Davidson smiled faintly.
“We out here have got used to him,” he said, as if excusing a universal and guilty toleration of a manifest nuisance. “I'd hardly call him that. I only know him as a hotel-keeper.”
“I never knew him even as that—not till this time, when you were so obliging as to take me to Sourabaya, I went to stay there from economy. The Netherlands House is very expensive, and they expect you to bring your own servant with you. It's a nuisance.”
“Of course, of course,” protested Davidson hastily.
After a short silence Heyst returned to the matter of the shawl. He wanted to send it back to Mrs. Schomberg. He said that it might be very awkward for her if she were unable, if asked, to produce it. This had given him, Heyst, much uneasiness. She was terrified of Schomberg. Apparently she had reason to be.
Davidson had remarked that, too. Which did not prevent her, he pointed out, from making a fool of him, in a way, for the sake of a stranger.
“Oh! You know!” said Heyst. “Yes, she helped me—us.”
“She told me so. I had quite a talk with her,” Davidson informed him. “Fancy anyone having a talk with Mrs. Schomberg! If I were to tell the fellows they wouldn't believe me. How did you get round her, Heyst? How did you think of it? Why, she looks too stupid to understand human speech and too scared to shoo a chicken away. Oh, the women, the women! You don't know what there may be in the quietest of them.”
“She was engaged in the task of defending her position in life,” said Heyst. “It's a very respectable task.”
“Is that it? I had some idea it was that,” confessed Davidson.