The Rescue: A Romance of the Shallows

  PART III. THE CAPTURE

  I

  "Some people," said Lingard, "go about the world with their eyes shut.You are right. The sea is free to all of us. Some work on it, and someplay the fool on it--and I don't care. Only you may take it from methat I will let no man's play interfere with my work. You want me tounderstand you are a very great man--"

  Mr. Travers smiled, coldly.

  "Oh, yes," continued Lingard, "I understand that well enough. Butremember you are very far from home, while I, here, I am where I belong.And I belong where I am. I am just Tom Lingard, no more, no less,wherever I happen to be, and--you may ask--" A sweep of his hand alongthe western horizon entrusted with perfect confidence the remainder ofhis speech to the dumb testimony of the sea.

  He had been on board the yacht for more than an hour, and nothing,for him, had come of it but the birth of an unreasoning hate. To theunconscious demand of these people's presence, of their ignorance, oftheir faces, of their voices, of their eyes, he had nothing to give buta resentment that had in it a germ of reckless violence. He could tellthem nothing because he had not the means. Their coming at this moment,when he had wandered beyond that circle which race, memories, earlyassociations, all the essential conditions of one's origin, trace roundevery man's life, deprived him in a manner of the power of speech. Hewas confounded. It was like meeting exacting spectres in a desert.

  He stared at the open sea, his arms crossed, with a reflectivefierceness. His very appearance made him utterly different from everyoneon board that vessel. The grey shirt, the blue sash, one rolled-upsleeve baring a sculptural forearm, the negligent masterfulness of histone and pose were very distasteful to Mr. Travers, who, having madeup his mind to wait for some kind of official assistance, regardedthe intrusion of that inexplicable man with suspicion. From the momentLingard came on board the yacht, every eye in that vessel had been fixedupon him. Only Carter, within earshot and leaning with his elbow uponthe rail, stared down at the deck as if overcome with drowsiness or lostin thought.

  Of the three other persons aft, Mr. Travers kept his hands in the sidepockets of his jacket and did not conceal his growing disgust.

  On the other side of the deck, a lady, in a long chair, had a passiveattitude that to Mr. d'Alcacer, standing near her, seemed characteristicof the manner in which she accepted the necessities of existence. Yearsbefore, as an attache of his Embassy in London, he had found her aninteresting hostess. She was even more interesting now, since a chancemeeting and Mr. Travers' offer of a passage to Batavia had given him anopportunity of studying the various shades of scorn which he suspectedto be the secret of her acquiescence in the shallowness of events andthe monotony of a worldly existence.

  There were things that from the first he had not been able tounderstand; for instance, why she should have married Mr. Travers. Itmust have been from ambition. He could not help feeling that such asuccessful mistake would explain completely her scorn and also heracquiescence. The meeting in Manila had been utterly unexpected tohim, and he accounted for it to his uncle, the Governor-General of thecolony, by pointing out that Englishmen, when worsted in the struggleof love or politics, travel extensively, as if by encompassing a largeportion of earth's surface they hoped to gather fresh strength for arenewed contest. As to himself, he judged--but did not say--that hiscontest with fate was ended, though he also travelled, leaving behindhim in the capitals of Europe a story in which there was nothingscandalous but the publicity of an excessive feeling, and nothing moretragic than the early death of a woman whose brilliant perfections wereno better known to the great world than the discreet and passionatedevotion she had innocently inspired.

  The invitation to join the yacht was the culminating point of manyexchanged civilities, and was mainly prompted by Mr. Travers' desireto have somebody to talk to. D'Alcacer had accepted with the recklessindifference of a man to whom one method of flight from a relentlessenemy is as good as another. Certainly the prospect of listening to longmonologues on commerce, administration, and politics did not promisemuch alleviation to his sorrow; and he could not expect much else fromMr. Travers, whose life and thought, ignorant of human passion, weredevoted to extracting the greatest possible amount of personal advantagefrom human institutions. D'Alcacer found, however, that he could attaina measure of forgetfulness--the most precious thing for him now--in thesociety of Edith Travers.

  She had awakened his curiosity, which he thought nothing and nobody onearth could do any more.

  These two talked of things indifferent and interesting, certainly notconnected with human institutions, and only very slightly with humanpassions; but d'Alcacer could not help being made aware of her latentcapacity for sympathy developed in those who are disenchanted with lifeor death. How far she was disenchanted he did not know, and didnot attempt to find out. This restraint was imposed upon him by thechivalrous respect he had for the secrets of women and by a convictionthat deep feeling is often impenetrably obscure, even to those itmasters for their inspiration or their ruin. He believed that even sheherself would never know; but his grave curiosity was satisfied by theobservation of her mental state, and he was not sorry that the strandingof the yacht prolonged his opportunity.

  Time passed on that mudbank as well as anywhere else, and it was notfrom a multiplicity of events, but from the lapse of time alone, thathe expected relief. Yet in the sameness of days upon the Shallows, timeflowing ceaselessly, flowed imperceptibly; and, since every man clingsto his own, be it joy, be it grief, he was pleased after the unrestof his wanderings to be able to fancy the whole universe and even timeitself apparently come to a standstill; as if unwilling to take him awayfurther from his sorrow, which was fading indeed but undiminished, asthings fade, not in the distance but in the mist.

