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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VICTORY: AN ISLAND TALE ***
+
+
+
+
+VICTORY: AN ISLAND TALE
+
+By Joseph Conrad
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+
+NOTE TO THE FIRST EDITION
+
+AUTHOR'S NOTE
+
+
+PART ONE
+
+CHAPTER ONE
+
+CHAPTER TWO
+
+CHAPTER THREE
+
+CHAPTER FOUR
+
+CHAPTER FIVE
+
+CHAPTER SIX
+
+CHAPTER SEVEN
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER ONE
+
+CHAPTER TWO
+
+CHAPTER THREE
+
+CHAPTER FOUR
+
+CHAPTER FIVE
+
+CHAPTER SIX
+
+CHAPTER SEVEN
+
+CHAPTER EIGHT
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PART THREE
+
+CHAPTER ONE
+
+CHAPTER TWO
+
+CHAPTER THREE
+
+CHAPTER FOUR
+
+CHAPTER FIVE
+
+CHAPTER SIX
+
+CHAPTER SEVEN
+
+CHAPTER EIGHT
+
+CHAPTER NINE
+
+CHAPTER TEN
+
+
+PART FOUR
+
+CHAPTER ONE
+
+CHAPTER TWO
+
+CHAPTER THREE
+
+CHAPTER FOUR
+
+CHAPTER FIVE
+
+CHAPTER SIX
+
+CHAPTER SEVEN
+
+CHAPTER EIGHT
+
+CHAPTER NINE
+
+CHAPTER TEN
+
+CHAPTER ELEVEN
+
+CHAPTER TWELVE
+
+CHAPTER THIRTEEN
+
+CHAPTER FOURTEEN
+
+
+
+
+
+NOTE TO THE FIRST EDITION
+
+The last word of this novel was written on 29 May 1914. And that last
+word was the single word of the title.
+
+Those were the times of peace. Now that the moment of publication
+approaches I have been considering the discretion of altering the
+title-page. The word “Victory” the shining and tragic goal of noble
+effort, appeared too great, too august, to stand at the head of a mere
+novel. There was also the possibility of falling under the suspicion of
+commercial astuteness deceiving the public into the belief that the book
+had something to do with war.
+
+Of that, however, I was not afraid very much. What influenced my
+decision most were the obscure promptings of that pagan residuum of
+awe and wonder which lurks still at the bottom of our old humanity.
+“Victory” was the last word I had written in peace-time. It was the last
+literary thought which had occurred to me before the doors of the Temple
+of Janus flying open with a crash shook the minds, the hearts, the
+consciences of men all over the world. Such coincidence could not be
+treated lightly. And I made up my mind to let the word stand, in the
+same hopeful spirit in which some simple citizen of Old Rome would have
+“accepted the Omen.”
+
+The second point on which I wish to offer a remark is the existence (in
+the novel) of a person named Schomberg.
+
+That I believe him to be true goes without saying. I am not likely to
+offer pinchbeck wares to my public consciously. Schomberg is an old
+member of my company. A very subordinate personage in Lord Jim as far
+back as the year 1899, he became notably active in a certain short story
+of mine published in 1902. Here he appears in a still larger part, true
+to life (I hope), but also true to himself. Only, in this instance, his
+deeper passions come into play, and thus his grotesque psychology is
+completed at last.
+
+I don't pretend to say that this is the entire Teutonic psychology; but
+it is indubitably the psychology of a Teuton. My object in mentioning
+him here is to bring out the fact that, far from being the incarnation
+of recent animosities, he is the creature of my old deep-seated, and, as
+it were, impartial conviction.
+
+J. C.
+
+
+
+AUTHOR'S NOTE
+
+On approaching the task of writing this Note for Victory, the first
+thing I am conscious of is the actual nearness of the book, its nearness
+to me personally, to the vanished mood in which it was written, and to
+the mixed feelings aroused by the critical notices the book obtained
+when first published almost exactly a year after the beginning of the
+war. The writing of it was finished in 1914 long before the murder of an
+Austrian Archduke sounded the first note of warning for a world already
+full of doubts and fears.
+
+The contemporaneous very short Author's Note which is preserved in this
+edition bears sufficient witness to the feelings with which I consented
+to the publication of the book. The fact of the book having been
+published in the United States early in the year made it difficult
+to delay its appearance in England any longer. It came out in the
+thirteenth month of the war, and my conscience was troubled by the awful
+incongruity of throwing this bit of imagined drama into the welter
+of reality, tragic enough in all conscience, but even more cruel than
+tragic and more inspiring than cruel. It seemed awfully presumptuous to
+think there would be eyes to spare for those pages in a community which
+in the crash of the big guns and in the din of brave words expressing
+the truth of an indomitable faith could not but feel the edge of a sharp
+knife at its throat.
+
+The unchanging Man of history is wonderfully adaptable both by his power
+of endurance and in his capacity for detachment. The fact seems to
+be that the play of his destiny is too great for his fears and too
+mysterious for his understanding. Were the trump of the Last Judgement
+to sound suddenly on a working day the musician at his piano would go on
+with his performance of Beethoven's sonata and the cobbler at his
+stall stick to his last in undisturbed confidence in the virtues of the
+leather. And with perfect propriety. For what are we to let ourselves be
+disturbed by an angel's vengeful music too mighty for our ears and too
+awful for our terrors? Thus it happens to us to be struck suddenly
+by the lightning of wrath. The reader will go on reading if the book
+pleases him and the critic will go on criticizing with that faculty of
+detachment born perhaps from a sense of infinite littleness and which is
+yet the only faculty that seems to assimilate man to the immortal gods.
+
+It is only when the catastrophe matches the natural obscurity of our
+fate that even the best representative of the race is liable to lose his
+detachment. It is very obvious that on the arrival of the gentlemanly
+Mr. Jones, the single-minded Ricardo, and the faithful Pedro, Heyst, the
+man of universal detachment, loses his mental self-possession, that fine
+attitude before the universally irremediable which wears the name of
+stoicism. It is all a matter of proportion. There should have been a
+remedy for that sort of thing. And yet there is no remedy. Behind this
+minute instance of life's hazards Heyst sees the power of blind destiny.
+Besides, Heyst in his fine detachment had lost the habit of asserting
+himself. I don't mean the courage of self-assertion, either moral or
+physical, but the mere way of it, the trick of the thing, the readiness
+of mind and the turn of the hand that come without reflection and lead
+the man to excellence in life, in art, in crime, in virtue, and, for the
+matter of that, even in love. Thinking is the great enemy of perfection.
+The habit of profound reflection, I am compelled to say, is the most
+pernicious of all the habits formed by the civilized man.
+
+But I wouldn't be suspected even remotely of making fun of Axel Heyst. I
+have always liked him. The flesh-and-blood individual who stands
+behind the infinitely more familiar figure of the book I remember as a
+mysterious Swede right enough. Whether he was a baron, too, I am not so
+certain. He himself never laid claim to that distinction. His detachment
+was too great to make any claims, big or small, on one's credulity. I
+will not say where I met him because I fear to give my readers a
+wrong impression, since a marked incongruity between a man and his
+surroundings is often a very misleading circumstance. We became very
+friendly for a time, and I would not like to expose him to unpleasant
+suspicions though, personally, I am sure he would have been indifferent
+to suspicions as he was indifferent to all the other disadvantages of
+life. He was not the whole Heyst of course; he is only the physical and
+moral foundation of my Heyst laid on the ground of a short acquaintance.
+That it was short was certainly not my fault for he had charmed me by
+the mere amenity of his detachment which, in this case, I cannot help
+thinking he had carried to excess. He went away from his rooms without
+leaving a trace. I wondered where he had gone to--but now I know.
+He vanished from my ken only to drift into this adventure that,
+unavoidable, waited for him in a world which he persisted in looking
+upon as a malevolent shadow spinning in the sunlight. Often in the
+course of years an expressed sentiment, the particular sense of a phrase
+heard casually, would recall him to my mind so that I have fastened on
+to him many words heard on other men's lips and belonging to other men's
+less perfect, less pathetic moods.
+
+The same observation will apply mutatis mutandis to Mr. Jones, who is
+built on a much slenderer connection. Mr. Jones (or whatever his name
+was) did not drift away from me. He turned his back on me and walked out
+of the room. It was in a little hotel in the island of St. Thomas in
+the West Indies (in the year '75) where we found him one hot afternoon
+extended on three chairs, all alone in the loud buzzing of flies to
+which his immobility and his cadaverous aspect gave a most gruesome
+significance. Our invasion must have displeased him because he got off
+the chairs brusquely and walked out, leaving with me an indelibly weird
+impression of his thin shanks. One of the men with me said that the
+fellow was the most desperate gambler he had ever come across. I said:
+“A professional sharper?” and got for an answer: “He's a terror; but I
+must say that up to a certain point he will play fair. . . .” I wonder
+what the point was. I never saw him again because I believe he went
+straight on board a mail-boat which left within the hour for other
+ports of call in the direction of Aspinall. Mr. Jones's characteristic
+insolence belongs to another man of a quite different type. I will say
+nothing as to the origins of his mentality because I don't intend to
+make any damaging admissions.
+
+It so happened that the very same year Ricardo--the physical
+Ricardo--was a fellow passenger of mine on board an extremely small and
+extremely dirty little schooner, during a four days' passage between two
+places in the Gulf of Mexico whose names don't matter. For the most part
+he lay on deck aft as it were at my feet, and raising himself from time
+to time on his elbow would talk about himself and go on talking, not
+exactly to me or even at me (he would not even look up but kept his
+eyes fixed on the deck) but more as if communing in a low voice with
+his familiar devil. Now and then he would give me a glance and make the
+hairs of his stiff little moustache stir quaintly. His eyes were green
+and every cat I see to this day reminds me of the exact contour of his
+face. What he was travelling for or what was his business in life he
+never confided to me. Truth to say, the only passenger on board that
+schooner who could have talked openly about his activities and purposes
+was a very snuffy and conversationally delightful friar, the superior
+of a convent, attended by a very young lay brother, of a particularly
+ferocious countenance. We had with us also, lying prostrate in the dark
+and unspeakable cuddy of that schooner, an old Spanish gentleman, owner
+of much luggage and, as Ricardo assured me, very ill indeed. Ricardo
+seemed to be either a servant or the confidant of that aged and
+distinguished-looking invalid, who early on the passage held a long
+murmured conversation with the friar, and after that did nothing but
+groan feebly, smoke cigarettes, and now and then call for Martin in a
+voice full of pain. Then he who had become Ricardo in the book would go
+below into that beastly and noisome hole, remain there mysteriously,
+and coming up on deck again with a face on which nothing could be read,
+would as likely as not resume for my edification the exposition of his
+moral attitude towards life illustrated by striking particular instances
+of the most atrocious complexion. Did he mean to frighten me? Or seduce
+me? Or astonish me? Or arouse my admiration? All he did was to arouse my
+amused incredulity. As scoundrels go he was far from being a bore.
+For the rest my innocence was so great then that I could not take his
+philosophy seriously. All the time he kept one ear turned to the cuddy
+in the manner of a devoted servant, but I had the idea that in some way
+or other he had imposed the connection on the invalid for some end of
+his own. The reader, therefore, won't be surprised to hear that one
+morning I was told without any particular emotion by the padrone of the
+schooner that the “rich man” down there was dead: He had died in the
+night. I don't remember ever being so moved by the desolate end of a
+complete stranger. I looked down the skylight, and there was the devoted
+Martin busy cording cowhide trunks belonging to the deceased whose white
+beard and hooked nose were the only parts I could make out in the dark
+depths of a horrible stuffy bunk.
+
+As it fell calm in the course of the afternoon and continued calm during
+all that night and the terrible, flaming day, the late “rich man” had
+to be thrown overboard at sunset, though as a matter of fact we were in
+sight of the low pestilential mangrove-lined coast of our destination.
+The excellent Father Superior mentioned to me with an air of immense
+commiseration: “The poor man has left a young daughter.” Who was to look
+after her I don't know, but I saw the devoted Martin taking the trunks
+ashore with great care just before I landed myself. I would perhaps have
+tracked the ways of that man of immense sincerity for a little while,
+but I had some of my own very pressing business to attend to, which in
+the end got mixed up with an earthquake and so I had no time to give
+to Ricardo. The reader need not be told that I have not forgotten him,
+though.
+
+My contact with the faithful Pedro was much shorter and my observation
+of him was less complete but incomparably more anxious. It ended in a
+sudden inspiration to get out of his way. It was in a hovel of sticks
+and mats by the side of a path. As I went in there only to ask for a
+bottle of lemonade I have not to this day the slightest idea what in
+my appearance or actions could have roused his terrible ire. It became
+manifest to me less than two minutes after I had set eyes on him for the
+first time, and though immensely surprised of course I didn't stop
+to think it out I took the nearest short cut--through the wall. This
+bestial apparition and a certain enormous buck nigger encountered in
+Haiti only a couple of months afterwards, have fixed my conception of
+blind, furious, unreasoning rage, as manifested in the human animal, to
+the end of my days. Of the nigger I used to dream for years afterwards.
+Of Pedro never. The impression was less vivid. I got away from him too
+quickly.
+
+It seems to me but natural that those three buried in a corner of my
+memory should suddenly get out into the light of the world--so natural
+that I offer no excuse for their existence, They were there, they had to
+come out; and this is a sufficient excuse for a writer of tales who had
+taken to his trade without preparation, or premeditation, and without
+any moral intention but that which pervades the whole scheme of this
+world of senses.
+
+Since this Note is mostly concerned with personal contacts and the
+origins of the persons in the tale, I am bound also to speak of Lena,
+because if I were to leave her out it would look like a slight; and
+nothing would be further from my thoughts than putting a slight on Lena.
+If of all the personages involved in the “mystery of Samburan” I have
+lived longest with Heyst (or with him I call Heyst) it was at her, whom
+I call Lena, that I have looked the longest and with a most sustained
+attention. This attention originated in idleness for which I have a
+natural talent. One evening I wandered into a cafe, in a town not of the
+tropics but of the South of France. It was filled with tobacco smoke,
+the hum of voices, the rattling of dominoes, and the sounds of strident
+music. The orchestra was rather smaller than the one that performed
+at Schomberg's hotel, had the air more of a family party than of an
+enlisted band, and, I must confess, seemed rather more respectable than
+the Zangiacomo musical enterprise. It was less pretentious also, more
+homely and familiar, so to speak, insomuch that in the intervals when
+all the performers left the platform one of them went amongst the
+marble tables collecting offerings of sous and francs in a battered
+tin receptacle recalling the shape of a sauceboat. It was a girl.
+Her detachment from her task seems to me now to have equalled or even
+surpassed Heyst's aloofness from all the mental degradations to which
+a man's intelligence is exposed in its way through life. Silent and
+wide-eyed she went from table to table with the air of a sleep-walker
+and with no other sound but the slight rattle of the coins to attract
+attention. It was long after the sea-chapter of my life had been closed
+but it is difficult to discard completely the characteristics of half
+a lifetime, and it was in something of the Jack-ashore spirit that
+I dropped a five-franc piece into the sauceboat; whereupon the
+sleep-walker turned her head to gaze at me and said “Merci, Monsieur”
+ in a tone in which there was no gratitude but only surprise. I must have
+been idle indeed to take the trouble to remark on such slight evidence
+that the voice was very charming and when the performers resumed
+their seats I shifted my position slightly in order not to have that
+particular performer hidden from me by the little man with the beard who
+conducted, and who might for all I know have been her father, but whose
+real mission in life was to be a model for the Zangiacomo of Victory.
+Having got a clear line of sight I naturally (being idle) continued to
+look at the girl through all the second part of the programme. The shape
+of her dark head inclined over the violin was fascinating, and, while
+resting between the pieces of that interminable programme she was, in
+her white dress and with her brown hands reposing in her lap, the very
+image of dreamy innocence. The mature, bad-tempered woman at the
+piano might have been her mother, though there was not the slightest
+resemblance between them. All I am certain of in their personal relation
+to each other is that cruel pinch on the upper part of the arm. That I
+am sure I have seen! There could be no mistake. I was in too idle a mood
+to imagine such a gratuitous barbarity. It may have been playfulness,
+yet the girl jumped up as if she had been stung by a wasp. It may have
+been playfulness. Yet I saw plainly poor “dreamy innocence” rub gently
+the affected place as she filed off with the other performers down the
+middle aisle between the marble tables in the uproar of voices, the
+rattling of dominoes through a blue atmosphere of tobacco smoke. I
+believe that those people left the town next day.
+
+Or perhaps they had only migrated to the other big cafe, on the other
+side of the Place de la Comedie. It is very possible. I did not go
+across to find out. It was my perfect idleness that had invested the
+girl with a peculiar charm, and I did not want to destroy it by
+any superfluous exertion. The receptivity of my indolence made the
+impression so permanent that when the moment came for her meeting with
+Heyst I felt that she would be heroically equal to every demand of the
+risky and uncertain future. I was so convinced of it that I let her go
+with Heyst, I won't say without a pang but certainly without misgivings.
+And in view of her triumphant end what more could I have done for her
+rehabilitation and her happiness?
+
+1920. J. C.
+
+
+
+
+VICTORY: AN ISLAND TALE PART ONE
+
+
+
+CHAPTER ONE
+
+There is, as every schoolboy knows in this scientific age, a very
+close chemical relation between coal and diamonds. It is the reason, I
+believe, why some people allude to coal as “black diamonds.” Both these
+commodities represent wealth; but coal is a much less portable form
+of property. There is, from that point of view, a deplorable lack of
+concentration in coal. Now, if a coal-mine could be put into one's
+waistcoat pocket--but it can't! At the same time, there is a fascination
+in coal, the supreme commodity of the age in which we are camped like
+bewildered travellers in a garish, unrestful hotel. And I suppose
+those two considerations, the practical and the mystical, prevented
+Heyst--Axel Heyst--from going away.
+
+The Tropical Belt Coal Company went into liquidation. The world of
+finance is a mysterious world in which, incredible as the fact may
+appear, evaporation precedes liquidation. First the capital evaporates,
+and then the company goes into liquidation. These are very unnatural
+physics, but they account for the persistent inertia of Heyst, at which
+we “out there” used to laugh among ourselves--but not inimically. An
+inert body can do no harm to anyone, provokes no hostility, is scarcely
+worth derision. It may, indeed, be in the way sometimes; but this could
+not be said of Axel Heyst. He was out of everybody's way, as if he
+were perched on the highest peak of the Himalayas, and in a sense as
+conspicuous. Everyone in that part of the world knew of him, dwelling on
+his little island. An island is but the top of a mountain. Axel Heyst,
+perched on it immovably, was surrounded, instead of the imponderable
+stormy and transparent ocean of air merging into infinity, by a tepid,
+shallow sea; a passionless offshoot of the great waters which embrace
+the continents of this globe. His most frequent visitors were shadows,
+the shadows of clouds, relieving the monotony of the inanimate, brooding
+sunshine of the tropics. His nearest neighbour--I am speaking now of
+things showing some sort of animation--was an indolent volcano which
+smoked faintly all day with its head just above the northern horizon,
+and at night levelled at him, from amongst the clear stars, a dull red
+glow, expanding and collapsing spasmodically like the end of a gigantic
+cigar puffed at intermittently in the dark. Axel Heyst was also a
+smoker; and when he lounged out on his veranda with his cheroot, the
+last thing before going to bed, he made in the night the same sort of
+glow and of the same size as that other one so many miles away.
+
+In a sense, the volcano was company to him in the shades of the
+night--which were often too thick, one would think, to let a breath of
+air through. There was seldom enough wind to blow a feather along. On
+most evenings of the year Heyst could have sat outside with a naked
+candle to read one of the books left him by his late father. It was not
+a mean store. But he never did that. Afraid of mosquitoes, very likely.
+Neither was he ever tempted by the silence to address any casual remarks
+to the companion glow of the volcano. He was not mad. Queer chap--yes,
+that may have been said, and in fact was said; but there is a tremendous
+difference between the two, you will allow.
+
+On the nights of full moon the silence around Samburan--the “Round
+Island” of the charts--was dazzling; and in the flood of cold light
+Heyst could see his immediate surroundings, which had the aspect of
+an abandoned settlement invaded by the jungle: vague roofs above low
+vegetation, broken shadows of bamboo fences in the sheen of long grass,
+something like an overgrown bit of road slanting among ragged thickets
+towards the shore only a couple of hundred yards away, with a black
+jetty and a mound of some sort, quite inky on its unlighted side. But
+the most conspicuous object was a gigantic blackboard raised on two
+posts and presenting to Heyst, when the moon got over that side, the
+white letters “T. B. C. Co.” in a row at least two feet high. These were
+the initials of the Tropical Belt Coal Company, his employers--his late
+employers, to be precise.
+
+According to the unnatural mysteries of the financial world, the T. B.
+C. Company's capital having evaporated in the course of two years, the
+company went into liquidation--forced, I believe, not voluntary. There
+was nothing forcible in the process, however. It was slow; and while the
+liquidation--in London and Amsterdam--pursued its languid course, Axel
+Heyst, styled in the prospectus “manager in the tropics,” remained at
+his post on Samburan, the No. 1 coaling-station of the company.
+
+And it was not merely a coaling-station. There was a coal-mine there,
+with an outcrop in the hillside less than five hundred yards from the
+rickety wharf and the imposing blackboard. The company's object had been
+to get hold of all the outcrops on tropical islands and exploit them
+locally. And, Lord knows, there were any amount of outcrops. It was
+Heyst who had located most of them in this part of the tropical belt
+during his rather aimless wanderings, and being a ready letter-writer
+had written pages and pages about them to his friends in Europe. At
+least, so it was said.
+
+We doubted whether he had any visions of wealth--for himself, at any
+rate. What he seemed mostly concerned for was the “stride forward,”
+ as he expressed it, in the general organization of the universe,
+apparently. He was heard by more than a hundred persons in the islands
+talking of a “great stride forward for these regions.” The convinced
+wave of the hand which accompanied the phrase suggested tropical
+distances being impelled onward. In connection with the finished
+courtesy of his manner, it was persuasive, or at any rate silencing--for
+a time, at least. Nobody cared to argue with him when he talked in this
+strain. His earnestness could do no harm to anybody. There was no danger
+of anyone taking seriously his dream of tropical coal, so what was the
+use of hurting his feelings?
+
+Thus reasoned men in reputable business offices where he had his entree
+as a person who came out East with letters of introduction--and modest
+letters of credit, too--some years before these coal-outcrops began to
+crop up in his playfully courteous talk. From the first there was
+some difficulty in making him out. He was not a traveller. A traveller
+arrives and departs, goes on somewhere. Heyst did not depart. I met a
+man once--the manager of the branch of the Oriental Banking Corporation
+in Malacca--to whom Heyst exclaimed, in no connection with anything in
+particular (it was in the billiard-room of the club):
+
+“I am enchanted with these islands!”
+
+He shot it out suddenly, a propos des bottes, as the French say, and
+while chalking his cue. And perhaps it was some sort of enchantment.
+There are more spells than your commonplace magicians ever dreamed of.
+
+Roughly speaking, a circle with a radius of eight hundred miles drawn
+round a point in North Borneo was in Heyst's case a magic circle. It
+just touched Manila, and he had been seen there. It just touched Saigon,
+and he was likewise seen there once. Perhaps these were his attempts to
+break out. If so, they were failures. The enchantment must have been
+an unbreakable one. The manager--the man who heard the exclamation--had
+been so impressed by the tone, fervour, rapture, what you will, or
+perhaps by the incongruity of it that he had related the experience to
+more than one person.
+
+“Queer chap, that Swede,” was his only comment; but this is the origin
+of the name “Enchanted Heyst” which some fellows fastened on our man.
+
+He also had other names. In his early years, long before he got so
+becomingly bald on the top, he went to present a letter of introduction
+to Mr. Tesman of Tesman Brothers, a Sourabaya firm--tip-top house. Well,
+Mr. Tesman was a kindly, benevolent old gentleman. He did not know what
+to make of that caller. After telling him that they wished to render his
+stay among the islands as pleasant as possible, and that they were
+ready to assist him in his plans, and so on, and after receiving Heyst's
+thanks--you know the usual kind of conversation--he proceeded to query
+in a slow, paternal tone:
+
+“And you are interested in--?”
+
+“Facts,” broke in Heyst in his courtly voice. “There's nothing worth
+knowing but facts. Hard facts! Facts alone, Mr. Tesman.”
+
+I don't know if old Tesman agreed with him or not, but he must have
+spoken about it, because, for a time, our man got the name of “Hard
+Facts.” He had the singular good fortune that his sayings stuck to him
+and became part of his name. Thereafter he mooned about the Java Sea in
+some of the Tesmans' trading schooners, and then vanished, on board an
+Arab ship, in the direction of New Guinea. He remained so long in that
+outlying part of his enchanted circle that he was nearly forgotten
+before he swam into view again in a native proa full of Goram vagabonds,
+burnt black by the sun, very lean, his hair much thinned, and a
+portfolio of sketches under his arm. He showed these willingly, but
+was very reserved as to anything else. He had had an “amusing time,” he
+said. A man who will go to New Guinea for fun--well!
+
+Later, years afterwards, when the last vestiges of youth had gone off
+his face and all the hair off the top of his head, and his red-gold
+pair of horizontal moustaches had grown to really noble proportions,
+a certain disreputable white man fastened upon him an epithet. Putting
+down with a shaking hand a long glass emptied of its contents--paid
+for by Heyst--he said, with that deliberate sagacity which no mere
+water-drinker ever attained:
+
+“Heyst's a puffect g'n'lman. Puffect! But he's a ut-uto-utopist.”
+
+Heyst had just gone out of the place of public refreshment where this
+pronouncement was voiced. Utopist, eh? Upon my word, the only thing
+I heard him say which might have had a bearing on the point was his
+invitation to old McNab himself. Turning with that finished courtesy of
+attitude, movement voice, which was his obvious characteristic, he had
+said with delicate playfulness:
+
+“Come along and quench your thirst with us, Mr. McNab!”
+
+Perhaps that was it. A man who could propose, even playfully, to quench
+old McNab's thirst must have been a utopist, a pursuer of chimeras; for
+of downright irony Heyst was not prodigal. And, may be, this was the
+reason why he was generally liked. At that epoch in his life, in the
+fulness of his physical development, of a broad, martial presence, with
+his bald head and long moustaches, he resembled the portraits of Charles
+XII., of adventurous memory. However, there was no reason to think that
+Heyst was in any way a fighting man.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWO
+
+It was about this time that Heyst became associated with Morrison on
+terms about which people were in doubt. Some said he was a partner,
+others said he was a sort of paying guest, but the real truth of the
+matter was more complex. One day Heyst turned up in Timor. Why in Timor,
+of all places in the world, no one knows. Well, he was mooning about
+Delli, that highly pestilential place, possibly in search of some
+undiscovered facts, when he came in the street upon Morrison, who, in
+his way, was also an “enchanted” man. When you spoke to Morrison of
+going home--he was from Dorsetshire--he shuddered. He said it was dark
+and wet there; that it was like living with your head and shoulders in
+a moist gunny-bag. That was only his exaggerated style of talking.
+Morrison was “one of us.” He was owner and master of the Capricorn,
+trading brig, and was understood to be doing well with her, except for
+the drawback of too much altruism. He was the dearly beloved friend of a
+quantity of God-forsaken villages up dark creeks and obscure bays, where
+he traded for produce. He would often sail, through awfully dangerous
+channels up to some miserable settlement, only to find a very hungry
+population clamorous for rice, and without so much “produce” between
+them as would have filled Morrison's suitcase. Amid general rejoicings,
+he would land the rice all the same, explain to the people that it was
+an advance, that they were in debt to him now; would preach to them
+energy and industry, and make an elaborate note in a pocket-diary which
+he always carried; and this would be the end of that transaction.
+I don't know if Morrison thought so, but the villagers had no doubt
+whatever about it. Whenever a coast village sighted the brig it would
+begin to beat all its gongs and hoist all its streamers, and all its
+girls would put flowers in their hair and the crowd would line the river
+bank, and Morrison would beam and glitter at all this excitement through
+his single eyeglass with an air of intense gratification. He was tall
+and lantern-jawed, and clean-shaven, and looked like a barrister who had
+thrown his wig to the dogs.
+
+We used to remonstrate with him:
+
+“You will never see any of your advances if you go on like this,
+Morrison.”
+
+He would put on a knowing air.
+
+“I shall squeeze them yet some day--never you fear. And that reminds
+me”--pulling out his inseparable pocketbook--“there's that So-and-So
+village. They are pretty well off again; I may just as well squeeze them
+to begin with.”
+
+He would make a ferocious entry in the pocketbook.
+
+Memo: Squeeze the So-and-So village at the first time of calling.
+
+Then he would stick the pencil back and snap the elastic on with
+inflexible finality; but he never began the squeezing. Some men grumbled
+at him. He was spoiling the trade. Well, perhaps to a certain extent;
+not much. Most of the places he traded with were unknown not only to
+geography but also to the traders' special lore which is transmitted by
+word of mouth, without ostentation, and forms the stock of mysterious
+local knowledge. It was hinted also that Morrison had a wife in each and
+every one of them, but the majority of us repulsed these innuendoes
+with indignation. He was a true humanitarian and rather ascetic than
+otherwise.
+
+When Heyst met him in Delli, Morrison was walking along the street,
+his eyeglass tossed over his shoulder, his head down, with the hopeless
+aspect of those hardened tramps one sees on our roads trudging from
+workhouse to workhouse. Being hailed on the street he looked up with a
+wild worried expression. He was really in trouble. He had come the week
+before into Delli and the Portuguese authorities, on some pretence
+of irregularity in his papers, had inflicted a fine upon him and had
+arrested his brig.
+
+Morrison never had any spare cash in hand. With his system of trading
+it would have been strange if he had; and all these debts entered in
+the pocketbook weren't good enough to raise a millrei on--let alone a
+shilling. The Portuguese officials begged him not to distress himself.
+They gave him a week's grace, and then proposed to sell the brig at
+auction. This meant ruin for Morrison; and when Heyst hailed him across
+the street in his usual courtly tone, the week was nearly out.
+
+Heyst crossed over, and said with a slight bow, and in the manner of a
+prince addressing another prince on a private occasion:
+
+“What an unexpected pleasure. Would you have any objection to drink
+something with me in that infamous wine-shop over there? The sun is
+really too strong to talk in the street.”
+
+The haggard Morrison followed obediently into a sombre, cool hovel which
+he would have distained to enter at any other time. He was distracted.
+He did not know what he was doing. You could have led him over the edge
+of a precipice just as easily as into that wine-shop. He sat down like
+an automaton. He was speechless, but he saw a glass full of rough red
+wine before him, and emptied it. Heyst meantime, politely watchful, had
+taken a seat opposite.
+
+“You are in for a bout of fever, I fear,” he said sympathetically.
+
+Poor Morrison's tongue was loosened at that.
+
+“Fever!” he cried. “Give me fever. Give me plague. They are diseases.
+One gets over them. But I am being murdered. I am being murdered by the
+Portuguese. The gang here downed me at last among them. I am to have my
+throat cut the day after tomorrow.”
+
+In the face of this passion Heyst made, with his eyebrows, a
+slight motion of surprise which would not have been misplaced in a
+drawing-room. Morrison's despairing reserve had broken down. He had been
+wandering with a dry throat all over that miserable town of mud hovels,
+silent, with no soul to turn to in his distress, and positively
+maddened by his thoughts; and suddenly he had stumbled on a white man,
+figuratively and actually white--for Morrison refused to accept the
+racial whiteness of the Portuguese officials. He let himself go for the
+mere relief of violent speech, his elbows planted on the table, his
+eyes blood-shot, his voice nearly gone, the brim of his round pith hat
+shading an unshaven, livid face. His white clothes, which he had not
+taken off for three days, were dingy. He had already gone to the bad,
+past redemption. The sight was shocking to Heyst; but he let nothing
+of it appear in his bearing, concealing his impression under that
+consummate good-society manner of his. Polite attention, what's due from
+one gentleman listening to another, was what he showed; and, as usual,
+it was catching; so that Morrison pulled himself together and finished
+his narrative in a conversational tone, with a man-of-the-world air.
+
+“It's a villainous plot. Unluckily, one is helpless. That scoundrel
+Cousinho--Andreas, you know--has been coveting the brig for years.
+Naturally, I would never sell. She is not only my livelihood; she's my
+life. So he has hatched this pretty little plot with the chief of the
+customs. The sale, of course, will be a farce. There's no one here to
+bid. He will get the brig for a song--no, not even that--a line of a
+song. You have been some years now in the islands, Heyst. You know us
+all; you have seen how we live. Now you shall have the opportunity
+to see how some of us end; for it is the end, for me. I can't deceive
+myself any longer. You see it--don't you?”
+
+Morrison had pulled himself together, but one felt the snapping strain
+on his recovered self-possession. Heyst was beginning to say that
+he “could very well see all the bearings of this unfortunate--” when
+Morrison interrupted him jerkily.
+
+“Upon my word, I don't know why I have been telling you all this. I
+suppose seeing a thoroughly white man made it impossible to keep my
+trouble to myself. Words can't do it justice; but since I've told you so
+much I may as well tell you more. Listen. This morning on board, in my
+cabin I went down on my knees and prayed for help. I went down on my
+knees!”
+
+“You are a believer, Morrison?” asked Heyst with a distinct note of
+respect.
+
+“Surely I am not an infidel.”
+
+Morrison was swiftly reproachful in his answer, and there came a pause,
+Morrison perhaps interrogating his conscience, and Heyst preserving a
+mien of unperturbed, polite interest.
+
+“I prayed like a child, of course. I believe in children praying--well,
+women, too, but I rather think God expects men to be more self-reliant.
+I don't hold with a man everlastingly bothering the Almighty with his
+silly troubles. It seems such cheek. Anyhow, this morning I--I have
+never done any harm to any God's creature knowingly--I prayed. A sudden
+impulse--I went flop on my knees; so you may judge--”
+
+They were gazing earnestly into each other's eyes. Poor Morrison added,
+as a discouraging afterthought:
+
+“Only this is such a God-forsaken spot.”
+
+Heyst inquired with a delicate intonation whether he might know the
+amount for which the brig was seized.
+
+Morrison suppressed an oath, and named curtly a sum which was in itself
+so insignificant that any other person than Heyst would have exclaimed
+at it. And even Heyst could hardly keep incredulity out of his politely
+modulated voice as he asked if it was a fact that Morrison had not that
+amount in hand.
+
+Morrison hadn't. He had only a little English gold, a few sovereigns, on
+board. He had left all his spare cash with the Tesmans, in Samarang, to
+meet certain bills which would fall due while he was away on his cruise.
+Anyhow, that money would not have been any more good to him than if it
+had been in the innermost depths of the infernal regions. He said all
+this brusquely. He looked with sudden disfavour at that noble forehead,
+at those great martial moustaches, at the tired eyes of the man sitting
+opposite him. Who the devil was he? What was he, Morrison, doing there,
+talking like this? Morrison knew no more of Heyst than the rest of us
+trading in the Archipelago did. Had the Swede suddenly risen and hit
+him on the nose, he could not have been taken more aback than when this
+stranger, this nondescript wanderer, said with a little bow across the
+table:
+
+“Oh! If that's the case I would be very happy if you'd allow me to be of
+use!”
+
+Morrison didn't understand. This was one of those things that don't
+happen--unheard of things. He had no real inkling of what it meant, till
+Heyst said definitely:
+
+“I can lend you the amount.”
+
+“You have the money?” whispered Morrison. “Do you mean here, in your
+pocket?”
+
+“Yes, on me. Glad to be of use.”
+
+Morrison, staring open-mouthed, groped over his shoulder for the cord of
+the eyeglass hanging down his back. When he found it, he stuck it in his
+eye hastily. It was as if he expected Heyst's usual white suit of the
+tropics to change into a shining garment, flowing down to his toes,
+and a pair of great dazzling wings to sprout out on the Swede's
+shoulders--and didn't want to miss a single detail of the
+transformation. But if Heyst was an angel from on high, sent in answer
+to prayer, he did not betray his heavenly origin by outward signs.
+So, instead of going on his knees, as he felt inclined to do, Morrison
+stretched out his hand, which Heyst grasped with formal alacrity and a
+polite murmur in which “Trifle--delighted--of service,” could just be
+distinguished.
+
+“Miracles do happen,” thought the awestruck Morrison. To him, as to
+all of us in the Islands, this wandering Heyst, who didn't toil or spin
+visibly, seemed the very last person to be the agent of Providence in
+an affair concerned with money. The fact of his turning up in Timor or
+anywhere else was no more wonderful than the settling of a sparrow on
+one's window-sill at any given moment. But that he should carry a sum of
+money in his pocket seemed somehow inconceivable.
+
+So inconceivable that as they were trudging together through the sand
+of the roadway to the custom-house--another mud hovel--to pay the
+fine, Morrison broke into a cold sweat, stopped short, and exclaimed in
+faltering accents:
+
+“I say! You aren't joking, Heyst?”
+
+“Joking!” Heyst's blue eyes went hard as he turned them on the
+discomposed Morrison. “In what way, may I ask?” he continued with
+austere politeness.
+
+Morrison was abashed.
+
+“Forgive me, Heyst. You must have been sent by God in answer to my
+prayer. But I have been nearly off my chump for three days with worry;
+and it suddenly struck me: 'What if it's the Devil who has sent him?'”
+
+“I have no connection with the supernatural,” said Heyst graciously,
+moving on. “Nobody has sent me. I just happened along.”
+
+“I know better,” contradicted Morrison. “I may be unworthy, but I have
+been heard. I know it. I feel it. For why should you offer--”
+
+Heyst inclined his head, as from respect for a conviction in which he
+could not share. But he stuck to his point by muttering that in the
+presence of an odious fact like this, it was natural--
+
+Later in the day, the fine paid, and the two of them on board the brig,
+from which the guard had been removed, Morrison who, besides, being a
+gentleman was also an honest fellow began to talk about repayment. He
+knew very well his inability to lay by any sum of money. It was partly
+the fault of circumstances and partly of his temperament; and it would
+have been very difficult to apportion the responsibility between the
+two. Even Morrison himself could not say, while confessing to the fact.
+With a worried air he ascribed it to fatality:
+
+“I don't know how it is that I've never been able to save. It's some
+sort of curse. There's always a bill or two to meet.”
+
+He plunged his hand into his pocket for the famous notebook so well
+known in the islands, the fetish of his hopes, and fluttered the pages
+feverishly.
+
+“And yet--look,” he went on. “There it is--more than five thousand
+dollars owing. Surely that's something.”
+
+He ceased suddenly. Heyst, who had been all the time trying to look
+as unconcerned as he could, made reassuring noises in his throat.
+But Morrison was not only honest. He was honourable, too; and on this
+stressful day, before this amazing emissary of Providence and in the
+revulsion of his feelings, he made his great renunciation. He cast off
+the abiding illusion of his existence.
+
+“No. No. They are not good. I'll never be able to squeeze them. Never.
+I've been saying for years I would, but I give it up. I never really
+believed I could. Don't reckon on that, Heyst. I have robbed you.”
+
+Poor Morrison actually laid his head on the cabin table, and remained
+in that crushed attitude while Heyst talked to him soothingly with the
+utmost courtesy. The Swede was as much distressed as Morrison; for he
+understood the other's feelings perfectly. No decent feeling was ever
+scorned by Heyst. But he was incapable of outward cordiality of manner,
+and he felt acutely his defect. Consummate politeness is not the right
+tonic for an emotional collapse. They must have had, both of them, a
+fairly painful time of it in the cabin of the brig. In the end Morrison,
+casting desperately for an idea in the blackness of his despondency,
+hit upon the notion of inviting Heyst to travel with him in his brig and
+have a share in his trading ventures up to the amount of his loan.
+
+It is characteristic of Heyst's unattached, floating existence that he
+was in a position to accept this proposal. There is no reason to think
+that he wanted particularly just then to go poking aboard the brig into
+all the holes and corners of the Archipelago where Morrison picked up
+most of his trade. Far from it; but he would have consented to almost
+any arrangement in order to put an end to the harrowing scene in the
+cabin. There was at once a great transformation act: Morrison raising
+his diminished head, and sticking the glass in his eye to look
+affectionately at Heyst, a bottle being uncorked, and so on. It was
+agreed that nothing should be said to anyone of this transaction.
+Morrison, you understand, was not proud of the episode, and he was
+afraid of being unmercifully chaffed.
+
+“An old bird like me! To let myself be trapped by those damned
+Portuguese rascals! I should never hear the last of it. We must keep it
+dark.”
+
+From quite other motives, among which his native delicacy was the
+principal, Heyst was even more anxious to bind himself to silence. A
+gentleman would naturally shrink from the part of heavenly messenger
+that Morrison would force upon him. It made Heyst uncomfortable, as it
+was. And perhaps he did not care that it should be known that he had
+some means, whatever they might have been--sufficient, at any rate, to
+enable him to lend money to people. These two had a duet down there,
+like conspirators in a comic opera, of “Sh--ssh, shssh! Secrecy!
+Secrecy!” It must have been funny, because they were very serious about
+it.
+
+And for a time the conspiracy was successful in so far that we all
+concluded that Heyst was boarding with the good-natured--some said:
+sponging on the imbecile--Morrison, in his brig. But you know how it
+is with all such mysteries. There is always a leak somewhere. Morrison
+himself, not a perfect vessel by any means, was bursting with gratitude,
+and under the stress he must have let out something vague--enough to
+give the island gossip a chance. And you know how kindly the world is
+in its comments on what it does not understand. A rumour sprang out that
+Heyst, having obtained some mysterious hold on Morrison, had fastened
+himself on him and was sucking him dry. Those who had traced these
+mutters back to their origin were very careful not to believe them. The
+originator, it seems, was a certain Schomberg, a big, manly, bearded
+creature of the Teutonic persuasion, with an ungovernable tongue which
+surely must have worked on a pivot. Whether he was a Lieutenant of the
+Reserve, as he declared, I don't know. Out there he was by profession a
+hotel-keeper, first in Bangkok, then somewhere else, and ultimately in
+Sourabaya. He dragged after him up and down that section of the tropical
+belt a silent, frightened, little woman with long ringlets, who smiled
+at one stupidly, showing a blue tooth. I don't know why so many of us
+patronized his various establishments. He was a noxious ass, and he
+satisfied his lust for silly gossip at the cost of his customers. It
+was he who, one evening, as Morrison and Heyst went past the hotel--they
+were not his regular patrons--whispered mysteriously to the mixed
+company assembled on the veranda:
+
+“The spider and the fly just gone by, gentlemen.” Then, very important
+and confidential, his thick paw at the side of his mouth: “We are among
+ourselves; well, gentlemen, all I can say is, don't you ever get mixed
+up with that Swede. Don't you ever get caught in his web.”
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THREE
+
+Human nature being what it is, having a silly side to it as well as
+a mean side, there were not a few who pretended to be indignant on no
+better authority than a general propensity to believe every evil report;
+and a good many others who found it simply funny to call Heyst the
+Spider--behind his back, of course. He was as serenely unconscious of
+this as of his several other nicknames. But soon people found other
+things to say of Heyst; not long afterwards he came very much to the
+fore in larger affairs. He blossomed out into something definite. He
+filled the public eye as the manager on the spot of the Tropical Belt
+Coal Company with offices in London and Amsterdam, and other things
+about it that sounded and looked grandiose. The offices in the two
+capitals may have consisted--and probably did--of one room in each;
+but at that distance, out East there, all this had an air. We were more
+puzzled than dazzled, it is true; but even the most sober-minded among
+us began to think that there was something in it. The Tesmans appointed
+agents, a contract for government mail-boats secured, the era of steam
+beginning for the islands--a great stride forward--Heyst's stride!
+
+And all this sprang from the meeting of the cornered Morrison and of the
+wandering Heyst, which may or may not have been the direct outcome of a
+prayer. Morrison was not an imbecile, but he seemed to have got himself
+into a state of remarkable haziness as to his exact position towards
+Heyst. For, if Heyst had been sent with money in his pocket by a direct
+decree of the Almighty in answer to Morrison's prayer then there was no
+reason for special gratitude, since obviously he could not help himself.
+But Morrison believed both, in the efficacy of prayer and in the
+infinite goodness of Heyst. He thanked God with awed sincerity for his
+mercy, and could not thank Heyst enough for the service rendered as
+between man and man. In this (highly creditable) tangle of strong
+feelings Morrison's gratitude insisted on Heyst's partnership in the
+great discovery. Ultimately we heard that Morrison had gone home through
+the Suez Canal in order to push the magnificent coal idea personally
+in London. He parted from his brig and disappeared from our ken; but
+we heard that he had written a letter or letters to Heyst, saying that
+London was cold and gloomy; that he did not like either the men or
+things, that he was “as lonely as a crow in a strange country.” In
+truth, he pined after the Capricorn--I don't mean only the tropic; I
+mean the ship too. Finally he went into Dorsetshire to see his people,
+caught a bad cold, and died with extraordinary precipitation in the
+bosom of his appalled family. Whether his exertions in the City of
+London had enfeebled his vitality I don't know; but I believe it was
+this visit which put life into the coal idea. Be it as it may, the
+Tropical Belt Coal Company was born very shortly after Morrison,
+the victim of gratitude and his native climate, had gone to join his
+forefathers in a Dorsetshire churchyard.
+
+Heyst was immensely shocked. He got the news in the Moluccas through the
+Tesmans, and then disappeared for a time. It appears that he stayed with
+a Dutch government doctor in Amboyna, a friend of his who looked after
+him for a bit in his bungalow. He became visible again rather suddenly,
+his eyes sunk in his head, and with a sort of guarded attitude, as if
+afraid someone would reproach him with the death of Morrison.
+
+Naive Heyst! As if anybody would . . . Nobody amongst us had any
+interest in men who went home. They were all right; they did not count
+any more. Going to Europe was nearly as final as going to Heaven. It
+removed a man from the world of hazard and adventure.
+
+As a matter of fact, many of us did not hear of this death till months
+afterwards--from Schomberg, who disliked Heyst gratuitously and made up
+a piece of sinister whispered gossip:
+
+“That's what comes of having anything to do with that fellow. He
+squeezes you dry like a lemon, then chucks you out--sends you home to
+die. Take warning by Morrison!”
+
+Of course, we laughed at the innkeeper's suggestions of black mystery.
+Several of us heard that Heyst was prepared to go to Europe himself,
+to push on his coal enterprise personally; but he never went. It wasn't
+necessary. The company was formed without him, and his nomination of
+manager in the tropics came out to him by post.
+
+From the first he had selected Samburan, or Round Island, for the
+central station. Some copies of the prospectus issued in Europe, having
+found their way out East, were passed from hand to hand. We greatly
+admired the map which accompanied them for the edification of the
+shareholders. On it Samburan was represented as the central spot of the
+Eastern Hemisphere with its name engraved in enormous capitals. Heavy
+lines radiated from it in all directions through the tropics, figuring a
+mysterious and effective star--lines of influence or lines of distance,
+or something of that sort. Company promoters have an imagination of
+their own. There's no more romantic temperament on earth than the
+temperament of a company promoter. Engineers came out, coolies were
+imported, bungalows were put up on Samburan, a gallery driven into the
+hillside, and actually some coal got out.
+
+These manifestations shook the soberest minds. For a time everybody in
+the islands was talking of the Tropical Belt Coal, and even those who
+smiled quietly to themselves were only hiding their uneasiness. Oh, yes;
+it had come, and anybody could see what would be the consequences--the
+end of the individual trader, smothered under a great invasion of
+steamers. We could not afford to buy steamers. Not we. And Heyst was the
+manager.
+
+“You know, Heyst, enchanted Heyst.”
+
+“Oh, come! He has been no better than a loafer around here as far back
+as any of us can remember.”
+
+“Yes, he said he was looking for facts. Well, he's got hold of one that
+will do for all of us,” commented a bitter voice.
+
+“That's what they call development--and be hanged to it!” muttered
+another.
+
+Never was Heyst talked about so much in the tropical belt before.
+
+“Isn't he a Swedish baron or something?”
+
+“He, a baron? Get along with you!”
+
+For my part I haven't the slightest doubt that he was. While he was
+still drifting amongst the islands, enigmatical and disregarded like an
+insignificant ghost, he told me so himself on a certain occasion. It
+was a long time before he materialized in this alarming way into the
+destroyer of our little industry--Heyst the Enemy.
+
+It became the fashion with a good many to speak of Heyst as the Enemy.
+He was very concrete, very visible now. He was rushing all over the
+Archipelago, jumping in and out of local mail-packets as if they had
+been tram-cars, here, there, and everywhere--organizing with all his
+might. This was no mooning about. This was business. And this sudden
+display of purposeful energy shook the incredulity of the most
+sceptical more than any scientific demonstration of the value of these
+coal-outcrops could have done. It was impressive. Schomberg was the
+only one who resisted the infection. Big, manly in a portly style,
+and profusely bearded, with a glass of beer in his thick paw, he would
+approach some table where the topic of the hour was being discussed,
+would listen for a moment, and then come out with his invariable
+declaration:
+
+“All this is very well, gentlemen; but he can't throw any of his
+coal-dust in my eyes. There's nothing in it. Why, there can't be
+anything in it. A fellow like that for manager? Phoo!”
+
+Was it the clairvoyance of imbecile hatred, or mere stupid tenacity of
+opinion, which ends sometimes by scoring against the world in a most
+astonishing manner? Most of us can remember instances of triumphant
+folly; and that ass Schomberg triumphed. The T.B.C. Company went into
+liquidation, as I began by telling you. The Tesmans washed their hands
+of it. The Government cancelled those famous contracts, the talk died
+out, and presently it was remarked here and there that Heyst had faded
+completely away. He had become invisible, as in those early days when
+he used to make a bolt clear out of sight in his attempts to break away
+from the enchantment of “these isles,” either in the direction of New
+Guinea or in the direction of Saigon--to cannibals or to cafes. The
+enchanted Heyst! Had he at last broken the spell? Had he died? We were
+too indifferent to wonder overmuch. You see we had on the whole liked
+him well enough. And liking is not sufficient to keep going the interest
+one takes in a human being. With hatred, apparently, it is otherwise.
+Schomberg couldn't forget Heyst. The keen, manly Teutonic creature was a
+good hater. A fool often is.
+
+“Good evening, gentlemen. Have you got everything you want? So! Good!
+You see? What was I always telling you? Aha! There was nothing in it. I
+knew it. But what I would like to know is what became of that--Swede.”
+
+He put a stress on the word Swede as if it meant scoundrel. He detested
+Scandinavians generally. Why? Goodness only knows. A fool like that is
+unfathomable. He continued:
+
+“It's five months or more since I have spoken to anybody who has seen
+him.”
+
+As I have said, we were not much interested; but Schomberg, of course,
+could not understand that. He was grotesquely dense. Whenever three
+people came together in his hotel, he took good care that Heyst should
+be with them.
+
+“I hope the fellow did not go and drown himself,” he would add with a
+comical earnestness that ought to have made us shudder; only our crowd
+was superficial, and did not apprehend the psychology of this pious
+hope.
+
+“Why? Heyst isn't in debt to you for drinks is he?” somebody asked him
+once with shallow scorn.
+
+“Drinks! Oh, dear no!”
+
+The innkeeper was not mercenary. Teutonic temperament seldom is. But he
+put on a sinister expression to tell us that Heyst had not paid perhaps
+three visits altogether to his “establishment.” This was Heyst's crime,
+for which Schomberg wished him nothing less than a long and tormented
+existence. Observe the Teutonic sense of proportion and nice forgiving
+temper.
+
+At last, one afternoon, Schomberg was seen approaching a group of his
+customers. He was obviously in high glee. He squared his manly chest
+with great importance.
+
+“Gentlemen, I have news of him. Who? why, that Swede. He is still
+on Samburan. He's never been away from it. The company is gone,
+the engineers are gone, the clerks are gone, the coolies are gone,
+everything's gone; but there he sticks. Captain Davidson, coming by from
+the westward, saw him with his own eyes. Something white on the wharf,
+so he steamed in and went ashore in a small boat. Heyst, right enough.
+Put a book into his pocket, always very polite. Been strolling on
+the wharf and reading. 'I remain in possession here,' he told Captain
+Davidson. What I want to know is what he gets to eat there. A piece of
+dried fish now and then--what? That's coming down pretty low for a man
+who turned up his nose at my table d'hote!”
+
+He winked with immense malice. A bell started ringing, and he led the
+way to the dining-room as if into a temple, very grave, with the air
+of a benefactor of mankind. His ambition was to feed it at a profitable
+price, and his delight was to talk of it behind its back. It was very
+characteristic of him to gloat over the idea of Heyst having nothing
+decent to eat.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FOUR
+
+A few of us who were sufficiently interested went to Davidson for
+details. These were not many. He told us that he passed to the north of
+Samburan on purpose to see what was going on. At first, it looked as if
+that side of the island had been altogether abandoned. This was what he
+expected. Presently, above the dense mass of vegetation that Samburan
+presents to view, he saw the head of the flagstaff without a flag. Then,
+while steaming across the slight indentation which for a time was known
+officially as Black Diamond Bay, he made out with his glass the white
+figure on the coaling-wharf. It could be no one but Heyst.
+
+“I thought for certain he wanted to be taken off, so I steamed in. He
+made no signs. However, I lowered a boat. I could not see another living
+being anywhere. Yes. He had a book in his hand. He looked exactly as we
+have always seen him--very neat, white shoes, cork helmet. He explained
+to me that he had always had a taste for solitude. It was the first I
+ever heard of it, I told him. He only smiled. What could I say? He isn't
+the sort of man one can speak familiarly to. There's something in him.
+One doesn't care to.
+
+“'But what's the object? Are you thinking of keeping possession of the
+mine?' I asked him.
+
+“'Something of the sort,' he says. 'I am keeping hold.'
+
+“'But all this is as dead as Julius Caesar,' I cried. 'In fact, you have
+nothing worth holding on to, Heyst.'
+
+“'Oh, I am done with facts,' says he, putting his hand to his helmet
+sharply with one of his short bows.”
+
+Thus dismissed, Davidson went on board his ship, swung her out, and as
+he was steaming away he watched from the bridge Heyst walking shoreward
+along the wharf. He marched into the long grass and vanished--all but
+the top of his white cork helmet, which seemed to swim in a green sea.
+Then that too disappeared, as if it had sunk into the living depths of
+the tropical vegetation, which is more jealous of men's conquests than
+the ocean, and which was about to close over the last vestiges of the
+liquidated Tropical Belt Coal Company--A. Heyst, manager in the East.
+
+Davidson, a good, simple fellow in his way, was strangely affected. It
+is to be noted that he knew very little of Heyst. He was one of those
+whom Heyst's finished courtesy of attitude and intonation most strongly
+disconcerted. He himself was a fellow of fine feeling, I think, though
+of course he had no more polish than the rest of us. We were naturally
+a hail-fellow-well-met crowd, with standards of our own--no worse, I
+daresay, than other people's; but polish was not one of them. Davidson's
+fineness was real enough to alter the course of the steamer he
+commanded. Instead of passing to the south of Samburan, he made it his
+practice to take the passage along the north shore, within about a mile
+of the wharf.
+
+“He can see us if he likes to see us,” remarked Davidson. Then he had an
+afterthought: “I say! I hope he won't think I am intruding, eh?”
+
+We reassured him on the point of correct behaviour. The sea is open to
+all.
+
+This slight deviation added some ten miles to Davidson's round trip, but
+as that was sixteen hundred miles it did not matter much.
+
+“I have told my owner of it,” said the conscientious commander of the
+Sissie.
+
+His owner had a face like an ancient lemon. He was small and
+wizened--which was strange, because generally a Chinaman, as he grows in
+prosperity, puts on inches of girth and stature. To serve a Chinese firm
+is not so bad. Once they become convinced you deal straight by them,
+their confidence becomes unlimited. You can do no wrong. So Davidson's
+old Chinaman squeaked hurriedly:
+
+“All right, all right, all right. You do what you like, captain--”
+
+And there was an end of the matter; not altogether, though. From time to
+time the Chinaman used to ask Davidson about the white man. He was still
+there, eh?
+
+“I never see him,” Davidson had to confess to his owner, who would peer
+at him silently through round, horn-rimmed spectacles, several sizes too
+large for his little old face. “I never see him.”
+
+To me, on occasions he would say:
+
+“I haven't a doubt he's there. He hides. It's very unpleasant.” Davidson
+was a little vexed with Heyst. “Funny thing,” he went on. “Of all the
+people I speak to, nobody ever asks after him but that Chinaman of
+mine--and Schomberg,” he added after a while.
+
+Yes, Schomberg, of course. He was asking everybody about everything, and
+arranging the information into the most scandalous shape his imagination
+could invent. From time to time he would step up, his blinking,
+cushioned eyes, his thick lips, his very chestnut beard, looking full of
+malice.
+
+“Evening, gentlemen. Have you got all you want? So! Good! Well, I am
+told the jungle has choked the very sheds in Black Diamond Bay. Fact.
+He's a hermit in the wilderness now. But what can this manager get to
+eat there? It beats me.”
+
+Sometimes a stranger would inquire with natural curiosity:
+
+“Who? What manager?”
+
+“Oh, a certain Swede,”--with a sinister emphasis, as if he were saying
+“a certain brigand.” “Well known here. He's turned hermit from shame.
+That's what the devil does when he's found out.”
+
+Hermit. This was the latest of the more or less witty labels applied
+to Heyst during his aimless pilgrimage in this section of the tropical
+belt, where the inane clacking of Schomberg's tongue vexed our ears.
+
+But apparently Heyst was not a hermit by temperament. The sight of his
+land was not invincibly odious to him. We must believe this, since
+for some reason or other he did come out from his retreat for a while.
+Perhaps it was only to see whether there were any letters for him at the
+Tesmans. I don't know. No one knows. But this reappearance shows that
+his detachment from the world was not complete. And incompleteness of
+any sort leads to trouble. Axel Heyst ought not to have cared for his
+letters--or whatever it was that brought him out after something more
+than a year and a half in Samburan. But it was of no use. He had not the
+hermit's vocation! That was the trouble, it seems.
+
+Be this as it may, he suddenly reappeared in the world, broad chest,
+bald forehead, long moustaches, polite manner, and all--the complete
+Heyst, even to the kindly sunken eyes on which there still rested the
+shadow of Morrison's death. Naturally, it was Davidson who had given him
+a lift out of his forsaken island. There were no other opportunities,
+unless some native craft were passing by--a very remote and
+unsatisfactory chance to wait for. Yes, he came out with Davidson, to
+whom he volunteered the statement that it was only for a short time--a
+few days, no more. He meant to go back to Samburan.
+
+Davidson expressing his horror and incredulity of such foolishness,
+Heyst explained that when the company came into being he had his few
+belongings sent out from Europe.
+
+To Davidson, as to any of us, the idea of Heyst, the wandering drifting,
+unattached Heyst, having any belongings of the sort that can furnish a
+house was startlingly novel. It was grotesquely fantastic. It was like a
+bird owning real property.
+
+“Belongings? Do you mean chairs and tables?” Davidson asked with
+unconcealed astonishment.
+
+Heyst did mean that. “My poor father died in London. It has been all
+stored there ever since,” he explained.
+
+“For all these years?” exclaimed Davidson, thinking how long we all had
+known Heyst flitting from tree to tree in a wilderness.
+
+“Even longer,” said Heyst, who had understood very well.
+
+This seemed to imply that he had been wandering before he came under our
+observation. In what regions? And what early age? Mystery. Perhaps he
+was a bird that had never had a nest.
+
+“I left school early,” he remarked once to Davidson, on the passage. “It
+was in England. A very good school. I was not a shining success there.”
+
+The confessions of Heyst. Not one of us--with the probable exception of
+Morrison, who was dead--had ever heard so much of his history. It
+looks as if the experience of hermit life had the power to loosen one's
+tongue, doesn't it?
+
+During that memorable passage, in the Sissie, which took about two days,
+he volunteered other hints--for you could not call it information--about
+his history. And Davidson was interested. He was interested not because
+the hints were exciting but because of that innate curiosity about our
+fellows which is a trait of human nature. Davidson's existence, too,
+running the Sissie along the Java Sea and back again, was distinctly
+monotonous and, in a sense, lonely. He never had any sort of company on
+board. Native deck-passengers in plenty, of course, but never a white
+man, so the presence of Heyst for two days must have been a godsend.
+Davidson was telling us all about it afterwards. Heyst said that his
+father had written a lot of books. He was a philosopher.
+
+“Seems to me he must have been something of a crank, too,” was
+Davidson's comment. “Apparently he had quarrelled with his people in
+Sweden. Just the sort of father you would expect Heyst to have. Isn't
+he a bit of a crank himself? He told me that directly his father died he
+lit out into the wide world on his own, and had been on the move till he
+fetched up against this famous coal business. Fits the son of the father
+somehow, don't you think?”
+
+For the rest, Heyst was as polite as ever. He offered to pay for his
+passage; but when Davidson refused to hear of it he seized him heartily
+by the hand, gave one of his courtly bows, and declared that he was
+touched by his friendly proceedings.
+
+“I am not alluding to this trifling amount which you decline to take,”
+ he went on, giving a shake to Davidson's hand. “But I am touched by your
+humanity.” Another shake. “Believe me, I am profoundly aware of having
+been an object of it.” Final shake of the hand. All this meant that
+Heyst understood in a proper sense the little Sissie's periodic
+appearance in sight of his hermitage.
+
+“He's a genuine gentleman,” Davidson said to us. “I was really sorry
+when he went ashore.”
+
+We asked him where he had left Heyst.
+
+“Why, in Sourabaya--where else?”
+
+The Tesmans had their principal counting-house in Sourabaya. There had
+long existed a connection between Heyst and the Tesmans. The incongruity
+of a hermit having agents did not strike us, nor yet the absurdity of a
+forgotten cast-off, derelict manager of a wrecked, collapsed, vanished
+enterprise, having business to attend to. We said Sourabaya, of course,
+and took it for granted that he would stay with one of the Tesmans.
+One of us even wondered what sort of reception he would get; for it was
+known that Julius Tesman was unreasonably bitter about the Tropical
+Belt Coal fiasco. But Davidson set us right. It was nothing of the
+kind. Heyst went to stay in Schomberg's hotel, going ashore in the hotel
+launch. Not that Schomberg would think of sending his launch alongside
+a mere trader like the Sissie. But she had been meeting a coasting
+mail-packet, and had been signalled to. Schomberg himself was steering
+her.
+
+“You should have seen Schomberg's eyes bulge out when Heyst jumped in
+with an ancient brown leather bag!” said Davidson. “He pretended not
+to know who it was--at first, anyway. I didn't go ashore with them. We
+didn't stay more than a couple of hours altogether. Landed two thousand
+coconuts and cleared out. I have agreed to pick him up again on my next
+trip in twenty days' time.”
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FIVE
+
+Davidson happened to be two days late on his return trip; no great
+matter, certainly, but he made a point of going ashore at once, during
+the hottest hour of the afternoon, to look for Heyst. Schomberg's hotel
+stood back in an extensive enclosure containing a garden, some large
+trees, and, under their spreading boughs, a detached “hall available
+for concerts and other performances,” as Schomberg worded it in his
+advertisements. Torn, and fluttering bills, intimating in heavy red
+capitals CONCERTS EVERY NIGHT, were stuck on the brick pillars on each
+side of the gateway.
+
+The walk had been long and confoundedly sunny. Davidson stood wiping his
+wet neck and face on what Schomberg called “the piazza.” Several doors
+opened on to it, but all the screens were down. Not a soul was in sight,
+not even a China boy--nothing but a lot of painted iron chairs and
+tables. Solitude, shade, and gloomy silence--and a faint, treacherous
+breeze which came from under the trees and quite unexpectedly caused the
+melting Davidson to shiver slightly--the little shiver of the tropics
+which in Sourabaya, especially, often means fever and the hospital to
+the incautious white man.
+
+The prudent Davidson sought shelter in the nearest darkened room. In the
+artificial dusk, beyond the levels of shrouded billiard-tables, a white
+form heaved up from two chairs on which it had been extended. The middle
+of the day, table d'hote tiffin once over, was Schomberg's easy time. He
+lounged out, portly, deliberate, on the defensive, the great fair beard
+like a cuirass over his manly chest. He did not like Davidson, never a
+very faithful client of his. He hit a bell on one of the tables as he
+went by, and asked in a distant, Officer-in-Reserve manner:
+
+“You desire?”
+
+The good Davidson, still sponging his wet neck, declared with simplicity
+that he had come to fetch away Heyst, as agreed.
+
+“Not here!”
+
+A Chinaman appeared in response to the bell. Schomberg turned to him
+very severely:
+
+“Take the gentleman's order.”
+
+Davidson had to be going. Couldn't wait--only begged that Heyst should
+be informed that the Sissie would leave at midnight.
+
+“Not--here, I am telling you!”
+
+Davidson slapped his thigh in concern.
+
+“Dear me! Hospital, I suppose.” A natural enough surmise in a very
+feverish locality.
+
+The Lieutenant of the Reserve only pursed up his mouth and raised his
+eyebrows without looking at him. It might have meant anything, but
+Davidson dismissed the hospital idea with confidence. However, he had to
+get hold of Heyst between this and midnight:
+
+“He has been staying here?” he asked.
+
+“Yes, he was staying here.”
+
+“Can you tell me where he is now?” Davidson went on placidly. Within
+himself he was beginning to grow anxious, having developed the affection
+of a self-appointed protector towards Heyst. The answer he got was:
+
+“Can't tell. It's none of my business,” accompanied by majestic
+oscillations of the hotel-keeper's head, hinting at some awful mystery.
+
+Davidson was placidity itself. It was his nature. He did not betray his
+sentiments, which were not favourable to Schomberg.
+
+“I am sure to find out at the Tesmans' office,” he thought. But it was
+a very hot hour, and if Heyst was down at the port he would have learned
+already that the Sissie was in. It was even possible that Heyst had
+already gone on board, where he could enjoy a coolness denied to the
+town. Davidson, being stout, was much preoccupied with coolness and
+inclined to immobility. He lingered awhile, as if irresolute. Schomberg,
+at the door, looking out, affected perfect indifference. He could not
+keep it up, though. Suddenly he turned inward and asked with brusque
+rage:
+
+“You wanted to see him?”
+
+“Why, yes,” said Davidson. “We agreed to meet--”
+
+“Don't you bother. He doesn't care about that now.”
+
+“Doesn't he?”
+
+“Well, you can judge for yourself. He isn't here, is he? You take my
+word for it. Don't you bother about him. I am advising you as a friend.”
+
+“Thank you,” said, Davidson, inwardly startled at the savage tone. “I
+think I will sit down for a moment and have a drink, after all.”
+
+This was not what Schomberg had expected to hear. He called brutally:
+
+“Boy!”
+
+The Chinaman approached, and after referring him to the white man by a
+nod the hotel-keeper departed, muttering to himself. Davidson heard him
+gnash his teeth as he went.
+
+Davidson sat alone with the billiard-tables as if there had been not a
+soul staying in the hotel. His placidity was so genuine that he was not
+unduly, fretting himself over the absence of Heyst, or the mysterious
+manners Schomberg had treated him to. He was considering these things in
+his own fairly shrewd way. Something had happened; and he was loath to
+go away to investigate, being restrained by a presentiment that somehow
+enlightenment would come to him there. A poster of CONCERTS EVERY
+EVENING, like those on the gate, but in a good state of preservation,
+hung on the wall fronting him. He looked at it idly and was struck by
+the fact--then not so very common--that it was a ladies' orchestra;
+“Zangiacomo's eastern tour--eighteen performers.” The poster stated
+that they had had the honour of playing their select repertoire before
+various colonial excellencies, also before pashas, sheiks, chiefs, H. H.
+the Sultan of Mascate, etc., etc.
+
+Davidson felt sorry for the eighteen lady-performers. He knew what that
+sort of life was like, the sordid conditions and brutal incidents of
+such tours led by such Zangiacomos who often were anything but musicians
+by profession. While he was staring at the poster, a door somewhere at
+his back opened, and a woman came in who was looked upon as Schomberg's
+wife, no doubt with truth. As somebody remarked cynically once, she was
+too unattractive to be anything else. The opinion that he treated her
+abominably was based on her frightened expression. Davidson lifted his
+hat to her. Mrs. Schomberg gave him an inclination of her sallow head
+and incontinently sat down behind a sort of raised counter, facing the
+door, with a mirror and rows of bottles at her back. Her hair was very
+elaborately done with two ringlets on the left side of her scraggy neck;
+her dress was of silk, and she had come on duty for the afternoon. For
+some reason or other Schomberg exacted this from her, though she added
+nothing to the fascinations of the place. She sat there in the smoke and
+noise, like an enthroned idol, smiling stupidly over the billiards from
+time to time, speaking to no one, and no one speaking to her. Schomberg
+himself took no more interest in her than may be implied in a sudden
+and totally unmotived scowl. Otherwise the very Chinamen ignored her
+existence.
+
+She had interrupted Davidson in his reflections. Being alone with her,
+her silence and open-eyed immobility made him uncomfortable. He was
+easily sorry for people. It seemed rude not to take any notice of her.
+He said, in allusion to the poster:
+
+“Are you having these people in the house?”
+
+She was so unused to being addressed by customers that at the sound of
+his voice she jumped in her seat. Davidson was telling us afterwards
+that she jumped exactly like a figure made of wood, without losing her
+rigid immobility. She did not even move her eyes; but she answered him
+freely, though her very lips seemed made of wood.
+
+“They stayed here over a month. They are gone now. They played every
+evening.”
+
+“Pretty good, were they?”
+
+To this she said nothing; and as she kept on staring fixedly in front
+of her, her silence disconcerted Davidson. It looked as if she had not
+heard him--which was impossible. Perhaps she drew the line of speech
+at the expression of opinions. Schomberg might have trained her, for
+domestic reasons, to keep them to herself. But Davidson felt in honour
+obliged to converse; so he said, putting his own interpretation on this
+surprising silence:
+
+“I see--not much account. Such bands hardly ever are. An Italian lot,
+Mrs. Schomberg, to judge by the name of the boss?”
+
+She shook her head negatively.
+
+“No. He is a German really; only he dyes his hair and beard black for
+business. Zangiacomo is his business name.”
+
+“That's a curious fact,” said Davidson. His head being full of Heyst, it
+occurred to him that she might be aware of other facts. This was a very
+amazing discovery to anyone who looked at Mrs. Schomberg. Nobody had
+ever suspected her of having a mind. I mean even a little of it, I mean
+any at all. One was inclined to think of her as an It--an automaton, a
+very plain dummy, with an arrangement for bowing the head at times
+and smiling stupidly now and then. Davidson viewed her profile with a
+flattened nose, a hollow cheek, and one staring, unwinking, goggle eye.
+He asked himself: Did that speak just now? Will it speak again? It was
+as exciting, for the mere wonder of it, as trying to converse with a
+mechanism. A smile played about the fat features of Davidson; the smile
+of a man making an amusing experiment. He spoke again to her:
+
+“But the other members of that orchestra were real Italians, were they
+not?”
+
+Of course, he didn't care. He wanted to see whether the mechanism would
+work again. It did. It said they were not. They were of all sorts,
+apparently. It paused, with the one goggle eye immovably gazing down
+the whole length of the room and through the door opening on to the
+“piazza.” It paused, then went on in the same low pitch:
+
+“There was even one English girl.”
+
+“Poor devil!”--said Davidson, “I suppose these women are not much better
+than slaves really. Was that fellow with the dyed beard decent in his
+way?”
+
+The mechanism remained silent. The sympathetic soul of Davidson drew its
+own conclusions.
+
+“Beastly life for these women!” he said. “When you say an English girl,
+Mrs. Schomberg, do you really mean a young girl? Some of these orchestra
+girls are no chicks.”
+
+“Young enough,” came the low voice out of Mrs. Schomberg's unmoved
+physiognomy.
+
+Davidson, encouraged, remarked that he was sorry for her. He was easily
+sorry for people.
+
+“Where did they go to from here?” he asked.
+
+“She did not go with them. She ran away.”
+
+This was the pronouncement Davidson obtained next. It introduced a new
+sort of interest.
+
+“Well! Well!” he exclaimed placidly; and then, with the air of a man who
+knows life: “Who with?” he inquired with assurance.
+
+Mrs. Schomberg's immobility gave her an appearance of listening
+intently. Perhaps she was really listening; but Schomberg must have been
+finishing his sleep in some distant part of the house. The silence was
+profound, and lasted long enough to become startling. Then, enthroned
+above Davidson, she whispered at last:
+
+“That friend of yours.”
+
+“Oh, you know I am here looking for a friend,” said Davidson hopefully.
+“Won't you tell me--”
+
+“I've told you”
+
+“Eh?”
+
+A mist seemed to roll away from before Davidson's eyes, disclosing
+something he could not believe.
+
+“You can't mean it!” he cried. “He's not the man for it.” But the last
+words came out in a faint voice. Mrs. Schomberg never moved her head the
+least bit. Davidson, after the shock which made him sit up, went slack
+all over.
+
+“Heyst! Such a perfect gentleman!” he exclaimed weakly.
+
+Mrs. Schomberg did not seem to have heard him. This startling fact did
+not tally somehow with the idea Davidson had of Heyst. He never talked
+of women, he never seemed to think of them, or to remember that they
+existed; and then all at once--like this! Running off with a casual
+orchestra girl!
+
+“You might have knocked me down with a feather,” Davidson told us some
+time afterwards.
+
+By then he was taking an indulgent view of both the parties to that
+amazing transaction. First of all, on reflection, he was by no means
+certain that it prevented Heyst from being a perfect gentleman, as
+before. He confronted our open grins or quiet smiles with a serious
+round face. Heyst had taken the girl away to Samburan; and that was
+no joking matter. The loneliness, the ruins of the spot, had impressed
+Davidson's simple soul. They were incompatible with the frivolous
+comments of people who had not seen it. That black jetty, sticking out
+of the jungle into the empty sea; these roof-ridges of deserted houses
+peeping dismally above the long grass! Ough! The gigantic and funereal
+blackboard sign of the Tropical Belt Coal Company, still emerging from a
+wild growth of bushes like an inscription stuck above a grave figured by
+the tall heap of unsold coal at the shore end of the wharf, added to the
+general desolation.
