He was asking everybody about everything, and
arranging the information into the most scandalous shape his imagination
could invent. From time to time he would step up, his blinking,
cushioned eyes, his thick lips, his very chestnut beard, looking full of
malice.
"Evening, gentlemen. Have you got all you want? So! Good! Well, I am
told the jungle has choked the very sheds in Black Diamond Bay. Fact.
He's a hermit in the wilderness now. But what can this manager get to
eat there? It beats me."
Sometimes a stranger would inquire with natural curiosity:
"Who? What manager?"
"Oh, a certain Swede,"--with a sinister emphasis, as if he were saying
"a certain brigand." "Well known here. He's turned hermit from shame.
That's what the devil does when he's found out."
Hermit. This was the latest of the more or less witty labels applied
to Heyst during his aimless pilgrimage in this section of the tropical
belt, where the inane clacking of Schomberg's tongue vexed our ears.
But apparently Heyst was not a hermit by temperament. The sight of his
land was not invincibly odious to him. We must believe this, since
for some reason or other he did come out from his retreat for a while.
Perhaps it was only to see whether there were any letters for him at the
Tesmans. I don't know. No one knows. But this reappearance shows that
his detachment from the world was not complete.
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