“But the other members of that orchestra were real Italians, were they not?”
Of course, he didn't care. He wanted to see whether the mechanism would work again. It did. It said they were not. They were of all sorts, apparently. It paused, with the one goggle eye immovably gazing down the whole length of the room and through the door opening on to the “piazza.” It paused, then went on in the same low pitch:
“Poor devil!”--said Davidson, “I suppose these women are not much better than slaves really. Was that fellow with the dyed beard decent in his way?”
The mechanism remained silent. The sympathetic soul of Davidson drew its own conclusions.
“Beastly life for these women!” he said. “When you say an English girl, Mrs. Schomberg, do you really mean a young girl? Some of these orchestra girls are no chicks.”
“Young enough,” came the low voice out of Mrs. Schomberg's unmoved physiognomy.
Davidson, encouraged, remarked that he was sorry for her. He was easily sorry for people.
“Where did they go to from here?” he asked.
“She did not go with them. She ran away.”
This was the pronouncement Davidson obtained next. It introduced a new sort of interest.
“Well! Well!” he exclaimed placidly; and then, with the air of a man who knows life: “Who with?” he inquired with assurance.
Mrs. Schomberg's immobility gave her an appearance of listening intently. Perhaps she was really listening; but Schomberg must have been finishing his sleep in some distant part of the house. The silence was profound, and lasted long enough to become startling. Then, enthroned above Davidson, she whispered at last:
“Oh, you know I am here looking for a friend,” said Davidson hopefully. “Won't you tell me--”
A mist seemed to roll away from before Davidson's eyes, disclosing something he could not believe.
“You can't mean it!” he cried. “He's not the man for it.” But the last words came out in a faint voice. Mrs. Schomberg never moved her head the least bit. Davidson, after the shock which made him sit up, went slack all over.
“Heyst! Such a perfect gentleman!” he exclaimed weakly.
Mrs. Schomberg did not seem to have heard him. This startling fact did not tally somehow with the idea Davidson had of Heyst. He never talked of women, he never seemed to think of them, or to remember that they existed; and then all at once--like this! Running off with a casual orchestra girl!