She had that and everything else—if she
could only believe it. What I had to tell her
was that in the whole world there was no one who ever
would need his heart, his mind, his hand. It was
a common fate, and yet it seemed an awful thing to
say of any man. She listened without a word,
and her stillness now was like the protest of an invincible
unbelief. What need she care for the world beyond
the forests? I asked. From all the multitudes
that peopled the vastness of that unknown there would
come, I assured her, as long as he lived, neither a
call nor a sign for him. Never. I was carried
away. Never! Never! I remember with
wonder the sort of dogged fierceness I displayed.
I had the illusion of having got the spectre by the
throat at last. Indeed the whole real thing has
left behind the detailed and amazing impression of
a dream. Why should she fear? She knew him
to be strong, true, wise, brave. He was all that.
Certainly. He was more. He was great—invincible—and
the world did not want him, it had forgotten him,
it would not even know him.
’I stopped; the silence over Patusan was profound,
and the feeble dry sound of a paddle striking the
side of a canoe somewhere in the middle of the river
seemed to make it infinite. “Why?”
she murmured. I felt that sort of rage one feels
during a hard tussle. The spectre was trying
to slip out of my grasp. “Why?” she
repeated louder; “tell me!” And as I remained
confounded, she stamped with her foot like a spoilt
child. “Why? Speak.” “You
want to know?” I asked in a fury. “Yes!”
she cried. “Because he is not good enough,”
I said brutally. During the moment’s pause
I noticed the fire on the other shore blaze up, dilating
the circle of its glow like an amazed stare, and contract
suddenly to a red pin-point. I only knew how
close to me she had been when I felt the clutch of
her fingers on my forearm. Without raising her
voice, she threw into it an infinity of scathing contempt,
bitterness, and despair.
’"This is the very thing he said. . . .
You lie!”
’The last two words she cried at me in the native
dialect. “Hear me out!” I entreated;
she caught her breath tremulously, flung my arm away.
“Nobody, nobody is good enough,” I began
with the greatest earnestness. I could hear the
sobbing labour of her breath frightfully quickened.
I hung my head. What was the use? Footsteps
were approaching; I slipped away without another word.
. . .’
Marlow swung his legs out, got up quickly, and staggered
a little, as though he had been set down after a rush
through space. He leaned his back against the
balustrade and faced a disordered array of long cane
chairs. The bodies prone in them seemed startled
out of their torpor by his movement. One or two
sat up as if alarmed; here and there a cigar glowed
yet; Marlow looked at them all with the eyes of a man
returning from the excessive remoteness of a dream.
A throat was cleared; a calm voice encouraged negligently,
‘Well.’
