Waking up suddenly, Lena looked, without raising her head from the pillow, at the room in which she was alone. She got up quickly, as if to counteract the awful sinking of her heart by the vigorous use of her limbs. But this sinking was only momentary. Mistress of herself from pride, from love, from necessity, and also because of a woman's vanity in self-sacrifice, she met Heyst, returning from the strangers' bungalow, with a clear glance and a smile.
The smile he managed to answer, but, noticing that he avoided her eyes, she composed her lips and lowered her gaze. For the same reason she hastened to speak to him in a tone of indifference, which she put on without effort, as if she had grown adept in duplicity since sunrise.
“You have been over there again?”
“I have. I thought—but you had better know first that we have lost Wang for good.”
She repeated “For good?” as if she had not understood.
“For good or evil—I shouldn't know which if you were to ask me. He has dismissed himself. He's gone.”
“You expected him to go, though, didn't you?”
Heyst sat down on the other side of the table.
“Yes. I expected it as soon as I discovered that he had annexed my revolver. He says he hasn't taken it. That's untrue of course. A Chinaman would not see the sense of confessing under any circumstances. To deny any charge is a principle of right conduct; but he hardly expected to be believed. He was a little enigmatic at the last, Lena. He startled me.”
Heyst paused. The girl seemed absorbed in her own thoughts.
“He startled me,” repeated Heyst. She noted the anxiety in his tone, and turned her head slightly to look at him across the table.
“It must have been something—to startle you,” she said. In the depth of her parted lips, like a ripe pomegranate, there was a gleam of white teeth.
“It was only a single word—and some of his gestures. He had been making a good deal of noise. I wonder we didn't wake you up. How soundly you can sleep! I say, do you feel all right now?”
“As fresh as can be,” she said, treating him to another deep gleam of a smile. “I heard no noise, and I'm glad of it. The way he talks in his harsh voice frightens me. I don't like all these foreign people.”
“It was just before he went away—bolted out, I should say. He nodded and pointed at the curtain to our room. He knew you were there, of course. He seemed to think—he seemed to try to give me to understand that you were in special—well, danger. You know how he talks.”
She said nothing; she made no sound, only the faint tinge of colour ebbed out of her cheek.
“Yes,” Heyst went on. “He seemed to try to warn me. That must have been it. Did he imagine I had forgotten your existence? The only word he said was 'two'. It sounded so, at least. Yes, 'two'—and that he didn't like it.”
“What does that mean?” she whispered.
“We know what the word two means, don't we, Lena? We are two. Never were such a lonely two out of the world, my dear! He might have tried to remind me that he himself has a woman to look after. Why are you so pale, Lena?”
“Am I pale?” she asked negligently.
“You are.” Heyst was really anxious.
“Well, it isn't from fright,” she protested truthfully.
Indeed, what she felt was a sort of horror which left her absolutely in the full possession of all her faculties; more difficult to bear, perhaps, for that reason, but not paralysing to her fortitude.
Heyst in his turn smiled at her.
“I really don't know that there is any reason to be frightened.”
“I mean I am not frightened for myself.”
“I believe you are very plucky,” he said. The colour had returned to her face. “I” continued Heyst, “am so rebellious to outward impressions that I can't say that much about myself. I don't react with sufficient distinctness.” He changed his tone. “You know I went to see those men first thing this morning.”
“I know. Be careful!” she murmured.
“I wonder how one can be careful! I had a long talk with—but I don't believe you have seen them. One of them is a fantastically thin, long person, apparently ailing; I shouldn't wonder if he were really so. He makes rather a point of it in a mysterious manner. I imagine he must have suffered from tropical fevers, but not so much as he tries to make out. He's what people would call a gentleman. He seemed on the point of volunteering a tale of his adventures—for which I didn't ask him—but remarked that it was a long story; some other time, perhaps.
“'I suppose you would like to know who I am?' he asked me.
“I told him I would leave it to him, in a tone which, between gentlemen, could have left no doubt in his mind. He raised himself on his elbow—he was lying down on the camp-bed—and said:
“'I am he who is—'”
Lena seemed not to be listening; but when Heyst paused, she turned her head quickly to him. He took it for a movement of inquiry, but in this he was wrong. A great vagueness enveloped her impressions, but all her energy was concentrated on the struggle that she wanted to take upon herself, in a great exaltation of love and self-sacrifice, which is woman's sublime faculty; altogether on herself, every bit of it, leaving him nothing, not even the knowledge of what she did, if that were possible. She would have liked to lock him up by some stratagem. Had she known of some means to put him to sleep for days she would have used incantations or philtres without misgivings. He seemed to her too good for such contacts, and not sufficiently equipped. This last feeling had nothing to do with the material fact of the revolver being stolen. She could hardly appreciate that fact at its full value.
