Complete Works

wildest of us did not resent the fact when it was disclosed.  Directly he had felt his feet out here, Davidson sent for his wife.  She came out (from West Australia) in the Somerset, under the care of Captain Ritchie — you know, Monkey-face Ritchie — who couldn’t praise enough her sweetness, her gentleness, and her charm.  She seemed to be the heaven-born mate for Davidson.  She found on arrival a very pretty bungalow on the hill, ready for her and the little girl they had.  Very soon he got for her a two-wheeled trap and a Burmah pony, and she used to drive down of an evening to pick up Davidson, on the quay.  When Davidson, beaming, got into the trap, it would become very full all at once.
    “We used to admire Mrs. Davidson from a distance.  It was a girlish head out of a keepsake.  From a distance.  We had not many opportunities for a closer view, because she did not care to give them to us.  We would have been glad to drop in at the Davidson bungalow, but we were made to feel somehow that we were not very welcome there.  Not that she ever said anything ungracious.  She never had much to say for herself.  I was perhaps the one who saw most of the Davidsons at home.  What I noticed under the superficial aspect of vapid sweetness was her convex, obstinate forehead, and her small, red, pretty, ungenerous mouth.  But then I am an observer with strong prejudices.  Most of us were fetched by her white, swan-like neck, by that drooping, innocent profile.  There was a lot of latent devotion to Davidson’s wife hereabouts, at that time, I can tell you.  But my idea was that she repaid it by a profound suspicion of the sort of men we were; a mistrust which extended — I fancied — to her very husband at times.  And I thought then she was jealous of him in a way; though there were no women that she could be jealous about.  She had no women’s society.  It’s difficult for a shipmaster’s wife unless there are other shipmasters’ wives about, and there were none here then.  I know that the dock manager’s wife called on her; but that was all.  The fellows here formed the opinion that Mrs. Davidson was a meek, shy little thing.  She looked it, I must say.  And this opinion was so universal that the friend I have been telling you of remembered his conversation with Davidson simply because of the statement about Davidson’s wife.  He even wondered to me: ‘Fancy Mrs. Davidson making a fuss to that extent.  She didn’t seem to me the sort of woman that would know how to make a fuss about anything.’
    “I wondered, too — but not so much.  That bumpy forehead — eh?  I had always suspected her of being silly.  And I observed that Davidson must have been vexed by this display of wifely anxiety.
    “My friend said: ‘No.  He seemed rather touched and distressed.  There really was no one he could ask to relieve him; mainly because he intended to make a call in some God-forsaken creek, to look up a fellow of the name of Bamtz who apparently had settled there.’
    “And again my friend wondered.  ‘Tell me,’ he cried, ‘what connection can there be between Davidson and such a creature as Bamtz?’
    “I don’t remember now what answer I made.  A sufficient one could have been given in two words: ‘Davidson’s goodness.’  That never boggled at unworthiness if there was the slightest reason for compassion.  I don’t want you to think that Davidson had no discrimination at all.  Bamtz could not have imposed on him.  Moreover, everybody knew what Bamtz was.  He was a loafer with a beard.  When I think of Bamtz, the first thing I see is that long black beard and a lot of propitiatory wrinkles at the corners of two little eyes.  There was no such beard from here to Polynesia, where a beard is a valuable property in itself.  Bamtz’s beard was valuable to him in another way.  You know how impressed Orientals are by a fine beard.  Years and years ago, I remember, the grave Abdullah, the great trader of Sambir, unable to repress signs of astonishment and admiration at the first sight of that imposing beard.  And it’s very well known that Bamtz lived on Abdullah off and on for several years.  It was a unique beard, and so was the bearer of the same.  A unique loafer.  He made a fine art of it, or rather a sort of craft and mystery.  One can understand a fellow living by cadging and small swindles in towns, in large communities of people; but Bamtz managed to do