The Rescue (40 page)

"I wouldn't question that for a moment," conceded d'Alcacer. "A point
of honour is not to be discussed. But there is such a thing as humanity,
too. To be delivered up helplessly. . . ."

"Perhaps!" interrupted Lingard. "But you needn't feel hopeless. I am
not at liberty to give up my life for your own. Mrs. Travers knows why.
That, too, is engaged."

"Always on your honour?"

"I don't know. A promise is a promise."

"Nobody can be held to the impossible," remarked d'Alcacer.

"Impossible! What is impossible? I don't know it. I am not a man to talk
of the impossible or dodge behind it. I did not bring you here."

D'Alcacer lowered his head for a moment. "I have finished," he said,
gravely. "That much I had to say. I hope you don't think I have appeared
unduly anxious."

"It's the best policy, too." Mrs. Travers made herself heard suddenly.
Nothing of her moved but her lips, she did not even raise her eyes.
"It's the only possible policy. You believe me, Mr. d'Alcacer? . . ." He
made an almost imperceptible movement of the head. . . . "Well, then,
I put all my hope in you, Mr. d'Alcacer, to get this over as easily as
possible and save us all from some odious scene. You think perhaps that
it is I who ought to. . . ."

"No, no! I don't think so," interrupted d'Alcacer. "It would be
impossible."

"I am afraid it would," she admitted, nervously.

D'Alcacer made a gesture as if to beg her to say no more and at once
crossed over to Mr. Travers' side of the Cage. He did not want to give
himself time to think about his task. Mr. Travers was sitting up on
the camp bedstead with a light cotton sheet over his legs. He stared at
nothing, and on approaching him d'Alcacer disregarded the slight sinking
of his own heart at this aspect which seemed to be that of extreme
terror. "This is awful," he thought. The man kept as still as a hare in
its form.

The impressed d'Alcacer had to make an effort to bring himself to tap
him lightly on the shoulder.

"The moment has come, Travers, to show some fortitude," he said with
easy intimacy. Mr. Travers looked up swiftly. "I have just been talking
to your wife. She had a communication from Captain Lingard for us both.
It remains for us now to preserve as much as possible our dignity. I
hope that if necessary we will both know how to die."

In a moment of profound stillness, d'Alcacer had time to wonder whether
his face was as stony in expression as the one upturned to him. But
suddenly a smile appeared on it, which was certainly the last thing
d'Alcacer expected to see. An indubitable smile. A slightly contemptuous
smile.

"My wife has been stuffing your head with some more of her nonsense."
Mr. Travers spoke in a voice which astonished d'Alcacer as much as the
smile, a voice that was not irritable nor peevish, but had a distinct
note of indulgence. "My dear d'Alcacer, that craze has got such a hold
of her that she would tell you any sort of tale. Social impostors,
mediums, fortune-tellers, charlatans of all sorts do obtain a strange
influence over women. You have seen that sort of thing yourself. I had a
talk with her before dinner. The influence that bandit has got over her
is incredible. I really believe the fellow is half crazy himself. They
often are, you know. I gave up arguing with her. Now, what is it you
have got to tell me? But I warn you that I am not going to take it
seriously."

He rejected briskly the cotton sheet, put his feet to the ground and
buttoned his jacket. D'Alcacer, as he talked, became aware by the slight
noise behind him that Mrs. Travers and Lingard were leaving the Cage,
but he went on to the end and then waited anxiously for the answer.

"See! She has followed him out on deck," were Mr. Travers' first words.
"I hope you understand that it is a mere craze. You can't help seeing
that. Look at her costume. She simply has lost her head. Luckily the
world needn't know. But suppose that something similar had happened at
home. It would have been extremely awkward. Oh! yes, I will come. I will
go anywhere. I can't stand this hulk, those people, this infernal Cage.
I believe I should fall ill if I were to remain here."

The inward detached voice of Jorgenson made itself heard near the
gangway saying: "The boat has been waiting for this hour past, King
Tom."

"Let us make a virtue of necessity and go with a good grace," said
d'Alcacer, ready to take Mr. Travers under the arm persuasively, for he
did not know what to make of that gentleman.

