“I wish you had. Why didn't you?”
“Do you want me to tell you that you were irresistible? How could I have sent you away? But you! What made you come back to me with your very heart on your lips?”
When Lingard spoke after a time it was in jerky sentences.
“I didn't stop to think. I had been hurt. I didn't think of you people as ladies and gentlemen. I thought of you as people whose lives I held in my hand. How was it possible to forget you in my trouble? It is your face that I brought back with me on board my brig. I don't know why. I didn't look at you more than at anybody else. It took me all my time to keep my temper down lest it should burn you all up. I didn't want to be rude to you people, but I found it wasn't very easy because threats were the only argument I had. Was I very offensive, Mrs. Travers?”
She had listened tense and very attentive, almost stern. And it was without the slightest change of expression that she said:
“I think that you bore yourself appropriately to the state of life to which it has pleased God to call you.”
“What state?” muttered Lingard to himself. “I am what I am. They call me Rajah Laut, King Tom, and such like. I think it amused you to hear it, but I can tell you it is no joke to have such names fastened on one, even in fun. And those very names have in them something which makes all this affair here no small matter to anybody.”
She stood before him with a set, severe face.—“Did you call me out in this alarming manner only to quarrel with me?”—“No, but why do you choose this time to tell me that my coming for help to you was nothing but impudence in your sight? Well, I beg your pardon for intruding on your dignity.”—“You misunderstood me,” said Mrs. Travers, without relaxing for a moment her contemplative severity. “Such a flattering thing had never happened to me before and it will never happen to me again. But believe me, King Tom, you did me too much honour. Jorgenson is perfectly right in being angry with you for having taken a woman in tow.”—“He didn't mean to be rude,” protested Lingard, earnestly. Mrs. Travers didn't even smile at this intrusion of a point of manners into the atmosphere of anguish and suspense that seemed always to arise between her and this man who, sitting on the sea-chest, had raised his eyes to her with an air of extreme candour and seemed unable to take them off again. She continued to look at him sternly by a tremendous effort of will.
“How changed you are,” he murmured.
He was lost in the depths of the simplest wonder. She appeared to him vengeful and as if turned forever into stone before his bewildered remorse. Forever. Suddenly Mrs. Travers looked round and sat down in the chair. Her strength failed her but she remained austere with her hands resting on the arms of her seat. Lingard sighed deeply and dropped his eyes. She did not dare relax her muscles for fear of breaking down altogether and betraying a reckless impulse which lurked at the bottom of her dismay, to seize the head of d'Alcacer's Man of Fate, press it to her breast once, fling it far away, and vanish herself, vanish out of life like a wraith. The Man of Fate sat silent and bowed, yet with a suggestion of strength in his dejection. “If I don't speak,” Mrs. Travers said to herself, with great inward calmness, “I shall burst into tears.” She said aloud, “What could have happened? What have you dragged me in here for? Why don't you tell me your news?”
“I thought you didn't want to hear. I believe you really don't want to. What is all this to you? I believe that you don't care anything about what I feel, about what I do and how I end. I verily believe that you don't care how you end yourself. I believe you never cared for your own or anybody's feelings. I don't think it is because you are hard, I think it is because you don't know, and don't want to know, and are angry with life.”
He flourished an arm recklessly, and Mrs. Travers noticed for the first time that he held a sheet of paper in his hand.
“Is that your news there?” she asked, significantly. “It's difficult to imagine that in this wilderness writing can have any significance. And who on earth here could send you news on paper? Will you let me see it? Could I understand it? Is it in English? Come, King Tom, don't look at me in this awful way.”
She got up suddenly, not in indignation, but as if at the end of her endurance. The jewelled clasps, the gold embroideries, gleamed elusively amongst the folds of her draperies which emitted a mysterious rustle.
“I can't stand this,” she cried. “I can't stand being looked at like this. No woman could stand it. No woman has ever been looked at like this. What can you see? Hatred I could understand. What is it you think me capable of?”
“You are very extraordinary,” murmured Lingard, who had regained his self-possession before that outburst.
“Very well, and you are extraordinary, too. That's understood—here we are both under that curse and having to face together whatever may turn up. But who on earth could have sent you this writing?”
“Who?” repeated Lingard. “Why, that young fellow that blundered on my brig in the dark, bringing a boatload of trouble alongside on that quiet night in Carimata Straits. The darkest night I have ever known. An accursed night.”
Mrs. Travers bit her lip, waited a little, then asked quietly:
“What difficulty has he got into now?”
“Difficulty!” cried Lingard. “He is immensely pleased with himself, the young fool. You know, when you sent him to talk to me that evening you left the yacht, he came with a loaded pistol in his pocket. And now he has gone and done it.”
“Done it?” repeated Mrs. Travers blankly. “Done what?”
She snatched from Lingard's unresisting palm the sheet of paper. While she was smoothing it Lingard moved round and stood close at her elbow. She ran quickly over the first lines, then her eyes steadied. At the end she drew a quick breath and looked up at Lingard. Their faces had never been so close together before and Mrs. Travers had a surprising second of a perfectly new sensation. She looked away.—“Do you understand what this news means?” he murmured. Mrs. Travers let her hand fall by her side. “Yes,” she said in a low tone. “The compact is broken.”
Carter had begun his letter without any preliminaries:
You cleared out in the middle of the night and took the lady away with you. You left me no proper orders. But as a sailorman I looked upon myself as left in charge of two ships while within half a mile on that sandbank there were more than a hundred piratical cut-throats watching me as closely as so many tigers about to leap. Days went by without a word of you or the lady. To leave the ships outside and go inland to look for you was not to be thought of with all those pirates within springing distance. Put yourself in my place. Can't you imagine my anxiety, my sleepless nights? Each night worse than the night before. And still no word from you. I couldn't sit still and worry my head off about things I couldn't understand. I am a sailorman. My first duty was to the ships. I had to put an end to this impossible situation and I hope you will agree that I have done it in a seamanlike way. One misty morning I moved the brig nearer the sandbank and directly the mist cleared I opened fire on the praus of those savages which were anchored in the channel. We aimed wide at first to give those vagabonds that were on board a chance to clear out and join their friends camped on the sands. I didn't want to kill people. Then we got the long gun to bear and in about an hour we had the bottom knocked out of the two praus. The savages on the bank howled and screamed at every shot. They are mighty angry but I don't care for their anger now, for by sinking their praus I have made them as harmless as a flock of lambs. They needn't starve on their sandbank because they have two or three dugouts hauled up on the sand and they may ferry themselves and their women to the mainland whenever they like.
