joyless features with a touch of pathos.
Heyst was temperamentally sympathetic. To have them passing and repassing
close to his little table was painful to him. He was preparing to rise and go out
when he noticed that two white muslin dresses and crimson sashes had not yet left
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the platform. One of these dresses concealed the raw-boned frame of the woman
with the bad-tempered curve to her nostrils. She was no less a personage than Mrs.
Zangiacomo. She had left the piano, and, with her back to the hall, was preparing
the parts for the second half of the concert, with a brusque, impatient action of her
ugly elbow. This task done, she turned, and, perceiving the other white muslin
dress motionless on a chair in the second row, she strode towards it between the
music-stands with an aggressive and masterful gait. On the lap of that dress there
lay, unclasped and idle, a pair of small hands, not very white, attached to well-
formed arms. The next detail Heyst was led to observe was the arrangement of the
hair—two thick, brown tresses rolled round an attractively shaped head.
"A girl, by Jove!" he exclaimed mentally.
It was evident that she was a girl. It was evident in the outline of the shoulders,
in the slender white bust springing up, barred slantwise by the crimson sash, from
the bell-shaped spread of muslin skirt hiding the chair on which she sat averted a
little from the body of the hall. Her feet, in low white shoes, were crossed prettily.
She had captured Heyst's awakened faculty of observation; he had the sensation
of a new experience. That was because his faculty of observation had never before
been captured by any feminine creature in that marked and exclusive fashion. He
looked at her anxiously, as no man ever looks at another man; and he positively
forgot where he was. He had lost touch with his surroundings. The big woman,
advancing, concealed the girl from his sight for a moment. She bent over the seated
youthful figure, in passing it very close, as if to drop a word into its ear. Her lips
did certainly move. But what sort of word could it have been to make the girl jump
up so swiftly? Heyst, at his table, was surprised into a sympathetic start. He glanced
quickly round. Nobody was looking towards the platform; and when his eyes swept
back there again, the girl, with the big woman treading at her heels, was coming
down the three steps from the platform to the floor of the hall. There she paused,
stumbled one pace forward, and stood still again, while the other—the escort, the
dragoon, the coarse big woman of the piano—passed her roughly, and, marching
truculently down the centre aisle between the chairs and tables, went out to rejoin
the hook-nosed Zangiacomo somewhere outside. During her extraordinary transit,
as if everything in the hall were dirt under her feet, her scornful eyes met the
upward glance of Heyst, who looked away at once towards the girl. She had not
moved. Her arms hung down; her eyelids were lowered.
Heyst laid down his half-smoked cigar and compressed his lips. Then he got up.
It was the same sort of impulse which years ago had made him cross the sandy
street of the abominable town of Delli in the island of Timor and accost Morrison,
practically a stranger to him then, a man in trouble, expressively harassed, dejected,
lonely.
It was the same impulse. But he did not recognize it. He was not thinking of
Morrison then. It may be said that, for the first time since the final abandonment of
the Samburan coal mine, he had completely forgotten the late Morrison. It is true
that to a certain extent he had forgotten also where he was. Thus, unchecked by any
sort of self consciousness, Heyst walked up the central passage.
Several of the women, by this time, had found anchorage here and there among
the occupied tables. They talked to the men, leaning on their elbows, and
suggesting funnily—if it hadn't been for the crimson sashes—in their white dresses
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an assembly of middle-aged brides with free and easy manners and hoarse
voices. The murmuring noise of conversations carried on with some spirit filled
Schomberg's concert-room. Nobody remarked Heyst's movements; for indeed he
was not the only man on his legs there. He had been confronting the girl for some
time before she became aware of his presence. She was looking down, very still,
without colour, without glances, without voice, without movement. It was only
when Heyst addressed her in his courteous tone that she raised her eyes.
"Excuse me," he said in English, "but that horrible female has done something to
you. She has pinched you, hasn't she? I am sure she pinched you just now, when
she stood by your chair."
The girl received this overture with the wide, motionless stare of profound
astonishment. Heyst, vexed with himself, suspected that she did not understand
what he said. One could not tell what nationality these women were, except that
they were of all sorts. But she was astonished almost more by the near presence of
the man himself, by his largely bald head, by the white brow, the sunburnt cheeks,
the long, horizontal moustaches of crinkly bronze hair, by the kindly expression of
the man's blue eyes looking into her own. He saw the stony amazement in hers give
way to a momentary alarm, which was succeeded by an expression of resignation.
