<p><SPAN name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013"></SPAN></p>
<h2> CHAPTER SIX </h2>
<p>As soon as Abdulla and his companions had left the enclosure, Aissa
approached Willems and stood by his side. He took no notice of her
expectant attitude till she touched him gently, when he turned furiously
upon her and, tearing off her face-veil, trampled upon it as though it had
been a mortal enemy. She looked at him with the faint smile of patient
curiosity, with the puzzled interest of ignorance watching the running of
a complicated piece of machinery. After he had exhausted his rage, he
stood again severe and unbending looking down at the fire, but the touch
of her fingers at the nape of his neck effaced instantly the hard lines
round his mouth; his eyes wavered uneasily; his lips trembled slightly.
Starting with the unresisting rapidity of a particle of iron—which,
quiescent one moment, leaps in the next to a powerful magnet—he
moved forward, caught her in his arms and pressed her violently to his
breast. He released her as suddenly, and she stumbled a little, stepped
back, breathed quickly through her parted lips, and said in a tone of
pleased reproof—</p>
<p>"O Fool-man! And if you had killed me in your strong arms what would you
have done?"</p>
<p>"You want to live . . . and to run away from me again," he said gently.
"Tell me—do you?"</p>
<p>She moved towards him with very short steps, her head a little on one
side, hands on hips, with a slight balancing of her body: an approach more
tantalizing than an escape. He looked on, eager—charmed. She spoke
jestingly.</p>
<p>"What am I to say to a man who has been away three days from me? Three!"
she repeated, holding up playfully three fingers before Willems' eyes. He
snatched at the hand, but she was on her guard and whisked it behind her
back.</p>
<p>"No!" she said. "I cannot be caught. But I will come. I am coming myself
because I like. Do not move. Do not touch me with your mighty hands, O
child!"</p>
<p>As she spoke she made a step nearer, then another. Willems did not stir.
Pressing against him she stood on tiptoe to look into his eyes, and her
own seemed to grow bigger, glistening and tender, appealing and promising.
With that look she drew the man's soul away from him through his immobile
pupils, and from Willems' features the spark of reason vanished under her
gaze and was replaced by an appearance of physical well-being, an ecstasy
of the senses which had taken possession of his rigid body; an ecstasy
that drove out regrets, hesitation and doubt, and proclaimed its terrible
work by an appalling aspect of idiotic beatitude. He never stirred a limb,
hardly breathed, but stood in stiff immobility, absorbing the delight of
her close contact by every pore.</p>
<p>"Closer! Closer!" he murmured.</p>
<p>Slowly she raised her arms, put them over his shoulders, and clasping her
hands at the back of his neck, swung off the full length of her arms. Her
head fell back, the eyelids dropped slightly, and her thick hair hung
straight down: a mass of ebony touched by the red gleams of the fire. He
stood unyielding under the strain, as solid and motionless as one of the
big trees of the surrounding forests; and his eyes looked at the modelling
of her chin, at the outline of her neck, at the swelling lines of her
bosom, with the famished and concentrated expression of a starving man
looking at food. She drew herself up to him and rubbed her head against
his cheek slowly and gently. He sighed. She, with her hands still on his
shoulders, glanced up at the placid stars and said—</p>
<p>"The night is half gone. We shall finish it by this fire. By this fire you
shall tell me all: your words and Syed Abdulla's words; and listening to
you I shall forget the three days—because I am good. Tell me—am
I good?"</p>
<p>He said "Yes" dreamily, and she ran off towards the big house.</p>
<p>When she came back, balancing a roll of fine mats on her head, he had
replenished the fire and was ready to help her in arranging a couch on the
side of it nearest to the hut. She sank down with a quick but gracefully
controlled movement, and he threw himself full length with impatient
haste, as if he wished to forestall somebody. She took his head on her
knees, and when he felt her hands touching his face, her fingers playing
