I
“Some people,” said Lingard, “go about the world with their eyes shut.
You are right. The sea is free to all of us. Some work on it, and some
play the fool on it--and I don't care. Only you may take it from me
that I will let no man's play interfere with my work. You want me to
understand you are a very great man--”
Mr. Travers smiled, coldly.
“Oh, yes,” continued Lingard, “I understand that well enough. But
remember you are very far from home, while I, here, I am where I belong.
And I belong where I am. I am just Tom Lingard, no more, no less,
wherever I happen to be, and--you may ask--” A sweep of his hand along
the western horizon entrusted with perfect confidence the remainder of
his speech to the dumb testimony of the sea.
He had been on board the yacht for more than an hour, and nothing,
for him, had come of it but the birth of an unreasoning hate. To the
unconscious demand of these people's presence, of their ignorance, of
their faces, of their voices, of their eyes, he had nothing to give but
a resentment that had in it a germ of reckless violence. He could tell
them nothing because he had not the means. Their coming at this moment,
when he had wandered beyond that circle which race, memories, early
associations, all the essential conditions of one's origin, trace round
every man's life, deprived him in a manner of the power of speech. He
was confounded. It was like meeting exacting spectres in a desert.
He stared at the open sea, his arms crossed, with a reflective
fierceness. His very appearance made him utterly different from everyone
on board that vessel. The grey shirt, the blue sash, one rolled-up
sleeve baring a sculptural forearm, the negligent masterfulness of his
tone and pose were very distasteful to Mr. Travers, who, having made
up his mind to wait for some kind of official assistance, regarded
the intrusion of that inexplicable man with suspicion. From the moment
Lingard came on board the yacht, every eye in that vessel had been fixed
upon him. Only Carter, within earshot and leaning with his elbow upon
the rail, stared down at the deck as if overcome with drowsiness or lost
in thought.
Of the three other persons aft, Mr. Travers kept his hands in the side
pockets of his jacket and did not conceal his growing disgust.
On the other side of the deck, a lady, in a long chair, had a passive
attitude that to Mr. d'Alcacer, standing near her, seemed characteristic
of the manner in which she accepted the necessities of existence. Years
before, as an attache of his Embassy in London, he had found her an
interesting hostess. She was even more interesting now, since a chance
meeting and Mr. Travers' offer of a passage to Batavia had given him an
opportunity of studying the various shades of scorn which he suspected
to be the secret of her acquiescence in the shallowness of events and
the monotony of a worldly existence.
There were things that from the first he had not been able to
understand; for instance, why she should have married Mr. Travers. It
must have been from ambition. He could not help feeling that such a
successful mistake would explain completely her scorn and also her
acquiescence. The meeting in Manila had been utterly unexpected to
him, and he accounted for it to his uncle, the Governor-General of the
colony, by pointing out that Englishmen, when worsted in the struggle
of love or politics, travel extensively, as if by encompassing a large
portion of earth's surface they hoped to gather fresh strength for a
renewed contest. As to himself, he judged--but did not say--that his
contest with fate was ended, though he also travelled, leaving behind
him in the capitals of Europe a story in which there was nothing
scandalous but the publicity of an excessive feeling, and nothing more
tragic than the early death of a woman whose brilliant perfections were
no better known to the great world than the discreet and passionate
devotion she had innocently inspired.
The invitation to join the yacht was the culminating point of many
exchanged civilities, and was mainly prompted by Mr. Travers' desire
to have somebody to talk to. D'Alcacer had accepted with the reckless
indifference of a man to whom one method of flight from a relentless
enemy is as good as another. Certainly the prospect of listening to long
monologues on commerce, administration, and politics did not promise
much alleviation to his sorrow; and he could not expect much else from
Mr. Travers, whose life and thought, ignorant of human passion, were
devoted to extracting the greatest possible amount of personal advantage
from human institutions. D'Alcacer found, however, that he could attain
a measure of forgetfulness--the most precious thing for him now--in the
society of Edith Travers.
She had awakened his curiosity, which he thought nothing and nobody on
earth could do any more.
These two talked of things indifferent and interesting, certainly not
connected with human institutions, and only very slightly with human
passions; but d'Alcacer could not help being made aware of her latent
capacity for sympathy developed in those who are disenchanted with life
or death. How far she was disenchanted he did not know, and did
not attempt to find out. This restraint was imposed upon him by the
chivalrous respect he had for the secrets of women and by a conviction
that deep feeling is often impenetrably obscure, even to those it
masters for their inspiration or their ruin. He believed that even she
herself would never know; but his grave curiosity was satisfied by the
observation of her mental state, and he was not sorry that the stranding
of the yacht prolonged his opportunity.
Time passed on that mudbank as well as anywhere else, and it was not
from a multiplicity of events, but from the lapse of time alone, that
he expected relief. Yet in the sameness of days upon the Shallows, time
flowing ceaselessly, flowed imperceptibly; and, since every man clings
to his own, be it joy, be it grief, he was pleased after the unrest
of his wanderings to be able to fancy the whole universe and even time
itself apparently come to a standstill; as if unwilling to take him away
further from his sorrow, which was fading indeed but undiminished, as
things fade, not in the distance but in the mist.
II
D'Alcacer was a man of nearly forty, lean and sallow, with hollow eyes
and a drooping brown moustache. His gaze was penetrating and direct, his
smile frequent and fleeting. He observed Lingard with great interest.
He was attracted by that elusive something--a line, a fold, perhaps
the form of the eye, the droop of an eyelid, the curve of a cheek, that
trifling trait which on no two faces on earth is alike, that in each
face is the very foundation of expression, as if, all the rest being
heredity, mystery, or accident, it alone had been shaped consciously by
the soul within.
Now and then he bent slightly over the slow beat of a red fan in the
curve of the deck chair to say a few words to Mrs. Travers, who answered
him without looking up, without a modulation of tone or a play of
feature, as if she had spoken from behind the veil of an immense
indifference stretched between her and all men, between her heart and
the meaning of events, between her eyes and the shallow sea which, like
her gaze, appeared profound, forever stilled, and seemed, far off in the
distance of a faint horizon, beyond the reach of eye, beyond the power
of hand or voice, to lose itself in the sky.
Mr. Travers stepped aside, and speaking to Carter, overwhelmed him with
reproaches.
“You misunderstood your instructions,” murmured Mr. Travers rapidly.
“Why did you bring this man here? I am surprised--”
“Not half so much as I was last night,” growled the young seaman,
without any reverence in his tone, very provoking to Mr. Travers.
“I perceive now you were totally unfit for the mission I entrusted you
with,” went on the owner of the yacht.
“It's he who got hold of me,” said Carter. “Haven't you heard him
yourself, sir?”
“Nonsense,” whispered Mr. Travers, angrily. “Have you any idea what his
intentions may be?”
“I half believe,” answered Carter, “that his intention was to shoot me
in his cabin last night if I--”
“That's not the point,” interrupted Mr. Travers. “Have you any opinion
as to his motives in coming here?”
Carter raised his weary, bloodshot eyes in a face scarlet and peeling as
though it had been licked by a flame. “I know no more than you do, sir.
Last night when he had me in that cabin of his, he said he would just as
soon shoot me as let me go to look for any other help. It looks as if
he were desperately bent upon getting a lot of salvage money out of a
stranded yacht.”
Mr. Travers turned away, and, for a moment, appeared immersed in deep
thought. This accident of stranding upon a deserted coast was annoying
as a loss of time. He tried to minimize it by putting in order the notes
collected during the year's travel in the East. He had sent off for
assistance; his sailing-master, very crestfallen, made bold to say that
the yacht would most likely float at the next spring tides; d'Alcacer,
a person of undoubted nobility though of inferior principles, was better
than no company, in so far at least that he could play picquet.
Mr. Travers had made up his mind to wait. Then suddenly this rough
man, looking as if he had stepped out from an engraving in a book about
buccaneers, broke in upon his resignation with mysterious allusions to
danger, which sounded absurd yet were disturbing; with dark and warning
sentences that sounded like disguised menaces.
Mr. Travers had a heavy and rather long chin which he shaved. His eyes
were blue, a chill, naive blue. He faced Lingard untouched by travel,
without a mark of weariness or exposure, with the air of having been
born invulnerable. He had a full, pale face; and his complexion was
perfectly colourless, yet amazingly fresh, as if he had been reared in
the shade.
He thought:
“I must put an end to this preposterous hectoring. I won't be
intimidated into paying for services I don't need.”
Mr. Travers felt a strong disgust for the impudence of the attempt; and
all at once, incredibly, strangely, as though the thing, like a contest
with a rival or a friend, had been of profound importance to his career,
he felt inexplicably elated at the thought of defeating the secret
purposes of that man.
Lingard, unconscious of everything and everybody, contemplated the sea.
He had grown on it, he had lived with it; it had enticed him away from
home; on it his thoughts had expanded and his hand had found work to do.
It had suggested endeavour, it had made him owner and commander of the
finest brig afloat; it had lulled him into a belief in himself, in
his strength, in his luck--and suddenly, by its complicity in a fatal
accident, it had brought him face to face with a difficulty that looked
like the beginning of disaster.
He had said all he dared to say--and he perceived that he was not
believed. This had not happened to him for years. It had never happened.
It bewildered him as if he had suddenly discovered that he was no longer
himself. He had come to them and had said: “I mean well by you. I am
Tom Lingard--” and they did not believe! Before such scepticism he was
helpless, because he had never imagined it possible. He had said: “You
are in the way of my work. You are in the way of what I can not give up
for any one; but I will see you through all safe if you will only
trust me--me, Tom Lingard.” And they would not believe him! It was
intolerable. He imagined himself sweeping their disbelief out of his
way. And why not? He did not know them, he did not care for them, he
did not even need to lift his hand against them! All he had to do was to
shut his eyes now for a day or two, and afterward he could forget that
he had ever seen them. It would be easy. Let their disbelief vanish,
their folly disappear, their bodies perish. . . . It was that--or ruin!
III
Lingard's gaze, detaching itself from the silent sea, travelled slowly
over the silent figures clustering forward, over the faces of the seamen
attentive and surprised, over the faces never seen before yet suggesting
old days--his youth--other seas--the distant shores of early memories.
Mr. Travers gave a start also, and the hand which had been busy with
his left whisker went into the pocket of his jacket, as though he
had plucked out something worth keeping. He made a quick step toward
Lingard.
“I don't see my way to utilize your services,” he said, with cold
finality.
Lingard, grasping his beard, looked down at him thoughtfully for a short
time.
“Perhaps it's just as well,” he said, very slowly, “because I did not
offer my services. I've offered to take you on board my brig for a
few days, as your only chance of safety. And you asked me what were
my motives. My motives! If you don't see them they are not for you to
know.”
And these men who, two hours before had never seen each other, stood
for a moment close together, antagonistic, as if they had been life-long
enemies, one short, dapper and glaring upward, the other towering
heavily, and looking down in contempt and anger.
Mr. d'Alcacer, without taking his eyes off them, bent low over the deck
chair.
“Have you ever seen a man dashing himself at a stone wall?” he asked,
confidentially.
“No,” said Mrs. Travers, gazing straight before her above the slow
flutter of the fan. “No, I did not know it was ever done; men burrow
under or slip round quietly while they look the other way.”
“Ah! you define diplomacy,” murmured d'Alcacer. “A little of it here
would do no harm. But our picturesque visitor has none of it. I've a
great liking for him.”
“Already!” breathed out Mrs. Travers, with a smile that touched her lips
with its bright wing and was flown almost before it could be seen.
“There is liking at first sight,” affirmed d'Alcacer, “as well as love
at first sight--the coup de foudre--you know.”
She looked up for a moment, and he went on, gravely: “I think it is the
truest, the most profound of sentiments. You do not love because of what
is in the other. You love because of something that is in you--something
alive--in yourself.” He struck his breast lightly with the tip of one
finger. “A capacity in you. And not everyone may have it--not everyone
deserves to be touched by fire from heaven.”
“And die,” she said.
He made a slight movement.
“Who can tell? That is as it may be. But it is always a privilege, even
if one must live a little after being burnt.”
Through the silence between them, Mr. Travers' voice came plainly,
saying with irritation:
“I've told you already that I do not want you. I've sent a messenger to
the governor of the Straits. Don't be importunate.”
Then Lingard, standing with his back to them, growled out something
which must have exasperated Mr. Travers, because his voice was pitched
higher:
“You are playing a dangerous game, I warn you. Sir John, as it happens,
is a personal friend of mine. He will send a cruiser--” and Lingard
interrupted recklessly loud:
“As long as she does not get here for the next ten days, I don't care.
Cruisers are scarce just now in the Straits; and to turn my back on you
is no hanging matter anyhow. I would risk that, and more! Do you hear?
And more!”
He stamped his foot heavily, Mr. Travers stepped back.
“You will gain nothing by trying to frighten me,” he said. “I don't know
who you are.”
Every eye in the yacht was wide open. The men, crowded upon each
other, stared stupidly like a flock of sheep. Mr. Travers pulled out
a handkerchief and passed it over his forehead. The face of the
sailing-master who leaned against the main mast--as near as he dared
to approach the gentry--was shining and crimson between white whiskers,
like a glowing coal between two patches of snow.
D'Alcacer whispered:
“It is a quarrel, and the picturesque man is angry. He is hurt.”
Mrs. Travers' fan rested on her knees, and she sat still as if waiting
to hear more.
“Do you think I ought to make an effort for peace?” asked d'Alcacer.
She did not answer, and after waiting a little, he insisted:
“What is your opinion? Shall I try to mediate--as a neutral, as a
benevolent neutral? I like that man with the beard.”
The interchange of angry phrases went on aloud, amidst general
consternation.
“I would turn my back on you only I am thinking of these poor devils
here,” growled Lingard, furiously. “Did you ask them how they feel about
it?”
“I ask no one,” spluttered Mr. Travers. “Everybody here depends on my
judgment.”
“I am sorry for them then,” pronounced Lingard with sudden deliberation,
and leaning forward with his arms crossed on his breast.
At this Mr. Travers positively jumped, and forgot himself so far as to
shout:
“You are an impudent fellow. I have nothing more to say to you.”
D'Alcacer, after muttering to himself, “This is getting serious,” made a
movement, and could not believe his ears when he heard Mrs. Travers say
rapidly with a kind of fervour:
“Don't go, pray; don't stop them. Oh! This is truth--this is
anger--something real at last.”
D'Alcacer leaned back at once against the rail.
Then Mr. Travers, with one arm extended, repeated very loudly:
“Nothing more to say. Leave my ship at once!”
And directly the black dog, stretched at his wife's feet, muzzle on
paws and blinking yellow eyes, growled discontentedly at the noise. Mrs.
Travers laughed a faint, bright laugh, that seemed to escape, to glide,
to dart between her white teeth. D'Alcacer, concealing his amazement,
was looking down at her gravely: and after a slight gasp, she said with
little bursts of merriment between every few words:
“No, but this is--such--such a fresh experience for me to hear--to see
something--genuine and human. Ah! ah! one would think they had waited
all their lives for this opportunity--ah! ah! ah! All their lives--for
this! ah! ah! ah!”
These strange words struck d'Alcacer as perfectly just, as throwing an
unexpected light. But after a smile, he said, seriously:
“This reality may go too far. A man who looks so picturesque is capable
of anything. Allow me--” And he left her side, moving toward Lingard,
loose-limbed and gaunt, yet having in his whole bearing, in his walk, in
every leisurely movement, an air of distinction and ceremony.
Lingard spun round with aggressive mien to the light touch on his
shoulder, but as soon as he took his eyes off Mr. Travers, his anger
fell, seemed to sink without a sound at his feet like a rejected
garment.
“Pardon me,” said d'Alcacer, composedly. The slight wave of his hand was
hardly more than an indication, the beginning of a conciliating gesture.
“Pardon me; but this is a matter requiring perfect confidence on both
sides. Don Martin, here, who is a person of importance. . . .”
“I've spoken my mind plainly. I have said as much as I dare. On my word
I have,” declared Lingard with an air of good temper.
“Ah!” said d'Alcacer, reflectively, “then your reserve is a matter of
pledged faith--of--of honour?”
Lingard also appeared thoughtful for a moment.
“You may put it that way. And I owe nothing to a man who couldn't see my
hand when I put it out to him as I came aboard.”
“You have so much the advantage of us here,” replied d'Alcacer, “that
you may well be generous and forget that oversight; and then just a
little more confidence. . . .”
“My dear d'Alcacer, you are absurd,” broke in Mr. Travers, in a calm
voice but with white lips. “I did not come out all this way to shake
hands promiscuously and receive confidences from the first adventurer
that comes along.”
D'Alcacer stepped back with an almost imperceptible inclination of the
head at Lingard, who stood for a moment with twitching face.
“I _am_ an adventurer,” he burst out, “and if I hadn't been an
adventurer, I would have had to starve or work at home for such people
as you. If I weren't an adventurer, you would be most likely lying dead
on this deck with your cut throat gaping at the sky.”
Mr. Travers waved this speech away. But others also had heard. Carter
listened watchfully and something, some alarming notion seemed to dawn
all at once upon the thick little sailing-master, who rushed on his
short legs, and tugging at Carter's sleeve, stammered desperately:
“What's he saying? Who's he? What's up? Are the natives unfriendly? My
book says--'Natives friendly all along this coast!' My book says--”
Carter, who had glanced over the side, jerked his arm free.
“You go down into the pantry, where you belong, Skipper, and read that
bit about the natives over again,” he said to his superior officer, with
savage contempt. “I'll be hanged if some of them ain't coming aboard now
to eat you--book and all. Get out of the way, and let the gentlemen have
the first chance of a row.”
Then addressing Lingard, he drawled in his old way:
“That crazy mate of yours has sent your boat back, with a couple of
visitors in her, too.”
Before he apprehended plainly the meaning of these words, Lingard caught
sight of two heads rising above the rail, the head of Hassim and the
head of Immada. Then their bodies ascended into view as though these two
beings had gradually emerged from the Shallows. They stood for a moment
on the platform looking down on the deck as if about to step into the
unknown, then descended and walking aft entered the half-light under the
awning shading the luxurious surroundings, the complicated emotions of
the, to them, inconceivable existences.
Lingard without waiting a moment cried:
“What news, O Rajah?”
Hassim's eyes made the round of the schooner's decks. He had left his
gun in the boat and advanced empty handed, with a tranquil assurance as
if bearing a welcome offering in the faint smile of his lips. Immada,
half hidden behind his shoulder, followed lightly, her elbows pressed
close to her side. The thick fringe of her eyelashes was dropped like
a veil; she looked youthful and brooding; she had an aspect of shy
resolution.
They stopped within arm's length of the whites, and for some time nobody
said a word. Then Hassim gave Lingard a significant glance, and uttered
rapidly with a slight toss of the head that indicated in a manner the
whole of the yacht:
“I see no guns!”
“N--no!” said Lingard, looking suddenly confused. It had occurred to him
that for the first time in two years or more he had forgotten, utterly
forgotten, these people's existence.
Immada stood slight and rigid with downcast eyes. Hassim, at his ease,
scrutinized the faces, as if searching for elusive points of similitude
or for subtle shades of difference.
“What is this new intrusion?” asked Mr. Travers, angrily.
“These are the fisher-folk, sir,” broke in the sailing-master, “we've
observed these three days past flitting about in a canoe; but they
never had the sense to answer our hail; and yet a bit of fish for
your breakfast--” He smiled obsequiously, and all at once, without
provocation, began to bellow:
“Hey! Johnnie! Hab got fish? Fish! One peecee fish! Eh? Savee? Fish!
Fish--” He gave it up suddenly to say in a deferential tone--“Can't
make them savages understand anything, sir,” and withdrew as if after a
clever feat.
Hassim looked at Lingard.
“Why did the little white man make that outcry?” he asked, anxiously.
“Their desire is to eat fish,” said Lingard in an enraged tone.
