Settlement, the stir of palm groves, the black shadows inland and the dazzling white beach of coral sand all ablaze in its formidable mystery. She swept the whole range of the view and was going to lower the glass when from behind the massive angle of the stockade there stepped out into the brilliant immobility of the landscape a man in a long white gown and with an enormous black turban surmounting a dark face. Slow and grave he paced the beach ominously in the sunshine, an enigmatical figure in an Oriental tale with something weird and menacing in its sudden emergence and lonely progress.
With an involuntary gasp Mrs. Travers lowered the glass. All at once behind her back she heard a low musical voice beginning to pour out incomprehensible words in a tone of passionate pleading. Hassim and Immada had come on board and had approached Lingard. Yes! It was intolerable to feel that this flow of soft speech which had no meaning for her could make its way straight into that man's heart.
PART V. THE POINT OF HONOUR AND THE POINT OF PASSION
I
'May I come in?'
'Yes,' said a voice within. 'The door is open.' It had a wooden latch. Mr. Travers lifted it while the voice of his wife continued as he entered. 'Did you imagine I had locked myself in? Did you ever know me lock myself in?'
Mr. Travers closed the door behind him. 'No, it has never come to that,' he said in a tone that was not conciliatory. In that place which was a room in a wooden hut and had a square opening without glass but with a half-closed shutter he could not distinguish his wife very well at once. She was sitting in an armchair and what he could see best was her fair hair all loose over the back of the chair. There was a moment of silence. The measured footsteps of two men pacing athwart the quarter-deck of the dead ship Emma commanded by the derelict shade of Jorgenson could be heard outside.
Jorgenson, on taking up his dead command, had a house of thin boards built on the after deck for his own accommodation and that of Lingard during his flying visits to the Shore of Refuge. A narrow passage divided it in two and Lingard's side was furnished with a camp bedstead, a rough desk, and a rattan armchair. On one of his visits Lingard had brought with him a black seaman's chest and left it there. Apart from these objects and a small looking-glass worth about half a crown and nailed to the wall there was nothing else in there whatever. What was on Jorgenson's side of the deckhouse no one had seen, but from external evidence one could infer the existence of a set of razors.
The erection of that primitive deckhouse was a matter of propriety rather than of necessity. It was proper that the white men should have a place to themselves on board, but Lingard was perfectly accurate when he told Mrs. Travers that he had never slept there once. His practice was to sleep on deck. As to Jorgenson, if he did sleep at all he slept very little. It might have been said that he haunted rather than commanded the Emma. His white form flitted here and there in the night or stood for hours, silent, contemplating the sombre glimmer of the lagoon. Mr. Travers' eyes accustomed gradually to the dusk of the place could now distinguish more of his wife's person than the great mass of honey-coloured hair. He saw her face, the dark eyebrows and her eyes that seemed profoundly black in the half light. He said:
'You couldn't have done so here. There is neither lock nor bolt.'
'Isn't there? I didn't notice. I would know how to protect myself without locks and bolts.'
'I am glad to hear it,' said Mr. Travers in a sullen tone and fell silent again surveying the woman in the chair. 'Indulging your taste for fancy dress,' he went on with faint irony.
Mrs. Travers clasped her hands behind her head. The wide sleeves slipping back bared her arms to her shoulders. She was wearing a Malay thin cotton jacket, cut low in the neck without a collar and fastened with wrought silver clasps from the throat downward. She had replaced her yachting skirt by a blue check sarong embroidered with threads of gold. Mr. Travers' eyes travelling slowly down attached themselves to the gleaming instep of an agitated foot from which hung a light leather sandal.
'I had no clothes with me but what I stood in,' said Mrs. Travers. 'I found my yachting costume too heavy. It was intolerable. I was soaked in dew when I arrived. So when these things were produced for my inspection. . . .'
'By enchantment,' muttered Mr. Travers in a tone too heavy for sarcasm.
'No. Out of that chest. There are very fine stuffs there.'
'No doubt,' said Mr. Travers. 'The man wouldn't be above plundering the natives. . . .' He sat down heavily on the chest. 'A most appropriate costume for this farce,' he continued. 'But do you mean to wear it in open daylight about the decks?'
'Indeed I do,' said Mrs. Travers. 'D'Alcacer has seen me already and he didn't seem shocked.'
'You should,' said Mr. Travers, 'try to get yourself presented with some bangles for your ankles so that you may jingle as you walk.'
'Bangles are not necessities,' said Mrs. Travers in a weary tone and with the fixed upward look of a person unwilling to relinquish her dream. Mr. Travers dropped the subject to ask:
'And how long is this farce going to last?'
Mrs. Travers unclasped her hands, lowered her glance, and changed her whole pose in a moment.
'What do you mean by farce? What farce?'
'The one which is being played at my expense.'
'You believe that?'
'Not only believe. I feel deeply that it is so. At my expense. It's a most sinister thing,' Mr. Travers pursued, still with downcast eyes and in an unforgiving tone. 'I must tell you that when I saw you in that courtyard in a crowd of natives and leaning on that man's arm, it gave me quite a shock.'
'Did I, too, look sinister?' said Mrs. Travers, turning her head slightly toward her husband. 'And yet I assure you that I was glad, profoundly glad, to see you safe from danger for a time at least. To gain time is everything. . . .'
'I ask myself,' Mr. Travers meditated aloud, 'was I ever in danger? Am I safe now? I don't know. I can't tell. No! All this seems an abominable farce.'