with his hair, he had an expression of being taken possession of; he
experienced a sense of peace, of rest, of happiness, and of soothing
delight. His hands strayed upwards about her neck, and he drew her down so
as to have her face above his. Then he whispered—"I wish I could die
like this—now!" She looked at him with her big sombre eyes, in which
there was no responsive light. His thought was so remote from her
understanding that she let the words pass by unnoticed, like the breath of
the wind, like the flight of a cloud. Woman though she was, she could not
comprehend, in her simplicity, the tremendous compliment of that speech,
that whisper of deadly happiness, so sincere, so spontaneous, coming so
straight from the heart—like every corruption. It was the voice of
madness, of a delirious peace, of happiness that is infamous, cowardly,
and so exquisite that the debased mind refuses to contemplate its
termination: for to the victims of such happiness the moment of its
ceasing is the beginning afresh of that torture which is its price.</p>
<p>With her brows slightly knitted in the determined preoccupation of her own
desires, she said—</p>
<p>"Now tell me all. All the words spoken between you and Syed Abdulla."</p>
<p>Tell what? What words? Her voice recalled back the consciousness that had
departed under her touch, and he became aware of the passing minutes every
one of which was like a reproach; of those minutes that falling, slow,
reluctant, irresistible into the past, marked his footsteps on the way to
perdition. Not that he had any conviction about it, any notion of the
possible ending on that painful road. It was an indistinct feeling, a
threat of suffering like the confused warning of coming disease, an
inarticulate monition of evil made up of fear and pleasure, of resignation
and of revolt. He was ashamed of his state of mind. After all, what was he
afraid of? Were those scruples? Why that hesitation to think, to speak of
what he intended doing? Scruples were for imbeciles. His clear duty was to
make himself happy. Did he ever take an oath of fidelity to Lingard? No.
Well then—he would not let any interest of that old fool stand
between Willems and Willems' happiness. Happiness? Was he not, perchance,
on a false track? Happiness meant money. Much money. At least he had
always thought so till he had experienced those new sensations which . . .</p>
<p>Aissa's question, repeated impatiently, interrupted his musings, and
looking up at her face shining above him in the dim light of the fire he
stretched his limbs luxuriously and obedient to her desire, he spoke
slowly and hardly above his breath. She, with her head close to his lips,
listened absorbed, interested, in attentive immobility. The many noises of
the great courtyard were hushed up gradually by the sleep that stilled all
voices and closed all eyes. Then somebody droned out a song with a nasal
drawl at the end of every verse. He stirred. She put her hand suddenly on
his lips and sat upright. There was a feeble coughing, a rustle of leaves,
and then a complete silence took possession of the land; a silence cold,
mournful, profound; more like death than peace; more hard to bear than the
fiercest tumult. As soon as she removed her hand he hastened to speak, so
insupportable to him was that stillness perfect and absolute in which his
thoughts seemed to ring with the loudness of shouts.</p>
<p>"Who was there making that noise?" he asked.</p>
<p>"I do not know. He is gone now," she answered, hastily. "Tell me, you will
not return to your people; not without me. Not with me. Do you promise?"</p>
<p>"I have promised already. I have no people of my own. Have I not told you,
that you are everybody to me?"</p>
<p>"Ah, yes," she said, slowly, "but I like to hear you say that again—every
day, and every night, whenever I ask; and never to be angry because I ask.
I am afraid of white women who are shameless and have fierce eyes." She
scanned his features close for a moment and added:</p>
<p>"Are they very beautiful? They must be."</p>
<p>"I do not know," he whispered, thoughtfully. "And if I ever did know,
looking at you I have forgotten."</p>
<p>"Forgotten! And for three days and two nights you have forgotten me also!
Why? Why were you angry with me when I spoke at first of Tuan Abdulla, in
the days when we lived beside the brook? You remembered somebody then.
