Fastidious, clever, slightly skeptical, accustomed to the best society (he had held a much-envied shore appoint-ment at the Ministry of Marine for a year preceding his retreat from his profession and from Europe), he possessed a latent warmth of feeling and a capacity for sympathy which were concealed by a sort of haughty, arbitrary indifference of manner arising from his early training; and by a something an enemy might have called foppish, in his aspect--like a distorted echo of past elegance. He managed to keep an almost mili-tary discipline amongst the coolies of the estate he had dragged into the light of day out of the tangle and shadows of the jungle; and the white shirt he put on every evening with its stiff glossy front and high collar looked as if he had meant to preserve the decent ceremony of evening-dress, but had wound a thick crim-son sash above his hips as a concession to the wilderness, once his adversary, now his vanquished companion.
Moreover, it was a hygienic precaution. Worn wide open in front, a short jacket of some airy silken stuff floated from his shoulders. His fluffy, fair hair, thin at the top, curled slightly at the sides; a carefully ar-ranged mustache, an ungarnished forehead, the gleam of low patent shoes peeping under the wide bottom of trowsers cut straight from the same stuff as the gossa-mer coat, completed a figure recalling, with its sash, a pirate chief of romance, and at the same time the ele-gance of a slightly bald dandy indulging, in seclusion, a taste for unorthodox costume.
It was his evening get-up. The proper time for the Sofala to arrive at Batu Beru was an hour before sun-set, and he looked picturesque, and somehow quite cor-rect too, walking at the water's edge on the background of grass slope crowned with a low long bungalow with an immensely steep roof of palm thatch, and clad to the eaves in flowering creepers. While the Sofala was being made fast he strolled in the shade of the few trees left near the landing-place, waiting till he could go on board. Her white men were not of his kind. The old Sultan (though his wistful invasions were a nuisance) was really much more acceptable to his fastidious taste.
But still they were white; the periodical visits of the ship made a break in the well-filled sameness of the days without disturbing his privacy. Moreover, they were necessary from a business point of view; and through a strain of preciseness in his nature he was irritated when she failed to appear at the appointed time.
The cause of the irregularity was too absurd, and Massy, in his opinion, was a contemptible idiot. The first time the Sofala reappeared under the new agree-ment swinging out of the bend below, after he had almost given up all hope of ever seeing her again, he felt so angry that he did not go down at once to the landing-place. His servants had come running to him with the news, and he had dragged a chair close against the front rail of the veranda, spread his elbows out, rested his chin on his hands, and went on glaring at her fixedly while she was being made fast opposite his house. He could make out easily all the white faces on board. Who on earth was that kind of patriarch they had got there on the bridge now?
At last he sprang up and walked down the gravel path.
It was a fact that the very gravel for his paths had been imported by the Sofala. Exasperated out of his quiet superciliousness, without looking at anyone right or left, he accosted Massy straightway in so determined a manner that the engineer, taken aback, began to stammer unintelligibly. Nothing could be heard but the words: "Mr. Van Wyk . . . Indeed, Mr. Van Wyk . . . For the future, Mr. Van Wyk"--and by the suffusion of blood Massy's vast bilious face acquired an unnatural orange tint, out of which the disconcerted coal-black eyes shone in an extraordinary manner.
"Nonsense. I am tired of this. I wonder you have the impudence to come alongside my jetty as if I had it made for your convenience alone."
Massy tried to protest earnestly. Mr. Van Wyk was very angry. He had a good mind to ask that German firm--those people in Malacca--what was their name?--boats with green funnels. They would be only too glad of the opening to put one of their small steamers on the run. Yes; Schnitzler, Jacob Schnitzler, would in a moment. Yes. He had decided to write without delay.
In his agitation Massy caught up his falling pipe.
"You don't mean it, sir!" he shrieked.
"You shouldn't mismanage your business in this ridiculous manner."
Mr. Van Wyk turned on his heel. The other three whites on the bridge had not stirred during the scene.
Massy walked hastily from side to side, puffed out his cheeks, suffocated.
"Stuck up Dutchman!"
And he moaned out feverishly a long tale of griefs.
The efforts he had made for all these years to please that man. This was the return you got for it, eh?
Pretty. Write to Schnitzler--let in the green-funnel boats--get an old Hamburg Jew to ruin him. No, really he could laugh. . . . He laughed sobbingly. . . .
Ha! ha! ha! And make him carry the letter in his own ship presumably.
He stumbled across a grating and swore. He would not hesitate to fling the Dutchman's correspondence overboard--the whole confounded bundle. He had never, never made any charge for that accommodation.
But Captain Whalley, his new partner, would not let him probably; besides, it would be only putting off the evil day. For his own part he would make a hole in the water rather than look on tamely at the green funnels overrunning his trade.
He raved aloud. The China boys hung back with the dishes at the foot of the ladder. He yelled from the bridge down at the deck, "Aren't we going to have any chow this evening at all?" then turned violently to Captain Whalley, who waited, grave and patient, at the head of the table, smoothing his beard in silence now and then with a forbearing gesture.
"You don't seem to care what happens to me. Don't you see that this affects your interests as much as mine?
It's no joking matter."
