Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) (565 page)

“No, not even Jorgenson. Old crazy Jorgenson. He calls me King Tom, too. You see what that’s worth.”

“Yes, I see. Or rather I have heard. That poor man has no tone, and so much depends on that. Now suppose I were to call you King Tom now and then between ourselves,” Mrs. Travers’ voice proposed, distantly tentative in the night that invested her person with a colourless vagueness of form.

She waited in the stillness, her elbows on the rail and her face in her hands as if she had already forgotten what she had said. She heard at her elbow the deep murmur of:

“Let’s hear you say it.”

She never moved the least bit. The sombre lagoon sparkled faintly with the reflection of the stars.

“Oh, yes, I will let you hear it,” she said into the starlit space in a voice of unaccented gentleness which changed subtly as she went on. “I hope you will never regret that you came out of your friendless mystery to speak to me, King Tom. How many days ago it was! And here is another day gone. Tell me how many more of them there must be? Of these blinding days and nights without a sound.”

“Be patient,” he murmured. “Don’t ask me for the impossible.”

“How do you or I know what is possible?” she whispered with a strange scorn. “You wouldn’t dare guess. But I tell you that every day that passes is more impossible to me than the day before.”

The passion of that whisper went like a stab into his breast. “What am I to tell you?” he murmured, as if with despair. “Remember that every sunset makes it a day less. Do you think I want you here?”

A bitter little laugh floated out into the starlight. Mrs. Travers heard Lingard move suddenly away from her side. She didn’t change her pose by a hair’s breadth. Presently she heard d’Alcacer coming out of the Cage. His cultivated voice asked half playfully:

“Have you had a satisfactory conversation? May I be told something of it?”

“Mr. d’Alcacer, you are curious.”

“Well, in our position, I confess. . . . You are our only refuge, remember.”

“You want to know what we were talking about,” said Mrs. Travers, altering slowly her position so as to confront d’Alcacer whose face was almost undistinguishable. “Oh, well, then, we talked about opera, the realities and illusions of the stage, of dresses, of people’s names, and things of that sort.”

“Nothing of importance,” he said courteously. Mrs. Travers moved forward and he stepped to one side. Inside the Cage two Malay hands were hanging round lanterns, the light of which fell on Mr. Travers’ bowed head as he sat in his chair.

When they were all assembled for the evening meal Jorgenson strolled up from nowhere in particular as his habit was, and speaking through the muslin announced that Captain Lingard begged to be excused from joining the company that evening. Then he strolled away. From that moment till they got up from the table and the camp bedsteads were brought in not twenty words passed between the members of the party within the net. The strangeness of their situation made all attempts to exchange ideas very arduous; and apart from that each had thoughts which it was distinctly useless to communicate to the others. Mr. Travers had abandoned himself to his sense of injury. He did not so much brood as rage inwardly in a dull, dispirited way. The impossibility of asserting himself in any manner galled his very soul. D’Alcacer was extremely puzzled. Detached in a sense from the life of men perhaps as much even as Jorgenson himself, he took yet a reasonable interest in the course of events and had not lost all his sense of self-preservation. Without being able to appreciate the exact values of the situation he was not one of those men who are ever completely in the dark in any given set of circumstances. Without being humorous he was a good-humoured man. His habitual, gentle smile was a true expression. More of a European than of a Spaniard he had that truly aristocratic nature which is inclined to credit every honest man with something of its own nobility and in its judgment is altogether independent of class feeling. He believed Lingard to be an honest man and he never troubled his head to classify him, except in the sense that he found him an interesting character. He had a sort of esteem for the outward personality and the bearing of that seaman. He found in him also the distinction of being nothing of a type. He was a specimen to be judged only by its own worth. With his natural gift of insight d’Alcacer told himself that many overseas adventurers of history were probably less worthy because obviously they must have been less simple. He didn’t, however, impart those thoughts formally to Mrs. Travers. In fact he avoided discussing Lingard with Mrs. Travers who, he thought, was quite intelligent enough to appreciate the exact shade of his attitude. If that shade was fine, Mrs. Travers was fine, too; and there was no need to discuss the colours of this adventure. Moreover, she herself seemed to avoid all direct discussion of the Lingard element in their fate. D’Alcacer was fine enough to be aware that those two seemed to understand each other in a way that was not obvious even to themselves. Whenever he saw them together he was always much tempted to observe them. And he yielded to the temptation. The fact of one’s life depending on the phases of an obscure action authorizes a certain latitude of behaviour. He had seen them together repeatedly, communing openly or apart, and there was in their way of joining each other, in their poses and their ways of separating, something special and characteristic and pertaining to themselves only, as if they had been made for each other.