Somebody in the land whence you come. Your tongue is false. You are white
indeed, and your heart is full of deception. I know it. And yet I cannot
help believing you when you talk of your love for me. But I am afraid!"</p>
<p>He felt flattered and annoyed by her vehemence, and said—</p>
<p>"Well, I am with you now. I did come back. And it was you that went away."</p>
<p>"When you have helped Abdulla against the Rajah Laut, who is the first of
white men, I shall not be afraid any more," she whispered.</p>
<p>"You must believe what I say when I tell you that there never was another
woman; that there is nothing for me to regret, and nothing but my enemies
to remember."</p>
<p>"Where do you come from?" she said, impulsive and inconsequent, in a
passionate whisper. "What is that land beyond the great sea from which you
come? A land of lies and of evil from which nothing but misfortune ever
comes to us—who are not white. Did you not at first ask me to go
there with you? That is why I went away."</p>
<p>"I shall never ask you again."</p>
<p>"And there is no woman waiting for you there?"</p>
<p>"No!" said Willems, firmly.</p>
<p>She bent over him. Her lips hovered above his face and her long hair
brushed his cheeks.</p>
<p>"You taught me the love of your people which is of the Devil," she
murmured, and bending still lower, she said faintly, "Like this?"</p>
<p>"Yes, like this!" he answered very low, in a voice that trembled slightly
with eagerness; and she pressed suddenly her lips to his while he closed
his eyes in an ecstasy of delight.</p>
<p>There was a long interval of silence. She stroked his head with gentle
touches, and he lay dreamily, perfectly happy but for the annoyance of an
indistinct vision of a well-known figure; a man going away from him and
diminishing in a long perspective of fantastic trees, whose every leaf was
an eye looking after that man, who walked away growing smaller, but never
getting out of sight for all his steady progress. He felt a desire to see
him vanish, a hurried impatience of his disappearance, and he watched for
it with a careful and irksome effort. There was something familiar about
that figure. Why! Himself! He gave a sudden start and opened his eyes,
quivering with the emotion of that quick return from so far, of finding
himself back by the fire with the rapidity of a flash of lightning. It had
been half a dream; he had slumbered in her arms for a few seconds. Only
the beginning of a dream—nothing more. But it was some time before
he recovered from the shock of seeing himself go away so deliberately, so
definitely, so unguardedly; and going away—where? Now, if he had not
woke up in time he would never have come back again from there; from
whatever place he was going to. He felt indignant. It was like an evasion,
like a prisoner breaking his parole—that thing slinking off
stealthily while he slept. He was very indignant, and was also astonished
at the absurdity of his own emotions.</p>
<p>She felt him tremble, and murmuring tender words, pressed his head to her
breast. Again he felt very peaceful with a peace that was as complete as
the silence round them. He muttered—</p>
<p>"You are tired, Aissa."</p>
<p>She answered so low that it was like a sigh shaped into faint words.</p>
<p>"I shall watch your sleep, O child!"</p>
<p>He lay very quiet, and listened to the beating of her heart. That sound,
light, rapid, persistent, and steady; her very life beating against his
cheek, gave him a clear perception of secure ownership, strengthened his
belief in his possession of that human being, was like an assurance of the
vague felicity of the future. There were no regrets, no doubts, no
hesitation now. Had there ever been? All that seemed far away, ages ago—as
unreal and pale as the fading memory of some delirium. All the anguish,
suffering, strife of the past days; the humiliation and anger of his
downfall; all that was an infamous nightmare, a thing born in sleep to be
forgotten and leave no trace—and true life was this: this dreamy
immobility with his head against her heart that beat so steadily.</p>
<p>He was broad awake now, with that tingling wakefulness of the tired body
which succeeds to the few refreshing seconds of irresistible sleep, and
his wide-open eyes looked absently at the doorway of Omar's hut. The reed
walls glistened in the light of the fire, the smoke of which, thin and
blue, drifted slanting in a succession of rings and spirals across the
doorway, whose empty blackness seemed to him impenetrable and enigmatical
like a curtain hiding vast spaces full of unexpected surprises. This was
only his fancy, but it was absorbing enough to make him accept the sudden
appearance of a head, coming out of the gloom, as part of his idle fantasy
