CHAPTER XXII
"That day is a day of wrath—a day of clouds and thick darkness."—The Bible.
"India!" repeated Leonie, "India!"
She flung round towards the sea, standing on the very edge of the cliff, the violence of the wind against her the only barrier between her and certain death.
"Tell me," she cried, pointing to the heaving, raging mass of waters with a hand above which shone dully a blood-soaked bandage. "Tell me what I did to myself down there just now. I awoke in a different place from which I went to sleep. I had no—I am cut and bruised. Terrible things happen wherever I am—they follow me. I woke one night in a pitch dark room and saw two green eyes staring at me from the wall. They were my eyes—reflected in a looking-glass—mine—they shine at night like a cat's—and there's a voice calling—often. Oh! I tell you I'm haunted, bewitched, cursed!"
"Come to me, beloved."
She turned and went like a child into the outstretched arms, and he, having wet his handkerchief on the mist-damped grass, bent the weary head back against his shoulder, and wiped away the blood-stains from the despairing face.
"You walk in your sleep, Leonie, by reason of the workings of an overwrought brain, that is all. India is the problem, and your ayah is the answer. I think she frightened you somehow, made some deep impression on you, on your baby brain, and we are going to India to find her. It's very simple, dear, once find the cause we can easily find the remedy, and it will be much better if you come with me. By the way, who gave you that cat's-eye?"
He had made a slip.
"When did you see it?" answered Leonie quickly, "I never showed it to you! Were—were you down there near me, before you called?"
"No," steadily lied the man, "but the thing slipped through your blouse one day—it's a brute. Who gave it to you?"
"My ayah! Do you know, I think you are quite wrong about her. Auntie says Mother told her that she nearly broke her heart when I left India, seventeen years ago, and she writes to me regularly every three months. Only last week I had a letter from——"
"Do you speak Hindustani?" interrupted Cuxson abruptly, with a frown on his face.
"Not a word!"
"Or Sanskrit?"
"Oh! no, neither, but the letters are in English, evidently written by one of those letter writers, who get so much for each letter they write for the illiterate poor. And in every one she says how she loves me and longs for my return, and although she is very happy in the service of some Ranee in the north of India, she wants to give it up and come to me."
There was a pause, broken by the nearing thunder and the crash of the waves against the cliffs.
"Don't let's worry about that yet, dear, as everything is settled splendidly and——"
But Leonie pulled away and stood facing him with her hands in his against his heart.
"Do you really love me?"
The whisper was almost lost in the tumult of the breakers beneath.
"Love you, Leonie, love you!"
"What would you forgive me through love?"
"Forgive you! Everything! Dishonour could not touch you, and everything else I should forgive!"
Leonie tried to speak as she looked past him to the little green track between the downs which led to the world, and all it contained for her; and he, obtuse male, content in the plans he had mapped out entirely to his own satisfaction, and having blissfully taken the girl's consent to the programme for granted, failed to read the agony written across her face in capital letters.
"Tell me that you will be content, dear. I'm rich enough, but nothing compared with—oh! tell me, what do you like—what do you want—what do you really care for!"
She freed her hands and turned to look out to sea, where the day had been born in agony upon a bed of sullen, unbroken water.
Then she looked straight down at the waves flinging themselves against the cliffs, drenching her with spray, moaning, fretting at the barrier, retiring only to do the same thing over and over again.
"What do I want, O Man whom I love? I want a white house within high, white walls, on the edge of the sea. I want my arms full of children—yours and mine. I want love, oh! love and yet more love, that is what I want!"
The man twisted her round and held her at arms' length, her heels within an inch of the edge, her body bent back over the chasm, and her hair, spreading like a banner in the tearing wind, swept about his shoulders and across his face, intoxicating him with its perfume and silken caress.
Passion swept over him, he shook her like a reed, and her foot slipped off the earth into nothingness.
But not a word said she, though she prayed that he might suddenly let go his hold and send her crashing to sweet death on the rocks beneath.
You see what happens when you are decent and honest and have a mind to keep your word—just death rather than dishonour, and pain to others.
Whereas if only she had been dishonest, and therefore commonplace, she would either have chucked her given word to the devil, or the deep grey sea over which she stood, and cleared for her own happiness and a marriage licence; or kept her word in one sense while making deedy little plans of triangular pattern for future reference.
"Is that what you want, oh! heart of mine?" said Jan Cuxson, exulting in the sensation that his hands alone held her metaphorically and actually safe from the depths beneath. "And that is what I am going to give you, beloved, and more, much more in exchange for the treasure you will put into my hands. Oh! Leonie, my love——"
And yet he did not kiss her, but pulled her farther inland and let her go as she essayed to free herself, having come to the absolute breaking point.
What a wooing!
The copper coloured clouds were massed above and about them, the trees bent and straightened and bent again before the wind, the sea heaved in huge unbroken waves right to the horizon; Lundy Island, Hartland, and Baggy Point had disappeared in a driving sheet of rain.
How beautiful she looked as she stood in the storm, cut, bruised and dishevelled.
Just for one moment she looked into the eyes of the man she loved, whose hands were outstretched for the treasures she could not lay therein; and then she turned and fled as a great streak of lightning rent the clouds, and thunder like heavy artillery crashed about their heads.
She had not gone twenty yards when she stumbled and fell heavily.
Her boots were being hurled here and there by the waves in the cove where she had left them; her left foot was cut and bleeding badly, but a sudden desperate courage came to her when she felt herself raised and steadied.
"I shall carry you to the foot of the hill near your cottage!"
She struggled as he lifted her, struggled so violently that he put her on her feet.
"Don't touch me, Jan, don't come near me, because I—because——"
And the mantle of his satisfaction and content being suddenly rent into a thousand shreds by the knife edge of his intuition, he put both hands on her shoulders, looked down into the misery of her eyes, and very gently said one word.
"Because?"
"Because," and she began to laugh without making any sound, her mouth twitching, her shoulders shaking, "because I am to be married to-day at noon!"
"To-day! but you said——"
"I lied."
"You lied—to me!"
She made a little sound which reminded him of an animal agonising in a trap, whilst the fury of his own pain drove him to hurt her even more.
"Why—lie?"
"Why?" her eyes blazed as she defied the storm, her hell and fate. "Why?—because I love you, because I love you so much that I wanted to cheat life out of one month of happiness. And I have had it—I have had it—and I love you——"
She flung her hands up to the stormy skies and brought them down, clenched against her breast. "I love you, God hear me, I love you!"
And with a terrible cry that went wailing out to sea she fled away through the lash of the blinding storm.
CHAPTER XXIII
"The lighted end of a torch may be turned towards the ground, but the flames still point upwards."—The Satakas.
The church was simply packed!
The lucky ones, almost all women, wedged tight and fast, crushed their beautiful clothes against their neighbours' lovely raiment in the pews.
The unlucky ones stood in rows in the side aisles, just as their commoner sisters stand in rows upon the pavement edge to watch some passing show.
Some, less hindered by superfluous adipose tissue, had managed to seat themselves upon the tomb of one Sir William de Tracy, who had one time unduly concerned himself in the murder of a certain Thomas à Becket.
Indeed he built this church in atonement for his unseemly conduct, though something seems to have gone agley in the architectural penance, as the ghost of Sir William is to be met o' nights upon the sands of Woolacombe—so 'tis said.
Some of the still younger fry among the spectators, I mean worshippers in this solemn ceremony, clasped the heads in effigy of dead squire, or dame, or knight, in order to get the necessary purchase for the task of pulling themselves up for just one second in the supreme attempt to catch a glimpse of the principals in the parade.
Except for the setting of this beautiful house of God it might have been an entr'acte at some theatrical first night; same comments upon actors and audience; same criticism upon dress and morals; same yawning and fidgeting.
What had they not suffered and sacrificed to flatter the vulgar old millionaire! Anyway they expected a good deal in return for the excruciating journey down by rail or car, the whole day lost out of the season in London town, and the wedding present.
Unless you own the genuine thing in rank or reputation, how frightfully difficult it is to send an astute vulgar old millionaire the one present which will open his doors to you.
If you do own the genuine thing, an electro-plated toast-rack will be all-sufficient. If you don't, well it's simply no good worrying around the bottom rung of the ladder which he has climbed, and from the top of which he sits making faces of derision at you.
The principal performers had just disappeared into the vestry as the old clock chimed twelve, and Jan Cuxson, swinging back the churchyard gate, strode up the narrow tomb-lined path to the church door.
Every woman turned to look at him as he passed.
"Look at 'e now, Mrs. Ovey! He be staying with me. Did 'ee iver zee sich a butivul face. Jist like a picture. Sit 'ee still, young Gracie, an' doan 'ee walk over thikee graves, now! I tell 'ee 'e'd make a proper bridegroom, 'e wud!"
"Iss, I reckon! 'Er 'av done mighty fine fer 'erself, 'er 'ave; Mrs. Tucker tol' me all 'bout 'un, but 'er be terr'ble young, b'ain't 'er, for the likes of thikee ol' man?"
The country women patted and pulled at their best clothes, and turned their sweet, slightly bronzed faces, with skins like satin, up to the blazing sun.
"Iss, vrai! that 'er be Mrs. Pugsley! But did 'ee iver zee the likes on they ther zatins an' laces an' juels they vine wimen be wearin'?"
"Iss! an' luk at th' ol' paint an' stuff ther be ol over ther vaces? Dear, dear now, ther lips be terr'ble raid, b'ain't 'un? Luks lik' they'd bin stealin' cherries! An' ther eyes be terr'ble black! Luks lik' the'd bin fightin' with ther 'usbands."
Silence fell, during which sweet music stole through the church windows to fall like a benison upon the charming simple folk who, by their courtesy and gentleness, make Devon such a blissful county to dwell in.
"Can't think, now," suddenly remarked Mrs. Ovey, "w'y thikee young lady 'av chose Mortehoe Church fer 'er weddin'!"
"I've year'd tell that 'er vather be related to zum lord 'oo 'elped kill some ol' parson, yers an' yers gone by! Gracie! now wat be th' ol' man's name now that taicher tol 'ee 'bout?"
"Tracey!"
"Iss, iss! I've year'd tell 'e be buried zumwher yer 'bouts, an' th' ol' bridegroom be proper zet to be married down yer!"
"After th' weddin'," continued Mrs. Ovey, supplying information, "all th' vine volks be goin' on to Lay Hotel vur summat t' ate. Arter that they tu be goin' vor 'oneymun over ta 'ardland in li'le ol' 'ouze. Poor li'le lady, an' th' ouze they be goin' to be so small ther b'ain't no room vur zervants nor nothin'!"
"My now, Mrs. Ovey, but that young feller be proper 'ansom, b'ain't 'e now? I reckon it be a pity that 'er 'adn't zeen 'im befor 'er vixed up with old 'un. I remember when Bill was courtin' me, 'ow——"
And so on and so forth, whilst inside the "vine wimen" from London Town made comments after their own kind.
"Some women have all the luck," remarked an enamelled dame, whose bridge and dressmakers' debts were on a par with those of her three daughters who had safely, oh! quite, but most unsuccessfully survived many seasons, "I wonder how Susie managed it? Gawky young miss, isn't she? Just out of school. Um—um—um!"
"Really! is she! Strange in her manner—you don't mean it—oh! of course not, dearest! Fancy! hates society, swims at night, walks ten miles a day—yes, of course! not quite cosmos, what d'you call it—um—um—um?"
"Miraud Soeurs, I believe—yes—did you like that draped effect? I suppose he did—poor old Susie's up to her eyes in debt! Didn't the happy bride look ghastly? Wonder how she came by the accident—and what it was—and means—um—um—um!"
"Yes! very, in a bizarre way. I'm damned sorry for her. Did you hear about the girl in the shop basement?—heavy! I should think so—put the screw on what?—hear the bride's settlement is simply enormous—um—um—um!"
