Victory (Dover Thrift Editions) Page 5

  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.

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  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

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  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, lon
ely. 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

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  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 coastal 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,

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  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:

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  "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?"

  "W
hy, 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

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  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