PART V. THE POINT OF HONOUR AND THE POINT OF PASSION

I

“May I come in?”

“Yes,” said a voice within. “The door is open.” It had a wooden latch.

Mr. Travers lifted it while the voice of his wife continued as he

entered. “Did you imagine I had locked myself in? Did you ever know me

lock myself in?”

Mr. Travers closed the door behind him. “No, it has never come to that,”

he said in a tone that was not conciliatory. In that place which was a

room in a wooden hut and had a square opening without glass but with a

half-closed shutter he could not distinguish his wife very well at once.

She was sitting in an armchair and what he could see best was her

fair hair all loose over the back of the chair. There was a moment

of silence. The measured footsteps of two men pacing athwart the

quarter-deck of the dead ship Emma commanded by the derelict shade of

Jorgenson could be heard outside.

Jorgenson, on taking up his dead command, had a house of thin boards

built on the after deck for his own accommodation and that of Lingard

during his flying visits to the Shore of Refuge. A narrow passage

divided it in two and Lingard's side was furnished with a camp bedstead,

a rough desk, and a rattan armchair. On one of his visits Lingard had

brought with him a black seaman's chest and left it there. Apart from

these objects and a small looking-glass worth about half a crown and

nailed to the wall there was nothing else in there whatever. What was

on Jorgenson's side of the deckhouse no one had seen, but from external

evidence one could infer the existence of a set of razors.

The erection of that primitive deckhouse was a matter of propriety

rather than of necessity. It was proper that the white men should have a

place to themselves on board, but Lingard was perfectly accurate when he

told Mrs. Travers that he had never slept there once. His practice was

to sleep on deck. As to Jorgenson, if he did sleep at all he slept very

little. It might have been said that he haunted rather than commanded

the Emma. His white form flitted here and there in the night or stood

for hours, silent, contemplating the sombre glimmer of the lagoon. Mr.

Travers' eyes accustomed gradually to the dusk of the place could

now distinguish more of his wife's person than the great mass of

honey-coloured hair. He saw her face, the dark eyebrows and her eyes

that seemed profoundly black in the half light. He said:

“You couldn't have done so here. There is neither lock nor bolt.”

“Isn't there? I didn't notice. I would know how to protect myself

without locks and bolts.”

“I am glad to hear it,” said Mr. Travers in a sullen tone and fell

silent again surveying the woman in the chair. “Indulging your taste for

fancy dress,” he went on with faint irony.

Mrs. Travers clasped her hands behind her head. The wide sleeves

slipping back bared her arms to her shoulders. She was wearing a Malay

thin cotton jacket, cut low in the neck without a collar and fastened

with wrought silver clasps from the throat downward. She had replaced

her yachting skirt by a blue check sarong embroidered with threads of

gold. Mr. Travers' eyes travelling slowly down attached themselves to

the gleaming instep of an agitated foot from which hung a light leather

sandal.

“I had no clothes with me but what I stood in,” said Mrs. Travers. “I

found my yachting costume too heavy. It was intolerable. I was soaked

in dew when I arrived. So when these things were produced for my

inspection. . . .”

“By enchantment,” muttered Mr. Travers in a tone too heavy for sarcasm.

“No. Out of that chest. There are very fine stuffs there.”

“No doubt,” said Mr. Travers. “The man wouldn't be above plundering the

natives. . . .” He sat down heavily on the chest. “A most appropriate

costume for this farce,” he continued. “But do you mean to wear it in

open daylight about the decks?”

“Indeed I do,” said Mrs. Travers. “D'Alcacer has seen me already and he

didn't seem shocked.”

“You should,” said Mr. Travers, “try to get yourself presented with some

bangles for your ankles so that you may jingle as you walk.”

“Bangles are not necessities,” said Mrs. Travers in a weary tone and

with the fixed upward look of a person unwilling to relinquish her

dream. Mr. Travers dropped the subject to ask:

“And how long is this farce going to last?”

Mrs. Travers unclasped her hands, lowered her glance, and changed her

whole pose in a moment.

“What do you mean by farce? What farce?”

“The one which is being played at my expense.”

“You believe that?”

“Not only believe. I feel deeply that it is so. At my expense. It's a

most sinister thing,” Mr. Travers pursued, still with downcast eyes and

in an unforgiving tone. “I must tell you that when I saw you in that

courtyard in a crowd of natives and leaning on that man's arm, it gave

me quite a shock.”

“Did I, too, look sinister?” said Mrs. Travers, turning her head

slightly toward her husband. “And yet I assure you that I was glad,

profoundly glad, to see you safe from danger for a time at least. To

gain time is everything. . . .”

“I ask myself,” Mr. Travers meditated aloud, “was I ever in danger? Am

I safe now? I don't know. I can't tell. No! All this seems an abominable

farce.”

There was that in his tone which made his wife continue to look at him

with awakened interest. It was obvious that he suffered from a distress

which was not the effect of fear; and Mrs. Travers' face expressed real

concern till he added in a freezing manner: “The question, however, is

as to your discretion.”

She leaned back again in the chair and let her hands rest quietly in her

lap. “Would you have preferred me to remain outside, in the yacht, in

the near neighbourhood of these wild men who captured you? Or do you

think that they, too, were got up to carry on a farce?”

“Most decidedly.” Mr. Travers raised his head, though of course not his

voice. “You ought to have remained in the yacht amongst white men, your

servants, the sailing-master, the crew whose duty it was to. . . . Who

would have been ready to die for you.”

“I wonder why they should have--and why I should have asked them for

that sacrifice. However, I have no doubt they would have died. Or would

you have preferred me to take up my quarters on board that man's brig?

We were all fairly safe there. The real reason why I insisted on coming

in here was to be nearer to you--to see for myself what could be or was

being done. . . . But really if you want me to explain my motives then I

may just as well say nothing. I couldn't remain outside for days without

news, in a state of horrible doubt. We couldn't even tell whether you

and d'Alcacer were still alive till we arrived here. You might have been

actually murdered on the sandbank, after Rajah Hassim and that girl had

gone away; or killed while going up the river. And I wanted to know at

once, as soon as possible. It was a matter of impulse. I went off in

what I stood in without delaying a moment.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Travers. “And without even thinking of having a

few things put up for me in a bag. No doubt you were in a state of

excitement. Unless you took such a tragic view that it seemed to you

hardly worth while to bother about my clothes.”

“It was absolutely the impulse of the moment. I could have done nothing

else. Won't you give me credit for it?”

Mr. Travers raised his eyes again to his wife's face. He saw it calm,

her attitude reposeful. Till then his tone had been resentful, dull,

without sarcasm. But now he became slightly pompous.

“No. As a matter of fact, as a matter of experience, I can't credit

you with the possession of feelings appropriate to your origin, social

position, and the ideas of the class to which you belong. It was the

heaviest disappointment of my life. I had made up my mind not to mention

it as long as I lived. This, however, seems an occasion which you have

provoked yourself. It isn't at all a solemn occasion. I don't look upon

it as solemn at all. It's very disagreeable and humiliating. But it

has presented itself. You have never taken a serious interest in the

activities of my life which of course are its distinction and its value.

And why you should be carried away suddenly by a feeling toward the mere

man I don't understand.”

“Therefore you don't approve,” Mrs. Travers commented in an even

tone. “But I assure you, you may safely. My feeling was of the most

conventional nature, exactly as if the whole world were looking on.

After all, we are husband and wife. It's eminently fitting that I should

be concerned about your fate. Even the man you distrust and dislike so

much (the warmest feeling, let me tell you, that I ever saw you display)

even that man found my conduct perfectly proper. His own word. Proper.

So eminently proper that it altogether silenced his objections.”

Mr. Travers shifted uneasily on his seat.

“It's my belief, Edith, that if you had been a man you would have led

a most irregular life. You would have been a frank adventurer. I mean

morally. It has been a great grief to me. You have a scorn in you for

the serious side of life, for the ideas and the ambitions of the social

sphere to which you belong.”

He stopped because his wife had clasped again her hands behind her head

and was no longer looking at him.

“It's perfectly obvious,” he began again. “We have been living amongst

most distinguished men and women and your attitude to them has been

always so--so negative! You would never recognize the importance of

achievements, of acquired positions. I don't remember you ever admiring

frankly any political or social success. I ask myself what after all you

could possibly have expected from life.”

“I could never have expected to hear such a speech from you. As to what

I did expect! . . . I must have been very stupid.”

“No, you are anything but that,” declared Mr. Travers, conscientiously.

“It isn't stupidity.” He hesitated for a moment. “It's a kind of

wilfulness, I think. I preferred not to think about this grievous

difference in our points of view, which, you will admit, I could not

have possibly foreseen before we. . . .”

