He stopped because his wife had clasped again her hands behind her head and was no longer looking at him.
"It"s perfectly obvious," he began again. "We have been living amongst most distinguished men and women and your att.i.tude to them has been always so--so negative! You would never recognize the importance of achievements, of acquired positions. I don"t remember you ever admiring frankly any political or social success. I ask myself what after all you could possibly have expected from life."
"I could never have expected to hear such a speech from you. As to what I did expect! . . . I must have been very stupid."
"No, you are anything but that," declared Mr. Travers, conscientiously.
"It isn"t stupidity." He hesitated for a moment. "It"s a kind of wilfulness, I think. I preferred not to think about this grievous difference in our points of view, which, you will admit, I could not have possibly foreseen before we. . . ."
A sort of solemn embarra.s.sment had come over Mr. Travers. Mrs. Travers, leaning her chin on the palm of her hand, stared at the bare matchboard side of the hut.
"Do you charge me with profound girlish duplicity?" she asked, very softly.
The inside of the deckhouse was full of stagnant heat perfumed by a slight scent which seemed to emanate from the loose ma.s.s of Mrs.
Travers" hair. Mr. Travers evaded the direct question which struck him as lacking fineness even to the point of impropriety.
"I must suppose that I was not in the calm possession of my insight and judgment in those days," he said. "I--I was not in a critical state of mind at the time," he admitted further; but even after going so far he did not look up at his wife and therefore missed something like the ghost of a smile on Mrs. Travers" lips. That smile was tinged with scepticism which was too deep-seated for anything but the faintest expression. Therefore she said nothing, and Mr. Travers went on as if thinking aloud:
"Your conduct was, of course, above reproach; but you made for yourself a detestable reputation of mental superiority, expressed ironically. You inspired mistrust in the best people. You were never popular."
"I was bored," murmured Mrs. Travers in a reminiscent tone and with her chin resting in the hollow of her hand.
Mr. Travers got up from the seaman"s chest as unexpectedly as if he had been stung by a wasp, but, of course, with a much slower and more solemn motion.
"The matter with you, Edith, is that at heart you are perfectly primitive." Mrs. Travers stood up, too, with a supple, leisurely movement, and raising her hands to her hair turned half away with a pensive remark:
"Imperfectly civilized."
"Imperfectly disciplined," corrected Mr. Travers after a moment of dreary meditation.
She let her arms fall and turned her head.
"No, don"t say that," she protested with strange earnestness. "I am the most severely disciplined person in the world. I am tempted to say that my discipline has stopped at nothing short of killing myself. I suppose you can hardly understand what I mean."
Mr. Travers made a slight grimace at the floor.
"I shall not try," he said. "It sounds like something that a barbarian, hating the delicate complexities and the restraints of a n.o.bler life, might have said. From you it strikes me as wilful bad taste. . . .
I have often wondered at your tastes. You have always liked extreme opinions, exotic costumes, lawless characters, romantic personalities--like d"Alcacer . . ."
"Poor Mr. d"Alcacer," murmured Mrs. Travers.
"A man without any ideas of duty or usefulness," said Mr. Travers, acidly. "What are you pitying him for?"
"Why! For finding himself in this position out of mere good-nature.
He had nothing to expect from joining our voyage, no advantage for his political ambitions or anything of the kind. I suppose you asked him on board to break our tete-a-tete which must have grown wearisome to you."
"I am never bored," declared Mr. Travers. "D"Alcacer seemed glad to come. And, being a Spaniard, the horrible waste of time cannot matter to him in the least."
"Waste of time!" repeated Mrs. Travers, indignantly.
"He may yet have to pay for his good nature with his life."
Mr. Travers could not conceal a movement of anger.
"Ah! I forgot those a.s.sumptions," he said between his clenched teeth.
"He is a mere Spaniard. He takes this farcical conspiracy with perfect nonchalance. Decayed races have their own philosophy."
"He takes it with a dignity of his own."
"I don"t know what you call his dignity. I should call it lack of self-respect."
"Why? Because he is quiet and courteous, and reserves his judgment. And allow me to tell you, Martin, that you are not taking our troubles very well."
"You can"t expect from me all those foreign affectations. I am not in the habit of compromising with my feelings."
