That evening by the fire old Nuflo, lately so miserable, now happy in
his delusions, was more than usually gay and loquacious. He was like
a child who by timely submission has escaped a threatened severe
punishment. But his lightness of heart was exceeded by mine; and, with
the exception of one other yet to come, that evening now shines in
memory as the happiest my life has known. For Rima’s sweet secret was
known to me; and her very ignorance of the meaning of the feeling she
experienced, which caused her to fly from me as from an enemy, only
served to make the thought of it more purely delightful.
On this occasion she did not steal away like a timid mouse to her own
apartment, as her custom was, but remained to give that one evening
a special grace, seated well away from the fire in that same shadowy
corner where I had first seen her indoors, when I had marvelled at her
altered appearance. From that corner she could see my face, with the
firelight full upon it, she herself in shadow, her eyes veiled by their
drooping lashes. Sitting there, the vivid consciousness of my happiness
was like draughts of strong, delicious wine, and its effect was like
wine, imparting such freedom to fancy, such fluency, that again and
again old Nuflo applauded, crying out that I was a poet, and begging
me to put it all into rhyme. I could not do that to please him, never
having acquired the art of improvisation--that idle trick of making
words jingle which men of Nuflo’s class in my country so greatly admire;
yet it seemed to me on that evening that my feelings could be adequately
expressed only in that sublimated language used by the finest minds in
their inspired moments; and, accordingly, I fell to reciting. But not
from any modern, nor from the poets of the last century, nor even from
the greater seventeenth century. I kept to the more ancient romances
and ballads, the sweet old verse that, whether glad or sorrowful, seems
always natural and spontaneous as the song of a bird, and so simple that
even a child can understand it.
It was late that night before all the romances I remembered or cared
to recite were exhausted, and not until then did Rima come out of her
shaded corner and steal silently away to her sleeping-place.
Although I had resolved to go with them, and had set Nuflo’s mind at
rest on the point, I was bent on getting the request from Rima’s own
lips; and the next morning the opportunity of seeing her alone presented
itself, after old Nuflo had sneaked off with his dogs. From the moment
of his departure I kept a close watch on the house, as one watches a
bush in which a bird one wishes to see has concealed itself, and out of
which it may dart at any moment and escape unseen.
At length she came forth, and seeing me in the way, would have slipped
back into hiding; for, in spite of her boldness on the previous day, she
now seemed shyer than ever when I spoke to her.
“Rima,” I said, “do you remember where we first talked together under a
tree one morning, when you spoke of your mother, telling me that she was
dead?”
“Yes.”
“I am going now to that spot to wait for you. I must speak to you again
in that place about this journey to Riolama.” As she kept silent, I
added: “Will you promise to come to me there?”
She shook her head, turning half away.
“Have you forgotten our compact, Rima?”
“No,” she returned; and then, suddenly coming near, spoke in a low tone:
“I will go there to please you, and you must also do as I tell you.”
“What do you wish, Rima?”
She came nearer still. “Listen! You must not look into my eyes, you must
not touch me with your hands.”
“Sweet Rima, I must hold your hand when I speak with you.”
“No, no, no,” she murmured, shrinking from me; and finding that it must
be as she wished, I reluctantly agreed.
Before I had waited long, she appeared at the trysting-place, and stood
before me, as on a former occasion, on that same spot of clean yellow
sand, clasping and unclasping her fingers, troubled in mind even then.
Only now her trouble was different and greater, making her shyer and
more reticent.
“Rima, your grandfather is going to take you to Riolama. Do you wish me
to go with you?”
“Oh, do you not know that?” she returned, with a swift glance at my
face.
“How should I know?”
Her eyes wandered away restlessly. “On Ytaioa you told me a hundred
things which I did not know,” she replied in a vague way, wishing,
perhaps, to imply that with so great a knowledge of geography it was
strange I did not know everything, even her most secret thoughts.
“Tell me, why must you go to Riolama?”
“You have heard. To speak to my people.”
“What will you say to them? Tell me.”
“What you do not understand. How tell you?”
“I understand you when you speak in Spanish.”
“Oh, that is not speaking.”
