The Rescue (52 page)

"I do hope you have nothing to tell me," he said with whimsical
earnestness.

"I? No! Have you?"

He assured her he had not, and proffered a request. "Don't let us tell
each other anything, Mrs. Travers. Don't let us think of anything. I
believe it will be the best way to get over the evening." There was real
anxiety in his jesting tone.

"Very well," Mrs. Travers assented, seriously. "But in that case we had
better not remain together." She asked, then, d'Alcacer to go below and
sit with Mr. Travers who didn't like to be left alone. "Though he, too,
doesn't seem to want to be told anything," she added, parenthetically,
and went on: "But I must ask you something else, Mr. d'Alcacer. I
propose to sit down in this chair and go to sleep—if I can. Will you
promise to call me about five o'clock? I prefer not to speak to any one
on deck, and, moreover, I can trust you."

He bowed in silence and went away slowly. Mrs. Travers, turning her
head, perceived a steady light at the brig's yard-arm, very bright among
the tarnished stars. She walked aft and looked over the taffrail. It was
exactly like that other night. She half expected to hear presently the
low, rippling sound of an advancing boat. But the universe remained
without a sound. When she at last dropped into the deck chair she was
absolutely at the end of her power of thinking. "I suppose that's
how the condemned manage to get some sleep on the night before the
execution," she said to herself a moment before her eyelids closed as if
under a leaden hand.

She woke up, with her face wet with tears, out of a vivid dream of
Lingard in chain-mail armour and vaguely recalling a Crusader, but
bare-headed and walking away from her in the depths of an impossible
landscape. She hurried on to catch up with him but a throng of
barbarians with enormous turbans came between them at the last moment
and she lost sight of him forever in the flurry of a ghastly sand-storm.
What frightened her most was that she had not been able to see his face.
It was then that she began to cry over her hard fate. When she woke up
the tears were still rolling down her cheeks and she perceived in the
light of the deck-lamp d'Alcacer arrested a little way off.

"Did you have to speak to me?" she asked.

"No," said d'Alcacer. "You didn't give me time. When I came as far as
this I fancied I heard you sobbing. It must have been a delusion."

"Oh, no. My face is wet yet. It was a dream. I suppose it is five
o'clock. Thank you for being so punctual. I have something to do before
sunrise."

D'Alcacer moved nearer. "I know. You have decided to keep an appointment
on the sandbank. Your husband didn't utter twenty words in all these
hours but he managed to tell me that piece of news."

"I shouldn't have thought," she murmured, vaguely.

"He wanted me to understand that it had no importance," stated d'Alcacer
in a very serious tone.

"Yes. He knows what he is talking about," said Mrs. Travers in such
a bitter tone as to disconcert d'Alcacer for a moment. "I don't see a
single soul about the decks," Mrs. Travers continued, almost directly.

"The very watchmen are asleep," said d'Alcacer.

"There is nothing secret in this expedition, but I prefer not to call
any one. Perhaps you wouldn't mind pulling me off yourself in our small
boat."

It seemed to her that d'Alcacer showed some hesitation. She added: "It
has no importance, you know."

He bowed his assent and preceded her down the side in silence. When she
entered the boat he had the sculls ready and directly she sat down he
shoved off. It was so dark yet that but for the brig's yard-arm light he
could not have kept his direction. He pulled a very deliberate stroke,
looking over his shoulder frequently. It was Mrs. Travers who saw first
the faint gleam of the uncovered sandspit on the black, quiet water.

"A little more to the left," she said. "No, the other way. . . ."
D'Alcacer obeyed her directions but his stroke grew even slower than
before. She spoke again. "Don't you think that the uttermost farthing
should always be paid, Mr. d'Alcacer?"

D'Alcacer glanced over his shoulder, then: "It would be the only
honourable way. But it may be hard. Too hard for our common fearful
hearts."

"I am prepared for anything."

He ceased pulling for a moment . . . "Anything that may be found on
a sandbank," Mrs. Travers went on. "On an arid, insignificant, and
deserted sandbank."

D'Alcacer gave two strokes and ceased again.