or as the beginning of another short dream, of another vagary of his
overtired brain. A face with drooping eyelids, old, thin, and yellow,
above the scattered white of a long beard that touched the earth. A head
without a body, only a foot above the ground, turning slightly from side
to side on the edge of the circle of light as if to catch the radiating
heat of the fire on either cheek in succession. He watched it in passive
amazement, growing distinct, as if coming nearer to him, and the confused
outlines of a body crawling on all fours came out, creeping inch by inch
towards the fire, with a silent and all but imperceptible movement. He was
astounded at the appearance of that blind head dragging that crippled body
behind, without a sound, without a change in the composure of the
sightless face, which was plain one second, blurred the next in the play
of the light that drew it to itself steadily. A mute face with a kriss
between its lips. This was no dream. Omar's face. But why? What was he
after?</p>
<p>He was too indolent in the happy languor of the moment to answer the
question. It darted through his brain and passed out, leaving him free to
listen again to the beating of her heart; to that precious and delicate
sound which filled the quiet immensity of the night. Glancing upwards he
saw the motionless head of the woman looking down at him in a tender gleam
of liquid white between the long eyelashes, whose shadow rested on the
soft curve of her cheek; and under the caress of that look, the uneasy
wonder and the obscure fear of that apparition, crouching and creeping in
turns towards the fire that was its guide, were lost—were drowned in
the quietude of all his senses, as pain is drowned in the flood of drowsy
serenity that follows upon a dose of opium.</p>
<p>He altered the position of his head by ever so little, and now could see
easily that apparition which he had seen a minute before and had nearly
forgotten already. It had moved closer, gliding and noiseless like the
shadow of some nightmare, and now it was there, very near, motionless and
still as if listening; one hand and one knee advanced; the neck stretched
out and the head turned full towards the fire. He could see the emaciated
face, the skin shiny over the prominent bones, the black shadows of the
hollow temples and sunken cheeks, and the two patches of blackness over
the eyes, over those eyes that were dead and could not see. What was the
impulse which drove out this blind cripple into the night to creep and
crawl towards that fire? He looked at him, fascinated, but the face, with
its shifting lights and shadows, let out nothing, closed and impenetrable
like a walled door.</p>
<p>Omar raised himself to a kneeling posture and sank on his heels, with his
hands hanging down before him. Willems, looking out of his dreamy
numbness, could see plainly the kriss between the thin lips, a bar across
the face; the handle on one side where the polished wood caught a red
gleam from the fire and the thin line of the blade running to a dull black
point on the other. He felt an inward shock, which left his body passive
in Aissa's embrace, but filled his breast with a tumult of powerless fear;
and he perceived suddenly that it was his own death that was groping
towards him; that it was the hate of himself and the hate of her love for
him which drove this helpless wreck of a once brilliant and resolute
pirate, to attempt a desperate deed that would be the glorious and supreme
consolation of an unhappy old age. And while he looked, paralyzed with
dread, at the father who had resumed his cautious advance—blind like
fate, persistent like destiny—he listened with greedy eagerness to
the heart of the daughter beating light, rapid, and steady against his
head.</p>
<p>He was in the grip of horrible fear; of a fear whose cold hand robs its
victim of all will and of all power; of all wish to escape, to resist, or
to move; which destroys hope and despair alike, and holds the empty and
useless carcass as if in a vise under the coming stroke. It was not the
fear of death—he had faced danger before—it was not even the
fear of that particular form of death. It was not the fear of the end, for
he knew that the end would not come then. A movement, a leap, a shout
would save him from the feeble hand of the blind old man, from that hand
that even now was, with cautious sweeps along the ground, feeling for his
body in the darkness. It was the unreasoning fear of this glimpse into the
unknown things, into those motives, impulses, desires he had ignored, but
that had lived in the breasts of despised men, close by his side, and were
revealed to him for a second, to be hidden again behind the black mists of
