It seemed to him that he could never be himself again till he had
got even with that artful Swede. He was ready to swear that Heyst had
ruined his life. The girl so unfairly, craftily, basely decoyed away
would have inspired him to success in a new start. Obviously Mrs.
Schomberg, whom he terrified by savagely silent moods combined with
underhand, poisoned glances, could give him no inspiration. He had grown
generally neglectful, but with a partiality for reckless expedients, as
if he did not care when and how his career as a hotel-keeper was to be
brought to an end. This demoralized state accounted for what Davidson
had observed on his last visit to the Schomberg establishment, some two
months after Heyst's secret departure with the girl to the solitude of
Samburan.
The Schomberg of a few years ago--the Schomberg of the Bangkok days,
for instance, when he started the first of his famed table d'hote
dinners--would never have risked anything of the sort. His genius ran to
catering, "white man for white men" and to the inventing, elaborating,
and retailing of scandalous gossip with asinine unction and impudent
delight. But now his mind was perverted by the pangs of wounded vanity
and of thwarted passion. In this state of moral weakness Schomberg
allowed himself to be corrupted.
CHAPTER FOUR
The business was done by a guest who arrived one fine morning by
mail-boat--immediately from Celebes, having boarded her in Macassar,
but generally, Schomberg understood, from up China Sea way; a wanderer
clearly, even as Heyst was, but not alone and of quite another kind.
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