Observing her eyes fixed and as if sightless—for the concentration on her purpose took all expression out of them—Heyst imagined it to be the effect of a great mental effort.
“No use asking me what he meant, Lena; I don't know, and I did not ask him. The gentleman, as I have told you before, seems devoted to mystification. I said nothing, and he laid down his head again on the bundle of rugs he uses for a pillow. He affects a state of great weakness, but I suspect that he's perfectly capable of leaping to his feet if he likes. Having been ejected, he said, from his proper social sphere because he had refused to conform to certain usual conventions, he was a rebel now, and was coming and going up and down the earth. As I really did not want to listen to all this nonsense, I told him that I had heard that sort of story about somebody else before. His grin is really ghastly. He confessed that I was very far from the sort of man he expected to meet. Then he said:
“'As to me, I am no blacker than the gentleman you are thinking of, and I have neither more nor less determination.'”
Heyst looked across the table at Lena. Propped on her elbows, and holding her head in both hands, she moved it a little with an air of understanding.
“Nothing could be plainer, eh?” said Heyst grimly. “Unless, indeed, this is his idea of a pleasant joke; for, when he finished speaking, he burst into a loud long laugh. I didn't join him!”
“I wish you had,” she breathed out.
“I didn't join him. It did not occur to me. I am not much of a diplomatist. It would probably have been wise, for, indeed, I believe he had said more than he meant to say, and was trying to take it back by this affected jocularity. Yet when one thinks of it, diplomacy without force in the background is but a rotten reed to lean upon. And I don't know whether I could have done it if I had thought of it. I don't know. It would have been against the grain. Could I have done it? I have lived too long within myself, watching the mere shadows and shades of life. To deceive a man on some issue which could be decided quicker, by his destruction while one is disarmed, helpless, without even the power to run away—no! That seems to me too degrading. And yet I have you here. I have your very existence in my keeping. What do you say, Lena? Would I be capable of throwing you to the lions to save my dignity?”
She got up, walked quickly round the table, posed herself on his knees lightly, throwing one arm round his neck, and whispered in his ear:
“You may if you like. And may be that's the only way I would consent to leave you. For something like that. If it were something no bigger than your little finger.”
She gave him a light kiss on the lips and was gone before he could detain her. She regained her seat and propped her elbows again on the table. It was hard to believe that she had moved from the spot at all. The fleeting weight of her body on his knees, the hug round his neck, the whisper in his ear, the kiss on his lips, might have been the unsubstantial sensations of a dream invading the reality of waking life; a sort of charming mirage in the barren aridity of his thoughts. He hesitated to speak till she said, businesslike:
“Well. And what then?”
Heyst gave a start.
“Oh, yes. I didn't join him. I let him have his laugh out by himself. He was shaking all over, like a merry skeleton, under a cotton sheet he was covered with—I believe in order to conceal the revolver that he had in his right hand. I didn't see it, but I have a distinct impression it was there in his fist. As he had not been looking at me for some time, but staring into a certain part of the room, I turned my head and saw a hairy, wild sort of creature which they take about with them, squatting on its heels in the angle of the walls behind me. He wasn't there when I came in. I didn't like the notion of that watchful monster behind my back. If I had been less at their mercy, I should certainly have changed my position. As things are now, to move would have been a mere weakness. So I remained where I was. The gentleman on the bed said he could assure me of one thing; and that was that his presence here was no more morally reprehensible than mine.
“'We pursue the same ends,' he said, 'only perhaps I pursue them with more openness than you—with more simplicity.'
“That's what he said,” Heyst went on, after looking at Lena in a sort of inquiring silence. “I asked him if he knew beforehand that I was living here; but he only gave me a ghastly grin. I didn't press him for an answer, Lena. I thought I had better not.”
On her smooth forehead a ray of light always seemed to rest. Her loose hair, parted in the middle, covered the hands sustaining her head. She seemed spellbound by the interest of the narrative. Heyst did not pause long. He managed to continue his relation smoothly enough, beginning afresh with a piece of comment.
“He would have lied impudently—and I detest being told a lie. It makes me uncomfortable. It's pretty clear that I am not fitted for the affairs of the wide world. But I did not want him to think that I accepted his presence too meekly, so I said that his comings or goings on the earth were none of my business, of course, except that I had a natural curiosity to know when he would find it convenient to resume them.
“He asked me to look at the state he was in. Had I been all alone here, as they think I am, I should have laughed at him. But not being alone—I say, Lena, you are sure you haven't shown yourself where you could be seen?”
“Certain,” she said promptly.
He looked relieved.
“You understand, Lena, that when I ask you to keep so strictly out of sight, it is because you are not for them to look at—to talk about. My poor Lena! I can't help that feeling. Do you understand it?”
She moved her head slightly in a manner that was neither affirmative nor negative.
“People will have to see me some day,” she said.
“I wonder how long it will be possible for you to keep out of sight?” murmured Heyst thoughtfully. He bent over the table. “Let me finish telling you. I asked him point blank what it was he wanted with me; he appeared extremely unwilling to come to the point. It was not really so pressing as all that, he said. His secretary, who was in fact his partner, was not present, having gone down to the wharf to look at their boat. Finally the fellow proposed that he should put off a certain communication he had to make till the day after tomorrow. I agreed; but I also told him that I was not at all anxious to hear it. I had no conception in what way his affairs could concern me.
“'Ah, Mr. Heyst,' he said, 'you and I have much more in common than you think.'”
Heyst struck the table with his fist unexpectedly.
“It was a jeer; I am sure it was!”
He seemed ashamed of this outburst and smiled faintly into the motionless eyes of the girl.
“What could I have done—even if I had had my pockets full of revolvers?”
She made an appreciative sign.
“Killing's a sin, sure enough,” she murmured.
“I went away,” Heyst continued. “I left him there, lying on his side with his eyes shut. When I got back here, I found you looking ill. What was it, Lena? You did give me a scare! Then I had the interview with Wang while you rested. You were sleeping quietly. I sat here to consider all these things calmly, to try to penetrate their inner meaning and their outward bearing. It struck me that the two days we have before us have the character of a sort of truce. The more I thought of it, the more I felt that this was tacitly understood between Jones and myself. It was to our advantage, if anything can be of advantage to people caught so completely unawares as we are. Wang was gone. He, at any rate, had declared himself, but as I did not know what he might take it into his head to do, I thought I had better warn these people that I was no longer responsible for the Chinaman. I did not want Mr. Wang making some move which would precipitate the action against us. Do you see my point of view?”
She made a sign that she did. All her soul was wrapped in her passionate determination, in an exalted belief in herself—in the contemplation of her amazing opportunity to win the certitude, the eternity, of that man's love.
“I never saw two men,” Heyst was saying, “more affected by a piece of information than Jones and his secretary, who was back in the bungalow by then. They had not heard me come up. I told them I was sorry to intrude.
“'Not at all! Not at all,' said Jones.
“The secretary backed away into a corner and watched me like a wary cat. In fact, they both were visibly on their guard.
“'I am come,' I told them, 'to let you know that my servant has deserted—gone off.'
“At first they looked at each other as if they had not understood what I was saying; but very soon they seemed quite concerned.
“'You mean to say your Chink's cleared out?' said Ricardo, coming forward from his corner. 'Like this—all at once? What did he do it for?'
“I said that a Chinaman had always a simple and precise reason for what he did, but that to get such a reason out of him was not so easy. All he told me, I said, was that he 'didn't like'.
“They were extremely disturbed at this. Didn't like what, they wanted to know.
“'The looks of you and your party,' I told Jones.
“'Nonsense!' he cried out, and immediately Ricardo, the short man, struck in.
“'Told you that? What did he take you for, sir—an infant? Or do you take us for kids?—meaning no offence. Come, I bet you will tell us next that you've missed something.'”
“'I didn't mean to tell you anything of the sort,' I said, 'but as a matter of fact it is so.'
“He slapped his thigh.
“'Thought so. What do you think of this trick, governor?'
“Jones made some sort of sign to him, and then that extraordinary cat-faced associate proposed that he and their servant should come out and help me catch or kill the Chink.
“My object, I said, was not to get assistance. I did not intend to chase the Chinaman. I had come only to warn them that he was armed, and that he really objected to their presence on the island. I wanted them to understand that I was not responsible for anything that might happen.
“'Do you mean to tell us,' asked Ricardo, 'that there is a crazy Chink with a six-shooter broke loose on this island, and that you don't care?'
“Strangely enough they did not seem to believe my story. They were exchanging significant looks all the time. Ricardo stole up close to his principal; they had a confabulation together, and then something happened which I did not expect. It's rather awkward, too.
“Since I would not have their assistance to get hold of the Chink and recover my property, the least they could do was to send me their servant. It was Jones who said that, and Ricardo backed up the idea.
“'Yes, yes—let our Pedro cook for all hands in your compound! He isn't so bad as he looks. That's what we will do!'
“He bustled out of the room to the veranda, and let out an ear-splitting whistle for their Pedro. Having heard the brute's answering howl, Ricardo ran back into the room.
“'Yes, Mr. Heyst. This will do capitally, Mr. Heyst. You just direct him to do whatever you are accustomed to have done for you in the way of attendance. See?'