And as they gossiped and criticised, tearing each other to pieces without zest, having already done it so often that their minds resembled rows of backyards piled with the rags and bones of their mutual enemies—or so-called friends—the organ played softly, and the sun through the stained glass flung dazzling lozenges of colour upon the tiles and pillars.
Then came that unmistakable rustle of anticipation, followed by the satisfied sigh of those who have patiently waited either for the hoisting of the black flag upon the prison wall, or the appearance of a popular bride in the doorway of the church.
There was a shimmer of white and silver, and a strenuous tussle in the pews and aisles as the stereotyped march from "Lohengrin" crashed through the little church.
Jan Cuxson made one step backwards, and stopped as his heel struck against the wall, then stepped forward and stood right in the path of the bridal party.
Straight down they came without a halt; gushing women who did not know her darted forward to shower the bride with their unwanted congratulations, hesitated and darted back with self-conscious giggles as they met the stony, unresponsive eyes in the death-white face.
Very slowly she passed, with the fingers of one hand resting on the arm of the corpulent, self-satisfied man beside her; the other arm, bandaged from elbow to wrist, was held in a sling across her breast, the fingers nearly touching the one jewel she wore, a sleepy cat's-eye hanging from a slender golden chain.
The happy bride was looking straight in front, down the road to Calvary, where stood a man outlined against the burst of light flooding through the door.
She neither slowed nor hastened as she passed through the lane of twitching mouths and popping eyes and approached him; then she stood quite still, a gleaming, living statue in shimmering satin and lace, and removing her hand from her husband's arm, laid it with a little gracious gesture on Jan Cuxson's, and he, bending low, gently kissed it.
An artist made the record lightning sketch of his life when in a few lines he drew the dignity, the despair, and the tenderness of the girl's face, upon whose brow and above whose heart rested weirdly two great crimson stains flung by the sun through the coloured windows.
For one brief second her moonlit eyes looked straight into the steady grey ones; then the heavy lids sank slowly, and the faintest rose colour swept from brow to chin, causing the artist to murmur to himself, "The ice floes are breaking!" as, like the gallant gentleman he was, he tore the sketch slowly across and across.
Two little words had been whispered loud enough to reach the ears beneath the orange blossom.
"I forgive!"
When he had said it Leonie once more laid her hand upon her irate husband's arm, and passed out into the sun to be met with the shrill cheers of the children who flung basketsful of wild flowers upon the bridal path, and the church was filled with a sound like a swarm of startled bees.
"Um—um—um!"
CHAPTER XXIV
"Many waters cannot quench love; neither can floods drown it."—The Bible.
The girl kicked aside the jumble of clothes littering the cabin floor, and bending her head squatted upon the bunk, and incidentally, and quite indifferently, upon a crêpe-de-Chine blouse which badly needed washing, and casually watched her mother who was scrabbling through a cabin trunk in a manner reminiscent of a terrier ratting in a hedge.
"Why on earth couldn't you stay on deck?" demanded the mother angrily, as she lifted the transformation from her brow and heaved it on to the upper berth, thereby unashamedly exposing a head not unlike a gorse common devastated by fire.
"I can't find that—oh! here it is. What a state it's in. D'you think the Chinese man could iron it?"
That was one of those hybrid négligés which can serve its turn as a bath gown, a bedroom wrap, or, covered with a genuine native-made tinsel shawl (bought at Teneriffe but made in Birmingham), can pass as an evening gown in the tropics. The cabin was on one of the liners which, calling at odd places like Genoa, Naples, Algiers, etc., allows you to pick up letters brought by the mail boat to Port Said. The inhabitants of the inner, double berthed black hole, called by courtesy a cabin, were the mother and her last unmarried daughter who lived in Surbiton.
The mother had successfully acquired a reputation as a world-wide traveller, and husbands for her numerous daughters amounting to a net total of six, by dint of travelling the latter backwards and forwards over those heartbreaking routes which suffer from two weeks or more of going without a break.
Try from Aden to Sydney with one break at Colombo, and the above long and somewhat involved paragraph will be easily understood.
"I say, mater, guess who gave me these—have one?"
Mater sat back on her heels, bumping her head against the washstand, plucked a Simon Artz from its cardboard nest, lit it, and emitted volumes of smoke from mouth, and nostrils, until the cabin resembled the smoking-room of any West End ladies' club.
"Oh! don't ask silly questions, it's too hot! Who?"
"The Grizzly Bear!"
"No!"
"He did! He'd been ashore!"
"No!"
"Yes! I'd been talking to him, and had just turned to say something to the Babe when he slipped down the gangway. I do wish we weren't so hard up. It's an awful rag going ashore. He came back an hour ago, found a letter, and has been sitting up and taking notice ever since. It was a man's handwriting, I saw the envelope!"
Mater flung everything pell-mell into the trunk, pushed it back with the aid of her daughter's heels under the berth, bent her head and sat down beside her.
"He looked so different that I actually asked him for a cigarette, and he gave me the box, and if it hadn't been for Mrs. Tomlinson-Tomlinson's hateful little brat—you know—Muriel—we should have had a good long talk. The little wretch actually sat on the arm of his chair; it's extraordinary how he lets children worry him."
"Yes! dear Lady de Smythe has christened him the wet nurse!"
Which leaves no doubt whatever that some time, somewhere the dear lady had been clawed by the grizzly.
"Why don't you get into your black sequin to-night! It'll be frightfully hot going down the Canal, and you can slip on the scarf if you go up on the boat deck, as everyone does the first time they go through the Suez."
"Yes! I might—the blue does want ironing!" replied the daughter, taking a hand in that weird game of "make-believe" which the majority of women play between themselves. For what ultimate benefit it is impossible to say, since from the moment the cards are shuffled they know, to a nicety, the tricks and manoeuvres of each player.
Anyway the sequin was fished out from somewhere, and shaken and pulled this way and that.
It consisted of a skirt of a kind, a waistbelt, two shoulder straps, and a big jet butterfly poised just where, for the sake of decency, it was necessary, and as a toilette allied with the boat deck would doubtless prove most attractive to the man who was not in search of a wife.
