The Rescue

J >> Joseph Conrad >> The Rescue


She became aware suddenly of a soft murmur, and glancing at Lingard
she saw him in an attitude of impassive attention. The momentous
negotiations had begun, and it went on like this in low undertones with
long pauses and in the immobility of all the attendants squatting on the
ground, with the distant figure of Daman far off in the shade towering
over all the assembly. But in him, too, Mrs. Travers could not detect
the slightest movement while the slightly modulated murmurs went on
enveloping her in a feeling of peace.

The fact that she couldn't understand anything of what was said soothed
her apprehensions. Sometimes a silence fell and Lingard bending toward
her would whisper, "It isn't so easy," and the stillness would be so
perfect that she would hear the flutter of a pigeon's wing somewhere
high up in the great overshadowing trees. And suddenly one of the men
before her without moving a limb would begin another speech rendered
more mysterious still by the total absence of action or play of feature.
Only the watchfulness of the eyes which showed that the speaker was
not communing with himself made it clear that this was not a spoken
meditation but a flow of argument directed to Lingard who now and then
uttered a few words either with a grave or a smiling expression. They
were always followed by murmurs which seemed mostly to her to convey
assent; and then a reflective silence would reign again and the
immobility of the crowd would appear more perfect than before.

When Lingard whispered to her that it was now his turn to make a
speech Mrs. Travers expected him to get up and assert himself by some
commanding gesture. But he did not. He remained seated, only his voice
had a vibrating quality though he obviously tried to restrain it, and
it travelled masterfully far into the silence. He spoke for a long time
while the sun climbing the unstained sky shifted the diminished shadows
of the trees, pouring on the heads of men its heat through the thick and
motionless foliage. Whenever murmurs arose he would stop and glancing
fearlessly at the assembly, wait till they subsided. Once or twice, they
rose to a loud hum and Mrs. Travers could hear on the other side of her
Jorgenson muttering something in his moustache. Beyond the rows of heads
Daman under the tree had folded his arms on his breast. The edge of
the white cloth concealed his forehead and at his feet the two Illanun
chiefs, half naked and bedecked with charms and ornaments of bright
feathers, of shells, with necklaces of teeth, claws, and shining beads,
remained cross-legged with their swords across their knees like two
bronze idols. Even the plumes of their head-dresses stirred not.

"Sudah! It is finished!" A movement passed along all the heads, the
seated bodies swayed to and fro. Lingard had ceased speaking. He
remained seated for a moment looking his audience all over and when he
stood up together with Mrs. Travers and Jorgenson the whole assembly
rose from the ground together and lost its ordered formation. Some
of Belarab's retainers, young broad-faced fellows, wearing a sort of
uniform of check-patterned sarongs, black silk jackets and crimson
skull-caps set at a rakish angle, swaggered through the broken groups
and ranged themselves in two rows before the motionless Daman and his
Illanun chiefs in martial array. The members of the council who had
left their bench approached the white people with gentle smiles
and deferential movements of the hands. Their bearing was faintly
propitiatory; only the man in the big turban remained fanatically aloof,
keeping his eyes fixed on the ground.

"I have done it," murmured Lingard to Mrs. Travers.--"Was it very
difficult?" she asked.--"No," he said, conscious in his heart that he
had strained to the fullest extent the prestige of his good name and
that habit of deference to his slightest wish established by the glamour
of his wealth and the fear of his personality in this great talk which
after all had done nothing except put off the decisive hour. He offered
Mrs. Travers his arm ready to lead her away, but at the last moment did
not move.

With an authoritative gesture Daman had parted the ranks of Belarab's
young followers with the red skullcaps and was seen advancing toward the
whites striking into an astonished silence all the scattered groups in
the courtyard. But the broken ranks had closed behind him. The Illanun
chiefs, for all their truculent aspect, were much too prudent to attempt
to move. They had not needed for that the faint warning murmur from
Daman. He advanced alone. The plain hilt of a sword protruded from the
open edges of his cloak. The parted edges disclosed also the butts of
two flintlock pistols. The Koran in a velvet case hung on his breast by
a red cord of silk. He was pious, magnificent, and warlike, with calm
movements and a straight glance from under the hem of the simple piece
of linen covering his head. He carried himself rigidly and his bearing
had a sort of solemn modesty. Lingard said hurriedly to Mrs. Travers
that the man had met white people before and that, should he attempt to
shake hands with her, she ought to offer her own covered with the end
of her scarf.--"Why?" she asked. "Propriety?"--"Yes, it will be better,"
said Lingard and the next moment Mrs. Travers felt her enveloped hand
pressed gently by slender dark fingers and felt extremely Oriental
herself when, with her face muffled to the eyes, she encountered the
lustrous black stare of the sea-robbers' leader. It was only for an
instant, because Daman turned away at once to shake hands with Lingard.
In the straight, ample folds of his robes he looked very slender facing
the robust white man.