“Lena, I confess to you that I was taken completely by surprise. I had not expected anything of the sort. I don't know what I expected. I am so anxious about you that I can't keep away from these infernal scoundrels. And only two months ago I would not have cared. I would have defied their scoundrelism as much as I have scorned all the other intrusions of life. But now I have you! You stole into my life, and—”
Heyst drew a deep breath. The girl gave him a quick, wide-eyed glance.
“Ah! That's what you are thinking of—that you have me!”
It was impossible to read the thoughts veiled by her steady grey eyes, to penetrate the meaning of her silences, her words, and even her embraces. He used to come out of her very arms with the feeling of a baffled man.
“If I haven't you, if you are not here, then where are you?” cried Heyst. “You understand me very well.”
She shook her head a little. Her red lips, at which he looked now, her lips as fascinating as the voice that came out of them, uttered the words:
“I hear what you say; but what does it mean?”
“It means that I could lie and perhaps cringe for your sake.”
“No! No! Don't you ever do that,” she said in haste, while her eyes glistened suddenly. “You would hate me for it afterwards!”
“Hate you?” repeated Heyst, who had recalled his polite manner. “No! You needn't consider the extremity of the improbable—as yet. But I will confess to you that I—how shall I call it?—that I dissembled. First I dissembled my dismay at the unforeseen result of my idiotic diplomacy. Do you understand, my dear girl?”
It was evident that she did not understand the word. Heyst produced his playful smile, which contrasted oddly with the worried character of his whole expression. His temples seemed to have sunk in, his face looked a little leaner.
“A diplomatic statement, Lena, is a statement of which everything is true, but the sentiment which seems to prompt it. I have never been diplomatic in my relation with mankind—not from regard for its feelings, but from a certain regard for my own. Diplomacy doesn't go well with consistent contempt. I cared little for life and still less for death.”
“Don't talk like that!”
“I dissembled my extreme longing to take these wandering scoundrels by their throats,” he went on. “I have only two hands—I wish I had a hundred to defend you—and there were three throats. By that time their Pedro was in the room too. Had he seen me engaged with their two throats, he would have been at mine like a fierce dog, or any other savage and faithful brute. I had no difficulty in dissembling my longing for the vulgar, stupid, and hopeless argument of fight. I remarked that I really did not want a servant. I couldn't think of depriving them of their man's services; but they would not hear me. They had made up their minds.
“'We shall send him over at once,' Ricardo said, 'to start cooking dinner for everybody. I hope you won't mind me coming to eat it with you in your bungalow; and we will send the governor's dinner over to him here.'
“I could do nothing but hold my tongue or bring on a quarrel—some manifestation of their dark purpose, which we have no means to resist. Of course, you may remain invisible this evening; but with that atrocious-brute prowling all the time at the back of the house, how long can your presence be concealed from these men?”
Heyst's distress could be felt in his silence. The girl's head, sustained by her hands buried in the thick masses of her hair, had a perfect immobility.
“You are certain you have not been seen so far?” he asked suddenly.
The motionless head spoke.
“How can I be certain? You told me you wanted me to keep out of the way. I kept out of the way. I didn't ask your reason. I thought you didn't want people to know that you had a girl like me about you.”
“What? Ashamed?” cried Heyst.
“It isn't what's right, perhaps—I mean for you—is it?”
Heyst lifted his hands, reproachfully courteous.
“I look upon it as so very much right that I couldn't bear the idea of any other than sympathetic, respectful eyes resting on you. I disliked and mistrusted these fellows from the first. Didn't you understand?”
“Yes; I did keep out of sight,” she said.
A silence fell. At last Heyst stirred slightly.
“All this is of very little importance now,” he said with a sigh. “This is a question of something infinitely worse than mere looks and thoughts, however base and contemptible. As I have told you, I met Ricardo's suggestions by silence. As I was turning away he said:
“'If you happen to have the key of that store-room of yours on you, Mr. Heyst, you may just as well let me have it; I will give it to our Pedro.'
“I had it on me, and I tendered it to him without speaking. The hairy creature was at the door by then, and caught the key, which Ricardo threw to him, better than any trained ape could have done. I came away. All the time I had been thinking anxiously of you, whom I had left asleep, alone here, and apparently ill.”
Heyst interrupted himself, with a listening turn of his head. He had heard the faint sound of sticks being snapped in the compound. He rose and crossed the room to look out of the back door.
“And here the creature is,” he said, returning to the table. “Here he is, already attending to the fire. Oh, my dear Lena!”