I fancy I have acted as a seaman and as a seaman I intend to go on acting. Now I have made the ships safe I shall set about without loss of time trying to get the yacht off the mud. When that's done I shall arm the boats and proceed inshore to look for you and the yacht's gentry, and shan't rest till I know whether any or all of you are above the earth yet.
I hope these words will reach you. Just as we had done the business of those praus the man you sent off that night in Carimata to stop our chief officer came sailing in from the west with our first gig in tow and the boat's crew all well. Your serang tells me he is a most trustworthy messenger and that his name is Jaffir. He seems only too anxious to try to get to you as soon as possible. I repeat, ships and men have been made safe and I don't mean to give you up dead or alive.
“You are quick in taking the point,” said Lingard in a dull voice, while Mrs. Travers, with the sheet of paper gripped in her hand, looked into his face with anxious eyes. “He has been smart and no mistake.”
“He didn't know,” murmured Mrs. Travers.
“No, he didn't know. But could I take everybody into my confidence?” protested Lingard in the same low tone. “And yet who else could I trust? It seemed to me that he must have understood without being told. But he is too young. He may well be proud according to his lights. He has done that job outside very smartly—damn his smartness! And here we are with all our lives depending on my word—which is broken now, Mrs. Travers. It is broken.”
Mrs. Travers nodded at him slightly.
“They would sooner have expected to see the sun and the moon fall out of the sky,” Lingard continued with repressed fire. Next moment it seemed to have gone out of him and Mrs. Travers heard him mutter a disconnected phrase. . . . “The world down about my ears.”
“What will you do?” she whispered.
“What will I do?” repeated Lingard, gently. “Oh, yes—do. Mrs. Travers, do you see that I am nothing now? Just nothing.”
He had lost himself in the contemplation of her face turned to him with an expression of awed curiosity. The shock of the world coming down about his ears in consequence of Carter's smartness was so terrific that it had dulled his sensibilities in the manner of a great pain or of a great catastrophe. What was there to look at but that woman's face, in a world which had lost its consistency, its shape, and its promises in a moment?
Mrs. Travers looked away. She understood that she had put to Lingard an impossible question. What was presenting itself to her as a problem was to that man a crisis of feeling. Obviously Carter's action had broken the compact entered into with Daman, and she was intelligent enough to understand that it was the sort of thing that could not be explained away. It wasn't horror that she felt, but a sort of consternation, something like the discomfiture of people who have just missed their train. It was only more intense. The real dismay had yet to make its way into her comprehension. To Lingard it was a blow struck straight at his heart.
He was not angry with Carter. The fellow had acted like a seaman. Carter's concern was for the ships. In this fatality Carter was a mere incident. The real cause of the disaster was somewhere else, was other, and more remote. And at the same time Lingard could not defend himself from a feeling that it was in himself, too, somewhere in the unexplored depths of his nature, something fatal and unavoidable. He muttered to himself:
“No. I am not a lucky man.”
This was but a feeble expression of the discovery of the truth that suddenly had come home to him as if driven into his breast by a revealing power which had decided that this was to be the end of his fling. But he was not the man to give himself up to the examination of his own sensations. His natural impulse was to grapple with the circumstances and that was what he was trying to do; but he missed now that sense of mastery which is half the battle. Conflict of some sort was the very essence of his life. But this was something he had never known before. This was a conflict within himself. He had to face unsuspected powers, foes that he could not go out to meet at the gate. They were within, as though he had been betrayed by somebody, by some secret enemy. He was ready to look round for that subtle traitor. A sort of blankness fell on his mind and he suddenly thought: “Why! It's myself.”
Immediately afterward he had a clear, merciless recollection of Hassim and Immada. He saw them far off beyond the forests. Oh, yes, they existed—within his breast!
“That was a night!” he muttered, looking straight at Mrs. Travers. He had been looking at her all the time. His glance had held her under a spell, but for a whole interminable minute he had not been aware of her at all. At the murmur of his words she made a slight movement and he saw her again.—“What night?” she whispered, timidly, like an intruder. She was astonished to see him smile.—“Not like this one,” he said. “You made me notice how quiet and still it was. Yes. Listen how still it is.”
Both moved their heads slightly and seemed to lend an ear. There was not a murmur, sigh, rustle, splash, or footfall. No whispers, no tremors, not a sound of any kind. They might have been alone on board the Emma, abandoned even by the ghost of Captain Jorgenson departed to rejoin the Barque Wild Rose on the shore of the Cimmerian sea.—“It's like the stillness of the end,” said Mrs. Travers in a low, equable voice.—“Yes, but that, too, is false,” said Lingard in the same tone.—“I don't understand,” Mrs. Travers began, hurriedly, after a short silence. “But don't use that word. Don't use it, King Tom! It frightens me by its mere sound.”
Lingard made no sign. His thoughts were back with Hassim and Immada. The young chief and his sister had gone up country on a voluntary mission to persuade Belarab to return to his stockade and to take up again the direction of affairs. They carried urgent messages from Lingard, who for Belarab was the very embodiment of truth and force, that unquestioned force which had permitted Belarab to indulge in all his melancholy hesitations. But those two young people had also some personal prestige. They were Lingard's heart's friends. They were like his children. But beside that, their high birth, their warlike story, their wanderings, adventures, and prospects had given them a glamour of their own.
V
The very day that Travers and d'Alcacer had come on board the Emma Hassim and Immada had departed on their mission; for Lingard, of course, could not think of leaving the white people alone with Jorgenson. Jorgenson was all right, but his ineradicable habit of muttering in his moustache about “throwing a lighted match amongst the powder barrels” had inspired Lingard with a certain amount of mistrust. And, moreover, he did not want to go away from Mrs. Travers.