A sort of solemn embarrassment had come over Mr. Travers. Mrs. Travers,

leaning her chin on the palm of her hand, stared at the bare matchboard

side of the hut.

“Do you charge me with profound girlish duplicity?” she asked, very

softly.

The inside of the deckhouse was full of stagnant heat perfumed by

a slight scent which seemed to emanate from the loose mass of Mrs.

Travers' hair. Mr. Travers evaded the direct question which struck him

as lacking fineness even to the point of impropriety.

“I must suppose that I was not in the calm possession of my insight and

judgment in those days,” he said. “I--I was not in a critical state of

mind at the time,” he admitted further; but even after going so far

he did not look up at his wife and therefore missed something like

the ghost of a smile on Mrs. Travers' lips. That smile was tinged with

scepticism which was too deep-seated for anything but the faintest

expression. Therefore she said nothing, and Mr. Travers went on as if

thinking aloud:

“Your conduct was, of course, above reproach; but you made for yourself

a detestable reputation of mental superiority, expressed ironically. You

inspired mistrust in the best people. You were never popular.”

“I was bored,” murmured Mrs. Travers in a reminiscent tone and with her

chin resting in the hollow of her hand.

Mr. Travers got up from the seaman's chest as unexpectedly as if he had

been stung by a wasp, but, of course, with a much slower and more solemn

motion.

“The matter with you, Edith, is that at heart you are perfectly

primitive.” Mrs. Travers stood up, too, with a supple, leisurely

movement, and raising her hands to her hair turned half away with a

pensive remark:

“Imperfectly civilized.”

“Imperfectly disciplined,” corrected Mr. Travers after a moment of

dreary meditation.

She let her arms fall and turned her head.

“No, don't say that,” she protested with strange earnestness. “I am the

most severely disciplined person in the world. I am tempted to say that

my discipline has stopped at nothing short of killing myself. I suppose

you can hardly understand what I mean.”

Mr. Travers made a slight grimace at the floor.

“I shall not try,” he said. “It sounds like something that a barbarian,

hating the delicate complexities and the restraints of a nobler life,

might have said. From you it strikes me as wilful bad taste. . . .

I have often wondered at your tastes. You have always liked

extreme opinions, exotic costumes, lawless characters, romantic

personalities--like d'Alcacer . . .”

“Poor Mr. d'Alcacer,” murmured Mrs. Travers.

“A man without any ideas of duty or usefulness,” said Mr. Travers,

acidly. “What are you pitying him for?”

“Why! For finding himself in this position out of mere good-nature.

He had nothing to expect from joining our voyage, no advantage for his

political ambitions or anything of the kind. I suppose you asked him on

board to break our tete-a-tete which must have grown wearisome to you.”

“I am never bored,” declared Mr. Travers. “D'Alcacer seemed glad to

come. And, being a Spaniard, the horrible waste of time cannot matter to

him in the least.”

“Waste of time!” repeated Mrs. Travers, indignantly.

“He may yet have to pay for his good nature with his life.”

Mr. Travers could not conceal a movement of anger.

“Ah! I forgot those assumptions,” he said between his clenched teeth.

“He is a mere Spaniard. He takes this farcical conspiracy with perfect

nonchalance. Decayed races have their own philosophy.”

“He takes it with a dignity of his own.”

“I don't know what you call his dignity. I should call it lack of

self-respect.”

“Why? Because he is quiet and courteous, and reserves his judgment. And

allow me to tell you, Martin, that you are not taking our troubles very

well.”

“You can't expect from me all those foreign affectations. I am not in

the habit of compromising with my feelings.”

Mrs. Travers turned completely round and faced her husband. “You sulk,”

she said. . . . Mr. Travers jerked his head back a little as if to let

the word go past.--“I am outraged,” he declared. Mrs. Travers recognized

there something like real suffering.--“I assure you,” she said,

seriously (for she was accessible to pity), “I assure you that this

strange Lingard has no idea of your importance. He doesn't know anything

of your social and political position and still less of your great

ambitions.” Mr. Travers listened with some attention.--“Couldn't you

have enlightened him?” he asked.--“It would have been no use; his mind

is fixed upon his own position and upon his own sense of power. He is

a man of the lower classes. . . .”--“He is a brute,” said Mr. Travers,

obstinately, and for a moment those two looked straight into each

other's eyes.--“Oh,” said Mrs. Travers, slowly, “you are determined not

to compromise with your feelings!” An undertone of scorn crept into her

voice. “But shall I tell you what I think? I think,” and she advanced

her head slightly toward the pale, unshaven face that confronted her

dark eyes, “I think that for all your blind scorn you judge the man

well enough to feel that you can indulge your indignation with perfect

safety. Do you hear? With perfect safety!” Directly she had spoken she

regretted these words. Really it was unreasonable to take Mr. Travers'

tricks of character more passionately on this spot of the Eastern

Archipelago full of obscure plots and warring motives than in the more

artificial atmosphere of the town. After all what she wanted was simply

to save his life, not to make him understand anything. Mr. Travers

opened his mouth and without uttering a word shut it again. His wife

turned toward the looking-glass nailed to the wall. She heard his voice

behind her.

“Edith, where's the truth in all this?”

She detected the anguish of a slow mind with an instinctive dread of

obscure places wherein new discoveries can be made. She looked over her

shoulder to say:

“It's on the surface, I assure you. Altogether on the surface.”

She turned again to the looking-glass where her own face met her with

dark eyes and a fair mist of hair above the smooth forehead; but her

words had produced no soothing effect.

“But what does it mean?” cried Mr. Travers. “Why doesn't the fellow

apologize? Why are we kept here? Are we being kept here? Why don't we

get away? Why doesn't he take me back on board my yacht? What does he

want from me? How did he procure our release from these people on shore

who he says intended to cut our throats? Why did they give us up to him

instead?”

Mrs. Travers began to twist her hair on her head.

“Matters of high policy and of local politics. Conflict of personal

interests, mistrust between the parties, intrigues of individuals--you

ought to know how that sort of thing works. His diplomacy made use of

all that. The first thing to do was not to liberate you but to get you

into his keeping. He is a very great man here and let me tell you that

your safety depends on his dexterity in the use of his prestige rather

than on his power which he cannot use. If you would let him talk to

you I am sure he would tell you as much as it is possible for him to

disclose.”

“I don't want to be told about any of his rascalities. But haven't you

been taken into his confidence?”

“Completely,” admitted Mrs. Travers, peering into the small

looking-glass.

“What is the influence you brought to bear upon this man? It looks to me

as if our fate were in your hands.”

“Your fate is not in my hands. It is not even in his hands. There is a

moral situation here which must be solved.”

“Ethics of blackmail,” commented Mr. Travers with unexpected sarcasm. It

flashed through his wife's mind that perhaps she didn't know him so well

as she had supposed. It was as if the polished and solemn crust of hard

proprieties had cracked slightly, here and there, under the strain,

disclosing the mere wrongheadedness of a common mortal. But it was

only manner that had cracked a little; the marvellous stupidity of

his conceit remained the same. She thought that this discussion was

perfectly useless, and as she finished putting up her hair she said: “I

think we had better go on deck now.”

“You propose to go out on deck like this?” muttered Mr. Travers with

downcast eyes.

“Like this? Certainly. It's no longer a novelty. Who is going to be

shocked?”

Mr. Travers made no reply. What she had said of his attitude was very

true. He sulked at the enormous offensiveness of men, things, and

events; of words and even of glances which he seemed to feel physically

resting on his skin like a pain, like a degrading contact. He managed

not to wince. But he sulked. His wife continued, “And let me tell

you that those clothes are fit for a princess--I mean they are of the

quality, material and style custom prescribes for the highest in the

land, a far-distant land where I am informed women rule as much as the

men. In fact they were meant to be presented to an actual princess in

due course. They were selected with the greatest care for that child

Immada. Captain Lingard. . . .”

Mr. Travers made an inarticulate noise partaking of a groan and a grunt.

“Well, I must call him by some name and this I thought would be the

least offensive for you to hear. After all, the man exists. But he is

known also on a certain portion of the earth's surface as King Tom.

D'Alcacer is greatly taken by that name. It seems to him wonderfully

well adapted to the man, in its familiarity and deference. And if you

prefer. . . .”

“I would prefer to hear nothing,” said Mr. Travers, distinctly. “Not a

single word. Not even from you, till I am a free agent again. But words

don't touch me. Nothing can touch me; neither your sinister warnings nor

the moods of levity which you think proper to display before a man whose

life, according to you, hangs on a thread.”

“I never forget it for a moment,” said Mrs. Travers. “And I not only

know that it does but I also know the strength of the thread. It is a

wonderful thread. You may say if you like it has been spun by the same

fate which made you what you are.”