She had followed him with her eyes. She watched him go out on the front veranda cautiously. He lowered stealthily a couple of screens that hung between the column, and remained outside very still, as if interested by something on the open ground. Meantime she had risen in her turn, to take a peep into the compound. Heyst, glancing over his shoulder, saw her returning to her seat. He beckoned to her, and she continued to move, crossing the shady room, pure and bright in her white dress, her hair loose, with something of a sleep-walker in her unhurried motion, in her extended hand, in the sightless effect of her grey eyes luminous in the half-light. He had never seen such an expression in her face before. It had dreaminess in it, intense attention, and something like sternness. Arrested in the doorway by Heyst's extended arm, she seemed to wake up, flushed faintly—and this flush, passing off, carried away with it the strange transfiguring mood. With a courageous gesture she pushed back the heavy masses of her hair. The light clung to her forehead. Her delicate nostrils quivered. Heyst seized her arm and whispered excitedly:
“Slip out here, quickly! The screens will conceal you. Only you must mind the stair-space. They are actually out—I mean the other two. You had better see them before you—”
She made a barely perceptible movement of recoil, checked at once, and stood still. Heyst released her arm.
“Yes, perhaps I had better,” she said with unnatural deliberation, and stepped out on the veranda to stand close by his side.
Together, one on each side of the screen, they peeped between the edge of the canvas and the veranda-post entwined with creepers. A great heat ascended from the sun-smitten ground, in an ever-rising wave, as if from some secret store of earth's fiery heart; for the sky was growing cooler already, and the sun had declined sufficiently for the shadows of Mr. Jones and his henchman to be projected towards the bungalow side by side—one infinitely slender, the other short and broad.
The two visitors stood still and gazed. To keep up the fiction of his invalidism, Mr. Jones, the gentleman, leaned on the arm of Ricardo, the secretary, the top of whose hat just came up to his governor's shoulder.
“Do you see them?” Heyst whispered into the girl's ear. “Here they are, the envoys of the outer world. Here they are before you—evil intelligence, instinctive savagery, arm in arm. The brute force is at the back. A trio of fitting envoys perhaps—but what about the welcome? Suppose I were armed, could I shoot these two down where they stand? Could I?”
Without moving her head, the girl felt for Heyst's hand, pressed it and thereafter did not let it go. He continued, bitterly playful:
“I don't know. I don't think so. There is a strain in me which lays me under an insensate obligation to avoid even the appearance of murder. I have never pulled a trigger or lifted my hand on a man, even in self-defence.”
The suddenly tightened grip of her hand checked him.
“They are making a move,” she murmured.
“Can they be thinking of coming here?” Heyst wondered anxiously.
“No, they aren't coming this way,” she said; and there was another pause. “They are going back to their house,” she reported finally.
After watching them a little longer, she let go Heyst's hand and moved away from the screen. He followed her into the room.
“You have seen them now,” he began. “Think what it was to me to see them land in the dusk, fantasms from the sea—apparitions, chimeras! And they persist. That's the worst of it—they persist. They have no right to be—but they are. They ought to have aroused my fury. But I have refined everything away by this time—anger, indignation, scorn itself. Nothing's left but disgust. Since you have told me of that abominable calumny, it has become immense—it extends even to myself.” He looked up at her.
“But luckily I have you. And if only Wang had not carried off that miserable revolver—yes, Lena, here we are, we two!”
She put both her hands on his shoulders and looked straight into his eyes. He returned her penetrating gaze. It baffled him. He could not pierce the grey veil of her eyes; but the sadness of her voice thrilled him profoundly.
“You are not reproaching me?” she asked slowly.
“Reproach? What a word between us! It could only be myself—but the mention of Wang has given me an idea. I have been, not exactly cringing, not exactly lying, but still dissembling. You have been hiding yourself, to please me, but still you have been hiding. All this is very dignified. Why shouldn't we try begging now? A noble art? Yes. Lena, we must go out together. I couldn't think of leaving you alone, and I must—yes, I must speak to Wang. We shall go and seek that man, who knows what he wants and how to secure what he wants. We will go at once!”
“Wait till I put my hair up,” she agreed instantly, and vanished behind the curtain.
When the curtain had fallen behind her, she turned her head back with an expression of infinite and tender concern for him—for him whom she could never hope to understand, and whom she was afraid she could never satisfy, as if her passion were of a hopelessly lower quality, unable to appease some exalted and delicate desire of his superior soul. In a couple of minutes she reappeared. They left the house by the door of the compound, and passed within three feet of the thunderstruck Pedro, without even looking in his direction. He rose from stooping over a fire of sticks, and, balancing himself clumsily, uncovered his enormous fangs in gaping astonishment. Then suddenly he set off rolling on his bandy legs to impart to his masters the astonishing discovery of a woman.
As luck would have it, Ricardo was lounging alone on the veranda of the former counting-house. He scented some new development at once, and ran down to meet the trotting, bear-like figure. The deep, growling noises it made, though they had only a very remote resemblance to the Spanish language, or indeed to any sort of human speech, were from long practice quite intelligible to Mr. Jones's secretary. Ricardo was rather surprised. He had imagined that the girl would continue to keep out of sight. That line apparently was given up. He did not mistrust her. How could he? Indeed, he could not think of her existence calmly.
