________________________________________________
_ "May I come in?"
"Yes," said a voice within. "The door is open." It had a wooden
latch. Mr. Travers lifted it while the voice of his wife
continued as he entered. "Did you imagine I had locked myself in?
Did you ever know me lock myself in?"
Mr. Travers closed the door behind him. "No, it has never come to
that," he said in a tone that was not conciliatory. In that place
which was a room in a wooden hut and had a square opening without
glass but with a half-closed shutter he could not distinguish his
wife very well at once. She was sitting in an armchair and what
he could see best was her fair hair all loose over the back of
the chair. There was a moment of silence. The measured footsteps
of two men pacing athwart the quarter-deck of the dead ship Emma
commanded by the derelict shade of Jorgenson could be heard
outside.
Jorgenson, on taking up his dead command, had a house of thin
boards built on the after deck for his own accommodation and that
of Lingard during his flying visits to the Shore of Refuge. A
narrow passage divided it in two and Lingard's side was furnished
with a camp bedstead, a rough desk, and a rattan armchair. On one
of his visits Lingard had brought with him a black seaman's chest
and left it there. Apart from these objects and a small
looking-glass worth about half a crown and nailed to the wall
there was nothing else in there whatever. What was on Jorgenson's
side of the deckhouse no one had seen, but from external evidence
one could infer the existence of a set of razors.
The erection of that primitive deckhouse was a matter of
propriety rather than of necessity. It was proper that the white
men should have a place to themselves on board, but Lingard was
perfectly accurate when he told Mrs. Travers that he had never
slept there once. His practice was to sleep on deck. As to
Jorgenson, if he did sleep at all he slept very little. It might
have been said that he haunted rather than commanded the Emma.
His white form flitted here and there in the night or stood for
hours, silent, contemplating the sombre glimmer of the lagoon.
Mr. Travers' eyes accustomed gradually to the dusk of the place
could now distinguish more of his wife's person than the great
mass of honey-coloured hair. He saw her face, the dark eyebrows
and her eyes that seemed profoundly black in the half light. He
said:
"You couldn't have done so here. There is neither lock nor bolt."
"Isn't there? I didn't notice. I would know how to protect myself
without locks and bolts."
"I am glad to hear it," said Mr. Travers in a sullen tone and
fell silent again surveying the woman in the chair. "Indulging
your taste for fancy dress," he went on with faint irony.
Mrs. Travers clasped her hands behind her head. The wide sleeves
slipping back bared her arms to her shoulders. She was wearing a
Malay thin cotton jacket, cut low in the neck without a collar
and fastened with wrought silver clasps from the throat downward.
She had replaced her yachting skirt by a blue check sarong
embroidered with threads of gold. Mr. Travers' eyes travelling
slowly down attached themselves to the gleaming instep of an
agitated foot from which hung a light leather sandal.
"I had no clothes with me but what I stood in," said Mrs.
Travers. "I found my yachting costume too heavy. It was
intolerable. I was soaked in dew when I arrived. So when these
things were produced for my inspection. . . ."
"By enchantment," muttered Mr. Travers in a tone too heavy for
sarcasm.
"No. Out of that chest. There are very fine stuffs there."
"No doubt," said Mr. Travers. "The man wouldn't be above
plundering the natives. . . ." He sat down heavily on the chest.
"A most appropriate costume for this farce," he continued. "But
do you mean to wear it in open daylight about the decks?"
"Indeed I do," said Mrs. Travers. "D'Alcacer has seen me already
and he didn't seem shocked."
"You should," said Mr. Travers, "try to get yourself presented
with some bangles for your ankles so that you may jingle as you
walk."
"Bangles are not necessities," said Mrs. Travers in a weary tone
and with the fixed upward look of a person unwilling to
relinquish her dream. Mr. Travers dropped the subject to ask:
"And how long is this farce going to last?"
Mrs. Travers unclasped her hands, lowered her glance, and changed
her whole pose in a moment.
"What do you mean by farce? What farce?"
"The one which is being played at my expense."
"You believe that?"
"Not only believe. I feel deeply that it is so. At my expense.
It's a most sinister thing," Mr. Travers pursued, still with
downcast eyes and in an unforgiving tone. "I must tell you that
when I saw you in that courtyard in a crowd of natives and
leaning on that man's arm, it gave me quite a shock."
"Did I, too, look sinister?" said Mrs. Travers, turning her head
slightly toward her husband. "And yet I assure you that I was
glad, profoundly glad, to see you safe from danger for a time at
least. To gain time is everything. . . ."
"I ask myself," Mr. Travers meditated aloud, "was I ever in
danger? Am I safe now? I don't know. I can't tell. No! All this
seems an abominable farce."
There was that in his tone which made his wife continue to look
at him with awakened interest. It was obvious that he suffered
from a distress which was not the effect of fear; and Mrs.
Travers' face expressed real concern till he added in a freezing
manner: "The question, however, is as to your discretion."
She leaned back again in the chair and let her hands rest quietly
in her lap. "Would you have preferred me to remain outside, in
the yacht, in the near neighbourhood of these wild men who
captured you? Or do you think that they, too, were got up to
carry on a farce?"
"Most decidedly." Mr. Travers raised his head, though of course
not his voice. "You ought to have remained in the yacht amongst
white men, your servants, the sailing-master, the crew whose duty
it was to. . . . Who would have been ready to die for you."
"I wonder why they should have--and why I should have asked them
for that sacrifice. However, I have no doubt they would have
died. Or would you have preferred me to take up my quarters on
board that man's brig? We were all fairly safe there. The real
reason why I insisted on coming in here was to be nearer to
you--to see for myself what could be or was being done. . . . But
really if you want me to explain my motives then I may just as
well say nothing. I couldn't remain outside for days without
news, in a state of horrible doubt. We couldn't even tell whether
you and d'Alcacer were still alive till we arrived here. You
might have been actually murdered on the sandbank, after Rajah
Hassim and that girl had gone away; or killed while going up the
river. And I wanted to know at once, as soon as possible. It was
a matter of impulse. I went off in what I stood in without
delaying a moment."
"Yes," said Mr. Travers. "And without even thinking of having a
few things put up for me in a bag. No doubt you were in a state
of excitement. Unless you took such a tragic view that it seemed
to you hardly worth while to bother about my clothes."
"It was absolutely the impulse of the moment. I could have done
nothing else. Won't you give me credit for it?"
Mr. Travers raised his eyes again to his wife's face. He saw it
calm, her attitude reposeful. Till then his tone had been
resentful, dull, without sarcasm. But now he became slightly
pompous.
"No. As a matter of fact, as a matter of experience, I can't
credit you with the possession of feelings appropriate to your
origin, social position, and the ideas of the class to which you
belong. It was the heaviest disappointment of my life. I had made
up my mind not to mention it as long as I lived. This, however,
seems an occasion which you have provoked yourself. It isn't at
all a solemn occasion. I don't look upon it as solemn at all.
It's very disagreeable and humiliating. But it has presented
itself. You have never taken a serious interest in the activities
of my life which of course are its distinction and its value. And
why you should be carried away suddenly by a feeling toward the
mere man I don't understand."
"Therefore you don't approve," Mrs. Travers commented in an even
tone. "But I assure you, you may safely. My feeling was of the
most conventional nature, exactly as if the whole world were
looking on. After all, we are husband and wife. It's eminently
fitting that I should be concerned about your fate. Even the man
you distrust and dislike so much (the warmest feeling, let me
tell you, that I ever saw you display) even that man found my
conduct perfectly proper. His own word. Proper. So eminently
proper that it altogether silenced his objections."
Mr. Travers shifted uneasily on his seat.