doubt and deception. It was not death that frightened him: it was the
horror of bewildered life where he could understand nothing and nobody
round him; where he could guide, control, comprehend nothing and no one—not
even himself.</p>
<p>He felt a touch on his side. That contact, lighter than the caress of a
mother's hand on the cheek of a sleeping child, had for him the force of a
crushing blow. Omar had crept close, and now, kneeling above him, held the
kriss in one hand while the other skimmed over his jacket up towards his
breast in gentle touches; but the blind face, still turned to the heat of
the fire, was set and immovable in its aspect of stony indifference to
things it could not hope to see. With an effort Willems took his eyes off
the deathlike mask and turned them up to Aissa's head. She sat motionless
as if she had been part of the sleeping earth, then suddenly he saw her
big sombre eyes open out wide in a piercing stare and felt the convulsive
pressure of her hands pinning his arms along his body. A second dragged
itself out, slow and bitter, like a day of mourning; a second full of
regret and grief for that faith in her which took its flight from the
shattered ruins of his trust. She was holding him! She too! He felt her
heart give a great leap, his head slipped down on her knees, he closed his
eyes and there was nothing. Nothing! It was as if she had died; as though
her heart had leaped out into the night, abandoning him, defenceless and
alone, in an empty world.</p>
<p>His head struck the ground heavily as she flung him aside in her sudden
rush. He lay as if stunned, face up and, daring not move, did not see the
struggle, but heard the piercing shriek of mad fear, her low angry words;
another shriek dying out in a moan. When he got up at last he looked at
Aissa kneeling over her father, he saw her bent back in the effort of
holding him down, Omar's contorted limbs, a hand thrown up above her head
and her quick movement grasping the wrist. He made an impulsive step
forward, but she turned a wild face to him and called out over her
shoulder—</p>
<p>"Keep back! Do not come near! Do not. . . ."</p>
<p>And he stopped short, his arms hanging lifelessly by his side, as if those
words had changed him into stone. She was afraid of his possible violence,
but in the unsettling of all his convictions he was struck with the
frightful thought that she preferred to kill her father all by herself;
and the last stage of their struggle, at which he looked as though a red
fog had filled his eyes, loomed up with an unnatural ferocity, with a
sinister meaning; like something monstrous and depraved, forcing its
complicity upon him under the cover of that awful night. He was horrified
and grateful; drawn irresistibly to her—and ready to run away. He
could not move at first—then he did not want to stir. He wanted to
see what would happen. He saw her lift, with a tremendous effort, the
apparently lifeless body into the hut, and remained standing, after they
disappeared, with the vivid image in his eyes of that head swaying on her
shoulder, the lower jaw hanging down, collapsed, passive, meaningless,
like the head of a corpse.</p>
<p>Then after a while he heard her voice speaking inside, harshly, with an
agitated abruptness of tone; and in answer there were groans and broken
murmurs of exhaustion. She spoke louder. He heard her saying violently—"No!
No! Never!"</p>
<p>And again a plaintive murmur of entreaty as of some one begging for a
supreme favour, with a last breath. Then she said—</p>
<p>"Never! I would sooner strike it into my own heart."</p>
<p>She came out, stood panting for a short moment in the doorway, and then
stepped into the firelight. Behind her, through the darkness came the
sound of words calling the vengeance of heaven on her head, rising higher,
shrill, strained, repeating the curse over and over again—till the
voice cracked in a passionate shriek that died out into hoarse muttering
ending with a deep and prolonged sigh. She stood facing Willems, one hand
behind her back, the other raised in a gesture compelling attention, and
she listened in that attitude till all was still inside the hut. Then she
made another step forward and her hand dropped slowly.</p>
<p>"Nothing but misfortune," she whispered, absently, to herself. "Nothing
but misfortune to us who are not white." The anger and excitement died out
of her face, and she looked straight at Willems with an intense and
mournful gaze.</p>
<p>He recovered his senses and his power of speech with a sudden start.</p>
<p>"Aissa," he exclaimed, and the words broke out through his lips with
hurried nervousness. "Aissa! How can I live here? Trust me. Believe in me.