Mr. Travers felt awfully offended. He had never heard anybody, let alone

his own self, addressed in such terms. The tone seemed to question his

very quality. He reflected with shocked amazement that he had lived with

that woman for eight years! And he said to her gloomily:

“You talk like a pagan.”

It was a very strong condemnation which apparently Mrs. Travers had

failed to hear for she pursued with animation:

“But really, you can't expect me to meditate on it all the time or shut

myself up here and mourn the circumstances from morning to night. It

would be morbid. Let us go on deck.”

“And you look simply heathenish in this costume,” Mr. Travers went on

as though he had not been interrupted, and with an accent of deliberate

disgust.

Her heart was heavy but everything he said seemed to force the tone

of levity on to her lips. “As long as I don't look like a guy,” she

remarked, negligently, and then caught the direction of his lurid stare

which as a matter of fact was fastened on her bare feet. She checked

herself, “Oh, yes, if you prefer it I will put on my stockings. But you

know I must be very careful of them. It's the only pair I have here. I

have washed them this morning in that bathroom which is built over the

stern. They are now drying over the rail just outside. Perhaps you will

be good enough to pass them to me when you go on deck.”

Mr. Travers spun round and went on deck without a word. As soon as she

was alone Mrs. Travers pressed her hands to her temples, a gesture of

distress which relieved her by its sincerity. The measured footsteps of

two men came to her plainly from the deck, rhythmic and double with

a suggestion of tranquil and friendly intercourse. She distinguished

particularly the footfalls of the man whose life's orbit was most remote

from her own. And yet the orbits had cut! A few days ago she could

not have even conceived of his existence, and now he was the man whose

footsteps, it seemed to her, her ears could single unerringly in the

tramp of a crowd. It was, indeed, a fabulous thing. In the half light of

her over-heated shelter she let an irresolute, frightened smile pass off

her lips before she, too, went on deck.

II

An ingeniously constructed framework of light posts and thin laths

occupied the greater part of the deck amidships of the Emma. The four

walls of that airy structure were made of muslin. It was comparatively

lofty. A door-like arrangement of light battens filled with calico

was further protected by a system of curtains calculated to baffle the

pursuit of mosquitoes that haunted the shores of the lagoon in great

singing clouds from sunset till sunrise. A lot of fine mats covered

the deck space within the transparent shelter devised by Lingard and

Jorgenson to make Mrs. Travers' existence possible during the time when

the fate of the two men, and indeed probably of everybody else on board

the Emma, had to hang in the balance. Very soon Lingard's unbidden and

fatal guests had learned the trick of stepping in and out of the place

quickly. Mr. d'Alcacer performed the feat without apparent haste, almost

nonchalantly, yet as well as anybody. It was generally conceded that he

had never let a mosquito in together with himself. Mr. Travers dodged in

and out without grace and was obviously much irritated at the necessity.

Mrs. Travers did it in a manner all her own, with marked cleverness

and an unconscious air. There was an improvised table in there and some

wicker armchairs which Jorgenson had produced from somewhere in the

depths of the ship. It was hard to say what the inside of the Emma

did not contain. It was crammed with all sorts of goods like a general

store. That old hulk was the arsenal and the war-chest of Lingard's

political action; she was stocked with muskets and gunpowder, with bales

of longcloth, of cotton prints, of silks; with bags of rice and currency

brass guns. She contained everything necessary for dealing death and

distributing bribes, to act on the cupidity and upon the fears of men,

to march and to organize, to feed the friends and to combat the enemies

of the cause. She held wealth and power in her flanks, that grounded

ship that would swim no more, without masts and with the best part

of her deck cumbered by the two structures of thin boards and of

transparent muslin.

Within the latter lived the Europeans, visible in the daytime to the few

Malays on board as if through a white haze. In the evening the lighting

of the hurricane lamps inside turned them into dark phantoms surrounded

by a shining mist, against which the insect world rushing in its

millions out of the forest on the bank was baffled mysteriously in its

assault. Rigidly enclosed by transparent walls, like captives of

an enchanted cobweb, they moved about, sat, gesticulated, conversed

publicly during the day; and at night when all the lanterns but one were

extinguished, their slumbering shapes covered all over by white cotton

sheets on the camp bedsteads, which were brought in every evening,

conveyed the gruesome suggestion of dead bodies reposing on stretchers.

The food, such as it was, was served within that glorified mosquito net

which everybody called the “Cage” without any humorous intention. At

meal times the party from the yacht had the company of Lingard who

attached to this ordeal a sense of duty performed at the altar of

civility and conciliation. He could have no conception how much his

presence added to the exasperation of Mr. Travers because Mr. Travers'

manner was too intensely consistent to present any shades. It was

determined by an ineradicable conviction that he was a victim held to

ransom on some incomprehensible terms by an extraordinary and outrageous

bandit. This conviction, strung to the highest pitch, never left him for

a moment, being the object of indignant meditation to his mind, and even

clinging, as it were, to his very body. It lurked in his eyes, in his

gestures, in his ungracious mutters, and in his sinister silences. The

shock to his moral being had ended by affecting Mr. Travers' physical

machine. He was aware of hepatic pains, suffered from accesses of

somnolence and suppressed gusts of fury which frightened him secretly.

His complexion had acquired a yellow tinge, while his heavy eyes had

become bloodshot because of the smoke of the open wood fires during

his three days' detention inside Belarab's stockade. His eyes had been

always very sensitive to outward conditions. D'Alcacer's fine black eyes

were more enduring and his appearance did not differ very much from his

ordinary appearance on board the yacht. He had accepted with smiling

thanks the offer of a thin blue flannel tunic from Jorgenson. Those two

men were much of the same build, though of course d'Alcacer, quietly

alive and spiritually watchful, did not resemble Jorgenson, who, without

being exactly macabre, behaved more like an indifferent but restless

corpse. Those two could not be said to have ever conversed together.

Conversation with Jorgenson was an impossible thing. Even Lingard never

attempted the feat. He propounded questions to Jorgenson much as a

magician would interrogate an evoked shade, or gave him curt directions

as one would make use of some marvellous automaton. And that was

apparently the way in which Jorgenson preferred to be treated. Lingard's

real company on board the Emma was d'Alcacer. D'Alcacer had met Lingard

on the easy terms of a man accustomed all his life to good society in

which the very affectations must be carried on without effort. Whether

affectation, or nature, or inspired discretion, d'Alcacer never let the

slightest curiosity pierce the smoothness of his level, grave courtesy

lightened frequently by slight smiles which often had not much

connection with the words he uttered, except that somehow they made them

sound kindly and as it were tactful. In their character, however, those

words were strictly neutral.

The only time when Lingard had detected something of a deeper

comprehension in d'Alcacer was the day after the long negotiations

inside Belarab's stockade for the temporary surrender of the prisoners.

That move had been suggested to him, exactly as Mrs. Travers had told

her husband, by the rivalries of the parties and the state of public

opinion in the Settlement deprived of the presence of the man who,

theoretically at least, was the greatest power and the visible ruler

of the Shore of Refuge. Belarab still lingered at his father's tomb.

Whether that man of the embittered and pacific heart had withdrawn there

to meditate upon the unruliness of mankind and the thankless nature of

his task; or whether he had gone there simply to bathe in a particularly

clear pool which was a feature of the place, give himself up to the

enjoyment of a certain fruit which grew in profusion there and indulge

for a time in a scrupulous performance of religious exercises, his

absence from the Settlement was a fact of the utmost gravity. It is true

that the prestige of a long-unquestioned rulership and the long-settled

mental habits of the people had caused the captives to be taken straight

to Belarab's stockade as a matter of course. Belarab, at a distance,

could still outweigh the power on the spot of Tengga, whose secret

purposes were no better known, who was jovial, talkative, outspoken and

pugnacious; but who was not a professed servant of God famed for many

charities and a scrupulous performance of pious practices, and who also

had no father who had achieved a local saintship. But Belarab, with

his glamour of asceticism and melancholy together with a reputation for

severity (for a man so pious would be naturally ruthless), was not on

the spot. The only favourable point in his absence was the fact that

he had taken with him his latest wife, the same lady whom Jorgenson had

mentioned in his letter to Lingard as anxious to bring about battle,

murder, and the looting of the yacht, not because of inborn wickedness

of heart but from a simple desire for silks, jewels and other objects

of personal adornment, quite natural in a girl so young and elevated to

such a high position. Belarab had selected her to be the companion of

his retirement and Lingard was glad of it. He was not afraid of her

influence over Belarab. He knew his man. No words, no blandishments, no

sulks, scoldings, or whisperings of a favourite could affect either the

resolves or the irresolutions of that Arab whose action ever seemed

to hang in mystic suspense between the contradictory speculations and

judgments disputing the possession of his will. It was not what Belarab

would either suddenly do or leisurely determine upon that Lingard was

afraid of. The danger was that in his taciturn hesitation, which had

something hopelessly godlike in its remote calmness, the man would do

nothing and leave his white friend face to face with unruly impulses

against which Lingard had no means of action but force which he dared

not use since it would mean the destruction of his plans and the

downfall of his hopes; and worse still would wear an aspect of treachery

to Hassim and Immada, those fugitives whom he had snatched away from

the jaws of death on a night of storm and had promised to lead back

in triumph to their own country he had seen but once, sleeping unmoved

under the wrath and fire of heaven.