"It's my belief, Edith, that if you had been a man you would have
led a most irregular life. You would have been a frank
adventurer. I mean morally. It has been a great grief to me. You
have a scorn in you for the serious side of life, for the ideas
and the ambitions of the social sphere to which you belong."
He stopped because his wife had clasped again her hands behind
her head and was no longer looking at him.
"It's perfectly obvious," he began again. "We have been living
amongst most distinguished men and women and your attitude to
them has been always so--so negative! You would never recognize
the importance of achievements, of acquired positions. I don't
remember you ever admiring frankly any political or social
success. I ask myself what after all you could possibly have
expected from life."
"I could never have expected to hear such a speech from you. As
to what I did expect! . . . I must have been very stupid."
"No, you are anything but that," declared Mr. Travers,
conscientiously. "It isn't stupidity." He hesitated for a moment.
"It's a kind of wilfulness, I think. I preferred not to think
about this grievous difference in our points of view, which, you
will admit, I could not have possibly foreseen before we. . . ."
A sort of solemn embarrassment had come over Mr. Travers. Mrs.
Travers, leaning her chin on the palm of her hand, stared at the
bare matchboard side of the hut.
"Do you charge me with profound girlish duplicity?" she asked,
very softly.
The inside of the deckhouse was full of stagnant heat perfumed by
a slight scent which seemed to emanate from the loose mass of
Mrs. Travers' hair. Mr. Travers evaded the direct question which
struck him as lacking fineness even to the point of impropriety.
"I must suppose that I was not in the calm possession of my
insight and judgment in those days," he said. "I --I was not in a
critical state of mind at the time," he admitted further; but
even after going so far he did not look up at his wife and
therefore missed something like the ghost of a smile on Mrs.
Travers' lips. That smile was tinged with scepticism which was
too deep-seated for anything but the faintest expression.
Therefore she said nothing, and Mr. Travers went on as if
thinking aloud:
"Your conduct was, of course, above reproach; but you made for
yourself a detestable reputation of mental superiority, expressed
ironically. You inspired mistrust in the best people. You were
never popular."
"I was bored," murmured Mrs. Travers in a reminiscent tone and
with her chin resting in the hollow of her hand.
Mr. Travers got up from the seaman's chest as unexpectedly as if
he had been stung by a wasp, but, of course, with a much slower
and more solemn motion.
"The matter with you, Edith, is that at heart you are perfectly
primitive." Mrs. Travers stood up, too, with a supple, leisurely
movement, and raising her hands to her hair turned half away with
a pensive remark:
"Imperfectly civilized."
"Imperfectly disciplined," corrected Mr. Travers after a moment
of dreary meditation.
She let her arms fall and turned her head.
"No, don't say that," she protested with strange earnestness. "I
am the most severely disciplined person in the world. I am
tempted to say that my discipline has stopped at nothing short of
killing myself. I suppose you can hardly understand what I mean."
Mr. Travers made a slight grimace at the floor.
"I shall not try," he said. "It sounds like something that a
barbarian, hating the delicate complexities and the restraints of
a nobler life, might have said. From you it strikes me as wilful
bad taste. . . . I have often wondered at your tastes. You have
always liked extreme opinions, exotic costumes, lawless
characters, romantic personalities--like d'Alcacer . . ."
"Poor Mr. d'Alcacer," murmured Mrs. Travers.
"A man without any ideas of duty or usefulness," said Mr.
Travers, acidly. "What are you pitying him for?"
"Why! For finding himself in this position out of mere
good-nature. He had nothing to expect from joining our voyage, no
advantage for his political ambitions or anything of the kind. I
suppose you asked him on board to break our tete-a-tete which
must have grown wearisome to you."
"I am never bored," declared Mr. Travers. "D'Alcacer seemed glad
to come. And, being a Spaniard, the horrible waste of time cannot
matter to him in the least."
"Waste of time!" repeated Mrs. Travers, indignantly.
"He may yet have to pay for his good nature with his life."
Mr. Travers could not conceal a movement of anger.