The man it was intended to subjugate, meanwhile, was lying full length on his deck chair intent upon a letter, oblivious of the noise of the harbour and the racket necessary to the boat's imminent departure.
Jan Cuxson had read the letter five times and was just starting on it for the sixth, subconsciously congratulating himself on his foresight, or horse sense, which you will.
His cabin was like nothing on earth, and in it, upon the outer edge of a dead maelstrom of his entire wardrobe, stood John Smith, cabin steward.
John Smith is not his name, but who does not know and bless him if they have ever travelled on this particular boat.
He has a big, very black mole on the extreme tip of his nose, and is the cheeriest, most optimistic soul on the ocean wave, yea! even those out-size waves in the Bay at its worst.
After the first lightning perusal of the God-sped letter, Jan Cuxson had given divers urgent orders for as much as possible of his gear in the hold to be thrown ashore.
Imagine it, and the boat almost due to sail!
He had then rushed to his cabin and initiated the maelstrom, until common sense had smitten him between the love-fogged eyes of his desire; whereupon he had heaved a huge sigh of utter contentment, propped himself against the door for the second perusal, rung the bell, countermanded all he had ordered, and left John Smith to it.
He had pulled the letter out of its envelope, growled at a vendor of Egyptian wares, and turned with a whole-hearted smile at the sound of a small voice.
"Is 'oo velly unhappy, Mr. Bear?"
The man did not know that he had become the object of that loathsome habit of nicknaming all and sundry which a certain clique on every boat consider so smart.
"I'm the happiest man on earth—water, I mean, little one. Yes! come along up—and why Mr. Bear?"
Followed a scramble, a gurgle, and arranging of infinitesimal frills.
"Mummie calls 'oo Mr. Grizzly Bear because you're cwoss! Mrs. Tom—Tom—li'son says Mummie's cwoss 'cos 'oo wouldn't take the buns she wanted 'oo too. Why didn't 'oo take the buns—buns nice, I fink!"
An agitated nurse swooped down at this crucial moment and recovered that which she had lost, leaving the man laughing aloud to the astonishment of all near him.
Laugh! Why he had not laughed since he had left Mortehoe Church, neither had he smiled at any time upon the boat, or upon anybody except the children; and now he laughed, all on account of an atrocious scrawl on many sheets of thin paper which he started once more to read.
"I hope," ran the scrawl of the man for whom Cuxson had fagged at Harrow, "that this catches you at Port Said, because"—followed a badly expressed bit of business. "London's had the shock of many seasons, by the way. You know that old brute, Pickled Walnuts, well I won't say anything about the old scallawag because he's dead. Well! he married the other day, you'd sailed I think, I didn't go to the wedding. Did you know Susan, old Hetth, V.C.'s sister by marriage—up to her eyes in debt—sold her niece to pay them, I suppose, to the old millionaire—wonder what hold she had on the girl.
"Anyway they went off somewhere in Devon for the honeymoon, God help her.
It seems that she had had an accident the night before, or something, and
fainted, or something, directly after dinner—the wedding dinner, I mean.
Did you ever learn composition on the Hill? I didn't!
"The woman who looks after the cottage put Lady Hickle to bed and tucked her up; placed a bottle of port in—all came out at the inquest—old Hickle's room, and left the house. Next thing, about two o'clock in the morning, a shepherd or something saw a blaze and went to look. Cottage on fire, old Hickle burnt to a cinder, and the girl hauled out of bed just in time, gibbering in French or something in panic I suppose.
"The charwoman thinks the curtains caught fire in the candle, and that the port had made the old man sleep heavily and that he was suffocated by the smoke.
"Full moon, too. What a sight it must have been! Place burned to the ground.
"I believe Lady Hickle is quite a girl and very beautiful—and is starting on a tour round the world or something—she'll get most of his millions, I believe. By the way, who do you think have fixed it up. Dear old Bumble and Diana Lytham. Heaven be good to him. Your turn next, old boy! Well she'll be darned lucky who gets you, see how well I trained you, d'you remember, etc., etc."
The man sat still for some long time, then suddenly sprang to his feet and went aft.
The dressing bugle had sounded but he had not heard; the dinner bugle had sounded and still he had not heard, as he stood at the stern watching the swirling wash of the slow-moving boat.
"Full moon, too! She was hauled from her bed gibbering in French or something."
He quoted the words, and crushed the letter savagely in his hands, for even in the fullness of his joy he remembered Leonie's words, "Terrible things happen wherever I am—they follow me." But in the greatness of his love he figuratively shrugged his shoulders, gathered his beloved into the safe haven of his arms, and closed the moonlit eyes with kisses.
Whilst a jet butterfly fluttered in vain over a very décolleté expanse which covered a heart agitated by rage and disappointment on the boat deck.
CHAPTER XXV
"And thy life shall hang in doubt before thee."—The Bible.
Leonie and her aunt were having tea at the Ladies' Union Club, of which the latter was almost an original member.
You know the place where, arriving on foot or with the trail of the omnibus upon you in the shape of a two-penny ticket grasped tightly in your right hand, you receive a stony stare as welcome from the hall porter, and one of dead fish glassiness from the rest of the staff.
There is a certain air of geniality diffused around a taxi arrival, but a car!—two or eight cylinder—owned, borrowed, or stolen, well! there you win in honours, no matter what kind of private address you camouflage with that of your club.
Having cleared a way across the tobacco-laden atmosphere, through which can be spied ladies, young and old, inhaling and exhaling with more vigour than grace, they had ensconced themselves in the seat for two which lies isolated from the jumble of chairs and couches.
That seat having the advantage of isolation, your conversation does not gladden the ears of your neighbour nor theirs yours.
You know what that is like—if you don't, well, it's the kind that if written would read in italics: Ayah—kitmutgar—pukka—chotar hazri—syce, with reference, ultra-distinct and emphatic, to Government House, Simla, and my dear old friend, General Methuselah.
Just those little British odds-and-ends which go to the ruling, more or less, of the land of the peacock. Add to that the general, what shall I say, touch-and-go attire of the majority of the members. You know what it is like.
