CHAPTER XXVIII
"To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus
And witch the world with noble horsemanship!"—Shakespeare.
The onlookers behaved in the orthodox runaway-horse manner.
Women screamed, or took the opportunity to manipulate a surreptitious powder-puff.
Men shouted and waved their topees, or shouted and performed equestrian gymnastics, and the jockeys en masse cursed their masters' presence, and the more or less mythical value of their respective mounts.
Just for that one moment in which anything occurring out of your ordinary rut leaves you practically stunned into inertia.
Then things began to shape themselves, and for one unbelievable second caste was thrown to the soft wind which was sweeping up the last rags of mist.
Military mingled with commerce, the I.C.S. which, written in full, means God's Anointed, looked at instead of through the railway; jute condescended to the tourist, and white ejaculated to kaffyolay as they all sat gazing after the retreating form of the Devil and the pursuing shapes of one or two, who, fairly decently mounted, were pegging away stout-heartedly in a perfectly vain, but praiseworthy effort to save Leonie from certain death.
And then a sigh of relief went up.
A bay, stretched out, was flying like the wind, hoofs thundering on the hard ground, tail streaming, as, urged by his master's heel and voice, he strove to get to the tank before the runaway.
The distance and the speed were too great, the horse and kit were not sufficiently familiar to allow the spectators to identify the one man who seemed to have a plan in his head, and a horse under him.
The women strained their eyes in an endeavour to distinguish him, men kept theirs glued to Leonie who was riding straight and apparently making no effort to check the Devil, and policemen, forgetful of their dignity, their status, and their red turbans, hung over the rails near the grand-stand entrance with a riff-raff of taxi chauffeurs, pukka chauffeurs and syce.
For the first two hundred yards across the brown grass of the Maidan, Leonie thoroughly enjoyed the tearing gallop, having failed to grasp the fact that the Devil was bolting; but after having spoken soothingly, and pulled firmly without making any impression, somewhere about the middle of the polo ground she awoke to the fact that something had to be done.
"They're in it! No! missed, by Jove!"
The jockey bunched himself in an ecstasy of relief, and his mare danced with a fellow-electrical feeling as the Devil, wheeling sharply from the sparkling water in the tank, missed the lone tree by a foot; then gathering fresh impetus from the ever-nearing sound of thudding hoofs, tore towards the rails enclosing the two tracks.
They are not high, but they are fairly close together, and four in all, and a horse, blind from fear or temper, is quite as likely to let you down at the first as at the fourth.
But Jan Cuxson saw a gleam of hope.
Surely the runaway would slacken, surely no horse could possibly take four fences at that terrific speed; and if he did slacken, then the bay, as nimble as a cat in spite of his weight, would catch up, and something would be done before they dashed headlong across the tram-threaded, crowded Kidderpore Road.
Except for admiring her seat and seeming calm acceptance of her inevitable and horrible end, he had not bothered about the girl as a human being; but he frowned suddenly in a vague effort of recollection when she stretched out her hand in a beckoning gesture for help to the man she heard racing to her rescue.
"By Jove!" he cried, and "By Jove!" repeated the others behind, and "By Jove!" echoed the distant on-lookers as, without hesitation or click of hoof on wood, the Devil rose to the first, the second, the third and the fourth rail, skimming them like a bird, while the bay, just two rails behind, crashed over them with nothing to spare.
Inky words take a long time to write, but Leonie's perilous career towards the river was merely the matter of a few cyclonic minutes, leaving the drivers of bullock and water-buffalo carts, gharries and trams no time in which to make an opening for her tempestuous passage.
"Wah! Wah!" shouted a group of natives, draped in gaily coloured shawls, who watched admiringly the woman's perfect seat, caring not an anna that she might be thrown and break her neck or be crushed to death. In fact, the halo of death encircling the woman's head lent enchantment to the sport, causing some of the more wealthy to bet upon her end.
A woman, white or brown, more or less in India of what account? though it were a different matter in the case of the sahib who rode in pursuit, with a mouth like a steel trap and eyes of fire.
Two women, with babes astraddle on the hip, turned to watch Leonie, then stuffing more betel nut into their already crimson mouths, moved lightly through the dust towards the bazaar. Crouched at the foot of a tree, inhaling the smoke from the bowl of his rude native pipe, an old man under the benign influence of the drug, lost in dreams, took no notice whatever of the disturbance around him.