“Last night you spoke to your mother in Spanish. Did you not tell her
everything?”
“Oh no--not then. When I tell her everything I speak in another way, in
a low voice--not on my knees and praying. At night, and in the woods,
and when I am alone I tell her. But perhaps she does not hear me; she is
not here, but up there--so far! She never answers, but when I speak to
my people they will answer me.”
Then she turned away as if there was nothing more to be said.
“Is this all I am to hear from you, Rima--these few words?” I exclaimed.
“So much did you say to your grandfather, so much to your dead mother,
but to me you say so little!”
She turned again, and with eyes cast down replied:
“He deceived me--I had to tell him that, and then to pray to mother.
But to you that do not understand, what can I say? Only that you are not
like him and all those that I knew at Voa. It is so different--and the
same. You are you, and I am I; why is it--do you know?”
“No; yes--I know, but cannot tell you. And if you find your people, what
will you do--leave me to go to them? Must I go all the way to Riolama
only to lose you?”
“Where I am, there you must be.”
“Why?”
“Do I not see it there?” she returned, with a quick gesture to indicate
that it appeared in my face.
“Your sight is keen, Rima--keen as a bird’s. Mine is not so keen. Let me
look once more into those beautiful wild eyes, then perhaps I shall see
in them as much as you see in mine.”
“Oh no, no, not that!” she murmured in distress, drawing away from me;
then with a sudden flash of brilliant colour cried:
“Have you forgotten the compact--the promise you made me?”
Her words made me ashamed, and I could not reply. But the shame was
as nothing in strength compared to the impulse I felt to clasp her
beautiful body in my arms and cover her face with kisses. Sick with
desire, I turned away and, sitting on a root of the tree, covered my
face with my hands.
She came nearer: I could see her shadow through my fingers; then her
face and wistful, compassionate eyes.
“Forgive me, dear Rima,” I said, dropping my hands again. “I have tried
so hard to please you in everything! Touch my face with your hand--only
that, and I will go to Riolama with you, and obey you in all things.”
For a while she hesitated, then stepped quickly aside so that I could
not see her; but I knew that she had not left me, that she was standing
just behind me. And after waiting a moment longer I felt her fingers
touching my skin, softly, trembling over my cheek as if a soft-winged
moth had fluttered against it; then the slight aerial touch was gone,
and she, too, moth-like, had vanished from my side.
Left alone in the wood, I was not happy. That fluttering, flattering
touch of her finger-tips had been to me like spoken language, and more
eloquent than language, yet the sweet assurance it conveyed had not
given perfect satisfaction; and when I asked myself why the gladness of
the previous evening had forsaken me--why I was infected with this
new sadness when everything promised well for me, I found that it was
because my passion had greatly increased during the last few hours; even
during sleep it had been growing, and could no longer be fed by merely
dwelling in thought on the charms, moral and physical, of its object,
and by dreams of future fruition.
I concluded that it would be best for Rima’s sake as well as my own to
spend a few of the days before setting out on our journey with my Indian
friends, who would be troubled at my long absence; and, accordingly,
next morning I bade good-bye to the old man, promising to return in
three or four days, and then started without seeing Rima, who had
quitted the house before her usual time. After getting free of the
woods, on casting back my eyes I caught sight of the girl standing under
an isolated tree watching me with that vague, misty, greenish appearance
she so frequently had when seen in the light shade at a short distance.
“Rima!” I cried, hurrying back to speak to her, but when I reached the
spot she had vanished; and after waiting some time, seeing and hearing
nothing to indicate that she was near me, I resumed my walk, half
thinking that my imagination had deceived me.
I found my Indian friends home again, and was not surprised to observe a
distinct change in their manner towards me. I had expected as much;
and considering that they must have known very well where and in whose
company I had been spending my time, it was not strange. Coming across
the savannah that morning I had first begun to think seriously of the
risk I was running. But this thought only served to prepare me for a new
condition of things; for now to go back and appear before Rima, and thus
prove myself to be a person not only capable of forgetting a promise
occasionally, but also of a weak, vacillating mind, was not to be
thought of for a moment.