"Ah! I forgot those assumptions," he said between his clenched
teeth. "He is a mere Spaniard. He takes this farcical conspiracy
with perfect nonchalance. Decayed races have their own
philosophy."
"He takes it with a dignity of his own."
"I don't know what you call his dignity. I should call it lack of
self-respect."
"Why? Because he is quiet and courteous, and reserves his
judgment. And allow me to tell you, Martin, that you are not
taking our troubles very well."
"You can't expect from me all those foreign affectations. I am
not in the habit of compromising with my feelings."
Mrs. Travers turned completely round and faced her husband. "You
sulk," she said. . . . Mr. Travers jerked his head back a little
as if to let the word go past.--"I am outraged," he declared.
Mrs. Travers recognized there something like real suffering.--"I
assure you," she said, seriously (for she was accessible to
pity), "I assure you that this strange Lingard has no idea of
your importance. He doesn't know anything of your social and
political position and still less of your great ambitions." Mr.
Travers listened with some attention.--"Couldn't you have
enlightened him?" he asked.--"It would have been no use; his mind
is fixed upon his own position and upon his own sense of power.
He is a man of the lower classes. . . ."--"He is a brute," said
Mr. Travers, obstinately, and for a moment those two looked
straight into each other's eyes.--"Oh," said Mrs. Travers,
slowly, "you are determined not to compromise with your
feelings!" An undertone of scorn crept into her voice. "But
shall I tell you what I think? I think," and she advanced her
head slightly toward the pale, unshaven face that confronted her
dark eyes, "I think that for all your blind scorn you judge the
man well enough to feel that you can indulge your indignation
with perfect safety. Do you hear? With perfect safety!" Directly
she had spoken she regretted these words. Really it was
unreasonable to take Mr. Travers' tricks of character more
passionately on this spot of the Eastern Archipelago full of
obscure plots and warring motives than in the more artificial
atmosphere of the town. After all what she wanted was simply to
save his life, not to make him understand anything. Mr. Travers
opened his mouth and without uttering a word shut it again. His
wife turned toward the looking-glass nailed to the wall. She
heard his voice behind her.
"Edith, where's the truth in all this?"
She detected the anguish of a slow mind with an instinctive dread
of obscure places wherein new discoveries can be made. She looked
over her shoulder to say:
"It's on the surface, I assure you. Altogether on the surface."
She turned again to the looking-glass where her own face met her
with dark eyes and a fair mist of hair above the smooth forehead;
but her words had produced no soothing effect.
"But what does it mean?" cried Mr. Travers. "Why doesn't the
fellow apologize? Why are we kept here? Are we being kept here?
Why don't we get away? Why doesn't he take me back on board my
yacht? What does he want from me? How did he procure our release
from these people on shore who he says intended to cut our
throats? Why did they give us up to him instead?"
Mrs. Travers began to twist her hair on her head.
"Matters of high policy and of local politics. Conflict of
personal interests, mistrust between the parties, intrigues of
individuals--you ought to know how that sort of thing works. His
diplomacy made use of all that. The first thing to do was not to
liberate you but to get you into his keeping. He is a very great
man here and let me tell you that your safety depends on his
dexterity in the use of his prestige rather than on his power
which he cannot use. If you would let him talk to you I am sure
he would tell you as much as it is possible for him to disclose."
"I don't want to be told about any of his rascalities. But
haven't you been taken into his confidence?"
"Completely," admitted Mrs. Travers, peering into the small
looking-glass.
"What is the influence you brought to bear upon this man? It
looks to me as if our fate were in your hands."
"Your fate is not in my hands. It is not even in his hands. There
is a moral situation here which must be solved."
"Ethics of blackmail," commented Mr. Travers with unexpected
sarcasm. It flashed through his wife's mind that perhaps she
didn't know him so well as she had supposed. It was as if the
polished and solemn crust of hard proprieties had cracked
slightly, here and there, under the strain, disclosing the mere
wrongheadedness of a common mortal. But it was only manner that
had cracked a little; the marvellous stupidity of his conceit
remained the same. She thought that this discussion was perfectly
useless, and as she finished putting up her hair she said: "I
think we had better go on deck now."
