Part 3

Part Three

"I looked at him, lost in astonishment. There he

was before me, in motley, as though he had absconded

from a troupe of mimes, enthusiastic, fabulous. His

very existence was improbable, inexplicable, and alto-

gether bewildering. He was an insoluble problem. It

was inconceivable how he had existed, how he had suc-

ceeded in getting so far, how he had managed to remain

--why he did not instantly disappear. 'I went a little

farther,' he said, 'then still a little farther--till I had

gone so far that I don't know how I'll ever get back.

Never mind. Plenty time. I can manage. You take

Kurtz away quick--quick--I tell you.' The glamour of

youth enveloped his particolored rags, his destitution, his

loneliness, the essential desolation of his futile wander-

ings. For months--for years--his life hadn't been

worth a day's purchase; and there he was gallantly,

thoughtlessly alive, to all appearance indestructible solely

by the virtue of his few years and of his unreflecting

audacity. I was seduced into something like admiration

--like envy. Glamour urged him on, glamour kept him

unscathed. He surely wanted nothing from the wilder-

ness but space to breathe in and to push on through.

His need was to exist, and to move onwards at the great-

est possible risk, and with a maximum of privation. If

the absolutely pure, uncalculating, unpractical spirit of

adventure had ever ruled a human being, it ruled this

be-patched youth. I almost envied him the possession

of this modest and clear flame. It seemed to have con-

sumed all thought of self so completely, that, even while

he was talking to you, you forgot that it was he--the

man before your eyes--who had gone through these

things. I did not envy him his devotion to Kurtz,

though. He had not meditated over it. It came to him,

and he accepted it with a sort of eager fatalism. I must

say that to me it appeared about the most dangerous

thing in every way he had come upon so far.

"They had come together unavoidably, like two ships

becalmed near each other, and lay rubbing sides at last.

I suppose Kurtz wanted an audience, because on a cer-

tain occasion, when encamped in the forest, they had

talked all night, or more probably Kurtz had talked.

'We talked of everything,' he said, quite transported

at the recollection. 'I forgot there was such a thing

as sleep. The night did not seem to last an hour. Every-

thing! Everything!... Of love too.' 'Ah, he

talked to you of love!' I said, much amused. 'It isn't

what you think,' he cried, almost passionately. 'It was

in general. He made me see things--things.'

"He threw his arms up. We were on deck at the time,

and the headman of my wood-cutters, lounging near by,

turned upon him his heavy and glittering eyes. I looked

around, and I don't know why, but I assure you that

never, never before, did this land, this river, this jungle,

the very arch of this blazing sky, appear to me so hope-

less and so dark, so impenetrable to human thought, so

pitiless to human weakness. 'And, ever since, you have

been with him, of course?' I said.

"On the contrary. It appears their intercourse had

been very much broken by various causes. He had, as

he informed me proudly, managed to nurse Kurtz

through two illnesses (he alluded to it as you would to

some risky feat), but as a rule Kurtz wandered alone,

far in the depths of the forest. 'Very often coming to

this station, I had to wait days and days before he would

turn up,' he said. 'Ah, it was worth waiting for!--

sometimes.' 'What was he doing? exploring or what?'

I asked. 'Oh yes, of course;' he had discovered lots of

villages, a lake too--he did not know exactly in what

direction; it was dangerous to inquire too much--but

mostly his expeditions had been for ivory. 'But he had

no goods to trade with by that time,' I objected. 'There's

a good lot of cartridges left even yet,' he answered, look-

ing away. 'To speak plainly, he raided the country,'

I said. He nodded. 'Not alone, surely!' He muttered

something about the villages round that lake. 'Kurtz

got the tribe to follow him, did he?' I suggested. He

fidgeted a little. 'They adored him,' he said. The tone

of these words was so extraordinary that I looked at

him searchingly. It was curious to see his mingled eager-

ness and reluctance to speak of Kurtz. The man filled

his life, occupied his thoughts, swayed his emotions.

'What can you expect?' he burst out; 'he came to them

with thunder and lightning, you know--and they had

never seen anything like it--and very terrible. He could

be very terrible. You can't judge Mr. Kurtz as you

would an ordinary man. No, no, no! Now--just to

give you an idea--I don't mind telling you, he wanted

to shoot me too one day--but I don't judge him.'

'Shoot you!' I cried. 'What for?' 'Well, I had a

small lot of ivory the chief of that village near my house

gave me. You see I used to shoot game for them. Well,

he wanted it, and wouldn't hear reason. He declared

he would shoot me unless I gave him the ivory and then

cleared out of the country, because he could do so, and

had a fancy for it, and there was nothing on earth to

prevent him killing whom he jolly well pleased. And it

was true too. I gave him the ivory. What did I care!

But I didn't clear out. No, no. I couldn't leave him.

I had to be careful, of course, till we got friendly again

for a time. He had his second illness then. Afterwards

I had to keep out of the way; but I didn't mind. He

was living for the most part in those villages on the

lake. When he came down to the river, sometimes he

would take to me, and sometimes it was better for me

to be careful. This man suffered too much. He hated

all this, and somehow he couldn't get away. When I had

a chance I begged him to try and leave while there was

time; I offered to go back with him. And he would

say yes, and then he would remain; go off on another

ivory hunt; disappear for weeks; forget himself amongst

these people--forget himself--you know.' 'Why! he's

mad,' I said. He protested indignantly. Mr. Kurtz

couldn't be mad. If I had heard him talk, only two

days ago, I wouldn't dare hint at such a thing....

I had taken up my binoculars while we talked and

was looking at the shore, sweeping the limit of the

forest at each side and at the back of the house. The

consciousness of there being people in that bush, so silent,

so quiet--as silent and quiet as the ruined house on the

hill--made me uneasy. There was no sign on the face

of nature of this amazing tale that was not so much

told as suggested to me in desolate exclamations, com-

pleted by shrugs, in interrupted phrases, in hints ending

in deep sighs. The woods were unmoved, like a mask--

heavy, like the closed door of a prison--they looked with

their air of hidden knowledge, of patient expectation,

of unapproachable silence. The Russian was explaining

to me that it was only lately that Mr. Kurtz had come

down to the river, bringing along with him all the fight-

ing men of that lake tribe. He had been absent for

several months--getting himself adored, I suppose--and

had come down unexpectedly, with the intention to all

appearance of making a raid either across the river or

down stream. Evidently the appetite for more ivory

had got the better of the--what shall I say?--less ma-

terial aspirations. However he had got much worse

suddenly. 'I heard he was lying helpless, and so I came

up--took my chance,' said the Russian. 'Oh, he is

bad, very bad.' I directed my glass to the house. There

were no signs of life, but there was the ruined roof,

the long mud wall peeping above the grass, with three

little square window-holes, no two of the same size; all

this brought within reach of my hand, as it were. And

then I made a brusque movement, and one of the remain-

ing posts of that vanished fence leaped up in the field

of my glass. You remember I told you I had been

struck at the distance by certain attempts at ornamenta-

tion, rather remarkable in the ruinous aspect of the place.

Now I had suddenly a nearer view, and its first result

was to make me throw my head back as if before a blow.

