Handy on the veranda upon a walnut etagere (it had come last year by the Sofala)—­everything came by the Sofala there lay, piled up under bronze weights, a pile of the Times’ weekly edition, the large sheets of the Rotterdam Courant, the Graphic in its world-wide green wrappers, an illustrated Dutch publication without a cover, the numbers of a German magazine with covers of the “Bismarck malade” color.  There were also parcels of new music—­though the piano (it had come years ago by the Sofala in the damp atmosphere of the forests was generally out of tune.) It was vexing to be cut off from everything for sixty days at a stretch sometimes, without any means of knowing what was the matter.  And when the Sofala reappeared Mr. Van Wyk would descend the steps of the veranda and stroll over the grass plot in front of his house, down to the waterside, with a frown on his white brow.

“You’ve been laid up after an accident, I presume.”

He addressed the bridge, but before anybody could answer Massy was sure to have already scrambled ashore over the rail and pushed in, squeezing the palms of his hands together, bowing his sleek head as if gummed all over the top with black threads and tapes.  And he would be so enraged at the necessity of having to offer such an explanation that his moaning would be positively pitiful, while all the time he tried to compose his big lips into a smile.

“No, Mr. Van Wyk.  You would not believe it.  I couldn’t get one of those wretches to take the ship out.  Not a single one of the lazy beasts could be induced, and the law, you know, Mr. Van Wyk . . .”

He moaned at great length apologetically; the words conspiracy, plot, envy, came out prominently, whined with greater energy.  Mr. Van Wyk, examining with a faint grimace his polished finger-nails, would say, “H’m.  Very unfortunate,” and turn his back on him.

Fastidious, clever, slightly skeptical, accustomed to the best society (he had held a much-envied shore appointment at the Ministry of Marine for a year preceding his retreat from his profession and from Europe), he possessed a latent warmth of feeling and a capacity for sympathy which were concealed by a sort of haughty, arbitrary indifference of manner arising from his early training; and by a something an enemy might have called foppish, in his aspect—­like a distorted echo of past elegance.  He managed to keep an almost military discipline amongst the coolies of the estate he had dragged into the light of day out of the tangle and shadows of the jungle; and the white shirt he put on every evening with its stiff glossy front and high collar looked as if he had meant to preserve the decent ceremony of evening-dress, but had wound a thick crimson sash above his hips as a concession to the wilderness, once his adversary, now his vanquished companion.