The Rescue (31 page)

"Edith, where's the truth in all this?"

She detected the anguish of a slow mind with an instinctive dread of
obscure places wherein new discoveries can be made. She looked over her
shoulder to say:

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

She turned again to the looking-glass where her own face met her with
dark eyes and a fair mist of hair above the smooth forehead; but her
words had produced no soothing effect.

"But what does it mean?" cried Mr. Travers. "Why doesn't the fellow
apologize? Why are we kept here? Are we being kept here? Why don't we
get away? Why doesn't he take me back on board my yacht? What does he
want from me? How did he procure our release from these people on shore
who he says intended to cut our throats? Why did they give us up to him
instead?"

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

"Matters of high policy and of local politics. Conflict of personal
interests, mistrust between the parties, intrigues of individuals—you
ought to know how that sort of thing works. His diplomacy made use of
all that. The first thing to do was not to liberate you but to get you
into his keeping. He is a very great man here and let me tell you that
your safety depends on his dexterity in the use of his prestige rather
than on his power which he cannot use. If you would let him talk to
you I am sure he would tell you as much as it is possible for him to
disclose."

"I don't want to be told about any of his rascalities. But haven't you
been taken into his confidence?"

"Completely," admitted Mrs. Travers, peering into the small
looking-glass.

"What is the influence you brought to bear upon this man? It looks to me
as if our fate were in your hands."

"Your fate is not in my hands. It is not even in his hands. There is a
moral situation here which must be solved."

"Ethics of blackmail," commented Mr. Travers with unexpected sarcasm. It
flashed through his wife's mind that perhaps she didn't know him so well
as she had supposed. It was as if the polished and solemn crust of hard
proprieties had cracked slightly, here and there, under the strain,
disclosing the mere wrongheadedness of a common mortal. But it was
only manner that had cracked a little; the marvellous stupidity of
his conceit remained the same. She thought that this discussion was
perfectly useless, and as she finished putting up her hair she said: "I
think we had better go on deck now."

"You propose to go out on deck like this?" muttered Mr. Travers with
downcast eyes.

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

Mr. Travers made no reply. What she had said of his attitude was very
true. He sulked at the enormous offensiveness of men, things, and
events; of words and even of glances which he seemed to feel physically
resting on his skin like a pain, like a degrading contact. He managed
not to wince. But he sulked. His wife continued, "And let me tell
you that those clothes are fit for a princess—I mean they are of the
quality, material and style custom prescribes for the highest in the
land, a far-distant land where I am informed women rule as much as the
men. In fact they were meant to be presented to an actual princess in
due course. They were selected with the greatest care for that child
Immada. Captain Lingard. . . ."

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

"Well, I must call him by some name and this I thought would be the
least offensive for you to hear. After all, the man exists. But he is
known also on a certain portion of the earth's surface as King Tom.
D'Alcacer is greatly taken by that name. It seems to him wonderfully
well adapted to the man, in its familiarity and deference. And if you
prefer. . . ."

"I would prefer to hear nothing," said Mr. Travers, distinctly. "Not a
single word. Not even from you, till I am a free agent again. But words
don't touch me. Nothing can touch me; neither your sinister warnings nor
the moods of levity which you think proper to display before a man whose
life, according to you, hangs on a thread."

"I never forget it for a moment," said Mrs. Travers. "And I not only
know that it does but I also know the strength of the thread. It is a
wonderful thread. You may say if you like it has been spun by the same
fate which made you what you are."

Mr. Travers felt awfully offended. He had never heard anybody, let alone
his own self, addressed in such terms. The tone seemed to question his
very quality. He reflected with shocked amazement that he had lived with
that woman for eight years! And he said to her gloomily:

"You talk like a pagan."

It was a very strong condemnation which apparently Mrs. Travers had
failed to hear for she pursued with animation:

"But really, you can't expect me to meditate on it all the time or shut
myself up here and mourn the circumstances from morning to night. It
would be morbid. Let us go on deck."

"And you look simply heathenish in this costume," Mr. Travers went on
as though he had not been interrupted, and with an accent of deliberate
disgust.