Then I went carefully from post to post with my glass,

and I saw my mistake. These round knobs were not

ornamental but symbolic; they were expressive and

puzzling, striking and disturbing--food for thought and

also for the vultures if there had been any looking down

from the sky; but at all events for such ants as were

industrious enough to ascend the pole. They would

have been even more impressive, those heads on the

stakes, if their faces had not been turned to the house.

Only one, the first I had made out, was facing my way.

I was not so shocked as you may think. The start back

I had given was really nothing but a movement of sur-

prise. I had expected to see a knob of wood there, you

know. I returned deliberately to the first I had seen--

and there it was, black, dried, sunken, with closed eye-

lids,--a head that seemed to sleep at the top of that pole,

and, with the shrunken dry lips showing a narrow white

line of the teeth, was smiling too, smiling continuously

at some endless and jocose dream of that eternal slumber.

"I am not disclosing any trade secrets. In fact the

manager said afterwards that Mr. Kurtz's methods had

ruined the district. I have no opinion on that point,

but I want you clearly to understand that there was

nothing exactly profitable in these heads being there.

They only showed that Mr. Kurtz lacked restraint in the

gratification of his various lusts, that there was some-

thing wanting in him--some small matter which, when

the pressing need arose, could not be found under his

magnificent eloquence. Whether he knew of this de-

ficiency himself I can't say. I think the knowledge came

to him at last--only at the very last. But the wilder-

ness had found him out early, and had taken on him

a terrible vengeance for the fantastic invasion. I think

it had whispered to him things about himself which he

did not know, things of which he had no conception till

he took counsel with this great solitude--and the whisper

had proved irresistibly fascinating. It echoed loudly

within him because he was hollow at the core.... I

put down the glass, and the head that had appeared

near enough to be spoken to seemed at once to have

leaped away from me into inaccessible distance.

"The admirer of Mr. Kurtz was a bit crestfallen. In

a hurried, indistinct voice he began to assure me he had

not dared to take these--say, symbols--down. He was

not afraid of the natives; they would not stir till Mr.

Kurtz gave the word. His ascendency was extraor-

dinary. The camps of these people surrounded the

place, and the chiefs came every day to see him. They

would crawl.... 'I don't want to know anything of

the ceremonies used when approaching Mr. Kurtz,' I

shouted. Curious, this feeling that came over me that

such details would be more intolerable than those heads

drying on the stakes under Mr. Kurtz's windows. After

all, that was only a savage sight, while I seemed at one

bound to have been transported into some lightless

region of subtle horrors, where pure, uncomplicated

savagery was a positive relief, being something that had

a right to exist--obviously--in the sunshine. The

young man looked at me with surprise. I suppose it

did not occur to him Mr. Kurtz was no idol of mine.

He forgot I hadn't heard any of these splendid mono-

logues on, what was it? on love, justice, conduct of life

--or what not. If it had come to crawling before Mr.

Kurtz, he crawled as much as the veriest savage of them

all. I had no idea of the conditions, he said: these heads

were the heads of rebels. I shocked him excessively by

laughing. Rebels! What would be the next definition

I was to hear? There had been enemies, criminals, work-

ers--and these were rebels. Those rebellious heads looked

very subdued to me on their sticks. 'You don't know how

such a life tries a man like Kurtz,' cried Kurtz's last

disciple. 'Well, and you?' I said. 'I! I! I am a

simple man. I have no great thoughts. I want nothing

from anybody. How can you compare me to...?"

His feelings were too much for speech, and suddenly he

broke down. 'I don't understand,' he groaned. 'I've

been doing my best to keep him alive, and that's enough.

I had no hand in all this. I have no abilities. There

hasn't been a drop of medicine or a mouthful of invalid

food for months here. He was shamefully abandoned.

A man like this, with such ideas. Shamefully!

Shamefully! I--I--haven't slept for the last ten

nights....'

"His voice lost itself in the calm of the evening. The

long shadows of the forest had slipped down hill while

we talked, had gone far beyond the ruined hovel, be-

yond the symbolic row of stakes. All this was in the

gloom, while we down there were yet in the sunshine,

and the stretch of the river abreast of the clearing

glittered in a still and dazzling splendor, with a murky

and over-shadowed bend above and below. Not a living

soul was seen on the shore. The bushes did not rustle.

"Suddenly round the corner of the house a group of

men appeared, as though they had come up from the

ground. They waded waist-deep in the grass, in a

compact body, bearing an improvised stretcher in their

midst. Instantly, in the emptiness of the landscape, a

cry arose whose shrillness pierced the still air like a sharp

arrow flying straight to the very heart of the land; and,

as if by enchantment, streams of human beings--of

naked human beings--with spears in their hands, with

bows, with shields, with wild glances and savage move-

ments, were poured into the clearing by the dark-faced

and pensive forest. The bushes shook, the grass swayed

for a time, and then everything stood still in attentive

immobility.

"'Now, if he does not say the right thing to them we

are all done for,' said the Russian at my elbow. The

knot of men with the stretcher had stopped too, half-way

to the steamer, as if petrified. I saw the man on the

stretcher sit up, lank and with an uplifted arm, above

the shoulders of the bearers. 'Let us hope that the

man who can talk so well of love in general will find

some particular reason to spare us this time,' I said. I

resented bitterly the absurd danger of our situation, as

if to be at the mercy of that atrocious phantom had

been a dishonoring necessity. I could not hear a sound,

but through my glasses I saw the thin arm extended

commandingly, the lower jaw moving, the eyes of that

apparition shining darkly far in its bony head that

nodded with grotesque jerks. Kurtz--Kurtz--that

means short in German--don't it? Well, the name was

as true as everything else in his life--and death. He

looked at least seven feet long. His covering had fallen

off, and his body emerged from it pitiful and appalling

as from a winding-sheet. I could see the cage of his

ribs all astir, the bones of his arm waving. It was as

though an animated image of death carved out of old

ivory had been shaking its hand with menaces at a

motionless crowd of men made of dark and glittering

bronze. I saw him open his mouth wide--it gave him

a weirdly voracious aspect, as though he had wanted to

swallow all the air, all the earth, all the men before him.

A deep voice reached me faintly. He must have been

shouting. He fell back suddenly. The stretcher shook

as the bearers staggered forward again, and almost at

the same time I noticed that the crowd of savages was

vanishing without any perceptible movement of retreat,

as if the forest that had ejected these beings so suddenly

had drawn them in again as the breath is drawn in a

long aspiration.

"Some of the pilgrims behind the stretcher carried his

arms--two shot-guns, a heavy rifle, and a light revolver-

carbine--the thunderbolts of that pitiful Jupiter. The

manager bent over him murmuring as he walked beside

his head. They laid him down in one of the little cabins

--just a room for a bed-place and a camp-stool or two,

you know. We had brought his belated correspondence,

and a lot of torn envelopes and open letters littered his

bed. His hand roamed feebly amongst these papers. I

was struck by the fire of his eyes and the composed

languor of his expression. It was not so much the ex-

haustion of disease. He did not seem in pain. This

shadow looked satiated and calm, as though for the

moment it had had its fill of all the emotions.