Lace collars over reconstructed tailor-mades; pseudo-suède gloves, chiffon scarfs, generally ropey and heliotrope of hue; odd-coloured jerseys affiliated to odd-cut skirts, plus jangling oriental bracelets and chains, and mix that with a few puckered, leather-hued countenances and you get the club's principal ingredient.
Anglo-Indian.
Anyway the place is conveniently situated, and quite bearable if you can put up with the waiter or the somewhat overdecorated and ever-changing waitress telling you, in front of your guest, that you "can only 'ave cakes and bread-un-butter forrer shilling, every-think-else-is extra."
Cheery, when you may have been doing your best to make an impression!
Of course every member (if she ever gets as far as this) of every ladies' club will here draw her pharisaical skirts about her and edge nearer to her neighbour.
"Did you read this"—quotes—"awfully good, isn't it? Of course it's meant for the Imperatrix—the Toga—the Ninth Century—the Spook."
It isn't!
It's just typical.
Is there any one thing in any one ladies' club to differentiate it from its sister establishment—especially in the canteen?
I will pay one year's town subscription to any woman knowing, of course, the difference between husks and food, who will honestly declare that her heart has not plumped to her boots after a spur-on-the-moment invitation to a man to lunch or dine at her club.
By spur-on-the-moment I mean when she has not had the time to negotiate with the cook, via the head waiter.
You do not need the menu to tell you that plaice is here your portion; or a lightning glance to ascertain that the exact number of your prunes is six, and that of your guest half a dozen; or just a sip of your coffee—well! there you begin to talk feverishly and to press liqueurs and cigarettes upon the suffering guest.
But to come back to the club tea-room.
"My dear," Susan Hetth was saying, jangling with the best, and pitching her voice so that it literally, though slangily, beat the band, "I really think, considering your position and recent bereavement, that you should wear——"
"Please be quiet, Auntie," said Leonie, who in a grey and pale mauve confection looked like a field of statice against a pearl-grey sky. "I came here to talk about you, not clothes. You see I want to tell you how I have settled things before I sail."
Her aunt fretted with a teaspoon, and spoke in the absurd peevish way which had been so attractive at seventeen.
"For the last time, Leonie, I want you to listen to me!"
"Other way round, Auntie," said Leonie, who had chosen the club, of all places, for a last tête-à-tête with her relation, in the hope that the presence of others would serve as a dam to the flood of tears which had streamed almost unceasingly during the last month.
"But it's absurd, idiotic——"
"Auntie, dear, we've been through all that a hundred times, and a hundred million times more won't make me change. I will not touch a penny of Sir Walter's money——"
"Oh! Leonie, your husband!"
"Not my husband in any sense at all, except for the awful name. Why"—and she spoke with sweet intense enthusiasm—"do you know they are going to build a house in Devon for blind babies out of my marriage settlement, and endow it, and have resident teachers—think of it——"
Leonie broke off to manipulate the tea-things to the rhythm of a one-step.
"And all the rest of the money, Leonie, oh! it's scandalous!"
"Oh, that!" said Leonie, manoeuvring the milk out of a broken milk-jug. "Except for Sir Walter's special bequests, it all goes back to the family. They've almost all come to see me at the hotel, such honest, nice people; and oh! so grateful. Mrs. Sam Hickle is moving to Balham from the Waterloo Road to open a fruit shop, she brought me a huge basket of vegetables, carried it into my room herself; and a young Bert Hickle, who has a whelk-barrow in the Borough, brought me a whole turbot which had soaked through its newspaper wrapping. He gave it to the page-boy to carry, and I do wish you had seen their faces when the tail suddenly burst through, just as the page-boy was gingerly laying it down on a most appropriate resting-place, a marble consol."
Leonie laughed just as the music stopped, a ringing, happy laugh which caused people to stare and then nudge, or kick each other surreptitiously as they recognised her.
"It's all settled about you, Auntiekins. I'm paying your debts, which aren't so terrific, only foolish, and giving you five hundred pounds to go on with. That, with your own income, will be all right if only you will live in the country instead of hanging on to the edge of a society which doesn't want you. Still, you do exactly as you like, dear, only remember that I shall only have just enough to live on when I've got through the thousand pounds, and don't run up any more debts."
"Why not invest the thousand, Leonie, sensibly." Susan Hetth's voice was dull, choked doubtlessly by the dust of her castle ruins.
"I've got to go to India!"
"Why, for goodness sake?"
"I don't know, Auntie, I've simply got to go!"
"How silly," said Auntie, as she forced a cigarette inartistically into a holder, adding abruptly, as her commonplace mind jumped at a commonplace loop-hole, "Where is Jan Cuxson? I should think——"
Leonie answered quickly, breaking her aunt's words.
"I have no idea! I haven't heard from him since he left England."
"Huh!" said Susan Hetth, putting up an absolute smoke screen, "and what will you do after the money is spent, pray?"
Leonie stared wide-eyed into the tobacco haze. "That," she said slowly, "is on the knees of the gods!"
Talking being temporarily suspended by the band in the death throes of the overture to Zampa, the two women sat silent; one frantically trying to solve financial problems, the other with her head a little on one side as though trying to catch the thread of some conversation.
A strange thing happened as the band stopped.
Leonie rose quite suddenly, with a half-eaten cake half-way to her mouth.
"I must go!" she said quite flatly, placing the cake on a plate and looking at her aunt without seeing her.
"Go!" shrilled Susan Hetth, putting her fourth cup of tea down with an irritated slam. "Where on earth to?"
But Leonie turned and walked away with never a word of explanation, and her aunt, with the thrifty side of her plebeian soul uppermost, turned to the task of getting through as much as possible of what was left of the two teas for which two shillings had been paid.
The porter looked hard at Leonie when she asked for a taxi, hesitated for a moment, looked hard again, and refrained from putting the question hovering on his tongue.
"Seemed quite dazed like," he explained later to his wife in Camberwell as she juggled with sausages, "pale as death, with a kind of funny look round her eyes!"