It was the only correct inspiration on Carter's part to send Jaffir with his report to Lingard. That stout-hearted fighter, swimmer, and devoted follower of the princely misfortunes of Hassim and Immada, had looked upon his mission to catch the chief officer of the yacht (which he had received from Lingard in Carimata) as a trifling job. It took him a little longer than he expected but he had got back to the brig just in time to be sent on to Lingard with Carter's letter after a couple of hours' rest. He had the story of all the happenings from Wasub before he left and though his face preserved its grave impassivity, in his heart he did not like it at all.
Fearless and wily, Jaffir was the man for difficult missions and a born messenger—as he expressed it himself—“to bear weighty words between great men.” With his unfailing memory he was able to reproduce them exactly, whether soft or hard, in council or in private; for he knew no fear. With him there was no need for writing which might fall into the hands of the enemy. If he died on the way the message would die with him. He had also the gift of getting at the sense of any situation and an observant eye. He was distinctly one of those men from whom trustworthy information can be obtained by the leaders of great enterprises. Lingard did put several questions to him, but in this instance, of course, Jaffir could have only very little to say. Of Carter, whom he called the “young one,” he said that he looked as white men look when they are pleased with themselves; then added without waiting for a definite question—“The ships out there are now safe enough, O, Rajah Laut!” There was no elation in his tone.
Lingard looked at him blankly. When the Greatest of White Men remarked that there was yet a price to be paid for that safety, Jaffir assented by a “Yes, by Allah!” without losing for a moment his grim composure. When told that he would be required to go and find his master and the lady Immada who were somewhere in the back country, in Belarab's travelling camp, he declared himself ready to proceed at once. He had eaten his fill and had slept three hours on board the brig and he was not tired. When he was young he used to get tired sometimes; but for many years now he had known no such weakness. He did not require the boat with paddlers in which he had come up into the lagoon. He would go alone in a small canoe. This was no time, he remarked, for publicity and ostentation. His pent-up anxiety burst through his lips. “It is in my mind, Tuan, that death has not been so near them since that night when you came sailing in a black cloud and took us all out of the stockade.”
Lingard said nothing but there was in Jaffir a faith in that white man which was not easily shaken.
“How are you going to save them this time, O Rajah Laut?” he asked, simply.
“Belarab is my friend,” murmured Lingard.
In his anxiety Jaffir was very outspoken. “A man of peace!” he exclaimed in a low tone. “Who could be safe with a man like that?” he asked, contemptuously.
“There is no war,” said Lingard
“There is suspicion, dread, and revenge, and the anger of armed men,” retorted Jaffir. “You have taken the white prisoners out of their hands by the force of your words alone. Is that so, Tuan?”
“Yes,” said Lingard.
“And you have them on board here?” asked Jaffir, with a glance over his shoulder at the white and misty structure within which by the light of a small oil flame d'Alcacer and Mrs. Travers were just then conversing.
“Yes, I have them here.”
“Then, Rajah Laut,” whispered Jaffir, “you can make all safe by giving them back.”
“Can I do that?” were the words breathed out through Lingard's lips to the faithful follower of Hassim and Immada.
“Can you do anything else?” was the whispered retort of Jaffir the messenger accustomed to speak frankly to the great of the earth. “You are a white man and you can have only one word. And now I go.”
A small, rough dug-out belonging to the Emma had been brought round to the ladder. A shadowy calash hovering respectfully in the darkness of the deck had already cleared his throat twice in a warning manner.
“Yes, Jaffir, go,” said Lingard, “and be my friend.”
“I am the friend of a great prince,” said the other, sturdily. “But you, Rajah Laut, were even greater. And great you will remain while you are with us, people of this sea and of this land. But what becomes of the strength of your arms before your own white people? Where does it go to, I say? Well, then, we must trust in the strength of your heart.”
“I hope that will never fail,” said Lingard, and Jaffir emitted a grunt of satisfaction. “But God alone sees into men's hearts.”
“Yes. Our refuge is with Allah,” assented Jaffir, who had acquired the habit of pious turns of speech in the frequentation of professedly religious men, of whom there were many in Belarab's stockade. As a matter of fact, he reposed all his trust in Lingard who had with him the prestige of a providential man sent at the hour of need by heaven itself. He waited a while, then: “What is the message I am to take?” he asked.
“Tell the whole tale to the Rajah Hassim,” said Lingard. “And tell him to make his way here with the lady his sister secretly and with speed. The time of great trouble has come. Let us, at least, be together.”
“Right! Right!” Jaffir approved, heartily. “To die alone under the weight of one's enemies is a dreadful fate.”
He stepped back out of the sheen of the lamp by which they had been talking and making his way down into the small canoe he took up a paddle and without a splash vanished on the dark lagoon.
It was then that Mrs. Travers and d'Alcacer heard Lingard call aloud for Jorgenson. Instantly the familiar shadow stood at Lingard's elbow and listened in detached silence. Only at the end of the tale it marvelled audibly: “Here's a mess for you if you like.” But really nothing in the world could astonish or startle old Jorgenson. He turned away muttering in his moustache. Lingard remained with his chin in his hand and Jaffir's last words took gradual possession of his mind. Then brusquely he picked up the lamp and went to seek Mrs. Travers. He went to seek her because he actually needed her bodily presence, the sound of her voice, the dark, clear glance of her eyes. She could do nothing for him. On his way he became aware that Jorgenson had turned out the few Malays on board the Emma and was disposing them about the decks to watch the lagoon in all directions. On calling Mrs. Travers out of the Cage Lingard was, in the midst of his mental struggle, conscious of a certain satisfaction in taking her away from d'Alcacer. He couldn't spare any of her attention to any other man, not the least crumb of her time, not the least particle of her thought! He needed it all. To see it withdrawn from him for the merest instant was irritating—seemed a disaster.
D'Alcacer, left alone, wondered at the imperious tone of Lingard's call. To this observer of shades the fact seemed considerable. “Sheer nerves,” he concluded, to himself. “The man is overstrung. He must have had some sort of shock.” But what could it be—he wondered to himself. In the tense stagnation of those days of waiting the slightest tremor had an enormous importance. D'Alcacer did not seek his camp bedstead. He didn't even sit down. With the palms of his hands against the edge of the table he leaned back against it. In that negligent attitude he preserved an alert mind which for a moment wondered whether Mrs. Travers had not spoiled Lingard a little. Yet in the suddenness of the forced association, where, too, d'Alcacer was sure there was some moral problem in the background, he recognized the extreme difficulty of weighing accurately the imperious demands against the necessary reservations, the exact proportions of boldness and caution. And d'Alcacer admired upon the whole Mrs. Travers' cleverness.
