Kate Meredith, Financier

by Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne

"Not now the King of Okky has closed the roads," said Smith decisively.

Now Swizzle-Stick Smith had a long list of failings, but letting his assistants eat the bread of idleness was not among them. "Nothing like work—and a moderate amount of drugs—for keeping fever and mischief out of a man," was his motto, and he saw to it that Carter remained steadily on the run. But now the roads were stopped, and it was only the rare merchant who straggled in scared, and often wounded, from that mysterious Africa behind, George Carter discovered that life was a very different thing. Beforetime, he had found work in the feteesh, and round the factory generally, a trial to the flesh; but the idleness that took its place was infinitely more objectionable.

He employed the Krooboy staff in whitewashing, in building, in making a caricature of a garden; he made the native clerks polish up their books into a shape that would have satisfied even a Glasgow Chartered Accountant; and for himself he made Okky arrows, axes, spears, drums and warhorns, in such quantities that even the curiosity shops of Europe would have been glutted if they had all gone home.

In despair he even thawed to a certain intimacy with the Portuguese linguister, but presently cast him off in disgust, and realized why on the West Coast one divides up the population into white men, black men, and Portuguese. Of course White-Man's-Trouble was always at his elbow, but he hardly fulfilled the requirements of a companion.

To be precise, after the roads were stopped, and Mr. Smith had departed elsewhere, the Trader-in-charge of Malla-Nulla factory discovered for himself what many millions of men have found out before, that it is not good for man to live alone, and though he made many ingenious plans for remedying the evil, all of these, save one, invariably broke down on being tested. The one plan that was sound related to Laura Slade.

Every time that Laura's name inserted itself into the argument his mind would presently leap back to Upper Wharfedale, and he would hear afresh that warning of his father's about taking a wife of one's own color. And his father, he reminded himself, had once held an Indian chaplaincy, and knew what he was talking about.

But by degrees, as this proposition was argued out again and again, and the loneliness of West Africa in general, and Malla-Nulla in particular bit deeper and deeper home, so did England and all that dwelt therein drift further and further away. He had found occasion the day after he had been left in sole charge of the factory to send a business note to Slade at Smooth River. In it he enclosed another to Laura, and to this latter he received a reply that he found charming. The affairs of the factories required many messages after that; and presently the pair of them did away with the cloak and pretence of commerce altogether, and White-Man's-Trouble was kept trotting backwards and forwards across the glaring beaches, frankly as Cupid's messenger. Only once did Slade interfere, and that was when the Krooboy, presuming on his peculiar position, stole from the Smooth River factory some article of more than customary value. Slade said nothing publicly, but took the law into his own hands, and after the custom of the Coast banged White-Man's-Trouble lustily with a section of a packing case; and even then Carter would have known nothing about the matter had not there been a nail in the weapon of offence, which left its marks, and about which he made inquiries.

Slade it seemed had also received from K. O'Neill similar instructions to those recorded above, on the matter of rubber estates, and with his usual indecision would determine one day to set off personally into the bush, and the next day to do the necessary bargaining by correspondence. Finally he wrote to Carter a querulous letter saying that as he got no help from anybody in deciding on such an important subject, he was just going to stay on at Smooth River and twiddle his thumbs, and so Carter was not in the least surprised to hear from Laura within the next twenty hours that her father with hammock-train and escort had that day set off for a prolonged expedition into the bush.

"His last instructions," wrote Laura, "were that I was not to be in the least nervous; he was going to avoid the Okky country; and anyway he was an old Coaster, and knew most thoroughly how to take care of himself. And so, nervous I refuse to feel. But, oh! I am so lonely here with no one whiter than Mr. and Mrs. da Silva to talk to. I somehow quite share your instinctive dislike to West Coast Portuguese."

Within ten minutes after reading that letter, Carter was out under a brazen glare of heat, marching along the sand where it was wet and hard, and nearing the straggle of palms which marked the banks of Smooth River, at the rate of four good miles to the hour. When a white man walks at that speed through West Africa mid-day heat, it is only because some question of life or death hangs upon the speed; though in this case Carter told himself that love was the same as life. He pinned his eyes on the Smooth River palms, which the refraction made to dance up and down most coquettishly, and repeated this over and over again, because another voice within him persisted in sneering something about two very lonely people with nothing to do, who were not in love at all, but merely bored with idleness and their own society; and finally he got quite angry over the matter. He stuck out his great dogged chin, and presently cursed aloud. He shook his fist at the splendor of the tropical sun. "I do love the girl," he declared, "and I will marry her in spite of my father, and K., and everyone, if she will have me. Curse it! Why should I hesitate when I love her? This infernal climate is making me as slack and undecided as even poor old Slade."