I turned round at once to look at the phenomenon. The “really good man” had a very broad back. I saw him signal a sampan to come alongside, get into it, and go off in the direction of a cluster of local steamers anchored close inshore.
I said: “He’s a seaman, isn’t he?”
“Yes. Commands that biggish dark-green steamer: ‘Sissie—Glasgow.’ He has never commanded anything else but the ‘Sissie—Glasgow,’ only it wasn’t always the same Sissie. The first he had was about half the length of this one, and we used to tell poor Davidson that she was a size too small for him. Even at that time Davidson had bulk. We warned him he would get callosities on his shoulders and elbows because of the tight fit of his command. And Davidson could well afford the smiles he gave us for our chaff. He made lots of money in her. She belonged to a portly Chinaman resembling a mandarin in a picture-book, with goggles and thin drooping moustaches, and as dignified as only a Celestial knows how to be.
“The best of Chinamen as employers is that they have such gentlemanly instincts. Once they become convinced that you are a straight man, they give you their unbounded confidence. You simply can’t do wrong, then. And they are pretty quick judges of character, too. Davidson’s Chinaman was the first to find out his worth, on some theoretical principle. One day in his counting-house, before several white men he was heard to declare: ‘Captain Davidson is a good man.’ And that settled it. After that you couldn’t tell if it was Davidson who belonged to the Chinaman or the Chinaman who belonged to Davidson. It was he who, shortly before he died, ordered in Glasgow the new Sissie for Davidson to command.”
We walked into the shade of the Harbour Office and leaned our elbows on the parapet of the quay.
“She was really meant to comfort poor Davidson,” continued Hollis. “Can you fancy anything more naïvely touching than this old mandarin spending several thousand pounds to console his white man? Well, there she is. The old mandarin’s sons have inherited her, and Davidson with her; and he commands her; and what with his salary and trading privileges he makes a lot of money; and everything is as before; and Davidson even smiles—you have seen it? Well, the smile’s the only thing which isn’t as before.”
“Tell me, Hollis,” I asked, “what do you mean by good in this connection?”
“Well, there are men who are born good just as others are born witty. What I mean is his nature. No simpler, more scrupulously delicate soul had ever lived in such a—a—comfortable envelope. How we used to laugh at Davidson’s fine scruples! In short, he’s thoroughly humane, and I don’t imagine there can be much of any other sort of goodness that counts on this earth. And as he’s that with a shade of particular refinement, I may well call him a ‘really good man.’”
I knew from old that Hollis was a firm believer in the final value of shades. And I said: “I see”—because I really did see Hollis’s Davidson in the sympathetic stout man who had passed us a little while before. But I remembered that at the very moment he smiled his placid face appeared veiled in melancholy—a sort of spiritual shadow. I went on.
“Who on earth has paid him off for being so fine by spoiling his smile?”