Such was the beginning of Willems career.
Lingard learned in half an hour all that there was of Willems commonplace story. Father outdoor clerk of some ship-broker in Rotterdam; mother dead. The boy quick in learning, but idle in school. The straitened circumstances in the house filled with small brothers and sisters, sufficiently clothed and fed but otherwise running wild, while the disconsolate widower tramped about all day in a shabby overcoat and imperfect boots on the muddy quays, and in the evening piloted wearily the half-intoxicated foreign skippers amongst the places of cheap delights, returning home late, sick with too much smoking and drinking for companys sake with these men, who expected such attentions in the way of business. Then the offer of the good-natured captain of Kosmopoliet IV., who was pleased to do something for the patient and obliging fellow; young Willems great joy, his still greater disappointment with the sea that looked so charming from afar, but proved so hard and exacting on closer acquaintance and then this running away by a sudden impulse. The boy was hopelessly at variance with the spirit of the sea. He had an instinctive contempt for the honest simplicity of that work which led to nothing he cared for. Lingard soon found this out. He offered to send him home in an English ship, but the boy begged hard to be permitted to remain. He wrote a beautiful hand, became soon perfect in English, was quick at figures; and Lingard made him useful in that way. As he grew older his trading instincts developed themselves astonishingly, and Lingard left him often to trade in one island or another while he, himself, made an intermediate trip to some out-of-the-way place. On Willems expressing a wish to that effect, Lingard let him enter Hudigs service. He felt a little sore at that abandonment because he had attached himself, in a way, to his protege. Still he was proud of him, and spoke up for him loyally. At first it was, Smart boy that never make a seaman though. Then when Willems was helping in the trading he referred to him as that clever young fellow. Later when Willems became the confidential agent of Hudig, employed in many a delicate affair, the simple-hearted old seaman would point an admiring finger at his back and whisper to whoever stood near at the moment, Long-headed chap that; deuced long-headed chap. Look at him. Confidential man of old Hudig. I picked him up in a ditch, you may say, like a starved cat. Skin and bone. Pon my word I did. And now he knows more than I do about island trading. Fact. I am not joking. More than I do, he would repeat, seriously, with innocent pride in his honest eyes.
From the safe elevation of his commercial successes Willems patronized Lingard. He had a liking for his benefactor, not unmixed with some disdain for the crude directness of the old fellows methods of conduct. There were, however, certain sides of Lingards character for which Willems felt a qualified respect. The talkative seaman knew how to be silent on certain matters that to Willems were very interesting. Besides, Lingard was rich, and that in itself was enough to compel Willems unwilling admiration. In his confidential chats with Hudig, Willems generally alluded to the benevolent Englishman as the lucky old fool in a very distinct tone of vexation; Hudig would grunt an unqualified assent, and then the two would look at each other in a sudden immobility of pupils fixed by a stare of unexpressed thought.
You cant find out where he gets all that india-rubber, hey Willems? Hudig would ask at last, turning away and bending over the papers on his desk.
No, Mr. Hudig. Not yet. But I am trying, was Willems invariable reply, delivered with a ring of regretful deprecation.
Try! Always try! You may try! You think yourself clever perhaps, rumbled on Hudig, without looking up. I have been trading with him twenty thirty years now. The old fox. And I have tried. Bah!
He stretched out a short, podgy leg and contemplated the bare instep and the grass slipper hanging by the toes. You cant make him drunk? he would add, after a pause of stertorous breathing.
No, Mr. Hudig, I cant really, protested Willems, earnestly.
Well, dont try. I know him. Dont try, advised the master, and, bending again over his desk, his staring bloodshot eyes close to the paper, he would go on tracing laboriously with his thick fingers the slim unsteady letters of his correspondence, while Willems waited respectfully for his further good pleasure before asking, with great deference
Any orders, Mr. Hudig?
Hm! yes. Go to Bun-Hin yourself and see the dollars of that payment counted and packed, and have them put on board the mail-boat for Ternate. Shes due here this afternoon.
Yes, Mr. Hudig.
And, look here. If the boat is late, leave the case in Bun-Hins godown till to-morrow. Seal it up. Eight seals as usual. Dont take it away till the boat is here.
No, Mr. Hudig.
And dont forget about these opium cases. Its for to-night. Use my own boatmen. Transship them from the Caroline to the Arab barque, went on the master in his hoarse undertone. And dont you come to me with another story of a case dropped overboard like last time, he added, with sudden ferocity, looking up at his confidential clerk.
No, Mr. Hudig. I will take care.
Thats all. Tell that pig as you go out that if he doesnt make the punkah go a little better I will break every bone in his body, finished up Hudig, wiping his purple face with a red silk handkerchief nearly as big as a counterpane.
Noiselessly Willems went out, shutting carefully behind him the little green door through which he passed to the warehouse. Hudig, pen in hand, listened to him bullying the punkah boy with profane violence, born of unbounded zeal for the masters comfort, before he returned to his writing amid the rustling of papers fluttering in the wind sent down by the punkah that waved in wide sweeps above his head.
Willems would nod familiarly to Mr. Vinck, who had his desk close to the little door of the private office, and march down the warehouse with an important air. Mr. Vinck extreme dislike lurking in every wrinkle of his gentlemanly countenance would follow with his eyes the white figure flitting in the gloom amongst the piles of bales and cases till it passed out through the big archway into the glare of the street.
Chapter Three
The opportunity and the temptation were too much for Willems, and under the pressure of sudden necessity he abused that trust which was his pride, the perpetual sign of his cleverness and a load too heavy for him to carry. A run of bad luck at cards, the failure of a small speculation undertaken on his own account, an unexpected demand for money from one or another member of the Da Souza family and almost before he was well aware of it he was off the path of his peculiar honesty. It was such a faint and ill-defined track that it took him some time to find out how far he had strayed amongst the brambles of the dangerous wilderness he had been skirting for so many years, without any other guide than his own convenience and that doctrine of success which he had found for himself in the book of life in those interesting chapters that the Devil has been permitted to write in it, to test the sharpness of mens eyesight and the steadfastness of their hearts. For one short, dark and solitary moment he was dismayed, but he had that courage that will not scale heights, yet will wade bravely through the mud if there be no other road. He applied himself to the task of restitution, and devoted himself to the duty of not being found out. On his thirtieth birthday he had almost accomplished the task and the duty had been faithfully and cleverly performed. He saw himself safe. Again he could look hopefully towards the goal of his legitimate ambition. Nobody would dare to suspect him, and in a few days there would be nothing to suspect. He was elated. He did not know that his prosperity had touched then its high-water mark, and that the tide was already on the turn.