The Rescue (45 page)

"I have been watching at that loophole for an hour, ever since they came
running to me with that story of the rockets," said Lingard. "I was shut
up with Belarab then. I was looking out when the torch blazed and you
stepped ashore. I thought I was dreaming. But what could I do? I felt I
must rush to you but I dared not. That clump of palms is full of men. So
are the houses you saw that time you came ashore with me. Full of men.
Armed men. A trigger is soon pulled and when once shooting begins. . . .
And you walking in the open with that light above your head! I didn't
dare. You were safer alone. I had the strength to hold myself in and
watch you come up from the shore. No! No man that ever lived had seen
such a sight. What did you come for?"

"Didn't you expect somebody? I don't mean me, I mean a messenger?"

"No!" said Lingard, wondering at his own self-control. "Why did he let
you come?"

"You mean Captain Jorgenson? Oh, he refused at first. He said that he
had your orders."

"How on earth did you manage to get round him?" said Lingard in his
softest tones.

"I did not try," she began and checked herself. Lingard's question,
though he really didn't seem to care much about an answer, had aroused
afresh her suspicion of Jorgenson's change of front. "I didn't have
to say very much at the last," she continued, gasping yet a little and
feeling her personality, crushed to nothing in the hug of those arms,
expand again to its full significance before the attentive immobility
of that man. "Captain Jorgenson has always looked upon me as a nuisance.
Perhaps he had made up his mind to get rid of me even against your
orders. Is he quite sane?"

She released her firm hold of that iron forearm which fell slowly
by Lingard's side. She had regained fully the possession of her
personality. There remained only a fading, slightly breathless
impression of a short flight above that earth on which her feet were
firmly planted now. "And is that all?" she asked herself, not bitterly,
but with a sort of tender contempt.

"He is so sane," sounded Lingard's voice, gloomily, "that if I had
listened to him you would not have found me here."

"What do you mean by here? In this stockade?"

"Anywhere," he said.

"And what would have happened then?"

"God knows," he answered. "What would have happened if the world had not
been made in seven days? I have known you for just about that time. It
began by me coming to you at night—like a thief in the night. Where the
devil did I hear that? And that man you are married to thinks I am no
better than a thief."

"It ought to be enough for you that I never made a mistake as to what
you are, that I come to you in less than twenty-four hours after you
left me contemptuously to my distress. Don't pretend you didn't hear me
call after you. Oh, yes, you heard. The whole ship heard me for I had no
shame."

"Yes, you came," said Lingard, violently. "But have you really come? I
can't believe my eyes! Are you really here?"

"This is a dark spot, luckily," said Mrs. Travers. "But can you really
have any doubt?" she added, significantly.

He made a sudden movement toward her, betraying so much passion that
Mrs. Travers thought, "I shan't come out alive this time," and yet he
was there, motionless before her, as though he had never stirred. It
was more as though the earth had made a sudden movement under his feet
without being able to destroy his balance. But the earth under Mrs.
Travers' feet had made no movement and for a second she was overwhelmed
by wonder not at this proof of her own self-possession but at the man's
immense power over himself. If it had not been for her strange inward
exhaustion she would perhaps have surrendered to that power. But it
seemed to her that she had nothing in her worth surrendering, and it
was in a perfectly even tone that she said, "Give me your arm, Captain
Lingard. We can't stay all night on this spot."

As they moved on she thought, "There is real greatness in that man."
He was great even in his behaviour. No apologies, no explanations, no
abasement, no violence, and not even the slightest tremor of the frame
holding that bold and perplexed soul. She knew that for certain because
her fingers were resting lightly on Lingard's arm while she walked
slowly by his side as though he were taking her down to dinner. And yet
she couldn't suppose for a moment, that, like herself, he was emptied of
all emotion. She never before was so aware of him as a dangerous force.
"He is really ruthless," she thought. They had just left the shadow of
the inner defences about the gate when a slightly hoarse, apologetic
voice was heard behind them repeating insistently, what even Mrs.
Travers' ear detected to be a sort of formula. The words were: "There
is this thing—there is this thing—there is this thing." They turned
round.

"Oh, my scarf," said Mrs. Travers.

A short, squat, broad-faced young fellow having for all costume a pair
of white drawers was offering the scarf thrown over both his arms, as
if they had been sticks, and holding it respectfully as far as possible
from his person. Lingard took it from him and Mrs. Travers claimed it
at once. "Don't forget the proprieties," she said. "This is also my face
veil."

She was arranging it about her head when Lingard said, "There is no
need. I am taking you to those gentlemen."—"I will use it all the
same," said Mrs. Travers. "This thing works both ways, as a matter of
propriety or as a matter of precaution. Till I have an opportunity of
looking into a mirror nothing will persuade me that there isn't some
change in my face." Lingard swung half round and gazed down at her.
Veiled now she confronted him boldly. "Tell me, Captain Lingard, how
many eyes were looking at us a little while ago?"

"Do you care?" he asked.

"Not in the least," she said. "A million stars were looking on, too, and
what did it matter? They were not of the world I know. And it's just the
same with the eyes. They are not of the world I live in."

Lingard thought: "Nobody is." Never before had she seemed to him more
unapproachable, more different and more remote. The glow of a number of
small fires lighted the ground only, and brought out the black bulk
of men lying down in the thin drift of smoke. Only one of these fires,
rather apart and burning in front of the house which was the quarter of
the prisoners, might have been called a blaze and even that was not a
great one. It didn't penetrate the dark space between the piles and the
depth of the verandah above where only a couple of heads and the glint
of a spearhead could be seen dimly in the play of the light. But down
on the ground outside, the black shape of a man seated on a bench had
an intense relief. Another intensely black shadow threw a handful of
brushwood on the fire and went away. The man on the bench got up. It was
d'Alcacer. He let Lingard and Mrs. Travers come quite close up to him.
Extreme surprise seemed to have made him dumb.

"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.