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.
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