I was received--not welcomed--quietly enough; not a question, not
a word, concerning my long absence fell from anyone; it was as if a
stranger had appeared among them, one about whom they knew nothing
and consequently regarded with suspicion, if not actual hostility. I
affected not to notice the change, and dipped my hand uninvited in the
pot to satisfy my hunger, and smoked and dozed away the sultry hours in
my hammock. Then I got my guitar and spent the rest of the day over it,
tuning it, touching the strings so softly with my finger-tips that to a
person four yards off the sound must have seemed like the murmur or
buzz of an insect’s wings; and to this scarcely audible accompaniment I
murmured in an equally low tone a new song.
In the evening, when all were gathered under the roof and I had eaten
again, I took up the instrument once more, furtively watched by all
those half-closed animal eyes, and swept the strings loudly, and sang
aloud. I sang an old simple Spanish melody, to which I had put words
in their own language--a language with no words not in everyday use,
in which it is so difficult to express feelings out of and above the
common. What I had been constructing and practicing all the afternoon
sotto voce was a kind of ballad, an extremely simple tale of a poor
Indian living alone with his young family in a season of dearth; how
day after day he ranged the voiceless woods, to return each evening with
nothing but a few withered sour berries in his hand, to find his lean,
large-eyed wife still nursing the fire that cooked nothing, and his
children crying for food, showing their bones more plainly through
their skins every day; and how, without anything miraculous, anything
wonderful, happening, that barrenness passed from earth, and the garden
once more yielded them pumpkin and maize, and manioc, the wild fruits
ripened, and the birds returned, filling the forest with their cries;
and so their long hunger was satisfied, and the children grew sleek,
and played and laughed in the sunshine; and the wife, no longer brooding
over the empty pot, wove a hammock of silk grass, decorated with
blue-and-scarlet feathers of the macaw; and in that new hammock the
Indian rested long from his labours, smoking endless cigars.
When I at last concluded with a loud note of joy, a long, involuntary
suspiration in the darkening room told me that I had been listened to
with profound interest; and, although no word was spoken, though I was
still a stranger and under a cloud, it was plain that the experiment had
succeeded, and that for the present the danger was averted.
I went to my hammock and slept, but without undressing. Next morning
I missed my revolver and found that the holster containing it had been
detached from the belt. My knife had not been taken, possibly because it
was under me in the hammock while I slept. In answer to my inquiries I
was informed that Runi had BORROWED my weapon to take it with him to the
forest, where he had gone to hunt, and that he would return it to me
in the evening. I affected to take it in good part, although feeling
secretly ill at ease. Later in the day I came to the conclusion that
Runi had had it in his mind to murder me, that I had softened him by
singing that Indian story, and that by taking possession of the revolver
he showed that he now only meant to keep me a prisoner. Subsequent
events confirmed me in this suspicion. On his return he explained that
he had gone out to seek for game in the woods; and, going without
a companion, he had taken my revolver to preserve him from
dangers--meaning those of a supernatural kind; and that he had had the
misfortune to drop it among the bushes while in pursuit of some animal.
I answered hotly that he had not treated me like a friend; that if he
had asked me for the weapon it would have been lent to him; that as
he had taken it without permission he must pay me for it. After some
pondering he said that when he took it I was sleeping soundly; also,
that it would not be lost; he would take me to the place where he had
dropped it, when we could search together for it.
He was in appearance more friendly towards me now, even asking me to
repeat my last evening’s song, and so we had that performance all over
again to everybody’s satisfaction. But when morning came he was not
inclined to go to the woods: there was food enough in the house, and the
pistol would not be hurt by lying where it had fallen a day longer. Next
day the same excuse; still I disguised my impatience and suspicion of
him and waited, singing the ballad for the third time that evening. Then
I was conducted to a wood about a league and a half away and we hunted
for the lost pistol among the bushes, I with little hope of finding it,
while he attended to the bird voices and frequently asked me to stand or
lie still when a chance of something offered.
