recollections, where the great fight with the "White Devil's"
brig and the convent life in Samarang occupied the principal
place. At that point she usually dropped the thread of her
narrative, and pulling out the little brass cross, always
suspended round her neck, she contemplated it with superstitious
awe. That superstitious feeling connected with some vague
talismanic properties of the little bit of metal, and the still
more hazy but terrible notion of some bad Djinns and horrible
torments invented, as she thought, for her especial punishment by
the good Mother Superior in case of the loss of the above charm,
were Mrs. Almayer's only theological luggage for the stormy road
of life. Mrs. Almayer had at least something tangible to cling
to, but Nina, brought up under the Protestant wing of the proper
Mrs. Vinck, had not even a little piece of brass to remind her of
past teaching. And listening to the recital of those savage
glories, those barbarous fights and savage feasting, to the story
of deeds valorous, albeit somewhat bloodthirsty, where men of her
mother's race shone far above the Orang Blanda, she felt herself
irresistibly fascinated, and saw with vague surprise the narrow
mantle of civilised morality, in which good-meaning people had
wrapped her young soul, fall away and leave her shivering and
helpless as if on the edge of some deep and unknown abyss.
Strangest of all, this abyss did not frighten her when she was
under the influence of the witch-like being she called her
mother. She seemed to have forgotten in civilised surroundings
her life before the time when Lingard had, so to speak, kidnapped
her from Brow. Since then she had had Christian teaching, social
education, and a good glimpse of civilised life. Unfortunately
her teachers did not understand her nature, and the education
ended in a scene of humiliation, in an outburst of contempt from
white people for her mixed blood. She had tasted the whole
bitterness of it and remembered distinctly that the virtuous Mrs.
Vinck's indignation was not so much directed against the young
man from the bank as against the innocent cause of that young
man's infatuation. And there was also no doubt in her mind that
the principal cause of Mrs. Vinck's indignation was the thought
that such a thing should happen in a white nest, where her
snow-white doves, the two Misses Vinck, had just returned from
Europe, to find shelter under the maternal wing, and there await
the coming of irreproachable men of their destiny. Not even the
thought of the money so painfully scraped together by Almayer,
and so punctually sent for Nina's expenses, could dissuade Mrs.
Vinck from her virtuous resolve. Nina was sent away, and in
truth the girl herself wanted to go, although a little frightened
by the impending change. And now she had lived on the river for
three years with a savage mother and a father walking about
amongst pitfalls, with his head in the clouds, weak, irresolute,
and unhappy. She had lived a life devoid of all the decencies of
civilisation, in miserable domestic conditions; she had breathed
in the atmosphere of sordid plottings for gain, of the no less
disgusting intrigues and crimes for lust or money; and those
things, together with the domestic quarrels, were the only events
of her three years' existence. She did not die from despair and
disgust the first month, as she expected and almost hoped for.
On the contrary, at the end of half a year it had seemed to her
that she had known no other life. Her young mind having been
unskilfully permitted to glance at better things, and then thrown