What he couldn’t understand was why Mrs. Travers should have put off his natural curiosity as to her latest conference with the Man of Fate by an incredible statement as to the nature of the conversation. Talk about dresses, opera, people’s names. He couldn’t take this seriously. She might have invented, he thought, something more plausible; or simply have told him that this was not for him to know. She ought to have known that he would not have been offended. Couldn’t she have seen already that he accepted the complexion of mystery in her relation to that man completely, unquestionably; as though it had been something preordained from the very beginning of things? But he was not annoyed with Mrs. Travers. After all it might have been true. She would talk exactly as she liked, and even incredibly, if it so pleased her, and make the man hang on her lips. And likewise she was capable of making the man talk about anything by a power of inspiration for reasons simple or perverse. Opera! Dresses! Yes — about Shakespeare and the musical glasses! For a mere whim or for the deepest purpose. Women worthy of the name were like that. They were very wonderful. They rose to the occasion and sometimes above the occasion when things were bound to occur that would be comic or tragic (as it happened) but generally charged with trouble even to innocent beholders. D’Alcacer thought these thoughts without bitterness and even without irony. With his half-secret social reputation as a man of one great passion in a world of mere intrigues he liked all women. He liked them in their sentiment and in their hardness, in the tragic character of their foolish or clever impulses, at which he looked with a sort of tender seriousness.

He didn’t take a favourable view of the position but he considered Mrs. Travers’ statement about operas and dresses as a warning to keep off the subject. For this reason he remained silent through the meal.

When the bustle of clearing away the table was over he strolled toward Mrs. Travers and remarked very quietly:

“I think that in keeping away from us this evening the Man of Fate was well inspired. We dined like a lot of Carthusian monks.”

“You allude to our silence?”

“It was most scrupulous. If we had taken an eternal vow we couldn’t have kept it better.”

“Did you feel bored?”

“Pas du tout,” d’Alcacer assured her with whimsical gravity. “I felt nothing. I sat in a state of blessed vacuity. I believe I was the happiest of us three. Unless you, too, Mrs. Travers. . . .”

“It’s absolutely no use your fishing for my thoughts, Mr. d’Alcacer. If I were to let you see them you would be appalled.”

“Thoughts really are but a shape of feelings. Let me congratulate you on the impassive mask you can put on those horrors you say you nurse in your breast. It was impossible to tell anything by your face.”

“You will always say flattering things.”

“Madame, my flatteries come from the very bottom of my heart. I have given up long ago all desire to please. And I was not trying to get at your thoughts. Whatever else you may expect from me you may count on my absolute respect for your privacy. But I suppose with a mask such as you can make for yourself you really don’t care. The Man of Fate, I noticed, is not nearly as good at it as you are.”

“What a pretentious name. Do you call him by it to his face, Mr. d’Alcacer?”

“No, I haven’t the cheek,” confessed d’Alcacer, equably. “And, besides, it’s too momentous for daily use. And he is so simple that he might mistake it for a joke and nothing could be further from my thoughts. Mrs. Travers, I will confess to you that I don’t feel jocular in the least. But what can he know about people of our sort? And when I reflect how little people of our sort can know of such a man I am quite content to address him as Captain Lingard. It’s common and soothing and most respectable and satisfactory; for Captain is the most empty of all titles. What is a Captain? Anybody can be a Captain; and for Lingard it’s a name like any other. Whereas what he deserves is something special, significant, and expressive, that would match his person, his simple and romantic person.”

He perceived that Mrs. Travers was looking at him intently. They hastened to turn their eyes away from each other.

“He would like your appreciation,” Mrs. Travers let drop negligently.

“I am afraid he would despise it.”