Then before the air of extreme surprise which incontinently appeared on
the other's face, he could not restrain a short and hopeless laugh.
“Eat fish,” repeated Hassim, staring. “O you white people! O you white
people! Eat fish! Good! But why make that noise? And why did you send
them here without guns?” After a significant glance down upon the slope
of the deck caused by the vessel being on the ground, he added with a
slight nod at Lingard--“And without knowledge?”
“You should not have come here, O Hassim,” said Lingard, testily. “Here
no one understands. They take a rajah for a fisherman--”
“Ya-wa! A great mistake, for, truly, the chief of ten fugitives without
a country is much less than the headman of a fishing village,” observed
Hassim, composedly. Immada sighed. “But you, Tuan, at least know the
truth,” he went on with quiet irony; then after a pause--“We came here
because you had forgotten to look toward us, who had waited, sleeping
little at night, and in the day watching with hot eyes the empty water
at the foot of the sky for you.”
Immada murmured, without lifting her head:
“You never looked for us. Never, never once.”
“There was too much trouble in my eyes,” explained Lingard with that
patient gentleness of tone and face which, every time he spoke to the
young girl, seemed to disengage itself from his whole person, enveloping
his fierceness, softening his aspect, such as the dreamy mist that in
the early radiance of the morning weaves a veil of tender charm about a
rugged rock in mid-ocean. “I must look now to the right and to the
left as in a time of sudden danger,” he added after a moment and she
whispered an appalled “Why?” so low that its pain floated away in the
silence of attentive men, without response, unheard, ignored, like the
pain of an impalpable thought.
IV
D'Alcacer, standing back, surveyed them all with a profound and alert
attention. Lingard seemed unable to tear himself away from the yacht,
and remained, checked, as it were in the act of going, like a man who
has stopped to think out the last thing to say; and that stillness of a
body, forgotten by the labouring mind, reminded Carter of that moment
in the cabin, when alone he had seen this man thus wrestling with his
thought, motionless and locked in the grip of his conscience.
Mr. Travers muttered audibly through his teeth:
“How long is this performance going to last? I have desired you to go.”
“Think of these poor devils,” whispered Lingard, with a quick glance at
the crew huddled up near by.
“You are the kind of man I would be least disposed to trust--in any
case,” said Mr. Travers, incisively, very low, and with an inexplicable
but very apparent satisfaction. “You are only wasting your time here.”
“You--You--” He stammered and stared. He chewed with growls some
insulting word and at last swallowed it with an effort. “My time pays
for your life,” he said.
He became aware of a sudden stir, and saw that Mrs. Travers had risen
from her chair.
She walked impulsively toward the group on the quarter-deck, making
straight for Immada. Hassim had stepped aside and his detached gaze of a
Malay gentleman passed by her as if she had been invisible.
She was tall, supple, moving freely. Her complexion was so dazzling
in the shade that it seemed to throw out a halo round her head. Upon
a smooth and wide brow an abundance of pale fair hair, fine as silk,
undulating like the sea, heavy like a helmet, descended low without a
trace of gloss, without a gleam in its coils, as though it had never
been touched by a ray of light; and a throat white, smooth, palpitating
with life, a round neck modelled with strength and delicacy, supported
gloriously that radiant face and that pale mass of hair unkissed by
sunshine.
She said with animation:
“Why, it's a girl!”
Mrs. Travers extorted from d'Alcacer a fresh tribute of curiosity. A
strong puff of wind fluttered the awnings and one of the screens blowing
out wide let in upon the quarter-deck the rippling glitter of the
Shallows, showing to d'Alcacer the luminous vastness of the sea, with
the line of the distant horizon, dark like the edge of the encompassing
night, drawn at the height of Mrs. Travers' shoulder. . . . Where was
it he had seen her last--a long time before, on the other side of the
world? There was also the glitter of splendour around her then, and an
impression of luminous vastness. The encompassing night, too, was there,
the night that waits for its time to move forward upon the glitter, the
splendour, the men, the women.
He could not remember for the moment, but he became convinced that of
all the women he knew, she alone seemed to be made for action. Every one
of her movements had firmness, ease, the meaning of a vital fact,
the moral beauty of a fearless expression. Her supple figure was not
dishonoured by any faltering of outlines under the plain dress of dark
blue stuff moulding her form with bold simplicity.
She had only very few steps to make, but before she had stopped,
confronting Immada, d'Alcacer remembered her suddenly as he had seen
her last, out West, far away, impossibly different, as if in another
universe, as if presented by the fantasy of a fevered memory. He saw
her in a luminous perspective of palatial drawing rooms, in the restless
eddy and flow of a human sea, at the foot of walls high as cliffs, under
lofty ceilings that like a tropical sky flung light and heat upon the
shallow glitter of uniforms, of stars, of diamonds, of eyes sparkling
in the weary or impassive faces of the throng at an official reception.
Outside he had found the unavoidable darkness with its aspect of patient
waiting, a cloudy sky holding back the dawn of a London morning. It was
difficult to believe.
Lingard, who had been looking dangerously fierce, slapped his thigh and
showed signs of agitation.
“By heavens, I had forgotten all about you!” he pronounced in dismay.
Mrs. Travers fixed her eyes on Immada. Fairhaired and white she asserted
herself before the girl of olive face and raven locks with the maturity
of perfection, with the superiority of the flower over the leaf, of the
phrase that contains a thought over the cry that can only express an
emotion. Immense spaces and countless centuries stretched between
them: and she looked at her as when one looks into one's own heart
with absorbed curiosity, with still wonder, with an immense compassion.
Lingard murmured, warningly:
“Don't touch her.”
Mrs. Travers looked at him.
“Do you think I could hurt her?” she asked, softly, and was so startled
to hear him mutter a gloomy “Perhaps,” that she hesitated before she
smiled.
“Almost a child! And so pretty! What a delicate face,” she said, while
another deep sigh of the sea breeze lifted and let fall the screens, so
that the sound, the wind, and the glitter seemed to rush in together and
bear her words away into space. “I had no idea of anything so charmingly
gentle,” she went on in a voice that without effort glowed, caressed,
and had a magic power of delight to the soul. “So young! And she lives
here--does she? On the sea--or where? Lives--” Then faintly, as if she
had been in the act of speaking, removed instantly to a great distance,
she was heard again: “How does she live?”
Lingard had hardly seen Edith Travers till then. He had seen no one
really but Mr. Travers. He looked and listened with something of the
stupor of a new sensation.
Then he made a distinct effort to collect his thoughts and said with a
remnant of anger:
“What have you got to do with her? She knows war. Do you know anything
about it? And hunger, too, and thirst, and unhappiness; things you have
only heard about. She has been as near death as I am to you--and what is
all that to any of you here?”
