Lingard might have thought himself alone. He had lost touch with the world. What he had said to d’Alcacer was perfectly true. He had no thought. He was in the state of a man who, having cast his eyes through the open gates of Paradise, is rendered insensible by that moment’s vision to all the forms and matters of the earth; and in the extremity of his emotion ceases even to look upon himself but as the subject of a sublime experience which exalts or unfits, sanctifies or damns — he didn’t know which. Every shadowy thought, every passing sensation was like a base intrusion on that supreme memory. He couldn’t bear it.
When he had tried to resume his conversation with Belarab after Mrs. Travers’ arrival he had discovered himself unable to go on. He had just enough self-control to break off the interview in measured terms. He pointed out the lateness of the hour, a most astonishing excuse to people to whom time is nothing and whose life and activities are not ruled by the clock. Indeed Lingard hardly knew what he was saying or doing when he went out again leaving everybody dumb with astonishment at the change in his aspect and in his behaviour. A suspicious silence reigned for a long time in Belarab’s great audience room till the Chief dismissed everybody by two quiet words and a slight gesture.
With her chin in her hand in the pose of a sybil trying to read the future in the glow of dying embers, Mrs. Travers, without holding her breath, heard quite close to her the footsteps which she had been listening for with mingled alarm, remorse, and hope.
She didn’t change her attitude. The deep red glow lighted her up dimly, her face, the white hand hanging by her side, her feet in their sandals. The disturbing footsteps stopped close to her.
“Where have you been all this time?” she asked, without looking round.
“I don’t know,” answered Lingard. He was speaking the exact truth. He didn’t know. Ever since he had released that woman from his arms everything but the vaguest notions had departed from him. Events, necessities, things — he had lost his grip on them all. And he didn’t care. They were futile and impotent; he had no patience with them. The offended and astonished Belarab, d’Alcacer with his kindly touch and friendly voice, the sleeping men, the men awake, the Settlement full of unrestful life and the restless Shallows of the coast, were removed from him into an immensity of pitying contempt. Perhaps they existed. Perhaps all this waited for him. Well, let all this wait; let everything wait, till to-morrow or to the end of time, which could now come at any moment for all he cared — but certainly till to-morrow.
“I only know,” he went on with an emphasis that made Mrs. Travers raise her head, “that wherever I go I shall carry you with me — against my breast.”
Mrs. Travers’ fine ear caught the mingled tones of suppressed exultation and dawning fear, the ardour and the faltering of those words. She was feeling still the physical truth at the root of them so strongly that she couldn’t help saying in a dreamy whisper:
“Did you mean to crush the life out of me?”
He answered in the same tone:
“I could not have done it. You are too strong. Was I rough? I didn’t mean to be. I have been often told I didn’t know my own strength. You did not seem able to get through that opening and so I caught hold of you. You came away in my hands quite easily. Suddenly I thought to myself, ‘now I will make sure.’“
He paused as if his breath had failed him. Mrs. Travers dared not make the slightest movement. Still in the pose of one in quest of hidden truth she murmured, “Make sure?”
“Yes. And now I am sure. You are here — here! Before I couldn’t tell.”
“Oh, you couldn’t tell before,” she said.
“No.”
“So it was reality that you were seeking.”
He repeated as if speaking to himself: “And now I am sure.”
Her sandalled foot, all rosy in the glow, felt the warmth of the embers. The tepid night had enveloped her body; and still under the impression of his strength she gave herself up to a momentary feeling of quietude that came about her heart as soft as the night air penetrated by the feeble clearness of the stars. “This is a limpid soul,” she thought.
“You know I always believed in you,” he began again. “You know I did. Well. I never believed in you so much as I do now, as you sit there, just as you are, and with hardly enough light to make you out by.”