+
+Thus was the sensitive Davidson. The girl must have been miserable
+indeed to follow such a strange man to such a spot. Heyst had, no doubt,
+told her the truth. He was a gentleman. But no words could do justice to
+the conditions of life on Samburan. A desert island was nothing to it.
+Moreover, when you were cast away on a desert island--why, you could not
+help yourself; but to expect a fiddle-playing girl out of an ambulant
+ladies' orchestra to remain content there for a day, for one single day,
+was inconceivable. She would be frightened at the first sight of it. She
+would scream.
+
+The capacity for sympathy in these stout, placid men! Davidson was
+stirred to the depths; and it was easy to see that it was about Heyst
+that he was concerned. We asked him if he had passed that way lately.
+
+“Oh, yes. I always do--about half a mile off.”
+
+“Seen anybody about?”
+
+“No, not a soul. Not a shadow.”
+
+“Did you blow your whistle?”
+
+“Blow the whistle? You think I would do such a thing?”
+
+He rejected the mere possibility of such an unwarrantable intrusion.
+Wonderfully delicate fellow, Davidson!
+
+“Well, but how do you know that they are there?” he was naturally asked.
+
+Heyst had entrusted Mrs. Schomberg with a message for Davidson--a few
+lines in pencil on a scrap of crumpled paper. It was to the effect: that
+an unforeseen necessity was driving him away before the appointed time.
+He begged Davidson's indulgence for the apparent discourtesy. The woman
+of the house--meaning Mrs. Schomberg--would give him the facts, though
+unable to explain them, of course.
+
+“What was there to explain?” wondered Davidson dubiously.
+
+“He took a fancy to that fiddle-playing girl, and--”
+
+“And she to him, apparently,” I suggested.
+
+“Wonderfully quick work,” reflected Davidson. “What do you think will
+come of it?”
+
+“Repentance, I should say. But how is it that Mrs. Schomberg has been
+selected for a confidante?”
+
+For indeed a waxwork figure would have seemed more useful than that
+woman whom we all were accustomed to see sitting elevated above the two
+billiard-tables--without expression, without movement, without voice,
+without sight.
+
+“Why, she helped the girl to bolt,” said Davidson turning at me his
+innocent eyes, rounded by the state of constant amazement in which
+this affair had left him, like those shocks of terror or sorrow which
+sometimes leave their victim afflicted by nervous trembling. It looked
+as though he would never get over it.
+
+“Mrs. Schomberg jerked Heyst's note, twisted like a pipe-light, into my
+lap while I sat there unsuspecting,” Davidson went on. “Directly I had
+recovered my senses, I asked her what on earth she had to do with it
+that Heyst should leave it with her. And then, behaving like a painted
+image rather than a live woman, she whispered, just loud enough for me
+to hear:
+
+“I helped them. I got her things together, tied them up in my own shawl,
+and threw them into the compound out of a back window. I did it.”
+
+“That woman that you would say hadn't the pluck to lift her little
+finger!” marvelled Davidson in his quiet, slightly panting voice. “What
+do you think of that?”
+
+I thought she must have had some interest of her own to serve. She was
+too lifeless to be suspected of impulsive compassion. It was impossible
+to think that Heyst had bribed her. Whatever means he had, he had
+not the means to do that. Or could it be that she was moved by
+that disinterested passion for delivering a woman to a man which in
+respectable spheres is called matchmaking?--a highly irregular example
+of it!
+
+“It must have been a very small bundle,” remarked Davidson further.
+
+“I imagine the girl must have been specially attractive,” I said.
+
+“I don't know. She was miserable. I don't suppose it was more than
+a little linen and a couple of those white frocks they wear on the
+platform.”
+
+Davidson pursued his own train of thought. He supposed that such a thing
+had never been heard of in the history of the tropics. For where could
+you find anyone to steal a girl out of an orchestra? No doubt fellows
+here and there took a fancy to some pretty one--but it was not for
+running away with her. Oh dear no! It needed a lunatic like Heyst.
+
+“Only think what it means,” wheezed Davidson, imaginative under his
+invincible placidity. “Just only try to think! Brooding alone on
+Samburan has upset his brain. He never stopped to consider, or he
+couldn't have done it. No sane man . . . How is a thing like that to go
+on? What's he going to do with her in the end? It's madness.”
+
+“You say that he's mad. Schomberg tells us that he must be starving on
+his island; so he may end yet by eating her,” I suggested.
+
+Mrs. Schomberg had had no time to enter into details, Davidson told us.
+Indeed, the wonder was that they had been left alone so long. The
+drowsy afternoon was slipping by. Footsteps and voices resounded on the
+veranda--I beg pardon, the piazza; the scraping of chairs, the ping of
+a smitten bell. Customers were turning up. Mrs. Schomberg was begging
+Davidson hurriedly, but without looking at him, to say nothing to
+anyone, when on a half-uttered word her nervous whisper was cut short.
+Through a small inner door Schomberg came in, his hair brushed, his
+beard combed neatly, but his eyelids still heavy from his nap. He looked
+with suspicion at Davidson, and even glanced at his wife; but he was
+baffled by the natural placidity of the one and the acquired habit of
+immobility in the other.
+
+“Have you sent out the drinks?” he asked surlily.
+
+She did not open her lips, because just then the head boy appeared with
+a loaded tray, on his way out. Schomberg went to the door and greeted
+the customers outside, but did not join them. He remained blocking
+half the doorway, with his back to the room, and was still there when
+Davidson, after sitting still for a while, rose to go. At the noise
+he made Schomberg turned his head, watched him lift his hat to Mrs.
+Schomberg and receive her wooden bow accompanied by a stupid grin, and
+then looked away. He was loftily dignified. Davidson stopped at the
+door, deep in his simplicity.
+
+“I am sorry you won't tell me anything about my friend's absence,” he
+said. “My friend Heyst, you know. I suppose the only course for me now
+is to make inquiries down at the port. I shall hear something there, I
+don't doubt.”
+
+“Make inquiries of the devil!” replied Schomberg in a hoarse mutter.
+
+Davidson's purpose in addressing the hotel-keeper had been mainly to
+make Mrs. Schomberg safe from suspicion; but he would fain have heard
+something more of Heyst's exploit from another point of view. It was
+a shrewd try. It was successful in a rather startling way, because the
+hotel-keeper's point of view was horribly abusive. All of a sudden, in
+the same hoarse sinister tone, he proceeded to call Heyst many names, of
+which “pig-dog” was not the worst, with such vehemence that he actually
+choked himself. Profiting from the pause, Davidson, whose temperament
+could withstand worse shocks, remonstrated in an undertone:
+
+“It's unreasonable to get so angry as that. Even if he had run off with
+your cash-box--”
+
+The big hotel-keeper bent down and put his infuriated face close to
+Davidson's.
+
+“My cash-box! My--he--look here, Captain Davidson! He ran off with a
+girl. What do I care for the girl? The girl is nothing to me.”
+
+He shot out an infamous word which made Davidson start. That's what the
+girl was; and he reiterated the assertion that she was nothing to him.
+What he was concerned for was the good name of his house. Wherever he
+had been established, he had always had “artist parties” staying in his
+house. One recommended him to the others; but what would happen now,
+when it got about that leaders ran the risk in his house--his house--of
+losing members of their troupe? And just now, when he had spent seven
+hundred and thirty-four guilders in building a concert-hall in his
+compound. Was that a thing to do in a respectable hotel? The cheek, the
+indecency, the impudence, the atrocity! Vagabond, impostor, swindler,
+ruffian, schwein-hund!
+
+He had seized Davidson by a button of his coat, detaining him in
+the doorway, and exactly in the line of Mrs. Schomberg's stony gaze.
+Davidson stole a glance in that direction and thought of making some
+sort of reassuring sign to her, but she looked so bereft of senses, and
+almost of life, perched up there, that it seemed not worth while.
+He disengaged his button with firm placidity. Thereupon, with a last
+stifled curse, Schomberg vanished somewhere within, to try and compose
+his spirits in solitude. Davidson stepped out on the veranda. The party
+of customers there had become aware of the explosive interlude in the
+doorway. Davidson knew one of these men, and nodded to him in passing;
+but his acquaintance called out:
+
+“Isn't he in a filthy temper? He's been like that ever since.”
+
+The speaker laughed aloud, while all the others sat smiling. Davidson
+stopped.
+
+“Yes, rather.” His feelings were, he told us, those of bewildered
+resignation; but of course that was no more visible to the others than
+the emotions of a turtle when it withdraws into its shell.
+
+“It seems unreasonable,” he murmured thoughtfully.
+
+“Oh, but they had a scrap!” the other said.
+
+“What do you mean? Was there a fight!--a fight with Heyst?” asked
+Davidson, much perturbed, if somewhat incredulous.
+
+“Heyst? No, these two--the bandmaster, the fellow who's taking these
+women about and our Schomberg. Signor Zangiacomo ran amuck in the
+morning, and went for our worthy friend. I tell you, they were rolling
+on the floor together on this very veranda, after chasing each other all
+over the house, doors slamming, women screaming, seventeen of them, in
+the dining-room; Chinamen up the trees. Hey, John? You climb tree to see
+the fight, eh?”
+
+The boy, almond-eyed and impassive, emitted a scornful grunt, finished
+wiping the table, and withdrew.
+
+“That's what it was--a real, go-as-you-please scrap. And Zangiacomo
+began it. Oh, here's Schomberg. Say, Schomberg, didn't he fly at you,
+when the girl was missed, because it was you who insisted that the
+artists should go about the audience during the interval?”
+
+Schomberg had reappeared in the doorway. He advanced. His bearing
+was stately, but his nostrils were extraordinarily expanded, and he
+controlled his voice with apparent effort.
+
+“Certainly. That was only business. I quoted him special terms and
+all for your sake, gentlemen. I was thinking of my regular customers.
+There's nothing to do in the evenings in this town. I think, gentlemen,
+you were all pleased at the opportunity of hearing a little good music;
+and where's the harm of offering a grenadine, or what not, to a lady
+artist? But that fellow--that Swede--he got round the girl. He got round
+all the people out here. I've been watching him for years. You remember
+how he got round Morrison.”
+
+He changed front abruptly, as if on parade, and marched off. The
+customers at the table exchanged glances silently. Davidson's attitude
+was that of a spectator. Schomberg's moody pacing of the billiard-room
+could be heard on the veranda.
+
+“And the funniest part is,” resumed the man who had been speaking
+before--an English clerk in a Dutch house--“the funniest part is that
+before nine o'clock that same morning those two were driving together
+in a gharry down to the port, to look for Heyst and the girl. I saw them
+rushing around making inquiries. I don't know what they would have
+done to the girl, but they seemed quite ready to fall upon your Heyst,
+Davidson, and kill him on the quay.”
+
+He had never, he said, seen anything so queer. Those two investigators
+working feverishly to the same end were glaring at each other with
+surprising ferocity. In hatred and mistrust they entered a steam-launch,
+and went flying from ship to ship all over the harbour, causing no end
+of sensation. The captains of vessels, coming on shore later in the day,
+brought tales of a strange invasion, and wanted to know who were the two
+offensive lunatics in a steam-launch, apparently after a man and a girl,
+and telling a story of which one could make neither head nor tail. Their
+reception by the roadstead was generally unsympathetic, even to the
+point of the mate of an American ship bundling them out over the rail
+with unseemly precipitation.
+
+Meantime Heyst and the girl were a good few miles away, having gone in
+the night on board one of the Tesman schooners bound to the eastward.
+This was known afterwards from the Javanese boatmen whom Heyst hired
+for the purpose at three o'clock in the morning. The Tesman schooner had
+sailed at daylight with the usual land breeze, and was probably still in
+sight in the offing at the time. However, the two pursuers after their
+experience with the American mate, made for the shore. On landing, they
+had another violent row in the German language. But there was no second
+fight; and finally, with looks of fierce animosity, they got together
+into a gharry--obviously with the frugal view of sharing expenses--and
+drove away, leaving an astonished little crowd of Europeans and natives
+on the quay.
+
+After hearing this wondrous tale, Davidson went away from the hotel
+veranda, which was filling with Schomberg's regular customers. Heyst's
+escapade was the general topic of conversation. Never before had that
+unaccountable individual been the cause of so much gossip, he judged.
+No! Not even in the beginnings of the Tropical Belt Coal Company when
+becoming for a moment a public character was he the object of a silly
+criticism and unintelligent envy for every vagabond and adventurer in
+the islands. Davidson concluded that people liked to discuss that sort
+of scandal better than any other.
+
+I asked him if he believed that this was such a great scandal after all.
+
+“Heavens, no!” said that excellent man who, himself, was incapable of
+any impropriety of conduct. “But it isn't a thing I would have done
+myself; I mean even if I had not been married.”
+
+There was no implied condemnation in the statement; rather something
+like regret. Davidson shared my suspicion that this was in its essence
+the rescue of a distressed human being. Not that we were two romantics,
+tingeing the world to the hue of our temperament, but that both of us
+had been acute enough to discover a long time ago that Heyst was.
+
+“I shouldn't have had the pluck,” he continued. “I see a thing all
+round, as it were; but Heyst doesn't, or else he would have been scared.
+You don't take a woman into a desert jungle without being made sorry for
+it sooner or later, in one way or another; and Heyst being a gentleman
+only makes it worse.”
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SIX
+
+We said no more about Heyst on that occasion, and it so happened that
+I did not meet Davidson again for some three months. When we did come
+together, almost the first thing he said to me was:
+
+“I've seen him.”
+
+Before I could exclaim, he assured me that he had taken no liberty,
+that he had not intruded. He was called in. Otherwise he would not have
+dreamed of breaking in upon Heyst's privacy.
+
+“I am certain you wouldn't,” I assured him, concealing my amusement at
+his wonderful delicacy. He was the most delicate man that ever took a
+small steamer to and fro among the islands. But his humanity, which was
+not less strong and praiseworthy, had induced him to take his
+steamer past Samburan wharf (at an average distance of a mile) every
+twenty-three days--exactly. Davidson was delicate, humane, and regular.
+
+“Heyst called you in?” I asked, interested.
+
+Yes, Heyst had called him in as he was going by on his usual date.
+Davidson was examining the shore through his glasses with his unwearied
+and punctual humanity as he steamed past Samburan.
+
+I saw a man in white. It could only have been Heyst. He had fastened
+some sort of enormous flag to a bamboo pole, and was waving it at the
+end of the old wharf.
+
+Davidson didn't like to take his steamer alongside--for fear of being
+indiscreet, I suppose; but he steered close inshore, stopped his
+engines, and lowered a boat. He went himself in that boat, which was
+manned, of course, by his Malay seamen.
+
+Heyst, when he saw the boat pulling towards him, dropped his
+signalling-pole; and when Davidson arrived, he was kneeling down engaged
+busily in unfastening the flag from it.
+
+“Was there anything wrong?” I inquired, Davidson having paused in his
+narrative and my curiosity being naturally aroused. You must remember
+that Heyst as the Archipelago knew him was not--what shall I say--was
+not a signalling sort of man.
+
+“The very words that came out of my mouth,” said Davidson, “before I
+laid the boat against the piles. I could not help it!”
+
+Heyst got up from his knees and began carefully folding up the flag
+thing, which struck Davidson as having the dimensions of a blanket.
+
+“No, nothing wrong,” he cried. His white teeth flashed agreeably below
+the coppery horizontal bar of his long moustaches.
+
+I don't know whether it was his delicacy or his obesity which prevented
+Davidson from clambering upon the wharf. He stood up in the boat,
+and, above him, Heyst stooped low with urbane smiles, thanking him and
+apologizing for the liberty, exactly in his usual manner. Davidson had
+expected some change in the man, but there was none. Nothing in him
+betrayed the momentous fact that within that jungle there was a girl, a
+performer in a ladies' orchestra, whom he had carried straight off the
+concert platform into the wilderness. He was not ashamed or defiant
+or abashed about it. He might have been a shade confidential when
+addressing Davidson. And his words were enigmatical.
+
+“I took this course of signalling to you,” he said to Davidson, “because
+to preserve appearances might be of the utmost importance. Not to me, of
+course. I don't care what people may say, and of course no one can hurt
+me. I suppose I have done a certain amount of harm, since I allowed
+myself to be tempted into action. It seemed innocent enough, but all
+action is bound to be harmful. It is devilish. That is why this world
+is evil upon the whole. But I have done with it! I shall never lift a
+little finger again. At one time I thought that intelligent observation
+of facts was the best way of cheating the time which is allotted to us
+whether we want it or not; but now I, have done with observation, too.”
+
+Imagine poor, simple Davidson being addressed in such terms alongside
+an abandoned, decaying wharf jutting out of tropical bush. He had
+never heard anybody speak like this before; certainly not Heyst, whose
+conversation was concise, polite, with a faint ring of playfulness in
+the cultivated tones of his voice.
+
+“He's gone mad,” Davidson thought to himself.
+
+But, looking at the physiognomy above him on the wharf, he was obliged
+to dismiss the notion of common, crude lunacy. It was truly most unusual
+talk. Then he remembered--in his surprise he had lost sight of it--that
+Heyst now had a girl there. This bizarre discourse was probably the
+effect of the girl. Davidson shook off the absurd feeling, and asked,
+wishing to make clear his friendliness, and not knowing what else to
+say:
+
+“You haven't run short of stores or anything like that?”
+
+Heyst smiled and shook his head:
+
+“No, no. Nothing of the kind. We are fairly well off here. Thanks, all
+the same. If I have taken the liberty to detain you, it is not from any
+uneasiness for myself and my--companion. The person I was thinking of
+when I made up my mind to invoke your assistance is Mrs. Schomberg.”
+
+“I have talked with her,” interjected Davidson.
+
+“Oh! You? Yes, I hoped she would find means to--”
+
+“But she didn't tell me much,” interrupted Davidson, who was not averse
+from hearing something--he hardly knew what.
+
+“H'm--Yes. But that note of mine? Yes? She found an opportunity to give
+it to you? That's good, very good. She's more resourceful than one would
+give her credit for.”
+
+“Women often are--” remarked Davidson. The strangeness from which he had
+suffered, merely because his interlocutor had carried off a girl, wore
+off as the minutes went by. “There's a lot of unexpectedness about
+women,” he generalized with a didactic aim which seemed to miss its
+mark; for the next thing Heyst said was:
+
+“This is Mrs. Schomberg's shawl.” He touched the stuff hanging over
+his arm. “An Indian thing, I believe,” he added, glancing at his arm
+sideways.
+
+“It isn't of particular value,” said Davidson truthfully.
+
+“Very likely. The point is that it belongs to Schomberg's wife. That
+Schomberg seems to be an unconscionable ruffian--don't you think so?”
+
+Davidson smiled faintly.
+
+“We out here have got used to him,” he said, as if excusing a universal
+and guilty toleration of a manifest nuisance. “I'd hardly call him that.
+I only know him as a hotel-keeper.”
+
+“I never knew him even as that--not till this time, when you were so
+obliging as to take me to Sourabaya, I went to stay there from economy.
+The Netherlands House is very expensive, and they expect you to bring
+your own servant with you. It's a nuisance.”
+
+“Of course, of course,” protested Davidson hastily.
+
+After a short silence Heyst returned to the matter of the shawl. He
+wanted to send it back to Mrs. Schomberg. He said that it might be very
+awkward for her if she were unable, if asked, to produce it. This had
+given him, Heyst, much uneasiness. She was terrified of Schomberg.
+Apparently she had reason to be.
+
+Davidson had remarked that, too. Which did not prevent her, he pointed
+out, from making a fool of him, in a way, for the sake of a stranger.
+
+“Oh! You know!” said Heyst. “Yes, she helped me--us.”
+
+“She told me so. I had quite a talk with her,” Davidson informed him.
+“Fancy anyone having a talk with Mrs. Schomberg! If I were to tell the
+fellows they wouldn't believe me. How did you get round her, Heyst?
+How did you think of it? Why, she looks too stupid to understand human
+speech and too scared to shoo a chicken away. Oh, the women, the women!
+You don't know what there may be in the quietest of them.”
+
+“She was engaged in the task of defending her position in life,” said
+Heyst. “It's a very respectable task.”
+
+“Is that it? I had some idea it was that,” confessed Davidson.
+
+He then imparted to Heyst the story of the violent proceedings following
+on the discovery of his flight. Heyst's polite attention to the tale
+took on a sombre cast; but he manifested no surprise, and offered no
+comment. When Davidson had finished he handed down the shawl into
+the boat, and Davidson promised to do his best to return it to Mrs.
+Schomberg in some secret fashion. Heyst expressed his thanks in a few
+simple words, set off by his manner of finished courtesy. Davidson
+prepared to depart. They were not looking at each other. Suddenly Heyst
+spoke:
+
+“You understand that this was a case of odious persecution, don't you? I
+became aware of it and--”
+
+It was a view which the sympathetic Davidson was capable of
+appreciating.
+
+“I am not surprised to hear it,” he said placidly. “Odious enough, I
+dare say. And you, of course--not being a married man--were free to step
+in. Ah, well!”
+
+He sat down in the stern-sheets, and already had the steering lines in
+his hands when Heyst observed abruptly:
+
+“The world is a bad dog. It will bite you if you give it a chance; but I
+think that here we can safely defy the fates.”
+
+When relating all this to me, Davidson's only comment was:
+
+“Funny notion of defying the fates--to take a woman in tow!”
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SEVEN
+
+Some considerable time afterwards--we did not meet very often--I asked
+Davidson how he had managed about the shawl and heard that he had
+tackled his mission in a direct way, and had found it easy enough. At
+the very first call he made in Samarang he rolled the shawl as tightly
+as he could into the smallest possible brown-paper parcel, which he
+carried ashore with him. His business in the town being transacted,
+he got into a gharry with the parcel and drove to the hotel. With his
+precious experience, he timed his arrival accurately for the hour of
+Schomberg's siesta. Finding the place empty as on the former occasion,
+he marched into the billiard-room, took a seat at the back, near the
+sort of dais which Mrs. Schomberg would in due course come to occupy,
+and broke the slumbering silence of the house by thumping a bell
+vigorously. Of course a Chinaman appeared promptly. Davidson ordered a
+drink and sat tight.
+
+“I would have ordered twenty drinks one after another, if necessary,”
+ he said--Davidson's a very abstemious man--“rather than take that parcel
+out of the house again. Couldn't leave it in a corner without letting
+the woman know it was there. It might have turned out worse for her than
+not bringing the thing back at all.”
+
+And so he waited, ringing the bell again and again, and swallowing two
+or three iced drinks which he did not want. Presently, as he hoped it
+would happen, Mrs. Schomberg came in, silk dress, long neck, ringlets,
+scared eyes, and silly grin--all complete. Probably that lazy beast had
+sent her out to see who was the thirsty customer waking up the echoes of
+the house at this quiet hour. Bow, nod--and she clambered up to her post
+behind the raised counter, looking so helpless, so inane, as she sat
+there, that if it hadn't been for the parcel, Davidson declared, he
+would have thought he had merely dreamed all that had passed between
+them. He ordered another drink, to get the Chinaman out of the room, and
+then seized the parcel, which was reposing on a chair near him, and
+with no more than a mutter--“this is something of yours”--he rammed it
+swiftly into a recess in the counter, at her feet. There! The rest
+was her affair. And just in time, too. Schomberg turned up, yawning
+affectedly, almost before Davidson had regained his seat. He cast about
+suspicious and irate glances. An invincible placidity of expression
+helped Davidson wonderfully at the moment, and the other, of course,
+could have no grounds for the slightest suspicion of any sort of
+understanding between his wife and this customer.
+
+As to Mrs. Schomberg, she sat there like a joss. Davidson was lost in
+admiration. He believed, now, that the woman had been putting it on
+for years. She never even winked. It was immense! The insight he had
+obtained almost frightened him; he couldn't get over his wonder at
+knowing more of the real Mrs. Schomberg than anybody in the Islands,
+including Schomberg himself. She was a miracle of dissimulation. No
+wonder Heyst got the girl away from under two men's noses, if he had her
+to help with the job!
+
+The greatest wonder, after all, was Heyst getting mixed up with
+petticoats. The fellow's life had been open to us for years and nothing
+could have been more detached from feminine associations. Except that he
+stood drinks to people on suitable occasions, like any other man, this
+observer of facts seemed to have no connection with earthly affairs and
+passions. The very courtesy of his manner, the flavour of playfulness in
+the voice set him apart. He was like a feather floating lightly in
+the workaday atmosphere which was the breath of our nostrils. For this
+reason whenever this looker-on took contact with things he attracted
+attention. First, it was the Morrison partnership of mystery, then
+came the great sensation of the Tropical Belt Coal where indeed varied
+interests were involved: a real business matter. And then came this
+elopement, this incongruous phenomenon of self-assertion, the greatest
+wonder of all, astonishing and amusing.
+
+Davidson admitted to me that, the hubbub was subsiding; and the affair
+would have been already forgotten, perhaps, if that ass Schomberg
+had not kept on gnashing his teeth publicly about it. It was really
+provoking that Davidson should not be able to give one some idea of the
+girl. Was she pretty? He didn't know. He had stayed the whole afternoon
+in Schomberg's hotel, mainly for the purpose of finding out something
+about her. But the story was growing stale. The parties at the tables on
+the veranda had other, fresher, events to talk about and Davidson shrank
+from making direct inquiries. He sat placidly there, content to be
+disregarded and hoping for some chance word to turn up. I shouldn't
+wonder if the good fellow hadn't been dozing. It's difficult to give you
+an adequate idea of Davidson's placidity.
+
+Presently Schomberg, wandering about, joined a party that had taken the
+table next to Davidson's.
+
+“A man like that Swede, gentlemen, is a public danger,” he began. “I
+remember him for years. I won't say anything of his spying--well, he
+used to say himself he was looking for out-of-the-way facts and what is
+that if not spying? He was spying into everybody's business. He got hold
+of Captain Morrison, squeezed him dry, like you would an orange, and
+scared him off to Europe to die there. Everybody knows that Captain
+Morrison had a weak chest. Robbed first and murdered afterwards! I don't
+mince words--not I. Next he gets up that swindle of the Belt Coal. You
+know all about it. And now, after lining his pockets with other people's
+money, he kidnaps a white girl belonging to an orchestra which is
+performing in my public room for the benefit of my patrons, and goes
+off to live like a prince on that island, where nobody can get at him. A
+damn silly girl . . . It's disgusting--tfui!”
+
+He spat. He choked with rage--for he saw visions, no doubt. He jumped up
+from his chair, and went away to flee from them--perhaps. He went into
+the room where Mrs. Schomberg sat. Her aspect could not have been very
+soothing to the sort of torment from which he was suffering.
+
+Davidson did not feel called upon to defend Heyst. His proceeding was to
+enter into conversation with one and another, casually, and showing no
+particular knowledge of the affair, in order to discover something about
+the girl. Was she anything out of the way? Was she pretty? She couldn't
+have been markedly so. She had not attracted special notice. She was
+young--on that everybody agreed. The English clerk of Tesmans remembered
+that she had a sallow face. He was respectable and highly proper. He
+was not the sort to associate with such people. Most of these women were
+fairly battered specimens. Schomberg had them housed in what he called
+the Pavilion, in the grounds, where they were hard at it mending and
+washing their white dresses, and could be seen hanging them out to dry
+between the trees, like a lot of washerwomen. They looked very much
+like middle-aged washerwomen on the platform, too. But the girl had
+been living in the main building along with the boss, the director, the
+fellow with the black beard, and a hard-bitten, oldish woman who took
+the piano and was understood to be the fellow's wife.
+
+This was not a very satisfactory result. Davidson stayed on, and even
+joined the table d'hote dinner, without gleaning any more information.
+He was resigned.
+
+“I suppose,” he wheezed placidly, “I am bound to see her some day.”
+
+He meant to take the Samburan channel every trip, as before of course.
+
+“Yes,” I said. “No doubt you will. Some day Heyst will be signalling to
+you again; and I wonder what it will be for.”
+
+Davidson made no reply. He had his own ideas about that, and his silence
+concealed a good deal of thought. We spoke no more of Heyst's girl.
+Before we separated, he gave me a piece of unrelated observation.
+
+“It's funny,” he said, “but I fancy there's some gambling going on
+in the evening at Schomberg's place, on the quiet. I've noticed men
+strolling away in twos and threes towards that hall where the orchestra
+used to play. The windows must be specially well shuttered, because I
+could not spy the smallest gleam of light from that direction; but I
+can't believe that those beggars would go in there only to sit and think
+of their sins in the dark.”
+
+“That's strange. It's incredible that Schomberg should risk that sort of
+thing,” I said.
+
+
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+
+
+CHAPTER ONE
+
+As we know, Heyst had gone to stay in Schomberg's hotel in complete
+ignorance that his person was odious to that worthy. When he arrived,
+Zangiacomo's Ladies' Orchestra had been established there for some time.
+
+The business which had called him out from his seclusion in his lost
+corner of the Eastern seas was with the Tesmans, and it had something
+to do with money. He transacted it quickly, and then found himself with
+nothing to do while he awaited Davidson, who was to take him back to his
+solitude; for back to his solitude Heyst meant to go. He whom we used
+to refer to as the Enchanted Heyst was suffering from thorough
+disenchantment. Not with the islands, however. The Archipelago has a
+lasting fascination. It is not easy to shake off the spell of island
+life. Heyst was disenchanted with life as a whole. His scornful
+temperament, beguiled into action, suffered from failure in a subtle way
+unknown to men accustomed to grapple with the realities of common human
+enterprise. It was like the gnawing pain of useless apostasy, a sort of
+shame before his own betrayed nature; and in addition, he also suffered
+from plain, downright remorse. He deemed himself guilty of Morrison's
+death. A rather absurd feeling, since no one could possibly have
+foreseen the horrors of the cold, wet summer lying in wait for poor
+Morrison at home.
+
+It was not in Heyst's character to turn morose; but his mental state was
+not compatible with a sociable mood. He spent his evenings sitting
+apart on the veranda of Schomberg's hotel. The lamentations of string
+instruments issued from the building in the hotel compound, the
+approaches to which were decorated with Japanese paper lanterns strung
+up between the trunks of several big trees. Scraps of tunes more or
+less plaintive reached his ears. They pursued him even into his bedroom,
+which opened into an upstairs veranda. The fragmentary and rasping
+character of these sounds made their intrusion inexpressibly tedious in
+the long run. Like most dreamers, to whom it is given sometimes to hear
+the music of the spheres, Heyst, the wanderer of the Archipelago, had
+a taste for silence which he had been able to gratify for years. The
+islands are very quiet. One sees them lying about, clothed in their dark
+garments of leaves, in a great hush of silver and azure, where the sea
+without murmurs meets the sky in a ring of magic stillness. A sort of
+smiling somnolence broods over them; the very voices of their people are
+soft and subdued, as if afraid to break some protecting spell.
+
+Perhaps this was the very spell which had enchanted Heyst in the early
+days. For him, however, that was broken. He was no longer enchanted,
+though he was still a captive of the islands. He had no intention to
+leave them ever. Where could he have gone to, after all these years?
+Not a single soul belonging to him lived anywhere on earth. Of this
+fact--not such a remote one, after all--he had only lately become aware;
+for it is failure that makes a man enter into himself and reckon up his
+resources. And though he had made up his mind to retire from the world
+in hermit fashion, yet he was irrationally moved by this sense of
+loneliness which had come to him in the hour of renunciation. It hurt
+him. Nothing is more painful than the shock of sharp contradictions that
+lacerate our intelligence and our feelings.
+
+Meantime Schomberg watched Heyst out of the corner of his eye.
+Towards the unconscious object of his enmity he preserved a distant
+lieutenant-of-the-Reserve demeanour. Nudging certain of his customers
+with his elbow, he begged them to observe what airs “that Swede” was
+giving himself.
+
+“I really don't know why he has come to stay in my house. This place
+isn't good enough for him. I wish to goodness he had gone somewhere else
+to show off his superiority. Here I have got up this series of concerts
+for you gentlemen, just to make things a little brighter generally; and
+do you think he'll condescend to step in and listen to a piece or two of
+an evening? Not he. I know him of old. There he sits at the dark end of
+the piazza, all the evening long--planning some new swindle, no doubt.
+For two-pence I would ask him to go and look for quarters somewhere
+else; only one doesn't like to treat a white man like that out in the
+tropics. I don't know how long he means to stay, but I'm willing to bet
+a trifle that he'll never work himself up to the point of spending the
+fifty cents of entrance money for the sake of a little good music.”
+
+Nobody cared to bet, or the hotel-keeper would have lost. One evening
+Heyst was driven to desperation by the rasped, squeaked, scraped
+snatches of tunes pursuing him even to his hard couch, with a mattress
+as thin as a pancake and a diaphanous mosquito net. He descended among
+the trees, where the soft glow of Japanese lanterns picked out parts of
+their great rugged trunks, here and there, in the great mass of darkness
+under the lofty foliage. More lanterns, of the shape of cylindrical
+concertinas, hanging in a row from a slack string, decorated the doorway
+of what Schomberg called grandiloquently “my concert-hall.” In his
+desperate mood Heyst ascended three steps, lifted a calico curtain, and
+went in.
+
+The uproar in that small, barn-like structure, built of imported
+pine boards, and raised clear of the ground, was simply stunning. An
+instrumental uproar, screaming, grunting, whining, sobbing, scraping,
+squeaking some kind of lively air; while a grand piano, operated upon
+by a bony, red-faced woman with bad-tempered nostrils, rained hard notes
+like hail through the tempest of fiddles. The small platform was filled
+with white muslin dresses and crimson sashes slanting from shoulders
+provided with bare arms, which sawed away without respite. Zangiacomo
+conducted. He wore a white mess-jacket, a black dress waistcoat, and
+white trousers. His longish, tousled hair and his great beard were
+purple-black. He was horrible. The heat was terrific. There were perhaps
+thirty people having drinks at several little tables. Heyst, quite
+overcome by the volume of noise, dropped into a chair. In the quick time
+of that music, in the varied, piercing clamour of the strings, in the
+movements of the bare arms, in the low dresses, the coarse faces,
+the stony eyes of the executants, there was a suggestion of
+brutality--something cruel, sensual and repulsive.
+
+“This is awful!” Heyst murmured to himself.
+
+But there is an unholy fascination in systematic noise. He did not
+flee from it incontinently, as one might have expected him to do. He
+remained, astonished at himself for remaining, since nothing could have
+been more repulsive to his tastes, more painful to his senses, and,
+so to speak, more contrary to his genius, than this rude exhibition
+of vigour. The Zangiacomo band was not making music; it was simply
+murdering silence with a vulgar, ferocious energy. One felt as if
+witnessing a deed of violence; and that impression was so strong that it
+seemed marvellous to see the people sitting so quietly on their
+chairs, drinking so calmly out of their glasses, and giving no signs
+of distress, anger, or fear. Heyst averted his gaze from the unnatural
+spectacle of their indifference.
+
+When the piece of music came to an end the relief was so great that he
+felt slightly dizzy, as if a chasm of silence had yawned at his feet.
+When he raised his eyes, the audience, most perversely, was exhibiting
+signs of animation and interest in their faces, and the women in white
+muslin dresses were coming down in pairs from the platform into the body
+of Schomberg's “concert-hall.” They dispersed themselves all over the
+place. The male creature with the hooked nose and purple-black beard
+disappeared somewhere. This was the interval during which, as the astute
+Schomberg had stipulated, the members of the orchestra were encouraged
+to favour the members of the audience with their company--that is, such
+members as seemed inclined to fraternize with the arts in a familiar and
+generous manner; the symbol of familiarity and generosity consisting in
+offers of refreshment.
+
+The procedure struck Heyst as highly incorrect. However, the impropriety
+of Schomberg's ingenious scheme was defeated by the circumstance that
+most of the women were no longer young, and that none of them had ever
+been beautiful. Their more or less worn cheeks were slightly rouged, but
+apart from that fact, which might have been simply a matter of routine,
+they did not seem to take the success of the scheme unduly to heart.
+The impulse to fraternize with the arts being obviously weak in the
+audience, some of the musicians sat down listlessly at unoccupied
+tables, while others went on perambulating the central passage: arm in
+arm, glad enough, no doubt, to stretch their legs while resting their
+arms. Their crimson sashes gave a factitious touch of gaiety to the
+smoky atmosphere of the concert-hall; and Heyst felt a sudden pity for
+these beings, exploited, hopeless, devoid of charm and grace, whose fate
+of cheerless dependence invested their coarse and joyless features with
+a touch of pathos.
+
+Heyst was temperamentally sympathetic. To have them passing and
+repassing close to his little table was painful to him. He was preparing
+to rise and go out when he noticed that two white muslin dresses and
+crimson sashes had not yet left the platform. One of these dresses
+concealed the raw-boned frame of the woman with the bad-tempered curve
+to her nostrils. She was no less a personage than Mrs. Zangiacomo. She
+had left the piano, and, with her back to the hall, was preparing the
+parts for the second half of the concert, with a brusque, impatient
+action of her ugly elbow. This task done, she turned, and, perceiving
+the other white muslin dress motionless on a chair in the second row,
+she strode towards it between the music-stands with an aggressive and
+masterful gait. On the lap of that dress there lay, unclasped and idle,
+a pair of small hands, not very white, attached to well-formed arms.
+The next detail Heyst was led to observe was the arrangement of the
+hair--two thick, brown tresses rolled round an attractively shaped head.
+
+“A girl, by Jove!” he exclaimed mentally.
+
+It was evident that she was a girl. It was evident in the outline of the
+shoulders, in the slender white bust springing up, barred slantwise by
+the crimson sash, from the bell-shaped spread of muslin skirt hiding the
+chair on which she sat averted a little from the body of the hall. Her
+feet, in low white shoes, were crossed prettily.
+
+She had captured Heyst's awakened faculty of observation; he had
+the sensation of a new experience. That was because his faculty of
+observation had never before been captured by any feminine creature in
+that marked and exclusive fashion. He looked at her anxiously, as no man
+ever looks at another man; and he positively forgot where he was. He had
+lost touch with his surroundings. The big woman, advancing, concealed
+the girl from his sight for a moment. She bent over the seated youthful
+figure, in passing it very close, as if to drop a word into its ear.
+Her lips did certainly move. But what sort of word could it have been
+to make the girl jump up so swiftly? Heyst, at his table, was surprised
+into a sympathetic start. He glanced quickly round. Nobody was looking
+towards the platform; and when his eyes swept back there again, the
+girl, with the big woman treading at her heels, was coming down the
+three steps from the platform to the floor of the hall. There she
+paused, stumbled one pace forward, and stood still again, while
+the other--the escort, the dragoon, the coarse big woman of the
+piano--passed her roughly, and, marching truculently down the centre
+aisle between the chairs and tables, went out to rejoin the hook-nosed
+Zangiacomo somewhere outside. During her extraordinary transit, as if
+everything in the hall were dirt under her feet, her scornful eyes met
+the upward glance of Heyst, who looked away at once towards the girl.
+She had not moved. Her arms hung down; her eyelids were lowered.
+
+Heyst laid down his half-smoked cigar and compressed his lips. Then he
+got up. It was the same sort of impulse which years ago had made him
+cross the sandy street of the abominable town of Delli in the island of
+Timor and accost Morrison, practically a stranger to him then, a man in
+trouble, expressively harassed, dejected, lonely.
+
+It was the same impulse. But he did not recognize it. He was not
+thinking of Morrison then. It may be said that, for the first time
+since the final abandonment of the Samburan coal mine, he had completely
+forgotten the late Morrison. It is true that to a certain extent he
+had forgotten also where he was. Thus, unchecked by any sort of self
+consciousness, Heyst walked up the central passage.
+
+Several of the women, by this time, had found anchorage here and there
+among the occupied tables. They talked to the men, leaning on their
+elbows, and suggesting funnily--if it hadn't been for the crimson
+sashes--in their white dresses an assembly of middle-aged brides
+with free and easy manners and hoarse voices. The murmuring noise
+of conversations carried on with some spirit filled Schomberg's
+concert-room. Nobody remarked Heyst's movements; for indeed he was not
+the only man on his legs there. He had been confronting the girl for
+some time before she became aware of his presence. She was looking down,
+very still, without colour, without glances, without voice, without
+movement. It was only when Heyst addressed her in his courteous tone
+that she raised her eyes.
+
+“Excuse me,” he said in English, “but that horrible female has done
+something to you. She has pinched you, hasn't she? I am sure she pinched
+you just now, when she stood by your chair.”
+
+The girl received this overture with the wide, motionless stare of
+profound astonishment. Heyst, vexed with himself, suspected that she did
+not understand what he said. One could not tell what nationality these
+women were, except that they were of all sorts. But she was astonished
+almost more by the near presence of the man himself, by his largely
+bald head, by the white brow, the sunburnt cheeks, the long, horizontal
+moustaches of crinkly bronze hair, by the kindly expression of the man's
+blue eyes looking into her own. He saw the stony amazement in hers
+give way to a momentary alarm, which was succeeded by an expression of
+resignation.
+
+“I am sure she pinched your arm most cruelly,” he murmured, rather
+disconcerted now at what he had done.
+
+It was a great comfort to hear her say:
+
+“It wouldn't have been the first time. And suppose she did--what are you
+going to do about it?”
+
+“I don't know,” he said with a faint, remote playfulness in his tone
+which had not been heard in it lately, and which seemed to catch her
+ear pleasantly. “I am grieved to say that I don't know. But can I do
+anything? What would you wish me to do? Pray command me.”
+
+Again, the greatest astonishment became visible in her face; for she now
+perceived how different he was from the other men in the room. He was as
+different from them as she was different from the other members of the
+ladies' orchestra.
+
+“Command you?” she breathed, after a time, in a bewildered tone. “Who
+are you?” she asked a little louder.
+
+“I am staying in this hotel for a few days. I just dropped in casually
+here. This outrage--”
+
+“Don't you try to interfere,” she said so earnestly that Heyst asked, in
+his faintly playful tone:
+
+“Is it your wish that I should leave you?”
+
+“I haven't said that,” the girl answered. “She pinched me because I
+didn't get down here quick enough--”
+
+“I can't tell you how indignant I am--” said Heyst. “But since you are
+down here now,” he went on, with the ease of a man of the world speaking
+to a young lady in a drawing-room, “hadn't we better sit down?”
+
+She obeyed his inviting gesture, and they sat down on the nearest
+chairs. They looked at each other across a little round table with a
+surprised, open gaze, self-consciousness growing on them so slowly that
+it was a long time before they averted their eyes; and very soon they
+met again, temporarily, only to rebound, as it were. At last they
+steadied in contact, but by that time, say some fifteen minutes from the
+moment when they sat down, the “interval” came to an end.
+
+So much for their eyes. As to the conversation, it had been perfectly
+insignificant because naturally they had nothing to say to each other.
+Heyst had been interested by the girl's physiognomy. Its expression was
+neither simple nor yet very clear. It was not distinguished--that could
+not be expected--but the features had more fineness than those of any
+other feminine countenance he had ever had the opportunity to observe so
+closely. There was in it something indefinably audacious and infinitely
+miserable--because the temperament and the existence of that girl were
+reflected in it. But her voice! It seduced Heyst by its amazing quality.
+It was a voice fit to utter the most exquisite things, a voice which
+would have made silly chatter supportable and the roughest talk
+fascinating. Heyst drank in its charm as one listens to the tone of some
+instrument without heeding the tune.
+
+“Do you sing as well as play?” he asked her abruptly.
+
+“Never sang a note in my life,” she said, obviously surprised by the
+irrelevant question; for they had not been discoursing of sweet sounds.
+She was clearly unaware of her voice. “I don't remember that I ever had
+much reason to sing since I was little,” she added.
+
+That inelegant phrase, by the mere vibrating, warm nobility of the
+sound, found its way into Heyst's heart. His mind, cool, alert, watched
+it sink there with a sort of vague concern at the absurdity of
+the occupation, till it rested at the bottom, deep down, where our
+unexpressed longings lie.
+
+“You are English, of course?” he said.
+
+“What do you think?” she answered in the most charming accents. Then, as
+if thinking that it was her turn to place a question: “Why do you always
+smile when you speak?”
+
+It was enough to make anyone look grave, but her good faith was so
+evident that Heyst recovered himself at once.
+
+“It's my unfortunate manner--” he said with his delicate, polished
+playfulness. “Is is very objectionable to you?”
+
+She was very serious.
+
+“No. I only noticed it. I haven't come across so many pleasant people as
+all that, in my life.”
+
+“It's certain that this woman who plays the piano is infinitely more
+disagreeable than any cannibal I have ever had to do with.”
+
+“I believe you!” She shuddered. “How did you come to have anything to do
+with cannibals?”
+
+“It would be too long a tale,” said Heyst with a faint smile. Heyst's
+smiles were rather melancholy, and accorded badly with his great
+moustaches, under which his mere playfulness lurked as comfortable as a
+shy bird in its native thicket. “Much too long. How did you get amongst
+this lot here?”
+
+“Bad luck,” she answered briefly.
+
+“No doubt, no doubt,” Heyst assented with slight nods. Then, still
+indignant at the pinch which he had divined rather than actually seen
+inflicted: “I say, couldn't you defend yourself somehow?”
+
+She had risen already. The ladies of the orchestra were slowly regaining
+their places. Some were already seated, idle stony-eyed, before the
+music-stands. Heyst was standing up, too.
+
+“They are too many for me,” she said.
+
+These few words came out of the common experience of mankind; yet by
+virtue of her voice, they thrilled Heyst like a revelation. His feelings
+were in a state of confusion, but his mind was clear.
+
+“That's bad. But it isn't actual ill-usage that this girl is complaining
+of,” he thought lucidly after she left him.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWO
+
+That was how it began. How it was that it ended, as we know it did end,
+is not so easy to state precisely. It is very clear that Heyst was not
+indifferent, I won't say to the girl, but to the girl's fate. He was
+the same man who had plunged after the submerged Morrison whom he
+hardly knew otherwise than by sight and through the usual gossip of the
+islands. But this was another sort of plunge altogether, and likely to
+lead to a very different kind of partnership.
+
+Did he reflect at all? Probably. He was sufficiently reflective. But
+if he did, it was with insufficient knowledge. For there is no evidence
+that he paused at any time between the date of that evening and the
+morning of the flight. Truth to say, Heyst was not one of those men
+who pause much. Those dreamy spectators of the world's agitation are
+terrible once the desire to act gets hold of them. They lower their
+heads and charge a wall with an amazing serenity which nothing but an
+indisciplined imagination can give.
+
+He was not a fool. I suppose he knew--or at least he felt--where this
+was leading him. But his complete inexperience gave him the necessary
+audacity. The girl's voice was charming when she spoke to him of her
+miserable past, in simple terms, with a sort of unconscious cynicism
+inherent in the truth of the ugly conditions of poverty. And whether
+because he was humane or because her voice included all the modulations
+of pathos, cheerfulness, and courage in its compass, it was not disgust
+that the tale awakened in him, but the sense of an immense sadness.
+
+On a later evening, during the interval between the two parts of the
+concert, the girl told Heyst about herself. She was almost a child
+of the streets. Her father was a musician in the orchestras of small
+theatres. Her mother ran away from him while she was little, and the
+landladies of various poor lodging-houses had attended casually to her
+abandoned childhood. It was never positive starvation and absolute rags,
+but it was the hopeless grip of poverty all the time. It was her father
+who taught her to play the violin. It seemed that he used to get drunk
+sometimes, but without pleasure, and only because he was unable to
+forget his fugitive wife. After he had a paralytic stroke, falling
+over with a crash in the well of a music-hall orchestra during the
+performance, she had joined the Zangiacomo company. He was now in a home
+for incurables.
+
+“And I am here,” she finished, “with no one to care if I make a hole in
+the water the next chance I get or not.”
+
+Heyst told her that he thought she could do a little better than that,
+if it was only a question of getting out of the world. She looked at him
+with special attention, and with a puzzled expression which gave to her
+face an air of innocence.
+
+This was during one of the “intervals” between the two parts of the
+concert. She had come down that time without being incited thereto by a
+pinch from the awful Zangiacomo woman. It is difficult to suppose that
+she was seduced by the uncovered intellectual forehead and the long
+reddish moustaches of her new friend. New is not the right word. She had
+never had a friend before; and the sensation of this friendliness going
+out to her was exciting by its novelty alone. Besides, any man who did
+not resemble Schomberg appeared for that very reason attractive. She was
+afraid of the hotel-keeper, who, in the daytime, taking advantage of the
+fact that she lived in the hotel itself, and not in the Pavilion with
+the other “artists” prowled round her, mute, hungry, portentous behind
+his great beard, or else assailed her in quiet corners and empty
+passages with deep, mysterious murmurs from behind, which, not
+withstanding their clear import, sounded horribly insane somehow.
+
+The contrast of Heyst's quiet, polished manner gave her special delight
+and filled her with admiration. She had never seen anything like that
+before. If she had, perhaps, known kindness in her life, she had never
+met the forms of simple courtesy. She was interested by it as a very
+novel experience, not very intelligible, but distinctly pleasurable.
+
+“I tell you they are too many for me,” she repeated, sometimes
+recklessly, but more often shaking her head with ominous dejection.
+
+She had, of course, no money at all. The quantities of “black men” all
+about frightened her. She really had no definite idea where she was on
+the surface of the globe. The orchestra was generally taken from the
+steamer to some hotel, and kept shut up there till it was time to go on
+board another steamer. She could not remember the names she heard.
+
+“How do you call this place again?” she used to ask Heyst.
+
+“Sourabaya,” he would say distinctly, and would watch the discouragement
+at the outlandish sound coming into her eyes, which were fastened on his
+face.
+
+He could not defend himself from compassion. He suggested that she might
+go to the consul, but it was his conscience that dictated this advice,
+not his conviction. She had never heard of the animal or of its uses. A
+consul! What was it? Who was he? What could he do? And when she learned
+that perhaps he could be induced to send her home, her head dropped on
+her breast.
+
+“What am I to do when I get there?” she murmured with an intonation so
+just, with an accent so penetrating--the charm of her voice did not fail
+her even in whispering--that Heyst seemed to see the illusion of human
+fellowship on earth vanish before the naked truth of her existence, and
+leave them both face to face in a moral desert as arid as the sands of
+Sahara, without restful shade, without refreshing water.
+
+She leaned slightly over the little table, the same little table at
+which they had sat when they first met each other; and with no other
+memories but of the stones in the streets her childhood had known, in
+the distress of the incoherent, confused, rudimentary impressions of her
+travels inspiring her with a vague terror of the world she said rapidly,
+as one speaks in desperation:
+
+“You do something! You are a gentleman. It wasn't I who spoke to you
+first, was it? I didn't begin, did I? It was you who came along and
+spoke to me when I was standing over there. What did you want to speak
+to me for? I don't care what it is, but you must do something.”
+
+Her attitude was fierce and entreating at the same time--clamorous, in
+fact though her voice had hardly risen above a breath. It was clamorous
+enough to be noticed. Heyst, on purpose, laughed aloud. She nearly
+choked with indignation at this brutal heartlessness.
+
+“What did you mean, then, by saying 'command me!'?” she almost hissed.
+
+Something hard in his mirthless stare, and a quiet final “All right,”
+ steadied her.
+
+“I am not rich enough to buy you out,” he went on, speaking with an
+extraordinary detached grin, “even if it were to be done; but I can
+always steal you.”
+
+She looked at him profoundly, as though these words had a hidden and
+very complicated meaning.
+
+“Get away now,” he said rapidly, “and try to smile as you go.”
+
+She obeyed with unexpected readiness; and as she had a set of very good
+white teeth, the effect of the mechanical, ordered smile was joyous,
+radiant. It astonished Heyst. No wonder, it flashed through his mind,
+women can deceive men so completely. The faculty was inherent in them;
+they seemed to be created with a special aptitude. Here was a smile
+the origin of which was well known to him; and yet it had conveyed a
+sensation of warmth, had given him a sort of ardour to live which was
+very new to his experience.
+
+By this time she was gone from the table, and had joined the other
+“ladies of the orchestra.” They trooped towards the platform, driven in
+truculently by the haughty mate of Zangiacomo, who looked as though
+she were restraining herself with difficulty from punching their backs.
+Zangiacomo followed, with his great, pendulous dyed beard and short
+mess-jacket, with an aspect of hang-dog concentration imparted by his
+drooping head and the uneasiness of his eyes, which were set very close
+together. He climbed the steps last of all, turned about, displaying
+his purple beard to the hall, and tapped with his bow. Heyst winced in
+anticipation of the horrible racket. It burst out immediately unabashed
+and awful. At the end of the platform the woman at the piano, presenting
+her cruel profile, her head tilted back, banged the keys without looking
+at the music.
+
+Heyst could not stand the uproar for more than a minute. He went out,
+his brain racked by the rhythm of some more or less Hungarian dance
+music. The forests inhabited by the New Guinea cannibals where he had
+encountered the most exciting of his earlier futile adventures were
+silent. And this adventure, not in its execution, perhaps, but in its
+nature, required even more nerve than anything he had faced before.
+Walking among the paper lanterns suspended to trees he remembered with
+regret the gloom and the dead stillness of the forests at the back of
+Geelvink Bay, perhaps the wildest, the unsafest, the most deadly spot
+on earth from which the sea can be seen. Oppressed by his thoughts,
+he sought the obscurity and peace of his bedroom; but they were not
+complete. The distant sounds of the concert reached his ear, faint
+indeed, but still disturbing. Neither did he feel very safe in there;
+for that sentiment depends not on extraneous circumstances but on our
+inward conviction. He did not attempt to go to sleep; he did not even
+unbutton the top button of his tunic. He sat in a chair and mused.
+Formerly, in solitude and in silence, he had been used to think clearly
+and sometimes even profoundly, seeing life outside the flattering
+optical delusion of everlasting hope, of conventional self-deceptions,
+of an ever-expected happiness. But now he was troubled; a light veil
+seemed to hang before his mental vision; the awakening of a tenderness,
+indistinct and confused as yet, towards an unknown woman.
+
+Gradually silence, a real silence, had established itself round him. The
+concert was over; the audience had gone; the concert-hall was dark; and
+even the Pavilion, where the ladies' orchestra slept after its noisy
+labours, showed not a gleam of light. Heyst suddenly felt restless in
+all his limbs, as this reaction from the long immobility would not be
+denied, he humoured it by passing quietly along the back veranda and out
+into the grounds at the side of the house, into the black shadows under
+the trees, where the extinguished paper lanterns were gently swinging
+their globes like withered fruit.
+
+He paced there to and fro for a long time, a calm, meditative ghost in
+his white drill-suit, revolving in his head thoughts absolutely novel,
+disquieting, and seductive; accustoming his mind to the contemplation
+of his purpose, in order that by being faced steadily it should appear
+praiseworthy and wise. For the use of reason is to justify the obscure
+desires that move our conduct, impulses, passions, prejudices, and
+follies, and also our fears.
+
+He felt that he had engaged himself by a rash promise to an action big
+with incalculable consequences. And then he asked himself if the girl
+had understood what he meant. Who could tell? He was assailed by all
+sorts of doubts. Raising his head, he perceived something white flitting
+between the trees. It vanished almost at once; but there could be no
+mistake. He was vexed at being detected roaming like this in the middle
+of the night. Who could that be? It never occurred to him that perhaps
+the girl, too, would not be able to sleep. He advanced prudently. Then
+he saw the white, phantom-like apparition again; and the next moment
+all his doubts as to the state of her mind were laid at rest, because he
+felt her clinging to him after the manner of supplicants all the world
+over. Her whispers were so incoherent that he could not understand
+anything; but this did not prevent him from being profoundly moved. He
+had no illusions about her; but his sceptical mind was dominated by the
+fulness of his heart.
+
+“Calm yourself, calm yourself,” he murmured in her ear, returning her
+clasp at first mechanically, and afterwards with a growing appreciation
+of her distressed humanity. The heaving of her breast and the trembling
+of all her limbs, in the closeness of his embrace, seemed to enter his
+body, to infect his very heart. While she was growing quieter in his
+arms, he was becoming more agitated, as if there were only a fixed
+quantity of violent emotion on this earth. The very night seemed
+more dumb, more still, and the immobility of the vague, black shapes,
+surrounding him more perfect.
+
+“It will be all right,” he tried to reassure her, with a tone of
+conviction, speaking into her ear, and of necessity clasping her more
+closely than before.
+
+Either the words or the action had a very good effect. He heard a light
+sigh of relief. She spoke with a calmed ardour.
+
+“Oh, I knew it would be all right from the first time you spoke to me!
+Yes, indeed, I knew directly you came up to me that evening. I knew it
+would be all right, if you only cared to make it so; but of course I
+could not tell if you meant it. 'Command me,' you said. Funny thing for
+a man like you to say. Did you really mean it? You weren't making fun of
+me?”
+
+He protested that he had been a serious person all his life.
+
+“I believe you,” she said ardently. He was touched by this declaration.
+“It's the way you have of speaking as if you were amused with people,”
+ she went on. “But I wasn't deceived. I could see you were angry with
+that beast of a woman. And you are clever. You spotted something at
+once. You saw it in my face, eh? It isn't a bad face--say? You'll never
+be sorry. Listen--I'm not twenty yet. It's the truth, and I can't be so
+bad looking, or else--I will tell you straight that I have been worried
+and pestered by fellows like this before. I don't know what comes to
+them--”
+
+She was speaking hurriedly. She choked, and then exclaimed, with an
+accent of despair:
+
+“What is it? What's the matter?”
+
+Heyst had removed his arms from her suddenly, and had recoiled a little.
+“Is it my fault? I didn't even look at them, I tell you straight. Never!
+Have I looked at you? Tell me. It was you that began it.”
+
+In truth, Heyst had shrunk from the idea of competition with fellows
+unknown, with Schomberg the hotel-keeper. The vaporous white figure
+before him swayed pitifully in the darkness. He felt ashamed of his
+fastidiousness.
+
+“I am afraid we have been detected,” he murmured. “I think I saw
+somebody on the path between the house and the bushes behind you.”
+
+He had seen no one. It was a compassionate lie, if there ever was one.
+His compassion was as genuine as his shrinking had been, and in his
+judgement more honourable.
+
+She didn't turn her head. She was obviously relieved.
+
+“Would it be that brute?” she breathed out, meaning Schomberg, of
+course. “He's getting too forward with me now. What can you expect? Only
+this evening, after supper, he--but I slipped away. You don't mind him,
+do you? Why, I could face him myself now that I know you care for me.
+A girl can always put up a fight. You believe me? Only it isn't easy to
+stand up for yourself when you feel there's nothing and nobody at your
+back. There's nothing so lonely in the world as a girl who has got to
+look after herself. When I left poor dad in that home--it was in the
+country, near a village--I came out of the gates with seven shillings
+and threepence in my old purse, and my railway ticket. I tramped a mile,
+and got into a train--”
+
+She broke off, and was silent for a moment.
+
+“Don't you throw me over now,” she went on. “If you did, what should
+I do? I should have to live, to be sure, because I'd be afraid to kill
+myself, but you would have done a thousand times worse than killing a
+body. You told me you had been always alone, you had never had a dog
+even. Well, then, I won't be in anybody's way if I live with you--not
+even a dog's. And what else did you mean when you came up and looked at
+me so close?”
+
+“Close? Did I?” he murmured unstirring before her in the profound
+darkness. “So close as that?”
+
+She had an outbreak of anger and despair in subdued tones.
+
+“Have you forgotten, then? What did you expect to find? I know what sort
+of girl I am; but all the same I am not the sort that men turn their
+backs on--and you ought to know it, unless you aren't made like the
+others. Oh, forgive me! You aren't like the others; you are like no one
+in the world I ever spoke to. Don't you care for me? Don't you see--?”
+
+What he saw was that, white and spectral, she was putting out her arms
+to him out of the black shadows like an appealing ghost. He took her
+hands, and was affected, almost surprised, to find them so warm, so
+real, so firm, so living in his grasp. He drew her to him, and she
+dropped her head on his shoulder with a deep-sigh.
+
+“I am dead tired,” she whispered plaintively.
+
+He put his arms around her, and only by the convulsive movements of her
+body became aware that she was sobbing without a sound. Sustaining her,
+he lost himself in the profound silence of the night. After a while she
+became still, and cried quietly. Then, suddenly, as if waking up, she
+asked:
+
+“You haven't seen any more of that somebody you thought was spying
+about?”
+
+He started at her quick, sharp whisper, and answered that very likely he
+had been mistaken.
+
+“If it was anybody at all,” she reflected aloud, “it wouldn't have been
+anyone but that hotel woman--the landlord's wife.”
+
+“Mrs. Schomberg,” Heyst said, surprised.
+
+“Yes. Another one that can't sleep o' nights. Why? Don't you see why?
+Because, of course, she sees what's going on. That beast doesn't even
+try to keep it from her. If she had only the least bit of spirit! She
+knows how I feel, too, only she's too frightened even to look him in the
+face, let alone open her mouth. He would tell her to go hang herself.”
+
+For some time Heyst said nothing. A public, active contest with the
+hotel-keeper was not to be thought of. The idea was horrible. Whispering
+gently to the girl, he tried to explain to her that as things stood, an
+open withdrawal from the company would be probably opposed. She listened
+to his explanation anxiously, from time to time pressing the hand she
+had sought and got hold of in the dark.
+
+“As I told you, I am not rich enough to buy you out so I shall steal you
+as soon as I can arrange some means of getting away from here. Meantime
+it would be fatal to be seen together at night. We mustn't give
+ourselves away. We had better part at once. I think I was mistaken just
+now; but if, as you say, that poor Mrs. Schomberg can't sleep of nights,
+we must be more careful. She would tell the fellow.”
+
+The girl had disengaged herself from his loose hold while he talked, and
+now stood free of him, but still clasping his hand firmly.
+
+“Oh, no,” she said with perfect assurance. “I tell you she daren't open
+her mouth to him. And she isn't as silly as she looks. She wouldn't give
+us away. She knows a trick worth two of that. She'll help--that's what
+she'll do, if she dares do anything at all.”
+
+“You seem to have a very clear view of the situation,” said Heyst, and
+received a warm, lingering kiss for this commendation.
+
+He discovered that to part from her was not such an easy matter as he
+had supposed it would be.
+
+“Upon my word,” he said before they separated, “I don't even know your
+name.”
+
+“Don't you? They call me Alma. I don't know why. Silly name! Magdalen
+too. It doesn't matter; you can call me by whatever name you choose.
+Yes, you give me a name. Think of one you would like the sound
+of--something quite new. How I should like to forget everything that has
+gone before, as one forgets a dream that's done with, fright and all! I
+would try.”
+
+“Would you really?” he asked in a murmur. “But that's not forbidden. I
+understand that women easily forget whatever in their past diminishes
+them in their eyes.”
+
+“It's your eyes that I was thinking of, for I'm sure I've never wished
+to forget anything till you came up to me that night and looked me
+through and through. I know I'm not much account; but I know how to
+stand by a man. I stood by father ever since I could understand. He
+wasn't a bad chap. Now that I can't be of any use to him, I would just
+as soon forget all that and make a fresh start. But these aren't things
+that I could talk to you about. What could I ever talk to you about?”
+
+“Don't let it trouble you,” Heyst said. “Your voice is enough. I am in
+love with it, whatever it says.”
+
+She remained silent for a while, as if rendered breathless by this quiet
+statement.
+
+“Oh! I wanted to ask you--”
+
+He remembered that she probably did not know his name, and expected the
+question to be put to him now; but after a moment of hesitation she went
+on:
+
+“Why was it that you told me to smile this evening in the concert-room
+there--you remember?”
+
+“I thought we were being observed. A smile is the best of masks.
+Schomberg was at a table next but one to us, drinking with some Dutch
+clerks from the town. No doubt he was watching us--watching you, at
+least. That's why I asked you to smile.”
+
+“Ah, that's why. It never came into my head!”
+
+“And you did it very well, too--very readily, as if you had understood
+my intention.”
+
+“Readily!” she repeated. “Oh, I was ready enough to smile then. That's
+the truth. It was the first time for years I may say that I felt
+disposed to smile. I've not had many chances to smile in my life, I can
+tell you; especially of late.”
+
+“But you do it most charmingly--in a perfectly fascinating way.”
+
+He paused. She stood still, waiting for more with the stillness of
+extreme delight, wishing to prolong the sensation.
+
+“It astonished me,” he added. “It went as straight to my heart as though
+you had smiled for the purpose of dazzling me. I felt as if I had never
+seen a smile before in my life. I thought of it after I left you. It
+made me restless.”
+
+“It did all that?” came her voice, unsteady, gentle, and incredulous.
+
+“If you had not smiled as you did, perhaps I should not have come out
+here tonight,” he said, with his playful earnestness of tone. “It was
+your triumph.”
+
+He felt her lips touch his lightly, and the next moment she was gone.
+Her white dress gleamed in the distance, and then the opaque darkness of
+the house seemed to swallow it. Heyst waited a little before he went the
+same way, round the corner, up the steps of the veranda, and into his
+room, where he lay down at last--not to sleep, but to go over in his
+mind all that had been said at their meeting.
+
+“It's exactly true about that smile,” he thought. There he had spoken
+the truth to her; and about her voice, too. For the rest--what must be
+must be.
+
+A great wave of heat passed over him. He turned on his back, flung his
+arms crosswise on the broad, hard bed, and lay still, open-eyed under
+the mosquito net, till daylight entered his room, brightened swiftly,
+and turned to unfailing sunlight. He got up then, went to a small
+looking-glass hanging on the wall, and stared at himself steadily. It
+was not a new-born vanity which induced this long survey. He felt
+so strange that he could not resist the suspicion of his personal
+appearance having changed during the night. What he saw in the glass,
+however, was the man he knew before. It was almost a disappointment--a
+belittling of his recent experience. And then he smiled at his
+naiveness; for, being over five and thirty years of age, he ought to
+have known that in most cases the body is the unalterable mask of the
+soul, which even death itself changes but little, till it is put out of
+sight where no changes matter any more, either to our friends or to our
+enemies.
+
+Heyst was not conscious of either friends or of enemies. It was the very
+essence of his life to be a solitary achievement, accomplished not by
+hermit-like withdrawal with its silence and immobility, but by a system
+of restless wandering, by the detachment of an impermanent dweller
+amongst changing scenes. In this scheme he had perceived the means of
+passing through life without suffering and almost without a single care
+in the world--invulnerable because elusive.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THREE
+
+For fifteen years Heyst had wandered, invariably courteous and
+unapproachable, and in return was generally considered a “queer chap.”
+ He had started off on these travels of his after the death of his
+father, an expatriated Swede who died in London, dissatisfied with his
+country and angry with all the world, which had instinctively rejected
+his wisdom.
+
+Thinker, stylist, and man of the world in his time, the elder Heyst
+had begun by coveting all the joys, those of the great and those of the
+humble, those of the fools and those of the sages. For more than sixty
+years he had dragged on this painful earth of ours the most weary, the
+most uneasy soul that civilization had ever fashioned to its ends of
+disillusion and regret. One could not refuse him a measure of greatness,
+for he was unhappy in a way unknown to mediocre souls. His mother Heyst
+had never known, but he kept his father's pale, distinguished face
+in affectionate memory. He remembered him mainly in an ample blue
+dressing-gown in a large house of a quiet London suburb. For three
+years, after leaving school at the age of eighteen, he had lived with
+the elder Heyst, who was then writing his last book. In this work, at
+the end of his life, he claimed for mankind that right to absolute moral
+and intellectual liberty of which he no longer believed them worthy.
+
+Three years of such companionship at that plastic and impressionable age
+were bound to leave in the boy a profound mistrust of life. The young
+man learned to reflect, which is a destructive process, a reckoning
+of the cost. It is not the clear-sighted who lead the world. Great
+achievements are accomplished in a blessed, warm mental fog, which the
+pitiless cold blasts of the father's analysis had blown away from the
+son.
+
+“I'll drift,” Heyst had said to himself deliberately.
+
+He did not mean intellectually or sentimentally or morally. He meant
+to drift altogether and literally, body and soul, like a detached leaf
+drifting in the wind-currents under the immovable trees of a forest
+glade; to drift without ever catching on to anything.
+
+“This shall be my defence against life,” he had said to himself with a
+sort of inward consciousness that for the son of his father there was no
+other worthy alternative.
+
+He became a waif and stray, austerely, from conviction, as others
+do through drink, from vice, from some weakness of character--with
+deliberation, as others do in despair. This, stripped of its facts, had
+been Heyst's life up to that disturbing night. Next day, when he saw the
+girl called Alma, she managed to give him a glance of frank tenderness,
+quick as lightning and leaving a profound impression, a secret touch on
+the heart. It was in the grounds of the hotel, about tiffin time, while
+the Ladies of the orchestra were strolling back to their pavilion after
+rehearsal, or practice, or whatever they called their morning musical
+exercises in the hall. Heyst, returning from the town, where he had
+discovered that there would be difficulties in the way of getting away
+at once, was crossing the compound, disappointed and worried. He had
+walked almost unwittingly into the straggling group of Zangiacomo's
+performers. It was a shock to him, on coming out of his brown study, to
+find the girl so near to him, as if one waking suddenly should see the
+figure of his dream turned into flesh and blood. She did not raise her
+shapely head, but her glance was no dream thing. It was real, the most
+real impression of his detached existence--so far.
+
+Heyst had not acknowledged it in any way, though it seemed to him
+impossible that its effect on him should not be visible to anyone who
+happened to be looking on. And there were several men on the
+veranda, steady customers of Schomberg's table d'hote, gazing in his
+direction--at the ladies of the orchestra, in fact. Heyst's dread arose,
+not out of shame or timidity, but from his fastidiousness. On getting
+amongst them, however, he noticed no signs of interest or astonishment
+in their faces, any more than if they had been blind men. Even Schomberg
+himself, who had to make way for him at the top of the stairs, was
+completely unperturbed, and continued the conversation he was carrying
+on with a client.
+
+Schomberg, indeed, had observed “that Swede” talking with the girl in
+the intervals. A crony of his had nudged him; and he had thought that it
+was so much the better; the silly fellow would keep everybody else off.
+He was rather pleased than otherwise and watched them out of the corner
+of his eye with a malicious enjoyment of the situation--a sort of
+Satanic glee. For he had little doubt of his personal fascination, and
+still less of his power to get hold of the girl, who seemed too ignorant
+to know how to help herself, and who was worse than friendless, since
+she had for some reason incurred the animosity of Mrs. Zangiacomo, a
+woman with no conscience. The aversion she showed him as far as she
+dared (for it is not always safe for the helpless to display the
+delicacy of their sentiments), Schomberg pardoned on the score of
+feminine conventional silliness. He had told Alma, as an argument, that
+she was a clever enough girl to see that she could do no better than to
+put her trust in a man of substance, in the prime of life, who knew
+his way about. But for the excited trembling of his voice, and the
+extraordinary way in which his eyes seemed to be starting out of his
+crimson, hirsute countenance, such speeches had every character of calm,
+unselfish advice--which, after the manner of lovers, passed easily into
+sanguine plans for the future.
+
+“We'll soon get rid of the old woman,” he whispered to her hurriedly,
+with panting ferocity. “Hang her! I've never cared for her. The climate
+don't suit her; I shall tell her to go to her people in Europe. She will
+have to go, too! I will see to it. Eins, zwei, march! And then we shall
+sell this hotel and start another somewhere else.”
+
+He assured her that he didn't care what he did for her sake; and it
+was true. Forty-five is the age of recklessness for many men, as if in
+defiance of the decay and death waiting with open arms in the sinister
+valley at the bottom of the inevitable hill. Her shrinking form, her
+downcast eyes, when she had to listen to him, cornered at the end of an
+empty corridor, he regarded as signs of submission to the overpowering
+force of his will, the recognition of his personal fascinations. For
+every age is fed on illusions, lest men should renounce life early and
+the human race come to an end.
+
+It's easy to imagine Schomberg's humiliation, his shocked fury, when
+he discovered that the girl who had for weeks resisted his attacks, his
+prayers, and his fiercest protestations, had been snatched from under
+his nose by “that Swede,” apparently without any trouble worth speaking
+of. He refused to believe the fact. He would have it, at first, that
+the Zangiacomos, for some unfathomable reason, had played him a scurvy
+trick, but when no further doubt was possible, he changed his view of
+Heyst. The despised Swede became for Schomberg the deepest, the most
+dangerous, the most hateful of scoundrels. He could not believe that the
+creature he had coveted with so much force and with so little effect,
+was in reality tender, docile to her impulse, and had almost offered
+herself to Heyst without a sense of guilt, in a desire of safety, and
+from a profound need of placing her trust where her woman's instinct
+guided her ignorance. Nothing would serve Schomberg but that she must
+have been circumvented by some occult exercise of force or craft, by the
+laying of some subtle trap. His wounded vanity wondered ceaselessly at
+the means “that Swede” had employed to seduce her away from a man
+like him--Schomberg--as though those means were bound to have been
+extraordinary, unheard of, inconceivable. He slapped his forehead openly
+before his customers; he would sit brooding in silence or else would
+burst out unexpectedly declaiming against Heyst without measure,
+discretion, or prudence, with swollen features and an affectation of
+outraged virtue which could not have deceived the most childlike of
+moralists for a moment--and greatly amused his audience.
+
+It became a recognized entertainment to go and hear his abuse of Heyst,
+while sipping iced drinks on the veranda of the hotel. It was, in a
+manner, a more successful draw than the Zangiacomo concerts had ever
+been--intervals and all. There was never any difficulty in starting the
+performer off. Anybody could do it, by almost any distant allusion.
+As likely as not he would start his endless denunciations in the very
+billiard-room where Mrs. Schomberg sat enthroned as usual, swallowing
+her sobs, concealing her tortures of abject humiliation and terror under
+her stupid, set, everlasting grin, which, having been provided for her
+by nature, was an excellent mask, in as much as nothing--not even death
+itself, perhaps--could tear it away.
+
+But nothing lasts in this world, at least without changing its
+physiognomy. So, after a few weeks, Schomberg regained his outward calm,
+as if his indignation had dried up within him. And it was time. He was
+becoming a bore with his inability to talk of anything else but Heyst's
+unfitness to be at large, Heyst's wickedness, his wiles, his astuteness,
+and his criminality. Schomberg no longer pretended to despise him. He
+could not have done it. After what had happened he could not pretend,
+even to himself. But his bottled-up indignation was fermenting
+venomously. At the time of his immoderate loquacity one of his
+customers, an elderly man, had remarked one evening:
+
+“If that ass keeps on like this, he will end by going crazy.”
+
+And this belief was less than half wrong. Schomberg had Heyst on the
+brain. Even the unsatisfactory state of his affairs, which had
+never been so unpromising since he came out East directly after the
+Franco-Prussian War, he referred to some subtly noxious influence of
+Heyst. It seemed to him that he could never be himself again till he had
+got even with that artful Swede. He was ready to swear that Heyst had
+ruined his life. The girl so unfairly, craftily, basely decoyed away
+would have inspired him to success in a new start. Obviously Mrs.
+Schomberg, whom he terrified by savagely silent moods combined with
+underhand, poisoned glances, could give him no inspiration. He had grown
+generally neglectful, but with a partiality for reckless expedients, as
+if he did not care when and how his career as a hotel-keeper was to be
+brought to an end. This demoralized state accounted for what Davidson
+had observed on his last visit to the Schomberg establishment, some two
+months after Heyst's secret departure with the girl to the solitude of
+Samburan.
+
+The Schomberg of a few years ago--the Schomberg of the Bangkok days,
+for instance, when he started the first of his famed table d'hote
+dinners--would never have risked anything of the sort. His genius ran to
+catering, “white man for white men” and to the inventing, elaborating,
+and retailing of scandalous gossip with asinine unction and impudent
+delight. But now his mind was perverted by the pangs of wounded vanity
+and of thwarted passion. In this state of moral weakness Schomberg
+allowed himself to be corrupted.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FOUR
+
+The business was done by a guest who arrived one fine morning by
+mail-boat--immediately from Celebes, having boarded her in Macassar,
+but generally, Schomberg understood, from up China Sea way; a wanderer
+clearly, even as Heyst was, but not alone and of quite another kind.
+
+Schomberg, looking up from the stern-sheets of his steam-launch, which
+he used for boarding passenger ships on arrival, discovered a dark
+sunken stare plunging down on him over the rail of the first-class part
+of the deck. He was no great judge of physiognomy. Human beings, for
+him, were either the objects of scandalous gossip or else recipients of
+narrow strips of paper, with proper bill-heads stating the name of his
+hotel--“W. Schomberg, proprietor, accounts settled weekly.”
+
+So in the clean-shaven, extremely thin face hanging over the mail-boat's
+rail Schomberg saw only the face of a possible “account.” The
+steam-launches of other hotels were also alongside, but he obtained the
+preference.
+
+“You are Mr. Schomberg, aren't you?” the face asked quite unexpectedly.
+
+“I am at your service,” he answered from below; for business is
+business, and its forms and formulas must be observed, even if one's
+manly bosom is tortured by that dull rage which succeeds the fury of
+baffled passion, like the glow of embers after a fierce blaze.
+
+Presently the possessor of the handsome but emaciated face was seated
+beside Schomberg in the stern-sheets of the launch. His body was long
+and loose-jointed, his slender fingers, intertwined, clasped the leg
+resting on the knee, as he lolled back in a careless yet tense attitude.
+On the other side of Schomberg sat another passenger, who was introduced
+by the clean-shaven man as--
+
+“My secretary. He must have the room next to mine.”
+
+“We can manage that easily for you.”
+
+Schomberg steered with dignity, staring straight ahead, but very much
+interested by these two promising “accounts.” Their belongings, a couple
+of large leather trunks browned by age and a few smaller packages,
+were piled up in the bows. A third individual--a nondescript, hairy
+creature--had modestly made his way forward and had perched himself on
+the luggage. The lower part of his physiognomy was over-developed;
+his narrow and low forehead, unintelligently furrowed by horizontal
+wrinkles, surmounted wildly hirsute cheeks and a flat nose with wide,
+baboon-like nostrils. There was something equivocal in the appearance of
+his shaggy, hair-smothered humanity. He, too, seemed to be a follower of
+the clean-shaven man, and apparently had travelled on deck with native
+passengers, sleeping under the awnings. His broad, squat frame denoted
+great strength. Grasping the gunwales of the launch, he displayed a
+pair of remarkably long arms, terminating in thick, brown hairy paws of
+simian aspect.
+
+“What shall we do with the fellow of mine?” the chief of the party asked
+Schomberg. “There must be a boarding-house somewhere near the port--some
+grog-shop where they could let him have a mat to sleep on?”
+
+Schomberg said there was a place kept by a Portuguese half-caste.
+
+“A servant of yours?” he asked.
+
+“Well, he hangs on to me. He is an alligator-hunter. I picked him up in
+Colombia, you know. Ever been in Colombia?”
+
+“No,” said Schomberg, very much surprised. “An alligator-hunter? Funny
+trade! Are you coming from Colombia, then?”
+
+“Yes, but I have been coming for a long time. I come from a good many
+places. I am travelling west, you see.”
+
+“For sport, perhaps?” suggested Schomberg.
+
+“Yes. Sort of sport. What do you say to chasing the sun?”
+
+“I see--a gentleman at large,” said Schomberg, watching a sailing canoe
+about to cross his bow, and ready to clear it by a touch of the helm.
+
+The other passenger made himself heard suddenly.
+
+“Hang these native craft! They always get in the way.”
+
+He was a muscular, short man with eyes that gleamed and blinked, a harsh
+voice, and a round, toneless, pock-marked face ornamented by a thin,
+dishevelled moustache, sticking out quaintly under the tip of a rigid
+nose. Schomberg made the reflection that there was nothing secretarial
+about him. Both he and his long, lank principal wore the usual white
+suit of the tropics, cork helmets, pipe-clayed white shoes--all correct.
+The hairy nondescript creature perched on their luggage in the bow had a
+check shirt and blue dungaree trousers. He gazed in their direction from
+forward in an expectant, trained-animal manner.
+
+“You spoke to me first,” said Schomberg in his manly tones. “You were
+acquainted with my name. Where did you hear of me, gentlemen, may I
+ask?”
+
+“In Manila,” answered the gentleman at large, readily. “From a man with
+whom I had a game of cards one evening in the Hotel Castille.”
+
+“What man? I've no friends in Manila that I know of,” wondered Schomberg
+with a severe frown.
+
+“I can't tell you his name. I've clean forgotten it; but don't you
+worry. He was anything but a friend of yours. He called you all the
+names he could think of. He said you set a lot of scandal going about
+him once, somewhere--in Bangkok, I think. Yes, that's it. You were
+running a table d'hote in Bangkok at one time, weren't you?”
+
+Schomberg, astounded by the turn of the information, could only throw
+out his chest more and exaggerate his austere Lieutenant-of-the-Reserve
+manner. A table d'hote? Yes, certainly. He always--for the sake of white
+men. And here in this place, too? Yes, in this place, too.
+
+“That's all right, then.” The stranger turned his black, cavernous,
+mesmerizing glance away from the bearded Schomberg, who sat gripping
+the brass tiller in a sweating palm. “Many people in the evening at your
+place?”
+
+Schomberg had recovered somewhat.
+
+“Twenty covers or so, take one day with another,” he answered feelingly,
+as befitted a subject on which he was sensitive. “Ought to be more,
+if only people would see that it's for their own good. Precious little
+profit I get out of it. You are partial to tables d'hote, gentlemen?”
+
+The new guest made answer that he liked a hotel where one could find
+some local people in the evening. It was infernally dull otherwise. The
+secretary, in sign of approval, emitted a grunt of astonishing ferocity,
+as if proposing to himself to eat the local people. All this sounded
+like a longish stay, thought Schomberg, satisfied under his grave air;
+till, remembering the girl snatched away from him by the last guest who
+had made a prolonged stay in his hotel, he ground his teeth so audibly
+that the other two looked at him in wonder. The momentary convulsion
+of his florid physiognomy seemed to strike them dumb. They exchanged a
+quick glance. Presently the clean-shaven man fired out another question
+in his curt, unceremonious manner:
+
+“You have no women in your hotel, eh?”
+
+“Women!” Schomberg exclaimed indignantly, but also as if a little
+frightened. “What on earth do you mean by women? What women? There's
+Mrs. Schomberg, of course,” he added, suddenly appeased, with lofty
+indifference.
+
+“If she knows how to keep her place, then it will do. I can't stand
+women near me. They give me the horrors,” declared the other. “They are
+a perfect curse!”
+
+During this outburst the secretary wore a savage grin. The chief guest
+closed his sunken eyes, as if exhausted, and leaned the back of his head
+against the stanchion of the awning. In this pose, his long, feminine
+eyelashes were very noticeable, and his regular features, sharp line of
+the jaw, and well-cut chin were brought into prominence, giving him a
+used-up, weary, depraved distinction. He did not open his eyes till
+the steam-launch touched the quay. Then he and the other man got ashore
+quickly, entered a carriage, and drove away to the hotel, leaving
+Schomberg to look after their luggage and take care of their strange
+companion. The latter, looking more like a performing bear abandoned by
+his show men than a human being, followed all Schomberg's movements step
+by step, close behind his back, muttering to himself in a language
+that sounded like some sort of uncouth Spanish. The hotel-keeper felt
+uncomfortable till at last he got rid of him at an obscure den where
+a very clean, portly Portuguese half-caste, standing serenely in the
+doorway, seemed to understand exactly how to deal with clients of every
+kind. He took from the creature the strapped bundle it had been hugging
+closely through all its peregrinations in that strange town, and cut
+short Schomberg's attempts at explanation by a most confident--
+
+“I comprehend very well, sir.”
+
+“It's more than I do,” thought Schomberg, going away thankful at being
+relieved of the alligator-hunter's company. He wondered what these
+fellows were, without being able to form a guess of sufficient
+probability. Their names he learned that very day by direct inquiry “to
+enter in my books,” he explained in his formal military manner, chest
+thrown out, beard very much in evidence.
+
+The shaven man, sprawling in a long chair, with his air of withered
+youth, raised his eyes languidly.
+
+“My name? Oh, plain Mr. Jones--put that down--a gentleman at large. And
+this is Ricardo.” The pock-marked man, lying prostrate in another long
+chair, made a grimace, as if something had tickled the end of his nose,
+but did not come out of his supineness. “Martin Ricardo, secretary. You
+don't want any more of our history, do you? Eh, what? Occupation? Put
+down, well--tourists. We've been called harder names before now; it
+won't hurt our feelings. And that fellow of mine--where did you tuck him
+away? Oh, he will be all right. When he wants anything he'll take it.
+He's Peter. Citizen of Colombia. Peter, Pedro--I don't know that he ever
+had any other name. Pedro, alligator hunter. Oh, yes--I'll pay his board
+with the half-caste. Can't help myself. He's so confoundedly devoted to
+me that if I were to give him the sack he would fly at my throat. Shall
+I tell you how I killed his brother in the wilds of Colombia? Well,
+perhaps some other time--it's a rather long story. What I shall always
+regret is that I didn't kill him, too. I could have done it without any
+extra trouble then; now it's too late. Great nuisance; but he's useful
+sometimes. I hope you are not going to put all this in your book?”
+
+The offhand, hard manner and the contemptuous tone of “plain Mr. Jones”
+ disconcerted Schomberg utterly. He had never been spoken to like this
+in his life. He shook his head in silence and withdrew, not exactly
+scared--though he was in reality of a timid disposition under his manly
+exterior--but distinctly mystified and impressed.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FIVE
+
+Three weeks later, after putting his cash-box away in the safe which
+filled with its iron bulk a corner of their room, Schomberg turned
+towards his wife, but without looking at her exactly, and said:
+
+“I must get rid of these two. It won't do!”
+
+Mrs. Schomberg had entertained that very opinion from the first; but she
+had been broken years ago into keeping her opinions to herself. Sitting
+in her night attire in the light of a single candle, she was careful not
+to make a sound, knowing from experience that her very assent would be
+resented. With her eyes she followed the figure of Schomberg, clad in
+his sleeping suit, and moving restlessly about the room.
+
+He never glanced her way, for the reason that Mrs. Schomberg, in
+her night attire, looked the most unattractive object in
+existence--miserable, insignificant, faded, crushed, old. And the
+contrast with the feminine form he had ever in his mind's eye made his
+wife's appearance painful to his aesthetic sense.
+
+Schomberg walked about swearing and fuming for the purpose of screwing
+his courage up to the sticking point.
+
+“Hang me if I ought not to go now, at once, this minute, into his
+bedroom, and tell him to be off--him and that secretary of his--early in
+the morning. I don't mind a round game of cards, but to make a decoy of
+my table d'hote--my blood boils! He came here because some lying rascal
+in Manila told him I kept a table d'hote.”
+
+He said these things, not for Mrs. Schomberg's information, but simply
+thinking aloud, and trying to work his fury up to a point where it would
+give him courage enough to face “plain Mr. Jones.”
+
+“Impudent overbearing, swindling sharper,” he went on. “I have a good
+mind to--”
+
+He was beside himself in his lurid, heavy, Teutonic manner, so unlike
+the picturesque, lively rage of the Latin races; and though his eyes
+strayed about irresolutely, yet his swollen, angry features awakened in
+the miserable woman over whom he had been tyrannizing for years a fear
+for his precious carcass, since the poor creature had nothing else but
+that to hold on to in the world. She knew him well; but she did not know
+him altogether. The last thing a woman will consent to discover in a man
+whom she loves, or on whom she simply depends, is want of courage. And,
+timid in her corner, she ventured to say pressingly:
+
+“Be careful, Wilhelm! Remember the knives and revolvers in their
+trunks.”
+
+In guise of thanks for that anxious reminder, he swore horribly in
+the direction of her shrinking person. In her scanty nightdress, and
+barefooted, she recalled a mediaeval penitent being reproved for her
+sins in blasphemous terms. Those lethal weapons were always present to
+Schomberg's mind. Personally, he had never seen them. His part, ten
+days after his guests' arrival, had been to lounge in manly, careless
+attitudes on the veranda--keeping watch--while Mrs. Schomberg, provided
+with a bunch of assorted keys, her discoloured teeth chattering and her
+globular eyes absolutely idiotic with fright, was “going through” the
+luggage of these strange clients. Her terrible Wilhelm had insisted on
+it.
+
+“I'll be on the look-out, I tell you,” he said. “I shall give you a
+whistle when I see them coming back. You couldn't whistle. And if he
+were to catch you at it, and chuck you out by the scruff of the neck, it
+wouldn't hurt you much; but he won't touch a woman. Not he! He has told
+me so. Affected beast. I must find out something about their little
+game, and so there's an end of it. Go in! Go now! Quick march!”
+
+It had been an awful job; but she did go in, because she was much more
+afraid of Schomberg than of any possible consequences of the act. Her
+greatest concern was lest no key of the bunch he had provided her with
+should fit the locks. It would have been such a disappointment for
+Wilhelm. However, the trunks, she found, had been left open; but her
+investigation did not last long. She was frightened of firearms, and
+generally of all weapons, not from personal cowardice, but as some women
+are, almost superstitiously, from an abstract horror of violence and
+murder. She was out again on the veranda long before Wilhelm had any
+occasion for a warning whistle. The instinctive, motiveless fear being
+the most difficult to overcome, nothing could induce her to return to
+her investigations, neither threatening growls nor ferocious hisses, nor
+yet a poke or two in the ribs.
+
+“Stupid female!” muttered the hotel-keeper, perturbed by the notion
+of that armoury in one of his bedrooms. This was from no abstract
+sentiment, with him it was constitutional. “Get out of my sight,” he
+snarled. “Go and dress yourself for the table d'hote.”
+
+Left to himself, Schomberg had meditated. What the devil did this mean?
+His thinking processes were sluggish and spasmodic; but suddenly the
+truth came to him.
+
+“By heavens, they are desperadoes!” he thought.
+
+Just then he beheld “plain Mr. Jones” and his secretary with the
+ambiguous name of Ricardo entering the grounds of the hotel. They had
+been down to the port on some business, and now were returning; Mr.
+Jones lank, spare, opening his long legs with angular regularity like
+a pair of compasses, the other stepping out briskly by his side.
+Conviction entered Schomberg's heart. They were two desperadoes--no
+doubt about it. But as the funk which he experienced was merely
+a general sensation, he managed to put on his most severe
+Officer-of-the-Reserve manner, long before they had closed with him.
+
+“Good morning, gentlemen.”
+
+Being answered with derisive civility, he became confirmed in his sudden
+conviction of their desperate character. The way Mr. Jones turned his
+hollow eyes on one, like an incurious spectre, and the way the other,
+when addressed, suddenly retracted his lips and exhibited his teeth
+without looking round--here was evidence enough to settle that point.
+Desperadoes! They passed through the billiard-room, inscrutably
+mysterious, to the back of the house, to join their violated trunks.
+
+“Tiffin bell will ring in five minutes, gentlemen.” Schomberg called
+after them, exaggerating the deep manliness of his tone.
+
+He had managed to upset himself very much. He expected to see them come
+back infuriated and begin to bully him with an odious lack of restraint.
+Desperadoes! However they didn't; they had not noticed anything unusual
+about their trunks and Schomberg recovered his composure and said
+to himself that he must get rid of this deadly incubus as soon as
+practicable. They couldn't possibly want to stay very long; this was not
+the town--the colony--for desperate characters. He shrank from action.
+He dreaded any kind of disturbance--“fracas” he called it--in his hotel.
+Such things were not good for business. Of course, sometimes one had to
+have a “fracas;” but it had been a comparatively trifling task to seize
+the frail Zangiacomo--whose bones were no larger than a chicken's--round
+the ribs, lift him up bodily, dash him to the ground, and fall on
+him. It had been easy. The wretched, hook-nosed creature lay without
+movement, buried under its purple beard.
+
+Suddenly, remembering the occasion of that “fracas,” Schomberg groaned
+with the pain as of a hot coal under his breastbone, and gave himself up
+to desolation. Ah, if he only had that girl with him he would have been
+masterful and resolute and fearless--fight twenty desperadoes--care
+for nobody on earth! Whereas the possession of Mrs. Schomberg was no
+incitement to a display of manly virtues. Instead of caring for no one,
+he felt that he cared for nothing. Life was a hollow sham; he wasn't
+going to risk a shot through his lungs or his liver in order to preserve
+its integrity. It had no savour--damn it!
+
+In his state of moral decomposition, Schomberg, master as he was of the
+art of hotel-keeping, and careful of giving no occasion for criticism
+to the powers regulating that branch of human activity, let things take
+their course; though he saw very well where that course was tending.
+It began first with a game or two after dinner--for the drinks,
+apparently--with some lingering customer, at one of the little tables
+ranged against the walls of the billiard-room. Schomberg detected the
+meaning of it at once. “That's what it was! This was what they were!”
+ And, moving about restlessly (at that time his morose silent period had
+set in), he cast sidelong looks at the game; but he said nothing. It was
+not worth while having a row with men who were so overbearing. Even when
+money appeared in connection with these postprandial games, into which
+more and more people were being drawn, he still refrained from raising
+the question; he was reluctant to draw unduly the attention of “plain
+Mr. Jones” and of the equivocal Ricardo, to his person. One evening,
+however, after the public rooms of the hotel had become empty, Schomberg
+made an attempt to grapple with the problem in an indirect way.
+
+In a distant corner the tired China boy dozed on his heels, his back
+against the wall. Mrs. Schomberg had disappeared, as usual, between ten
+and eleven. Schomberg walked about slowly in and out of the room and
+the veranda, thoughtful, waiting for his two guests to go to bed. Then
+suddenly he approached them, militarily, his chest thrown out, his voice
+curt and soldierly.
+
+“Hot night, gentlemen.”
+
+Mr. Jones, lolling back idly in a chair, looked up. Ricardo, as idle, but
+more upright, made no sign.
+
+“Won't you have a drink with me before retiring?” went on Schomberg,
+sitting down by the little table.
+
+“By all means,” said Mr. Jones lazily.
+
+Ricardo showed his teeth in a strange, quick grin. Schomberg felt
+painfully how difficult it was to get in touch with these men, both
+so quiet, so deliberate, so menacingly unceremonious. He ordered the
+Chinaman to bring in the drinks. His purpose was to discover how long
+these guests intended to stay. Ricardo displayed no conversational vein,
+but Mr. Jones appeared communicative enough. His voice somehow matched
+his sunken eyes. It was hollow without being in the least mournful;
+it sounded distant, uninterested, as though he were speaking from the
+bottom of a well. Schomberg learned that he would have the privilege of
+lodging and boarding these gentlemen for at least a month more. He could
+not conceal his discomfiture at this piece of news.
+
+“What's the matter? Don't you like to have people in your house?” asked
+plain Mr. Jones languidly. “I should have thought the owner of a hotel
+would be pleased.”
+
+He lifted his delicate and beautifully pencilled eyebrows. Schomberg
+muttered something about the locality being dull and uninteresting to
+travellers--nothing going on--too quiet altogether, but he only provoked
+the declaration that quiet had its charm sometimes, and even dullness
+was welcome as a change.
+
+“We haven't had time to be dull for the last three years,” added plain
+Mr. Jones, his eyes fixed darkly on Schomberg whom he further more
+invited to have another drink, this time with him, and not to worry
+himself about things he did not understand; and especially not to be
+inhospitable--which in a hotel-keeper is highly unprofessional.
+
+“I don't understand,” grumbled Schomberg. “Oh, yes, I understand
+perfectly well. I--”
+
+“You are frightened,” interrupted Mr. Jones. “What is the matter?”
+
+“I don't want any scandal in my place. That's what's the matter.”
+
+Schomberg tried to face the situation bravely, but that steady, black
+stare affected him. And when he glanced aside uncomfortably, he met
+Ricardo's grin uncovering a lot of teeth, though the man seemed absorbed
+in his thoughts all the time.
+
+“And, moreover,” went on Mr. Jones in that distant tone of his, “you
+can't help yourself. Here we are and here we stay. Would you try to
+put us out? I dare say you could do it; but you couldn't do it without
+getting hurt--very badly hurt. We can promise him that, can't we,
+Martin?”
+
+The secretary retracted his lips and looked up sharply at Schomberg, as
+if only too anxious to leap upon him with teeth and claws.
+
+Schomberg managed to produce a deep laugh.
+
+“Ha! Ha! Ha!”
+
+Mr. Jones closed his eyes wearily, as if the light hurt them, and looked
+remarkably like a corpse for a moment. This was bad enough; but when he
+opened them again, it was almost a worse trial for Schomberg's nerves.
+The spectral intensity of that glance, fixed on the hotel-keeper (and
+this was most frightful) without any definite expression, seemed to
+dissolve the last grain of resolution in his character.
+
+“You don't think, by any chance, that you have to do with ordinary
+people, do you?” inquired Mr. Jones, in his lifeless manner, which
+seemed to imply some sort of menace from beyond the grave.
+
+“He's a gentleman,” testified Martin Ricardo with a sudden snap of the
+lips, after which his moustaches stirred by themselves in an odd, feline
+manner.
+
+“Oh, I wasn't thinking of that,” said plain Mr. Jones, while Schomberg,
+dumb and planted heavily in his chair looked from one to the other,
+leaning forward a little. “Of course I am that; but Ricardo attaches
+too much importance to a social advantage. What I mean, for instance, is
+that he, quiet and inoffensive as you see him sitting here, would think
+nothing of setting fire to this house of entertainment of yours. It
+would blaze like a box of matches. Think of that! It wouldn't advance
+your affairs much, would it?--whatever happened to us.”
+
+“Come, come gentlemen,” remonstrated Schomberg, in a murmur. “This is
+very wild talk!”
+
+“And you have been used to deal with tame people, haven't you? But we
+aren't tame. We once kept a whole angry town at bay for two days, and
+then we got away with our plunder. It was in Venezuela. Ask Martin
+here--he can tell you.”
+
+Instinctively Schomberg looked at Ricardo, who only passed the tip of
+his tongue over his lips with an uncanny sort of gusto, but did not
+offer to begin.
+
+“Well, perhaps it would be a rather long story,” Mr. Jones conceded
+after a short silence.
+
+“I have no desire to hear it, I am sure,” said Schomberg. “This isn't
+Venezuela. You wouldn't get away from here like that. But all this is
+silly talk of the worst sort. Do you mean to say you would make deadly
+trouble for the sake of a few guilders that you and that other”--eyeing
+Ricardo suspiciously, as one would look at a strange animal--“gentleman
+can win of an evening? Isn't as if my customers were a lot of rich men
+with pockets full of cash. I wonder you take so much trouble and risk
+for so little money.”
+
+Schomberg's argument was met by Mr. Jones's statement that one must do
+something to kill time. Killing time was not forbidden. For the rest,
+being in a communicative mood, Mr. Jones said languidly and in a voice
+indifferent, as if issuing from a tomb, that he depended on himself, as
+if the world were still one great, wild jungle without law. Martin was
+something like that, too--for reasons of his own.
+
+All these statements Ricardo confirmed by short, inhuman grins.
+Schomberg lowered his eyes, for the sight of these two men intimidated
+him; but he was losing patience.
+
+“Of course, I could see at once that you were two desperate
+characters--something like what you say. But what would you think if
+I told you that I am pretty near as desperate as you two gentlemen?
+'Here's that Schomberg has an easy time running his hotel,' people
+think; and yet it seems to me I would just as soon let you rip me open
+and burn the whole show as not. There!”
+
+A low whistle was heard. It came from Ricardo, and was derisive.
+Schomberg, breathing heavily, looked on the floor. He was really
+desperate. Mr. Jones remained languidly sceptical.
+
+“Tut, tut! You have a tolerable business. You are perfectly tame; you--”
+ He paused, then added in a tone of disgust: “You have a wife.”
+
+Schomberg tapped the floor angrily with his foot and uttered an
+indistinct, laughing curse.
+
+“What do you mean by flinging that damned trouble at my head?” he cried.
+“I wish you would carry her off with you some where to the devil! I
+wouldn't run after you.”
+
+The unexpected outburst affected Mr. Jones strangely. He had a horrified
+recoil, chair and all, as if Schomberg had thrust a wriggling viper in
+his face.
+
+“What's this infernal nonsense?” he muttered thickly. “What do you mean?
+How dare you?”
+
+Ricardo chuckled audibly.
+
+“I tell you I am desperate,” Schomberg repeated. “I am as desperate as
+any man ever was. I don't care a hang what happens to me!”
+
+“Well, then”--Mr. Jones began to speak with a quietly threatening
+effect, as if the common words of daily use had some other deadly
+meaning to his mind--“well, then, why should you make yourself
+ridiculously disagreeable to us? If you don't care, as you say, you
+might just as well let us have the key of that music-shed of yours for
+a quiet game; a modest bank--a dozen candles or so. It would be greatly
+appreciated by your clients, as far as I can judge from the way they
+betted on a game of ecarte I had with that fair, baby-faced man--what's
+his name? They just yearn for a modest bank. And I am afraid Martin here
+would take it badly if you objected; but of course you won't. Think of
+the calls for drinks!”
+
+Schomberg, raising his eyes, at last met the gleams in two dark caverns
+under Mr. Jones's devilish eyebrows, directed upon him impenetrably. He
+shuddered as if horrors worse than murder had been lurking there, and
+said, nodding towards Ricardo:
+
+“I dare say he wouldn't think twice about sticking me, if he had you at
+his back! I wish I had sunk my launch, and gone to the bottom myself
+in her, before I boarded the steamer you came by. Ah, well, I've been
+already living in hell for weeks, so you don't make much difference.
+I'll let you have the concert-room--and hang the consequences. But
+what about the boy on late duty? If he sees the cards and actual money
+passing, he will be sure to blab, and it will be all over the town in no
+time.”
+
+A ghastly smile stirred the lips of Mr. Jones.
+
+“Ah, I see you want to make a success of it. Very good. That's the way
+to get on. Don't let it disturb you. You chase all the Chinamen to bed
+early, and we'll get Pedro here every evening. He isn't the conventional
+waiter's cut, but he will do to run to and fro with the tray, while
+you sit here from nine to eleven serving out drinks and gathering the
+money.”
+
+“There will be three of them now,” thought the unlucky Schomberg.
+
+But Pedro, at any rate, was just a simple, straightforward brute, if
+a murderous one. There was no mystery about him, nothing uncanny, no
+suggestion of a stealthy, deliberate wildcat turned into a man, or of an
+insolent spectre on leave from Hades, endowed with skin and bones and
+a subtle power of terror. Pedro with his fangs, his tangled beard, and
+queer stare of his little bear's eyes was, by comparison, delightfully
+natural. Besides, Schomberg could no longer help himself.
+
+“That will do very well,” he asserted mournfully. “But if you gentlemen,
+if you had turned up here only three months ago--ay, less than three
+months ago--you would have found somebody very different from what I am
+now to talk to you. It's true. What do you think of that?”
+
+“I scarcely know what to think. I should think it was a lie. You were
+probably as tame three months ago as you are now. You were born tame,
+like most people in the world.”
+
+Mr. Jones got up spectrally, and Ricardo imitated him with a snarl and a
+stretch. Schomberg, in a brown study, went on, as if to himself:
+
+“There has been an orchestra here--eighteen women.”
+
+Mr. Jones let out an exclamation of dismay, and looked about as if the
+walls around him and the whole house had been infected with plague. Then
+he became very angry, and swore violently at Schomberg for daring to
+bring up such subjects. The hotel-keeper was too much surprised to get
+up. He gazed from his chair at Mr. Jones's anger, which had nothing
+spectral in it but was not the more comprehensible for that.
+
+“What's the matter?” he stammered out. “What subject? Didn't you hear me
+say it was an orchestra? There's nothing wrong in that. Well, there was
+a girl amongst them--” Schomberg's eyes went stony; he clasped his hands
+in front of his breast with such force that his knuckles came out white.
+“Such a girl! Tame, am I? I would have kicked everything to pieces about
+me for her. And she, of course . . . I am in the prime of life . . .
+then a fellow bewitched her--a vagabond, a false, lying, swindling,
+underhand, stick-at-nothing brute. Ah!”
+
+His entwined fingers cracked as he tore his hands apart, flung out his
+arms, and leaned his forehead on them in a passion of fury. The other
+two looked at his shaking back--the attenuated Mr. Jones with mingled
+scorn and a sort of fear, Ricardo with the expression of a cat which
+sees a piece of fish in the pantry out of reach. Schomberg flung himself
+backwards. He was dry-eyed, but he gulped as if swallowing sobs.
+
+“No wonder you can do with me what you like. You have no idea--just let
+me tell you of my trouble--”
+
+“I don't want to know anything of your beastly trouble,” said Mr. Jones,
+in his most lifelessly positive voice.
+
+He stretched forth an arresting hand, and, as Schomberg remained
+open-mouthed, he walked out of the billiard-room in all the uncanniness
+of his thin shanks. Ricardo followed at his leader's heels; but he
+showed his teeth to Schomberg over his shoulder.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SIX
+
+From that evening dated those mysterious but significant phenomena in
+Schomberg's establishment which attracted Captain Davidson's casual
+notice when he dropped in, placid yet astute, in order to return
+Mrs. Schomberg's Indian shawl. And strangely enough, they lasted
+some considerable time. It argued either honesty and bad luck or
+extraordinary restraint on the part of “plain Mr. Jones and Co.” in
+their discreet operations with cards.
+
+It was a curious and impressive sight, the inside of Schomberg's
+concert-hall, encumbered at one end by a great stack of chairs piled up
+on and about the musicians' platform, and lighted at the other by two
+dozen candles disposed about a long trestle table covered with green
+cloth. In the middle, Mr. Jones, a starved spectre turned into a banker,
+faced Ricardo, a rather nasty, slow-moving cat turned into a croupier.
+By contrast, the other faces round that table, anything between twenty
+and thirty, must have looked like collected samples of intensely
+artless, helpless humanity--pathetic in their innocent watch for the
+small turns of luck which indeed might have been serious enough for
+them. They had no notice to spare for the hairy Pedro, carrying a tray
+with the clumsiness of a creature caught in the woods and taught to walk
+on its hind legs.
+
+As to Schomberg, he kept out of the way. He remained in the
+billiard-room, serving out drinks to the unspeakable Pedro with an air
+of not seeing the growling monster, of not knowing where the drinks
+went, of ignoring that there was such a thing as a music-room over there
+under the trees within fifty yards of the hotel. He submitted himself
+to the situation with a low-spirited stoicism compounded of fear and
+resignation. Directly the party had broken up, (he could see dark
+shapes of the men drifting singly and in knots through the gate of
+the compound), he would withdraw out of sight behind a door not quite
+closed, in order to avoid meeting his two extraordinary guests; but he
+would watch through the crack their contrasted forms pass through the
+billiard-room and disappear on their way to bed. Then he would hear
+doors being slammed upstairs; and a profound silence would fall upon the
+whole house, upon his hotel appropriated, haunted by those insolently
+outspoken men provided with a whole armoury of weapons in their trunks.
+A profound silence. Schomberg sometimes could not resist the notion that
+he must be dreaming. Shuddering, he would pull himself together,
+and creep out, with movements strangely inappropriate to the
+Lieutenant-of-the-Reserve bearing by which he tried to keep up his
+self-respect before the world.
+
+A great loneliness oppressed him. One after another he would extinguish
+the lamps, and move softly towards his bedroom, where Mrs. Schomberg
+waited for him--no fit companion for a man of his ability and “in the
+prime of life.” But that life, alas, was blighted. He felt it; and never
+with such force as when on opening the door he perceived that woman
+sitting patiently in a chair, her toes peeping out under the edge of her
+night-dress, an amazingly small amount of hair on her head drooping
+on the long stalk of scraggy neck, with that everlasting scared grin
+showing a blue tooth and meaning nothing--not even real fear. For she
+was used to him.
+
+Sometimes he was tempted to screw the head off the stalk. He imagined
+himself doing it--with one hand, a twisting movement. Not seriously, of
+course. Just a simple indulgence for his exasperated feelings. He wasn't
+capable of murder. He was certain of that. And, remembering suddenly the
+plain speeches of Mr. Jones, he would think: “I suppose I am too tame
+for that”--quite unaware that he had murdered the poor woman morally
+years ago. He was too unintelligent to have the notion of such a crime.
+Her bodily presence was bitterly offensive, because of its contrast with
+a very different feminine image. And it was no use getting rid of her.
+She was a habit of years, and there would be nothing to put in her
+place. At any rate, he could talk to that idiot half the night if he
+chose.
+
+That night he had been vapouring before her as to his intention to face
+his two guests and, instead of that inspiration he needed, had merely
+received the usual warning: “Be careful, Wilhelm.” He did not want to be
+told to be careful by an imbecile female. What he needed was a pair of
+woman's arms which, flung round his neck, would brace him up for the
+encounter. Inspire him, he called it to himself.
+
+He lay awake a long time; and his slumbers, when they came, were
+unsatisfactory and short. The morning light had no joy for his eyes.
+He listened dismally to the movements in the house. The Chinamen were
+unlocking and flinging wide the doors of the public rooms which opened
+on the veranda. Horrors! Another poisoned day to get through somehow!
+The recollection of his resolve made him feel actually sick for a
+moment. First of all the lordly, abandoned attitudes of Mr. Jones
+disconcerted him. Then there was his contemptuous silence. Mr. Jones
+never addressed himself to Schomberg with any general remarks, never
+opened his lips to him unless to say “Good morning”--two simple words
+which, uttered by that man, seemed a mockery of a threatening character.
+And, lastly, it was not a frank physical fear he inspired--for as to
+that, even a cornered rat will fight--but a superstitious shrinking awe,
+something like an invincible repugnance to seek speech with a wicked
+ghost. That it was a daylight ghost surprisingly angular in his
+attitudes, and for the most part spread out on three chairs, did
+not make it any easier. Daylight only made him a more weird, a more
+disturbing and unlawful apparition. Strangely enough in the evening when
+he came out of his mute supineness, this unearthly side of him was less
+obtrusive. At the gaming-table, when actually handling the cards, it was
+probably sunk quite out of sight; but Schomberg, having made up his mind
+in ostrich-like fashion to ignore what was going on, never entered the
+desecrated music-room. He had never seen Mr. Jones in the exercise of
+his vocation--or perhaps it was only his trade.
+
+“I will speak to him tonight,” Schomberg said to himself, while he drank
+his morning tea, in pyjamas, on the veranda, before the rising sun had
+topped the trees of the compound, and while the undried dew still
+lay silvery on the grass, sparkled on the blossoms of the central
+flower-bed, and darkened the yellow gravel of the drive. “That's what
+I'll do. I won't keep out of sight tonight. I shall come out and catch
+him as he goes to bed carrying the cash-box.”
+
+After all, what was the fellow but a common desperado? Murderous? Oh,
+yes; murderous enough, perhaps--and the muscles of Schomberg's stomach
+had a quivering contraction under his airy attire. But even a common
+desperado would think twice or, more likely, a hundred times, before
+openly murdering an inoffensive citizen in a civilized, European-ruled
+town. He jerked his shoulders. Of course! He shuddered again, and
+paddled back to his room to dress himself. His mind was made up, and he
+would think no more about it; but still he had his doubts. They grew and
+unfolded themselves with the progress of the day, as some plants do. At
+times they made him perspire more than usual, and they did away with
+the possibility of his afternoon siesta. After turning over on his couch
+more than a dozen times, he gave up this mockery of repose, got up, and
+went downstairs.
+
+It was between three and four o'clock, the hour of profound peace. The
+very flowers seemed to doze on their stalks set with sleepy leaves. Not
+even the air stirred, for the sea-breeze was not due till later. The
+servants were out of sight, catching naps in the shade somewhere behind
+the house. Mrs. Schomberg in a dim up-stair room with closed jalousies,
+was elaborating those two long pendant ringlets which were such a
+feature of her hairdressing for her afternoon duties. At that time no
+customers ever troubled the repose of the establishment. Wandering about
+his premises in profound solitude, Schomberg recoiled at the door of the
+billiard-room, as if he had seen a snake in his path. All alone with the
+billiards, the bare little tables, and a lot of untenanted chairs, Mr.
+Secretary Ricardo sat near the wall, performing with lightning rapidity
+something that looked like tricks with his own personal pack of cards,
+which he always carried about in his pocket. Schomberg would have backed
+out quietly if Ricardo had not turned his head. Having been seen, the
+hotel-keeper elected to walk in as the lesser risk of the two. The
+consciousness of his inwardly abject attitude towards these men caused
+him always to throw his chest out and assume a severe expression.
+Ricardo watched his approach, clasping the pack of cards in both hands.
+
+“You want something, perhaps?” suggested Schomberg in his
+lieutenant-of-the-Reserve voice.
+
+Ricardo shook his head in silence and looked expectant. With him
+Schomberg exchanged at least twenty words every day. He was infinitely
+more communicative than his patron. At times he looked very much like
+an ordinary human being of his class; and he seemed to be in an amiable
+mood at that moment. Suddenly spreading some ten cards face downward in
+the form of a fan, he thrust them towards Schomberg.
+
+“Come, man, take one quick!”
+
+Schomberg was so surprised that he took one hurriedly, after a very
+perceptible start. The eyes of Martin Ricardo gleamed phosphorescent
+in the half-light of the room screened from the heat and glare of the
+tropics.
+
+“That's the king of hearts you've got,” he chuckled, showing his teeth
+in a quick flash.
+
+Schomberg, after looking at the card, admitted that it was, and laid it
+down on the table.
+
+“I can make you take any card I like nine times out of ten,” exulted the
+secretary, with a strange curl of his lips and a green flicker in his
+raised eyes.
+
+Schomberg looked down at him dumbly. For a few seconds neither of them
+stirred; then Ricardo lowered his glance, and, opening his fingers,
+let the whole pack fall on the table. Schomberg sat down. He sat down
+because of the faintness in his legs, and for no other reason. His mouth
+was dry. Having sat down, he felt that he must speak. He squared his
+shoulders in parade style.
+
+“You are pretty good at that sort of thing,” he said.
+
+“Practice makes perfect,” replied the secretary.
+
+His precarious amiability made it impossible for Schomberg to get away.
+Thus, from his very timidity, the hotel-keeper found himself engaged
+in a conversation the thought of which filled him with apprehension. It
+must be said, in justice to Schomberg, that he concealed his funk very
+creditably. The habit of throwing out his chest and speaking in a severe
+voice stood him in good stead. With him, too, practice made perfect; and
+he would probably have kept it up to the end, to the very last moment,
+to the ultimate instant of breaking strain which would leave him
+grovelling on the floor. To add to his secret trouble, he was at a loss
+what to say. He found nothing else but the remark:
+
+“I suppose you are fond of cards.”
+
+“What would you expect?” asked Ricardo in a simple, philosophical tone.
+“It is likely I should not be?” Then, with sudden fire: “Fond of cards?
+Ay, passionately!”
+
+The effect of this outburst was augmented by the quiet lowering of the
+eyelids, by a reserved pause as though this had been a confession of
+another kind of love. Schomberg cudgelled his brains for a new topic,
+but he could not find one. His usual scandalous gossip would not serve
+this turn. That desperado did not know anyone anywhere within a thousand
+miles. Schomberg was almost compelled to keep to the subject.
+
+“I suppose you've always been so--from your early youth.”
+
+Ricardo's eyes remained cast down. His fingers toyed absently with the
+pack on the table.
+
+“I don't know that it was so early. I first got in the way of it playing
+for tobacco--in forecastles of ships, you know--common sailor games. We
+used to spend whole watches below at it, round a chest, under a
+slush lamp. We would hardly spare the time to get a bite of salt
+horse--neither eat nor sleep. We could hardly stand when the watches
+were mustered on deck. Talk of gambling!” He dropped the reminiscent
+tone to add the information, “I was bred to the sea from a boy, you
+know.”
+
+Schomberg had fallen into a reverie, but without losing the sense of
+impending calamity. The next words he heard were:
+
+“I got on all right at sea, too. Worked up to be mate. I was mate of a
+schooner--a yacht, you might call her--a special good berth too, in the
+Gulf of Mexico, a soft job that you don't run across more than once in a
+lifetime. Yes, I was mate of her when I left the sea to follow him.”
+
+Ricardo tossed up his chin to indicate the room above; from which
+Schomberg, his wits painfully aroused by this reminder of Mr. Jones's
+existence, concluded that the latter had withdrawn into his bedroom.
+Ricardo, observing him from under lowered eyelids, went on:
+
+“It so happened that we were shipmates.”
+
+“Mr. Jones, you mean? Is he a sailor too?”
+
+Ricardo raised his eyelids at that.
+
+“He's no more Mr. Jones than you are,” he said with obvious pride. “He a
+sailor! That just shows your ignorance. But there! A foreigner can't be
+expected to know any better. I am an Englishman, and I know a gentleman
+at sight. I should know one drunk, in the gutter, in jail, under the
+gallows. There's a something--it isn't exactly the appearance, it's
+a--no use me trying to tell you. You ain't an Englishman, and if you
+were, you wouldn't need to be told.”
+
+An unsuspected stream of loquacity had broken its dam somewhere deep
+within the man, had diluted his fiery blood and softened his pitiless
+fibre. Schomberg experienced mingled relief and apprehension, as if
+suddenly an enormous savage cat had begun to wind itself about his legs
+in inexplicable friendliness. No prudent man under such circumstances
+would dare to stir. Schomberg didn't stir. Ricardo assumed an easy
+attitude, with an elbow on the table. Schomberg squared his shoulders
+afresh.
+
+“I was employed, in that there yacht--schooner, whatever you call it--by
+ten gentlemen at once. That surprises you, eh? Yes, yes, ten. Leastwise
+there were nine of them gents good enough in their way, and one
+downright gentleman, and that was . . .”
+
+Ricardo gave another upward jerk of his chin as much as to say: He! The
+only one.
+
+“And no mistake,” he went on. “I spotted him from the first day. How?
+Why? Ay, you may ask. Hadn't seen that many gentlemen in my life. Well,
+somehow I did. If you were an Englishman, you would--”
+
+“What was your yacht?” Schomberg interrupted as impatiently as he dared;
+for this harping on nationality jarred on his already tried nerves.
+“What was the game?”
+
+“You have a headpiece on you! Game! 'Xactly. That's what it was--the
+sort of silliness gentlemen will get up among themselves to play at
+adventure. A treasure-hunting expedition. Each of them put down so much
+money, you understand, to buy the schooner. Their agent in the city
+engaged me and the skipper. The greatest secrecy and all that. I reckon
+he had a twinkle in his eye all the time--and no mistake. But that
+wasn't our business. Let them bust their money as they like. The pity of
+it was that so little of it came our way. Just fair pay and no more. And
+damn any pay, much or little, anyhow--that's what I say!”
+
+He blinked his eyes greenishly in the dim light. The heat seemed to
+have stilled everything in the world but his voice. He swore at large,
+abundantly, in snarling undertones, it was impossible to say why, then
+calmed down as inexplicably, and went on, as a sailor yarns.
+
+“At first there were only nine of them adventurous sparks, then, just a
+day or two before the sailing date, he turned up. Heard of it somehow,
+somewhere--I would say from some woman, if I didn't know him as I do. He
+would give any woman a ten-mile berth. He can't stand them. Or maybe in
+a flash bar. Or maybe in one of them grand clubs in Pall Mall. Anyway,
+the agent netted him in all right--cash down, and only about four and
+twenty hours for him to get ready; but he didn't miss his ship. Not he!
+You might have called it a pier-head jump--for a gentleman. I saw him
+come along. Know the West India Docks, eh?”
+
+Schomberg did not know the West India Docks. Ricardo looked at him
+pensively for a while, and then continued, as if such ignorance had to
+be disregarded.
+
+“Our tug was already alongside. Two loafers were carrying his dunnage
+behind him. I told the dockman at our moorings to keep all fast for a
+minute. The gangway was down already; but he made nothing of it. Up he
+jumps, one leap, swings his long legs over the rail, and there he is
+on board. They pass up his swell dunnage, and he puts his hand in his
+trousers pocket and throws all his small change on the wharf for them
+chaps to pick up. They were still promenading that wharf on all fours
+when we cast off. It was only then that he looked at me--quietly, you
+know; in a slow way. He wasn't so thin then as he is now; but I noticed
+he wasn't so young as he looked--not by a long chalk. He seemed to touch
+me inside somewhere. I went away pretty quick from there; I was wanted
+forward anyhow. I wasn't frightened. What should I be frightened for? I
+only felt touched--on the very spot. But Jee-miny, if anybody had told
+me we should be partners before the year was out--well, I would have--”
+
+He swore a variety of strange oaths, some common, others quaintly
+horrible to Schomberg's ears, and all mere innocent exclamations of
+wonder at the shifts and changes of human fortune. Schomberg moved
+slightly in his chair. But the admirer and partner of “plain Mr. Jones”
+ seemed to have forgotten Schomberg's existence for the moment. The
+stream of ingenuous blasphemy--some of it in bad Spanish--had run dry,
+and Martin Ricardo, connoisseur in gentlemen, sat dumb with a stony gaze
+as if still marvelling inwardly at the amazing elections, conjunctions,
+and associations of events which influence man's pilgrimage on this
+earth.
+
+At last Schomberg spoke tentatively:
+
+“And so the--the gentleman, up there, talked you over into leaving a
+good berth?”
+
+Ricardo started.
+
+“Talked me over! Didn't need to talk me over. Just beckoned to me, and
+that was enough. By that time we were in the Gulf of Mexico. One night
+we were lying at anchor, close to a dry sandbank--to this day I am not
+sure where it was--off the Colombian coast or thereabouts. We were
+to start digging the next morning, and all hands had turned in early,
+expecting a hard day with the shovels. Up he comes, and in his quiet,
+tired way of speaking--you can tell a gentleman by that as much as by
+anything else almost--up he comes behind me and says, just like that
+into my ear, in a manner: 'Well, what do you think of our treasure hunt
+now?'
+
+“I didn't even turn my head; 'xactly as I stood, I remained, and I spoke
+no louder than himself:
+
+“'If you want to know, sir, it's nothing but just damned tom-foolery.'
+
+“We had, of course, been having short talks together at one time or
+another during the passage. I dare say he had read me like a book. There
+ain't much to me, except that I have never been tame, even when walking
+the pavement and cracking jokes and standing drinks to chums--ay, and to
+strangers, too. I would watch them lifting their elbows at my expense,
+or splitting their side at my fun--I can be funny when I like, you bet!”
+
+A pause for self-complacent contemplation of his own fun and generosity
+checked the flow of Ricardo's speech. Schomberg was concerned to keep
+within bounds the enlargement of his eyes, which he seemed to feel
+growing bigger in his head.
+
+“Yes, yes,” he whispered hastily.
+
+“I would watch them and think: 'You boys don't know who I am. If you
+did--!' With girls, too. Once I was courting a girl. I used to kiss her
+behind the ear and say to myself: 'If you only knew who's kissing you,
+my dear, you would scream and bolt!' Ha! ha! Not that I wanted to
+do them any harm; but I felt the power in myself. Now, here we sit,
+friendly like, and that's all right. You aren't in my way. But I am not
+friendly to you. I just don't care. Some men do say that; but I really
+don't. You are no more to me one way or another than that fly there.
+Just so. I'd squash you or leave you alone. I don't care what I do.”
+
+If real force of character consists in overcoming our sudden weaknesses,
+Schomberg displayed plenty of that quality. At the mention of the fly,
+he re-enforced the severe dignity of his attitude as one inflates a
+collapsing toy balloon with a great effort of breath. The easy-going,
+relaxed attitude of Ricardo was really appalling.
+
+“That's so,” he went on. “I am that sort of fellow. You wouldn't think
+it, would you? No. You have to be told. So I am telling you, and I dare
+say you only half believe it. But you can't say to yourself that I am
+drunk, stare at me as you may. I haven't had anything stronger than a
+glass of iced water all day. Takes a real gentleman to see through a
+fellow. Oh, yes--he spotted me. I told you we had a few talks at sea
+about one thing or another. And I used to watch him down the skylight,
+playing cards in the cuddy with the others. They had to pass the time
+away somehow. By the same token he caught me at it once, and it was then
+that I told him I was fond of cards--and generally lucky in gambling,
+too. Yes, he had sized me up. Why not? A gentleman's just like any other
+man--and something more.”
+
+It flashed through Schomberg's mind: that these two were indeed well
+matched in their enormous dissimilarity, identical souls in different
+disguises.
+
+“Says he to me”--Ricardo started again in a gossiping manner--'I'm
+packed up. It's about time to go, Martin.'
+
+“It was the first time he called me Martin. Says I:
+
+“'Is that it, sir?'
+
+“'You didn't think I was after that sort of treasure, did you? I wanted
+to clear out from home quietly. It's a pretty expensive way of getting a
+passage across, but it has served my turn.'
+
+“I let him know very soon that I was game for anything, from pitch and
+toss to wilful murder, in his company.
+
+“'Wilful murder?' says he in his quiet way. 'What the deuce is that?
+What are you talking about? People do get killed sometimes when they get
+in one's way, but that's self-defence--you understand?'
+
+“I told him I did. And then I said I would run below for a minute, to
+ram a few of my things into a sailor's bag I had. I've never cared for
+a lot of dunnage; I believed in going about flying light when I was at
+sea. I came back and found him strolling up and down the deck, as if
+he were taking a breath of fresh air before turning in, like any other
+evening.
+
+“'Ready?'
+
+“'Yes, sir.'
+
+“He didn't even look at me. We had had a boat in the water astern ever
+since we came to anchor in the afternoon. He throws the stump of his
+cigar overboard.
+
+“'Can you get the captain out on deck?' he asks.
+
+“That was the last thing in the world I should have thought of doing. I
+lost my tongue for a moment.
+
+“'I can try,' says I.
+
+“'Well, then, I am going below. You get him up and keep him with you
+till I come back on deck. Mind! Don't let him go below till I return.'
+
+“I could not help asking why he told me to rouse a sleeping man, when
+we wanted everybody on board to sleep sweetly till we got clear of the
+schooner. He laughs a little and says that I didn't see all the bearings
+of this business.
+
+“'Mind,' he says, 'don't let him leave you till you see me come up
+again.' He puts his eyes close to mine. 'Keep him with you at all
+costs.'
+
+“'And that means?' says I.
+
+“'All costs to him--by every possible or impossible means. I don't want
+to be interrupted in my business down below. He would give me lots
+of trouble. I take you with me to save myself trouble in various
+circumstances; and you've got to enter on your work right away.'
+
+“'Just so, sir,' says I; and he slips down the companion.
+
+“With a gentleman you know at once where you are; but it was a ticklish
+job. The skipper was nothing to me one way or another, any more than you
+are at this moment, Mr. Schomberg. You may light your cigar or blow your
+brains out this minute, and I don't care a hang which you do, both or
+neither. To bring the skipper up was easy enough. I had only to stamp on
+the deck a few times over his head. I stamped hard. But how to keep him
+up when he got there?
+
+“'Anything the matter; Mr. Ricardo?' I heard his voice behind me.
+
+“There he was, and I hadn't thought of anything to say to him; so I
+didn't turn round. The moonlight was brighter than many a day I could
+remember in the North Sea.
+
+“'Why did you call me? What are you staring at out there, Mr. Ricardo?'
+
+“He was deceived by my keeping my back to him. I wasn't staring at
+anything, but his mistake gave me a notion.
+
+“'I am staring at something that looks like a canoe over there,' I said
+very slowly.
+
+“The skipper got concerned at once. It wasn't any danger from the
+inhabitants, whoever they were.
+
+“'Oh, hang it!' says he. 'That's very unfortunate.' He had hoped that
+the schooner being on the coast would not get known so very soon.
+'Dashed awkward, with the business we've got in hand, to have a lot of
+niggers watching operations. But are you certain this is a canoe?'
+
+“'It may be a drift-log,' I said; 'but I thought you had better have a
+look with your own eyes. You may make it out better than I can.'
+
+“His eyes weren't anything as good as mine. But he says:
+
+“'Certainly. Certainly. You did quite right.'
+
+“And it's a fact I had seen some drift-logs at sunset. I saw what they
+were then and didn't trouble my head about them, forgot all about it
+till that very moment. Nothing strange in seeing drift-logs off a coast
+like that; and I'm hanged if the skipper didn't make one out in the
+wake of the moon. Strange what a little thing a man's life hangs on
+sometimes--a single word! Here you are, sitting unsuspicious before me,
+and you may let out something unbeknown to you that would settle your
+hash. Not that I have any ill-feeling. I have no feelings. If the
+skipper had said, 'O, bosh!' and had turned his back on me, he would not
+have gone three steps towards his bed; but he stood there and stared.
+And now the job was to get him off the deck when he was no longer wanted
+there.
+
+“'We are just trying to make out if that object there is a canoe or a
+log,' says he to Mr. Jones.
+
+“Mr. Jones had come up, lounging as carelessly as when he went below.
+While the skipper was jawing about boats and drifting logs. I asked by
+signs, from behind, if I hadn't better knock him on the head and drop
+him quietly overboard. The night was slipping by, and we had to go. It
+couldn't be put off till next night no more. No. No more. And do you
+know why?”
+
+Schomberg made a slight negative sign with his head. This direct appeal
+annoyed him, jarred on the induced quietude of a great talker forced
+into the part of a listener and sunk in it as a man sinks into slumber.
+Mr. Ricardo struck a note of scorn.
+
+“Don't know why? Can't you guess? No? Because the boss had got hold of
+the skipper's cash-box by then. See?”
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SEVEN
+
+ “A common thief!”
+
+Schomberg bit his tongue just too late, and woke up completely as he saw
+Ricardo retract his lips in a cat-like grin; but the companion of “plain
+Mr. Jones” didn't alter his comfortable, gossiping attitude.
+
+“Garn! What if he did want to see his money back, like any tame
+shopkeeper, hash-seller, gin-slinger, or ink-spewer does? Fancy a mud
+turtle like you trying to pass an opinion on a gentleman! A gentleman
+isn't to be sized up so easily. Even I ain't up to it sometimes. For
+instance, that night, all he did was to waggle his finger at me. The
+skipper stops his silly chatter, surprised.
+
+“'Eh? What's the matter?' asks he.
+
+“The matter! It was his reprieve--that's what was the matter.
+
+“'O, nothing, nothing,' says my gentleman. 'You are perfectly right. A
+log--nothing but a log.'
+
+“Ha, ha! Reprieve, I call it, because if the skipper had gone on with
+his silly argument much longer he would have had to be knocked out
+of the way. I could hardly hold myself in on account of the precious
+minutes. However, his guardian angel put it into his head to shut up and
+go back to his bed. I was ramping mad about the lost time.”
+
+“'Why didn't you let me give him one on his silly coconut sir?' I asks.
+
+“'No ferocity, no ferocity,' he says, raising his finger at me as calm
+as you please.
+
+“You can't tell how a gentleman takes that sort of thing. They don't
+lose their temper. It's bad form. You'll never see him lose his
+temper--not for anybody to see anyhow. Ferocity ain't good form,
+either--that much I've learned by this time, and more, too. I've had
+that schooling that you couldn't tell by my face if I meant to rip you
+up the next minute--as of course I could do in less than a jiffy. I have
+a knife up the leg of my trousers.”
+
+“You haven't!” exclaimed Schomberg incredulously.
+
+Mr. Ricardo was as quick as lightning in changing his lounging, idle
+attitude for a stooping position, and exhibiting the weapon with one
+jerk at the left leg of his trousers. Schomberg had just a view of it,
+strapped to a very hairy limb, when Mr. Ricardo, jumping up, stamped his
+foot to get the trouser-leg down, and resumed his careless pose with one
+elbow on the table.
+
+“It's a more handy way to carry a tool than you would think,” he went
+on, gazing abstractedly into Schomberg's wide-open eyes. “Suppose some
+little difference comes up during a game. Well, you stoop to pick up a
+dropped card, and when you come up--there you are ready to strike, or
+with the thing up you sleeve ready to throw. Or you just dodge under the
+table when there's some shooting coming. You wouldn't believe the damage
+a fellow with a knife under the table can do to ill-conditioned skunks
+that want to raise trouble, before they begin to understand what the
+screaming's about, and make a bolt--those that can, that is.”
+
+The roses of Schomberg's cheek at the root of his chestnut beard faded
+perceptibly. Ricardo chuckled faintly.
+
+“But no ferocity--no ferocity! A gentleman knows. What's the good of
+getting yourself into a state? And no shirking necessity, either. No
+gentleman ever shirks. What I learn I don't forget. Why! We gambled
+on the plains, with a damn lot of cattlemen in ranches; played fair,
+mind--and then had to fight for our winnings afterwards as often as not.
+We've gambled on the hills and in the valleys and on the sea-shore, and
+out of sight of land--mostly fair. Generally it's good enough. We began
+in Nicaragua first, after we left that schooner and her fool errand.
+There were one hundred and twenty-seven sovereigns and some Mexican
+dollars in that skipper's cash-box. Hardly enough to knock a man on the
+head for from behind, I must confess; but that the skipper had a narrow
+escape the governor himself could not deny afterwards.
+
+“'Do you want me to understand, sir, that you mind there being one life
+more or less on this earth?' I asked him, a few hours after we got away.
+
+“'Certainly not,' says he.
+
+“'Well, then, why did you stop me?'
+
+“'There's a proper way of doing things. You'll have to learn to be
+correct. There's also unnecessary exertion. That must be avoided,
+too--if only for the look of the thing.' A gentleman's way of putting
+things to you--and no mistake!
+
+“At sunrise we got into a creek, to lie hidden in case the treasure hunt
+party had a mind to take a spell hunting for us. And dash me if they
+didn't! We saw the schooner away out, running to leeward, with ten pairs
+of binoculars sweeping the sea, no doubt on all sides. I advised the
+governor to give her time to beat back again before we made a start. So
+we stayed up that creek something like ten days, as snug as can be. On
+the seventh day we had to kill a man, though--the brother of this Pedro
+here. They were alligator-hunters, right enough. We got our lodgings in
+their hut. Neither the boss nor I could habla Espanol--speak Spanish,
+you know--much then. Dry bank, nice shade, jolly hammocks, fresh fish,
+good game, everything lovely. The governor chucked them a few dollars to
+begin with; but it was like boarding with a pair of savage apes, anyhow.
+By and by we noticed them talking a lot together. They had twigged
+the cash-box, and the leather portmanteaus, and my bag--a jolly lot of
+plunder to look at. They must have been saying to each other:
+
+“'No one's ever likely to come looking for these two fellows, who seem
+to have fallen from the moon. Let's cut their throats.'
+
+“Why, of course! Clear as daylight. I didn't need to spy one of them
+sharpening a devilish long knife behind some bushes, while glancing
+right and left with his wild eyes, to know what was in the wind. Pedro
+was standing by, trying the edge of another long knife. They thought we
+were away on our lookout at the mouth of the river, as was usual with us
+during the day. Not that we expected to see much of the schooner, but
+it was just as well to make certain, if possible; and then it was cooler
+out of the woods, in the breeze. Well, the governor was there right
+enough, lying comfortable on a rug, where he could watch the offing, but
+I had gone back to the hut to get a chew of tobacco out of my bag. I had
+not broken myself of the habit then, and I couldn't be happy unless I
+had a lump as big as a baby's fist in my cheek.”
+
+At the cannibalistic comparison, Schomberg muttered a faint, sickly
+“don't.” Ricardo hitched himself up in his seat and glanced down his
+outstretched legs complacently.
+
+“I am tolerably light on my feet, as a general thing,” he went on. “Dash
+me if I don't think I could drop a pinch of salt on a sparrow's tail,
+if I tried. Anyhow, they didn't hear me. I watched them two brown, hairy
+brutes not ten yards off. All they had on was white linen drawers rolled
+up on their thighs. Not a word they said to each other. Antonio was
+down on his thick hams, busy rubbing a knife on a flat stone; Pedro was
+leaning against a small tree and passing his thumb along the edge of his
+blade. I got away quieter than a mouse, you bet.”
+
+“I didn't say anything to the boss then. He was leaning on his elbow
+on his rug, and didn't seem to want to be spoken to. He's like
+that--sometimes that familiar you might think he would eat out of your
+hand, and at others he would snub you sharper than a devil--but always
+quiet. Perfect gentleman, I tell you. I didn't bother him, then; but
+I wasn't likely to forget them two fellows, so businesslike with their
+knives. At that time we had only one revolver between us two--the
+governor's six-shooter, but loaded only in five chambers; and we had no
+more cartridges. He had left the box behind in a drawer in his cabin.
+Awkward! I had nothing but an old clasp-knife--no good at all for
+anything serious.
+
+“In the evening we four sat round a bit of fire outside the
+sleeping-shed, eating broiled fish off plantain leaves, with roast yams
+for bread--the usual thing. The governor and I were on one side, and
+these two beauties cross-legged on the other, grunting a word or two
+to each other, now and then, hardly human speech at all, and their eyes
+down, fast on the ground. For the last three days we couldn't get them
+to look us in the face. Presently I began to talk to the boss quietly,
+just as I am talking to you now, careless like, and I told him all I had
+observed. He goes on picking up pieces of fish and putting them into his
+mouth as calm as anything. It's a pleasure to have anything to do with a
+gentleman. Never looked across at them once.
+
+“'And now,' says I, yawning on purpose, 'we've got to stand watch at
+night, turn about, and keep our eyes skinned all day, too, and mind we
+don't get jumped upon suddenly.'
+
+“'It's perfectly intolerable,' says the governor. 'And you with no
+weapon of any sort!'
+
+“'I mean to stick pretty close to you, sir, from this on, if you don't
+mind,' says I.
+
+“He just nods the least bit, wipes his fingers on the plantain leaf,
+puts his hand behind his back, as if to help himself to rise from the
+ground, snatches his revolver from under his jacket and plugs a bullet
+plumb centre into Mr. Antonio's chest. See what it is to have to do with
+a gentleman. No confounded fuss, and things done out of hand. But he
+might have tipped me a wink or something. I nearly jumped out of my
+skin. Scared ain't in it! I didn't even know who had fired. Everything
+had been so still just before that the bang of the shot seemed
+the loudest noise I had ever heard. The honourable Antonio pitches
+forward--they always do, towards the shot; you must have noticed that
+yourself--yes, he pitches forward on to the embers, and all that lot of
+hair on his face and head flashes up like a pinch of gunpowder. Greasy,
+I expect; always scraping the fat off them alligators' hides--”
+
+“Look here,” exclaimed Schomberg violently, as if trying to burst some
+invisible bonds, “do you mean to say that all this happened?”
+
+“No,” said Ricardo coolly. “I am making it all up as I go along, just to
+help you through the hottest part of the afternoon. So down he pitches
+his nose on the red embers, and up jumps our handsome Pedro and I at the
+same time, like two Jacks-in-the-box. He starts to bolt away, with his
+head over his shoulder, and I, hardly knowing what I was doing, spring
+on his back. I had the sense to get my hands round his neck at once, and
+it's about all I could do to lock my fingers tight under his jaw. You
+saw the beauty's neck, didn't you? Hard as iron, too. Down we both went.
+Seeing this the governor puts his revolver in his pocket.
+
+“'Tie his legs together, sir,' I yell. 'I'm trying to strangle him.'
+
+“There was a lot of their fibre-lines lying about. I gave him a last
+squeeze and then got up.
+
+“'I might have shot you,' says the governor, quite concerned.
+
+“'But you are glad to have saved a cartridge, sir,' I tell him.
+
+“My jump did save it. It wouldn't have done to let him get away in
+the dark like that, and have the beauty dodging around in the bushes,
+perhaps, with the rusty flint-lock gun they had. The governor owned up
+that the jump was the correct thing.
+
+“'But he isn't dead,' says he, bending over him.
+
+“Might as well hope to strangle an ox. We made haste to tie his elbows
+back, and then, before he came to himself, we dragged him to a small
+tree, sat him up, and bound him to it, not by the waist but by the
+neck--some twenty turns of small line round his throat and the trunk,
+finished off with a reef-knot under his ear. Next thing we did was to
+attend to the honourable Antonio, who was making a great smell frizzling
+his face on the red coals. We pushed and rolled him into the creek, and
+left the rest to the alligators.
+
+“I was tired. That little scrap took it out of me something awful. The
+governor hadn't turned a hair. That's where a gentleman has the pull
+of you. He don't get excited. No gentleman does--or hardly ever. I fell
+asleep all of a sudden and left him smoking by the fire I had made
+up, his railway rug round his legs, as calm as if he were sitting in a
+first-class carriage. We hardly spoke ten words to each other after
+it was over, and from that day to this we have never talked of the
+business. I wouldn't have known he remembered it if he hadn't alluded to
+it when talking with you the other day--you know, with regard to Pedro.”
+
+“It surprised you, didn't it? That's why I am giving you this yarn of
+how he came to be with us, like a sort of dog--dashed sight more useful,
+though. You know how he can trot around with trays? Well, he could bring
+down an ox with his fist, at a word from the boss, just as cleverly. And
+fond of the governor! Oh, my word! More than any dog is of any man.”
+
+Schomberg squared his chest.
+
+“Oh, and that's one of the things I wanted to mention to Mr. Jones,” he
+said. “It's unpleasant to have that fellow round the house so early. He
+sits on the stairs at the back for hours before he is needed here, and
+frightens people so that the service suffers. The Chinamen--”
+
+Ricardo nodded and raised his hand.
+
+“When I first saw him he was fit to frighten a grizzly bear, let alone
+a Chinaman. He's become civilized now to what he once was. Well, that
+morning, first thing on opening my eyes, I saw him sitting there, tied
+up by the neck to the tree. He was blinking. We spent the day watching
+the sea, and we actually made out the schooner working to windward,
+which showed that she had given us up. Good! When the sun rose again, I
+took a squint at our Pedro. He wasn't blinking. He was rolling his eyes,
+all white one minute and black the next, and his tongue was hanging out
+a yard. Being tied up short by the neck like this would daunt the arch
+devil himself--in time--in time, mind! I don't know but that even a
+real gentleman would find it difficult to keep a stiff lip to the end.
+Presently we went to work getting our boat ready. I was busying myself
+setting up the mast, when the governor passes the remark:
+
+“'I think he wants to say something.'
+
+“I had heard a sort of croaking going on for some time, only I wouldn't
+take any notice; but then I got out of the boat and went up to him, with
+some water. His eyes were red--red and black and half out of his
+head. He drank all the water I gave him, but he hadn't much to say for
+himself. I walked back to the governor.
+
+“'He asks for a bullet in his head before we go,' I said. I wasn't at
+all pleased.
+
+“'Oh, that's out of the question altogether,' says the governor.
+
+“He was right there. Only four shots left, and ninety miles of wild
+coast to put behind us before coming to the first place where you could
+expect to buy revolver cartridges.
+
+“'Anyhow,' I tells him, 'he wants to be killed some way or other, as a
+favour.'
+
+“And then I go on setting up the boat's mast. I didn't care much for the
+notion of butchering a man bound hand and foot and fastened by the neck
+besides. I had a knife then--the honourable Antonio's knife; and that
+knife is this knife.
+
+“Ricardo gave his leg a resounding slap.
+
+“First spoil in my new life,” he went on with harsh joviality. “The
+dodge of carrying it down there I learned later. I carried it stuck in
+my belt that day. No, I hadn't much stomach for the job; but when you
+work with a gentleman of the real right sort you may depend on your
+feelings being seen through your skin. Says the governor suddenly:
+
+“'It may even be looked upon as his right'--you hear a gentleman
+speaking there?--'but what do you think of taking him with us in the
+boat?'
+
+“And the governor starts arguing that the beggar would be useful in
+working our way along the coast. We could get rid of him before coming
+to the first place that was a little civilized. I didn't want much
+talking over. Out I scrambled from the boat.
+
+“'Ay, but will he be manageable, sir?'
+
+“'Oh, yes. He's daunted. Go on, cut him loose--I take the
+responsibility.'
+
+“'Right you are, sir.'
+
+“He sees me come along smartly with his brother's knife in my hand--I
+wasn't thinking how it looked from his side of the fence, you know--and
+jiminy, it nearly killed him! He stared like a crazed bullock and began
+to sweat and twitch all over, something amazing. I was so surprised,
+that I stopped to look at him. The drops were pouring over his eyebrows,
+down his beard, off his nose--and he gurgled. Then it struck me that he
+couldn't see what was in my mind. By favour or by right he didn't like
+to die when it came to it; not in that way, anyhow. When I stepped round
+to get at the lashing, he let out a sort of soft bellow. Thought I was
+going to stick him from behind, I guess. I cut all the turns with one
+slash, and he went over on his side, flop, and started kicking with his
+tied legs. Laugh! I don't know what there was so funny about it, but I
+fairly shouted. What between my laughing and his wriggling, I had a job
+in cutting him free. As soon as he could feel his limbs he makes for the
+bank, where the governor was standing, crawls up to him on his hands and
+knees, and embraces his legs. Gratitude, eh? You could see that being
+allowed to live suited that chap down to the ground. The governor gets
+his legs away from him gently and just mutters to me:
+
+“'Let's be off. Get him into the boat.'
+
+“It was not difficult,” continued Ricardo, after eyeing Schomberg
+fixedly for a moment. “He was ready enough to get into the boat,
+and--here he is. He would let himself be chopped into small pieces--with
+a smile, mind; with a smile!--for the governor. I don't know about him
+doing that much for me; but pretty near, pretty near. I did the tying up
+and the untying, but he could see who was the boss. And then he knows a
+gentleman. A dog knows a gentleman--any dog. It's only some foreigners
+that don't know; and nothing can teach them, either.”
+
+“And you mean to say,” asked Schomberg, disregarding what might have
+been annoying for himself in the emphasis of the final remark, “you mean
+to say that you left steady employment at good wages for a life like
+this?”
+
+“There!” began Ricardo quietly. “That's just what a man like you would
+say. You are that tame! I follow a gentleman. That ain't the same thing
+as to serve an employer. They give you wages as they'd fling a bone to
+a dog, and they expect you to be grateful. It's worse than slavery. You
+don't expect a slave that's bought for money to be grateful. And if you
+sell your work--what is it but selling your own self? You've got so many
+days to live and you sell them one after another. Hey? Who can pay me
+enough for my life? Ay! But they throw at you your week's money and
+expect you to say 'thank you' before you pick it up.”
+
+He mumbled some curses, directed at employers generally, as it seemed,
+then blazed out:
+
+“Work be damned! I ain't a dog walking on its hind legs for a bone; I am
+a man who's following a gentleman. There's a difference which you will
+never understand, Mr. Tame Schomberg.”
+
+He yawned slightly. Schomberg, preserving a military stiffness
+reinforced by a slight frown, had allowed his thoughts to stray away.
+They were busy detailing the image of a young girl--absent--gone--stolen
+from him. He became enraged. There was that rascal looking at him
+insolently. If the girl had not been shamefully decoyed away from him,
+he would not have allowed anyone to look at him insolently. He would
+have made nothing of hitting that rogue between the eyes. Afterwards he
+would have kicked the other without hesitation. He saw himself doing it;
+and in sympathy with this glorious vision Schomberg's right foot, and
+arm moved convulsively.
+
+At this moment he came out of his sudden reverie to note with alarm the
+wide-awake curiosity of Mr. Ricardo's stare.
+
+“And so you go like this about the world, gambling,” he remarked
+inanely, to cover his confusion. But Ricardo's stare did not change its
+character, and he continued vaguely:
+
+“Here and there and everywhere.” He pulled himself together, squared his
+shoulders. “Isn't it very precarious?” he said firmly.
+
+The word precarious--seemed to be effective, because Ricardo's eyes lost
+their dangerously interested expression.
+
+“No, not so bad,” Ricardo said, with indifference. “It's my opinion that
+men will gamble as long as they have anything to put on a card. Gamble?
+That's nature. What's life itself? You never know what may turn up. The
+worst of it is that you never can tell exactly what sort of cards you
+are holding yourself. What's trumps?--that is the question. See? Any man
+will gamble if only he's given a chance, for anything or everything. You
+too--”
+
+“I haven't touched a card now for twenty years,” said Schomberg in an
+austere tone.
+
+“Well, if you got your living that way you would be no worse than you
+are now, selling drinks to people--beastly beer and spirits, rotten
+stuff fit to make an old he-goat yell if you poured it down its throat.
+Pooh! I can't stand the confounded liquor. Never could. A whiff of neat
+brandy in a glass makes me feel sick. Always did. If everybody was like
+me, liquor would be going a-begging. You think it's funny in a man,
+don't you?”
+
+Schomberg made a vague gesture of toleration. Ricardo hitched up his
+chair and settled his elbow afresh on the table.
+
+“French siros I must say I do like. Saigon's the place for them. I see
+you have siros in the bar. Hang me if I ain't getting dry, conversing
+like this with you. Come, Mr. Schomberg, be hospitable, as the governor
+says.”
+
+Schomberg rose and walked with dignity to the counter. His footsteps
+echoed loudly on the floor of polished boards. He took down a bottle,
+labelled “Sirop de Groseille.” The little sounds he made, the clink of
+glass, the gurgling of the liquid, the pop of the soda-water cork had
+a preternatural sharpness. He came back carrying a pink and glistening
+tumbler. Mr. Ricardo had followed his movements with oblique, coyly
+expectant yellow eyes, like a cat watching the preparation of a saucer
+of milk, and the satisfied sound after he had drunk might have been a
+slightly modified form of purring, very soft and deep in his throat. It
+affected Schomberg unpleasantly as another example of something inhuman
+in those men wherein lay the difficulty of dealing with them. A
+spectre, a cat, an ape--there was a pretty association for a mere man to
+remonstrate with, he reflected with an inward shudder; for Schomberg had
+been overpowered, as it were, by his imagination, and his reason could
+not react against that fanciful view of his guests. And it was not only
+their appearance. The morals of Mr. Ricardo seemed to him to be pretty
+much the morals of a cat. Too much. What sort of argument could a mere
+man offer to a . . . or to a spectre, either! What the morals of a
+spectre could be, Schomberg had no idea. Something dreadful, no
+doubt. Compassion certainly had no place in them. As to the ape--well,
+everybody knew what an ape was. It had no morals. Nothing could be more
+hopeless.
+
+Outwardly, however, having picked up the cigar which he had laid aside
+to get the drink, with his thick fingers, one of them ornamented by a
+gold ring, Schomberg smoked with moody composure. Facing him, Ricardo
+blinked slowly for a time, then closed his eyes altogether, with the
+placidity of the domestic cat dozing on the hearth-rug. In another
+moment he opened them very wide, and seemed surprised to see Schomberg
+there.
+
+“You're having a very slack time today, aren't you?” he observed. “But
+then this whole town is confoundedly slack, anyhow; and I've never faced
+such a slack party at a table before. Come eleven o'clock, they begin to
+talk of breaking up. What's the matter with them? Want to go to bed so
+early, or what?”
+
+“I reckon you don't lose a fortune by their wanting to go to bed,” said
+Schomberg, with sombre sarcasm.
+
+“No,” admitted Ricardo, with a grin that stretched his thin mouth from
+ear to ear, giving a sudden glimpse of his white teeth. “Only, you see,
+when I once start, I would play for nuts, for parched peas, for any
+rubbish. I would play them for their souls. But these Dutchmen aren't
+any good. They never seem to get warmed up properly, win or lose. I've
+tried them both ways, too. Hang them for a beggarly, bloodless lot of
+animated cucumbers!”
+
+“And if anything out of the way was to happen, they would be just
+as cool in locking you and your gentleman up,” Schomberg snarled
+unpleasantly.
+
+“Indeed!” said Ricardo slowly, taking Schomberg's measure with his eyes.
+“And what about you?”
+
+“You talk mighty big,” burst out the hotel-keeper. “You talk of ranging
+all over the world, and doing great things, and taking fortune by the
+scruff of the neck, but here you stick at this miserable business!”
+
+“It isn't much of a lay--that's a fact,” admitted Ricardo unexpectedly.
+
+Schomberg was red in the face with audacity.
+
+“I call it paltry,” he spluttered.
+
+“That's how it looks. Can't call it anything else.” Ricardo seemed to
+be in an accommodating mood. “I should be ashamed of it myself, only you
+see the governor is subject to fits--”
+
+“Fits!” Schomberg cried out, but in a low tone. “You don't say so!” He
+exulted inwardly, as if this disclosure had in some way diminished the
+difficulty of the situation. “Fits! That's a serious thing, isn't it?
+You ought to take him to the civil hospital--a lovely place.”
+
+Ricardo nodded slightly, with a faint grin.
+
+“Serious enough. Regular fits of laziness, I call them. Now and then
+he lays down on me like this, and there's no moving him. If you think I
+like it, you're a long way out. Generally speaking, I can talk him over.
+I know how to deal with a gentleman. I am no daily-bread slave. But when
+he has said, 'Martin, I am bored,' then look out! There's nothing to do
+but to shut up, confound it!”
+
+Schomberg, very much cast down, had listened open-mouthed.
+
+“What's the cause of it?” he asked. “Why is he like this? I don't
+understand.”
+
+“I think I do,” said Ricardo. “A gentleman, you know, is not such a
+simple person as you or I; and not so easy to manage, either. If only I
+had something to lever him out with!”
+
+“What do you mean, to lever him out with?” muttered Schomberg
+hopelessly.
+
+Ricardo was impatient with this denseness.
+
+“Don't you understand English? Look here! I couldn't make this
+billiard table move an inch if I talked to it from now till the end of
+days--could I? Well, the governor is like that, too, when the fits are
+on him. He's bored. Nothing's worthwhile, nothing's good enough, that's
+mere sense. But if I saw a capstan bar lying about here, I would soon
+manage to shift that billiard table of yours a good many inches. And
+that's all there is to it.”
+
+He rose noiselessly, stretched himself, supple and stealthy, with
+curious sideways movements of his head and unexpected elongations of his
+thick body, glanced out of the corners of his eyes in the direction of
+the door, and finally leaned back against the table, folding his arms on
+his breast comfortably, in a completely human attitude.
+
+“That's another thing you can tell a gentleman by--his freakishness.
+A gentleman ain't accountable to nobody, any more than a tramp on the
+roads. He ain't got to keep time. The governor got like this once in a
+one-horse Mexican pueblo on the uplands, away from everywhere. He lay
+all day long in a dark room--”
+
+“Drunk?” This word escaped Schomberg by inadvertence at which he became
+frightened. But the devoted secretary seemed to find it natural.
+
+“No, that never comes on together with this kind of fit. He just lay
+there full length on a mat, while a ragged, bare-legged boy that he had
+picked up in the street sat in the patio, between two oleanders near the
+open door of his room, strumming on a guitar and singing tristes to him
+from morning to night. You know tristes--twang, twang, twang, aouh, hoo!
+Chroo, yah!”
+
+Schomberg uplifted his hands in distress. This tribute seemed to flatter
+Ricardo. His mouth twitched grimly.
+
+“Like that--enough to give colic to an ostrich, eh? Awful. Well, there
+was a cook there who loved me--an old fat, Negro woman with spectacles.
+I used to hide in the kitchen and turn her to, to make me dulces--sweet
+things, you know, mostly eggs and sugar--to pass the time away. I am
+like a kid for sweet things. And, by the way, why don't you ever have
+a pudding at your tablydott, Mr. Schomberg? Nothing but fruit, morning,
+noon, and night. Sickening! What do you think a fellow is--a wasp?”
+
+Schomberg disregarded the injured tone.
+
+“And how long did that fit, as you call it, last?” he asked anxiously.
+
+“Weeks, months, years, centuries, it seemed to me,” returned Mr. Ricardo
+with feeling. “Of an evening the governor would stroll out into the sala
+and fritter his life away playing cards with the juez of the place--a
+little Dago with a pair of black whiskers--ekarty, you know, a
+quick French game, for small change. And the comandante, a one-eyed,
+half-Indian, flat-nosed ruffian, and I, we had to stand around and bet
+on their hands. It was awful!”
+
+“Awful,” echoed Schomberg, in a Teutonic throaty tone of despair. “Look
+here, I need your rooms.”
+
+“To be sure. I have been thinking that for some time past,” said Ricardo
+indifferently.
+
+“I was mad when I listened to you. This must end!”
+
+“I think you are mad yet,” said Ricardo, not even unfolding his arms or
+shifting his attitude an inch. He lowered his voice to add: “And if
+I thought you had been to the police, I would tell Pedro to catch
+you round the waist and break your fat neck by jerking your head
+backward--snap! I saw him do it to a big buck nigger who was flourishing
+a razor in front of the governor. It can be done. You hear a low crack,
+that's all--and the man drops down like a limp rag.”
+
+Not even Ricardo's head, slightly inclined on the left shoulder, had
+moved; but when he ceased the greenish irises which had been staring out
+of doors glided into the corners of his eyes nearest to Schomberg and
+stayed there with a coyly voluptuous expression.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER EIGHT
+
+Schomberg felt desperation, that lamentable substitute for courage,
+ooze out of him. It was not so much the threat of death as the weirdly
+circumstantial manner of its declaration which affected him. A mere
+“I'll murder you,” however ferocious in tone, and earnest, in purpose,
+he could have faced; but before this novel mode of speech and procedure,
+his imagination being very sensitive to the unusual, he collapsed as if
+indeed his moral neck had been broken--snap!
+
+“Go to the police? Of course not. Never dreamed of it. Too late now.
+I've let myself be mixed up in this. You got my consent while I wasn't
+myself. I explained it to you at the time.”
+
+Ricardo's eye glided gently off Schomberg to stare far away.
+
+“Ay! Some trouble with a girl. But that's nothing to us.”
+
+“Naturally. What I say is, what's the good of all that savage talk to
+me?” A bright argument occurred to him. “It's out of proportion; for
+even if I were fool enough to go to the police now, there's nothing
+serious to complain about. It would only mean deportation for you. They
+would put you on board the first west-bound steamer to Singapore.” He
+had become animated. “Out of this to the devil,” he added between his
+teeth for his own private satisfaction.
+
+Ricardo made no comment, and gave no sign of having heard a single word.
+This discouraged Schomberg, who had looked up hopefully.
+
+“Why do you want to stick here?” he cried. “It can't pay you people
+to fool around like this. Didn't you worry just now about moving your
+governor? Well, the police would move him for you; and from Singapore
+you can go on to the east coast of Africa.”
+
+“I'll be hanged if the fellow isn't up to that silly trick!” was
+Ricardo's comment, spoken in an ominous tone which recalled Schomberg to
+the realities of his position.
+
+“No! No!” he protested. “It's a manner of speaking. Of course I
+wouldn't.”
+
+“I think that trouble about the girl has really muddled your brains,
+Mr. Schomberg. Believe me, you had better part friends with us; for,
+deportation or no deportation, you'll be seeing one of us turning up
+before long to pay you off for any nasty dodge you may be hatching in
+that fat head of yours.”
+
+“Gott im Himmel!” groaned Schomberg. “Will nothing move him out? Will
+he stop here immer--I mean always? Suppose I were to make it worth your
+while, couldn't you--”
+
+“No,” Ricardo interrupted. “I couldn't, unless I had something to lever
+him out with. I've told you that before.”
+
+“An inducement?” muttered Schomberg.
+
+“Ay. The east coast of Africa isn't good enough. He told me the other
+day that it will have to wait till he is ready for it; and he may not be
+ready for a long time, because the east coast can't run away, and no one
+is likely to run off with it.”
+
+These remarks, whether considered as truisms or as depicting Mr.
+Jones's mental state, were distinctly discouraging to the long-suffering
+Schomberg; but there is truth in the well-known saying that places
+the darkest hour before the dawn. The sound of words, apart from the
+context, has its power; and these two words, 'run off,' had a special
+affinity to the hotel-keeper's, haunting idea. It was always present
+in his brain, and now it came forward evoked by a purely fortuitous
+expression. No, nobody could run off with a continent; but Heyst had run
+off with the girl!
+
+Ricardo could have had no conception of the cause of Schomberg's changed
+expression. Yet it was noticeable enough to interest him so much that
+he stopped the careless swinging of his leg and said, looking at the
+hotel-keeper:
+
+“There's not much use arguing against that sort of talk--is there?”
+
+Schomberg was not listening.
+
+“I could put you on another track,” he said slowly, and stopped, as if
+suddenly choked by an unholy emotion of intense eagerness combined with
+fear of failure. Ricardo waited, attentive, yet not without a certain
+contempt.
+
+“On the track of a man!” Schomberg uttered convulsively, and paused
+again, consulting his rage and his conscience.
+
+“The man in the moon, eh?” suggested Ricardo, in a jeering murmur.
+
+Schomberg shook his head.
+
+“It would be nearly as safe to rook him as if he were the Man in the
+moon. You go and try. It isn't so very far.”
+
+He reflected. These men were thieves and murderers as well as gamblers.
+Their fitness for purposes of vengeance was appallingly complete. But he
+preferred not to think of it in detail. He put it to himself summarily
+that he would be paying Heyst out and would, at the same time, relieve
+himself of these men's oppression. He had only to let loose his natural
+gift for talking scandalously about his fellow creatures. And in this
+case his great practice in it was assisted by hate, which, like love,
+has an eloquence of its own. With the utmost ease he portrayed for
+Ricardo, now seriously attentive, a Heyst fattened by years of private
+and public rapines, the murderer of Morrison, the swindler of many
+shareholders, a wonderful mixture of craft and impudence, of deep
+purposes and simple wiles, of mystery and futility. In this exercise of
+his natural function Schomberg revived, the colour coming back to his
+face, loquacious, florid, eager, his manliness set off by the military
+bearing.
+
+“That's the exact story. He was seen hanging about this part of the
+world for years, spying into everybody's business: but I am the only
+one who has seen through him from the first--contemptible, double-faced,
+stick-at-nothing, dangerous fellow.”
+
+“Dangerous, is he?”
+
+Schomberg came to himself at the sound of Ricardo's voice.
+
+“Well, you know what I mean,” he said uneasily. “A lying, circumventing,
+soft-spoken, polite, stuck-up rascal. Nothing open about him.”
+
+Mr. Ricardo had slipped off the table, and was prowling about the room in
+an oblique, noiseless manner. He flashed a grin at Schomberg in passing,
+and a snarling:
+
+“Ah! H'm!”
+
+“Well, what more dangerous do you want?” argued Schomberg. “He's in no
+way a fighting man, I believe,” he added negligently.
+
+“And you say he has been living alone there?”
+
+“Like the man in the moon,” answered Schomberg readily. “There's no
+one that cares a rap what becomes of him. He has been lying low, you
+understand, after bagging all that plunder.”
+
+“Plunder, eh? Why didn't he go home with it?” inquired Ricardo.
+
+The henchman of plain Mr. Jones was beginning to think that this was
+something worth looking into. And he was pursuing truth in the manner
+of men of sounder morality and purer intentions than his own; that is he
+pursued it in the light of his own experience and prejudices. For facts,
+whatever their origin (and God only knows where they come from), can be
+only tested by our own particular suspicions. Ricardo was suspicious all
+round. Schomberg, such is the tonic of recovered self-esteem, Schomberg
+retorted fearlessly:
+
+“Go home? Why don't you go home? To hear your talk, you must have made
+a pretty considerable pile going round winning people's money. You ought
+to be ready by this time.”
+
+Ricardo stopped to look at Schomberg with surprise.
+
+“You think yourself very clever, don't you?” he said.
+
+Schomberg just then was so conscious of being clever that the snarling
+irony left him unmoved. There was positively a smile in his noble
+Teutonic beard, the first smile for weeks. He was in a felicitous vein.
+
+“How do you know that he wasn't thinking of going home? As a matter of
+fact, he was on his way home.”
+
+“And how do I know that you are not amusing yourself by spinning out
+a blamed fairy tale?” interrupted Ricardo roughly. “I wonder at myself
+listening to the silly rot!”
+
+Schomberg received this turn of temper unmoved. He did not require to be
+very subtly observant to notice that he had managed to arouse some sort
+of feeling, perhaps of greed, in Ricardo's breast.
+
+“You won't believe me? Well! You can ask anybody that comes here if
+that--that Swede hadn't got as far as this house on his way home. Why
+should he turn up here if not for that? You ask anybody.”
+
+“Ask, indeed!” returned the other. “Catch me asking at large about a man
+I mean to drop on! Such jobs must be done on the quiet--or not at all.”
+
+The peculiar intonation of the last phrase touched the nape of
+Schomberg's neck with a chill. He cleared his throat slightly and looked
+away as though he had heard something indelicate. Then, with a jump as
+it were:
+
+“Of course he didn't tell me. Is it likely? But haven't I got eyes?
+Haven't I got my common sense to tell me? I can see through people. By
+the same token, he called on the Tesmans. Why did he call on the Tesmans
+two days running, eh? You don't know? You can't tell?”
+
+He waited complacently till Ricardo had finished swearing quite openly
+at him for a confounded chatterer, and then went on:
+
+“A fellow doesn't go to a counting-house in business hours for a chat
+about the weather, two days running. Then why? To close his account with
+them one day, and to get his money out the next! Clear, what?”
+
+Ricardo, with his trick of looking one way and moving another approached
+Schomberg slowly.
+
+“To get his money?” he purred.
+
+“Gewiss,” snapped Schomberg with impatient superiority. “What else? That
+is, only the money he had with the Tesmans. What he has buried or put
+away on the island, devil only knows. When you think of the lot of hard
+cash that passed through that man's hands, for wages and stores and all
+that--and he's just a cunning thief, I tell you.” Ricardo's hard stare
+discomposed the hotel-keeper, and he added in an embarrassed tone: “I
+mean a common, sneaking thief--no account at all. And he calls himself a
+Swedish baron, too! Tfui!”
+
+“He's a baron, is he? That foreign nobility ain't much,” commented Mr.
+Ricardo seriously. “And then what? He hung about here!”
+
+“Yes, he hung about,” said Schomberg, making a wry mouth. “He--hung
+about. That's it. Hung--”
+
+His voice died out. Curiosity was depicted in Ricardo's countenance.
+
+“Just like that; for nothing? And then turned about and went back to
+that island again?”
+
+“And went back to that island again,” Schomberg echoed lifelessly,
+fixing his gaze on the floor.
+
+“What's the matter with you?” asked Ricardo with genuine surprise. “What
+is it?”
+
+Schomberg, without looking up, made an impatient gesture. His face was
+crimson, and he kept it lowered. Ricardo went back to the point.
+
+“Well, but how do you account for it? What was his reason? What did he
+go back to the island for?”
+
+“Honeymoon!” spat out Schomberg viciously.
+
+Perfectly still, his eyes downcast, he suddenly, with no preliminary
+stir, hit the table with his fist a blow which caused the utterly
+unprepared Ricardo to leap aside. And only then did Schomberg look up
+with a dull, resentful expression.
+
+Ricardo stared hard for a moment, spun on his heel, walked to the end
+of the room, came back smartly, and muttered a profound “Ay! Ay!” above
+Schomberg's rigid head. That the hotel-keeper was capable of a
+great moral effort was proved by a gradual return of his severe,
+Lieutenant-of-the-Reserve manner.
+
+“Ay, ay!” repeated Ricardo more deliberately than before, and as if
+after a further survey of the circumstances, “I wish I hadn't asked you,
+or that you had told me a lie. It don't suit me to know that there's a
+woman mixed up in this affair. What's she like? It's the girl you--”
+
+“Leave off!” muttered Schomberg, utterly pitiful behind his stiff
+military front.
+
+“Ay, ay!” Ricardo ejaculated for the third time, more and more
+enlightened and perplexed. “Can't bear to talk about it--so bad as that?
+And yet I would bet she isn't a miracle to look at.”
+
+Schomberg made a gesture as if he didn't know, as if he didn't care.
+Then he squared his shoulders and frowned at vacancy.
+
+“Swedish baron--h'm!” Ricardo continued meditatively. “I believe the
+governor would think that business worth looking up, quite, if I put it
+to him properly. The governor likes a duel, if you will call it so; but
+I don't know a man that can stand up to him on the square. Have you ever
+seen a cat play with a mouse? It's a pretty sight!”
+
+Ricardo, with his voluptuously gleaming eyes and the coy expression,
+looked so much like a cat that Schomberg would have felt all the alarm
+of a mouse if other feelings had not had complete possession of his
+breast.
+
+“There are no lies between you and me,” he said, more steadily than he
+thought he could speak.
+
+“What's the good now? He funks women. In that Mexican pueblo where we
+lay grounded on our beef-bones, so to speak, I used to go to dances of
+an evening. The girls there would ask me if the English caballero in
+the posada was a monk in disguise, or if he had taken a vow to the
+sancissima madre not to speak to a woman, or whether--You can imagine
+what fairly free-spoken girls will ask when they come to the point of
+not caring what they say; and it used to vex me. Yes, the governor funks
+facing women.”
+
+“One woman?” interjected Schomberg in guttural tones.
+
+“One may be more awkward to deal with than two, or two hundred, for that
+matter. In a place that's full of women you needn't look at them unless
+you like; but if you go into a room where there is only one woman, young
+or old, pretty or ugly, you have got to face her. And, unless you are
+after her, then--the governor is right enough--she's in the way.”
+
+“Why notice them?” muttered Schomberg. “What can they do?”
+
+“Make a noise, if nothing else,” opined Mr. Ricardo curtly, with the
+distaste of a man whose path is a path of silence; for indeed, nothing
+is more odious than a noise when one is engaged in a weighty and
+absorbing card game. “Noise, noise, my friend,” he went on forcibly;
+“confounded screeching about something or other, and I like it no more
+than the governor does. But with the governor there's something else
+besides. He can't stand them at all.”
+
+He paused to reflect on this psychological phenomenon, and as no
+philosopher was at hand to tell him that there is no strong sentiment
+without some terror, as there is no real religion without a little
+fetishism, he emitted his own conclusion, which surely could not go to
+the root of the matter.
+
+“I'm hanged if I don't think they are to him what liquor is to me.
+Brandy--pah!”
+
+He made a disgusted face, and produced a genuine shudder. Schomberg
+listened to him in wonder. It looked as if the very scoundrelism, of
+that--that Swede would protect him; the spoil of his iniquity standing
+between the thief and the retribution.
+
+“That's so, old buck.” Ricardo broke the silence after contemplating
+Schomberg's mute dejection with a sort of sympathy. “I don't think this
+trick will work.”
+
+“But that's silly,” whispered the man deprived of the vengeance which he
+had seemed already to hold in his hand, by a mysterious and exasperating
+idiosyncrasy.
+
+“Don't you set yourself to judge a gentleman.” Ricardo without anger
+administered a moody rebuke. “Even I can't understand the governor
+thoroughly. And I am an Englishman and his follower. No, I don't think I
+care to put it before him, sick as I am of staying here.”
+
+Ricardo could not be more sick of staying than Schomberg was of seeing
+him stay. Schomberg believed so firmly in the reality of Heyst as
+created by his own power of false inferences, of his hate, of his love
+of scandal, that he could not contain a stifled cry of conviction
+as sincere as most of our convictions, the disguised servants of our
+passions, can appear at a supreme moment.
+
+“It would have been like going to pick up a nugget of a thousand pounds,
+or two or three times as much, for all I know. No trouble, no--”
+
+“The petticoat's the trouble,” Ricardo struck in.
+
+He had resumed his noiseless, feline, oblique prowling, in which an
+observer would have detected a new character of excitement, such as a
+wild animal of the cat species, anxious to make a spring, might betray.
+Schomberg saw nothing. It would probably have cheered his drooping
+spirits; but in a general way he preferred not to look at Ricardo.
+Ricardo, however, with one of his slanting, gliding, restless glances,
+observed the bitter smile on Schomberg's bearded lips--the unmistakable
+smile of ruined hopes.
+
+“You are a pretty unforgiving sort of chap,” he said, stopping for a
+moment with an air of interest. “Hang me if I ever saw anybody look so
+disappointed! I bet you would send black plague to that island if you
+only knew how--eh, what? Plague too good for them? Ha, ha, ha!”
+
+He bent down to stare at Schomberg who sat unstirring with stony eyes
+and set features, and apparently deaf to the rasping derision of that
+laughter so close to his red fleshy ear.
+
+“Black plague too good for them, ha, ha!” Ricardo pressed the point on
+the tormented hotel-keeper. Schomberg kept his eyes down obstinately.
+
+“I don't wish any harm to the girl--” he muttered.
+
+“But did she bolt from you? A fair bilk? Come!”
+
+“Devil only knows what that villainous Swede had done to her--what he
+promised her, how he frightened her. She couldn't have cared for him,
+I know.” Schomberg's vanity clung to the belief in some atrocious,
+extraordinary means of seduction employed by Heyst. “Look how he
+bewitched that poor Morrison,” he murmured.
+
+“Ah, Morrison--got all his money, what?”
+
+“Yes--and his life.”
+
+“Terrible fellow, that Swedish baron! How is one to get at him?”
+
+Schomberg exploded.
+
+“Three against one! Are you shy? Do you want me to give you a letter of
+introduction?”
+
+“You ought to look at yourself in a glass,” Ricardo said quietly. “Dash
+me if you don't get a stroke of some kind presently. And this is the
+fellow who says women can do nothing! That one will do for you, unless
+you manage to forget her.”
+
+“I wish I could,” Schomberg admitted earnestly. “And it's all the doing
+of that Swede. I don't get enough sleep, Mr. Ricardo. And then, to
+finish me off, you gentlemen turn up . . . as if I hadn't enough worry.”
+
+“That's done you good,” suggested the secretary with ironic seriousness.
+“Takes your mind off that silly trouble. At your age too.”
+
+He checked himself, as if in pity, and changing his tone:
+
+“I would really like to oblige you while doing a stroke of business at
+the same time.”
+
+“A good stroke,” insisted Schomberg, as if it were mechanically. In his
+simplicity he was not able to give up the idea which had entered his
+head. An idea must be driven out by another idea, and with Schomberg
+ideas were rare and therefore tenacious. “Minted gold,” he murmured with
+a sort of anguish.
+
+Such an expressive combination of words was not without effect upon
+Ricardo. Both these men were amenable to the influence of verbal
+suggestions. The secretary of “plain Mr. Jones” sighed and murmured.
+
+“Yes. But how is one to get at it?”
+
+“Being three to one,” said Schomberg, “I suppose you could get it for
+the asking.”
+
+“One would think the fellow lived next door,” Ricardo growled
+impatiently. “Hang it all, can't you understand a plain question? I have
+asked you the way.”
+
+Schomberg seemed to revive.
+
+“The way?”
+
+The torpor of deceived hopes underlying his superficial changes of mood
+had been pricked by these words which seemed pointed with purpose.
+
+“The way is over the water, of course,” said the hotel-keeper. “For
+people like you, three days in a good, big boat is nothing. It's no more
+than a little outing, a bit of a change. At this season the Java Sea
+is a pond. I have an excellent, safe boat--a ship's life-boat--carry
+thirty, let alone three, and a child could handle her. You wouldn't get
+a wet face at this time of the year. You might call it a pleasure-trip.”
+
+“And yet, having this boat, you didn't go after her yourself--or after
+him? Well, you are a fine fellow for a disappointed lover.”
+
+Schomberg gave a start at the suggestion.
+
+“I am not three men,” he said sulkily, as the shortest answer of the
+several he could have given.
+
+“Oh, I know your sort,” Ricardo let fall negligently. “You are like most
+people--or perhaps just a little more peaceable than the rest of the
+buying and selling gang that bosses this rotten show. Well, well,
+you respectable citizen,” he went on, “let us go thoroughly into the
+matter.”
+
+When Schomberg had been made to understand that Mr. Jones's henchman was
+ready to discuss, in his own words, “this boat of yours, with courses
+and distances,” and such concrete matters of no good augury to that
+villainous Swede, he recovered his soldierly bearing, squared his
+shoulders, and asked in his military manner:
+
+“You wish, then, to proceed with the business?”
+
+Ricardo nodded. He had a great mind to, he said. A gentleman had to be
+humoured as much as possible; but he must be managed, too, on occasions,
+for his own good. And it was the business of the right sort of
+“follower” to know the proper time and the proper methods of that
+delicate part of his duty. Having exposed this theory Ricardo proceeded
+to the application.
+
+“I've never actually lied to him,” he said, “and I ain't going to now.
+I shall just say nothing about the girl. He will have to get over the
+shock the best he can. Hang it all! Too much humouring won't do here.”
+
+“Funny thing,” Schomberg observed crisply.
+
+“Is it? Ay, you wouldn't mind taking a woman by the throat in some dark
+corner and nobody by, I bet!”
+
+Ricardo's dreadful, vicious, cat-like readiness to get his claws out at
+any moment startled Schomberg as usual. But it was provoking too.
+
+“And you?” he defended himself. “Don't you want me to believe you are up
+to anything?”
+
+“I, my boy? Oh, yes. I am not that gentleman; neither are you. Take 'em
+by the throat or chuck 'em under the chin is all one to me--almost,”
+ affirmed Ricardo, with something obscurely ironical in his complacency.
+“Now, as to this business. A three days' jaunt in a good boat isn't a
+thing to frighten people like us. You are right, so far; but there are
+other details.”
+
+Schomberg was ready enough to enter into details. He explained that he
+had a small plantation, with a fairly habitable hut on it, on Madura. He
+proposed that his guest should start from town in his boat, as if going
+for an excursion to that rural spot. The custom-house people on the quay
+were used to see his boat go off on such trips.
+
+From Madura, after some repose and on a convenient day, Mr. Jones
+and party would make the real start. It would all be plain sailing.
+Schomberg undertook to provision the boat. The greatest hardship the
+voyagers need apprehend would be a mild shower of rain. At that season
+of the year there were no serious thunderstorms.
+
+Schomberg's heart began to thump as he saw himself nearing his
+vengeance. His speech was thick but persuasive.
+
+“No risk at all--none whatever.”
+
+Ricardo dismissed these assurances of safety with an impatient gesture.
+He was thinking of other risks.
+
+“The getting away from here is all right; but we may be sighted at sea,
+and that may bring awkwardness later on. A ship's boat with three white
+men in her, knocking about out of sight of land, is bound to make talk.
+Are we likely to be seen on our way?”
+
+“No, unless by native craft,” said Schomberg.
+
+Ricardo nodded, satisfied. Both these white men looked on native life as
+a mere play of shadows. A play of shadows the dominant race could
+walk through unaffected and disregarded in the pursuit of its
+incomprehensible aims and needs. No. Native craft did not count, of
+course. It was an empty, solitary part of the sea, Schomberg expounded
+further. Only the Ternate mail-boat crossed that region about the eighth
+of every month, regularly--nowhere near the island though. Rigid, his
+voice hoarse, his heart thumping, his mind concentrated on the success
+of his plan, the hotel-keeper multiplied words, as if to keep as many
+of them as possible between himself and the murderous aspect of his
+purpose.
+
+“So, if you gentlemen depart from my plantation quietly at sunset on the
+eighth--always best to make a start at night, with a land breeze--it's a
+hundred to one--What am I saying?--it's a thousand to one that no
+human eye will see you on the passage. All you've got to do is keep her
+heading north-east for, say, fifty hours; perhaps not quite so long.
+There will always be draft enough to keep a boat moving; you may reckon
+on that; and then--”
+
+The muscles about his waist quivered under his clothes with eagerness,
+with impatience, and with something like apprehension, the true nature
+of which was not clear to him. And he did not want to investigate it.
+Ricardo regarded him steadily, with those dry eyes of his shining more
+like polished stones than living tissue.
+
+“And then what?” he asked.
+
+“And then--why, you will astonish der herr baron--ha, ha!”
+
+Schomberg seemed to force the words and the laugh out of himself in a
+hoarse bass.
+
+“And you believe he has all that plunder by him?” asked Ricardo, rather
+perfunctorily, because the fact seemed to him extremely probable when
+looked at all round by his acute mind.
+
+Schomberg raised his hands and lowered them slowly.
+
+“How can it be otherwise? He was going home, he was on his way, in this
+hotel. Ask people. Was it likely he would leave it behind him?”
+
+Ricardo was thoughtful. Then, suddenly raising his head, he remarked:
+
+“Steer north-east for fifty hours, eh? That's not much of a sailing
+direction. I've heard of a port being missed before on better
+information. Can't you say what sort of landfall a fellow may expect?
+But I suppose you have never seen that island yourself?”
+
+Schomberg admitted that he had not seen it, in a tone in which a
+man congratulates himself on having escaped the contamination of an
+unsavoury experience. No, certainly not. He had never had any business
+to call there. But what of that? He could give Mr. Ricardo as good a
+sea-mark as anybody need wish for. He laughed nervously. Miss it! He
+defied anyone that came within forty miles of it to miss the retreat of
+that villainous Swede.
+
+“What do you think of a pillar of smoke by day and a loom of fire at
+night? There's a volcano in full blast near that island--enough to guide
+almost a blind man. What more do you want? An active volcano to steer
+by?”
+
+These last words he roared out exultingly, then jumped up and glared.
+The door to the left of the bar had swung open, and Mrs. Schomberg,
+dressed for duty, stood facing him down the whole length of the room.
+She clung to the handle for a moment, then came in and glided to her
+place, where she sat down to stare straight before her, as usual.
+
+
+
+
+
+PART THREE
+
+
+
+CHAPTER ONE
+
+Tropical nature had been kind to the failure of the commercial
+enterprise. The desolation of the headquarters of the Tropical Belt Coal
+Company had been screened from the side of the sea; from the side where
+prying eyes--if any were sufficiently interested, either in malice or
+in sorrow--could have noted the decaying bones of that once sanguine
+enterprise.
+
+Heyst had been sitting among the bones buried so kindly in the grass of
+two wet seasons' growth. The silence of his surroundings, broken only by
+such sounds as a distant roll of thunder, the lash of rain through the
+foliage of some big trees, the noise of the wind tossing the leaves of
+the forest, and of the short seas breaking against the shore, favoured
+rather than hindered his solitary meditation.
+
+A meditation is always--in a white man, at least--more or less an
+interrogative exercise. Heyst meditated in simple terms on the mystery
+of his actions; and he answered himself with the honest reflection:
+
+“There must be a lot of the original Adam in me, after all.”
+
+He reflected, too, with the sense of making a discovery, that this
+primeval ancestor is not easily suppressed. The oldest voice in the
+world is just the one that never ceases to speak. If anybody could have
+silenced its imperative echoes, it should have been Heyst's father, with
+his contemptuous, inflexible negation of all effort; but apparently he
+could not. There was in the son a lot of that first ancestor who,
+as soon as he could uplift his muddy frame from the celestial mould,
+started inspecting and naming the animals of that paradise which he was
+so soon to lose.
+
+Action--the first thought, or perhaps the first impulse, on earth! The
+barbed hook, baited with the illusions of progress, to bring out of the
+lightless void the shoals of unnumbered generations!
+
+“And I, the son of my father, have been caught too, like the silliest
+fish of them all.” Heyst said to himself.
+
+He suffered. He was hurt by the sight of his own life, which ought to
+have been a masterpiece of aloofness. He remembered always his last
+evening with his father. He remembered the thin features, the great mass
+of white hair, and the ivory complexion. A five-branched candlestick
+stood on a little table by the side of the easy chair. They had been
+talking a long time. The noises of the street had died out one by one,
+till at last, in the moonlight, the London houses began to look like the
+tombs of an unvisited, unhonoured, cemetery of hopes.
+
+He had listened. Then, after a silence, he had asked--for he was really
+young then:
+
+“Is there no guidance?”
+
+His father was in an unexpectedly soft mood on that night, when the moon
+swam in a cloudless sky over the begrimed shadows of the town.
+
+“You still believe in something, then?” he said in a clear voice,
+which had been growing feeble of late. “You believe in flesh and blood,
+perhaps? A full and equable contempt would soon do away with that, too.
+But since you have not attained to it, I advise you to cultivate
+that form of contempt which is called pity. It is perhaps the least
+difficult--always remembering that you, too, if you are anything, are as
+pitiful as the rest, yet never expecting any pity for yourself.”
+
+“What is one to do, then?” sighed the young man, regarding his father,
+rigid in the high-backed chair.
+
+“Look on--make no sound,” were the last words of the man who had spent
+his life in blowing blasts upon a terrible trumpet which filled heaven
+and earth with ruins, while mankind went on its way unheeding.
+
+That very night he died in his bed, so quietly that they found him
+in his usual attitude of sleep, lying on his side, one hand under his
+cheek, and his knees slightly bent. He had not even straightened his
+legs.
+
+His son buried the silenced destroyer of systems, of hopes, of beliefs.
+He observed that the death of that bitter contemner of life did not
+trouble the flow of life's stream, where men and women go by thick as
+dust, revolving and jostling one another like figures cut out of cork
+and weighted with lead just sufficiently to keep them in their proudly
+upright posture.
+
+After the funeral, Heyst sat alone, in the dusk, and his meditation took
+the form of a definite vision of the stream, of the fatuously jostling,
+nodding, spinning figures hurried irresistibly along, and giving no sign
+of being aware that the voice on the bank had been suddenly silenced .
+. . Yes. A few obituary notices generally insignificant and some grossly
+abusive. The son had read them all with mournful detachment.
+
+“This is the hate and rage of their fear,” he thought to himself, “and
+also of wounded vanity. They shriek their little shriek as they fly
+past. I suppose I ought to hate him too . . .”
+
+He became aware of his eyes being wet. It was not that the man was his
+father. For him it was purely a matter of hearsay which could not in
+itself cause this emotion. No! It was because he had looked at him so
+long that he missed him so much. The dead man had kept him on the bank
+by his side. And now Heyst felt acutely that he was alone on the bank of
+the stream. In his pride he determined not to enter it.
+
+A few slow tears rolled down his face. The rooms, filling with shadows,
+seemed haunted by a melancholy, uneasy presence which could not express
+itself. The young man got up with a strange sense of making way for
+something impalpable that claimed possession, went out of the house, and
+locked the door. A fortnight later he started on his travels--to “look
+on and never make a sound.”
+
+The elder Heyst had left behind him a little money and a certain
+quantity of movable objects, such as books, tables, chairs, and
+pictures, which might have complained of heartless desertion after many
+years of faithful service; for there is a soul in things. Heyst, our
+Heyst, had often thought of them, reproachful and mute, shrouded and
+locked up in those rooms, far away in London with the sounds of the
+street reaching them faintly, and sometimes a little sunshine, when
+the blinds were pulled up and the windows opened from time to time in
+pursuance of his original instructions and later reminders. It seemed
+as if in his conception of a world not worth touching, and perhaps not
+substantial enough to grasp, these objects familiar to his childhood and
+his youth, and associated with the memory of an old man, were the only
+realities, something having an absolute existence. He would never have
+them sold, or even moved from the places they occupied when he looked
+upon them last. When he was advised from London that his lease had
+expired, and that the house, with some others as like it as two peas,
+was to be demolished, he was surprisingly distressed.
+
+He had entered by then the broad, human path of inconsistencies. Already
+the Tropical Belt Coal Company was in existence. He sent instructions
+to have some of the things sent out to him at Samburan, just as any
+ordinary, credulous person would have done. They came, torn out from
+their long repose--a lot of books, some chairs and tables, his father's
+portrait in oils, which surprised Heyst by its air of youth, because he
+remembered his father as a much older man; a lot of small objects, such
+as candlesticks, inkstands, and statuettes from his father's study,
+which surprised him because they looked so old and so much worn.
+
+The manager of the Tropical Belt Coal Company, unpacking them on the
+veranda in the shade besieged by a fierce sunshine, must have felt like
+a remorseful apostate before these relics. He handled them tenderly;
+and it was perhaps their presence there which attached him to the island
+when he woke up to the failure of his apostasy. Whatever the decisive
+reason, Heyst had remained where another would have been glad to be off.
+The excellent Davidson had discovered the fact without discovering the
+reason, and took a humane interest in Heyst's strange existence, while
+at the same time his native delicacy kept him from intruding on the
+other's whim of solitude. He could not possibly guess that Heyst, alone
+on the island, felt neither more nor less lonely than in any other
+place, desert or populous. Davidson's concern was, if one may express it
+so, the danger of spiritual starvation; but this was a spirit which had
+renounced all outside nourishment, and was sustaining itself proudly on
+its own contempt of the usual coarse ailments which life offers to the
+common appetites of men.
+
+Neither was Heyst's body in danger of starvation, as Schomberg had so
+confidently asserted. At the beginning of the company's operations the
+island had been provisioned in a manner which had outlasted the need.
+Heyst did not need to fear hunger; and his very loneliness had not been
+without some alleviation. Of the crowd of imported Chinese labourers,
+one at least had remained in Samburan, solitary and strange, like a
+swallow left behind at the migrating season of his tribe.
+
+Wang was not a common coolie. He had been a servant to white men before.
+The agreement between him and Heyst consisted in the exchange of a few
+words on the day when the last batch of the mine coolies was leaving
+Samburan. Heyst, leaning over the balustrade of the veranda, was looking
+on, as calm in appearance as though he had never departed from the
+doctrine that this world, for the wise, is nothing but an amusing
+spectacle. Wang came round the house, and standing below, raised up his
+yellow, thin face.
+
+“All finished?” he asked. Heyst nodded slightly from above, glancing
+towards the jetty. A crowd of blue-clad figures with yellow faces and
+calves was being hustled down into the boats of the chartered steamer
+lying well out, like a painted ship on a painted sea; painted in crude
+colours, without shadows, without feeling, with brutal precision.
+
+“You had better hurry up if you don't want to be left behind.”
+
+But the Chinaman did not move.
+
+“We stop,” he declared. Heyst looked down at him for the first time.
+
+“You want to stop here?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“What were you? What was your work here?”
+
+“Mess-loom boy.”
+
+“Do you want to stay with me here as my boy?” inquired Heyst, surprised.
+
+The Chinaman unexpectedly put on a deprecatory expression, and said,
+after a marked pause:
+
+“Can do.”
+
+“You needn't,” said Heyst, “unless you like. I propose to stay on
+here--it may be for a very long time. I have no power to make you go if
+you wish to remain, but I don't see why you should.”
+
+“Catchee one piecee wife,” remarked Wang unemotionally, and marched off,
+turning his back on the wharf and the great world beyond, represented by
+the steamer waiting for her boats.
+
+Heyst learned presently that Wang had persuaded one of the women of
+Alfuro village, on the west shore of the island, beyond the central
+ridge, to come over to live with him in a remote part of the company's
+clearing. It was a curious case, inasmuch as the Alfuros, having been
+frightened by the sudden invasion of Chinamen, had blocked the path over
+the ridge by felling a few trees, and had kept strictly on their own
+side. The coolies, as a body, mistrusting the manifest mildness of these
+harmless fisher-folk, had kept to their lines, without attempting to
+cross the island. Wang was the brilliant exception. He must have been
+uncommonly fascinating, in a way that was not apparent to Heyst, or else
+uncommonly persuasive. The woman's services to Heyst were limited to
+the fact that she had anchored Wang to the spot by her charms, which
+remained unknown to the white man, because she never came near the
+houses. The couple lived at the edge of the forest, and she could
+sometimes be seen gazing towards the bungalow shading her eyes with her
+hand. Even from a distance she appeared to be a shy, wild creature,
+and Heyst, anxious not to try her primitive nerves unduly, scrupulously
+avoided that side of the clearing in his strolls.
+
+The day--or rather the first night--after his hermit life began, he was
+aware of vague sounds of revelry in that direction. Emboldened by the
+departure of the invading strangers, some Alfuros, the woman's friends
+and relations, had ventured over the ridge to attend something in the
+nature of a wedding feast. Wang had invited them. But this was the only
+occasion when any sound louder than the buzzing of insects had troubled
+the profound silence of the clearing. The natives were never invited
+again. Wang not only knew how to live according to conventional
+proprieties, but had strong personal views as to the manner of arranging
+his domestic existence. After a time Heyst perceived that Wang had
+annexed all the keys. Any keys left lying about vanished after Wang had
+passed that way. Subsequently some of them--those that did not belong
+to the store-rooms and the empty bungalows, and could not be regarded
+as the common property of this community of two--were returned to Heyst,
+tied in a bunch with a piece of string. He found them one morning
+lying by the side of his plate. He had not been inconvenienced by their
+absence, because he never locked up anything in the way of drawers and
+boxes. Heyst said nothing. Wang also said nothing. Perhaps he had always
+been a taciturn man; perhaps he was influenced by the genius of the
+locality, which was certainly that of silence. Till Heyst and Morrison
+had landed in Black Diamond Bay, and named it, that side of Samburan had
+hardly ever heard the sound of human speech. It was easy to be taciturn
+with Heyst, who had plunged himself into an abyss of meditation over
+books, and remained in it till the shadow of Wang falling across the
+page, and the sound of a rough, low voice uttering the Malay word
+“makan,” would force him to climb out to a meal.
+
+Wang in his native province in China might have been an aggressively,
+sensitively genial person; but in Samburan he had clothed himself in
+a mysterious stolidity and did not seem to resent not being spoken to
+except in single words, at a rate which did not average half a dozen per
+day. And he gave no more than he got. It is to be presumed that if he
+suffered he made up for it with the Alfuro woman. He always went back to
+her at the first fall of dusk, vanishing from the bungalow suddenly at
+this hour, like a sort of topsy-turvy, day-hunting, Chinese ghost with a
+white jacket and a pigtail. Presently, giving way to a Chinaman's ruling
+passion, he could be observed breaking the ground near his hut, between
+the mighty stumps of felled trees, with a miner's pickaxe. After a
+time, he discovered a rusty but serviceable spade in one of the empty
+store-rooms, and it is to be supposed that he got on famously; but
+nothing of it could be seen, because he went to the trouble of pulling
+to pieces one of the company's sheds in order to get materials for
+making a high and very close fence round his patch, as if the growing
+of vegetables were a patented process, or an awful and holy mystery
+entrusted to the keeping of his race.
+
+Heyst, following from a distance the progress of Wang's gardening and of
+these precautions--there was nothing else to look at--was amused at
+the thought that he, in his own person, represented the market for
+its produce. The Chinaman had found several packets of seeds in the
+store-rooms, and had surrendered to an irresistible impulse to put them
+into the ground. He would make his master pay for the vegetables which
+he was raising to satisfy his instinct. And, looking silently at the
+silent Wang going about his work in the bungalow in his unhasty,
+steady way; Heyst envied the Chinaman's obedience to his instincts, the
+powerful simplicity of purpose which made his existence appear almost
+automatic in the mysterious precision of its facts.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWO
+
+During his master's absence at Sourabaya, Wang had busied himself with
+the ground immediately in front of the principal bungalow. Emerging
+from the fringe of grass growing across the shore end of the coal-jetty,
+Heyst beheld a broad, clear space, black and level, with only one or two
+clumps of charred twigs, where the flame had swept from the front of his
+house to the nearest trees of the forest.
+
+“You took the risk of firing the grass?” Heyst asked.
+
+Wang nodded. Hanging on the arm of the white man before whom he stood
+was the girl called Alma; but neither from the Chinaman's eyes nor from
+his expression could anyone have guessed that he was in the slightest
+degree aware of the fact.
+
+“He has been tidying the place in his labour-saving way,” explained
+Heyst, without looking at the girl, whose hand rested on his forearm.
+“He's the whole establishment, you see. I told you I hadn't even a dog
+to keep me company here.”
+
+Wang had marched off towards the wharf.
+
+“He's like those waiters in that place,” she said. That place was
+Schomberg's hotel.
+
+“One Chinaman looks very much like another,” Heyst remarked. “We shall
+find it useful to have him here. This is the house.”
+
+They faced, at some distance, the six shallow steps leading up to the
+veranda. The girl had abandoned Heyst's arm.
+
+“This is the house,” he repeated.
+
+She did not offer to budge away from his side, but stood staring fixedly
+at the steps, as if they had been something unique and impracticable. He
+waited a little, but she did not move.
+
+“Don't you want to go in?” he asked, without turning his head to look at
+her. “The sun's too heavy to stand about here.” He tried to overcome
+a sort of fear, a sort of impatient faintness, and his voice sounded
+rough. “You had better go in,” he concluded.
+
+They both moved then, but at the foot of the stairs Heyst stopped, while
+the girl went on rapidly, as if nothing could stop her now. She crossed
+the veranda swiftly, and entered the twilight of the big central room
+opening upon it, and then the deeper twilight of the room beyond. She
+stood still in the dusk, in which her dazzled eyes could scarcely make
+out the forms of objects, and sighed a sigh of relief. The impression
+of the sunlight, of sea and sky, remained with her like a memory of a
+painful trial gone through--done with at last!
+
+Meanwhile Heyst had walked back slowly towards the jetty; but he did not
+get so far as that. The practical and automatic Wang had got hold of
+one of the little trucks that had been used for running baskets of coal
+alongside ships. He appeared pushing it before him, loaded lightly with
+Heyst's bag and the bundle of the girl's belongings, wrapped in Mrs.
+Schomberg's shawl. Heyst turned about and walked by the side of the
+rusty rails on which the truck ran. Opposite the house Wang stopped,
+lifted the bag to his shoulder, balanced it carefully, and then took the
+bundle in his hand.
+
+“Leave those things on the table in the big room--understand?”
+
+“Me savee,” grunted Wang, moving off.
+
+Heyst watched the Chinaman disappear from the veranda. It was not till
+he had seen Wang come out that he himself entered the twilight of the
+big room. By that time Wang was out of sight at the back of the house,
+but by no means out of hearing. The Chinaman could hear the voice of
+him who, when there were many people there, was generally referred to
+as “Number One.” Wang was not able to understand the words, but the tone
+interested him.
+
+“Where are you?” cried Number One.
+
+Then Wang heard, much more faint, a voice he had never heard before--a
+novel impression which he acknowledged by cocking his head slightly to
+one side.
+
+“I am here--out of the sun.”
+
+The new voice sounded remote and uncertain. Wang heard nothing more,
+though he waited for some time, very still, the top of his shaven poll
+exactly level with the floor of the back veranda. His face meanwhile
+preserved an inscrutable immobility. Suddenly he stooped to pick up
+the lid of a deal candle-box which was lying on the ground by his foot.
+Breaking it up with his fingers, he directed his steps towards the
+cook-shed, where, squatting on his heels, he proceeded to kindle a small
+fire under a very sooty kettle, possibly to make tea. Wang had some
+knowledge of the more superficial rites and ceremonies of white men's
+existence, otherwise so enigmatically remote to his mind, and containing
+unexpected possibilities of good and evil, which had to be watched for
+with prudence and care.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THREE
+
+That morning, as on all the others of the full tale of mornings since
+his return with the girl to Samburan, Heyst came out on the veranda and
+spread his elbows on the railing, in an easy attitude of proprietorship.
+The bulk of the central ridge of the island cut off the bungalow from
+sunrises, whether glorious or cloudy, angry or serene. The dwellers
+therein were debarred from reading early the fortune of the new-born
+day. It sprang upon them in its fulness with a swift retreat of the
+great shadow when the sun, clearing the ridge, looked down, hot and dry,
+with a devouring glare like the eye of an enemy. But Heyst, once the
+Number One of this locality, while it was comparatively teeming with
+mankind, appreciated the prolongation of early coolness, the subdued,
+lingering half-light, the faint ghost of the departed night, the
+fragrance of its dewy, dark soul captured for a moment longer between
+the great glow of the sky and the intense blaze of the uncovered sea.
+
+It was naturally difficult for Heyst to keep his mind from dwelling on
+the nature and consequences of this, his latest departure from the part
+of an unconcerned spectator. Yet he had retained enough of his wrecked
+philosophy to prevent him from asking himself consciously how it would
+end. But at the same time he could not help being temperamentally, from
+long habit and from set purpose, a spectator still, perhaps a little
+less naive but (as he discovered with some surprise) not much more far
+sighted than the common run of men. Like the rest of us who act, all he
+could say to himself, with a somewhat affected grimness, was:
+
+“We shall see!”
+
+This mood of grim doubt intruded on him only when he was alone. There
+were not many such moments in his day now; and he did not like them when
+they came. On this morning he had no time to grow uneasy. Alma came out
+to join him long before the sun, rising above the Samburan ridge, swept
+the cool shadow of the early morning and the remnant of the night's
+coolness clear off the roof under which they had dwelt for more than
+three months already. She came out as on other mornings. He had heard
+her light footsteps in the big room--the room where he had unpacked the
+cases from London; the room now lined with the backs of books halfway up
+on its three sides. Above the cases the fine matting met the ceiling of
+tightly stretched white calico. In the dusk and coolness nothing gleamed
+except the gilt frame of the portrait of Heyst's father, signed by a
+famous painter, lonely in the middle of a wall.
+
+Heyst did not turn round.
+
+“Do you know what I was thinking of?” he asked.
+
+“No,” she said. Her tone betrayed always a shade of anxiety, as though
+she were never certain how a conversation with him would end. She leaned
+on the guard-rail by his side.
+
+“No,” she repeated. “What was it?” She waited. Then, rather with
+reluctance than shyness, she asked:
+
+“Were you thinking of me?”
+
+“I was wondering when you would come out,” said Heyst, still without
+looking at the girl--to whom, after several experimental essays in
+combining detached letters and loose syllables, he had given the name of
+Lena.
+
+She remarked after a pause:
+
+“I was not very far from you.”
+
+“Apparently you were not near enough for me.”
+
+“You could have called if you wanted me,” she said. “And I wasn't so
+long doing my hair.”
+
+“Apparently it was too long for me.”
+
+“Well, you were thinking of me, anyhow. I am glad of it. Do you know,
+it seems to me, somehow, that if you were to stop thinking of me I
+shouldn't be in the world at all!”
+
+He turned round and looked at her. She often said things which surprised
+him. A vague smile faded away on her lips before his scrutiny.
+
+“What is it?” he asked. “Is it a reproach?”
+
+“A reproach! Why, how could it be?” she defended herself.
+
+“Well, what did it mean?” he insisted.
+
+“What I said--just what I said. Why aren't you fair?”
+
+“Ah, this is at least a reproach!”
+
+She coloured to the roots of her hair.
+
+“It looks as if you were trying to make out that I am disagreeable,” she
+murmured. “Am I? You will make me afraid to open my mouth presently. I
+shall end by believing I am no good.”
+
+Her head drooped a little. He looked at her smooth, low brow, the
+faintly coloured cheeks, and the red lips parted slightly, with the
+gleam of her teeth within.
+
+“And then I won't be any good,” she added with conviction. “That I
+won't! I can only be what you think I am.”
+
+He made a slight movement. She put her hand on his arm, without raising
+her head, and went on, her voice animated in the stillness of her body:
+
+“It is so. It couldn't be any other way with a girl like me and a man
+like you. Here we are, we two alone, and I can't even tell where we
+are.”
+
+“A very well-known spot of the globe,” Heyst uttered gently. “There
+must have been at least fifty thousand circulars issued at the time--a
+hundred and fifty thousand, more likely. My friend was looking after
+that, and his ideas were large and his belief very strong. Of us two it
+was he who had the faith. A hundred and fifty thousand, certainly.”
+
+“What is it you mean?” she asked in a low tone.
+
+“What should I find fault with you for?” Heyst went on. “For being
+amiable, good, gracious--and pretty?”
+
+A silence fell. Then she said:
+
+“It's all right that you should think that of me. There's no one here to
+think anything of us, good or bad.”
+
+The rare timbre of her voice gave a special value to what she uttered.
+The indefinable emotion which certain intonations gave him, he was
+aware, was more physical than moral. Every time she spoke to him she
+seemed to abandon to him something of herself--something excessively
+subtle and inexpressible, to which he was infinitely sensible, which he
+would have missed horribly if she were to go away. While he was looking
+into her eyes she raised her bare forearm, out of the short sleeve, and
+held it in the air till he noticed it and hastened to pose his great
+bronze moustaches on the whiteness of the skin. Then they went in.
+
+Wang immediately appeared in front, and, squatting on his heels, began
+to potter mysteriously about some plants at the foot of the veranda.
+When Heyst and the girl came out again, the Chinaman had gone in his
+peculiar manner, which suggested vanishing out of existence rather than
+out of sight, a process of evaporation rather than of movement. They
+descended the steps, looking at each other, and started off smartly
+across the cleared ground; but they were not ten yards away when,
+without perceptible stir or sound, Wang materialized inside the empty
+room. The Chinaman stood still with roaming eyes, examining the walls as
+if for signs, for inscriptions; exploring the floor as if for pitfalls,
+for dropped coins. Then he cocked his head slightly at the profile of
+Heyst's father, pen in hand above a white sheet of paper on a crimson
+tablecloth; and, moving forward noiselessly, began to clear away the
+breakfast things.
+
+Though he proceeded without haste, the unerring precision of his
+movements, the absolute soundlessness of the operation, gave it
+something of the quality of a conjuring trick. And, the trick having
+been performed, Wang vanished from the scene, to materialize presently
+in front of the house. He materialized walking away from it, with no
+visible or guessable intention; but at the end of some ten paces he
+stopped, made a half turn, and put his hand up to shade his eyes. The
+sun had topped the grey ridge of Samburan. The great morning shadow was
+gone; and far away in the devouring sunshine Wang was in time to see
+Number One and the woman, two remote white specks against the sombre
+line of the forest. In a moment they vanished. With the smallest display
+of action, Wang also vanished from the sunlight of the clearing.
+
+Heyst and Lena entered the shade of the forest path which crossed the
+island, and which, near its highest point had been blocked by felled
+trees. But their intention was not to go so far. After keeping to the
+path for some distance, they left it at a point where the forest was
+bare of undergrowth, and the trees, festooned with creepers, stood clear
+of one another in the gloom of their own making. Here and there great
+splashes of light lay on the ground. They moved, silent in the great
+stillness, breathing the calmness, the infinite isolation, the repose of
+a slumber without dreams. They emerged at the upper limit of vegetation,
+among some rocks; and in a depression of the sharp slope, like a small
+platform, they turned about and looked from on high over the sea,
+lonely, its colour effaced by sunshine, its horizon a heat mist, a mere
+unsubstantial shimmer in the pale and blinding infinity overhung by the
+darker blaze of the sky.
+
+“It makes my head swim,” the girl murmured, shutting her eyes and
+putting her hand on his shoulder.
+
+Heyst, gazing fixedly to the southward, exclaimed:
+
+“Sail ho!”
+
+A moment of silence ensued.
+
+“It must be very far away,” he went on. “I don't think you could see it.
+Some native craft making for the Moluccas, probably. Come, we mustn't
+stay here.”
+
+With his arm round her waist, he led her down a little distance, and
+they settled themselves in the shade; she, seated on the ground, he a
+little lower, reclining at her feet.
+
+“You don't like to look at the sea from up there?” he said after a time.
+
+She shook her head. That empty space was to her the abomination of
+desolation. But she only said again:
+
+“It makes my head swim.”
+
+“Too big?” he inquired.
+
+“Too lonely. It makes my heart sink, too,” she added in a low voice, as
+if confessing a secret.
+
+“I'm afraid,” said Heyst, “that you would be justified in reproaching me
+for these sensations. But what would you have?”
+
+His tone was playful, but his eyes, directed at her face, were serious.
+She protested.
+
+“I am not feeling lonely with you--not a bit. It is only when we come up
+to that place, and I look at all that water and all that light--”
+
+“We will never come here again, then,” he interrupted her.
+
+She remained silent for a while, returning his gaze till he removed it.
+
+“It seems as if everything that there is had gone under,” she said.
+
+“Reminds you of the story of the deluge,” muttered the man, stretched at
+her feet and looking at them. “Are you frightened at it?”
+
+“I should be rather frightened to be left behind alone. When I say, I,
+of course I mean we.”
+
+“Do you?” . . . Heyst remained silent for a while. “The vision of a
+world destroyed,” he mused aloud. “Would you be sorry for it?”
+
+“I should be sorry for the happy people in it,” she said simply.
+
+His gaze travelled up her figure and reached her face, where he seemed
+to detect the veiled glow of intelligence, as one gets a glimpse of the
+sun through the clouds.
+
+“I should have thought it's they specially who ought to have been
+congratulated. Don't you?”
+
+“Oh, yes--I understand what you mean; but there were forty days before
+it was all over.”
+
+“You seem to be in possession of all the details.”
+
+Heyst spoke just to say something rather than to gaze at her in silence.
+She was not looking at him.
+
+“Sunday school,” she murmured. “I went regularly from the time I
+was eight till I was thirteen. We lodged in the north of London, off
+Kingsland Road. It wasn't a bad time. Father was earning good money
+then. The woman of the house used to pack me off in the afternoon with
+her own girls. She was a good woman. Her husband was in the post office.
+Sorter or something. Such a quiet man. He used to go off after supper
+for night-duty, sometimes. Then one day they had a row, and broke up the
+home. I remember I cried when we had to pack up all of a sudden and go
+into other lodgings. I never knew what it was, though--”
+
+“The deluge,” muttered Heyst absently.
+
+He felt intensely aware of her personality, as if this were the first
+moment of leisure he had found to look at her since they had come
+together. The peculiar timbre of her voice, with its modulations of
+audacity and sadness, would have given interest to the most inane
+chatter. But she was no chatterer. She was rather silent, with a
+capacity for immobility, an upright stillness, as when resting on the
+concert platform between the musical numbers, her feet crossed, her
+hands reposing on her lap. But in the intimacy of their life her grey,
+unabashed gaze forced upon him the sensation of something inexplicable
+reposing within her; stupidity or inspiration, weakness or force--or
+simply an abysmal emptiness, reserving itself even in the moments of
+complete surrender.
+
+During a long pause she did not look at him. Then suddenly, as if
+the word “deluge” had stuck in her mind, she asked, looking up at the
+cloudless sky:
+
+“Does it ever rain here?”
+
+“There is a season when it rains almost every day,” said Heyst,
+surprised. “There are also thunderstorms. We once had a 'mud-shower.'”
+
+“Mud-shower?”
+
+“Our neighbour there was shooting up ashes. He sometimes clears his
+red-hot gullet like that; and a thunderstorm came along at the
+same time. It was very messy; but our neighbour is generally well
+behaved--just smokes quietly, as he did that day when I first showed
+you the smudge in the sky from the schooner's deck. He's a good-natured,
+lazy fellow of a volcano.”
+
+“I saw a mountain smoking like that before,” she said, staring at the
+slender stem of a tree-fern some dozen feet in front of her. “It wasn't
+very long after we left England--some few days, though. I was so ill at
+first that I lost count of days. A smoking mountain--I can't think how
+they called it.”
+
+“Vesuvius, perhaps,” suggested Heyst.
+
+“That's the name.”
+
+“I saw it, too, years, ages ago,” said Heyst.
+
+“On your way here?”
+
+“No, long before I ever thought of coming into this part of the world. I
+was yet a boy.”
+
+She turned and looked at him attentively, as if seeking to discover some
+trace of that boyhood in the mature face of the man with the hair
+thin at the top and the long, thick moustaches. Heyst stood the frank
+examination with a playful smile, hiding the profound effect these
+veiled grey eyes produced--whether on his heart or on his nerves,
+whether sensuous or spiritual, tender or irritating, he was unable to
+say.
+
+“Well, princess of Samburan,” he said at last, “have I found favour in
+your sight?”
+
+She seemed to wake up, and shook her head.
+
+“I was thinking,” she murmured very low.
+
+“Thought, action--so many snares! If you begin to think you will be
+unhappy.”
+
+“I wasn't thinking of myself!” she declared with a simplicity which took
+Heyst aback somewhat.
+
+“On the lips of a moralist this would sound like a rebuke,” he said,
+half seriously; “but I won't suspect you of being one. Moralists and I
+haven't been friends for many years.”
+
+She had listened with an air of attention.
+
+“I understood you had no friends,” she said. “I am pleased that there's
+nobody to find fault with you for what you have done. I like to think
+that I am in no one's way.”
+
+Heyst would have said something, but she did not give him time.
+Unconscious of the movement he made she went on:
+
+“What I was thinking to myself was, why are you here?”
+
+Heyst let himself sink on his elbow again.
+
+“If by 'you' you mean 'we'--well, you know why we are here.”
+
+She bent her gaze down at him.
+
+“No, it isn't that. I meant before--all that time before you came across
+me and guessed at once that I was in trouble, with no one to turn to.
+And you know it was desperate trouble too.”
+
+Her voice fell on the last words, as if she would end there; but there
+was something so expectant in Heyst's attitude as he sat at her feet,
+looking up at her steadily, that she continued, after drawing a short,
+quick breath:
+
+“It was, really. I told you I had been worried before by bad fellows.
+It made me unhappy, disturbed--angry, too. But oh, how I hated, hated,
+hated that man!”
+
+“That man” was the florid Schomberg with the military bearing,
+benefactor of white men ['decent food to eat in decent company')--mature
+victim of belated passion. The girl shuddered. The characteristic
+harmoniousness of her face became, as it were, decomposed for an
+instant. Heyst was startled.
+
+“Why think of it now?” he cried.
+
+“It's because I was cornered that time. It wasn't as before. It was
+worse, ever so much. I wished I could die of my fright--and yet it's
+only now that I begin to understand what a horror it might have been.
+Yes, only now, since we--”
+
+Heyst stirred a little.
+
+“Came here,” he finished.
+
+Her tenseness relaxed, her flushed face went gradually back to its
+normal tint.
+
+“Yes,” she said indifferently, but at the same time she gave him a
+stealthy glance of passionate appreciation; and then her face took on a
+melancholy cast, her whole figure drooped imperceptibly.
+
+“But you were coming back here anyhow?” she asked.
+
+“Yes. I was only waiting for Davidson. Yes, I was coming back here, to
+these ruins--to Wang, who perhaps did not expect to see me again. It's
+impossible to guess at the way that Chinaman draws his conclusions, and
+how he looks upon one.”
+
+“Don't talk about him. He makes me feel uncomfortable. Talk about
+yourself!”
+
+“About myself? I see you are still busy with the mystery of my existence
+here; but it isn't at all mysterious. Primarily the man with the quill
+pen in his hand in that picture you so often look at is responsible for
+my existence. He is also responsible for what my existence is, or
+rather has been. He was a great man in his way. I don't know much of his
+history. I suppose he began like other people; took fine words for good,
+ringing coin and noble ideals for valuable banknotes. He was a great
+master of both, himself, by the way. Later he discovered--how am I to
+explain it to you? Suppose the world were a factory and all mankind
+workmen in it. Well, he discovered that the wages were not good enough.
+That they were paid in counterfeit money.”
+
+“I see!” the girl said slowly.
+
+“Do you?”
+
+Heyst, who had been speaking as if to himself, looked up curiously.
+
+“It wasn't a new discovery, but he brought his capacity for scorn to
+bear on it. It was immense. It ought to have withered this globe. I
+don't know how many minds he convinced. But my mind was very young then,
+and youth I suppose can be easily seduced--even by a negation. He was
+very ruthless, and yet he was not without pity. He dominated me without
+difficulty. A heartless man could not have done so. Even to fools he was
+not utterly merciless. He could be indignant, but he was too great for
+flouts and jeers. What he said was not meant for the crowd; it could not
+be; and I was flattered to find myself among the elect. They read his
+books, but I have heard his living word. It was irresistible. It was
+as if that mind were taking me into its confidence, giving me a special
+insight into its mastery of despair. Mistake, no doubt. There is
+something of my father in every man who lives long enough. But they
+don't say anything. They can't. They wouldn't know how, or perhaps,
+they wouldn't speak if they could. Man on this earth is an unforeseen
+accident which does not stand close investigation. However, that
+particular man died as quietly as a child goes to sleep. But, after
+listening to him, I could not take my soul down into the street to fight
+there. I started off to wander about, an independent spectator--if that
+is possible.”
+
+For a long time the girl's grey eyes had been watching his face. She
+discovered that, addressing her, he was really talking to himself. Heyst
+looked up, caught sight of her as it were, and caught himself up, with a
+low laugh and a change of tone.
+
+“All this does not tell you why I ever came here. Why, indeed? It's like
+prying into inscrutable mysteries which are not worth scrutinizing. A
+man drifts. The most successful men have drifted into their successes.
+I don't want to tell you that this is a success. You wouldn't believe
+me if I did. It isn't; neither is it the ruinous failure it looks. It
+proves nothing, unless perhaps some hidden weakness in my character--and
+even that is not certain.”
+
+He looked fixedly at her, and with such grave eyes that she felt obliged
+to smile faintly at him, since she did not understand what he meant. Her
+smile was reflected, still fainter, on his lips.
+
+“This does not advance you much in your inquiry,” he went on. “And in
+truth your question is unanswerable; but facts have a certain positive
+value, and I will tell you a fact. One day I met a cornered man. I use
+the word because it expresses the man's situation exactly, and because
+you just used it yourself. You know what that means?”
+
+“What do you say?” she whispered, astounded. “A man!”
+
+Heyst laughed at her wondering eyes.
+
+“No! No! I mean in his own way.”
+
+“I knew very well it couldn't be anything like that,” she observed under
+her breath.
+
+“I won't bother you with the story. It was a custom-house affair,
+strange as it may sound to you. He would have preferred to be killed
+outright--that is, to have his soul dispatched to another world, rather
+than to be robbed of his substance, his very insignificant substance, in
+this. I saw that he believed in another world because, being cornered,
+as I have told you, he went down on his knees and prayed. What do you
+think of that?”
+
+Heyst paused. She looked at him earnestly.
+
+“You didn't make fun of him for that?” she said.
+
+Heyst made a brusque movement of protest
+
+“My dear girl, I am not a ruffian,” he cried. Then, returning to his
+usual tone: “I didn't even have to conceal a smile. Somehow it didn't
+look a smiling matter. No, it was not funny; it was rather pathetic; he
+was so representative of all the past victims of the Great Joke. But it
+is by folly alone that the world moves, and so it is a respectable thing
+upon the whole. And besides, he was what one would call a good man. I
+don't mean especially because he had offered up a prayer. No! He was
+really a decent fellow, he was quite unfitted for this world, he was a
+failure, a good man cornered--a sight for the gods; for no decent mortal
+cares to look at that sort.” A thought seemed to occur to him. He turned
+his face to the girl. “And you, who have been cornered too--did you
+think of offering a prayer?”
+
+Neither her eyes nor a single one of her features moved the least bit.
+She only let fall the words:
+
+“I am not what they call a good girl.”
+
+“That sounds evasive,” said Heyst after a short silence. “Well, the good
+fellow did pray and after he had confessed to it I was struck by the
+comicality of the situation. No, don't misunderstand me--I am not
+alluding to his act, of course. And even the idea of Eternity, Infinity,
+Omnipotence, being called upon to defeat the conspiracy of two miserable
+Portuguese half-castes did not move my mirth. From the point of view of
+the supplicant, the danger to be conjured was something like the end
+of the world, or worse. No! What captivated my fancy was that I, Axel
+Heyst, the most detached of creatures in this earthly captivity, the
+veriest tramp on this earth, an indifferent stroller going through the
+world's bustle--that I should have been there to step into the situation
+of an agent of Providence. I, a man of universal scorn and unbelief. . .
+.”
+
+“You are putting it on,” she interrupted in her seductive voice, with a
+coaxing intonation.
+
+“No. I am not like that, born or fashioned, or both. I am not for
+nothing the son of my father, of that man in the painting. I am he, all
+but the genius. And there is even less in me than I make out, because
+the very scorn is falling away from me year after year. I have never
+been so amused as by that episode in which I was suddenly called to act
+such an incredible part. For a moment I enjoyed it greatly. It got him
+out of his corner, you know.”
+
+“You saved a man for fun--is that what you mean? Just for fun?”
+
+“Why this tone of suspicion?” remonstrated Heyst. “I suppose the sight
+of this particular distress was disagreeable to me. What you call fun
+came afterwards, when it dawned on me that I was for him a walking,
+breathing, incarnate proof of the efficacy of prayer. I was a little
+fascinated by it--and then, could I have argued with him? You don't
+argue against such evidence, and besides it would have looked as if
+I had wanted to claim all the merit. Already his gratitude was simply
+frightful. Funny position, wasn't it? The boredom came later, when we
+lived together on board his ship. I had, in a moment of inadvertence,
+created for myself a tie. How to define it precisely I don't know. One
+gets attached in a way to people one has done something for. But is that
+friendship? I am not sure what it was. I only know that he who forms a
+tie is lost. The germ of corruption has entered into his soul.”
+
+Heyst's tone was light, with the flavour of playfulness which seasoned
+all his speeches and seemed to be of the very essence of his thoughts.
+The girl he had come across, of whom he had possessed himself, to whose
+presence he was not yet accustomed, with whom he did not yet know how to
+live; that human being so near and still so strange, gave him a greater
+sense of his own reality than he had ever known in all his life.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FOUR
+
+With her knees drawn up, Lena rested her elbows on them and held her
+head in both her hands.
+
+“Are you tired of sitting here?” Heyst asked.
+
+An almost imperceptible negative movement of the head was all the answer
+she made.
+
+“Why are you looking so serious?” he pursued, and immediately thought
+that habitual seriousness, in the long run, was much more bearable than
+constant gaiety. “However, this expression suits you exceedingly,” he
+added, not diplomatically, but because, by the tendency of his taste,
+it was a true statement. “And as long as I can be certain that it is not
+boredom which gives you this severe air, I am willing to sit here and
+look at you till you are ready to go.”
+
+And this was true. He was still under the fresh sortilege of their
+common life, the surprise of novelty, the flattered vanity of his
+possession of this woman; for a man must feel that, unless he has ceased
+to be masculine. Her eyes moved in his direction, rested on him,
+then returned to their stare into the deeper gloom at the foot of the
+straight tree-trunks, whose spreading crowns were slowly withdrawing
+their shade. The warm air stirred slightly about her motionless head.
+She would not look at him, from some obscure fear of betraying herself.
+She felt in her innermost depths an irresistible desire to give herself
+up to him more completely, by some act of absolute sacrifice. This was
+something of which he did not seem to have an idea. He was a strange
+being without needs. She felt his eyes fixed upon her; and as he kept
+silent, she said uneasily--for she didn't know what his silences might
+mean:
+
+“And so you lived with that friend--that good man?”
+
+“Excellent fellow,” Heyst responded, with a readiness that she did not
+expect. “But it was a weakness on my part. I really didn't want to, only
+he wouldn't let me off, and I couldn't explain. He was the sort of man
+to whom you can't explain anything. He was extremely sensitive, and it
+would have been a tigerish thing to do to mangle his delicate feelings
+by the sort of plain speaking that would have been necessary. His
+mind was like a white-walled, pure chamber, furnished with, say, six
+straw-bottomed chairs, and he was always placing and displacing them
+in various combinations. But they were always the same chairs. He was
+extremely easy to live with; but then he got hold of this coal idea--or,
+rather, the idea got hold of him, it entered into that scantily
+furnished chamber of which I have just spoken, and sat on all the
+chairs. There was no dislodging it, you know! It was going to make his
+fortune, my fortune, everybody's fortune. In past years, in moments of
+doubt that will come to a man determined to remain free from absurdities
+of existence, I often asked myself, with a momentary dread, in what way
+would life try to get hold of me? And this was the way. He got it into
+his head that he could do nothing without me. And was I now, he asked
+me, to spurn and ruin him? Well, one morning--I wonder if he had gone
+down on his knees to pray that night!--one morning I gave in.”
+
+Heyst tugged violently at a tuft of dried grass, and cast it away from
+him with a nervous gesture.
+
+“I gave in,” he repeated.
+
+Looking towards him with a movement of her eyes only, the girl noticed
+the strong feeling on his face with that intense interest which his
+person awakened in her mind and in her heart. But it soon passed away,
+leaving only a moody expression.
+
+“It's difficult to resist where nothing matters,” he observed. “And
+perhaps there is a grain of freakishness in my nature. It amused me
+to go about uttering silly, commonplace phrases. I was never so well
+thought of in the islands till I began to jabber commercial gibberish
+like the veriest idiot. Upon my word, I believe that I was actually
+respected for a time. I was as grave as an owl over it; I had to be
+loyal to the man. I have been, from first to last, completely, utterly
+loyal to the best of my ability. I thought he understood something about
+coal. And if I had been aware that he knew nothing of it, as in fact he
+didn't, well--I don't know what I could have done to stop him. In one
+way or another I should have had to be loyal. Truth, work, ambition,
+love itself, may be only counters in the lamentable or despicable game
+of life, but when one takes a hand one must play the game. No, the shade
+of Morrison needn't haunt me. What's the matter? I say, Lena, why are
+you staring like that? Do you feel ill?”
+
+Heyst made as if to get on his feet. The girl extended her arm to arrest
+him, and he remained staring in a sitting posture, propped on one arm,
+observing her indefinable expression of anxiety, as if she were unable
+to draw breath.
+
+“What has come to you?” he insisted, feeling strangely unwilling to
+move, to touch her.
+
+“Nothing!” She swallowed painfully. “Of course it can't be. What name
+did you say? I didn't hear it properly.”
+
+“Name?” repeated Heyst dazedly. “I only mentioned Morrison. It's the
+name of that man of whom I've been speaking. What of it?”
+
+“And you mean to say that he was your friend?”
+
+“You have heard enough to judge for yourself. You know as much of our
+connection as I know myself. The people in this part of the world
+went by appearances, and called us friends, as far as I can remember.
+Appearances--what more, what better can you ask for? In fact you can't
+have better. You can't have anything else.”
+
+“You are trying to confuse me with your talk,” she cried. “You can't
+make fun of this.”
+
+“Can't? Well, no I can't. It's a pity. Perhaps it would have been the
+best way,” said Heyst, in a tone which for him could be called gloomy.
+“Unless one could forget the silly business altogether.” His faint
+playfulness of manner and speech returned, like a habit one has schooled
+oneself into, even before his forehead had cleared completely. “But why
+are you looking so hard at me? Oh, I don't object, and I shall try not
+to flinch. Your eyes--”
+
+He was looking straight into them, and as a matter of fact had forgotten
+all about the late Morrison at that moment.
+
+“No,” he exclaimed suddenly. “What an impenetrable girl you are Lena,
+with those grey eyes of yours! Windows of the soul, as some poet has
+said. The fellow must have been a glazier by vocation. Well, nature has
+provided excellently for the shyness of your soul.”
+
+When he ceased speaking, the girl came to herself with a catch of her
+breath. He heard her voice, the varied charm of which he thought he knew
+so well, saying with an unfamiliar intonation:
+
+“And that partner of yours is dead?”
+
+“Morrison? Oh, yes, as I've told you, he--”
+
+“You never told me.”
+
+“Didn't I? I thought I did; or, rather, I thought you must know. It
+seems impossible that anybody with whom I speak should not know that
+Morrison is dead.”
+
+She lowered her eyelids, and Heyst was startled by something like an
+expression of horror on her face.
+
+“Morrison!” she whispered in an appalled tone. “Morrison!” Her head
+drooped. Unable to see her features, Heyst could tell from her voice
+that for some reason or other she was profoundly moved by the syllables
+of that unromantic name. A thought flashed through his head--could she
+have known Morrison? But the mere difference of their origins made it
+wildly improbable.
+
+“This is very extraordinary!” he said. “Have you ever heard the name
+before?”
+
+Her head moved quickly several times in tiny affirmative nods, as if she
+could not trust herself to speak, or even to look at him. She was biting
+her lower lip.
+
+“Did you ever know anybody of that name?” he asked.
+
+The girl answered by a negative sign; and then at last she spoke,
+jerkily, as if forcing herself against some doubt or fear. She had heard
+of that very man, she told Heyst.
+
+“Impossible!” he said positively. “You are mistaken. You couldn't have
+heard of him, it's--”
+
+He stopped short, with the thought that to talk like this was perfectly
+useless; that one doesn't argue against thin air.
+
+“But I did hear of him; only I didn't know then, I couldn't guess, that
+it was your partner they were talking about.”
+
+“Talking about my partner?” repeated Heyst slowly.
+
+“No.” Her mind seemed almost as bewildered, as full of incredulity, as
+his. “No. They were talking of you really; only I didn't know it.”
+
+“Who were they?” Heyst raised his voice. “Who was talking of me? Talking
+where?”
+
+With the first question he had lifted himself from his reclining
+position; at the last he was on his knees before her, their heads on a
+level.
+
+“Why, in that town, in that hotel. Where else could it have been?” she
+said.
+
+The idea of being talked about was always novel to Heyst's simplified
+conception of himself. For a moment he was as much surprised as if he
+had believed himself to be a mere gliding shadow among men. Besides,
+he had in him a half-unconscious notion that he was above the level of
+island gossip.
+
+“But you said first that it was of Morrison they talked,” he remarked to
+the girl, sinking on his heels, and no longer much interested. “Strange
+that you should have the opportunity to hear any talk at all! I was
+rather under the impression that you never saw anybody belonging to the
+town except from the platform.”
+
+“You forget that I was not living with the other girls,” she said.
+“After meals they used to go back to the Pavilion, but I had to stay in
+the hotel and do my sewing, or what not, in the room where they talked.”
+
+“I didn't think of that. By the by, you never told me who they were.”
+
+“Why, that horrible red-faced beast,” she said, with all the energy of
+disgust which the mere thought of the hotel-keeper provoked in her.
+
+“Oh, Schomberg!” Heyst murmured carelessly.
+
+“He talked to the boss--to Zangiacomo, I mean. I had to sit there. That
+devil-woman sometimes wouldn't let me go away. I mean Mrs. Zangiacomo.”
+
+“I guessed,” murmured Heyst. “She liked to torment you in a variety
+of ways. But it is really strange that the hotel-keeper should talk of
+Morrison to Zangiacomo. As far as I can remember he saw very little of
+Morrison professionally. He knew many others much better.”
+
+The girl shuddered slightly.
+
+“That was the only name I ever overheard. I would get as far away from
+them as I could, to the other end of the room, but when that beast
+started shouting I could not help hearing. I wish I had never heard
+anything. If I had got up and gone out of the room I don't suppose the
+woman would have killed me for it; but she would have rowed me in a
+nasty way. She would have threatened me and called me names. That sort,
+when they know you are helpless, there's nothing to stop them. I don't
+know how it is, but bad people, real bad people that you can see are
+bad, they get over me somehow. It's the way they set about downing one.
+I am afraid of wickedness.”
+
+Heyst watched the changing expressions of her face. He encouraged her,
+profoundly sympathetic, a little amused.
+
+“I quite understand. You needn't apologize for your great delicacy in
+the perception of inhuman evil. I am a little like you.”
+
+“I am not very plucky,” she said.
+
+“Well! I don't know myself what I would do, what countenance I would
+have before a creature which would strike me as being evil incarnate.
+Don't you be ashamed!”
+
+She sighed, looked up with her pale, candid gaze and a timid expression
+on her face, and murmured:
+
+“You don't seem to want to know what he was saying.”
+
+“About poor Morrison? It couldn't have been anything bad, for the poor
+fellow was innocence itself. And then, you know, he is dead, and nothing
+can possibly matter to him now.”
+
+“But I tell you that it was of you he was talking!” she cried.
+
+“He was saying that Morrison's partner first got all there was to get
+out of him, and then, and then--well, as good as murdered him--sent him
+out to die somewhere!”
+
+“You believe that of me?” said Heyst, after a moment of perfect silence.
+
+“I didn't know it had anything to do with you. Schomberg was talking
+of some Swede. How was I to know? It was only when you began telling me
+about how you came here--”
+
+“And now you have my version.” Heyst forced himself to speak quietly.
+“So that's how the business looked from outside!” he muttered.
+
+“I remember him saying that everybody in these parts knew the story,”
+ the girl added breathlessly.
+
+“Strange that it should hurt me!” mused Heyst to himself; “yet it does.
+I seem to be as much of a fool as those everybodies who know the story
+and no doubt believe it. Can you remember any more?” he addressed the
+girl in a grimly polite tone. “I've often heard of the moral advantages
+of seeing oneself as others see one. Let us investigate further. Can't
+you recall something else that everybody knows?”
+
+“Oh! Don't laugh!” she cried.
+
+“Did I laugh? I assure you I was not aware of it. I won't ask you
+whether you believe the hotel-keeper's version. Surely you must know the
+value of human judgement!”
+
+She unclasped her hands, moved them slightly, and twined her fingers as
+before. Protest? Assent? Was there to be nothing more? He was relieved
+when she spoke in that warm and wonderful voice which in itself
+comforted and fascinated one's heart, which made her lovable.
+
+“I heard this before you and I ever spoke to each other. It went out of
+my memory afterwards. Everything went out of my memory then; and I was
+glad of it. It was a fresh start for me, with you--and you know it. I
+wish I had forgotten who I was--that would have been best; and I very
+nearly did forget.”
+
+He was moved by the vibrating quality of the last words. She seemed to
+be talking low of some wonderful enchantment, in mysterious terms of
+special significance. He thought that if she only could talk to him
+in some unknown tongue, she would enslave him altogether by the sheer
+beauty of the sound, suggesting infinite depths of wisdom and feeling.
+
+“But,” she went on, “the name stuck in my head, it seems; and when you
+mentioned it--”
+
+“It broke the spell,” muttered Heyst in angry disappointment as if he
+had been deceived in some hope.
+
+The girl, from her position a little above him, surveyed with still
+eyes the abstracted silence of the man on whom she now depended with
+a completeness of which she had not been vividly conscious before,
+because, till then, she had never felt herself swinging between the
+abysses of earth and heaven in the hollow of his arm. What if he should
+grow weary of the burden?
+
+“And, moreover, nobody had ever believed that tale!”
+
+Heyst came out with an abrupt burst of sound which made her open her
+steady eyes wider, with an effect of immense surprise. It was a purely
+mechanical effect, because she was neither surprised nor puzzled. In
+fact, she could understand him better then than at any moment since she
+first set eyes on him.
+
+He laughed scornfully.
+
+“What am I thinking of?” he cried. “As if it could matter to me what
+anybody had ever said or believed, from the beginning of the world till
+the crack of doom!”
+
+“I never heard you laugh till today,” she observed. “This is the second
+time!”
+
+He scrambled to his feet and towered above her.
+
+“That's because, when one's heart has been broken into in the way you
+have broken into mine, all sorts of weaknesses are free to enter--shame,
+anger, stupid indignation, stupid fears--stupid laughter, too. I wonder
+what interpretation you are putting on it?”
+
+“It wasn't gay, certainly,” she said. “But why are you angry with me?
+Are you sorry you took me away from those beasts? I told you who I was.
+You could see it.”
+
+“Heavens!” he muttered. He had regained his command of himself. “I
+assure you I could see much more than you could tell me. I could see
+quite a lot that you don't even suspect yet, but you can't be seen quite
+through.”
+
+He sank to the ground by her side and took her hand. She asked gently:
+
+“What more do you want from me?”
+
+He made no sound for a time.
+
+“The impossible, I suppose,” he said very low, as one makes a
+confidence, and pressing the hand he grasped.
+
+It did not return the pressure. He shook his head as if to drive away
+the thought of this, and added in a louder, light tone:
+
+“Nothing less. And it isn't because I think little of what I've got
+already. Oh, no! It is because I think so much of this possession of
+mine that I can't have it complete enough. I know it's unreasonable. You
+can't hold back anything--now.”
+
+“Indeed I couldn't,” she whispered, letting her hand lie passive in his
+tight grasp. “I only wish I could give you something more, or better, or
+whatever it is you want.”
+
+He was touched by the sincere accent of these simple words.
+
+“I tell you what you can do--you can tell me whether you would have gone
+with me like this if you had known of whom that abominable idiot of a
+hotel-keeper was speaking. A murderer--no less!”
+
+“But I didn't know you at all then,” she cried. “And I had the sense to
+understand what he was saying. It wasn't murder, really. I never thought
+it was.”
+
+“What made him invent such an atrocity?” Heyst exclaimed. “He seems
+a stupid animal. He is stupid. How did he manage to hatch that pretty
+tale? Have I a particularly vile countenance? Is black selfishness
+written all over my face? Or is that sort of thing so universally human
+that it might be said of anybody?”
+
+“It wasn't murder,” she insisted earnestly.
+
+“I know. I understand. It was worse. As to killing a man, which would be
+a comparatively decent thing to do, well--I have never done that.”
+
+“Why should you do it?” she asked in a frightened voice.
+
+“My dear girl, you don't know the sort of life I have been leading in
+unexplored countries, in the wilds; it's difficult to give you an idea.
+There are men who haven't been in such tight places as I have found
+myself in who have had to--to shed blood, as the saying is. Even the
+wilds hold prizes which tempt some people; but I had no schemes, no
+plans--and not even great firmness of mind to make me unduly obstinate.
+I was simply moving on, while the others, perhaps, were going somewhere.
+An indifference as to roads and purposes makes one meeker, as it were.
+And I may say truly, too, that I never did care, I won't say for life--I
+had scorned what people call by that name from the first--but for being
+alive. I don't know if that is what men call courage, but I doubt it
+very much.”
+
+“You! You have no courage?” she protested.
+
+“I really don't know. Not the sort that always itches for a weapon, for
+I have never been anxious to use one in the quarrels that a man gets
+into in the most innocent way sometimes. The differences for which
+men murder each other are, like everything else they do, the most
+contemptible, the most pitiful things to look back upon. No, I've never
+killed a man or loved a woman--not even in my thoughts, not even in my
+dreams.”
+
+He raised her hand to his lips, and let them rest on it for a space,
+during which she moved a little closer to him. After the lingering kiss
+he did not relinquish his hold.
+
+“To slay, to love--the greatest enterprises of life upon a man! And I
+have no experience of either. You must forgive me anything that may have
+appeared to you awkward in my behaviour, inexpressive in my speeches,
+untimely in my silences.”
+
+He moved uneasily, a little disappointed by her attitude, but indulgent
+to it, and feeling, in this moment of perfect quietness, that in holding
+her surrendered hand he had found a closer communion than they had ever
+achieved before. But even then there still lingered in him a sense of
+incompleteness not altogether overcome--which, it seemed, nothing ever
+would overcome--the fatal imperfection of all the gifts of life, which
+makes of them a delusion and a snare.
+
+All of a sudden he squeezed her hand angrily. His delicately playful
+equanimity, the product of kindness and scorn, had perished with the
+loss of his bitter liberty.
+
+“Not murder, you say! I should think not. But when you led me to talk
+just now, when the name turned up, when you understood that it was of me
+that these things had been said, you showed a strange emotion. I could
+see it.”
+
+“I was a bit startled,” she said.
+
+“At the baseness of my conduct?” he asked.
+
+“I wouldn't judge you, not for anything.”
+
+“Really?”
+
+“It would be as if I dared to judge everything that there is.” With her
+other hand she made a gesture that seemed to embrace in one movement the
+earth and the heaven. “I wouldn't do such a thing.”
+
+Then came a silence, broken at last by Heyst:
+
+“I! I! do a deadly wrong to my poor Morrison!” he cried. “I, who could
+not bear to hurt his feelings. I, who respected his very madness! Yes,
+this madness, the wreck of which you can see lying about the jetty of
+Diamond Bay. What else could I do? He insisted on regarding me as his
+saviour; he was always restraining the eternal obligation on the tip of
+his tongue, till I was burning with shame at his gratitude. What could I
+do? He was going to repay me with this infernal coal, and I had to join
+him as one joins a child's game in a nursery. One would no more have
+thought of humiliating him than one would think of humiliating a child.
+What's the use of talking of all this! Of course, the people here
+could not understand the truth of our relation to each other. But what
+business of theirs was it? Kill old Morrison! Well, it is less criminal,
+less base--I am not saying it is less difficult--to kill a man than to
+cheat him in that way. You understand that?”
+
+She nodded slightly, but more than once and with evident conviction. His
+eyes rested on her, inquisitive, ready for tenderness.
+
+“But it was neither one nor the other,” he went on. “Then, why your
+emotion? All you confess is that you wouldn't judge me.”
+
+She turned upon him her veiled, unseeing grey eyes in which nothing of
+her wonder could be read.
+
+“I said I couldn't,” she whispered.
+
+“But you thought that there was no smoke without fire!” the playfulness
+of tone hardly concealed his irritation. “What power there must be in
+words, only imperfectly heard--for you did not listen with particular
+care, did you? What were they? What evil effort of invention drove them
+into that idiot's mouth out of his lying throat? If you were to try to
+remember, they would perhaps convince me, too.”
+
+“I didn't listen,” she protested. “What was it to me what they said of
+anybody? He was saying that there never were such loving friends to
+look at as you two; then, when you got all you wanted out of him and got
+thoroughly tired of him, too, you kicked him out to go home and die.”
+
+Indignation, with an undercurrent of some other feeling, rang in these
+quoted words, uttered in her pure and enchanting voice. She ceased
+abruptly and lowered her long, dark lashes, as if mortally weary, sick
+at heart.
+
+“Of course, why shouldn't you get tired of that or any other--company?
+You aren't like anyone else, and--and the thought of it made me unhappy
+suddenly; but indeed, I did not believe anything bad of you. I--”
+
+A brusque movement of his arm, flinging her hand away, stopped her
+short. Heyst had again lost control of himself. He would have shouted,
+if shouting had been in his character.
+
+“No, this earth must be the appointed hatching planet of calumny enough
+to furnish the whole universe. I feel a disgust at my own person, as if
+I had tumbled into some filthy hole. Pah! And you--all you can say is
+that you won't judge me; that you--”
+
+She raised her head at this attack, though indeed he had not turned to
+her.
+
+“I don't believe anything bad of you,” she repeated. “I couldn't.”
+
+He made a gesture as if to say:
+
+“That's sufficient.”
+
+In his soul and in his body he experienced a nervous reaction from
+tenderness. All at once, without transition, he detested her. But only
+for a moment. He remembered that she was pretty, and, more, that she
+had a special grace in the intimacy of life. She had the secret of
+individuality which excites--and escapes.
+
+He jumped up and began to walk to and fro. Presently his hidden fury
+fell into dust within him, like a crazy structure, leaving behind
+emptiness, desolation, regret. His resentment was not against the girl,
+but against life itself--that commonest of snares, in which he felt
+himself caught, seeing clearly the plot of plots and unconsoled by the
+lucidity of his mind.
+
+He swerved and, stepping up to her, sank to the ground by her side.
+Before she could make a movement or even turn her head his way, he took
+her in his arms and kissed her lips. He tasted on them the bitterness
+of a tear fallen there. He had never seen her cry. It was like another
+appeal to his tenderness--a new seduction. The girl glanced round,
+moved suddenly away, and averted her face. With her hand she signed
+imperiously to him to leave her alone--a command which Heyst did not
+obey.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FIVE
+
+When she opened her eyes at last and sat up, Heyst scrambled quickly to
+his feet and went to pick up her cork helmet, which had rolled a little
+way off. Meanwhile she busied herself in doing up her hair, plaited on
+the top of her head in two heavy, dark tresses, which had come loose. He
+tendered her the helmet in silence, and waited as if unwilling to hear
+the sound of his own voice.
+
+“We had better go down now,” he suggested in a low tone.
+
+He extended his hand to help her up. He had the intention to smile,
+but abandoned it at the nearer sight of her still face, in which was
+depicted the infinite lassitude of her soul. On their way to regain the
+forest path they had to pass through the spot from which the view of
+the sea could be obtained. The flaming abyss of emptiness, the liquid,
+undulating glare, the tragic brutality of the light, made her long for
+the friendly night, with its stars stilled by an austere spell; for the
+velvety dark sky and the mysterious great shadow of the sea, conveying
+peace to the day-weary heart. She put her hand to her eyes. Behind her
+back Heyst spoke gently.
+
+“Let us get on, Lena.”
+
+She walked ahead in silence. Heyst remarked that they had never been
+out before during the hottest hours. It would do her no good, he feared.
+This solicitude pleased and soothed her. She felt more and more like
+herself--a poor London girl playing in an orchestra, and snatched out
+from the humiliations, the squalid dangers of a miserable existence,
+by a man like whom there was not, there could not be, another in this
+world. She felt this with elation, with uneasiness, with an intimate
+pride--and with a peculiar sinking of the heart.
+
+“I am not easily knocked out by any such thing as heat,” she said
+decisively.
+
+“Yes, but I don't forget that you're not a tropical bird.”
+
+“You weren't born in these parts, either,” she returned.
+
+“No, and perhaps I haven't even your physique. I am a transplanted
+being. Transplanted! I ought to call myself uprooted--an unnatural state
+of existence; but a man is supposed to stand anything.”
+
+She looked back at him and received a smile. He told her to keep in the
+shelter of the forest path, which was very still and close, full of heat
+if free from glare. Now and then they had glimpses of the company's old
+clearing blazing with light, in which the black stumps of trees stood
+charred, without shadows, miserable and sinister. They crossed the open
+in a direct line for the bungalow. On the veranda they fancied they had
+a glimpse of the vanishing Wang, though the girl was not at all sure
+that she had seen anything move. Heyst had no doubts.
+
+“Wang has been looking out for us. We are late.”
+
+“Was he? I thought I saw something white for a moment, and then I did
+not see it any more.”
+
+“That's it--he vanishes. It's a very remarkable gift in that Chinaman.”
+
+“Are they all like that?” she asked with naive curiosity and uneasiness.
+
+“Not in such perfection,” said Heyst, amused.
+
+He noticed with approval that she was not heated by the walk. The drops
+of perspiration on her forehead were like dew on the cool, white petal
+of a flower. He looked at her figure of grace and strength, solid and
+supple, with an ever-growing appreciation.
+
+“Go in and rest yourself for a quarter of an hour; and then Mr. Wang
+will give us something to eat,” he said.
+
+They had found the table laid. When they came together again and sat
+down to it, Wang materialized without a sound, unheard, uncalled, and
+did his office. Which being accomplished, at a given moment he was not.
+
+A great silence brooded over Samburan--the silence of the great heat
+that seems pregnant with fatal issues, like the silence of ardent
+thought. Heyst remained alone in the big room. The girl seeing him
+take up a book, had retreated to her chamber. Heyst sat down under
+his father's portrait; and the abominable calumny crept back into his
+recollection. The taste of it came on his lips, nauseating and corrosive
+like some kinds of poison. He was tempted to spit on the floor, naively,
+in sheer unsophisticated disgust of the physical sensation. He shook his
+head, surprised at himself. He was not used to receive his intellectual
+impressions in that way--reflected in movements of carnal emotion. He
+stirred impatiently in his chair, and raised the book to his eyes with
+both hands. It was one of his father's. He opened it haphazard, and
+his eyes fell on the middle of the page. The elder Heyst had written of
+everything in many books--of space and of time, of animals and of stars;
+analysing ideas and actions, the laughter and the frowns of men, and the
+grimaces of their agony. The son read, shrinking into himself, composing
+his face as if under the author's eye, with a vivid consciousness of
+the portrait on his right hand, a little above his head; a wonderful
+presence in its heavy frame on the flimsy wall of mats, looking exiled
+and at home, out of place and masterful, in the painted immobility of
+profile.
+
+And Heyst, the son, read:
+
+Of the stratagems of life the most cruel is the consolation of love--the
+most subtle, too; for the desire is the bed of dreams.
+
+He turned the pages of the little volume, “Storm and Dust,” glancing
+here and there at the broken text of reflections, maxims, short phrases,
+enigmatical sometimes and sometimes eloquent. It seemed to him that he
+was hearing his father's voice, speaking and ceasing to speak again.
+Startled at first, he ended by finding a charm in the illusion. He
+abandoned himself to the half-belief that something of his father dwelt
+yet on earth--a ghostly voice, audible to the ear of his own flesh and
+blood. With what strange serenity, mingled with terrors, had that man
+considered the universal nothingness! He had plunged into it headlong,
+perhaps to render death, the answer that faced one at every inquiry,
+more supportable.
+
+Heyst stirred, and the ghostly voice ceased; but his eyes followed the
+words on the last page of the book:
+
+Men of tormented conscience, or of a criminal imagination, are aware of
+much that minds of a peaceful, resigned cast do not even suspect. It is
+not poets alone who dare descend into the abyss of infernal regions, or
+even who dream of such a descent. The most inexpressive of human beings
+must have said to himself, at one time or another: “Anything but this!”
+ . . .
+
+We all have our instants of clairvoyance. They are not very helpful.
+The character of the scheme does not permit that or anything else to
+be helpful. Properly speaking its character, judged by the standards
+established by its victims, is infamous. It excuses every violence of
+protest and at the same time never fails to crush it, just as it
+crushes the blindest assent. The so-called wickedness must be, like the
+so-called virtue, its own reward--to be anything at all . . .
+
+Clairvoyance or no clairvoyance, men love their captivity. To the
+unknown force of negation they prefer the miserably tumbled bed of their
+servitude. Man alone can give one the disgust of pity; yet I find it
+easier to believe in the misfortune of mankind than in its wickedness.
+
+These were the last words. Heyst lowered the book to his knees. Lena's
+voice spoke above his drooping head:
+
+“You sit there as if you were unhappy.”
+
+“I thought you were asleep,” he said.
+
+“I was lying down right enough, but I never closed my eyes.”
+
+“The rest would have done you good after our walk. Didn't you try?”
+
+“I was lying down, I tell you, but sleep I couldn't.”
+
+“And you made no sound! What want of sincerity. Or did you want to be
+alone for a time?”
+
+“I--alone?” she murmured.
+
+He noticed her eyeing the book, and got up to put it back in the
+bookcase. When he turned round, he saw that she had dropped into the
+chair--it was the one she always used--and looked as if her strength had
+suddenly gone from her, leaving her only her youth, which seemed very
+pathetic, very much at his mercy. He moved quickly towards the chair.
+
+“Tired, are you? It's my fault, taking you up so high and keeping you
+out so long. Such a windless day, too!”
+
+She watched his concern, her pose languid, her eyes raised to him,
+but as unreadable as ever. He avoided looking into them for that very
+reason. He forgot himself in the contemplation of those passive arms, of
+these defenceless lips, and--yes, one had to go back to them--of these
+wide-open eyes. Something wild in their grey stare made him think of
+sea-birds in the cold murkiness of high latitudes. He started when she
+spoke, all the charm of physical intimacy revealed suddenly in that
+voice.
+
+“You should try to love me!” she said.
+
+He made a movement of astonishment.
+
+“Try,” he muttered. “But it seems to me--” He broke off, saying to
+himself that if he loved her, he had never told her so in so many words.
+Simple words! They died on his lips. “What makes you say that?” he
+asked.
+
+She lowered her eyelids and turned her head a little.
+
+“I have done nothing,” she said in a low voice. “It's you who have been
+good, helpful, and tender to me. Perhaps you love me for that--just
+for that; or perhaps you love me for company, and because--well! But
+sometimes it seems to me that you can never love me for myself, only
+for myself, as people do love each other when it is to be for ever.”
+ Her head drooped. “Forever,” she breathed out again; then, still more
+faintly, she added an entreating: “Do try!”
+
+These last words went straight to his heart--the sound of them more than
+the sense. He did not know what to say, either from want of practice in
+dealing with women or simply from his innate honesty of thought. All
+his defences were broken now. Life had him fairly by the throat. But he
+managed a smile, though she was not looking at him; yes, he did manage
+it--the well-known Heyst smile of playful courtesy, so familiar to all
+sorts and conditions of men in the islands.
+
+“My dear Lena,” he said, “it looks as if you were trying to pick a very
+unnecessary quarrel with me--of all people!”
+
+She made no movement. With his elbows spread out he was twisting the
+ends of his long moustaches, very masculine and perplexed, enveloped in
+the atmosphere of femininity as in a cloud, suspecting pitfalls, and as
+if afraid to move.
+
+“I must admit, though,” he added, “that there is no one else; and I
+suppose a certain amount of quarrelling is necessary for existence in
+this world.”
+
+That girl, seated in her chair in graceful quietude, was to him like a
+script in an unknown language, or even more simply mysterious, like
+any writing to the illiterate. As far as women went he was altogether
+uninstructed and he had not the gift of intuition which is fostered in
+the days of youth by dreams and visions, exercises of the heart fitting
+it for the encounters of a world, in which love itself rests as much
+on antagonism as on attraction. His mental attitude was that of a man
+looking this way and that on a piece of writing which he is unable to
+decipher, but which may be big with some revelation. He didn't know what
+to say. All he found to add was:
+
+“I don't even understand what I have done or left undone to distress you
+like this.”
+
+He stopped, struck afresh by the physical and moral sense of the
+imperfections of their relations--a sense which made him desire her
+constant nearness, before his eyes, under his hand, and which, when
+she was out of his sight, made her so vague, so elusive and illusory, a
+promise that could not be embraced and held.
+
+“No! I don't see clearly what you mean. Is your mind turned towards the
+future?” he interpellated her with marked playfulness, because he
+was ashamed to let such a word pass his lips. But all his cherished
+negations were falling off him one by one.
+
+“Because if it is so there is nothing easier than to dismiss it. In our
+future, as in what people call the other life, there is nothing to be
+frightened of.”
+
+She raised her eyes to him; and if nature had formed them to express
+anything else but blank candour he would have learned how terrified
+she was by his talk and the fact that her sinking heart loved him more
+desperately than ever. He smiled at her.
+
+“Dismiss all thought of it,” he insisted. “Surely you don't suspect
+after what I have heard from you, that I am anxious to return to
+mankind. I! I! murder my poor Morrison! It's possible that I may be
+really capable of that which they say I have done. The point is that I
+haven't done it. But it is an unpleasant subject to me. I ought to be
+ashamed to confess it--but it is! Let us forget it. There's that in you,
+Lena, which can console me for worse things, for uglier passages. And if
+we forget, there are no voices here to remind us.”
+
+She had raised her head before he paused.
+
+“Nothing can break in on us here,” he went on and, as if there had been
+an appeal or a provocation in her upward glance, he bent down and took
+her under the arms, raising her straight out of the chair into a sudden
+and close embrace. Her alacrity to respond, which made her seem as light
+as a feather, warmed his heart at that moment more than closer caresses
+had done before. He had not expected that ready impulse towards himself
+which had been dormant in her passive attitude. He had just felt the
+clasp of her arms round his neck, when, with a slight exclamation--“He's
+here!”--she disengaged herself and bolted, away into her room.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SIX
+
+Heyst was astounded. Looking all round, as if to take the whole room
+to witness of this outrage, he became aware of Wang materialized in the
+doorway. The intrusion was as surprising as anything could be, in view
+of the strict regularity with which Wang made himself visible. Heyst
+was tempted to laugh at first. This practical comment on his affirmation
+that nothing could break in on them relieved the strain of his feelings.
+He was a little vexed, too. The Chinaman preserved a profound silence.
+
+“What do you want?” asked Heyst sternly.
+
+“Boat out there,” said the Chinaman.
+
+“Where? What do you mean? Boat adrift in the straits?”
+
+Some subtle change in Wang's bearing suggested his being out of breath;
+but he did not pant, and his voice was steady.
+
+“No--row.”
+
+It was Heyst now who was startled and raised his voice.
+
+“Malay man, eh?”
+
+Wang made a slight negative movement with his head.
+
+“Do you hear, Lena?” Heyst called out. “Wang says there is a boat in
+sight--somewhere near apparently. Where's that boat Wang?”
+
+“Round the point,” said Wang, leaping into Malay unexpectedly, and in a
+loud voice. “White men three.”
+
+“So close as that?” exclaimed Heyst, moving out on the veranda followed
+by Wang. “White men? Impossible!”
+
+Over the clearing the shadows were already lengthening. The sun
+hung low; a ruddy glare lay on the burnt black patch in front of
+the bungalow, and slanted on the ground between the straight, tall,
+mast-like trees soaring a hundred feet or more without a branch. The
+growth of bushes cut off all view of the jetty from the veranda. Far
+away to the right Wang's hut, or rather its dark roof of mats, could
+be seen above the bamboo fence which insured the privacy of the Alfuro
+woman. The Chinaman looked that way swiftly. Heyst paused, and then
+stepped back a pace into the room.
+
+“White men, Lena, apparently. What are you doing?”
+
+“I am just bathing my eyes a little,” the girl's voice said from the
+inner room.
+
+“Oh, yes; all right!”
+
+“Do you want me?”
+
+“No. You had better--I am going down to the jetty. Yes, you had better
+stay in. What an extraordinary thing!”
+
+It was so extraordinary that nobody could possibly appreciate
+how extraordinary it was but himself. His mind was full of mere
+exclamations, while his feet were carrying him in the direction of the
+jetty. He followed the line of the rails, escorted by Wang.
+
+“Where were you when you first saw the boat?” he asked over his
+shoulder.
+
+Wang explained in Malay that he had gone to the shore end of the wharf,
+to get a few lumps of coal from the big heap, when, happening to raise
+his eyes from the ground, he saw the boat--a white man boat, not a
+canoe. He had good eyes. He had seen the boat, with the men at the oars;
+and here Wang made a particular gesture over his eyes, as if his vision
+had received a blow. He had turned at once and run to the house to
+report.
+
+“No mistake, eh?” said Heyst, moving on. At the very outer edge of the
+belt he stopped short. Wang halted behind him on the path, till the
+voice of Number One called him sharply forward into the open. He obeyed.
+
+“Where's that boat?” asked Heyst forcibly. “I say--where is it?”
+
+Nothing whatever was to be seen between the point and the jetty. The
+stretch of Diamond Bay was like a piece of purple shadow, lustrous and
+empty, while beyond the land, the open sea lay blue and opaque under the
+sun. Heyst's eyes swept all over the offing till they met, far off, the
+dark cone of the volcano, with its faint plume of smoke broadening and
+vanishing everlastingly at the top, without altering its shape in the
+glowing transparency of the evening.
+
+“The fellow has been dreaming,” he muttered to himself.
+
+He looked hard at the Chinaman. Wang seemed turned into stone. Suddenly,
+as if he had received a shock, he started, flung his arm out with a
+pointing forefinger, and made guttural noises to the effect that there,
+there, there, he had seen a boat.
+
+It was very uncanny. Heyst thought of some strange hallucination.
+Unlikely enough; but that a boat with three men in it should have sunk
+between the point and the jetty, suddenly, like a stone, without leaving
+as much on the surface as a floating oar, was still more unlikely. The
+theory of a phantom boat would have been more credible than that.
+
+“Confound it!” he muttered to himself.
+
+He was unpleasantly affected by this mystery; but now a simple
+explanation occurred to him. He stepped hastily out on the wharf. The
+boat, if it had existed and had retreated, could perhaps be seen from
+the far end of the long jetty.
+
+Nothing was to be seen. Heyst let his eyes roam idly over the sea. He
+was so absorbed in his perplexity that a hollow sound, as of somebody
+tumbling about in a boat, with a clatter of oars and spars, failed to
+make him move for a moment. When his mind seized its meaning, he had
+no difficulty in locating the sound. It had come from below--under the
+jetty!
+
+He ran back for a dozen yards or so, and then looked over. His sight
+plunged straight into the stern-sheets of a big boat, the greater part
+of which was hidden from him by the planking of the jetty. His eyes
+fell on the thin back of a man doubled up over the tiller in a queer,
+uncomfortable attitude of drooping sorrow. Another man, more directly
+below Heyst, sprawled on his back from gunwale to gunwale, half off
+the after thwart, his head lower than his feet. This second man glared
+wildly upward, and struggled to raise himself, but to all appearance was
+much too drunk to succeed. The visible part of the boat contained also
+a flat, leather trunk, on which the first man's long legs were tucked
+up nervelessly. A large earthenware jug, with its wide mouth uncorked,
+rolled out on the bottom-boards from under the sprawling man.
+
+Heyst had never been so much astonished in his life. He stared dumbly at
+the strange boat's crew. From the first he was positive that these
+men were not sailors. They wore the white drill-suit of tropical
+civilization; but their apparition in a boat Heyst could not connect
+with anything plausible. The civilization of the tropics could have
+had nothing to do with it. It was more like those myths, current in
+Polynesia, of amazing strangers, who arrive at an island, gods or
+demons, bringing good or evil to the innocence of the inhabitants--gifts
+of unknown things, words never heard before.
+
+Heyst noticed a cork helmet floating alongside the boat, evidently
+fallen from the head of the man doubled over the tiller, who displayed
+a dark, bony poll. An oar, too, had been knocked overboard, probably
+by the sprawling man, who was still struggling, between the thwarts.
+By this time Heyst regarded the visitation no longer with surprise, but
+with the sustained attention demanded by a difficult problem. With one
+foot poised on the string-piece, and leaning on his raised knee, he
+was taking in everything. The sprawling man rolled off the thwart,
+collapsed, and, most unexpectedly, got on his feet. He swayed dizzily,
+spreading his arms out and uttered faintly a hoarse, dreamy “Hallo!” His
+upturned face was swollen, red, peeling all over the nose and cheeks.
+His stare was irrational. Heyst perceived stains of dried blood all over
+the front of his dirty white coat, and also on one sleeve.
+
+“What's the matter? Are you wounded?”
+
+The other glanced down, reeled--one of his feet was inside a large pith
+hat--and, recovering himself, let out a dismal, grating sound in the
+manner of a grim laugh.
+
+“Blood--not mine. Thirst's the matter. Exhausted's the matter. Done up.
+Drink, man! Give us water!”
+
+Thirst was in the very tone of his words, alternating a broken croak and
+a faint, throaty rustle which just reached Heyst's ears. The man in the
+boat raised his hands to be helped up on the jetty, whispering:
+
+“I tried. I am too weak. I tumbled down.”
+
+Wang was coming along the jetty slowly, with intent, straining eyes.
+
+“Run back and bring a crowbar here. There's one lying by the coal-heap,”
+ Heyst shouted to him.
+
+The man standing in the boat sat down on the thwart behind him. A
+horrible coughing laugh came through his swollen lips.
+
+“Crowbar? What's that for?” he mumbled, and his head dropped on his
+chest mournfully.
+
+Meantime, Heyst, as if he had forgotten the boat, started kicking hard
+at a large brass tap projecting above the planks. To accommodate ships
+that came for coal and happened to need water as well, a stream had
+been tapped in the interior and an iron pipe led along the jetty. It
+terminated with a curved end almost exactly where the strangers' boat
+had been driven between the piles; but the tap was set fast.
+
+“Hurry up!” Heyst yelled to the Chinaman, who was running with the
+crowbar in his hand.
+
+Heyst snatched it from him and, obtaining a leverage against the
+string-piece, wrung the stiff tap round with a mighty jerk. “I hope that
+pipe hasn't got choked!” he muttered to himself anxiously.
+
+It hadn't; but it did not yield a strong gush. The sound of a thin
+stream, partly breaking on the gunwale of the boat and partly
+splashing alongside, became at once audible. It was greeted by a cry of
+inarticulate and savage joy. Heyst knelt on the string-piece and peered
+down. The man who had spoken was already holding his open mouth under
+the bright trickle. Water ran over his eyelids and over his nose,
+gurgled down his throat, flowed over his chin. Then some obstruction in
+the pipe gave way, and a sudden thick jet broke on his face. In a moment
+his shoulders were soaked, the front of his coat inundated; he streamed
+and dripped; water ran into his pockets, down his legs, into his shoes;
+but he had clutched the end of the pipe, and, hanging on with both
+hands, swallowed, spluttered, choked, snorted with the noises of a
+swimmer. Suddenly a curious dull roar reached Heyst's ears. Something
+hairy and black flew from under the jetty. A dishevelled head, coming on
+like a cannonball, took the man at the pipe in flank, with enough force
+to tear his grip loose and fling him headlong into the stern-sheets. He
+fell upon the folded legs of the man at the tiller, who, roused by the
+commotion in the boat, was sitting up, silent, rigid, and very much like
+a corpse. His eyes were but two black patches, and his teeth glistened
+with a death's head grin between his retracted lips, no thicker than
+blackish parchment glued over the gums.
+
+From him Heyst's eyes wandered to the creature who had replaced the
+first man at the end of the water-pipe. Enormous brown paws clutched it
+savagely; the wild, big head hung back, and in a face covered with a wet
+mass of hair there gaped crookedly a wide mouth full of fangs. The water
+filled it, welled up in hoarse coughs, ran down on each side of the jaws
+and down the hairy throat, soaked the black pelt of the enormous chest,
+naked under a torn check shirt, heaving convulsively with a play of
+massive muscles carved in red mahogany.
+
+As soon as the first man had recovered the breath knocked out of him
+by the irresistible charge, a scream of mad cursing issued from the
+stern-sheets. With a rigid, angular crooking of the elbow, the man at
+the tiller put his hand back to his hip.
+
+“Don't shoot him, sir!” yelled the first man. “Wait! Let me have that
+tiller. I will teach him to shove himself in front of a caballero!”
+
+Martin Ricardo flourished the heavy piece of wood, leaped forward with
+astonishing vigour, and brought it down on Pedro's head with a crash
+that resounded all over the quiet sweep of Black Diamond Bay. A crimson
+patch appeared on the matted hair, red veins appeared in the water
+flowing all over his face, and it dripped in rosy drops off his head.
+But the man hung on. Not till a second furious blow descended did the
+hairy paws let go their grip and the squirming body sink limply. Before
+it could touch the bottom-boards, a tremendous kick in the ribs from
+Ricardo's foot shifted it forward out of sight, whence came the noise of
+a heavy thud, a clatter of spars, and a pitiful grunt. Ricardo stooped
+to look under the jetty.
+
+“Aha, dog! This will teach you to keep back where you belong, you
+murdering brute, you slaughtering savage, you! You infidel, you robber
+of churches! Next time I will rip you open from neck to heel, you
+carrion-eater! Esclavo!”
+
+He backed a little and straightened himself up.
+
+“I don't mean it really,” he remarked to Heyst, whose steady eyes met
+his from above. He ran aft briskly.
+
+“Come along, sir. It's your turn. I oughtn't to have drunk first. 'S
+truth, I forgot myself! A gentleman like you will overlook that, I
+know.” As he made these apologies, Ricardo extended his hand. “Let me
+steady you, sir.”
+
+Slowly Mr. Jones unfolded himself in all his slenderness, rocked,
+staggered, and caught Ricardo's shoulder. His henchman assisted him
+to the pipe, which went on gushing a clear stream of water, sparkling
+exceedingly against the black piles and the gloom under the jetty.
+
+“Catch hold, sir,” Ricardo advised solicitously. “All right?”
+
+He stepped back, and, while Mr. Jones revelled in the abundance of
+water, he addressed himself to Heyst with a sort of justificatory
+speech, the tone of which, reflecting his feelings, partook of purring
+and spitting. They had been thirty hours tugging at the oars, he
+explained, and they had been more than forty hours without water, except
+that the night before they had licked the dew off the gunwales.
+
+Ricardo did not explain to Heyst how it happened. At that precise moment
+he had no explanation ready for the man on the wharf, who, he guessed,
+must be wondering much more at the presence of his visitors than at
+their plight.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SEVEN
+
+The explanation lay in the two simple facts that the light winds and
+strong currents of the Java Sea had drifted the boat about until they
+partly lost their bearings; and that by some extra-ordinary mistake
+one of the two jars put into the boat by Schomberg's man contained salt
+water. Ricardo tried to put some pathos into his tones. Pulling for
+thirty hours with eighteen-foot oars! And the sun! Ricardo relieved
+his feelings by cursing the sun. They had felt their hearts and lungs
+shrivel within them. And then, as if all that hadn't been trouble
+enough, he complained bitterly, he had had to waste his fainting
+strength in beating their servant about the head with a stretcher. The
+fool had wanted to drink sea water, and wouldn't listen to reason.
+There was no stopping him otherwise. It was better to beat him into
+insensibility than to have him go crazy in the boat, and to be obliged
+to shoot him. The preventive, administered with enough force to brain
+an elephant, boasted Ricardo, had to be applied on two occasions--the
+second time all but in sight of the jetty.
+
+“You have seen the beauty,” Ricardo went on expansively, hiding his lack
+of some sort of probable story under this loquacity. “I had to hammer
+him away from the spout. Opened afresh all the old broken spots on his
+head. You saw how hard I had to hit. He has no restraint, no restraint
+at all. If it wasn't that he can be made useful in one way or another, I
+would just as soon have let the governor shoot him.”
+
+He smiled up at Heyst in his peculiar lip-retracting manner, and added
+by way of afterthought:
+
+“That's what will happen to him in the end, if he doesn't learn to
+restrain himself. But I've taught him to mind his manners for a while,
+anyhow!”
+
+And again he addressed his quick grin up to the man on the wharf. His
+round eyes had never left Heyst's face ever since he began to deliver
+his account of the voyage.
+
+“So that's how he looks!” Ricardo was saying to himself.
+
+He had not expected Heyst to be like this. He had formed for himself
+a conception containing the helpful suggestion of a vulnerable point.
+These solitary men were often tipplers. But no!--this was not a drinking
+man's face; nor could he detect the weakness of alarm, or even the
+weakness of surprise, on these features, in those steady eyes.
+
+“We were too far gone to climb out,” Ricardo went on. “I heard you
+walking along though. I thought I shouted; I tried to. You didn't hear
+me shout?”
+
+Heyst made an almost imperceptible negative sign, which the greedy eyes
+of Ricardo--greedy for all signs--did not miss.
+
+“Throat too parched. We didn't even care to whisper to each other
+lately. Thirst chokes one. We might have died there under this wharf
+before you found us.”
+
+“I couldn't think where you had gone to.” Heyst was heard at last,
+addressing directly the newcomers from the sea. “You were seen as soon
+as you cleared that point.”
+
+“We were seen, eh?” grunted Mr. Ricardo. “We pulled like
+machines--daren't stop. The governor sat at the tiller, but he couldn't
+speak to us. She drove in between the piles till she hit something, and
+we all tumbled off the thwarts as if we had been drunk. Drunk--ha,
+ha! Too dry, by George! We fetched in here with the very last of our
+strength, and no mistake. Another mile would have done for us. When I
+heard your footsteps, above, I tried to get up, and I fell down.”
+
+“That was the first sound I heard,” said Heyst.
+
+Mr. Jones, the front of his soiled white tunic soaked and plastered
+against his breast-bone, staggered away from the water-pipe. Steadying
+himself on Ricardo's shoulder, he drew a long breath, raised his
+dripping head, and produced a smile of ghastly amiability, which was
+lost upon the thoughtful Heyst. Behind his back the sun, touching the
+water, was like a disc of iron cooled to a dull red glow, ready to start
+rolling round the circular steel plate of the sea, which, under the
+darkening sky, looked more solid than the high ridge of Samburan; more
+solid than the point, whose long outlined slope melted into its own
+unfathomable shadow blurring the dim sheen on the bay. The forceful
+stream from the pipe broke like shattered glass on the boat's gunwale.
+Its loud, fitful, and persistent splashing revealed the depths of the
+world's silence.
+
+“Great notion, to lead the water out here,” pronounced Ricardo
+appreciatively.
+
+Water was life. He felt now as if he could run a mile, scale a ten-foot
+wall, sing a song. Only a few minutes ago he was next door to a corpse,
+done up, unable to stand, to lift a hand; unable to groan. A drop of
+water had done that miracle.
+
+“Didn't you feel life itself running and soaking into you, sir?” he
+asked his principal, with deferential but forced vivacity.
+
+Without a word, Mr. Jones stepped off the thwart and sat down in the
+stern-sheets.
+
+“Isn't that man of yours bleeding to death in the bows under there?”
+ inquired Heyst.
+
+Ricardo ceased his ecstasies over the life-giving water and answered in
+a tone of innocence:
+
+“He? You may call him a man, but his hide is a jolly sight tougher than
+the toughest alligator he ever skinned in the good old days. You don't
+know how much he can stand: I do. We have tried him a long time ago.
+Ola, there! Pedro! Pedro!” he yelled, with a force of lung testifying to
+the regenerative virtues of water.
+
+A weak “Senor?” came from under the wharf.
+
+“What did I tell you?” said Ricardo triumphantly. “Nothing can hurt him.
+He's all right. But, I say, the boat's getting swamped. Can't you turn
+this water off before you sink her under us? She's half full already.”
+
+At a sign from Heyst, Wang hammered at the brass tap on the wharf, then
+stood behind Number One, crowbar in hand, motionless as before. Ricardo
+was perhaps not so certain of Pedro's toughness as he affirmed; for he
+stooped, peering under the wharf, then moved forward out of sight. The
+gush of water ceasing suddenly, made a silence which became complete
+when the after-trickle stopped. Afar, the sun was reduced to a red
+spark, glowing very low in the breathless immensity of twilight. Purple
+gleams lingered on the water all round the boat. The spectral figure in
+the stern-sheets spoke in a languid tone:
+
+“That--er--companion--er--secretary of mine is a queer chap. I am afraid
+we aren't presenting ourselves in a very favourable light.”
+
+Heyst listened. It was the conventional voice of an educated man,
+only strangely lifeless. But more strange yet was this concern for
+appearances, expressed, he did not know, whether in jest or in earnest.
+Earnestness was hardly to be supposed under the circumstances, and no
+one had ever jested in such dead tones. It was something which could not
+be answered, and Heyst said nothing. The other went on:
+
+“Travelling as I do, I find a man of his sort extremely useful. He has
+his little weaknesses, no doubt.”
+
+“Indeed!” Heyst was provoked into speaking. “Weakness of the arm is not
+one of them; neither is an exaggerated humanity, as far as I can judge.”
+
+“Defects of temper,” explained Mr. Jones from the stern-sheets.
+
+The subject of this dialogue, coming out just then from under the
+wharf into the visible part of the boat, made himself heard in his own
+defence, in a voice full of life, and with nothing languid in his manner
+on the contrary, it was brisk, almost jocose. He begged pardon for
+contradicting. He was never out of temper with “our Pedro.” The
+fellow was a Dago of immense strength and of no sense whatever. This
+combination made him dangerous, and he had to be treated accordingly, in
+a manner which he could understand. Reasoning was beyond him.
+
+“And so”--Ricardo addressed Heyst with animation--“you mustn't be
+surprised if--”
+
+“I assure you,” Heyst interrupted, “that my wonder at your arrival
+in your boat here is so great that it leaves no room for minor
+astonishments. But hadn't you better land?”
+
+“That's the talk, sir!” Ricardo began to bustle about the boat, talking
+all the time. Finding himself unable to “size up” this man, he was
+inclined to credit him with extraordinary powers of penetration, which,
+it seemed to him, would be favoured by silence. Also, he feared some
+pointblank question. He had no ready-made story to tell. He and his
+patron had put off considering that rather important detail too
+long. For the last two days, the horrors of thirst, coming on them
+unexpectedly, had prevented consultation. They had had to pull for
+dear life. But the man on the wharf, were he in league with the devil
+himself, would pay for all their sufferings, thought Ricardo with an
+unholy joy.
+
+Meantime, splashing in the water which covered the bottom-boards,
+Ricardo congratulated himself aloud on the luggage being out of the way
+of the wet. He had piled it up forward. He had roughly tied up Pedro's
+head. Pedro had nothing to grumble about. On the contrary, he ought to
+be mighty thankful to him, Ricardo, for being alive at all.
+
+“Well, now, let me give you a leg up, sir,” he said cheerily to
+his motionless principal in the stern-sheets. “All our troubles are
+over--for a time, anyhow. Ain't it luck to find a white man on this
+island? I would have just as soon expected to meet an angel from
+heaven--eh, Mr. Jones? Now then--ready, sir? one, two, three, up you
+go!”
+
+Helped from below by Ricardo, and from above by the man more unexpected
+than an angel, Mr. Jones scrambled up and stood on the wharf by the side
+of Heyst. He swayed like a reed. The night descending on Samburan turned
+into dense shadow the point of land and the wharf itself, and gave a
+dark solidity to the unshimmering water extending to the last faint
+trace of light away to the west. Heyst stared at the guests whom the
+renounced world had sent him thus at the end of the day. The only other
+vestige of light left on earth lurked in the hollows of the thin man's
+eyes. They gleamed, mobile and languidly evasive. The eyelids fluttered.
+
+“You are feeling weak,” said Heyst.
+
+“For the moment, a little,” confessed the other.
+
+With loud panting, Ricardo scrambled on his hands and knees upon the
+wharf, energetic and unaided. He rose up at Heyst's elbow and stamped
+his foot on the planks, with a sharp, provocative, double beat, such
+as is heard sometimes in fencing-schools before the adversaries engage
+their foils. Not that the renegade seaman Ricardo knew anything of
+fencing. What he called “shooting-irons,” were his weapons, or the still
+less aristocratic knife, such as was even then ingeniously strapped
+to his leg. He thought of it, at that moment. A swift stooping motion,
+then, on the recovery, a ripping blow, a shove off the wharf, and no
+noise except a splash in the water that would scarcely disturb the
+silence. Heyst would have no time for a cry. It would be quick and neat,
+and immensely in accord with Ricardo's humour. But he repressed this
+gust of savagery. The job was not such a simple one. This piece had to
+be played to another tune, and in much slower time. He returned to his
+note of talkative simplicity.
+
+“Ay; and I too don't feel as strong as I thought I was when the first
+drink set me up. Great wonder-worker water is! And to get it right here
+on the spot! It was heaven--hey, sir?”
+
+Mr. Jones, being directly addressed, took up his part in the concerted
+piece:
+
+“Really, when I saw a wharf on what might have been an uninhabited
+island, I couldn't believe my eyes. I doubted its existence. I thought
+it was a delusion till the boat actually drove between the piles, as you
+see her lying now.”
+
+While he was speaking faintly, in a voice which did not seem to belong
+to the earth, his henchman, in extremely loud and terrestrial accents,
+was fussing about their belongings in the boat, addressing himself to
+Pedro:
+
+“Come, now--pass up the dunnage there! Move, yourself, hombre, or I'll
+have to get down again and give you a tap on those bandages of yours,
+you growling bear, you!”
+
+“Ah! You didn't believe in the reality of the wharf?” Heyst was saying
+to Mr. Jones.
+
+“You ought to kiss my hands!”
+
+Ricardo caught hold of an ancient Gladstone bag and swung it on the
+wharf with a thump.
+
+“Yes! You ought to burn a candle before me as they do before the saints
+in your country. No saint has ever done so much for you as I have, you
+ungrateful vagabond. Now then! Up you get!”
+
+Helped by the talkative Ricardo, Pedro scrambled up on the wharf, where
+he remained for some time on all fours, swinging to and fro his shaggy
+head tied up in white rags. Then he got up clumsily, like a bulky animal
+in the dusk, balancing itself on its hind legs.
+
+Mr. Jones began to explain languidly to Heyst that they were in a pretty
+bad state that morning, when they caught sight of the smoke of the
+volcano. It nerved them to make an effort for their lives. Soon
+afterwards they made out the island.
+
+“I had just wits enough left in my baked brain to alter the direction
+of the boat,” the ghostly voice went on. “As to finding assistance,
+a wharf, a white man--nobody would have dreamed of it. Simply
+preposterous!”
+
+“That's what I thought when my Chinaman came and told me he had seen a
+boat with white men pulling up,” said Heyst.
+
+“Most extraordinary luck,” interjected Ricardo, standing by anxiously
+attentive to every word. “Seems a dream,” he added. “A lovely dream!”
+
+A silence fell on that group of three, as if everyone had become afraid
+to speak, in an obscure sense of an impending crisis. Pedro on one side
+of them and Wang on the other had the air of watchful spectators. A few
+stars had come out pursuing the ebbing twilight. A light draught of air
+tepid enough in the thickening twilight after the scorching day, struck
+a chill into Mr. Jones in his soaked clothes.
+
+“I may infer, then, that there is a settlement of white people here?” he
+murmured, shivering visibly.
+
+Heyst roused himself.
+
+“Oh, abandoned, abandoned. I am alone here--practically alone; but
+several empty houses are still standing. No lack of accommodation. We
+may just as well--here, Wang, go back to the shore and run the trolley
+out here.”
+
+The last words having been spoken in Malay, he explained courteously
+that he had given directions for the transport of the luggage. Wang had
+melted into the night--in his soundless manner.
+
+“My word! Rails laid down and all,” exclaimed Ricardo softly, in a tone
+of admiration. “Well, I never!”
+
+“We were working a coal-mine here,” said the late manager of the
+Tropical Belt Coal Company. “These are only the ghosts of things that
+have been.”
+
+Mr. Jones's teeth were suddenly started chattering by another faint puff
+of wind, a mere sigh from the west, where Venus cast her rays on the
+dark edge of the horizon, like a bright lamp hung above the grave of the
+sun.
+
+“We might be moving on,” proposed Heyst. “My Chinaman and
+that--ah--ungrateful servant of yours, with the broken head, can load
+the things and come along after us.”
+
+The suggestion was accepted without words. Moving towards the shore,
+the three men met the trolley, a mere metallic rustle which whisked past
+them, the shadowy Wang running noiselessly behind. Only the sound of
+their footsteps accompanied them. It was a long time since so many
+footsteps had rung together on that jetty. Before they stepped on to the
+path trodden through the grass, Heyst said:
+
+“I am prevented from offering you a share of my own quarters.” The
+distant courtliness of this beginning arrested the other two suddenly,
+as if amazed by some manifest incongruity. “I should regret it more,”
+ he went on, “if I were not in a position to give you the choice of those
+empty bungalows for a temporary home.”
+
+He turned round and plunged into the narrow track, the two others
+following in single file.
+
+“Queer start!” Ricardo took the opportunity for whispering, as he fell
+behind Mr. Jones, who swayed in the gloom, enclosed by the stalks of
+tropical grass, almost as slender as a stalk of grass himself.
+
+In this order they emerged into the open space kept clear of vegetation
+by Wang's judicious system of periodic firing. The shapes of buildings,
+unlighted, high-roofed, looked mysteriously extensive and featureless
+against the increasing glitter of the stars. Heyst was pleased at
+the absence of light in his bungalow. It looked as uninhabited as
+the others. He continued to lead the way, inclining to the right. His
+equable voice was heard:
+
+“This one would be the best. It was our counting-house. There is some
+furniture in it yet. I am pretty certain that you'll find a couple of
+camp bedsteads in one of the rooms.”
+
+The high-pitched roof of the bungalow towered up very close, eclipsing
+the sky.
+
+“Here we are. Three steps. As you see, there's a wide veranda. Sorry to
+keep you waiting for a moment; the door is locked, I think.”
+
+He was heard trying it. Then he leaned against the rail, saying:
+
+“Wang will get the keys.”
+
+The others waited, two vague shapes nearly mingled together in the
+darkness of the veranda, from which issued a sudden chattering of Mr.
+Jones's teeth, directly suppressed, and a slight shuffle of Ricardo's
+feet. Their guide and host, his back against the rail, seemed to have
+forgotten their existence. Suddenly he moved, and murmured:
+
+“Ah, here's the trolley.”
+
+Then he raised his voice in Malay, and was answered, “Ya tuan,” from an
+indistinct group that could be made out in the direction of the track.
+
+“I have sent Wang for the key and a light,” he said, in a voice
+that came out without any particular direction--a peculiarity which
+disconcerted Ricardo.
+
+Wang did not tarry long on his mission. Very soon from the distant
+recesses of obscurity appeared the swinging lantern he carried. It cast
+a fugitive ray on the arrested trolley with the uncouth figure of the
+wild Pedro drooping over the load; then it moved towards the bungalow
+and ascended the stairs. After working at the stiff lock, Wang applied
+his shoulder to the door. It came open with explosive suddenness, as if
+in a passion at being thus disturbed after two years' repose. From the
+dark slope of a tall stand-up writing-desk a forgotten, solitary sheet
+of paper flew up and settled gracefully on the floor.
+
+Wang and Pedro came and went through the offended door, bringing the
+things off the trolley, one flitting swiftly in and out, the other
+staggering heavily. Later, directed by a few quiet words from Number
+One, Wang made several journeys with the lantern to the store-rooms,
+bringing in blankets, provisions in tins, coffee, sugar, and a packet of
+candles. He lighted one, and stuck it on the ledge of the stand-up desk.
+Meantime Pedro, being introduced to some kindling-wood and a bundle of
+dry sticks, had busied himself outside in lighting a fire, on which he
+placed a ready-filled kettle handed to him by Wang impassively, at arm's
+length, as if across a chasm. Having received the thanks of his guests,
+Heyst wished them goodnight and withdrew, leaving them to their repose.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER EIGHT
+
+Heyst walked away slowly. There was still no light in his bungalow, and
+he thought that perhaps it was just as well. By this time he was much
+less perturbed. Wang had preceded him with the lantern, as if in a hurry
+to get away from the two white men and their hairy attendant. The light
+was not dancing along any more; it was standing perfectly still by the
+steps of the veranda.
+
+Heyst, glancing back casually, saw behind him still another light--the
+light of the strangers' open fire. A black, uncouth form, stooping over
+it monstrously, staggered away into the outlying shadows. The kettle had
+boiled, probably.
+
+With that weird vision of something questionably human impressed upon
+his senses, Heyst moved on a pace or two. What could the people be who
+had such a creature for their familiar attendant? He stopped. The vague
+apprehension, of a distant future, in which he saw Lena unavoidably
+separated from him by profound and subtle differences; the sceptical
+carelessness which had accompanied every one of his attempts at action,
+like a secret reserve of his soul, fell away from him. He no longer
+belonged to himself. There was a call far more imperious and august. He
+came up to the bungalow, and at the very limit of the lantern's light,
+on the top step, he saw her feet and the bottom part of her dress. The
+rest of her person was suggested dimly as high as her waist. She sat
+on a chair, and the gloom of the low eaves descended upon her head and
+shoulders. She didn't stir.
+
+“You haven't gone to sleep here?” he asked.
+
+“Oh, no! I was waiting for you--in the dark.”
+
+Heyst, on the top step, leaned against a wooden pillar, after moving the
+lantern to one side.
+
+“I have been thinking that it is just as well you had no light. But
+wasn't it dull for you to sit in the dark?”
+
+“I don't need a light to think of you.” Her charming voice gave a value
+to this banal answer, which had also the merit of truth. Heyst laughed
+a little, and said that he had had a curious experience. She made no
+remark. He tried to figure to himself the outlines of her easy pose.
+A spot of dim light here and there hinted at the unfailing grace of
+attitude which was one of her natural possessions.
+
+She had thought of him, but not in connection with the strangers. She
+had admired him from the first; she had been attracted by his warm
+voice, his gentle eye, but she had felt him too wonderfully difficult to
+know. He had given to life a savour, a movement, a promise mingled with
+menaces, which she had not suspected were to be found in it--or, at any
+rate, not by a girl wedded to misery as she was. She said to herself
+that she must not be irritated because he seemed too self-contained, and
+as if shut up in a world of his own. When he took her in his arms, she
+felt that his embrace had a great and compelling force, that he was
+moved deeply, and that perhaps he would not get tired of her so very
+soon. She thought that he had opened to her the feelings of delicate
+joy, that the very uneasiness he caused her was delicious in its
+sadness, and that she would try to hold him as long as she could--till
+her fainting arms, her sinking soul, could cling to him no more.
+
+“Wang's not here, of course?” Heyst said suddenly. She answered as if in
+her sleep.
+
+“He put this light down here without stopping, and ran.”
+
+“Ran, did he? H'm! Well, it's considerably later than his usual time
+to go home to his Alfuro wife; but to be seen running is a sort of
+degradation for Wang, who has mastered the art of vanishing. Do you
+think he was startled out of his perfection by something?”
+
+“Why should he be startled?”
+
+Her voice remained dreamy, a little uncertain.
+
+“I have been startled,” Heyst said.
+
+She was not listening to him. The lantern at their feet threw the
+shadows of her face upward. Her eyes glistened, as if frightened and
+attentive, above a lighted chin and a very white throat.
+
+“Upon my word,” mused Heyst, “now that I don't see them, I can hardly
+believe that those fellows exist!”
+
+“And what about me?” she asked, so swiftly that he made a movement like
+somebody pounced upon from an ambush. “When you don't see me, do you
+believe that I exist?”
+
+“Exist? Most charmingly! My dear Lena, you don't know your own
+advantages. Why, your voice alone would be enough to make you
+unforgettable!”
+
+“Oh, I didn't mean forgetting in that way. I dare say if I were to
+die you would remember me right enough. And what good would that be to
+anybody? It's while I am alive that I want--”
+
+Heyst stood by her chair, a stalwart figure imperfectly lighted. The
+broad shoulders, the martial face that was like a disguise of his
+disarmed soul, were lost in the gloom above the plane of light in which
+his feet were planted. He suffered from a trouble with which she had
+nothing to do. She had no general conception of the conditions of the
+existence he had offered to her. Drawn into its peculiar stagnation she
+remained unrelated to it because of her ignorance.
+
+For instance, she could never perceive the prodigious improbability of
+the arrival of that boat. She did not seem to be thinking of it. Perhaps
+she had already forgotten the fact herself. And Heyst resolved suddenly
+to say nothing more of it. It was not that he shrank from alarming her.
+Not feeling anything definite himself he could not imagine a precise
+effect being produced on her by any amount of explanation. There is a
+quality in events which is apprehended differently by different minds
+or even by the same mind at different times. Any man living at all
+consciously knows that embarrassing truth. Heyst was aware that this
+visit could bode nothing pleasant. In his present soured temper
+towards all mankind he looked upon it as a visitation of a particularly
+offensive kind.
+
+He glanced along the veranda in the direction of the other bungalow. The
+fire of sticks in front of it had gone out. No faint glow of embers, not
+the slightest thread of light in that direction, hinted at the presence
+of strangers. The darker shapes in the obscurity, the dead silence,
+betrayed nothing of that strange intrusion. The peace of Samburan
+asserted itself as on any other night. Everything was as before,
+except--Heyst became aware of it suddenly--that for a whole minute,
+perhaps, with his hand on the back of the girl's chair and within a foot
+of her person, he had lost the sense of her existence, for the first
+time since he had brought her over to share this invincible, this
+undefiled peace. He picked up the lantern, and the act made a silent
+stir all along the veranda. A spoke of shadow swung swiftly across her
+face, and the strong light rested on the immobility of her features, as
+of a woman looking at a vision. Her eyes were still, her lips serious.
+Her dress, open at the neck, stirred slightly to her even breathing.
+
+“We had better go in, Lena,” suggested Heyst, very low, as if breaking a
+spell cautiously.
+
+She rose without a word. Heyst followed her indoors. As they passed
+through the living-room, he left the lantern burning on the centre
+table.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER NINE
+
+That night the girl woke up, for the first time in her new experience,
+with the sensation of having been abandoned to her own devices. She woke
+up from a painful dream of separation brought about in a way which she
+could not understand, and missed the relief of the waking instant.
+The desolate feeling of being alone persisted. She was really alone.
+A night-light made it plain enough, in the dim, mysterious manner of a
+dream; but this was reality. It startled her exceedingly.
+
+In a moment she was at the curtain that hung in the doorway, and raised
+it with a steady hand. The conditions of their life in Samburan would
+have made peeping absurd; nor was such a thing in her character. This
+was not a movement of curiosity, but of downright alarm--the continued
+distress and fear of the dream. The night could not have been very far
+advanced. The light of the lantern was burning strongly, striping the
+floor and walls of the room with thick black bands. She hardly knew
+whether she expected to see Heyst or not; but she saw him at once,
+standing by the table in his sleeping-suit, his back to the doorway.
+She stepped in noiselessly with her bare feet, and let the curtain fall
+behind her. Something characteristic in Heyst's attitude made her say,
+almost in a whisper:
+
+“You are looking for something.”
+
+He could not have heard her before; but he didn't start at the
+unexpected whisper. He only pushed the drawer of the table in and,
+without even looking over his shoulder, asked quietly, accepting her
+presence as if he had been aware of all her movements:
+
+“I say, are you certain that Wang didn't go through this room this
+evening?”
+
+“Wang? When?”
+
+“After leaving the lantern, I mean.”
+
+“Oh, no. He ran on. I watched him.”
+
+“Or before, perhaps--while I was with these boat people? Do you know?
+Can you tell?”
+
+“I hardly think so. I came out as the sun went down, and sat outside
+till you came back to me.”
+
+“He could have popped in for an instant through the back veranda.”
+
+“I heard nothing in here,” she said. “What is the matter?”
+
+“Naturally you wouldn't hear. He can be as quiet as a shadow, when he
+likes. I believe he could steal the pillows from under our heads. He
+might have been here ten minutes ago.”
+
+“What woke you up? Was it a noise?”
+
+“Can't say that. Generally one can't tell, but is it likely, Lena? You
+are, I believe, the lighter sleeper of us two. A noise loud enough to
+wake me up would have awakened you, too. I tried to be as quiet as I
+could. What roused you?”
+
+“I don't know--a dream, perhaps. I woke up crying.”
+
+“What was the dream?”
+
+Heyst, with one hand resting on the table, had turned in her direction,
+his round, uncovered head set on a fighter's muscular neck. She left his
+question unanswered, as if she had not heard it.
+
+“What is it you have missed?” she asked in her turn, very grave.
+
+Her dark hair, drawn smoothly back, was done in two thick tresses for
+the night. Heyst noticed the good form of her brow, the dignity of its
+width, its unshining whiteness. It was a sculptural forehead. He had a
+moment of acute appreciation intruding upon another order of thoughts.
+It was as if there could be no end of his discoveries about that girl,
+at the most incongruous moments.
+
+She had on nothing but a hand-woven cotton sarong--one of Heyst's few
+purchases, years ago, in Celebes, where they are made. He had forgotten
+all about it till she came, and then had found it at the bottom of an
+old sandalwood trunk dating back to pre-Morrison days. She had quickly
+learned to wind it up under her armpits with a safe twist, as Malay
+village girls do when going down to bathe in a river. Her shoulders and
+arms were bare; one of her tresses, hanging forward, looked almost black
+against the white skin. As she was taller than the average Malay woman,
+the sarong ended a good way above her ankles. She stood poised firmly,
+half-way between the table and the curtained doorway, the insteps of her
+bare feet gleaming like marble on the overshadowed matting of the floor.
+The fall of her lighted shoulders, the strong and fine modelling of
+her arms hanging down her sides, her immobility, too, had something
+statuesque, the charm of art tense with life. She was not very
+big--Heyst used to think of her, at first, as “that poor little
+girl,”--but revealed free from the shabby banality of a white platform
+dress, in the simple drapery of the sarong, there was that in her form
+and in the proportions of her body which suggested a reduction from a
+heroic size.
+
+She moved forward a step.
+
+“What is it you have missed?” she asked again.
+
+Heyst turned his back altogether on the table. The black spokes of
+darkness over the floor and the walls, joining up on the ceiling in a
+path of shadow, were like the bars of a cage about them. It was his turn
+to ignore a question.
+
+“You woke up in a fright, you say?” he said.
+
+She walked up to him, exotic yet familiar, with her white woman's face
+and shoulders above the Malay sarong, as if it were an airy disguise,
+but her expression was serious.
+
+“No,” she replied. “It was distress, rather. You see, you weren't there,
+and I couldn't tell why you had gone away from me. A nasty dream--the
+first I've had, too, since--”
+
+“You don't believe in dreams, do you?” asked Heyst.
+
+“I once knew a woman who did. Leastwise, she used to tell people what
+dreams mean, for a shilling.”
+
+“Would you go now and ask her what this dream means?” inquired Heyst
+jocularly.
+
+“She lived in Camberwell. She was a nasty old thing!”
+
+Heyst laughed a little uneasily.
