sed me if I had not been fathoms deep in discontent. To a
young man fairly conscientious and as well-meaning as only the young
man can be, the current ill-usage of life comes with a peculiar cruelty.
Youth that is fresh enough to believe in guilt, in innocence, and in
itself, will always doubt whether it have not perchance deserved its
fate. Sombre of mind and without appetite, I struggled with the
chop while Mrs. Schomberg sat with her everlasting stupid grin and
Schomberg's talk gathered way like a slide of rubbish.

"Let me tell you. It's all about that girl. I don't know what Captain
Hermann expects, but if he asked me I could tell him something about
Falk. He's a miserable fellow. That man is a perfect slave. That's what
I call him. A slave. Last year I started this table d'hote, and sent
cards out--you know. You think he had one meal in the house? Give the
thing a trial? Not once. He has got hold now of a Madras cook--a blamed
fraud that I hunted out of my cookhouse with a rattan. He was not fit to
cook for white men. No, not for the white men's dogs either; but, see,
any damned native that can boil a pot of rice is good enough for Mr.
Falk. Rice and a little fish he buys for a few cents from the fishing
boats outside is what he lives on. You would hardly credit it--eh? A
white man, too...."

He wiped his lips, using the napkin with indignation, and looking at me.
It flashed through my mind in the midst of my depression that if all the
meat in the town was like these table d'hote chops, Falk wasn't so far
wrong. I was on the point of saying this, but Schomberg's stare was
intimidating. "He's a vegetarian, perhaps," I murmured instead.

"He's a miser. A miserable miser," affirmed the hotel-keeper with great
force. "The meat here is not so good as at home--of course. And dear
too. But look at me. I only charge a dollar for the tiffin, and one
dollar and fifty cents for the dinner. Show me anything cheaper. Why am
I doing it? There's little profit in this game. Falk wouldn't look
at it. I do it for the sake of a lot of young white fellows here that
hadn't a place where they could get a decent meal and eat it decently in
good company. There's first-rate company always at my table."

The convinced way he surveyed the empty chairs made me feel as if I had
intruded upon a tiffin of ghostly Presences.

"A white man should eat like a white man, dash it all," he burst out
impetuously. "Ought to eat meat, must eat meat.