1.02.05. Book 2: Ch 5. The Loris
CHAPTER V THIS story is being written in the forest. Four miles from the Dohnavur Nurseries, the Western Ghauts rise almost straight from the plains. Hidden behind the foot-hills is a narrow valley that leads into a deep ravine carved by the river in the heart of the mountains, rising in these parts to a height of 5,449 feet. Half-way up, the mountains form a horseshoe curve, and on the only suitable level place our forest house is built.
All round us therefore, except where the horse-shoe opens, are the glorious, ever-changing mountains, hung with forests that stretch away for thousands and thousands of square miles; forests full of perpetual delights, and mysteries as perpetual. These end from 500 to 1,000 feet from the summits, and the bare, scarred, great faces of the mountains show themselves to the world. The horse-shoe opens to the east upon the variegated carpet of the plains, now pink, now blue, now pale green or gold, according to the season and the crops. Sometimes all colours mix in it; sometimes in the monsoon, in moonlight, it is so like the sea that one can hardly believe it is land; for the long reaches of shallow water look like silvery, moonlit ripples, in a misty sea. The real sea is beyond, a band of vivid glory in sunrise and sunset, and in moonlight a dream of angels. It must be full forty miles away, but we can see the flash of a revolving light on the coast, and sometimes even the white sail of a ship sailing calmly down the strip of blue, or the bright, moving light of a steamer at night. To the north of our ravine there is another lovely valley where the river is larger than ours. Suddenly, as you walk through the forest there, you see it part, and a broad band of white breaks the green. It is the waterfall we call Eight-Falls, and as it has no other findable name, and the forest people have already adopted ours, it is likely to continue. Eight-Falls, because there are eight distinct and beautiful falls racing down from that break in the forest through a wide bed strewn with boulders to the plains more than four thousand feet below. The rocks there are arranged in enormous steps, built one on top of the other. Over these in exposed places the lighter water falls in lacy patterns of living silver. At the foot is a deep, dark pool, so deep, so dark that even the pounding water thundering into it seems to make no impression. As for "the laughter of the spray," it never looks the least as if it heard it. It is too solemn to listen to such little sounds as that. But this magnificence is most delicately decorated. The steps are blue with bladderwort. Within a foot or two of the majestic movement of the water those fragile, joyful, little blue things grow, shaking their blue bells over the chasm, smiling if they do not laugh aloud in the face of the tremendous and the awe-inspiring all about them. Many a neck has been risked to get these brave blue flowers. But bare-footed children are sure-footed, and perhaps the climb was not as hazardous as it looked. This river owns for source a watershed within the Travancore boundary, and from it flows too, our little river, small in comparison with the other, but in rains a riotous, magnificent creature, capable of great deeds-at other times, gentle and dear. This river makes our pool; the pool which the children would instantly say, if questioned, was the joy of our ravine.
It is girded round with rocks, and these again are set in forest; grey and green reflections lie in it, and sometimes splashes of yellow-ochre and crimson when the sun touches the painted parts of the rocks. But its own particular colour is jade-green, clear, wonderful water-green, and when the angels are in a very kind mood they send a blue kingfisher to fish there. Then the pool is something quite too lovely for this every-day earth, and sets one thinking what the pools must be among the green woods of Paradise. Then, too, it is deep, deep enough for deep diving, and its floor is of clean white sand, the powdered dust of mountains. In this pool we, the holiday children and whoever is up with them, daily turn into water-babies, pure and simple. You may be as old, and as serious, as we will suppose Methuselah was, drop into that cool pool and you are a water-baby and nothing else. If you have troubles, the pool washes them off. Worries are just kissed away. Water-kisses, you know, are most comforting. When I came up last week with a brood of children (the Tara set) our first thought was the pool. Into it we straightway tumbled, and forgot we had ever been hot and tired and at the end of our tether. I for one forgot that a book for Christmas had been asked for by a friendly and courageous firm in London, forgot I knew I could not possibly do it, being limp as a rag and brainless as one, forgot indeed there was a book to do. And when a week later another mail came up and in it was a letter from a Malvern schoolgirl, saying, "We want some more books," the pool had so dealt with the half-melted grey jelly in me that it had begun to "set" as the cooks say, and felt as if under the stimulus of that letter it might possibly do something again (for it is stimulating to have such things wanted). This then is the story of this story, and though it be a story of the hot plains it should be full of the sound of running water, and all loveliness and joy should somehow enter into it. Perhaps it will. In the meantime here is a forest tale. A few nights ago I was wakened by the growlings of a bear, one of the big black variety. He was grubbing for termites just below the house, and his growls seemed to come from under my bed. The forest at night is a weird place, and as our windows are wide open, only guarded by criss-cross wires which, when the house is lighted in the evening, give them the appearance of old-fashioned cottage windows with diamond panes, we hear everything from the chirp of a cricket up through various little tin-horn barks of small deer, and howls of hunting dogs, to the really awesome noises of the big cats. Sometimes a sambur bells just outside our clearing, and then we hold our breath and hope no tiger heard him. We have no elephants in our particular ravine, it is too steep for them, nor have we bison, though both are plentiful quite near; but we have found the pugs of most other forest dwellers, or heard their manifold noises in the night.
It is rather ideal for animal lovers to be thus alone in the animals’ world. Our nearest human neighbours, in the next valley, are miles away, almost impenetrable forests stretch between. All day long we are out of doors; but at night it is better to be safe between walls; the beasts might resent us in their world at night.
Just about the time of the bear’s visit, the Forest Ranger and his subordinates, as he calls them, came up for some work.
They were busy about it one early morning, and we were with them; for forest folk are interesting company and one never knows when one may learn something from them; but their noise had as we expected scared away every living thing for miles, and we had no hope of seeing anything special. Suddenly through the undergrowth came a peculiar kind of chirp, like the chirp of an excited cicada, only somehow more animal than insect in expression. We looked up and down everywhere, and saw nothing; but that agonising squeak rose from our very feet, and at last we saw it; It, I should say, no mere common it describes it. The night had been wet. The ground was covered with soaking leaves. In one of these curled up so as to hold a pool of water, sat shivering and crying the loneliest, the minutest being of semi-human sort I had ever seen or imagined. For one long second we were all dumb. In that irresponsible second I believed in gnomes of the forest, goblins, elves of every sort and description. But the manikin at our feet wrung its tiny, tiny hands, held them up above its head and wrung them as if appealing to heaven and earth to come to its succour. And I lifted it out of its pool.
It was under three inches long, half its head seemed made of eyes, two great, round, amazed, amazing eyes. Hands and feet it had, like a skinny old man’s, but unbelievably small; the delicate transparent finger-nails asked for a pocket lens if they were to be properly examined. Tail there was none. The thing was a babe, new born, but it had the weariness, the dejection, the accumulated woe of centuries in its face. It nestled into the hollow of my hand; one of the children flew off to get some warm milk (for we have two buffaloes up with us, buffs being safer in the wilds than cows), and I was comforting and feeding it when the foresters drew near, gathered round, and stared astonished.
Only one of the group had seen its like before. "Worth two thousand rupees," he remarked, "very seldom found. The devil makes them." But the wee thing did not in the very least mind who had made it if only it could be warm. It drank little, and in all ways behaved as a new-made human baby does, all it wanted for the first twenty-four hours was warmth and sleep, an occasional lick, warmth and sleep again. At first I thought it was a marmoset, but it was too small, and besides had no tail; we found it finally in an animal book, Loris is its name, the Slender Loris. It is cuddled up in my hand as I type, a little soft ball of fur, not at all disconcerted by the quick movement, two fingers curled round it are quite enough to keep it happy. A favourite position is a tight clasp round a friendly thumb. It rubs its little face against the sides of the branch, as I suppose it considers it, in most endearing fashion.
We seem to have left the Brownie a long time. Not so. She has been in mind through every line of this story. The wood at night with its prowling things, the little lonely unprotected life, they bring her to mind. "Our lives are like untracked forests," said a forest man to me the other day when, in a quiet place in the depths of the wood, a group of them came to listen to talk about things eternal. "There are fierce beasts about us, and entangled thorns; we do not know the way through the forest of life." Nor did the infant Loris, nor did our Brownie; but neither one nor the other was left unsuccoured.
Succoured.
Wisdom reacheth from one end to another mightily; and sweetly doth she order all things.- Wis 8:1.