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 in the wood had I seen that desolate ash-heap where the fire had done its work. Nor had I looked for it. On the contrary, my wish was never to see it, and the fear of coming accidentally upon it made me keep to the old familiar paths. But at length, one night, without thinking of Rima's fearful end, it all at once occurred to me that the hated savage whose blood Ihad shed on the white savannah might have only been practicing his natural deceit when he told me that most pitiful story. If that were so--if he had been prepared with a fictitious account of her death to meet my questions--then Rima might still exist:
lost, perhaps, wandering in some distant place, exposed to perils day and night, and unable to find her way back, but living still!
Living! her heart on fire with the hope of reunion with me, cautiously threading her way through the undergrowth of immeasurable forests; spying out the distant villages and hiding herself from the sight of all men, as she knew so well how to hide; studying the outlines of distant mountains, to recognize some familiar landmark at last, and so find her way back to the old wood once more! Even now, while I sat there idly musing, she might be somewhere in the wood--somewhere near me; but after so long an absence full of apprehension, waiting in concealment for what tomorrow's light might show.
I started up and replenished the fire with trembling hands, then set the door open to let the welcoming stream out into the wood.
But Rima had done more; going out into the black forest in the pitiless storm, she had found and led me home. Could I do less!
I was quickly out in the shadows of the wood. Surely it was more than a mere hope that made my heart beat so wildly! How could a sensation so strangely sudden, so irresistible 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 your divine eyes--to hold you again in my arms at last! I so changed--so different! But the old love remains; and of all that has happened in your absence I shall tell you nothing--not one word; all shall be forgotten now--sufferings, madness, crime, remorse! Nothing shall ever vex you again--not Nuflo, who vexed you every day; for he is dead now--murdered, only I shall not say that--and I have decently buried his poor old sinful bones. We alone together in the wood--OUR wood now! The sweet 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 would soon be mine; and at intervals I stood still and made the forest echo with my calls. "Rima! Rima!" I called again and again, and waited for some response; and heard only the familiar night-sounds--voices of insect and bird and tinkling tree-frog, and a low murmur in the topmost foliage, moved by some light breath of wind unfelt below. I was drenched with dew, bruised and bleeding from falls in the dark, and from rocks and thorns and rough branches, but had felt nothing; gradually the excitement burnt itself out; I was hoarse with shouting and ready to drop down with fatigue, and hope was dead: and at length Icrept back to my 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 search the forest well; since, if no evidence of the great fire Kua-ko had described to me existed, it would still be possible to believe that he had lied to me, and that Rima lived. I searched all day and found nothing; but the area was large, and to search it thoroughly would require several days.
On the third day I discovered the fatal spot, and knew that never again would I behold Rima in the flesh, that my last hope had indeed been a vain one. There could be no mistake: just such an open place as the Indian had pictured to me was here, with giant trees standing apart; while one tree stood killed and blackened by fire, surrounded by a huge heap, sixty or seventy yards across, of prostrate charred tree-trunks and ashes. Here and there slender plants had sprung up through the ashes, and the omnipresent small-leaved creepers were beginning to throw their pale green embroidery over the blackened trunks. I looked long at the vast funeral tree that had a buttressed girth of not less than fifty feet, and rose straight as a ship's mast, with its top about a hundred and fifty feet from the earth. What a distance to fall, through burning leaves and smoke, like a white bird shot dead with a poisoned arrow, swift and straight into that sea of flame below! How cruel imagination was to turn that desolate ash-heap, in spite of feathery foliage and embroidery of creepers, into roaring leaping flames again--to bring those dead savages back, men, women, and children--even the little ones Ihad played with--to set them yelling around me: "Burn! burn!"Oh, no, this damnable spot must not be her last resting-place!
If the fire had not utterly consumed her, bones as well as sweet tender flesh, shrivelling her like a frail white-winged moth into the finest white ashes, 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.
