________________________________________________
_ Jorgenson, after seeing the canoe leave the ship's side, ceased
to live intellectually. There was no need for more thinking, for
any display of mental ingenuity. He had done with it all. All his
notions were perfectly fixed and he could go over them in the
same ghostly way in which he haunted the deck of the Emma. At the
sight of the ring Lingard would return to Hassim and Immada, now
captives, too, though Jorgenson certainly did not think them in
any serious danger. What had happened really was that Tengga was
now holding hostages, and those Jorgenson looked upon as
Lingard's own people. They were his. He had gone in with them
deep, very deep. They had a hold and a claim on King Tom just as
many years ago people of that very race had had a hold and a
claim on him, Jorgenson. Only Tom was a much bigger man. A very
big man. Nevertheless, Jorgenson didn't see why he should escape
his own fate--Jorgenson's fate--to be absorbed, captured, made
their own either in failure or in success. It was an unavoidable
fatality and Jorgenson felt certain that the ring would compel
Lingard to face it without flinching. What he really wanted
Lingard to do was to cease to take the slightest interest in
those whites--who were the sort of people that left no
footprints.
Perhaps at first sight, sending that woman to Lingard was not the
best way toward that end. Jorgenson, however, had a distinct
impression in which his morning talk with Mrs. Travers had only
confirmed him, that those two had quarrelled for good. As,
indeed, was unavoidable. What did Tom Lingard want with any
woman? The only woman in Jorgenson's life had come in by way of
exchange for a lot of cotton stuffs and several brass guns. This
fact could not but affect Jorgenson's judgment since obviously in
this case such a transaction was impossible. Therefore the case
was not serious. It didn't exist. What did exist was Lingard's
relation to the Wajo exiles, a great and warlike adventure such
as no rover in those seas had ever attempted.
That Tengga was much more ready to negotiate than to fight, the
old adventurer had not the slightest doubt. How Lingard would
deal with him was not a concern of Jorgenson's. That would be
easy enough. Nothing prevented Lingard from going to see Tengga
and talking to him with authority. All that ambitious person
really wanted was to have a share in Lingard's wealth, in
Lingard's power, in Lingard's friendship. A year before Tengga
had once insinuated to Jorgenson, "In what way am I less worthy
of being a friend than Belarab?"
It was a distinct overture, a disclosure of the man's innermost
mind. Jorgenson, of course, had met it with a profound silence.
His task was not diplomacy but the care of stores.
After the effort of connected mental processes in order to bring
about Mrs. Travers' departure he was anxious to dismiss the whole
matter from his mind. The last thought he gave to it was severely
practical. It occurred to him that it would be advisable to
attract in some way or other Lingard's attention to the lagoon.
In the language of the sea a single rocket is properly a signal
of distress, but, in the circumstances, a group of three sent up
simultaneously would convey a warning. He gave his orders and
watched the rockets go up finely with a trail of red sparks, a
bursting of white stars high up in the air, and three loud
reports in quick succession. Then he resumed his pacing of the
whole length of the hulk, confident that after this Tom would
guess that something was up and set a close watch over the
lagoon. No doubt these mysterious rockets would have a disturbing
effect on Tengga and his friends and cause a great excitement in
the Settlement; but for that Jorgenson did not care. The
Settlement was already in such a turmoil that a little more
excitement did not matter. What Jorgenson did not expect,
however, was the sound of a musket-shot fired from the jungle
facing the bows of the Emma. It caused him to stop dead short. He
had heard distinctly the bullet strike the curve of the bow
forward. "Some hot-headed ass fired that," he said to himself,
contemptuously. It simply disclosed to him the fact that he was
already besieged on the shore side and set at rest his doubts as
to the length Tengga was prepared to go. Any length! Of course
there was still time for Tom to put everything right with six
words, unless . . . Jorgenson smiled, grimly, in the dark and
resumed his tireless pacing.
What amused him was to observe the fire which had been burning
night and day before Tengga's residence suddenly extinguished. He
pictured to himself the wild rush with bamboo buckets to the
lagoon shore, the confusion, the hurry and jostling in a great
hissing of water midst clouds of steam. The image of the fat
Tengga's consternation appealed to Jorgenson's sense of humour
for about five seconds. Then he took up the binoculars from the
roof of the deckhouse.
The bursting of the three white stars over the lagoon had given
him a momentary glimpse of the black speck of the canoe taking
over Mrs. Travers. He couldn't find it again with the glass, it
was too dark; but the part of the shore for which it was steered
would be somewhere near the angle of Belarab's stockade nearest
to the beach. This Jorgenson could make out in the faint rosy
glare of fires burning inside. Jorgenson was certain that Lingard
was looking toward the Emma through the most convenient loophole
he could find.
As obviously Mrs. Travers could not have paddled herself across,
two men were taking her over; and for the steersman she had
Jaffir. Though he had assented to Jorgenson's plan Jaffir was
anxious to accompany the ring as near as possible to its
destination. Nothing but dire necessity had induced him to part
with the talisman. Crouching in the stern and flourishing his
paddle from side to side he glared at the back of the canvas
deck-chair which had been placed in the middle for Mrs. Travers.
Wrapped up in the darkness she reclined in it with her eyes
closed, faintly aware of the ring hung low on her breast. As the
canoe was rather large it was moving very slowly. The two men
dipped their paddles without a splash: and surrendering herself
passively, in a temporary relaxation of all her limbs, to this
adventure Mrs. Travers had no sense of motion at all. She, too,
like Jorgenson, was tired of thinking. She abandoned herself to
the silence of that night full of roused passions and deadly
purposes. She abandoned herself to an illusory feeling; to the
impression that she was really resting. For the first time in
many days she could taste the relief of being alone. The men with
her were less than nothing. She could not speak to them; she
could not understand them; the canoe might have been moving by
enchantment--if it did move at all. Like a half-conscious sleeper
she was on the verge of saying to herself, "What a strange dream
I am having."
The low tones of Jaffir's voice stole into it quietly telling the
men to cease paddling, and the long canoe came to a rest slowly,
no more than ten yards from the beach. The party had been
provided with a torch which was to be lighted before the canoe
touched the shore, thus giving a character of openness to this
desperate expedition. "And if it draws fire on us," Jaffir had
commented to Jorgenson, "well, then, we shall see whose fate it
is to die on this night."
"Yes," had muttered Jorgenson. "We shall see."
Jorgenson saw at last the small light of the torch against the
blackness of the stockade. He strained his hearing for a possible
volley of musketry fire but no sound came to him over the broad
surface of the lagoon. Over there the man with the torch, the
other paddler, and Jaffir himself impelling with a gentle motion
of his paddle the canoe toward the shore, had the glistening
eyeballs and the tense faces of silent excitement. The ruddy
glare smote Mrs. Travers' closed eyelids but she didn't open her
eyes till she felt the canoe touch the strand. The two men leaped
instantly out of it. Mrs. Travers rose, abruptly. Nobody made a
sound. She stumbled out of the canoe on to the beach and almost
before she had recovered her balance the torch was thrust into
her hand. The heat, the nearness of the blaze confused and
blinded her till, instinctively, she raised the torch high above
her head. For a moment she stood still, holding aloft the fierce
flame from which a few sparks were falling slowly.
A naked bronze arm lighted from above pointed out the direction
and Mrs. Travers began to walk toward the featureless black mass
of the stockade. When after a few steps she looked back over her
shoulder, the lagoon, the beach, the canoe, the men she had just
left had become already invisible. She was alone bearing up a
blazing torch on an earth that was a dumb shadow shifting under
her feet. At last she reached firmer ground and the dark length
of the palisade untouched as yet by the light of the torch seemed
to her immense, intimidating. She felt ready to drop from sheer
emotion. But she moved on.
"A little more to the left," shouted a strong voice.
It vibrated through all her fibres, rousing like the call of a
trumpet, went far beyond her, filled all the space. Mrs. Travers
stood still for a moment, then casting far away from her the
burning torch ran forward blindly with her hands extended toward
the great sound of Lingard's voice, leaving behind her the light
flaring and spluttering on the ground. She stumbled and was only
saved from a fall by her hands coming in contact with the rough
stakes. The stockade rose high above her head and she clung to it
with widely open arms, pressing her whole body against the rugged
surface of that enormous and unscalable palisade. She heard
through it low voices inside, heavy thuds; and felt at every blow
a slight vibration of the ground under her feet. She glanced
fearfully over her shoulder and saw nothing in the darkness but
the expiring glow of the torch she had thrown away and the sombre
shimmer of the lagoon bordering the opaque darkness of the shore.
Her strained eyeballs seemed to detect mysterious movements in
the darkness and she gave way to irresistible terror, to a
shrinking agony of apprehension. Was she to be transfixed by a
broad blade, to the high, immovable wall of wood against which
she was flattening herself desperately, as though she could hope
to penetrate it by the mere force of her fear? She had no idea
where she was, but as a matter of fact she was a little to the
left of the principal gate and almost exactly under one of the
loopholes of the stockade. Her excessive anguish passed into
insensibility. She ceased to hear, to see, and even to feel the
contact of the surface to which she clung. Lingard's voice
somewhere from the sky above her head was directing her,
distinct, very close, full of concern.
"You must stoop low. Lower yet."
The stagnant blood of her body began to pulsate languidly. She
stooped low--lower yet--so low that she had to sink on her knees,
and then became aware of a faint smell of wood smoke mingled with
the confused murmur of agitated voices. This came to her through
an opening no higher than her head in her kneeling posture, and
no wider than the breadth of two stakes. Lingard was saying in a
tone of distress:
"I couldn't get any of them to unbar the gate."
She was unable to make a sound.--"Are you there?" Lingard asked,
anxiously, so close to her now that she seemed to feel the very
breath of his words on her face. It revived her completely; she
understood what she had to do. She put her head and shoulders
through the opening, was at once seized under the arms by an
eager grip and felt herself pulled through with an irresistible
force and with such haste that her scarf was dragged off her
head, its fringes having caught in the rough timber. The same
eager grip lifted her up, stood her on her feet without her
having to make any exertion toward that end. She became aware
that Lingard was trying to say something, but she heard only a
confused stammering expressive of wonder and delight in which she
caught the words "You . . . you . . . " deliriously repeated.
He didn't release his hold of her; his helpful and irresistible
grip had changed into a close clasp, a crushing embrace, the
violent taking possession by an embodied force that had broken
loose and was not to be controlled any longer. As his great voice
had done a moment before, his great strength, too, seemed able to
fill all space in its enveloping and undeniable authority. Every
time she tried instinctively to stiffen herself against its
might, it reacted, affirming its fierce will, its uplifting
power. Several times she lost the feeling of the ground and had a
sensation of helplessness without fear, of triumph without
exultation. The inevitable had come to pass. She had foreseen
it--and all the time in that dark place and against the red glow
of camp fires within the stockade the man in whose arms she
struggled remained shadowy to her eyes--to her half-closed eyes.
She thought suddenly, "He will crush me to death without knowing
it."
He was like a blind force. She closed her eyes altogether. Her
head fell back a little. Not instinctively but with wilful
resignation and as it were from a sense of justice she abandoned
herself to his arms. The effect was as though she had suddenly
stabbed him to the heart. He let her go so suddenly and
completely that she would have fallen down in a heap if she had
not managed to catch hold of his forearm. He seemed prepared for
it and for a moment all her weight hung on it without moving its
rigidity by a hair's breadth. Behind her Mrs. Travers heard the
heavy thud of blows on wood, the confused murmurs and movements
of men.
A voice said suddenly, "It's done," with such emphasis that
though, of course, she didn't understand the words it helped her
to regain possession of herself; and when Lingard asked her very
little above a whisper: "Why don't you say something?" she
answered readily, "Let me get my breath first."
Round them all sounds had ceased. The men had secured again the
opening through which those arms had snatched her into a moment
of self-forgetfulness which had left her out of breath but
uncrushed. As if something imperative had been satisfied she had
a moment of inward serenity, a period of peace without thought
while, holding to that arm that trembled no more than an arm of
iron, she felt stealthily over the ground for one of the sandals
which she had lost. Oh, yes, there was no doubt of it, she had
been carried off the earth, without shame, without regret. But
she would not have let him know of that dropped sandal for
anything in the world. That lost sandal was as symbolic as a
dropped veil. But he did not know of it. He must never know.
