These birds, long-lived as parrots, had seen the father and mother of Dick build, mate, bring forth their young and depart; they had seen the arrival of Lestrange, the growth of Dick, the coming of Katafa. They had seen Lestrange waiting for his lost children, they had seen him vanish, and now they had seen his skull laid on a strange altar. Verily they had seen strange things, but the strangest lay below them on the sward in the tree shadows of that slumbrous afternoon, for Katafa might have been Emmeline, who had often lain there just like that, Emmeline with the faithful flower still in her hair and her dark eyes fixed across the lagoon on the mysterious sea beyond.
The birds, whilst friendly, had always held aloof, the noisy and restless Dick managing to break somehow that thread of confidence which had drawn them sometimes to swoop down and light on Emmeline’s shoulder or hand.
Now, Dick away and Katafa lying absolutely motionless, one of the birds, stirred, maybe, by some old memory, fluttered down on the sward close to her, looked at her with bright eyes, picked up a bit of dried grass, and flew up with it to the nest.
Again it came down and, the girl stretching out her hand to it, it lit on her thumb, hopping at once back to the ground. She put her hand on its blue, warm back, clasping it for a moment. It was the first warm-blooded living thing she had ever touched, the first thing she had handled without intent to kill, the first thing that had come to waken the warmth of humanity in her heart—except that cry of Dick: “Hai, amonai, Katafa! Help!”
CHAPTER XX
THE TREE
We see in nature forms of which perhaps the highest images of men are only compound reflections and symbols. If there had never been birds, would men ever have imagined angels? If there had never been serpents, would men ever have imagined Satan? Are the things about us—which we grossly believe to be the properties of a vast stage set for man to strut on—are these things the real actors in a drama of which man is only a property? A mirror exceedingly complex, built and set up by them for their reflections to fall on. Subtract from man all that he has ever seen, touched, smelt, heard or tasted, and what is left? Bar the road of any of these five senses—will he be complete?
Katafa, who had never touched a warm-blooded sentient thing till now, released the bird and it flew up to the branch where the nest was building, but it had left with her something that had become part of her for ever—something strange and new and sweet, yet disturbing, something from the universal soul of sentient things that had reached her, vaguely perhaps in the cry for help, but more fully now.
A great longing came on her to clasp the bird again, but it was far from her reach, busy in the branches above. She sat up and, with her hands folded in her lap, gazed away out to sea, perplexed, troubled, listening to the sound of the surf on the reef, the movements of the birds above and the gentle stirring of the wind in the leaves.
All the tenderest voices of the Garden of God, all the voices that had brought comfort to Lestrange and promise to his tired heart, seemed conspiring now to augment the message of the bird, the message from a world of compassion, tenderness and pity.