Travertine

“ How could I tell that a man like you would come along for a fight bringing a woman with him?"
"This lady is Mrs. Travers," said Lingard. "The wife of one of the luckless gentlemen Daman got hold of last evening. . . . This is Jorgenson, the friend of whom I have been telling you, Mrs. Travers."
Mrs. Travers smiled faintly. Her eyes roamed far and near and the strangeness of her surroundings, the overpowering curiosity, the conflict of interest and doubt gave her the aspect of one still new to life, presenting an innocent and naive attitude before the surprises of experience. ”

“ 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." ”

“ Traverse, sir, the doctor's horse has just rushed home to the stables all in foam, without his rider!"
"Good heaven!" exclaimed Traverse, starting up and seizing his hat. "Follow me immediately! Hurry to the stables and saddle my horse and bring him up instantly! We must follow on the road the doctor took to see what has happened! Stay! On your life, breathe not a word of what has occurred! I would not have Miss Day alarmed for the world!" he concluded, hastening down-stairs attended by the servant. ”

“ Travers moved back the least bit so as to let the light fall in front of her and with a slow, distinct movement she put her left hand to her forehead.
"Well, then," she heard Lingard's forcible murmur, "well, then, Mrs. Travers, it must be done to-night."
One may be true, fearless, and wise, and yet catch one's breath before the simple finality of action. Mrs. Travers caught her breath: "To-night! To-night!" she whispered. D'Alcacer's dark and misty silhouette became more blurred. He had seen her sign and had retreated deeper within the Cage. ”

“ Travers did not say a word, but Immada threw herself between them and cried:
"You are a cruel woman! You are driving him away from where his strength is. You put madness into his heart, O! Blind—without pity—without shame! . . ."
"Immada," said Hassim's calm voice. Nobody moved.
"What did she say to me?" faltered Mrs. Travers and again repeated in a voice that sounded hard, "What did she say?"
"Forgive her," said Lingard. "Her fears are for me . . ."—"It's about your going?" Mrs. Travers interrupted, swiftly. ”

“ 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?" ”

“ Mrs. Travers' loud, “Martin!” made Lingard wince, caused d'Alcacer to lift his head down there in the boat, and even Jorgenson, forward somewhere out of sight, ceased mumbling in his moustache. The only person who seemed not to have heard that exclamation was Mr. Travers himself, who continued smoothly:
“. . . at the aberration of your mind, you who seemed so superior to common credulities. You are not yourself, not at all, and some day you will admit to me that . . . No, the best thing will be to forget it, as you will soon see yourself. ”

“ 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 . ”

“ Travers was conscious of nothing worse than a great fatigue. Mr. Travers' restfulness had something faintly triumphant in it. To find himself again on board his yacht had soothed his vanity and had revived his sense of his own importance. He contemplated it in a distant perspective, restored to its proper surroundings and unaffected by an adventure too extraordinary to trouble a superior mind or even to remain in one's memory for any length of time. He was not responsible. Like many men ambitious of directing the affairs of a nation, Mr. Travers disliked the sense of responsibility. ”

“ Travers.
"A man without any ideas of duty or usefulness," said Mr. Travers, acidly. "What are you pitying him for?"
"Why! For finding himself in this position out of mere good-nature. He had nothing to expect from joining our voyage, no advantage for his political ambitions or anything of the kind. I suppose you asked him on board to break our tete-a-tete which must have grown wearisome to you."
"I am never bored," declared Mr. Travers. "D'Alcacer seemed glad to come. And, being a Spaniard, the horrible waste of time cannot matter to him in the least." ”

“ I thought you did not, from the fact that you never felt her pulse or gave her a prescription," exclaimed Traverse, delightedly, for in one thing the lad resembled his mother—he was sensitive and excitable—easily depressed and easily exhilarated.
"Traverse, I said your mother is in no immediate danger of death, for that, in fact, she has no disease; but yet, Traverse, brace yourself up, for I am about to strike you a heavy blow. ”

“ I really must speak to some one about Mr Travers. His poor wife has enough to bear. I can’t trouble her. The man is insufferable; he upsets the whole house. His nurse has just been to me in tears. Nothing will please him. He rings his bell all day, and half the night, and for nothing—literally nothing! Just an excuse to give trouble. We have honestly done our best—more than our best. With such a patient it is easier to give in than to protest, but I’m beginning to think we’ve been wrong. He is not getting on as quickly as he should. ”

