The Rescue (51 page)

Wasub ceased. It seemed to Lingard that it was impossible for mortal
man to suffer more than he suffered in the succeeding moment of silence
crowded by the mute images as of universal destruction. He felt
himself gone to pieces as though the violent expression of Jorgenson's
intolerable mistrust of the life of men had shattered his soul, leaving
his body robbed of all power of resistance and of all fortitude, a prey
forever to infinite remorse and endless regrets.

"Leave me, Wasub," he said. "They are all dead—but I would sleep."

Wasub raised his dumb old eyes to the white man's face.

"Tuan, it is necessary that you should hear Jaffir," he said, patiently.

"Is he going to die?" asked Lingard in a low, cautious tone as though he
were afraid of the sound of his own voice.

"Who can tell?" Wasub's voice sounded more patient than ever. "There is
no wound on his body but, O Tuan, he does not wish to live."

"Abandoned by his God," muttered Lingard to himself.

Wasub waited a little before he went on, "And, Tuan, he has a message
for you."

"Of course. Well, I don't want to hear it."

"It is from those who will never speak to you again," Wasub persevered,
sadly. "It is a great trust. A Rajah's own words. It is difficult for
Jaffir to die. He keeps on muttering about a ring that was for you, and
that he let pass out of his care. It was a great talisman!"

"Yes. But it did not work this time. And if I go and tell Jaffir why he
will be able to tell his Rajah, O Wasub, since you say that he is going
to die. . . . I wonder where they will meet," he muttered to himself.

Once more Wasub raised his eyes to Lingard's face. "Paradise is the lot
of all True Believers," he whispered, firm in his simple faith.

The man who had been undone by a glimpse of Paradise exchanged a
profound look with the old Malay. Then he got up. On his passage to the
main hatchway the commander of the brig met no one on the decks, as if
all mankind had given him up except the old man who preceded him and
that other man dying in the deepening twilight, who was awaiting his
coming. Below, in the light of the hatchway, he saw a young Calash with
a broad yellow face and his wiry hair sticking up in stiff wisps through
the folds of his head-kerchief, holding an earthenware water-jar to the
lips of Jaffir extended on his back on a pile of mats.

A languid roll of the already glazed eyeballs, a mere stir of black
and white in the gathering dusk showed that the faithful messenger of
princes was aware of the presence of the man who had been so long known
to him and his people as the King of the Sea. Lingard knelt down close
to Jaffir's head, which rolled a little from side to side and then
became still, staring at a beam of the upper deck. Lingard bent his ear
to the dark lips. "Deliver your message" he said in a gentle tone.

"The Rajah wished to hold your hand once more," whispered Jaffir so
faintly that Lingard had to guess the words rather than hear them. "I
was to tell you," he went on—and stopped suddenly.

"What were you to tell me?"

"To forget everything," said Jaffir with a loud effort as if beginning a
long speech. After that he said nothing more till Lingard murmured, "And
the lady Immada?"

Jaffir collected all his strength. "She hoped no more," he uttered,
distinctly. "The order came to her while she mourned, veiled, apart. I
didn't even see her face."

Lingard swayed over the dying man so heavily that Wasub, standing near
by, hastened to catch him by the shoulder. Jaffir seemed unaware of
anything, and went on staring at the beam.

"Can you hear me, O Jaffir?" asked Lingard.

"I hear."

"I never had the ring. Who could bring it to me?"

"We gave it to the white woman—may Jehannum be her lot!"

"No! It shall be my lot," said Lingard with despairing force, while
Wasub raised both his hands in dismay. "For, listen, Jaffir, if she had
given the ring to me it would have been to one that was dumb, deaf, and
robbed of all courage."

It was impossible to say whether Jaffir had heard. He made no sound,
there was no change in his awful stare, but his prone body moved under
the cotton sheet as if to get further away from the white man. Lingard
got up slowly and making a sign to Wasub to remain where he was, went up
on deck without giving another glance to the dying man. Again it seemed
to him that he was pacing the quarter-deck of a deserted ship. The
mulatto steward, watching through the crack of the pantry door, saw the
Captain stagger into the cuddy and fling-to the door behind him with
a crash. For more than an hour nobody approached that closed door till
Carter coming down the companion stairs spoke without attempting to open
it.

"Are you there, sir?" The answer, "You may come in," comforted the young
man by its strong resonance. He went in.

"Well?"

"Jaffir is dead. This moment. I thought you would want to know."

Lingard looked persistently at Carter, thinking that now Jaffir was
dead there was no one left on the empty earth to speak to him a word of
reproach; no one to know the greatness of his intentions, the bond of
fidelity between him and Hassim and Immada, the depth of his affection
for those people, the earnestness of his visions, and the unbounded
trust that was his reward. By the mad scorn of Jorgenson flaming up
against the life of men, all this was as if it had never been. It had
become a secret locked up in his own breast forever.

"Tell Wasub to open one of the long-cloth bales in the hold, Mr. Carter,
and give the crew a cotton sheet to bury him decently according to their
faith. Let it be done to-night. They must have the boats, too. I suppose
they will want to take him on the sandbank."

"Yes, sir," said Carter.

"Let them have what they want, spades, torches. . . . Wasub will chant
the right words. Paradise is the lot of all True Believers. Do you
understand me, Mr. Carter? Paradise! I wonder what it will be for him!
Unless he gets messages to carry through the jungle, avoiding ambushes,
swimming in storms and knowing no rest, he won't like it."

Carter listened with an unmoved face. It seemed to him that the Captain
had forgotten his presence.

"And all the time he will be sleeping on that sandbank," Lingard began
again, sitting in his old place under the gilt thunderbolts suspended
over his head with his elbows on the table and his hands to his temples.
"If they want a board to set up at the grave let them have a piece of an
oak plank. It will stay there—till the next monsoon. Perhaps."

Carter felt uncomfortable before that tense stare which just missed
him and in that confined cabin seemed awful in its piercing and far-off
expression. But as he had not been dismissed he did not like to go away.

"Everything will be done as you wish it, sir," he said. "I suppose the
yacht will be leaving the first thing to-morrow morning, sir."

"If she doesn't we must give her a solid shot or two to liven her
up—eh, Mr. Carter?"

Carter did not know whether to smile or to look horrified. In the end he
did both, but as to saying anything he found it impossible. But Lingard
did not expect an answer.

"I believe you are going to stay with me, Mr. Carter?"

"I told you, sir, I am your man if you want me."

"The trouble is, Mr. Carter, that I am no longer the man to whom you
spoke that night in Carimata."

"Neither am I, sir, in a manner of speaking."

Lingard, relaxing the tenseness of his stare, looked at the young man,
thoughtfully.

"After all, it is the brig that will want you. She will never change.
The finest craft afloat in these seas. She will carry me about as she
did before, but . . ."

He unclasped his hands, made a sweeping gesture.

Carter gave all his naive sympathy to that man who had certainly rescued
the white people but seemed to have lost his own soul in the attempt.
Carter had heard something from Wasub. He had made out enough of this
story from the old serang's pidgin English to know that the Captain's
native friends, one of them a woman, had perished in a mysterious
catastrophe. But the why of it, and how it came about, remained still
quite incomprehensible to him. Of course, a man like the Captain would
feel terribly cut up. . . .

"You will be soon yourself again, sir," he said in the kindest possible
tone.

With the same simplicity Lingard shook his head. He was thinking of the
dead Jaffir with his last message delivered and untroubled now by all
these matters of the earth. He had been ordered to tell him to forget
everything. Lingard had an inward shudder. In the dismay of his heart he
might have believed his brig to lie under the very wing of the Angel of
Desolation—so oppressive, so final, and hopeless seemed the silence in
which he and Carter looked at each other, wistfully.

Lingard reached for a sheet of paper amongst several lying on the table,
took up a pen, hesitated a moment, and then wrote:

"Meet me at day-break on the sandbank."

He addressed the envelope to Mrs. Travers, Yacht Hermit, and pushed it
across the table.

"Send this on board the schooner at once, Mr. Carter. Wait a moment.
When our boats shove off for the sandbank have the forecastle gun fired.
I want to know when that dead man has left the ship."

