Читать книгу The Gnomobile - A Gnice, Gnew Gnarrative with Gnonsense, but Gnothing Gnaughty - Upton Sinclair - Страница 6

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LIZABETH, carrying Bobo, and Rodney, carrying the basket, went on deeper into the forest, following Bobo’s directions. The ferns grew thicker, and the silence deeper; until at last Bobo said: “Here.” Then he whispered: “Don’t put me down, because I have been hurt.” He raised his shrill little pipe: “Glogo! Glogo!”

There was a long silence. The two big people had no way of knowing that Glogo was anywhere near; but apparently Bobo had some way of knowing, for he began to talk. “Glogo, I fell out of a tree and hurt myself, and these big people have been helping me. They are very good and kind people; they love the trees, and help to take care of them, so please forgive me for letting them carry me.” Again a silence, and Bobo seemed to find something in it to frighten him, for he went on anxiously: “They are not at all like the other people, Glogo. They have never cut down a tree, and they have been so polite—please forgive them, Glogo.”

Again there was a pause; until from somewhere in a big clump of azaleas came a voice, deeper than Bobo’s, and stern, in spite of its lack of volume: “Tell the big people to put you down and go away.”

“But, Glogo, that is not polite.”

“The big people are never polite. They are murderers.”

“No, Glogo, these are very wise people. Rodney is a student, and can tell you many things about the world.” Again a pause. “Please answer, Glogo.”

“I do not want to know anything that the big people have to tell.”

“Believe me, Glogo, Rodney knows many useful things. He can tell you about this forest, that it is a state park and will never be destroyed.”

“He himself will be destroyed, and his state, and its parks.”

Again there was a silence. Bobo began to plead, with fear in his voice—thinking perhaps that these strange big people might take offense and go away. “Believe me, Glogo, these people have ways of learning many things; they have ways of going about—Rodney will take us, and help us to find some other gnomes in some other forest. They really want to help us.”

“The gnomes were happy and they did not have the help of the big people. All the big people can do for us is to go away, as far away as possible.”

Bobo looked up at Elizabeth, and she saw there were tears in his eyes. Rodney saw it too, and took a step forward. “Let me speak,” he said. And, addressing the clump of azaleas, he began:

“I know that we big people have been very stupid and cruel. There are a few of us trying to change that, and having an unhappy time. It may be that we shall fail entirely, I cannot promise. But I have tried in my feeble way. I bought one tract of these redwood forests, and gave it to the state, to be protected forever; I can take you and show you the place on the highway where my name is written on a bronze plate. So you ought to be a little grateful to me, Glogo, in spite of my having the misfortune to be born so big.”

Said the stern voice out of the azalea clump: “There is nothing I can do for you.”

“You are mistaken, Glogo. I am a student, and I have been visiting the forests, trying to learn to talk to the trees. You can teach me.”

“How do you know I can talk to the trees?”

“I know that no wise person like yourself can live in the forest for a thousand years without learning to talk to all living things. I know that the trees have souls like persons.”

“They are not at all like persons! Their souls are kind. When did a tree ever make a sharp ax to destroy things? A tree builds. It labors without rest, day and night. It performs mighty labors. It draws the sap up from the ground, and builds it into bark and heartwood and branches and leaves.”

“Yes, Glogo. And the greatest scientist in the whole world does not know by what means the tree does that. How can a tree know which is the place for bark and which for leaf? By what means does it know that it has been wounded, and send the sap to build new bark and new heartwood?”

“A tree knows all the things which a tree needs for its own life, and for the life of the future, the billions of precious seeds which it makes.”

“How does a tree speak to you, Glogo? Does it use words?”

“A tree has no tongue with which to make words. A tree speaks in actions. If you love it and live with it, its spirit becomes one with yours and you understand it, and hate the madmen who murder it.”

“Listen to me, Glogo. You are old and wise, and I am nothing but a child. I have lived only twenty-three years—and what can one learn in that time? I beg you humbly to tell me the secrets of the forest; and perhaps I can go back and teach them to men, and they will be less mad than they have been in the past.”