He tried to keep her image out of his mind so that he should be able to use its powers with some approach to that coolness which the complex nature of the situation demanded from him, both for his own sake and as the faithful follower of plain Mr. Jones, gentleman.
He collected his wits and thought. This was a change of policy, probably on the part of Heyst. If so, what could it mean? A deep fellow! Unless it was her doing; in which case—h'm—all right. Must be. She would know what she was doing. Before him Pedro, lifting his feet alternately, swayed to and fro sideways—his usual attitude of expectation. His little red eyes, lost in the mass of hair, were motionless. Ricardo stared into them with calculated contempt and said in a rough, angry voice:
“Woman! Of course there is. We know that without you!” He gave the tame monster a push. “Git! Vamos! Waddle! Get back and cook the dinner. Which way did they go, then?”
Pedro extended a huge, hairy forearm to show the direction, and went off on his bandy legs. Advancing a few steps, Ricardo was just in time to see, above some bushes, two white helmets moving side by side in the clearing. They disappeared. Now that he had managed to keep Pedro from informing the governor that there was a woman on the island, he could indulge in speculation as to the movements of these people. His attitude towards Mr. Jones had undergone a spiritual change, of which he himself was not yet fully aware.
That morning, before tiffin, after his escape from the Heyst bungalow, completed in such an inspiring way by the recovery of the slipper, Ricardo had made his way to their allotted house, reeling as he ran, his head in a whirl. He was wildly excited by visions of inconceivable promise. He waited to compose himself before he dared to meet the governor. On entering the room, he found Mr. Jones sitting on the camp bedstead like a tailor on his board, cross-legged, his long back against the wall.
“I say, sir. You aren't going to tell me you are bored?”
“Bored! No! Where the devil have you been all this time?”
“Observing—watching—nosing around. What else? I knew you had company. Have you talked freely, sir?”
“Yes, I have,” muttered Mr. Jones.
“Not downright plain, sir?”
“No. I wished you had been here. You loaf all the morning, and now you come in out of breath. What's the matter?”
“I haven't been wasting my time out there,” said Ricardo. “Nothing's the matter. I—I—might have hurried a bit.” He was in truth still panting; only it was not with running, but with the tumult of thoughts and sensations long repressed, which had been set free by the adventure of the morning. He was almost distracted by them now. He forgot himself in the maze of possibilities threatening and inspiring. “And so you had a long talk?” he said, to gain time.
“Confound you! The sun hasn't affected your head, has it? Why are you staring at me like a basilisk?”
“Beg pardon, sir. Wasn't aware I stared,” Ricardo apologized good-humouredly. “The sun might well affect a thicker skull than mine. It blazes. Phew! What do you think a fellow is, sir—a salamander?”
“You ought to have been here,” observed Mr. Jones.
“Did the beast give any signs of wanting to prance?” asked Ricardo quickly, with absolutely genuine anxiety. “It wouldn't do, sir. You must play him easy for at least a couple of days, sir. I have a plan. I have a notion that I can find out a lot in a couple of days.”
“You have? In what way?”
“Why, by watching,” Ricardo answered slowly.
Mr. Jones grunted.
“Nothing new, that. Watch, eh? Why not pray a little, too?”
“Ha, ha, ha! That's a good one,” burst out the secretary, fixing Mr. Jones with mirthless eyes.
The latter dropped the subject indolently.
“Oh, you may be certain of at least two days,” he said.
Ricardo recovered himself. His eyes gleamed voluptuously.
“We'll pull this off yet—clean—whole—right through, if you will only trust me, sir.”
“I am trusting you right enough,” said Mr. Jones. “It's your interest, too.”
And, indeed, Ricardo was truthful enough in his statement. He did absolutely believe in success now. But he couldn't tell his governor that he had intelligences in the enemy's camp. It wouldn't do to tell him of the girl. Devil only knew what he would do if he learned there was a woman about. And how could he begin to tell of it? He couldn't confess his sudden escapade.
“We'll pull it off, sir,” he said, with perfectly acted cheerfulness. He experienced gusts of awful joy expanding in his heart and hot like a fanned flame.
“We must,” pronounced Mr. Jones. “This thing, Martin, is not like our other tries. I have a peculiar feeling about this. It's a different thing. It's a sort of test.”