There could be no doubt that she had the situation in her hands. That, of course, did not mean safety. She had it in her hands as one may hold some highly explosive and uncertain compound. D'Alcacer thought of her with profound sympathy and with a quite unselfish interest. Sometimes in a street we cross the path of personalities compelling sympathy and wonder but for all that we don't follow them home. D'Alcacer refrained from following Mrs. Travers any further. He had become suddenly aware that Mr. Travers was sitting up on his camp bedstead. He must have done it very suddenly. Only a moment before he had appeared plunged in the deepest slumber, and the stillness for a long time now had been perfectly unbroken. D'Alcacer was startled enough for an exclamation and Mr. Travers turned his head slowly in his direction. D'Alcacer approached the bedstead with a certain reluctance.
“Awake?” he said.
“A sudden chill,” said Mr. Travers. “But I don't feel cold now. Strange! I had the impression of an icy blast.”
“Ah!” said d'Alcacer.
“Impossible, of course!” went on Mr. Travers. “This stagnating air never moves. It clings odiously to one. What time is it?”
“Really, I don't know.”
“The glass of my watch was smashed on that night when we were so treacherously assailed by the savages on the sandbank,” grumbled Mr. Travers.
“I must say I was never so surprised in my life,” confessed d'Alcacer. “We had stopped and I was lighting a cigar, you may remember.”
“No,” said Mr. Travers. “I had just then pulled out my watch. Of course it flew out of my hand but it hung by the chain. Somebody trampled on it. The hands are broken off short. It keeps on ticking but I can't tell the time. It's absurd. Most provoking.”
“Do you mean to say,” asked d'Alcacer, “that you have been winding it up every evening?”
Mr. Travers looked up from his bedstead and he also seemed surprised. “Why! I suppose I have.” He kept silent for a while. “It isn't so much blind habit as you may think. My habits are the outcome of strict method. I had to order my life methodically. You know very well, my dear d'Alcacer, that without strict method I would not have been able to get through my work and would have had no time at all for social duties, which, of course, are of very great importance. I may say that, materially, method has been the foundation of my success in public life. There were never any empty moments in my day. And now this! . . .” He looked all round the Cage. . . . “Where's my wife?” he asked.
“I was talking to her only a moment ago,” answered d'Alcacer. “I don't know the time. My watch is on board the yacht; but it isn't late, you know.”
Mr. Travers flung off with unwonted briskness the light cotton sheet which covered him. He buttoned hastily the tunic which he had unfastened before lying down, and just as d'Alcacer was expecting him to swing his feet to the deck impetuously, he lay down again on the pillow and remained perfectly still.
D'Alcacer waited awhile and then began to pace the Cage. After a couple of turns he stopped and said, gently:
“I am afraid, Travers, you are not very well.”
“I don't know what illness is,” answered the voice from the pillow to the great relief of d'Alcacer who really had not expected an answer. “Good health is a great asset in public life. Illness may make you miss a unique opportunity. I was never ill.”
All this came out deadened in tone, as if the speaker's face had been buried in the pillow. D'Alcacer resumed his pacing.
“I think I asked you where my wife was,” said the muffled voice.
With great presence of mind d'Alcacer kept on pacing the Cage as if he had not heard.—“You know, I think she is mad,” went on the muffled voice. “Unless I am.”
Again d'Alcacer managed not to interrupt his regular pacing. “Do you know what I think?” he said, abruptly. “I think, Travers, that you don't want to talk about her. I think that you don't want to talk about anything. And to tell you the truth I don't want to, either.”
D'Alcacer caught a faint sigh from the pillow and at the same time saw a small, dim flame appear outside the Cage. And still he kept on his pacing. Mrs. Travers and Lingard coming out of the deckhouse stopped just outside the door and Lingard stood the deck-lamp on its roof. They were too far from d'Alcacer to be heard, but he could make them out: Mrs. Travers, as straight as an arrow, and the heavy bulk of the man who faced her with a lowered head. He saw it in profile against the light and as if deferential in its slight droop. They were looking straight at each other. Neither of them made the slightest gesture.
“There is that in me,” Lingard murmured, deeply, “which would set my heart harder than a stone. I am King Tom, Rajah Laut, and fit to look any man hereabouts in the face. I have my name to take care of. Everything rests on that.”
“Mr. d'Alcacer would express this by saying that everything rested on honour,” commented Mrs. Travers with lips that did not tremble, though from time to time she could feel the accelerated beating of her heart.
“Call it what you like. It's something that a man needs to draw a free breath. And look!—as you see me standing before you here I care for it no longer.”
“But I do care for it,” retorted Mrs. Travers. “As you see me standing here—I do care. This is something that is your very own. You have a right to it. And I repeat I do care for it.”
“Care for something of my own,” murmured Lingard, very close to her face. “Why should you care for my rights?”
“Because,” she said, holding her ground though their foreheads were nearly touching, “because if I ever get back to my life I don't want to make it more absurd by real remorse.”
Her tone was soft and Lingard received the breath of those words like a caress on his face. D'Alcacer, in the Cage, made still another effort to keep up his pacing. He didn't want to give Mr. Travers the slightest excuse for sitting up again and looking round.
“That I should live to hear anybody say they cared anything for what was mine!” whispered Lingard. “And that it should be you—you, who have taken all hardness out of me.”
“I don't want your heart to be made hard. I want it to be made firm.”
“You couldn't have said anything better than what you have said just now to make it steady,” flowed the murmur of Lingard's voice with something tender in its depth. “Has anybody ever had a friend like this?” he exclaimed, raising his head as if taking the starry night to witness.
“And I ask myself is it possible that there should be another man on earth that I could trust as I trust you. I say to you: Yes! Go and save what you have a right to and don't forget to be merciful. I will not remind you of our perfect innocence. The earth must be small indeed that we should have blundered like this into your life. It's enough to make one believe in fatality. But I can't find it in me to behave like a fatalist, to sit down with folded hands. Had you been another kind of man I might have been too hopeless or too disdainful. Do you know what Mr. d'Alcacer calls you?”
