The Rescue (16 page)

"You should not have come here, O Hassim," said Lingard, testily. "Here
no one understands. They take a rajah for a fisherman—"

"Ya-wa! A great mistake, for, truly, the chief of ten fugitives without
a country is much less than the headman of a fishing village," observed
Hassim, composedly. Immada sighed. "But you, Tuan, at least know the
truth," he went on with quiet irony; then after a pause—"We came here
because you had forgotten to look toward us, who had waited, sleeping
little at night, and in the day watching with hot eyes the empty water
at the foot of the sky for you."

Immada murmured, without lifting her head:

"You never looked for us. Never, never once."

"There was too much trouble in my eyes," explained Lingard with that
patient gentleness of tone and face which, every time he spoke to the
young girl, seemed to disengage itself from his whole person, enveloping
his fierceness, softening his aspect, such as the dreamy mist that in
the early radiance of the morning weaves a veil of tender charm about a
rugged rock in mid-ocean. "I must look now to the right and to the
left as in a time of sudden danger," he added after a moment and she
whispered an appalled "Why?" so low that its pain floated away in the
silence of attentive men, without response, unheard, ignored, like the
pain of an impalpable thought.

D'Alcacer, standing back, surveyed them all with a profound and alert
attention. Lingard seemed unable to tear himself away from the yacht,
and remained, checked, as it were in the act of going, like a man who
has stopped to think out the last thing to say; and that stillness of a
body, forgotten by the labouring mind, reminded Carter of that moment
in the cabin, when alone he had seen this man thus wrestling with his
thought, motionless and locked in the grip of his conscience.

Mr. Travers muttered audibly through his teeth:

"How long is this performance going to last? I have desired you to go."

"Think of these poor devils," whispered Lingard, with a quick glance at
the crew huddled up near by.

"You are the kind of man I would be least disposed to trust—in any
case," said Mr. Travers, incisively, very low, and with an inexplicable
but very apparent satisfaction. "You are only wasting your time here."

"You—You—" He stammered and stared. He chewed with growls some
insulting word and at last swallowed it with an effort. "My time pays
for your life," he said.

He became aware of a sudden stir, and saw that Mrs. Travers had risen
from her chair.

She walked impulsively toward the group on the quarter-deck, making
straight for Immada. Hassim had stepped aside and his detached gaze of a
Malay gentleman passed by her as if she had been invisible.

She was tall, supple, moving freely. Her complexion was so dazzling
in the shade that it seemed to throw out a halo round her head. Upon
a smooth and wide brow an abundance of pale fair hair, fine as silk,
undulating like the sea, heavy like a helmet, descended low without a
trace of gloss, without a gleam in its coils, as though it had never
been touched by a ray of light; and a throat white, smooth, palpitating
with life, a round neck modelled with strength and delicacy, supported
gloriously that radiant face and that pale mass of hair unkissed by
sunshine.

She said with animation:

"Why, it's a girl!"

Mrs. Travers extorted from d'Alcacer a fresh tribute of curiosity. A
strong puff of wind fluttered the awnings and one of the screens blowing
out wide let in upon the quarter-deck the rippling glitter of the
Shallows, showing to d'Alcacer the luminous vastness of the sea, with
the line of the distant horizon, dark like the edge of the encompassing
night, drawn at the height of Mrs. Travers' shoulder. . . . Where was
it he had seen her last—a long time before, on the other side of the
world? There was also the glitter of splendour around her then, and an
impression of luminous vastness. The encompassing night, too, was there,
the night that waits for its time to move forward upon the glitter, the
splendour, the men, the women.

He could not remember for the moment, but he became convinced that of
all the women he knew, she alone seemed to be made for action. Every one
of her movements had firmness, ease, the meaning of a vital fact,
the moral beauty of a fearless expression. Her supple figure was not
dishonoured by any faltering of outlines under the plain dress of dark
blue stuff moulding her form with bold simplicity.

