\u201cI 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 altogether bewildering. He was an insoluble problem. It was inconceivable how he had existed, how he had succeeded in getting so far, how he had managed to remain\u2014why he did not instantly disappear. \u2018I went a little farther,\u2019 he said, \u2018then still a little farther\u2014till I had gone so far that I don\u2019t know how I\u2019ll ever get back. Never mind. Plenty time. I can manage. You take Kurtz away quick\u2014quick\u2014I tell you.\u2019 The glamour of youth enveloped his parti-coloured rags, his destitution, his loneliness, the essential desolation of his futile wanderings. For months\u2014for years\u2014his life hadn\u2019t been worth a day\u2019s purchase; and there he was gallantly, thoughtlessly alive, to all appearances indestructible solely by the virtue of his few years and of his unreflecting audacity. I was seduced into something like admiration\u2014like envy. Glamour urged him on, glamour kept him unscathed. He surely wanted nothing from the wilderness but space to breathe in and to push on through. His need was to exist, and to move onwards at the greatest 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 bepatched youth. I almost envied him the possession of this modest and clear flame. It seemed to have consumed all thought of self so completely, that even while he was talking to you, you forgot that it was he\u2014the man before your eyes\u2014who 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey 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 certain occasion, when encamped in the forest, they had talked all night, or more probably Kurtz had talked. \u2018We talked of everything,\u2019 he said, quite transported at the recollection. \u2018I forgot there was such a thing as sleep. The night did not seem to last an hour. Everything! Everything!… Of love, too.\u2019 \u2018Ah, he talked to you of love!\u2019 I said, much amused. \u2018It isn\u2019t what you think,\u2019 he cried, almost passionately. \u2018It was in general. He made me see things\u2014things.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cHe 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\u2019t 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 hopeless and so dark, so impenetrable to human thought, so pitiless to human weakness. \u2018And, ever since, you have been with him, of course?\u2019 I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn 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. \u2018Very often coming to this station, I had to wait days and days before he would turn up,\u2019 he said. \u2018Ah, it was worth waiting for!\u2014sometimes.\u2019 \u2018What was he doing? exploring or what?\u2019 I asked. \u2018Oh, yes, of course\u2019; he had discovered lots of villages, a lake, too\u2014he did not know exactly in what direction; it was dangerous to inquire too much\u2014but mostly his expeditions had been for ivory. \u2018But he had no goods to trade with by that time,\u2019 I objected. \u2018There\u2019s a good lot of cartridges left even yet,\u2019 he answered, looking away. \u2018To speak plainly, he raided the country,\u2019 I said. He nodded. \u2018Not alone, surely!\u2019 He muttered something about the villages round that lake. \u2018Kurtz got the tribe to follow him, did he?\u2019 I suggested. He fidgeted a little. \u2018They adored him,\u2019 he said. The tone of these words was so extraordinary that I looked at him searchingly. It was curious to see his mingled eagerness and reluctance to speak of Kurtz. The man filled his life, occupied his thoughts, swayed his emotions. \u2018What can you expect?\u2019 he burst out; \u2018he came to them with thunder and lightning, you know\u2014and they had never seen anything like it\u2014and very terrible. He could be very terrible. You can\u2019t judge Mr. Kurtz as you would an ordinary man. No, no, no! Now\u2014just to give you an idea\u2014I don\u2019t mind telling you, he wanted to shoot me, too, one day\u2014but I don\u2019t judge him.\u2019 \u2018Shoot you!\u2019 I cried \u2018What for?\u2019 \u2018Well, 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\u2019t 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\u2019t clear out. No, no. I couldn\u2019t 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\u2019t 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\u2019t 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\u2014forget himself\u2014you know.\u2019 \u2018Why! he\u2019s mad,\u2019 I said. He protested indignantly. Mr. Kurtz couldn\u2019t be mad. If I had heard him talk, only two days ago, I wouldn\u2019t 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\u2014as silent and quiet as the ruined house on the hill\u2014made 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, completed by shrugs, in interrupted phrases, in hints ending in deep sighs. The woods were unmoved, like a mask\u2014heavy, like the closed door of a prison\u2014they 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 fighting men of that lake tribe. He had been absent for several months\u2014getting himself adored, I suppose\u2014and 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\u2014what shall I say?\u2014less material aspirations. However he had got much worse suddenly. \u2018I heard he was lying helpless, and so I came up\u2014took my chance,\u2019 said the Russian. \u2018Oh, he is bad, very bad.\u2019 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 remaining 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 ornamentation, 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\u2014food for thought and also for 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 surprise. I had expected to see a knob of wood there, you know. I returned deliberately to the first I had seen\u2014and there it was, black, dried, sunken, with closed eyelids\u2014a 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am not disclosing any trade secrets. In fact, the manager said afterwards that Mr. Kurtz\u2019s 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 something wanting in him\u2014some small matter which, when the pressing need arose, could not be found under his magnificent eloquence. Whether he knew of this deficiency himself I can\u2019t say. I think the knowledge came to him at last\u2014only at the very last. But the wilderness 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\u2014and 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe 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\u2014say, symbols\u2014down. He was not afraid of the natives; they would not stir till Mr. Kurtz gave the word. His ascendancy was extraordinary. The camps of these people surrounded the place, and the chiefs came every day to see him. They would crawl…. \u2018I don\u2019t want to know anything of the ceremonies used when approaching Mr. Kurtz,\u2019 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\u2019s 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\u2014obviously\u2014in the sunshine. The young man looked at me with surprise. I suppose it did not occur to him that Mr. Kurtz was no idol of mine. He forgot I hadn\u2019t heard any of these splendid monologues on, what was it? on love, justice, conduct of life\u2014or 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, workers\u2014and these were rebels. Those rebellious heads looked very subdued to me on their sticks. \u2018You don\u2019t know how such a life tries a man like Kurtz,\u2019 cried Kurtz\u2019s last disciple. \u2018Well, and you?\u2019 I said. \u2018I! I! I am a simple man. I have no great thoughts. I want nothing from anybody. How can you compare me to…?\u2019 His feelings were too much for speech, and suddenly he broke down. \u2018I don\u2019t understand,\u2019 he groaned. \u2018I\u2019ve been doing my best to keep him alive, and that\u2019s enough. I had no hand in all this. I have no abilities. There hasn\u2019t 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\u2014I\u2014haven\u2019t slept for the last ten nights…\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cHis voice lost itself in the calm of the evening. The long shadows of the forest had slipped downhill while we talked, had gone far beyond the ruined hovel, beyond 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 splendour, with a murky and overshadowed bend above and below. Not a living soul was seen on the shore. The bushes did not rustle.<\/p>\n
\u201cSuddenly 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\u2014of naked human beings\u2014with spears in their hands, with bows, with shields, with wild glances and savage movements, 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.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018Now, if he does not say the right thing to them we are all done for,\u2019 said the Russian at my elbow. The knot of men with the stretcher had stopped, too, halfway 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. \u2018Let us hope that the man who can talk so well of love in general will find some particular reason to spare us this time,\u2019 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 dishonouring 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\u2014Kurtz\u2014that means short in German\u2014don\u2019t it? Well, the name was as true as everything else in his life\u2014and 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\u2014it 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome of the pilgrims behind the stretcher carried his arms\u2014two shot-guns, a heavy rifle, and a light revolver-carbine\u2014the 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\u2014just 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 exhaustion 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe rustled one of the letters, and looking straight in my face said, \u2018I am glad.\u2019 Somebody had been writing 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, profound, vibrating, while the man did not seem capable of a whisper. However, he had enough strength in him\u2014factitious no doubt\u2014to very nearly make an end of us, as you shall hear directly.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe 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 staring at the shore. I followed the direction of his glance.<\/p>\n
\u201cDark 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe 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 magnificent; 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 mysterious life seemed to look at her, pensive, as though it had been looking at the image of its own tenebrous and passionate soul.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe came abreast of the steamer, stood still, and faced us. Her long shadow fell to the water\u2019s 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 brooding 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 draperies, and she stopped as if her heart had failed her. The young fellow by my side growled. The pilgrims murmured 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 uncontrollable 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 embrace. A formidable silence hung over the scene.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe 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.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018If she had offered to come aboard I really think I would have tried to shoot her,\u2019 said the man of patches, nervously. \u2018I have 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 miserable rags I picked up in the storeroom to mend my clothes with. I wasn\u2019t decent. At least it must have been that, for she talked like a fury to Kurtz for an hour, pointing at me now and then. I don\u2019t understand the dialect of this tribe. Luckily for me, I fancy Kurtz felt too ill that day to care, or there would have been mischief. I don\u2019t understand…. No\u2014it\u2019s too much for me. Ah, well, it\u2019s all over now.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cAt this moment I heard Kurtz\u2019s deep voice behind the curtain: \u2018Save me!\u2014save the ivory, you mean. Don\u2019t tell me. Save me!<\/i> Why, I\u2019ve had to save you. You are interrupting my plans now. Sick! Sick! Not so sick as you would like to believe. Never mind. I\u2019ll carry my ideas out yet\u2014I will return. I\u2019ll show you what can be done. You with your little peddling notions\u2014you are interfering with me. I will return. I….\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cThe manager came out. He did me the honour to take me under the arm and lead me aside. \u2018He is very low, very low,\u2019 he said. He considered it necessary to sigh, but neglected to be consistently sorrowful. \u2018We have done all we could for him\u2014haven\u2019t 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, cautiously\u2014that\u2019s 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\u2019t deny there is a remarkable quantity of ivory\u2014mostly fossil. We must save it, at all events\u2014but look how precarious the position is\u2014and why? Because the method is unsound.\u2019 \u2018Do you,\u2019 said I, looking at the shore, \u2018call it \u201cunsound method?\u201d\u2019 \u2018Without doubt,\u2019 he exclaimed hotly. \u2018Don\u2019t you?\u2019… \u2018No method at all,\u2019 I murmured after a while. \u2018Exactly,\u2019 he exulted. \u2018I anticipated this. Shows a complete want of judgment. It is my duty to point it out in the proper quarter.\u2019 \u2018Oh,\u2019 said I, \u2018that fellow\u2014what\u2019s his name?\u2014the brickmaker, will make a readable report for you.\u2019 He appeared confounded for a moment. It seemed to me I had never breathed an atmosphere so vile, and I turned mentally to Kurtz for relief\u2014positively for relief. \u2018Nevertheless I think Mr. Kurtz is a remarkable man,\u2019 I said with emphasis. He started, dropped on me a heavy glance, said very quietly, \u2018he was<\/i>,\u2019 and turned his back on me. My hour of favour 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cI 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 \u2018brother seaman\u2014couldn\u2019t conceal\u2014knowledge of matters that would affect Mr. Kurtz\u2019s reputation.\u2019 I waited. For him evidently Mr. Kurtz was not in his grave; I suspect that for him Mr. Kurtz was one of the immortals. \u2018Well!\u2019 said I at last, \u2018speak out. As it happens, I am Mr. Kurtz\u2019s friend\u2014in a way.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cHe stated with a good deal of formality that had we not been \u2018of the same profession,\u2019 he would have kept the matter to himself without regard to consequences. \u2018He suspected there was an active ill-will towards him on the part of these white men that\u2014\u2019 \u2018You are right,\u2019 I said, remembering a certain conversation I had overheard. \u2018The manager thinks you ought to be hanged.\u2019 He showed a concern at this intelligence which amused me at first. \u2018I had better get out of the way quietly,\u2019 he said earnestly. \u2018I can do no more for Kurtz now, and they would soon find some excuse. What\u2019s to stop them? There\u2019s a military post three hundred miles from here.\u2019 \u2018Well, upon my word,\u2019 said I, \u2018perhaps you had better go if you have any friends amongst the savages near by.\u2019 \u2018Plenty,\u2019 he said. \u2018They are simple people\u2014and I want nothing, you know.\u2019 He stood biting his lip, then: \u2018I don\u2019t want any harm to happen to these whites here, but of course I was thinking of Mr. Kurtz\u2019s reputation\u2014but you are a brother seaman and\u2014\u2019 \u2018All right,\u2019 said I, after a time. \u2018Mr. Kurtz\u2019s reputation is safe with me.\u2019 I did not know how truly I spoke.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe informed me, lowering his voice, that it was Kurtz who had ordered the attack to be made on the steamer. \u2018He hated sometimes the idea of being taken away\u2014and then again…. But I don\u2019t understand these matters. I am a simple man. He thought it would scare you away\u2014that you would give it up, thinking him dead. I could not stop him. Oh, I had an awful time of it this last month.\u2019 \u2018Very well,\u2019 I said. \u2018He is all right now.\u2019 \u2018Ye-e-es,\u2019 he muttered, not very convinced apparently. \u2018Thanks,\u2019 said I; \u2018I shall keep my eyes open.\u2019 \u2018But quiet-eh?\u2019 he urged anxiously. \u2018It would be awful for his reputation if anybody here\u2014\u2019 I promised a complete discretion with great gravity. \u2018I have a canoe and three black fellows waiting not very far. I am off. Could you give me a few Martini-Henry cartridges?\u2019 I could, and did, with proper secrecy. He helped himself, with a wink at me, to a handful of my tobacco. \u2018Between sailors\u2014you know\u2014good English tobacco.\u2019 At the door of the pilot-house he turned round\u2014\u2018I say, haven\u2019t you a pair of shoes you could spare?\u2019 He raised one leg. \u2018Look.\u2019 The soles were tied with knotted strings sandalwise under his bare feet. I rooted out an old pair, at which he looked with admiration before tucking it under his left arm. One of his pockets (bright red) was bulging with cartridges, from the other (dark blue) peeped \u2018Towson\u2019s Inquiry,\u2019 etc., etc. He seemed to think himself excellently well equipped for a renewed encounter with the wilderness. \u2018Ah! I\u2019ll never, never meet such a man again. You ought to have heard him recite poetry\u2014his own, too, it was, he told me. Poetry!