  II

  D'Alcacer was a man of nearly forty, lean and sallow, with hollow eyesand a drooping brown moustache. His gaze was penetrating and direct, hissmile frequent and fleeting. He observed Lingard with great interest.He was attracted by that elusive something--a line, a fold, perhapsthe form of the eye, the droop of an eyelid, the curve of a cheek, thattrifling trait which on no two faces on earth is alike, that in eachface is the very foundation of expression, as if, all the rest beingheredity, mystery, or accident, it alone had been shaped consciously bythe soul within.

  Now and then he bent slightly over the slow beat of a red fan in thecurve of the deck chair to say a few words to Mrs. Travers, who answeredhim without looking up, without a modulation of tone or a play offeature, as if she had spoken from behind the veil of an immenseindifference stretched between her and all men, between her heart andthe meaning of events, between her eyes and the shallow sea which, likeher gaze, appeared profound, forever stilled, and seemed, far off in thedistance of a faint horizon, beyond the reach of eye, beyond the powerof hand or voice, to lose itself in the sky.

  Mr. Travers stepped aside, and speaking to Carter, overwhelmed him withreproaches.

  "You misunderstood your instructions," murmured Mr. Travers rapidly."Why did you bring this man here? I am surprised--"

  "Not half so much as I was last night," growled the young seaman,without any reverence in his tone, very provoking to Mr. Travers.

  "I perceive now you were totally unfit for the mission I entrusted youwith," went on the owner of the yacht.

  "It's he who got hold of me," said Carter. "Haven't you heard himyourself, sir?"

  "Nonsense," whispered Mr. Travers, angrily. "Have you any idea what hisintentions may be?"

  "I half believe," answered Carter, "that his intention was to shoot mein his cabin last night if I--"

  "That's not the point," interrupted Mr. Travers. "Have you any opinionas to his motives in coming here?"

  Carter raised his weary, bloodshot eyes in a face scarlet and peeling asthough it had been licked by a flame. "I know no more than you do, sir.Last night when he had me in that cabin of his, he said he would just assoon shoot me as let me go to look for any other help. It looks as ifhe were desperately
bent upon getting a lot of salvage money out of astranded yacht."

  Mr. Travers turned away, and, for a moment, appeared immersed in deepthought. This accident of stranding upon a deserted coast was annoyingas a loss of time. He tried to minimize it by putting in order the notescollected during the year's travel in the East. He had sent off forassistance; his sailing-master, very crestfallen, made bold to say thatthe yacht would most likely float at the next spring tides; d'Alcacer,a person of undoubted nobility though of inferior principles, was betterthan no company, in so far at least that he could play picquet.

  Mr. Travers had made up his mind to wait. Then suddenly this roughman, looking as if he had stepped out from an engraving in a book aboutbuccaneers, broke in upon his resignation with mysterious allusions todanger, which sounded absurd yet were disturbing; with dark and warningsentences that sounded like disguised menaces.

  Mr. Travers had a heavy and rather long chin which he shaved. His eyeswere blue, a chill, naive blue. He faced Lingard untouched by travel,without a mark of weariness or exposure, with the air of having beenborn invulnerable. He had a full, pale face; and his complexion wasperfectly colourless, yet amazingly fresh, as if he had been reared inthe shade.

  He thought:

  "I must put an end to this preposterous hectoring. I won't beintimidated into paying for services I don't need."

  Mr. Travers felt a strong disgust for the impudence of the attempt; andall at once, incredibly, strangely, as though the thing, like a contestwith a rival or a friend, had been of profound importance to his career,he felt inexplicably elated at the thought of defeating the secretpurposes of that man.

  Lingard, unconscious of everything and everybody, contemplated the sea.He had grown on it, he had lived with it; it had enticed him away fromhome; on it his thoughts had expanded and his hand had found work to do.It had suggested endeavour, it had made him owner and commander of thefinest brig afloat; it had lulled him into a belief in himself, inhis strength, in his luck--and suddenly, by its complicity in a fatalaccident, it had brought him face to face with a difficulty that lookedlike the beginning of disaster.

  He had said all he dared to say--and he perceived that he was notbelieved. This had not happened to him for years. It had never happened.It bewildered him as if he had suddenly discovered that he was no longerhimself. He had come to them and had said: "I mean well by you. I amTom Lingard--" and they did not believe! Before such scepticism he washelpless, because he had never imagined it possible. He had said: "Youare in the way of my work. You are in the way of what I can not give upfor any one; but I will see you through all safe if you will onlytrust me--me, Tom Lingard." And they would not believe him! It wasintolerable. He imagined himself sweeping their disbelief out of hisway. And why not? He did not know them, he did not care for them, hedid not even need to lift his hand against them! All he had to do was toshut his eyes now for a day or two, and afterward he could forget thathe had ever seen them. It would be easy. Let their disbelief vanish,their folly disappear, their bodies perish. . . . It was that--or ruin!