Let us go away from here. Go very far away! Very far; you and I!"</p>
<p>He did not stop to ask himself whether he could escape, and how, and
where. He was carried away by the flood of hate, disgust, and contempt of
a white man for that blood which is not his blood, for that race which is
not his race; for the brown skins; for the hearts false like the sea,
blacker than night. This feeling of repulsion overmastered his reason in a
clear conviction of the impossibility for him to live with her people. He
urged her passionately to fly with him because out of all that abhorred
crowd he wanted this one woman, but wanted her away from them, away from
that race of slaves and cut-throats from which she sprang. He wanted her
for himself—far from everybody, in some safe and dumb solitude. And
as he spoke his anger and contempt rose, his hate became almost fear; and
his desire of her grew immense, burning, illogical and merciless; crying
to him through all his senses; louder than his hate, stronger than his
fear, deeper than his contempt—irresistible and certain like death
itself.</p>
<p>Standing at a little distance, just within the light—but on the
threshold of that darkness from which she had come—she listened, one
hand still behind her back, the other arm stretched out with the hand half
open as if to catch the fleeting words that rang around her, passionate,
menacing, imploring, but all tinged with the anguish of his suffering, all
hurried by the impatience that gnawed his breast. And while she listened
she felt a slowing down of her heart-beats as the meaning of his appeal
grew clearer before her indignant eyes, as she saw with rage and pain the
edifice of her love, her own work, crumble slowly to pieces, destroyed by
that man's fears, by that man's falseness. Her memory recalled the days by
the brook when she had listened to other words—to other thoughts—to
promises and to pleadings for other things, which came from that man's
lips at the bidding of her look or her smile, at the nod of her head, at
the whisper of her lips. Was there then in his heart something else than
her image, other desires than the desires of her love, other fears than
the fear of losing her? How could that be? Had she grown ugly or old in a
moment? She was appalled, surprised and angry with the anger of unexpected
humiliation; and her eyes looked fixedly, sombre and steady, at that man
born in the land of violence and of evil wherefrom nothing but misfortune
comes to those who are not white. Instead of thinking of her caresses,
instead of forgetting all the world in her embrace, he was thinking yet of
his people; of that people that steals every land, masters every sea, that
knows no mercy and no truth—knows nothing but its own strength. O
man of strong arm and of false heart! Go with him to a far country, be
lost in the throng of cold eyes and false hearts—lose him there!
Never! He was mad—mad with fear; but he should not escape her! She
would keep him here a slave and a master; here where he was alone with
her; where he must live for her—or die. She had a right to his love
which was of her making, to the love that was in him now, while he spoke
those words without sense. She must put between him and other white men a
barrier of hate. He must not only stay, but he must also keep his promise
to Abdulla, the fulfilment of which would make her safe.</p>
<p>"Aissa, let us go! With you by my side I would attack them with my naked
hands. Or no! Tomorrow we shall be outside, on board Abdulla's ship. You
shall come with me and then I could . . . If the ship went ashore by some
chance, then we could steal a canoe and escape in the confusion. . . . You
are not afraid of the sea . . . of the sea that would give me freedom . .