\u2019 He rolled his eyes at the recollection of these delights. \u2018Oh, he enlarged my mind!\u2019 \u2018Good-bye,\u2019 said I. He shook hands and vanished in the night. Sometimes I ask myself whether I had ever really seen him\u2014whether it was possible to meet such a phenomenon!…<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen 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\u2019s adorers were keeping their uneasy 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 overwhelming 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think I would have raised an outcry if I had believed my eyes. But I didn\u2019t believe them at first\u2014the 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\u2014how shall I define it?\u2014the 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 something 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was an agent buttoned up inside an ulster and sleeping on a chair on deck within three feet of me. 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\u2014it was ordered I should never betray him\u2014it was written I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice. I was anxious to deal with this shadow by myself alone\u2014and to this day I don\u2019t know why I was so jealous of sharing with any one the peculiar blackness of that experience.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs soon as I got on the bank I saw a trail\u2014a broad trail through the grass. I remember the exultation with which I said to myself, \u2018He can\u2019t walk\u2014he is crawling on all-fours\u2014I\u2019ve got him.\u2019 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\u2019t know. I had some imbecile thoughts. The knitting old woman with the cat obtruded 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\u2014you know. And I remember I confounded the beat of the drum with the beating of my heart, and was pleased at its calm regularity.<\/p>\n
\u201cI kept to the track though\u2014then 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 semicircle (I verily believe chuckling to myself) so as to get in front of that stir, of that motion I had seen\u2014if indeed I had seen anything. I was circumventing Kurtz as though it had been a boyish game.<\/p>\n
\u201cI 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 vapour 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 vigour in his voice. \u2018Go away\u2014hide yourself,\u2019 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\u2014antelope horns, I think\u2014on its head. Some sorcerer, some witch-man, no doubt: it looked fiendlike enough. \u2018Do you know what you are doing?\u2019 I whispered. \u2018Perfectly,\u2019 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. \u2018If he makes a row we are lost,\u2019 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\u2014this wandering and tormented thing. \u2018You will be lost,\u2019 I said\u2014\u2018utterly lost.\u2019 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\u2014to endure\u2014to endure\u2014even to the end\u2014even beyond.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018I had immense plans,\u2019 he muttered irresolutely. \u2018Yes,\u2019 said I; \u2018but if you try to shout I\u2019ll smash your head with\u2014\u2019 There was not a stick or a stone near. \u2018I will throttle you for good,\u2019 I corrected myself. \u2018I was on the threshold of great things,\u2019 he pleaded, in a voice of longing, with a wistfulness of tone that made my blood run cold. \u2018And now for this stupid scoundrel\u2014\u2019 \u2018Your success in Europe is assured in any case,\u2019 I affirmed steadily. I did not want to have the throttling of him, you understand\u2014and indeed it would have been very little use for any practical purpose. I tried to break the spell\u2014the heavy, mute spell of the wilderness\u2014that 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\u2019t you see, the terror of the position was not in being knocked on the head\u2014though I had a very lively sense of that danger, too\u2014but 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\u2014himself\u2014his 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\u2019ve been telling you what we said\u2014repeating the phrases we pronounced\u2014but what\u2019s the good? They were common everyday words\u2014the familiar, vague sounds exchanged on every waking day of life. But what of that? They had behind them, to my mind, the terrific suggestiveness of words heard in dreams, of phrases spoken in nightmares. Soul! If anybody ever struggled with a soul, I am the man. And I wasn\u2019t arguing with a lunatic either. Believe me or not, his intelligence was perfectly clear\u2014concentrated, it is true, upon himself with horrible intensity, yet clear; and therein was my only chance\u2014barring, of course, the killing him there and then, which wasn\u2019t so good, on account of unavoidable noise. But his soul was mad. Being alone in the wilderness, it had looked within itself, and, by heavens! I tell you, it had gone mad. I had\u2014for my sins, I suppose\u2014to go through the ordeal of looking into it myself. No eloquence could have been so withering to one\u2019s belief in mankind as his final burst of sincerity. He struggled with himself, too. I saw it\u2014I heard it. I saw the inconceivable 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\u2014and he was not much heavier than a child.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen 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\u2014something that looked a dried gourd; they shouted periodically together strings of amazing words that resembled no sounds of human language; and the deep murmurs of the crowd, interrupted suddenly, were like the responses of some satanic litany.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe 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.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018Do you understand this?\u2019 I asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe 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 indefinable meaning, appear on his colourless lips that a moment after twitched convulsively. \u2018Do I not?\u2019 he said slowly, gasping, as if the words had been torn out of him by a supernatural power.<\/p>\n
