Even if he had run off with
your cash-box--"
The big hotel-keeper bent down and put his infuriated face close to
Davidson's.
"My cash-box! My--he--look here, Captain Davidson! He ran off with a
girl. What do I care for the girl? The girl is nothing to me."
He shot out an infamous word which made Davidson start. That's what the
girl was; and he reiterated the assertion that she was nothing to him.
What he was concerned for was the good name of his house. Wherever he
had been established, he had always had "artist parties" staying in his
house. One recommended him to the others; but what would happen now,
when it got about that leaders ran the risk in his house--his house--of
losing members of their troupe? And just now, when he had spent seven
hundred and thirty-four guilders in building a concert-hall in his
compound. Was that a thing to do in a respectable hotel? The cheek, the
indecency, the impudence, the atrocity! Vagabond, impostor, swindler,
ruffian, schwein-hund!
He had seized Davidson by a button of his coat, detaining him in
the doorway, and exactly in the line of Mrs. Schomberg's stony gaze.
Davidson stole a glance in that direction and thought of making some
sort of reassuring sign to her, but she looked so bereft of senses, and
almost of life, perched up there, that it seemed not worth while.
He disengaged his button with firm placidity.
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