."</p>
<p>He was approaching her gradually with extended arms, while he pleaded
ardently in incoherent words that ran over and tripped each other in the
extreme eagerness of his speech. She stepped back, keeping her distance,
her eyes on his face, watching on it the play of his doubts and of his
hopes with a piercing gaze, that seemed to search out the innermost
recesses of his thought; and it was as if she had drawn slowly the
darkness round her, wrapping herself in its undulating folds that made her
indistinct and vague. He followed her step by step till at last they both
stopped, facing each other under the big tree of the enclosure. The
solitary exile of the forests, great, motionless and solemn in his
abandonment, left alone by the life of ages that had been pushed away from
him by those pigmies that crept at his foot, towered high and straight
above their heads. He seemed to look on, dispassionate and imposing, in
his lonely greatness, spreading his branches wide in a gesture of lofty
protection, as if to hide them in the sombre shelter of innumerable
leaves; as if moved by the disdainful compassion of the strong, by the
scornful pity of an aged giant, to screen this struggle of two human
hearts from the cold scrutiny of glittering stars.</p>
<p>The last cry of his appeal to her mercy rose loud, vibrated under the
sombre canopy, darted among the boughs startling the white birds that
slept wing to wing—and died without an echo, strangled in the dense
mass of unstirring leaves. He could not see her face, but he heard her
sighs and the distracted murmur of indistinct words. Then, as he listened
holding his breath, she exclaimed suddenly—</p>
<p>"Have you heard him? He has cursed me because I love you. You brought me
suffering and strife—and his curse. And now you want to take me far
away where I would lose you, lose my life; because your love is my life
now. What else is there? Do not move," she cried violently, as he stirred
a little—"do not speak! Take this! Sleep in peace!"</p>
<p>He saw a shadowy movement of her arm. Something whizzed past and struck
the ground behind him, close to the fire. Instinctively he turned round to
look at it. A kriss without its sheath lay by the embers; a sinuous dark
object, looking like something that had been alive and was now crushed,
dead and very inoffensive; a black wavy outline very distinct and still in
the dull red glow. Without thinking he moved to pick it up, stooping with
the sad and humble movement of a beggar gathering the alms flung into the
dust of the roadside. Was this the answer to his pleading, to the hot and
living words that came from his heart? Was this the answer thrown at him
like an insult, that thing made of wood and iron, insignificant and
venomous, fragile and deadly? He held it by the blade and looked at the
handle stupidly for a moment before he let it fall again at his feet; and
when he turned round he faced only the night:—the night immense,
profound and quiet; a sea of darkness in which she had disappeared without
leaving a trace.</p>
<p>He moved forward with uncertain steps, putting out both his hands before
him with the anguish of a man blinded suddenly.</p>
<p>"Aissa!" he cried—"come to me at once."</p>
<p>He peered and listened, but saw nothing, heard nothing. After a while the
solid blackness seemed to wave before his eyes like a curtain disclosing
movements but hiding forms, and he heard light and hurried footsteps, then
the short clatter of the gate leading to Lakamba's private enclosure. He
sprang forward and brought up against the rough timber in time to hear the
words, "Quick! Quick!" and the sound of the wooden bar dropped on the
other side, securing the gate. With his arms thrown up, the palms against
the paling, he slid down in a heap on the ground.</p>
<p>"Aissa," he said, pleadingly, pressing his lips to a chink between the
stakes. "Aissa, do you hear me? Come back! I will do what you want, give
you all you desire—if I have to set the whole Sambir on fire and put
that fire out with blood. Only come back. Now! At once! Are you there? Do
you hear me? Aissa!"</p>
<p>On the other side there were startled whispers of feminine voices; a
frightened little laugh suddenly interrupted; some woman's admiring murmur—"This
is brave talk!" Then after a short silence Aissa cried—</p>
<p>"Sleep in peace—for the time of your going is near. Now I am afraid
of you. Afraid of your fear. When you return with Tuan Abdulla you shall
be great. You will find me here. And there will be nothing but love.
Nothing else!—Always!—Till we die!"</p>
<p>He listened to the shuffle of footsteps going away, and staggered to his
feet, mute with the excess of his passionate anger against that being so
savage and so charming; loathing her, himself, everybody he had ever
known; the earth, the sky, the very air he drew into his oppressed chest;
loathing it because it made him live, loathing her because she made him
suffer. But he could not leave that gate through which she had passed. He
wandered a little way off, then swerved round, came back and fell down
again by the stockade only to rise suddenly in another attempt to break
away from the spell that held him, that brought him back there, dumb,
obedient and furious. And under the immobilized gesture of lofty
protection in the branches outspread wide above his head, under the high
branches where white birds slept wing to wing in the shelter of countless
leaves, he tossed like a grain of dust in a whirlwind—sinking and
rising—round and round—always near that gate. All through the
languid stillness of that night he fought with the impalpable; he fought
with the shadows, with the darkness, with the silence. He fought without a
sound, striking futile blows, dashing from side to side; obstinate,
hopeless, and always beaten back; like a man bewitched within the
invisible sweep of a magic circle.</p>
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