\u201cI 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. \u2018Don\u2019t! don\u2019t you frighten them away,\u2019 cried some one on deck disconsolately. 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 sombre and glittering river.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd then that imbecile crowd down on the deck started their little fun, and I could see nothing more for smoke.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe 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\u2019s 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 \u2018affair\u2019 had come off as well as could be wished. I saw the time approaching when I would be left alone of the party of \u2018unsound method.\u2019 The pilgrims looked upon me with disfavour. I was, so to speak, numbered with the dead. It is strange how I accepted this unforeseen partnership, this choice of nightmares forced upon me in the tenebrous land invaded by these mean and greedy phantoms.<\/p>\n
\u201cKurtz 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\u2014images of wealth and fame revolving obsequiously round his unextinguishable gift of noble and lofty expression. My Intended, my station, my career, my ideas\u2014these were the subjects for the occasional 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 mould 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 distinction, of all the appearances of success and power.<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes 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 accomplish great things. \u2018You show them you have in you something that is really profitable, and then there will be no limits to the recognition of your ability,\u2019 he would say. \u2018Of course you must take care of the motives\u2014right motives\u2014always.\u2019 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\u2014piloting. \u2018Close the shutter,\u2019 said Kurtz suddenly one day; \u2018I can\u2019t bear to look at this.\u2019 I did so. There was a silence. \u2018Oh, but I will wring your heart yet!\u2019 he cried at the invisible wilderness.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe broke down\u2014as I had expected\u2014and had to lie up for repairs at the head of an island. This delay was the first thing that shook Kurtz\u2019s confidence. One morning he gave me a packet of papers and a photograph\u2014the lot tied together with a shoe-string. \u2018Keep this for me,\u2019 he said. \u2018This noxious fool\u2019 (meaning the manager) \u2018is capable of prying into my boxes when I am not looking.\u2019 In the afternoon I saw him. He was lying on his back with closed eyes, and I withdrew quietly, but I heard him mutter, \u2018Live rightly, die, die…\u2019 I listened. There was nothing more. Was he rehearsing some speech in his sleep, or was it a fragment of a phrase from some newspaper article? He had been writing for the papers and meant to do so again, \u2018for the furthering of my ideas. It\u2019s a duty.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cHis 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\u2014things I abominate, because I don\u2019t get on with them. I tended the little forge we fortunately had aboard; I toiled wearily in a wretched scrap-heap\u2014unless I had the shakes too bad to stand.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne evening coming in with a candle I was startled to hear him say a little tremulously, \u2018I am lying here in the dark waiting for death.\u2019 The light was within a foot of his eyes. I forced myself to murmur, \u2018Oh, nonsense!\u2019 and stood over him as if transfixed.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnything approaching the change that came over his features I have never seen before, and hope never to see again. Oh, I wasn\u2019t touched. I was fascinated. It was as though a veil had been rent. I saw on that ivory face the expression of sombre pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror\u2014of 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\u2014he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath:<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018The horror! The horror!\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cI blew the candle out and left the cabin. The pilgrims 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 continuous shower of small flies streamed upon the lamp, upon the cloth, upon our hands and faces. Suddenly the manager\u2019s boy put his insolent black head in the doorway, and said in a tone of scathing contempt:<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018Mistah Kurtz\u2014he dead.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cAll 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\u2014light, don\u2019t you know\u2014and 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 something in a muddy hole.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd then they very nearly buried me.<\/p>\n
