Some postmen have come in late because their feet were sore. And some, in passing through their home town, have permitted themselves an illness or a marriage. Some have waited, with the mail in their loads, to bury the dead. Such a postman, so given to misadventures and clumsy ill-timed tragedies, was once late to the tune of eleven days. Who remembers what delayed him or what exquisite reasons he gave? And who of us in that little clearing forgets the long hours of that year of days?
Another postman, of an extreme beauty and an extreme speed, arrived before his time. There was a shouting when he came. All the inhabitants of that little settlement of white men called to each other; the four or five of them filled a room of a bark house--those white faces that were growing daily like the face of the Asra, 'bleich und bleicher,' were all lit by the flame of the mail. In all that little commonwealth, with its pioneer trades and its pioneer gardens and its pioneer hospital and school and church--in all that settlement all the busy crude wheels of industry slackened and stood still while the white men opened the load of the mail.
'Now they will be reading the _books_ from home!'
And of Ebengé, that young carrier, it is still remembered that he arrived before he was due. 'Ah, Ebengé.' you still say to him from time to time, 'that was a fine walking you walked that walk so long ago when you slept but three nights with the mail!'
Another postman, never to be forgotten by those exiles whom he served, never came at all. This was a boy, too young, you would think, for his great office. The letters in his little pack were from husbands to wives, and they must travel a hundred miles of forest-trail in time of war. Not twenty miles they traveled when the postman, surrounded by black soldiers, was called to deliver. He did not deliver. He could not give the white man's letters to another hand. He said, No, he could not. And for this they killed him. That young body tarried forever upon the trail, witnessing in that interminable delay--as Ebengé had witnessed in his swift coming--to the sacred element in the mail.
Here is the king's touch for the king's evil--the hand of the postman dropping a letter. For this the victims of nostalgia do long service. For this they scribble, in their lonely and various dwellings, their letters. There is a night, in those alien settlements all about the world, that is unlike other nights. It is the night before the mail is closed. The lamp is full of oil that night, and the cup of coffee is at the elbow. On and on, while the stars march, the white man's hand runs upon the page. In villages where there are no street lamps, the white man's window is a lamp all night of the night before the mail. From steamers that are tied to trees among the rushes, in rivers that you do not know, the officer on watch may look all night through such a window at such a man writing, writing a long, long letter--the beating heart of man, articulate in all that heartless darkness.