Green Mansions Part 6

"You know!" flashed out her answer, with something like resentment.

"It is all there in there," waving her hand towards the hut. "Out here in the wood it is all gone--like this," and stooping quickly, she raised a little yellow sand on her palm, then let it run away through her fingers.

Thus she ill.u.s.trated how all the matters she had been taught slipped from her mind when she was out of doors, out of sight of the picture.

After an interval she added: "Only mother is here--always with me."

"Ah, poor Rima!" I said; "alone without a mother, and only your old grandfather! He is old--what will you do when he dies and flies away to the starry country where your mother is?"

She looked inquiringly at me, then made answer in a low voice: "You are here."

"But when I go away?"

She was silent; and not wishing to dwell on a subject that seemed to pain her, I continued: "Yes, I am here now, but you will not stay with me and talk freely! Will it always be the same if I remain with you?

Why are you always so silent in the house, so cold with your old grandfather? So different--so full of life, like a bird, when you are alone in the woods? Rima, speak to me! Am I no more to you than your old grandfather? Do you not like me to talk to you?"

She appeared strangely disturbed at my words. "Oh, you are not like him," she suddenly replied. "Sitting all day on a log by the fire--all day, all day; Goloso and Susio lying beside him--sleep, sleep. Oh, when I saw you in the wood I followed you, and talked and talked; still no answer. Why will you not come when I call? To me!" Then, mocking my voice: "Rima, Rima! Come here! Do this! Say that! Rima! Rima! It is nothing, nothing--it is not you," pointing to my mouth, and then, as if fearing that her meaning had not been made clear, suddenly touching my lips with her finger. "Why do you not answer me?--speak to me--speak to me, like this!" And turning a little more towards me, and glancing at me with eyes that had all at once changed, losing their clouded expression for one of exquisite tenderness, from her lips came a succession of those mysterious sounds which had first attracted me to her, swift and low and bird-like, yet with something so much higher and more soul-penetrating than any bird-music. Ah, what feeling and fancies, what quaint turns of expression, unfamiliar to my mind, were contained in those sweet, wasted symbols! I could never know--never come to her when she called, or respond to her spirit. To me they would always be inarticulate sounds, affecting me like a tender spiritual music--a language without words, suggesting more than words to the soul.

The mysterious speech died down to a lisping sound, like the faint note of some small bird falling from a cloud of foliage on the topmost bough of a tree; and at the same time that new light pa.s.sed from her eyes, and she half averted her face in a disappointed way.

"Rima," I said at length, a new thought coming to my aid, "it is true that I am not here," touching my lips as she had done, "and that my words are nothing. But look into my eyes, and you will see me there--all, all that is in my heart."

"Oh, I know what I should see there!" she returned quickly.

"What would you see--tell me?"

"There is a little black ball in the middle of your eye; I should see myself in it no bigger than that," and she marked off about an eighth of her little fingernail. "There is a pool in the wood, and I look down and see myself there. That is better. Just as large as I am--not small and black like a small, small fly." And after saying this a little disdainfully, she moved away from my side and out into the sunshine; and then, half turning towards me, and glancing first at my face and then upwards, she raised her hand to call my attention to something there.

Far up, high as the tops of the tallest trees, a great blue-winged b.u.t.terfly was pa.s.sing across the open s.p.a.ce with loitering flight. In a few moments it was gone over the trees; then she turned once more to me with a little rippling sound of laughter--the first I had heard from her, and called: "Come, come!"

I was glad enough to go with her then; and for the next two hours we rambled together in the wood; that is, together in her way, for though always near she contrived to keep out of my sight most of the time. She was evidently now in a gay, frolicsome temper; again and again, when I looked closely into some wide-spreading bush, or peered behind a tree, when her calling voice had sounded, her rippling laughter would come to me from some other spot. At length, somewhere about the centre of the wood, she led me to an immense mora tree, growing almost isolated, covering with its shade a large s.p.a.ce of ground entirely free from undergrowth. At this spot she all at once vanished from my side; and after listening and watching some time in vain, I sat down beside the giant trunk to wait for her. Very soon I heard a low, warbling sound which seemed quite near.

"Rima! Rima!" I called, and instantly my call was repeated like an echo.

Again and again I called, and still the words flew back to me, and I could not decide whether it was an echo or not. Then I gave up calling; and presently the low, warbling sound was repeated, and I knew that Rima was somewhere near me.

"Rima, where are you?" I called.

"Rima, where are you?" came the answer.

"You are behind the tree."

"You are behind the tree."

"I shall catch you, Rima." And this time, instead of repeating my words, she answered: "Oh no."

I jumped up and ran round the tree, feeling sure that I should find her.

It was about thirty-five or forty feet in circ.u.mference; and after going round two or three times, I turned and ran the other way, but failing to catch a glimpse of her I at last sat down again.

"Rima, Rima!" sounded the mocking voice as soon as I had sat down.

"Where are you, Rima? I shall catch you, Rima! Have you caught Rima?"