"There is room for a whole world of suffering on a sandbank, for all the
bitterness and resentment a human soul may be made to feel."

"Yes, I suppose you would know," she whispered while he gave a stroke or
two and again glanced over his shoulder. She murmured the words:

"Bitterness, resentment," and a moment afterward became aware of the
keel of the boat running up on the sand. But she didn't move, and
d'Alcacer, too, remained seated on the thwart with the blades of his
sculls raised as if ready to drop them and back the dinghy out into deep
water at the first sign.

Mrs. Travers made no sign, but she asked, abruptly: "Mr. d'Alcacer, do
you think I shall ever come back?"

Her tone seemed to him to lack sincerity. But who could tell what
this abruptness covered—sincere fear or mere vanity? He asked himself
whether she was playing a part for his benefit, or only for herself.

"I don't think you quite understand the situation, Mrs. Travers. I
don't think you have a clear idea, either of his simplicity or of his
visionary's pride."

She thought, contemptuously, that there were other things which
d'Alcacer didn't know and surrendered to a sudden temptation to
enlighten him a little.

"You forget his capacity for passion and that his simplicity doesn't
know its own strength."

There was no mistaking the sincerity of that murmur. "She has felt it,"
d'Alcacer said to himself with absolute certitude. He wondered when,
where, how, on what occasion? Mrs. Travers stood up in the stern sheets
suddenly and d'Alcacer leaped on the sand to help her out of the boat.

"Hadn't I better hang about here to take you back again?" he suggested,
as he let go her hand.

"You mustn't!" she exclaimed, anxiously. "You must return to the yacht.
There will be plenty of light in another hour. I will come to this spot
and wave my handkerchief when I want to be taken off."

At their feet the shallow water slept profoundly, the ghostly gleam of
the sands baffled the eye by its lack of form. Far off, the growth of
bushes in the centre raised a massive black bulk against the stars to
the southward. Mrs. Travers lingered for a moment near the boat as if
afraid of the strange solitude of this lonely sandbank and of this lone
sea that seemed to fill the whole encircling universe of remote stars
and limitless shadows. "There is nobody here," she whispered to herself.

"He is somewhere about waiting for you, or I don't know the man,"
affirmed d'Alcacer in an undertone. He gave a vigorous shove which sent
the little boat into the water.

D'Alcacer was perfectly right. Lingard had come up on deck long before
Mrs. Travers woke up with her face wet with tears. The burial party had
returned hours before and the crew of the brig were plunged in
sleep, except for two watchmen, who at Lingard's appearance retreated
noiselessly from the poop. Lingard, leaning on the rail, fell into
a sombre reverie of his past. Reproachful spectres crowded the air,
animated and vocal, not in the articulate language of mortals but
assailing him with faint sobs, deep sighs, and fateful gestures. When he
came to himself and turned about they vanished, all but one dark shape
without sound or movement. Lingard looked at it with secret horror.

"Who's that?" he asked in a troubled voice.

The shadow moved closer: "It's only me, sir," said Carter, who had left
orders to be called directly the Captain was seen on deck.

"Oh, yes, I might have known," mumbled Lingard in some confusion. He
requested Carter to have a boat manned and when after a time the young
man told him that it was ready, he said "All right!" and remained
leaning on his elbow.

"I beg your pardon, sir," said Carter after a longish silence, "but are
you going some distance?"

"No, I only want to be put ashore on the sandbank."

Carter was relieved to hear this, but also surprised. "There is nothing
living there, sir," he said.

"I wonder," muttered Lingard.

"But I am certain," Carter insisted. "The last of the women and children
belonging to those cut-throats were taken off by the sampans which
brought you and the yacht-party out."

He walked at Lingard's elbow to the gangway and listened to his orders.

"Directly there is enough light to see flags by, make a signal to the
schooner to heave short on her cable and loose her sails. If there
is any hanging back give them a blank gun, Mr. Carter. I will have no
shilly-shallying. If she doesn't go at the word, by heavens, I will
drive her out. I am still master here—for another day."

