Part 27 (1/2)

”In eight months. You'll come home and see me through.”

Walker agreed and for eight months listened to praises of the lady.

There were no more solitary expeditions. In fact, Hatteras seemed absorbed in the diurnal discovery of new perfections in his future wife.

”Yes, she seems a nice girl,” Walker commented. He found her upon his arrival in England more human than Hatteras' conversation had led him to expect, and she proved to him that she was a nice girl. For she listened for hours to him lecturing her on the proper way to treat d.i.c.k without the slightest irritation and with only a faintly visible amus.e.m.e.nt. Besides she insisted on returning with her husband to Bonny river, which was a sufficiently courageous thing to undertake.

For a year in spite of the climate the couple were commonplace and happy. For a year Walker clucked about them like a hen after its chickens and slept the sleep of the untroubled. Then he returned to England and from that time made only occasional journeys to West Africa. Thus for awhile he almost lost sight of Hatteras and consequently still slept the sleep of the untroubled. One morning, however, he arrived unexpectedly at the settlement and at once called on Hatteras. He did not wait to be announced, but ran up the steps outside the house and into the dining-room. He found Mrs. Hatteras crying. She dried her eyes, welcomed Walker, and said that she was sorry, but her husband was away.

Walker started, looked at her eyes, and asked hesitatingly whether he could help. Mrs. Hatteras replied with an ill-a.s.sumed surprise that she did not understand. Walker suggested that there was trouble. Mrs.

Hatteras denied the truth of the suggestion. Walker pressed the point and Mrs. Hatteras yielded so far as to a.s.sert that there was no trouble in which Hatteras was concerned. Walker hardly thought it the occasion for a parade of manners, and insisted on pointing out that his knowledge of her husband was intimate and dated from his schooldays. Thereupon Mrs. Hatteras gave way.

”d.i.c.k goes away alone,” she said. ”He stains his skin and goes away at night. He tells me that he must, that it's the only way by which he can know the natives, and that so it's a sort of duty. He says the black tells nothing of himself to the white man--ever. You must go amongst them if you are to know them. So he goes, and I never know when he will come back. I never know whether he will come back.”

”But he has done that sort of thing on and off for years, and he has always come back,” replied Walker.

”Yes, but one day he will not.” Walker comforted her as well as he could, praised Hatteras for his conduct, though his heart was hot against him, spoke of risks that every one must run who serve the Empire. ”Never a lotus closes, you know,” he said, and went back to the factory with the consciousness that he had been telling lies.

It was no sense of duty that prompted Hatteras, of that he was certain, and he waited--he waited from darkness to daybreak in his compound for three successive nights. On the fourth he heard the scuffling sound at the corner of the fence. The night was black as the inside of a coffin. Half a regiment of men might steal past him and he not have seen them. Accordingly he walked cautiously to the palisade which separated the enclosure of the Residency from his own, felt along it until he reached the little gate and stationed himself in front of it. In a few moments he thought that he heard a man breathing, but whether to the right or the left he could not tell; and then a groping hand lightly touched his face and drew away again.

Walker said nothing, but held his breath and did not move. The hand was stretched out again. This time it touched his breast and moved across it until it felt a b.u.t.ton of Walker's coat. Then it was s.n.a.t.c.hed away and Walker heard a gasping in-draw of the breath and afterwards a sound as of a man turning in a flurry. Walker sprang forward and caught a naked shoulder with one hand, a naked arm with the other.

”Wait a bit, d.i.c.k Hatteras,” he said.

There was a low cry, and then a husky voice addressed him respectfully as ”Daddy” in trade-English.

”That won't do, d.i.c.k,” said Walker.

The voice babbled more trade-English.

”If you're not d.i.c.k Hatteras,” continued Walker, tightening his grasp, ”You've no manner of right here. I'll give you till I count ten and then I shall shoot.”

Walker counted up to nine aloud and then--

”Jim,” said Hatteras in his natural voice.

”That's better,” said Walker. ”Let's go in and talk.”

III.

He went up the step and lighted the lamp. Hatteras followed him and the two men faced one another. For a little while neither of them spoke. Walker was repeating to himself that this man with the black skin, naked except for a dirty loincloth and a few feathers on his head was a white man married to a white wife who was sleeping--Nay, more likely crying--not thirty yards away.

Hatteras began to mumble out his usual explanation of duty and the rest of it.

”That won't wash,” interrupted Walker. ”What is it? A woman?”

”Good Heaven, no!” cried Hatteras suddenly. It was plain that that explanation was at all events untrue. ”Jim, I've a good mind to tell you all about it.”

”You have got to,” said Walker. He stood between Hatteras and the steps.

”I told you how this country fascinated me in spite of myself,” he began.