On the following day Rima continued in the same inexplicable humour; and
feeling my defeat keenly, I determined once more to try the effect of
absence on her, and to remain away on this occasion for a longer period.
Like old Nuflo, I was secret in going forth next morning, waiting until
the girl was out of the way, then slipping off among the bushes into
the deeper wood; and finally quitting its shelter, I set out across the
savannah towards my old quarters. Great was my surprise on arriving
at the village to find no person there. At first I imagined that my
disappearance in the forest of evil fame had caused them to abandon
their home in a panic; but on looking round I concluded that my friends
had only gone on one of their periodical visits to some neighbouring
village. For when these Indians visit their neighbours they do it in a
very thorough manner; they all go, taking with them their entire stock
of provisions, their cooking utensils, weapons, hammocks, and even
their pet animals. Fortunately in this case they had not taken quite
everything; my hammock was there, also one small pot, some cassava
bread, purple potatoes, and a few ears of maize. I concluded that these
had been left for me in the event of my return; also that they had not
been gone very many hours, since a log of wood buried under the ashes
of the hearth was still alight. Now, as their absences from home usually
last many days, it was plain that I would have the big naked barn-like
house to myself for as long as I thought proper to remain, with little
food to eat; but the prospect did not disturb me, and I resolved to
amuse myself with music. In vain I hunted for my guitar; the Indians
had taken it to delight their friends by twanging its strings. At odd
moments during the last day or two I had been composing a simple melody
in my brain, fitting it to ancient words; and now, without an instrument
to assist me, I began softly singing to myself:
Muy mas clara que la luna
Sola una
en el mundo vos nacistes.
After music I made up the fire and parched an ear of maize for my
dinner, and while laboriously crunching the dry hard grain I thanked
Heaven for having bestowed on me such good molars. Finally I slung my
hammock in its old corner, and placing myself in it in my favourite
oblique position, my hands clasped behind my head, one knee cocked up,
the other leg dangling down, I resigned myself to idle thought. I felt
very happy. How strange, thought I, with a little self-flattery, that
I, accustomed to the agreeable society of intelligent men and charming
women, and of books, should find such perfect contentment here! But I
congratulated myself too soon. The profound silence began at length to
oppress me. It was not like the forest, where one has wild birds for
company, where their cries, albeit inarticulate, have a meaning and give
a charm to solitude. Even the sight and whispered sounds of green leaves
and rushes trembling in the wind have for us something of intelligence
and sympathy; but I could not commune with mud walls and an earthen pot.
Feeling my loneliness too acutely, I began to regret that I had left
Rima, then to feel remorse at the secrecy I had practiced. Even now
while I inclined idly in my hammock, she would be roaming the forest in
search of me, listening for my footsteps, fearing perhaps that I had
met with some accident where there was no person to succour me. It was
painful to think of her in this way, of the pain I had doubtless given
her by stealing off without a word of warning. Springing to the floor, I
flung out of the house and went down to the stream. It was better there,
for now the greatest heat of the day was over, and the weltering sun
began to look large and red and rayless through the afternoon haze.
I seated myself on a stone within a yard or two of the limpid water; and
now the sight of nature and the warm, vital air and sunshine infected
my spirit and made it possible for me to face the position calmly,
even hopefully. The position was this: for some days the idea had been
present in my mind, and was now fixed there, that this desert was to
be my permanent home. The thought of going back to Caracas, that little
Paris in America, with its Old World vices, its idle political passions,
its empty round of gaieties, was unendurable. I was changed, and this
change--so great, so complete--was proof that the old artificial life
had not been and could not be the real one, in harmony with my deeper
and truer nature. I deceived myself, you will say, as I have often
myself said. I had and I had not. It is too long a question to
discuss here; but just then I felt that I had quitted the hot, tainted
atmosphere of the ballroom, that the morning air of heaven refreshed and
elevated me and was sweet to breathe. Friends and relations I had who
were dear to me; but I could forget them, even as I could forget the
splendid dreams which had been mine. And the woman I had loved, and
who perhaps loved me in return--I could forget her too. A daughter of
civilization and of that artificial life, she could never experience
such feelings as these and return to nature as I was doing. For women,
though within narrow limits more plastic than men, are yet without that
larger adaptiveness which can take us back to the sources of life, which
they have left eternally behind. Better, far better for both of us that
she should wait through the long, slow months, growing sick at heart
with hope deferred; that, seeing me no more, she should weep my loss,
and be healed at last by time, and find love and happiness again in the
old way, in the old place.
And while I thus sat thinking, sadly enough, but not despondingly, of
past and present and future, all at once on the warm, still air came
the resonant, far-reaching KLING-KLANG of the campanero from some leafy
summit half a league away. KLING-KLANG fell the sound again, and
often again, at intervals, affecting me strangely at that moment, so
bell-like, so like the great wide-travelling sounds associated in our
minds with Christian worship. And yet so unlike. A bell, yet not made of
gross metal dug out of earth, but of an ethereal, sublimer material
that floats impalpable and invisible in space--a vital bell suspended on
nothing, giving out sounds in harmony with the vastness of blue heaven,
the unsullied purity of nature, the glory of the sun, and conveying a
mystic, a higher message to the soul than the sounds that surge from
tower and belfry.
O mystic bell-bird of the heavenly race of the swallow and dove, the
quetzal and the nightingale! When the brutish savage and the brutish
white man that slay thee, one for food, the other for the benefit of
science, shall have passed away, live still, live to tell thy message to
the blameless spiritualized race that shall come after us to possess the
earth, not for a thousand years, but for ever; for how much shall thy
voice be our clarified successors when even to my dull, unpurged soul
thou canst speak such high things and bring it a sense of an impersonal,
all-compromising One who is in me and I in Him, flesh of His flesh and
soul of His soul.
The sounds ceased, but I was still in that exalted mood and, like a
person in a trance, staring fixedly before me into the open wood of
scattered dwarf trees on the other side of the stream, when suddenly on
the field of vision appeared a grotesque human figure moving towards me.
I started violently, astonished and a little alarmed, but in a very
few moments I recognized the ancient Cla-cla, coming home with a large
bundle of dry sticks on her shoulders, bent almost double under the
burden, and still ignorant of my presence. Slowly she came down to the
stream, then cautiously made her way over the line of stepping-stones
by which it was crossed; and only when within ten yards did the old
creature catch sight of me sitting silent and motionless in her path.
With a sharp cry of amazement and terror she straightened herself up,
the bundle of sticks dropping to the ground, and turned to run from
me. That, at all events, seemed her intention, for her body was thrown
forward, and her head and arms working like those of a person going at
full speed, but her legs seemed paralysed and her feet remained planted
on the same spot. I burst out laughing; whereat she twisted her neck
until her wrinkled, brown old face appeared over her shoulder staring at
me. This made me laugh again, whereupon she straightened herself up once
more and turned round to have a good look at me.
“Come, Cla-cla,” I cried; “can you not see that I am a living man and no
spirit? I thought no one had remained behind to keep me company and give
me food. Why are you not with the others?”
“Ah, why!” she returned tragically. And then deliberately turning
from me and assuming a most unladylike attitude, she slapped herself
vigorously on the small of the back, exclaiming: “Because of my pain
here!”
As she continued in that position with her back towards me for some
time, I laughed once more and begged her to explain.
Slowly she turned round and advanced cautiously towards me, staring at
me all the time. Finally, still eyeing me suspiciously, she related that
the others had all gone on a visit to a distant village, she starting
with them; that after going some distance a pain had attacked her in her
hind quarters, so sudden and acute that it had instantly brought her to
a full stop; and to illustrate how full the stop was she allowed herself
to go down, very unnecessarily, with a flop to the ground. But she no
sooner touched the ground than up she started to her feet again, with
an alarmed look on her owlish face, as if she had sat down on a
stinging-nettle.
“We thought you were dead,” she remarked, still thinking that I might be
a ghost after all.
“No, still alive,” I said. “And so because you came to the ground with
your pain, they left you behind! Well, never mind, Cla-cla, we are two
now and must try to be happy together.”
By this time she had recovered from her fear and began to feel highly
pleased at my return, only lamenting that she had no meat to give
me. She was anxious to hear my adventures, and the reason of my long
absence. I had no wish to gratify her curiosity, with the truth at all
events, knowing very well that with regard to the daughter of the Didi
her feelings were as purely savage and malignant as those of Kua-ko. But
it was necessary to say something, and, fortifying myself with the good
old Spanish notion that lies told to the heathen are not recorded, I
related that a venomous serpent had bitten me; after which a terrible
thunderstorm had surprised me in the forest, and night coming on
prevented my escape from it; then, next day, remembering that he who is
bitten by a serpent dies, and not wishing to distress my friends with
the sight of my dissolution, I elected to remain, sitting there in the
wood, amusing myself by singing songs and smoking cigarettes; and after
several days and nights had gone by, finding that I was not going to die
after all, and beginning to feel hungry, I got up and came back.
Old Cla-cla looked very serious, shaking and nodding her head a great
deal, muttering to herself; finally she gave it as her opinion that
nothing ever would or could kill me; but whether my story had been
believed or not she only knew.
