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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?
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 lostwere 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.
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?
An Outcast of the Islands
CHAPTER SIX
64
He looked at him, fascinated, but the face, with its shifting lights and
shadows, let out nothing, closed and impenetrable like a walled door.
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 advanceblind like fate, persistent like
destinyhe listened with greedy eagerness to the heart of the daughter beating
light, rapid, and steady against his head.
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
deathhe had faced danger beforeit 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
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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 onenot even himself.
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.
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
"Keep back! Do not come near! Do not. . . ."
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
An Outcast of the Islands
CHAPTER SIX
65
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
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