On the afternoon of the very day he had arrived with her on board the

Emma--to the infinite disgust of Jorgenson--Lingard held with Mrs.

Travers (after she had had a couple of hours' rest) a long, fiery, and

perplexed conversation. From the nature of the problem it could not be

exhaustive; but toward the end of it they were both feeling thoroughly

exhausted. Mrs. Travers had no longer to be instructed as to facts and

possibilities. She was aware of them only too well and it was not her

part to advise or argue. She was not called upon to decide or to plead.

The situation was far beyond that. But she was worn out with watching

the passionate conflict within the man who was both so desperately

reckless and so rigidly restrained in the very ardour of his heart and

the greatness of his soul. It was a spectacle that made her forget

the actual questions at issue. This was no stage play; and yet she had

caught herself looking at him with bated breath as at a great actor on a

darkened stage in some simple and tremendous drama. He extorted from her

a response to the forces that seemed to tear at his single-minded

brain, at his guileless breast. He shook her with his own struggles, he

possessed her with his emotions and imposed his personality as if its

tragedy were the only thing worth considering in this matter. And

yet what had she to do with all those obscure and barbarous things?

Obviously nothing. Unluckily she had been taken into the confidence of

that man's passionate perplexity, a confidence provoked apparently by

nothing but the power of her personality. She was flattered, and even

more, she was touched by it; she was aware of something that resembled

gratitude and provoked a sort of emotional return as between equals who

had secretly recognized each other's value. Yet at the same time she

regretted not having been left in the dark; as much in the dark as Mr.

Travers himself or d'Alcacer, though as to the latter it was impossible

to say how much precise, unaccountable, intuitive knowledge was buried

under his unruffled manner.

D'Alcacer was the sort of man whom it would be much easier to suspect

of anything in the world than ignorance--or stupidity. Naturally he

couldn't know anything definite or even guess at the bare outline of the

facts but somehow he must have scented the situation in those few days

of contact with Lingard. He was an acute and sympathetic observer in all

his secret aloofness from the life of men which was so very different

from Jorgenson's secret divorce from the passions of this earth. Mrs.

Travers would have liked to share with d'Alcacer the burden (for it

was a burden) of Lingard's story. After all, she had not provoked those

confidences, neither had that unexpected adventurer from the sea laid on

her an obligation of secrecy. No, not even by implication. He had never

said to her that she was the _only_ person whom he wished to know that

story.

No. What he had said was that she was the only person to whom he _could_

tell the tale himself, as if no one else on earth had the power to draw

it from him. That was the sense and nothing more. Yes, it would have

been a relief to tell d'Alcacer. It would have been a relief to her

feeling of being shut off from the world alone with Lingard as if within

the four walls of a romantic palace and in an exotic atmosphere. Yes,

that relief and also another: that of sharing the responsibility with

somebody fit to understand. Yet she shrank from it, with unaccountable

reserve, as if by talking of Lingard with d'Alcacer she was bound to

give him an insight into herself. It was a vague uneasiness and yet so

persistent that she felt it, too, when she had to approach and talk to

Lingard under d'Alcacer's eyes. Not that Mr. d'Alcacer would ever dream

of staring or even casting glances. But was he averting his eyes on

purpose? That would be even more offensive.

“I am stupid,” whispered Mrs. Travers to herself, with a complete and

reassuring conviction. Yet she waited motionless till the footsteps of

the two men stopped outside the deckhouse, then separated and died away,

before she went out on deck. She came out on deck some time after her

husband. As if in intended contrast to the conflicts of men a great

aspect of serenity lay upon all visible things. Mr. Travers had gone

inside the Cage in which he really looked like a captive and thoroughly

out of place. D'Alcacer had gone in there, too, but he preserved--or was

it an illusion?--an air of independence. It was not that he put it

on. Like Mr. Travers he sat in a wicker armchair in very much the same

attitude as the other gentleman and also silent; but there was somewhere

a subtle difference which did away with the notion of captivity.

Moreover, d'Alcacer had that peculiar gift of never looking out of place

in any surroundings. Mrs. Travers, in order to save her European boots

for active service, had been persuaded to use a pair of leather sandals

also extracted from that seaman's chest in the deckhouse. An additional

fastening had been put on them but she could not avoid making a delicate

clatter as she walked on the deck. No part of her costume made her feel

so exotic. It also forced her to alter her usual gait and move with

quick, short steps very much like Immada.

“I am robbing the girl of her clothes,” she had thought to herself,

“besides other things.” She knew by this time that a girl of such

high rank would never dream of wearing anything that had been worn by

somebody else.

At the slight noise of Mrs. Travers' sandals d'Alcacer looked over the

back of his chair. But he turned his head away at once and Mrs. Travers,

leaning her elbow on the rail and resting her head on the palm of her

hand, looked across the calm surface of the lagoon, idly.

She was turning her back on the Cage, the fore-part of the deck and

the edge of the nearest forest. That great erection of enormous solid

trunks, dark, rugged columns festooned with writhing creepers and

steeped in gloom, was so close to the bank that by looking over the

side of the ship she could see inverted in the glassy belt of water

its massive and black reflection on the reflected sky that gave the

impression of a clear blue abyss seen through a transparent film. And

when she raised her eyes the same abysmal immobility seemed to reign

over the whole sun-bathed enlargement of that lagoon which was one of

the secret places of the earth. She felt strongly her isolation. She was

so much the only being of her kind moving within this mystery that even

to herself she looked like an apparition without rights and without

defence and that must end by surrendering to those forces which seemed

to her but the expression of the unconscious genius of the place. Hers

was the most complete loneliness, charged with a catastrophic tension.

It lay about her as though she had been set apart within a magic circle.

It cut off--but it did not protect. The footsteps that she knew how to

distinguish above all others on that deck were heard suddenly behind

her. She did not turn her head.

Since that afternoon when the gentlemen, as Lingard called them, had

been brought on board, Mrs. Travers and Lingard had not exchanged one

significant word.

When Lingard had decided to proceed by way of negotiation she had asked

him on what he based his hope of success; and he had answered her: “On

my luck.” What he really depended on was his prestige; but even if he

had been aware of such a word he would not have used it, since it would

have sounded like a boast. And, besides, he did really believe in his

luck. Nobody, either white or brown, had ever doubted his word and that,

of course, gave him great assurance in entering upon the negotiation.

But the ultimate issue of it would be always a matter of luck. He said

so distinctly to Mrs. Travers at the moment of taking leave of her,

with Jorgenson already waiting for him in the boat that was to take them

across the lagoon to Belarab's stockade.

Startled by his decision (for it had come suddenly clinched by the words

“I believe I can do it”), Mrs. Travers had dropped her hand into

his strong open palm on which an expert in palmistry could have

distinguished other lines than the line of luck. Lingard's hand closed

on hers with a gentle pressure. She looked at him, speechless. He waited

for a moment, then in an unconsciously tender voice he said: “Well, wish

me luck then.”

She remained silent. And he still holding her hand looked surprised at

her hesitation. It seemed to her that she could not let him go, and she

didn't know what to say till it occurred to her to make use of the power

she knew she had over him. She would try it again. “I am coming with

you,” she declared with decision. “You don't suppose I could remain here

in suspense for hours, perhaps.”

He dropped her hand suddenly as if it had burnt him--“Oh, yes, of

course,” he mumbled with an air of confusion. One of the men over there

was her husband! And nothing less could be expected from such a woman.

He had really nothing to say but she thought he hesitated.--“Do you

think my presence would spoil everything? I assure you I am a lucky

person, too, in a way. . . . As lucky as you, at least,” she had added

in a murmur and with a smile which provoked his responsive mutter--“Oh,

yes, we are a lucky pair of people.”--“I count myself lucky in having

found a man like you to fight my--our battles,” she said, warmly.

“Suppose you had not existed? . . . . You must let me come with you!”

