He looked like a man who had never in his life smiled, yet his face was not an unpleasant face altogether, though there was much in it to give the observer pause.
His voice was not an unpleasant voice, altogether, yet there was that in it, as he greeted Berselius, which struck Adams sharply and strangely; for the voice of Andreas Meeus, Chef de Poste at M’Bassa, was the voice of a man who for two years had been condemned to talk the language of the natives. It had curious inflections, hesitancies, and a dulness that expressed the condition of a brain condemned for two years to think the thoughts of the natives in their own language.
Just as the voice of a violin expresses the condition of the violin, so does the voice of a man express the condition of his mind. And that is the fact that will strike you most if you travel in the wilds of the Congo State and talk to the men of your own colour who are condemned to live amongst the people.
One might have compared Meeus’s voice to the voice of a violin—a violin that had been attacked by some strange fungoid growth that had filled its interior and dulled the sounding board.
He had been apprised a month before of the coming of Berselius’s expedition, and one might imagine the servility which this man would show to the all-powerful Berselius, whose hunting expeditions were red-carpeted, who was hail-fellow-well-met with Leopold, who, by lifting his finger, could cause Andreas Meeus to be dismissed from his post, and by crooking his finger cause him to be raised to a Commissionership.
Yet he showed no servility at all. He had left servility behind him, just as he had left pride, just as he had left ambition, patriotism, country, and that divine something which blossoms into love of wife and child.
When he had shaken hands with Berselius and Adams, he led the way into the fort, or rather into the enclosure surrounded by the ruinous mud walls, an enclosure of about a hundred yards square.
On the right of the quadrangle stood the go-down, where the rubber and a small quantity of ivory was stored.
In the centre stood the misnamed guest house, a large mud and wattle building, with a veranda gone to decay.
The blinding sun shone on it all, showing up with its fierce light the true and appalling desolation of the place. There was not one thing in the enclosure upon which the eye could rest with thankfulness.