The result of that wasted day was a determination on my part to escape
from Runi as soon as possible, although at the risk of making a deadly
enemy of him and of being compelled to go on that long journey to
Riolama with no better weapon than a hunting-knife. I had noticed, while
appearing not to do so, that outside of the house I was followed or
watched by one or other of the Indians, so that great circumspection
was needed. On the following day I attacked my host once more about the
revolver, telling him with well-acted indignation that if not found
it must be paid for. I went so far as to give a list of the articles I
should require, including a bow and arrows, zabatana, two spears, and
other things which I need not specify, to set me up for life as a wild
man in the woods of Guayana. I was going to add a wife, but as I had
already been offered one it did not appear to be necessary. He seemed a
little taken aback at the value I set upon my weapon, and promised to go
and look for it again. Then I begged that Kua-ko, in whose sharpness of
sight I had great faith, might accompany us. He consented, and named
the next day but one for the expedition. Very well, thought I, tomorrow
their suspicion will be less, and my opportunity will come; then taking
up my rude instrument, I gave them an old Spanish song:
Desde aquel doloroso momento;
but this kind of music had lost its charm for them, and I was asked to
give them the ballad they understood so well, in which their interest
seemed to increase with every repetition. In spite of anxiety it amused
me to see old Cla-cla regarding me fixedly with owlish eyes and lips
moving. My tale had no wonderful things in it, like hers of the olden
time, which she told only to send her hearers to sleep. Perhaps she had
discovered by now that it was the strange honey of melody which made the
coarse, common cassava bread of everyday life in my story so pleasant to
the palate. I was quite prepared to receive a proposal to give her music
and singing lessons, and to bequeath a guitar to her in my last will and
testament. For, in spite of her hoary hair and million wrinkles, she,
more than any other savage I had met with, seemed to have taken a
draught from Ponce de Leon’s undiscovered fountain of eternal youth.
Poor old witch!
The following day was the sixth of my absence from Rima, and one of
intense anxiety to me, a feeling which I endeavoured to hide by playing
with the children, fighting our old comic stick fights, and by strumming
noisily on the guitar. In the afternoon, when it was hottest, and all
the men who happened to be indoors were lying in their hammocks, I asked
Kua-ko to go with me to the stream to bathe. He refused--I had counted
on that--and earnestly advised me not to bathe in the pool I was
accustomed to, as some little caribe fishes had made their appearance
there and would be sure to attack me. I laughed at his idle tale and,
taking up my cloak, swung out of the door, whistling a lively air.
He knew that I always threw my cloak over my head and shoulders as a
protection from the sun and stinging flies when coming out of the water,
and so his suspicion was not aroused, and I was not followed. The
pool was about ten minutes’ walk from the house; I arrived at it with
palpitating heart, and going round to its end, where the stream was
shallow, sat down to rest for a few moments and take a few sips of cool
water dipped up in my palm. Presently I rose, crossed the stream, and
began running, keeping among the low trees near the bank until a
dry gully, which extended for some distance across the savannah, was
reached. By following its course the distance to be covered would be
considerably increased, but the shorter way would have exposed me to
sight and made it more dangerous. I had put forth too much speed at
first, and in a short time my exertions, and the hot sun, together with
my intense excitement, overcame me. I dared not hope that my flight
had not been observed; I imagined that the Indians, unencumbered by any
heavy weight, were already close behind me, and ready to launch
their deadly spears at my back. With a sob of rage and despair I fell
prostrate on my face in the dry bed of the stream, and for two or three
minutes remained thus exhausted and unmanned, my heart throbbing so
violently that my whole frame was shaken. If my enemies had come on me
then disposed to kill me, I could not have lifted a hand in defence of
my life. But minutes passed and they came not. I rose and went on, at a
fast walk now, and when the sheltering streamed ended, I stooped among
the sere dwarfed shrubs scattered about here and there on its southern
side; and now creeping and now running, with an occasional pause to
rest and look back, I at last reached the dividing ridge at its southern
extremity. The rest of the way was over comparatively easy ground,
inclining downwards; and with that glad green forest now full in sight,
and hope growing stronger every minute in my breast, my knees ceased to
tremble, and I ran on again, scarcely pausing until I had touched and
lost myself in the welcome shadows.