The Rescue (37 page)

"I thought you didn't want to hear. I believe you really don't want to.
What is all this to you? I believe that you don't care anything about
what I feel, about what I do and how I end. I verily believe that you
don't care how you end yourself. I believe you never cared for your own
or anybody's feelings. I don't think it is because you are hard, I think
it is because you don't know, and don't want to know, and are angry with
life."

He flourished an arm recklessly, and Mrs. Travers noticed for the first
time that he held a sheet of paper in his hand.

"Is that your news there?" she asked, significantly. "It's difficult to
imagine that in this wilderness writing can have any significance. And
who on earth here could send you news on paper? Will you let me see it?
Could I understand it? Is it in English? Come, King Tom, don't look at
me in this awful way."

She got up suddenly, not in indignation, but as if at the end of her
endurance. The jewelled clasps, the gold embroideries, gleamed elusively
amongst the folds of her draperies which emitted a mysterious rustle.

"I can't stand this," she cried. "I can't stand being looked at like
this. No woman could stand it. No woman has ever been looked at like
this. What can you see? Hatred I could understand. What is it you think
me capable of?"

"You are very extraordinary," murmured Lingard, who had regained his
self-possession before that outburst.

"Very well, and you are extraordinary, too. That's understood—here we
are both under that curse and having to face together whatever may turn
up. But who on earth could have sent you this writing?"

"Who?" repeated Lingard. "Why, that young fellow that blundered on my
brig in the dark, bringing a boatload of trouble alongside on that
quiet night in Carimata Straits. The darkest night I have ever known. An
accursed night."

Mrs. Travers bit her lip, waited a little, then asked quietly:

"What difficulty has he got into now?"

"Difficulty!" cried Lingard. "He is immensely pleased with himself, the
young fool. You know, when you sent him to talk to me that evening you
left the yacht, he came with a loaded pistol in his pocket. And now he
has gone and done it."

"Done it?" repeated Mrs. Travers blankly. "Done what?"

She snatched from Lingard's unresisting palm the sheet of paper. While
she was smoothing it Lingard moved round and stood close at her elbow.
She ran quickly over the first lines, then her eyes steadied. At the end
she drew a quick breath and looked up at Lingard. Their faces had never
been so close together before and Mrs. Travers had a surprising second
of a perfectly new sensation. She looked away.—"Do you understand what
this news means?" he murmured. Mrs. Travers let her hand fall by her
side. "Yes," she said in a low tone. "The compact is broken."

Carter had begun his letter without any preliminaries:

You cleared out in the middle of the night and took the lady away with
you. You left me no proper orders. But as a sailorman I looked upon
myself as left in charge of two ships while within half a mile on that
sandbank there were more than a hundred piratical cut-throats watching
me as closely as so many tigers about to leap. Days went by without a
word of you or the lady. To leave the ships outside and go inland to
look for you was not to be thought of with all those pirates within
springing distance. Put yourself in my place. Can't you imagine my
anxiety, my sleepless nights? Each night worse than the night before.
And still no word from you. I couldn't sit still and worry my head off
about things I couldn't understand. I am a sailorman. My first duty was
to the ships. I had to put an end to this impossible situation and I
hope you will agree that I have done it in a seamanlike way. One misty
morning I moved the brig nearer the sandbank and directly the mist
cleared I opened fire on the praus of those savages which were anchored
in the channel. We aimed wide at first to give those vagabonds that
were on board a chance to clear out and join their friends camped on the
sands. I didn't want to kill people. Then we got the long gun to bear
and in about an hour we had the bottom knocked out of the two praus. The
savages on the bank howled and screamed at every shot. They are mighty
angry but I don't care for their anger now, for by sinking their praus
I have made them as harmless as a flock of lambs. They needn't starve on
their sandbank because they have two or three dugouts hauled up on
the sand and they may ferry themselves and their women to the mainland
whenever they like.

