The Rescue (30 page)

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.