his chest started heaving convulsively as if he were wrestling or
running a race; his body began to sway gently back and forth. The
self-restraint was at an end: his psychology must have its way. The
instinct for the feral spring could no longer be denied. Ravish or
kill--it was all one to him, as long as by the act he liberated the
suffering soul of savagery repressed for so long. After a quick glance
over his shoulder, which hunters of big game tell us no lion or tiger
omits to give before charging home, Ricardo charged, head down, straight
at the curtain. The stuff, tossed up violently by his rush, settled
itself with a slow, floating descent into vertical folds, motionless,
without a shudder even, in the still, warm air.
CHAPTER TWO
The clock--which once upon a time had measured the hours of philosophic
meditation--could not have ticked away more than five seconds when Wang
materialized within the living-room. His concern primarily was with the
delayed breakfast, but at once his slanting eyes became immovably fixed
upon the unstirring curtain. For it was behind it that he had located
the strange, deadened scuffling sounds which filled the empty room. The
slanting eyes of his race could not achieve a round, amazed stare, but
they remained still, dead still, and his impassive yellow face grew all
at once careworn and lean with the sudden strain of intense, doubtful,
frightened watchfulness. Contrary impulses swayed his body, rooted to
the floor-mats. He even went so far as to extend his hand towards the
curtain. He could not reach it, and he didn't make the necessary step
forward.
The mysterious struggle was going on with confused thuds of bare feet,
in a mute wrestling match, no human sound, hiss, groan, murmur, or
exclamation coming through the curtain. A chair fell over, not with a
crash but lightly, as if just grazed, and a faint metallic ring of the
tin bath succeeded. Finally the tense silence, as of two adversaries
locked in a deadly grip, was ended by the heavy, dull thump of a soft
body flung against the inner partition of planks. It seemed to shake
the whole bungalow. By that time, walking backward, his eyes, his
very throat, strained with fearful excitement, his extended arm still
pointing at the curtain, Wang had disappeared through the back door.
Once out in the compound, he bolted round the end of the house. Emerging
innocently between the two bungalows he lingered and lounged in the
open, where anybody issuing from any of the dwellings was bound to see
him--a self-possessed Chinaman idling there, with nothing but perhaps an
unserved breakfast on his mind.
It was at this time that Wang made up his mind to give up all connection
with Number One, a man not only disarmed but already half vanquished.
Till that morning he had had doubts as to his course of action, but this
overheard scuffle decided the question. Number One was a doomed man--one
of those beings whom it is unlucky to help. Even as he walked in the
open with a fine air of unconcern, Wang wondered that no sound of any
sort was to be heard inside the house. For all he knew, the white woman
might have been scuffling in there with an evil spirit, which had of
course killed her. For nothing visible came out of the house he watched
out of the slanting corner of his eye. The sunshine and the silence
outside the bungalow reigned undisturbed.
But in the house the silence of the big room would not have struck an
acute ear as perfect. It was troubled by a stir so faint that it could
hardly be called a ghost of whispering from behind the curtain.
Ricardo, feeling his throat with tender care, breathed out admiringly:
“You have fingers like steel. Jimminy! You have muscles like a giant!”
Luckily for Lena, Ricardo's onset had been so sudden--she was winding
her two heavy tresses round her head--that she had no time to lower her
arms. This, which saved them from being pinned to her sides, gave her a
better chance to resist. His spring had nearly thrown her down. Luckily,
again, she was standing so near the wall that, though she was driven
against it headlong, yet the shock was not heavy enough to knock all the
breath out of her body. On the contrary, it helped her first instinctive
attempt to drive her assailant backward.
After the first gasp of a surprise that was really too over-powering for
a cry, she was never in doubt of the nature of her danger. She defended
herself in the full, clear knowledge of it, from the force of instinct
which is the true source of every great display of energy, and with a
determination which could hardly have been expected from a girl who,
cornered in a dim corridor by the red-faced, stammering Schomberg, had
trembled with shame, disgust, and fear; had drooped, terrified, before
mere words spluttered out odiously by a man who had never in his life
laid his big paw on her.