\u201cHowever, 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\u2014that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself\u2014that comes too late\u2014a crop of unextinguishable regrets. I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine. It takes place in an impalpable greyness, with nothing underfoot, with nothing around, without spectators, without clamour, without glory, without the great desire of victory, without the great fear of defeat, in a sickly atmosphere of tepid scepticism, 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\u2019s breadth of the last opportunity for pronouncement, 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 something 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 darkness. He had summed up\u2014he had judged. \u2018The horror!\u2019 He was a remarkable man. After all, this was the expression of some sort of belief; it had candour, it had conviction, it had a vibrating note of revolt in its whisper, it had the appalling face of a glimpsed truth\u2014the strange commingling of desire and hate. And it is not my own extremity I remember best\u2014a vision of greyness without form filled with physical pain, and a careless contempt for the evanescence of all things\u2014even 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 perhaps in this is the whole difference; perhaps all the wisdom, 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\u2014much better. It was an affirmation, a moral victory paid for by innumerable defeats, by abominable terrors, by abominable satisfactions. But it was a victory! That is why I have remained 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, 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 pretence, 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 flauntings 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 importance. I daresay I was not very well at that time. I tottered about the streets\u2014there were various affairs to settle\u2014grinning bitterly at perfectly respectable persons. I admit my behaviour was inexcusable, but then my temperature was seldom normal in these days. My dear aunt\u2019s endeavours to \u2018nurse up my strength\u2019 seemed altogether 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, afterwards suavely pressing, about what he was pleased to denominate certain \u2018documents.\u2019 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 \u2018territories.\u2019 And said he, \u2018Mr. Kurtz\u2019s knowledge of unexplored regions must have been necessarily extensive and peculiar\u2014owing to his great abilities and to the deplorable circumstances in which he had been placed: therefore\u2014\u2019 I assured him Mr. Kurtz\u2019s knowledge, however extensive, did not bear upon the problems of commerce or administration. He invoked then the name of science. \u2018It would be an incalculable loss if,\u2019 etc., etc. I offered him the report on the \u2018Suppression of Savage Customs,\u2019 with the postscriptum torn off. He took it up eagerly, but ended by sniffing at it with an air of contempt. \u2018This is not what we had a right to expect,\u2019 he remarked. \u2018Expect nothing else,\u2019 I said. \u2018There are only private letters.\u2019 He withdrew upon some threat of legal proceedings, and I saw him no more; but another fellow, calling himself Kurtz\u2019s cousin, appeared two days later, and was anxious to hear all the details about his dear relative\u2019s last moments. Incidentally he gave me to understand that Kurtz had been essentially a great musician. \u2018There was the making of an immense success,\u2019 said the man, who was an organist, I believe, with lank grey 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\u2019s profession, whether he ever had any\u2014which 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\u2014but even the cousin (who took snuff during the interview) could not tell me what he had been\u2014exactly. He was a universal genius\u2014on that point I agreed with the old chap, who thereupon blew his nose noisily into a large cotton handkerchief and withdrew in senile agitation, bearing off some family letters and memoranda without importance. Ultimately a journalist anxious to know something of the fate of his \u2018dear colleague\u2019 turned up. This visitor informed me Kurtz\u2019s proper sphere ought to have been politics \u2018on the popular side.\u2019 He had furry straight eyebrows, bristly hair cropped short, an eyeglass on a broad ribbon, and, becoming expansive, confessed his opinion that Kurtz really couldn\u2019t write a bit\u2014\u2018but heavens! how that man could talk. He electrified large meetings. He had faith\u2014don\u2019t you see?\u2014he had the faith. He could get himself to believe anything\u2014anything. He would have been a splendid leader of an extreme party.\u2019 \u2018What party?\u2019 I asked. \u2018Any party,\u2019 answered the other. \u2018He was an\u2014an\u2014extremist.\u2019 Did I not think so? I assented. Did I know, he asked, with a sudden flash of curiosity, \u2018what it was that had induced him to go out there?\u2019 \u2018Yes,\u2019 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 \u2018it would do,\u2019 and took himself off with this plunder.<\/p>\n
\u201cThus I was left at last with a slim packet of letters and the girl\u2019s portrait. She struck me as beautiful\u2014I 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, without suspicion, without a thought for herself. I concluded 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\u2019s 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\u2014and I wanted to give that up, too, to the past, in a way\u2014to surrender personally all that remained of him with me to that oblivion which is the last word of our common fate. I don\u2019t defend myself. I had no clear perception of what it was I really wanted. Perhaps it was an impulse of unconscious loyalty, or the fulfilment of one of those ironic necessities that lurk in the facts of human existence. I don\u2019t know. I can\u2019t tell. But I went.