"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.
'Heart of Darkness', by Joseph Conrad.
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