Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) (575 page)

“You didn’t expect . . .” began Mrs. Travers with some embarrassment before that mute attitude.

“I doubted my eyes,” struck in d’Alcacer, who seemed embarrassed, too. Next moment he recovered his tone and confessed simply: “At the moment I wasn’t thinking of you, Mrs. Travers.” He passed his hand over his forehead. “I hardly know what I was thinking of.”

In the light of the shooting-up flame Mrs. Travers could see d’Alcacer’s face. There was no smile on it. She could not remember ever seeing him so grave and, as it were, so distant. She abandoned Lingard’s arm and moved closer to the fire.

“I fancy you were very far away, Mr. d’Alcacer,” she said.

“This is the sort of freedom of which nothing can deprive us,” he observed, looking hard at the manner in which the scarf was drawn across Mrs. Travers’ face. “It’s possible I was far away,” he went on, “but I can assure you that I don’t know where I was. Less than an hour ago we had a great excitement here about some rockets, but I didn’t share in it. There was no one I could ask a question of. The captain here was, I understood, engaged in a most momentous conversation with the king or the governor of this place.”

He addressed Lingard, directly. “May I ask whether you have reached any conclusion as yet? That Moor is a very dilatory person, I believe.”

“Any direct attack he would, of course, resist,” said Lingard. “And, so far, you are protected. But I must admit that he is rather angry with me. He’s tired of the whole business. He loves peace above anything in the world. But I haven’t finished with him yet.”

“As far as I understood from what you told me before,” said Mr. d’Alcacer, with a quick side glance at Mrs. Travers’ uncovered and attentive eyes, “as far as I can see he may get all the peace he wants at once by driving us two, I mean Mr. Travers and myself, out of the gate on to the spears of those other enraged barbarians. And there are some of his counsellors who advise him to do that very thing no later than the break of day I understand.”

Lingard stood for a moment perfectly motionless.

“That’s about it,” he said in an unemotional tone, and went away with a heavy step without giving another look at d’Alcacer and Mrs. Travers, who after a moment faced each other.

“You have heard?” said d’Alcacer. “Of course that doesn’t affect your fate in any way, and as to him he is much too prestigious to be killed light-heartedly. When all this is over you will walk triumphantly on his arm out of this stockade; for there is nothing in all this to affect his greatness, his absolute value in the eyes of those people — and indeed in any other eyes.” D’Alcacer kept his glance averted from Mrs. Travers and as soon as he had finished speaking busied himself in dragging the bench a little way further from the fire. When they sat down on it he kept his distance from Mrs. Travers. She made no sign of unveiling herself and her eyes without a face seemed to him strangely unknown and disquieting.

“The situation in a nutshell,” she said. “You have arranged it all beautifully, even to my triumphal exit. Well, and what then? No, you needn’t answer, it has no interest. I assure you I came here not with any notion of marching out in triumph, as you call it. I came here, to speak in the most vulgar way, to save your skin — and mine.”

Her voice came muffled to d’Alcacer’s ears with a changed character, even to the very intonation. Above the white and embroidered scarf her eyes in the firelight transfixed him, black and so steady that even the red sparks of the reflected glare did not move in them. He concealed the strong impression she made. He bowed his head a little.

“I believe you know perfectly well what you are doing.”

“No! I don’t know,” she said, more quickly than he had ever heard her speak before. “First of all, I don’t think he is so safe as you imagine. Oh, yes, he has prestige enough, I don’t question that. But you are apportioning life and death with too much assurance. . . .”

“I know my portion,” murmured d’Alcacer, gently. A moment of silence fell in which Mrs. Travers’ eyes ended by intimidating d’Alcacer, who looked away. The flame of the fire had sunk low. In the dark agglomeration of buildings, which might have been called Belarab’s palace, there was a certain animation, a flitting of people, voices calling and answering, the passing to and fro of lights that would illuminate suddenly a heavy pile, the corner of a house, the eaves of a low-pitched roof, while in the open parts of the stockade the armed men slept by the expiring fires.

Mrs. Travers said, suddenly, “That Jorgenson is not friendly to us.”

“Possibly.”

