“That is the first thing he would naturally think of any man,” said Mrs. Travers.
“Will your eyes never be opened?” Mr. Travers began, irritably, then gave it up. “Well, so much the better then. I give you a free hand.”
“What made you change your attitude like this?” asked Mrs. Travers, suspiciously.
“My regard for you,” he answered without hesitation.
“I intended to join you in your captivity. I was just trying to persuade him. …”
“I forbid you absolutely,” whispered Mr. Travers, forcibly. “I am glad to get away. I don’t want to see you again till your craze is over.”
She was confounded by his secret vehemence. But instantly succeeding his fierce whisper came a short, inane society laugh and a much louder, “Not that I attach any importance …”
He sprang away, as it were, from his wife, and as he went over the gangway waved his hand to her amiably.
Lighted dimly by the lantern on the roof of the deckhouse Mrs. Travers remained very still with lowered head and an aspect of profound meditation. It lasted but an instant before she moved off and brushing against Lingard passed on with downcast eyes to her deck cabin. Lingard heard the door shut. He waited awhile, made a movement toward the gangway but checked himself and followed Mrs. Travers into her cabin.
It was pitch dark in there. He could see absolutely nothing and was oppressed by the profound stillness unstirred even by the sound of breathing.
“I am going on shore,” he began, breaking the black and deathlike silence enclosing him and the invisible woman. “I wanted to say goodbye.”
“You are going on shore,” repeated Mrs. Travers. Her voice was emotionless, blank, unringing.
“Yes, for a few hours, or for life,” Lingard said in measured tones. “I may have to die with them or to die maybe for others. For you, if I only knew how to manage it, I would want to live. I am telling you this because it is dark. If there had been a light in here I wouldn’t have come in.”
“I wish you had not,” uttered the same unringing woman’s voice. “You are always coming to me with those lives and those deaths in your hand.”
“Yes, it’s too much for you,” was Lingard’s undertoned comment. “You could be no other than true. And you are innocent! Don’t wish me life, but wish me luck, for you are innocent—and you will have to take your chance.”
“All luck to you, King Tom,” he heard her say in the darkness in which he seemed now to perceive the gleam of her hair. “I will take my chance. And try not to come near me again for I am weary of you.”
“I can well believe it,” murmured Lingard, and stepped out of the cabin, shutting the door after him gently. For half a minute, perhaps, the stillness continued, and then suddenly the chair fell over in the darkness. Next moment Mrs. Travers’ head appeared in the light of the lamp left on the roof of the deckhouse. Her bare arms grasped the door posts.
“Wait a moment,” she said, loudly, into the shadows of the deck. She heard no footsteps, saw nothing moving except the vanishing white shape of the late Captain H. C. Jörgenson, who was indifferent to the life of men. “Wait, King Tom!” she insisted, raising her voice; then, “I didn’t mean it. Don’t believe me!” she cried, recklessly.
For the second time that night a woman’s voice startled the hearts of men on board the Emma. All except the heart of old Jörgenson. The Malays in the boat looked up from their thwarts. D’Alcacer, sitting in the stern sheets beside Lingard, felt a sinking of his heart.
“What’s this?” he exclaimed. “I heard your name on deck. You are wanted, I think.”
“Shove off,” ordered Lingard, inflexibly, without even looking at d’Alcacer. Mr. Travers was the only one who didn’t seem to be aware of anything. A long time after the boat left the Emma’s side he leaned toward d’Alcacer.
“I have a most extraordinary feeling,” he said in a cautious undertone. “I seem to be in the air—I don’t know. Are we on the water, d’Alcacer? Are you quite sure? But of course, we are on the water.”
“Yes,” said d’Alcacer, in the same tone. “Crossing the Styx—perhaps.” He heard Mr. Travers utter an unmoved “Very likely,” which he did not expect. Lingard, his hand on the tiller, sat like a man of stone.
“Then your point of view has changed,” whispered d’Alcacer.
“I told my wife to make an offer,” went on the earnest whisper of the other man. “A sum of money. But to tell you the truth I don’t believe very much in its success.”
D’Alcacer made no answer and only wondered whether he didn’t like better Mr. Travers’ other, unreasonable mood. There was no denying the fact that Mr. Travers was a troubling person. Now he suddenly gripped d’Alcacer’s forearm and added under his breath: “I doubt everything. I doubt whether the offer will ever be made.”
All this was not very impressive. There was something pitiful in it: whisper, grip, shudder, as of a child frightened in the dark. But the emotion was deep. Once more that evening, but this time aroused by the husband’s distress, d’Alcacer’s wonder approached the borders of awe.
Part VI
The Claim of Life and the Toll of Death
I
“Have you got King Tom’s watch in there?” said a voice that seemed not to attach the slightest importance to the question. Jörgenson, outside the door of Mrs. Travers’ part of the deckhouse, waited for the