Her heart was heavy but everything he said seemed to force the tone
of levity on to her lips. "As long as I don't look like a guy," she
remarked, negligently, and then caught the direction of his lurid stare
which as a matter of fact was fastened on her bare feet. She checked
herself, "Oh, yes, if you prefer it I will put on my stockings. But you
know I must be very careful of them. It's the only pair I have here. I
have washed them this morning in that bathroom which is built over the
stern. They are now drying over the rail just outside. Perhaps you will
be good enough to pass them to me when you go on deck."

Mr. Travers spun round and went on deck without a word. As soon as she
was alone Mrs. Travers pressed her hands to her temples, a gesture of
distress which relieved her by its sincerity. The measured footsteps of
two men came to her plainly from the deck, rhythmic and double with
a suggestion of tranquil and friendly intercourse. She distinguished
particularly the footfalls of the man whose life's orbit was most remote
from her own. And yet the orbits had cut! A few days ago she could
not have even conceived of his existence, and now he was the man whose
footsteps, it seemed to her, her ears could single unerringly in the
tramp of a crowd. It was, indeed, a fabulous thing. In the half light of
her over-heated shelter she let an irresolute, frightened smile pass off
her lips before she, too, went on deck.

An ingeniously constructed framework of light posts and thin laths
occupied the greater part of the deck amidships of the Emma. The four
walls of that airy structure were made of muslin. It was comparatively
lofty. A door-like arrangement of light battens filled with calico
was further protected by a system of curtains calculated to baffle the
pursuit of mosquitoes that haunted the shores of the lagoon in great
singing clouds from sunset till sunrise. A lot of fine mats covered
the deck space within the transparent shelter devised by Lingard and
Jorgenson to make Mrs. Travers' existence possible during the time when
the fate of the two men, and indeed probably of everybody else on board
the Emma, had to hang in the balance. Very soon Lingard's unbidden and
fatal guests had learned the trick of stepping in and out of the place
quickly. Mr. d'Alcacer performed the feat without apparent haste, almost
nonchalantly, yet as well as anybody. It was generally conceded that he
had never let a mosquito in together with himself. Mr. Travers dodged in
and out without grace and was obviously much irritated at the necessity.
Mrs. Travers did it in a manner all her own, with marked cleverness
and an unconscious air. There was an improvised table in there and some
wicker armchairs which Jorgenson had produced from somewhere in the
depths of the ship. It was hard to say what the inside of the Emma
did not contain. It was crammed with all sorts of goods like a general
store. That old hulk was the arsenal and the war-chest of Lingard's
political action; she was stocked with muskets and gunpowder, with bales
of longcloth, of cotton prints, of silks; with bags of rice and currency
brass guns. She contained everything necessary for dealing death and
distributing bribes, to act on the cupidity and upon the fears of men,
to march and to organize, to feed the friends and to combat the enemies
of the cause. She held wealth and power in her flanks, that grounded
ship that would swim no more, without masts and with the best part
of her deck cumbered by the two structures of thin boards and of
transparent muslin.

