"Why, certainly," said Maya, making room for him.
Fridolin said good-by and left. Maya stayed; she was eager to get at Hannibal"s personality.
"The many, many different kinds of animals there are in the world," she thought. "Every day a fresh discovery."
The wind had subsided some, and the sun shone through the branches. From below rose the song of a robin redbreast, filling the woods with joy. Maya could see it perched on a branch, could see its throat swell and pulse with the song as it held its little head raised up to the light.
"If only I could sing like that robin redbreast," she said, "I"d perch on a flower and keep it up the livelong day."
"You"d produce something lovely, you would, with your humming and buzzing."
"The bird looks so happy."
"You have great fancies," said the daddy-long-legs. "Supposing every animal were to wish he could do something that nature had not fitted him to do, the world would be all topsy-turvy.
Supposing a robin redbreast thought he had to have a sting--a sting above everything else--or a goat wanted to fly about gathering honey. Supposing a frog were to come along and languish for my kind of legs."
Maya laughed.
"That isn"t just what I mean. I mean, it seems lovely to be able to make all beings as happy as the bird does with his song.-- But goodness gracious!" she exclaimed suddenly. "Mr. Hannibal, you have one leg too many."
Hannibal frowned and looked into s.p.a.ce, vexed.
"Well, you"ve noticed it," he said glumly. "But as a matter of fact--one leg too few, not too many."
"Why? Do you usually have eight legs?"
"Permit me to explain. We spiders have eight legs. We need them all. Besides, eight is a more aristocratic number. One of my legs got lost. Too bad about it. However you manage, you make the best of it."
"It must be dreadfully disagreeable to lose a leg," Maya sympathized.
Hannibal propped his chin on his hand and arranged his legs to keep them from being easily counted.
"I"ll tell you how it happened. Of course, as usual when there"s mischief, a human being is mixed up in it. We spiders are careful and look what we"re doing, but human beings are careless, they grab you sometimes as though you were a piece of wood. Shall I tell you?"
"Oh, do please," said Maya, settling herself comfortably. "It would be awfully interesting. You must certainly have gone through a good deal."
"I should say so," said Hannibal. "Now listen. We daddy-long-legs, you know, hunt by night. I was then living in a green garden-house.
It was overgrown with ivy, and there were a number of broken window-panes, which made it very convenient for me to crawl in and out. The man came at dark. In one hand he carried his artificial sun, which he calls lamp, in the other hand a small bottle, under his arm some paper, and in his pocket another bottle. He put everything down on the table and began to think, because he wanted to write his thoughts on the paper.-- You must certainly have come across paper in the woods or in the garden. The black on the paper is what man has excogitated--excogitated."
"Marvelous!" cried Maya, all a-glow that she was to learn so much.
"For this purpose," Hannibal continued, "man needs both bottles.
He inserts a stick into the one and drinks out of the other. The more he drinks, the better it goes. Of course it is about us insects that he writes, everything he knows about us, and he writes strenuously, but the result is not much to boast of, because up to now man has found out very little in regard to insects. He is absolutely ignorant of our soul-life and hasn"t the least consideration for our feelings. You"ll see."
"Don"t you think well of human beings?" asked Maya.
"Oh, yes, yes. But the loss of a leg"--the daddy-long-legs looked down slantwise--"is apt to embitter one, rather."
"I see," said Maya.
"One evening I was sitting on a window-frame as usual, prepared for the chase, and the man was sitting at the table, his two bottles before him, trying to produce something. It annoyed me dreadfully that a whole swarm of little flies and gnats, upon which I depend for my subsistence, had settled upon the artificial sun and were staring into it in that crude, stupid, uneducated way of theirs."
"Well," observed Maya, "I think I"d look at a thing like that myself."
"Look, for all I care. But to look and to stare like an idiot are two entirely different things. Just watch once and see the silly jig they dance around a lamp. It"s nothing for them to b.u.t.t their heads about twenty times. Some of them keep it up until they burn their wings. And all the time they stare and stare at the light."
"Poor creatures! Evidently they lose their wits."
"Then they had better stay outside on the window-frame or under the leaves. They"re safe from the lamp there, and that"s where I can catch them.-- Well, on that fateful night I saw from my position on the window-frame that some gnats were lying scattered on the table beside the lamp drawing their last breath. The man did not seem to notice or care about them, so I decided to go and take them myself. That"s perfectly natural, isn"t it?"
"Perfectly."
"And yet, it was my undoing. I crept up the leg of the table, very softly, on my guard, until I could peep over the edge. The man seemed dreadfully big. I watched him working. Then, slowly, very slowly, carefully lifting one leg at a time, I crossed over to the lamp. As long as I was covered by the bottle all went well, but I had scarcely turned the corner, when the man looked up and grabbed me. He lifted me by one of my legs, dangled me in front of his huge eyes, and said: "See what"s here, just see what"s here." And he grinned--the brute!--he grinned with his whole face, as though it were a laughing matter."
Hannibal sighed, and little Maya kept quite still. Her head was in a whirl.
"Have human beings such immense eyes?" she asked at last.
"Please think of _me_ in the position _I_ was in," cried Hannibal, vexed. "Try to imagine how I felt. Who"d like to be hanging by the leg in front of eyes twenty times as big as his own body and a mouth full of gleaming teeth, each fully twice as big as himself? Well, what do you think?"
"Awful! Perfectly awful!"
"Thank the Lord, my leg broke off. There"s no telling what might have happened if my leg had not broken off. I fell to the table, and then I ran, I ran as fast as my remaining legs would take me, and hid behind the bottle. There I stood and hurled threats of violence at the man. They saved me, my threats did, the man was afraid to run after me. I saw him lay my leg on the white paper, and I watched how it wanted to escape--which it can"t do without me."
"Was it still moving?" asked Maya, p.r.i.c.kling at the thought.
"Yes. Our legs always do move when they"re pulled out. My leg ran, but I not being there it didn"t know where to run to, so it merely flopped about aimlessly on the same spot, and the man watched it, clutching at his nose and smiling--smiling, the heartless wretch!--at my leg"s sense of duty."
"Impossible," said the little bee, quite scared, "an offen leg can"t crawl."
"An offen leg? _What_ is an offen leg?"
"A leg that has come off," explained Maya, staring at him.
"Don"t you know? At home we children used the word offen for anything that had come off."
"You should drop your nursery slang when you"re out in the world and in the presence of cultured people," said Hannibal severely.
"But it _is_ true that our legs totter long after they have been torn from our bodies."
"I can"t believe it without proof."
"Do you think I"ll tear one of my legs off to satisfy you?"
Hannibal"s tone was ugly. "I see you"re not a fit person to a.s.sociate with. n.o.body, I"d like you to know, _no_body has ever doubted my word before."
Maya was terribly put out. She couldn"t understand what had upset the daddy-long-legs so, or what dreadful thing she had done.
"It isn"t altogether easy to get along with strangers," she thought. "They don"t think the way we do and don"t see that we mean no harm." She was depressed and cast a troubled look at the spider with his long legs and soured expression.
"Really, someone ought to come and eat you up."