But the drivers, with raucous cries, twisted the tails of their kine to port or starboard, or beat them forcibly, and the tram driver, roused from the lethargy engendered by the cool of the early morning, by the shouts and cries, put on his brake, bringing his tram to a stand-still just as, with a terrific clatter of hoofs, Leonie dashed past the front of it with Cuxson at her heels.
There was a moment's uproar when, wishing for a better view, the driver of a tawdry ekka urged his half-starved pony forward.
The bay caught the side of the pony's bleeding mouth, causing the wretched animal to rear from pain and twist sideways into a bullock cart.
In its usual leisurely way the bullock swung itself also sideways, and almost under the bay's feet, causing him to lose a precious second, for which Cuxson made up by a ruthless use of his spurs, whilst before Leonie's eyes, quite close, through the trees, appeared the funnels and masts of the river craft.
"Oh!" she said involuntarily, having retained no impression during her motor drives of the road to Kidderpore; as the Devil tore with her across the old polo ground and the old Ellenborough course, straight to the crowded Strand Road.
And then she sighed a little sigh of relief, for the bay heaved alongside and a hand stretched for her bridle.
Side by side they clattered across the Strand towards the Prinseps
Ghat, standing just as ostracised and white as the Marble Arch.
Would the two horses crash headlong into the columns, or would the
Devil yield in time to the strong hand pulling on the bit?
Neither.
Terrified by the shouts of the populace, and the shrill whistling from the river, he raced along so close to the left side of the monument that Cuxson's boot scratched against the stone.
But as they crashed across the Strand and the sharp incline on the other side of the railway lines appeared, Cuxson, knowing that the moment had arrived, dropped his reins, and gripping the bay with his knees, leant over towards Leonie as she dropped her reins, and loosening her grip on the pommel, prepared to break her neck or her back or both as she slipped from the saddle.
Then she felt an arm round her waist.
She knew intuitively her rescuer's intention, but——!
Would a man's left arm be strong enough to lift her across her horse's hind-quarters at the terrific speed they were going, combined with her weight?
Would he be able to hold her until his horse slackened speed, or would they both overbalance and hurtle to the ground together? Would there be time to stop the horse, or would they all be hurled into the water?
The questions had hardly flashed through her mind when she felt herself lifted and swung.
For one petrifying moment the bay, pulled savagely until blood stained the bit, reared with its double weight within a yard of the steep incline, then, yanked cruelly by its master, swung sideways and came down; just as the Devil, striving at the last moment to check his wild career, hesitated for one half-second, then, pushed by his own terrific impetus, slid over the incline, and turning a complete somersault backwards, crashed into the water.
* * * * * * * *
Leonie's scarlet mouth trembled, and her yellow-green eyes gleamed as the man she loved pressed both her hands in his against his coat, until the high relief of the button was marked upon her skin, even through her glove.
"You," she said, so softly that the one note sounded like the chime of a temple bell.
"You!" he said, giving her arms a little savage wrench, then letting her go as the sound of approaching hoofs heralded the arrival of the first of the hunt to be in at the averted death.
A score or more of natives in their vivid colours, which seem so atune with all that has to do with love, mattered not at all; but Leonie turned and pointed casually to the Devil, enjoying his matutinal bath, as the boy flung himself from the discredited polo pony on which he had done his best.
He seized both her hands and held them very tightly, then catching sight of Cuxson, let them go suddenly.
"Of course!" he said, "of course you would—you lucky beggar!" Then added triumphantly, "But anyway, I told her so!"
CHAPTER XXIX
"A merry heart doeth good like a medicine!"—The Bible.
Guy Dean, the cheery optimistic lad who worshipped openly at Leonie's beautiful feet, and who was seeing the world at the behest of his wealthy old father, had been as good as his word.
Bursting with excitement, he hurled himself into his racing-car one
Sunday morning, about a fortnight after Leonie's hasty ride riverwards,
and passed like a whirlwind through the fairly empty streets of
Calcutta and the suburb of Ballygunge to the Jodhpur Club.
She was waiting for breakfast under the trees with some friends, discussing the four-some they had just finished, and watching the arrival of various cars which were parked, with some difficulty, with the others which had arrived earlier.
"Sounds all right," said Cuxson, as he looked with disfavour upon the club's breakfast pièce de résistance, namely fatty sausages and mashed of all things. "I am beginning to feel quite thrilled. Let's see, it will take us about a day to get to Tiger's Point by launch from Kulna, and there we find monkeys, adjutant birds, spotted deer, and tigers all ready."
"Don't rot!" said young Dean. "I've bribed the finest shikari in the whole of Bengal to stage-manage the whole thing; he did seem rather contemptuous over the chotar shikar, as he called it, I must say, until I began to juggle with backsheesch, and then he bucked up considerably and said he would do his very best to provide sport for the mems. The programme includes a ruined temple but not a tiger, 'cause he says it would be too risky a job at such short notice; also, and the real reason I should say, there hasn't been a tiger seen, anyway killed, since one was wounded and caught near that same Hindu temple umpteen years ago."
Leonie wrinkled her forehead at the last sentence, and looking up caught Jan Cuxson's eyes upon her.
"That sounds so familiar," she said perplexedly, "I——"
"The tiger at the Zoo which we knew all those years ago was trapped near a ruined Hindu temple in the Sunderbunds, Lady Hickle," he said quietly, watching the curious dilation of the pupils in the greenish eyes as he spoke.
"The very one!" broke in young Dean, as he suspiciously eyed a proffered curry.
"How did you come to think of the stunt?"
"I ran up against a perfectly top-hole native prince at polo last month. Amongst other things we started talking elephant and bagh—tiger, you know," laughed the lad, who always seemed to be on the point of bursting with high infectious spirits. "No, take it away, I will not eat a cold chupattie of the consistency of a bicycle tyre—as I was saying, we talked tiger, and somehow or other he suggested a few days' pursuit, through the Sunderbunds, of the spotted deer, muntjak or sambur——"
"Neither."
"Well, they're spotted."
"Dogs, perhaps."
Ignoring the execrable repartee, the boy turned completely round to
Leonie.
"By the way, Lady Hickle, if you ever go to Benares, don't forget to get off en route and visit the tomb of what's-its-name, it's quite near—oh! I forget—but it's on one of this fellow's father's estates. They don't let many people go and see it—afraid, I expect, of paper bags but if you do go you'll find an elephant or two hanging about to take you to the place in state. He's, the native prince, got some of the finest elephants in the whole of this mosquito-ridden land—makes a hobby of them."
"What happened to the original tiger?"
"Noah pushed him into the ark."
The lad grinned, and offered his cigarette to Leonie, who shook her head.
"Oh! stop fooling, Dean. Did a sahib manage to trap the brute, or what?"
"Yes! and sent it across to Blighty and shoved it into the Zoo. They're frightfully sick about that tiger being in a cage; they wouldn't have minded a sahib killing it for the good of mankind it seems, but putting it behind bars is an insult to some god, or something like that. Are you any good as a gun, dear lady?"
Leonie smiled at the tardiness of such an important question.
"Fair," she said, refusing an unkempt pot of marmalade as she turned to Cuxson. "I used to pass most of my holidays with the Wetherbournes, you know them, don't you? They were awfully keen on sports, and had a rifle-range, but I could beat them any day with a revolver."
"That doesn't matter, Lady Hickle," said the lad blithely. "All you'll have to do'll be to bob up and down in the tiger-grass in the approved style; keep your trigger away from the bush, and so as to feel thoroughly creepy, your eye out for pugs; which, in case some of you don't know, means tiger-tracks, not the dog with the beastly curly tail—and—oh, jolly!—here come the Talbots—just in time for the khubber which means tiger-news for those whose Hindustani is not as perfect as mine. Mrs. Talbot, don't pass us by, we have plenty of room and some superb sausages."
Edna Talbot laughingly sank into a chair next Leonie whom she liked, and immediately became enthralled in the discussion.
Honest, sweet little woman, with an honest plodding husband in a native regiment, inhabiting the dreary crumbling fort, without a murmur, whilst living in hopes of better things to come. Soft-voiced, considerate towards her native servants who worshipped her, one of the finest shots in India, and a true upholder of the British Raj in word, action, and clothes.
A perfect oasis, in fact, among the desert of her sisters, who storm in season and out at their native staff, before whom they likewise show themselves in ill-considered négligé, with their unbrushed hair down their backs, and their bare feet thrust into the evening shoes of last night's dance.
