And——* * * *”
“I don’t know the rest!”
“You could ascertain it,” said Verbrugge, “by writing to Krijgsman, who was your clerk at Natal; he knows it.”
“How did he get hold of it?” asked Max.
“Perhaps out of your waste-basket. But certain it is [[194]]that he has it. Does not then follow the story of the fall of man, which made the island sink, that formerly protected Natal’s coast … the history of Djiwa and the two brothers?”
“That is true. This legend—was no legend at all, it was a parable which I made, and which two hundred years hence——will be a legend if Krijgsman often relates it. Such has been the origin of all legends. Djiwa is ‘soul’ as you know.…”
“Max, what became of the little girl with the coral beads?” asked Tine.
“They had been laid aside. It was six o’clock, and there under the equator—Natal being a few minutes north of it [when I went on horseback to Ayer-Bangie, I made my horse walk over the equator, or almost walk; fearing I should fall over it]—it was six o’clock, a signal for evening thoughts. Now, I think that a man in the evening is always a little better, or less vicious, than in the morning—and that is natural. A Controller wipes his eyes, and dreads meeting an Assistant Resident, who assumes a foolish ascendency because he has been a few years more in the service; or has to measure fields that day, and is in doubt between his honesty——you do not know that, Duclari, because you are a military man; but there are indeed honest Controllers——then he is in doubt between that honesty and the fear that Radeen Demang So-and-so will desire to have that grey horse that ambles [[195]]so well;—or, he has to say that day Yes or No in answer to letter No——. In a word, when you awake in the morning, the world falls on your heart; and that is a heavy burden for a heart, even when it is strong.
“But when it is evening you pause. There are ten hours; thirty-six thousand seconds before you will see your official coat again. That allures every one. That is the moment when I hope to die … to arrive yonder with an unofficial face. That is the moment when your wife finds something once more in your face of what caught her when she allowed you to keep that pocket-handkerchief with an ‘E’ in the corner.…”
“And before she had time to catch a bad cold.”