"He rustled one of the letters, and looking straight

in my face said, 'I am glad.' Somebody had been writ-

ing to him about me. These special recommendations

were turning up again. The volume of tone he emitted

without effort, almost without the trouble of moving his

lips, amazed me. A voice! a voice! It was grave, pro-

found, vibrating, while the man did not seem capable

of a whisper. However, he had enough strength in

him--factitious no doubt--to very nearly make an end

of us, as you shall hear directly.

"The manager appeared silently in the doorway; I

stepped out at once and he drew the curtain after me.

The Russian, eyed curiously by the pilgrims, was star-

ing at the shore. I followed the direction of his glance.

"Dark human shapes could be made out in the distance,

flitting indistinctly against the gloomy border of the

forest, and near the river two bronze figures, leaning

on tall spears, stood in the sunlight under fantastic head-

dresses of spotted skins, warlike and still in statuesque

repose. And from right to left along the lighted shore

moved a wild and gorgeous apparition of a woman.

"She walked with measured steps, draped in striped

and fringed cloths, treading the earth proudly, with a

slight jingle and flash of barbarous ornaments. She

carried her head high; her hair was done in the shape

of a helmet; she had brass leggings to the knee, brass

wire gauntlets to the elbow, a crimson spot on her tawny

cheek, innumerable necklaces of glass beads on her neck;

bizarre things, charms, gifts of witch-men, that hung

about her, glittered and trembled at every step. She

must have had the value of several elephant tusks upon

her. She was savage and superb, wild-eyed and magnifi-

cent; there was something ominous and stately in her

deliberate progress. And in the hush that had fallen

suddenly upon the whole sorrowful land, the immense

wilderness, the colossal body of the fecund and mys-

terious life seemed to look at her, pensive, as though it

had been looking at the image of its own tenebrous and

passionate soul.

"She came abreast of the steamer, stood still, and faced

us. Her long shadow fell to the water's edge. Her face

had a tragic and fierce aspect of wild sorrow and of

dumb pain mingled with the fear of some struggling,

half-shaped resolve. She stood looking at us without

a stir and like the wilderness itself, with an air of brood-

ing over an inscrutable purpose. A whole minute passed,

and then she made a step forward. There was a low

jingle, a glint of yellow metal, a sway of fringed draper-

ies, and she stopped as if her heart had failed her. The

young fellow by my side growled. The pilgrims mur-

mured at my back. She looked at us all as if her life

had depended upon the unswerving steadiness of her

glance. Suddenly she opened her bared arms and threw

them up rigid above her head, as though in an uncon-

trollable desire to touch the sky, and at the same time

the swift shadows darted out on the earth, swept around

on the river, gathering the steamer into a shadowy em-

brace. A formidable silence hung over the scene.

"She turned away slowly, walked on, following the

bank, and passed into the bushes to the left. Once only

her eyes gleamed back at us in the dusk of the thickets

before she disappeared.

"'If she had offered to come aboard I really think I

would have tried to shoot her,' said the man of patches,

nervously. 'I had been risking my life every day for

the last fortnight to keep her out of the house. She

got in one day and kicked up a row about those miser-

able rags I picked up in the storeroom to mend my clothes

with. I wasn't decent. At least it must have been that,

for she talked like a fury to Kurtz for an hour, point-

ing at me now and then. I don't understand the dia-

lect of this tribe. Luckily for me, I fancy Kurtz felt

too ill that day to care, or there would have been mis-

chief. I don't understand.... No--it's too much

for me. Ah, well, it's all over now.'

"At this moment I heard Kurtz's deep voice behind

the curtain, 'Save me!--save the ivory, you mean. Don't

tell me. Save ME! Why, I've had to save you. You

are interrupting my plans now. Sick! Sick! Not so

sick as you would like to believe. Never mind. I'll

carry my ideas out yet--I will return. I'll show you

what can be done. You with your little peddling no-

tions--you are interfering with me. I will return.

I...'

"The manager came out. He did me the honor to

take me under the arm and lead me aside. 'He is very

low, very low,' he said. He considered it necessary to

sigh, but neglected to be consistently sorrowful. 'We

have done all we could for him--haven't we? But there

is no disguising the fact, Mr. Kurtz has done more

harm than good to the Company. He did not see the

time was not ripe for vigorous action. Cautiously, cau-

tiously--that's my principle. We must be cautious yet.

The district is closed to us for a time. Deplorable! Upon

the whole, the trade will suffer. I don't deny there is

a remarkable quantity of ivory--mostly fossil. We must

save it, at all events--but look how precarious the posi-

tion is--and why? Because the method is unsound.'

'Do you,' said I, looking at the shore, 'call it "unsound

method"?' 'Without doubt,' he exclaimed, hotly.

'Don't you?'... 'No method at all,' I murmured

after a while. 'Exactly,' he exulted. 'I anticipated

this. Shows a complete want of judgment. It is my

duty to point it out in the proper quarter.' 'Oh,' said

I, 'that fellow--what's his name?--the brickmaker, will

make a readable report for you.' He appeared con-

founded for a moment. It seemed to me I had never

breathed an atmosphere so vile, and I turned mentally

to Kurtz for relief--positively for relief. 'Neverthe-

less I think Mr. Kurtz is a remarkable man,' I said with

emphasis. He started, dropped on me a cold heavy

glance, said very quietly, 'He WAS,' and turned his back

on me. My hour of favor was over; I found myself

lumped along with Kurtz as a partisan of methods for

which the time was not ripe: I was unsound! Ah! but it

was something to have at least a choice of nightmares.

"I had turned to the wilderness really, not to Mr.

Kurtz, who, I was ready to admit, was as good as buried.

And for a moment it seemed to me as if I also were

buried in a vast grave full of unspeakable secrets. I

felt an intolerable weight oppressing my breast, the

smell of the damp earth, the unseen presence of victorious

corruption, the darkness of an impenetrable night....

The Russian tapped me on the shoulder. I heard him

mumbling and stammering something about 'brother

seaman--couldn't conceal--knowledge of matters that

would affect Mr. Kurtz's reputation.' I waited. For

him evidently Mr. Kurtz was not in his grave; I suspect

that for him Mr. Kurtz was one of the immortals.

'Well!' said I at last, 'speak out. As it happens, I am

Mr. Kurtz's friend--in a way.'

"He stated with a good deal of formality that had

we not been 'of the same profession,' he would have

kept the matter to himself without regard to conse-

quences. 'He suspected there was an active ill-will to-

wards him on the part of these white men that--'

'You are right,' I said, remembering a certain conversa-

tion I had overheard. 'The manager thinks you ought

to be hanged.' He showed a concern at this intelligence

which amused me at first. 'I had better get out of the

way quietly,' he said, earnestly. 'I can do no more for

Kurtz now, and they would soon find some excuse.

What's to stop them? There's a military post three hun-

dred miles from here.' 'Well, upon my word,' said I,

'perhaps you had better go if you have any friends

amongst the savages near by.' 'Plenty,' he said. 'They

are simple people--and I want nothing, you know.'

He stood biting his lips, then: 'I don't want any harm to

happen to these whites here, but of course I was think-

ing of Mr. Kurtz's reputation--but you are a brother

seaman and--' 'All right,' said I, after a time.