Said the stern voice, after a pause: “You are asking me to break the rule of a million years. It is not only myself, it is all the generations of the gnomes who forbid me.”

“But, Glogo, if a rule does not work—is not a million years’ trial enough? This rule has left only you and Bobo; and what is going to become of him when you are gone?”

“Do not say that!” cried the voice from the azalea clump, in what seemed anger.

“But it is true, Glogo. What is going to become of the race of gnomes, if you do not find a wife for your grandson?”

There came only a moan out of the bushes.

“You have thought of that, Glogo?”

The answer came, almost a whisper: “I have thought of nothing else for many years.”

“That is why you are so unhappy?”

“I am the most unhappy of living things.”

“But, Glogo,” broke in Bobo, “you don’t have to worry about me. I’m not missing a wife.”

“Foolish boy,” said the voice. “All the future of the gnomes is missing your wife.”

A long silence. Said Rodney at last: “I wish I could say that I know where there are other gnomes. But, as you know, they hide themselves from men. All that I can say is, I will be your friend if you will let me, and I will do everything in my power to search the forests and find more of your people. I will do that, whether or not you consent to teach me the wisdom of your forest.”

For the first time the hidden voice showed signs of weakening. “That is fairly spoken. But do men ever mean what their words say?”

“But,” argued the young man, “if we meant harm to you, we already have Bobo in our power. And as for you—when one has lived a thousand years, has he so much to risk?”

“It is true.” And suddenly the bushes were parted, and there came out a figure of the same size as Bobo, with the same short trousers and little brown peaked cap. But the face of this little creature was longer, and had wrinkles in it, and a straggly gray beard reaching almost to the waist. “I am here,” said Glogo. “I will try to be your friend.”

“I thank you, sir,” said Rodney, with a grave bow, which the old gnome gravely returned. “My name is Rodney; and this my little niece, Elizabeth.” Again the old gnome bowed.

“And now,” continued Rodney, “I think we should make ourselves comfortable, so that we may talk.” He spread the robe on the floor of the forest, and Elizabeth set Bobo down.

“Are you hurt?” demanded the old one; and Bobo answered that he was all right now, and proved it by jumping up.

Elizabeth and Rodney seated themselves; and Glogo, at their invitation, took one corner of the robe—the one nearest to the bushes. From time to time he would glance about him nervously, and one could see that he was ready to leap up and dash away at the slightest sign of danger.

“Let me tell you, to begin with,” said Rodney, “that I have been a student at what is called a university. May I ask, did you have those among the gnomes?”

“We gnomes did most of our learning day by day, as we lived,” said Glogo. “We learned not merely from our elders, but from all things in nature, the spirits of the trees and the plants.”

“All trees and plants have spirits, then?”

“All living things have spirits. How else can they act? How can they grow?”

“Are you able to exchange ideas with all these spirits?”

“All living things exchange ideas, even though they may not know it.”

“Tell me about the spirit of this fern, for example.” Rodney touched one close by his hand.

“The spirit of the fern is like that of a woman,” said Glogo. “It is gentle, modest, and humble, but also very strong—nothing discourages it. You have thoughtlessly bent and hurt one; it will suffer in silence, but when you are gone it will bravely go on with its task of making beauty. The little girl will understand the spirit of the fern, which hangs curtains all over the forest, and cannot rest until it has made the place pretty and homelike.”

“That is a very nice way to say it,” said Elizabeth. “I think I would understand the spirits of both the ferns and the flowers.”

“I suppose,” said Rodney, “that one has to be very old indeed in order to know the spirit of one of these redwoods.”

“A tree like that speaks of a great victory won. Millions of pounds of matter have been taken out of the earth with careful choice, and dissolved in water, lifted to those tremendous heights, and built into a tower which takes care of itself, and is safe against the blind forces of wind and fire. The spirit which builds that tree is strong and serene; it knows its power. It is in fact a great system, in which many spirits work in harmony. It is music which our Mother Nature has played for a hundred million years; and there has come only one voice to disturb it.”

