The Rescue (34 page)

"This was a wonderful success," she said.

For a time the character of his fascinated gaze did not change. It
was as if she had said nothing. Then he whispered, admiringly, "You
understand everything."

She moved her eyes away and had to disengage her hand to which he clung
for a moment, giddy, like a man falling out of the world.

Mrs. Travers, acutely aware of Lingard behind her, remained gazing over
the lagoon. After a time he stepped forward and placed himself beside
her close to the rail. She went on staring at the sheet of water turned
to deep purple under the sunset sky.

"Why have you been avoiding me since we came back from the stockade?"
she asked in a deadened voice.

"There is nothing to tell you till Rajah Hassim and his sister Immada
return with some news," Lingard answered in the same tone. "Has my
friend succeeded? Will Belarab listen to any arguments? Will he consent
to come out of his shell? Is he on his way back? I wish I knew! . . .
Not a whisper comes from there! He may have started two days ago and
he may be now near the outskirts of the Settlement. Or he may have gone
into camp half way down, from some whim or other; or he may be already
arrived for all I know. We should not have seen him. The road from the
hills does not lead along the beach."

He snatched nervously at the long glass and directed it at the dark
stockade. The sun had sunk behind the forests leaving the contour of the
tree-tops outlined by a thread of gold under a band of delicate green
lying across the lower sky. Higher up a faint crimson glow faded into
the darkened blue overhead. The shades of the evening deepened over the
lagoon, clung to the sides of the Emma and to the forms of the further
shore. Lingard laid the glass down.

"Mr. d'Alcacer, too, seems to have been avoiding me," said Mrs. Travers.
"You are on very good terms with him, Captain Lingard."

"He is a very pleasant man," murmured Lingard, absently. "But he says
funny things sometimes. He inquired the other day if there were any
playing cards on board, and when I asked him if he liked card-playing,
just for something to say, he told me with that queer smile of his that
he had read a story of some people condemned to death who passed the
time before execution playing card games with their guards."

"And what did you say?"

"I told him that there were probably cards on board somewhere—Jorgenson
would know. Then I asked him whether he looked on me as a gaoler. He was
quite startled and sorry for what he said."

"It wasn't very kind of you, Captain Lingard."

"It slipped out awkwardly and we made it up with a laugh."

Mrs. Travers leaned her elbows on the rail and put her head into her
hands. Every attitude of that woman surprised Lingard by its enchanting
effect upon himself. He sighed, and the silence lasted for a long while.

"I wish I had understood every word that was said that morning."

"That morning," repeated Lingard. "What morning do you mean?"

"I mean the morning when I walked out of Belarab's stockade on your arm,
Captain Lingard, at the head of the procession. It seemed to me that I
was walking on a splendid stage in a scene from an opera, in a gorgeous
show fit to make an audience hold its breath. You can't possibly guess
how unreal all this seemed, and how artificial I felt myself. An opera,
you know. . . ."

"I know. I was a gold digger at one time. Some of us used to come down
to Melbourne with our pockets full of money. I daresay it was poor
enough to what you must have seen, but once I went to a show like that.
It was a story acted to music. All the people went singing through it
right to the very end."

"How it must have jarred on your sense of reality," said Mrs. Travers,
still not looking at him. "You don't remember the name of the opera?"

"No. I never troubled my head about it. We—our lot never did."

"I won't ask you what the story was like. It must have appeared to
you like the very defiance of all truth. Would real people go singing
through their life anywhere except in a fairy tale?"

"These people didn't always sing for joy," said Lingard, simply. "I
don't know much about fairy tales."

"They are mostly about princesses," murmured Mrs. Travers.

Lingard didn't quite hear. He bent his ear for a moment but she wasn't
looking at him and he didn't ask her to repeat her remark. "Fairy tales
are for children, I believe," he said. "But that story with music I am
telling you of, Mrs. Travers, was not a tale for children. I assure you
that of the few shows I have seen that one was the most real to me. More
real than anything in life."