"I am sure she pinched your arm most cruelly," he murmured, rather
disconcerted now at what he had done.
It was a great comfort to hear her say:
"It wouldn't have been the first time. And suppose she did—what are you going
to do about it?"
"I don't know," he said with a faint, remote playfulness in his tone which had not
been heard in it lately, and which seemed to catch her ear pleasantly. "I am grieved
to say that I don't know. But can I do anything? What would you wish me to do?
Pray command me."
Again, the greatest astonishment became visible in her face; for she now
perceived how different he was from the other men in the room. He was as
different from them as she was different from the other members of the ladies'
orchestra.
"Command you?" she breathed, after a time, in a bewildered tone. "Who are
you?" she asked a little louder.
"I am staying in this hotel for a few days. I just dropped in casually here. This
outrage—"
"Don't you try to interfere," she said so earnestly that Heyst asked, in his faintly
playful tone:
"Is it your wish that I should leave you?"
"I haven't said that," the girl answered. "She pinched me because I didn't get
down here quick enough—"
"I can't tell you how indignant I am—" said Heyst. "But since you are down here
now," he went on, with the ease of a man of the world speaking to a young lady in
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a drawing-room, "hadn't we better sit down?"
She obeyed his inviting gesture, and they sat down on the nearest chairs. They
looked at each other across a little round table with a surprised, open gaze, self-
consciousness growing on them so slowly that it was a long time before they
averted their eyes; and very soon they met again, temporarily, only to rebound, as it
were. At last they steadied in contact, but by that time, say some fifteen minutes
from the moment when they sat down, the "interval" came to an end.
So much for their eyes. As to the conversation, it had been perfectly insignificant
because naturally they had nothing to say to each other. Heyst had been interested
by the girl's physiognomy. Its expression was neither simple nor yet very clear. It
was not distinguished—that could not be expected—but the features had more
fineness than those of any other feminine countenance he had ever had the
opportunity to observe so closely. There was in it something indefinably audacious
and infinitely miserable—because the temperament and the existence of that girl
were reflected in it. But her voice! It seduced Heyst by its amazing quality. It was a
voice fit to utter the most exquisite things, a voice which would have made silly
chatter supportable and the roughest talk fascinating. Heyst drank in its charm as
one listens to the tone of some instrument without heeding the tune.
"Do you sing as well as play?" he asked her abruptly.
"Never sang a note in my life," she said, obviously surprised by the irrelevant
question; for they had not been discoursing of sweet sounds. She was clearly
unaware of her voice. "I don't remember that I ever had much reason to sing since I
was little," she added.
That inelegant phrase, by the mere vibrating, warm nobility of the sound, found
its way into Heyst's heart. His mind, cool, alert, watched it sink there with a sort of
vague concern at the absurdity of the occupation, till it rested at the bottom, deep
down, where our unexpressed longings lie.
"You are English, of course?" he said.
"What do you think?" she answered in the most charming accents. Then, as if
thinking that it was her turn to place a question: "Why do you always smile when
you speak?"
It was enough to make anyone look grave, but her good faith was so evident that
Heyst recovered himself at once.
"It's my unfortunate manner—" he said with his delicate, polished playfulness.
"It is very objectionable to you?"
She was very serious.
"No. I only noticed it. I haven't come across so many pleasant people as all that,
in my life."
"It's certain that this woman who plays the piano is infinitely more disagreeable
than any cannibal I have ever had to do with."
"I believe you!" She shuddered. "How did you come to have anything to do with
cannibals?"
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"It would be too long a tale," said Heyst with a faint smile. Heyst's smiles were
rather melancholy, and accorded badly with his great moustaches, under which his
mere playfulness lurked as comfortable as a shy bird in its native thicket. "Much
too long. How did you get amongst this lot here?"
"Bad luck," she answered briefly.
"No doubt, no doubt," Heyst assented with slight nods. Then, still indignant at
the pinch which he had divined rather than actually seen inflicted: "I say, couldn't
you defend yourself somehow?"
She had risen already. The ladies of the orchestra were slowly regaining their
places. Some were already seated, idle stony-eyed, before the music-stands. Heyst
was standing up, too.
