Emily had spurned the selfish thought almost before she had properly conceived it, but the bare reminder of such mental processes summoned up all the noble forces of her nature, and she now faced the prospect of a lifelong battle with herself with something of the bellicose confidence of a nation during a period of military maneuvers. And, as if her own weaknesses were an insufficient foe, she bristled more and more eagerly to defend her beloved against those of his future wife.

“Let the future bring what it may,” she thought, standing very erect and earnest in the middle of her little white room, “my place is beside Mr. Fatigay, and who knows but that even he may come to be grateful to the humble chimp, when the dawning sense of her love and constancy shines as the only light on the dark path he seems fated to tread.”

And, going down to his study, she took from the shelf a pocket encyclopedia, and soon was deeply immersed in an account of the divorce laws of England, which she read, not from vain hopes of its future practical utility, but for its prose, which struck her, in its stark and puritanical terseness, as being far superior to the more exotic phrasing of the marriage service.

Chapter 5

Behold! behold, the palace of his pride!

God Neptune’s palaces!

Not long after this there was a great bustle in the schoolmaster’s pleasant house. Bags were dragged out and packed, livestock and garden appurtenances disposed of, crates filled with curios and souvenirs. Blacks thronged the garden path and sat all day upon the steps. Every time Mr. Fatigay appeared at a window he was cheered to the echo; every time he appeared at the door he was swamped by clustering natives, thick as flies on a roadside fragment, who first loudly, and I believe sincerely, implored him not to go, and then, on his smiling persistence, pressed upon him yams and whatnot.

“Here,” they cried, piling these up into his arms, “let us exchange mementos.”

And off they went, calling out his praises — one carrying a pair of old shoes, another a collection of used razor blades, yet another a rain-spoiled pith helmet, and a fourth that fine piece of earthenware which had stood beneath his washstand. They gave him all their old rubbish and he gave them his, and everyone was content.

The schoolchildren marched up with flags and music, and performed a masque in his honor on the lawn. In this, the Seven Deadly Sins were mimed with such energy that the pair who enacted Anger were carried gasping to the infirmary, Gluttony was sick on the spot, and when it came to the seventh Mr. Fatigay was obliged to step down and marry the actors before they had completely finished with their parts.

This interposition, however, in no way marred the effect of the whole, in which it had been arranged for an impersonation of himself to appear and to redress the assembled Vices, transmuting them by his mere presence into the corresponding Virtues. And, as they thought he was honoring them by taking up his part in their play, nor did it bear ill fruit afterwards in tying together two adolescents who were yet too young for the cares of domesticity.

“Good-bye!” they cried at the end. “Bless our dear teacher. Hurrah! No more school! Hurrah! Character rather than Intelligence! Hurrah!”

“Good-bye, dear friend,” said the headman of Boboma, who, shortly after the execution of Loblulya, had been told by the spirit that he must return to the village.

“Good-bye,” replied Mr. Fatigay. “I suppose you don’t want to get married again before I go?” For he would have liked to see the whole world married.

“No, thank you,” said the headman. “After my last dear wife . . . I shall never marry again. Mais,” he continued, unconsciously quoting George II, for he had worked in his youth in the French Congo, “j’aurai des maîtresses.”

“Good-bye,” cried all the servants, their faces so wet and smiling that one instinctively looked for coal-tar rainbows there. Not only the good and faithful ones, but the idlers, thieves, and wastrels among them, even Topsy, the fat cook, found now that they loved Mr. Fatigay and wished he would not go.

“Good-bye,” said an old tin can, from which, Emily remembered, as she caught sight of it lying forlorn upon a dunghill, she and Mr. Fatigay had had some delicious pineapple for her name-day tea.

“Good-bye,” murmured Emily’s heart to it. “And good-bye, village. Good-bye, Arcady. Good-bye, summer. Good-bye. Good-bye.”

And the jungle opened up its track, parting like the waters of the Red Sea as they rode away. Mr. Fatigay’s ardent heart went on before them, in alternate cloud and fire, on this journey through what wilderness he knew not, to a Canaan other than that of which he dreamed.

Half a day’s journey away lay the rotten little pier head, blistering in the mud, where once a month a tiny hiccuping river launch put in an appearance.