So it came about without any undue fuss that, after surviving the excruciating heat of the railway journey, three sahibs, two mem-sahibs, and their servants steamed out of Kulna in two launches to Tiger's Point, where awaited them the finest shikari in all Bengal, with an adequate retinue in which was included a chukler or skin dresser.
And who would notice the look in an ayah's eyes as she wiped her beloved mem-sahib's ant-ridden bunk with cotton-waste soaked in kerosene, and who on earth would connect the jungle guide with the British Museum.
CHAPTER XXX
"A mighty hunter, and his prey was man!"—Pope.
It was the second evening and they were nearing the ruined temple.
Walking silently and in single file along a faintly discernible track is an eerie proceeding if you are not used to the Sunderbunds.
True, in this jungle there are no serpent-like creepers festooned from tree to tree to impede your progress, or luxuriant and rank vegetation to hide snakes and other poisonous reptiles; neither is there a canopy of thick dark leaves above to obliterate the light of day, or the stars at night.
But the space between the crowding sundri trees which predominate, is packed with an undergrowth of light shrubs through which you have to force and tear your way if you lose the track; and you trip and twist your ankle at every step on the abominable sundri breathers which thrust themselves through the soil at every inch, and vary in thickness from a stick of vermicelli to a good stout bough.
"Look," will whisper your shikari as he sinks silently to the ground; and look you do with all your eye-power, and yet fail to see the spotted deer gazing at you, motionless from sheer fright, only a few yards away in the undergrowth, so at one is the animal's colouring with the dappled shadows on the leaves.
What depths of humiliation you plumb when the deer flees to safety through the trees and your shikari sighs.
Leonie as a gun had proved a dire, undiluted failure.
As a companion no one could beat her. Nothing tired her, nothing dismayed her. The terrific heat, the untoward hours and meals, the sting of mosquito, and the rip of the thorn left her unmoved.
She and Edna Talbot had gleefully climbed the ladder up to one of the two suapattah huts, which are a kind of shelter of leaves built for the sundri wood collector upon high platforms near the water, and in which they had passed their first vermin-stricken night. They had climbed cheerfully down the next morning without a word of complaint about the hours of torture they had endured as they sat at the hut door in the light of the moon, whiling away the time until the jungle cocks should crow by watching various shapes come down to the creek to drink.
But the first time a deer, hypnotised by fear or curiosity, had stood stock-still before her, simply asking for death, Leonie put her gun down and shook her head.
"I can't," she said sturdily. "I simply could not kill except in self-defence."
And although young Dean sighed lugubriously over his lady's defalcation, Jan Cuxson adored her utterly for her womanliness, and translated the remark the head shikari made as he handed back to the mem-sahib the rifle he had examined.
"He says he knows that in time of need you would be brave, and would have no fear even of a man-eater, but he says that you must carry your rifle because you can never tell in the jungle what may be awaiting you round the next corner."
As none of the party knew that the temple stood well hidden but quite close to the edge of one of the smallest creeks, open only to the narrowest native craft, they had no idea they were being taken there by a most circuitous route; and the shikari who did know thought that the silent guide was doing it purposely in order to give the sahibs an opportunity to add yet more to the ever-increasing bag of odds-and-ends, also to his backsheesch later on.
They were all longing to get to the ruins; more than desirous for their evening meal; aching to remove their boots, and the dust, and other evidence of a hard day's tramp.
"We are almost there, mem-sahib," said the very fine old shikari who, by the way, is a real personage, as he noticed a certain lack of elasticity in Leonie's movements. "Let us hasten, because at the fall of the shadows, all that is evil will come down to the waters, and behold! as this jungle is cut across and yet across with water-ways, the evil ones may even cross the sahibs' path."
"How much farther is it?"
"Another half-mile of this path, sahib, then through a glade without trees, then another mile and we find the outer wall of the temple."
The perfect English came from a small knot of natives difficult to distinguish in the shadows.
Leonie swung round and stared, and turning to Jan Cuxson put her hand on his arm.
"Funny, isn't it?" she said softly. "But do you know I am sure I have heard that voice before, and all this"—and she waved a hand vaguely—"seems so very, very familiar."
The head-man halted them once more at the edge of the clearing.
