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In Heart of Darkness, Marlow comes back after Kurtz's death feeling unsure about the people around him after witnessing the atrocities of the Congo which are not known to the people back at home.
Why does Marlow feel the need to lie to the intended and others?
Why did Marlow lie? On pg. 24, Marlow said that he hates and detests lies (you can read the book online).
If you google "Why did Marlow lie?" you get dozens of answers, all leading to the point that telling the truth would do no one any good, and it is better for the dead to be well thought of, blah blah blah, etc. etc. etc. I think this is true, as far as it goes.
To answer the deeper problem, let’s ask the question, what if he had NOT lied? Could he have really explained, in words, the entire pernicious atmosphere of the area?
The truth here is particularly impossible to explain to anyone who is not an eyewitness to the facts that the native cannibals committed horrible atrocities in their everyday lives, and that Kurtz became their leader and led them in the further commission of these atrocities. How can anyone truly and completely describe an existence where human life is of no consequence, if the listener has no experience of the same? Combat veterans also have difficulty in describing life in a combat zone. That’s why they usually only talk to other combat veterans about such things.
That Kurtz was at once, an active participant in the horrors, and, also vehemently wished the natives to be exterminated, is a dichotomy Marlow cannot explain to his own satisfaction, let alone to Kurtz’s Intended or others. How could Marlow get inside Kurtz's head, and understand how Kurtz could justify these horrors? How could Marlow even describe them? No, it was better simply to deny these truths, since Kurtz is dead.
So, to answer the OP’s question, what is so horrible in the Congo is actually uniquely indescribable. However, it has to do with cannibalism, humans as food, shrunken heads, and so on, all creating a horrendous tableau incomprehensible to the normal European mind. Yes, Marlow lied because it was the nice thing to do, but really he lied because he was literally incapable of telling the whole truth. No one would understand or believe him, who had not been there himself.
In any case, this is my opinion.
There are three reasons why Marlow lied.
Marlow keenly felt that his profound experience - of the Belgian Congo in general, and of Kurtz in particular - was beyond explanation to ordinary European citizens. He says that after his return to "the sepulchral city" (Brussels), he found himself
"resenting the sight of people hurrying through the streets to filch a little money from each other, to devour their infamous cookery, to gulp their unwholesome beer, to dream their insignificant and silly dreams. They trespassed upon my thoughts. They were intruders whose knowledge of life was to me an irritating presence ... [their bearing] was offensive to me like the outrageous flauntings of folly in the face of a danger it is unable to comprehend." [Penguin edition (2007), p88]
To put it simply, Marlow had experienced something so profound that even he was struggling to understand it. How could he then bring these petty, mundane city folk into his extraordinary world?
Ironically, almost the whole novel consists of Marlow telling his untellable tale to his close friends on the yacht anchored in the Thames. Why can he share his tale with them but not with others? On the very first page, the narrator makes it clear that Marlow and his mates share a special bond - "the bond of the sea" - which "had the effect of making us tolerant of each other's yarns--and even convictions."
Marlow venerates Kurtz. He says he himself survived in order "to show my loyalty to Kurtz once more".
"I was within a hair's-breadth of the last opportunity for pronouncement, and I found with humiliation that probably I would have nothing to say. This is the reason why I affirm that Kurtz was a remarkable man. He had something to say. He said it. [...] He had summed up---he had judged. 'The horror!' [...] Better his cry---much better. It was an affirmation, a moral victory paid for by innumerable defeats, by abominable terrors, by abominable satisfactions. But it was a victory! That is why I have remained loyal to the last, and even beyond." [pp. 87-88]
Conrad is at pains to emphasise that Kurtz's last words - "The horror! The horror!" - are utterly defining, both of the man and of the "heart of darkness" (in all its interpretations). Marlow's "impulse of unconscious loyalty" is to the truth not only of Kurtz's greatness, but also of Kurtz's darkness, "the colossal scale of his vile desires". For reasons already covered above, Marlow feels it impossible to describe the true Kurtz to ordinary folk, and is therefore compelled to conceal Kurtz's "heart of darkness" as a way of honouring his memory.
Despite the above, in the end Marlow says of Kurtz "there remained only his memory and his Intended---and I wanted to give that up too to the past." It's as if the burden Marlow carries is too great, and he is ready to pass this burden on.
But when Marlow arrives at the house of the Intended, Conrad delivers the ultimate crescendo of melodramatic gothic horror. Marlow experiences a powerful vision of Kurtz on his stretcher,
"opening his mouth voraciously, as if to devour all the earth with all its mankind. He lived then before me; he lived as much as he had ever lived---a shadow insatiable of splendid appearances, of frightful realities [...] The vision seemed to enter the house with me [...] 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 along for the salvation of another soul."
Here is the first intimation that Marlow will save the Intended from the full truth, and especially from knowing about "the summing-up whisper of his eternal condemnation." Indeed, when she mentions Kurtz's loneliness at the moment of his death, Marlow reassures her that he was there with Kurtz:
"'I heard his very last words....' I stopped in a fright." [my emphasis]
The fright is because he is now confronted with the reality: Kurtz's last, defining words are a tormenting yet unutterable legacy.
"I was on the point of crying out at her, 'Don't you hear them?' The dusk was repeating them in a persistent whisper all around us, in a whisper that seemed to swell menacingly like the first whisper of a rising wind. 'The horror! the horror!'"
Marlow lies, to the "inconceivable triumph and [...] unspeakable pain" of the Intended. He now feels as if the house will collapse before he can escape from the weeping woman, "that the heavens would fall upon my head." He wonders whether he should have "rendered Kurtz that justice which was his due" by revealing his true final words in all their appalling greatness. As Marlow explains, in his final words of the novel (last words being a bit of a theme for Conrad):
"But I couldn't. I could not tell her. It would have been too dark--too dark altogether...."