Inside the Cage d'Alcacer, casting curious glances in their direction, saw Lingard shake his head and thought with slight uneasiness: “He is refusing her something.”
“Mr. d'Alcacer's name for you is the 'Man of Fate',” said Mrs. Travers, a little breathlessly.
“A mouthful. Never mind, he is a gentleman. It's what you. . . .”
“I call you all but by your Christian name,” said Mrs. Travers, hastily. “Believe me, Mr. d'Alcacer understands you.”
“He is all right,” interjected Lingard.
“And he is innocent. I remember what you have said—that the innocent must take their chance. Well, then, do what is right.”
“You think it would be right? You believe it? You feel it?”
“At this time, in this place, from a man like you—Yes, it is right.”
Lingard thought that woman wonderfully true to him and wonderfully fearless with herself. The necessity to take back the two captives to the stockade was so clear and unavoidable now, that he believed nothing on earth could have stopped him from doing so, but where was there another woman in the world who would have taken it like this? And he reflected that in truth and courage there is found wisdom. It seemed to him that till Mrs. Travers came to stand by his side he had never known what truth and courage and wisdom were. With his eyes on her face and having been told that in her eyes he appeared worthy of being both commanded and entreated, he felt an instant of complete content, a moment of, as it were, perfect emotional repose.
During the silence Mrs. Travers with a quick side-glance noticed d'Alcacer as one sees a man in a mist, his mere dark shape arrested close to the muslin screen. She had no doubt that he was looking in their direction and that he could see them much more plainly than she could see him. Mrs. Travers thought suddenly how anxious he must be; and she remembered that he had begged her for some sign, for some warning, beforehand, at the moment of crisis. She had understood very well his hinted request for time to get prepared. If he was to get more than a few minutes,thiswas the moment to make him a sign—the sign he had suggested himself. Mrs. Travers moved back the least bit so as to let the light fall in front of her and with a slow, distinct movement she put her left hand to her forehead.
“Well, then,” she heard Lingard's forcible murmur, “well, then, Mrs. Travers, it must be done to-night.”
One may be true, fearless, and wise, and yet catch one's breath before the simple finality of action. Mrs. Travers caught her breath: “To-night! To-night!” she whispered. D'Alcacer's dark and misty silhouette became more blurred. He had seen her sign and had retreated deeper within the Cage.
“Yes, to-night,” affirmed Lingard. “Now, at once, within the hour, this moment,” he murmured, fiercely, following Mrs. Travers in her recoiling movement. She felt her arm being seized swiftly. “Don't you see that if it is to do any good, that if they are not to be delivered to mere slaughter, it must be done while all is dark ashore, before an armed mob in boats comes clamouring alongside? Yes. Before the night is an hour older, so that I may be hammering at Belarab's gate while all the Settlement is still asleep.”
Mrs. Travers didn't dream of protesting. For the moment she was unable to speak. This man was very fierce and just as suddenly as it had been gripped (making her think incongruously in the midst of her agitation that there would be certainly a bruise there in the morning) she felt her arm released and a penitential tone come into Lingard's murmuring voice.
“And even now it's nearly too late! The road was plain, but I saw you on it and my heart failed me. I was there like an empty man and I dared not face you. You must forgive me. No, I had no right to doubt you for a moment. I feel as if I ought to go on my knees and beg your pardon for forgetting what you are, for daring to forget.”
“Why, King Tom, what is it?”
“It seems as if I had sinned,” she heard him say. He seized her by the shoulders, turned her about, moved her forward a step or two. His hands were heavy, his force irresistible, though he himself imagined he was handling her gently. “Look straight before you,” he growled into her ear. “Do you see anything?” Mrs. Travers, passive between the rigid arms, could see nothing but, far off, the massed, featureless shadows of the shore.
“No, I see nothing,” she said.
“You can't be looking the right way,” she heard him behind her. And now she felt her head between Lingard's hands. He moved it the least bit to the right. “There! See it?”
“No. What am I to look for?”
“A gleam of light,” said Lingard, taking away his hands suddenly. “A gleam that will grow into a blaze before our boat can get half way across the lagoon.”
Even as Lingard spoke Mrs. Travers caught sight of a red spark far away. She had looked often enough at the Settlement, as on the face of a painting on a curtain, to have its configuration fixed in her mind, to know that it was on the beach at its end furthest from Belarab's stockade.
“The brushwood is catching,” murmured Lingard in her ear. “If they had some dry grass the whole pile would be blazing by now.”
“And this means. . . .”
“It means that the news has spread. And it is before Tengga's enclosure on his end of the beach. That's where all the brains of the Settlement are. It means talk and excitement and plenty of crafty words. Tengga's fire! I tell you, Mrs. Travers, that before half an hour has passed Daman will be there to make friends with the fat Tengga, who is ready to say to him, 'I told you so'.”
“I see,” murmured Mrs. Travers. Lingard drew her gently to the rail.
“And now look over there at the other end of the beach where the shadows are heaviest. That is Belarab's fort, his houses, his treasure, his dependents. That's where the strength of the Settlement is. I kept it up. I made it last. But what is it now? It's like a weapon in the hand of a dead man. And yet it's all we have to look to, if indeed there is still time. I swear to you I wouldn't dare land them in daylight for fear they should be slaughtered on the beach.”
“There is no time to lose,” whispered Mrs. Travers, and Lingard, too, spoke very low.
“No, not if I, too, am to keep what is my right. It's you who have said it.”
“Yes, I have said it,” she whispered, without lifting her head. Lingard made a brusque movement at her elbow and bent his head close to her shoulder.
“And I who mistrusted you! Like Arabs do to their great men, I ought to kiss the hem of your robe in repentance for having doubted the greatness of your heart.”
“Oh! my heart!” said Mrs. Travers, lightly, still gazing at the fire, which had suddenly shot up to a tall blaze. “I can assure you it has been of very little account in the world.” She paused for a moment to steady her voice, then said, firmly, “Let's get this over.”
“To tell you the truth the boat has been ready for some time.”