For the second time before her expressed wish to stand by his side he

bowed his head. After all, if things came to the worst, she would be as

safe between him and Jorgenson as left alone on board the Emma with

a few Malay spearmen for all defence. For a moment Lingard thought

of picking up the pistols he had taken out of his belt preparatory to

joining Jorgenson in the boat, thinking it would be better to go to a

big talk completely unarmed. They were lying on the rail but he didn't

pick them up. Four shots didn't matter. They could not matter if the

world of his creation were to go to pieces. He said nothing of that to

Mrs. Travers but busied himself in giving her the means to alter her

personal appearance. It was then that the sea-chest in the deckhouse

was opened for the first time before the interested Mrs. Travers who had

followed him inside. Lingard handed to her a Malay woman's light cotton

coat with jewelled clasps to put over her European dress. It covered

half of her yachting skirt. Mrs. Travers obeyed him without comment. He

pulled out a long and wide scarf of white silk embroidered heavily on

the edges and ends, and begged her to put it over her head and arrange

the ends so as to muffle her face, leaving little more than her eyes

exposed to view.--“We are going amongst a lot of Mohammedans,” he

explained.--“I see. You want me to look respectable,” she jested.--“I

assure you, Mrs. Travers,” he protested, earnestly, “that most of the

people there and certainly all the great men have never seen a white

woman in their lives. But perhaps you would like better one of those

other scarves? There are three in there.”--“No, I like this one well

enough. They are all very gorgeous. I see that the Princess is to be

sent back to her land with all possible splendour. What a thoughtful man

you are, Captain Lingard. That child will be touched by your generosity.

. . . Will I do like this?”

“Yes,” said Lingard, averting his eyes. Mrs. Travers followed him into

the boat where the Malays stared in silence while Jorgenson, stiff and

angular, gave no sign of life, not even so much as a movement of the

eyes. Lingard settled her in the stern sheets and sat down by her side.

The ardent sunshine devoured all colours. The boat swam forward on the

glare heading for the strip of coral beach dazzling like a crescent of

metal raised to a white heat. They landed. Gravely, Jorgenson opened

above Mrs. Travers' head a big white cotton parasol and she advanced

between the two men, dazed, as if in a dream and having no other contact

with the earth but through the soles of her feet. Everything was still,

empty, incandescent, and fantastic. Then when the gate of the stockade

was thrown open she perceived an expectant and still multitude of bronze

figures draped in coloured stuffs. They crowded the patches of shade

under the three lofty forest trees left within the enclosure between the

sun-smitten empty spaces of hard-baked ground. The broad blades of the

spears decorated with crimson tufts of horsehair had a cool gleam under

the outspread boughs. To the left a group of buildings on piles with

long verandahs and immense roofs towered high in the air above the

heads of the crowd, and seemed to float in the glare, looking much less

substantial than their heavy shadows. Lingard, pointing to one of the

smallest, said in an undertone, “I lived there for a fortnight when I

first came to see Belarab”; and Mrs. Travers felt more than ever as if

walking in a dream when she perceived beyond the rails of its verandah

and visible from head to foot two figures in an armour of chain mail

with pointed steel helmets crested with white and black feathers and

guarding the closed door. A high bench draped in turkey cloth stood

in an open space of the great audience shed. Lingard led her up to it,

Jorgenson on her other side closed the parasol calmly, and when she sat

down between them the whole throng before her eyes sank to the ground

with one accord disclosing in the distance of the courtyard a lonely

figure leaning against the smooth trunk of a tree. A white cloth was

fastened round his head by a yellow cord. Its pointed ends fell on

his shoulders, framing a thin dark face with large eyes, a silk cloak

striped black and white fell to his feet, and in the distance he looked

aloof and mysterious in his erect and careless attitude suggesting

assurance and power.

Lingard, bending slightly, whispered into Mrs. Travers' ear that that

man, apart and dominating the scene, was Daman, the supreme leader of

the Illanuns, the one who had ordered the capture of those gentlemen in

order perhaps to force his hand. The two barbarous, half-naked figures

covered with ornaments and charms, squatting at his feet with their

heads enfolded in crimson and gold handkerchiefs and with straight

swords lying across their knees, were the Pangerans who carried out the

order, and had brought the captives into the lagoon. But the two men in

chain armour on watch outside the door of the small house were Belarab's

two particular body-guards, who got themselves up in that way only on

very great occasions. They were the outward and visible sign that the

prisoners were in Belarab's keeping, and this was good, so far. The pity

was that the Great Chief himself was not there. Then Lingard assumed a

formal pose and Mrs. Travers stared into the great courtyard and with

rows and rows of faces ranged on the ground at her feet felt a little

giddy for a moment.

Every movement had died in the crowd. Even the eyes were still under the

variegated mass of coloured headkerchiefs: while beyond the open gate a

noble palm tree looked intensely black against the glitter of the lagoon

and the pale incandescence of the sky. Mrs. Travers gazing that way

wondered at the absence of Hassim and Immada. But the girl might have

been somewhere within one of the houses with the ladies of Belarab's

stockade. Then suddenly Mrs. Travers became aware that another bench

had been brought out and was already occupied by five men dressed in

gorgeous silks, and embroidered velvets, round-faced and grave. Their

hands reposed on their knees; but one amongst them clad in a white robe

and with a large nearly black turban on his head leaned forward a little

with his chin in his hand. His cheeks were sunken and his eyes remained

fixed on the ground as if to avoid looking at the infidel woman.

She became aware suddenly of a soft murmur, and glancing at Lingard

she saw him in an attitude of impassive attention. The momentous

negotiations had begun, and it went on like this in low undertones with

long pauses and in the immobility of all the attendants squatting on the

ground, with the distant figure of Daman far off in the shade towering

over all the assembly. But in him, too, Mrs. Travers could not detect

the slightest movement while the slightly modulated murmurs went on

enveloping her in a feeling of peace.

The fact that she couldn't understand anything of what was said soothed

her apprehensions. Sometimes a silence fell and Lingard bending toward

her would whisper, “It isn't so easy,” and the stillness would be so

perfect that she would hear the flutter of a pigeon's wing somewhere

high up in the great overshadowing trees. And suddenly one of the men

before her without moving a limb would begin another speech rendered

more mysterious still by the total absence of action or play of feature.

Only the watchfulness of the eyes which showed that the speaker was

not communing with himself made it clear that this was not a spoken

meditation but a flow of argument directed to Lingard who now and then

uttered a few words either with a grave or a smiling expression. They

were always followed by murmurs which seemed mostly to her to convey

assent; and then a reflective silence would reign again and the

immobility of the crowd would appear more perfect than before.

When Lingard whispered to her that it was now his turn to make a

speech Mrs. Travers expected him to get up and assert himself by some

commanding gesture. But he did not. He remained seated, only his voice

had a vibrating quality though he obviously tried to restrain it, and

it travelled masterfully far into the silence. He spoke for a long time

while the sun climbing the unstained sky shifted the diminished shadows

of the trees, pouring on the heads of men its heat through the thick and

motionless foliage. Whenever murmurs arose he would stop and glancing

fearlessly at the assembly, wait till they subsided. Once or twice, they

rose to a loud hum and Mrs. Travers could hear on the other side of her

Jorgenson muttering something in his moustache. Beyond the rows of heads

Daman under the tree had folded his arms on his breast. The edge of

the white cloth concealed his forehead and at his feet the two Illanun

chiefs, half naked and bedecked with charms and ornaments of bright

feathers, of shells, with necklaces of teeth, claws, and shining beads,

remained cross-legged with their swords across their knees like two

bronze idols. Even the plumes of their head-dresses stirred not.

“Sudah! It is finished!” A movement passed along all the heads, the

seated bodies swayed to and fro. Lingard had ceased speaking. He

remained seated for a moment looking his audience all over and when he

stood up together with Mrs. Travers and Jorgenson the whole assembly

rose from the ground together and lost its ordered formation. Some

of Belarab's retainers, young broad-faced fellows, wearing a sort of

uniform of check-patterned sarongs, black silk jackets and crimson

skull-caps set at a rakish angle, swaggered through the broken groups

and ranged themselves in two rows before the motionless Daman and his

Illanun chiefs in martial array. The members of the council who had

left their bench approached the white people with gentle smiles

and deferential movements of the hands. Their bearing was faintly

propitiatory; only the man in the big turban remained fanatically aloof,

keeping his eyes fixed on the ground.

“I have done it,” murmured Lingard to Mrs. Travers.--“Was it very

difficult?” she asked.--“No,” he said, conscious in his heart that he

had strained to the fullest extent the prestige of his good name and

that habit of deference to his slightest wish established by the glamour

of his wealth and the fear of his personality in this great talk which

after all had done nothing except put off the decisive hour. He offered

Mrs. Travers his arm ready to lead her away, but at the last moment did

not move.