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought his memory was like the other memories of the dead that accumulate in every man\u2019s life\u2014a 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\u2014a 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\u2014the stretcher, the phantom-bearers, the wild crowd of obedient worshippers, the gloom of the forests, the glitter of the reach between the murky bends, the beat of the drum, regular and muffled like the beating of a heart\u2014the heart of a conquering darkness. It was a moment of triumph for the wilderness, an invading 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 tempestuous anguish of his soul. And later on I seemed to see his collected languid manner, when he said one day, \u2018This 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\u2019m. It is a difficult case. What do you think I ought to do\u2014resist? Eh? I want no more than justice.\u2019… He wanted no more than justice\u2014no 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\u2014stare with that wide and immense stare embracing, condemning, loathing all the universe. I seemed to hear the whispered cry, \u201cThe horror! The horror!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe dusk was falling. I had to wait in a lofty drawing-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 massively in a corner; with dark gleams on the flat surfaces like a sombre and polished sarcophagus. A high door opened\u2014closed. I rose.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe 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 forever. She took both my hands in hers and murmured, \u2018I had heard you were coming.\u2019 I noticed she was not very young\u2014I 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, \u2018I\u2014I alone know how to mourn for him as he deserves.\u2019 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\u2014nay, this very minute. I saw her and him in the same instant of time\u2014his death and her sorrow\u2014I saw her sorrow in the very moment of his death. Do you understand? I saw them together\u2014I heard them together. She had said, with a deep catch of the breath, \u2018I have survived\u2019 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…. \u2018You knew him well,\u2019 she murmured, after a moment of mourning silence.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018Intimacy grows quickly out there,\u2019 I said. \u2018I knew him as well as it is possible for one man to know another.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018And you admired him,\u2019 she said. \u2018It was impossible to know him and not to admire him. Was it?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018He was a remarkable man,\u2019 I said, unsteadily. Then before the appealing fixity of her gaze, that seemed to watch for more words on my lips, I went on, \u2018It was impossible not to\u2014\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018Love him,\u2019 she finished eagerly, silencing me into an appalled dumbness. \u2018How 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.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018You knew him best,\u2019 I repeated. And perhaps she did. But with every word spoken the room was growing darker, and only her forehead, smooth and white, remained illumined by the inextinguishable light of belief and love.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018You were his friend,\u2019 she went on. \u2018His friend,\u2019 she repeated, a little louder. \u2018You must have been, if he had given you this, and sent you to me. I feel I can speak to you\u2014and oh! I must speak. I want you\u2014you who have heard his last words\u2014to 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\u2014he told me so himself. And since his mother died I have had no one\u2014no one\u2014to\u2014to\u2014\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cI 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\u2019t rich enough or something. And indeed I don\u2019t know whether he had not been a pauper all his life. He had given me some reason to infer that it was his impatience of comparative poverty that drove him out there.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018… Who was not his friend who had heard him speak once?\u2019 she was saying. \u2018He drew men towards him by what was best in them.\u2019 She looked at me with intensity. \u2018It is the gift of the great,\u2019 she went on, and the sound of her low voice seemed to have the accompaniment of all the other sounds, full of mystery, desolation, and sorrow, I had ever heard\u2014the ripple of the river, the soughing of the trees swayed by the wind, the murmurs of the crowds, the faint ring of incomprehensible words cried from afar, the whisper of a voice speaking from beyond the threshold of an eternal darkness. \u2018But you have heard him! You know!\u2019 she cried.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018Yes, I know,\u2019 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 defended her\u2014from which I could not even defend myself.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018What a loss to me\u2014to us!\u2019\u2014she corrected herself with beautiful generosity; then added in a murmur, \u2018To the world.\u2019 By the last gleams of twilight I could see the glitter of her eyes, full of tears\u2014of tears that would not fall.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018I have been very happy\u2014very fortunate\u2014very proud,\u2019 she went on. \u2018Too fortunate. Too happy for a little while. And now I am unhappy for\u2014for life.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cShe stood up; her fair hair seemed to catch all the remaining light in a glimmer of gold. I rose, too.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018And of all this,\u2019 she went on mournfully, \u2018of all his promise, and of all his greatness, of his generous mind, of his noble heart, nothing remains\u2014nothing but a memory. You and I\u2014\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018We shall always remember him,\u2019 I said hastily.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018No!