“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. Jörgenson 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 Jörgenson 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 passion 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 daydreams, 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 Jörgenson,” she cried with suppressed passion. “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 Jörgenson 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 Jörgenson has any such power. But upon the whole, and if you feel that Jörgenson 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 circumstances 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,”