Where was that thing? She felt sure that they had not moved an
inch from that spot. Presently her foot found it and still
gripping Lingard's forearm she stooped to secure it properly.
When she stood up, still holding his arm, they confronted each
other, he rigid in an effort of self-command but feeling as if
the surges of the heaviest sea that he could remember in his life
were running through his heart; and the woman as if emptied of
all feeling by her experience, without thought yet, but beginning
to regain her sense of the situation and the memory of the
immediate past.
"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.
"Suspicion is not in my nature, Mrs. Travers, I assure you, and I
hope that you on your side will never suspect either my reserve
or my frankness. I respect the mysterious nature of your
conviction but hasn't Jorgenson given you some occasion to. . .
"
"He hates me," said Mrs. Travers, and frowned at d'Alcacer's
incipient smile. "It isn't a delusion on my part. The worst is
that he hates me not for myself. I believe he is completely
indifferent to my existence. Jorgenson hates me because as it
were I represent you two who are in danger, because it is you two
that are the trouble and I . . . Well!"
"Yes, yes, that's certain," said d'Alcacer, hastily. "But
Jorgenson is wrong in making you the scapegoat. For if you were
not here cool reason would step in and would make Lingard pause
in his passion to make a king out of an exile. If we were
murdered it would certainly make some stir in the world in time
and he would fall under the suspicion of complicity with those
wild and inhuman Moors. Who would regard the greatness of his
day-dreams, his engaged honour, his chivalrous feelings? Nothing
could save him from that suspicion. And being what he is, you
understand me, Mrs. Travers (but you know him much better than I
do), it would morally kill him."
"Heavens!" whispered Mrs. Travers. "This has never occurred to
me." Those words seemed to lose themselves in the folds of the
scarf without reaching d'Alcacer, who continued in his gentle
tone:
'"However, as it is, he will be safe enough whatever happens. He
will have your testimony to clear him."
Mrs. Travers stood up, suddenly, but still careful to keep her
face covered, she threw the end of the scarf over her shoulder.
"I fear that Jorgenson," she cried with suppressed passion. "One
can't understand what that man means to do. I think him so
dangerous that if I were, for instance, entrusted with a message
bearing on the situation, I would . . . suppress it."
D'Alcacer was looking up from the seat, full of wonder. Mrs.
Travers appealed to him in a calm voice through the folds of the
scarf:
"Tell me, Mr. d'Alcacer, you who can look on it calmly, wouldn't
I be right?"
"Why, has Jorgenson told you anything?"
"Directly--nothing, except a phrase or two which really I could
not understand. They seemed to have a hidden sense and he
appeared to attach some mysterious importance to them that he
dared not explain to me."
"That was a risk on his part," exclaimed d'Alcacer. "And he
trusted you. Why you, I wonder!"
"Who can tell what notions he has in his head? Mr. d'Alcacer, I
believe his only object is to call Captain Lingard away from us.
I understood it only a few minutes ago. It has dawned upon me.
All he wants is to call him off."
"Call him off," repeated d'Alcacer, a little bewildered by the
aroused fire of her conviction. "I am sure I don't want him
called off any more than you do; and, frankly, I don't believe
Jorgenson has any such power. But upon the whole, and if you feel
that Jorgenson has the power, I would--yes, if I were in your
place I think I would suppress anything I could not understand."
Mrs. Travers listened to the very end. Her eyes--they appeared
incredibly sombre to d'Alcacer--seemed to watch the fall of every
deliberate word and after he had ceased they remained still for
an appreciable time. Then she turned away with a gesture that
seemed to say: "So be it."
D'Alcacer raised his voice suddenly after her. "Stay! Don't
forget that not only your husband's but my head, too, is being
played at that game. My judgment is not . . ."
She stopped for a moment and freed her lips. In the profound
stillness of the courtyard her clear voice made the shadows at
the nearest fires stir a little with low murmurs of surprise.
"Oh, yes, I remember whose heads I have to save," she cried. "But
in all the world who is there to save that man from himself?" _
Read next: PART VI. THE CLAIM OF LIFE AND THE TOLL OF DEATH: CHAPTER V
Read previous: PART VI. THE CLAIM OF LIFE AND THE TOLL OF DEATH: CHAPTER III
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