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PART ONE - 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.
Content of PART ONE CHAPTER SEVEN [Joseph Conrad's novel: Victory]
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