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
Diamond water,” 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
Diamond water. 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 funeral 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 the sensitive Davidson. 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
Diamond water! 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.”