+
+“Dreams are madness, my dear. It's things that happen in the waking
+world, while one is asleep, that one would be glad to know the meaning
+of.”
+
+“You have missed something out of this drawer,” she said positively.
+
+“This or some other. I have looked into every single one of them and
+come back to this again, as people do. It's difficult to believe the
+evidence of my own senses; but it isn't there. Now, Lena, are you sure
+that you didn't--”
+
+“I have touched nothing in the house but what you have given me.”
+
+“Lena!” he cried.
+
+He was painfully affected by this disclaimer of a charge which he had
+not made. It was what a servant might have said--an inferior open
+to suspicion--or, at any rate, a stranger. He was angry at being so
+wretchedly misunderstood; disenchanted at her not being instinctively
+aware of the place he had secretly given her in his thoughts.
+
+“After all,” he said to himself, “we are strangers to each other.”
+
+And then he felt sorry for her. He spoke calmly:
+
+“I was about to say, are you sure you have no reason to think that the
+Chinaman has been in this room tonight?”
+
+“You suspect him?” she asked, knitting her eyebrows.
+
+“There is no one else to suspect. You may call it a certitude.”
+
+“You don't want to tell me what it is?” she inquired, in the equable
+tone in which one takes a fact into account.
+
+Heyst only smiled faintly.
+
+“Nothing very precious, as far as value goes,” he replied.
+
+“I thought it might have been money,” she said.
+
+“Money!” exclaimed Heyst, as if the suggestion had been altogether
+preposterous. She was so visibly surprised that he hastened to add: “Of
+course, there is some money in the house--there, in that writing-desk,
+the drawer on the left. It's not locked. You can pull it right out.
+There is a recess, and the board at the back pivots: a very simple
+hiding-place, when you know the way to it. I discovered it by accident,
+and I keep our store of sovereigns in there. The treasure, my dear, is
+not big enough to require a cavern.”
+
+He paused, laughed very low, and returned her steady stare.
+
+“The loose silver, some guilders and dollars, I have always kept in that
+unlocked left drawer. I have no doubt Wang knows what there is in it,
+but he isn't a thief, and that's why I--no, Lena, what I've missed is
+not gold or jewels; and that's what makes the fact interesting--which
+the theft of money cannot be.”
+
+She took a long breath, relieved to hear that it was not money. A great
+curiosity was depicted on her face, but she refrained from pressing him
+with questions. She only gave him one of her deep-gleaming smiles.
+
+“It isn't me so it must be Wang. You ought to make him give it back to
+you.”
+
+Heyst said nothing to that naive and practical suggestion, for the
+object that he missed from the drawer was his revolver.
+
+It was a heavy weapon which he had owned for many years and had never
+used in his life. Ever since the London furniture had arrived in
+Samburan, it had been reposing in the drawer of the table. The real
+dangers of life, for him, were not those which could be repelled
+by swords or bullets. On the other hand neither his manner nor his
+appearance looked sufficiently inoffensive to expose him to light-minded
+aggression.
+
+He could not have explained what had induced him to go to the drawer
+in the middle of the night. He had started up suddenly--which was very
+unusual with him. He had found himself sitting up and extremely wide
+awake all at once, with the girl reposing by his side, lying with her
+face away from him, a vague, characteristically feminine form in the dim
+light. She was perfectly still.
+
+At that season of the year there were no mosquitoes in Samburan, and the
+sides of the mosquito net were looped up. Heyst swung his feet to the
+floor, and found himself standing there, almost before he had become
+aware of his intention to get up.
+
+Why he did this he did not know. He didn't wish to wake her up, and
+the slight creak of the broad bedstead had sounded very loud to him. He
+turned round apprehensively and waited for her to move, but she did not
+stir. While he looked at her, he had a vision of himself lying there
+too, also fast asleep, and--it occurred to him for the first time in his
+life--very defenceless. This quite novel impression of the dangers of
+slumber made him think suddenly of his revolver. He left the bedroom
+with noiseless footsteps. The lightness of the curtain he had to lift
+as he passed out, and the outer door, wide open on the blackness of
+the veranda--for the roof eaves came down low, shutting out the
+starlight--gave him a sense of having been dangerously exposed, he could
+not have said to what. He pulled the drawer open. Its emptiness cut his
+train of self-communion short. He murmured to the assertive fact:
+
+“Impossible! Somewhere else!”
+
+He tried to remember where he had put the thing; but those provoked
+whispers of memory were not encouraging. Foraging in every receptacle
+and nook big enough to contain a revolver, he came slowly to the
+conclusion that it was not in that room. Neither was it in the other.
+The whole bungalow consisted of the two rooms and a profuse allowance of
+veranda all round. Heyst stepped out on the veranda.
+
+“It's Wang, beyond a doubt,” he thought, staring into the night. “He has
+got hold of it for some reason.”
+
+There was nothing to prevent that ghostly Chinaman from materializing
+suddenly at the foot of the stairs, or anywhere, at any moment, and
+toppling him over with a dead sure shot. The danger was so irremediable
+that it was not worth worrying about, any more than the general
+precariousness of human life. Heyst speculated on this added risk. How
+long had he been at the mercy of a slender yellow finger on the trigger?
+That is, if that was the fellow's reason for purloining the revolver.
+
+“Shoot and inherit,” thought Heyst. “Very simple.” Yet there was in his
+mind a marked reluctance to regard the domesticated grower of vegetables
+in the light of a murderer.
+
+“No, it wasn't that. For Wang could have done it any time this last
+twelve months or more--”
+
+Heyst's mind had worked on the assumption that Wang had possessed
+himself of the revolver during his own absence from Samburan; but at
+that period of his speculation his point of view changed. It struck him
+with the force of manifest certitude that the revolver had been taken
+only late in the day, or on that very night. Wang, of course. But why?
+So there had been no danger in the past. It was all ahead.
+
+“He has me at his mercy now,” thought Heyst, without particular
+excitement.
+
+The sentiment he experienced was curiosity. He forgot himself in it: it
+was as if he were considering somebody else's strange predicament. But
+even that sort of interest was dying out when, looking to his left, he
+saw the accustomed shapes of the other bungalows looming in the night,
+and remembered the arrival of the thirsty company in the boat. Wang
+would hardly risk such a crime in the presence of other white men. It
+was a peculiar instance of the “safety in numbers,” principle, which
+somehow was not much to Heyst's taste.
+
+He went in gloomily, and stood over the empty drawer in deep and
+unsatisfactory thought. He had just made up his mind that he must
+breathe nothing of this to the girl, when he heard her voice behind him.
+She had taken him by surprise, but he resisted the impulse to turn round
+at once under the impression that she might read his trouble in his
+face. Yes, she had taken him by surprise, and for that reason the
+conversation which began was not exactly as he would have conducted it
+if he had been prepared for her pointblank question. He ought to have
+said at once: “I've missed nothing.” It was a deplorable thing that he
+should have let it come so far as to have her ask what it was he missed.
+He closed the conversation by saying lightly:
+
+“It's an object of very small value. Don't worry about it--it isn't
+worth while. The best you can do is to go and lie down again, Lena.”
+
+Reluctant she turned away, and only in the doorway asked: “And you?”
+
+“I think I shall smoke a cheroot on the veranda. I don't feel sleepy for
+the moment.”
+
+“Well, don't be long.”
+
+He made no answer. She saw him standing there, very still, with a frown
+on his brow, and slowly dropped the curtain.
+
+Heyst did really light a cheroot before going out again on the veranda.
+He glanced up from under the low eaves, to see by the stars how the
+night went on. It was going very slowly. Why it should have irked him he
+did not know, for he had nothing to expect from the dawn; but everything
+round him had become unreasonable, unsettled, and vaguely urgent, laying
+him under an obligation, but giving him no line of action. He felt
+contemptuously irritated with the situation. The outer world had broken
+upon him; and he did not know what wrong he had done to bring this on
+himself, any more than he knew what he had done to provoke the horrible
+calumny about his treatment of poor Morrison. For he could not forget
+this. It had reached the ears of one who needed to have the most perfect
+confidence in the rectitude of his conduct.
+
+“And she only half disbelieves it,” he thought, with hopeless
+humiliation.
+
+This moral stab in the back seemed to have taken some of his strength
+from him, as a physical wound would have done. He had no desire to do
+anything--neither to bring Wang to terms in the matter of the revolver
+nor to find out from the strangers who they were, and how their
+predicament had come about. He flung his glowing cigar away into the
+night. But Samburan was no longer a solitude wherein he could indulge in
+all his moods. The fiery parabolic path the cast-out stump traced in the
+air was seen from another veranda at a distance of some twenty yards. It
+was noted as a symptom of importance by an observer with his faculties
+greedy for signs, and in a state of alertness tense enough almost to
+hear the grass grow.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TEN
+
+The observer was Martin Ricardo. To him life was not a matter of
+passive renunciation, but of a particularly active warfare. He was
+not mistrustful of it, he was not disgusted with it, still less was he
+inclined to be suspicious of its disenchantments; but he was vividly
+aware that it held many possibilities of failure. Though very far from
+being a pessimist, he was not a man of foolish illusions. He did
+not like failure, not only because of its unpleasant and dangerous
+consequences, but also because of its damaging effect upon his own
+appreciation of Martin Ricardo. And this was a special job, of his own
+contriving, and of considerable novelty. It was not, so to speak, in his
+usual line of business--except, perhaps, from a moral standpoint, about
+which he was not likely to trouble his head. For these reasons Martin
+Ricardo was unable to sleep.
+
+Mr. Jones, after repeated shivering fits, and after drinking much hot
+tea, had apparently fallen into deep slumber. He had very peremptorily
+discouraged attempts at conversation on the part of his faithful
+follower. Ricardo listened to his regular breathing. It was all very
+well for the governor. He looked upon it as a sort of sport. A gentleman
+naturally would. But this ticklish and important job had to be pulled
+off at all costs, both for honour and for safety. Ricardo rose quietly,
+and made his way on the veranda. He could not lie still. He wanted to
+go out for air, and he had a feeling that by the force of his eagerness
+even the darkness and the silence could be made to yield something to
+his eyes and ears.
+
+He noted the stars, and stepped back again into the dense darkness.
+He resisted the growing impulse to go out and steal towards the other
+bungalow. It would have been madness to start prowling in the dark on
+unknown ground. And for what end? Unless to relieve the oppression.
+Immobility lay on his limbs like a leaden garment. And yet he was
+unwilling to give up. He persisted in his objectless vigil. The man of
+the island was keeping quiet.
+
+It was at that moment that Ricardo's eyes caught the vanishing red
+trail of light made by the cigar--a startling revelation of the man's
+wakefulness. He could not suppress a low “Hallo!” and began to sidle
+along towards the door, with his shoulders rubbing the wall. For all he
+knew, the man might have been out in front by this time, observing the
+veranda. As a matter of fact, after flinging away the cheroot, Heyst
+had gone indoors with the feeling of a man who gives up an unprofitable
+occupation. But Ricardo fancied he could hear faint footfalls on the
+open ground, and dodged quickly into the room. There he drew breath, and
+meditated for a while. His next step was to feel for the matches on
+the tall desk, and to light the candle. He had to communicate to his
+governor views and reflections of such importance that it was absolutely
+necessary for him to watch their effect on the very countenance of the
+hearer. At first he had thought that these matters could have waited
+till daylight; but Heyst's wakefulness, disclosed in that startling way,
+made him feel suddenly certain that there could be no sleep for him that
+night.
+
+He said as much to his governor. When the little dagger-like flame had
+done its best to dispel the darkness, Mr. Jones was to be seen reposing
+on a camp bedstead, in a distant part of the room. A railway rug
+concealed his spare form up to his very head, which rested on the
+other railway rug rolled up for a pillow. Ricardo plumped himself down
+cross-legged on the floor, very close to the low bedstead; so that Mr.
+Jones--who perhaps had not been so very profoundly asleep--on opening
+his eyes found them conveniently levelled at the face of his secretary.
+
+“Eh? What is it you say? No sleep for you tonight? But why can't you let
+me sleep? Confound your fussiness!”
+
+“Because that there fellow can't sleep--that's why. Dash me if he hasn't
+been doing a think just now! What business has he to think in the middle
+of the night?”
+
+“How do you know?”
+
+“He was out, sir--up in the middle of the night. My own eyes saw it.”
+
+“But how do you know that he was up to think?” inquired Mr. Jones. “It
+might have been anything--toothache, for instance. And you may have
+dreamed it for all I know. Didn't you try to sleep?”
+
+“No, sir. I didn't even try to go to sleep.”
+
+Ricardo informed his patron of his vigil on the veranda, and of the
+revelation which put an end to it. He concluded that a man up with a
+cigar in the middle of the night must be doing a think.
+
+Mr. Jones raised himself on his elbow. This sign of interest comforted
+his faithful henchman.
+
+“Seems to me it's time we did a little think ourselves,” added Ricardo,
+with more assurance. Long as they had been together the moods of his
+governor were still a source of anxiety to his simple soul.
+
+“You are always making a fuss,” remarked Mr. Jones, in a tolerant tone.
+
+“Ay, but not for nothing, am I? You can't say that, sir. Mine may not be
+a gentleman's way of looking round a thing, but it isn't a fool's way,
+either. You've admitted that much yourself at odd times.”
+
+Ricardo was growing warmly argumentative. Mr. Jones interrupted him
+without heat.
+
+“You haven't roused me to talk about yourself, I presume?”
+
+“No, sir.” Ricardo remained silent for a minute, with the tip of
+his tongue caught between his teeth. “I don't think I could tell you
+anything about myself that you don't know,” he continued. There was a
+sort of amused satisfaction in his tone which changed completely as he
+went on. “It's that man, over there, that's got to be talked over. I
+don't like him.”
+
+He, failed to observe the flicker of a ghastly smile on his governor's
+lips.
+
+“Don't you?” murmured Mr. Jones, whose face, as he reclined on his
+elbow, was on a level with the top of his follower's head.
+
+“No, sir,” said Ricardo emphatically. The candle from the other side of
+the room threw his monstrous black shadow on the wall. “He--I don't know
+how to say it--he isn't hearty-like.”
+
+Mr. Jones agreed languidly in his own manner:
+
+“He seems to be a very self-possessed man.”
+
+“Ay, that's it. Self--” Ricardo choked with indignation. “I would soon
+let out some of his self-possession through a hole between his ribs, if
+this weren't a special job!”
+
+Mr. Jones had been making his own reflections, for he asked:
+
+“Do you think he is suspicious?”
+
+“I don't see very well what he can be suspicious of,” pondered Ricardo.
+“Yet there he was doing a think. And what could be the object of it?
+What made him get out of his bed in the middle of the night. 'Tain't
+fleas, surely.”
+
+“Bad conscience, perhaps,” suggested Mr. Jones jocularly.
+
+His faithful secretary suffered from irritation, and did not see the
+joke. In a fretful tone he declared that there was no such thing as
+conscience. There was such a thing as funk; but there was nothing to
+make that fellow funky in any special way. He admitted, however, that
+the man might have been uneasy at the arrival of strangers, because of
+all that plunder of his put away somewhere.
+
+Ricardo glanced here and there, as if he were afraid of being overheard
+by the heavy shadows cast by the dim light all over the room. His
+patron, very quiet, spoke in a calm whisper:
+
+“And perhaps that hotel-keeper has been lying to you about him. He may
+be a very poor devil indeed.”
+
+Ricardo shook his head slightly. The Schombergian theory of Heyst had
+become in him a profound conviction, which he had absorbed as naturally
+as a sponge takes up water. His patron's doubts were a wanton denying
+of what was self-evident; but Ricardo's voice remained as before, a soft
+purring with a snarling undertone.
+
+“I am sup-prised at you, sir! It's the very way them tame ones--the
+common 'yporcrits of the world--get on. When it comes to plunder
+drifting under one's very nose, there's not one of them that would keep
+his hands off. And I don't blame them. It's the way they do it that sets
+my back up. Just look at the story of how he got rid of that pal of his!
+Send a man home to croak of a cold on the chest--that's one of your tame
+tricks. And d'you mean to say, sir, that a man that's up to it wouldn't
+bag whatever he could lay his hands in his 'yporcritical way? What was
+all that coal business? Tame citizen dodge; 'yporcrisy--nothing else.
+No, no, sir! The thing is to extract it from him as neatly as possible.
+That's the job; and it isn't so simple as it looks. I reckon you have
+looked at it all round, sir, before you took up the notion of this
+trip.”
+
+“No.” Mr. Jones was hardly audible, staring far away from his couch. “I
+didn't think about it much. I was bored.”
+
+“Ay, that you were--bad. I was feeling pretty desperate that afternoon,
+when that bearded softy of a landlord got talking to me about this
+fellow here. Quite accidentally, it was. Well, sir, here we are after a
+mighty narrow squeak. I feel all limp yet; but never mind--his swag will
+pay for the lot!”
+
+“He's all alone here,” remarked Mr. Jones in a hollow murmur.
+
+“Ye-es, in a way. Yes, alone enough. Yes, you may say he is.”
+
+“There's that Chinaman, though.”
+
+“Ay, there's the Chink,” assented Ricardo rather absentmindedly.
+
+He was debating in his mind the advisability of making a clean breast of
+his knowledge of the girl's existence. Finally he concluded he wouldn't.
+The enterprise was difficult enough without complicating it with an
+upset to the sensibilities of the gentleman with whom he had the honour
+of being associated. Let the discovery come of itself, he thought,
+and then he could swear that he had known nothing of that offensive
+presence.
+
+He did not need to lie. He had only to hold his tongue.
+
+“Yes,” he muttered reflectively, “there's that Chink, certainly.”
+
+At bottom, he felt a certain ambiguous respect for his governor's
+exaggerated dislike of women, as if that horror of feminine presence
+were a sort of depraved morality; but still morality, since he counted
+it as an advantage. It prevented many undesirable complications. He did
+not pretend to understand it. He did not even try to investigate
+this idiosyncrasy of his chief. All he knew was that he himself was
+differently inclined, and that it did not make him any happier or safer.
+He did not know how he would have acted if he had been knocking about
+the world on his own. Luckily he was a subordinate, not a wage-slave but
+a follower--which was a restraint. Yes! The other sort of disposition
+simplified matters in general; it wasn't to be gainsaid. But it was
+clear that it could also complicate them--as in this most important and,
+in Ricardo's view, already sufficiently delicate case. And the worst of
+it was that one could not tell exactly in what precise manner it would
+act.
+
+It was unnatural, he thought somewhat peevishly. How was one to reckon
+up the unnatural? There were no rules for that. The faithful henchman
+of plain Mr. Jones, foreseeing many difficulties of a material order,
+decided to keep the girl out of the governor's knowledge, out of his
+sight, too, for as long a time as it could be managed. That, alas,
+seemed to be at most a matter of a few hours; whereas Ricardo feared
+that to get the affair properly going would take some days. Once well
+started, he was not afraid of his gentleman failing him. As is often the
+case with lawless natures, Ricardo's faith in any given individual was
+of a simple, unquestioning character. For man must have some support in
+life.
+
+Cross-legged, his head drooping a little and perfectly still, he might
+have been meditating in a bonze-like attitude upon the sacred syllable
+“Om.” It was a striking illustration of the untruth of appearances, for
+his contempt for the world was of a severely practical kind. There was
+nothing oriental about Ricardo but the amazing quietness of his pose.
+Mr. Jones was also very quiet. He had let his head sink on the rolled-up
+rug, and lay stretched out on his side with his back to the light. In
+that position the shadows gathered in the cavities of his eyes made
+them look perfectly empty. When he spoke, his ghostly voice had only to
+travel a few inches straight into Ricardo's left ear.
+
+“Why don't you say something, now that you've got me awake?”
+
+“I wonder if you were sleeping as sound as you are trying to make out,
+sir,” said the unmoved Ricardo.
+
+“I wonder,” repeated Mr. Jones. “At any rate, I was resting quietly!”
+
+“Come, sir!” Ricardo's whisper was alarmed. “You don't mean to say
+you're going to be bored?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Quite right!” The secretary was very much relieved. “There's no
+occasion to be, I can tell you, sir,” he whispered earnestly. “Anything
+but that! If I didn't say anything for a bit, it ain't because there
+isn't plenty to talk about. Ay, more than enough.”
+
+“What's the matter with you?” breathed out his patron. “Are you going to
+turn pessimist?”
+
+“Me turn? No, sir! I ain't of those that turn. You may call me hard
+names, if you like, but you know very well that I ain't a croaker.”
+ Ricardo changed his tone. “If I said nothing for a while, it was because
+I was meditating over the Chink, sir.”
+
+“You were? Waste of time, my Martin. A Chinaman is unfathomable.”
+
+Ricardo admitted that this might be so. Anyhow, a Chink was neither
+here nor there, as a general thing, unfathomable as he might be; but a
+Swedish baron wasn't--couldn't be! The woods were full of such barons.
+
+“I don't know that he is so tame,” was Mr. Jones's remark, in a
+sepulchral undertone.
+
+“How do you mean, sir? He ain't a rabbit, of course. You couldn't
+hypnotize him, as I saw you do to more than one Dago, and other kinds
+of tame citizens, when it came to the point of holding them down to a
+game.”
+
+“Don't you reckon on that,” murmured plain Mr. Jones seriously.
+
+“No, sir, I don't, though you have a wonderful power of the eye. It's a
+fact.”
+
+“I have a wonderful patience,” remarked Mr. Jones dryly.
+
+A dim smile flitted over the lips of the faithful Ricardo who never
+raised his head.
+
+“I don't want to try you too much, sir, but this is like no other job we
+ever turned our minds to.”
+
+“Perhaps not. At any rate let us think so.”
+
+A weariness with the monotony of life was reflected in the tone of this
+qualified assent. It jarred on the nerves of the sanguine Ricardo.
+
+“Let us think of the way to go to work,” he retorted a little
+impatiently. “He's a deep one. Just look at the way he treated that chum
+of his. Did you ever hear of anything so low? And the artfulness of the
+beast--the dirty, tame artfulness!”
+
+“Don't you start moralizing, Martin,” said Mr. Jones warningly. “As far
+as I can make out the story that German hotel-keeper told you, it seems
+to show a certain amount of character;--and independence from common
+feelings which is not usual. It's very remarkable, if true.”
+
+“Ay, ay! Very remarkable. It's mighty low down, all the same,” muttered,
+Ricardo obstinately. “I must say I am glad to think he will be paid off
+for it in a way that'll surprise him!”
+
+The tip of his tongue appeared lively for an instant, as if trying for
+the taste of that ferocious retribution on his compressed lips. For
+Ricardo was sincere in his indignation before the elementary principle
+of loyalty to a chum violated in cold blood, slowly, in a patient
+duplicity of years. There are standards in villainy as in virtue, and
+the act as he pictured it to himself acquired an additional horror
+from the slow pace of that treachery so atrocious and so tame. But
+he understood too the educated judgement of his governor, a gentleman
+looking on all this with the privileged detachment of a cultivated mind,
+of an elevated personality.
+
+“Ay, he's deep--he's artful,” he mumbled between his sharp teeth.
+
+“Confound you!” Mr. Jones's calm whisper crept into his ear. “Come to
+the point.”
+
+Obedient, the secretary shook off his thoughtfulness. There was a
+similarity of mind between these two--one the outcast of his vices, the
+other inspired by a spirit of scornful defiance, the aggressiveness of
+a beast of prey looking upon all the tame creatures of the earth as its
+natural victim. Both were astute enough, however, and both were aware
+that they had plunged into this adventure without a sufficient scrutiny
+of detail. The figure of a lonely man far from all assistance had
+loomed up largely, fascinating and defenceless in the middle of the sea,
+filling the whole field of their vision. There had not seemed to be any
+need for thinking. As Schomberg had been saying: “Three to one.”
+
+But it did not look so simple now in the face of that solitude which was
+like an armour for this man. The feeling voiced by the henchman in his
+own way--“We don't seem much forwarder now we are here” was acknowledged
+by the silence of the patron. It was easy enough to rip a fellow up or
+drill a hole in him, whether he was alone or not, Ricardo reflected in
+low, confidential tones, but--
+
+“He isn't alone,” Mr. Jones said faintly, in his attitude of a man
+composed for sleep. “Don't forget that Chinaman.” Ricardo started
+slightly.
+
+“Oh, ay--the Chink!”
+
+Ricardo had been on the point of confessing about the girl; but no! He
+wanted his governor to be unperturbed and steady. Vague thoughts,
+which he hardly dared to look in the face, were stirring his brain in
+connection with that girl. She couldn't be much account, he thought. She
+could be frightened. And there were also other possibilities. The Chink,
+however, could be considered openly.
+
+“What I was thinking about it, sir,” he went on earnestly, “is
+this--here we've got a man. He's nothing. If he won't be good, he can be
+made quiet. That's easy. But then there's his plunder. He doesn't carry
+it in his pocket.”
+
+“I hope not,” breathed Mr. Jones.
+
+“Same here. It's too big, we know, but if he were alone, he would not
+feel worried about it overmuch--I mean the safety of the pieces. He
+would just put the lot into any box or drawer that was handy.”
+
+“Would he?”
+
+“Yes, sir. He would keep it under his eye, as it were. Why not? It is
+natural. A fellow doesn't put his swag underground, unless there's a
+very good reason for it.”
+
+“A very good reason, eh?”
+
+“Yes, sir. What do you think a fellow is--a mole?”
+
+From his experience, Ricardo declared that man was not a burrowing
+beast. Even the misers very seldom buried their hoard, unless for
+exceptional reasons. In the given situation of a man alone on an island,
+the company of a Chink was a very good reason. Drawers would not be
+safe, nor boxes, either, from a prying, slant-eyed Chink. No, sir,
+unless a safe--a proper office safe. But the safe was there in the room.
+
+“Is there a safe in this room? I didn't notice it,” whispered Mr. Jones.
+
+That was because the thing was painted white, like the walls of the
+room; and besides, it was tucked away in the shadows of a corner. Mr.
+Jones had been too tired to observe anything on his first coming ashore;
+but Ricardo had very soon spotted the characteristic form. He only
+wished he could believe that the plunder of treachery, duplicity, and
+all the moral abominations of Heyst had been there. But no; the blamed
+thing was open.
+
+“It might have been there at one time or another,” he commented
+gloomily, “but it isn't there now.”
+
+“The man did not elect to live in this house,” remarked Mr. Jones. “And
+by the by, what could he have meant by speaking of circumstances which
+prevented him lodging us in the other bungalow? You remember what he
+said, Martin? Sounded cryptic.”
+
+Martin, who remembered and understood the phrase as directly motived by
+the existence of the girl, waited a little before saying:
+
+“Some of his artfulness, sir; and not the worst of it either. That
+manner of his to us, this asking no questions, is some more of his
+artfulness. A man's bound to be curious, and he is; yet he goes on as if
+he didn't care. He does care--or else what was he doing up with a cigar
+in the middle of the night, doing a think? I don't like it.”
+
+“He may be outside, observing the light here, and saying the very same
+thing to himself of our own wakefulness,” gravely suggested Ricardo's
+governor.
+
+“He may be, sir; but this is too important to be talked over in the
+dark. And the light is all right, it can be accounted for. There's a
+light in this bungalow in the middle of the night because--why, because
+you are not well. Not well, sir--that's what's the matter, and you will
+have to act up to it.”
+
+The consideration had suddenly occurred to the faithful henchman, in the
+light of a felicitous expedient to keep his governor and the girl apart
+as long as possible. Mr. Jones received the suggestion without the
+slightest stir, even in the deep sockets of his eyes, where a steady,
+faint gleam was the only thing telling of life and attention in his
+attenuated body. But Ricardo, as soon as he had enunciated his happy
+thought, perceived in it other possibilities more to the point and of
+greater practical advantage.
+
+“With your looks, sir, it will be easy enough,” he went on evenly, as
+if no silence had intervened, always respectful, but frank, with
+perfect simplicity of purpose. “All you've got to do is just to lie down
+quietly. I noticed him looking sort of surprised at you on the wharf,
+sir.”
+
+At these words, a naive tribute to the aspect of his physique, even more
+suggestive of the grave than of the sick-bed, a fold appeared on that
+side of the governor's face which was exposed to the dim light--a deep,
+shadowy, semicircular fold from the side of the nose to bottom of the
+chin--a silent smile. By a side-glance Ricardo had noted this play of
+features. He smiled, too, appreciative, encouraged.
+
+“And you as hard as nails all the time,” he went on. “Hang me if anybody
+would believe you aren't sick, if I were to swear myself black in
+the face! Give us a day or two to look into matters and size up that
+'yporcrit.”
+
+Ricardo's eyes remained fixed on his crossed shins. The chief, in his
+lifeless accents, approved.
+
+“Perhaps it would be a good idea.”
+
+“The Chink, he's nothing. He can be made quiet any time.”
+
+One of Ricardo's hands, reposing palm upwards on his folded legs, made
+a swift thrusting gesture, repeated by the enormous darting shadow of an
+arm very low on the wall. It broke the spell of perfect stillness in
+the room. The secretary eyed moodily the wall from which the shadow had
+gone. Anybody could be made quiet, he pointed out. It was not anything
+that the Chink could do; no, it was the effect that his company must
+have produced on the conduct of the doomed man. A man! What was a man? A
+Swedish baron could be ripped up, or else holed by a shot, as easily as
+any other creature; but that was exactly what was to be avoided, till
+one knew where he had hidden his plunder.
+
+“I shouldn't think it would be some sort of hole in his bungalow,”
+ argued Ricardo with real anxiety.
+
+No. A house can be burnt--set on fire accidentally, or on purpose, while
+a man's asleep. Under the house--or in some crack, cranny, or crevice?
+Something told him it wasn't that. The anguish of mental effort
+contracted Ricardo's brow. The skin of his head seemed to move in this
+travail of vain and tormenting suppositions.
+
+“What did you think a fellow is, sir--a baby?” he said, in answer to Mr.
+Jones's objections. “I am trying to find out what I would do myself. He
+wouldn't be likely to be cleverer than I am.”
+
+“And what do you know about yourself?”
+
+Mr. Jones seemed to watch his follower's perplexities with amusement
+concealed in a death-like composure.
+
+Ricardo disregarded the question. The material vision of the spoil
+absorbed all his faculties. A great vision! He seemed to see it. A few
+small canvas bags tied up with thin cord, their distended rotundity
+showing the inside pressure of the disk-like forms of coins--gold,
+solid, heavy, eminently portable. Perhaps steel cash-boxes with a chased
+design, on the covers; or perhaps a black and brass box with a handle
+on the top, and full of goodness knows what. Bank notes? Why not? The
+fellow had been going home; so it was surely something worth going home
+with.
+
+“And he may have put it anywhere outside--anywhere!” cried Ricardo in a
+deadened voice, “in the forest--”
+
+That was it! A temporary darkness replaced the dim light of the room.
+The darkness of the forest at night and in it the gleam of a lantern, by
+which a figure is digging at the foot of a tree-trunk. As likely as not,
+another figure holding that lantern--ha, feminine! The girl!
+
+The prudent Ricardo stifled a picturesque and profane exclamation,
+partly joy, partly dismay. Had the girl been trusted or mistrusted by
+that man? Whatever it was, it was bound to be wholly! With women there
+could be no half-measures. He could not imagine a fellow half-trusting
+a woman in that intimate relation to himself, and in those particular
+circumstances of conquest and loneliness where no confidences could
+appear dangerous since, apparently, there could be no one she could
+give him away to. Moreover, in nine cases out of ten the woman would be
+trusted. But, trusted or mistrusted, was her presence a favourable or
+unfavourable condition of the problem? That was the question!
+
+The temptation to consult his chief, to talk over the weighty fact, and
+get his opinion on it, was great indeed. Ricardo resisted it; but the
+agony of his solitary mental conflict was extremely sharp. A woman in
+a problem is an incalculable quantity, even if you have something to go
+upon in forming your guess. How much more so when you haven't even once
+caught sight of her.
+
+Swift as were his mental processes, he felt that a longer silence was
+inadvisable. He hastened to speak:
+
+“And do you see us, sir, you and I, with a couple of spades having to
+tackle this whole confounded island?”
+
+He allowed himself a slight movement of the arm. The shadow enlarged it
+into a sweeping gesture.
+
+“This seems rather discouraging, Martin,” murmured the unmoved governor.
+
+“We mustn't be discouraged--that's all!” retorted his henchman. “And
+after what we had to go through in that boat too! Why it would be--”
+
+He couldn't find the qualifying words. Very calm, faithful, and yet
+astute, he expressed his new-born hopes darkly.
+
+“Something's sure to turn up to give us a hint; only this job can't be
+rushed. You may depend on me to pick up the least little bit of a hint;
+but you, sir--you've got to play him very gently. For the rest you can
+trust me.”
+
+“Yes; but I ask myself what YOU are trusting to.”
+
+“Our luck,” said the faithful Ricardo. “Don't say a word against that.
+It might spoil the run of it.”
+
+“You are a superstitious beggar. No, I won't say anything against it.”
+
+“That's right, sir. Don't you even think lightly of it. Luck's not to be
+played with.”
+
+“Yes, luck's a delicate thing,” assented Mr. Jones in a dreamy whisper.
+
+A short silence ensued, which Ricardo ended in a discreet and tentative
+voice.
+
+“Talking of luck, I suppose he could be made to take a hand with
+you, sir--two-handed picket or ekkarty, you being seedy and keeping
+indoors--just to pass the time. For all we know, he may be one of them
+hot ones once they start--”
+
+“Is it likely?” came coldly from the principal. “Considering what we
+know of his history--say with his partner.”
+
+“True, sir. He's a cold-blooded beast; a cold-blooded, inhuman--”
+
+“And I'll tell you another thing that isn't likely. He would not be
+likely to let himself be stripped bare. We haven't to do with a young
+fool that can be led on by chaff or flattery, and in the end simply
+overawed. This is a calculating man.”
+
+Ricardo recognized that clearly. What he had in his mind was something
+on a small scale, just to keep the enemy busy while he, Ricardo, had
+time to nose around a bit.
+
+“You could even lose a little money to him, sir,” he suggested.
+
+“I could.”
+
+Ricardo was thoughtful for a moment.
+
+“He strikes me, too, as the sort of man to start prancing when one
+didn't expect it. What do you think, sir? Is he a man that would prance?
+That is, if something startled him. More likely to prance than to
+run--what?”
+
+The answer came at once, because Mr. Jones understood the peculiar idiom
+of his faithful follower.
+
+“Oh, without doubt! Without doubt!”
+
+“It does me good to hear that you think so. He's a prancing beast,
+and so we mustn't startle him--not till I have located the stuff.
+Afterwards--”
+
+Ricardo paused, sinister in the stillness of his pose. Suddenly he
+got up with a swift movement and gazed down at his chief in moody
+abstraction. Mr. Jones did not stir.
+
+“There's one thing that's worrying me,” began Ricardo in a subdued
+voice.
+
+“Only one?” was the faint comment from the motionless body on the
+bedstead.
+
+“I mean more than all the others put together.”
+
+“That's grave news.”
+
+“Ay, grave enough. It's this--how do you feel in yourself, sir? Are you
+likely to get bored? I know them fits come on you suddenly; but surely
+you can tell--”
+
+“Martin, you are an ass.”
+
+The moody face of the secretary brightened up.
+
+“Really, sir? Well, I am quite content to be on these terms--I mean as
+long as you don't get bored. It wouldn't do, sir.”
+
+For coolness, Ricardo had thrown open his shirt and rolled up his
+sleeves. He moved stealthily across the room, bare-footed, towards the
+candle, the shadow of his head and shoulders growing bigger behind him
+on the opposite wall, to which the face of plain Mr. Jones was turned.
+With a feline movement, Ricardo glanced over his shoulder at the thin
+back of the spectre reposing on the bed, and then blew out the candle.
+
+“In fact, I am rather amused, Martin,” Mr. Jones said in the dark.
+
+He heard the sound of a slapped thigh and the jubilant exclamation of
+his henchman:
+
+“Good! That's the way to talk, sir!”
+
+
+
+
+
+PART FOUR
+
+
+
+CHAPTER ONE
+
+Ricardo advanced prudently by short darts from one tree-trunk to
+another, more in the manner of a squirrel than a cat. The sun had
+risen some time before. Already the sparkle of open sea was encroaching
+rapidly on the dark, cool, early-morning blue of Diamond Bay; but the
+deep dusk lingered yet under the mighty pillars of the forest, between
+which the secretary dodged.
+
+He was watching Number One's bungalow with an animal-like patience, if
+with a very human complexity of purpose. This was the second morning
+of such watching. The first one had not been rewarded by success. Well,
+strictly speaking, there was no hurry.
+
+The sun, swinging above the ridge all at once, inundated with light the
+space of burnt grass in front of Ricardo and the face of the bungalow,
+on which his eyes were fixed, leaving only the one dark spot of the
+doorway. To his right, to his left, and behind him, splashes of gold
+appeared in the deep shade of the forest, thinning the gloom under the
+ragged roof of leaves.
+
+This was not a very favourable circumstance for Ricardo's purpose. He
+did not wish to be detected in his patient occupation. For what he was
+watching for was a sight of the girl--that girl! just a glimpse across
+the burnt patch to see what she was like. He had excellent eyes, and
+the distance was not so great. He would be able to distinguish her face
+quite easily if she only came out on the veranda; and she was bound
+to do that sooner or later. He was confident that he could form some
+opinion about her--which, he felt, was very necessary, before venturing
+on some steps to get in touch with her behind that Swedish baron's back.
+His theoretical view of the girl was such that he was quite prepared,
+on the strength of that distant examination, to show himself
+discreetly--perhaps even make a sign. It all depended on his reading of
+the face. She couldn't be much. He knew that sort!
+
+By protruding his head a little he commanded, through the foliage of a
+festooning creeper, a view of the three bungalows. Irregularly disposed
+along a flat curve, over the veranda rail of the farthermost one hung a
+dark rug of a tartan pattern, amazingly conspicuous. Ricardo could see
+the very checks. A brisk fire of sticks was burning on the ground in
+front of the steps, and in the sunlight the thin, fluttering flame had
+paled almost to invisibility--a mere rosy stir under a faint wreath of
+smoke. He could see the white bandage on the head of Pedro bending over
+it, and the wisps of black hair standing up weirdly. He had wound that
+bandage himself, after breaking that shaggy and enormous head. The
+creature balanced it like a load, staggering towards the steps. Ricardo
+could see a small, long-handled saucepan at the end of a great hairy
+paw.
+
+Yes, he could see all that there was to be seen, far and near. Excellent
+eyes! The only thing they could not penetrate was the dark oblong of the
+doorway on the veranda under the low eaves of the bungalow's roof. And
+that was vexing. It was an outrage. Ricardo was easily outraged. Surely
+she would come out presently! Why didn't she? Surely the fellow did not
+tie her up to the bedpost before leaving the house!
+
+Nothing appeared. Ricardo was as still as the leafy cables of creepers
+depending in a convenient curtain from the mighty limb sixty feet above
+his head. His very eyelids were still, and this unblinking watchfulness
+gave him the dreamy air of a cat posed on a hearth-rug contemplating the
+fire. Was he dreaming? There, in plain sight, he had before him a white,
+blouse-like jacket, short blue trousers, a pair of bare yellow calves, a
+pigtail, long and slender--
+
+“The confounded Chink!” he muttered, astounded.
+
+He was not conscious of having looked away; and yet right there, in the
+middle of the picture, without having come round the right-hand corner
+or the left-hand corner of the house, without falling from the sky or
+surging up from the ground, Wang had become visible, large as life,
+and engaged in the young-ladyish occupation of picking flowers. Step
+by step, stooping repeatedly over the flower-beds at the foot of the
+veranda, the startlingly materialized Chinaman passed off the scene in
+a very commonplace manner, by going up the steps and disappearing in the
+darkness of the doorway.
+
+Only then the yellow eyes of Martin Ricardo lost their intent fixity. He
+understood that it was time for him to be moving. That bunch of
+flowers going into the house in the hand of a Chinaman was for the
+breakfast-table. What else could it be for?
+
+“I'll give you flowers!” he muttered threateningly. “You wait!”
+
+Another moment, just for a glance towards the Jones bungalow, whence
+he expected Heyst to issue on his way to that breakfast so offensively
+decorated, and Ricardo began his retreat. His impulse, his desire, was
+for a rush into the open, face to face with the appointed victim, for
+what he called a “ripping up,” visualized greedily, and always with
+the swift preliminary stooping movement on his part--the forerunner of
+certain death to his adversary. This was his impulse; and as it was, so
+to speak, constitutional, it was extremely difficult to resist when his
+blood was up. What could be more trying than to have to skulk and dodge
+and restrain oneself, mentally and physically, when one's blood was up?
+Mr. Secretary Ricardo began his retreat from his post of observation
+behind a tree opposite Heyst's bungalow, using great care to remain
+unseen. His proceedings were made easier by the declivity of the ground,
+which sloped sharply down to the water's edge. There, his feet feeling
+the warmth of the island's rocky foundation already heated by the sun,
+through the thin soles of his straw slippers he was, as it were, sunk
+out of sight of the houses. A short scramble of some twenty feet brought
+him up again to the upper level, at the place where the jetty had its
+root in the shore. He leaned his back against one of the lofty uprights
+which still held up the company's signboard above the mound of derelict
+coal. Nobody could have guessed how much his blood was up. To contain
+himself he folded his arms tightly on his breast.
+
+Ricardo was not used to a prolonged effort of self-control. His craft,
+his artfulness, felt themselves always at the mercy of his nature, which
+was truly feral and only held in subjection by the influence of the
+“governor,” the prestige of a gentleman. It had its cunning too, but it
+was being almost too severely tried since the feral solution of a growl
+and a spring was forbidden by the problem. Ricardo dared not venture out
+on the cleared ground. He dared not.
+
+“If I meet the beggar,” he thought, “I don't know what I mayn't do. I
+daren't trust myself.”
+
+What exasperated him just now was his inability to understand
+Heyst. Ricardo was human enough to suffer from the discovery of his
+limitations. No, he couldn't size Heyst up. He could kill him with
+extreme ease--a growl and a spring--but that was forbidden! However, he
+could not remain indefinitely under the funereal blackboard.
+
+“I must make a move,” he thought.
+
+He moved on, his head swimming a little with the repressed desire of
+violence, and came out openly in front of the bungalows, as if he had
+just been down to the jetty to look at the boat. The sunshine enveloped
+him, very brilliant, very still, very hot. The three buildings faced
+him. The one with the rug on the balustrade was the most distant; next
+to it was the empty bungalow; the nearest, with the flower-beds at the
+foot of its veranda, contained that bothersome girl, who had managed
+so provokingly to keep herself invisible. That was why Ricardo's eyes
+lingered on that building. The girl would surely be easier to “size up”
+ than Heyst. A sight of her, a mere glimpse, would have been something to
+go by, a step nearer to the goal--the first real move, in fact. Ricardo
+saw no other move. And any time she might appear on that veranda!
+
+She did not appear; but, like a concealed magnet, she exercised her
+attraction. As he went on, he deviated towards the bungalow. Though his
+movements were deliberate, his feral instincts had such sway that if he
+had met Heyst walking towards him, he would have had to satisfy his
+need of violence. But he saw nobody. Wang was at the back of the house,
+keeping the coffee hot against Number One's return for breakfast. Even
+the simian Pedro was out of sight, no doubt crouching on the door-step,
+his red little eyes fastened with animal-like devotion on Mr. Jones, who
+was in discourse with Heyst in the other bungalow--the conversation of
+an evil spectre with a disarmed man, watched by an ape.
+
+His will having very little to do with it, Ricardo, darting swift
+glances in all directions, found himself at the steps of the Heyst
+bungalow. Once there, falling under an uncontrollable force of
+attraction, he mounted them with a savage and stealthy action of his
+limbs, and paused for a moment under the eaves to listen to the silence.
+Presently he advanced over the threshold one leg--it seemed to stretch
+itself, like a limb of india-rubber--planted his foot within, brought up
+the other swiftly, and stood inside the room, turning his head from side
+to side. To his eyes, brought in there from the dazzling sunshine, all
+was gloom for a moment. His pupils, like a cat's, dilating swiftly, he
+distinguished an enormous quantity of books. He was amazed; and he was
+put off too. He was vexed in his astonishment. He had meant to note the
+aspect and nature of things, and hoped to draw some useful inference,
+some hint as to the man. But what guess could one make out of a
+multitude of books? He didn't know what to think; and he formulated his
+bewilderment in the mental exclamation:
+
+“What the devil has this fellow been trying to set up here--a school?”
+
+He gave a prolonged stare to the portrait of Heyst's father, that severe
+profile ignoring the vanities of this earth. His eyes gleamed sideways
+at the heavy silver candlesticks--signs of opulence. He prowled as a
+stray cat entering a strange place might have done, for if Ricardo had
+not Wang's miraculous gift of materializing and vanishing, rather than
+coming and going, he could be nearly as noiseless in his less elusive
+movements. He noted the back door standing just ajar; and all the time
+his slightly pointed ears, at the utmost stretch of watchfulness, kept
+in touch with the profound silence outside enveloping the absolute
+stillness of the house.
+
+He had not been in the room two minutes when it occurred to him that he
+must be alone in the bungalow. The woman, most likely, had sneaked out
+and was walking about somewhere in the grounds at the back. She had
+been probably ordered to keep out of sight. Why? Because the fellow
+mistrusted his guests; or was it because he mistrusted her?
+
+Ricardo reflected that from a certain point of view it amounted nearly
+to the same thing. He remembered Schomberg's story. He felt that
+running away with somebody only to get clear of that beastly, tame,
+hotel-keeper's attention was no proof of hopeless infatuation. She could
+be got in touch with.
+
+His moustaches stirred. For some time he had been looking at a closed
+door. He would peep into that other room, and perhaps see something more
+informing than a confounded lot of books. As he crossed over, he thought
+recklessly:
+
+“If the beggar comes in suddenly, and starts to prance, I'll rip him up
+and be done with it!”
+
+He laid his hand on the handle, and felt the door come unlatched. Before
+he pulled it open, he listened again to the silence. He felt it all
+about him, complete, without a flaw.
+
+The necessity of prudence had exasperated his self-restraint. A mood
+of ferocity woke up in him, and, as always at such times, he became
+physically aware of the sheeted knife strapped to his leg. He pulled at
+the door with fierce curiosity. It came open without a squeak of hinge,
+without a rustle, with no sound at all; and he found himself glaring at
+the opaque surface of some rough blue stuff, like serge. A curtain was
+fitted inside, heavy enough and long enough not to stir.
+
+A curtain! This unforeseen veil, baffling his curiosity checked his
+brusqueness. He did not fling it aside with an impatient movement; he
+only looked at it closely, as if its texture had to be examined before
+his hand could touch such stuff. In this interval of hesitation, he
+seemed to detect a flaw in the perfection of the silence, the faintest
+possible rustle, which his ears caught and instantly, in the effort of
+conscious listening, lost again. No! Everything was still inside and
+outside the house, only he had no longer the sense of being alone there.
+
+When he put out his hand towards the motionless folds it was with
+extreme caution, and merely to push the stuff aside a little, advancing
+his head at the same time to peep within. A moment of complete
+immobility ensued. Then, without anything else of him stirring,
+Ricardo's head shrank back on his shoulders, his arm descended slowly to
+his side. There was a woman in there. The very woman! Lighted dimly
+by the reflection of the outer glare, she loomed up strangely big and
+shadowy at the other end of the long, narrow room. With her back to
+the door, she was doing her hair with bare arms uplifted. One of them
+gleamed pearly white; the other detached its perfect form in black
+against the unshuttered, uncurtained square window-hole. She was there,
+her fingers busy with her dark hair, utterly unconscious, exposed and
+defenceless--and tempting.
+
+Ricardo drew back one foot and pressed his elbows close to his sides;
+his chest started heaving convulsively as if he were wrestling or
+running a race; his body began to sway gently back and forth. The
+self-restraint was at an end: his psychology must have its way. The
+instinct for the feral spring could no longer be denied. Ravish or
+kill--it was all one to him, as long as by the act he liberated the
+suffering soul of savagery repressed for so long. After a quick glance
+over his shoulder, which hunters of big game tell us no lion or tiger
+omits to give before charging home, Ricardo charged, head down, straight
+at the curtain. The stuff, tossed up violently by his rush, settled
+itself with a slow, floating descent into vertical folds, motionless,
+without a shudder even, in the still, warm air.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWO
+
+The clock--which once upon a time had measured the hours of philosophic
+meditation--could not have ticked away more than five seconds when Wang
+materialized within the living-room. His concern primarily was with the
+delayed breakfast, but at once his slanting eyes became immovably fixed
+upon the unstirring curtain. For it was behind it that he had located
+the strange, deadened scuffling sounds which filled the empty room. The
+slanting eyes of his race could not achieve a round, amazed stare, but
+they remained still, dead still, and his impassive yellow face grew all
+at once careworn and lean with the sudden strain of intense, doubtful,
+frightened watchfulness. Contrary impulses swayed his body, rooted to
+the floor-mats. He even went so far as to extend his hand towards the
+curtain. He could not reach it, and he didn't make the necessary step
+forward.
+
+The mysterious struggle was going on with confused thuds of bare feet,
+in a mute wrestling match, no human sound, hiss, groan, murmur, or
+exclamation coming through the curtain. A chair fell over, not with a
+crash but lightly, as if just grazed, and a faint metallic ring of the
+tin bath succeeded. Finally the tense silence, as of two adversaries
+locked in a deadly grip, was ended by the heavy, dull thump of a soft
+body flung against the inner partition of planks. It seemed to shake
+the whole bungalow. By that time, walking backward, his eyes, his
+very throat, strained with fearful excitement, his extended arm still
+pointing at the curtain, Wang had disappeared through the back door.
+Once out in the compound, he bolted round the end of the house. Emerging
+innocently between the two bungalows he lingered and lounged in the
+open, where anybody issuing from any of the dwellings was bound to see
+him--a self-possessed Chinaman idling there, with nothing but perhaps an
+unserved breakfast on his mind.
+
+It was at this time that Wang made up his mind to give up all connection
+with Number One, a man not only disarmed but already half vanquished.
+Till that morning he had had doubts as to his course of action, but this
+overheard scuffle decided the question. Number One was a doomed man--one
+of those beings whom it is unlucky to help. Even as he walked in the
+open with a fine air of unconcern, Wang wondered that no sound of any
+sort was to be heard inside the house. For all he knew, the white woman
+might have been scuffling in there with an evil spirit, which had of
+course killed her. For nothing visible came out of the house he watched
+out of the slanting corner of his eye. The sunshine and the silence
+outside the bungalow reigned undisturbed.
+
+But in the house the silence of the big room would not have struck an
+acute ear as perfect. It was troubled by a stir so faint that it could
+hardly be called a ghost of whispering from behind the curtain.
+
+Ricardo, feeling his throat with tender care, breathed out admiringly:
+
+“You have fingers like steel. Jimminy! You have muscles like a giant!”
+
+Luckily for Lena, Ricardo's onset had been so sudden--she was winding
+her two heavy tresses round her head--that she had no time to lower her
+arms. This, which saved them from being pinned to her sides, gave her a
+better chance to resist. His spring had nearly thrown her down. Luckily,
+again, she was standing so near the wall that, though she was driven
+against it headlong, yet the shock was not heavy enough to knock all the
+breath out of her body. On the contrary, it helped her first instinctive
+attempt to drive her assailant backward.
+
+After the first gasp of a surprise that was really too over-powering for
+a cry, she was never in doubt of the nature of her danger. She defended
+herself in the full, clear knowledge of it, from the force of instinct
+which is the true source of every great display of energy, and with a
+determination which could hardly have been expected from a girl who,
+cornered in a dim corridor by the red-faced, stammering Schomberg, had
+trembled with shame, disgust, and fear; had drooped, terrified, before
+mere words spluttered out odiously by a man who had never in his life
+laid his big paw on her.
+
+This new enemy's attack was simple, straightforward violence. It was not
+the slimy, underhand plotting to deliver her up like a slave, which
+had sickened her heart and had made her feel in her loneliness that her
+oppressors were too many for her. She was no longer alone in the world
+now. She resisted without a moment of faltering, because she was no
+longer deprived of moral support; because she was a human being who
+counted; because she was no longer defending herself for herself alone;
+because of the faith that had been born in her--the faith in the man of
+her destiny, and perhaps in the Heaven which had sent him so wonderfully
+to cross her path.
+
+She had defended herself principally by maintaining a desperate,
+murderous clutch on Ricardo's windpipe, till she felt a sudden
+relaxation of the terrific hug in which he stupidly and ineffectually
+persisted to hold her. Then with a supreme effort of her arms and of
+her suddenly raised knee, she sent him flying against the partition.
+The cedar-wood chest stood in the way, and Ricardo, with a thump which
+boomed hollow through the whole bungalow, fell on it in a sitting
+posture, half strangled, and exhausted not so much by the efforts as by
+the emotions of the struggle.
+
+With the recoil of her exerted strength, she too reeled, staggered back,
+and sat on the edge of the bed. Out of breath, but calm and unabashed,
+she busied herself in readjusting under her arms the brown and yellow
+figured Celebes sarong, the tuck of which had come undone during the
+fight. Then, folding her bare arms tightly on her breast, she leaned
+forward on her crossed legs, determined and without fear.
+
+Ricardo, leaning forward too, his nervous force gone, crestfallen like a
+beast of prey that has missed its spring, met her big grey eyes looking
+at him--wide open, observing, mysterious--from under the dark arches of
+her courageous eyebrows. Their faces were not a foot apart. He ceased
+feeling about his aching throat and dropped the palms of his hands
+heavily on his knees. He was not looking at her bare shoulders, at her
+strong arms; he was looking down at the floor. He had lost one of his
+straw slippers. A chair with a white dress on it had been overturned.
+These, with splashes of water on the floor out of a brusquely misplaced
+sponge-bath, were the only traces of the struggle.
+
+Ricardo swallowed twice consciously, as if to make sure of his throat
+before he spoke again:
+
+“All right. I never meant to hurt you--though I am no joker when it
+comes to it.”
+
+He pulled up the leg of his pyjamas to exhibit the strapped knife.
+She glanced at it without moving her head, and murmured with scornful
+bitterness:
+
+“Ah, yes--with that thing stuck in my side. In no other way.”
+
+He shook his head with a shamefaced smile.
+
+“Listen! I am quiet now. Straight--I am. I don't need to explain
+why--you know how it is. And I can see, now, this wasn't the way with
+you.”
+
+She made no sound. Her still, upward gaze had a patient, mournfulness
+which troubled him like a suggestion of an inconceivable depth. He added
+thoughtfully:
+
+“You are not going to make a noise about this silly try of mine?”
+
+She moved her head the least bit.
+
+“Jee-miny! You are a wonder--” he murmured earnestly, relieved more than
+she could have guessed.
+
+Of course, if she had attempted to run out, he would have stuck the
+knife between her shoulders, to stop her screaming; but all the fat
+would have been in the fire, the business utterly spoiled, and the rage
+of the governor--especially when he learned the cause--boundless. A
+woman that does not make a noise after an attempt of that kind has
+tacitly condoned the offence. Ricardo had no small vanities. But
+clearly, if she would pass it over like this, then he could not be so
+utterly repugnant to her. He felt flattered. And she didn't seem afraid
+of him either. He already felt almost tender towards the girl--that
+plucky, fine girl who had not tried to run screaming from him.
+
+“We shall be friends yet. I don't give you up. Don't think it. Friends
+as friends can be!” he whispered confidently. “Jee-miny! You aren't a
+tame one. Neither am I. You will find that out before long.”
+
+He could not know that if she had not run out, it was because that
+morning, under the stress of growing uneasiness at the presence of the
+incomprehensible visitors, Heyst had confessed to her that it was his
+revolver he had been looking for in the night; that it was gone, that he
+was a disarmed, defenceless man. She had hardly comprehended the meaning
+of his confession. Now she understood better what it meant. The effort
+of her self-control, her stillness, impressed Ricardo. Suddenly she
+spoke:
+
+“What are you after?”
+
+He did not raise his eyes. His hands reposing on his knees, his drooping
+head, something reflective in his pose, suggested the weariness of a
+simple soul, the fatigue of a mental rather than physical contest. He
+answered the direct question by a direct statement, as if he were too
+tired to dissemble:
+
+“After the swag.”
+
+The word was strange to her. The veiled ardour of her grey gaze from
+under the dark eyebrows never left Ricardo's.
+
+“A swag?” she murmured quietly. “What's that?”
+
+“Why, swag, plunder--what your gentleman has been pinching right and
+left for years--the pieces. Don't you know? This!”
+
+Without looking up, he made the motion of counting money into the
+palm of his hand. She lowered her eyes slightly to observe this bit
+of pantomime, but returned them to his face at once. Then, in a mere
+breath:
+
+“How do you know anything about him?” she asked, concealing her puzzled
+alarm. “What has it got to do with you?”
+
+“Everything,” was Ricardo's concise answer, in a low, emphatic whisper.
+He reflected that this girl was really his best hope. Out of the unfaded
+impression of past violence there was growing the sort of sentiment
+which prevents a man from being indifferent to a woman he has once held
+in his arms--if even against her will--and still more so if she has
+pardoned the outrage. It becomes then a sort of bond. He felt positively
+the need to confide in her--a subtle trait of masculinity, this almost
+physical need of trust which can exist side by side with the most brutal
+readiness of suspicion.
+
+“It's a game of grab--see?” he went on, with a new inflection of
+intimacy in his murmur. He was looking straight at her now.
+
+“That fat, tame slug of a gin-slinger, Schomberg, put us up to it.”
+
+So strong is the impression of helpless and persecuted misery, that the
+girl who had fought down a savage assault without faltering could not
+completely repress a shudder at the mere sound of the abhorred name.
+
+Ricardo became more rapid and confidential:
+
+“He wants to pay him off--pay both of you, at that; so he told me. He
+was hot after you. He would have given all he had into those hands of
+yours that have nearly strangled me. But you couldn't, eh? Nohow--what?”
+ He paused. “So, rather than--you followed a gentleman?”
+
+He noticed a slight movement of her head and spoke quickly.
+
+“Same here--rather than be a wage-slave. Only these foreigners aren't to
+be trusted. You're too good for him. A man that will rob his best
+chum?” She raised her head. He went on, well pleased with his progress,
+whispering hurriedly: “Yes. I know all about him. So you may guess how
+he's likely to treat a woman after a bit!”
+
+He did not know that he was striking terror into her breast now. Still
+the grey eyes remained fixed on him unmovably watchful, as if sleepy
+under the white forehead. She was beginning to understand. His words
+conveyed a definite, dreadful meaning to her mind, which he proceeded to
+enlighten further in a convinced murmur.
+
+“You and I are made to understand each other. Born alike, bred alike, I
+guess. You are not tame. Same here! You have been chucked out into this
+rotten world of 'yporcrits. Same here!”
+
+Her stillness, her appalled stillness, wore to him an air of fascinated
+attention. He asked abruptly:
+
+“Where is it?”
+
+She made an effort to breathe out:
+
+“Where's what?”
+
+His tone expressed excited secrecy.
+
+“The swag--plunder--pieces. It's a game of grab. We must have it; but it
+isn't easy, and so you will have to lend a hand. Come! is it kept in the
+house?”
+
+As often with women, her wits were sharpened by the very terror of the
+glimpsed menace. She shook her head negatively.
+
+“No.”
+
+“Sure?”
+
+“Sure,” she said.
+
+“Ay! Thought so. Does your gentleman trust you?”
+
+Again she shook her head.
+
+“Blamed 'yporcrit,” he said feelingly, and then reflected: “He's one of
+the tame ones, ain't he?”
+
+“You had better find out for yourself,” she said.
+
+“You trust me. I don't want to die before you and I have made friends.”
+ This was said with a strange air of feline gallantry. Then, tentatively:
+“But he could be brought to trust you, couldn't he?”
+
+“Trust me?” she said, in a tone which bordered on despair, but which he
+mistook for derision.
+
+“Stand in with us,” he urged. “Give the chuck to all this blamed
+'yporcrisy. Perhaps, without being trusted, you have managed to find out
+something already, eh?”
+
+“Perhaps I have,” she uttered with lips that seemed to her to be
+freezing fast.
+
+Ricardo now looked at her calm face with something like respect. He was
+even a little awed by her stillness, by her economy of words. Womanlike,
+she felt the effect she had produced, the effect of knowing much and of
+keeping all her knowledge in reserve. So far, somehow, this had come,
+about of itself. Thus encouraged, directed in the way of duplicity, the
+refuge of the weak, she made a heroically conscious effort and forced
+her stiff, cold lips into a smile.
+
+Duplicity--the refuge of the weak and the cowardly, but of the disarmed,
+too! Nothing stood between the enchanted dream of her existence and
+a cruel catastrophe but her duplicity. It seemed to her that the man
+sitting there before her was an unavoidable presence, which had attended
+all her life. He was the embodied evil of the world. She was not ashamed
+of her duplicity. With a woman's frank courage, as soon as she saw
+that opening she threw herself into it without reserve, with only one
+doubt--that of her own strength. She was appalled by the situation; but
+already all her aroused femininity, understanding that whether Heyst
+loved her or not she loved him, and feeling that she had brought this on
+his head, faced the danger with a passionate desire to defend her own.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THREE
+
+To Ricardo the girl had been so unforeseen that he was unable to bring
+upon her the light of his critical faculties. Her smile appeared to him
+full of promise. He had not expected her to be what she was. Who, from
+the talk he had heard, could expect to meet a girl like this? She was
+a blooming miracle, he said to himself, familiarly, yet with a tinge
+of respect. She was no meat for the likes of that tame, respectable
+gin-slinger. Ricardo grew hot with indignation. Her courage, her
+physical strength, demonstrated at the cost of his discomfiture,
+commanded his sympathy. He felt himself drawn to her by the proofs
+of her amazing spirit. Such a girl! She had a strong soul; and her
+reflective disposition to throw over her connection proved that she was
+no hypocrite.
+
+“Is your gentleman a good shot?” he said, looking down on the floor
+again, as if indifferent.
+
+She hardly understood the phrase; but in its form it suggested some
+accomplishment. It was safe to whisper an affirmative.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Mine, too--and better than good,” Ricardo murmured, and then, in a
+confidential burst: “I am not so good at it, but I carry a pretty deadly
+thing about me, all the same!”
+
+He tapped his leg. She was past the stage of shudders now. Stiff all
+over, unable even to move her eyes, she felt an awful mental tension
+which was like blank forgetfulness. Ricardo tried to influence her in
+his own way.
+
+“And my gentleman is not the sort that would drop me. He ain't no
+foreigner; whereas you, with your baron, you don't know what's before
+you--or, rather, being a woman, you know only too well. Much better
+not to wait for the chuck. Pile in with us and get your share--of the
+plunder, I mean. You have some notion about it already.”
+
+She felt that if she as much as hinted by word or sign that there was no
+such thing on the island, Heyst's life wouldn't be worth half an hour's
+purchase; but all power of combining words had vanished in the tension
+of her mind. Words themselves were too difficult to think of--all except
+the word “yes,” the saving word! She whispered it with not a feature of
+her face moving. To Ricardo the faint and concise sound proved a cool,
+reserved assent, more worth having from that amazing mistress of herself
+than a thousand words from any other woman. He thought with exultation
+that he had come upon one in a million--in ten millions! His whisper
+became frankly entreating.
+
+“That's good! Now all you've got to do is to make sure where he keeps
+his swag. Only do be quick about it! I can't stand much longer this
+crawling-on-the-stomach business so as not to scare your gentleman. What
+do you think a fellow is--a reptile?”
+
+She stared without seeing anyone, as a person in the night sits staring
+and listening to deadly sounds, to evil incantations. And always in her
+head there was that tension of the mind trying to get hold of something,
+of a saving idea which seemed to be so near and could not be captured.
+Suddenly she seized it. Yes--she had to get that man out of the
+house. At that very moment, raised outside, not very near, but heard
+distinctly, Heyst's voice uttered the words:
+
+“Have you been looking out for me, Wang?”
+
+It was for her like a flash of lightning framed in the darkness which
+had beset her on all sides, showing a deadly precipice right under her
+feet. With a convulsive movement she sat up straight, but had no power
+to rise. Ricardo, on the contrary, was on his feet on the instant, as
+noiseless as a cat. His yellow eyes gleamed, gliding here and there;
+but he too seemed unable to make another movement. Only his moustaches
+stirred visibly, like the feelers of some animal.
+
+Wang's answer, “Ya tuan,” was heard by the two in the room, but more
+faintly. Then Heyst again:
+
+“All right! You may bring the coffee in. Mem Putih out in the room yet?”
+
+To this question Wang made no answer.
+
+Ricardo's and the girl's eyes met, utterly without expression, all their
+faculties being absorbed in listening for the first sound of Heyst's
+footsteps, for any sound outside which would mean that Ricardo's retreat
+was cut off. Both understood perfectly well that Wang must have gone
+round the house, and that he was now at the back, making it impossible
+for Ricardo to slip out unseen that way before Heyst came in at the
+front.
+
+A darkling shade settled on the face of the devoted secretary. Here was
+the business utterly spoiled! It was the gloom of anger, and even of
+apprehension. He would perhaps have made a dash for it through the back
+door, if Heyst had not been heard ascending the front steps. He climbed
+them slowly, very slowly, like a man who is discouraged or weary--or
+simply thoughtful; and Ricardo had a mental vision of his face, with its
+martial moustache, the lofty forehead, the impassive features, and the
+quiet, meditative eyes. Trapped! Confound it! After all, perhaps the
+governor was right. Women had to be shunned. Fooling with this one had
+apparently ruined the whole business. For, trapped as he was he might
+just as well kill, since, anyhow, to be seen was to be unmasked. But he
+was too fair-minded to be angry with the girl.
+
+Heyst had paused on the veranda, or in the very doorway.
+
+“I shall be shot down like a dog if I ain't quick,” Ricardo muttered
+excitedly to the girl.
+
+He stooped to get hold of his knife; and the next moment would have
+hurled himself out through the curtain, nearly, as prompt and fully as
+deadly to Heyst as an unexpected thunderbolt. The feel more than the
+strength of the girl's hand, clutching at his shoulder, checked him. He
+swung round, crouching with a yellow upward glare. Ah! Was she turning
+against him?
+
+He would have stuck his knife into the hollow of her bare throat if
+he had not seen her other hand pointing to the window. It was a long
+opening, high up, close under the ceiling almost, with a single pivoting
+shutter.
+
+While he was still looking at it she moved noiselessly away, picking
+up the overturned chair, and placed it under the wall. Then she looked
+round; but he didn't need to be beckoned to. In two long, tiptoeing
+strides he was at her side.
+
+“Be quick!” she gasped.
+
+He seized her hand and wrung it with all the force of his dumb
+gratitude, as a man does to a chum when there is no time for words. Then
+he mounted the chair. Ricardo was short--too short to get over without a
+noisy scramble. He hesitated an instant; she, watchful, bore rigidly on
+the seat with her beautiful bare arms, while, light and sure, he used
+the back of the chair as a ladder. The masses of her brown hair fell all
+about her face.
+
+Footsteps resounded in the next room, and Heyst's voice, not very loud,
+called her by name.
+
+“Lena!”
+
+“Yes! In a minute,” she answered with a particular intonation which she
+knew would prevent Heyst from coming in at once.
+
+When she looked up, Ricardo had vanished, letting himself down outside
+so lightly that she had not heard the slightest noise. She stood up
+then, bewildered, frightened, as if awakened from a drugged sleep, with
+heavy, downcast, unseeing eyes, her fortitude tired out, her imagination
+as if dead within her and unable to keep her fear alive.
+
+Heyst moved about aimlessly in the other room. This sound roused her
+exhausted wits. At once she began to think, hear, see; and what she
+saw--or rather recognized, for her eyes had been resting on it all the
+time--was Ricardo's straw slipper, lost in the scuffle, lying near the
+bath. She had just time to step forward and plant her foot on it when
+the curtains shook, and, pushed aside, disclosed Heyst in the doorway.
+
+Out of the appeased enchantment of the senses she had found with him,
+like a sort of bewitched state, his danger brought a sensation of warmth
+to her breast. She felt something stir in there, something profound,
+like a new sort of life.
+
+The room was in partial darkness, Ricardo having accidentally swung
+the pivoted shutter as he went out of the window. Heyst peered from the
+doorway.
+
+“Why, you haven't done your hair yet,” he said.
+
+“I won't stop to do it now. I shan't be long,” she replied steadily, and
+remained still, feeling Ricardo's slipper under the sole of her foot.
+
+Heyst, with a movement of retreat, let the curtain drop slowly. On the
+instant she stooped for the slipper, and, with it in her hand, spun
+round wildly, looking for some hiding-place; but there was no such spot
+in the bare room. The chest, the leather bunk, a dress or two of hers
+hanging on pegs--there was no place where the merest hazard might not
+guide Heyst's hand at any moment. Her wildly roaming eyes were caught
+by the half-closed window. She ran to it, and by raising herself on her
+toes was able to reach the shutter with her fingertips. She pushed it
+square, stole back to the middle of the room, and, turning about, swung
+her arm, regulating the force of the throw so as not to let the slipper
+fly too far out and hit the edge of the overhanging eaves. It was a
+task of the nicest judgement for the muscles of those round arms, still
+quivering from the deadly wrestle with a man, for that brain, tense with
+the excitement of the situation and for the unstrung nerves flickering
+darkness before her eyes. At last the slipper left her hand. As soon as
+it passed the opening, it was out of her sight. She listened. She did
+not hear it strike anything; it just vanished, as if it had wings to fly
+on through the air. Not a sound! It had gone clear.
+
+Her valiant arms hanging close against her side, she stood as if turned
+into stone. A faint whistle reached her ears. The forgetful Ricardo,
+becoming very much aware of his loss, had been hanging about in great
+anxiety, which was relieved by the appearance of the slipper flying from
+under the eaves; and now, thoughtfully, he had ventured a whistle to put
+her mind at ease.
+
+Suddenly the girl reeled forward. She saved herself from a fall only by
+embracing with both arms one of the tall, roughly carved posts holding
+the mosquito net above the bed. For a long time she clung to it, with
+her forehead leaning against the wood. One side of her loosened sarong
+had slipped down as low as her hip. The long brown tresses of her hair
+fell in lank wisps, as if wet, almost black against her white body. Her
+uncovered flank, damp with the sweat of anguish and fatigue, gleamed
+coldly with the immobility of polished marble in the hot, diffused
+light falling through the window above her head--a dim reflection of the
+consuming, passionate blaze of sunshine outside, all aquiver with the
+effort to set the earth on fire, to burn it to ashes.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FOUR
+
+Heyst, seated at the table with his chin on his breast, raised his head
+at the faint rustle of Lena's dress. He was startled by the dead pallor
+of her cheeks, by something lifeless in her eyes, which looked at
+him strangely, without recognition. But to his anxious inquiries she
+answered reassuringly that there was nothing the matter with her,
+really. She had felt giddy on rising. She had even had a moment of
+faintness, after her bath. She had to sit down to wait for it to pass.
+This had made her late dressing.
+
+“I didn't try to do my hair. I didn't want to keep you waiting any
+longer,” she said.
+
+He was unwilling to press her with questions about her health, since she
+seemed to make light of this indisposition. She had not done her hair,
+but she had brushed it, and had tied it with a ribbon behind. With her
+forehead uncovered, she looked very young, almost a child, a careworn
+child; a child with something on its mind.
+
+What surprised Heyst was the non-appearance of Wang. The Chinaman had
+always materialized at the precise moment of his service, neither too
+soon nor too late. This time the usual miracle failed. What was the
+meaning of this?
+
+Heyst raised his voice--a thing he disliked doing. It was promptly
+answered from the compound:
+
+“Ada tuan!”
+
+Lena, leaning on her elbow, with her eyes on her plate, did not seem to
+hear anything. When Wang entered with a tray, his narrow eyes, tilted
+inward by the prominence of salient cheek-bones, kept her under stealthy
+observation all the time. Neither the one nor the other of that white
+couple paid the slightest attention to him and he withdrew without
+having heard them exchange a single word. He squatted on his heels on
+the back veranda. His Chinaman's mind, very clear but not far-reaching,
+was made up according to the plain reason of things, such as it appeared
+to him in the light of his simple feeling for self-preservation,
+untrammelled by any notions of romantic honour or tender conscience. His
+yellow hands, lightly clasped, hung idly between his knees. The graves
+of Wang's ancestors were far away, his parents were dead, his elder
+brother was a soldier in the yamen of some Mandarin away in Formosa. No
+one near by had a claim on his veneration or his obedience. He had been
+for years a labouring restless vagabond. His only tie in the world
+was the Alfuro woman, in exchange for whom he had given away some
+considerable part of his hard-earned substance; and his duty, in reason,
+could be to no one but himself.
+
+The scuffle behind the curtain was a thing of bad augury for that Number
+One for whom the Chinaman had neither love nor dislike. He had been awed
+enough by that development to hang back with the coffee-pot till at last
+the white man was induced to call him in. Wang went in with curiosity.
+Certainly, the white woman looked as if she had been wrestling with
+a spirit which had managed to tear half her blood out of her before
+letting her go. As to the man, Wang had long looked upon him as being in
+some sort bewitched; and now he was doomed. He heard their voices in
+the room. Heyst was urging the girl to go and lie down again. He was
+extremely concerned. She had eaten nothing.
+
+“The best thing for you. You really must!”
+
+She sat listless, shaking her head from time to time negatively, as if
+nothing could be any good. But he insisted; she saw the beginning of
+wonder in his eyes, and suddenly gave way.
+
+“Perhaps I had better.”
+
+She did not want to arouse his wonder, which would lead him straight to
+suspicion. He must not suspect!