She had only very few steps to make, but before she had stopped,
confronting Immada, d'Alcacer remembered her suddenly as he had seen
her last, out West, far away, impossibly different, as if in another
universe, as if presented by the fantasy of a fevered memory. He saw
her in a luminous perspective of palatial drawing rooms, in the restless
eddy and flow of a human sea, at the foot of walls high as cliffs, under
lofty ceilings that like a tropical sky flung light and heat upon the
shallow glitter of uniforms, of stars, of diamonds, of eyes sparkling
in the weary or impassive faces of the throng at an official reception.
Outside he had found the unavoidable darkness with its aspect of patient
waiting, a cloudy sky holding back the dawn of a London morning. It was
difficult to believe.

Lingard, who had been looking dangerously fierce, slapped his thigh and
showed signs of agitation.

"By heavens, I had forgotten all about you!" he pronounced in dismay.

Mrs. Travers fixed her eyes on Immada. Fairhaired and white she asserted
herself before the girl of olive face and raven locks with the maturity
of perfection, with the superiority of the flower over the leaf, of the
phrase that contains a thought over the cry that can only express an
emotion. Immense spaces and countless centuries stretched between
them: and she looked at her as when one looks into one's own heart
with absorbed curiosity, with still wonder, with an immense compassion.
Lingard murmured, warningly:

"Don't touch her."

Mrs. Travers looked at him.

"Do you think I could hurt her?" she asked, softly, and was so startled
to hear him mutter a gloomy "Perhaps," that she hesitated before she
smiled.

"Almost a child! And so pretty! What a delicate face," she said, while
another deep sigh of the sea breeze lifted and let fall the screens, so
that the sound, the wind, and the glitter seemed to rush in together and
bear her words away into space. "I had no idea of anything so charmingly
gentle," she went on in a voice that without effort glowed, caressed,
and had a magic power of delight to the soul. "So young! And she lives
here—does she? On the sea—or where? Lives—" Then faintly, as if she
had been in the act of speaking, removed instantly to a great distance,
she was heard again: "How does she live?"

Lingard had hardly seen Edith Travers till then. He had seen no one
really but Mr. Travers. He looked and listened with something of the
stupor of a new sensation.

Then he made a distinct effort to collect his thoughts and said with a
remnant of anger:

"What have you got to do with her? She knows war. Do you know anything
about it? And hunger, too, and thirst, and unhappiness; things you have
only heard about. She has been as near death as I am to you—and what is
all that to any of you here?"

"That child!" she said in slow wonder.

Immada turned upon Mrs. Travers her eyes black as coal, sparkling and
soft like a tropical night; and the glances of the two women, their
dissimilar and inquiring glances met, seemed to touch, clasp, hold each
other with the grip of an intimate contact. They separated.

"What are they come for? Why did you show them the way to this place?"
asked Immada, faintly.

Lingard shook his head in denial.

"Poor girl," said Mrs. Travers. "Are they all so pretty?"

"Who-all?" mumbled Lingard. "There isn't an other one like her if you
were to ransack the islands all round the compass."

"Edith!" ejaculated Mr. Travers in a remonstrating, acrimonious voice,
and everyone gave him a look of vague surprise.

Then Mrs. Travers asked:

"Who is she?"

Lingard very red and grave declared curtly:

"A princess."

Immediately he looked round with suspicion. No one smiled. D'Alcacer,
courteous and nonchalant, lounged up close to Mrs. Travers' elbow.

"If she is a princess, then this man is a knight," he murmured with
conviction. "A knight as I live! A descendant of the immortal hidalgo
errant upon the sea. It would be good for us to have him for a friend.
Seriously I think that you ought—"

The two stepped aside and spoke low and hurriedly.

"Yes, you ought—"

"How can I?" she interrupted, catching the meaning like a ball.

"By saying something."

"Is it really necessary?" she asked, doubtfully.

"It would do no harm," said d'Alcacer with sudden carelessness; "a
friend is always better than an enemy."

"Always?" she repeated, meaningly. "But what could I say?"

"Some words," he answered; "I should think any words in your voice—"

"Mr. d'Alcacer!"

"Or you could perhaps look at him once or twice as though he were not
exactly a robber," he continued.

"Mr. d'Alcacer, are you afraid?"

"Extremely," he said, stooping to pick up the fan at her feet. "That is
the reason I am so anxious to conciliate. And you must not forget that
one of your queens once stepped on the cloak of perhaps such a man."

Her eyes sparkled and she dropped them suddenly.

"I am not a queen," she said, coldly.

