1.1. CHAPTER ONE
WHEN he stepped off the straight and narrow path
of his peculiar honesty, it was with an inward assertion
of unflinching resolve to fall back again into the monotonous
but safe stride of virtue as soon as his little
excursion into the wayside quagmires had produced
the desired effect. It was going to be a short episode
—a sentence in brackets, so to speak—in the flowing
tale of his life: a thing of no moment, to be done unwillingly,
yet neatly, and to be quickly forgotten. He
imagined that he could go on afterwards looking at the
sunshine, enjoying the shade, breathing in the perfume
of flowers in the small garden before his house. He
fancied that nothing would be changed, that he would
be able as heretofore to tyrannize good-humouredly
over his half-caste wife, to notice with tender contempt
his pale yellow child, to patronize loftily his dark-skinned brother-in-law, who loved pink neckties and
wore patent-leather boots on his little feet, and was so
humble before the white husband of the lucky sister.
Those were the delights of his life, and he was unable
to conceive that the moral significance of any act of
his could interfere with the very nature of things, could
dim the light of the sun, could destroy the perfume of
the flowers, the submission of his wife, the smile of his
child, the awe-struck respect of Leonard da Souza and
of all the Da Souza family. That family's admiration
was the great luxury of his life. It rounded and completed
his existence in a perpetual assurance of unquestionable
superiority. He loved to breathe the coarse
incense they offered before the shrine of the successful
white man; the man that had done them the honour
to marry their daughter, sister, cousin; the rising man
sure to climb very high; the confidential clerk of Hudig
& Co. They were a numerous and an unclean crowd,
living in ruined bamboo houses, surrounded by neglected
compounds, on the outskirts of Macassar. He
kept them at arm's length and even further off, perhaps,
having no illusions as to their worth. They
were a half-caste, lazy lot, and he saw them as they
were—ragged, lean, unwashed, undersized men of
various ages, shuffling about aimlessly in slippers;
motionless old women who looked like monstrous bags
of pink calico stuffed with shapeless lumps of fat, and
deposited askew upon decaying rattan chairs in shady
corners of dusty verandahs; young women, slim and
yellow, big-eyed, long-haired, moving languidly amongst
the dirt and rubbish of their dwellings as if every step
they took was going to be their very last. He heard
their shrill quarrellings, the squalling of their children,
the grunting of their pigs; he smelt the odours of the
heaps of garbage in their courtyards: and he was greatly
disgusted. But he fed and clothed that shabby multitude;
those degenerate descendants of Portuguese conquerors;
he was their providence; he kept them singing
his praises in the midst of their laziness, of their dirt,
of their immense and hopeless squalor: and he was
greatly delighted. They wanted much, but he could
give them all they wanted without ruining himself.
In exchange he had their silent fear, their loquacious
love, their noisy veneration. It is a fine thing to be a
providence, and to be told so on every day of one's life.
It gives one a feeling of enormously remote superiority,
and Willems revelled in it. He did not analyze the
state of his mind, but probably his greatest delight lay
in the unexpressed but intimate conviction that, should
he close his hand, all those admiring human beings
would starve. His munificence had demoralized them.
An easy task. Since he descended amongst them and
married Joanna they had lost the little aptitude and
strength for work they might have had to put forth
under the stress of extreme necessity. They lived now
by the grace of his will. This was power. Willems
loved it.
In another, and perhaps a lower plane, his days did
not want for their less complex but more obvious pleasures.
He liked the simple games of skill—billiards;
also games not so simple, and calling for quite another
kind of skill—poker. He had been the aptest pupil of
a steady-eyed, sententious American, who had drifted
mysteriously into Macassar from the wastes of the
Pacific, and, after knocking about for a time in the
eddies of town life, had drifted out enigmatically into
the sunny solitudes of the Indian Ocean. The memory
of the Californian stranger was perpetuated in the game
of poker—which became popular in the capital of Celebes
from that time—and in a powerful cocktail, the
recipe for which is transmitted—in the Kwang-tung
dialect—from head boy to head boy of the Chinese
servants in the Sunda Hotel even to this day. Willems
was a connoisseur in the drink and an adept at the game.
Of those accomplishments he was moderately proud.