"Great is your power," he said, in a pleasant voice. "The white men are
going to be delivered to you."

"Yes, they pass into my keeping," said Lingard, returning the other's
bright smile but otherwise looking grim enough with the frown which
had settled on his forehead at Daman's approach. He glanced over his
shoulder at a group of spearmen escorting the two captives who had come
down the steps from the hut. At the sight of Daman barring as it were
Lingard's way they had stopped at some distance and had closed round the
two white men. Daman also glanced dispassionately that way.

"They were my guests," he murmured. "Please God I shall come soon to ask
you for them . . . as a friend," he added after a slight pause.

"And please God you will not go away empty handed," said Lingard,
smoothing his brow. "After all you and I were not meant to meet only
to quarrel. Would you have preferred to see them pass into Tengga's
keeping?"

"Tengga is fat and full of wiles," said Daman, disdainfully, "a mere
shopkeeper smitten by a desire to be a chief. He is nothing. But you and
I are men that have real power. Yet there is a truth that you and I can
confess to each other. Men's hearts grow quickly discontented. Listen.
The leaders of men are carried forward in the hands of their followers;
and common men's minds are unsteady, their desires changeable, and
their thoughts not to be trusted. You are a great chief they say. Do not
forget that I am a chief, too, and a leader of armed men."

"I have heard of you, too," said Lingard in a composed voice.

Daman had cast his eyes down. Suddenly he opened them very wide with an
effect that startled Mrs. Travers.--"Yes. But do you see?" Mrs. Travers,
her hand resting lightly on Lingard's arm, had the sensation of acting
in a gorgeously got up play on the brilliantly lighted stage of an
exotic opera whose accompaniment was not music but the varied strains
of the all-pervading silence.--"Yes, I see," Lingard replied with a
surprisingly confidential intonation. "But power, too, is in the hands
of a great leader."

Mrs. Travers watched the faint movements of Daman's nostrils as though
the man were suffering from some powerful emotion, while under her
fingers Lingard's forearm in its white sleeve was as steady as a limb of
marble. Without looking at him she seemed to feel that with one movement
he could crush that nervous figure in which lived the breath of the
great desert haunted by his nomad, camel-riding ancestors.--"Power is
in the hand of God," he said, all animation dying out of his face, and
paused to wait for Lingard's "Very true," then continued with a fine
smile, "but He apportions it according to His will for His own purposes,
even to those that are not of the Faith."

"Such being the will of God you should harbour no bitterness against
them in your heart."

The low exclamation, "Against those!" and a slight dismissing gesture
of a meagre dark hand out of the folds of the cloak were almost
understandable to Mrs. Travers in the perfection of their melancholy
contempt, and gave Lingard a further insight into the character of
the ally secured to him by the diplomacy of Belarab. He was only half
reassured by this assumption of superior detachment. He trusted to the
man's self-interest more; for Daman no doubt looked to the reconquered
kingdom for the reward of dignity and ease. His father and grandfather
(the men of whom Jorgenson had written as having been hanged for an
example twelve years before) had been friends of Sultans, advisers of
Rulers, wealthy financiers of the great raiding expeditions of the
past. It was hatred that had turned Daman into a self-made outcast,
till Belarab's diplomacy had drawn him out from some obscure and uneasy
retreat.

In a few words Lingard assured Daman of the complete safety of his
followers as long as they themselves made no attempt to get possession
of the stranded yacht. Lingard understood very well that the capture of
Travers and d'Alcacer was the result of a sudden fear, a move directed
by Daman to secure his own safety. The sight of the stranded yacht shook
his confidence completely. It was as if the secrets of the place had
been betrayed. After all, it was perhaps a great folly to trust any
white man, no matter how much he seemed estranged from his own people.
Daman felt he might have been the victim of a plot. Lingard's brig
appeared to him a formidable engine of war. He did not know what to
think and the motive for getting hold of the two white men was really
the wish to secure hostages. Distrusting the fierce impulses of his
followers he had hastened to put them into Belarab's keeping. But
everything in the Settlement seemed to him suspicious: Belarab's
absence, Jorgenson's refusal to make over at once the promised supply
of arms and ammunition. And now that white man had by the power of his
speech got them away from Belarab's people. So much influence filled
Daman with wonder and awe. A recluse for many years in the most obscure
corner of the Archipelago he felt himself surrounded by intrigues. But
the alliance was a great thing, too. He did not want to quarrel. He was
quite willing for the time being to accept Lingard's assurance that no
harm should befall his people encamped on the sandbanks. Attentive and
slight, he seemed to let Lingard's deliberate words sink into him. The
force of that unarmed big man seemed overwhelming. He bowed his head
slowly.

"Allah is our refuge," he murmured, accepting the inevitable.

He delighted Mrs. Travers not as a living being but like a clever
sketch in colours, a vivid rendering of an artist's vision of some soul,
delicate and fierce. His bright half-smile was extraordinary, sharp like
clear steel, painfully penetrating. Glancing right and left Mrs. Travers
saw the whole courtyard smitten by the desolating fury of sunshine and
peopled with shadows, their forms and colours fading in the violence of
the light. The very brown tones of roof and wall dazzled the eye. Then
Daman stepped aside. He was no longer smiling and Mrs. Travers advanced
with her hand on Lingard's arm through a heat so potent that it seemed
to have a taste, a feel, a smell of its own. She moved on as if floating
in it with Lingard's support.

"Where are they?" she asked.

"They are following us all right," he answered. Lingard was so certain
that the prisoners would be delivered to him on the beach that he never
glanced back till, after reaching the boat, he and Mrs. Travers turned
about.

The group of spearmen parted right and left, and Mr. Travers and
d'Alcacer walked forward alone looking unreal and odd like their own
day-ghosts. Mr. Travers gave no sign of being aware of his wife's
presence. It was certainly a shock to him. But d'Alcacer advanced
smiling, as if the beach were a drawing room.

With a very few paddlers the heavy old European-built boat moved
slowly over the water that seemed as pale and blazing as the sky above.
Jorgenson had perched himself in the bow. The other four white people
sat in the stern sheets, the ex-prisoners side by side in the middle.
Lingard spoke suddenly.

"I want you both to understand that the trouble is not over yet. Nothing
is finished. You are out on my bare word."

While Lingard was speaking Mr. Travers turned his face away but
d'Alcacer listened courteously. Not another word was spoken for the rest
of the way. The two gentlemen went up the ship's side first. Lingard
remained to help Mrs. Travers at the foot of the ladder. She pressed his
hand strongly and looking down at his upturned face:

"This was a wonderful success," she said.

For a time the character of his fascinated gaze did not change. It
was as if she had said nothing. Then he whispered, admiringly, "You
understand everything."

She moved her eyes away and had to disengage her hand to which he clung
for a moment, giddy, like a man falling out of the world.



III

Mrs. Travers, acutely aware of Lingard behind her, remained gazing over
the lagoon. After a time he stepped forward and placed himself beside
her close to the rail. She went on staring at the sheet of water turned
to deep purple under the sunset sky.

"Why have you been avoiding me since we came back from the stockade?"
she asked in a deadened voice.

"There is nothing to tell you till Rajah Hassim and his sister Immada
return with some news," Lingard answered in the same tone. "Has my
friend succeeded? Will Belarab listen to any arguments? Will he consent
to come out of his shell? Is he on his way back? I wish I knew! . . .
Not a whisper comes from there! He may have started two days ago and
he may be now near the outskirts of the Settlement. Or he may have gone
into camp half way down, from some whim or other; or he may be already
arrived for all I know. We should not have seen him. The road from the
hills does not lead along the beach."

He snatched nervously at the long glass and directed it at the dark
stockade. The sun had sunk behind the forests leaving the contour of the
tree-tops outlined by a thread of gold under a band of delicate green
lying across the lower sky. Higher up a faint crimson glow faded into
the darkened blue overhead. The shades of the evening deepened over the
lagoon, clung to the sides of the Emma and to the forms of the further
shore. Lingard laid the glass down.