“ What the deuce is in the wind, anyway?”
“Give it up,” answered Travers, growing serious at once; “but I know one thing. You and I have some decidedly nasty experience of some sort in store for us tonight, see if we haven’t. You are going up to town with him this afternoon, he tells me. So am I.”
“Yes,” answered Allyne, also grown serious; “he wants us to spend the night with him in Carlton House Terrace—going over his papers, that sort of thing. The poor devil is regularly bowled over for some reason. Queer turn for him to take—the coolest man I ever met, you know. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It was said that this Miss Travers, a pretty girl just out of her teens, had been seduced by Dr. Sir William Wilde while under his care as a patient. Some went so far as to say that chloroform had been used, and that the girl had been violated.
The doctor was represented as a sort of Minotaur: lustful stories were invented and repeated with breathless delight; on all faces, the joy of malicious curiosity and envious denigration. ”

“ Travers is an old man, to be knocked out with a blow. All we have to fear are those fellows on the sloop, and they will have to be attended to quietly, without any alarm reaching the house. I am going to leave that job to you—it's not your first. ”

“ The doctor says it is all because Traverse is profoundly in earnest, and that one of these days he will be——"
"There, mother, don't repeat all the doctor's kind speeches. He only says such things to encourage a poor boy in the pursuit of knowledge under difficulties," said Traverse, blushing and laughing.
"'—Will be an honor to his kindred, country and race!'" said Herbert, finishing the widow's incomplete quotation.
"It was something like that, indeed," she said, nodding and smiling.
"You do me proud!" said Traverse, touching his forelock with comic gravity. ”

“ For some time Mona tried to discuss the question calmly, but the cutting, merciless words wounded her more than she could bear; so she rose and took her gloves from the table.
"That will do, cousin," she said coldly; "but for the accident of circumstances it might have been you or I."
This of course was a truism, but Rachel could not be expected to see it in that light, and the flames of her wrath leaped higher.
"Jenny can pay for a nurse from Kirkstoun," she said; "I'll not have you waiting hand and foot on a creature no decent woman would speak to. You'll not enter that house again." ”

“ Here coffee was presently served to the travelers, who soon after retired for the night.
Traverse's room was a large, pleasant apartment at the end of a wide, long hall, on each side of which were the doors opening into the cells of the patients.
Fatigued by his journey, Traverse slept soundly through the night; but early in the morning he was rudely awakened by the sounds of maniac voices from the cells. Some were crying, some laughing aloud some groaning and howling and some holding forth in fancied exhortations. ”

“ Travers says they are dreadfully fierce, and that when they are not at war with other people, they fight among themselves, and go on in the most dreadful way.
This Professor that came to see father didn't look a bit fierce, but Mr. Travers says that was just his deceitful way, and that if we had had a valuable old bone or a queer kind of shell in the house, the Professor would have got up in the night, and stolen it and killed us all in our beds; but Sue said it was a shame, and that the Professor was a lovely old gentleman, and there wasn't the least harm in his kissing her. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Traverse found his patient in a bad condition—in a stupor, if not in a state of positive insensibility. The surface of his body was cold as ice, and apparently without the least vitality. If he was not, as his sister had expressed it, "very dead," he was certainly "next to it."
By close questioning, and by putting his questions in various forms, the doctor learned from the chattering little magpie of a Frenchwoman that the patient had been ill for nine days; that he had been under the care of Monsieur le Doctor Cartiere; that there had been a consultation of physicians ”

“ Travers was not there to take charge of his men. "He's never where he's wanted," he said, and took most of "A" company away with him.
"Where can Mr. Travers have gone?" I kept on wondering, but hadn't much time for thinking, as I only had been left a very few men to guard the burning house, and there were still a good many prowling Chinese sneaking round, and I had to make my men keep them away. It seemed an awfully long time before suddenly we heard a shout and a cheer from somewhere up the hill. "Thank God, sir, they've found that pretty little American lady!" ”

“ An hysterical gasp caused Travers to start.
"No, please keep your face turned. I must tell you in my way. I have just taken care of—Mr. Huntter. He is not—fit to marry any woman—he cannot marry—Margaret! Doctor Hapgood told him, but—he—means to marry! She came to see him; she did not see me; she does not know; but she must know!" fiercely; "she must know! That is the one thing above all else that would matter to her; she told me so! She does not live for the—the now; she was made for—for bigger things!"
"My God!" Travers was on his feet, and he dragged Priscilla with him. ”

“ Travers felt a strong disgust for the impudence of the attempt; and all at once, incredibly, strangely, as though the thing, like a contest with a rival or a friend, had been of profound importance to his career, he felt inexplicably elated at the thought of defeating the secret purposes of that man. ”

“ Travers, who answered him without looking up, without a modulation of tone or a play of feature, as if she had spoken from behind the veil of an immense indifference stretched between her and all men, between her heart and the meaning of events, between her eyes and the shallow sea which, like her gaze, appeared profound, forever stilled, and seemed, far off in the distance of a faint horizon, beyond the reach of eye, beyond the power of hand or voice, to lose itself in the sky. ”