“He ought to have handled the warning she had given him in another way. He was convinced now that a simple display of watchfulness would have been enough to restrain that vile and cowardly crew. But the fact was that he had not quite believed that anything would be attempted.
“The body of Laughing Anne having been ‘committed to the deep’ some twenty miles S.S.W. from Cape Selatan, the task before Davidson was to commit Laughing Anne’s child to the care of his wife. And there poor, good Davidson made a fatal move. He didn’t want to tell her the whole awful story, since it involved the knowledge of the danger from which he, Davidson, had escaped. And this, too, after he had been laughing at her unreasonable fears only a short time before.
“‘I thought that if I told her everything,’ Davidson explained to me, ‘she would never have a moment’s peace while I was away on my trips.’
“He simply stated that the boy was an orphan, the child of some people to whom he, Davidson, was under the greatest obligation, and that he felt morally bound to look after him. Some day he would tell her more, he said, and meantime he trusted in the goodness and warmth of her heart, in her woman’s natural compassion.
“He did not know that her heart was about the size of a parched pea, and had the proportional amount of warmth; and that her faculty of compassion was mainly directed to herself. He was only startled and disappointed at the air of cold surprise and the suspicious look with which she received his imperfect tale. But she did not say much. She never had much to say. She was a fool of the silent, hopeless kind.
“What story Davidson’s crew thought fit to set afloat in Malay town is neither here nor there. Davidson himself took some of his friends into his confidence, besides giving the full story officially to the Harbour Master.
“The Harbour Master was considerably astonished. He didn’t think, however, that a formal complaint should be made to the Dutch Government. They would probably do nothing in the end, after a lot of trouble and correspondence. The robbery had not come off, after all. Those vagabonds could be trusted to go to the devil in their own way. No amount of fuss would bring the poor woman to life again, and the actual murderer had been done justice to by a chance shot from Davidson. Better let the matter drop.
“This was good common sense. But he was impressed.
“‘Sounds a terrible affair, Captain Davidson.’
“‘Aye, terrible enough,’ agreed the remorseful Davidson. But the most terrible thing for him, though he didn’t know it yet then, was that his wife’s silly brain was slowly coming to the conclusion that Tony was Davidson’s child, and that he had invented that lame story to introduce him into her pure home in defiance of decency, of virtue—of her most sacred feelings.