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PART TWO: CHAPTER FIVE
Three weeks later, after putting his cash-box away in the safe which
filled with its iron bulk a corner of their room, Schomberg turned
towards his wife, but without looking at her exactly, and said:
"I must get rid of these two. It won't do!"
Mrs. Schomberg had entertained that very opinion from the first; but
she had been broken years ago into keeping her opinions to herself.
Sitting in her night attire in the light of a single candle, she was
careful not to make a sound, knowing from experience that her very
assent would be resented. With her eyes she followed the figure of
Schomberg, clad in his sleeping suit, and moving restlessly about
the room.
He never glanced her way, for the reason that Mrs. Schomberg, in her
night attire, looked the most unattractive object in existence--
miserable, insignificant, faded, crushed, old. And the contrast
with the feminine form he had ever in his mind's eye made his wife's
appearance painful to his aesthetic sense.
Schomberg walked about swearing and fuming for the purpose of
screwing his courage up to the sticking point.
"Hang me if I ought not to go now, at once, this minute, into his
bedroom, and tell him to be off--him and that secretary of his--
early in the morning. I don't mind a round game of cards, but to
make a decoy of my table d'hote--my blood boils! He came here
because some lying rascal in Manila told him I kept a table d'hote."
He said these things, not for Mrs. Schomberg's information, but
simply thinking aloud, and trying to work his fury up to a point
where it would give him courage enough to face "plain Mr. Jones."
"Impudent overbearing, swindling sharper," he went on. "I have a
good mind to--"
He was beside himself in his lurid, heavy, Teutonic manner, so
unlike the picturesque, lively rage of the Latin races; and though
his eyes strayed about irresolutely, yet his swollen, angry features
awakened in the miserable woman over whom he had been tyrannizing
for years a fear for his precious carcass, since the poor creature
had nothing else but that to hold on to in the world. She knew him
well; but she did not know him altogether. The last thing a woman
will consent to discover in a man whom she loves, or on whom she
simply depends, is want of courage. And, timid in her comer, she
ventured to say pressingly:
"Be careful, Wilhelm! Remember the knives and revolvers in their
trunks."
In guise of thanks for that anxious reminder, he swore horribly in
the direction of her shrinking person. In her scanty nightdress,
and barefooted, she recalled a mediaeval penitent being reproved for
her sins in blasphemous terms. Those lethal weapons were always
present to Schomberg's mind. Personally, he had never seen them.
His part, ten days after his guests' arrival, had been to lounge in
manly, careless attitudes on the veranda--keeping watch--while Mrs.
Schomberg, provided with a bunch of assorted keys, her discoloured
teeth chattering and her globular eyes absolutely idiotic with
fright, was "going through" the luggage of these strange clients.
Her terrible Wilhelm had insisted on it.
"I'll be on the look-out, I tell you," he said. "I shall give you a
whistle when I see them coming back. You couldn't whistle. And if
he were to catch you at it, and chuck you out by the scruff of the
neck, it wouldn't hurt you much; but he won't touch a woman. Not
he! He has told me so. Affected beast. I must find out something
about their little game, and so there's an end of it. Go in! Go
now! Quick march!"
It had been an awful job; but she did go in, because she was much
more afraid of Schomberg than of any possible consequences of the
act. Her greatest concern was lest no key of the bunch he had
provided her with should fit the locks. It would have been such a
disappointment for Wilhelm. However, the trunks, she found, had
been left open; but her investigation did not last long. She was
frightened of firearms, and generally of all weapons, not from
personal cowardice, but as some women are, almost superstitiously,
from an abstract horror of violence and murder. She was out again
on the veranda long before Wilhelm had any occasion for a warning
whistle. The instinctive, motiveless fear being the most difficult
to overcome, nothing could induce her to return to her
investigations, neither threatening growls nor ferocious hisses, nor
yet a poke or two in the ribs.
"Stupid female!" muttered the hotel-keeper, perturbed by the notion
of that armoury in one of his bedrooms. This was from no abstract
sentiment, with him it was constitutional. "Get out of my sight,"
he snarled. "Go and dress yourself for the table d'hote."
Left to himself, Schomberg had meditated. What the devil did this
mean? His thinking processes were sluggish and spasmodic; but
suddenly the truth came to him.
"By heavens, they are desperadoes!" he thought.
Just then he beheld "plain Mr. Jones" and his secretary with the
ambiguous name of Ricardo entering the grounds of the hotel. They
had been down to the port on some business, and now were returning;
Mr. Jones lank, spare, opening his long legs with angular regularity
like a pair of compasses, the other stepping out briskly by his
side. Conviction entered Schomberg's heart. They WERE two
desperadoes--no doubt about it. But as the funk which he
experienced was merely a general sensation, he managed to put on his
most severe Officer-of-the-Reserve manner, long before they had
closed with him.
