Finally, bowed and weeping, she came to my wife one night. "Please give me back the promises I have made," she said. "I cannot keep them."
After that we just hoped that she went to the hills with only the more trustworthy girls. And whenever we ourselves found in time to take a walk beyond the limits of the town, we would take her along. She would nave a great time then, chasing butterflies and picking wild fruits and flowers. She would climb to the top branch of a tree as far as the limbs could bear her weight, and she would yodel in complete abandon till my wife, outraged, would say, "Patricia! You are a young lady now!"
The walks helped a great deal, however, and my wife and I often wished that we had more time of our own to take Patricia out, after thumbing through the magazines in her room or perhaps doing a little of the sewing she now took in for a modest fee, she would turn off the light and look out of the window. Or she would walk out to the steps on the back porch and gaze at the hills far to the east of our delta.
She was on the back porch one evening when I spoke to her.
"Patricia," I said.
She stood still, gazing at the line of hills far away under the moon.
"What seems to be troubling you? I said. "This, you know, is your home."
Patricia turned to me, sighed, and looked away at the rim of hills. Under the moon the leaves waved in the breeze from the uplands.
"That's true," she said.
"This is like home to me. But in the hills far out there you see them, don't you?--there, where the moon rose not long ago tonight and where deep woods and wide grasslands are--there lie
dark and little-known jungles. There." she went on, warming up to the subject that I knew had been on her thoughts, "the nights are not silent. There the voice of the jungle is a thing one cannot forget. Many birds and wild things live there, wild things that speak music endlessly."
"But you must know it's not safe to live in those hills, Patricia", said my wife, joining us perhaps too abruptly. "It is wild there, with so many bandits roaming around these days. You lost your parents there. You will find no streets there, and no books. And at night no town lights.
"That's the most important thing of all," Patricia replied, still gazing at the hills far away. "No town lights there to drive away the jungle moon. And the paths winding up the hills are narrow and little walked upon. They are lined on both sides with tall grass that rub against your arms pleasantly when you walk past them. And the nighthawks and birds whose calls one never hears in the town are not afraid to call there, and you should hear the frogs in the water calling."
In the face of such withering eloquence, I cast a side glance at my wife and, understanding my look, she came away with me.
Our home was not far from the river. On the river's farther bank lay beds of reed so thick you could not have known that rails and snipes skulked in them till you heard their dreamy pipings at dawn. Patricia would lie down on the graveled bank and feel the wind from the hills brush her face. Or she would poke about in the reeds and flush the wading birds.
The meat the Tirurai hunter peddled was so good that I asked Patricia to watch for him and buy several kilos of it when he should come into town again. She usually got the best portions of the man's wares, and at a slightly reduced price too. And no wonder, my wife told me, for of course Patricia could talk to him in their native Tirurai, and that naturally made a big difference.
Then something happened. One day when we came home for lunch, the maid followed us into our room in a nervous flurry. That morning, having done her washing earlier than usual, she had returned from the river and found "the wild man," so she told us, standing in the front yard for no apparent reason. Looking up, however, she had seen Patricia half concealed behind e screen of vines on the porch, and the two were talking so earnestly with each other that neither of them saw her. In fear that he would catch her spying on them "and tear me to pieces and make dried meat of me," she cleared her throat. The man turned his sour face to her and Patricia withdrew into the house. Then, scowling savagely but saying not a word, the man had left.
After supper my wife called Patricia aside and tried to reason with her. Was her friendship with the hunter a serious matter? If she returned to those barbaric hills, what would become of her talents, her looks? What was the use of her having finished her education in the own school and having been brought up in civilization if she would only return to her hills after all?
Patricia kept her eyes to the floor and sat weeping silently. Her eyes were still swollen when she came out of her room next morning.
The man did not return to the town for some months after that, perhaps, my wife hoped, because he had realized his error in trying to win so fine a girl as Patricia; perhaps, I feared, because it was the rainy time of the year again and the seed had to be sown in his clearing.
When the August rain were over and the new crop, we knew, was well along, the Tirurai hunter came back. He had grown more bronzed and muscular. He clearly had been working harder than ever. His clothes appeared somewhat neater too, though as usual they were innocent of starch and iron. He made two trips to town that week.
We woke up later the following Saturday morning, after a week full of the paper work that is the death of us teachers, to find Patricia gone. We waited for her all the next day. We waited for her all the next week.
But the green hills were far away.
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