"No, I have not caught her. There is no Rima now. She has faded away like a rainbow--like a drop of dew in the sun. I have lost her; I shall go to sleep." And stretching myself out at full length under the tree, I remained quiet for two or three minutes. Then a slight rustling sound was heard, and I looked eagerly round for her. But the sound was overhead and caused by a great avalanche of leaves which began to descend on me from that vast leafy canopy above.

"Ah, little spider-monkey--little green tree-snake--you are there!"

But there was no seeing her in that immense aerial palace hung with dim drapery of green and copper-coloured leaves. But how had she got there?

Up the stupendous trunk even a monkey could not have climbed, and there were no lianas dropping to earth from the wide horizontal branches that I could see; but by and by, looking further away, I perceived that on one side the longest lower branches reached and mingled with the shorter boughs of the neighbouring trees. While gazing up I heard her low, rippling laugh, and then caught sight of her as she ran along an exposed horizontal branch, erect on her feet; and my heart stood still with terror, for she was fifty to sixty feet above the ground. In another moment she vanished from sight in a cloud of foliage, and I saw no more of her for about ten minutes, when all at once she appeared at my side once more, having come round the trunk of the mora. Her face had a bright, pleased expression, and showed no trace of fatigue or agitation.

I caught her hand in mine. It was a delicate, shapely little hand, soft as velvet, and warm--a real human hand; only now when I held it did she seem altogether like a human being and not a mocking spirit of the wood, a daughter of the Didi.

"Do you like me to hold your hand, Rima?"

"Yes," she replied, with indifference.

"Is it I?"

"Yes." This time as if it was small satisfaction to make acquaintance with this purely physical part of me.

Having her so close gave me an opportunity of examining that light sheeny garment she wore always in the woods. It felt soft and satiny to the touch, and there was no seam nor hem in it that I could see, but it was all in one piece, like the coc.o.o.n of the caterpillar. While I was feeling it on her shoulder and looking narrowly at it, she glanced at me with a mocking laugh in her eyes.

"Is it silk?" I asked. Then, as she remained silent, I continued: "Where did you get this dress, Rima? Did you make it yourself? Tell me."

She answered not in words, but in response to my question a new look came into her face; no longer restless and full of change in her expression, she was now as immovable as an alabaster statue; not a silken hair on her head trembled; her eyes were wide open, gazing fixedly before her; and when I looked into them they seemed to see and yet not to see me. They were like the clear, brilliant eyes of a bird, which reflect as in a miraculous mirror all the visible world but do not return our look and seem to see us merely as one of the thousand small details that make up the whole picture. Suddenly she darted out her hand like a flash, making me start at the unexpected motion, and quickly withdrawing it, held up a finger before me. From its tip a minute gossamer spider, about twice the bigness of a pin's head, appeared suspended from a fine, scarcely visible line three or four inches long.

"Look!" she exclaimed, with a bright glance at my face.

The small spider she had captured, anxious to be free, was falling, falling earthward, but could not reach the surface. Leaning her shoulder a little forward, she placed the finger-tip against it, but lightly, scarcely touching, and moving continuously, with a motion rapid as that of a fluttering moth's wing; while the spider, still paying out his line, remained suspended, rising and falling slightly at nearly the same distance from the ground. After a few moments she cried: "Drop down, little spider." Her finger's motion ceased, and the minute captive fell, to lose itself on the shaded ground.

"Do you not see?" she said to me, pointing to her shoulder. Just where the finger-tip had touched the garment a round shining spot appeared, looking like a silver coin on the cloth; but on touching it with my finger it seemed part of the original fabric, only whiter and more shiny on the grey ground, on account of the freshness of the web of which it had just been made.

And so all this curious and pretty performance, which seemed instinctive in its spontaneous quickness and dexterity, was merely intended to show me how she made her garments out of the fine floating lines of small gossamer spiders!

Before I could express my surprise and admiration she cried again, with startling suddenness: "Look!"

A minute shadowy form darted by, appearing like a dim line traced across the deep glossy more foliage, then on the lighter green foliage further away. She waved her hand in imitation of its swift, curving flight; then, dropping it, exclaimed: "Gone--oh, little thing!"

"What was it?" I asked, for it might have been a bird, a bird-like moth, or a bee.

"Did you not see? And you asked me to look into your eyes!"

"Ah, little squirrel Sakawinki, you remind me of that!" I said, pa.s.sing my arm round her waist and drawing her a little closer. "Look into my eyes now and see if I am blind, and if there is nothing in them except an image of Rima like a small, small fly."

She shook her head and laughed a little mockingly, but made no effort to escape from my arm.

"Would you like me always to do what you wish, Rima--to follow you in the woods when you say 'Come'--to chase you round the tree to catch you, and lie down for you to throw leaves on me, and to be glad when you are glad?"

"Oh, yes."

"Then let us make a compact. I shall do everything to please you, and you must promise to do everything to please me."