“Well, then. . . .”
“Mrs. Travers,” said Lingard with an effort, “they are people of your own kind.” And suddenly he burst out: “I cannot take them ashore bound hand and foot.”
“Mr. d'Alcacer knows. You will find him ready. Ever since the beginning he has been prepared for whatever might happen.”
“He is a man,” said Lingard with conviction. “But it's of the other that I am thinking.”
“Ah, the other,” she repeated. “Then, what about my thoughts? Luckily we have Mr. d'Alcacer. I shall speak to him first.”
She turned away from the rail and moved toward the Cage.
“Jorgenson,” the voice of Lingard resounded all along the deck, “get a light on the gangway.” Then he followed Mrs. Travers slowly.
VI
D'Alcacer, after receiving his warning, stepped back and leaned against the edge of the table. He could not ignore in himself a certain emotion. And indeed, when he had asked Mrs. Travers for a sign he expected to be moved—but he had not expected the sign to come so soon. He expected this night to pass like other nights, in broken slumbers, bodily discomfort, and the unrest of disconnected thinking. At the same time he was surprised at his own emotion. He had flattered himself on the possession of more philosophy. He thought that this famous sense of self-preservation was a queer thing, a purely animal thing. “For, as a thinking man,” he reflected, “I really ought not to care.” It was probably the unusual that affected him. Clearly. If he had been lying seriously ill in a room in a hotel and had overheard some ominous whispers he would not have cared in the least. Ah, but then he would have been ill—and in illness one grows so indifferent. Illness is a great help to unemotional behaviour, which of course is the correct behaviour for a man of the world. He almost regretted he was not very ill. But, then, Mr. Travers was obviously ill and it did not seem to help him much. D'Alcacer glanced at the bedstead where Mr. Travers preserved an immobility which struck d'Alcacer as obviously affected. He mistrusted it. Generally he mistrusted Mr. Travers. One couldn't tell what he would do next. Not that he could do much one way or another, but that somehow he threatened to rob the situation of whatever dignity it may have had as a stroke of fate, as a call on courage. Mr. d'Alcacer, acutely observant and alert for the slightest hints, preferred to look upon himself as the victim not of a swindle but of a rough man naively engaged in a contest with heaven's injustice. D'Alcacer did not examine his heart, but some lines of a French poet came into his mind, to the effect that in all times those who fought with an unjust heaven had possessed the secret admiration and love of men. He didn't go so far as love but he could not deny to himself that his feeling toward Lingard was secretly friendly and—well, appreciative. Mr. Travers sat up suddenly. What a horrible nuisance, thought d'Alcacer, fixing his eyes on the tips of his shoes with the hope that perhaps the other would lie down again. Mr. Travers spoke.
“Still up, d'Alcacer?”
“I assure you it isn't late. It's dark at six, we dined before seven, that makes the night long and I am not a very good sleeper; that is, I cannot go to sleep till late in the night.”
“I envy you,” said Mr. Travers, speaking with a sort of drowsy apathy. “I am always dropping off and the awakenings are horrible.”
D'Alcacer, raising his eyes, noticed that Mrs. Travers and Lingard had vanished from the light. They had gone to the rail where d'Alcacer could not see them. Some pity mingled with his vexation at Mr. Travers' snatchy wakefulness. There was something weird about the man, he reflected. “Jorgenson,” he began aloud.
“What's that?” snapped Mr. Travers.
“It's the name of that lanky old store-keeper who is always about the decks.”
“I haven't seen him. I don't see anybody. I don't know anybody. I prefer not to notice.”
“I was only going to say that he gave me a pack of cards; would you like a game of piquet?”
“I don't think I could keep my eyes open,” said Mr. Travers in an unexpectedly confidential tone. “Isn't it funny, d'Alcacer? And then I wake up. It's too awful.”
D'Alcacer made no remark and Mr. Travers seemed not to have expected any.
“When I said my wife was mad,” he began, suddenly, causing d'Alcacer to start, “I didn't mean it literally, of course.” His tone sounded slightly dogmatic and he didn't seem to be aware of any interval during which he had appeared to sleep. D'Alcacer was convinced more than ever that he had been shamming, and resigned himself wearily to listen, folding his arms across his chest. “What I meant, really,” continued Mr. Travers, “was that she is the victim of a craze. Society is subject to crazes, as you know very well. They are not reprehensible in themselves, but the worst of my wife is that her crazes are never like those of the people with whom she naturally associates. They generally run counter to them. This peculiarity has given me some anxiety, you understand, in the position we occupy. People will begin to say that she is eccentric. Do you see her anywhere, d'Alcacer?”
D'Alcacer was thankful to be able to say that he didn't see Mrs. Travers. He didn't even hear any murmurs, though he had no doubt that everybody on board the Emma was wide awake by now. But Mr. Travers inspired him with invincible mistrust and he thought it prudent to add:
“You forget that your wife has a room in the deckhouse.”
This was as far as he would go, for he knew very well that she was not in the deckhouse. Mr. Travers, completely convinced by the statement, made no sound. But neither did he lie down again. D'Alcacer gave himself up to meditation. The night seemed extremely oppressive. At Lingard's shout for Jorgenson, that in the profound silence struck his ears ominously, he raised his eyes and saw Mrs. Travers outside the door of the Cage. He started forward but she was already within. He saw she was moved. She seemed out of breath and as if unable to speak at first.
“Hadn't we better shut the door?” suggested d'Alcacer.
“Captain Lingard's coming in,” she whispered to him. “He has made up his mind.”
“That's an excellent thing,” commented d'Alcacer, quietly. “I conclude from this that we shall hear something.”
“You shall hear it all from me,” breathed out Mrs. Travers.
“Ah!” exclaimed d'Alcacer very low.
By that time Lingard had entered, too, and the decks of the Emma were all astir with moving figures. Jorgenson's voice was also heard giving directions. For nearly a minute the four persons within the Cage remained motionless. A shadowy Malay in the gangway said suddenly: “Sudah, Tuan,” and Lingard murmured, “Ready, Mrs. Travers.”