"Mr. d'Alcacer, too, seems to have been avoiding me," said Mrs. Travers.
"You are on very good terms with him, Captain Lingard."

"He is a very pleasant man," murmured Lingard, absently. "But he says
funny things sometimes. He inquired the other day if there were any
playing cards on board, and when I asked him if he liked card-playing,
just for something to say, he told me with that queer smile of his that
he had read a story of some people condemned to death who passed the
time before execution playing card games with their guards."

"And what did you say?"

"I told him that there were probably cards on board somewhere--Jorgenson
would know. Then I asked him whether he looked on me as a gaoler. He was
quite startled and sorry for what he said."

"It wasn't very kind of you, Captain Lingard."

"It slipped out awkwardly and we made it up with a laugh."

Mrs. Travers leaned her elbows on the rail and put her head into her
hands. Every attitude of that woman surprised Lingard by its enchanting
effect upon himself. He sighed, and the silence lasted for a long while.

"I wish I had understood every word that was said that morning."

"That morning," repeated Lingard. "What morning do you mean?"

"I mean the morning when I walked out of Belarab's stockade on your arm,
Captain Lingard, at the head of the procession. It seemed to me that I
was walking on a splendid stage in a scene from an opera, in a gorgeous
show fit to make an audience hold its breath. You can't possibly guess
how unreal all this seemed, and how artificial I felt myself. An opera,
you know. . . ."

"I know. I was a gold digger at one time. Some of us used to come down
to Melbourne with our pockets full of money. I daresay it was poor
enough to what you must have seen, but once I went to a show like that.
It was a story acted to music. All the people went singing through it
right to the very end."

"How it must have jarred on your sense of reality," said Mrs. Travers,
still not looking at him. "You don't remember the name of the opera?"

"No. I never troubled my head about it. We--our lot never did."

"I won't ask you what the story was like. It must have appeared to
you like the very defiance of all truth. Would real people go singing
through their life anywhere except in a fairy tale?"

"These people didn't always sing for joy," said Lingard, simply. "I
don't know much about fairy tales."

"They are mostly about princesses," murmured Mrs. Travers.

Lingard didn't quite hear. He bent his ear for a moment but she wasn't
looking at him and he didn't ask her to repeat her remark. "Fairy tales
are for children, I believe," he said. "But that story with music I am
telling you of, Mrs. Travers, was not a tale for children. I assure you
that of the few shows I have seen that one was the most real to me. More
real than anything in life."

Mrs. Travers, remembering the fatal inanity of most opera librettos, was
touched by these words as if there had been something pathetic in this
readiness of response; as if she had heard a starved man talking of the
delight of a crust of dry bread. "I suppose you forgot yourself in that
story, whatever it was," she remarked in a detached tone.

"Yes, it carried me away. But I suppose you know the feeling."

"No. I never knew anything of the kind, not even when I was a chit of
a girl." Lingard seemed to accept this statement as an assertion of
superiority. He inclined his head slightly. Moreover, she might have
said what she liked. What pleased him most was her not looking at him;
for it enabled him to contemplate with perfect freedom the curve of her
cheek, her small ear half hidden by the clear mesh of fine hair,
the fascination of her uncovered neck. And her whole person was an
impossible, an amazing and solid marvel which somehow was not so much
convincing to the eye as to something within him that was apparently
independent of his senses. Not even for a moment did he think of her as
remote. Untouchable--possibly! But remote--no. Whether consciously or
unconsciously he took her spiritually for granted. It was materially
that she was a wonder of the sort that is at the same time familiar and
sacred.

"No," Mrs. Travers began again, abruptly. "I never forgot myself in a
story. It was not in me. I have not even been able to forget myself on
that morning on shore which was part of my own story."

"You carried yourself first rate," said Lingard, smiling at the nape of
her neck, her ear, the film of escaped hair, the modelling of the corner
of her eye. He could see the flutter of the dark eyelashes: and the
delicate flush on her cheek had rather the effect of scent than of
colour.

"You approved of my behaviour."

"Just right, I tell you. My word, weren't they all struck of a heap when
they made out what you were."

"I ought to feel flattered. I will confess to you that I felt only half
disguised and was half angry and wholly uncomfortable. What helped me, I
suppose, was that I wanted to please. . . ."

"I don't mean to say that they were exactly pleased," broke in Lingard,
conscientiously. "They were startled more."