Of the confidence reposed in him by Hudig—the master
—he was boastfully and obtrusively proud. This arose
from his great benevolence, and from an exalted sense
of his duty to himself and the world at large. He experienced
that irresistible impulse to impart information
which is inseparable from gross ignorance. There is
always some one thing which the ignorant man knows,
and that thing is the only thing worth knowing; it
fills the ignorant man's universe. Willems knew all
about himself. On the day when, with many misgivings,
he ran away from a Dutch East-Indiaman in
Samarang roads, he had commenced that study of
himself, of his own ways, of his own abilities, of those
fate-compelling qualities of his which led him toward
that lucrative position which he now filled. Being of a
modest and diffident nature, his successes amazed,
almost frightened him, and ended—as he got over the
succeeding shocks of surprise—by making him ferociously
conceited. He believed in his genius and in his
knowledge of the world. Others should know of it also;
for their own good and for his greater glory. All those
friendly men who slapped him on the back and greeted
him noisily should have the benefit of his example. For
that he must talk. He talked to them conscientiously.
In the afternoon he expounded his theory of success
over the little tables, dipping now and then his moustache
in the crushed ice of the cocktails; in the evening
he would often hold forth, cue in hand, to a young listener
across the billiard table. The billiard balls stood
still as if listening also, under the vivid brilliance of the
shaded oil lamps hung low over the cloth; while away
in the shadows of the big room the Chinaman marker
would lean wearily against the wall, the blank mask of
his face looking pale under the mahogany marking-board; his eyelids dropped in the drowsy fatigue of late
hours and in the buzzing monotony of the unintelligible
stream of words poured out by the white man. In a
sudden pause of the talk the game would recommence
with a sharp click and go on for a time in the flowing
soft whirr and the subdued thuds as the balls rolled
zig-zagging towards the inevitably successful cannon.
Through the big windows and the open doors the salt
dampness of the sea, the vague smell of mould and
flowers from the garden of the hotel drifted in and
mingled with the odour of lamp oil, growing heavier
as the night advanced. The players' heads dived into
the light as they bent down for the stroke, springing
back again smartly into the greenish gloom of broad
lamp-shades; the clock ticked methodically; the unmoved
Chinaman continuously repeated the score in a
lifeless voice, like a big talking doll—and Willems
would win the game. With a remark that it was getting
late, and that he was a married man, he would say a
patronizing good-night and step out into the long,
empty street. At that hour its white dust was like a
dazzling streak of moonlight where the eye sought repose
in the dimmer gleam of rare oil lamps. Willems
walked homewards, following the line of walls over-topped by the luxuriant vegetation of the front gardens.
The houses right and left were hidden behind
the black masses of flowering shrubs. Willems had
the street to himself. He would walk in the middle,
his shadow gliding obsequiously before him. He looked
down on it complacently. The shadow of a successful
man! He would be slightly dizzy with the cocktails
and with the intoxication of his own glory. As he often
told people, he came east fourteen years ago—a cabin
boy. A small boy. His shadow must have been very
small at that time; he thought with a smile that he was
not aware then he had anything—even a shadow—
which he dared call his own. And now he was looking
at the shadow of the confidential clerk of Hudig & Co.
going home. How glorious! How good was life for
those that were on the winning side! He had won the
game of life; also the game of billiards. He walked
faster, jingling his winnings, and thinking of the white
stone days that had marked the path of his existence.
He thought of the trip to Lombok for ponies—that
first important transaction confided to him by Hudig;
then he reviewed the more important affairs: the quiet
deal in opium; the illegal traffic in gunpowder; the great
affair of smuggled firearms, the difficult business of the
Rajah of Goak. He carried that last through by sheer
pluck; he had bearded the savage old ruler in his council
room; he had bribed him with a gilt glass coach, which,
rumour said, was used as a hen-coop now; he had over-persuaded him; he had bested him in every way. That
was the way to get on. He disapproved of the elementary
dishonesty that dips the hand in the cash-box, but
one could evade the laws and push the principles of
trade to their furthest consequences. Some call that
cheating. Those are the fools, the weak, the contemptible.
The wise, the strong, the respected, have no
scruples. Where there are scruples there can be no
power. On that text he preached often to the young
men. It was his doctrine, and he, himself, was a shining
example of its truth.
Night after night he went home thus, after a day of
toil and pleasure, drunk with the sound of his own voice
celebrating his own prosperity. On his thirtieth birthday
he went home thus. He had spent in good company
a nice, noisy evening, and, as he walked along the
empty street, the feeling of his own greatness grew upon
him, lifted him above the white dust of the road, and
filled him with exultation and regrets. He had not
done himself justice over there in the hotel, he had not
talked enough about himself, he had not impressed his
hearers enough. Never mind. Some other time. Now
he would go home and make his wife get up and listen
to him. Why should she not get up?—and mix a cocktail
for him—and listen patiently. Just so. She shall.
