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 passion 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 passion of a fish would be if one could imagine such a thing as a passionate 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-cushioned 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.