“The most rapacious thief I ever met!” exclaimed the traveller, thickly.
“Ah! He is a respectable man. His two brothers got themselves speared—served them right. They went in for robbing Dyak graves. Gold ornaments in them you know. Serve them right. But he kept respectable and got on. Aye! Everybody got on—but I. And all through that scoundrel who brought the Arabs here.”
“De mortuis nil ni …num,” muttered Almayer’s guest.
“I wish you would speak English instead of jabbering in your own language, which no one can understand,” said Almayer, sulkily.
“Don’t be angry,” hiccoughed the other. “It’s Latin, and it’s wisdom. It means: Don’t waste your breath in abusing shadows. No offence there. I like you. You have a quarrel with Providence—so have I. I was meant to be a professor, while—look.”
His head nodded. He sat grasping the glass. Almayer walked up and down, then stopped suddenly.
“Yes, they all got on but I. Why? I am better than any of them. Lakamba calls himself a Sultan, and when I go to see him on business sends that one-eyed fiend of his—Babalatchi—to tell me that the ruler is asleep; and shall sleep for a long time. And that Babalatchi! He is the Shahbandar of the State—if you please. Oh Lord! Shahbandar! The pig! A vagabond I wouldn’t let come up these steps when he first came here…. Look at Abdulla now. He lives here because—he says—here he is away from white men. But he has hundreds of thousands. Has a house in Penang. Ships. What did he not have when he stole my trade from me! He knocked everything here into a cocked hat, drove father to gold-hunting—then to Europe, where he disappeared. Fancy a man like Captain Lingard disappearing as though he had been a common coolie. Friends of mine wrote to London asking about him. Nobody ever heard of him there! Fancy! Never heard of Captain Lingard!”
The learned gatherer of orchids lifted his head.
“He was a sen—sentimen—tal old buc—buccaneer,” he stammered out, “I like him. I’m sent—tal myself.”
He winked slowly at Almayer, who laughed.
“Yes! I told you about that gravestone. Yes! Another hundred and twenty dollars thrown away. Wish I had them now. He would do it. And the inscription. Ha! ha! ha! ‘Peter Willems, Delivered by the Mercy of God from his Enemy.’ What enemy—unless Captain Lingard himself? And then it has no sense. He was a great man—father was—but strange in many ways…. You haven’t seen the grave? On the top of that hill, there, on the other side of the river. I must show you. We will go there.”
“Not I!” said the other. “No interest—in the sun—too tiring…. Unless you carry me there.”
As a matter of fact he was carried there a few months afterwards, and his was the second white man’s grave in Sambir; but at present he was alive if rather drunk. He asked abruptly—
“And the woman?”
“Oh! Lingard, of course, kept her and her ugly brat in Macassar. Sinful waste of money—that! Devil only knows what became of them since father went home. I had my daughter to look after. I shall give you a word to Mrs. Vinck in Singapore when you go back. You shall see my Nina there. Lucky man. She is beautiful, and I hear so accomplished, so . . .”
“I have heard already twenty …a hundred times about your daughter. What ab—about—that—that other one, Ai—ssa?”
“She! Oh! we kept her here. She was mad for a long time in a quiet sort of way. Father thought a lot of her. He gave her a house to live in, in my campong. She wandered about, speaking to nobody unless she caught sight of Abdulla, when she would have a fit of fury, and shriek and curse like anything. Very often she would disappear—and then we all had to turn out and hunt for her, because father would worry till she was brought back. Found her in all kinds of places. Once in the abandoned campong of Lakamba. Sometimes simply wandering in the bush. She had one favourite spot we always made for at first. It was ten to one on finding her there—a kind of a grassy glade on the banks of a small brook. Why she preferred that place, I can’t imagine! And such a job to get her away from there. Had to drag her away by main force. Then, as the time passed, she became quieter and more settled, like. Still, all my people feared her greatly. It was my Nina that tamed her. You see the child was naturally fearless and used to have her own way, so she would go to her and pull at her sarong, and order her about, as she did everybody. Finally she, I verily believe, came to love the child. Nothing could resist that little one—you know. She made a capital nurse. Once when the little devil ran away from me and fell into the river off the end of the jetty, she jumped in and pulled her out in no time. I very nearly died of fright. Now of course she lives with my serving girls, but does what she likes. As long as I have a handful of rice or a piece of cotton in the store she sha’n’t want for anything. You have seen her. She brought in the dinner with Ali.”