\u2019 she cried. \u2018It is impossible that all this should be lost\u2014that such a life should be sacrificed to leave nothing\u2014but sorrow. You know what vast plans he had. I knew of them, too\u2014I could not perhaps understand\u2014but others knew of them. Something must remain. His words, at least, have not died.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018His words will remain,\u2019 I said.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018And his example,\u2019 she whispered to herself. \u2018Men looked up to him\u2014his goodness shone in every act. His example\u2014\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018True,\u2019 I said; \u2018his example, too. Yes, his example. I forgot that.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018But I do not. I cannot\u2014I cannot believe\u2014not yet. I cannot believe that I shall never see him again, that nobody will see him again, never, never, never.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cShe put out her arms as if after a retreating figure, stretching them back 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 gesture another one, tragic also, and bedecked with powerless charms, stretching bare brown arms over the glitter of the infernal stream, the stream of darkness. She said suddenly very low, \u2018He died as he lived.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018His end,\u2019 said I, with dull anger stirring in me, \u2018was in every way worthy of his life.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018And I was not with him,\u2019 she murmured. My anger subsided before a feeling of infinite pity.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018Everything that could be done\u2014\u2019 I mumbled.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018Ah, but I believed in him more than any one on earth\u2014more than his own mother, more than\u2014himself. He needed me! Me! I would have treasured every sigh, every word, every sign, every glance.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt like a chill grip on my chest. \u2018Don\u2019t,\u2019 I said, in a muffled voice.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018Forgive me. I\u2014I have mourned so long in silence\u2014in silence…. You were with him\u2014to the last? I think of his loneliness. Nobody near to understand him as I would have understood. Perhaps no one to hear….\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018To the very end,\u2019 I said, shakily. \u2018I heard his very last words….\u2019 I stopped in a fright.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018Repeat them,\u2019 she murmured in a heart-broken tone. \u2018I want\u2014I want\u2014something\u2014something\u2014to\u2014to live with.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cI was on the point of crying at her, \u2018Don\u2019t you hear them?\u2019 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. \u2018The horror! The horror!\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018His last word\u2014to live with,\u2019 she insisted. \u2018Don\u2019t you understand I loved him\u2014I loved him\u2014I loved him!\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cI pulled myself together and spoke slowly.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018The last word he pronounced was\u2014your name.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cI 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. \u2018I knew it\u2014I was sure!\u2019… 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\u2019t he said he wanted only justice? But I couldn\u2019t. I could not tell her. It would have been too dark\u2014too dark altogether….\u201d<\/p>\n
Marlow ceased, and sat apart, indistinct and silent, in the pose of a meditating Buddha. Nobody moved for a time. \u201cWe have lost the first of the ebb,\u201d said the Director suddenly. I raised my head. The offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed sombre under an overcast sky\u2014seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":299,"menu_order":3,"template":"","meta":{"pb_show_title":"on","pb_short_title":"","pb_subtitle":"","pb_authors":[],"pb_section_license":""},"chapter-type":[48],"contributor":[],"license":[],"class_list":["post-24","chapter","type-chapter","status-publish","hentry","chapter-type-numberless"],"part":3,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/heartofdarkness\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/24","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/heartofdarkness\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/heartofdarkness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/chapter"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/heartofdarkness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/299"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/heartofdarkness\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/24\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/heartofdarkness\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/24\/revisions\/62"}],"part":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/heartofdarkness\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/parts\/3"}],"metadata":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/heartofdarkness\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/24\/metadata\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/heartofdarkness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"chapter-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/heartofdarkness\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapter-type?post=24"},{"taxonomy":"contributor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/heartofdarkness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor?post=24"},{"taxonomy":"license","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/heartofdarkness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/license?post=24"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}