He sat alone, leaning his head on his hand, listening, listening
endlessly, for the report of the gun. Would it never come? When it came
at last muffled, distant, with a slight shock through the body of the
brig he remained still with his head leaning on his hand but with a
distinct conviction, with an almost physical certitude, that under the
cotton sheet shrouding the dead man something of himself, too, had left
the ship.

In a roomy cabin, furnished and fitted with austere comfort, Mr. Travers
reposed at ease in a low bed-place under a snowy white sheet and a light
silk coverlet, his head sunk in a white pillow of extreme purity. A
faint scent of lavender hung about the fresh linen. Though lying on his
back like a person who is seriously ill Mr. Travers was conscious
of nothing worse than a great fatigue. Mr. Travers' restfulness had
something faintly triumphant in it. To find himself again on board
his yacht had soothed his vanity and had revived his sense of his own
importance. He contemplated it in a distant perspective, restored to its
proper surroundings and unaffected by an adventure too extraordinary to
trouble a superior mind or even to remain in one's memory for any length
of time. He was not responsible. Like many men ambitious of
directing the affairs of a nation, Mr. Travers disliked the sense of
responsibility. He would not have been above evading it in case of need,
but with perverse loftiness he really, in his heart, scorned it. That
was the reason why he was able to lie at rest and enjoy a sense of
returning vigour. But he did not care much to talk as yet, and that was
why the silence in the stateroom had lasted for hours. The bulkhead lamp
had a green silk shade. It was unnecessary to admit for a moment the
existence of impudence or ruffianism. A discreet knocking at the cabin
door sounded deferential.

Mrs. Travers got up to see what was wanted, and returned without
uttering a single word to the folding armchair by the side of the
bed-place, with an envelope in her hand which she tore open in the
greenish light. Mr. Travers remained incurious but his wife handed to
him an unfolded sheet of paper which he condescended to hold up to his
eyes. It contained only one line of writing. He let the paper fall on
the coverlet and went on reposing as before. It was a sick man's repose.
Mrs. Travers in the armchair, with her hands on the arm-rests, had a
great dignity of attitude.

"I intend to go," she declared after a time.

"You intend to go," repeated Mr. Travers in a feeble, deliberate voice.
"Really, it doesn't matter what you decide to do. All this is of so
little importance. It seems to me that there can be no possible object."

"Perhaps not," she admitted. "But don't you think that the uttermost
farthing should always be paid?"

Mr. Travers' head rolled over on the pillow and gave a covertly scared
look at that outspoken woman. But it rolled back again at once and the
whole man remained passive, the very embodiment of helpless exhaustion.
Mrs. Travers noticed this, and had the unexpected impression that Mr.
Travers was not so ill as he looked. "He's making the most of it. It's
a matter of diplomacy," she thought. She thought this without irony,
bitterness, or disgust. Only her heart sank a little lower and she felt
that she could not remain in the cabin with that man for the rest of the
evening. For all life—yes! But not for that evening.

"It's simply monstrous," murmured the man, who was either very
diplomatic or very exhausted, in a languid manner. "There is something
abnormal in you."

Mrs. Travers got up swiftly.

"One comes across monstrous things. But I assure you that of all the
monsters that wait on what you would call a normal existence the one I
dread most is tediousness. A merciless monster without teeth or claws.
Impotent. Horrible!"

She left the stateroom, vanishing out of it with noiseless resolution.
No power on earth could have kept her in there for another minute. On
deck she found a moonless night with a velvety tepid feeling in the air,
and in the sky a mass of blurred starlight, like the tarnished tinsel of
a worn-out, very old, very tedious firmament. The usual routine of the
yacht had been already resumed, the awnings had been stretched aft, a
solitary round lamp had been hung as usual under the main boom. Out of
the deep gloom behind it d'Alcacer, a long, loose figure, lounged in the
dim light across the deck. D'Alcacer had got promptly in touch with
the store of cigarettes he owed to the Governor General's generosity. A
large, pulsating spark glowed, illuminating redly the design of his
lips under the fine dark moustache, the tip of his nose, his lean chin.
D'Alcacer reproached himself for an unwonted light-heartedness which
had somehow taken possession of him. He had not experienced that sort of
feeling for years. Reprehensible as it was he did not want anything to
disturb it. But as he could not run away openly from Mrs. Travers he
advanced to meet her.