He descended the steps and
plunged into the long grass on his way to the solitude of his new house,
dragging his feet in a state of physical collapse from disgust and fear
before that fury. She followed to the head of the steps, and sent the
shafts of indiscriminate abuse after the retreating form. And each of
those scenes was concluded by a piercing shriek, reaching him far away.
"You know, Kaspar, I am your wife! your own Christian wife after your own
Blanda law!" For she knew that this was the bitterest thing of all; the
greatest regret of that man's life.
All these scenes Nina witnessed unmoved. She might have been deaf, dumb,
without any feeling as far as any expression of opinion went. Yet oft
when her father had sought the refuge of the great dusty rooms of
"Almayer's Folly," and her mother, exhausted by rhetorical efforts,
squatted wearily on her heels with her back against the leg of the table,
Nina would approach her curiously, guarding her skirts from betel juice
besprinkling the floor, and gaze down upon her as one might look into the
quiescent crater of a volcano after a destructive eruption. Mrs.
Almayer's thoughts, after these scenes, were usually turned into a
channel of childhood reminiscences, and she gave them utterance in a kind
of monotonous recitative--slightly disconnected, but generally describing
the glories of the Sultan of Sulu, his great splendour, his power, his
great prowess; the fear which benumbed the hearts of white men at the
sight of his swift piratical praus.
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