"Unfortunately not," he admitted; "but then the other was a woman with
no charm but her crown."

At that moment Lingard, to whom Hassim had been talking earnestly,
protested aloud:

"I never saw these people before."

Immada caught hold of her brother's arm. Mr. Travers said harshly:

"Oblige me by taking these natives away."

"Never before," murmured Immada as if lost in ecstasy. D'Alcacer glanced
at Mrs. Travers and made a step forward.

"Could not the difficulty, whatever it is, be arranged, Captain?" he
said with careful politeness. "Observe that we are not only men here—"

"Let them die!" cried Immada, triumphantly.

Though Lingard alone understood the meaning of these words, all on board
felt oppressed by the uneasy silence which followed her cry.

"Ah! He is going. Now, Mrs. Travers," whispered d'Alcacer.

"I hope!" said Mrs. Travers, impulsively, and stopped as if alarmed at
the sound.

Lingard stood still.

"I hope," she began again, "that this poor girl will know happier
days—" She hesitated.

Lingard waited, attentive and serious.

"Under your care," she finished. "And I believe you meant to be friendly
to us."

"Thank you," said Lingard with dignity.

"You and d'Alcacer," observed Mr. Travers, austerely, "are unnecessarily
detaining this—ah—person, and—ah—friends—ah!"

"I had forgotten you—and now—what? One must—it is hard—hard—" went
on Lingard, disconnectedly, while he looked into Mrs. Travers'
violet eyes, and felt his mind overpowered and troubled as if by the
contemplation of vast distances. "I—you don't know—I—you—cannot
. . . Ha! It's all that man's doing," he burst out.

For a time, as if beside himself, he glared at Mrs. Travers, then flung
up one arm and strode off toward the gangway, where Hassim and Immada
waited for him, interested and patient. With a single word "Come," he
preceded them down into the boat. Not a sound was heard on the yacht's
deck, while these three disappeared one after another below the rail as
if they had descended into the sea.

The afternoon dragged itself out in silence. Mrs. Travers sat pensive
and idle with her fan on her knees. D'Alcacer, who thought the incident
should have been treated in a conciliatory spirit, attempted to
communicate his view to his host, but that gentleman, purposely
misunderstanding his motive, overwhelmed him with so many apologies
and expressions of regret at the irksome and perhaps inconvenient delay
"which you suffer from through your good-natured acceptance of our
invitation" that the other was obliged to refrain from pursuing the
subject further.

"Even my regard for you, my dear d'Alcacer, could not induce me to
submit to such a bare-faced attempt at extortion," affirmed Mr. Travers
with uncompromising virtue. "The man wanted to force his services
upon me, and then put in a heavy claim for salvage. That is the whole
secret—you may depend on it. I detected him at once, of course." The
eye-glass glittered perspicuously. "He underrated my intelligence; and
what a violent scoundrel! The existence of such a man in the time we
live in is a scandal."

D'Alcacer retired, and, full of vague forebodings, tried in vain for
hours to interest himself in a book. Mr. Travers walked up and down
restlessly, trying to persuade himself that his indignation was based
on purely moral grounds. The glaring day, like a mass of white-hot iron
withdrawn from the fire, was losing gradually its heat and its glare
in a richer deepening of tone. At the usual time two seamen, walking
noiselessly aft in their yachting shoes, rolled up in silence the
quarter-deck screens; and the coast, the shallows, the dark islets and
the snowy sandbanks uncovered thus day after day were seen once more
in their aspect of dumb watchfulness. The brig, swung end on in the
foreground, her squared yards crossing heavily the soaring symmetry of
the rigging, resembled a creature instinct with life, with the power of
springing into action lurking in the light grace of its repose.

A pair of stewards in white jackets with brass buttons appeared on deck
and began to flit about without a sound, laying the table for dinner on
the flat top of the cabin skylight. The sun, drifting away toward
other lands, toward other seas, toward other men; the sun, all red in a
cloudless sky raked the yacht with a parting salvo of crimson rays that
shattered themselves into sparks of fire upon the crystal and silver
of the dinner-service, put a short flame into the blades of knives, and
spread a rosy tint over the white of plates. A trail of purple, like a
smear of blood on a blue shield, lay over the sea.