'Mr. Kurtz's reputation is safe with me.' I did not

know how truly I spoke.

"He informed me, lowering his voice, that it was

Kurtz who had ordered the attack to be made on the

steamer. 'He hated sometimes the idea of being taken

away--and then again.... But I don't understand

these matters. I am a simple man. He thought it would

scare you away--that you would give it up, thinking

him dead. I could not stop him. Oh, I had an awful

time of it this last month.' 'Very well,' I said. 'He is

all right now.' 'Ye-e-es,' he muttered, not very con-

vinced apparently. 'Thanks,' said I; 'I shall keep my

eyes open.' 'But quiet--eh?' he urged, anxiously. 'It

would be awful for his reputation if anybody here--'

I promised a complete discretion with great gravity. 'I

have a canoe and three black fellows waiting not very

far. I am off. Could you give me a few Martini-Henry

cartridges?' I could, and did, with proper secrecy. He

helped himself, with a wink at me, to a handful of my

tobacco. 'Between sailors--you know--good English

tobacco.' At the door of the pilot-house he turned round

--'I say, haven't you a pair of shoes you could spare?'

He raised one leg. 'Look.' The soles were tied with

knotted strings sandal-wise under his bare feet. I rooted

out an old pair, at which he looked with admiration be-

fore tucking it under his left arm. One of his pockets

(bright red) was bulging with cartridges, from the

other (dark blue) peeped 'Towson's Inquiry,' &c., &c.

He seemed to think himself excellently well equipped

for a renewed encounter with the wilderness. 'Ah! I'll

never, never meet such a man again. You ought to

have heard him recite poetry--his own too it was, he told

me. Poetry!' He rolled his eyes at the recollection

of these delights. 'Oh, he enlarged my mind!' 'Good-

by,' said I. He shook hands and vanished in the night.

Sometimes I ask myself whether I had ever really seen

him--whether it was possible to meet such a phenome-

non!...

"When I woke up shortly after midnight his warning

came to my mind with its hint of danger that seemed,

in the starred darkness, real enough to make me get

up for the purpose of having a look round. On the

hill a big fire burned, illuminating fitfully a crooked

corner of the station-house. One of the agents with

a picket of a few of our blacks, armed for the purpose,

was keeping guard over the ivory; but deep within the

forest, red gleams that wavered, that seemed to sink and

rise from the ground amongst confused columnar shapes

of intense blackness, showed the exact position of the

camp where Mr. Kurtz's adorers were keeping their un-

easy vigil. The monotonous beating of a big drum filled

the air with muffled shocks and a lingering vibration. A

steady droning sound of many men chanting each to

himself some weird incantation came out from the black,

flat wall of the woods as the humming of bees comes

out of a hive, and had a strange narcotic effect upon

my half-awake senses. I believe I dozed off leaning

over the rail, till an abrupt burst of yells, an over-

whelming outbreak of a pent-up and mysterious frenzy,

woke me up in a bewildered wonder. It was cut short

all at once, and the low droning went on with an effect

of audible and soothing silence. I glanced casually into

the little cabin. A light was burning within, but Mr.

Kurtz was not there.

"I think I would have raised an outcry if I had be-

lieved my eyes. But I didn't believe them at first--the

thing seemed so impossible. The fact is I was completely

unnerved by a sheer blank fright, pure abstract terror,

unconnected with any distinct shape of physical danger.

What made this emotion so overpowering was--how shall

I define it?--the moral shock I received, as if something

altogether monstrous, intolerable to thought and odious

to the soul, had been thrust upon me unexpectedly. This

lasted of course the merest fraction of a second, and

then the usual sense of commonplace, deadly danger, the

possibility of a sudden onslaught and massacre, or some-

thing of the kind, which I saw impending, was positively

welcome and composing. It pacified me, in fact, so

much, that I did not raise an alarm.

"There was an agent buttoned up inside an ulster

and sleeping on a chair on deck within three feet of

e. The yells had not awakened him; he snored very

slightly; I left him to his slumbers and leaped ashore.

I did not betray Mr. Kurtz--it was ordered I should

never betray him--it was written I should be loyal to

the nightmare of my choice. I was anxious to deal

with this shadow by myself alone,--and to this day I

don't know why I was so jealous of sharing with any-

one the peculiar blackness of that experience.

"As soon as I got on the bank I saw a trail--a broad

trail through the grass. I remember the exultation with

which I said to myself, 'He can't walk--he is crawling

on all-fours--I've got him.' The grass was wet with

dew. I strode rapidly with clenched fists. I fancy I

had some vague notion of falling upon him and giving

him a drubbing. I don't know. I had some imbecile

thoughts. The knitting old woman with the cat ob-

truded herself upon my memory as a most improper

person to be sitting at the other end of such an affair.

I saw a row of pilgrims squirting lead in the air out

of Winchesters held to the hip. I thought I would

never get back to the steamer, and imagined myself

living alone and unarmed in the woods to an advanced

age. Such silly things--you know. And I remember

I confounded the beat of the drum with the beating of

my heart, and was pleased at its calm regularity.

"I kept to the track though--then stopped to listen.

The night was very clear: a dark blue space, sparkling

with dew and starlight, in which black things stood

very still. I thought I could see a kind of motion ahead

of me. I was strangely cocksure of everything that

night. I actually left the track and ran in a wide semi-

circle (I verily believe chuckling to myself) so as to

get in front of that stir, of that motion I had seen--

if indeed I had seen anything. I was circumventing

Kurtz as though it had been a boyish game.

"I came upon him, and, if he had not heard me coming,

I would have fallen over him too, but he got up in

time. He rose, unsteady, long, pale, indistinct, like a

vapor exhaled by the earth, and swayed slightly, misty

and silent before me; while at my back the fires loomed

between the trees, and the murmur of many voices issued

from the forest. I had cut him off cleverly; but when

actually confronting him I seemed to come to my senses,

I saw the danger in its right proportion. It was by

no means over yet. Suppose he began to shout? Though

he could hardly stand, there was still plenty of vigor

in his voice. 'Go away--hide yourself,' he said, in that

profound tone. It was very awful. I glanced back.

We were within thirty yards from the nearest fire. A

black figure stood up, strode on long black legs, waving

long black arms, across the glow. It had horns--ante-

lope horns, I think--on its head. Some sorcerer, some

witch-man, no doubt: it looked fiend-like enough. 'Do

you know what you are doing?' I whispered. 'Per-

fectly,' he answered, raising his voice for that single

word: it sounded to me far off and yet loud, like a hail

through a speaking-trumpet. If he makes a row we

are lost, I thought to myself. This clearly was not a

case for fisticuffs, even apart from the very natural

aversion I had to beat that Shadow--this wandering and

tormented thing. 'You will be lost,' I said--'utterly

lost.' One gets sometimes such a flash of inspiration,

you know. I did say the right thing, though indeed

he could not have been more irretrievably lost than he

was at this very moment, when the foundations of our

intimacy were being laid--to endure--to endure--even

to the end--even beyond.

"'I had immense plans,' he muttered irresolutely.