With clasped hands and leaning over his knees d’Alcacer had assented in a very low tone. Mrs. Travers, unobserved, pressed her hands to her breast and felt the shape of the ring, thick, heavy, set with a big stone. It was there, secret, hung against her heart, and enigmatic. What did it mean? What could it mean? What was the feeling it could arouse or the action it could provoke? And she thought with compunction that she ought to have given it to Lingard at once, without thinking, without hesitating. “There! This is what I came for. To give you this.” Yes, but there had come an interval when she had been able to think of nothing, and since then she had had the time to reflect — unfortunately. To remember Jorgenson’s hostile, contemptuous glance enveloping her from head to foot at the break of a day after a night of lonely anguish. And now while she sat there veiled from his keen sight there was that other man, that d’Alcacer, prophesying. O yes, triumphant. She knew already what that was. Mrs. Travers became afraid of the ring. She felt ready to pluck it from her neck and cast it away.

“I mistrust him,” she said. — ”You do!” exclaimed d’Alcacer, very low. — ”I mean that Jorgenson. He seems a merciless sort of creature.” — ”He is indifferent to everything,” said d’Alcacer. — ”It may be a mask.” — ”Have you some evidence, Mrs. Travers?”

“No,” said Mrs. Travers without hesitation. “I have my instinct.”

D’Alcacer remained silent for a while as though he were pursuing another train of thought altogether, then in a gentle, almost playful tone: “If I were a woman,” he said, turning to Mrs. Travers, “I would always trust my intuition.” — ”If you were a woman, Mr. d’Alcacer, I would not be speaking to you in this way because then I would be suspect to you.”

The thought that before long perhaps he would be neither man nor woman but a lump of cold clay, crossed d’Alcacer’s mind, which was living, alert, and unsubdued by the danger. He had welcomed the arrival of Mrs. Travers simply because he had been very lonely in that stockade, Mr. Travers having fallen into a phase of sulks complicated with shivering fits. Of Lingard d’Alcacer had seen almost nothing since they had landed, for the Man of Fate was extremely busy negotiating in the recesses of Belarab’s main hut; and the thought that his life was being a matter of arduous bargaining was not agreeable to Mr. d’Alcacer. The Chief’s dependents and the armed men garrisoning the stockade paid very little attention to him apparently, and this gave him the feeling of his captivity being very perfect and hopeless. During the afternoon, while pacing to and fro in the bit of shade thrown by the glorified sort of hut inside which Mr. Travers shivered and sulked misanthropically, he had been aware of the more distant verandahs becoming filled now and then by the muffled forms of women of Belarab’s household taking a distant and curious view of the white man. All this was irksome. He found his menaced life extremely difficult to get through. Yes, he welcomed the arrival of Mrs. Travers who brought with her a tragic note into the empty gloom.

“Suspicion is not in my nature, Mrs. Travers, I assure you, and I hope that you on your side will never suspect either my reserve or my frankness. I respect the mysterious nature of your conviction but hasn’t Jorgenson given you some occasion to. . .”

“He hates me,” said Mrs. Travers, and frowned at d’Alcacer’s incipient smile. “It isn’t a delusion on my part. The worst is that he hates me not for myself. I believe he is completely indifferent to my existence. Jorgenson hates me because as it were I represent you two who are in danger, because it is you two that are the trouble and I . . . Well!”

“Yes, yes, that’s certain,” said d’Alcacer, hastily. “But Jorgenson is wrong in making you the scapegoat. For if you were not here cool reason would step in and would make Lingard pause in his passion to make a king out of an exile. If we were murdered it would certainly make some stir in the world in time and he would fall under the suspicion of complicity with those wild and inhuman Moors. Who would regard the greatness of his day-dreams, his engaged honour, his chivalrous feelings? Nothing could save him from that suspicion. And being what he is, you understand me, Mrs. Travers (but you know him much better than I do), it would morally kill him.”

“Heavens!” whispered Mrs. Travers. “This has never occurred to me.” Those words seemed to lose themselves in the folds of the scarf without reaching d’Alcacer, who continued in his gentle tone:

‘“However, as it is, he will be safe enough whatever happens. He will have your testimony to clear him.”

Mrs. Travers stood up, suddenly, but still careful to keep her face covered, she threw the end of the scarf over her shoulder.

“I fear that Jorgenson,” she cried with suppressed passion. “One can’t understand what that man means to do. I think him so dangerous that if I were, for instance, entrusted with a message bearing on the situation, I would . . . suppress it.”