“Despise it! Why, that sort of thing is the very breath of his nostrils.”

“You seem to understand him, Mrs. Travers. Women have a singular capacity for understanding. I mean subjects that interest them; because when their imagination is stimulated they are not afraid of letting it go. A man is more mistrustful of himself, but women are born much more reckless. They push on and on under the protection of secrecy and silence, and the greater the obscurity of what they wish to explore the greater their courage.”

“Do you mean seriously to tell me that you consider me a creature of darkness?”

“I spoke in general,” remonstrated d’Alcacer. “Anything else would have been an impertinence. Yes, obscurity is women’s best friend. Their daring loves it; but a sudden flash of light disconcerts them. Generally speaking, if they don’t get exactly at the truth they always manage to come pretty near to it.”

Mrs. Travers had listened with silent attention and she allowed the silence to continue for some time after d’Alcacer had ceased. When she spoke it was to say in an unconcerned tone that as to this subject she had had special opportunities. Her self-possessed interlocutor managed to repress a movement of real curiosity under an assumption of conventional interest. “Indeed,” he exclaimed, politely. “A special opportunity. How did you manage to create it?”

This was too much for Mrs. Travers. “I! Create it!” she exclaimed, indignantly, but under her breath. “How on earth do you think I could have done it?”

Mr. d’Alcacer, as if communing with himself, was heard to murmur unrepentantly that indeed women seldom knew how they had “done it,” to which Mrs. Travers in a weary tone returned the remark that no two men were dense in the same way. To this Mr. d’Alcacer assented without difficulty. “Yes, our brand presents more varieties. This, from a certain point of view, is obviously to our advantage. We interest. . . . Not that I imagine myself interesting to you, Mrs. Travers. But what about the Man of Fate?”

“Oh, yes,” breathed out Mrs. Travers.

“I see! Immensely!” said d’Alcacer in a tone of mysterious understanding. “Was his stupidity so colossal?”

“It was indistinguishable from great visions that were in no sense mean and made up for him a world of his own.”

“I guessed that much,” muttered d’Alcacer to himself. “But that, you know, Mrs. Travers, that isn’t good news at all to me. World of dreams, eh? That’s very bad, very dangerous. It’s almost fatal, Mrs. Travers.”

“Why all this dismay? Why do you object to a world of dreams?”

“Because I dislike the prospect of being made a sacrifice of by those Moors. I am not an optimist like our friend there,” he continued in a low tone nodding toward the dismal figure of Mr. Travers huddled up in the chair. “I don’t regard all this as a farce and I have discovered in myself a strong objection to having my throat cut by those gorgeous barbarians after a lot of fatuous talk. Don’t ask me why, Mrs. Travers. Put it down to an absurd weakness.”

Mrs. Travers made a slight movement in her chair, raising her hands to her head, and in the dim light of the lanterns d’Alcacer saw the mass of her clear gleaming hair fall down and spread itself over her shoulders. She seized half of it in her hands which looked very white, and with her head inclined a little on one side she began to make a plait.

“You are terrifying,” he said after watching the movement of her fingers for a while.

“Yes . . . ?” she accentuated interrogatively.

“You have the awfulness of the predestined. You, too, are the prey of dreams.”

“Not of the Moors, then,” she uttered, calmly, beginning the other plait. D’Alcacer followed the operation to the end. Close against her, her diaphanous shadow on the muslin reproduced her slightest movements. D’Alcacer turned his eyes away.

“No! No barbarian shall touch you. Because if it comes to that I believe he would be capable of killing you himself.”

A minute elapsed before he stole a glance in her direction. She was leaning back again, her hands had fallen on her lap and her head with a plait of hair on each side of her face, her head incredibly changed in character and suggesting something medieval, ascetic, drooped dreamily on her breast.

D’Alcacer waited, holding his breath. She didn’t move. In the dim gleam of jewelled clasps, the faint sheen of gold embroideries and the shimmer of silks, she was like a figure in a faded painting. Only her neck appeared dazzlingly white in the smoky redness of the light. D’Alcacer’s wonder approached a feeling of awe. He was on the point of moving away quietly when Mrs. Travers, without stirring in the least, let him hear the words: