CHAPTER XXI
Many days had passed since the hut was made--how many may not be known,since I notched no stick and knotted no cord--yet never in my rambles inthe wood had I seen that desolate ash-heap where the fire had done itswork. Nor had I looked for it. On the contrary, my wish was never to seeit, and the fear of coming accidentally upon it made me keep to the oldfamiliar paths. But at length, one night, without thinking of Rima'sfearful end, it all at once occurred to me that the hated savage whoseblood I had shed on the white savannah might have only been practicinghis natural deceit when he told me that most pitiful story. If that wereso--if he had been prepared with a fictitious account of her death tomeet my questions--then Rima might still exist: lost, perhaps, wanderingin some distant place, exposed to perils day and night, and unable tofind her way back, but living still! Living! her heart on fire withthe hope of reunion with me, cautiously threading her way through theundergrowth of immeasurable forests; spying out the distant villagesand hiding herself from the sight of all men, as she knew so well howto hide; studying the outlines of distant mountains, to recognize somefamiliar landmark at last, and so find her way back to the old wood oncemore! Even now, while I sat there idly musing, she might be somewherein the wood--somewhere near me; but after so long an absence full ofapprehension, waiting in concealment for what tomorrow's light mightshow.
I started up and replenished the fire with trembling hands, then set thedoor open to let the welcoming stream out into the wood. But Rima haddone more; going out into the black forest in the pitiless storm, shehad found and led me home. Could I do less! I was quickly out in theshadows of the wood. Surely it was more than a mere hope that made myheart beat so wildly! How could a sensation so strangely sudden, soirresistible in its power, possess me unless she were living and near?Can it be, can it be that we shall meet again? To look again into yourdivine eyes--to hold you again in my arms at last! I so changed--sodifferent! But the old love remains; and of all that has happenedin your absence I shall tell you nothing--not one word; all shall beforgotten now--sufferings, madness, crime, remorse! Nothing shallever vex you again--not Nuflo, who vexed you every day; for he is deadnow--murdered, only I shall not say that--and I have decently buried hispoor old sinful bones. We alone together in the wood--OUR wood now! Thesweet old days again; for I know that you would not have it different,nor would I.
Thus I talked to myself, mad with the thoughts of the joy that wouldsoon be mine; and at intervals I stood still and made the forest echowith my calls. "Rima! Rima!" I called again and again, and waited forsome response; and heard only the familiar night-sounds--voices ofinsect and bird and tinkling tree-frog, and a low murmur in the topmostfoliage, moved by some light breath of wind unfelt below. I was drenchedwith dew, bruised and bleeding from falls in the dark, and from rocksand thorns and rough branches, but had felt nothing; gradually theexcitement burnt itself out; I was hoarse with shouting and ready todrop down with fatigue, and hope was dead: and at length I crept back tomy hut, to cast myself on my grass bed and sink into a dull, miserable,desponding stupor.
But on the following morning I was out once more, determined to searchthe forest well; since, if no evidence of the great fire Kua-ko haddescribed to me existed, it would still be possible to believe thathe had lied to me, and that Rima lived. I searched all day and foundnothing; but the area was large, and to search it thoroughly wouldrequire several days.
On the third day I discovered the fatal spot, and knew that never againwould I behold Rima in the flesh, that my last hope had indeed beena vain one. There could be no mistake: just such an open place as theIndian had pictured to me was here, with giant trees standing apart;while one tree stood killed and blackened by fire, surrounded by a hugeheap, sixty or seventy yards across, of prostrate charred tree-trunksand ashes. Here and there slender plants had sprung up through theashes, and the omnipresent small-leaved creepers were beginning to throwtheir pale green embroidery over the blackened trunks. I looked long atthe vast funeral tree that had a buttressed girth of not less than fiftyfeet, and rose straight as a ship's mast, with its top about a hundredand fifty feet from the earth. What a distance to fall, through burningleaves and smoke, like a white bird shot dead with a poisoned arrow,swift and straight into that sea of flame below! How cruel imaginationwas to turn that desolate ash-heap, in spite of feathery foliage andembroidery of creepers, into roaring leaping flames again--to bringthose dead savages back, men, women, and children--even the little onesI had played with--to set them yelling around me: "Burn! burn!" Oh, no,this damnable spot must not be her last resting-place! If the firehad not utterly consumed her, bones as well as sweet tender flesh,shrivelling her like a frail white-winged moth into the finest whiteashes, mixed inseparably with the ashes of stems and leaves innumerable,then whatever remained of her must be conveyed elsewhere to be with me,to mingle with my ashes at last.
Having resolved to sift and examine the entire heap, I at once set aboutmy task. If she had climbed into the central highest branch, and hadfallen straight, then she would have dropped into the flames not farfrom the roots; and so to begin I made a path to the trunk, and whendarkness overtook me I had worked all round the tree, in a width ofthree to four yards, without discovering any remains. At noon on thefollowing day I found the skeleton, or, at all events, the larger bones,rendered so fragile by the fierce heat they had been subjected to, thatthey fell to pieces when handled. But I was careful--how careful!--tosave these last sacred relics, all that was now left of Rima!--kissingeach white fragment as I lifted it, and gathering them all in my oldfrayed cloak, spread out to receive them. And when I had recovered themall, even to the smallest, I took my treasure home.
Another storm had shaken my soul, and had been succeeded by a secondcalm, which was more complete and promised to be more enduring than thefirst. But it was no lethargic calm; my brain was more active than ever;and by and by it found a work for my hands to do, of such a characteras to distinguish me from all other forest hermits, fugitives from theirfellows, in that savage land. The calcined bones I had rescued were keptin one of the big, rudely shaped, half-burnt earthen jars which Nuflohad used for storing grain and other food-stuff. It was of a wood-ashcolour; and after I had given up my search for the peculiar fine clay hehad used in its manufacture--for it had been in my mind to make a moreshapely funeral urn myself--I set to work to ornament its surface. Aportion of each day was given to this artistic labour; and when thesurface was covered with a pattern of thorny stems, and a trailingcreeper with curving leaf and twining tendril, and pendent bud andblossom, I gave it colour. Purples and black only were used, obtainedfrom the juices of some deeply coloured berries; and when a tint, orshade, or line failed to satisfy me I erased it, to do it again; andthis so often that I never completed my work. I might, in the proudlymodest spirit of the old sculptors, have inscribed on the vase thewords: Abel was doing this. For was not my ideal beautiful like theirs,and the best that my art could do only an imperfect copy--a rude sketch?A serpent was represented wound round the lower portion of the jar,dull-hued, with a chain of irregular black spots or blotches extendingalong its body; and if any person had curiously examined these spots hewould have discovered that every other one was a rudely shaped letter,and that the letters, by being properly divided, made the followingwords:
Sin vos y siu dios y mi.
Words that to some might seem wild, even insane in their extravagance,sung by some ancient forgotten poet; or possibly the motto of somelove-sick knight-errant, whose passion was consumed to ashes longcenturies ago. But not wild nor insane to me, dwelling alone on a vaststony plain in everlasting twilight, where there was no motion, nor anysound; but all things, even trees, ferns, and grasses, were stone.And in that place I had sat for many a thousand years, drawn up andmotionless, with stony fingers clasped round my legs, and foreheadresting on my knees; and there would I sit, unmoving, immovable, formany a thousand years to come--I, no longer I, in a universe where shewas not, and God was not.
The
days went by, and to others grouped themselves into weeks andmonths; to me they were only days--not Saturday, Sunday, Monday, butnameless. They were so many and their sum so great that all my previouslife, all the years I had existed before this solitary time, now lookedlike a small island immeasurably far away, scarcely discernible, in themidst of that endless desolate waste of nameless days.
My stock of provisions had been so long consumed that I had forgottenthe flavour of pulse and maize and pumpkins and purple and sweetpotatoes. For Nuflo's cultivated patch had been destroyed by thesavages--not a stem, not a root had they left: and I, like the sorrowfulman that broods on his sorrow and the artist who thinks only of his art,had been improvident and had consumed the seed without putting a portioninto the ground. Only wild food, and too little of that, found withmuch seeking and got with many hurts. Birds screamed at and scolded me;branches bruised and thorns scratched me; and still worse were the angryclouds of waspish things no bigger than flies. Buzz--buzz! Sting--sting!A serpent's tooth has failed to kill me; little do I care for your smalldrops of fiery venom so that I get at the spoil--grubs and honey. Mywhite bread and purple wine! Once my soul hungered after knowledge; Itook delight in fine thoughts finely expressed; I sought them carefullyin printed books: now only this vile bodily hunger, this eager seekingfor grubs and honey, and ignoble war with little things!
A bad hunter I proved after larger game. Bird and beast despised mysnares, which took me so many waking hours at night to invent, so manydaylight hours to make. Once, seeing a troop of monkeys high up in thetall trees, I followed and watched them for a long time, thinking howroyally I should feast if by some strange unheard-of accident onewere to fall disabled to the ground and be at my mercy. But nothingimpossible happened, and I had no meat. What meat did I ever have exceptan occasional fledgling, killed in its cradle, or a lizard, or smalltree-frog detected, in spite of its green colour, among the foliage? Iwould roast the little green minstrel on the coals. Why not? Why shouldhe live to tinkle on his mandolin and clash his airy cymbals with noappreciative ear to listen? Once I had a different and strange kind ofmeat; but the starved stomach is not squeamish. I found a serpent coiledup in my way in a small glade, and arming myself with a long stick,I roused him from his siesta and slew him without mercy. Rima was notthere to pluck the rage from my heart and save his evil life. No coralsnake this, with slim, tapering body, ringed like a wasp with brilliantcolour; but thick and blunt, with lurid scales, blotched with black;also a broad, flat, murderous head, with stony, ice-like, whity-blueeyes, cold enough to freeze a victim's blood in its veins and make itsit still, like some wide-eyed creature carved in stone, waiting forthe sharp, inevitable stroke--so swift at last, so long in coming. "Oabominable flat head, with icy-cold, humanlike, fiend-like eyes, I shallcut you off and throw you away!" And away I flung it, far enough inall conscience: yet I walked home troubled with a fancy that somewhere,somewhere down on the black, wet soil where it had fallen, through allthat dense, thorny tangle and millions of screening leaves, the white,lidless, living eyes were following me still, and would always befollowing me in all my goings and comings and windings about in theforest. And what wonder? For were we not alone together in this dreadfulsolitude, I and the serpent, eaters of the dust, singled out andcursed above all cattle? HE would not have bitten me, and I--faithlesscannibal!--had murdered him. That cursed fancy would live on, wormingitself into every crevice of my mind; the severed head would grow andgrow in the night-time to something monstrous at last, the hellishwhite lidless eyes increasing to the size of two full moons. "Murderer!murderer!" they would say; "first a murderer of your own fellowcreatures--that was a small crime; but God, our enemy, had made themin His image, and He cursed you; and we two were together, alone andapart--you and I, murderer! you and I, murderer!"
I tried to escape the tyrannous fancy by thinking of other things and bymaking light of it. "The starved, bloodless brain," I said, "has strangethoughts." I fell to studying the dark, thick, blunt body in my hands;I noticed that the livid, rudely blotched, scaly surface showed in somelights a lovely play of prismatic colours. And growing poetical, I said:"When the wild west wind broke up the rainbow on the flying grey cloudand scattered it over the earth, a fragment doubtless fell on thisreptile to give it that tender celestial tint. For thus it is Natureloves all her children, and gives to each some beauty, little or much;only to me, her hated stepchild, she gives no beauty, no grace. Butstay, am I not wronging her? Did not Rima, beautiful above all things,love me well? said she not that I was beautiful?"
"Ah, yes, that was long ago," spoke the voice that mocked me by the poolwhen I combed out my tangled hair. "Long ago, when the soul that lookedfrom your eyes was not the accursed thing it is now. Now Rima wouldstart at the sight of them; now she would fly in terror from theirinsane expression."
"O spiteful voice, must you spoil even such appetite as I have for thisfork-tongued spotty food? You by day and Rima by night--what shall Ido--what shall I do?"
For it had now come to this, that the end of each day brought not sleepand dreams, but waking visions. Night by night, from my dry grass bed Ibeheld Nuflo sitting in his old doubled-up posture, his big brown feetclose to the white ashes--sitting silent and miserable. I pitied him; Iowed him hospitality; but it seemed intolerable that he should be there.It was better to shut my eyes; for then Rima's arms would be round myneck; the silky mist of her hair against my face, her flowery breathmixing with my breath. What a luminous face was hers! Even withcloseshut eyes I could see it vividly, the translucent skin showing theradiant rose beneath, the lustrous eyes, spiritual and passionate, darkas purple wine under their dark lashes. Then my eyes would open wide. NoRima in my arms! But over there, a little way back from the fire, justbeyond where old Nuflo had sat brooding a few minutes ago, Rima wouldbe standing, still and pale and unspeakably sad. Why does she come to mefrom the outside darkness to stand there talking to me, yet never oncelifting her mournful eyes to mine? "Do not believe it, Abel; no, thatwas only a phantom of your brain, the What-I-was that you remember sowell. For do you not see that when I come she fades away and is nothing?Not that--do not ask it. I know that I once refused to look into youreyes, and afterwards, in the cave at Riolama, I looked long and washappy--unspeakably happy! But now--oh, you do not know what you ask; youdo not know the sorrow that has come into mine; that if you once beheldit, for very sorrow you would die. And you must live. But I will waitpatiently, and we shall be together in the end, and see each otherwithout disguise. Nothing shall divide us. Only wish not for it soonthink not that death will ease your pain, and seek it not. Austerities?Good works? Prayers? They are not seen; they are not heard, they areless-than nothing, and there is no intercession. I did not know it then,but you knew it. Your life was your own; you are not saved nor judged!acquit yourself--undo that which you have done, which Heaven cannotundo--and Heaven will say no word nor will I. You cannot, Abel, youcannot. That which you have done is done, and yours must be the penaltyand the sorrow--yours and mine--yours and mine--yours and mine."
This, too, was a phantom, a Rima of the mind, one of the shapes theever-changing black vapours of remorse and insanity would take; andall her mournful sentences were woven out of my own brain. I was notso crazed as not to know it; only a phantom, an illusion, yet more realthan reality--real as my crime and vain remorse and death to come. Itwas, indeed, Rima returned to tell me that I that loved her had beenmore cruel to her than her cruellest enemies; for they had but torturedand destroyed her body with fire, while I had cast this shadow onher soul--this sorrow transcending all sorrows, darker than death,immitigable, eternal.
If I could only have faded gradually, painlessly, growing feebler inbody and dimmer in my senses each day, to sink at last into sleep! Butit could not be. Still the fever in my brain, the mocking voice by day,the phantoms by night; and at last I became convinced that unless Iquitted the forest before long, death would come to me in some terribleshape. But in the feeble condition I was now in, and without anyprovi
sions, to escape from the neighbourhood of Parahuari wasimpossible, seeing that it was necessary at starting to avoid thevillages where the Indians were of the same tribe as Runi, who wouldrecognize me as the white man who was once his guest and afterwards hisimplacable enemy. I must wait, and in spite of a weakened body and amind diseased, struggle still to wrest a scanty subsistence from wildnature.
One day I discovered an old prostrate tree, buried under a thick growthof creeper and fern, the wood of which was nearly or quite rotten, asI proved by thrusting my knife to the heft in it. No doubt it wouldcontain grubs--those huge, white wood-borers which now formed animportant item in my diet. On the following day I returned to the spotwith a chopper and a bundle of wedges to split the trunk up, but hadscarcely commenced operations when an animal, startled at my blows,rushed or rather wriggled from its hiding-place under the dead wood ata distance of a few yards from me. It was a robust, round-headed,short-legged creature, about as big as a good-sized cat, and clothedin a thick, greenish-brown fur. The ground all about was covered withcreepers, binding the ferns, bushes, and old dead branches together; andin this confused tangle the animal scrambled and tore with a great showof energy, but really made very little progress; and all at once itflashed into my mind that it was a sloth--a common animal, but rarelyseen on the ground--with no tree near to take refuge in. The shock ofjoy this discovery produced was great enough to unnerve me, and for somemoments I stood trembling, hardly able to breathe; then recovering Ihastened after it, and stunned it with a blow from my chopper on itsround head.
"Poor sloth!" I said as I stood over it. "Poor old lazy-bones! Did Rimaever find you fast asleep in a tree, hugging a branch as if you lovedit, and with her little hand pat your round, human-like head; and laughmockingly at the astonishment in your drowsy, waking eyes; and scoldyou tenderly for wearing your nails so long, and for being so ugly?Lazybones, your death is revenged! Oh, to be out of this wood--away fromthis sacred place--to be anywhere where killing is not murder!"
Then it came into my mind that I was now in possession of the supply offood which would enable me to quit the wood. A noble capture! As much tome as if a stray, migratory mule had rambled into the wood and found me,and I him. Now I would be my own mule, patient, and long-suffering, andfar-going, with naked feet hardened to hoofs, and a pack of provender onmy back to make me independent of the dry, bitter grass on the sunburntsavannahs.
Part of that night and the next morning was spent in curing the fleshover a smoky fire of green wood and in manufacturing a rough sack tostore it in, for I had resolved to set out on my journey. How safely toconvey Rima's treasured ashes was a subject of much thought and anxiety.The clay vessel on which I had expended so much loving, sorrowful labourhad to be left, being too large and heavy to carry; eventually I put thefragments into a light sack; and in order to avert suspicion from thepeople I would meet on the way, above the ashes I packed a layer ofroots and bulbs. These I would say contained medicinal properties,known to the white doctors, to whom I would sell them on my arrival ata Christian settlement, and with the money buy myself clothes to startlife afresh.
On the morrow I would bid a last farewell to that forest of manymemories. And my journey would be eastwards, over a wild savage land ofmountains, rivers, and forests, where every dozen miles would be like ahundred of Europe; but a land inhabited by tribes not unfriendly to thestranger. And perhaps it would be my good fortune to meet with Indianstravelling east who would know the easiest routes; and from time to timesome compassionate voyager would let me share his wood-skin, and manyleagues would be got over without weariness, until some great river,flowing through British or Dutch Guiana, would be reached; and so on,and on, by slow or swift stages, with little to eat perhaps, with muchlabour and pain, in hot sun and in storm, to the Atlantic at last, andtowns inhabited by Christian men.
In the evening of that day, after completing my preparations, I suppedon the remaining portions of the sloth, not suitable for preservation,roasting bits of fat on the coals and boiling the head and bones into abroth; and after swallowing the liquid I crunched the bones and suckedthe marrow, feeding like some hungry carnivorous animal.
Glancing at the fragments scattered on the floor, I remembered oldNuflo, and how I had surprised him at his feast of rank coatimundi inhis secret retreat. "Nuflo, old neighbour," said I, "how quiet you areunder your green coverlet, spangled just now with yellow flowers! Itis no sham sleep, old man, I know. If any suspicion of these curiousdoings, this feast of flesh on a spot once sacred, could flit like asmall moth into your mouldy hollow skull you would soon thrust out yourold nose to sniff the savour of roasting fat once more."
There was in me at that moment an inclination to laughter; it cameto nothing, but affected me strangely, like an impulse I had notexperienced since boyhood--familiar, yet novel. After the good-night tomy neighbour, I tumbled into my straw and slept soundly, animal-like. Nofancies and phantoms that night: the lidless, white, implacable eyesof the serpent's severed head were turned to dust at last; no suddendream-glare lighted up old Cla-cla's wrinkled dead face and white,blood-dabbled locks; old Nuflo stayed beneath his green coverlet; nordid my mournful spirit-bride come to me to make my heart faint at thethought of immortality.
But when morning dawned again, it was bitter to rise up and go away forever from that spot where I had often talked with Rima--the true andthe visionary. The sky was cloudless and the forest wet as if rain hadfallen; it was only a heavy dew, and it made the foliage look pale andhoary in the early light. And the light grew, and a whispering windsprung as I walked through the wood; and the fast-evaporating moisturewas like a bloom on the feathery fronds and grass and rank herbage; buton the higher foliage it was like a faint iridescent mist--a glory abovethe trees. The everlasting beauty and freshness of nature was over allagain, as I had so often seen it with joy and adoration before grief anddreadful passions had dimmed my vision. And now as I walked, murmuringmy last farewell, my eyes grew dim again with the tears that gathered tothem.