'Yes,' said I; 'but if you try to shout I'll smash your

head with--' there was not a stick or a stone near. 'I

will throttle you for good,' I corrected myself. 'I was

on the threshold of great things,' he pleaded, in a voice

of longing, with a wistfulness of tone that made my

blood run cold. 'And now for this stupid scoundrel--'

'Your success in Europe is assured in any case,' I af-

firmed, steadily. I did not want to have the throttling

of him, you understand--and indeed it would have been

very little use for any practical purpose. I tried to

break the spell--the heavy, mute spell of the wilder-

ness--that seemed to draw him to its pitiless breast by

the awakening of forgotten and brutal instincts, by the

memory of gratified and monstrous passions. This alone,

I was convinced, had driven him out to the edge of the

forest, to the bush, towards the gleam of fires, the throb

of drums, the drone of weird incantations; this alone

had beguiled his unlawful soul beyond the bounds of

permitted aspirations. And, don't you see, the terror

of the position was not in being knocked on the head

--though I had a very lively sense of that danger too

--but in this, that I had to deal with a being to whom

I could not appeal in the name of anything high or low.

I had, even like the niggers, to invoke him--himself--

his own exalted and incredible degradation. There was

nothing either above or below him, and I knew it. He

had kicked himself loose of the earth. Confound the

man! he had kicked the very earth to pieces. He was

alone, and I before him did not know whether I stood

on the ground or floated in the air. I've been telling

you what we said--repeating the phrases we pronounced,

--but what's the good? They were common everyday

words,--the familiar, vague sounds exchanged on every

waking day of life. But what of that? They had be-

hind them, to my mind, the terrific suggestiveness of

words heard in dreams, of phrases spoken in night-

mares. Soul! If anybody had ever struggled with a

soul, I am the man. And I wasn't arguing with a luna-

tic either. Believe me or not, his intelligence was per-

fectly clear--concentrated, it is true, upon himself with

horrible intensity, yet clear; and therein was my only

chance--barring, of course, the killing him there and

then, which wasn't so good, on account of unavoidable

noise. But his soul was mad. Being alone in the wilder-

ness, it had looked within itself, and, by heavens! I tell

you, it had gone mad. I had--for my sins, I suppose--

to go through the ordeal of looking into it myself. No

eloquence could have been so withering to one's belief

in mankind as his final burst of sincerity. He struggled

with himself, too. I saw it,--I heard it. I saw the in-

conceivable mystery of a soul that knew no restraint, no

faith, and no fear, yet struggling blindly with itself. I

kept my head pretty well; but when I had him at last

stretched on the couch, I wiped my forehead, while my

legs shook under me as though I had carried half a

ton on my back down that hill. And yet I had only

supported him, his bony arm clasped round my neck

--and he was not much heavier than a child.

"When next day we left at noon, the crowd, of whose

presence behind the curtain of trees I had been acutely

conscious all the time, flowed out of the woods again,

filled the clearing, covered the slope with a mass of naked,

breathing, quivering, bronze bodies. I steamed up a

bit, then swung down-stream, and two thousand eyes

followed the evolutions of the splashing, thumping,

fierce river-demon beating the water with its terrible tail

and breathing black smoke into the air. In front of

the first rank, along the river, three men, plastered with

bright red earth from head to foot, strutted to and fro

restlessly. When we came abreast again, they faced the

river, stamped their feet, nodded their horned heads,

swayed their scarlet bodies; they shook towards the fierce

river-demon a bunch of black feathers, a mangy skin

with a pendent tail--something that looked like a dried

gourd; they shouted periodically together strings of

amazing words that resembled no sounds of human lan-

guage; and the deep murmurs of the crowd, inter-

rupted suddenly, were like the response of some satanic

litany.

"We had carried Kurtz into the pilot-house: there was

more air there. Lying on the couch, he stared through

the open shutter. There was an eddy in the mass of

human bodies, and the woman with helmeted head and

tawny cheeks rushed out to the very brink of the stream.

She put out her hands, shouted something, and all that

wild mob took up the shout in a roaring chorus of

articulated, rapid, breathless utterance.

"'Do you understand this?' I asked.

"He kept on looking out past me with fiery, longing

eyes, with a mingled expression of wistfulness and hate.

He made no answer, but I saw a smile, a smile of inde-

finable meaning, appear on his colorless lips that a mo-

ment after twitched convulsively. 'Do I not?' he said

slowly, gasping, as if the words had been torn out of

him by a supernatural power.

"I pulled the string of the whistle, and I did this

because I saw the pilgrims on deck getting out their

rifles with an air of anticipating a jolly lark. At the

sudden screech there was a movement of abject terror

through that wedged mass of bodies. 'Don't! don't!

you frighten them away,' cried someone on deck dis-

consolately. I pulled the string time after time. They

broke and ran, they leaped, they crouched, they swerved,

they dodged the flying terror of the sound. The three

red chaps had fallen flat, face down on the shore, as

though they had been shot dead. Only the barbarous

and superb woman did not so much as flinch, and

stretched tragically her bare arms after us over the

somber and glittering river.

"And then that imbecile crowd down on the deck

started their little fun, and I could see nothing more

for smoke.

"The brown current ran swiftly out of the heart of

darkness, bearing us down towards the sea with twice

the speed of our upward progress; and Kurtz's life was

running swiftly too, ebbing, ebbing out of his heart

into the sea of inexorable time. The manager was very

placid, he had no vital anxieties now, he took us both

in with a comprehensive and satisfied glance: the 'affair'

had come off as well as could be wished. I saw the time

approaching when I would be left alone of the party of

'unsound method.' The pilgrims looked upon me with

disfavor. I was, so to speak, numbered with the dead.

It is strange how I accepted this unforeseen partner-

ship, this choice of nightmares forced upon me in the

tenebrous land invaded by these mean and greedy phan-

toms.

"Kurtz discoursed. A voice! a voice! It rang deep

to the very last. It survived his strength to hide in

the magnificent folds of eloquence the barren darkness

of his heart. Oh, he struggled! he struggled! The

wastes of his weary brain were haunted by shadowy

images now--images of wealth and fame revolving

obsequiously round his unextinguishable gift of noble

and lofty expression. My Intended, my station, my

career, my ideas--these were the subjects for the occa-

sional utterances of elevated sentiments. The shade of

the original Kurtz frequented the bedside of the hollow

sham, whose fate it was to be buried presently in the

mold of primeval earth. But both the diabolic love and

the unearthly hate of the mysteries it had penetrated

fought for the possession of that soul satiated with

primitive emotions, avid of lying fame, of sham dis-

tinction, of all the appearances of success and power.

"Sometimes he was contemptibly childish. He desired

to have kings meet him at railway-stations on his return

from some ghastly Nowhere, where he intended to ac-

complish great things. 'You show them you have in

you something that is really profitable, and then there

will be no limits to the recognition of your ability,' he

would say. 'Of course you must take care of the mo-

tives--right motives--always.' The long reaches that

were like one and the same reach, monotonous bends that

were exactly alike, slipped past the steamer with their

multitude of secular trees looking patiently after this

grimy fragment of another world, the forerunner of

change, of conquest, of trade, of massacres, of blessings.

I looked ahead--piloting. 'Close the shutter,' said

Kurtz suddenly one day; 'I can't bear to look at this.'

