The Rescue (18 page)

"I didn't ask for much," Lingard began again. "Did I? Only that you all
should come on board my brig for five days. That's all. . . . Do I
look like a liar? There are things I could not tell him. I couldn't
explain—I couldn't—not to him—to no man—to no man in the world—"

His voice dropped.

"Not to myself," he ended as if in a dream.

"We have remained unmolested so long here," began Mrs. Travers a little
unsteadily, "that it makes it very difficult to believe in danger, now.
We saw no one all these days except those two people who came for you.
If you may not explain—"

"Of course, you can't be expected to see through a wall," broke in
Lingard. "This coast's like a wall, but I know what's on the other side.
. . . A yacht here, of all things that float! When I set eyes on her I
could fancy she hadn't been more than an hour from home. Nothing but the
look of her spars made me think of old times. And then the faces of the
chaps on board. I seemed to know them all. It was like home coming to me
when I wasn't thinking of it. And I hated the sight of you all."

"If we are exposed to any peril," she said after a pause during which
she tried to penetrate the secret of passion hidden behind that man's
words, "it need not affect you. Our other boat is gone to the Straits
and effective help is sure to come very soon."

"Affect me! Is that precious watchman of yours coming aft? I don't want
anybody to know I came here again begging, even of you. Is he coming
aft? . . . Listen! I've stopped your other boat."

His head and shoulders disappeared as though he had dived into a denser
layer of obscurity floating on the water. The watchman, who had the
intention to stretch himself in one of the deck chairs, catching sight
of the owner's wife, walked straight to the lamp that hung under the
ridge pole of the awning, and after fumbling with it for a time went
away forward with an indolent gait.

"You dared!" Mrs. Travers whispered down in an intense tone; and
directly, Lingard's head emerged again below her with an upturned face.

"It was dare—or give up. The help from the Straits would have been too
late anyhow if I hadn't the power to keep you safe; and if I had the
power I could see you through it—alone. I expected to find a reasonable
man to talk to. I ought to have known better. You come from too far to
understand these things. Well, I dared; I've sent after your other boat
a fellow who, with me at his back, would try to stop the governor of
the Straits himself. He will do it. Perhaps it's done already. You
have nothing to hope for. But I am here. You said you believed I meant
well—"

"Yes," she murmured.

"That's why I thought I would tell you everything. I had to begin with
this business about the boat. And what do you think of me now? I've cut
you off from the rest of the earth. You people would disappear like a
stone in the water. You left one foreign port for another. Who's there
to trouble about what became of you? Who would know? Who could guess? It
would be months before they began to stir."

"I understand," she said, steadily, "we are helpless."

"And alone," he added.

After a pause she said in a deliberate, restrained voice:

"What does this mean? Plunder, captivity?"

"It would have meant death if I hadn't been here," he answered.

"But you have the power to—"

"Why, do you think, you are alive yet?" he cried. "Jorgenson has been
arguing with them on shore," he went on, more calmly, with a swing of
his arm toward where the night seemed darkest. "Do you think he would
have kept them back if they hadn't expected me every day? His words
would have been nothing without my fist."

She heard a dull blow struck on the side of the yacht and concealed in
the same darkness that wrapped the unconcern of the earth and sea, the
fury and the pain of hearts; she smiled above his head, fascinated by
the simplicity of images and expressions.

Lingard made a brusque movement, the lively little boat being unsteady
under his feet, and she spoke slowly, absently, as if her thought had
been lost in the vagueness of her sensations.

"And this—this—Jorgenson, you said? Who is he?"

"A man," he answered, "a man like myself."

"Like yourself?"

"Just like myself," he said with strange reluctance, as if admitting a
painful truth. "More sense, perhaps, but less luck. Though, since your
yacht has turned up here, I begin to think that my luck is nothing much
to boast of either."

"Is our presence here so fatal?"