D’Alcacer was looking up from the seat, full of wonder. Mrs. Travers appealed to him in a calm voice through the folds of the scarf:

“Tell me, Mr. d’Alcacer, you who can look on it calmly, wouldn’t I be right?”

“Why, has Jorgenson told you anything?”

“Directly — nothing, except a phrase or two which really I could not understand. They seemed to have a hidden sense and he appeared to attach some mysterious importance to them that he dared not explain to me.”

“That was a risk on his part,” exclaimed d’Alcacer. “And he trusted you. Why you, I wonder!”

“Who can tell what notions he has in his head? Mr. d’Alcacer, I believe his only object is to call Captain Lingard away from us. I understood it only a few minutes ago. It has dawned upon me. All he wants is to call him off.”

“Call him off,” repeated d’Alcacer, a little bewildered by the aroused fire of her conviction. “I am sure I don’t want him called off any more than you do; and, frankly, I don’t believe Jorgenson has any such power. But upon the whole, and if you feel that Jorgenson has the power, I would — yes, if I were in your place I think I would suppress anything I could not understand.”

Mrs. Travers listened to the very end. Her eyes — they appeared incredibly sombre to d’Alcacer — seemed to watch the fall of every deliberate word and after he had ceased they remained still for an appreciable time. Then she turned away with a gesture that seemed to say: “So be it.”

D’Alcacer raised his voice suddenly after her. “Stay! Don’t forget that not only your husband’s but my head, too, is being played at that game. My judgment is not . . .”

She stopped for a moment and freed her lips. In the profound stillness of the courtyard her clear voice made the shadows at the nearest fires stir a little with low murmurs of surprise.

“Oh, yes, I remember whose heads I have to save,” she cried. “But in all the world who is there to save that man from himself?”

V

D’Alcacer sat down on the bench again. “I wonder what she knows,” he thought, “and I wonder what I have done.” He wondered also how far he had been sincere and how far affected by a very natural aversion from being murdered obscurely by ferocious Moors with all the circumstances of barbarity. It was a very naked death to come upon one suddenly. It was robbed of all helpful illusions, such as the free will of a suicide, the heroism of a warrior, or the exaltation of a martyr. “Hadn’t I better make some sort of fight of it?” he debated with himself. He saw himself rushing at the naked spears without any enthusiasm. Or wouldn’t it be better to go forth to meet his doom (somewhere outside the stockade on that horrible beach) with calm dignity. “Pah! I shall be probably speared through the back in the beastliest possible fashion,” he thought with an inward shudder. It was certainly not a shudder of fear, for Mr. d’Alcacer attached no high value to life. It was a shudder of disgust because Mr. d’Alcacer was a civilized man and though he had no illusions about civilization he could not but admit the superiority of its methods. It offered to one a certain refinement of form, a comeliness of proceedings and definite safeguards against deadly surprises. “How idle all this is,” he thought, finally. His next thought was that women were very resourceful. It was true, he went on meditating with unwonted cynicism, that strictly speaking they had only one resource but, generally, it served — it served.

He was surprised by his supremely shameless bitterness at this juncture. It was so uncalled for. This situation was too complicated to be entrusted to a cynical or shameless hope. There was nothing to trust to. At this moment of his meditation he became aware of Lingard’s approach. He raised his head eagerly. D’Alcacer was not indifferent to his fate and even to Mr. Travers’ fate. He would fain learn. . . . But one look at Lingard’s face was enough. “It’s no use asking him anything,” he said to himself, “for he cares for nothing just now.”

Lingard sat down heavily on the other end of the bench, and d’Alcacer, looking at his profile, confessed to himself that this was the most masculinely good-looking face he had ever seen in his life. It was an expressive face, too, but its present expression was also beyond d’Alcacer’s past experience. At the same time its quietness set up a barrier against common curiosities and even common fears. No, it was no use asking him anything. Yet something should be said to break the spell, to call down again this man to the earth. But it was Lingard who spoke first. “Where has Mrs. Travers gone?”

“She has gone . . . where naturally she would be anxious to go first of all since she has managed to come to us,” answered d’Alcacer, wording his answer with the utmost regard for the delicacy of the situation.