“I know what you mean,” said Rodney. “There was a wise old man among us who said that God had protected the redwoods against everything but fools.”

“I am glad to hear of such a man,” replied Glogo. “It makes it easier for me to talk to you.”

“Our wise old man added that only the state could protect the trees against the fools; and to some extent that is being done.”

“I fear it is too late for my people,” said Glogo, and appeared to sink back into that mournfulness which had caused his case to be diagnosed as neurasthenia.

“We are going to find out about it,” said Rodney, with the quick cheerfulness that has to be learned by those who attend mental patients. “But first let me explain that it is the hour when we big people are accustomed to have lunch. How is it with you, Glogo?”

“We gnomes do not have regular hours for eating. We take our fern seed when and where we find it.”

“I wonder if you would be willing to try some of the kinds of food we have brought with us?”

Elizabeth began to unpack the lunch basket. She spread a paper tablecloth, and laid out four folded paper napkins. She took out the box of sandwiches, each wrapped in a piece of oiled paper. There were stuffed eggs, and a bottle of olives, and a little box of nuts, some lettuce and tomatoes, several ripe bananas, a bottle of milk, and the two thermos bottles. It was doubtless more food than the two gnomes had ever seen piled together in their many years of life. Bobo’s quick bright eyes moved from one object to another.

First they must “wet their whistles,” said Rodney; and a difficulty arose at once, for the cups which they had with them were not of gnome size. “I will fix that,” said Bobo, eager to taste all these strange foods of the big people. Forgetting his hurts, he ran into the forest, and came back with two gleaming tiger lilies. He twisted out the stamens and pistils, and wiped the cups clean of the golden pollen. Then into each of them Elizabeth poured some lemonade out of the thermos bottle, and watched the faces of the two gnomes while they tasted it.

“It is cold as the mountain snows!” exclaimed Bobo.

Not even neurasthenia could hold out against such a surprise. “Is it a spirit?” asked Glogo.

“It might be,” answered Rodney. “I have learned from you that there are all sorts of spirits. Here is a different kind,” he added, as he poured out the coffee. “Be careful now, for this is a mischievous spirit, and he will bite your tongue if he can.”

Of course the butler in the home of a lumber king would see to it that the thermos bottle contained good coffee, and the right amount of cream and sugar. Bobo was loud in his cries of delight, and Rodney explained that it was the spirit of the sun which the big people had learned to pen up in a bottle and take into their stomachs.

He told them how the lemons had come from Southern California, and the sugar from Louisiana, and the coffee from Brazil, and the butter from Denmark. All this was not so easy to understand, for the little forest creatures did not know that the earth was so big, and while they had learned that there were oceans, they did not understand how ships could sail upon them. When you were trying to help an old gnome to be happy, it was a mistake to speak of ships, and have to tell him that many of them were made out of murdered trees.

Elizabeth gave each of them a small piece of sandwich; and Rodney had to explain how wheat was grown and ground, and how butter and cheese were made from the milk of cows. Glogo took all this with quiet dignity; but Bobo was full of curiosity and fun, and nibbled his bread and his butter and his cheese, each one separately. A banana had to be cut into small slices, so that he could get comfortable bites out of it; then Rodney had to tell him about the strange kind of forests in which these plants grew, so different from the giant redwoods. Yet they were very old plants too; their ancestors had been on earth for millions of years, and had furnished food for all sorts of people. Some of them were small people, said Rodney, known as pygmies, but they were much bigger than gnomes, and Rodney did not think that Bobo would like to have a pygmy lady for a wife. Besides, she would speak Portuguese, or Indian, or some other language he wouldn’t understand.

“By the way,” said Rodney to Glogo, “I have been meaning to ask you, how does it happen that your people speak English?”

“English?” said the old gnome. “What is that?”

“That is the name of the language you speak.”

“What a strange idea!” commented Glogo. “I had in mind to ask you how you came to speak Gnomic.” And so that was that.