The overwhelming sense of immensity, of disturbing emptiness, which
affects those who walk on the sands in the midst of the sea, intimidated
Mrs. Travers. The world resembled a limitless flat shadow which was
motionless and elusive. Then against the southern stars she saw a human
form that isolated and lone appeared to her immense: the shape of a
giant outlined amongst the constellations. As it approached her
it shrank to common proportions, got clear of the stars, lost its
awesomeness, and became menacing in its ominous and silent advance. Mrs.
Travers hastened to speak.

"You have asked for me. I am come. I trust you will have no reason to
regret my obedience."

He walked up quite close to her, bent down slightly to peer into her
face. The first of the tropical dawn put its characteristic cold sheen
into the sky above the Shore of Refuge.

Mrs. Travers did not turn away her head.

"Are you looking for a change in me? No. You won't see it. Now I know
that I couldn't change even if I wanted to. I am made of clay that is
too hard."

"I am looking at you for the first time," said Lingard. "I never could
see you before. There were too many things, too many thoughts, too many
people. No, I never saw you before. But now the world is dead."

He grasped her shoulders, approaching his face close to hers. She never
flinched.

"Yes, the world is dead," she said. "Look your fill then. It won't be
for long."

He let her go as suddenly as though she had struck him. The cold white
light of the tropical dawn had crept past the zenith now and the expanse
of the shallow waters looked cold, too, without stir or ripple within
the enormous rim of the horizon where, to the west, a shadow lingered
still.

"Take my arm," he said.

She did so at once, and turning their backs on the two ships they began
to walk along the sands, but they had not made many steps when Mrs.
Travers perceived an oblong mound with a board planted upright at one
end. Mrs. Travers knew that part of the sands. It was here she used to
walk with her husband and d'Alcacer every evening after dinner,
while the yacht lay stranded and her boats were away in search of
assistance—which they had found—which they had found! This was
something that she had never seen there before. Lingard had suddenly
stopped and looked at it moodily. She pressed his arm to rouse him and
asked, "What is this?"

"This is a grave," said Lingard in a low voice, and still gazing at the
heap of sand. "I had him taken out of the ship last night. Strange," he
went on in a musing tone, "how much a grave big enough for one man only
can hold. His message was to forget everything."

"Never, never," murmured Mrs. Travers. "I wish I had been on board the
Emma. . . . You had a madman there," she cried out, suddenly. They moved
on again, Lingard looking at Mrs. Travers who was leaning on his arm.

"I wonder which of us two was mad," he said.

"I wonder you can bear to look at me," she murmured. Then Lingard spoke
again.

"I had to see you once more."

"That abominable Jorgenson," she whispered to herself.

"No, no, he gave me my chance—before he gave me up."

Mrs. Travers disengaged her arm and Lingard stopped, too, facing her in
a long silence.

"I could not refuse to meet you," said Mrs. Travers at last. "I could
not refuse you anything. You have all the right on your side and I don't
care what you do or say. But I wonder at my own courage when I think of
the confession I have to make." She advanced, laid her hand on Lingard's
shoulder and spoke earnestly. "I shuddered at the thought of meeting you
again. And now you must listen to my confession."

"Don't say a word," said Lingard in an untroubled voice and never taking
his eyes from her face. "I know already."

"You can't," she cried. Her hand slipped off his shoulder. "Then why
don't you throw me into the sea?" she asked, passionately. "Am I to live
on hating myself?"

"You mustn't!" he said with an accent of fear. "Haven't you understood
long ago that if you had given me that ring it would have been just the
same?"

"Am I to believe this? No, no! You are too generous to a mere sham. You
are the most magnanimous of men but you are throwing it away on me.
Do you think it is remorse that I feel? No. If it is anything it is
despair. But you must have known that—and yet you wanted to look at me
again."

"I told you I never had a chance before," said Lingard in an unmoved
voice. "It was only after I heard they gave you the ring that I felt the
hold you have got on me. How could I tell before? What has hate or love
to do with you and me? Hate. Love. What can touch you? For me you stand
above death itself; for I see now that as long as I live you will never
die."