Ricardo was impressed by the governor's manner; for the first time a hint of passion could be detected in him. But also a word he used, the word “test,” had struck him as particularly significant somehow. It was the last word uttered during that morning's conversation. Immediately afterwards Ricardo went out of the room. It was impossible for him to keep still. An elation in which an extraordinary softness mingled with savage triumph would not allow it. It prevented his thinking, also. He walked up and down the veranda far into the afternoon, eyeing the other bungalow at every turn. It gave no sign of being inhabited. Once or twice he stopped dead short and looked down at his left slipper. Each time he chuckled audibly. His restlessness kept on increasing till at last it frightened him. He caught hold of the balustrade of the veranda and stood still, smiling not at his thought but at the strong sense of life within him. He abandoned himself to it carelessly, even recklessly. He cared for no one, friend or enemy. At that moment Mr. Jones called him by name from within. A shadow fell on the secretary's face.
“Here, sir,” he answered; but it was a moment before he could make up his mind to go in.
He found the governor on his feet. Mr. Jones was tired of lying down when there was no necessity for it. His slender form, gliding about the room, came to a standstill.
“I've been thinking, Martin, of something you suggested. At the time it did not strike me as practical; but on reflection it seems to me that to propose a game is as good a way as any to let him understand that the time has come to disgorge. It's less—how should I say?—vulgar. He will know what it means. It's not a bad form to give to the business—which in itself is crude, Martin, crude.”
“Want to spare his feelings?” jeered the secretary in such a bitter tone that Mr. Jones was really surprised.
“Why, it was your own notion, confound you!”
“Who says it wasn't?” retorted Ricardo sulkily. “But I am fairly sick of this crawling. No! No! Get the exact bearings of his swag and then a rip up. That's plenty good enough for him.”
His passions being thoroughly aroused, a thirst for blood was allied in him with a thirst for tenderness—yes, tenderness. A sort of anxious, melting sensation pervaded and softened his heart when he thought of that girl—one of his own sort. And at the same time jealousy started gnawing at his breast as the image of Heyst intruded itself on his fierce anticipation of bliss.
“The crudeness of your ferocity is positively gross, Martin,” Mr. Jones said disdainfully. “You don't even understand my purpose. I mean to have some sport out of him. Just try to imagine the atmosphere of the game—the fellow handling the cards—the agonizing mockery of it! Oh, I shall appreciate this greatly. Yes, let him lose his money instead of being forced to hand it over. You, of course, would shoot him at once, but I shall enjoy the refinement and the jest of it. He's a man of the best society. I've been hounded out of my sphere by people very much like that fellow. How enraged and humiliated he will be! I promise myself some exquisite moments while watching his play.”
“Ay, and suppose he suddenly starts prancing. He may not appreciate the fun.”
“I mean you to be present,” Mr. Jones remarked calmly.
“Well, as long as I am free to plug him or rip him up whenever I think the time has come, you are welcome to your bit of sport, sir. I shan't spoil it.”
It was at this precise moment of their conversation that Heyst had intruded on Mr. Jones and his secretary with his warning about Wang, as he had related to Lena. When he left them, the two looked at each other in wondering silence. My Jones was the first to break it.
“I say, Martin!”
“Yes, sir.”
“What does this mean?”
“It's some move. Blame me if I can understand.”
“Too deep for you?” Mr. Jones inquired dryly.
“It's nothing but some of his infernal impudence,” growled the secretary. “You don't believe all that about the Chink, do you, sir? 'Tain't true.”
“It isn't necessary for it to be true to have a meaning for us. It's the why of his coming to tell us this tale that's important.”
“Do you think he made it up to frighten us?” asked Ricardo.
Mr. Jones scowled at him thoughtfully.
“The man looked worried,” he muttered, as if to himself. “Suppose that Chinaman has really stolen his money! The man looked very worried.”
“Nothing but his artfulness, sir,” protested Ricardo earnestly, for the idea was too disconcerting to entertain. “Is it likely that he would have trusted a Chink with enough knowledge to make it possible?” he argued warmly. “Why, it's the very thing that he would keep close about. There's something else there. Ay, but what?”
“Ha, ha, ha!” Mr. Jones let out a ghostly, squeaky laugh. “I've never been placed in such a ridiculous position before,” he went on, with a sepulchral equanimity of tone. “It's you, Martin, who dragged me into it. However, it's my own fault too. I ought to—but I was really too bored to use my brain, and yours is not to be trusted. You are a hothead!”
A blasphemous exclamation of grief escaped from Ricardo. Not to be trusted! Hothead! He was almost tearful.
“Haven't I heard you, sir, saying more than twenty times since we got fired out from Manila that we should want a lot of capital to work the East Coast with? You were always telling me that to prime properly all them officials and Portuguese scallywags we should have to lose heavily at first. Weren't you always worrying about some means of getting hold of a good lot of cash? It wasn't to be got hold of by allowing yourself to become bored in that rotten Dutch town and playing a two-penny game with confounded beggarly bank clerks and such like. Well, I've brought you here, where there is cash to be got—and a big lot, to a moral,” he added through his set teeth.
