know him, mother.”
    Mrs. Almayer condescended to laugh contemptuously.
    “You speak like a fool of a white woman,” she exclaimed.  “What do you know of men’s anger and of men’s love?  Have you watched the sleep of men weary of dealing death?  Have you felt about you the strong arm that could drive a kriss deep into a beating heart?  Yah! you are a white woman, and ought to pray to a woman-god!”
    “Why do you say this?  I have listened to your words so long that I have forgotten my old life.  If I was white would I stand here, ready to go?  Mother, I shall return to the house and look once more at my father’s face.”
    “No!” said Mrs. Almayer, violently.  “No, he sleeps now the sleep of gin; and if you went back he might awake and see you.  No, he shall never see you.  When the terrible old man took you away from me when you were little, you remember — ”
    “It was such a long time ago,” murmured Nina.
    “I remember,” went on Mrs. Almayer, fiercely.  “I wanted to look at your face again.  He said no!  I heard you cry and jumped into the river.  You were his daughter then; you are my daughter now.  Never shall you go back to that house; you shall never cross this courtyard again.  No! no!”
    Her voice rose almost to a shout.  On the other side of the creek there was a rustle in the long grass.  The two women heard it, and listened for a while in startled silence.  “I shall go,” said Nina, in a cautious but intense whisper.  “What is your hate or your revenge to me?”
    She moved towards the house, Mrs. Almayer clinging to her and trying to pull her back.
    “Stop, you shall not go!” she gasped.
    Nina pushed away her mother impatiently and gathered up her skirts for a quick run, but Mrs. Almayer ran forward and turned round, facing her daughter with outstretched arms.
    “If you move another step,” she exclaimed, breathing quickly, “I shall cry out.  Do you see those lights in the big house?  There sit two white men, angry because they cannot have the blood of the man you love.  And in those dark houses,” she continued, more calmly as she pointed towards the settlement, “my voice could wake up men that would lead the Orang Blanda soldiers to him who is waiting — for you.”
    She could not see her daughter’s face, but the white figure before her stood silent and irresolute in the darkness.  Mrs. Almayer pursued her advantage.
    “Give up your old life!  Forget!” she said in entreating tones.  “Forget that you ever looked at a white face; forget their words; forget their thoughts.  They speak lies.  And they think lies because they despise us that are better than they are, but not so strong.  Forget their friendship and their contempt; forget their many gods.  Girl, why do you want to remember the past when there is a warrior and a chief ready to give many lives — his own life — for one of your smiles?”
    While she spoke she pushed gently her daughter towards the canoes, hiding her own fear, anxiety, and doubt under the flood of passionate words that left Nina no time to