I spent an amusing evening with my old savage hostess. She had thrown
off her ailments and, pleased at having a companion in her dreary
solitude, she was good-tempered and talkative, and much more inclined to
laugh than when the others were present, when she was on her dignity.
We sat by the fire, cooking such food as we had, and talked and smoked;
then I sang her songs in Spanish with that melody of my own--
Muy mas clara que la luna;
and she rewarded me by emitting a barbarous chant in a shrill, screechy
voice; and finally, starting up, I danced for her benefit polka,
mazurka, and valse, whistling and singing to my motions.
More than once during the evening she tried to introduce serious
subjects, telling me that I must always live with them, learn to shoot
the birds and catch the fishes, and have a wife; and then she would
speak of her granddaughter Oalava, whose virtues it was proper to
mention, but whose physical charms needed no description since they had
never been concealed. Each time she got on this topic I cut her short,
vowing that if I ever married she only should be my wife. She informed
me that she was old and past her fruitful period; that not much longer
would she make cassava bread, and blow the fire to a flame with her
wheezy old bellows, and talk the men to sleep at night. But I stuck to
it that she was young and beautiful, that our descendants would be more
numerous than the birds in the forest. I went out to some bushes close
by, where I had noticed a passion plant in bloom, and gathering a few
splendid scarlet blossoms with their stems and leaves, I brought them in
and wove them into a garland for the old dame’s head; then I pulled her
up, in spite of screams and struggles, and waltzed her wildly to the
other end of the room and back again to her seat beside the fire. And
as she sat there, panting and grinning with laughter, I knelt before her
and, with suitable passionate gestures, declaimed again the old delicate
lines sung by Mena before Columbus sailed the seas:
Muy mas clara que la luna
Sola una
en el mundo vos nacistes
tan gentil, que no vecistes
ni tavistes
competedora ninguna
Desdi ninez en la cuna
cobrastes fama, beldad, con tanta graciosidad,
que vos doto la fortuna.
Thinking of another all the time! O poor old Cla-cla, knowing not what
the jingle meant nor the secret of my wild happiness, now when I recall
you sitting there, your old grey owlish head crowned with scarlet
passion flowers, flushed with firelight, against the background of
smoke-blackened walls and rafters, how the old undying sorrow comes back
to me!
Thus our evening was spent, merrily enough; then we made up the fire
with hard wood that would last all night, and went to our hammocks, but
wakeful still. The old dame, glad and proud to be on duty once more,
religiously went to work to talk me to sleep; but although I called out
at intervals to encourage her to go on, I did not attempt to follow the
ancient tales she told, which she had imbibed in childhood from other
white-headed grandmothers long, long turned to dust. My own brain was
busy thinking, thinking, thinking now of the woman I had once loved, far
away in Venezuela, waiting and weeping and sick with hope deferred;
now of Rima, wakeful and listening to the mysterious nightsounds of the
forest--listening, listening for my returning footsteps.
Next morning I began to waver in my resolution to remain absent from
Rima for some days; and before evening my passion, which I had now
ceased to struggle against, coupled with the thought that I had acted
unkindly in leaving her, that she would be a prey to anxiety, overcame
me, and I was ready to return. The old woman, who had been suspiciously
watching my movements, rushed out after me as I left the house, crying
out that a storm was brewing, that it was too late to go far, and
night would be full of danger. I waved my hand in good-bye, laughingly
reminding her that I was proof against all perils. Little she cared what
evil might befall me, I thought; but she loved not to be alone; even for
her, low down as she was intellectually, the solitary earthen pot had
no “mind stuff” in it, and could not be sent to sleep at night with the
legends of long ago.
By the time I reached the ridge, I had discovered that she had
prophesied truly, for now an ominous change had come over nature. A dull
grey vapour had overspread the entire western half of the heavens;
down, beyond the forest, the sky looked black as ink, and behind this
blackness the sun had vanished. It was too late to go back now; I had
been too long absent from Rima, and could only hope to reach Nuflo’s
lodge, wet or dry, before night closed round me in the forest.
For some moments I stood still on the ridge, struck by the somewhat
weird aspect of the shadowed scene before me--the long strip of dull
uniform green, with here and there a slender palm lifting its feathery
crown above the other trees, standing motionless, in strange relief
against the advancing blackness. Then I set out once more at a run,
taking advantage of the downward slope to get well on my way before the
tempest should burst. As I approached the wood, there came a flash of
lightning, pale, but covering the whole visible sky, followed after a
long interval by a distant roll of thunder, which lasted several seconds
and ended with a succession of deep throbs. It was as if Nature herself,
in supreme anguish and abandonment, had cast herself prone on the earth,
and her great heart had throbbed audibly, shaking the world with its
beats. No more thunder followed, but the rain was coming down heavily
now in huge drops that fell straight through the gloomy, windless air.
In half a minute I was drenched to the skin; but for a short time
the rain seemed an advantage, as the brightness of the falling water
lessened the gloom, turning the air from dark to lighter grey. This
subdued rain-light did not last long: I had not been twenty minutes
in the wood before a second and greater darkness fell on the earth,
accompanied by an even more copious downpour of water. The sun had
evidently gone down, and the whole sky was now covered with one thick
cloud. Becoming more nervous as the gloom increased, I bent my steps
more to the south, so as to keep near the border and more open part of
the wood. Probably I had already grown confused before deviating and
turned the wrong way, for instead of finding the forest easier, it
grew closer and more difficult as I advanced. Before many minutes the
darkness so increased that I could no longer distinguish objects more
than five feet from my eyes. Groping blindly along, I became entangled
in a dense undergrowth, and after struggling and stumbling along for
some distance in vain endeavours to get through it, I came to a stand
at last in sheer despair. All sense of direction was now lost: I was
entombed in thick blackness--blackness of night and cloud and rain and
of dripping foliage and network of branches bound with bush ropes and
creepers in a wild tangle. I had struggled into a hollow, or hole, as
it were, in the midst of that mass of vegetation, where I could stand
upright and turn round and round without touching anything; but when I
put out my hands they came into contact with vines and bushes. To move
from that spot seemed folly; yet how dreadful to remain there standing
on the sodden earth, chilled with rain, in that awful blackness in which
the only luminous thing one could look to see would be the eyes, shining
with their own internal light, of some savage beast of prey! Yet the
danger, the intense physical discomfort, and the anguish of looking
forward to a whole night spent in that situation stung my heart less
than the thought of Rima’s anxiety and of the pain I had carelessly
given by secretly leaving her.
It was then, with that pang in my heart, that I was startled by hearing,
close by, one of her own low, warbled expressions. There could be no
mistake; if the forest had been full of the sounds of animal life
and songs of melodious birds, her voice would have been instantly
distinguished from all others. How mysterious, how infinitely tender it
sounded in that awful blackness!--so musical and exquisitely modulated,
so sorrowful, yet piercing my heart with a sudden, unutterable joy.
“Rima! Rima!” I cried. “Speak again. Is it you? Come to me here.”
Again that low, warbling sound, or series of sounds, seemingly from
a distance of a few yards. I was not disturbed at her not replying in
Spanish: she had always spoken it somewhat reluctantly, and only when
at my side; but when calling to me from some distance she would return
instinctively to her own mysterious language, and call to me as bird
calls to bird. I knew that she was inviting me to follow her, but I
refused to move.
“Rima,” I cried again, “come to me here, for I know not where to step,
and cannot move until you are at my side and I can feel your hand.”
There came no response, and after some moments, becoming alarmed, I
called to her again.
Then close by me, in a low, trembling voice, she returned: “I am here.”
I put out my hand and touched something soft and wet; it was her breast,
and moving my hand higher up, I felt her hair, hanging now and streaming
with water. She was trembling, and I thought the rain had chilled her.
“Rima--poor child! How wet you are! How strange to meet you in such a
place! Tell me, dear Rima, how did you find me?”
“I was waiting--watching--all day. I saw you coming across the savannah,
and followed at a distance through the wood.”
“And I had treated you so unkindly! Ah, my guardian angel, my light in
the darkness, how I hate myself for giving you pain! Tell me, sweet, did
you wish me to come back and live with you again?” She made no reply.
Then, running my fingers down her arm, I took her hand in mine. It was
hot, like the hand of one in a fever. I raised it to my lips and then
attempted to draw her to me, but she slipped down and out of my arms to
my feet. I felt her there, on her knees, with head bowed low. Stooping
and putting my arm round her body, I drew her up and held her against my
breast, and felt her heart throbbing wildly. With many endearing words I
begged her to speak to me; but her only reply was: “Come--come,” as she
slipped again out of my arms and, holding my hand in hers, guided me
through the bushes.
Before long we came to an open path or glade, where the darkness was not
profound; and releasing my hand, she began walking rapidly before me,
always keeping at such a distance as just enabled me to distinguish her
grey, shadowy figure, and with frequent doublings to follow the natural
paths and openings which she knew so well. In this way we kept on nearly
to the end, without exchanging a word, and hearing no sound except the
continuous rush of rain, which to our accustomed ears had ceased to
have the effect of sound, and the various gurgling noises of innumerable
runners. All at once, as we came to a more open place, a strip of bright
firelight appeared before us, shining from the half-open door of Nuflo’s
lodge. She turned round as much as to say: “Now you know where you are,”
then hurried on, leaving me to follow as best I could.