“But that's silly,” whispered the man deprived of the vengeance which he had seemed already to hold in his hand, by a mysterious and exasperating idiosyncrasy.
“Don't you set yourself to judge a gentleman.” Ricardo without anger administered a moody rebuke. “Even I can't understand the governor thoroughly. And I am an Englishman and his follower. No, I don't think I care to put it before him, sick as I am of staying here.”
Ricardo could not be more sick of staying than Schomberg was of seeing him stay. Schomberg believed so firmly in the reality of Heyst as created by his own power of false inferences, of his hate, of his love of scandal, that he could not contain a stifled cry of conviction as sincere as most of our convictions, the disguised servants of our passions, can appear at a supreme moment.
“It would have been like going to pick up a nugget of a thousand pounds, or two or three times as much, for all I know. No trouble, no--”
“The petticoat's the trouble,” Ricardo struck in.
He had resumed his noiseless, feline, oblique prowling, in which an observer would have detected a new character of excitement, such as a wild animal of the cat species, anxious to make a spring, might betray. Schomberg saw nothing. It would probably have cheered his drooping spirits; but in a general way he preferred not to look at Ricardo. Ricardo, however, with one of his slanting, gliding, restless glances, observed the bitter smile on Schomberg's bearded lips--the unmistakable smile of ruined hopes.
“You are a pretty unforgiving sort of chap,” he said, stopping for a moment with an air of interest. “Hang me if I ever saw anybody look so disappointed! I bet you would send black plague to that island if you only knew how--eh, what? Plague too good for them? Ha, ha, ha!”
He bent down to stare at Schomberg who sat unstirring with stony eyes and set features, and apparently deaf to the rasping derision of that laughter so close to his red fleshy ear.
“Black plague too good for them, ha, ha!” Ricardo pressed the point on the tormented hotel-keeper. Schomberg kept his eyes down obstinately.
“I don't wish any harm to the girl--” he muttered.
“But did she bolt from you? A fair bilk? Come!”
“Devil only knows what that villainous Swede had done to her--what he promised her, how he frightened her. She couldn't have cared for him, I know.” Schomberg's vanity clung to the belief in some atrocious, extraordinary means of seduction employed by Heyst. “Look how he bewitched that poor Morrison,” he murmured.