She seized d'Alcacer's arm and led him to the side of the Cage furthest from the corner in which Mr. Travers' bed was placed, while Lingard busied himself in pricking up the wick of the Cage lantern as if it had suddenly occurred to him that this, whatever happened, should not be a deed of darkness. Mr. Travers did nothing but turn his head to look over his shoulder.
“One moment,” said d'Alcacer, in a low tone and smiling at Mrs. Travers' agitation. “Before you tell me anything let me ask you: 'Haveyoumade up your mind?'” He saw with much surprise a widening of her eyes. Was it indignation? A pause as of suspicion fell between those two people. Then d'Alcacer said apologetically: “Perhaps I ought not to have asked that question,” and Lingard caught Mrs. Travers' words, “Oh, I am not afraid to answer that question.”
Then their voices sank. Lingard hung the lamp up again and stood idle in the revived light; but almost immediately he heard d'Alcacer calling him discreetly.
“Captain Lingard!”
He moved toward them at once. At the same instant Mr. Travers' head pivoted away from the group to its frontal position.
D'Alcacer, very serious, spoke in a familiar undertone.
“Mrs. Travers tells me that we must be delivered up to those Moors on shore.”
“Yes, there is nothing else for it,” said Lingard.
“I confess I am a bit startled,” said d'Alcacer; but except for a slightly hurried utterance nobody could have guessed at anything resembling emotion.
“I have a right to my good name,” said Lingard, also very calm, while Mrs. Travers near him, with half-veiled eyes, listened impassive like a presiding genius.
“I wouldn't question that for a moment,” conceded d'Alcacer. “A point of honour is not to be discussed. But there is such a thing as humanity, too. To be delivered up helplessly. . . .”
“Perhaps!” interrupted Lingard. “But you needn't feel hopeless. I am not at liberty to give up my life for your own. Mrs. Travers knows why. That, too, is engaged.”
“Always on your honour?”
“I don't know. A promise is a promise.”
“Nobody can be held to the impossible,” remarked d'Alcacer.
“Impossible! What is impossible? I don't know it. I am not a man to talk of the impossible or dodge behind it. I did not bring you here.”
D'Alcacer lowered his head for a moment. “I have finished,” he said, gravely. “That much I had to say. I hope you don't think I have appeared unduly anxious.”
“It's the best policy, too.” Mrs. Travers made herself heard suddenly. Nothing of her moved but her lips, she did not even raise her eyes. “It's the only possible policy. You believe me, Mr. d'Alcacer? . . .” He made an almost imperceptible movement of the head. . . . “Well, then, I put all my hope in you, Mr. d'Alcacer, to get this over as easily as possible and save us all from some odious scene. You think perhaps that it is I who ought to. . . .”
“No, no! I don't think so,” interrupted d'Alcacer. “It would be impossible.”
“I am afraid it would,” she admitted, nervously.
D'Alcacer made a gesture as if to beg her to say no more and at once crossed over to Mr. Travers' side of the Cage. He did not want to give himself time to think about his task. Mr. Travers was sitting up on the camp bedstead with a light cotton sheet over his legs. He stared at nothing, and on approaching him d'Alcacer disregarded the slight sinking of his own heart at this aspect which seemed to be that of extreme terror. “This is awful,” he thought. The man kept as still as a hare in its form.
The impressed d'Alcacer had to make an effort to bring himself to tap him lightly on the shoulder.
“The moment has come, Travers, to show some fortitude,” he said with easy intimacy. Mr. Travers looked up swiftly. “I have just been talking to your wife. She had a communication from Captain Lingard for us both. It remains for us now to preserve as much as possible our dignity. I hope that if necessary we will both know how to die.”
In a moment of profound stillness, d'Alcacer had time to wonder whether his face was as stony in expression as the one upturned to him. But suddenly a smile appeared on it, which was certainly the last thing d'Alcacer expected to see. An indubitable smile. A slightly contemptuous smile.
“My wife has been stuffing your head with some more of her nonsense.” Mr. Travers spoke in a voice which astonished d'Alcacer as much as the smile, a voice that was not irritable nor peevish, but had a distinct note of indulgence. “My dear d'Alcacer, that craze has got such a hold of her that she would tell you any sort of tale. Social impostors, mediums, fortune-tellers, charlatans of all sorts do obtain a strange influence over women. You have seen that sort of thing yourself. I had a talk with her before dinner. The influence that bandit has got over her is incredible. I really believe the fellow is half crazy himself. They often are, you know. I gave up arguing with her. Now, what is it you have got to tell me? But I warn you that I am not going to take it seriously.”
He rejected briskly the cotton sheet, put his feet to the ground and buttoned his jacket. D'Alcacer, as he talked, became aware by the slight noise behind him that Mrs. Travers and Lingard were leaving the Cage, but he went on to the end and then waited anxiously for the answer.
“See! She has followed him out on deck,” were Mr. Travers' first words. “I hope you understand that it is a mere craze. You can't help seeing that. Look at her costume. She simply has lost her head. Luckily the world needn't know. But suppose that something similar had happened at home. It would have been extremely awkward. Oh! yes, I will come. I will go anywhere. I can't stand this hulk, those people, this infernal Cage. I believe I should fall ill if I were to remain here.”
The inward detached voice of Jorgenson made itself heard near the gangway saying: “The boat has been waiting for this hour past, King Tom.”
“Let us make a virtue of necessity and go with a good grace,” said d'Alcacer, ready to take Mr. Travers under the arm persuasively, for he did not know what to make of that gentleman.
But Mr. Travers seemed another man. “I am afraid, d'Alcacer, that you, too, are not very strong-minded. I am going to take a blanket off this bedstead. . . .” He flung it hastily over his arm and followed d'Alcacer closely. “What I suffer mostly from, strange to say, is cold.”
Mrs. Travers and Lingard were waiting near the gangway. To everybody's extreme surprise Mr. Travers addressed his wife first.
“You were always laughing at people's crazes,” was what he said, “and now you have a craze of your own. But we won't discuss that.”
D'Alcacer passed on, raising his cap to Mrs. Travers, and went down the ship's side into the boat. Jorgenson had vanished in his own manner like an exorcised ghost, and Lingard, stepping back, left husband and wife face to face.