“That child!” she said in slow wonder.
Immada turned upon Mrs. Travers her eyes black as coal, sparkling and
soft like a tropical night; and the glances of the two women, their
dissimilar and inquiring glances met, seemed to touch, clasp, hold each
other with the grip of an intimate contact. They separated.
“What are they come for? Why did you show them the way to this place?”
asked Immada, faintly.
Lingard shook his head in denial.
“Poor girl,” said Mrs. Travers. “Are they all so pretty?”
“Who-all?” mumbled Lingard. “There isn't an other one like her if you
were to ransack the islands all round the compass.”
“Edith!” ejaculated Mr. Travers in a remonstrating, acrimonious voice,
and everyone gave him a look of vague surprise.
Then Mrs. Travers asked:
“Who is she?”
Lingard very red and grave declared curtly:
“A princess.”
Immediately he looked round with suspicion. No one smiled. D'Alcacer,
courteous and nonchalant, lounged up close to Mrs. Travers' elbow.
“If she is a princess, then this man is a knight,” he murmured with
conviction. “A knight as I live! A descendant of the immortal hidalgo
errant upon the sea. It would be good for us to have him for a friend.
Seriously I think that you ought--”
The two stepped aside and spoke low and hurriedly.
“Yes, you ought--”
“How can I?” she interrupted, catching the meaning like a ball.
“By saying something.”
“Is it really necessary?” she asked, doubtfully.
“It would do no harm,” said d'Alcacer with sudden carelessness; “a
friend is always better than an enemy.”
“Always?” she repeated, meaningly. “But what could I say?”
“Some words,” he answered; “I should think any words in your voice--”
“Mr. d'Alcacer!”
“Or you could perhaps look at him once or twice as though he were not
exactly a robber,” he continued.
“Mr. d'Alcacer, are you afraid?”
“Extremely,” he said, stooping to pick up the fan at her feet. “That is
the reason I am so anxious to conciliate. And you must not forget that
one of your queens once stepped on the cloak of perhaps such a man.”
Her eyes sparkled and she dropped them suddenly.
“I am not a queen,” she said, coldly.
“Unfortunately not,” he admitted; “but then the other was a woman with
no charm but her crown.”
At that moment Lingard, to whom Hassim had been talking earnestly,
protested aloud:
“I never saw these people before.”
Immada caught hold of her brother's arm. Mr. Travers said harshly:
“Oblige me by taking these natives away.”
“Never before,” murmured Immada as if lost in ecstasy. D'Alcacer glanced
at Mrs. Travers and made a step forward.
“Could not the difficulty, whatever it is, be arranged, Captain?” he
said with careful politeness. “Observe that we are not only men here--”
“Let them die!” cried Immada, triumphantly.
Though Lingard alone understood the meaning of these words, all on board
felt oppressed by the uneasy silence which followed her cry.
“Ah! He is going. Now, Mrs. Travers,” whispered d'Alcacer.
“I hope!” said Mrs. Travers, impulsively, and stopped as if alarmed at
the sound.
Lingard stood still.
“I hope,” she began again, “that this poor girl will know happier
days--” She hesitated.
Lingard waited, attentive and serious.
“Under your care,” she finished. “And I believe you meant to be friendly
to us.”
“Thank you,” said Lingard with dignity.
“You and d'Alcacer,” observed Mr. Travers, austerely, “are unnecessarily
detaining this--ah--person, and--ah--friends--ah!”
“I had forgotten you--and now--what? One must--it is hard--hard--” went
on Lingard, disconnectedly, while he looked into Mrs. Travers'
violet eyes, and felt his mind overpowered and troubled as if by the
contemplation of vast distances. “I--you don't know--I--you--cannot
. . . Ha! It's all that man's doing,” he burst out.
For a time, as if beside himself, he glared at Mrs. Travers, then flung
up one arm and strode off toward the gangway, where Hassim and Immada
waited for him, interested and patient. With a single word “Come,” he
preceded them down into the boat. Not a sound was heard on the yacht's
deck, while these three disappeared one after another below the rail as
if they had descended into the sea.
V
The afternoon dragged itself out in silence. Mrs. Travers sat pensive
and idle with her fan on her knees. D'Alcacer, who thought the incident
should have been treated in a conciliatory spirit, attempted to
communicate his view to his host, but that gentleman, purposely
misunderstanding his motive, overwhelmed him with so many apologies
and expressions of regret at the irksome and perhaps inconvenient delay
“which you suffer from through your good-natured acceptance of our
invitation” that the other was obliged to refrain from pursuing the
subject further.
“Even my regard for you, my dear d'Alcacer, could not induce me to
submit to such a bare-faced attempt at extortion,” affirmed Mr. Travers
with uncompromising virtue. “The man wanted to force his services
upon me, and then put in a heavy claim for salvage. That is the whole
secret--you may depend on it. I detected him at once, of course.” The
eye-glass glittered perspicuously. “He underrated my intelligence; and
what a violent scoundrel! The existence of such a man in the time we
live in is a scandal.”
D'Alcacer retired, and, full of vague forebodings, tried in vain for
hours to interest himself in a book. Mr. Travers walked up and down
restlessly, trying to persuade himself that his indignation was based
on purely moral grounds. The glaring day, like a mass of white-hot iron
withdrawn from the fire, was losing gradually its heat and its glare
in a richer deepening of tone. At the usual time two seamen, walking
noiselessly aft in their yachting shoes, rolled up in silence the
quarter-deck screens; and the coast, the shallows, the dark islets and
the snowy sandbanks uncovered thus day after day were seen once more
in their aspect of dumb watchfulness. The brig, swung end on in the
foreground, her squared yards crossing heavily the soaring symmetry of
the rigging, resembled a creature instinct with life, with the power of
springing into action lurking in the light grace of its repose.
A pair of stewards in white jackets with brass buttons appeared on deck
and began to flit about without a sound, laying the table for dinner on
the flat top of the cabin skylight. The sun, drifting away toward
other lands, toward other seas, toward other men; the sun, all red in a
cloudless sky raked the yacht with a parting salvo of crimson rays that
shattered themselves into sparks of fire upon the crystal and silver
of the dinner-service, put a short flame into the blades of knives, and
spread a rosy tint over the white of plates. A trail of purple, like a
smear of blood on a blue shield, lay over the sea.
On sitting down Mr. Travers alluded in a vexed tone to the necessity of
living on preserves, all the stock of fresh provisions for the passage
to Batavia having been already consumed. It was distinctly unpleasant.
“I don't travel for my pleasure, however,” he added; “and the belief
that the sacrifice of my time and comfort will be productive of some
good to the world at large would make up for any amount of privations.”
Mrs. Travers and d'Alcacer seemed unable to shake off a strong aversion
to talk, and the conversation, like an expiring breeze, kept on dying
out repeatedly after each languid gust. The large silence of the
horizon, the profound repose of all things visible, enveloping the
bodies and penetrating the souls with their quieting influence, stilled
thought as well as voice. For a long time no one spoke. Behind the
taciturnity of the masters the servants hovered without noise.
Suddenly, Mr. Travers, as if concluding a train of thought, muttered
aloud:
“I own with regret I did in a measure lose my temper; but then you will
admit that the existence of such a man is a disgrace to civilization.”
This remark was not taken up and he returned for a time to the nursing
of his indignation, at the bottom of which, like a monster in a fog,
crept a bizarre feeling of rancour. He waved away an offered dish.
“This coast,” he began again, “has been placed under the sole protection
of Holland by the Treaty of 1820. The Treaty of 1820 creates special
rights and obligations. . . .”
Both his hearers felt vividly the urgent necessity to hear no more.
D'Alcacer, uncomfortable on a campstool, sat stiff and stared at the
glass stopper of a carafe. Mrs. Travers turned a little sideways and
leaning on her elbow rested her head on the palm of her hand like one
thinking about matters of profound import. Mr. Travers talked; he talked
inflexibly, in a harsh blank voice, as if reading a proclamation.
The other two, as if in a state of incomplete trance, had their ears
assailed by fragments of official verbiage.
“An international understanding--the duty to civilize--failed to carry
out--compact--Canning--” D'Alcacer became attentive for a moment.
“--not that this attempt, almost amusing in its impudence, influences my
opinion. I won't admit the possibility of any violence being offered to
people of our position. It is the social aspect of such an incident I am
desirous of criticising.”
Here d'Alcacer lost himself again in the recollection of Mrs. Travers
and Immada looking at each other--the beginning and the end, the
flower and the leaf, the phrase and the cry. Mr. Travers' voice went
on dogmatic and obstinate for a long time. The end came with a certain
vehemence.
“And if the inferior race must perish, it is a gain, a step toward the
perfecting of society which is the aim of progress.”
He ceased. The sparks of sunset in crystal and silver had gone out,
and around the yacht the expanse of coast and Shallows seemed to await,
unmoved, the coming of utter darkness. The dinner was over a long time
ago and the patient stewards had been waiting, stoical in the downpour
of words like sentries under a shower.
Mrs. Travers rose nervously and going aft began to gaze at the coast.
Behind her the sun, sunk already, seemed to force through the mass of
waters the glow of an unextinguishable fire, and below her feet, on each
side of the yacht, the lustrous sea, as if reflecting the colour of her
eyes, was tinged a sombre violet hue.
D'Alcacer came up to her with quiet footsteps and for some time they
leaned side by side over the rail in silence. Then he said--“How quiet
it is!” and she seemed to perceive that the quietness of that evening
was more profound and more significant than ever before. Almost without
knowing it she murmured--“It's like a dream.” Another long silence
ensued; the tranquillity of the universe had such an August ampleness
that the sounds remained on the lips as if checked by the fear of
profanation. The sky was limpid like a diamond, and under the last
gleams of sunset the night was spreading its veil over the earth. There
was something precious and soothing in the beautifully serene end of
that expiring day, of the day vibrating, glittering and ardent, and
dying now in infinite peace, without a stir, without a tremor, without a
sigh--in the certitude of resurrection.
Then all at once the shadow deepened swiftly, the stars came out in a
crowd, scattering a rain of pale sparks upon the blackness of the water,
while the coast stretched low down, a dark belt without a gleam. Above
it the top-hamper of the brig loomed indistinct and high.
Mrs. Travers spoke first.
“How unnaturally quiet! It is like a desert of land and water without a
living soul.”
“One man at least dwells in it,” said d'Alcacer, lightly, “and if he is
to be believed there are other men, full of evil intentions.”
“Do you think it is true?” Mrs. Travers asked.
Before answering d'Alcacer tried to see the expression of her face but
the obscurity was too profound already.
“How can one see a dark truth on such a dark night?” he said, evasively.
“But it is easy to believe in evil, here or anywhere else.”
She seemed to be lost in thought for a while.
“And that man himself?” she asked.
After some time d'Alcacer began to speak slowly. “Rough, uncommon,
decidedly uncommon of his kind. Not at all what Don Martin thinks him to
be. For the rest--mysterious to me. He is _your_ countryman after all--”
She seemed quite surprised by that view.
“Yes,” she said, slowly. “But you know, I can not--what shall I
say?--imagine him at all. He has nothing in common with the mankind I
know. There is nothing to begin upon. How does such a man live? What are
his thoughts? His actions? His affections? His--”
“His conventions,” suggested d'Alcacer. “That would include everything.”
Mr. Travers appeared suddenly behind them with a glowing cigar in
his teeth. He took it between his fingers to declare with persistent
acrimony that no amount of “scoundrelly intimidation” would prevent him
from having his usual walk. There was about three hundred yards to the
southward of the yacht a sandbank nearly a mile long, gleaming a silvery
white in the darkness, plumetted in the centre with a thicket of dry
bushes that rustled very loud in the slightest stir of the heavy night
air. The day after the stranding they had landed on it “to stretch their
legs a bit,” as the sailing-master defined it, and every evening since,
as if exercising a privilege or performing a duty, the three paced there
for an hour backward and forward lost in dusky immensity, threading at
the edge of water the belt of damp sand, smooth, level, elastic to the
touch like living flesh and sweating a little under the pressure of
their feet.
This time d'Alcacer alone followed Mr. Travers. Mrs. Travers heard them
get into the yacht's smallest boat, and the night-watchman, tugging at
a pair of sculls, pulled them off to the nearest point. Then the man
returned. He came up the ladder and she heard him say to someone on
deck:
“Orders to go back in an hour.”
His footsteps died out forward, and a somnolent, unbreathing repose took
possession of the stranded yacht.
VI
After a time this absolute silence which she almost could feel pressing
upon her on all sides induced in Mrs. Travers a state of hallucination.
She saw herself standing alone, at the end of time, on the brink of
days. All was unmoving as if the dawn would never come, the stars would
never fade, the sun would never rise any more; all was mute, still,
dead--as if the shadow of the outer darkness, the shadow of the
uninterrupted, of the everlasting night that fills the universe, the
shadow of the night so profound and so vast that the blazing suns lost
in it are only like sparks, like pin-points of fire, the restless shadow
that like a suspicion of an evil truth darkens everything upon the earth
on its passage, had enveloped her, had stood arrested as if to remain
with her forever.
And there was such a finality in that illusion, such an accord with the
trend of her thought that when she murmured into the darkness a faint
“so be it” she seemed to have spoken one of those sentences that resume
and close a life.
As a young girl, often reproved for her romantic ideas, she had
dreams where the sincerity of a great passion appeared like the ideal
fulfilment and the only truth of life. Entering the world she discovered
that ideal to be unattainable because the world is too prudent to
be sincere. Then she hoped that she could find the truth of life an
ambition which she understood as a lifelong devotion to some unselfish
ideal. Mr. Travers' name was on men's lips; he seemed capable of
enthusiasm and of devotion; he impressed her imagination by his
impenetrability. She married him, found him enthusiastically devoted to
the nursing of his own career, and had nothing to hope for now.
That her husband should be bewildered by the curious misunderstanding
which had taken place and also permanently grieved by her disloyalty
to his respectable ideals was only natural. He was, however, perfectly
satisfied with her beauty, her brilliance, and her useful connections.
She was admired, she was envied; she was surrounded by splendour and
adulation; the days went on rapid, brilliant, uniform, without a glimpse
of sincerity or true passion, without a single true emotion--not even
that of a great sorrow. And swiftly and stealthily they had led her on
and on, to this evening, to this coast, to this sea, to this moment of
time and to this spot on the earth's surface where she felt unerringly
that the moving shadow of the unbroken night had stood still to remain
with her forever.
“So be it!” she murmured, resigned and defiant, at the mute and smooth
obscurity that hung before her eyes in a black curtain without a
fold; and as if in answer to that whisper a lantern was run up to the
foreyard-arm of the brig. She saw it ascend swinging for a. short space,
and suddenly remain motionless in the air, piercing the dense night
between the two vessels by its glance of flame that strong and steady
seemed, from afar, to fall upon her alone.
Her thoughts, like a fascinated moth, went fluttering toward that
light--that man--that girl, who had known war, danger, seen death near,
had obtained evidently the devotion of that man. The occurrences of the
afternoon had been strange in themselves, but what struck her artistic
sense was the vigour of their presentation. They outlined themselves
before her memory with the clear simplicity of some immortal legend.
They were mysterious, but she felt certain they were absolutely true.
They embodied artless and masterful feelings; such, no doubt, as had
swayed mankind in the simplicity of its youth. She envied, for a moment,
the lot of that humble and obscure sister. Nothing stood between that
girl and the truth of her sensations. She could be sincerely courageous,
and tender and passionate and--well--ferocious. Why not ferocious? She
could know the truth of terror--and of affection, absolutely, without
artificial trammels, without the pain of restraint.
Thinking of what such life could be Mrs. Travers felt invaded by that
inexplicable exaltation which the consciousness of their physical
capacities so often gives to intellectual beings. She glowed with a
sudden persuasion that she also could be equal to such an existence; and
her heart was dilated with a momentary longing to know the naked truth
of things; the naked truth of life and passion buried under the growth
of centuries.
She glowed and, suddenly, she quivered with the shock of coming to
herself as if she had fallen down from a star. There was a sound of
rippling water and a shapeless mass glided out of the dark void she
confronted. A voice below her feet said:
“I made out your shape--on the sky.” A cry of surprise expired on her
lips and she could only peer downward. Lingard, alone in the brig's
dinghy, with another stroke sent the light boat nearly under the yacht's
counter, laid his sculls in, and rose from the thwart. His head and
shoulders loomed up alongside and he had the appearance of standing upon
the sea. Involuntarily Mrs. Travers made a movement of retreat.
“Stop,” he said, anxiously, “don't speak loud. No one must know. Where
do your people think themselves, I wonder? In a dock at home? And you--”
“My husband is not on board,” she interrupted, hurriedly.
“I know.”
She bent a little more over the rail.
“Then you are having us watched. Why?”
“Somebody must watch. Your people keep such a good look-out--don't they?
Yes. Ever since dark one of my boats has been dodging astern here, in
the deep water. I swore to myself I would never see one of you, never
speak to one of you here, that I would be dumb, blind, deaf. And--here I
am!”
Mrs. Travers' alarm and mistrust were replaced by an immense curiosity,
burning, yet quiet, too, as if before the inevitable work of destiny.
She looked downward at Lingard. His head was bared, and, with one hand
upon the ship's side, he seemed to be thinking deeply.
“Because you had something more to tell us,” Mrs. Travers suggested,
gently.
“Yes,” he said in a low tone and without moving in the least.
“Will you come on board and wait?” she asked.
“Who? I!” He lifted his head so quickly as to startle her. “I have
nothing to say to him; and I'll never put my foot on board this craft.
I've been told to go. That's enough.”
“He is accustomed to be addressed deferentially,” she said after a
pause, “and you--”
“Who is he?” asked Lingard, simply.
These three words seemed to her to scatter her past in the air--like
smoke. They robbed all the multitude of mankind of every vestige of
importance. She was amazed to find that on this night, in this place,
there could be no adequate answer to the searching naiveness of that
question.
“I didn't ask for much,” Lingard began again. “Did I? Only that you all
should come on board my brig for five days. That's all. . . . Do I
look like a liar? There are things I could not tell him. I couldn't
explain--I couldn't--not to him--to no man--to no man in the world--”
His voice dropped.
“Not to myself,” he ended as if in a dream.
“We have remained unmolested so long here,” began Mrs. Travers a little
unsteadily, “that it makes it very difficult to believe in danger, now.
We saw no one all these days except those two people who came for you.
If you may not explain--”
“Of course, you can't be expected to see through a wall,” broke in
Lingard. “This coast's like a wall, but I know what's on the other side.
. . . A yacht here, of all things that float! When I set eyes on her I
could fancy she hadn't been more than an hour from home. Nothing but the
look of her spars made me think of old times. And then the faces of the
chaps on board. I seemed to know them all. It was like home coming to me
when I wasn't thinking of it. And I hated the sight of you all.”
“If we are exposed to any peril,” she said after a pause during which
she tried to penetrate the secret of passion hidden behind that man's
words, “it need not affect you. Our other boat is gone to the Straits
and effective help is sure to come very soon.”
“Affect me! Is that precious watchman of yours coming aft? I don't want
anybody to know I came here again begging, even of you. Is he coming
aft? . . . Listen! I've stopped your other boat.”
His head and shoulders disappeared as though he had dived into a denser
layer of obscurity floating on the water. The watchman, who had the
intention to stretch himself in one of the deck chairs, catching sight
of the owner's wife, walked straight to the lamp that hung under the
ridge pole of the awning, and after fumbling with it for a time went
away forward with an indolent gait.
“You dared!” Mrs. Travers whispered down in an intense tone; and
directly, Lingard's head emerged again below her with an upturned face.
“It was dare--or give up. The help from the Straits would have been too
late anyhow if I hadn't the power to keep you safe; and if I had the
power I could see you through it--alone. I expected to find a reasonable
man to talk to. I ought to have known better. You come from too far to
understand these things. Well, I dared; I've sent after your other boat
a fellow who, with me at his back, would try to stop the governor of
the Straits himself. He will do it. Perhaps it's done already. You
have nothing to hope for. But I am here. You said you believed I meant
well--”
“Yes,” she murmured.
“That's why I thought I would tell you everything. I had to begin with
this business about the boat. And what do you think of me now? I've cut
you off from the rest of the earth. You people would disappear like a
stone in the water. You left one foreign port for another. Who's there
to trouble about what became of you? Who would know? Who could guess? It
would be months before they began to stir.”
“I understand,” she said, steadily, “we are helpless.”
“And alone,” he added.
After a pause she said in a deliberate, restrained voice:
“What does this mean? Plunder, captivity?”
“It would have meant death if I hadn't been here,” he answered.
“But you have the power to--”
“Why, do you think, you are alive yet?” he cried. “Jorgenson has been
arguing with them on shore,” he went on, more calmly, with a swing of
his arm toward where the night seemed darkest. “Do you think he would
have kept them back if they hadn't expected me every day? His words
would have been nothing without my fist.”
She heard a dull blow struck on the side of the yacht and concealed in
the same darkness that wrapped the unconcern of the earth and sea, the
fury and the pain of hearts; she smiled above his head, fascinated by
the simplicity of images and expressions.
Lingard made a brusque movement, the lively little boat being unsteady
under his feet, and she spoke slowly, absently, as if her thought had
been lost in the vagueness of her sensations.
“And this--this--Jorgenson, you said? Who is he?”
“A man,” he answered, “a man like myself.”
“Like yourself?”
“Just like myself,” he said with strange reluctance, as if admitting a
painful truth. “More sense, perhaps, but less luck. Though, since your
yacht has turned up here, I begin to think that my luck is nothing much
to boast of either.”
“Is our presence here so fatal?”
“It may be death to some. It may be worse than death to me. And it rests
with you in a way. Think of that! I can never find such another chance
again. But that's nothing! A man who has saved my life once and that I
passed my word to would think I had thrown him over. But that's nothing!
Listen! As true as I stand here in my boat talking to you, I believe the
girl would die of grief.”
“You love her,” she said, softly.
“Like my own daughter,” he cried, low.
Mrs. Travers said, “Oh!” faintly, and for a moment there was a silence,
then he began again:
“Look here. When I was a boy in a trawler, and looked at you yacht
people, in the Channel ports, you were as strange to me as the Malays
here are strange to you. I left home sixteen years ago and fought my way
all round the earth. I had the time to forget where I began. What are
you to me against these two? If I was to die here on the spot would you
care? No one would care at home. No one in the whole world--but these
two.”
“What can I do?” she asked, and waited, leaning over.
He seemed to reflect, then lifting his head, spoke gently:
“Do you understand the danger you are in? Are you afraid?”
“I understand the expression you used, of course. Understand the
danger?” she went on. “No--decidedly no. And--honestly--I am not
afraid.”
“Aren't you?” he said in a disappointed voice. “Perhaps you don't
believe me? I believed you, though, when you said you were sure I meant
well. I trusted you enough to come here asking for your help--telling
you what no one knows.”
“You mistake me,” she said with impulsive earnestness. “This is so
extraordinarily unusual--sudden--outside my experience.”
“Aye!” he murmured, “what would you know of danger and trouble? You! But
perhaps by thinking it over--”
“You want me to think myself into a fright!” Mrs. Travers laughed
lightly, and in the gloom of his thought this flash of joyous sound
was incongruous and almost terrible. Next moment the night appeared
brilliant as day, warm as sunshine; but when she ceased the returning
darkness gave him pain as if it had struck heavily against his breast.
“I don't think I could do that,” she finished in a serious tone.
“Couldn't you?” He hesitated, perplexed. “Things are bad enough to make
it no shame. I tell you,” he said, rapidly, “and I am not a timid man, I
may not be able to do much if you people don't help me.”
“You want me to pretend I am alarmed?” she asked, quickly.
“Aye, to pretend--as well you may. It's a lot to ask of you--who perhaps
never had to make-believe a thing in your life--isn't it?”
“It is,” she said after a time.
The unexpected bitterness of her tone struck Lingard with dismay.
“Don't be offended,” he entreated. “I've got to plan a way out of this
mess. It's no play either. Could you pretend?”
“Perhaps, if I tried very hard. But to what end?”
“You must all shift aboard the brig,” he began, speaking quickly, “and
then we may get over this trouble without coming to blows. Now, if you
were to say that you wish it; that you feel unsafe in the yacht--don't
you see?”
“I see,” she pronounced, thoughtfully.
“The brig is small but the cuddy is fit for a lady,” went on Lingard
with animation.
“Has it not already sheltered a princess?” she commented, coolly.
“And I shall not intrude.”
“This is an inducement.”
“Nobody will dare to intrude. You needn't even see me.”
“This is almost decisive, only--”
“I know my place.”
“Only, I might not have the influence,” she finished.
“That I can not believe,” he said, roughly. “The long and the short of
it is you don't trust me because you think that only people of your own
condition speak the truth always.”
“Evidently,” she murmured.
“You say to yourself--here's a fellow deep in with pirates, thieves,
niggers--”
“To be sure--”
“A man I never saw the like before,” went on Lingard, headlong,
“a--ruffian.”
He checked himself, full of confusion. After a time he heard her saying,
calmly:
“You are like other men in this, that you get angry when you can not
have your way at once.”
“I angry!” he exclaimed in deadened voice. “You do not understand. I am
thinking of you also--it is hard on me--”
“I mistrust not you, but my own power. You have produced an unfortunate
impression on Mr. Travers.”
“Unfortunate impression! He treated me as if I had been a long-shore
loafer. Never mind that. He is your husband. Fear in those you care for
is hard to bear for any man. And so, he--”
“What Machiavellism!”
“Eh, what did you say?”
“I only wondered where you had observed that. On the sea?”
“Observed what?” he said, absently. Then pursuing his idea--“One word
from you ought to be enough.”
“You think so?”
“I am sure of it. Why, even I, myself--”
“Of course,” she interrupted. “But don't you think that after parting
with you on such--such--inimical terms, there would be a difficulty in
resuming relations?”
“A man like me would do anything for money--don't you see?”
After a pause she asked:
“And would you care for that argument to be used?”
“As long as you know better!”
His voice vibrated--she drew back disturbed, as if unexpectedly he had
touched her.
“What can there be at stake?” she began, wonderingly.
“A kingdom,” said Lingard.
Mrs. Travers leaned far over the rail, staring, and their faces, one
above the other, came very close together.
“Not for yourself?” she whispered.
He felt the touch of her breath on his forehead and remained still for
a moment, perfectly still as if he did not intend to move or speak any
more.