I did so. There was a silence. 'Oh, but I will wring

your heart yet!' he cried at the invisible wilderness.

"We broke down--as I had expected--and had to lie

up for repairs at the head of an island. This delay

was the first thing that shook Kurtz's confidence. One

morning he gave me a packet of papers and a photo-

graph,--the lot tied together with a shoe-string. 'Keep

this for me,' he said. 'This noxious fool' (meaning

the manager) 'is capable of prying into my boxes when

I am not looking.' In the afternoon I saw him. He

was lying on his back with closed eyes, and I withdrew

quietly, but I heard him mutter, 'Live rightly, die,

die...' I listened. There was nothing more. Was

he rehearsing some speech in his sleep, or was it a frag-

ment of a phrase from some newspaper article? He had

been writing for the papers and meant to do so again,

'for the furthering of my ideas. It's a duty.'

"His was an impenetrable darkness. I looked at him

as you peer down at a man who is lying at the bottom

of a precipice where the sun never shines. But I had

not much time to give him, because I was helping the

engine-driver to take to pieces the leaky cylinders, to

straighten a bent connecting-rod, and in other such

matters. I lived in an infernal mess of rust, filings,

nuts, bolts, spanners, hammers, ratchet-drills--things I

abominate, because I don't get on with them. I tended

the little forge we fortunately had aboard; I toiled

wearily in a wretched scrap-heap--unless I had the

shakes too bad to stand.

"One evening coming in with a candle I was startled

to hear him say a little tremulously, 'I am lying here

in the dark waiting for death.' The light was within

a foot of his eyes. I forced myself to murmur, 'Oh,

nonsense!' and stood over him as if transfixed.

"Anything approaching the change that came over

his features I have never seen before, and hope never

to see again. Oh, I wasn't touched. I was fascinated.

It was as though a veil had been rent. I saw on that

ivory face the expression of somber pride, of ruthless

power, of craven terror--of an intense and hopeless

despair. Did he live his life again in every detail of

desire, temptation, and surrender during that supreme

moment of complete knowledge? He cried in a whisper

at some image, at some vision,--he cried out twice, a

cry that was no more than a breath--

"'The horror! The horror!'

"I blew the candle out and left the cabin. The pil-

grims were dining in the mess-room, and I took my

place opposite the manager, who lifted his eyes to give

me a questioning glance, which I successfully ignored.

He leaned back, serene, with that peculiar smile of his

sealing the unexpressed depths of his meanness. A con-

tinuous shower of small flies streamed upon the lamp,

upon the cloth, upon our hands and faces. Suddenly

the manager's boy put his insolent black head in the

doorway, and said in a tone of scathing contempt--

"'Mistah Kurtz--he dead.'

"All the pilgrims rushed out to see. I remained, and

went on with my dinner. I believe I was considered

brutally callous. However, I did not eat much. There

was a lamp in there--light, don't you know--and outside

it was so beastly, beastly dark. I went no more near

the remarkable man who had pronounced a judgment

upon the adventures of his soul on this earth. The

voice was gone. What else had been there? But I am

of course aware that next day the pilgrims buried some-

thing in a muddy hole.

"And then they very nearly buried me.

"However, as you see, I did not go to join Kurtz

there and then. I did not. I remained to dream the

nightmare out to the end, and to show my loyalty to

Kurtz once more. Destiny. My destiny! Droll thing

life is--that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic

for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it

is some knowledge of yourself--that comes too late--a

crop of unextinguishable regrets. I have wrestled with

death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine.

It takes place in an impalpable grayness, with nothing

underfoot, with nothing around, without spectators,

without clamor, without glory, without the great desire

of victory, without the great fear of defeat, in a sickly

atmosphere of tepid skepticism, without much belief in

your own right, and still less in that of your adversary.

If such is the form of ultimate wisdom, then life is a

greater riddle than some of us think it to be. I was

within a hair's-breadth of the last opportunity for pro-

nouncement, and I found with humiliation that probably

I would have nothing to say. This is the reason why I

affirm that Kurtz was a remarkable man. He had some-

thing to say. He said it. Since I had peeped over the

edge myself, I understand better the meaning of his

stare, that could not see the flame of the candle, but was

wide enough to embrace the whole universe, piercing

enough to penetrate all the hearts that beat in the dark-

ness. He had summed up--he had judged. 'The

horror!' He was a remarkable man. After all, this

was the expression of some sort of belief; it had candor,

it had conviction, it had a vibrating note of revolt in its

whisper, it had the appalling face of a glimpsed truth

--the strange commingling of desire and hate. And it

is not my own extremity I remember best--a vision of

grayness without form filled with physical pain, and a

careless contempt for the evanescence of all things--even

of this pain itself. No! It is his extremity that I seem

to have lived through. True, he had made that last

stride, he had stepped over the edge, while I had been

permitted to draw back my hesitating foot. And per-

haps in this is the whole difference; perhaps all the wis-

dom, and all truth, and all sincerity, are just compressed

into that inappreciable moment of time in which we step

over the threshold of the invisible. Perhaps! I like to

think my summing-up would not have been a word of

careless contempt. Better his cry--much better. It was

an affirmation, a moral victory paid for by innumerable

defeats, by abominable terrors, by abominable satisfac-

tions. But it was a victory! That is why I have re-

mained loyal to Kurtz to the last, and even beyond,

when a long time after I heard once more, not his own

voice, but the echo of his magnificent eloquence thrown

to me from a soul as translucently pure as a cliff of

crystal.

"No, they did not bury me, though there is a period

of time which I remember mistily, with a shuddering

wonder, like a passage through some inconceivable world

that had no hope in it and no desire. I found myself

back in the sepulchral city resenting the sight of people

hurrying through the streets to filch a little money from

each other, to devour their infamous cookery, to gulp

their unwholesome beer, to dream their insignificant and

silly dreams. They trespassed upon my thoughts. They

were intruders whose knowledge of life was to me an

irritating pretense, because I felt so sure they could

not possibly know the things I knew. Their bearing,

which was simply the bearing of commonplace individuals

going about their business in the assurance of perfect

safety, was offensive to me like the outrageous flaunt-

ings of folly in the face of a danger it is unable to

comprehend. I had no particular desire to enlighten

them, but I had some difficulty in restraining myself

from laughing in their faces, so full of stupid impor-

tance. I dare say I was not very well at that time. I

tottered about the streets--there were various affairs to

settle--grinning bitterly at perfectly respectable per-

sons. I admit my behavior was inexcusable, but then my

temperature was seldom normal in these days. My dear

aunt's endeavors to 'nurse up my strength' seemed alto-

gether beside the mark. It was not my strength that

wanted nursing, it was my imagination that wanted

soothing. I kept the bundle of papers given me by

Kurtz, not knowing exactly what to do with it. His

mother had died lately, watched over, as I was told, by

his Intended. A clean-shaved man, with an official

manner and wearing gold-rimmed spectacles, called on

me one day and made inquiries, at first circuitous, after-

wards suavely pressing, about what he was pleased to

denominate certain 'documents.' I was not surprised,

because I had had two rows with the manager on the

subject out there. I had refused to give up the smallest

scrap out of that package, and I took the same attitude

with the spectacled man. He became darkly menacing

at last, and with much heat argued that the Company

had the right to every bit of information about its 'ter-

ritories.' And, said he, 'Mr. Kurtz's knowledge of

unexplored regions must have been necessarily extensive

and peculiar--owing to his great abilities and to the

deplorable circumstances in which he had been placed:

therefore'--I assured him Mr. Kurtz's knowledge,

however extensive, did not bear upon the problems of

commerce or administration. He invoked then the name

of science. 'It would be an incalculable loss if,' &c., &c.

