“If I had wanted to hurt you—if I had wanted to destroy you, it was easy. I stood in the doorway long enough to pull a trigger—and you know I shoot straight.”
“You would have missed,” said Lingard, with assurance. “There is, under heaven, such a thing as justice.”
The sound of that word on his own lips made him pause, confused, like an unexpected and unanswerable rebuke. The anger of his outraged pride, the anger of his outraged heart, had gone out in the blow; and there remained nothing but the sense of some immense infamy—of something vague, disgusting and terrible, which seemed to surround him on all sides, hover about him with shadowy and stealthy movements, like a band of assassins in the darkness of vast and unsafe places. Was there, under heaven, such a thing as justice? He looked at the man before him with such an intensity of prolonged glance that he seemed to see right through him, that at last he saw but a floating and unsteady mist in human shape. Would it blow away before the first breath of the breeze and leave nothing behind?
The sound of Willems’ voice made him start violently. Willems was saying—
“I have always led a virtuous life; you know I have. You always praised me for my steadiness; you know you have. You know also I never stole—if that’s what you’re thinking of. I borrowed. You know how much I repaid. It was an error of judgment. But then consider my position there. I had been a little unlucky in my private affairs, and had debts. Could I let myself go under before the eyes of all those men who envied me? But that’s all over. It was an error of judgment. I’ve paid for it. An error of judgment.”
Lingard, astounded into perfect stillness, looked down. He looked down at Willems’ bare feet. Then, as the other had paused, he repeated in a blank tone—
“An error of judgment . . .”
“Yes,” drawled out Willems, thoughtfully, and went on with increasing animation: “As I said, I have always led a virtuous life. More so than Hudig—than you. Yes, than you. I drank a little, I played cards a little. Who doesn’t? But I had principles from a boy. Yes, principles. Business is business, and I never was an ass. I never respected fools. They had to suffer for their folly when they dealt with me. The evil was in them, not in me. But as to principles, it’s another matter. I kept clear of women. It’s forbidden—I had no time—and I despised them. Now I hate them!”
He put his tongue out a little; a tongue whose pink and moist end ran here and there, like something independently alive, under his swollen and blackened lip; he touched with the tips of his fingers the cut on his cheek, felt all round it with precaution: and the unharmed side of his face appeared for a moment to be preoccupied and uneasy about the state of that other side which was so very sore and stiff.
He recommenced speaking, and his voice vibrated as though with repressed emotion of some kind.