But Mr. Travers seemed another man. "I am afraid, d'Alcacer, that you,
too, are not very strong-minded. I am going to take a blanket off this
bedstead. . . ." He flung it hastily over his arm and followed d'Alcacer
closely. "What I suffer mostly from, strange to say, is cold."

Mrs. Travers and Lingard were waiting near the gangway. To everybody's
extreme surprise Mr. Travers addressed his wife first.

"You were always laughing at people's crazes," was what he said, "and
now you have a craze of your own. But we won't discuss that."

D'Alcacer passed on, raising his cap to Mrs. Travers, and went down the
ship's side into the boat. Jorgenson had vanished in his own manner like
an exorcised ghost, and Lingard, stepping back, left husband and wife
face to face.

"Did you think I was going to make a fuss?" asked Mr. Travers in a very
low voice. "I assure you I would rather go than stay here. You didn't
think that? You have lost all sense of reality, of probability. I was
just thinking this evening that I would rather be anywhere than here
looking on at you. At your folly. . . ."

Mrs. Travers' loud, "Martin!" made Lingard wince, caused d'Alcacer
to lift his head down there in the boat, and even Jorgenson, forward
somewhere out of sight, ceased mumbling in his moustache. The only
person who seemed not to have heard that exclamation was Mr. Travers
himself, who continued smoothly:

". . . at the aberration of your mind, you who seemed so superior to
common credulities. You are not yourself, not at all, and some day you
will admit to me that . . . No, the best thing will be to forget it, as
you will soon see yourself. We shall never mention that subject in the
future. I am certain you will be only too glad to agree with me on that
point."

"How far ahead are you looking?" asked Mrs. Travers, finding her voice
and even the very tone in which she would have addressed him had they
been about to part in the hall of their town house. She might have been
asking him at what time he expected to be home, while a footman held the
door open and the brougham waited in the street.

"Not very far. This can't last much longer." Mr. Travers made a movement
as if to leave her exactly as though he were rather pressed to keep
an appointment. "By the by," he said, checking himself, "I suppose the
fellow understands thoroughly that we are wealthy. He could hardly doubt
that."

"It's the last thought that would enter his head," said Mrs. Travers.

"Oh, yes, just so," Mr. Travers allowed a little impatience to pierce
under his casual manner. "But I don't mind telling you that I have had
enough of this. I am prepared to make—ah!—to make concessions. A large
pecuniary sacrifice. Only the whole position is so absurd! He might
conceivably doubt my good faith. Wouldn't it be just as well if you,
with your particular influence, would hint to him that with me he would
have nothing to fear? I am a man of my word."

"That is the first thing he would naturally think of any man," said Mrs.
Travers.

"Will your eyes never be opened?" Mr. Travers began, irritably, then
gave it up. "Well, so much the better then. I give you a free hand."

"What made you change your attitude like this?" asked Mrs. Travers,
suspiciously.

"My regard for you," he answered without hesitation.

"I intended to join you in your captivity. I was just trying to persuade
him. . . ."

"I forbid you absolutely," whispered Mr. Travers, forcibly. "I am glad
to get away. I don't want to see you again till your craze is over."

She was confounded by his secret vehemence. But instantly succeeding his
fierce whisper came a short, inane society laugh and a much louder, "Not
that I attach any importance . . ."

He sprang away, as it were, from his wife, and as he went over the
gangway waved his hand to her amiably.

Lighted dimly by the lantern on the roof of the deckhouse Mrs. Travers
remained very still with lowered head and an aspect of profound
meditation. It lasted but an instant before she moved off and brushing
against Lingard passed on with downcast eyes to her deck cabin. Lingard
heard the door shut. He waited awhile, made a movement toward the
gangway but checked himself and followed Mrs. Travers into her cabin.

It was pitch dark in there. He could see absolutely nothing and was
oppressed by the profound stillness unstirred even by the sound of
breathing.

"I am going on shore," he began, breaking the black and deathlike
silence enclosing him and the invisible woman. "I wanted to say
good-bye."

"You are going on shore," repeated Mrs. Travers. Her voice was
emotionless, blank, unringing.

"Yes, for a few hours, or for life," Lingard said in measured tones. "I
may have to die with them or to die maybe for others. For you, if I
only knew how to manage it, I would want to live. I am telling you this
because it is dark. If there had been a light in here I wouldn't have
come in."

