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 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
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, '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 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--closed. I rose.

"She came forward, all in black, with a pale head, floating towards
me in the dusk. Sh