Part 8 (1/2)
I was astonished that she should dare before Jacobus. Yet what could he have done to repress her? He needed her too much. He raised a heavy, drowsy glance for an instant, then looked down again. She insisted with shrill finality:
”Haven't you done your business, you two? Well, then-”
She had the true Jacobus impudence, that old woman. Her mop of iron-grey hair was parted, on the side like a man's, raffishly, and she made as if to plunge her fork into it, as she used to do with the knitting-needle, but refrained. Her little black eyes sparkled venomously. I turned to my host at the head of the table-menacingly as it were.
”Well, and what do you say to that, Jacobus? Am I to take it that we have done with each other?”
I had to wait a little. The answer when it came was rather unexpected, and in quite another spirit than the question.
”I certainly think we might do some business yet with those potatoes of mine, Captain. You will find that-”
I cut him short.
”I've told you before that I don't trade.”
His broad chest heaved without a sound in a noiseless sigh.
”Think it over, Captain,” he murmured, tenacious and tranquil; and I burst into a jarring laugh, remembering how he had stuck to the circus-rider woman-the depth of pa.s.sion under that placid surface, which even cuts with a riding-whip (so the legend had it) could never raffle into the semblance of a storm; something like the pa.s.sion of a fish would be if one could imagine such a thing as a pa.s.sionate fish.
That evening I experienced more distinctly than ever the sense of moral discomfort which always attended me in that house lying under the ban of all ”decent” people. I refused to stay on and smoke after dinner; and when I put my hand into the thickly-cus.h.i.+oned palm of Jacobus, I said to myself that it would be for the last time under his roof. I pressed his bulky paw heartily nevertheless. Hadn't he got me out of a serious difficulty? To the few words of acknowledgment I was bound, and indeed quite willing, to utter, he answered by stretching his closed lips in his melancholy, glued-together smile.
”That will be all right, I hope, Captain,” he breathed out weightily.
”What do you mean?” I asked, alarmed. ”That your brother might yet-”
”Oh, no,” he rea.s.sured me. ”He . . . he's a man of his word, Captain.”
My self-communion as I walked away from his door, trying to believe that this was for the last time, was not satisfactory. I was aware myself that I was not sincere in my reflections as to Jacobus's motives, and, of course, the very next day I went back again.
How weak, irrational, and absurd we are! How easily carried away whenever our awakened imagination brings us the irritating hint of a desire! I cared for the girl in a particular way, seduced by the moody expression of her face, by her obstinate silences, her rare, scornful words; by the perpetual pout of her closed lips, the black depths of her fixed gaze turned slowly upon me as if in contemptuous provocation, only to be averted next moment with an exasperating indifference.
Of course the news of my a.s.siduity had spread all over the little town.
I noticed a change in the manner of my acquaintances and even something different in the nods of the other captains, when meeting them at the landing-steps or in the offices where business called me. The old-maidish head clerk treated me with distant punctiliousness and, as it were, gathered his skirts round him for fear of contamination. It seemed to me that the very n.i.g.g.e.rs on the quays turned to look after me as I pa.s.sed; and as to Jacobus's boatman his ”Good-night, sah!” when he put me on board was no longer merely cordial-it had a familiar, confidential sound as though we had been partners in some villainy.
My friend S- the elder pa.s.sed me on the other side of the street with a wave of the hand and an ironic smile. The younger brother, the one they had married to an elderly shrew, he, on the strength of an older friends.h.i.+p and as if paying a debt of grat.i.tude, took the liberty to utter a word of warning.
”You're doing yourself no good by your choice of friends, my dear chap,”
he said with infantile gravity.
As I knew that the meeting of the brothers Jacobus was the subject of excited comment in the whole of the sugary Pearl of the Ocean I wanted to know why I was blamed.
”I have been the occasion of a move which may end in a reconciliation surely desirable from the point of view of the proprieties-don't you know?”
”Of course, if that girl were disposed of it would certainly facilitate-”
he mused sagely, then, inconsequential creature, gave me a light tap on the lower part of my waistcoat. ”You old sinner,” he cried jovially, ”much you care for proprieties. But you had better look out for yourself, you know, with a personage like Jacobus who has no sort of reputation to lose.”
He had recovered his gravity of a respectable citizen by that time and added regretfully:
”All the women of our family are perfectly scandalised.”
But by that time I had given up visiting the S- family and the D- family.