"To the British Museum," Leonie said through the window as the taxi door closed, and the funny look round her eyes deepened into a line of perplexity between the eyebrows, as the cab bore her swiftly to her destination and her destiny.
She walked swiftly up the steps to the institution she was visiting for the first time, and through the glass swing doors, just as though she was hurrying to an appointment; she turned, without hesitating, sharply to the left up the long flight of stairs, passed through the rooms filled with relics of Rome found in Britain, and stopped.
Just for a second she put the palm of her ungloved hand against her forehead, sighed quickly, with her head bent forward, then passed through the doorway, turned to the left, stopped and said "Yes?"
And the man, in faultless western clothes save for the white turban which with its regulation folds outlined the pale bronze face, with a look of satisfaction in the dark eyes, salaamed before the beautiful woman who had looked at him questioningly.
"Allow me!" he said simply, bending to pick up the glove she had dropped, the smile of satisfaction deepening as he looked at her again.
She had turned from him, and stock-still was staring into the glass case which lined the wall.
Closer she pressed, until her nose, flattened against the glass looked like a white cherry.
"Kali," she read, "Kali, the Goddess of Death. I thought—I——"
Lower she leant to look at the square stone image numbered thirty-seven.
High breasted, squatting on her crossed legs, garlanded with skulls, with five hands, holding a sword, a thunderbolt, a skull, a snake, a cup, and the other two raised in blessing, the goddess leers at you like a very old woman from behind the glass.
Leonie turned swiftly to find herself alone; and the hunted look in her gold-flecked eyes deepened to horror as she gathered her skirts about her, and fled blindly through the rooms, and down the stairs, and out of the building.
Heading straight down Museum Street for Oxford Street, she ran across the road at the risk of her neck and the wrath of a taxi-driver; gave one terrified backward glance at a law-abiding student from India, who was going to his cheery lodgings in Bloomsbury; and fled into the tea-rooms which lure you outside with the pretty apple-painted ware in the window, and where inside, one beautiful little blonde head shines like a field of ripening wheat.
Safe, she crouched down behind the window curtain with her eyes fixed unseeingly on the distorted figures of the Java frieze.
BOOK II
THE EAST
CHAPTER XXVI
"But when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life."—The Bible.
The first-class passengers, leastways the passengers travelling first class, lay stretched out side by side, one sex to starboard, t'other to port, divided, however, more by the fear of the eyes of the other sex, than by any hatch piled with chairs, or ship rule pinned upon the notice-board, and signed by the chief.
Surely the hours of the tropical nights passed in sleep on deck are those in which we should return thanks for lacking the gift of seeing ourselves as the officer going on, or coming off watch, the fugitive apprentice, or some stray passenger see us.
Human chrysalis, wrapt in the cocoon of sheet or unsightly night attire, with starboard boudoir cap awry, exposing the steel cracker or the lanky lock; unsightly pedal extremities peeping from the unfeminine pyjama; ruby lips, uncarmined, ajar; whilst to port like rocks from the ocean, unshaven chins rise unrebuked from blanket billows, and pyjama button and buttonhole play touch across the unseemly, unrestrained and unconfined masculine torso.
It was one of those insufferably hot nights you get sometimes as you turn into the Hoogli, when the smell of the land comes in sickening wafts, and the enchantment of the East is considerably lessened in your opinion by the oppression of the atmosphere.
You are going up the Hoogli! you are passing the Sunderbunds! you can almost see the tigers squatting in rows at the water's edge! it is the East! it is India!—also it is infernally hot, and having retired to your cabin to disrobe, you anathemise your stable companion who has been likewise inspired; curse your overworked cabin steward who has heaved your bedding on to the wrong site; re-arrange everything and bed down.
Everyone was asleep when the light of the full moon caused a subdued lustre under the awnings, and a greenish light in Leonie's wide-open, staring eyes, as she suddenly swung herself over the side of her bunk and slid unhurt to the floor.
She made an arresting picture as she stood listening intently, her flimsy garment falling away from her shoulders, leaving the slender white back bare to the waist, while she held handfuls of the transparent stuff crushed against her breast, upon which lay a jewel hung from a gold chain.
Her feet were bare, her arms were bare, and her tawny mass of hair hung in two thick scented plaits to her dimpled knees; and she repeated some words over and over again like one insane or delirious.
"Ham abhi ate hai—ham abhi ate hai."
Which being translated means "I come—I come."
Without the slightest hesitation she opened the door of No. 1 state-room, which she had had to herself after Port Said, and which, as anyone who has travelled on this particular boat will know, gives on to the dining saloon; passed swiftly along the narrow passage past the notice board and the head steward's cabin, and stood among the human cocoons on deck.
For a moment she paused irresolute, turned, and swiftly mounted the companion-way to the bridge deck, her bare feet making no sound, her beautiful body shining like ivory through the flimsy garment she held gathered to her breast.
Oh! well for her was it that the ship slept, and that the awnings made it almost impossible for those on the bridge to see what took place on the deck.
Though a report of sleep-walking on board would only have served to broaden the lines of laughter in the chief officer's mercurial soul, and deepen the lines of cynicism around the second officer's cynical mouth when the one relieved the other on the bridge at the matutinal hour of four a.m.
And very well for Leonie was it that the captain had forbidden sleeping on his deck, and that the high caste native who had come aboard at Colombo was sitting on the port side as she approached.
Owing to his high caste, and the purity of his habits, the young native had passed the days apart from his fellow-passengers since he had come aboard; and the days left were too few for the white folk to show any curiosity concerning the handsome man.
You don't feel curious about anything after almost five weeks seafaring; you feel kind of stunned.
Leonie, therefore, had not noticed him particularly as he sat apart with his delicate oval face behind a book when she approached, or passed his chair; neither had she felt the gentle luminous eyes resting upon her from the nape of her sunkissed neck to her slim ankle.
Nor did he now, long after midnight, make any sign when, without touching the rails, she came swiftly up the companion-ladder, bending her bronze head to miss the edge of the awning; and he made no movement as she sped past him, crossed the deck to the starboard rail, and putting both hands upon it, swung her body back as you do when you are going to vault clear.
No movement of his body, but he gave a jerk of his will-power which brought the veins out like whipcord upon his forehead, and drove the nails deep into the palms of his hands.
And in response, Leonie's arms slackened. She stood quite still, staring out to where the Sunderbunds lay hidden under mist; then she put one bare foot upon the lower rail, and swinging herself up, sat sideways, leaning far over; in such a position that the slightest lurch of the ship would have sent her headlong into the water.
The native's eyes narrowed to slits, and his nostrils dilated strangely as he pitted his will against the force which was impelling her.
He dared not speak, he dared not touch her. For he knew that one moment of recognition, one breath of scandal touching himself and the woman he trailed, meant the crumbling of the altar he was building stone by stone to his god.
For that reason he had taken the mail instead of the slow boat she had chosen, and had thought long before deciding to come aboard, even at Colombo.
He was afraid because of the evening she had answered when he called her across London to his side, by the image of Kali the Terrible in a glass case; afraid that she might recognise him and be on her guard, undoing all that he had done in the last year in obedience to the mandate of the old priest.
Sleeping Leonie, having descended from her perilous seat, stood for a moment with outflung arms, looking across the waters; then turned and walked swiftly and softly like a cat, straight up to the man who rose. Sweetly she laughed up into his face as she laid one little hand upon the great white cloak which swung from his shoulders, unaware that in moving her hand her own garment had slipped, and that her beauty lay exposed like a lotus bud before his eyes.
She came so close that her bare shoulder touched the fine white linen, and the curves of her scarlet lips wet but a fraction of an inch from his own; and her whimpered words in the eastern tongue were as a flame to an oil well.
"This plant," she murmured, with the light of unholiness in her gleaming eyes, "this plant is honey born—at the tip of my tongue honey—mayest thou come unto my intent!"
He answered softly in the same sonorous tongue and she swayed towards him like a flower.
"About thee with an encompassing sugar-cane have I gone, in order to absence of mutual hatred; that thou mayest be one loving me, that thou mayest be one not going away from me!"
Where is the dividing line?
What is it that causes the saint suddenly to fling aside his holiness and hurl himself headlong to perdition? or the sinner to hurl aside his evilness and fling himself headlong into a monastery?
The jogging of memory, mostly, I think.
For what resolutions can not be conceived, and accomplished, or broken by the scent of a flower, the touch of a hand, or the feel of a piece of stuff.
Love, sudden, overpowering oriental love consumed the man, passion scorched his soul, and desire shook him from his dark head to the slender feet.
He was awake and the girl was asleep, and craving to set his seal upon her in her unconsciousness, he bent towards her until the fierceness of his breath disturbed the lacey frill about her breast, bringing to view the jewel suspended from a golden chain.
Instantly his joined hands were raised towards his face mechanically in prayer, his eyes burned with the fanaticism of his creed, and his face became old in knowledge.
The dividing line? the lifted veil? Nay! nothing but a jewel with the form and the colouring of a cat's-eye, which had cunningly winked up at him from the secret places of the girl's bosom; so that she returned to her cabin with her body unscathed, and her soul on the edge of the precipice.
And the most razor-tongued, detested colonel mem-sahib of the line in India thanked her stars that the mosquitoes had roused her frantically, but just in time, to see the trailing edge of Leonie's indecorous night attire disappear through the door.
Aloofness, allied to perfect shoes and silken hose, will find a woman more enemies on board than all the pretty faces and frocks in the world; and if, in addition, she can heap on such items as a seductive face and figure; and if gossip via the newspapers can and does supply information as to the contents of her pass-book, plus savoury rumours concerning mysterious incidents in her past; well! 'twere better for that woman to stop at home, bob her hair, and take to that field of literature which is not bound on any side by the hedge of convention.
So it came about that her friends, after stumbling up the gangway at the Kidderpore Docks, with handkerchiefs held against their noses to protect them from the effluvia wafted from Garden Reach, lifted their eyebrows slightly at the frostiness of the adieux between their guest and her fellow-passengers.
And no one in the scramble and flurry noticed the elderly pock-marked ayah who had been engaged as Leonie's bodywoman as she lifted the hem of the mem-sahib's skirt and laid it against her forehead, and touched the instep of the high caste native when he passed behind the girl and disappeared in the crowd of his countrymen which opened up a way before him.
An ayah, who, to the utter astonishment of her friends, had given up the high position of head body-woman to a Ranee of the North, in order to accept the humble post of ayah to a mem-sahib.
A post she had gained by the baffling methods of the East which bind each man's work to that of his neighbour with an unbreakable, untraceable chain; and gained too, over the sleek heads of many of her sister ayahs, who, armed with countless and phenomenally laudatory chits, had squatted patiently for hours in the servants' quarters of the bungalow at Alipore.
CHAPTER XXVII
"For lo! the winter is past, and the rain is over and gone!"—The Bible.
"That's Lady Hickle!"
The two men turned in their saddles as Leonie went by at a canter near the rails.
The raking great waler forging ahead like an engine of destruction was kept in check by Leonie, exuberant with health, the knowledge of a perfect seat and hands, and that uprush of spirits which an early ride on the Maidan brings—to some of us.
"Not the Lady Hickle?"
"The same!"
"Well, I'm damned! she's only a girl, and what a seat! Chucked the millions, too, didn't she? Having a good time?"
John Thorne frowned as he backed his horse before answering.
"We're great friends," he said shortly, and the other man tapped his teeth with his whip.
Thorne hadn't the slightest intention of implanting a snub, as the other man knew, knowing him and his most unfortunate manner.
Friends, yes! they were friends, two strong, super-sensitive characters drawn in sympathy one to the other; and John Thorne would have liked to have been a good deal more than a friend, but he had the sense to realise that the only kind of woman he could ever ask to share his rising fortune, bad manners, and worse temper, would be of the type designated in the short and unromantic word cow.
One of those slumbrous, sleek creatures who stand knee deep and content in a field of domestic trivialities; ruminate placidly upon the happy little events of the past hour; and always find a hedge under which to shelter at the first intimation of a storm.