I fancy I have acted as a seaman and as a seaman I intend to go on
acting. Now I have made the ships safe I shall set about without loss of
time trying to get the yacht off the mud. When that's done I shall arm
the boats and proceed inshore to look for you and the yacht's gentry,
and shan't rest till I know whether any or all of you are above the
earth yet.

I hope these words will reach you. Just as we had done the business
of those praus the man you sent off that night in Carimata to stop our
chief officer came sailing in from the west with our first gig in
tow and the boat's crew all well. Your serang tells me he is a most
trustworthy messenger and that his name is Jaffir. He seems only too
anxious to try to get to you as soon as possible. I repeat, ships and
men have been made safe and I don't mean to give you up dead or alive.

"You are quick in taking the point," said Lingard in a dull voice, while
Mrs. Travers, with the sheet of paper gripped in her hand, looked into
his face with anxious eyes. "He has been smart and no mistake."

"He didn't know," murmured Mrs. Travers.

"No, he didn't know. But could I take everybody into my confidence?"
protested Lingard in the same low tone. "And yet who else could I trust?
It seemed to me that he must have understood without being told. But he
is too young. He may well be proud according to his lights. He has done
that job outside very smartly—damn his smartness! And here we are with
all our lives depending on my word—which is broken now, Mrs. Travers.
It is broken."

Mrs. Travers nodded at him slightly.

"They would sooner have expected to see the sun and the moon fall out of
the sky," Lingard continued with repressed fire. Next moment it seemed
to have gone out of him and Mrs. Travers heard him mutter a disconnected
phrase. . . . "The world down about my ears."

"What will you do?" she whispered.

"What will I do?" repeated Lingard, gently. "Oh, yes—do. Mrs. Travers,
do you see that I am nothing now? Just nothing."

He had lost himself in the contemplation of her face turned to him with
an expression of awed curiosity. The shock of the world coming down
about his ears in consequence of Carter's smartness was so terrific that
it had dulled his sensibilities in the manner of a great pain or of a
great catastrophe. What was there to look at but that woman's face, in
a world which had lost its consistency, its shape, and its promises in a
moment?

Mrs. Travers looked away. She understood that she had put to Lingard an
impossible question. What was presenting itself to her as a problem was
to that man a crisis of feeling. Obviously Carter's action had broken
the compact entered into with Daman, and she was intelligent enough to
understand that it was the sort of thing that could not be explained
away. It wasn't horror that she felt, but a sort of consternation,
something like the discomfiture of people who have just missed their
train. It was only more intense. The real dismay had yet to make its way
into her comprehension. To Lingard it was a blow struck straight at his
heart.

He was not angry with Carter. The fellow had acted like a seaman.
Carter's concern was for the ships. In this fatality Carter was a mere
incident. The real cause of the disaster was somewhere else, was other,
and more remote. And at the same time Lingard could not defend himself
from a feeling that it was in himself, too, somewhere in the unexplored
depths of his nature, something fatal and unavoidable. He muttered to
himself:

"No. I am not a lucky man."

This was but a feeble expression of the discovery of the truth that
suddenly had come home to him as if driven into his breast by a
revealing power which had decided that this was to be the end of his
fling. But he was not the man to give himself up to the examination
of his own sensations. His natural impulse was to grapple with the
circumstances and that was what he was trying to do; but he missed now
that sense of mastery which is half the battle. Conflict of some sort
was the very essence of his life. But this was something he had never
known before. This was a conflict within himself. He had to face
unsuspected powers, foes that he could not go out to meet at the gate.
They were within, as though he had been betrayed by somebody, by some
secret enemy. He was ready to look round for that subtle traitor. A
sort of blankness fell on his mind and he suddenly thought: "Why! It's
myself."

Immediately afterward he had a clear, merciless recollection of Hassim
and Immada. He saw them far off beyond the forests. Oh, yes, they
existed—within his breast!

"That was a night!" he muttered, looking straight at Mrs. Travers. He
had been looking at her all the time. His glance had held her under a
spell, but for a whole interminable minute he had not been aware of her
at all. At the murmur of his words she made a slight movement and he saw
her again.—"What night?" she whispered, timidly, like an intruder. She
was astonished to see him smile.—"Not like this one," he said. "You
made me notice how quiet and still it was. Yes. Listen how still it is."