I offered him the report on the 'Suppression of Savage

Customs,' with the postscriptum torn off. He took it

up eagerly, but ended by sniffing at it with an air of

contempt. 'This is not what we had a right to expect,'

he remarked. 'Expect nothing else,' I said. 'There

are only private letters.' He withdrew upon some threat

of legal proceedings, and I saw him no more; but an-

other fellow, calling himself Kurtz's cousin, appeared

two days later, and was anxious to hear all the details

about his dear relative's last moments. Incidentally he

gave me to understand that Kurtz had been essentially

a great musician. 'There was the making of an im-

mense success,' said the man, who was an organist, I

believe, with lank gray hair flowing over a greasy coat-

collar. I had no reason to doubt his statement; and to

this day I am unable to say what was Kurtz's pro-

fession, whether he ever had any--which was the greatest

of his talents. I had taken him for a painter who wrote

for the papers, or else for a journalist who could paint

--but even the cousin (who took snuff during the inter-

view) could not tell me what he had been--exactly. He

was a universal genius--on that point I agreed with the

old chap, who thereupon blew his nose noisily into a

large cotton handkerchief and withdrew in senile agita-

tion, bearing off some family letters and memoranda

without importance. Ultimately a journalist anxious to

know something of the fate of his 'dear colleague'

turned up. This visitor informed me Kurtz's proper

sphere ought to have been politics 'on the popular side.'

He had furry straight eyebrows, bristly hair cropped

short, an eye-glass on a broad ribbon, and, becoming

expansive, confessed his opinion that Kurtz really

couldn't write a bit--'but heavens! how that man could

talk! He electrified large meetings. He had faith--

don't you see?--he had the faith. He could get himself

to believe anything--anything. He would have been

a splendid leader of an extreme party.' 'What party?'

I asked. 'Any party,' answered the other. 'He was

an--an--extremist.' Did I not think so? I assented.

Did I know, he asked, with a sudden flash of curiosity,

'what it was that had induced him to go out there?'

'Yes,' said I, and forthwith handed him the famous

Report for publication, if he thought fit. He glanced

through it hurriedly, mumbling all the time, judged 'it

would do,' and took himself off with this plunder.

"Thus I was left at last with a slim packet of letters

and the girl's portrait. She struck me as beautiful--

I mean she had a beautiful expression. I know that the

sunlight can be made to lie too, yet one felt that no

manipulation of light and pose could have conveyed the

delicate shade of truthfulness upon those features. She

seemed ready to listen without mental reservation, with-

out suspicion, without a thought for herself. I con-

cluded I would go and give her back her portrait and

those letters myself. Curiosity? Yes; and also some

other feeling perhaps. All that had been Kurtz's had

passed out of my hands: his soul, his body, his station,

his plans, his ivory, his career. There remained only

his memory and his Intended--and I wanted to give that

up too to the past, in a way,--to surrender personally

all that remained of him with me to that oblivion which

is the last word of our common fate. I don't defend

myself. I had no clear perception of what it was I

really wanted. Perhaps it was an impulse of uncon-

scious loyalty, or the fulfillment of one of these ironic

necessities that lurk in the facts of human existence.

I don't know. I can't tell. But I went.

"I thought his memory was like the other memories

of the dead that accumulate in every man's life,--a vague

impress on the brain of shadows that had fallen on it

in their swift and final passage; but before the high and

ponderous door, between the tall houses of a street as

still and decorous as a well-kept alley in a cemetery, I

had a vision of him on the stretcher, opening his mouth

voraciously, as if to devour all the earth with all its

mankind. He lived then before me; he lived as much

as he had ever lived--a shadow insatiable of splendid

appearances, of frightful realities; a shadow darker than

the shadow of the night, and draped nobly in the folds

of a gorgeous eloquence. The vision seemed to enter

the house with me--the stretcher, the phantom-bearers,

the wild crowd of obedient worshipers, the gloom of the

forests, the glitter of the reach between the murky bends,

the beat of the drum, regular and muffled like the beat-

ing of a heart--the heart of a conquering darkness. It

was a moment of triumph for the wilderness, an invad-

ing and vengeful rush which, it seemed to me, I would

have to keep back alone for the salvation of another

soul. And the memory of what I had heard him say

afar there, with the horned shapes stirring at my back,

in the glow of fires, within the patient woods, those

broken phrases came back to me, were heard again in

their ominous and terrifying simplicity. I remembered

his abject pleading, his abject threats, the colossal scale

of his vile desires, the meanness, the torment, the tem-

pestuous anguish of his soul. And later on I seemed to

see his collected languid manner, when he said one day,

'This lot of ivory now is really mine. The Company

did not pay for it. I collected it myself at a very great

personal risk. I am afraid they will try to claim it as

theirs though. H'm. It is a difficult case. What do

you think I ought to do--resist? Eh? I want no more

than justice.'... He wanted no more than justice--

no more than justice. I rang the bell before a mahogany

door on the first floor, and while I waited he seemed to

stare at me out of the glassy panel--stare with that wide

and immense stare embracing, condemning, loathing all

the universe. I seemed to hear the whispered cry, 'The

horror! The horror!'

"The dusk was falling. I had to wait in a lofty draw-

ing-room with three long windows from floor to ceiling

that were like three luminous and bedraped columns.

The bent gilt legs and backs of the furniture shone in

indistinct curves. The tall marble fireplace had a cold

and monumental whiteness. A grand piano stood mas-

sively in a corner, with dark gleams on the flat sur-

faces like a somber and polished sarcophagus. A high

door opened--closed. I rose.

"She came forward, all in black, with a pale head,

floating towards me in the dusk. She was in mourning.

It was more than a year since his death, more than a

year since the news came; she seemed as though she

would remember and mourn for ever. She took both

my hands in hers and murmured, 'I had heard you

were coming.' I noticed she was not very young--I

mean not girlish. She had a mature capacity for fidelity,

for belief, for suffering. The room seemed to have

grown darker, as if all the sad light of the cloudy

evening had taken refuge on her forehead. This fair

hair, this pale visage, this pure brow, seemed surrounded

by an ashy halo from which the dark eyes looked out at

me. Their glance was guileless, profound, confident, and

trustful. She carried her sorrowful head as though she

were proud of that sorrow, as though she would say, I

--I alone know how to mourn for him as he deserves.

