With clasped hands and leaning over his knees d"Alcacer had a.s.sented in a very low tone. Mrs. Travers, un.o.bserved, pressed her hands to her breast and felt the shape of the ring, thick, heavy, set with a big stone. It was there, secret, hung against her heart, and enigmatic. What did it mean? What could it mean? What was the feeling it could arouse or the action it could provoke? And she thought with compunction that she ought to have given it to Lingard at once, without thinking, without hesitating. "There! This is what I came for. To give you this." Yes, but there had come an interval when she had been able to think of nothing, and since then she had had the time to reflect--unfortunately. To remember Jorgenson"s hostile, contemptuous glance enveloping her from head to foot at the break of a day after a night of lonely anguish. And now while she sat there veiled from his keen sight there was that other man, that d"Alcacer, prophesying. O yes, triumphant. She knew already what that was. Mrs. Travers became afraid of the ring. She felt ready to pluck it from her neck and cast it away.
"I mistrust him," she said.--"You do!" exclaimed d"Alcacer, very low.--"I mean that Jorgenson. He seems a merciless sort of creature."--"He is indifferent to everything," said d"Alcacer.--"It may be a mask."--"Have you some evidence, Mrs. Travers?"
"No," said Mrs. Travers without hesitation. "I have my instinct."
D"Alcacer remained silent for a while as though he were pursuing another train of thought altogether, then in a gentle, almost playful tone: "If I were a woman," he said, turning to Mrs. Travers, "I would always trust my intuition."--"If you were a woman, Mr. d"Alcacer, I would not be speaking to you in this way because then I would be suspect to you."
The thought that before long perhaps he would be neither man nor woman but a lump of cold clay, crossed d"Alcacer"s mind, which was living, alert, and unsubdued by the danger. He had welcomed the arrival of Mrs.
Travers simply because he had been very lonely in that stockade, Mr.
Travers having fallen into a phase of sulks complicated with shivering fits. Of Lingard d"Alcacer had seen almost nothing since they had landed, for the Man of Fate was extremely busy negotiating in the recesses of Belarab"s main hut; and the thought that his life was being a matter of arduous bargaining was not agreeable to Mr. d"Alcacer. The Chief"s dependents and the armed men garrisoning the stockade paid very little attention to him apparently, and this gave him the feeling of his captivity being very perfect and hopeless. During the afternoon, while pacing to and fro in the bit of shade thrown by the glorified sort of hut inside which Mr. Travers shivered and sulked misanthropically, he had been aware of the more distant verandahs becoming filled now and then by the m.u.f.fled forms of women of Belarab"s household taking a distant and curious view of the white man. All this was irksome. He found his menaced life extremely difficult to get through. Yes, he welcomed the arrival of Mrs. Travers who brought with her a tragic note into the empty gloom.
"Suspicion is not in my nature, Mrs. Travers, I a.s.sure 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 pa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sion. "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?"
V
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 circ.u.mstances 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 a.s.sure you that seven thousand miles from here n.o.body 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 att.i.tude. 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 att.i.tude. Was this the fitting occasion for one of the remaining two?