Both moved their heads slightly and seemed to lend an ear. There was not
a murmur, sigh, rustle, splash, or footfall. No whispers, no tremors,
not a sound of any kind. They might have been alone on board the Emma,
abandoned even by the ghost of Captain Jorgenson departed to rejoin
the Barque Wild Rose on the shore of the Cimmerian sea.—"It's like the
stillness of the end," said Mrs. Travers in a low, equable voice.—"Yes,
but that, too, is false," said Lingard in the same tone.—"I don't
understand," Mrs. Travers began, hurriedly, after a short silence. "But
don't use that word. Don't use it, King Tom! It frightens me by its mere
sound."

Lingard made no sign. His thoughts were back with Hassim and Immada. The
young chief and his sister had gone up country on a voluntary mission
to persuade Belarab to return to his stockade and to take up again the
direction of affairs. They carried urgent messages from Lingard, who for
Belarab was the very embodiment of truth and force, that unquestioned
force which had permitted Belarab to indulge in all his melancholy
hesitations. But those two young people had also some personal prestige.
They were Lingard's heart's friends. They were like his children. But
beside that, their high birth, their warlike story, their wanderings,
adventures, and prospects had given them a glamour of their own.

The very day that Travers and d'Alcacer had come on board the Emma
Hassim and Immada had departed on their mission; for Lingard, of course,
could not think of leaving the white people alone with Jorgenson.
Jorgenson was all right, but his ineradicable habit of muttering in his
moustache about "throwing a lighted match amongst the powder barrels"
had inspired Lingard with a certain amount of mistrust. And, moreover,
he did not want to go away from Mrs. Travers.

It was the only correct inspiration on Carter's part to send Jaffir with
his report to Lingard. That stout-hearted fighter, swimmer, and devoted
follower of the princely misfortunes of Hassim and Immada, had looked
upon his mission to catch the chief officer of the yacht (which he had
received from Lingard in Carimata) as a trifling job. It took him a
little longer than he expected but he had got back to the brig just in
time to be sent on to Lingard with Carter's letter after a couple of
hours' rest. He had the story of all the happenings from Wasub before he
left and though his face preserved its grave impassivity, in his heart
he did not like it at all.

Fearless and wily, Jaffir was the man for difficult missions and a born
messenger—as he expressed it himself—"to bear weighty words between
great men." With his unfailing memory he was able to reproduce them
exactly, whether soft or hard, in council or in private; for he knew no
fear. With him there was no need for writing which might fall into the
hands of the enemy. If he died on the way the message would die with
him. He had also the gift of getting at the sense of any situation
and an observant eye. He was distinctly one of those men from whom
trustworthy information can be obtained by the leaders of great
enterprises. Lingard did put several questions to him, but in this
instance, of course, Jaffir could have only very little to say. Of
Carter, whom he called the "young one," he said that he looked as white
men look when they are pleased with themselves; then added without
waiting for a definite question—"The ships out there are now safe
enough, O, Rajah Laut!" There was no elation in his tone.

Lingard looked at him blankly. When the Greatest of White Men remarked
that there was yet a price to be paid for that safety, Jaffir assented
by a "Yes, by Allah!" without losing for a moment his grim composure.
When told that he would be required to go and find his master and
the lady Immada who were somewhere in the back country, in Belarab's
travelling camp, he declared himself ready to proceed at once. He had
eaten his fill and had slept three hours on board the brig and he was
not tired. When he was young he used to get tired sometimes; but for
many years now he had known no such weakness. He did not require the
boat with paddlers in which he had come up into the lagoon. He would go
alone in a small canoe. This was no time, he remarked, for publicity and
ostentation. His pent-up anxiety burst through his lips. "It is in my
mind, Tuan, that death has not been so near them since that night when
you came sailing in a black cloud and took us all out of the stockade."