With an authoritative gesture Daman had parted the ranks of Belarab's

young followers with the red skullcaps and was seen advancing toward the

whites striking into an astonished silence all the scattered groups in

the courtyard. But the broken ranks had closed behind him. The Illanun

chiefs, for all their truculent aspect, were much too prudent to attempt

to move. They had not needed for that the faint warning murmur from

Daman. He advanced alone. The plain hilt of a sword protruded from the

open edges of his cloak. The parted edges disclosed also the butts of

two flintlock pistols. The Koran in a velvet case hung on his breast by

a red cord of silk. He was pious, magnificent, and warlike, with calm

movements and a straight glance from under the hem of the simple piece

of linen covering his head. He carried himself rigidly and his bearing

had a sort of solemn modesty. Lingard said hurriedly to Mrs. Travers

that the man had met white people before and that, should he attempt to

shake hands with her, she ought to offer her own covered with the end

of her scarf.--“Why?” she asked. “Propriety?”--“Yes, it will be better,”

said Lingard and the next moment Mrs. Travers felt her enveloped hand

pressed gently by slender dark fingers and felt extremely Oriental

herself when, with her face muffled to the eyes, she encountered the

lustrous black stare of the sea-robbers' leader. It was only for an

instant, because Daman turned away at once to shake hands with Lingard.

In the straight, ample folds of his robes he looked very slender facing

the robust white man.

“Great is your power,” he said, in a pleasant voice. “The white men are

going to be delivered to you.”

“Yes, they pass into my keeping,” said Lingard, returning the other's

bright smile but otherwise looking grim enough with the frown which

had settled on his forehead at Daman's approach. He glanced over his

shoulder at a group of spearmen escorting the two captives who had come

down the steps from the hut. At the sight of Daman barring as it were

Lingard's way they had stopped at some distance and had closed round the

two white men. Daman also glanced dispassionately that way.

“They were my guests,” he murmured. “Please God I shall come soon to ask

you for them . . . as a friend,” he added after a slight pause.

“And please God you will not go away empty handed,” said Lingard,

smoothing his brow. “After all you and I were not meant to meet only

to quarrel. Would you have preferred to see them pass into Tengga's

keeping?”

“Tengga is fat and full of wiles,” said Daman, disdainfully, “a mere

shopkeeper smitten by a desire to be a chief. He is nothing. But you and

I are men that have real power. Yet there is a truth that you and I can

confess to each other. Men's hearts grow quickly discontented. Listen.

The leaders of men are carried forward in the hands of their followers;

and common men's minds are unsteady, their desires changeable, and

their thoughts not to be trusted. You are a great chief they say. Do not

forget that I am a chief, too, and a leader of armed men.”

“I have heard of you, too,” said Lingard in a composed voice.

Daman had cast his eyes down. Suddenly he opened them very wide with an

effect that startled Mrs. Travers.--“Yes. But do you see?” Mrs. Travers,

her hand resting lightly on Lingard's arm, had the sensation of acting

in a gorgeously got up play on the brilliantly lighted stage of an

exotic opera whose accompaniment was not music but the varied strains

of the all-pervading silence.--“Yes, I see,” Lingard replied with a

surprisingly confidential intonation. “But power, too, is in the hands

of a great leader.”

Mrs. Travers watched the faint movements of Daman's nostrils as though

the man were suffering from some powerful emotion, while under her

fingers Lingard's forearm in its white sleeve was as steady as a limb of

marble. Without looking at him she seemed to feel that with one movement

he could crush that nervous figure in which lived the breath of the

great desert haunted by his nomad, camel-riding ancestors.--“Power is

in the hand of God,” he said, all animation dying out of his face, and

paused to wait for Lingard's “Very true,” then continued with a fine

smile, “but He apportions it according to His will for His own purposes,

even to those that are not of the Faith.”

“Such being the will of God you should harbour no bitterness against

them in your heart.”

The low exclamation, “Against those!” and a slight dismissing gesture

of a meagre dark hand out of the folds of the cloak were almost

understandable to Mrs. Travers in the perfection of their melancholy

contempt, and gave Lingard a further insight into the character of

the ally secured to him by the diplomacy of Belarab. He was only half

reassured by this assumption of superior detachment. He trusted to the

man's self-interest more; for Daman no doubt looked to the reconquered

kingdom for the reward of dignity and ease. His father and grandfather

(the men of whom Jorgenson had written as having been hanged for an

example twelve years before) had been friends of Sultans, advisers of

Rulers, wealthy financiers of the great raiding expeditions of the

past. It was hatred that had turned Daman into a self-made outcast,

till Belarab's diplomacy had drawn him out from some obscure and uneasy

retreat.

In a few words Lingard assured Daman of the complete safety of his

followers as long as they themselves made no attempt to get possession

of the stranded yacht. Lingard understood very well that the capture of

Travers and d'Alcacer was the result of a sudden fear, a move directed

by Daman to secure his own safety. The sight of the stranded yacht shook

his confidence completely. It was as if the secrets of the place had

been betrayed. After all, it was perhaps a great folly to trust any

white man, no matter how much he seemed estranged from his own people.

Daman felt he might have been the victim of a plot. Lingard's brig

appeared to him a formidable engine of war. He did not know what to

think and the motive for getting hold of the two white men was really

the wish to secure hostages. Distrusting the fierce impulses of his

followers he had hastened to put them into Belarab's keeping. But

everything in the Settlement seemed to him suspicious: Belarab's

absence, Jorgenson's refusal to make over at once the promised supply

of arms and ammunition. And now that white man had by the power of his

speech got them away from Belarab's people. So much influence filled

Daman with wonder and awe. A recluse for many years in the most obscure

corner of the Archipelago he felt himself surrounded by intrigues. But

the alliance was a great thing, too. He did not want to quarrel. He was

quite willing for the time being to accept Lingard's assurance that no

harm should befall his people encamped on the sandbanks. Attentive and

slight, he seemed to let Lingard's deliberate words sink into him. The

force of that unarmed big man seemed overwhelming. He bowed his head

slowly.

“Allah is our refuge,” he murmured, accepting the inevitable.

He delighted Mrs. Travers not as a living being but like a clever

sketch in colours, a vivid rendering of an artist's vision of some soul,

delicate and fierce. His bright half-smile was extraordinary, sharp like

clear steel, painfully penetrating. Glancing right and left Mrs. Travers

saw the whole courtyard smitten by the desolating fury of sunshine and

peopled with shadows, their forms and colours fading in the violence of

the light. The very brown tones of roof and wall dazzled the eye. Then

Daman stepped aside. He was no longer smiling and Mrs. Travers advanced

with her hand on Lingard's arm through a heat so potent that it seemed

to have a taste, a feel, a smell of its own. She moved on as if floating

in it with Lingard's support.

“Where are they?” she asked.

“They are following us all right,” he answered. Lingard was so certain

that the prisoners would be delivered to him on the beach that he never

glanced back till, after reaching the boat, he and Mrs. Travers turned

about.

The group of spearmen parted right and left, and Mr. Travers and

d'Alcacer walked forward alone looking unreal and odd like their own

day-ghosts. Mr. Travers gave no sign of being aware of his wife's

presence. It was certainly a shock to him. But d'Alcacer advanced

smiling, as if the beach were a drawing room.

With a very few paddlers the heavy old European-built boat moved

slowly over the water that seemed as pale and blazing as the sky above.

Jorgenson had perched himself in the bow. The other four white people

sat in the stern sheets, the ex-prisoners side by side in the middle.

Lingard spoke suddenly.

“I want you both to understand that the trouble is not over yet. Nothing

is finished. You are out on my bare word.”

While Lingard was speaking Mr. Travers turned his face away but

d'Alcacer listened courteously. Not another word was spoken for the rest

of the way. The two gentlemen went up the ship's side first. Lingard

remained to help Mrs. Travers at the foot of the ladder. She pressed his

hand strongly and looking down at his upturned face:

“This was a wonderful success,” she said.

For a time the character of his fascinated gaze did not change. It

was as if she had said nothing. Then he whispered, admiringly, “You

understand everything.”

She moved her eyes away and had to disengage her hand to which he clung

for a moment, giddy, like a man falling out of the world.

III

Mrs. Travers, acutely aware of Lingard behind her, remained gazing over

the lagoon. After a time he stepped forward and placed himself beside

her close to the rail. She went on staring at the sheet of water turned

to deep purple under the sunset sky.

“Why have you been avoiding me since we came back from the stockade?”

she asked in a deadened voice.

“There is nothing to tell you till Rajah Hassim and his sister Immada

return with some news,” Lingard answered in the same tone. “Has my

friend succeeded? Will Belarab listen to any arguments? Will he consent

to come out of his shell? Is he on his way back? I wish I knew! . . .