"They are too many for me," she said.
These few words came out of the common experience of mankind; yet by virtue
of her voice, they thrilled Heyst like a revelation. His feelings were in a state of
confusion, but his mind was clear.
"That's bad. But it isn't actual ill-usage that this girl is complaining of," he
thought lucidly after she left him.
CHAPTER TWO
That was how it began. How it was that it ended, as we know it did end, is not so
easy to state precisely. It is very clear that Heyst was not indifferent, I won't say to
the girl, but to the girl's fate. He was the same man who had plunged after the
submerged Morrison whom he hardly knew otherwise than by sight and through
the usual gossip of the islands. But this was another sort of plunge altogether, and
likely to lead to a very different kind of partnership.
Did he reflect at all? Probably. He was sufficiently reflective. But if he did, it
was with insufficient knowledge. For there is no evidence that he paused at any
time between the date of that evening and the morning of the flight. Truth to say,
Heyst was not one of those men who pause much. Those dreamy spectators of the
world's agitation are terrible once the desire to act gets hold of them. They lower
their heads and charge a wall with an amazing serenity which nothing but an
indisciplined imagination can give.
He was not a fool. I suppose he knew—or at least he felt—where this was
leading him. But his complete inexperience gave him the necessary audacity. The
terms, with a sort of unconscious cynicism inherent in the truth of the ugly
conditions of poverty. And whether because he was humane or because her voice
included all the modulations of pathos, cheerfulness, and courage in its compass, it
was not disgust that the tale awakened in him, but the sense of an immense sadness.
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On a later evening, during the interval between the two parts of the concert, the
girl told Heyst about herself. She was almost a child of the streets. Her father was a
musician in the orchestras of small theatres. Her mother ran away from him while
she was little, and the landladies of various poor lodging-houses had attended
casually to her abandoned childhood. It was never positive starvation and absolute
rags, but it was the hopeless grip of poverty all the time. It was her father who
taught her to play the violin. It seemed that he used to get drunk sometimes, but
without pleasure, and only because he was unable to forget his fugitive wife. After
he had a paralytic stroke, falling over with a crash in the well of a music-hall
orchestra during the performance, she had joined the Zangiacomo company. He
was now in a home for incurables.
"And I am here," she finished, "with no one to care if I make a hole in the water
the next chance I get or not."
Heyst told her that he thought she could do a little better than that, if it was only
a question of getting out of the world. She looked at him with special attention, and
with a puzzled expression which gave to her face an air of innocence.
This was during one of the "intervals" between the two parts of the concert. She
had c
ome down that time without being incited thereto by a pinch from the awful
Zangiacomo woman. It is difficult to suppose that she was seduced by the
uncovered intellectual forehead and the long reddish moustaches of her new friend.
New is not the right word. She had never had a friend before; and the sensation of
this friendliness going out to her was exciting by its novelty alone. Besides, any
man who did not resemble Schomberg appeared for that very reason attractive. She
was afraid of the hotel-keeper, who, in the daytime, taking advantage of the fact
that she lived in the hotel itself, and not in the Pavilion with the other "artists"
prowled round her, mute, hungry, portentous behind his great beard, or else
assailed her in quiet corners and empty passages with deep, mysterious murmurs
from behind, which, not withstanding their clear import, sounded horribly insane
somehow.
The contrast of Heyst's quiet, polished manner gave her special delight and filled
her with admiration. She had never seen anything like that before. If she had,
perhaps, known kindness in her life, she had never met the forms of simple
courtesy. She was interested by it as a very novel experience, not very intelligible,
but distinctly pleasurable.
"I tell you they are too many for me," she repeated, sometimes recklessly, but
more often shaking her head with ominous dejection.
She had, of course, no money at all. The quantities of "black men" all about
frightened her. She really had no definite idea where she was on the surface of the
globe. The orchestra was generally taken from the steamer to some hotel, and kept
shut up there till it was time to go on board another steamer. She could not
remember the names she heard.
"How do you call this place again?" she used to ask Heyst.
"Sourabaya," he would say distinctly, and would watch the discouragement at
the outlandish sound coming into her eyes, which were fastened on his face.
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He could not defend himself from compassion. He suggested that she might go
to the consul, but it was his conscience that dictated this advice, not his conviction.
She had never heard of the animal or of its uses. A consul! What was it? Who was