The Rescue (46 page)

"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?"

D'Alcacer sat down on the bench again. "I wonder what she knows," he
thought, "and I wonder what I have done." He wondered also how far he
had been sincere and how far affected by a very natural aversion from
being murdered obscurely by ferocious Moors with all the circumstances
of barbarity. It was a very naked death to come upon one suddenly. It
was robbed of all helpful illusions, such as the free will of a suicide,
the heroism of a warrior, or the exaltation of a martyr. "Hadn't I
better make some sort of fight of it?" he debated with himself. He saw
himself rushing at the naked spears without any enthusiasm. Or wouldn't
it be better to go forth to meet his doom (somewhere outside the
stockade on that horrible beach) with calm dignity. "Pah! I shall be
probably speared through the back in the beastliest possible fashion,"
he thought with an inward shudder. It was certainly not a shudder of
fear, for Mr. d'Alcacer attached no high value to life. It was a shudder
of disgust because Mr. d'Alcacer was a civilized man and though he had
no illusions about civilization he could not but admit the superiority
of its methods. It offered to one a certain refinement of form, a
comeliness of proceedings and definite safeguards against deadly
surprises. "How idle all this is," he thought, finally. His next thought
was that women were very resourceful. It was true, he went on meditating
with unwonted cynicism, that strictly speaking they had only one
resource but, generally, it served—it served.

He was surprised by his supremely shameless bitterness at this juncture.
It was so uncalled for. This situation was too complicated to be
entrusted to a cynical or shameless hope. There was nothing to trust to.
At this moment of his meditation he became aware of Lingard's approach.
He raised his head eagerly. D'Alcacer was not indifferent to his fate
and even to Mr. Travers' fate. He would fain learn. . . . But one look
at Lingard's face was enough. "It's no use asking him anything," he said
to himself, "for he cares for nothing just now."

Lingard sat down heavily on the other end of the bench, and d'Alcacer,
looking at his profile, confessed to himself that this was the most
masculinely good-looking face he had ever seen in his life. It was
an expressive face, too, but its present expression was also beyond
d'Alcacer's past experience. At the same time its quietness set up a
barrier against common curiosities and even common fears. No, it was
no use asking him anything. Yet something should be said to break the
spell, to call down again this man to the earth. But it was Lingard who
spoke first. "Where has Mrs. Travers gone?"

"She has gone . . . where naturally she would be anxious to go first of
all since she has managed to come to us," answered d'Alcacer, wording
his answer with the utmost regard for the delicacy of the situation.

The stillness of Lingard seemed to have grown even more impressive. He
spoke again.

"I wonder what those two can have to say to each other."

He might have been asking that of the whole darkened part of the globe,
but it was d'Alcacer who answered in his courteous tones.

"Would it surprise you very much, Captain Lingard, if I were to tell you
that those two people are quite fit to understand each other thoroughly?
Yes? It surprises you! Well, I assure you that seven thousand miles from
here nobody would wonder."

"I think I understand," said Lingard, "but don't you know the man is
light-headed? A man like that is as good as mad."

"Yes, he had been slightly delirious since seven o'clock," said
d'Alcacer. "But believe me, Captain Lingard," he continued, earnestly,
and obeying a perfectly disinterested impulse, "that even in his
delirium he is far more understandable to her and better able to
understand her than . . . anybody within a hundred miles from here."

"Ah!" said Lingard without any emotion, "so you don't wonder. You don't
see any reason for wonder."

"No, for, don't you see, I do know."

"What do you know?"

"Men and women, Captain Lingard, which you. . . ."

"I don't know any woman."

"You have spoken the strictest truth there," said d'Alcacer, and for the
first time Lingard turned his head slowly and looked at his neighbour on
the bench.

"Do you think she is as good as mad, too?" asked Lingard in a startled
voice.

D'Alcacer let escape a low exclamation. No, certainly he did not think
so. It was an original notion to suppose that lunatics had a sort of
common logic which made them understandable to each other. D'Alcacer
tried to make his voice as gentle as possible while he pursued: "No,
Captain Lingard, I believe the woman of whom we speak is and will always
remain in the fullest possession of herself."