This new enemy's attack was simple, straightforward violence. It was not
the slimy, underhand plotting to deliver her up like a slave, which
had sickened her heart and had made her feel in her loneliness that her
oppressors were too many for her. She was no longer alone in the world
now. She resisted without a moment of faltering, because she was no
longer deprived of moral support; because she was a human being who
counted; because she was no longer defending herself for herself alone;
because of the faith that had been born in her--the faith in the man of
her destiny, and perhaps in the Heaven which had sent him so wonderfully
to cross her path.
She had defended herself principally by maintaining a desperate,
murderous clutch on Ricardo's windpipe, till she felt a sudden
relaxation of the terrific hug in which he stupidly and ineffectually
persisted to hold her. Then with a supreme effort of her arms and of
her suddenly raised knee, she sent him flying against the partition.
The cedar-wood chest stood in the way, and Ricardo, with a thump which
boomed hollow through the whole bungalow, fell on it in a sitting
posture, half strangled, and exhausted not so much by the efforts as by
the emotions of the struggle.
With the recoil of her exerted strength, she too reeled, staggered back,
and sat on the edge of the bed. Out of breath, but calm and unabashed,
she busied herself in readjusting under her arms the brown and yellow
figured Celebes sarong, the tuck of which had come undone during the
fight. Then, folding her bare arms tightly on her breast, she leaned
forward on her crossed legs, determined and without fear.
Ricardo, leaning forward too, his nervous force gone, crestfallen like a
beast of prey that has missed its spring, met her big grey eyes looking
at him--wide open, observing, mysterious--from under the dark arches of
her courageous eyebrows. Their faces were not a foot apart. He ceased
feeling about his aching throat and dropped the palms of his hands
heavily on his knees. He was not looking at her bare shoulders, at her
strong arms; he was looking down at the floor. He had lost one of his
straw slippers. A chair with a white dress on it had been overturned.
These, with splashes of water on the floor out of a brusquely misplaced
sponge-bath, were the only traces of the struggle.
Ricardo swallowed twice consciously, as if to make sure of his throat
before he spoke again:
“All right. I never meant to hurt you--though I am no joker when it
comes to it.”
He pulled up the leg of his pyjamas to exhibit the strapped knife.
She glanced at it without moving her head, and murmured with scornful
bitterness:
“Ah, yes--with that thing stuck in my side. In no other way.”
He shook his head with a shamefaced smile.
“Listen! I am quiet now. Straight--I am. I don't need to explain
why--you know how it is. And I can see, now, this wasn't the way with
you.”
She made no sound. Her still, upward gaze had a patient, mournfulness
which troubled him like a suggestion of an inconceivable depth. He added
thoughtfully:
“You are not going to make a noise about this silly try of mine?”
She moved her head the least bit.
“Jee-miny! You are a wonder--” he murmured earnestly, relieved more than
she could have guessed.
Of course, if she had attempted to run out, he would have stuck the
knife between her shoulders, to stop her screaming; but all the fat
would have been in the fire, the business utterly spoiled, and the rage
of the governor--especially when he learned the cause--boundless. A
woman that does not make a noise after an attempt of that kind has
tacitly condoned the offence. Ricardo had no small vanities. But
clearly, if she would pass it over like this, then he could not be so
utterly repugnant to her. He felt flattered. And she didn't seem afraid
of him either. He already felt almost tender towards the girl--that
plucky, fine girl who had not tried to run screaming from him.
“We shall be friends yet. I don't give you up. Don't think it. Friends
as friends can be!” he whispered confidently. “Jee-miny! You aren't a
tame one. Neither am I. You will find that out before long.”
He could not know that if she had not run out, it was because that
morning, under the stress of growing uneasiness at the presence of the
incomprehensible visitors, Heyst had confessed to her that it was his
revolver he had been looking for in the night; that it was gone, that he
was a disarmed, defenceless man. She had hardly comprehended the meaning
of his confession. Now she understood better what it meant. The effort
of her self-control, her stillness, impressed Ricardo. Suddenly she
spoke:
“What are you after?”