"I wanted to please you," dropped Mrs. Travers, negligently. A faint,
hoarse, and impatient call of a bird was heard from the woods as if
calling to the oncoming night. Lingard's face grew hot in the deepening
dusk. The delicate lemon yellow and ethereal green tints had vanished
from the sky and the red glow darkened menacingly. The sun had set
behind the black pall of the forest, no longer edged with a line of
gold. "Yes, I was absurdly self-conscious," continued Mrs. Travers in a
conversational tone. "And it was the effect of these clothes that you
made me put on over some of my European--I almost said disguise; because
you know in the present more perfect costume I feel curiously at home;
and yet I can't say that these things really fit me. The sleeves of this
silk under-jacket are rather tight. My shoulders feel bound, too, and as
to the sarong it is scandalously short. According to rule it should have
been long enough to fall over my feet. But I like freedom of movement. I
have had very little of what I liked in life."

"I can hardly believe that," said Lingard. "If it wasn't for your saying
so. . . ."

"I wouldn't say so to everybody," she said, turning her head for a
moment to Lingard and turning it away again to the dusk which seemed to
come floating over the black lagoon. Far away in its depth a couple of
feeble lights twinkled; it was impossible to say whether on the shore
or on the edge of the more distant forest. Overhead the stars were
beginning to come out, but faint yet, as if too remote to be reflected
in the lagoon. Only to the west a setting planet shone through the red
fog of the sunset glow. "It was supposed not to be good for me to have
much freedom of action. So at least I was told. But I have a suspicion
that it was only unpleasing to other people."

"I should have thought," began Lingard, then hesitated and stopped. It
seemed to him inconceivable that everybody should not have loved to make
that woman happy. And he was impressed by the bitterness of her tone.
Mrs. Travers did not seem curious to know what he wanted to say and
after a time she added, "I don't mean only when I was a child. I don't
remember that very well. I daresay I was very objectionable as a child."

Lingard tried to imagine her as a child. The idea was novel to him.
Her perfection seemed to have come into the world complete, mature, and
without any hesitation or weakness. He had nothing in his experience
that could help him to imagine a child of that class. The children he
knew played about the village street and ran on the beach. He had been
one of them. He had seen other children, of course, since, but he
had not been in touch with them except visually and they had not been
English children. Her childhood, like his own, had been passed in
England, and that very fact made it almost impossible for him to imagine
it. He could not even tell whether it was in town or in the country, or
whether as a child she had even seen the sea. And how could a child of
that kind be objectionable? But he remembered that a child disapproved
of could be very unhappy, and he said:

"I am sorry."

Mrs. Travers laughed a little. Within the muslin cage forms had turned
to blurred shadows. Amongst them the form of d'Alcacer arose and moved.
The systematic or else the morbid dumbness of Mr. Travers bored and
exasperated him, though, as a matter of fact, that gentleman's speeches
had never had the power either to entertain or to soothe his mind.

"It's very nice of you. You have a great capacity for sympathy, but
after all I am not certain on which side your sympathies lie. With me,
or those much-tried people," said Mrs. Travers.

"With the child," said Lingard, disregarding the bantering tone. "A
child can have a very bad time of it all to itself."

"What can you know of it?" she asked.

"I have my own feelings," he answered in some surprise.

Mrs. Travers, with her back to him, was covered with confusion. Neither
could she depict to herself his childhood as if he, too, had come
into the world in the fullness of his strength and his purpose. She
discovered a certain naiveness in herself and laughed a little. He made
no sound.

"Don't be angry," she said. "I wouldn't dream of laughing at your
feelings. Indeed your feelings are the most serious thing that ever came
in my way. I couldn't help laughing at myself--at a funny discovery I
made."

"In the days of your childhood?" she heard Lingard's deep voice asking
after a pause.

"Oh, no. Ages afterward. No child could have made that discovery. Do
you know the greatest difference there is between us? It is this: That I
have been living since my childhood in front of a show and that I
never have been taken in for a moment by its tinsel and its noise or
by anything that went on on the stage. Do you understand what I mean,
Captain Lingard?"

There was a moment of silence. "What does it matter? We are no children
now." There was an infinite gentleness in Lingard's deep tones. "But if
you have been unhappy then don't tell me that it has not been made up to
you since. Surely you have only to make a sign. A woman like you."