+
+Already, with the consciousness of her love for this man, of that
+something rapturous and profound going beyond the mere embrace, there
+was born in her a woman's innate mistrust of masculinity, of that
+seductive strength allied to an absurd, delicate shrinking from the
+recognition of the naked necessity of facts, which never yet frightened
+a woman worthy of the name. She had no plan; but her mind, quieted down
+somewhat by the very effort to preserve outward composure for his sake,
+perceived that her behaviour had secured, at any rate, a short period of
+safety. Perhaps because of the similarity of their miserable origin in
+the dregs of mankind, she had understood Ricardo perfectly. He would
+keep quiet for a time now. In this momentarily soothing certitude her
+bodily fatigue asserted itself, the more overpoweringly since its cause
+was not so much the demand on her strength as the awful suddenness of
+the stress she had had to meet. She would have tried to overcome it
+from the mere instinct of resistance, if it had not been for Heyst's
+alternate pleadings and commands. Before this eminently masculine
+fussing she felt the woman's need to give way, the sweetness of
+surrender.
+
+“I will do anything you like,” she said.
+
+Getting up, she was surprised by a wave of languid weakness that came
+over her, embracing and enveloping her like warm water, with a noise in
+her ears as of a breaking sea.
+
+“You must help me along,” she added quickly.
+
+While he put his arm round her waist--not by any means an uncommon thing
+for him to do--she found a special satisfaction in the feeling of being
+thus sustained. She abandoned all her weight to that encircling and
+protecting pressure, while a thrill went through her at the sudden
+thought that it was she who would have to protect him, to be the
+defender of a man who was strong enough to lift her bodily, as he was
+doing even then in his two arms. For Heyst had done this as soon as they
+had crept through the doorway of the room. He thought it was quicker
+and simpler to carry her the last step or two. He had grown really too
+anxious to be aware of the effort. He lifted her high and deposited her
+on the bed, as one lays a child on its side in a cot. Then he sat down
+on the edge, masking his concern with a smile which obtained no response
+from the dreamy immobility of her eyes. But she sought his hand, seized
+it eagerly; and while she was pressing it with all the force of
+which she was capable, the sleep she needed overtook her suddenly,
+overwhelmingly, as it overtakes a child in a cot, with her lips parted
+for a safe, endearing word which she had thought of but had no time to
+utter.
+
+The usual flaming silence brooded over Samburan.
+
+“What in the world is this new mystery?” murmured Heyst to himself,
+contemplating her deep slumber.
+
+It was so deep, this enchanted sleep, that when some time afterwards he
+gently tried to open her fingers and free his hand, he succeeded without
+provoking the slightest stir.
+
+“There is some very simple explanation, no doubt,” he thought, as he
+stole out into the living-room.
+
+Absent-mindedly he pulled a book out of the top shelf, and sat down with
+it; but even after he had opened it on his knee, and had been staring
+at the pages for a time, he had not the slightest idea of what it was
+about. He stared and stared at the crowded, parallel lines. It was only
+when, raising his eyes for no particular reason, he saw Wang standing
+motionless on the other side of the table, that he regained complete
+control of his faculties.
+
+“Oh, yes,” he said, as if suddenly reminded of a forgotten appointment
+of a not particularly welcome sort.
+
+He waited a little, and then, with reluctant curiosity, forced himself
+to ask the silent Wang what he had to say. He had some idea that the
+matter of the vanished revolver would come up at last; but the guttural
+sounds which proceeded from the Chinaman did not refer to that delicate
+subject. His speech was concerned with cups, saucers, plates, forks, and
+knives. All these things had been put away in the cupboards on the
+back veranda, where they belonged, perfectly clean, “all plopel.” Heyst
+wondered at the scrupulosity of a man who was about to abandon him;
+for he was not surprised to hear Wang conclude the account of his
+stewardship with the words:
+
+“I go now.”
+
+“Oh! You go now?” said Heyst, leaning back, his book on his knees.
+
+“Yes. Me no likee. One man, two man, three man--no can do! Me go now.”
+
+“What's frightening you away like this?” asked Heyst, while through his
+mind flashed the hope that something enlightening might come from that
+being so unlike himself, taking contact with the world with a simplicity
+and directness of which his own mind was not capable. “Why?” he went on.
+“You are used to white men. You know them well.”
+
+“Yes. Me savee them,” assented Wang inscrutably. “Me savee plenty.”
+
+All that he really knew was his own mind. He had made it up to withdraw
+himself and the Alfuro woman from the uncertainties of the relations
+which were going to establish themselves between those white men. It
+was Pedro who had been the first cause of Wang's suspicion and fear. The
+Chinaman had seen wild men. He had penetrated, in the train of a Chinese
+pedlar, up one or two of the Bornean rivers into the country of the
+Dyaks. He had also been in the interior of Mindanao, where there are
+people who live in trees--savages, no better than animals; but a
+hairy brute like Pedro, with his great fangs and ferocious growls, was
+altogether beyond his conception of anything that could be looked upon
+as human. The strong impression made on him by Pedro was the prime
+inducement which had led Wang to purloin the revolver. Reflection on
+the general situation, and on the insecurity of Number One, came later,
+after he had obtained possession of the revolver and of the box of
+cartridges out of the table drawer in the living-room.
+
+“Oh, you savee plenty about white men,” Heyst went on in a slightly
+bantering tone, after a moment of silent reflection in which he had
+confessed to himself that the recovery of the revolver was not to be
+thought of, either by persuasion or by some more forcible means. “You
+speak in that fashion, but you are frightened of those white men over
+there.”
+
+“Me no flightened,” protested Wang raucously, throwing up his
+head--which gave to his throat a more strained, anxious appearance than
+ever. “Me no likee,” he added in a quieter tone. “Me velly sick.”
+
+He put his hand over the region under the breast-bone.
+
+“That,” said Heyst, serenely positive, “belong one piecee lie. That
+isn't proper man-talk at all. And after stealing my revolver, too!”
+
+He had suddenly decided to speak about it, because this frankness could
+not make the situation much worse than it was. He did not suppose for a
+moment that Wang had the revolver anywhere about his person; and after
+having thought the matter over, he had arrived at the conclusion that
+the Chinaman never meant to use the weapon against him. After a slight
+start, because the direct charge had taken him unawares, Wang tore open
+the front of his jacket with a convulsive show of indignation.
+
+“No hab got. Look see!” he mouthed in pretended anger.
+
+He slapped his bare chest violently; he uncovered his very ribs, all
+astir with the panting of outraged virtue; his smooth stomach heaved
+with indignation. He started his wide blue breeches flapping about his
+yellow calves. Heyst watched him quietly.
+
+“I never said you had it on you,” he observed, without raising his
+voice; “but the revolver is gone from where I kept it.”
+
+“Me no savee levolvel,” Wang said obstinately.
+
+The book lying open on Heyst's knee slipped suddenly and he made a
+sharp movement to catch it up. Wang was unable to see the reason of
+this because of the table, and leaped away from what seemed to him a
+threatening symptom. When Heyst looked up, the Chinaman was already at
+the door facing the room, not frightened, but alert.
+
+“What's the matter?” asked Heyst.
+
+Wang nodded his shaven head significantly at the curtain closing the
+doorway of the bedroom.
+
+“Me no likee,” he repeated.
+
+“What the devil do you mean?” Heyst was genuinely amazed. “Don't like
+what?”
+
+Wang pointed a long lemon-coloured finger at the motionless folds.
+
+“Two,” he said.
+
+“Two what? I don't understand.”
+
+“Suppose you savee, you no like that fashion. Me savee plenty. Me go
+now.”
+
+Heyst had risen from his chair, but Wang kept his ground in the doorway
+for a little longer. His almond-shaped eyes imparted to his face an
+expression of soft and sentimental melancholy. The muscles of his throat
+moved visibly while he uttered a distinct and guttural “Goodbye” and
+vanished from Number One's sight.
+
+The Chinaman's departure altered the situation. Heyst reflected on what
+would be best to do in view of that fact. For a long time he hesitated;
+then, shrugging his shoulders wearily, he walked out on the veranda,
+down the steps, and continued at a steady gait, with a thoughtful mien,
+in the direction of his guests' bungalow. He wanted to make an important
+communication to them, and he had no other object--least of all to give
+them the shock of a surprise call. Nevertheless, their brutish henchman
+not being on watch, it was Heyst's fate to startle Mr. Jones and his
+secretary by his sudden appearance in the doorway. Their conversation
+must have been very interesting to prevent them from hearing the
+visitor's approach. In the dim room--the shutters were kept constantly
+closed against the heat--Heyst saw them start apart. It was Mr. Jones
+who spoke:
+
+“Ah, here you are again! Come in, come in!”
+
+Heyst, taking his hat off in the doorway, entered the room.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FIVE
+
+Waking up suddenly, Lena looked, without raising her head from the
+pillow, at the room in which she was alone. She got up quickly, as if
+to counteract the awful sinking of her heart by the vigorous use of her
+limbs. But this sinking was only momentary. Mistress of herself from
+pride, from love, from necessity, and also because of a woman's
+vanity in self-sacrifice, she met Heyst, returning from the strangers'
+bungalow, with a clear glance and a smile.
+
+The smile he managed to answer, but, noticing that he avoided her eyes,
+she composed her lips and lowered her gaze. For the same reason she
+hastened to speak to him in a tone of indifference, which she put on
+without effort, as if she had grown adept in duplicity since sunrise.
+
+“You have been over there again?”
+
+“I have. I thought--but you had better know first that we have lost Wang
+for good.”
+
+She repeated “For good?” as if she had not understood.
+
+“For good or evil--I shouldn't know which if you were to ask me. He has
+dismissed himself. He's gone.”
+
+“You expected him to go, though, didn't you?”
+
+Heyst sat down on the other side of the table.
+
+“Yes. I expected it as soon as I discovered that he had annexed my
+revolver. He says he hasn't taken it. That's untrue of course. A
+Chinaman would not see the sense of confessing under any circumstances.
+To deny any charge is a principle of right conduct; but he hardly
+expected to be believed. He was a little enigmatic at the last, Lena. He
+startled me.”
+
+Heyst paused. The girl seemed absorbed in her own thoughts.
+
+“He startled me,” repeated Heyst. She noted the anxiety in his tone, and
+turned her head slightly to look at him across the table.
+
+“It must have been something--to startle you,” she said. In the depth
+of her parted lips, like a ripe pomegranate, there was a gleam of white
+teeth.
+
+“It was only a single word--and some of his gestures. He had been making
+a good deal of noise. I wonder we didn't wake you up. How soundly you
+can sleep! I say, do you feel all right now?”
+
+“As fresh as can be,” she said, treating him to another deep gleam of
+a smile. “I heard no noise, and I'm glad of it. The way he talks in his
+harsh voice frightens me. I don't like all these foreign people.”
+
+“It was just before he went away--bolted out, I should say. He nodded
+and pointed at the curtain to our room. He knew you were there, of
+course. He seemed to think--he seemed to try to give me to understand
+that you were in special--well, danger. You know how he talks.”
+
+She said nothing; she made no sound, only the faint tinge of colour
+ebbed out of her cheek.
+
+“Yes,” Heyst went on. “He seemed to try to warn me. That must have been
+it. Did he imagine I had forgotten your existence? The only word he said
+was 'two'. It sounded so, at least. Yes, 'two'--and that he didn't like
+it.”
+
+“What does that mean?” she whispered.
+
+“We know what the word two means, don't we, Lena? We are two. Never
+were such a lonely two out of the world, my dear! He might have tried
+to remind me that he himself has a woman to look after. Why are you so
+pale, Lena?”
+
+“Am I pale?” she asked negligently.
+
+“You are.” Heyst was really anxious.
+
+“Well, it isn't from fright,” she protested truthfully.
+
+Indeed, what she felt was a sort of horror which left her absolutely
+in the full possession of all her faculties; more difficult to bear,
+perhaps, for that reason, but not paralysing to her fortitude.
+
+Heyst in his turn smiled at her.
+
+“I really don't know that there is any reason to be frightened.”
+
+“I mean I am not frightened for myself.”
+
+“I believe you are very plucky,” he said. The colour had returned to her
+face. “I” continued Heyst, “am so rebellious to outward impressions
+that I can't say that much about myself. I don't react with sufficient
+distinctness.” He changed his tone. “You know I went to see those men
+first thing this morning.”
+
+“I know. Be careful!” she murmured.
+
+“I wonder how one can be careful! I had a long talk with--but I don't
+believe you have seen them. One of them is a fantastically thin, long
+person, apparently ailing; I shouldn't wonder if he were really so. He
+makes rather a point of it in a mysterious manner. I imagine he must
+have suffered from tropical fevers, but not so much as he tries to make
+out. He's what people would call a gentleman. He seemed on the point of
+volunteering a tale of his adventures--for which I didn't ask him--but
+remarked that it was a long story; some other time, perhaps.
+
+“'I suppose you would like to know who I am?' he asked me.
+
+“I told him I would leave it to him, in a tone which, between gentlemen,
+could have left no doubt in his mind. He raised himself on his elbow--he
+was lying down on the camp-bed--and said:
+
+“'I am he who is--'”
+
+Lena seemed not to be listening; but when Heyst paused, she turned her
+head quickly to him. He took it for a movement of inquiry, but in this
+he was wrong. A great vagueness enveloped her impressions, but all her
+energy was concentrated on the struggle that she wanted to take upon
+herself, in a great exaltation of love and self-sacrifice, which is
+woman's sublime faculty; altogether on herself, every bit of it, leaving
+him nothing, not even the knowledge of what she did, if that were
+possible. She would have liked to lock him up by some stratagem. Had
+she known of some means to put him to sleep for days she would have used
+incantations or philtres without misgivings. He seemed to her too good
+for such contacts, and not sufficiently equipped. This last feeling had
+nothing to do with the material fact of the revolver being stolen. She
+could hardly appreciate that fact at its full value.
+
+Observing her eyes fixed and as if sightless--for the concentration on
+her purpose took all expression out of them--Heyst imagined it to be the
+effect of a great mental effort.
+
+“No use asking me what he meant, Lena; I don't know, and I did not
+ask him. The gentleman, as I have told you before, seems devoted to
+mystification. I said nothing, and he laid down his head again on
+the bundle of rugs he uses for a pillow. He affects a state of great
+weakness, but I suspect that he's perfectly capable of leaping to his
+feet if he likes. Having been ejected, he said, from his proper social
+sphere because he had refused to conform to certain usual conventions,
+he was a rebel now, and was coming and going up and down the earth. As
+I really did not want to listen to all this nonsense, I told him that
+I had heard that sort of story about somebody else before. His grin is
+really ghastly. He confessed that I was very far from the sort of man he
+expected to meet. Then he said:
+
+“'As to me, I am no blacker than the gentleman you are thinking of, and
+I have neither more nor less determination.'”
+
+Heyst looked across the table at Lena. Propped on her elbows, and
+holding her head in both hands, she moved it a little with an air of
+understanding.
+
+“Nothing could be plainer, eh?” said Heyst grimly. “Unless, indeed, this
+is his idea of a pleasant joke; for, when he finished speaking, he burst
+into a loud long laugh. I didn't join him!”
+
+“I wish you had,” she breathed out.
+
+“I didn't join him. It did not occur to me. I am not much of a
+diplomatist. It would probably have been wise, for, indeed, I believe
+he had said more than he meant to say, and was trying to take it back by
+this affected jocularity. Yet when one thinks of it, diplomacy without
+force in the background is but a rotten reed to lean upon. And I don't
+know whether I could have done it if I had thought of it. I don't know.
+It would have been against the grain. Could I have done it? I have lived
+too long within myself, watching the mere shadows and shades of life.
+To deceive a man on some issue which could be decided quicker, by his
+destruction while one is disarmed, helpless, without even the power to
+run away--no! That seems to me too degrading. And yet I have you here.
+I have your very existence in my keeping. What do you say, Lena? Would I
+be capable of throwing you to the lions to save my dignity?”
+
+She got up, walked quickly round the table, posed herself on his knees
+lightly, throwing one arm round his neck, and whispered in his ear:
+
+“You may if you like. And may be that's the only way I would consent to
+leave you. For something like that. If it were something no bigger than
+your little finger.”
+
+She gave him a light kiss on the lips and was gone before he could
+detain her. She regained her seat and propped her elbows again on the
+table. It was hard to believe that she had moved from the spot at all.
+The fleeting weight of her body on his knees, the hug round his neck,
+the whisper in his ear, the kiss on his lips, might have been the
+unsubstantial sensations of a dream invading the reality of waking life;
+a sort of charming mirage in the barren aridity of his thoughts. He
+hesitated to speak till she said, businesslike:
+
+“Well. And what then?”
+
+Heyst gave a start.
+
+“Oh, yes. I didn't join him. I let him have his laugh out by himself. He
+was shaking all over, like a merry skeleton, under a cotton sheet he was
+covered with--I believe in order to conceal the revolver that he had in
+his right hand. I didn't see it, but I have a distinct impression it was
+there in his fist. As he had not been looking at me for some time, but
+staring into a certain part of the room, I turned my head and saw a
+hairy, wild sort of creature which they take about with them, squatting
+on its heels in the angle of the walls behind me. He wasn't there when
+I came in. I didn't like the notion of that watchful monster behind my
+back. If I had been less at their mercy, I should certainly have changed
+my position. As things are now, to move would have been a mere weakness.
+So I remained where I was. The gentleman on the bed said he could assure
+me of one thing; and that was that his presence here was no more morally
+reprehensible than mine.
+
+“'We pursue the same ends,' he said, 'only perhaps I pursue them with
+more openness than you--with more simplicity.'
+
+“That's what he said,” Heyst went on, after looking at Lena in a sort of
+inquiring silence. “I asked him if he knew beforehand that I was living
+here; but he only gave me a ghastly grin. I didn't press him for an
+answer, Lena. I thought I had better not.”
+
+On her smooth forehead a ray of light always seemed to rest. Her loose
+hair, parted in the middle, covered the hands sustaining her head. She
+seemed spellbound by the interest of the narrative. Heyst did not pause
+long. He managed to continue his relation smoothly enough, beginning
+afresh with a piece of comment.
+
+“He would have lied impudently--and I detest being told a lie. It makes
+me uncomfortable. It's pretty clear that I am not fitted for the affairs
+of the wide world. But I did not want him to think that I accepted his
+presence too meekly, so I said that his comings or goings on the
+earth were none of my business, of course, except that I had a natural
+curiosity to know when he would find it convenient to resume them.
+
+“He asked me to look at the state he was in. Had I been all alone here,
+as they think I am, I should have laughed at him. But not being alone--I
+say, Lena, you are sure you haven't shown yourself where you could be
+seen?”
+
+“Certain,” she said promptly.
+
+He looked relieved.
+
+“You understand, Lena, that when I ask you to keep so strictly out of
+sight, it is because you are not for them to look at--to talk about. My
+poor Lena! I can't help that feeling. Do you understand it?”
+
+She moved her head slightly in a manner that was neither affirmative nor
+negative.
+
+“People will have to see me some day,” she said.
+
+“I wonder how long it will be possible for you to keep out of sight?”
+ murmured Heyst thoughtfully. He bent over the table. “Let me finish
+telling you. I asked him point blank what it was he wanted with me; he
+appeared extremely unwilling to come to the point. It was not really
+so pressing as all that, he said. His secretary, who was in fact his
+partner, was not present, having gone down to the wharf to look at
+their boat. Finally the fellow proposed that he should put off a certain
+communication he had to make till the day after tomorrow. I agreed;
+but I also told him that I was not at all anxious to hear it. I had no
+conception in what way his affairs could concern me.
+
+“'Ah, Mr. Heyst,' he said, 'you and I have much more in common than you
+think.'”
+
+Heyst struck the table with his fist unexpectedly.
+
+“It was a jeer; I am sure it was!”
+
+He seemed ashamed of this outburst and smiled faintly into the
+motionless eyes of the girl.
+
+“What could I have done--even if I had had my pockets full of
+revolvers?”
+
+She made an appreciative sign.
+
+“Killing's a sin, sure enough,” she murmured.
+
+“I went away,” Heyst continued. “I left him there, lying on his side
+with his eyes shut. When I got back here, I found you looking ill. What
+was it, Lena? You did give me a scare! Then I had the interview with
+Wang while you rested. You were sleeping quietly. I sat here to consider
+all these things calmly, to try to penetrate their inner meaning and
+their outward bearing. It struck me that the two days we have before
+us have the character of a sort of truce. The more I thought of it, the
+more I felt that this was tacitly understood between Jones and myself.
+It was to our advantage, if anything can be of advantage to people
+caught so completely unawares as we are. Wang was gone. He, at any rate,
+had declared himself, but as I did not know what he might take it into
+his head to do, I thought I had better warn these people that I was no
+longer responsible for the Chinaman. I did not want Mr. Wang making some
+move which would precipitate the action against us. Do you see my point
+of view?”
+
+She made a sign that she did. All her soul was wrapped in her passionate
+determination, in an exalted belief in herself--in the contemplation
+of her amazing opportunity to win the certitude, the eternity, of that
+man's love.
+
+“I never saw two men,” Heyst was saying, “more affected by a piece of
+information than Jones and his secretary, who was back in the bungalow
+by then. They had not heard me come up. I told them I was sorry to
+intrude.
+
+“'Not at all! Not at all,' said Jones.
+
+“The secretary backed away into a corner and watched me like a wary cat.
+In fact, they both were visibly on their guard.
+
+“'I am come,' I told them, 'to let you know that my servant has
+deserted--gone off.'
+
+“At first they looked at each other as if they had not understood what I
+was saying; but very soon they seemed quite concerned.
+
+“'You mean to say your Chink's cleared out?' said Ricardo, coming
+forward from his corner. 'Like this--all at once? What did he do it
+for?'
+
+“I said that a Chinaman had always a simple and precise reason for what
+he did, but that to get such a reason out of him was not so easy. All he
+told me, I said, was that he 'didn't like'.
+
+“They were extremely disturbed at this. Didn't like what, they wanted to
+know.
+
+“'The looks of you and your party,' I told Jones.
+
+“'Nonsense!' he cried out, and immediately Ricardo, the short man,
+struck in.
+
+“'Told you that? What did he take you for, sir--an infant? Or do you
+take us for kids?--meaning no offence. Come, I bet you will tell us next
+that you've missed something.'”
+
+“'I didn't mean to tell you anything of the sort,' I said, 'but as a
+matter of fact it is so.'
+
+“He slapped his thigh.
+
+“'Thought so. What do you think of this trick, governor?'
+
+“Jones made some sort of sign to him, and then that extraordinary
+cat-faced associate proposed that he and their servant should come out
+and help me catch or kill the Chink.
+
+“My object, I said, was not to get assistance. I did not intend to chase
+the Chinaman. I had come only to warn them that he was armed, and that
+he really objected to their presence on the island. I wanted them to
+understand that I was not responsible for anything that might happen.
+
+“'Do you mean to tell us,' asked Ricardo, 'that there is a crazy Chink
+with a six-shooter broke loose on this island, and that you don't care?'
+
+“Strangely enough they did not seem to believe my story. They were
+exchanging significant looks all the time. Ricardo stole up close to
+his principal; they had a confabulation together, and then something
+happened which I did not expect. It's rather awkward, too.
+
+“Since I would not have their assistance to get hold of the Chink
+and recover my property, the least they could do was to send me their
+servant. It was Jones who said that, and Ricardo backed up the idea.
+
+“'Yes, yes--let our Pedro cook for all hands in your compound! He isn't
+so bad as he looks. That's what we will do!'
+
+“He bustled out of the room to the veranda, and let out an ear-splitting
+whistle for their Pedro. Having heard the brute's answering howl,
+Ricardo ran back into the room.
+
+“'Yes, Mr. Heyst. This will do capitally, Mr. Heyst. You just direct
+him to do whatever you are accustomed to have done for you in the way of
+attendance. See?'
+
+“Lena, I confess to you that I was taken completely by surprise. I had
+not expected anything of the sort. I don't know what I expected. I am so
+anxious about you that I can't keep away from these infernal scoundrels.
+And only two months ago I would not have cared. I would have defied
+their scoundrelism as much as I have scorned all the other intrusions of
+life. But now I have you! You stole into my life, and--”
+
+Heyst drew a deep breath. The girl gave him a quick, wide-eyed glance.
+
+“Ah! That's what you are thinking of--that you have me!”
+
+It was impossible to read the thoughts veiled by her steady grey eyes,
+to penetrate the meaning of her silences, her words, and even her
+embraces. He used to come out of her very arms with the feeling of a
+baffled man.
+
+“If I haven't you, if you are not here, then where are you?” cried
+Heyst. “You understand me very well.”
+
+She shook her head a little. Her red lips, at which he looked now, her
+lips as fascinating as the voice that came out of them, uttered the
+words:
+
+“I hear what you say; but what does it mean?”
+
+“It means that I could lie and perhaps cringe for your sake.”
+
+“No! No! Don't you ever do that,” she said in haste, while her eyes
+glistened suddenly. “You would hate me for it afterwards!”
+
+“Hate you?” repeated Heyst, who had recalled his polite manner. “No!
+You needn't consider the extremity of the improbable--as yet. But I will
+confess to you that I--how shall I call it?--that I dissembled. First I
+dissembled my dismay at the unforeseen result of my idiotic diplomacy.
+Do you understand, my dear girl?”
+
+It was evident that she did not understand the word. Heyst produced his
+playful smile, which contrasted oddly with the worried character of his
+whole expression. His temples seemed to have sunk in, his face looked a
+little leaner.
+
+“A diplomatic statement, Lena, is a statement of which everything is
+true, but the sentiment which seems to prompt it. I have never been
+diplomatic in my relation with mankind--not from regard for its
+feelings, but from a certain regard for my own. Diplomacy doesn't go
+well with consistent contempt. I cared little for life and still less
+for death.”
+
+“Don't talk like that!”
+
+“I dissembled my extreme longing to take these wandering scoundrels
+by their throats,” he went on. “I have only two hands--I wish I had a
+hundred to defend you--and there were three throats. By that time
+their Pedro was in the room too. Had he seen me engaged with their two
+throats, he would have been at mine like a fierce dog, or any other
+savage and faithful brute. I had no difficulty in dissembling my longing
+for the vulgar, stupid, and hopeless argument of fight. I remarked that
+I really did not want a servant. I couldn't think of depriving them of
+their man's services; but they would not hear me. They had made up their
+minds.
+
+“'We shall send him over at once,' Ricardo said, 'to start cooking
+dinner for everybody. I hope you won't mind me coming to eat it with
+you in your bungalow; and we will send the governor's dinner over to him
+here.'
+
+“I could do nothing but hold my tongue or bring on a quarrel--some
+manifestation of their dark purpose, which we have no means to resist.
+Of course, you may remain invisible this evening; but with that
+atrocious-brute prowling all the time at the back of the house, how long
+can your presence be concealed from these men?”
+
+Heyst's distress could be felt in his silence. The girl's head,
+sustained by her hands buried in the thick masses of her hair, had a
+perfect immobility.
+
+“You are certain you have not been seen so far?” he asked suddenly.
+
+The motionless head spoke.
+
+“How can I be certain? You told me you wanted me to keep out of the way.
+I kept out of the way. I didn't ask your reason. I thought you didn't
+want people to know that you had a girl like me about you.”
+
+“What? Ashamed?” cried Heyst.
+
+“It isn't what's right, perhaps--I mean for you--is it?”
+
+Heyst lifted his hands, reproachfully courteous.
+
+“I look upon it as so very much right that I couldn't bear the idea of
+any other than sympathetic, respectful eyes resting on you. I disliked
+and mistrusted these fellows from the first. Didn't you understand?”
+
+“Yes; I did keep out of sight,” she said.
+
+A silence fell. At last Heyst stirred slightly.
+
+“All this is of very little importance now,” he said with a sigh.
+“This is a question of something infinitely worse than mere looks and
+thoughts, however base and contemptible. As I have told you, I met
+Ricardo's suggestions by silence. As I was turning away he said:
+
+“'If you happen to have the key of that store-room of yours on you,
+Mr. Heyst, you may just as well let me have it; I will give it to our
+Pedro.'
+
+“I had it on me, and I tendered it to him without speaking. The hairy
+creature was at the door by then, and caught the key, which Ricardo
+threw to him, better than any trained ape could have done. I came away.
+All the time I had been thinking anxiously of you, whom I had left
+asleep, alone here, and apparently ill.”
+
+Heyst interrupted himself, with a listening turn of his head. He had
+heard the faint sound of sticks being snapped in the compound. He rose
+and crossed the room to look out of the back door.
+
+“And here the creature is,” he said, returning to the table. “Here he
+is, already attending to the fire. Oh, my dear Lena!”
+
+She had followed him with her eyes. She watched him go out on the front
+veranda cautiously. He lowered stealthily a couple of screens that hung
+between the column, and remained outside very still, as if interested
+by something on the open ground. Meantime she had risen in her turn, to
+take a peep into the compound. Heyst, glancing over his shoulder, saw
+her returning to her seat. He beckoned to her, and she continued to
+move, crossing the shady room, pure and bright in her white dress, her
+hair loose, with something of a sleep-walker in her unhurried motion, in
+her extended hand, in the sightless effect of her grey eyes luminous in
+the half-light. He had never seen such an expression in her face
+before. It had dreaminess in it, intense attention, and something like
+sternness. Arrested in the doorway by Heyst's extended arm, she seemed
+to wake up, flushed faintly--and this flush, passing off, carried away
+with it the strange transfiguring mood. With a courageous gesture
+she pushed back the heavy masses of her hair. The light clung to her
+forehead. Her delicate nostrils quivered. Heyst seized her arm and
+whispered excitedly:
+
+“Slip out here, quickly! The screens will conceal you. Only you must
+mind the stair-space. They are actually out--I mean the other two. You
+had better see them before you--”
+
+She made a barely perceptible movement of recoil, checked at once, and
+stood still. Heyst released her arm.
+
+“Yes, perhaps I had better,” she said with unnatural deliberation, and
+stepped out on the veranda to stand close by his side.
+
+Together, one on each side of the screen, they peeped between the edge
+of the canvas and the veranda-post entwined with creepers. A great heat
+ascended from the sun-smitten ground, in an ever-rising wave, as if from
+some secret store of earth's fiery heart; for the sky was growing cooler
+already, and the sun had declined sufficiently for the shadows of Mr.
+Jones and his henchman to be projected towards the bungalow side by
+side--one infinitely slender, the other short and broad.
+
+The two visitors stood still and gazed. To keep up the fiction of his
+invalidism, Mr. Jones, the gentleman, leaned on the arm of Ricardo, the
+secretary, the top of whose hat just came up to his governor's shoulder.
+
+“Do you see them?” Heyst whispered into the girl's ear. “Here they
+are, the envoys of the outer world. Here they are before you--evil
+intelligence, instinctive savagery, arm in arm. The brute force is at
+the back. A trio of fitting envoys perhaps--but what about the welcome?
+Suppose I were armed, could I shoot these two down where they stand?
+Could I?”
+
+Without moving her head, the girl felt for Heyst's hand, pressed it and
+thereafter did not let it go. He continued, bitterly playful:
+
+“I don't know. I don't think so. There is a strain in me which lays me
+under an insensate obligation to avoid even the appearance of murder.
+I have never pulled a trigger or lifted my hand on a man, even in
+self-defence.”
+
+The suddenly tightened grip of her hand checked him.
+
+“They are making a move,” she murmured.
+
+“Can they be thinking of coming here?” Heyst wondered anxiously.
+
+“No, they aren't coming this way,” she said; and there was another
+pause. “They are going back to their house,” she reported finally.
+
+After watching them a little longer, she let go Heyst's hand and moved
+away from the screen. He followed her into the room.
+
+“You have seen them now,” he began. “Think what it was to me to see them
+land in the dusk, fantasms from the sea--apparitions, chimeras! And they
+persist. That's the worst of it--they persist. They have no right to
+be--but they are. They ought to have aroused my fury. But I have
+refined everything away by this time--anger, indignation, scorn itself.
+Nothing's left but disgust. Since you have told me of that abominable
+calumny, it has become immense--it extends even to myself.” He looked up
+at her.
+
+“But luckily I have you. And if only Wang had not carried off that
+miserable revolver--yes, Lena, here we are, we two!”
+
+She put both her hands on his shoulders and looked straight into his
+eyes. He returned her penetrating gaze. It baffled him. He could not
+pierce the grey veil of her eyes; but the sadness of her voice thrilled
+him profoundly.
+
+“You are not reproaching me?” she asked slowly.
+
+“Reproach? What a word between us! It could only be myself--but the
+mention of Wang has given me an idea. I have been, not exactly cringing,
+not exactly lying, but still dissembling. You have been hiding
+yourself, to please me, but still you have been hiding. All this is very
+dignified. Why shouldn't we try begging now? A noble art? Yes. Lena,
+we must go out together. I couldn't think of leaving you alone, and
+I must--yes, I must speak to Wang. We shall go and seek that man, who
+knows what he wants and how to secure what he wants. We will go at
+once!”
+
+“Wait till I put my hair up,” she agreed instantly, and vanished behind
+the curtain.
+
+When the curtain had fallen behind her, she turned her head back with
+an expression of infinite and tender concern for him--for him whom she
+could never hope to understand, and whom she was afraid she could never
+satisfy, as if her passion were of a hopelessly lower quality, unable
+to appease some exalted and delicate desire of his superior soul. In a
+couple of minutes she reappeared. They left the house by the door of
+the compound, and passed within three feet of the thunderstruck Pedro,
+without even looking in his direction. He rose from stooping over a fire
+of sticks, and, balancing himself clumsily, uncovered his enormous fangs
+in gaping astonishment. Then suddenly he set off rolling on his bandy
+legs to impart to his masters the astonishing discovery of a woman.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SIX
+
+As luck would have it, Ricardo was lounging alone on the veranda of the
+former counting-house. He scented some new development at once, and ran
+down to meet the trotting, bear-like figure. The deep, growling noises
+it made, though they had only a very remote resemblance to the Spanish
+language, or indeed to any sort of human speech, were from long
+practice quite intelligible to Mr. Jones's secretary. Ricardo was rather
+surprised. He had imagined that the girl would continue to keep out of
+sight. That line apparently was given up. He did not mistrust her. How
+could he? Indeed, he could not think of her existence calmly.
+
+He tried to keep her image out of his mind so that he should be able
+to use its powers with some approach to that coolness which the complex
+nature of the situation demanded from him, both for his own sake and as
+the faithful follower of plain Mr. Jones, gentleman.
+
+He collected his wits and thought. This was a change of policy, probably
+on the part of Heyst. If so, what could it mean? A deep fellow! Unless
+it was her doing; in which case--h'm--all right. Must be. She would
+know what she was doing. Before him Pedro, lifting his feet alternately,
+swayed to and fro sideways--his usual attitude of expectation. His
+little red eyes, lost in the mass of hair, were motionless. Ricardo
+stared into them with calculated contempt and said in a rough, angry
+voice:
+
+“Woman! Of course there is. We know that without you!” He gave the tame
+monster a push. “Git! Vamos! Waddle! Get back and cook the dinner. Which
+way did they go, then?”
+
+Pedro extended a huge, hairy forearm to show the direction, and went off
+on his bandy legs. Advancing a few steps, Ricardo was just in time to
+see, above some bushes, two white helmets moving side by side in the
+clearing. They disappeared. Now that he had managed to keep Pedro from
+informing the governor that there was a woman on the island, he could
+indulge in speculation as to the movements of these people. His attitude
+towards Mr. Jones had undergone a spiritual change, of which he himself
+was not yet fully aware.
+
+That morning, before tiffin, after his escape from the Heyst bungalow,
+completed in such an inspiring way by the recovery of the slipper,
+Ricardo had made his way to their allotted house, reeling as he ran,
+his head in a whirl. He was wildly excited by visions of inconceivable
+promise. He waited to compose himself before he dared to meet the
+governor. On entering the room, he found Mr. Jones sitting on the camp
+bedstead like a tailor on his board, cross-legged, his long back against
+the wall.
+
+“I say, sir. You aren't going to tell me you are bored?”
+
+“Bored! No! Where the devil have you been all this time?”
+
+“Observing--watching--nosing around. What else? I knew you had company.
+Have you talked freely, sir?”
+
+“Yes, I have,” muttered Mr. Jones.
+
+“Not downright plain, sir?”
+
+“No. I wished you had been here. You loaf all the morning, and now you
+come in out of breath. What's the matter?”
+
+“I haven't been wasting my time out there,” said Ricardo. “Nothing's the
+matter. I--I--might have hurried a bit.” He was in truth still panting;
+only it was not with running, but with the tumult of thoughts and
+sensations long repressed, which had been set free by the adventure of
+the morning. He was almost distracted by them now. He forgot himself in
+the maze of possibilities threatening and inspiring. “And so you had a
+long talk?” he said, to gain time.
+
+“Confound you! The sun hasn't affected your head, has it? Why are you
+staring at me like a basilisk?”
+
+“Beg pardon, sir. Wasn't aware I stared,” Ricardo apologized
+good-humouredly. “The sun might well affect a thicker skull than mine.
+It blazes. Phew! What do you think a fellow is, sir--a salamander?”
+
+“You ought to have been here,” observed Mr. Jones.
+
+“Did the beast give any signs of wanting to prance?” asked Ricardo
+quickly, with absolutely genuine anxiety. “It wouldn't do, sir. You must
+play him easy for at least a couple of days, sir. I have a plan. I have
+a notion that I can find out a lot in a couple of days.”
+
+“You have? In what way?”
+
+“Why, by watching,” Ricardo answered slowly.
+
+Mr. Jones grunted.
+
+“Nothing new, that. Watch, eh? Why not pray a little, too?”
+
+“Ha, ha, ha! That's a good one,” burst out the secretary, fixing Mr.
+Jones with mirthless eyes.
+
+The latter dropped the subject indolently.
+
+“Oh, you may be certain of at least two days,” he said.
+
+Ricardo recovered himself. His eyes gleamed voluptuously.
+
+“We'll pull this off yet--clean--whole--right through, if you will only
+trust me, sir.”
+
+“I am trusting you right enough,” said Mr. Jones. “It's your interest,
+too.”
+
+And, indeed, Ricardo was truthful enough in his statement. He did
+absolutely believe in success now. But he couldn't tell his governor
+that he had intelligences in the enemy's camp. It wouldn't do to tell
+him of the girl. Devil only knew what he would do if he learned there
+was a woman about. And how could he begin to tell of it? He couldn't
+confess his sudden escapade.
+
+“We'll pull it off, sir,” he said, with perfectly acted cheerfulness.
+He experienced gusts of awful joy expanding in his heart and hot like a
+fanned flame.
+
+“We must,” pronounced Mr. Jones. “This thing, Martin, is not like our
+other tries. I have a peculiar feeling about this. It's a different
+thing. It's a sort of test.”
+
+Ricardo was impressed by the governor's manner; for the first time a
+hint of passion could be detected in him. But also a word he used, the
+word “test,” had struck him as particularly significant somehow. It was
+the last word uttered during that morning's conversation. Immediately
+afterwards Ricardo went out of the room. It was impossible for him to
+keep still. An elation in which an extraordinary softness mingled with
+savage triumph would not allow it. It prevented his thinking, also. He
+walked up and down the veranda far into the afternoon, eyeing the other
+bungalow at every turn. It gave no sign of being inhabited. Once or
+twice he stopped dead short and looked down at his left slipper. Each
+time he chuckled audibly. His restlessness kept on increasing till at
+last it frightened him. He caught hold of the balustrade of the veranda
+and stood still, smiling not at his thought but at the strong sense of
+life within him. He abandoned himself to it carelessly, even recklessly.
+He cared for no one, friend or enemy. At that moment Mr. Jones called
+him by name from within. A shadow fell on the secretary's face.
+
+“Here, sir,” he answered; but it was a moment before he could make up
+his mind to go in.
+
+He found the governor on his feet. Mr. Jones was tired of lying down
+when there was no necessity for it. His slender form, gliding about the
+room, came to a standstill.
+
+“I've been thinking, Martin, of something you suggested. At the time it
+did not strike me as practical; but on reflection it seems to me that
+to propose a game is as good a way as any to let him understand that the
+time has come to disgorge. It's less--how should I say?--vulgar. He will
+know what it means. It's not a bad form to give to the business--which
+in itself is crude, Martin, crude.”
+
+“Want to spare his feelings?” jeered the secretary in such a bitter tone
+that Mr. Jones was really surprised.
+
+“Why, it was your own notion, confound you!”
+
+“Who says it wasn't?” retorted Ricardo sulkily. “But I am fairly sick of
+this crawling. No! No! Get the exact bearings of his swag and then a rip
+up. That's plenty good enough for him.”
+
+His passions being thoroughly aroused, a thirst for blood was allied in
+him with a thirst for tenderness--yes, tenderness. A sort of anxious,
+melting sensation pervaded and softened his heart when he thought of
+that girl--one of his own sort. And at the same time jealousy started
+gnawing at his breast as the image of Heyst intruded itself on his
+fierce anticipation of bliss.
+
+“The crudeness of your ferocity is positively gross, Martin,” Mr. Jones
+said disdainfully. “You don't even understand my purpose. I mean to
+have some sport out of him. Just try to imagine the atmosphere of the
+game--the fellow handling the cards--the agonizing mockery of it! Oh,
+I shall appreciate this greatly. Yes, let him lose his money instead of
+being forced to hand it over. You, of course, would shoot him at once,
+but I shall enjoy the refinement and the jest of it. He's a man of the
+best society. I've been hounded out of my sphere by people very much
+like that fellow. How enraged and humiliated he will be! I promise
+myself some exquisite moments while watching his play.”
+
+“Ay, and suppose he suddenly starts prancing. He may not appreciate the
+fun.”
+
+“I mean you to be present,” Mr. Jones remarked calmly.
+
+“Well, as long as I am free to plug him or rip him up whenever I think
+the time has come, you are welcome to your bit of sport, sir. I shan't
+spoil it.”
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SEVEN
+
+It was at this precise moment of their conversation that Heyst had
+intruded on Mr. Jones and his secretary with his warning about Wang, as
+he had related to Lena. When he left them, the two looked at each other
+in wondering silence. My Jones was the first to break it.
+
+“I say, Martin!”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“What does this mean?”
+
+“It's some move. Blame me if I can understand.”
+
+“Too deep for you?” Mr. Jones inquired dryly.
+
+“It's nothing but some of his infernal impudence,” growled the
+secretary. “You don't believe all that about the Chink, do you, sir?
+'Tain't true.”
+
+“It isn't necessary for it to be true to have a meaning for us. It's the
+why of his coming to tell us this tale that's important.”
+
+“Do you think he made it up to frighten us?” asked Ricardo.
+
+Mr. Jones scowled at him thoughtfully.
+
+“The man looked worried,” he muttered, as if to himself. “Suppose that
+Chinaman has really stolen his money! The man looked very worried.”
+
+“Nothing but his artfulness, sir,” protested Ricardo earnestly, for the
+idea was too disconcerting to entertain. “Is it likely that he would
+have trusted a Chink with enough knowledge to make it possible?” he
+argued warmly. “Why, it's the very thing that he would keep close about.
+There's something else there. Ay, but what?”
+
+“Ha, ha, ha!” Mr. Jones let out a ghostly, squeaky laugh. “I've never
+been placed in such a ridiculous position before,” he went on, with a
+sepulchral equanimity of tone. “It's you, Martin, who dragged me into
+it. However, it's my own fault too. I ought to--but I was really
+too bored to use my brain, and yours is not to be trusted. You are a
+hothead!”
+
+A blasphemous exclamation of grief escaped from Ricardo. Not to be
+trusted! Hothead! He was almost tearful.
+
+“Haven't I heard you, sir, saying more than twenty times since we got
+fired out from Manila that we should want a lot of capital to work the
+East Coast with? You were always telling me that to prime properly all
+them officials and Portuguese scallywags we should have to lose heavily
+at first. Weren't you always worrying about some means of getting hold
+of a good lot of cash? It wasn't to be got hold of by allowing yourself
+to become bored in that rotten Dutch town and playing a two-penny game
+with confounded beggarly bank clerks and such like. Well, I've brought
+you here, where there is cash to be got--and a big lot, to a moral,” he
+added through his set teeth.
+
+Silence fell. Each of them was staring into a different corner of the
+room. Suddenly, with a slight stamp of his foot, Mr. Jones made for the
+door. Ricardo caught him up outside.
+
+“Put an arm through mine, sir,” he begged him gently but firmly. “No use
+giving the game away. An invalid may well come out for a breath of fresh
+air after the sun's gone down a bit. That's it, sir. But where do you
+want to go? Why did you come out, sir?”
+
+Mr. Jones stopped short.
+
+“I hardly know myself,” he confessed in a hollow mutter, staring
+intently at the Number One bungalow. “It's quite irrational,” he
+declared in a still lower tone.
+
+“Better go in, sir,” suggested Ricardo. “What's that? Those screens
+weren't down before. He's spying from behind them now, I bet--the
+dodging, artful, plotting beast!”
+
+“Why not go over there and see if we can't get to the bottom of this
+game?” was the unexpected proposal uttered by Mr. Jones. “He will have
+to talk to us.”
+
+Ricardo repressed a start of dismay, but for a moment could not speak.
+He only pressed the governor's hand to his side instinctively.
+
+“No, sir. What could you say? Do you expect to get to the bottom of his
+lies? How could you make him talk? It isn't time yet to come to grips
+with that gent. You don't think I would hang back, do you? His Chink, of
+course, I'll shoot like a dog the moment I catch sight of him; but as
+to that Mr. Blasted Heyst, the time isn't yet. My head's cooler just now
+than yours. Let's go in again. Why, we are exposed here. Suppose he
+took it into his head to let off a gun on us! He's an unaccountable,
+'yporcritical skunk.”
+
+Allowing himself to be persuaded, Mr. Jones returned to his seclusion.
+The secretary, however, remained on the veranda--for the purpose, he
+said, of seeing whether that Chink wasn't sneaking around; in which
+case he proposed to take a long shot at the galoot and chance the
+consequences. His real reason was that he wanted to be alone, away from
+the governor's deep-sunk eyes. He felt a sentimental desire to indulge
+his fancies in solitude. A great change had come over Mr. Ricardo since
+that morning. A whole side of him which from prudence, from necessity,
+from loyalty, had been kept dormant, was aroused now, colouring
+his thoughts and disturbing his mental poise by the vision of such
+staggering consequences as, for instance, the possibility of an active
+conflict with the governor. The appearance of the monstrous Pedro with
+his news drew Ricardo out of a feeling of dreaminess wrapped up in a
+sense of impending trouble. A woman? Yes, there was one; and it made all
+the difference. After driving away Pedro, and watching the white
+helmets of Heyst and Lena vanishing among the bushes he stood lost in
+meditation.
+
+“Where could they be off to like this?” he mentally asked himself.
+
+The answer found by his speculative faculties on their utmost stretch
+was--to meet that Chink. For in the desertion of Wang Ricardo did not
+believe. It was a lying yarn, the organic part of a dangerous plot.
+Heyst had gone to combine some fresh move. But then Ricardo felt sure
+that the girl was with him--the girl full of pluck, full of sense, full
+of understanding; an ally of his own kind!
+
+He went indoors briskly. Mr. Jones had resumed his cross-legged pose at
+the head of the bed, with his back against the wall.
+
+“Anything new?”
+
+“No, sir.”
+
+Ricardo walked about the room as if he had no care in the world. He
+hummed snatches of song. Mr. Jones raised his waspish eyebrows, at the
+sound. The secretary got down on his knees before an old leather trunk,
+and, rummaging in there, brought out a small looking-glass. He fell to
+examining his physiognomy in it with silent absorption.
+
+“I think I'll shave,” he decided, getting up.
+
+He gave a sidelong glance to the governor, and repeated it several times
+during the operation, which did not take long, and even afterwards, when
+after putting away the implements, he resumed his walking, humming more
+snatches of unknown songs. Mr. Jones preserved a complete immobility,
+his thin lips compressed, his eyes veiled. His face was like a carving.
+
+“So you would like to try your hand at cards with that skunk, sir?” said
+Ricardo, stopping suddenly and rubbing his hands.
+
+Mr. Jones gave no sign of having heard anything.
+
+“Well, why not? Why shouldn't he have the experience? You remember in
+that Mexican town--what's its name?--the robber fellow they caught in
+the mountains and condemned to be shot? He played cards half the night
+with the jailer and the sheriff. Well, this fellow is condemned, too.
+He must give you your game. Hang it all, a gentleman ought to have some
+little relaxation! And you have been uncommonly patient, sir.”
+
+“You are uncommonly volatile all of a sudden,” Mr. Jones remarked in a
+bored voice. “What's come to you?”
+
+The secretary hummed for a while, and then said:
+
+“I'll try to get him over here for you tonight, after dinner. If I ain't
+here myself, don't you worry, sir. I shall be doing a bit of nosing
+around--see?”
+
+“I see,” sneered Mr. Jones languidly. “But what do you expect to see in
+the dark?”
+
+Ricardo made no answer, and after another turn or two slipped out of the
+room. He no longer felt comfortable alone with the governor.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER EIGHT
+
+Meantime Heyst and Lena, walking rather fast, approached Wang's hut.
+Asking the girl to wait, Heyst ascended the little ladder of bamboos
+giving access to the door. It was as he had expected. The smoky interior
+was empty, except for a big chest of sandalwood too heavy for hurried
+removal. Its lid was thrown up, but whatever it might have contained was
+no longer there. All Wang's possessions were gone. Without tarrying in
+the hut, Heyst came back to the girl, who asked no questions, with her
+strange air of knowing or understanding everything.
+
+“Let us push on,” he said.
+
+He went ahead, the rustle of her white skirt following him into the
+shades of the forest, along the path of their usual walk. Though the air
+lay heavy between straight denuded trunks, the sunlit patches moved on
+the ground, and raising her eyes Lena saw far above her head the
+flutter of the leaves, the surface shudder on the mighty limbs extended
+horizontally in the perfect immobility of patience. Twice Heyst looked
+over his shoulder at her. Behind the readiness of her answering smile
+there was a fund of devoted, concentrated passion, burning with the hope
+of a more perfect satisfaction. They passed the spot where it was their
+practice to turn towards the barren summit of the central hill. Heyst
+held steadily on his way towards the upper limit of the forest. The
+moment they left its shelter, a breeze enveloped them, and a great
+cloud, racing over the sun, threw a peculiar sombre tint over
+everything. Heyst pointed up a precipitous, rugged path clinging to the
+side of the hill. It ended in a barricade of felled trees, a primitively
+conceived obstacle which must have cost much labour to erect at just
+that spot.
+
+“This,” Heyst, explained in his urbane tone, “is a barrier against the
+march of civilization. The poor folk over there did not like it, as it
+appeared to them in the shape of my company--a great step forward, as
+some people used to call it with mistaken confidence. The advanced foot
+has been drawn back, but the barricade remains.”
+
+They went on climbing slowly. The cloud had driven over, leaving an
+added brightness on the face of the world.
+
+“It's a very ridiculous thing,” Heyst went on; “but then it is the
+product of honest fear--fear of the unknown, of the incomprehensible.
+It's pathetic, too, in a way. And I heartily wish, Lena, that we were on
+the other side of it.”
+
+“Oh, stop, stop!” she cried, seizing his arm.
+
+The face of the barricade they were approaching had been piled up with a
+lot of fresh-cut branches. The leaves were still green. A gentle breeze,
+sweeping over the top, stirred them a little; but what had startled the
+girl was the discovery of several spear-blades protruding from the mass
+of foliage. She had made them out suddenly. They did not gleam, but she
+saw them with extreme distinctness, very still, very vicious to look at.
+
+“You had better let me go forward alone, Lena,” said Heyst.
+
+She tugged, persistently at his arm, but after a time, during which
+he never ceased to look smilingly into her terrified eyes, he ended by
+disengaging himself.
+
+“It's a sign rather than a demonstration,” he argued, persuasively.
+“Just wait here a moment. I promise not to approach near enough to be
+stabbed.”
+
+As in a nightmare she watched Heyst go up the few yards of the path as
+if he never meant to stop; and she heard his voice, like voices heard
+in dreams, shouting unknown words in an unearthly tone. Heyst was only
+demanding to see Wang. He was not kept waiting very long. Recovering
+from the first flurry of her fright, Lena noticed a commotion in the
+green top-dressing of the barricade. She exhaled a sigh of relief when
+the spear-blades retreated out of sight, sliding inward--the horrible
+things! in a spot facing Heyst a pair of yellow hands parted the leaves,
+and a face filled the small opening--a face with very noticeable eyes.
+It was Wang's face, of course, with no suggestion of a body belonging to
+it, like those cardboard faces at which she remembered gazing as a child
+in the window of a certain dim shop kept by a mysterious little man in
+Kingsland Road. Only this face, instead of mere holes, had eyes which
+blinked. She could see the beating of the eyelids. The hands on each
+side of the face, keeping the boughs apart, also did not look as if they
+belonged to any real body. One of them was holding a revolver--a weapon
+which she recognized merely by intuition, never having seen such an
+object before.
+
+She leaned her shoulders against the rock of the perpendicular hillside
+and kept her eyes on Heyst, with comparative composure, since the spears
+were not menacing him any longer. Beyond the rigid and motionless back
+he presented to her, she saw Wang's unreal cardboard face moving its
+thin lips and grimacing artificially. She was too far down the path to
+hear the dialogue, carried on in an ordinary voice. She waited patiently
+for its end. Her shoulders felt the warmth of the rock; now and then a
+whiff of cooler air seemed to slip down upon her head from above; the
+ravine at her feet, choked full of vegetation, emitted the faint, drowsy
+hum of insect life. Everything was very quiet. She failed to notice
+the exact moment when Wang's head vanished from the foliage, taking the
+unreal hands away with it. To her horror, the spear-blades came gliding
+slowly out. The very hair on her head stirred; but before she had
+time to cry out, Heyst, who seemed rooted to the ground, turned round
+abruptly and began to move towards her. His great moustaches did not
+quite hide an ugly but irresolute smile; and when he had come down near
+enough to touch her, he burst out into a harsh laugh:
+
+“Ha, ha, ha!”
+
+She looked at him, uncomprehending. He cut short his laugh and said
+curtly:
+
+“We had better go down as we came.”
+
+She followed him into the forest. The advance of the afternoon had
+filled it with gloom. Far away a slant of light between the trees closed
+the view. All was dark beyond. Heyst stopped.
+
+“No reason to hurry, Lena,” he said in his ordinary, serenely polite
+tones. “We return unsuccessful. I suppose you know, or at least can
+guess, what was my object in coming up there?”
+
+“No, I can't guess, dear,” she said, and smiled, noticing with
+emotion that his breast was heaving as if he had been out of breath.
+Nevertheless, he tried to command his speech, pausing only a little
+between the words.
+
+“No? I went up to find Wang. I went up”--he gasped again here, but this
+was for the last time--“I made you come with me because I didn't like
+to leave you unprotected in the proximity of those fellows.” Suddenly he
+snatched his cork helmet off his head and dashed it on the ground. “No!”
+ he cried roughly. “All this is too unreal altogether. It isn't to be
+borne! I can't protect you! I haven't the power.”
+
+He glared at her for a moment, then hastened after his hat which had
+bounded away to some distance. He came back looking at her face, which
+was very white.
+
+“I ought to beg your pardon for these antics,” he said, adjusting his
+hat. “A movement of childish petulance! Indeed, I feel very much like a
+child in my ignorance, in my powerlessness, in my want of resource, in
+everything except in the dreadful consciousness of some evil hanging
+over your head--yours!”
+
+“It's you they are after,” she murmured.
+
+“No doubt, but unfortunately--”
+
+“Unfortunately--what?”
+
+“Unfortunately, I have not succeeded with Wang,” he said. “I failed to
+move his Celestial, heart--that is, if there is such a thing. He told me
+with horrible Chinese reasonableness that he could not let us pass the
+barrier, because we should be pursued. He doesn't like fights. He gave
+me to understand that he would shoot me with my own revolver without
+any sort of compunction, rather than risk a rude and distasteful
+contest with the strange barbarians for my sake. He has preached to the
+villagers. They respect him. He is the most remarkable man they have
+ever seen, and their kinsman by marriage. They understand his policy.
+And anyway only women and children and a few old fellows are left in the
+village. This is the season when the men are away in trading vessels.
+But it would have been all the same. None of them have a taste for
+fighting--and with white men too! They are peaceable, kindly folk and
+would have seen me shot with extreme satisfaction. Wang seemed to think
+my insistence--for I insisted, you know--very stupid and tactless. But a
+drowning man clutches at straws. We were talking in such Malay as we are
+both equal to.
+
+“'Your fears are foolish,' I said to him.
+
+“'Foolish? of course I am foolish,' he replied. 'If I were a wise man,
+I would be a merchant with a big hong in Singapore, instead of being a
+mine coolie turned houseboy. But if you don't go away in time, I will
+shoot you before it grows too dark to take aim. Not till then, Number
+One, but I will do it then. Now--finish!'
+
+“'All right,' I said. 'Finish as far as I am concerned; but you can have
+no objections to the mem putih coming over to stay with the Orang Kaya's
+women for a few days. I will make a present in silver for it.' Orang
+Kaya, is the head man of the village, Lena,” added Heyst.
+
+She looked at him in astonishment.
+
+“You wanted me to go to that village of savages?” she gasped. “You
+wanted me to leave you?”
+
+“It would have given me a freer hand.”
+
+Heyst stretched out his hands and looked at them for a moment, then let
+them fall by his side. Indignation was expressed more in the curve of
+her lips than in her clear eyes, which never wavered.
+
+“I believe Wang laughed,” he went on. “He made a noise like a
+turkey-cock.”
+
+“'That would be worse than anything,' he told me.
+
+“I was taken aback. I pointed out to him that he was talking nonsense.
+It could not make any difference to his security where you were, because
+the evil men, as he calls them, did not know of your existence. I did
+not lie exactly, Lena, though I did stretch the truth till it cracked;
+but the fellow seems to have an uncanny insight. He shook his head. He
+assured me they knew all about you. He made a horrible grimace at me.”
+
+“It doesn't matter,” said the girl. “I didn't want--I would not have
+gone.”
+
+Heyst raised his eyes.
+
+“Wonderful intuition! As I continued to press him, Wang made that
+very remark about you. When he smiles, his face looks like a conceited
+death's head. It was his very last remark that you wouldn't want to. I
+went away then.”
+
+She leaned back against a tree. Heyst faced her in the same attitude of
+leisure, as if they had done with time and all the other concerns of the
+earth. Suddenly, high above their heads the roof of leaves whispered at
+them tumultuously and then ceased.
+
+“That was a strange notion of yours, to send me away,” she said. “Send
+me away? What for? Yes, what for?”
+
+“You seem indignant,” he remarked listlessly.
+
+“To these savages, too!” she pursued. “And you think I would have gone?
+You can do what you like with me--but not that, not that!”
+
+Heyst looked into the dim aisles of the forest. Everything was so still
+now that the very ground on which they stood seemed to exhale silence
+into the shade.
+
+“Why be indignant?” he remonstrated. “It has not happened. I gave up
+pleading with Wang. Here we are, repulsed! Not only without power to
+resist the evil, but unable to make terms for ourselves with the worthy
+envoys, the envoys extraordinary of the world we thought we had done
+with for years and years. And that's bad, Lena, very bad.”
+
+“It's funny,” she said thoughtfully. “Bad? I suppose it is. I don't know
+that it is. But do you? Do you? You talk as if you didn't believe in
+it.”
+
+She gazed at him earnestly.
+
+“Do I? Ah! That's it. I don't know how to talk. I have managed to refine
+everything away. I've said to the Earth that bore me: 'I am I and you
+are a shadow.' And, by Jove, it is so! But it appears that such words
+cannot be uttered with impunity. Here I am on a Shadow inhabited
+by Shades. How helpless a man is against the Shades! How is one to
+intimidate, persuade, resist, assert oneself against them? I have lost
+all belief in realities . . . Lena, give me your hand.”
+
+She looked at him surprised, uncomprehending.
+
+“Your hand,” he cried.
+
+She obeyed; he seized it with avidity as if eager to raise it to his
+lips, but halfway up released his grasp. They looked at each other for a
+time.
+
+“What's the matter, dear?” she whispered timidly.
+
+“Neither force nor conviction,” Heyst muttered wearily to himself. “How
+am I to meet this charmingly simple problem?”
+
+“I am sorry,” she murmured.
+
+“And so am I,” he confessed quickly. “And the bitterest of this
+humiliation is its complete uselessness--which I feel, I feel!”
+
+She had never before seen him give such signs of feeling. Across his
+ghastly face the long moustaches flamed in the shade. He spoke suddenly:
+
+“I wonder if I could find enough courage to creep among them in the
+night, with a knife, and cut their throats one after another, as they
+slept! I wonder--”
+
+She was frightened by his unwonted appearance more than by the words in
+his mouth, and said earnestly:
+
+“Don't you try to do such a thing! Don't you think of it!”
+
+“I don't possess anything bigger than a penknife. As to thinking of it,
+Lena, there's no saying what one may think of. I don't think. Something
+in me thinks--something foreign to my nature. What is the matter?”
+
+He noticed her parted lips, and the peculiar stare in her eyes, which
+had wandered from his face.
+
+“There's somebody after us. I saw something white moving,” she cried.
+
+Heyst did not turn his head; he only glanced at her out-stretched arm.
+
+“No doubt we are followed; we are watched.”
+
+“I don't see anything now,” she said.
+
+“And it does not matter,” Heyst went on in his ordinary voice. “Here we
+are in the forest. I have neither strength nor persuasion. Indeed, it's
+extremely difficult to be eloquent before a Chinaman's head stuck at
+one out of a lot of brushwood. But can we wander among these big trees
+indefinitely? Is this a refuge? No! What else is left to us? I did think
+for a moment of the mine; but even there we could not remain very long.
+And then that gallery is not safe. The props were too weak to begin
+with. Ants have been at work there--ants after the men. A death-trap, at
+best. One can die but once, but there are many manners of death.”
+
+The girl glanced about fearfully, in search of the watcher or follower
+whom she had glimpsed once among the trees; but if he existed, he had
+concealed himself. Nothing met her eyes but the deepening shadows of the
+short vistas between the living columns of the still roof of leaves.
+She looked at the man beside her expectantly, tenderly, with suppressed
+affright and a sort of awed wonder.
+
+“I have also thought of these people's boat,” Heyst went on. “We could
+get into that, and--only they have taken everything out of her. I have
+seen her oars and mast in a corner of their room. To shove off in an
+empty boat would be nothing but a desperate expedient, supposing even
+that she would drift out a good distance between the islands before the
+morning. It would only be a complicated manner of committing suicide--to
+be found dead in a boat, dead from sun and thirst. A sea mystery.
+I wonder who would find us! Davidson, perhaps; but Davidson passed
+westward ten days ago. I watched him steaming past one early morning,
+from the jetty.”
+
+“You never told me,” she said.
+
+“He must have been looking at me through his big binoculars. Perhaps, if
+I had raised my arm--but what did we want with Davidson then, you and
+I? He won't be back this way for three weeks or more, Lena. I wish I had
+raised my arm that morning.”
+
+“What would have been the good of it?” she sighed out.
+
+“What good? No good, of course. We had no forebodings. This seemed to be
+an inexpugnable refuge, where we could live untroubled and learn to know
+each other.”
+
+“It's perhaps in trouble that people get to know each other,” she
+suggested.
+
+“Perhaps,” he said indifferently. “At any rate, we would not have gone
+away from here with him; though I believe he would have come in eagerly
+enough, and ready for any service he could render. It's that fat man's
+nature--a delightful fellow. You would not come on the wharf that time
+I sent the shawl back to Mrs. Schomberg through him. He has never seen
+you.”
+
+“I didn't know that you wanted anybody ever to see me,” she said.
+
+He had folded his arms on his breast and hung his head.
+
+“And I did not know that you cared to be seen as yet. A misunderstanding
+evidently. An honourable misunderstanding. But it does not matter now.”
+
+He raised his head after a silence.
+
+“How gloomy this forest has grown! Yet surely the sun cannot have set
+already.”
+
+She looked round; and as if her eyes had just been opened, she perceived
+the shades of the forest surrounding her, not so much with gloom, but
+with a sullen, dumb, menacing hostility. Her heart sank in the engulfing
+stillness, at that moment she felt the nearness of death, breathing on
+her and on the man with her. If there had been a sudden stir of leaves,
+the crack of a dry branch, the faintest rustle, she would have screamed
+aloud. But she shook off the unworthy weakness. Such as she was, a
+fiddle-scraping girl picked up on the very threshold of infamy, she
+would try to rise above herself, triumphant and humble; and then
+happiness would burst on her like a torrent, flinging at her feet the
+man whom she loved.
+
+Heyst stirred slightly.
+
+“We had better be getting back, Lena, since we can't stay all night in
+the woods--or anywhere else, for that matter. We are the slaves of
+this infernal surprise which has been sprung on us by--shall I say
+fate?--your fate, or mine.”
+
+It was the man who had broken the silence, but it was the woman who
+led the way. At the very edge of the forest she stopped, concealed by a
+tree. He joined her cautiously.
+
+“What is it? What do you see, Lena?” he whispered.
+
+She said that it was only a thought that had come into her head. She
+hesitated for a moment giving him over her shoulder a shining gleam in
+her grey eyes. She wanted to know whether this trouble, this danger,
+this evil, whatever it was, finding them out in their retreat, was not a
+sort of punishment.
+
+“Punishment?” repeated Heyst. He could not understand what she meant.
+When she explained, he was still more surprised. “A sort of retribution,
+from an angry Heaven?” he said in wonder. “On us? What on earth for?”
+
+He saw her pale face darken in the dusk. She had blushed. Her whispering
+flowed very fast. It was the way they lived together--that wasn't right,
+was it? It was a guilty life. For she had not been forced into it,
+driven, scared into it. No, no--she had come to him of her own free
+will, with her whole soul yearning unlawfully.
+
+He was so profoundly touched that he could not speak for a moment. To
+conceal his trouble, he assumed his best Heystian manner.
+
+“What? Are our visitors then messengers of morality, avengers of
+righteousness, agents of Providence? That's certainly an original view.
+How flattered they would be if they could hear you!”
+
+“Now you are making fun of me,” she said in a subdued voice which broke
+suddenly.
+
+“Are you conscious of sin?” Heyst asked gravely. She made no answer.
+“For I am not,” he added; “before Heaven, I am not!”
+
+“You! You are different. Woman is the tempter. You took me up from pity.
+I threw myself at you.”
+
+“Oh, you exaggerate, you exaggerate. It was not so bad as that,” he said
+playfully, keeping his voice steady with an effort.
+
+He considered himself a dead man already, yet forced to pretend that
+he was alive for her sake, for her defence. He regretted that he had
+no Heaven to which he could recommend this fair, palpitating handful of
+ashes and dust--warm, living sentient his own--and exposed helplessly to
+insult, outrage, degradation, and infinite misery of the body.
+
+She had averted her face from him and was still. He suddenly seized her
+passive hand.
+
+“You will have it so?” he said. “Yes? Well, let us then hope for mercy
+together.”
+
+She shook her head without looking at him, like an abashed child.
+
+“Remember,” he went on incorrigible with his delicate raillery, “that
+hope is a Christian virtue, and surely you can't want all the mercy for
+yourself.”
+
+Before their eyes the bungalow across the cleared ground stood bathed in
+a sinister light. An unexpected chill gust of wind made a noise in the
+tree-tops. She snatched her hand away and stepped out into the open;
+but before she had advanced more than three yards, she stood still and
+pointed to the west.
+
+“Oh look there!” she exclaimed.
+
+Beyond the headland of Diamond Bay, lying black on a purple sea, great
+masses of cloud stood piled up and bathed in a mist of blood. A crimson
+crack like an open wound zigzagged between them, with a piece of dark
+red sun showing at the bottom. Heyst cast an indifferent glance at the
+ill-omened chaos of the sky.
+
+“Thunderstorm making up. We shall hear it all night, but it won't visit
+us, probably. The clouds generally gather round the volcano.”
+
+She was not listening to him. Her eyes reflected the sombre and violent
+hues of the sunset.
+
+“That does not look much like a sign of mercy,” she said slowly, as if
+to herself, and hurried on, followed by Heyst. Suddenly she stopped. “I
+don't care. I would do more yet! And some day you'll forgive me. You'll
+have to forgive me!”
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER NINE
+
+Stumbling up the steps, as if suddenly exhausted, Lena entered the room
+and let herself fall on the nearest chair. Before following her, Heyst
+took a survey of the surroundings from the veranda. It was a complete
+solitude. There was nothing in the aspect of this familiar scene to tell
+him that he and the girl were not as completely alone as they had been
+in the early days of their common life on this abandoned spot, with only
+Wang discreetly materializing from time to time and the uncomplaining
+memory of Morrison to keep them company.
+
+After the cold gust of wind there was an absolute stillness of the
+air. The thunder-charged mass hung unbroken beyond the low, ink-black
+headland, darkening the twilight. By contrast, the sky at the zenith
+displayed pellucid clearness, the sheen of a delicate glass bubble which
+the merest movement of air might shatter. A little to the left, between
+the black masses of the headland and of the forest, the volcano, a
+feather of smoke by day and a cigar-glow at night, took its first fiery
+expanding breath of the evening. Above it a reddish star came out like
+an expelled spark from the fiery bosom of the earth, enchanted into
+permanency by the mysterious spell of frozen spaces.
+
+In front of Heyst the forest, already full of the deepest shades, stood
+like a wall. But he lingered, watching its edge, especially where it
+ended at the line of bushes, masking the land end of the jetty. Since
+the girl had spoken of catching a glimpse of something white among the
+trees, he believed pretty firmly that they had been followed in their
+excursion up the mountain by Mr. Jones's secretary. No doubt the fellow
+had watched them out of the forest, and now, unless he took the trouble
+to go back some distance and fetch a considerable circuit inland over
+the clearing, he was bound to walk out into the open space before the
+bungalows. Heyst did, indeed, imagine at one time some movement between
+the trees, lost as soon as perceived. He stared patiently, but nothing
+more happened. After all, why should he trouble about these people's
+actions? Why this stupid concern for the preliminaries, since, when
+the issue was joined, it would find him disarmed and shrinking from the
+ugliness and degradation of it?
+
+He turned and entered the room. Deep dusk reigned in there already.
+Lena, near the door, did not move or speak. The sheen of the white
+tablecloth was very obtrusive. The brute these two vagabonds had tamed
+had entered on its service while Heyst and Lena were away. The table was
+laid. Heyst walked up and down the room several times. The girl remained
+without sound or movement on the chair. But when Heyst, placing the two
+silver candelabra on the table, struck a match to light the candles,
+she got up suddenly and went into the bedroom. She came out again almost
+immediately, having taken off her hat. Heyst looked at her over his
+shoulder.
+
+“What's the good of shirking the evil hour? I've lighted these
+candles for a sign of our return. After all, we might not have been
+watched--while returning, I mean. Of course we were seen leaving the
+house.”
+
+The girl sat down again. The great wealth of her hair looked very dark
+above her colourless face. She raised her eyes, glistening softly in
+the light with a sort of unreadable appeal, with a strange effect of
+unseeing innocence.
+
+“Yes,” said Heyst across the table, the fingertips of one hand resting
+on the immaculate cloth. “A creature with an antediluvian lower jaw,
+hairy like a mastodon, and formed like a pre-historic ape, has laid this
+table. Are you awake, Lena? Am I? I would pinch myself, only I know that
+nothing would do away with this dream. Three covers. You know it is the
+shorter of the two who's coming--the gentleman who, in the play of his
+shoulders as he walks, and in his facial structure, recalls a Jaguar.
+Ah, you don't know what a jaguar is? But you have had a good look at
+these two. It's the short one, you know, who's to be our guest.”
+
+She made a sign with her head that she knew; Heyst's insistence brought
+Ricardo vividly before her mental vision. A sudden languor, like the
+physical echo of her struggle with the man, paralysed all her limbs.
+She lay still in the chair, feeling very frightened at this
+phenomenon--ready to pray aloud for strength.
+
+Heyst had started to pace the room.
+
+“Our guest! There is a proverb--in Russia, I believe--that when a
+guest enters the house, God enters the house. The sacred virtue of
+hospitality! But it leads one into trouble as well as any other.”
+
+The girl unexpectedly got up from the chair, swaying her supple figure
+and stretching her arms above her head. He stopped to look at her
+curiously, paused, and then went on:
+
+“I venture to think that God has nothing to do with such a hospitality
+and with such a guest!”
+
+She had jumped to her feet to react against the numbness, to discover
+whether her body would obey her will. It did. She could stand up, and
+she could move her arms freely. Though no physiologist, she concluded
+that all that sudden numbness was in her head, not in her limbs. Her
+fears assuaged, she thanked God for it mentally, and to Heyst murmured a
+protest:
+
+“Oh, yes! He's got to do with everything--every little thing. Nothing
+can happen--”
+
+“Yes,” he said hastily, “one of the two sparrows can't be struck to the
+ground--you are thinking of that.” The habitual playful smile faded on
+the kindly lips under the martial moustache. “Ah, you remember what you
+have been told--as a child--on Sundays.”
+
+“Yes, I do remember.” She sank into the chair again. “It was the only
+decent bit of time I ever had when I was a kid, with our landlady's two
+girls, you know.”
+
+“I wonder, Lena,” Heyst said, with a return to his urbane playfulness,
+“whether you are just a little child, or whether you represent something
+as old as the world.”
+
+She surprised Heyst by saying dreamily:
+
+“Well--and what about you?”
+
+“I? I date later--much later. I can't call myself a child, but I am so
+recent that I may call myself a man of the last hour--or is it the hour
+before last? I have been out of it so long that I am not certain how far
+the hands of the clock have moved since--since--”
+
+He glanced at the portrait of his father, exactly above the head of the
+girl, as if it were ignoring her in its painted austerity of feeling. He
+did not finish the sentence; but he did not remain silent for long.
+
+“Only what must be avoided are fallacious inferences, my dear
+Lena--especially at this hour.”
+
+“Now you are making fun of me again,” she said without looking up.
+
+“Am I?” he cried. “Making fun? No, giving warning. Hang it all, whatever
+truth people told you in the old days, there is also this one--that
+sparrows do fall to the ground, that they are brought to the ground.
+This is no vain assertion, but a fact. That's why”--again his
+tone changed, while he picked up the table knife and let it fall
+disdainfully--“that's why I wish these wretched round knives had some
+edge on them. Absolute rubbish--neither edge, point, nor substance. I
+believe one of these forks would make a better weapon at a pinch. But
+can I go about with a fork in my pocket?” He gnashed his teeth with a
+rage very real, and yet comic.
+
+“There used to be a carver here, but it was broken and thrown away a
+long time ago. Nothing much to carve here. It would have made a noble
+weapon, no doubt; but--”
+
+He stopped. The girl sat very quiet, with downcast eyes. As he kept
+silence for some time, she looked up and said thoughtfully:
+
+“Yes, a knife--it's a knife that you would want, wouldn't you, in case,
+in case--”
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.
+
+“There must be a crowbar or two in the sheds; but I have given up all
+the keys together. And then, do you see me walking about with a crowbar
+in my hand? Ha, ha! And besides, that edifying sight alone might start
+the trouble for all I know. In truth, why has it not started yet?”
+
+“Perhaps they are afraid of you,” she whispered, looking down again.
+
+“By Jove, it looks like it,” he assented meditatively. “They do seem to
+hang back for some reason. Is that reason prudence, or downright fear,
+or perhaps the leisurely method of certitude?”
+
+Out in the black night, not very far from the bungalow, resounded a loud
+and prolonged whistle. Lena's hands grasped the sides of the chair, but
+she made no movement. Heyst started, and turned his face away from the
+door.
+
+The startling sound had died away.
+
+“Whistles, yells, omens, signals, portents--what do they matter?” he
+said. “But what about the crowbar? Suppose I had it! Could I stand
+in ambush at the side of the door--this door--and smash the first
+protruding head, scatter blood and brains over the floor, over these
+walls, and then run stealthily to the other door to do the same
+thing--and repeat the performance for a third time, perhaps? Could I? On
+suspicion, without compunction, with a calm and determined purpose? No,
+it is not in me. I date too late. Would you like to see me attempt this
+thing while that mysterious prestige of mine lasts--or their not less
+mysterious hesitation?”
+
+“No, no!” she whispered ardently, as if compelled to speak by his
+eyes fixed on her face. “No, it's a knife you want to defend yourself
+with--to defend--there will be time--”
+
+“And who knows if it isn't really my duty?” he began again, as if he had
+not heard her disjointed words at all. “It may be--my duty to you, to
+myself. For why should I put up with the humiliation of their secret
+menaces? Do you know what the world would say?”
+
+He emitted a low laugh, which struck her with terror. She would have got
+up, but he stooped so low over her that she could not move without first
+pushing him away.
+
+“It would say, Lena, that I--the Swede--after luring my friend and
+partner to his death from mere greed of money, have murdered these
+unoffending shipwrecked strangers from sheer funk. That would be
+the story whispered--perhaps shouted--certainly spread out, and
+believed--and believed, my dear Lena!”
+
+“Who would believe such awful things?”
+
+“Perhaps you wouldn't--not at first, at any rate; but the power of
+calumny grows with time. It's insidious and penetrating. It can even
+destroy one's faith in oneself--dry-rot the soul.”
+
+All at once her eyes leaped to the door and remained fixed, stony, a
+little enlarged. Turning his head, Heyst beheld the figure of Ricardo
+framed in the doorway. For a moment none of the three moved, then,
+looking from the newcomer to the girl in the chair, Heyst formulated a
+sardonic introduction.
+
+“Mr. Ricardo, my dear.”
+
+Her head drooped a little. Ricardo's hand went up to his moustache. His
+voice exploded in the room.
+
+“At your service, ma'am!”
+
+He stepped in, taking his hat off with a flourish, and dropping it
+carelessly on a chair near the door.
+
+“At your service,” he repeated, in quite another tone. “I was made aware
+there was a lady about, by that Pedro of ours; only I didn't know I
+should have the privilege of seeing you tonight, ma'am.”
+
+Lena and Heyst looked at him covertly, but he, with a vague gaze
+avoiding them both, looked at nothing, seeming to pursue some point in
+space.
+
+“Had a pleasant walk?” he asked suddenly.
+
+“Yes. And you?” returned Heyst, who had managed to catch his glance.
+
+“I haven't been a yard away from the governor this afternoon till
+I started for here.” The genuineness of the accent surprised Heyst,
+without convincing him of the truth of the words.
+
+“Why do you ask?” pursued Ricardo with every inflection of perfect
+candour.
+
+“You might have wished to explore the island a little,” said Heyst,
+studying the man, who, to render him justice, did not try to free his
+captured gaze. “I may remind you that it wouldn't be a perfectly safe
+proceeding.”
+
+Ricardo presented a picture of innocence.
+
+“Oh, yes--meaning that Chink that has ran away from you. He ain't much!”
+
+“He has a revolver,” observed Heyst meaningly.
+
+“Well, and you have a revolver, too,” Mr. Ricardo argued unexpectedly.
+“I don't worry myself about that.”
+
+“That's different. I am not afraid of you,” Heyst made answer after a
+short pause.
+
+“Of me?”
+
+“Of all of you.”
+
+“You have a queer way of putting things,” began Ricardo.
+
+At that moment the door on the compound side of the house came open with
+some noise, and Pedro entered, pressing the edge of a loaded tray to his
+breast. His big, hairy head rolled a little, his feet fell in front of
+each other with a short, hard thump on the floor. The arrival changed
+the current of Ricardo's thought, perhaps, but certainly of his speech.
+
+“You heard me whistling a little while ago outside? That was to give him
+a hint, as I came along, that it was time to bring in the dinner; and
+here it is.”
+
+Lena rose and passed to the right of Ricardo, who lowered his glance for
+a moment. They sat down at the table. The enormous gorilla back of Pedro
+swayed out through the door.
+
+“Extraordinary strong brute, ma'am,” said Ricardo. He had a propensity
+to talk about “his Pedro,” as some men will talk of their dog. “He ain't
+pretty, though. No, he ain't pretty. And he has got to be kept under. I
+am his keeper, as it might be. The governor don't trouble his head much
+about dee-tails. All that's left to Martin. Martin, that's me, ma'am.”
+
+Heyst saw the girl's eyes turn towards Mr. Jones's secretary and rest
+blankly on his face. Ricardo, however, looked vaguely into space,
+and, with faint flickers of a smile about his lips, made conversation
+indefatigably against the silence of his entertainers. He boasted
+largely of his long association with Mr. Jones--over four years now, he
+said. Then, glancing rapidly at Heyst:
+
+“You can see at once he's a gentleman, can't you?”
+
+“You people,” Heyst said, his habitual playful intonation tinged with
+gloom, “are divorced from all reality in my eyes.”
+
+Ricardo received this speech as if he had been expecting to hear
+those very words, or else did not mind at all what Heyst might say.
+He muttered an absent-minded “Ay, ay,” played with a bit of biscuit,
+sighed, and said, with a peculiar stare which did not seem to carry any
+distance, but to stop short at a point in the air very near his face:
+
+“Anybody can see at once you are one. You and the governor ought to
+understand each other. He expects to see you tonight. The governor isn't
+well, and we've got to think of getting away from here.”
+
+While saying these words he turned himself full towards Lena, but
+without any marked expression. Leaning back with folded arms, the girl
+stared before her as if she had been alone in the room. But under
+that aspect of almost vacant unconcern the perils and emotion that had
+entered into her life warmed her heart, exalted her mind with a sense of
+an inconceivable intensity of existence.
+
+“Really? Thinking of going away from here?” Heyst murmured.
+
+“The best of friends must part,” Ricardo pronounced slowly. “And, as
+long as they part friends, there's no harm done. We two are used to be
+on the move. You, I understand, prefer to stick in one place.”
+
+It was obvious that all this was being said merely for the sake of
+talking, and that Ricardo's mind was concentrated on some purpose
+unconnected with the words that were coming out of his mouth.
+
+“I should like to know,” Heyst asked with incisive politeness, “how you
+have come to understand this or anything else about me? As far as I can
+remember, I've made you no confidences.”
+
+Ricardo, gazing comfortably into space out of the back of his chair--for
+some time all three had given up any pretence of eating--answered
+abstractedly:
+
+“Any fellow might have guessed it!” He sat up suddenly, and uncovered
+all his teeth in a grin of extraordinary ferocity, which was belied by
+the persistent amiability of his tone. “The governor will be the man
+to tell you something about that. I wish you would say you would see my
+governor. He's the one who does all our talking. Let me take you to him
+this evening. He ain't at all well; and he can't make up his mind to go
+away without having a talk with you.”
+
+Heyst, looking up, met Lena's eyes. Their expression of candour seemed
+to hide some struggling intention. Her head, he fancied, had made an
+imperceptible affirmative movement. Why? What reason could she have? Was
+it the prompting of some obscure instinct? Or was it simply a delusion
+of his own senses? But in this strange complication invading the
+quietude of his life, in his state of doubt and disdain and almost of
+despair with which he looked at himself, he would let even a delusive
+appearance guide him through a darkness so dense that it made for
+indifference.
+
+“Well, suppose I do say so.”
+
+Ricardo did not conceal his satisfaction, which for a moment interested
+Heyst.
+
+“It can't be my life they are after,” he said to himself. “What good
+could it be to them?”
+
+He looked across the table at the girl. What did it matter whether she
+had nodded or not? As always when looking into her unconscious eyes, he
+tasted something like the dregs of tender pity. He had decided to go.
+Her nod, imaginary or not imaginary, advice or illusion, had tipped the
+scale. He reflected that Ricardo's invitation could scarcely be anything
+in the nature of a trap. It would have been too absurd. Why carry subtly
+into a trap someone already bound hand and foot, as it were?
+
+All this time he had been looking fixedly at the girl he called Lena. In
+the submissive quietness of her being, which had been her attitude ever
+since they had begun their life on the island, she remained as secret
+as ever. Heyst got up abruptly, with a smile of such enigmatic and
+despairing character that Mr. Secretary Ricardo, whose abstract gaze had
+an all-round efficiency, made a slight crouching start, as if to dive
+under the table for his leg-knife--a start that was repressed, as soon
+as begun. He had expected Heyst to spring on him or draw a revolver,
+because he created for himself a vision of him in his own image. Instead
+of doing either of these obvious things, Heyst walked across the
+room, opened the door and put his head through it to look out into the
+compound.
+
+As soon as his back was turned, Ricardo's hand sought the girl's arm
+under the table. He was not looking at her, but she felt the groping,
+nervous touch of his search, felt suddenly the grip of his fingers above
+her wrist. He leaned forward a little; still he dared not look at her.
+His hard stare remained fastened on Heyst's back. In an extremely low
+hiss, his fixed idea of argument found expression scathingly:
+
+“See! He's no good. He's not the man for you!”
+
+He glanced at her at last. Her lips moved a little, and he was awed
+by that movement without a sound. Next instant the hard grasp of his
+fingers vanished from her arm. Heyst had shut the door. On his way back
+to the table, he crossed the path of the girl they had called Alma--she
+didn't know why--also Magdalen, whose mind had remained so long in doubt
+as to the reason of her own existence. She no longer wondered at that
+bitter riddle, since her heart found its solution in a blinding, hot
+glow of passionate purpose.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TEN
+
+She passed by Heyst as if she had indeed been blinded by some secret,
+lurid, and consuming glare into which she was about to enter. The
+curtain of the bedroom door fell behind her into rigid folds. Ricardo's
+vacant gaze seemed to be watching the dancing flight of a fly in mid
+air.
+
+“Extra dark outside, ain't it?” he muttered.
+
+“Not so dark but that I could see that man of yours prowling about
+there,” said Heyst in measured tones.
+
+“What--Pedro? He's scarcely a man you know; or else I wouldn't be so
+fond of him as I am.”
+
+“Very well. Let's call him your worthy associate.”
+
+“Ay! Worthy enough for what we want of him. A great standby is Peter in
+a scrimmage. A growl and a bite--oh, my! And you don't want him about?”
+
+“I don't.”
+
+“You want him out of the way?” insisted Ricardo with an affectation
+of incredulity which Heyst accepted calmly, though the air in the room
+seemed to grow more oppressive with every word spoken.
+
+“That's it. I do want him out of the way.” He forced himself to speak
+equably.
+
+“Lor'! That's no great matter. Pedro's not much use here. The business
+my governor's after can be settled by ten minutes' rational talk
+with--with another gentleman. Quiet talk!”
+
+He looked up suddenly with hard, phosphorescent eyes. Heyst didn't move
+a muscle. Ricardo congratulated himself on having left his revolver
+behind. He was so exasperated that he didn't know what he might have
+done. He said at last:
+
+“You want poor, harmless Peter out of the way before you let me take you
+to see the governor--is that it?”
+
+“Yes, that is it.”
+
+“H'm! One can see,” Ricardo said with hidden venom, “that you are a
+gentleman; but all that gentlemanly fancifulness is apt to turn sour on
+a plain man's stomach. However--you'll have to pardon me.”
+
+He put his fingers into his mouth and let out a whistle which seemed to
+drive a thin, sharp shaft of air solidly against one's nearest ear-drum.
+Though he greatly enjoyed Heyst's involuntary grimace, he sat perfectly
+stolid waiting for the effect of the call.
+
+It brought Pedro in with an extraordinary, uncouth, primeval
+impetuosity. The door flew open with a clatter, and the wild figure it
+disclosed seemed anxious to devastate the room in leaps and bounds;
+but Ricardo raised his open palm, and the creature came in quietly.
+His enormous half-closed paws swung to and fro a little in front of his
+bowed trunk as he walked. Ricardo looked on truculently.
+
+“You go to the boat--understand? Go now!”
+
+The little red eyes of the tame monster blinked with painful attention
+in the mass of hair.
+
+“Well? Why don't you get? Forgot human speech, eh? Don't you know any
+longer what a boat is?”
+
+“Si--boat,” the creature stammered out doubtfully.
+
+“Well, go there--the boat at the jetty. March off to it and sit there,
+lie down there, do anything but go to sleep there--till you hear my
+call, and then fly here. Them's your orders. March! Get, vamos! No, not
+that way--out through the front door. No sulks!”
+
+Pedro obeyed with uncouth alacrity. When he had gone, the gleam of
+pitiless savagery went out of Ricardo's yellow eyes, and his physiognomy
+took on, for the first time that evening, the expression of a domestic
+cat which is being noticed.
+
+“You can watch him right into the bushes, if you like. Too dark, eh? Why
+not go with him to the very spot, then?”
+
+Heyst made a gesture of vague protest.
+
+“There's nothing to assure me that he will stay there. I have no doubt
+of his going, but it's an act without guarantee.”
+
+“There you are!” Ricardo shrugged his shoulders philosophically. “Can't
+be helped. Short of shooting our Pedro, nobody can make absolutely sure
+of his staying in the same place longer than he has a mind to; but I
+tell you, he lives in holy terror of my temper. That's why I put on my
+sudden-death air when I talk to him. And yet I wouldn't shoot him--not
+I, unless in such a fit of rage as would make a man shoot his favourite
+dog. Look here, sir! This deal is on the square. I didn't tip him a wink
+to do anything else. He won't budge from the jetty. Are you coming along
+now, sir?”
+
+A short silence ensued. Ricardo's jaws were working ominously under his
+skin. His eyes glided voluptuously here and there, cruel and dreamy.
+Heyst checked a sudden movement, reflected for a while, then said:
+
+“You must wait a little.”
+
+“Wait a little! Wait a little! What does he think a fellow is--a graven
+image?” grumbled Ricardo half audibly.
+
+Heyst went into the bedroom, and shut the door after him with a bang.
+Coming from the light, he could not see a thing in there at first; yet
+he received the impression of the girl getting up from the floor. On
+the less opaque darkness of the shutter-hole, her head detached itself
+suddenly, very faint, a mere hint of a round, dark shape without a face.
+
+“I am going, Lena. I am going to confront these scoundrels.” He was
+surprised to feel two arms falling on his shoulders. “I thought that
+you--” he began.
+
+“Yes, yes!” the girl whispered hastily.
+
+She neither clung to him, nor yet did she try to draw him to her. Her
+hands grasped his shoulders, and she seemed to him to be staring into
+his face in the dark. And now he could see something of her face,
+too--an oval without features--and faintly distinguish her person, in
+the blackness, a form without definite lines.
+
+“You have a black dress here, haven't you, Lena?” he asked, speaking
+rapidly, and so low that she could just hear him.
+
+“Yes--an old thing.”
+
+“Very good. Put it on at once.”
+
+“But why?”
+
+“Not for mourning!” There was something peremptory in the slightly
+ironic murmur. “Can you find it and get into it in the dark?”
+
+She could. She would try. He waited, very still. He could imagine
+her movements over there at the far end of the room; but his eyes,
+accustomed now to the darkness, had lost her completely. When she spoke,
+her voice surprised him by its nearness. She had done what he had told
+her to do, and had approached him, invisible.
+
+“Good! Where's that piece of purple veil I've seen lying about?” he
+asked.
+
+There was no answer, only a slight rustle.
+
+“Where is it?” he repeated impatiently.
+
+Her unexpected breath was on his cheek.
+
+“In my hands.”
+
+“Capital! Listen, Lena. As soon as I leave the bungalow with that
+horrible scoundrel, you slip out at the back--instantly, lose no
+time!--and run round into the forest. That will be your time, while we
+are walking away, and I am sure he won't give me the slip. Run into the
+forest behind the fringe of bushes between the big trees. You will know,
+surely, how to find a place in full view of the front door. I fear for
+you; but in this black dress, with most of your face muffled up in that
+dark veil, I defy anybody to find you there before daylight. Wait in the
+forest till the table is pushed into full view of the doorway, and you
+see three candles out of four blown out and one relighted--or, should
+the lights be put out here while you watch them, wait till three candles
+are lighted and then two put out. At either of these signals run back as
+hard as you can, for it will mean that I am waiting for you here.”
+
+While he was speaking, the girl had sought and seized one of his
+hands. She did not press it; she held it loosely, as it were timidly,
+caressingly. It was no grasp; it was a mere contact, as if only to make
+sure that he was there, that he was real and no mere darker shadow in
+the obscurity. The warmth of her hand gave Heyst a strange, intimate
+sensation of all her person. He had to fight down a new sort of emotion,
+which almost unmanned him. He went on, whispering sternly:
+
+“But if you see no such signals, don't let anything--fear, curiosity,
+despair, or hope--entice you back to this house; and with the first sign
+of dawn steal away along the edge of the clearing till you strike the
+path. Wait no longer, because I shall probably be dead.”
+
+The murmur of the word “Never!” floated into his ear as if it formed
+itself in the air.
+
+“You know the path,” he continued. “Make your way to the barricade. Go
+to Wang--yes, to Wang. Let nothing stop you!” It seemed to him that the
+girl's hand trembled a little. “The worst he can do to you is to shoot
+you, but he won't. I really think he won't, if I am not there. Stay with
+the villagers, with the wild people, and fear nothing. They will be more
+awed by you than you can be frightened of them. Davidson's bound to turn
+up before very long. Keep a look-out for a passing steamer. Think of
+some sort of signal to call him.”
+
+She made no answer. The sense of the heavy, brooding silence in the
+outside world seemed to enter and fill the room--the oppressive infinity
+of it, without breath, without light. It was as if the heart of hearts
+had ceased to beat and the end of all things had come.
+
+“Have you understood? You are to run out of the house at once,” Heyst
+whispered urgently.
+
+She lifted his hand to her lips and let it go. He was startled.
+
+“Lena!” he cried out under his breath.
+
+She was gone from his side. He dared not trust himself--no, not even to
+the extent of a tender word.
+
+Turning to go out he heard a thud somewhere in the house. To open the
+door, he had first to lift the curtain; he did so with his face over his
+shoulder. The merest trickle of light, coming through the keyhole and
+one or two cracks, was enough for his eyes to see her plainly, all
+black, down on her knees, with her head and arms flung on the foot of
+the bed--all black in the desolation of a mourning sinner. What was
+this? A suspicion that there were everywhere more things than he
+could understand crossed Heyst's mind. Her arm, detached from the bed,
+motioned him away. He obeyed, and went out, full of disquiet.
+
+The curtain behind him had not ceased to tremble when she was up on her
+feet, close against it, listening for sounds, for words, in a stooping,
+tragic attitude of stealthy attention, one hand clutching at her breast
+as if to compress, to make less loud the beating of her heart. Heyst
+had caught Mr. Jones's secretary in the contemplation of his closed
+writing-desk. Ricardo might have been meditating how to break into it;
+but when he turned about suddenly, he showed so distorted a face that
+it made Heyst pause in wonder at the upturned whites of the eyes, which
+were blinking horribly, as if the man were inwardly convulsed.
+
+“I thought you were never coming,” Ricardo mumbled.
+
+“I didn't know you were pressed for time. Even if your going away
+depends on this conversation, as you say, I doubt if you are the men to
+put to sea on such a night as this,” said Heyst, motioning Ricardo to
+precede him out of the house.
+
+With feline undulations of hip and shoulder, the secretary left the
+room at once. There was something cruel in the absolute dumbness of the
+night. The great cloud covering half the sky hung right against one,
+like an enormous curtain hiding menacing preparations of violence. As
+the feet of the two men touched the ground, a rumble came from behind
+it, preceded by a swift, mysterious gleam of light on the waters of the
+bay.
+
+“Ha!” said Ricardo. “It begins.”
+
+“It may be nothing in the end,” observed Heyst, stepping along steadily.
+
+“No! Let it come!” Ricardo said viciously. “I am in the humour for it!”
+
+By the time the two men had reached the other bungalow, the far-off
+modulated rumble growled incessantly, while pale lightning in waves of
+cold fire flooded and ran off the island in rapid succession. Ricardo,
+unexpectedly, dashed ahead up the steps and put his head through the
+doorway.
+
+“Here he is, governor! Keep him with you as long as you can--till you
+hear me whistle. I am on the track.”
+
+He flung these words into the room with inconceivable speed, and stood
+aside to let the visitor pass through the doorway; but he had to wait
+an appreciable moment, because Heyst, seeing his purpose, had scornfully
+slowed his pace. When Heyst entered the room it was with a smile, the
+Heyst smile, lurking under his martial moustache.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER ELEVEN
+
+Two candles were burning on the stand-up desk. Mr. Jones, tightly
+enfolded in an old but gorgeous blue silk dressing-gown, kept his
+elbows close against his sides and his hands deeply plunged into the
+extraordinarily deep pockets of the garment. The costume accentuated his
+emaciation. He resembled a painted pole leaning against the edge of the
+desk, with a dried head of dubious distinction stuck on the top of it.
+Ricardo lounged in the doorway. Indifferent in appearance to what
+was going on, he was biding his time. At a given moment, between two
+flickers of lightning, he melted out of his frame into the outer
+air. His disappearance was observed on the instant by Mr. Jones, who
+abandoned his nonchalant immobility against the desk, and made a few
+steps calculated to put him between Heyst and the doorway.
+
+“It's awfully close,” he remarked.
+
+Heyst, in the middle of the room, had made up his mind to speak plainly.
+
+“We haven't met to talk about the weather. You favoured me earlier in
+the day with a rather cryptic phrase about yourself. 'I am he that is,'
+you said. What does that mean?”
+
+Mr. Jones, without looking at Heyst, continued his absentminded
+movements till, attaining the desired position, he brought his shoulders
+with a thump against the wall near the door, and raised his head. In
+the emotion of the decisive moment his haggard face glistened with
+perspiration. Drops ran down his hollow cheeks and almost blinded the
+spectral eyes in their bony caverns.
+
+“It means that I am a person to be reckoned with. No--stop! Don't put
+your hand into your pocket--don't.”
+
+His voice had a wild, unexpected shrillness. Heyst started, and there
+ensued a moment of suspended animation, during which the thunder's
+deep bass muttered distantly and the doorway to the right of Mr. Jones
+flickered with bluish light. At last Heyst shrugged his shoulders; he
+even looked at his hand. He didn't put it in his pocket, however. Mr.
+Jones, glued against the wall, watched him raise both his hands to
+the ends of his horizontal moustaches, and answered the note of
+interrogation in his steady eyes.
+
+“A matter of prudence,” said Mr. Jones in his natural hollow tones, and
+with a face of deathlike composure. “A man of your free life has surely
+perceived that. You are a much talked-about man, Mr. Heyst--and though,
+as far as I understand, you are accustomed to employ the subtler
+weapons of intelligence, still I can't afford to take any risks of
+the--er--grosser methods. I am not unscrupulous enough to be a match for
+you in the use of intelligence; but I assure you, Mr. Heyst, that in
+the other way you are no match for me. I have you covered at this
+very moment. You have been covered ever since you entered this room.
+Yes--from my pocket.”
+
+During this harangue Heyst looked deliberately over his shoulder,
+stepped back a pace, and sat down on the end of the camp bedstead.
+Leaning his elbow on one knee, he laid his cheek in the palm of his hand
+and seemed to meditate on what he should say next. Mr. Jones, planted
+against the wall, was obviously waiting for some sort of overture.
+As nothing came, he resolved to speak himself; but he hesitated. For,
+though he considered that the most difficult step had been taken, he
+said to himself that every stage of progress required great caution,
+lest the man in Ricardo's phraseology, should “start to prance”--which
+would be most inconvenient. He fell back on a previous statement:
+
+“And I am a person to be reckoned with.”
+
+The other man went on looking at the floor, as if he were alone in the
+room. There was a pause.
+
+“You have heard of me, then?” Heyst said at length, looking up.
+
+“I should think so! We have been staying at Schomberg's hotel.”
+
+“Schom--” Heyst choked on the word.
+
+“What's the matter, Mr. Heyst?”
+
+“Nothing. Nausea,” Heyst said resignedly. He resumed his former attitude
+of meditative indifference. “What is this reckoning you are talking
+about?” he asked after a time, in the quietest possible tone. “I don't
+know you.”
+
+“It's obvious that we belong to the same--social sphere,” began Mr.
+Jones with languid irony. Inwardly he was as watchful as he could be.
+“Something has driven you out--the originality of your ideas, perhaps.
+Or your tastes.”
+
+Mr. Jones indulged in one of his ghastly smiles. In repose his features
+had a curious character of evil, exhausted austerity; but when he
+smiled, the whole mask took on an unpleasantly infantile expression. A
+recrudescence of the rolling thunder invaded the room loudly, and passed
+into silence.
+
+“You are not taking this very well,” observed Mr. Jones. This was
+what he said, but as a matter of fact he thought that the business
+was shaping quite satisfactorily. The man, he said to himself, had no
+stomach for a fight. Aloud he continued: “Come! You can't expect to have
+it always your own way. You are a man of the world.”
+
+“And you?” Heyst interrupted him unexpectedly. “How do you define
+yourself?”
+
+“I, my dear sir? In one way I am--yes, I am the world itself, come to
+pay you a visit. In another sense I am an outcast--almost an outlaw.
+If you prefer a less materialistic view, I am a sort of fate--the
+retribution that waits its time.”
+
+“I wish to goodness you were the commonest sort of ruffian!” said Heyst,
+raising his equable gaze to Mr. Jones. “One would be able to talk to you
+straight then, and hope for some humanity. As it is--”
+
+“I dislike violence and ferocity of every sort as much as you do,” Mr.
+Jones declared, looking very languid as he leaned against the wall, but
+speaking fairly loud. “You can ask my Martin if it is not so. This, Mr.
+Heyst, is a soft age. It is also an age without prejudices. I've heard
+that you are free from them yourself. You mustn't be shocked if I tell
+you plainly that we are after your money--or I am, if you prefer to make
+me alone responsible. Pedro, of course, knows no more of it than
+any other animal would. Ricardo is of the faithful-retainer
+class--absolutely identified with all my ideas, wishes, and even whims!”
+
+Mr. Jones pulled his left hand out of his pocket, got a handkerchief out
+of another, and began to wipe the perspiration from his forehead, neck,
+and chin. The excitement from which he suffered made his breathing
+visible. In his long dressing-gown he had the air of a convalescent
+invalid who had imprudently overtaxed his strength. Heyst,
+broad-shouldered, robust, watched the operation from the end of the camp
+bedstead, very calm, his hands on his knees.
+
+“And by the by,” he asked, “where is he now, that henchman of yours?
+Breaking into my desk?”
+
+“That would be crude. Still, crudeness is one of life's conditions.”
+ There was the slightest flavour of banter in the tone of Ricardo's
+governor. “Conceivable, but unlikely. Martin is a little crude; but you
+are not, Mr. Heyst. To tell you the truth, I don't know precisely
+where he is. He has been a little mysterious of late; but he has my
+confidence. No, don't get up, Mr. Heyst!”
+
+The viciousness of his spectral face was indescribable. Heyst, who had
+moved a little, was surprised by the disclosure.
+
+“It was not my intention,” he said.
+
+“Pray remain seated,” Mr. Jones insisted in a languid voice, but with a
+very determined glitter in his black eye-caverns.
+
+“If you were more observant,” said Heyst with dispassionate contempt,
+“you would have known before I had been five minutes in the room that I
+had no weapon of any sort on me.”
+
+“Possibly; but pray keep your hands still. They are very well where they
+are. This is too big an affair for me to take any risks.”
+
+“Big? Too big?” Heyst repeated with genuine surprise. “Good Heavens!
+Whatever you are looking for, there's very little of it here--very
+little of anything.”
+
+“You would naturally say so, but that's not what we have heard,”
+ retorted Mr. Jones quickly, with a grin so ghastly that it was
+impossible to think it voluntary.
+
+Heyst's face had grown very gloomy. He knitted his brows.
+
+“What have you heard?” he asked.
+
+“A lot, Mr. Heyst--a lot,” affirmed Mr. Jones. He was vying to recover
+his manner of languid superiority. “We have heard, for instance, of a
+certain Mr. Morrison, once your partner.”
+
+Heyst could not repress a slight movement.
+
+“Aha!” said Mr. Jones, with a sort of ghostly glee on his face.
+
+The muffled thunder resembled the echo of a distant cannonade below the
+horizon, and the two men seemed to be listening to it in sullen silence.
+
+“This diabolical calumny will end in actually and literally taking my
+life from me,” thought Heyst.
+
+Then, suddenly, he laughed. Portentously spectral, Mr. Jones frowned at
+the sound.
+
+“Laugh as much as you please,” he said. “I, who have been hounded out
+from society by a lot of highly moral souls, can't see anything funny in
+that story. But here we are, and you will now have to pay for your fun,
+Mr. Heyst.”
+
+“You have heard a lot of ugly lies,” observed Heyst. “Take my word for
+it!”
+
+“You would say so, of course--very natural. As a matter of fact I
+haven't heard very much. Strictly speaking, it was Martin. He collects
+information, and so on. You don't suppose I would talk to that Schomberg
+animal more than I could help? It was Martin whom he took into his
+confidence.”
+
+“The stupidity of that creature is so great that it becomes formidable,”
+ Heyst said, as if speaking to himself.
+
+Involuntarily, his mind turned to the girl, wandering in the forest,
+alone and terrified. Would he ever see her again? At that thought he
+nearly lost his self-possession. But the idea that if she followed
+his instructions those men were not likely to find her steadied him a
+little. They did not know that the island had any inhabitants; and he
+himself once disposed of, they would be too anxious to get away to waste
+time hunting for a vanished girl.
+
+All this passed through Heyst's mind in a flash, as men think in moments
+of danger. He looked speculatively at Mr. Jones, who, of course, had
+never for a moment taken his eyes from his intended victim. And, the
+conviction came to Heyst that this outlaw from the higher spheres was an
+absolutely hard and pitiless scoundrel.
+
+Mr. Jones's voice made him start.
+
+“It would be useless, for instance, to tell me that your Chinaman has
+run off with your money. A man living alone with a Chinaman on an island
+takes care to conceal property of that kind so well that the devil
+himself--”
+
+“Certainly,” Heyst muttered.
+
+Again, with his left hand, Mr. Jones mopped his frontal bone, his
+stalk-like neck, his razor jaws, his fleshless chin. Again his voice
+faltered and his aspect became still more gruesomely malevolent as of a
+wicked and pitiless corpse.
+
+“I see what you mean,” he cried, “but you mustn't put too much trust
+in your ingenuity. You don't strike me as a very ingenious person, Mr.
+Heyst. Neither am I. My talents lie another way. But Martin--”
+
+“Who is now engaged in rifling my desk,” interjected Heyst.
+
+“I don't think so. What I was going to say is that Martin is much
+cleverer than a Chinaman. Do you believe in racial superiority, Mr.
+Heyst? I do, firmly. Martin is great at ferreting out such secrets as
+yours, for instance.”
+
+“Secrets like mine!” repeated Heyst bitterly. “Well I wish him joy of
+all he can ferret out!”
+
+“That's very kind of you,” remarked Mr. Jones. He was beginning to
+be anxious for Martin's return. Of iron self-possession at the
+gaming-table, fearless in a sudden affray, he found that this rather
+special kind of work was telling on his nerves. “Keep still as you are!”
+ he cried sharply.
+
+“I've told you I am not armed,” said Heyst, folding his arms on his
+breast.
+
+“I am really inclined to believe that you are not,” admitted Mr. Jones
+seriously. “Strange!” he mused aloud, the caverns of his eyes turned
+upon Heyst. Then briskly: “But my object is to keep you in this room.
+Don't provoke me, by some unguarded movement, to smash your knee or do
+something definite of that sort.” He passed his tongue over his lips,
+which were dry and black, while his forehead glistened with moisture. “I
+don't know if it wouldn't be better to do it at once!”
+
+“He who deliberates is lost,” said Heyst with grave mockery.
+
+Mr. Jones disregarded the remark. He had the air of communing with
+himself.
+
+“Physically I am no match for you,” he said slowly, his black gaze fixed
+upon the man sitting on the end of the bed. “You could spring--”
+
+“Are you trying to frighten yourself?” asked Heyst abruptly. “You don't
+seem to have quite enough pluck for your business. Why don't you do it
+at once?”
+
+Mr. Jones, taking violent offence, snorted like a savage skeleton.
+
+“Strange as it may seem to you, it is because of my origin, my breeding,
+my traditions, my early associations, and such-like trifles. Not
+everybody can divest himself of the prejudices of a gentleman as easily
+as you have done, Mr. Heyst. But don't worry about my pluck. If you were
+to make a clean spring at me, you would receive in mid air, so to speak,
+something that would make you perfectly harmless by the time you landed.
+No, don't misapprehend us, Mr. Heyst. We are--er--adequate bandits; and
+we are after the fruit of your labours as a--er--successful swindler.
+It's the way of the world--gorge and disgorge!”
+
+He leaned wearily the back of his head against the wall. His vitality
+seemed exhausted. Even his sunken eyelids drooped within the bony
+sockets. Only his thin, waspish, beautifully pencilled eyebrows, drawn
+together a little, suggested the will and the power to sting--something
+vicious, unconquerable, and deadly.
+
+“Fruits! Swindler!” repeated Heyst, without heat, almost without
+contempt. “You are giving yourself no end of trouble, you and your
+faithful henchman, to crack an empty nut. There are no fruits here, as
+you imagine. There are a few sovereigns, which you may have if you like;
+and since you have called yourself a bandit--”
+
+“Yaas!” drawled Mr. Jones. “That, rather than a swindler. Open warfare
+at least!”
+
+“Very good! Only let me tell you that there were never in the world two
+more deluded bandits--never!”
+
+Heyst uttered these words with such energy that Mr. Jones, stiffening
+up, seemed to become thinner and taller in his metallic blue
+dressing-gown against the whitewashed wall.
+
+“Fooled by a silly, rascally innkeeper!” Heyst went on. “Talked over
+like a pair of children with a promise of sweets!”
+
+“I didn't talk with that disgusting animal,” muttered Mr. Jones
+sullenly; “but he convinced Martin, who is no fool.”
+
+“I should think he wanted very much to be convinced,” said Heyst, with
+the courteous intonation so well known in the Islands. “I don't want to
+disturb your touching trust in your--your follower, but he must be the
+most credulous brigand in existence. What do you imagine? If the story
+of my riches were ever so true, do you think Schomberg would have
+imparted it to you from sheer altruism? Is that the way of the world,
+Mr. Jones?”
+
+For a moment the lower jaw of Ricardo's gentleman dropped; but it came
+up with a snap of scorn, and he said with spectral intensity:
+
+“The beast is cowardly! He was frightened, and wanted to get rid of
+us, if you want to know, Mr. Heyst. I don't know that the material
+inducement was so very great, but I was bored, and we decided to accept
+the bribe. I don't regret it. All my life I have been seeking new
+impressions, and you have turned out to be something quite out of
+the common. Martin, of course, looks to the material results. He's
+simple--and faithful--and wonderfully acute.”
+
+“Ah, yes! He's on the track--” and now Heyst's speech had the character
+of politely grim raillery--“but not sufficiently on the track, as
+yet, to make it quite convenient to shoot me without more ado. Didn't
+Schomberg tell you precisely where I conceal the fruit of my rapines?
+Pah! Don't you know he would have told you anything, true or false, from
+a very clear motive? Revenge! Mad hate--the unclean idiot!”
+
+Mr. Jones did not seem very much moved. On his right hand the doorway
+incessantly flickered with distant lightning, and the continuous rumble
+of thunder went on irritatingly, like the growl of an inarticulate giant
+muttering fatuously.
+
+Heyst overcame his immense repugnance to allude to her whose image,
+cowering in the forest was constantly before his eyes, with all the
+pathos and force of its appeal, august, pitiful, and almost holy to him.
+It was in a hurried, embarrassed manner that he went on:
+
+“If it had not been for that girl whom he persecuted with his insane and
+odious passion, and who threw herself on my protection, he would never
+have--but you know well enough!”
+
+“I don't know!” burst out Mr. Jones with amazing heat. “That
+hotel-keeper tried to talk to me once of some girl he had lost, but I
+told him I didn't want to hear any of his beastly women stories. It had
+something to do with you, had it?”
+
+Heyst looked on serenely at this outburst, then lost his patience a
+little.
+
+“What sort of comedy is this? You don't mean to say that you didn't know
+that I had--that there was a girl living with me here?”
+
+One could see that the eyes of Mr. Jones had become fixed in the depths
+of their black holes by the gleam of white becoming steady there. The
+whole man seemed frozen still.
+
+“Here! Here!” he screamed out twice. There was no mistaking his
+astonishment, his shocked incredulity--something like frightened
+disgust.
+
+Heyst was disgusted also, but in another way. He too was incredulous.
+He regretted having mentioned the girl; but the thing was done, his
+repugnance had been overcome in the heat of his argument against the
+absurd bandit.
+
+“Is it possible that you didn't know of that significant fact?” he
+inquired. “Of the only effective truth in the welter of silly lies that
+deceived you so easily?”
+
+“No, I didn't!” Mr. Jones shouted. “But Martin did!” he added in a faint
+whisper, which Heyst's ears just caught and no more.
+
+“I kept her out of sight as long as I could,” said Heyst. “Perhaps, with
+your bringing up, traditions, and so on; you will understand my reason
+for it.”
+
+“He knew. He knew before!” Mr. Jones mourned in a hollow voice. “He knew
+of her from the first!”
+
+Backed hard against the wall he no longer watched Heyst. He had the air
+of a man who had seen an abyss yawning under his feet.
+
+“If I want to kill him, this is my time,” thought Heyst; but he did not
+move.
+
+Next moment Mr. Jones jerked his head up, glaring with sardonic fury.
+
+“I have a good mind to shoot you, you woman-ridden hermit, you man in
+the moon, that can't exist without--no, it won't be you that I'll shoot.
+It's the other woman-lover--the prevaricating, sly, low-class, amorous
+cuss! And he shaved--shaved under my very nose. I'll shoot him!”
+
+“He's gone mad,” thought Heyst, startled by the spectre's sudden fury.
+
+He felt himself more in danger, nearer death, than ever since he had
+entered that room. An insane bandit is a deadly combination. He did not,
+could not know that Mr. Jones was quick-minded enough to see already the
+end of his reign over his excellent secretary's thoughts and feelings;
+the coming failure of Ricardo's fidelity. A woman had intervened!
+A woman, a girl, who apparently possessed the power to awaken
+men's disgusting folly. Her power had been proved in two instances
+already--the beastly innkeeper, and that man with moustaches, upon whom
+Mr. Jones, his deadly right hand twitching in his pocket, glared more in
+repulsion than in anger. The very object of the expedition was lost from
+view in his sudden and overwhelming sense of utter insecurity. And
+this made Mr. Jones feel very savage; but not against the man with the
+moustaches. Thus, while Heyst was really feeling that his life was
+not worth two minutes, purchase, he heard himself addressed with
+no affectation of languid impertinence but with a burst of feverish
+determination.
+
+“Here! Let's call a truce!” said Mr. Jones.
+
+Heyst's heart was too sick to allow him to smile.
+
+“Have I been making war on you?” he asked wearily. “How do you expect
+me to attach any meaning to your words?” he went on. “You seem to be a
+morbid, senseless sort of bandit. We don't speak the same language. If I
+were to tell you why I am here, talking to you, you wouldn't believe
+me, because you would not understand me. It certainly isn't the love
+of life, from which I have divorced myself long ago--not sufficiently,
+perhaps; but if you are thinking of yours, then I repeat to you that it
+has never been in danger from me. I am unarmed.”
+
+Mr. Jones was biting his lower lip, in a deep meditation. It was only
+towards the last that he looked at Heyst.
+
+“Unarmed, eh?” Then he burst out violently: “I tell you, a gentleman is
+no match for the common herd. And yet one must make use of the brutes.
+Unarmed, eh? And I suppose that creature is of the commonest sort. You
+could hardly have got her out of a drawing-room. Though they're all
+alike, for that matter. Unarmed! It's a pity. I am in much greater
+danger than you are or were--or I am much mistaken. But I am not--I know
+my man!”
+
+He lost his air of mental vacancy and broke out into shrill
+exclamations. To Heyst they seemed madder than anything that had gone
+before.
+
+“On the track! On the scent!” he cried, forgetting himself to the point
+of executing a dance of rage in the middle of the floor.
+
+Heyst looked on, fascinated by this skeleton in a gay dressing-gown,
+jerkily agitated like a grotesque toy on the end of an invisible string.
+It became quiet suddenly.
+
+“I might have smelt a rat! I always knew that this would be the danger.”
+ He changed suddenly to a confidential tone, fixing his sepulchral stare
+on Heyst. “And yet here I am, taken in by the fellow, like the veriest
+fool. I've been always on the watch for some beastly influence, but here
+I am, fairly caught. He shaved himself right in front of me and I never
+guessed!”
+
+The shrill laugh, following on the low tone of secrecy, sounded so
+convincingly insane that Heyst got up as if moved by a spring. Mr. Jones
+stepped back two paces, but displayed no uneasiness.
+
+“It's as clear as daylight!” he uttered mournfully, and fell silent.
+
+Behind him the doorway flickered lividly, and the sound as of a naval
+action somewhere away on the horizon filled the breathless pause.
+Mr. Jones inclined his head on his shoulder. His mood had completely
+changed.
+
+“What do you say, unarmed man? Shall we go and see what is detaining
+my trusted Martin so long? He asked me to keep you engaged in friendly
+conversation till he made a further examination of that track. Ha, ha,
+ha!”
+
+“He is no doubt ransacking my house,” said Heyst.
+
+He was bewildered. It seemed to him that all this was an
+incomprehensible dream, or perhaps an elaborate other-world joke,
+contrived by that spectre in a gorgeous dressing gown.
+
+Mr. Jones looked at him with a horrible, cadaverous smile of inscrutable
+mockery, and pointed to the door. Heyst passed through it first. His
+feelings had become so blunted that he did not care how soon he was shot
+in the back.
+
+“How oppressive the air is!” the voice of Mr. Jones said at his elbow.
+“This stupid storm gets on my nerves. I would welcome some rain, though
+it would be unpleasant to get wet. On the other hand, this exasperating
+thunder has the advantage of covering the sound of our approach. The
+lightning's not so convenient. Ah, your house is fully illuminated!
+My clever Martin is punishing your stock of candles. He belongs to the
+unceremonious classes, which are also unlovely, untrustworthy, and so
+on.”
+
+“I left the candles burning,” said Heyst, “to save him trouble.”
+
+“You really believed he would go to your house?” asked Mr. Jones with
+genuine interest.
+
+“I had that notion, strongly. I do believe he is there now.”
+
+“And you don't mind?”
+
+“No!”
+
+“You don't!” Mr. Jones stopped to wonder. “You are an extraordinary
+man,” he said suspiciously, and moved on, touching elbows with Heyst.
+
+In the latter's breast dwelt a deep silence, the complete silence of
+unused faculties. At this moment, by simply shouldering Mr. Jones, he
+could have thrown him down and put himself, by a couple of leaps, beyond
+the certain aim of the revolver; but he did not even think of that. His
+very will seemed dead of weariness. He moved automatically, his head
+low, like a prisoner captured by the evil power of a masquerading
+skeleton out of a grave. Mr. Jones took charge of the direction. They
+fetched a wide sweep. The echoes of distant thunder seemed to dog their
+footsteps.
+
+“By the by,” said Mr. Jones, as if unable to restrain his curiosity,
+“aren't you anxious about that--ouch!--that fascinating creature to whom
+you owe whatever pleasure you can find in our visit?”
+
+“I have placed her in safety,” said Heyst. “I--I took good care of
+that.”
+
+Mr. Jones laid a hand on his arm.
+
+“You have? Look! is that what you mean?”
+
+Heyst raised his head. In the flicker of lightning the desolation of the
+cleared ground on his left leaped out and sank into the night, together
+with the elusive forms of things distant, pale, unearthly. But in the
+brilliant square of the door he saw the girl--the woman he had longed to
+see once more as if enthroned, with her hands on the arms of the chair.
+She was in black; her face was white, her head dreamily inclined on her
+breast. He saw her only as low as her knees. He saw her--there, in the
+room, alive with a sombre reality. It was no mocking vision. She was not
+in the forest--but there! She sat there in the chair, seemingly without
+strength, yet without fear, tenderly stooping.
+
+“Can you understand their power?” whispered the hot breath of Mr. Jones
+into his ear. “Can there be a more disgusting spectacle? It's enough to
+make the earth detestable. She seems to have found her affinity. Move
+on closer. If I have to shoot you in the end, then perhaps you will die
+cured.”
+
+Heyst obeyed the pushing pressure of a revolver barrel between his
+shoulders. He felt it distinctly, but he did not feel the ground under
+his feet. They found the steps, without his being aware that he was
+ascending them--slowly, one by one. Doubt entered into him--a doubt of
+a new kind, formless, hideous. It seemed to spread itself all over him,
+enter his limbs, and lodge in his entrails. He stopped suddenly, with
+a thought that he who experienced such a feeling had no business to
+live--or perhaps was no longer living.
+
+Everything--the bungalow, the forest, the open ground--trembled
+incessantly, the earth, the sky itself, shivered all the time, and the
+only thing immovable in the shuddering universe was the interior of the
+lighted room and the woman in black sitting in the light of the eight
+candle-flames. They flung around her an intolerable brilliance which
+hurt his eyes, seemed to sear his very brain with the radiation of
+infernal heat. It was some time before his scorched eyes made out
+Ricardo seated on the floor at some little distance, his back to the
+doorway, but only partly so; one side of his upturned face showing the
+absorbed, all forgetful rapture of his contemplation.
+
+The grip of Mr. Jones's hard claw drew Heyst back a little. In the roll
+of thunder, swelling and subsiding, he whispered in his ear a sarcastic:
+“Of course!”
+
+A great shame descended upon Heyst--the shame of guilt, absurd and
+maddening. Mr. Jones drew him still farther back into the darkness of
+the veranda.
+
+“This is serious,” he went on, distilling his ghostly venom into Heyst's
+very ear. “I had to shut my eyes many times to his little flings; but
+this is serious. He has found his soul-mate. Mud souls, obscene and
+cunning! Mud bodies, too--the mud of the gutter! I tell you, we are
+no match for the vile populace. I, even I, have been nearly caught. He
+asked me to detain you till he gave me the signal. It won't be you
+that I'll have to shoot, but him. I wouldn't trust him near me for five
+minutes after this!”
+
+He shook Heyst's arm a little.
+
+“If you had not happened to mention the creature, we should both have
+been dead before morning. He would have stabbed you as you came down
+the steps after leaving me and then he would have walked up to me and
+planted the same knife between my ribs. He has no prejudices. The viler
+the origin, the greater the freedom of these simple souls!”
+
+He drew a cautious, hissing breath and added in an agitated murmur: “I
+can see right into his mind, I have been nearly caught napping by his
+cunning.”
+
+He stretched his neck to peer into the room from the side. Heyst, too,
+made a step forward, under the slight impulse of that slender hand
+clasping his hand with a thin, bony grasp.
+
+“Behold!” the skeleton of the crazy bandit jabbered thinly into his ear
+in spectral fellowship. “Behold the simple, Acis kissing the sandals
+of the nymph, on the way to her lips, all forgetful, while the menacing
+fife of Polyphemus already sounds close at hand--if he could only hear
+it! Stoop a little.”
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWELVE
+
+On returning to the Heyst bungalow, rapid as if on wings, Ricardo
+found Lena waiting for him. She was dressed in black; and at once his
+uplifting exultation was replaced by an awed and quivering patience
+before her white face, before the immobility of her reposeful pose, the
+more amazing to him who had encountered the strength of her limbs and
+the indomitable spirit in her body. She had come out after Heyst's
+departure, and had sat down under the portrait to wait for the return of
+the man of violence and death. While lifting the curtain, she felt the
+anguish of her disobedience to her lover, which was soothed by a feeling
+she had known before--a gentle flood of penetrating sweetness. She
+was not automatically obeying a momentary suggestion, she was under
+influences more deliberate, more vague, and of greater potency. She had
+been prompted, not by her will, but by a force that was outside of her
+and more worthy. She reckoned upon nothing definite; she had calculated
+nothing. She saw only her purpose of capturing death--savage, sudden,
+irresponsible death, prowling round the man who possessed her, death
+embodied in the knife ready to strike into his heart. No doubt it had
+been a sin to throw herself into his arms. With that inspiration
+that descends at times from above for the good or evil of our common
+mediocrity, she had a sense of having been for him only a violent and
+sincere choice of curiosity and pity--a thing that passes. She did not
+know him. If he were to go away from her and disappear, she would utter
+no reproach, she would not resent it; for she would hold in herself the
+impress of something most rare and precious--his embraces made her own
+by her courage in saving his life.
+
+All she thought of--the essence of her tremors, her flushes of heat, and
+her shudders of cold--was the question how to get hold of that knife,
+the mark and sign of stalking death. A tremor of impatience to clutch
+the frightful thing, glimpsed once and unforgettable, agitated her
+hands.
+
+The instinctive flinging forward of these hands stopped Ricardo dead
+short between the door and her chair, with the ready obedience of a
+conquered man who can bide his time. Her success disconcerted her. She
+listened to the man's impassioned transports of terrible eulogy and even
+more awful declarations of love. She was even able to meet his eyes,
+oblique, apt to glide away, throwing feral gleams of desire.
+
+“No!” he was saying, after a fiery outpouring of words in which the most
+ferocious phrases of love were mingled with wooing accents of entreaty.
+“I will have no more of it! Don't you mistrust me. I am sober in my
+talk. Feel how quietly my heart beats. Ten times today when you, you,
+you, swam in my eye, I thought it would burst one of my ribs or leap
+out of my throat. It has knocked itself dead and tired, waiting for this
+evening, for this very minute. And now it can do no more. Feel how quiet
+it is!”
+
+He made a step forward, but she raised her clear voice commandingly:
+
+“No nearer!”
+
+He stopped with a smile of imbecile worship on his lips, and with the
+delighted obedience of a man who could at any moment seize her in his
+hands and dash her to the ground.
+
+“Ah! If I had taken you by the throat this morning and had my way with
+you, I should never have known what you are. And now I do. You are a
+wonder! And so am I, in my way. I have nerve, and I have brains, too.
+We should have been lost many times but for me. I plan--I plot for my
+gentleman. Gentleman--pah! I am sick of him. And you are sick of yours,
+eh? You, you!”
+
+He shook all over; he cooed at her a string of endearing names, obscene
+and tender, and then asked abruptly:
+
+“Why don't you speak to me?”
+
+“It's my part to listen,” she said, giving him an inscrutable smile,
+with a flush on her cheek and her lips cold as ice.
+
+“But you will answer me?”
+
+“Yes,” she said, her eyes dilated as if with sudden interest.
+
+“Where's that plunder? Do you know?”
+
+“No! Not yet.”
+
+“But there is plunder stowed somewhere that's worth having?”
+
+“Yes, I think so. But who knows?” she added after a pause.
+
+“And who cares?” he retorted recklessly. “I've had enough of this
+crawling on my belly. It's you who are my treasure. It's I who found you
+out where a gentleman had buried you to rot for his accursed pleasure!”
+
+He looked behind him and all around for a seat, then turned to her his
+troubled eyes and dim smile.
+
+“I am dog-tired,” he said, and sat down on the floor. “I went tired this
+morning, since I came in here and started talking to you--as tired as if
+I had been pouring my life-blood here on these planks for you to dabble
+your white feet in.”
+
+Unmoved, she nodded at him thoughtfully. Woman-like, all her faculties
+remained concentrated on her heart's desire--on the knife--while the man
+went on babbling insanely at her feet, ingratiating and savage, almost
+crazy with elation. But he, too, was holding on to his purpose.
+
+“For you! For you I will throw away money, lives--all the lives but
+mine! What you want is a man, a master that will let you put the heel of
+your shoe on his neck; not that skulker, who will get tired of you in a
+year--and you of him. And then what? You are not the one to sit still;
+neither am I. I live for myself, and you shall live for yourself,
+too--not for a Swedish baron. They make a convenience of people like you
+and me. A gentleman is better than an employer, but an equal partnership
+against all the 'yporcrits is the thing for you and me. We'll go on
+wandering the world over, you and I both free and both true. You are no
+cage bird. We'll rove together, for we are of them that have no homes.
+We are born rovers!”
+
+She listened to him with the utmost attention, as if any unexpected
+word might give her some sort of opening to get that dagger, that awful
+knife--to disarm murder itself, pleading for her love at her feet. Again
+she nodded at him thoughtfully, rousing a gleam in his yellow eyes,
+yearning devotedly upon her face. When he hitched himself a little
+closer, her soul had no movement of recoil. This had to be. Anything
+had to be which would bring the knife within her reach. He talked more
+confidentially now.
+
+“We have met, and their time has come,” he began, looking up into her
+eyes. “The partnership between me and my gentleman has to be ripped up.
+There's no room for him where we two are. Why, he would shoot me like a
+dog! Don't you worry. This will settle it not later than tonight!”
+
+He tapped his folded leg below the knee, and was surprised, flattered,
+by the lighting up of her face, which stooped towards him eagerly and
+remained expectant, the lips girlishly parted, red in the pale face, and
+quivering in the quickened drawing of her breath.
+
+“You marvel, you miracle, you man's luck and joy--one in a million! No,
+the only one. You have found your man in me,” he whispered tremulously.
+“Listen! They are having their last talk together; for I'll do for your
+gentleman, too, by midnight.”
+
+Without the slightest tremor she murmured, as soon as the tightening of
+her breast had eased off and the words would come:
+
+“I wouldn't be in too much of a hurry--with him.”
+
+The pause, the tone, had all the value of meditated advice.
+
+“Good, thrifty girl!” he laughed low, with a strange feline gaiety,
+expressed by the undulating movement of his shoulders and the sparkling
+snap of his oblique eyes. “You are still thinking about the chance of
+that swag. You'll make a good partner, that you will! And, I say, what a
+decoy you will make! Jee-miny!”
+
+He was carried away for a moment, but his face darkened swiftly.
+
+“No! No reprieve. What do you think a fellow is--a scarecrow? All hat
+and clothes and no feeling, no inside, no brain to make fancies for
+himself? No!” he went on violently. “Never in his life will he go again
+into that room of yours--never any more!”
+
+A silence fell. He was gloomy with the torment of his jealousy, and did
+not even look at her. She sat up and slowly, gradually, bent lower and
+lower over him, as if ready to fall into his arms. He looked up at last,
+and checked this droop unwittingly.
+
+“Say! You, who are up to fighting a man with your bare hands, could
+you--eh?--could you manage to stick one with a thing like that knife of
+mine?”
+
+She opened her eyes very wide and gave him a wild smile.
+
+“How can I tell?” she whispered enchantingly. “Will you let me have a
+look at it?”
+
+Without taking his eyes from her face, he pulled the knife out of its
+sheath--a short, broad, cruel double-edged blade with a bone handle--and
+only then looked down at it.
+
+“A good friend,” he said simply. “Take it in your hand and feel the
+balance,” he suggested.
+
+At the moment when she bent forward to receive it from him, there was
+a flash of fire in her mysterious eyes--a red gleam in the white mist
+which wrapped the promptings and longings of her soul. She had done it!
+The very sting of death was in her hands, the venom of the viper in her
+paradise, extracted, safe in her possession--and the viper's head all
+but lying under her heel. Ricardo, stretched on the mats of the floor,
+crept closer and closer to the chair in which she sat.
+
+All her thoughts were busy planning how to keep possession of that
+weapon which had seemed to have drawn into itself every danger and
+menace on the death-ridden earth. She said with a low laugh, the
+exultation in which he failed to recognize:
+
+“I didn't think that you would ever trust me with that thing!”
+
+“Why not?”
+
+“For fear I should suddenly strike you with it.”
+
+“What for? For this morning's work? Oh, no! There's no spite in you for
+that. You forgave me. You saved me. You got the better of me, too. And
+anyhow, what good would it be?”
+
+“No, no good,” she admitted.
+
+In her heart she felt that she would not know how to do it; that if it
+came to a struggle, she would have to drop the dagger and fight with her
+hands.
+
+“Listen. When we are going about the world together, you shall always
+call me husband. Do you hear?”
+
+“Yes,” she said bracing herself for the contest, in whatever shape it
+was coming.
+
+The knife was lying in her lap. She let it slip into the fold of her
+dress, and laid her forearms with clasped fingers over her knees, which
+she pressed desperately together. The dreaded thing was out of sight at
+last. She felt a dampness break out all over her.
+
+“I am not going to hide you, like that good-for-nothing, finicky, sneery
+gentleman. You shall be my pride and my chum. Isn't that better than
+rotting on an island for the pleasure of a gentleman, till he gives you
+the chuck?”
+
+“I'll be anything you like,” she said.
+
+In his intoxication he crept closer with every word she uttered, with
+every movement she made.
+
+“Give your foot,” he begged in a timid murmur, and in the full
+consciousness of his power.
+
+Anything! Anything to keep murder quiet and disarmed till strength had
+returned to her limbs and she could make up her mind what to do. Her
+fortitude had been shaken by the very facility of success that had come
+to her. She advanced her foot forward a little from under the hem of her
+skirt; and he threw himself on it greedily. She was not even aware of
+him. She had thought of the forest, to which she had been told to run.
+Yes, the forest--that was the place for her to carry off the terrible
+spoil, the sting of vanquished death. Ricardo, clasping her ankle,
+pressed his lips time after time to the instep, muttering gasping words
+that were like sobs, making little noises that resembled the sounds of
+grief and distress. Unheard by them both, the thunder growled distantly
+with angry modulations of it's tremendous voice, while the world outside
+shuddered incessantly around the dead stillness of the room where the
+framed profile of Heyst's father looked severely into space.
+
+Suddenly Ricardo felt himself spurned by the foot he had been
+cherishing--spurned with a push of such violence into the very hollow of
+his throat that it swung him back instantly into an upright position on
+his knees. He read his danger in the stony eyes of the girl; and in
+the very act of leaping to his feet he heard sharply, detached on the
+comminatory voice of the storm the brief report of a shot which half
+stunned him, in the manner of a blow. He turned his burning head, and
+saw Heyst towering in the doorway. The thought that the beggar had
+started to prance darted through his mind. For a fraction of a second
+his distracted eyes sought for his weapon all over the floor. He
+couldn't see it.
+
+“Stick him, you!” he called hoarsely to the girl, and dashed headlong
+for the door of the compound.
+
+While he thus obeyed the instinct of self-preservation, his reason was
+telling him that he could not possibly reach it alive. It flew open,
+however, with a crash, before his launched weight, and instantly he
+swung it to behind him. There, his shoulder leaning against it, his
+hands clinging to the handle, dazed and alone in the night full of
+shudders and muttered menaces, he tried to pull himself together. He
+asked himself if he had been shot at more than once. His shoulder was
+wet with the blood trickling from his head. Feeling above his ear, he
+ascertained that it was only a graze, but the shock of the surprise had
+unmanned him for the moment.
+
+What the deuce was the governor about to let the beggar break loose like
+this? Or--was the governor dead, perhaps?
+
+The silence within the room awed him. Of going back there could be no
+question.
+
+“But she knows how to take care of her self,” he muttered.
+
+She had his knife. It was she now who was deadly, while he was disarmed,
+no good for the moment. He stole away from the door, staggering, the
+warm trickle running down his neck, to find out what had become of the
+governor and to provide himself with a firearm from the armoury in the
+trunks.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THIRTEEN
+
+Mr. Jones, after firing his shot over Heyst's shoulder, had thought it
+proper to dodge away. Like the spectre he was, he noiselessly vanished
+from the veranda. Heyst stumbled into the room and looked around. All
+the objects in there--the books, the gleam of old silver familiar
+to him from boyhood, the very portrait on the wall--seemed shadowy,
+unsubstantial, the dumb accomplices of an amazing dream-plot ending in
+an illusory effect of awakening and the impossibility of ever closing
+his eyes again. With dread he forced himself to look at the girl. Still
+in the chair, she was leaning forward far over her knees, and had
+hidden her face in her hands. Heyst remembered Wang suddenly. How clear
+all this was--and how extremely amusing! Very.
+
+She sat up a little, then leaned back, and taking her hands from her
+face, pressed both of them to her breast as if moved to the heart by
+seeing him there looking at her with a black, horror-struck curiosity.
+He would have pitied her, if the triumphant expression of her face had
+not given him a shock which destroyed the balance of his feelings. She
+spoke with an accent of wild joy:
+
+“I knew you would come back in time! You are safe now. I have done it!
+I would never, never have let him--” Her voice died out, while her eyes
+shone at him as when the sun breaks through a mist. “Never get it back.
+Oh, my beloved!”
+
+He bowed his head gravely, and said in his polite. Heystian tone:
+
+“No doubt you acted from instinct. Women have been provided with their
+own weapon. I was a disarmed man, I have been a disarmed man all my life
+as I see it now. You may glory in your resourcefulness and your profound
+knowledge of yourself; but I may say that the other attitude, suggestive
+of shame, had its charm. For you are full of charm!”
+
+The exultation vanished from her face.
+
+“You mustn't make fun of me now. I know no shame. I was thanking God
+with all my sinful heart for having been able to do it--for giving you
+to me in that way--oh, my beloved--all my own at last!”
+
+He stared as if mad. Timidly she tried to excuse herself for disobeying
+his directions for her safety. Every modulation of her enchanting voice
+cut deep into his very breast, so that he could hardly understand the
+words for the sheer pain of it. He turned his back on her; but a sudden
+drop, an extraordinary faltering of her tone, made him spin round. On
+her white neck her pale head dropped as in a cruel drought a withered
+flower droops on its stalk. He caught his breath, looked at her closely,
+and seemed to read some awful intelligence in her eyes. At the moment
+when her eyelids fell as if smitten from above by an invisible power, he
+snatched her up bodily out of the chair, and disregarding an unexpected
+metallic clatter on the floor, carried her off into the other room. The
+limpness of her body frightened him. Laying her down on the bed, he
+ran out again, seized a four-branched candlestick on the table, and ran
+back, tearing down with a furious jerk the curtain that swung stupidly
+in his way, but after putting the candlestick on the table by the bed,
+he remained absolutely idle. There did not seem anything more for him
+to do. Holding his chin in his hand he looked down intently at her still
+face.
+
+“Has she been stabbed with this thing?” asked Davidson, whom suddenly he
+saw standing by his side and holding up Ricardo's dagger to his sight.
+Heyst uttered no word of recognition or surprise. He gave Davidson only
+a dumb look of unutterable awe, then, as if possessed with a sudden
+fury, started tearing open the front of the girls dress. She remained
+insensible under his hands, and Heyst let out a groan which made
+Davidson shudder inwardly the heavy plaint of a man who falls clubbed in
+the dark.
+
+They stood side by side, looking mournfully at the little black hole
+made by Mr. Jones's bullet under the swelling breast of a dazzling and
+as it were sacred whiteness. It rose and fell slightly--so slightly that
+only the eyes of the lover could detect the faint stir of life. Heyst,
+calm and utterly unlike himself in the face, moving about noiselessly,
+prepared a wet cloth, and laid it on the insignificant wound,
+round which there was hardly a trace of blood to mar the charm, the
+fascination, of that mortal flesh.
+
+Her eyelids fluttered. She looked drowsily about, serene, as if fatigued
+only by the exertions of her tremendous victory, capturing the very
+sting of death in the service of love. But her eyes became very
+wide awake when they caught sight of Ricardo's dagger, the spoil of
+vanquished death, which Davidson was still holding, unconsciously.
+
+“Give it to me,” she said. “It's mine.”
+
+Davidson put the symbol of her victory into her feeble hands extended to
+him with the innocent gesture of a child reaching eagerly for a toy.
+
+“For you,” she gasped, turning her eyes to Heyst. “Kill nobody.”
+
+“No,” said Heyst, taking the dagger and laying it gently on her breast,
+while her hands fell powerless by her side.
+
+The faint smile on her deep-cut lips waned, and her head sank deep into
+the pillow, taking on the majestic pallor and immobility of marble.
+But over the muscles, which seemed set in their transfigured beauty for
+ever, passed a slight and awful tremor. With an amazing strength she
+asked loudly:
+
+“What's the matter with me?”
+
+“You have been shot, dear Lena,” Heyst said in a steady voice, while
+Davidson, at the question, turned away and leaned his forehead against
+the post of the foot of the bed.
+
+“Shot? I did think, too, that something had struck me.”
+
+Over Samburan the thunder had ceased to growl at last, and the world of
+material forms shuddered no more under the emerging stars. The spirit
+of the girl which was passing away from under them clung to her triumph
+convinced of the reality of her victory over death.
+
+“No more,” she muttered. “There will be no more! Oh, my beloved,” she
+cried weakly, “I've saved you! Why don't you take me into your arms and
+carry me out of this lonely place?”
+
+Heyst bent low over her, cursing his fastidious soul, which even at that
+moment kept the true cry of love from his lips in its infernal mistrust
+of all life. He dared not touch her and she had no longer the strength
+to throw her arms about his neck.
+
+“Who else could have done this for you?” she whispered gloriously.
+
+“No one in the world,” he answered her in a murmur of unconcealed
+despair.
+
+She tried to raise herself, but all she could do was to lift her head
+a little from the pillow. With a terrible and gentle movement, Heyst
+hastened to slip his arm under her neck. She felt relieved at once of
+an intolerable weight, and was content to surrender to him the infinite
+weariness of her tremendous achievement. Exulting, she saw herself
+extended on the bed, in a black dress, and profoundly at peace, while,
+stooping over her with a kindly, playful smile, he was ready to lift
+her up in his firm arms and take her into the sanctuary of his innermost
+heart--for ever! The flush of rapture flooding her whole being broke out
+in a smile of innocent, girlish happiness; and with that divine radiance
+on her lips she breathed her last--triumphant, seeking for his glance in
+the shades of death.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FOURTEEN
+
+ “Yes, Excellency,” said Davidson in his placid voice; “there are more dead in this affair--more white people, I mean--than have been killed in many of the battles in the last Achin war.”
+
+Davidson was talking with an Excellency, because what was alluded to in
+conversation as “the mystery of Samburan” had caused such a sensation in
+the Archipelago that even those in the highest spheres were anxious to
+hear something at first hand. Davidson had been summoned to an audience.
+It was a high official on his tour.
+
+“You knew the late Baron Heyst well?”
+
+“The truth is that nobody out here can boast of having known him well,”
+ said Davidson. “He was a queer chap. I doubt if he himself knew how
+queer he was. But everybody was aware that I was keeping my eye on him
+in a friendly way. And that's how I got the warning which made me turn
+round in my tracks. In the middle of my trip and steam back to Samburan,
+where, I am grieved to say, I arrived too late.”
+
+Without enlarging very much, Davidson explained to the attentive
+Excellency how a woman, the wife of a certain hotel-keeper named
+Schomberg, had overheard two card-sharping rascals making inquiries from
+her husband as to the exact position of the island. She caught only a
+few words referring to the neighbouring volcano, but there were enough
+to arouse her suspicions--“which,” went on Davidson, “she imparted to
+me, your Excellency. They were only too well founded!”
+
+“That was very clever of her,” remarked the great man.
+
+“She's much cleverer than people have any conception of,” said Davidson.
+
+But he refrained from disclosing to the Excellency the real cause which
+had sharpened Mrs. Schomberg's wits. The poor woman was in mortal terror
+of the girl being brought back within reach of her infatuated Wilhelm.
+Davidson only said that her agitation had impressed him; but he
+confessed that while going back, he began to have his doubts as to there
+being anything in it.
+
+“I steamed into one of those silly thunderstorms that hang about the
+volcano, and had some trouble in making the island,” narrated Davidson.
+“I had to grope my way dead slow into Diamond Bay. I don't suppose that
+anybody, even if looking out for me, could have heard me let go the
+anchor.”
+
+He admitted that he ought to have gone ashore at once; but everything
+was perfectly dark and absolutely quiet. He felt ashamed of his
+impulsiveness. What a fool he would have looked, waking up a man in the
+middle of the night just to ask him if he was all right! And then the
+girl being there, he feared that Heyst would look upon his visit as an
+unwarrantable intrusion.
+
+The first intimation he had of there being anything wrong was a big
+white boat, adrift, with the dead body of a very hairy man inside,
+bumping against the bows of his steamer. Then indeed he lost no time in
+going ashore--alone, of course, from motives of delicacy.
+
+“I arrived in time to see that poor girl die, as I have told your
+Excellency,” pursued Davidson. “I won't tell you what a time I had with
+him afterwards. He talked to me. His father seems to have been a crank,
+and to have upset his head when he was young. He was a queer chap.
+Practically the last words he said to me, as we came out on the veranda,
+were:
+
+“'Ah, Davidson, woe to the man whose heart has not learned while young
+to hope, to love--and to put its trust in life!'
+
+“As we stood there, just before I left him, for he said he wanted to be
+alone with his dead for a time, we heard a snarly sort of voice near the
+bushes by the shore calling out:
+
+“'Is that you, governor?'
+
+“'Yes, it's me.'
+
+“'Jeeminy! I thought the beggar had done for you. He has started
+prancing and nearly had me. I have been dodging around, looking for you
+ever since.'
+
+“'Well, here I am,' suddenly screamed the other voice, and then a shot
+rang out.
+
+“'This time he has not missed him,' Heyst said to me bitterly, and went
+back into the house.
+
+“I returned on board as he had insisted I should do. I didn't want
+to intrude on his grief. Later, about five in the morning, some of my
+calashes came running to me, yelling that there was a fire ashore. I
+landed at once, of course. The principal bungalow was blazing. The
+heat drove us back. The other two houses caught one after another like
+kindling-wood. There was no going beyond the shore end of the jetty till
+the afternoon.”
+
+Davidson sighed placidly.
+
+“I suppose you are certain that Baron Heyst is dead?”
+
+“He is--ashes, your Excellency,” said Davidson, wheezing a little; “he
+and the girl together. I suppose he couldn't stand his thoughts before
+her dead body--and fire purifies everything. That Chinaman of whom I
+told your Excellency helped me to investigate next day, when the
+embers got cooled a little. We found enough to be sure. He's not a bad
+Chinaman. He told me that he had followed Heyst and the girl through the
+forest from pity, and partly out of curiosity. He watched the house till
+he saw Heyst go out, after dinner, and Ricardo come back alone. While he
+was dodging there, it occurred to him that he had better cast the boat
+adrift, for fear those scoundrels should come round by water and bombard
+the village from the sea with their revolvers and Winchesters. He judged
+that they were devils enough for anything. So he walked down the wharf
+quietly; and as he got into the boat, to cast her off, that hairy man
+who, it seems, was dozing in her, jumped up growling, and Wang shot him
+dead. Then he shoved the boat off as far as he could and went away.”
+
+There was a pause. Presently Davidson went on, in his tranquil manner:
+
+“Let Heaven look after what has been purified. The wind and rain will
+take care of the ashes. The carcass of that follower, secretary, or
+whatever the unclean ruffian called himself, I left where it lay, to
+swell and rot in the sun. His principal had shot him neatly through the
+head. Then, apparently, this Jones went down to the wharf to look for
+the boat and for the hairy man. I suppose he tumbled into the water by
+accident--or perhaps not by accident. The boat and the man were gone,
+and the scoundrel saw himself alone, his game clearly up, and fairly
+trapped. Who knows? The water's very clear there, and I could see him
+huddled up on the bottom, between two piles, like a heap of bones in a
+blue silk bag, with only the head and the feet sticking out. Wang was
+very pleased when he discovered him. That made everything safe, he said,
+and he went at once over the hill to fetch his Alfuro woman back to the
+hut.”
+
+Davidson took out his handkerchief to wipe the perspiration off his
+forehead.
+
+“And then, your Excellency, I went away. There was nothing to be done
+there.”
+
+“Clearly!” assented the Excellency.
+
+Davidson, thoughtful, seemed to weigh the matter in his mind, and then
+murmured with placid sadness:
+
+“Nothing!”
+
+October 1912--May 1914
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VICTORY: AN ISLAND TALE ***
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