My words seemed to trouble her, but very soon she spoke again with renewed animation. “If my people exist, why must it be disappointment and perhaps death? He does not know; but she came to him here--did she not? The others are not here, but perhaps not far off. Come, let us go to the summit together to see from it the desert beneath us--mountain and forest, mountain and forest. Somewhere there! You said that I had knowledge of distant things. And shall I not know which mountain--which forest?”
“Alas! no, Rima; there is a limit to your far-seeing; and even if that faculty were as great as you imagine, it would avail you nothing, for there is no mountain, no forest, in whose shadow your people dwell.”
For a while she was silent, but her eyes and clasping fingers were restless and showed her agitation. She seemed to be searching in the depths of her mind for some argument to oppose to my assertions. Then in a low, almost despondent voice, with something of reproach in it, she said: “Have we come so far to go back again? You were not Nuflo to need my intercession, yet you came too.”
“Where you are, there I must be--you have said it yourself. Besides, when we started I had some hope of finding your people. Now I know better, having heard Nuflo’s story. Now I know that your hope is a vain one.”
“Why? Why? Was she not found here--mother? Where, then, are the others?”
“Yes, she was found here, alone. You must remember all the things she spoke to you before she died. Did she ever speak to you of her people--speak of them as if they existed, and would be glad to receive you among them some day?”
“No. Why did she not speak of that? Do you know--can you tell me?”
“I can guess the reason, Rima. It is very sad--so sad that it is hard to tell it. When Nuflo tended her in the cave and was ready to worship her and do everything she wished, and conversed with her by signs, she showed no wish to return to her people. And when he offered her, in a way she understood, to take her to a distant place, where she would be among strange beings, among others like Nuflo, she readily consented, and painfully performed that long journey to Voa. Would you, Rima, have acted thus--would you have gone so far away from your beloved people, never to return, never to hear of them or speak to them again? Oh no, you could not; nor would she if her people had been in existence. But she knew that she had survived them, that some great calamity had fallen upon and destroyed them. They were few in number, perhaps, and surrounded on every side by hostile tribes, and had no weapons, and made no war. They had been preserved because they inhabited a place apart, some deep valley perhaps, guarded on all sides by lofty mountains and impenetrable forests and marshes; but at last the cruel savages broke into this retreat and hunted them down, destroying all except a few fugitives, who escaped singly like your mother, and fled away to hide in some distant solitude.”