'I know my place.'
'Only, I might not have the influence,' she finished.
'That I can not believe,' he said, roughly. 'The long and the short of it is you don't trust me because you think that only people of your own condition speak the truth always.'
'Evidently,' she murmured.
'You say to yourself—here's a fellow deep in with pirates, thieves, niggers—'
'To be sure—'
'A man I never saw the like before,' went on Lingard, headlong, 'a—ruffian.'
He checked himself, full of confusion. After a time he heard her saying, calmly:
'You are like other men in this, that you get angry when you can not have your way at once.'
'I angry!' he exclaimed in deadened voice. 'You do not understand. I am thinking of you also—it is hard on me—'
'I mistrust not you, but my own power. You have produced an unfortunate impression on Mr. Travers.'
'Unfortunate impression! He treated me as if I had been a long-shore loafer. Never mind that. He is your husband. Fear in those you care for is hard to bear for any man. And so, he—'
'What Machiavellism!'
'Eh, what did you say?'
'I only wondered where you had observed that. On the sea?'
'Observed what?' he said, absently. Then pursuing his idea—'One word from you ought to be enough.'
'You think so?'
'I am sure of it. Why, even I, myself—'
'Of course,' she interrupted. 'But don't you think that after parting with you on such—such—inimical terms, there would be a difficulty in resuming relations?'
'A man like me would do anything for money—don't you see?'
After a pause she asked:
'And would you care for that argument to be used?'
'As long as you know better!'
His voice vibrated—she drew back disturbed, as if unexpectedly he had touched her.
'What can there be at stake?' she began, wonderingly.
'A kingdom,' said Lingard.
Mrs. Travers leaned far over the rail, staring, and their faces, one above the other, came very close together.
'Not for yourself?' she whispered.
He felt the touch of her breath on his forehead and remained still for a moment, perfectly still as if he did not intend to move or speak any more.
'Those things,' he began, suddenly, 'come in your way, when you don't think, and they get all round you before you know what you mean to do. When I went into that bay in New Guinea I never guessed where that course would take me to. I could tell you a story. You would understand! You! You!'
He stammered, hesitated, and suddenly spoke, liberating the visions of two years into the night where Mrs. Travers could follow them as if outlined in words of fire.
VII
His tale was as startling as the discovery of a new world. She was being taken along the boundary of an exciting existence, and she looked into it through the guileless enthusiasm of the narrator. The heroic quality of the feelings concealed what was disproportionate and absurd in that gratitude, in that friendship, in that inexplicable devotion. The headlong fierceness of purpose invested his obscure design of conquest with the proportions of a great enterprise. It was clear that no vision of a subjugated world could have been more inspiring to the most famous adventurer of history.
From time to time he interrupted himself to ask, confidently, as if he had been speaking to an old friend, 'What would you have done?' and hurried on without pausing for approval.
It struck her that there was a great passion in all this, the beauty of an implanted faculty of affection that had found itself, its immediate need of an object and the way of expansion; a tenderness expressed violently; a tenderness that could only be satisfied by backing human beings against their own destiny. Perhaps her hatred of convention, trammelling the frankness of her own impulses, had rendered her more alert to perceive what is intrinsically great and profound within the forms of human folly, so simple and so infinitely varied according to the region of the earth and to the moment of time.
What of it that the narrator was only a roving seaman; the kingdom of the jungle, the men of the forest, the lives obscure! That simple soul was possessed by the greatness of the idea; there was nothing sordid in its flaming impulses. When she once understood that, the story appealed to the audacity of her thoughts, and she became so charmed with what she heard that she forgot where she was. She forgot that she was personally close to that tale which she saw detached, far away from her, truth or fiction, presented in picturesque speech, real only by the response of her emotion.
Lingard paused. In the cessation of the impassioned murmur she began to reflect. And at first it was only an oppressive notion of there being some significance that really mattered in this man's story. That mattered to her.