But while we were still shaking hands, such a look of

awful desolation came upon her face that I perceived she

was one of those creatures that are not the playthings

of Time. For her he had died only yesterday. And,

by Jove! the impression was so powerful that for me too

he seemed to have died only yesterday--nay, this very

minute. I saw her and him in the same instant of time

--his death and her sorrow--I saw her sorrow in the

very moment of his death. Do you understand? I saw

them together--I heard them together. She had said,

with a deep catch of the breath, 'I have survived;' while

my strained ears seemed to hear distinctly, mingled with

her tone of despairing regret, the summing-up whisper

of his eternal condemnation. I asked myself what I

was doing there, with a sensation of panic in my heart

as though I had blundered into a place of cruel and

absurd mysteries not fit for a human being to behold.

She motioned me to a chair. We sat down. I laid the

packet gently on the little table, and she put her hand

over it.... 'You knew him well,' she murmured,

after a moment of mourning silence.

"'Intimacy grows quick out there,' I said. 'I knew

him as well as it is possible for one man to know another.'

"'And you admired him,' she said. 'It was impossible

to know him and not to admire him. Was it?'

"'He was a remarkable man,' I said, unsteadily. Then

before the appealing fixity of her gaze, that seemed to

watch for more words on my lips, I went on, 'It was

impossible not to--'

"'Love him,' she finished eagerly, silencing me into

an appalled dumbness. 'How true! how true! But

when you think that no one knew him so well as I! I

had all his noble confidence. I knew him best.'

"'You knew him best,' I repeated. And perhaps she

did. But with every word spoken the room was growing

darker, and only her forehead, smooth and white, re-

mained illumined by the unextinguishable light of belief

and love.

"'You were his friend,' she went on. 'His friend,'

she repeated, a little louder. 'You must have been, if

he had given you this, and sent you to me. I feel I

can speak to you--and oh! I must speak. I want you

--you who have heard his last words--to know I have

been worthy of him.... It is not pride.... Yes!

I am proud to know I understood him better than any-

one on earth--he told me so himself. And since his

mother died I have had no one--no one--to--to--'

"I listened. The darkness deepened. I was not even

sure whether he had given me the right bundle. I rather

suspect he wanted me to take care of another batch of

his papers which, after his death, I saw the manager

examining under the lamp. And the girl talked, easing

her pain in the certitude of my sympathy; she talked as

thirsty men drink. I had heard that her engagement

with Kurtz had been disapproved by her people. He

wasn't rich enough or something. And indeed I don't

know whether he had not been a pauper all his life. He

had given me some reason to infer that it was his im-

patience of comparative poverty that drove him out

there.

"'... Who was not his friend who had heard him

speak once?' she was saying. 'He drew men towards

him by what was best in them.' She looked at me with

intensity. 'It is the gift of the great,' she went on,

and the sound of her low voice seemed to have the ac-

companiment of all the other sounds, full of mystery,

desolation, and sorrow, I had ever heard--the ripple of

the river, the soughing of the trees swayed by the wind,

the murmurs of wild crowds, the faint ring of incom-

prehensible words cried from afar, the whisper of a

voice speaking from beyond the threshold of an eternal

darkness. 'But you have heard him! You know!' she

cried.

"'Yes, I know,' I said with something like despair

in my heart, but bowing my head before the faith that

was in her, before that great and saving illusion that

shone with an unearthly glow in the darkness, in the

triumphant darkness from which I could not have de-

fended her--from which I could not even defend

myself.

"'What a loss to me--to us!'--she corrected herself

with beautiful generosity; then added in a murmur, 'To

the world.' By the last gleams of twilight I could see

the glitter of her eyes, full of tears--of tears that would

not fall.

"'I have been very happy--very fortunate--very

proud,' she went on. 'Too fortunate. Too happy for

a little while. And now I am unhappy for--for

life.'

"She stood up; her fair hair seemed to catch all the

remaining light in a glimmer of gold. I rose too.

"'And of all this,' she went on, mournfully, 'of all his

promise, and of all his greatness, of his generous mind,

of his noble heart, nothing remains--nothing but a

memory. You and I--'

"'We shall always remember him,' I said, hastily.

"'No!' she cried. 'It is impossible that all this should

be lost--that such a life should be sacrificed to leave

nothing--but sorrow. You know what vast plans he

had. I knew of them too--I could not perhaps under-

stand,--but others knew of them. Something must re-

main. His words, at least, have not died.'

"'His words will remain,' I said.

"'And his example,' she whispered to herself. 'Men

looked up to him,--his goodness shone in every act. His

example--'

"'True,' I said; 'his example too. Yes, his example.

I forgot that.'

"'But I do not. I cannot--I cannot believe--not yet.

I cannot believe that I shall never see him again, that

nobody will see him again, never, never, never.'

"She put out her arms as if after a retreating figure,

stretching them black and with clasped pale hands across

the fading and narrow sheen of the window. Never see

him! I saw him clearly enough then. I shall see this

eloquent phantom as long as I live, and I shall see her

too, a tragic and familiar Shade, resembling in this ges-

ture another one, tragic also, and bedecked with power-

less charms, stretching bare brown arms over the glitter

of the infernal stream, the stream of darkness. She said

suddenly very low, 'He died as he lived.'

"'His end,' said I, with dull anger stirring in me,

'was in every way worthy of his life.'

"'And I was not with him,' she murmured. My anger

subsided before a feeling of infinite pity.

"'Everything that could be done--' I mumbled.

"'Ah, but I believed in him more than anyone on

earth--more than his own mother, more than--himself.

He needed me! Me! I would have treasured every sigh,

every word, every sign, every glance.'

"I felt like a chill grip on my chest. 'Don't,' I said,

in a muffled voice.

"'Forgive me. I--I--have mourned so long in silence

--in silence.... You were with him--to the last?

I think of his loneliness. Nobody near to understand

him as I would have understood. Perhaps no one to

hear....'

"'To the very end,' I said, shakily. 'I heard his very

last words....' I stopped in a fright.

"'Repeat them,' she said in a heart-broken tone. 'I

want--I want--something--something--to--to live

with.'

"I was on the point of crying at her, 'Don't you hear

them?' The dusk was repeating them in a persistent

whisper all around us, in a whisper that seemed to swell

menacingly like the first whisper of a rising wind. 'The

horror! the horror!'

"'His last word--to live with,' she murmured. 'Don't

you understand I loved him--I loved him--I loved him!'

"I pulled myself together and spoke slowly.

"'The last word he pronounced was--your name.'

"I heard a light sigh, and then my heart stood still,

stopped dead short by an exulting and terrible cry, by

the cry of inconceivable triumph and of unspeakable

pain. 'I knew it--I was sure!'... She knew. She

was sure. I heard her weeping; she had hidden her

face in her hands. It seemed to me that the house would

collapse before I could escape, that the heavens would

fall upon my head. But nothing happened. The

heavens do not fall for such a trifle. Would they have

fallen, I wonder, if I had rendered Kurtz that justice

which was his due? Hadn't he said he wanted only jus-

tice? But I couldn't. I could not tell her. It would

have been too dark--too dark altogether...."

Marlow ceased, and sat apart, indistinct and silent, in

the pose of a meditating Buddha. Nobody moved for a

time. "We have lost the first of the ebb," said the Di-

rector, suddenly. I raised my head. The offing was

barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil water-

way leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed

somber under an overcast sky--seemed to lead into the

heart of an immense darkness.

The End