Lucky, lucky cattle who do not know the temperamental ups and downs, the mental lights and shadows, the physical and psychological upheavals, or the intense joys and griefs of the more highly strung goat.
At that moment Leonie rode back slowly with some friends, and smiled at
John Thorne.
"No!" Thorne went on meditatively, "no, she's not having a good time. I can't quite make it out. You see, although she was only married for a day, the defunct tradesman husband rather overshadows her father's splendid career—old Bob Hetth, V.C., you remember. It would in this caste-bound country. Caste amongst us, ye gods! Then her clothes are really lovely, oh! ripping! make Chowringhee confections look as though they'd come from the durzi or the Lal Bazaar. And it seems that she's living on her capital, and that her hair curls naturally——"
The other man laughed out loud.
"Oh! you needn't laugh. Wait until you've been stationed as long as I have in Calcutta, then you'll——"
Leonie had turned and was coming up at a gentle trot.
"Gad! isn't she beautiful?" said the newcomer.
"Yes! I think that's really her trouble," replied Thorne as he moved to meet her.
"Good morning, and don't come too near the Devil. We were out in the fog this morning and it has made him as touchy as anything. Isn't it a simply perfect morning!"
For a moment she sat and looked at the funnels and masts swarming the placid Hoogli, turned her head as a far-away siren announced the arrival of a liner, gave a little sigh as she looked up at a kite sailing care-free overhead, and came back to earth with a smile.
"How d'you do," she smiled, upon the introduction of the other man. "And don't come too near the Devil, he's nervy; in fact I think he will burst with suppressed energy if I keep him standing longer. Shall we canter as far—oh!——"
"Hell!" finished Thorne after his kind, causing the corners of Leonie's beautiful mouth to lift as she raised a reproving finger.
The razor-tongued, most feared and detested colonel mem-sahib of the line, in the whole of India, rode up with a seat which would not have disgraced the sands of Margate.
Thinking that she might as well share the pig-skin, she had, upon her husband attaining his majority, taken a dozen riding lessons somewhere near Regent's Park; had hacked irregularly ever since, and still, when off her equine guard, talked about a horse's ankles.
"Don't come too near the Devil, Mrs. Hudson, he's so fidgety."
"Nonsense!" brusquely replied the lady as she nodded to the men. "It's you who are fidgety; comes of all your sleep-walking, brain fag or whatever you call it; you've—you've inoculated the poor darling," she added, clapping her hand on the Devil's hind-quarters.
Thorne made an ineffectual grab as the Devil reared so straight that Leonie's face was hidden in the mane, and backed his horse as the waler came down with a terrific clatter on the hard ground, scraping the colonel mem-sahib's foot as she wheeled about, emitting silly little cries, whilst men tore up from all sides with desire to help.
Up again he shot, pawing the air until it seemed that he surely must fall backwards, and men and women stared aghast until Leonie, raising her arm, brought her whip down between the silky ears.
"Damnation!" said John Thorne as Leonie patted the Devil's neck as he danced nervously on one spot.
"Time I took him home," she said. "The syce?—no! I daren't give him to anyone as he is—oh! good morning——
"Saw your haute école stunt, Lady Hickle," burst out a lad who rode a fallen star in the shape of a discarded discreditable polo pony. "Simply topping—but the Devil's a nervy demon, you shouldn't ride him—he'll get away with you one of these fine days. What happened?"
"He bumped into my horse, he's not safe to be out amongst us—indeed, he is not. Lady Hickle, I have been in Cat——"
The rest was lost in precipitate flight with the colonel mem-sahib's arms closely hugging her pony's neck, to the joy and the infinite delight of the rest of the spectators.
Unseen, uncouth John Thorne, furious at the scant courtesy shown to the lady of his dreams, had brought his whip down heftily, just above the mangy tail of the colonel mem's pony.
"I think I'll ride alone, if you don't mind," said Leonie with a ripple of suppressed laughter in her voice.
"All the way to Alipore?"
"Oh! it's not far, and I daren't trust the syce, the Devil would simply eat him."
The boy sidled in between her and Thorne, to the latter's infinite annoyance.
"Are you still keen on the shikar stunt, Lady Hickle?"
He gazed at her adoringly, and she smiled back into the honest, merry eyes.
"Shikar stunt?"
"Yes! you remember—Sunderbunds—dâk bungalows—shikari—wild animals in bunches—discomfort and all the rest. Say yes! Oh! do!" as Leonie slowly shook her head, "It'll be such a rag! Major and Mrs. Talbot—she's a fine shot—you and me, and we've got to get another fe—woman 'cos a simply top-hole fellow walked into the club last night, who's wonderfully keen on it; we're kind of related, his father was my mother's second cousin."
"And the higher the fewer," interposed Thorne, as Leonie laughed. "And what's the top-hole fellow's name?"
The youngster eyed the elder man with disapproval.
"Name—coming brain specialist—setting the old fossils in Harley Street by the ears—forgotten more than they've ever learned—name—why, Jan Cuxson. Won't you come, Lady Hickle?"
Leonie had suddenly bent to adjust her stirrup leather.
Her face was dead white, her eyes like stars, her mouth like a gate to heaven.
Almost a year and not a word, not a sign!
Tortured by doubt, racked with love, she had gone her way silently; blaming herself one moment for the ease with which she had shown her love; staking her all the next on the honesty of the man who had kissed her hand in forgiveness in the old Devon church.
Making excuses, heaping the blame upon herself, wearying, wondering—and now!
She lifted her face, which shone like the Taj at noon, and the worshipful company of men looked at her, almost stunned by its incomprehensible radiance.
"Yes," she said softly, without thought of the Devil's nerve-storm.
"Yes, I will surely come!"
As she spoke there was a terrific report as the hind tyre of a passing car burst with due violence, a sudden convulsive bound as the Devil leapt with all four feet off the ground, and a thunder of hoofs as, with the bit between his teeth, he cleared for the open just as a man on a sixteen-hand bay turned in at the race-stand opening.