Mrs. Travers, remembering the fatal inanity of most opera librettos, was
touched by these words as if there had been something pathetic in this
readiness of response; as if she had heard a starved man talking of the
delight of a crust of dry bread. "I suppose you forgot yourself in that
story, whatever it was," she remarked in a detached tone.

"Yes, it carried me away. But I suppose you know the feeling."

"No. I never knew anything of the kind, not even when I was a chit of
a girl." Lingard seemed to accept this statement as an assertion of
superiority. He inclined his head slightly. Moreover, she might have
said what she liked. What pleased him most was her not looking at him;
for it enabled him to contemplate with perfect freedom the curve of her
cheek, her small ear half hidden by the clear mesh of fine hair,
the fascination of her uncovered neck. And her whole person was an
impossible, an amazing and solid marvel which somehow was not so much
convincing to the eye as to something within him that was apparently
independent of his senses. Not even for a moment did he think of her as
remote. Untouchable—possibly! But remote—no. Whether consciously or
unconsciously he took her spiritually for granted. It was materially
that she was a wonder of the sort that is at the same time familiar and
sacred.

"No," Mrs. Travers began again, abruptly. "I never forgot myself in a
story. It was not in me. I have not even been able to forget myself on
that morning on shore which was part of my own story."

"You carried yourself first rate," said Lingard, smiling at the nape of
her neck, her ear, the film of escaped hair, the modelling of the corner
of her eye. He could see the flutter of the dark eyelashes: and the
delicate flush on her cheek had rather the effect of scent than of
colour.

"You approved of my behaviour."

"Just right, I tell you. My word, weren't they all struck of a heap when
they made out what you were."

"I ought to feel flattered. I will confess to you that I felt only half
disguised and was half angry and wholly uncomfortable. What helped me, I
suppose, was that I wanted to please. . . ."

"I don't mean to say that they were exactly pleased," broke in Lingard,
conscientiously. "They were startled more."

"I wanted to please you," dropped Mrs. Travers, negligently. A faint,
hoarse, and impatient call of a bird was heard from the woods as if
calling to the oncoming night. Lingard's face grew hot in the deepening
dusk. The delicate lemon yellow and ethereal green tints had vanished
from the sky and the red glow darkened menacingly. The sun had set
behind the black pall of the forest, no longer edged with a line of
gold. "Yes, I was absurdly self-conscious," continued Mrs. Travers in a
conversational tone. "And it was the effect of these clothes that you
made me put on over some of my European—I almost said disguise; because
you know in the present more perfect costume I feel curiously at home;
and yet I can't say that these things really fit me. The sleeves of this
silk under-jacket are rather tight. My shoulders feel bound, too, and as
to the sarong it is scandalously short. According to rule it should have
been long enough to fall over my feet. But I like freedom of movement. I
have had very little of what I liked in life."

"I can hardly believe that," said Lingard. "If it wasn't for your saying
so. . . ."

"I wouldn't say so to everybody," she said, turning her head for a
moment to Lingard and turning it away again to the dusk which seemed to
come floating over the black lagoon. Far away in its depth a couple of
feeble lights twinkled; it was impossible to say whether on the shore
or on the edge of the more distant forest. Overhead the stars were
beginning to come out, but faint yet, as if too remote to be reflected
in the lagoon. Only to the west a setting planet shone through the red
fog of the sunset glow. "It was supposed not to be good for me to have
much freedom of action. So at least I was told. But I have a suspicion
that it was only unpleasing to other people."

"I should have thought," began Lingard, then hesitated and stopped. It
seemed to him inconceivable that everybody should not have loved to make
that woman happy. And he was impressed by the bitterness of her tone.
Mrs. Travers did not seem curious to know what he wanted to say and
after a time she added, "I don't mean only when I was a child. I don't
remember that very well. I daresay I was very objectionable as a child."