"I wish you had not," uttered the same unringing woman's voice. "You are
always coming to me with those lives and those deaths in your hand."

"Yes, it's too much for you," was Lingard's undertoned comment. "You
could be no other than true. And you are innocent! Don't wish me life,
but wish me luck, for you are innocent—and you will have to take your
chance."

"All luck to you, King Tom," he heard her say in the darkness in which
he seemed now to perceive the gleam of her hair. "I will take my chance.
And try not to come near me again for I am weary of you."

"I can well believe it," murmured Lingard, and stepped out of the cabin,
shutting the door after him gently. For half a minute, perhaps, the
stillness continued, and then suddenly the chair fell over in the
darkness. Next moment Mrs. Travers' head appeared in the light of the
lamp left on the roof of the deckhouse. Her bare arms grasped the door
posts.

"Wait a moment," she said, loudly, into the shadows of the deck. She
heard no footsteps, saw nothing moving except the vanishing white shape
of the late Captain H. C. Jorgenson, who was indifferent to the life of
men. "Wait, King Tom!" she insisted, raising her voice; then, "I didn't
mean it. Don't believe me!" she cried, recklessly.

For the second time that night a woman's voice startled the hearts of
men on board the Emma. All except the heart of old Jorgenson. The Malays
in the boat looked up from their thwarts. D'Alcacer, sitting in the
stern sheets beside Lingard, felt a sinking of his heart.

"What's this?" he exclaimed. "I heard your name on deck. You are wanted,
I think."

"Shove off," ordered Lingard, inflexibly, without even looking at
d'Alcacer. Mr. Travers was the only one who didn't seem to be aware
of anything. A long time after the boat left the Emma's side he leaned
toward d'Alcacer.

"I have a most extraordinary feeling," he said in a cautious undertone.
"I seem to be in the air—I don't know. Are we on the water, d'Alcacer?
Are you quite sure? But of course, we are on the water."

"Yes," said d'Alcacer, in the same tone. "Crossing the Styx—perhaps."
He heard Mr. Travers utter an unmoved "Very likely," which he did not
expect. Lingard, his hand on the tiller, sat like a man of stone.

"Then your point of view has changed," whispered d'Alcacer.

"I told my wife to make an offer," went on the earnest whisper of the
other man. "A sum of money. But to tell you the truth I don't believe
very much in its success."

D'Alcacer made no answer and only wondered whether he didn't like better
Mr. Travers' other, unreasonable mood. There was no denying the fact
that Mr. Travers was a troubling person. Now he suddenly gripped
d'Alcacer's fore-arm and added under his breath: "I doubt everything. I
doubt whether the offer will ever be made."

All this was not very impressive. There was something pitiful in it:
whisper, grip, shudder, as of a child frightened in the dark. But the
emotion was deep. Once more that evening, but this time aroused by the
husband's distress, d'Alcacer's wonder approached the borders of awe.

"Have you got King Tom's watch in there?" said a voice that seemed not
to attach the slightest importance to the question. Jorgenson, outside
the door of Mrs. Travers' part of the deckhouse, waited for the answer.
He heard a low cry very much like a moan, the startled sound of pain
that may be sometimes heard in sick rooms. But it moved him not at all.
He would never have dreamt of opening the door unless told to do so,
in which case he would have beheld, with complete indifference, Mrs.
Travers extended on the floor with her head resting on the edge of the
camp bedstead (on which Lingard had never slept), as though she had
subsided there from a kneeling posture which is the attitude of prayer,
supplication, or defeat. The hours of the night had passed Mrs. Travers
by. After flinging herself on her knees, she didn't know why, since she
could think of nothing to pray for, had nothing to invoke, and was too
far gone for such a futile thing as despair, she had remained there till
the sense of exhaustion had grown on her to the point in which she lost
her belief in her power to rise. In a half-sitting attitude, her head
resting against the edge of the couch and her arms flung above her head,
she sank into an indifference, the mere resignation of a worn-out body
and a worn-out mind which often is the only sort of rest that comes to
people who are desperately ill and is welcome enough in a way. The voice
of Jorgenson roused her out of that state. She sat up, aching in every
limb and cold all over.