He did not raise his eyes. His hands reposing on his knees, his drooping
head, something reflective in his pose, suggested the weariness of a
simple soul, the fatigue of a mental rather than physical contest. He
answered the direct question by a direct statement, as if he were too
tired to dissemble:
“After the swag.”
The word was strange to her. The veiled ardour of her grey gaze from
under the dark eyebrows never left Ricardo's.
“A swag?” she murmured quietly. “What's that?”
“Why, swag, plunder--what your gentleman has been pinching right and
left for years--the pieces. Don't you know? This!”
Without looking up, he made the motion of counting money into the
palm of his hand. She lowered her eyes slightly to observe this bit
of pantomime, but returned them to his face at once. Then, in a mere
breath:
“How do you know anything about him?” she asked, concealing her puzzled
alarm. “What has it got to do with you?”
“Everything,” was Ricardo's concise answer, in a low, emphatic whisper.
He reflected that this girl was really his best hope. Out of the unfaded
impression of past violence there was growing the sort of sentiment
which prevents a man from being indifferent to a woman he has once held
in his arms--if even against her will--and still more so if she has
pardoned the outrage. It becomes then a sort of bond. He felt positively
the need to confide in her--a subtle trait of masculinity, this almost
physical need of trust which can exist side by side with the most brutal
readiness of suspicion.
“It's a game of grab--see?” he went on, with a new inflection of
intimacy in his murmur. He was looking straight at her now.
“That fat, tame slug of a gin-slinger, Schomberg, put us up to it.”
So strong is the impression of helpless and persecuted misery, that the
girl who had fought down a savage assault without faltering could not
completely repress a shudder at the mere sound of the abhorred name.
Ricardo became more rapid and confidential:
“He wants to pay him off--pay both of you, at that; so he told me. He
was hot after you. He would have given all he had into those hands of
yours that have nearly strangled me. But you couldn't, eh? Nohow--what?”
He paused. “So, rather than--you followed a gentleman?”
He noticed a slight movement of her head and spoke quickly.
“Same here--rather than be a wage-slave. Only these foreigners aren't to
be trusted. You're too good for him. A man that will rob his best
chum?” She raised her head. He went on, well pleased with his progress,
whispering hurriedly: “Yes. I know all about him. So you may guess how
he's likely to treat a woman after a bit!”
He did not know that he was striking terror into her breast now. Still
the grey eyes remained fixed on him unmovably watchful, as if sleepy
under the white forehead. She was beginning to understand. His words
conveyed a definite, dreadful meaning to her mind, which he proceeded to
enlighten further in a convinced murmur.
“You and I are made to understand each other. Born alike, bred alike, I
guess. You are not tame. Same here! You have been chucked out into this
rotten world of 'yporcrits. Same here!”
Her stillness, her appalled stillness, wore to him an air of fascinated
attention. He asked abruptly:
“Where is it?”
She made an effort to breathe out:
“Where's what?”
His tone expressed excited secrecy.
“The swag--plunder--pieces. It's a game of grab. We must have it; but it
isn't easy, and so you will have to lend a hand. Come! is it kept in the
house?”
As often with women, her wits were sharpened by the very terror of the
glimpsed menace. She shook her head negatively.
“No.”
“Sure?”
“Sure,” she said.
“Ay! Thought so. Does your gentleman trust you?”
Again she shook her head.
“Blamed 'yporcrit,” he said feelingly, and then reflected: “He's one of
the tame ones, ain't he?”
“You had better find out for yourself,” she said.
“You trust me. I don't want to die before you and I have made friends.”
This was said with a strange air of feline gallantry. Then, tentatively:
“But he could be brought to trust you, couldn't he?”
“Trust me?” she said, in a tone which bordered on despair, but which he
mistook for derision.
“Stand in with us,” he urged. “Give the chuck to all this blamed
'yporcrisy. Perhaps, without being trusted, you have managed to find out
something already, eh?”
“Perhaps I have,” she uttered with lips that seemed to her to be
freezing fast.