Silence fell. Each of them was staring into a different corner of the room. Suddenly, with a slight stamp of his foot, Mr. Jones made for the door. Ricardo caught him up outside.
“Put an arm through mine, sir,” he begged him gently but firmly. “No use giving the game away. An invalid may well come out for a breath of fresh air after the sun's gone down a bit. That's it, sir. But where do you want to go? Why did you come out, sir?”
Mr. Jones stopped short.
“I hardly know myself,” he confessed in a hollow mutter, staring intently at the Number One bungalow. “It's quite irrational,” he declared in a still lower tone.
“Better go in, sir,” suggested Ricardo. “What's that? Those screens weren't down before. He's spying from behind them now, I bet—the dodging, artful, plotting beast!”
“Why not go over there and see if we can't get to the bottom of this game?” was the unexpected proposal uttered by Mr. Jones. “He will have to talk to us.”
Ricardo repressed a start of dismay, but for a moment could not speak. He only pressed the governor's hand to his side instinctively.
“No, sir. What could you say? Do you expect to get to the bottom of his lies? How could you make him talk? It isn't time yet to come to grips with that gent. You don't think I would hang back, do you? His Chink, of course, I'll shoot like a dog the moment I catch sight of him; but as to that Mr. Blasted Heyst, the time isn't yet. My head's cooler just now than yours. Let's go in again. Why, we are exposed here. Suppose he took it into his head to let off a gun on us! He's an unaccountable, 'yporcritical skunk.”
Allowing himself to be persuaded, Mr. Jones returned to his seclusion. The secretary, however, remained on the veranda—for the purpose, he said, of seeing whether that Chink wasn't sneaking around; in which case he proposed to take a long shot at the galoot and chance the consequences. His real reason was that he wanted to be alone, away from the governor's deep-sunk eyes. He felt a sentimental desire to indulge his fancies in solitude. A great change had come over Mr. Ricardo since that morning. A whole side of him which from prudence, from necessity, from loyalty, had been kept dormant, was aroused now, colouring his thoughts and disturbing his mental poise by the vision of such staggering consequences as, for instance, the possibility of an active conflict with the governor. The appearance of the monstrous Pedro with his news drew Ricardo out of a feeling of dreaminess wrapped up in a sense of impending trouble. A woman? Yes, there was one; and it made all the difference. After driving away Pedro, and watching the white helmets of Heyst and Lena vanishing among the bushes he stood lost in meditation.
“Where could they be off to like this?” he mentally asked himself.
The answer found by his speculative faculties on their utmost stretch was—to meet that Chink. For in the desertion of Wang Ricardo did not believe. It was a lying yarn, the organic part of a dangerous plot. Heyst had gone to combine some fresh move. But then Ricardo felt sure that the girl was with him—the girl full of pluck, full of sense, full of understanding; an ally of his own kind!
He went indoors briskly. Mr. Jones had resumed his cross-legged pose at the head of the bed, with his back against the wall.
“Anything new?”
“No, sir.”
Ricardo walked about the room as if he had no care in the world. He hummed snatches of song. Mr. Jones raised his waspish eyebrows, at the sound. The secretary got down on his knees before an old leather trunk, and, rummaging in there, brought out a small looking-glass. He fell to examining his physiognomy in it with silent absorption.
“I think I'll shave,” he decided, getting up.
He gave a sidelong glance to the governor, and repeated it several times during the operation, which did not take long, and even afterwards, when after putting away the implements, he resumed his walking, humming more snatches of unknown songs. Mr. Jones preserved a complete immobility, his thin lips compressed, his eyes veiled. His face was like a carving.
“So you would like to try your hand at cards with that skunk, sir?” said Ricardo, stopping suddenly and rubbing his hands.
Mr. Jones gave no sign of having heard anything.
“Well, why not? Why shouldn't he have the experience? You remember in that Mexican town—what's its name?—the robber fellow they caught in the mountains and condemned to be shot? He played cards half the night with the jailer and the sheriff. Well, this fellow is condemned, too. He must give you your game. Hang it all, a gentleman ought to have some little relaxation! And you have been uncommonly patient, sir.”
“You are uncommonly volatile all of a sudden,” Mr. Jones remarked in a bored voice. “What's come to you?”
The secretary hummed for a while, and then said:
“I'll try to get him over here for you tonight, after dinner. If I ain't here myself, don't you worry, sir. I shall be doing a bit of nosing around—see?”
“I see,” sneered Mr. Jones languidly. “But what do you expect to see in the dark?”
Ricardo made no answer, and after another turn or two slipped out of the room. He no longer felt comfortable alone with the governor.