Lingard tried to imagine her as a child. The idea was novel to him.
Her perfection seemed to have come into the world complete, mature, and
without any hesitation or weakness. He had nothing in his experience
that could help him to imagine a child of that class. The children he
knew played about the village street and ran on the beach. He had been
one of them. He had seen other children, of course, since, but he
had not been in touch with them except visually and they had not been
English children. Her childhood, like his own, had been passed in
England, and that very fact made it almost impossible for him to imagine
it. He could not even tell whether it was in town or in the country, or
whether as a child she had even seen the sea. And how could a child of
that kind be objectionable? But he remembered that a child disapproved
of could be very unhappy, and he said:

"I am sorry."

Mrs. Travers laughed a little. Within the muslin cage forms had turned
to blurred shadows. Amongst them the form of d'Alcacer arose and moved.
The systematic or else the morbid dumbness of Mr. Travers bored and
exasperated him, though, as a matter of fact, that gentleman's speeches
had never had the power either to entertain or to soothe his mind.

"It's very nice of you. You have a great capacity for sympathy, but
after all I am not certain on which side your sympathies lie. With me,
or those much-tried people," said Mrs. Travers.

"With the child," said Lingard, disregarding the bantering tone. "A
child can have a very bad time of it all to itself."

"What can you know of it?" she asked.

"I have my own feelings," he answered in some surprise.

Mrs. Travers, with her back to him, was covered with confusion. Neither
could she depict to herself his childhood as if he, too, had come
into the world in the fullness of his strength and his purpose. She
discovered a certain naiveness in herself and laughed a little. He made
no sound.

"Don't be angry," she said. "I wouldn't dream of laughing at your
feelings. Indeed your feelings are the most serious thing that ever came
in my way. I couldn't help laughing at myself—at a funny discovery I
made."

"In the days of your childhood?" she heard Lingard's deep voice asking
after a pause.

"Oh, no. Ages afterward. No child could have made that discovery. Do
you know the greatest difference there is between us? It is this: That I
have been living since my childhood in front of a show and that I
never have been taken in for a moment by its tinsel and its noise or
by anything that went on on the stage. Do you understand what I mean,
Captain Lingard?"

There was a moment of silence. "What does it matter? We are no children
now." There was an infinite gentleness in Lingard's deep tones. "But if
you have been unhappy then don't tell me that it has not been made up to
you since. Surely you have only to make a sign. A woman like you."

"You think I could frighten the whole world on to its knees?"

"No, not frighten." The suggestion of a laugh in the deadened voice
passed off in a catch of the breath. Then he was heard beginning
soberly: "Your husband. . . ." He hesitated a little and she took the
opportunity to say coldly:

"His name is Mr. Travers."

Lingard didn't know how to take it. He imagined himself to have been
guilty of some sort of presumption. But how on earth was he to call the
man? After all he was her husband. That idea was disagreeable to him
because the man was also inimical in a particularly unreasonable and
galling manner. At the same time he was aware that he didn't care a
bit for his enmity and had an idea that he would not have cared for his
friendship either. And suddenly he felt very much annoyed.

"Yes. That's the man I mean," he said in a contemptuous tone. "I don't
particularly like the name and I am sure I don't want to talk about him
more than I can help. If he hadn't been your husband I wouldn't have put
up with his manners for an hour. Do you know what would have happened to
him if he hadn't been your husband?"

"No," said Mrs. Travers. "Do you, Captain Lingard?"

"Not exactly," he admitted. "Something he wouldn't have liked, you may
be sure."

"While of course he likes this very much," she observed. Lingard gave an
abrupt laugh.

"I don't think it's in my power to do anything that he would like," he
said in a serious tone. "Forgive me my frankness, Mrs. Travers, but he
makes it very difficult sometimes for me to keep civil. Whatever I have
had to put up with in life I have never had to put up with contempt."

"I quite believe that," said Mrs. Travers. "Don't your friends call you
King Tom?"

"Nobody that I care for. I have no friends. Oh, yes, they call me
that . . ."