Ricardo now looked at her calm face with something like respect. He was
even a little awed by her stillness, by her economy of words. Womanlike,
she felt the effect she had produced, the effect of knowing much and of
keeping all her knowledge in reserve. So far, somehow, this had come,
about of itself. Thus encouraged, directed in the way of duplicity, the
refuge of the weak, she made a heroically conscious effort and forced
her stiff, cold lips into a smile.
Duplicity--the refuge of the weak and the cowardly, but of the disarmed,
too! Nothing stood between the enchanted dream of her existence and
a cruel catastrophe but her duplicity. It seemed to her that the man
sitting there before her was an unavoidable presence, which had attended
all her life. He was the embodied evil of the world. She was not ashamed
of her duplicity. With a woman's frank courage, as soon as she saw
that opening she threw herself into it without reserve, with only one
doubt--that of her own strength. She was appalled by the situation; but
already all her aroused femininity, understanding that whether Heyst
loved her or not she loved him, and feeling that she had brought this on
his head, faced the danger with a passionate desire to defend her own.
CHAPTER THREE
To Ricardo the girl had been so unforeseen that he was unable to bring
upon her the light of his critical faculties. Her smile appeared to him
full of promise. He had not expected her to be what she was. Who, from
the talk he had heard, could expect to meet a girl like this? She was
a blooming miracle, he said to himself, familiarly, yet with a tinge
of respect. She was no meat for the likes of that tame, respectable
gin-slinger. Ricardo grew hot with indignation. Her courage, her
physical strength, demonstrated at the cost of his discomfiture,
commanded his sympathy. He felt himself drawn to her by the proofs
of her amazing spirit. Such a girl! She had a strong soul; and her
reflective disposition to throw over her connection proved that she was
no hypocrite.
“Is your gentleman a good shot?” he said, looking down on the floor
again, as if indifferent.
She hardly understood the phrase; but in its form it suggested some
accomplishment. It was safe to whisper an affirmative.
“Yes.”
“Mine, too--and better than good,” Ricardo murmured, and then, in a
confidential burst: “I am not so good at it, but I carry a pretty deadly
thing about me, all the same!”
He tapped his leg. She was past the stage of shudders now. Stiff all
over, unable even to move her eyes, she felt an awful mental tension
which was like blank forgetfulness. Ricardo tried to influence her in
his own way.
“And my gentleman is not the sort that would drop me. He ain't no
foreigner; whereas you, with your baron, you don't know what's before
you--or, rather, being a woman, you know only too well. Much better
not to wait for the chuck. Pile in with us and get your share--of the
plunder, I mean. You have some notion about it already.”
She felt that if she as much as hinted by word or sign that there was no
such thing on the island, Heyst's life wouldn't be worth half an hour's
purchase; but all power of combining words had vanished in the tension
of her mind. Words themselves were too difficult to think of--all except
the word “yes,” the saving word! She whispered it with not a feature of
her face moving. To Ricardo the faint and concise sound proved a cool,
reserved assent, more worth having from that amazing mistress of herself
than a thousand words from any other woman. He thought with exultation
that he had come upon one in a million--in ten millions! His whisper
became frankly entreating.
“That's good! Now all you've got to do is to make sure where he keeps
his swag. Only do be quick about it! I can't stand much longer this
crawling-on-the-stomach business so as not to scare your gentleman. What
do you think a fellow is--a reptile?”
She stared without seeing anyone, as a person in the night sits staring
and listening to deadly sounds, to evil incantations. And always in her
head there was that tension of the mind trying to get hold of something,
of a saving idea which seemed to be so near and could not be captured.
Suddenly she seized it. Yes--she had to get that man out of the
house. At that very moment, raised outside, not very near, but heard
distinctly, Heyst's voice uttered the words:
“Have you been looking out for me, Wang?”
It was for her like a flash of lightning framed in the darkness which
had beset her on all sides, showing a deadly precipice right under her
feet. With a convulsive movement she sat up straight, but had no power
to rise. Ricardo, on the contrary, was on his feet on the instant, as
noiseless as a cat. His yellow eyes gleamed, gliding here and there;
but he too seemed unable to make another movement. Only his moustaches
stirred visibly, like the feelers of some animal.