Within the latter lived the Europeans, visible in the daytime to the few
Malays on board as if through a white haze. In the evening the lighting
of the hurricane lamps inside turned them into dark phantoms surrounded
by a shining mist, against which the insect world rushing in its
millions out of the forest on the bank was baffled mysteriously in its
assault. Rigidly enclosed by transparent walls, like captives of
an enchanted cobweb, they moved about, sat, gesticulated, conversed
publicly during the day; and at night when all the lanterns but one were
extinguished, their slumbering shapes covered all over by white cotton
sheets on the camp bedsteads, which were brought in every evening,
conveyed the gruesome suggestion of dead bodies reposing on stretchers.
The food, such as it was, was served within that glorified mosquito net
which everybody called the "Cage" without any humorous intention. At
meal times the party from the yacht had the company of Lingard who
attached to this ordeal a sense of duty performed at the altar of
civility and conciliation. He could have no conception how much his
presence added to the exasperation of Mr. Travers because Mr. Travers'
manner was too intensely consistent to present any shades. It was
determined by an ineradicable conviction that he was a victim held to
ransom on some incomprehensible terms by an extraordinary and outrageous
bandit. This conviction, strung to the highest pitch, never left him for
a moment, being the object of indignant meditation to his mind, and even
clinging, as it were, to his very body. It lurked in his eyes, in his
gestures, in his ungracious mutters, and in his sinister silences. The
shock to his moral being had ended by affecting Mr. Travers' physical
machine. He was aware of hepatic pains, suffered from accesses of
somnolence and suppressed gusts of fury which frightened him secretly.
His complexion had acquired a yellow tinge, while his heavy eyes had
become bloodshot because of the smoke of the open wood fires during
his three days' detention inside Belarab's stockade. His eyes had been
always very sensitive to outward conditions. D'Alcacer's fine black eyes
were more enduring and his appearance did not differ very much from his
ordinary appearance on board the yacht. He had accepted with smiling
thanks the offer of a thin blue flannel tunic from Jorgenson. Those two
men were much of the same build, though of course d'Alcacer, quietly
alive and spiritually watchful, did not resemble Jorgenson, who, without
being exactly macabre, behaved more like an indifferent but restless
corpse. Those two could not be said to have ever conversed together.
Conversation with Jorgenson was an impossible thing. Even Lingard never
attempted the feat. He propounded questions to Jorgenson much as a
magician would interrogate an evoked shade, or gave him curt directions
as one would make use of some marvellous automaton. And that was
apparently the way in which Jorgenson preferred to be treated. Lingard's
real company on board the Emma was d'Alcacer. D'Alcacer had met Lingard
on the easy terms of a man accustomed all his life to good society in
which the very affectations must be carried on without effort. Whether
affectation, or nature, or inspired discretion, d'Alcacer never let the
slightest curiosity pierce the smoothness of his level, grave courtesy
lightened frequently by slight smiles which often had not much
connection with the words he uttered, except that somehow they made them
sound kindly and as it were tactful. In their character, however, those
words were strictly neutral.

The only time when Lingard had detected something of a deeper
comprehension in d'Alcacer was the day after the long negotiations
inside Belarab's stockade for the temporary surrender of the prisoners.
That move had been suggested to him, exactly as Mrs. Travers had told
her husband, by the rivalries of the parties and the state of public
opinion in the Settlement deprived of the presence of the man who,
theoretically at least, was the greatest power and the visible ruler
of the Shore of Refuge. Belarab still lingered at his father's tomb.
Whether that man of the embittered and pacific heart had withdrawn there
to meditate upon the unruliness of mankind and the thankless nature of
his task; or whether he had gone there simply to bathe in a particularly
clear pool which was a feature of the place, give himself up to the
enjoyment of a certain fruit which grew in profusion there and indulge
for a time in a scrupulous performance of religious exercises, his
absence from the Settlement was a fact of the utmost gravity. It is true
that the prestige of a long-unquestioned rulership and the long-settled
mental habits of the people had caused the captives to be taken straight
to Belarab's stockade as a matter of course. Belarab, at a distance,
could still outweigh the power on the spot of Tengga, whose secret
purposes were no better known, who was jovial, talkative, outspoken and
pugnacious; but who was not a professed servant of God famed for many
charities and a scrupulous performance of pious practices, and who also
had no father who had achieved a local saintship. But Belarab, with
his glamour of asceticism and melancholy together with a reputation for
severity (for a man so pious would be naturally ruthless), was not on
the spot. The only favourable point in his absence was the fact that
he had taken with him his latest wife, the same lady whom Jorgenson had
mentioned in his letter to Lingard as anxious to bring about battle,
murder, and the looting of the yacht, not because of inborn wickedness
of heart but from a simple desire for silks, jewels and other objects
of personal adornment, quite natural in a girl so young and elevated to
such a high position. Belarab had selected her to be the companion of
his retirement and Lingard was glad of it. He was not afraid of her
influence over Belarab. He knew his man. No words, no blandishments, no
sulks, scoldings, or whisperings of a favourite could affect either the
resolves or the irresolutions of that Arab whose action ever seemed
to hang in mystic suspense between the contradictory speculations and
judgments disputing the possession of his will. It was not what Belarab
would either suddenly do or leisurely determine upon that Lingard was
afraid of. The danger was that in his taciturn hesitation, which had
something hopelessly godlike in its remote calmness, the man would do
nothing and leave his white friend face to face with unruly impulses
against which Lingard had no means of action but force which he dared
not use since it would mean the destruction of his plans and the
downfall of his hopes; and worse still would wear an aspect of treachery
to Hassim and Immada, those fugitives whom he had snatched away from
the jaws of death on a night of storm and had promised to lead back
in triumph to their own country he had seen but once, sleeping unmoved
under the wrath and fire of heaven.