“Did you think I was going to make a fuss?” asked Mr. Travers in a very low voice. “I assure you I would rather go than stay here. You didn't think that? You have lost all sense of reality, of probability. I was just thinking this evening that I would rather be anywhere than here looking on at you. At your folly. . . .”
Mrs. Travers' loud, “Martin!” made Lingard wince, caused d'Alcacer to lift his head down there in the boat, and even Jorgenson, forward somewhere out of sight, ceased mumbling in his moustache. The only person who seemed not to have heard that exclamation was Mr. Travers himself, who continued smoothly:
“. . . at the aberration of your mind, you who seemed so superior to common credulities. You are not yourself, not at all, and some day you will admit to me that . . . No, the best thing will be to forget it, as you will soon see yourself. We shall never mention that subject in the future. I am certain you will be only too glad to agree with me on that point.”
“How far ahead are you looking?” asked Mrs. Travers, finding her voice and even the very tone in which she would have addressed him had they been about to part in the hall of their town house. She might have been asking him at what time he expected to be home, while a footman held the door open and the brougham waited in the street.
“Not very far. This can't last much longer.” Mr. Travers made a movement as if to leave her exactly as though he were rather pressed to keep an appointment. “By the by,” he said, checking himself, “I suppose the fellow understands thoroughly that we are wealthy. He could hardly doubt that.”
“It's the last thought that would enter his head,” said Mrs. Travers.
“Oh, yes, just so,” Mr. Travers allowed a little impatience to pierce under his casual manner. “But I don't mind telling you that I have had enough of this. I am prepared to make—ah!—to make concessions. A large pecuniary sacrifice. Only the whole position is so absurd! He might conceivably doubt my good faith. Wouldn't it be just as well if you, with your particular influence, would hint to him that with me he would have nothing to fear? I am a man of my word.”
“That is the first thing he would naturally think of any man,” said Mrs. Travers.
“Will your eyes never be opened?” Mr. Travers began, irritably, then gave it up. “Well, so much the better then. I give you a free hand.”
“What made you change your attitude like this?” asked Mrs. Travers, suspiciously.
“My regard for you,” he answered without hesitation.
“I intended to join you in your captivity. I was just trying to persuade him. . . .”
“I forbid you absolutely,” whispered Mr. Travers, forcibly. “I am glad to get away. I don't want to see you again till your craze is over.”
She was confounded by his secret vehemence. But instantly succeeding his fierce whisper came a short, inane society laugh and a much louder, “Not that I attach any importance . . .”
He sprang away, as it were, from his wife, and as he went over the gangway waved his hand to her amiably.
Lighted dimly by the lantern on the roof of the deckhouse Mrs. Travers remained very still with lowered head and an aspect of profound meditation. It lasted but an instant before she moved off and brushing against Lingard passed on with downcast eyes to her deck cabin. Lingard heard the door shut. He waited awhile, made a movement toward the gangway but checked himself and followed Mrs. Travers into her cabin.
It was pitch dark in there. He could see absolutely nothing and was oppressed by the profound stillness unstirred even by the sound of breathing.
“I am going on shore,” he began, breaking the black and deathlike silence enclosing him and the invisible woman. “I wanted to say good-bye.”
“You are going on shore,” repeated Mrs. Travers. Her voice was emotionless, blank, unringing.
“Yes, for a few hours, or for life,” Lingard said in measured tones. “I may have to die with them or to die maybe for others. For you, if I only knew how to manage it, I would want to live. I am telling you this because it is dark. If there had been a light in here I wouldn't have come in.”
“I wish you had not,” uttered the same unringing woman's voice. “You are always coming to me with those lives and those deaths in your hand.”
“Yes, it's too much for you,” was Lingard's undertoned comment. “You could be no other than true. And you are innocent! Don't wish me life, but wish me luck, for you are innocent—and you will have to take your chance.”
“All luck to you, King Tom,” he heard her say in the darkness in which he seemed now to perceive the gleam of her hair. “I will take my chance. And try not to come near me again for I am weary of you.”
“I can well believe it,” murmured Lingard, and stepped out of the cabin, shutting the door after him gently. For half a minute, perhaps, the stillness continued, and then suddenly the chair fell over in the darkness. Next moment Mrs. Travers' head appeared in the light of the lamp left on the roof of the deckhouse. Her bare arms grasped the door posts.
“Wait a moment,” she said, loudly, into the shadows of the deck. She heard no footsteps, saw nothing moving except the vanishing white shape of the late Captain H. C. Jorgenson, who was indifferent to the life of men. “Wait, King Tom!” she insisted, raising her voice; then, “I didn't mean it. Don't believe me!” she cried, recklessly.
For the second time that night a woman's voice startled the hearts of men on board the Emma. All except the heart of old Jorgenson. The Malays in the boat looked up from their thwarts. D'Alcacer, sitting in the stern sheets beside Lingard, felt a sinking of his heart.
“What's this?” he exclaimed. “I heard your name on deck. You are wanted, I think.”
“Shove off,” ordered Lingard, inflexibly, without even looking at d'Alcacer. Mr. Travers was the only one who didn't seem to be aware of anything. A long time after the boat left the Emma's side he leaned toward d'Alcacer.
“I have a most extraordinary feeling,” he said in a cautious undertone. “I seem to be in the air—I don't know. Are we on the water, d'Alcacer? Are you quite sure? But of course, we are on the water.”
“Yes,” said d'Alcacer, in the same tone. “Crossing the Styx—perhaps.” He heard Mr. Travers utter an unmoved “Very likely,” which he did not expect. Lingard, his hand on the tiller, sat like a man of stone.
“Then your point of view has changed,” whispered d'Alcacer.
“I told my wife to make an offer,” went on the earnest whisper of the other man. “A sum of money. But to tell you the truth I don't believe very much in its success.”
D'Alcacer made no answer and only wondered whether he didn't like better Mr. Travers' other, unreasonable mood. There was no denying the fact that Mr. Travers was a troubling person. Now he suddenly gripped d'Alcacer's fore-arm and added under his breath: “I doubt everything. I doubt whether the offer will ever be made.”
All this was not very impressive. There was something pitiful in it: whisper, grip, shudder, as of a child frightened in the dark. But the emotion was deep. Once more that evening, but this time aroused by the husband's distress, d'Alcacer's wonder approached the borders of awe.