"Good morning, gentlemen."
Being answered with derisive civility, he became confirmed in his
sudden conviction of their desperate character. The way Mr. Jones
turned his hollow eyes on one, like an incurious spectre, and the
way the other, when addressed, suddenly retracted his lips and
exhibited his teeth without looking round--here was evidence enough
to settle that point. Desperadoes! They passed through the
billiard-room, inscrutably mysterious, to the back of the house, to
join their violated trunks.
"Tiffin bell will ring in five minutes, gentlemen." Schomberg
called after them, exaggerating the deep manliness of his tone.
He had managed to upset himself very much. He expected to see them
come back infuriated and begin to bully him with an odious lack of
restraint. Desperadoes! However they didn't; they had not noticed
anything unusual about their trunks and Schomberg recovered his
composure and said to himself that he must get rid of this deadly
incubus as soon as practicable. They couldn't possibly want to stay
very long; this was not the town--the colony--for desperate
characters. He shrank from action. He dreaded any kind of
disturbance--"fracas" he called it--in his hotel. Such things were
not good for business. Of course, sometimes one had to have a
"fracas;" but it had been a comparatively trifling task to seize the
frail Zangiacomo--whose bones were no larger than a chicken's--round
the ribs, lift him up bodily, dash him to the ground, and fall on
him. It had been easy. The wretched, hook-nosed creature lay
without movement, buried under its purple beard.
Suddenly, remembering the occasion of that "fracas," Schomberg
groaned with the pain as of a hot coal under his breastbone, and
gave himself up to desolation. Ah, if he only had that girl with
him he would have been masterful and resolute and fearless--fight
twenty desperadoes--care for nobody on earth! Whereas the
possession of Mrs. Schomberg was no incitement to a display of manly
virtues. Instead of caring for no one, he felt that he cared for
nothing. Life was a hollow sham; he wasn't going to risk a shot
through his lungs or his liver in order to preserve its integrity.
It had no savour--damn it!
In his state of moral decomposition, Schomberg, master as he was of
the art of hotel-keeping, and careful of giving no occasion for
criticism to the powers regulating that branch of human activity,
let things take their course; though he saw very well where that
course was tending. It began first with a game or two after dinner-
-for the drinks, apparently--with some lingering customer, at one of
the little tables ranged against the walls of the billiard-room.
Schomberg detected the meaning of it at once. "That's what it was!
This was what they were! And, moving about restlessly (at that time
his morose silent period had set in), he cast sidelong looks at the
game; but he said nothing. It was not worth while having a row with
men who were so overbearing. Even when money appeared in connection
with these postprandial games, into which more and more people were
being drawn, he still refrained from raising the question; he was
reluctant to draw unduly the attention of "plain Mr. Jones" and of
the equivocal Ricardo, to his person. One evening, however, after
the public rooms of the hotel had become empty, Schomberg made an
attempt to grapple with the problem in an indirect way.
In a distant corner the tired China boy dozed on his heels, his back
against the wall. Mrs. Schomberg had disappeared, as usual, between
ten and eleven. Schomberg walked about slowly in and out of the
room and the veranda, thoughtful, waiting for his two guests to go
to bed. Then suddenly he approached them, militarily, his chest
thrown out, his voice curt and soldierly.
"Hot night, gentlemen."
Mr Jones, lolling back idly in a chair, looked up. Ricardo, as
idle, but more upright, made no sign.
"Won't you have a drink with me before retiring?" went on Schomberg,
sitting down by the little table.
"By all means," said Mr. Jones lazily.
Ricardo showed his teeth in a strange, quick grin. Schomberg felt
painfully how difficult it was to get in touch with these men, both
so quiet, so deliberate, so menacingly unceremonious. He ordered
the Chinaman to bring in the drinks. His purpose was to discover
how long these guests intended to stay. Ricardo displayed no
conversational vein, but Mr. Jones appeared communicative enough.
His voice somehow matched his sunken eyes. It was hollow without
being in the least mournful; it sounded distant, uninterested, as
though he were speaking from the bottom of a well. Schomberg
learned that he would have the privilege of lodging and boarding
these gentlemen for at least a month more. He could not conceal his
discomfiture at this piece of news.
"What's the matter? Don't you like to have people in your house?"
asked plain Mr. Jones languidly. "I should have thought the owner
of a hotel would be pleased."
He lifted his delicate and beautifully pencilled eyebrows.
Schomberg muttered something about the locality being dull and
uninteresting to travellers--nothing going on--too quiet altogether,
but he only provoked the declaration that quiet had its charm
sometimes, and even dullness was welcome as a change.
"We haven't had time to be dull for the last three years," added
plain Mr. Jones, his eyes fixed darkly on Schomberg whom he further
more invited to have another drink, this time with him, and not to
worry himself about things he did not understand; and especially not
to be inhospitable--which in a hotel-keeper is highly
unprofessional.
"I don't understand," grumbled Schomberg. "Oh, yes, I understand
perfectly well. I--"
"You are frightened," interrupted Mr. Jones. "What is the matter?"
"I don't want any scandal in my place. That's what's the matter."
Schomberg tried to face the situation bravely, but that steady,
black stare affected him. And when he glanced aside uncomfortably,
he met Ricardo's grin uncovering a lot of teeth, though the man
seemed absorbed in his thoughts all the time.
"And, moreover," went on Mr. Jones in that distant tone of his, "you
can't help yourself. Here we are and here we stay. Would you try
to put us out? I dare say you could do it; but you couldn't do it
without getting hurt--very badly hurt. We can promise him that,
can't we, Martin?"
The secretary retracted his lips and looked up sharply at Schomberg,
as if only too anxious to leap upon him with teeth and claws.
Schomberg managed to produce a deep laugh.
"Ha! Ha! Ha!"
Mr Jones closed his eyes wearily, as if the light hurt them, and
looked remarkably like a corpse for a moment. This was bad enough;
but when he opened them again, it was almost a worse trial for
Schomberg's nerves. The spectral intensity of that glance, fixed on
the hotel-keeper (and this was most frightful) without any definite
expression, seemed to dissolve the last grain of resolution in his
character.
"You don't think, by any chance, that you have to do with ordinary
people, do you?" inquired Mr. Jones, in his lifeless manner, which
seemed to imply some sort of menace from beyond the grave.
"He's a gentleman," testified Martin Ricardo with a sudden snap of
the lips, after which his moustaches stirred by themselves in an
odd, feline manner.
"Oh, I wasn't thinking of that," said plain Mr. Jones, while
Schomberg, dumb and planted heavily in his chair looked from one to
the other, leaning forward a little. "Of course I am that; but
Ricardo attaches too much importance to a social advantage. What I
mean, for instance, is that he, quiet and inoffensive as you see him
sitting here, would think nothing of setting fire to this house of
entertainment of yours. It would blaze like a box of matches.
Think of that! It wouldn't advance your affairs much, would it?--
whatever happened to us."
"Come, come gentlemen," remonstrated Schomberg, in a murmur. "This
is very wild talk!"
"And you have been used to deal with tame people, haven't you? But
we aren't tame. We once kept a whole angry town at bay for two
days, and then we got away with our plunder. It was in Venezuela.
Ask Martin here--he can tell you."
Instinctively Schomberg looked at Ricardo, who only passed the tip
of his tongue over his lips with an uncanny sort of gusto, but did
not offer to begin.
"Well, perhaps it would be a rather long story," Mr. Jones conceded
after a short silence.
"I have no desire to hear it, I am sure," said Schomberg. "This
isn't Venezuela. You wouldn't get away from here like that. But
all this is silly talk of the worst sort. Do you mean to say you
would make deadly trouble for the sake of a few guilders that you
and that other"--eyeing Ricardo suspiciously, as one would look at a
strange animal--"gentleman can win of an evening? Isn't as if my
customers were a lot of rich men with pockets full of cash. I
wonder you take so much trouble and risk for so little money."
Schomberg's argument was met by Mr. Jones's statement that one must
do something to kill time. Killing time was not forbidden. For the
rest, being in a communicative mood, Mr. Jones said languidly and in
a voice indifferent, as if issuing from a tomb, that he depended on
himself, as if the world were still one great, wild jungle without
law. Martin was something like that, too--for reasons of his own.
All these statements Ricardo confirmed by short, inhuman grins.
Schomberg lowered his eyes, for the sight of these two men
intimidated him; but he was losing patience.
"Of course, I could see at once that you were two desperate
characters--something like what you say. But what would you think
if I told you that I am pretty near as desperate as you two
gentlemen? 'Here's that Schomberg has an easy time running his
hotel,' people think; and yet it seems to me I would just as soon
let you rip me open and burn the whole show as not. There!"
A low whistle was heard. It came from Ricardo, and was derisive.
Schomberg, breathing heavily, looked on the floor. He was really
desperate. Mr. Jones remained languidly sceptical.
"Tut, tut! You have a tolerable business. You are perfectly tame;
you--" He paused, then added in a tone of disgust: "You have a
wife."
Schomberg tapped the floor angrily with his foot and uttered an
indistinct, laughing curse.
"What do you mean by flinging that damned trouble at my head?" he
cried. "I wish you would carry her off with you some where to the
devil! I wouldn't run after you."
The unexpected outburst affected Mr. Jones strangely. He had a
horrified recoil, chair and all, as if Schomberg had thrust a
wriggling viper in his face.
"What's this infernal nonsense?" he muttered thickly. "What do you
mean? How dare you?"
Ricardo chuckled audibly.
"I tell you I am desperate," Schomberg repeated. "I am as desperate
as any man ever was. I don't care a hang what happens to me!"
"Well, then"--Mr. Jones began to speak with a quietly threatening
effect, as if the common words of daily use had some other deadly
meaning to his mind--"well, then, why should you make yourself
ridiculously disagreeable to us? If you don't care, as you say, you
might just as well let us have the key of that music-shed of yours
for a quiet game; a modest bank--a dozen candles or so. It would be
greatly appreciated by your clients, as far as I can judge from the
way they betted on a game of ecarte I had with that fair, baby-faced
man--what's his name? They just yearn for a modest bank. And I am
afraid Martin here would take it badly if you objected; but of
course you won't. Think of the calls for drinks!"
Schomberg, raising his eyes, at last met the gleams in two dark
caverns under Mr. Jones's devilish eyebrows, directed upon him
impenetrably. He shuddered as if horrors worse than murder had been
lurking there, and said, nodding towards Ricardo:
"I dare say he wouldn't think twice about sticking me, if he had you
at his back! I wish I had sunk my launch, and gone to the bottom
myself in her, before I boarded the steamer you came by. Ah, well,
I've been already living in hell for weeks, so you don't make much
difference. I'll let you have the concert-room--and hang the
consequences. But what about the boy on late duty? If he sees the
cards and actual money passing, he will be sure to blab, and it will
be all over the town in no time."
A ghastly smile stirred the lips of Mr. Jones.
"Ah, I see you want to make a success of it. Very good. That's the
way to get on. Don't let it disturb you. You chase all the
Chinamen to bed early, and we'll get Pedro here every evening. He
isn't the conventional waiter's cut, but he will do to run to and
fro with the tray, while you sit here from nine to eleven serving
out drinks and gathering the money."
"There will be three of them now," thought the unlucky Schomberg.
But Pedro, at any rate, was just a simple, straightforward brute, if
a murderous one. There was no mystery about him, nothing uncanny,
no suggestion of a stealthy, deliberate wildcat turned into a man,
or of an insolent spectre on leave from Hades, endowed with skin and
bones and a subtle power of terror. Pedro with his fangs, his
tangled beard, and queer stare of his little bear's eyes was, by
comparison, delightfully natural. Besides, Schomberg could no
longer help himself.
"That will do very well," he asserted mournfully. "But if you
gentlemen, if you had turned up here only three months ago--ay, less
than three months ago--you would have found somebody very different
from what I am now to talk to you. It's true. What do you think of
that?"
"I scarcely know what to think. I should think it was a lie. You
were probably as tame three months ago as you are now. You were
born tame, like most people in the world."
Mr Jones got up spectrally, and Ricardo imitated him with a snarl
and a stretch. Schomberg, in a brown study, went on, as if to
himself:
"There has been an orchestra here--eighteen women."
Mr Jones let out an exclamation of dismay, and looked about as if
the walls around him and the whole house had been infected with
plague. Then he became very angry, and swore violently at Schomberg
for daring to bring up such subjects. The hotel-keeper was too much
surprised to get up. He gazed from his chair at Mr. Jones's anger,
which had nothing spectral in it but was not the more comprehensible
for that.
"What's the matter?" he stammered out. "What subject? Didn't you
hear me say it was an orchestra? There's nothing wrong in that.
Well, there was a girl amongst them--" Schomberg's eyes went stony;
he clasped his hands in front of his breast with such force that his
knuckles came out white. "Such a girl! Tame, am I? I would have
kicked everything to pieces about me for her. And she, of course .
. . I am in the prime of life . . . then a fellow bewitched her--a
vagabond, a false, bring, swindling, underhand, stick-at-nothing
brute. Ah!"
His entwined fingers cracked as he tore his hands apart, flung out
his arms, and leaned his forehead on them in a passion of fury. The
other two looked at his shaking back--the attenuated Mr. Jones with
mingled scorn and a sort of fear, Ricardo with the expression of a
cat which sees a piece of fish in the pantry out of reach.
Schomberg flung himself backwards. He was dry-eyed, but he gulped
as if swallowing sobs.
"No wonder you can do with me what you like. You have no idea--just
let me tell you of my trouble--"
"I don't want to know anything of your beastly trouble," said Mr.
Jones, in his most lifelessly positive voice.
He stretched forth an arresting hand, and, as Schomberg remained
open-mouthed, he walked out of the billiard-room in all the
uncanniness of his thin shanks. Ricardo followed at his leader's
heels; but he showed his teeth to Schomberg over his shoulder.
Content of PART TWO CHAPTER FIVE [Joseph Conrad's novel: Victory]
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