"It may be death to some. It may be worse than death to me. And it rests
with you in a way. Think of that! I can never find such another chance
again. But that's nothing! A man who has saved my life once and that I
passed my word to would think I had thrown him over. But that's nothing!
Listen! As true as I stand here in my boat talking to you, I believe the
girl would die of grief."

"You love her," she said, softly.

"Like my own daughter," he cried, low.

Mrs. Travers said, "Oh!" faintly, and for a moment there was a silence,
then he began again:

"Look here. When I was a boy in a trawler, and looked at you yacht
people, in the Channel ports, you were as strange to me as the Malays
here are strange to you. I left home sixteen years ago and fought my way
all round the earth. I had the time to forget where I began. What are
you to me against these two? If I was to die here on the spot would you
care? No one would care at home. No one in the whole world—but these
two."

"What can I do?" she asked, and waited, leaning over.

He seemed to reflect, then lifting his head, spoke gently:

"Do you understand the danger you are in? Are you afraid?"

"I understand the expression you used, of course. Understand the
danger?" she went on. "No—decidedly no. And—honestly—I am not
afraid."

"Aren't you?" he said in a disappointed voice. "Perhaps you don't
believe me? I believed you, though, when you said you were sure I meant
well. I trusted you enough to come here asking for your help—telling
you what no one knows."

"You mistake me," she said with impulsive earnestness. "This is so
extraordinarily unusual—sudden—outside my experience."

"Aye!" he murmured, "what would you know of danger and trouble? You! But
perhaps by thinking it over—"

"You want me to think myself into a fright!" Mrs. Travers laughed
lightly, and in the gloom of his thought this flash of joyous sound
was incongruous and almost terrible. Next moment the night appeared
brilliant as day, warm as sunshine; but when she ceased the returning
darkness gave him pain as if it had struck heavily against his breast.
"I don't think I could do that," she finished in a serious tone.

"Couldn't you?" He hesitated, perplexed. "Things are bad enough to make
it no shame. I tell you," he said, rapidly, "and I am not a timid man, I
may not be able to do much if you people don't help me."

"You want me to pretend I am alarmed?" she asked, quickly.

"Aye, to pretend—as well you may. It's a lot to ask of you—who perhaps
never had to make-believe a thing in your life—isn't it?"

"It is," she said after a time.

The unexpected bitterness of her tone struck Lingard with dismay.

"Don't be offended," he entreated. "I've got to plan a way out of this
mess. It's no play either. Could you pretend?"

"Perhaps, if I tried very hard. But to what end?"

"You must all shift aboard the brig," he began, speaking quickly, "and
then we may get over this trouble without coming to blows. Now, if you
were to say that you wish it; that you feel unsafe in the yacht—don't
you see?"

"I see," she pronounced, thoughtfully.

"The brig is small but the cuddy is fit for a lady," went on Lingard
with animation.

"Has it not already sheltered a princess?" she commented, coolly.

"And I shall not intrude."

"This is an inducement."

"Nobody will dare to intrude. You needn't even see me."

"This is almost decisive, only—"

"I know my place."

"Only, I might not have the influence," she finished.

"That I can not believe," he said, roughly. "The long and the short of
it is you don't trust me because you think that only people of your own
condition speak the truth always."

"Evidently," she murmured.

"You say to yourself—here's a fellow deep in with pirates, thieves,
niggers—"

"To be sure—"

"A man I never saw the like before," went on Lingard, headlong,
"a—ruffian."

He checked himself, full of confusion. After a time he heard her saying,
calmly:

"You are like other men in this, that you get angry when you can not
have your way at once."

"I angry!" he exclaimed in deadened voice. "You do not understand. I am
thinking of you also—it is hard on me—"

"I mistrust not you, but my own power. You have produced an unfortunate
impression on Mr. Travers."

"Unfortunate impression! He treated me as if I had been a long-shore
loafer. Never mind that. He is your husband. Fear in those you care for
is hard to bear for any man. And so, he—"

"What Machiavellism!"

"Eh, what did you say?"

"I only wondered where you had observed that. On the sea?"

"Observed what?" he said, absently. Then pursuing his idea—"One word
from you ought to be enough."

"You think so?"

"I am sure of it. Why, even I, myself—"

"Of course," she interrupted. "But don't you think that after parting
with you on such—such—inimical terms, there would be a difficulty in
resuming relations?"

"A man like me would do anything for money—don't you see?"

After a pause she asked:

"And would you care for that argument to be used?"

"As long as you know better!"

His voice vibrated—she drew back disturbed, as if unexpectedly he had
touched her.

"What can there be at stake?" she began, wonderingly.

"A kingdom," said Lingard.

Mrs. Travers leaned far over the rail, staring, and their faces, one
above the other, came very close together.

"Not for yourself?" she whispered.

He felt the touch of her breath on his forehead and remained still for
a moment, perfectly still as if he did not intend to move or speak any
more.

"Those things," he began, suddenly, "come in your way, when you don't
think, and they get all round you before you know what you mean to
do. When I went into that bay in New Guinea I never guessed where that
course would take me to. I could tell you a story. You would understand!
You! You!"

He stammered, hesitated, and suddenly spoke, liberating the visions
of two years into the night where Mrs. Travers could follow them as if
outlined in words of fire.

His tale was as startling as the discovery of a new world. She was being
taken along the boundary of an exciting existence, and she looked into
it through the guileless enthusiasm of the narrator. The heroic quality
of the feelings concealed what was disproportionate and absurd in
that gratitude, in that friendship, in that inexplicable devotion. The
headlong fierceness of purpose invested his obscure design of conquest
with the proportions of a great enterprise. It was clear that no vision
of a subjugated world could have been more inspiring to the most famous
adventurer of history.

From time to time he interrupted himself to ask, confidently, as if
he had been speaking to an old friend, "What would you have done?" and
hurried on without pausing for approval.

It struck her that there was a great passion in all this, the beauty of
an implanted faculty of affection that had found itself, its immediate
need of an object and the way of expansion; a tenderness expressed
violently; a tenderness that could only be satisfied by backing human
beings against their own destiny. Perhaps her hatred of convention,
trammelling the frankness of her own impulses, had rendered her more
alert to perceive what is intrinsically great and profound within the
forms of human folly, so simple and so infinitely varied according to
the region of the earth and to the moment of time.

What of it that the narrator was only a roving seaman; the kingdom of
the jungle, the men of the forest, the lives obscure! That simple soul
was possessed by the greatness of the idea; there was nothing sordid in
its flaming impulses. When she once understood that, the story appealed
to the audacity of her thoughts, and she became so charmed with what she
heard that she forgot where she was. She forgot that she was personally
close to that tale which she saw detached, far away from her, truth or
fiction, presented in picturesque speech, real only by the response of
her emotion.

Lingard paused. In the cessation of the impassioned murmur she began to
reflect. And at first it was only an oppressive notion of there being
some significance that really mattered in this man's story. That
mattered to her. For the first time the shadow of danger and death
crossed her mind. Was that the significance? Suddenly, in a flash of
acute discernment, she saw herself involved helplessly in that story, as
one is involved in a natural cataclysm.

He was speaking again. He had not been silent more than a minute. It
seemed to Mrs. Travers that years had elapsed, so different now was the
effect of his words. Her mind was agitated as if his coming to speak and
confide in her had been a tremendous occurrence. It was a fact of her
own existence; it was part of the story also. This was the disturbing
thought. She heard him pronounce several names: Belarab, Daman, Tengga,
Ningrat. These belonged now to her life and she was appalled to find she
was unable to connect these names with any human appearance. They stood
out alone, as if written on the night; they took on a symbolic shape;
they imposed themselves upon her senses. She whispered as if pondering:
"Belarab, Daman, Ningrat," and these barbarous sounds seemed to possess
an exceptional energy, a fatal aspect, the savour of madness.