Lingard, leaning back, clasped his hands round his knees. He seemed
not to be listening and d'Alcacer, pulling a cigarette case out of his
pocket, looked for a long time at the three cigarettes it contained. It
was the last of the provision he had on him when captured. D'Alcacer
had put himself on the strictest allowance. A cigarette was only to be
lighted on special occasions; and now there were only three left and
they had to be made to last till the end of life. They calmed, they
soothed, they gave an attitude. And only three left! One had to be
kept for the morning, to be lighted before going through the gate of
doom—the gate of Belarab's stockade. A cigarette soothed, it gave an
attitude. Was this the fitting occasion for one of the remaining two?
D'Alcacer, a true Latin, was not afraid of a little introspection. In
the pause he descended into the innermost depths of his being, then
glanced up at the night sky. Sportsman, traveller, he had often looked
up at the stars before to see how time went. It was going very slowly.
He took out a cigarette, snapped-to the case, bent down to the embers.
Then he sat up and blew out a thin cloud of smoke. The man by his side
looked with his bowed head and clasped knee like a masculine rendering
of mournful meditation. Such attitudes are met with sometimes on the
sculptures of ancient tombs. D'Alcacer began to speak:

"She is a representative woman and yet one of those of whom there are
but very few at any time in the world. Not that they are very rare but
that there is but little room on top. They are the iridescent gleams on
a hard and dark surface. For the world is hard, Captain Lingard, it is
hard, both in what it will remember and in what it will forget. It
is for such women that people toil on the ground and underground and
artists of all sorts invoke their inspiration."

Lingard seemed not to have heard a word. His chin rested on his breast.
D'Alcacer appraised the remaining length of his cigarette and went on in
an equable tone through which pierced a certain sadness:

"No, there are not many of them. And yet they are all. They decorate our
life for us. They are the gracious figures on the drab wall which lies
on this side of our common grave. They lead a sort of ritual dance, that
most of us have agreed to take seriously. It is a very binding agreement
with which sincerity and good faith and honour have nothing to do.
Very binding. Woe to him or her who breaks it. Directly they leave the
pageant they get lost."

Lingard turned his head sharply and discovered d'Alcacer looking at him
with profound attention.

"They get lost in a maze," continued d'Alcacer, quietly. "They wander in
it lamenting over themselves. I would shudder at that fate for anything
I loved. Do you know, Captain Lingard, how people lost in a maze end?"
he went on holding Lingard by a steadfast stare. "No? . . . I will
tell you then. They end by hating their very selves, and they die in
disillusion and despair."

As if afraid of the force of his words d'Alcacer laid a soothing hand
lightly on Lingard's shoulder. But Lingard continued to look into the
embers at his feet and remained insensible to the friendly touch. Yet
d'Alcacer could not imagine that he had not been heard. He folded his
arms on his breast.

"I don't know why I have been telling you all this," he said,
apologetically. "I hope I have not been intruding on your thoughts."

"I can think of nothing," Lingard declared, unexpectedly. "I only know
that your voice was friendly; and for the rest—"

"One must get through a night like this somehow," said d'Alcacer.
"The very stars seem to lag on their way. It's a common belief that a
drowning man is irresistibly compelled to review his past experience.
Just now I feel quite out of my depth, and whatever I have said has come
from my experience. I am sure you will forgive me. All that it amounts
to is this: that it is natural for us to cry for the moon but it would
be very fatal to have our cries heard. For what could any one of us do
with the moon if it were given to him? I am speaking now of us—common
mortals."

It was not immediately after d'Alcacer had ceased speaking but only
after a moment that Lingard unclasped his fingers, got up, and walked
away. D'Alcacer followed with a glance of quiet interest the big,
shadowy form till it vanished in the direction of an enormous forest
tree left in the middle of the stockade. The deepest shade of the night
was spread over the ground of Belarab's fortified courtyard. The very
embers of the fires had turned black, showing only here and there a mere
spark; and the forms of the prone sleepers could hardly be distinguished
from the hard ground on which they rested, with their arms lying
beside them on the mats. Presently Mrs. Travers appeared quite close to
d'Alcacer, who rose instantly.

"Martin is asleep," said Mrs. Travers in a tone that seemed to have
borrowed something of the mystery and quietness of the night.

"All the world's asleep," observed d'Alcacer, so low that Mrs. Travers
barely caught the words, "Except you and me, and one other who has left
me to wander about in the night."

"Was he with you? Where has he gone?"

"Where it's darkest I should think," answered d'Alcacer, secretly. "It's
no use going to look for him; but if you keep perfectly still and hold
your breath you may presently hear his footsteps."