After dinner he walked through the warm sunny emptiness of the afternoon to Derby Wharf and the Nautilus. Standing on the wharf, smoking a cheroot, he leaned back upon his cane, studying the ship with a gaze that missed no detail. There was not a sound from the water; across the harbor Peach's Point seemed about to dissolve in a faint green haze; a strong scent of mingled spices came from the warehouses. There was the splash of oars in the Basin beyond, and the more distant peal of a church bell.
At the sound of footfalls behind him he turned and saw Nettie Vollar and her uncle, Edward Dunsack. A dark color rose in the girl's cheek, and her hand pulled involuntarily at Dunsack's arm, as if she wished to retreat. Gerrit thought that she had aged since he had latest met her: Nettie's mouth, with its full, slightly drooping lower lip, had lost something of its fresh arch; her eyes, though they still preserved their black sparkle, were plainly resentful. Edward Dunsack, medium tall but thin almost to emaciation, had a riven sallow face with close-cut silvery hair and agate-brown eyes with contracted pupils.
"Well, Nettie," Gerrit said, moving forward promptly, "it's pleasant to see you again." Her hand was cold and still. "Dunsack, too."
"I am obliged to you for my chest," the latter told him, unmoved by
Gerrit's quizzical gaze.
"Glad to do it for you," the other replied; "it came ashore with my personal things, and so, perhaps, saved you something."
"Perhaps," Dunsack agreed levelly.
Looking down at the cob filling of the wharf, Nettie Vollar said, "You came home married, I hear, and to a Chinese lady."
Gerrit assented. "You'll certainly know her, and like her, too. Taou Yuen is very wise and without the prejudices—" he stopped, conscious of the stupidity of his attempted kindness. Nettie looked up defiantly, biting her lip—a familiar trick, he recalled. Dunsack interposed:
"You will find that the Chinese have none of your little sympathetic tricks. No foreigner could ever grasp the depth of their indifference to what you might call humanity. They are born wise, as you say, but weary. I suppose your wife plays the guitar skillfully and sings the Soochow Love Song."
Gerrit Ammidon studied him with somber eyes and a gathering temper: it was, however, impossible to decide whether the implication was deliberately insulting. He wouldn't have any Canton clerk, probably saturated with opium, insinuate that his affair was on the plane of that of a drunken sailor! "My wife," he said deliberately, "is a Manchu lady. You may know that they don't learn dialect songs nor ornament tea houses."