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PART ONE - 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 I 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!"
Content of PART ONE CHAPTER SIX [Joseph Conrad's novel: Victory]
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