Not a whisper comes from there! He may have started two days ago and

he may be now near the outskirts of the Settlement. Or he may have gone

into camp half way down, from some whim or other; or he may be already

arrived for all I know. We should not have seen him. The road from the

hills does not lead along the beach.”

He snatched nervously at the long glass and directed it at the dark

stockade. The sun had sunk behind the forests leaving the contour of the

tree-tops outlined by a thread of gold under a band of delicate green

lying across the lower sky. Higher up a faint crimson glow faded into

the darkened blue overhead. The shades of the evening deepened over the

lagoon, clung to the sides of the Emma and to the forms of the further

shore. Lingard laid the glass down.

“Mr. d'Alcacer, too, seems to have been avoiding me,” said Mrs. Travers.

“You are on very good terms with him, Captain Lingard.”

“He is a very pleasant man,” murmured Lingard, absently. “But he says

funny things sometimes. He inquired the other day if there were any

playing cards on board, and when I asked him if he liked card-playing,

just for something to say, he told me with that queer smile of his that

he had read a story of some people condemned to death who passed the

time before execution playing card games with their guards.”

“And what did you say?”

“I told him that there were probably cards on board somewhere--Jorgenson

would know. Then I asked him whether he looked on me as a gaoler. He was

quite startled and sorry for what he said.”

“It wasn't very kind of you, Captain Lingard.”

“It slipped out awkwardly and we made it up with a laugh.”

Mrs. Travers leaned her elbows on the rail and put her head into her

hands. Every attitude of that woman surprised Lingard by its enchanting

effect upon himself. He sighed, and the silence lasted for a long while.

“I wish I had understood every word that was said that morning.”

“That morning,” repeated Lingard. “What morning do you mean?”

“I mean the morning when I walked out of Belarab's stockade on your arm,

Captain Lingard, at the head of the procession. It seemed to me that I

was walking on a splendid stage in a scene from an opera, in a gorgeous

show fit to make an audience hold its breath. You can't possibly guess

how unreal all this seemed, and how artificial I felt myself. An opera,

you know. . . .”

“I know. I was a gold digger at one time. Some of us used to come down

to Melbourne with our pockets full of money. I daresay it was poor

enough to what you must have seen, but once I went to a show like that.

It was a story acted to music. All the people went singing through it

right to the very end.”

“How it must have jarred on your sense of reality,” said Mrs. Travers,

still not looking at him. “You don't remember the name of the opera?”

“No. I never troubled my head about it. We--our lot never did.”

“I won't ask you what the story was like. It must have appeared to

you like the very defiance of all truth. Would real people go singing

through their life anywhere except in a fairy tale?”

“These people didn't always sing for joy,” said Lingard, simply. “I

don't know much about fairy tales.”

“They are mostly about princesses,” murmured Mrs. Travers.

Lingard didn't quite hear. He bent his ear for a moment but she wasn't

looking at him and he didn't ask her to repeat her remark. “Fairy tales

are for children, I believe,” he said. “But that story with music I am

telling you of, Mrs. Travers, was not a tale for children. I assure you

that of the few shows I have seen that one was the most real to me. More

real than anything in life.”

Mrs. Travers, remembering the fatal inanity of most opera librettos, was

touched by these words as if there had been something pathetic in this

readiness of response; as if she had heard a starved man talking of the

delight of a crust of dry bread. “I suppose you forgot yourself in that

story, whatever it was,” she remarked in a detached tone.

“Yes, it carried me away. But I suppose you know the feeling.”

“No. I never knew anything of the kind, not even when I was a chit of

a girl.” Lingard seemed to accept this statement as an assertion of

superiority. He inclined his head slightly. Moreover, she might have

said what she liked. What pleased him most was her not looking at him;

for it enabled him to contemplate with perfect freedom the curve of her

cheek, her small ear half hidden by the clear mesh of fine hair,

the fascination of her uncovered neck. And her whole person was an

impossible, an amazing and solid marvel which somehow was not so much

convincing to the eye as to something within him that was apparently

independent of his senses. Not even for a moment did he think of her as

remote. Untouchable--possibly! But remote--no. Whether consciously or

unconsciously he took her spiritually for granted. It was materially

that she was a wonder of the sort that is at the same time familiar and

sacred.

“No,” Mrs. Travers began again, abruptly. “I never forgot myself in a

story. It was not in me. I have not even been able to forget myself on

that morning on shore which was part of my own story.”

“You carried yourself first rate,” said Lingard, smiling at the nape of

her neck, her ear, the film of escaped hair, the modelling of the corner

of her eye. He could see the flutter of the dark eyelashes: and the

delicate flush on her cheek had rather the effect of scent than of

colour.

“You approved of my behaviour.”

“Just right, I tell you. My word, weren't they all struck of a heap when

they made out what you were.”

“I ought to feel flattered. I will confess to you that I felt only half

disguised and was half angry and wholly uncomfortable. What helped me, I

suppose, was that I wanted to please. . . .”

“I don't mean to say that they were exactly pleased,” broke in Lingard,

conscientiously. “They were startled more.”

“I wanted to please you,” dropped Mrs. Travers, negligently. A faint,

hoarse, and impatient call of a bird was heard from the woods as if

calling to the oncoming night. Lingard's face grew hot in the deepening

dusk. The delicate lemon yellow and ethereal green tints had vanished

from the sky and the red glow darkened menacingly. The sun had set

behind the black pall of the forest, no longer edged with a line of

gold. “Yes, I was absurdly self-conscious,” continued Mrs. Travers in a

conversational tone. “And it was the effect of these clothes that you

made me put on over some of my European--I almost said disguise; because

you know in the present more perfect costume I feel curiously at home;

and yet I can't say that these things really fit me. The sleeves of this

silk under-jacket are rather tight. My shoulders feel bound, too, and as

to the sarong it is scandalously short. According to rule it should have

been long enough to fall over my feet. But I like freedom of movement. I

have had very little of what I liked in life.”

“I can hardly believe that,” said Lingard. “If it wasn't for your saying

so. . . .”

“I wouldn't say so to everybody,” she said, turning her head for a

moment to Lingard and turning it away again to the dusk which seemed to

come floating over the black lagoon. Far away in its depth a couple of

feeble lights twinkled; it was impossible to say whether on the shore

or on the edge of the more distant forest. Overhead the stars were

beginning to come out, but faint yet, as if too remote to be reflected

in the lagoon. Only to the west a setting planet shone through the red

fog of the sunset glow. “It was supposed not to be good for me to have

much freedom of action. So at least I was told. But I have a suspicion

that it was only unpleasing to other people.”

“I should have thought,” began Lingard, then hesitated and stopped. It

seemed to him inconceivable that everybody should not have loved to make

that woman happy. And he was impressed by the bitterness of her tone.

Mrs. Travers did not seem curious to know what he wanted to say and

after a time she added, “I don't mean only when I was a child. I don't

remember that very well. I daresay I was very objectionable as a child.”

Lingard tried to imagine her as a child. The idea was novel to him.

Her perfection seemed to have come into the world complete, mature, and

without any hesitation or weakness. He had nothing in his experience

that could help him to imagine a child of that class. The children he

knew played about the village street and ran on the beach. He had been

one of them. He had seen other children, of course, since, but he

had not been in touch with them except visually and they had not been

English children. Her childhood, like his own, had been passed in

England, and that very fact made it almost impossible for him to imagine

it. He could not even tell whether it was in town or in the country, or

whether as a child she had even seen the sea. And how could a child of

that kind be objectionable? But he remembered that a child disapproved

of could be very unhappy, and he said:

“I am sorry.”

Mrs. Travers laughed a little. Within the muslin cage forms had turned

to blurred shadows. Amongst them the form of d'Alcacer arose and moved.

The systematic or else the morbid dumbness of Mr. Travers bored and

exasperated him, though, as a matter of fact, that gentleman's speeches

had never had the power either to entertain or to soothe his mind.

“It's very nice of you. You have a great capacity for sympathy, but

after all I am not certain on which side your sympathies lie. With me,

or those much-tried people,” said Mrs. Travers.

“With the child,” said Lingard, disregarding the bantering tone. “A

child can have a very bad time of it all to itself.”

“What can you know of it?” she asked.

“I have my own feelings,” he answered in some surprise.

Mrs. Travers, with her back to him, was covered with confusion. Neither

could she depict to herself his childhood as if he, too, had come

into the world in the fullness of his strength and his purpose. She

discovered a certain naiveness in herself and laughed a little. He made

no sound.

“Don't be angry,” she said. “I wouldn't dream of laughing at your

feelings. Indeed your feelings are the most serious thing that ever came

in my way. I couldn't help laughing at myself--at a funny discovery I

made.”

“In the days of your childhood?” she heard Lingard's deep voice asking

after a pause.