It occurred to her that she had never heard a voice she liked so well — except one. But that had been a great actor’s voice; whereas this man was nothing in the world but his very own self. He persuaded, he moved, he disturbed, he soothed by his inherent truth. He had wanted to make sure and he had made sure apparently; and too weary to resist the waywardness of her thoughts Mrs. Travers reflected with a sort of amusement that apparently he had not been disappointed. She thought, “He believes in me. What amazing words. Of all the people that might have believed in me I had to find this one here. He believes in me more than in himself.” A gust of sudden remorse tore her out from her quietness, made her cry out to him:
“Captain Lingard, we forget how we have met, we forget what is going on. We mustn’t. I won’t say that you placed your belief wrongly but I have to confess something to you. I must tell you how I came here to-night. Jorgenson . . .”
He interrupted her forcibly but without raising his voice.
“Jorgenson. Who’s Jorgenson? You came to me because you couldn’t help yourself.”
This took her breath away. “But I must tell you. There is something in my coming which is not clear to me.”
“You can tell me nothing that I don’t know already,” he said in a pleading tone. “Say nothing. Sit still. Time enough to-morrow. To-morrow! The night is drawing to an end and I care for nothing in the world but you. Let me be. Give me the rest that is in you.”
She had never heard such accents on his lips and she felt for him a great and tender pity. Why not humour this mood in which he wanted to preserve the moments that would never come to him again on this earth? She hesitated in silence. She saw him stir in the darkness as if he could not make up his mind to sit down on the bench. But suddenly he scattered the embers with his foot and sank on the ground against her feet, and she was not startled in the least to feel the weight of his head on her knee. Mrs. Travers was not startled but she felt profoundly moved. Why should she torment him with all those questions of freedom and captivity, of violence and intrigue, of life and death? He was not in a state to be told anything and it seemed to her that she did not want to speak, that in the greatness of her compassion she simply could not speak. All she could do for him was to rest her hand lightly on his head and respond silently to the slight movement she felt, sigh or sob, but a movement which suddenly immobilized her in an anxious emotion.
About the same time on the other side of the lagoon Jorgenson, raising his eyes, noted the stars and said to himself that the night would not last long now. He wished for daylight. He hoped that Lingard had already done something. The blaze in Tengga’s compound had been re-lighted. Tom’s power was unbounded, practically unbounded. And he was invulnerable.
Jorgenson let his old eyes wander amongst the gleams and shadows of the great sheet of water between him and that hostile shore and fancied he could detect a floating shadow having the characteristic shape of a man in a small canoe.
“O! Ya! Man!” he hailed. “What do you want?” Other eyes, too, had detected that shadow. Low murmurs arose on the deck of the Emma. “If you don’t speak at once I shall fire,” shouted Jorgenson, fiercely.
“No, white man,” returned the floating shape in a solemn drawl. “I am the bearer of friendly words. A chief’s words. I come from Tengga.”
“There was a bullet that came on board not a long time ago — also from Tengga,” said Jorgenson.
“That was an accident,” protested the voice from the lagoon. “What else could it be? Is there war between you and Tengga? No, no, O white man! All Tengga desires is a long talk. He has sent me to ask you to come ashore.”
At these word
s Jorgenson’s heart sank a little. This invitation meant that Lingard had made no move. Was Tom asleep or altogether mad?
“The talk would be of peace,” declared impressively the shadow which had drifted much closer to the hulk now.
“It isn’t for me to talk with great chiefs,” Jorgenson returned, cautiously.
“But Tengga is a friend,” argued the nocturnal messenger. “And by that fire there are other friends — your friends, the Rajah Hassim and the lady Immada, who send you their greetings and who expect their eyes to rest on you before sunrise.”
“That’s a lie,” remarked Jorgenson, perfunctorily, and fell into thought, while the shadowy bearer of words preserved a scandalized silence, though, of course, he had not expected to be believed for a moment. But one could never tell what a white man would believe. He had wanted to produce the impression that Hassim and Immada were the honoured guests of Tengga. It occurred to him suddenly that perhaps Jorgenson didn’t know anything of the capture. And he persisted.
“My words are all true, Tuan. The Rajah of Wajo and his sister are with my master. I left them sitting by the fire on Tengga’s right hand. Will you come ashore to be welcomed amongst friends?”