"You propose to go out on deck like this?" muttered Mr. Travers
with downcast eyes.
"Like this? Certainly. It's no longer a novelty. Who is going to
be shocked?"
Mr. Travers made no reply. What she had said of his attitude was
very true. He sulked at the enormous offensiveness of men,
things, and events; of words and even of glances which he seemed
to feel physically resting on his skin like a pain, like a
degrading contact. He managed not to wince. But he sulked. His
wife continued, "And let me tell you that those clothes are fit
for a princess--I mean they are of the quality, material and
style custom prescribes for the highest in the land, a
far-distant land where I am informed women rule as much as the
men. In fact they were meant to be presented to an actual
princess in due course. They were selected with the greatest care
for that child Immada. Captain Lingard. . . ."
Mr. Travers made an inarticulate noise partaking of a groan and a
grunt.
"Well, I must call him by some name and this I thought would be
the least offensive for you to hear. After all, the man exists.
But he is known also on a certain portion of the earth's surface
as King Tom. D'Alcacer is greatly taken by that name. It seems to
him wonderfully well adapted to the man, in its familiarity and
deference. And if you prefer. . . ."
"I would prefer to hear nothing," said Mr. Travers, distinctly.
"Not a single word. Not even from you, till I am a free agent
again. But words don't touch me. Nothing can touch me; neither
your sinister warnings nor the moods of levity which you think
proper to display before a man whose life, according to you,
hangs on a thread."
"I never forget it for a moment," said Mrs. Travers. "And I not
only know that it does but I also know the strength of the
thread. It is a wonderful thread. You may say if you like it has
been spun by the same fate which made you what you are."
Mr. Travers felt awfully offended. He had never heard anybody,
let alone his own self, addressed in such terms. The tone seemed
to question his very quality. He reflected with shocked amazement
that he had lived with that woman for eight years! And he said to
her gloomily:
"You talk like a pagan."
It was a very strong condemnation which apparently Mrs. Travers
had failed to hear for she pursued with animation:
"But really, you can't expect me to meditate on it all the time
or shut myself up here and mourn the circumstances from morning
to night. It would be morbid. Let us go on deck."
"And you look simply heathenish in this costume," Mr. Travers
went on as though he had not been interrupted, and with an accent
of deliberate disgust.
Her heart was heavy but everything he said seemed to force the
tone of levity on to her lips. "As long as I don't look like a
guy," she remarked, negligently, and then caught the direction of
his lurid stare which as a matter of fact was fastened on her
bare feet. She checked herself, "Oh, yes, if you prefer it I will
put on my stockings. But you know I must be very careful of them.
It's the only pair I have here. I have washed them this morning
in that bathroom which is built over the stern. They are now
drying over the rail just outside. Perhaps you will be good
enough to pass them to me when you go on deck."
Mr. Travers spun round and went on deck without a word. As soon
as she was alone Mrs. Travers pressed her hands to her temples, a
gesture of distress which relieved her by its sincerity. The
measured footsteps of two men came to her plainly from the deck,
rhythmic and double with a suggestion of tranquil and friendly
intercourse. She distinguished particularly the footfalls of the
man whose life's orbit was most remote from her own. And yet the
orbits had cut! A few days ago she could not have even conceived
of his existence, and now he was the man whose footsteps, it
seemed to her, her ears could single unerringly in the tramp of a
crowd. It was, indeed, a fabulous thing. In the half light of her
over-heated shelter she let an irresolute, frightened smile pass
off her lips before she, too, went on deck. _
Read next: PART V. THE POINT OF HONOUR AND THE POINT OF PASSION: CHAPTER II
Read previous: PART IV. THE GIFT OF THE SHALLOWS: CHAPTER V
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