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