Jorgenson had been reflecting profoundly. His object was to gain as much time as possible for Lingard’s interference which indeed could not fail to be effective. But he had not the slightest wish to entrust himself to Tengga’s friendliness. Not that he minded the risk; but he did not see the use of taking it.
“No!” he said, “I can’t go ashore. We white men have ways of our own and I am chief of this hulk. And my chief is the Rajah Laut, a white man like myself. All the words that matter are in him and if Tengga is such a great chief let him ask the Rajah Laut for a talk. Yes, that’s the proper thing for Tengga to do if he is such a great chief as he says.”
“The Rajah Laut has made his choice. He dwells with Belarab, and with the white people who are huddled together like trapped deer in Belarab’s stockade. Why shouldn’t you meantime go over where everything is lighted up and open and talk in friendship with Tengga’s friends, whose hearts have been made sick by many doubts; Rajah Hassim and the lady Immada and Daman, the chief of the men of the sea, who do not know now whom they can trust unless it be you, Tuan, the keeper of much wealth?”
The diplomatist in the small dugout paused for a moment to give special weight to the final argument:
“Which you have no means to defend. We know how many armed men there are with you.”
“They are great fighters,” Jorgenson observed, unconcernedly, spreading his elbows on the rail and looking over at the floating black patch of characteristic shape whence proceeded the voice of the wily envoy of Tengga. “Each man of them is worth ten of such as you can find in the Settlement.”
“Yes, by Allah. Even worth twenty of these common people. Indeed, you have enough with you to make a great fight but not enough for victory.”
“God alone gives victory,” said suddenly the voice of Jaffir, who, very still at Jorgenson’s elbow, had been listening to the conversation.
“Very true,” was the answer in an extremely conventional tone. “Will you come ashore, O white man; and be the leader of chiefs?”
“I have been that before,” said Jorgenson, with great dignity, “and now all I want is peace. But I won’t come ashore amongst people whose minds are so much troubled, till Rajah Hassim and his sister return on board this ship and tell me the tale of their new friendship with Tengga.”
His heart was sinking with every minute, the very air was growing heavier with the sense of oncoming disaster, on that night that was neither war nor peace and whose only voice was the voice of Tengga’s envoy, insinuating in tone though menacing in words.
“No, that cannot be,” said that voice. “But, Tuan, verily Tengga himself is ready to come on board here to talk with you. He is very ready to come and indeed, Tuan, he means to come on board here before very long.”
“Yes, with fifty war-canoes filled with the ferocious rabble of the Shore of Refuge,” Jaffir was heard commenting, sarcastically, over the rail; and a sinister muttered “It may be so,” ascended alongside from the black water.
Jorgenson kept silent as if waiting for a supreme inspiration and suddenly he spoke in his other-world voice: “Tell Tengga from me that as long as he brings with him Rajah Hassim and the Rajah’s sister, he and his chief men will be welcome on deck here, no matter how many boats come along with them. For that I do not care. You may go now.”
A profound silence succeeded. It was clear that the envoy was gone, keeping in the shadow of the shore. Jorgenson turned to Jaffir.
“Death amongst friends is but a festival,” he quoted, mumbling in his moustache.
“It is, by Allah,” assented Jaffir with sombre fervour.
VI
Thirty-six hours later Carter, alone with Lingard in the cabin of the brig, could almost feel during a pause in his talk the oppressive, the breathless peace of the Shallows awaiting another sunset.
“I never expected to see any of you alive,” Carter began in his easy tone, but with much less carelessness in his bearing as though his days of responsibility amongst the Shoals of the Shore of Refuge had matured his view of the external world and of his own place therein.
“Of course not,” muttered Lingard.
The listlessness of that man whom he had always seen acting under the stress of a secret passion seemed perfectly appalling to Carter’s youthful and deliberate energy. Ever since he had found himself again face to face with Lingard he had tried to conceal the shocking impression with a delicacy which owed nothing to training but was as intuitive as a child’s.
