The Rescue (36 page)

"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.

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?"