Mrs. Travers turned completely round and faced her husband. "You sulk,"
she said. . . . Mr. Travers jerked his head back a little as if to let the word go past.--"I am outraged," he declared. Mrs. Travers recognized there something like real suffering.--"I a.s.sure you," she said, seriously (for she was accessible to pity), "I a.s.sure you that this strange Lingard has no idea of your importance. He doesn"t know anything of your social and political position and still less of your great ambitions." Mr. Travers listened with some attention.--"Couldn"t you have enlightened him?" he asked.--"It would have been no use; his mind is fixed upon his own position and upon his own sense of power. He is a man of the lower cla.s.ses. . . ."--"He is a brute," said Mr. Travers, obstinately, and for a moment those two looked straight into each other"s eyes.--"Oh," said Mrs. Travers, slowly, "you are determined not to compromise with your feelings!" An undertone of scorn crept into her voice. "But shall I tell you what I think? I think," and she advanced her head slightly toward the pale, unshaven face that confronted her dark eyes, "I think that for all your blind scorn you judge the man well enough to feel that you can indulge your indignation with perfect safety. Do you hear? With perfect safety!" Directly she had spoken she regretted these words. Really it was unreasonable to take Mr. Travers"
tricks of character more pa.s.sionately on this spot of the Eastern Archipelago full of obscure plots and warring motives than in the more artificial atmosphere of the town. After all what she wanted was simply to save his life, not to make him understand anything. Mr. Travers opened his mouth and without uttering a word shut it again. His wife turned toward the looking-gla.s.s nailed to the wall. She heard his voice behind her.
"Edith, where"s the truth in all this?"
She detected the anguish of a slow mind with an instinctive dread of obscure places wherein new discoveries can be made. She looked over her shoulder to say:
"It"s on the surface, I a.s.sure you. Altogether on the surface."
She turned again to the looking-gla.s.s where her own face met her with dark eyes and a fair mist of hair above the smooth forehead; but her words had produced no soothing effect.
"But what does it mean?" cried Mr. Travers. "Why doesn"t the fellow apologize? Why are we kept here? Are we being kept here? Why don"t we get away? Why doesn"t he take me back on board my yacht? What does he want from me? How did he procure our release from these people on sh.o.r.e who he says intended to cut our throats? Why did they give us up to him instead?"
Mrs. Travers began to twist her hair on her head.
"Matters of high policy and of local politics. Conflict of personal interests, mistrust between the parties, intrigues of individuals--you ought to know how that sort of thing works. His diplomacy made use of all that. The first thing to do was not to liberate you but to get you into his keeping. He is a very great man here and let me tell you that your safety depends on his dexterity in the use of his prestige rather than on his power which he cannot use. If you would let him talk to you I am sure he would tell you as much as it is possible for him to disclose."
"I don"t want to be told about any of his rascalities. But haven"t you been taken into his confidence?"
"Completely," admitted Mrs. Travers, peering into the small looking-gla.s.s.
"What is the influence you brought to bear upon this man? It looks to me as if our fate were in your hands."
"Your fate is not in my hands. It is not even in his hands. There is a moral situation here which must be solved."
"Ethics of blackmail," commented Mr. Travers with unexpected sarcasm. It flashed through his wife"s mind that perhaps she didn"t know him so well as she had supposed. It was as if the polished and solemn crust of hard proprieties had cracked slightly, here and there, under the strain, disclosing the mere wrongheadedness of a common mortal. But it was only manner that had cracked a little; the marvellous stupidity of his conceit remained the same. She thought that this discussion was perfectly useless, and as she finished putting up her hair she said: "I think we had better go on deck now."
"You propose to go out on deck like this?" muttered Mr. Travers with downcast eyes.
"Like this? Certainly. It"s no longer a novelty. Who is going to be shocked?"
Mr. Travers made no reply. What she had said of his att.i.tude was very true. He sulked at the enormous offensiveness of men, things, and events; of words and even of glances which he seemed to feel physically resting on his skin like a pain, like a degrading contact. He managed not to wince. But he sulked. His wife continued, "And let me tell you that those clothes are fit for a princess--I mean they are of the quality, material and style custom prescribes for the highest in the land, a far-distant land where I am informed women rule as much as the men. In fact they were meant to be presented to an actual princess in due course. They were selected with the greatest care for that child Immada. Captain Lingard. . . ."
Mr. Travers made an inarticulate noise partaking of a groan and a grunt.