While justifying to Lingard his manner of dealing with the situation on the Shore of Refuge, he could not for the life of him help asking himself what was this new mystery. He was also young enough to long for a word of commendation.
“Come, Captain,” he argued; “how would you have liked to come out and find nothing but two half-burnt wrecks stuck on the sands — perhaps?”
He waited for a moment, then in sheer compassion turned away his eyes from that fixed gaze, from that harassed face with sunk cheeks, from that figure of indomitable strength robbed of its fire. He said to himself: “He doesn’t hear me,” and raised his voice without altering its self-contained tone:
“I was below yesterday morning when we felt the shock, but the noise came to us only as a deep rumble. I made one jump for the companion but that precious Shaw was before me yelling, ‘Earthquake! Earthquake!’ and I am hanged if he didn’t miss his footing and land down on his head at the bottom of the stairs. I had to stop to pick him up but I got on deck in time to see a mighty black cloud that seemed almost solid pop up from behind the forest like a balloon. It stayed there for quite a long time. Some of our Calashes on deck swore to me that they had seen a red flash above the tree-tops. But that’s hard to believe. I guessed at once that something had blown up on shore. My first thought was that I would never see you any more and I made up my mind at once to find out all the truth you have been keeping away from me. No, sir! Don’t you make a mistake! I wasn’t going to give you up, dead or alive.”
He looked hard at Lingard while saying these words and saw the first sign of animation pass over that ravaged face. He saw even its lips move slightly; but there was no sound, and Carter looked away again.
“Perhaps you would have done better by telling me everything; but you left me behind on my own to be your man here. I put my hand to the work I could see before me. I am a sailor. There were two ships to look after. And here they are both for you, fit to go or to stay, to fight or to run, as you choose.” He watched with bated breath the effort Lingard had to make to utter the two words of the desired commendation:
“Well done!”
“And I am your man still,” Carter added, impulsively, and hastened to look away from Lingard, who had tried to smile at him and had failed. Carter didn’t know what to do next, remain in the cab
in or leave that unsupported strong man to himself. With a shyness completely foreign to his character and which he could not understand himself, he suggested in an engaging murmur and with an embarrassed assumption of his right to give advice:
“Why not lie down for a bit, sir? I can attend to anything that may turn up. You seem done up, sir.”
He was facing Lingard, who stood on the other side of the table in a leaning forward attitude propped up on rigid arms and stared fixedly at him — perhaps? Carter felt on the verge of despair. This couldn’t last. He was relieved to see Lingard shake his head slightly.
“No, Mr. Carter. I think I will go on deck,” said the Captain of the famous brig Lightning, while his eyes roamed all over the cabin. Carter stood aside at once, but it was some little time before Lingard made a move.
The sun had sunk already, leaving that evening no trace of its glory on a sky clear as crystal and on the waters without a ripple. All colour seemed to have gone out of the world. The oncoming shadow rose as subtle as a perfume from the black coast lying athwart the eastern semicircle; and such was the silence within the horizon that one might have fancied oneself come to the end of time. Black and toylike in the clear depths and the final stillness of the evening the brig and the schooner lay anchored in the middle of the main channel with their heads swung the same way. Lingard, with his chin on his breast and his arms folded, moved slowly here and there about the poop. Close and mute like his shadow, Carter, at his elbow, followed his movements. He felt an anxious solicitude. . . .
It was a sentiment perfectly new to him. He had never before felt this sort of solicitude about himself or any other man. His personality was being developed by new experience, and as he was very simple he received the initiation with shyness and self-mistrust. He had noticed with innocent alarm that Lingard had not looked either at the sky or over the sea, neither at his own ship nor the schooner astern; not along the decks, not aloft, not anywhere. He had looked at nothing! And somehow Carter felt himself more lonely and without support than when he had been left alone by that man in charge of two ships entangled amongst the Shallows and environed by some sinister mystery. Since that man had come back, instead of welcome relief Carter felt his responsibility rest on his young shoulders with tenfold weight. His profound conviction was that Lingard should be roused.
Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) Page 456