“Oh, no. Ages afterward. No child could have made that discovery. Do

you know the greatest difference there is between us? It is this: That I

have been living since my childhood in front of a show and that I

never have been taken in for a moment by its tinsel and its noise or

by anything that went on on the stage. Do you understand what I mean,

Captain Lingard?”

There was a moment of silence. “What does it matter? We are no children

now.” There was an infinite gentleness in Lingard's deep tones. “But if

you have been unhappy then don't tell me that it has not been made up to

you since. Surely you have only to make a sign. A woman like you.”

“You think I could frighten the whole world on to its knees?”

“No, not frighten.” The suggestion of a laugh in the deadened voice

passed off in a catch of the breath. Then he was heard beginning

soberly: “Your husband. . . .” He hesitated a little and she took the

opportunity to say coldly:

“His name is Mr. Travers.”

Lingard didn't know how to take it. He imagined himself to have been

guilty of some sort of presumption. But how on earth was he to call the

man? After all he was her husband. That idea was disagreeable to him

because the man was also inimical in a particularly unreasonable and

galling manner. At the same time he was aware that he didn't care a

bit for his enmity and had an idea that he would not have cared for his

friendship either. And suddenly he felt very much annoyed.

“Yes. That's the man I mean,” he said in a contemptuous tone. “I don't

particularly like the name and I am sure I don't want to talk about him

more than I can help. If he hadn't been your husband I wouldn't have put

up with his manners for an hour. Do you know what would have happened to

him if he hadn't been your husband?”

“No,” said Mrs. Travers. “Do you, Captain Lingard?”

“Not exactly,” he admitted. “Something he wouldn't have liked, you may

be sure.”

“While of course he likes this very much,” she observed. Lingard gave an

abrupt laugh.

“I don't think it's in my power to do anything that he would like,” he

said in a serious tone. “Forgive me my frankness, Mrs. Travers, but he

makes it very difficult sometimes for me to keep civil. Whatever I have

had to put up with in life I have never had to put up with contempt.”

“I quite believe that,” said Mrs. Travers. “Don't your friends call you

King Tom?”

“Nobody that I care for. I have no friends. Oh, yes, they call me

that . . .”

“You have no friends?”

“Not I,” he said with decision. “A man like me has no chums.”

“It's quite possible,” murmured Mrs. Travers to herself.

“No, not even Jorgenson. Old crazy Jorgenson. He calls me King Tom, too.

You see what that's worth.”

“Yes, I see. Or rather I have heard. That poor man has no tone, and so

much depends on that. Now suppose I were to call you King Tom now

and then between ourselves,” Mrs. Travers' voice proposed, distantly

tentative in the night that invested her person with a colourless

vagueness of form.

She waited in the stillness, her elbows on the rail and her face in her

hands as if she had already forgotten what she had said. She heard at

her elbow the deep murmur of:

“Let's hear you say it.”

She never moved the least bit. The sombre lagoon sparkled faintly with

the reflection of the stars.

“Oh, yes, I will let you hear it,” she said into the starlit space in a

voice of unaccented gentleness which changed subtly as she went on. “I

hope you will never regret that you came out of your friendless mystery

to speak to me, King Tom. How many days ago it was! And here is another

day gone. Tell me how many more of them there must be? Of these blinding

days and nights without a sound.”

“Be patient,” he murmured. “Don't ask me for the impossible.”

“How do you or I know what is possible?” she whispered with a strange

scorn. “You wouldn't dare guess. But I tell you that every day that

passes is more impossible to me than the day before.”

The passion of that whisper went like a stab into his breast. “What am

I to tell you?” he murmured, as if with despair. “Remember that every

sunset makes it a day less. Do you think I want you here?”

A bitter little laugh floated out into the starlight. Mrs. Travers heard

Lingard move suddenly away from her side. She didn't change her pose by

a hair's breadth. Presently she heard d'Alcacer coming out of the Cage.

His cultivated voice asked half playfully:

“Have you had a satisfactory conversation? May I be told something of

it?”

“Mr. d'Alcacer, you are curious.”

“Well, in our position, I confess. . . . You are our only refuge,

remember.”

“You want to know what we were talking about,” said Mrs. Travers,

altering slowly her position so as to confront d'Alcacer whose face was

almost undistinguishable. “Oh, well, then, we talked about opera, the

realities and illusions of the stage, of dresses, of people's names, and

things of that sort.”

“Nothing of importance,” he said courteously. Mrs. Travers moved forward

and he stepped to one side. Inside the Cage two Malay hands were hanging

round lanterns, the light of which fell on Mr. Travers' bowed head as he

sat in his chair.

When they were all assembled for the evening meal Jorgenson strolled up

from nowhere in particular as his habit was, and speaking through the

muslin announced that Captain Lingard begged to be excused from joining

the company that evening. Then he strolled away. From that moment till

they got up from the table and the camp bedsteads were brought in not

twenty words passed between the members of the party within the net. The

strangeness of their situation made all attempts to exchange ideas very

arduous; and apart from that each had thoughts which it was distinctly

useless to communicate to the others. Mr. Travers had abandoned himself

to his sense of injury. He did not so much brood as rage inwardly in

a dull, dispirited way. The impossibility of asserting himself in any

manner galled his very soul. D'Alcacer was extremely puzzled. Detached

in a sense from the life of men perhaps as much even as Jorgenson

himself, he took yet a reasonable interest in the course of events and

had not lost all his sense of self-preservation. Without being able to

appreciate the exact values of the situation he was not one of those men

who are ever completely in the dark in any given set of circumstances.

Without being humorous he was a good-humoured man. His habitual, gentle

smile was a true expression. More of a European than of a Spaniard he

had that truly aristocratic nature which is inclined to credit every

honest man with something of its own nobility and in its judgment is

altogether independent of class feeling. He believed Lingard to be an

honest man and he never troubled his head to classify him, except in

the sense that he found him an interesting character. He had a sort of

esteem for the outward personality and the bearing of that seaman. He

found in him also the distinction of being nothing of a type. He was a

specimen to be judged only by its own worth. With his natural gift of

insight d'Alcacer told himself that many overseas adventurers of history

were probably less worthy because obviously they must have been less

simple. He didn't, however, impart those thoughts formally to Mrs.

Travers. In fact he avoided discussing Lingard with Mrs. Travers who, he

thought, was quite intelligent enough to appreciate the exact shade of

his attitude. If that shade was fine, Mrs. Travers was fine, too; and

there was no need to discuss the colours of this adventure. Moreover,

she herself seemed to avoid all direct discussion of the Lingard element

in their fate. D'Alcacer was fine enough to be aware that those two

seemed to understand each other in a way that was not obvious even to

themselves. Whenever he saw them together he was always much tempted to

observe them. And he yielded to the temptation. The fact of one's

life depending on the phases of an obscure action authorizes a certain

latitude of behaviour. He had seen them together repeatedly, communing

openly or apart, and there was in their way of joining each other,

in their poses and their ways of separating, something special and

characteristic and pertaining to themselves only, as if they had been

made for each other.

What he couldn't understand was why Mrs. Travers should have put off his

natural curiosity as to her latest conference with the Man of Fate by

an incredible statement as to the nature of the conversation. Talk about

dresses, opera, people's names. He couldn't take this seriously. She

might have invented, he thought, something more plausible; or simply

have told him that this was not for him to know. She ought to have known

that he would not have been offended. Couldn't she have seen already

that he accepted the complexion of mystery in her relation to that man

completely, unquestionably; as though it had been something preordained

from the very beginning of things? But he was not annoyed with Mrs.

Travers. After all it might have been true. She would talk exactly as

she liked, and even incredibly, if it so pleased her, and make the man

hang on her lips. And likewise she was capable of making the man talk

about anything by a power of inspiration for reasons simple or perverse.

Opera! Dresses! Yes--about Shakespeare and the musical glasses! For a

mere whim or for the deepest purpose. Women worthy of the name were like

that. They were very wonderful. They rose to the occasion and sometimes

above the occasion when things were bound to occur that would be comic

or tragic (as it happened) but generally charged with trouble even to

innocent beholders. D'Alcacer thought these thoughts without bitterness

and even without irony. With his half-secret social reputation as a man

of one great passion in a world of mere intrigues he liked all women.

He liked them in their sentiment and in their hardness, in the tragic

character of their foolish or clever impulses, at which he looked with a

sort of tender seriousness.

He didn't take a favourable view of the position but he considered Mrs.

Travers' statement about operas and dresses as a warning to keep off the

subject. For this reason he remained silent through the meal.

When the bustle of clearing away the table was over he strolled toward

Mrs. Travers and remarked very quietly:

“I think that in keeping away from us this evening the Man of Fate was

well inspired. We dined like a lot of Carthusian monks.”

“You allude to our silence?”