Wang's answer, “Ya tuan,” was heard by the two in the room, but more
faintly. Then Heyst again:
“All right! You may bring the coffee in. Mem Putih out in the room yet?”
To this question Wang made no answer.
Ricardo's and the girl's eyes met, utterly without expression, all their
faculties being absorbed in listening for the first sound of Heyst's
footsteps, for any sound outside which would mean that Ricardo's retreat
was cut off. Both understood perfectly well that Wang must have gone
round the house, and that he was now at the back, making it impossible
for Ricardo to slip out unseen that way before Heyst came in at the
front.
A darkling shade settled on the face of the devoted secretary. Here was
the business utterly spoiled! It was the gloom of anger, and even of
apprehension. He would perhaps have made a dash for it through the back
door, if Heyst had not been heard ascending the front steps. He climbed
them slowly, very slowly, like a man who is discouraged or weary--or
simply thoughtful; and Ricardo had a mental vision of his face, with its
martial moustache, the lofty forehead, the impassive features, and the
quiet, meditative eyes. Trapped! Confound it! After all, perhaps the
governor was right. Women had to be shunned. Fooling with this one had
apparently ruined the whole business. For, trapped as he was he might
just as well kill, since, anyhow, to be seen was to be unmasked. But he
was too fair-minded to be angry with the girl.
Heyst had paused on the veranda, or in the very doorway.
“I shall be shot down like a dog if I ain't quick,” Ricardo muttered
excitedly to the girl.
He stooped to get hold of his knife; and the next moment would have
hurled himself out through the curtain, nearly, as prompt and fully as
deadly to Heyst as an unexpected thunderbolt. The feel more than the
strength of the girl's hand, clutching at his shoulder, checked him. He
swung round, crouching with a yellow upward glare. Ah! Was she turning
against him?
He would have stuck his knife into the hollow of her bare throat if
he had not seen her other hand pointing to the window. It was a long
opening, high up, close under the ceiling almost, with a single pivoting
shutter.
While he was still looking at it she moved noiselessly away, picking
up the overturned chair, and placed it under the wall. Then she looked
round; but he didn't need to be beckoned to. In two long, tiptoeing
strides he was at her side.
“Be quick!” she gasped.
He seized her hand and wrung it with all the force of his dumb
gratitude, as a man does to a chum when there is no time for words. Then
he mounted the chair. Ricardo was short--too short to get over without a
noisy scramble. He hesitated an instant; she, watchful, bore rigidly on
the seat with her beautiful bare arms, while, light and sure, he used
the back of the chair as a ladder. The masses of her brown hair fell all
about her face.
Footsteps resounded in the next room, and Heyst's voice, not very loud,
called her by name.
“Lena!”
“Yes! In a minute,” she answered with a particular intonation which she
knew would prevent Heyst from coming in at once.
When she looked up, Ricardo had vanished, letting himself down outside
so lightly that she had not heard the slightest noise. She stood up
then, bewildered, frightened, as if awakened from a drugged sleep, with
heavy, downcast, unseeing eyes, her fortitude tired out, her imagination
as if dead within her and unable to keep her fear alive.
Heyst moved about aimlessly in the other room. This sound roused her
exhausted wits. At once she began to think, hear, see; and what she
saw--or rather recognized, for her eyes had been resting on it all the
time--was Ricardo's straw slipper, lost in the scuffle, lying near the
bath. She had just time to step forward and plant her foot on it when
the curtains shook, and, pushed aside, disclosed Heyst in the doorway.
Out of the appeased enchantment of the senses she had found with him,
like a sort of bewitched state, his danger brought a sensation of warmth
to her breast. She felt something stir in there, something profound,
like a new sort of life.
The room was in partial darkness, Ricardo having accidentally swung
the pivoted shutter as he went out of the window. Heyst peered from the
doorway.
“Why, you haven't done your hair yet,” he said.
“I won't stop to do it now. I shan't be long,” she replied steadily, and
remained still, feeling Ricardo's slipper under the sole of her foot.