第54章

"We used to admire Mrs.Davidson from a distance.It was a girlish head out of a keepsake.From a distance.We had not many opportunities for a closer view, because she did not care to give them to us.We would have been glad to drop in at the Davidson bungalow, but we were made to feel somehow that we were not very welcome there.Not that she ever said anything ungracious.She never had much to say for herself.I was perhaps the one who saw most of the Davidsons at home.What I noticed under the superficial aspect of vapid sweetness was her convex, obstinate forehead, and her small, red, pretty, ungenerous mouth.But then Iam an observer with strong prejudices.Most of us were fetched by her white, swan-like neck, by that drooping, innocent profile.

There was a lot of latent devotion to Davidson's wife hereabouts, at that time, I can tell you.But my idea was that she repaid it by a profound suspicion of the sort of men we were; a mistrust which extended - I fancied - to her very husband at times.And Ithought then she was jealous of him in a way; though there were no women that she could be jealous about.She had no women's society.

It's difficult for a shipmaster's wife unless there are other shipmasters' wives about, and there were none here then.I know that the dock manager's wife called on her; but that was all.The fellows here formed the opinion that Mrs.Davidson was a meek, shy little thing.She looked it, I must say.And this opinion was so universal that the friend I have been telling you of remembered his conversation with Davidson simply because of the statement about Davidson's wife.He even wondered to me: 'Fancy Mrs.Davidson making a fuss to that extent.She didn't seem to me the sort of woman that would know how to make a fuss about anything.'

"I wondered, too - but not so much.That bumpy forehead - eh? Ihad always suspected her of being silly.And I observed that Davidson must have been vexed by this display of wifely anxiety.

"My friend said: 'No.He seemed rather touched and distressed.

There really was no one he could ask to relieve him; mainly because he intended to make a call in some God-forsaken creek, to look up a fellow of the name of Bamtz who apparently had settled there.'

"And again my friend wondered.'Tell me,' he cried, 'what connection can there be between Davidson and such a creature as Bamtz?'

"I don't remember now what answer I made.A sufficient one could have been given in two words: 'Davidson's goodness.' THAT never boggled at unworthiness if there was the slightest reason for compassion.I don't want you to think that Davidson had no discrimination at all.Bamtz could not have imposed on him.

Moreover, everybody knew what Bamtz was.He was a loafer with a beard.When I think of Bamtz, the first thing I see is that long black beard and a lot of propitiatory wrinkles at the corners of two little eyes.There was no such beard from here to Polynesia, where a beard is a valuable property in itself.Bamtz's beard was valuable to him in another way.You know how impressed Orientals are by a fine beard.Years and years ago, I remember, the grave Abdullah, the great trader of Sambir, unable to repress signs of astonishment and admiration at the first sight of that imposing beard.And it's very well known that Bamtz lived on Abdullah off and on for several years.It was a unique beard, and so was the bearer of the same.A unique loafer.He made a fine art of it, or rather a sort of craft and mystery.One can understand a fellow living by cadging and small swindles in towns, in large communities of people; but Bamtz managed to do that trick in the wilderness, to loaf on the outskirts of the virgin forest.

"He understood how to ingratiate himself with the natives.He would arrive in some settlement up a river, make a present of a cheap carbine or a pair of shoddy binoculars, or something of that sort, to the Rajah, or the head-man, or the principal trader; and on the strength of that gift, ask for a house, posing mysteriously as a very special trader.He would spin them no end of yarns, live on the fat of the land, for a while, and then do some mean swindle or other - or else they would get tired of him and ask him to quit.

And he would go off meekly with an air of injured innocence.Funny life.Yet, he never got hurt somehow.I've heard of the Rajah of Dongala giving him fifty dollars' worth of trade goods and paying his passage in a prau only to get rid of him.Fact.And observe that nothing prevented the old fellow having Bamtz's throat cut and the carcase thrown into deep water outside the reefs; for who on earth would have inquired after Bamtz?

"He had been known to loaf up and down the wilderness as far north as the Gulf of Tonkin.Neither did he disdain a spell of civilisation from time to time.And it was while loafing and cadging in Saigon, bearded and dignified (he gave himself out there as a bookkeeper), that he came across Laughing Anne.

"The less said of her early history the better, but something must be said.We may safely suppose there was very little heart left in her famous laugh when Bamtz spoke first to her in some low cafe.

She was stranded in Saigon with precious little money and in great trouble about a kid she had, a boy of five or six.

"A fellow I just remember, whom they called Pearler Harry, brought her out first into these parts - from Australia, I believe.He brought her out and then dropped her, and she remained knocking about here and there, known to most of us by sight, at any rate.

Everybody in the Archipelago had heard of Laughing Anne.She had really a pleasant silvery laugh always at her disposal, so to speak, but it wasn't enough apparently to make her fortune.The poor creature was ready to stick to any half-decent man if he would only let her, but she always got dropped, as it might have been expected.

"She had been left in Saigon by the skipper of a German ship with whom she had been going up and down the China coast as far as Vladivostok for near upon two years.The German said to her: