Part 13 (1/2)
Such was the aspect of Belarab's settlement when Lingard set his eyes on it for the first time. There were all these things, a great number of faces at the back of the spare and m.u.f.fled-up figure confronting him, and in the swiftly increasing light a complete stillness that made the murmur of the word ”Marhaba” (welcome), p.r.o.nounced at last by the chief, perfectly audible to every one of his followers. The bodyguards who stood about him in black skull-caps and with long-shafted lances, preserved an impa.s.sive aspect. Across open s.p.a.ces men could be seen running to the waterside. A group of women standing on a low knoll gazed intently, and nothing of them but the heads showed above the unstirring stalks of a maize field. Suddenly within a cl.u.s.ter of empty huts near by the voice of an invisible hag was heard scolding with shrill fury an invisible young girl:
”Strangers! You want to see the strangers? O devoid of all decency!
Must I so lame and old husk the rice alone? May evil befall thee and the strangers! May they never find favour! May they be pursued with swords!
I am old. I am old. There is no good in strangers! O girl! May they burn.”
”Welcome,” repeated Belarab, gravely, and looking straight into Lingard's eyes.
Lingard spent six days that time in Belarab's settlement. Of these, three were pa.s.sed in observing each other without a question being asked or a hint given as to the object in view. Lingard lounged on the fine mats with which the chief had furnished a small bamboo house outside a fortified enclosure, where a white flag with a green border fluttered on a high and slender pole but still below the walls of long, high-roofed buildings, raised forty feet or more on hard-wood posts.
Far away the inland forests were tinted a s.h.i.+mmering blue, like the forests of a dream. On the seaward side the belt of great trunks and matted undergrowth came to the western sh.o.r.e of the oval lagoon; and in the pure freshness of the air the groups of brown houses reflected in the water or seen above the waving green of the fields, the clumps of palm trees, the fenced-in plantations, the groves of fruit trees, made up a picture of sumptuous prosperity.
Above the buildings, the men, the women, the still sheet of water and the great plain of crops glistening with dew, stretched the exalted, the miraculous peace of a cloudless sky. And no road seemed to lead into this country of splendour and stillness. One could not believe the unquiet sea was so near, with its gifts and its unending menace. Even during the months of storms, the great clamour rising from the whitened expanse of the Shallows dwelt high in the air in a vast murmur, now feeble now stronger, that seemed to swing back and forth on the wind above the earth without any one being able to tell whence it came. It was like the solemn chant of a waterfall swelling and dying away above the woods, the fields, above the roofs of houses and the heads of men, above the secret peace of that hidden and flouris.h.i.+ng settlement of vanquished fanatics, fugitives, and outcasts.
Every afternoon Belarab, followed by an escort that stopped outside the door, entered alone the house of his guest. He gave the salutation, inquired after his health, conversed about insignificant things with an inscrutable mien. But all the time the steadfast gaze of his thoughtful eyes seemed to seek the truth within that white face. In the cool of the evening, before the sun had set, they talked together, pa.s.sing and repa.s.sing between the rugged pillars of the grove near the gate of the stockade. The escort away in the oblique sunlight, followed with their eyes the strolling figures appearing and vanis.h.i.+ng behind the trees.
Many words were p.r.o.nounced, but nothing was said that would disclose the thoughts of the two men. They clasped hands demonstratively before separating, and the heavy slam of the gate was followed by the triple thud of the wooden bars dropped into iron clamps.
On the third night, Lingard was awakened from a light sleep by the sound of whispering outside. A black shadow obscured the stars in the doorway, and a man entering suddenly, stood above his couch while another could be seen squatting--a dark lump on the threshold of the hut.
”Fear not. I am Belarab,” said a cautious voice.
”I was not afraid,” whispered Lingard. ”It is the man coming in the dark and without warning who is in danger.”
”And did you not come to me without warning? I said 'welcome'--it was as easy for me to say 'kill him.'”
”You were within reach of my arm. We would have died together,” retorted Lingard, quietly.
The other clicked his tongue twice, and his indistinct shape seemed to sink half-way through the floor.
”It was not written thus before we were born,” he said, sitting cross-legged near the mats, and in a deadened voice. ”Therefore you are my guest. Let the talk between us be straight like the shaft of a spear and shorter than the remainder of this night. What do you want?”
”First, your long life,” answered Lingard, leaning forward toward the gleam of a pair of eyes, ”and then--your help.”
VII
The faint murmur of the words spoken on that night lingered for a long time in Lingard's ears, more persistent than the memory of an uproar; he looked with a fixed gaze at the stars burning peacefully in the square of the doorway, while after listening in silence to all he had to say, Belarab, as if seduced by the strength and audacity of the white man, opened his heart without reserve. He talked of his youth surrounded by the fury of fanaticism and war, of battles on the hills, of advances through the forests, of men's unswerving piety, of their unextinguishable hate. Not a single wandering cloud obscured the gentle splendour of the rectangular patch of starlight framed in the opaque blackness of the hut. Belarab murmured on of a succession of reverses, of the ring of disasters narrowing round men's fading hopes and undiminished courage. He whispered of defeat and flight, of the days of despair, of the nights without sleep, of unending pursuit, of the bewildered horror and sombre fury, of their women and children killed in the stockade before the besieged sallied forth to die.
”I have seen all this before I was in years a man,” he cried, low.
His voice vibrated. In the pause that succeeded they heard a light sigh of the sleeping follower who, clasping his legs above his ankles, rested his forehead on his knees.
”And there was amongst us,” began Belarab again, ”one white man who remained to the end, who was faithful with his strength, with his courage, with his wisdom. A great man. He had great riches but a greater heart.”
The memory of Jorgenson, emaciated and grey-haired, and trying to borrow five dollars to get something to eat for the girl, pa.s.sed before Lingard suddenly upon the pacific glitter of the stars.
”He resembled you,” pursued Belarab, abruptly. ”We escaped with him, and in his s.h.i.+p came here. It was a solitude. The forest came near to the sheet of water, the rank gra.s.s waved upon the heads of tall men. Telal, my father, died of weariness; we were only a few, and we all nearly died of trouble and sadness--here. On this spot! And no enemies could tell where we had gone. It was the Sh.o.r.e of Refuge--and starvation.”
He droned on in the night, with rising and falling inflections. He told how his desperate companions wanted to go out and die fighting on the sea against the s.h.i.+ps from the west, the s.h.i.+ps with high sides and white sails; and how, unflinching and alone, he kept them battling with the th.o.r.n.y bush, with the rank gra.s.s, with the soaring and enormous trees.
Lingard, leaning on his elbow and staring through the door, recalled the image of the wide fields outside, sleeping now, in an immensity of serenity and starlight. This quiet and almost invisible talker had done it all; in him was the origin, the creation, the fate; and in the wonder of that thought the shadowy murmuring figure acquired a gigantic greatness of significance, as if it had been the embodiment of some natural force, of a force forever masterful and undying.