ted 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 -- much bet-
ter. It was an affirmation, a moral victory paid for by
innumerable defeats, by abominable terrors, by abomi-
nable 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 elo-
quence 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 knowl-
edge 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 -- there were
various affairs to settle -- grinning bitterly at perfectly
respectable persons. I admit my behaviour was inex-
cusable, but then my temperature was seldom normal
in these days. My dear aunt's endeavours to 'nurse up
my strength' 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 '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 'territories.'
And said he, 'Mr. Kurtz's knowledge of unexplored
regions must have been necessarily extensive and pe-
culiar -- owing to his great abilities and to the deplor-
able 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,'
etc., etc. 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 another fellow, calling himself Kurtz's
cousin, appeared two days later, and was anxious to
hear all the details about his dear relative's last mo-
ments. Incidentally he gave me to understand that
Kurtz had been essentially a great musician. 'There
was the making of an immense success,' 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's profession, 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 interview) 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 agitation, bear-
ing 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 eyeglass 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 let-
ters 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 con-
veyed the delicate shade of truthfulness upon those
features. She seemed ready to listen without mental
reservation, without suspicion, without a thought for
herself. I conclucled 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 unconscious loyalty, or the fulfil-
ment of one of those 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 memo-
ries 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 in-
satiable 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 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 -- the 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 remem-
bered his abject pleading, his abject threats, the colos-
sal 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, '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, con-
demning, 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
drawingroom 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 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 forever. 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 fidel-
ity, for belief, for suffering. The room seemed to have
grown darker, as if all the sad light of the cloudy eve-
ning 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, confi-
dent, 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 quickly 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 impos-
sible 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 truel
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, remained 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 sympa-
thy; 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 pau-
per all his life. He had given me some reason to infer
that it was his impatience 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 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. '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
defended her -- from which I could not even defend
myself.
" 'What a loss to me -- to us!' -- she corrected her-
self with beautiful generosity; then added in a mur-
mur, '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
understand -- but others knew of them. Something
must remain. 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 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,
'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 any one on
earth -- more than his own mother, more than -- him-
self. 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 under-
stand 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.