If he wanted he could make all the Da Souza family
get up. He had only to say a word and they would
all come and sit silently in their night vestments on
the hard, cold ground of his compound and listen, as
long as he wished to go on explaining to them from the
top of the stairs, how great and good he was. They
would. However, his wife would do—for to-night.
His wife! He winced inwardly. A dismal woman
with startled eyes and dolorously drooping mouth, that
would listen to him in pained wonder and mute stillness.
She was used to those night-discourses now. She had
rebelled once—at the beginning. Only once. Now,
while he sprawled in the long chair and drank and
talked, she would stand at the further end of the table,
her hands resting on the edge, her frightened eyes
watching his lips, without a sound, without a stir, hardly
breathing, till he dismissed her with a contemptuous:
"Go to bed, dummy." She would draw a long breath
then and trail out of the room, relieved but unmoved.
Nothing could startle her, make her scold or make her
cry. She did not complain, she did not rebel. That
first difference of theirs was decisive. Too decisive,
thought Willems, discontentedly. It had frightened
the soul out of her body apparently. A dismal woman!
A damn'd business altogether! What the devil did he
want to go and saddle himself. . . . Ah! Well! he
wanted a home, and the match seemed to please Hudig,
and Hudig gave him the bungalow, that flower-bowered
house to which he was wending his way in the cool
moonlight. And he had the worship of the Da Souza
tribe. A man of his stamp could carry off anything,
do anything, aspire to anything. In another five years
those white people who attended the Sunday card-parties of the Governor would accept him—half-caste
wife and all! Hooray! He saw his shadow dart forward
and wave a hat, as big as a rum barrel, at the
end of an arm several yards long. . . . Who
shouted hooray? . . . He smiled shamefacedly to
himself, and, pushing his hands deep into his pockets,
walked faster with a suddenly grave face.
Behind him—to the left—a cigar end glowed in the
gateway of Mr. Vinck's front yard. Leaning against
one of the brick pillars, Mr. Vinck, the cashier of Hudig
& Co., smoked the last cheroot of the evening. Amongst
the shadows of the trimmed bushes Mrs. Vinck crunched
slowly, with measured steps, the gravel of the circular
path before the house.
"There's Willems going home on foot—and drunk I
fancy," said Mr. Vinck over his shoulder. "I saw him
jump and wave his hat."
The crunching of the gravel stopped.
"Horrid man," said Mrs. Vinck, calmly. "I have
heard he beats his wife."
"Oh no, my dear, no," muttered absently Mr. Vinck,
with a vague gesture. The aspect of Willems as a wife-beater presented to him no interest. How women do
misjudge! If Willems wanted to torture his wife he
would have recourse to less primitive methods. Mr.
Vinck knew Willems well, and believed him to be very
able, very smart—objectionably so. As he took the
last quick draws at the stump of his cheroot, Mr. Vinck
reflected that the confidence accorded by Hudig to
Willems was open, under the circumstances, to loyal
criticism from Hudig's cashier.
"He is becoming dangerous; he knows too much.
He will have to be got rid of," said Mr. Vinck aloud.
But Mrs. Vinck had gone in already, and after shaking
his head he threw away his cheroot and followed her
slowly.
Willems walked on homeward weaving the splendid
web of his future. The road to greatness lay plainly
before his eyes, straight and shining, without any obstacle
that he could see. He had stepped off the path of
honesty, as he understood it, but he would soon regain
it, never to leave it any more! It was a very small
matter. He would soon put it right again. Meantime
his duty was not to be found out, and he trusted in his
skill, in his luck, in his well-established reputation that
would disarm suspicion if anybody dared to suspect.
But nobody would dare! True, he was conscious of a
slight deterioration. He had appropriated temporarily
some of Hudig's money. A deplorable necessity. But
he judged himself with the indulgence that should be
extended to the weaknesses of genius. He would make
reparation and all would be as before; nobody would be
the loser for it, and he would go on unchecked toward
the brilliant goal of his ambition.
Hudig's partner!
Before going up the steps of his house he stood for
awhile, his feet well apart, chin in hand, contemplating
mentally Hudig's future partner. A glorious occupation.
He saw him quite safe; solid as the hills; deep—
deep as an abyss; discreet as the grave.