Strange bare spots these clearings which occur now and again in the Sunderbunds, looking for all the world as though they had been cleared by man some time or another for building purposes. Well, who knows if that doughty adventurer, Khan Jehan, did not prospect thereabouts centuries back.
"We will now place the mem-sahibs in the centre of a widening circle," said the shikari patiently, showing no sign of the detestation in which he held all sports-women, and the amount of trouble and anxiety their presence always entailed in a shikar, however insignificant.
To lose a sahib would be bad enough, but to see a mem-sahib seized and carried off before your very eyes, well, by the power of all the gods, that would mean ruin if not death; for, being a very wise old man, however good the news, he always prepared for the worst.
"I dislike these clearings at the setting of the sun, O defender of the poor!" he explained to the major, who kept his wife close and was beginning to wish he had not brought her, even if she were far and away the better shot of the two. "The trouble is upon one without even the warning of a cracking twig. Neither have I any love for the temple, for behold! one, even a great guru up to within a few moons of this day, lived there in worship, making sacrifice to the Black One. Yet is he not there to welcome us. Maybe he has fallen victim to the bhoot of the great cat whom he once fed."
Luckily for their peace of mind the sahib log only understood a quarter of a man's lament, and did not trouble their heads about ghosts.
"Aye, verily am I bewitched to allow of such tarrying, likewise to let such fear enter my head," he muttered to himself, and as a cloak to his misgivings sharply ordered ten men to proceed to the centre of the clearing in a semi-circle, and there await further orders.
They did as they were ordered, and were standing motionless when suddenly without a sound a great striped body leapt straight from the shadows of the surrounding trees upon a boy who had out-distanced his companions.
The instant double report of Jan Cuxson's rifle deadened the lad's horrible screaming and the growling of the wounded beast as it crouched flat, almost hidden behind the human body in the undergrowth, with tail lashing, and great claws tearing the boy's shoulder, as the rest of the terrified coolies ran shouting back to the party.
"Fire, sahib," commanded the shikari.
"Can't," tersely replied Major Talbot. "I shall kill the boy if I do; the brute's making a shield of his body. I'll creep round to the flank and——"
"Fire, sahib," urged the native. "Better to kill the lad as he is badly wounded," then added, "Tesch," as Talbot shook his head. "Stay here, sahib, to protect the mem-sahibs, I will creep to——"
"God!"
The word simultaneously escaped the three men as they and Edna Talbot raised their rifles.
Leonie was walking across the space, neither hastening nor hesitating, towards the tiger which crouched, growling softly, with its tail sweeping the ground.
Did she hypnotise the brute, or did her supreme courage build an invisible barrier between the two?
Who knows!
Anyway she calmly approached within five yards, raised her rifle, took deliberate aim, and fired just as, with a hoarse-coughing roar, the tiger sprang.
There was the dull thud of a bullet, a snarl, and the animal fell back across the boy's body, twitching convulsively.
Without one moment's hesitation, while the rest of the party stood helpless owing to her position, Leonie, letting fall her rifle and drawing her revolver, walked right up to the writhing brute and fired straight into the terrible mouth.
With one supreme effort the tiger reared itself on its hind legs, gave a choking, strangled cough ending in a spurt of blood and froth which drenched Leonie, and fell back dead; and the entire native staff, shouting in wonder and joy, tore across the clearing and prostrated themselves, in grateful layers around the girl's heavily booted feet.
CHAPTER XXXI
"For her house inclineth unto death!"—The Bible.
We lie beneath the mosquito net, we undress behind the purdah, we sit on the verandah, or stroll in the compound; we dance, we ride, we eat, we sleep, ever heedless of the eyes watching, and of the hidden form; but above all of that relentless will which causes some of us uncontrollably to do odd things at odd moments under the Indian stars, to our subsequent disgust and wonderment.
Leonie, with Jan Cuxson behind her, stopped outside the temple door, which, hanging upon one hinge, moved slowly to and fro in the night breeze.
And at the side of the altar, in the black shadows of the doorway which led to the secret places of the temple, a pock-marked native woman, draped in an orange coloured sari embroidered in silver, laid one hand upon the priest's arm and pointed with the other.
"Behold the Sahib," she whispered with a snarl of hate at the corners of her mouth, stained crimson with betel juice. "He who seeks her in wife," she continued, pushing the sari back from about her head so that the thirteen silver rings she wore in her crumpled left ear tinkled faintly, and her nose-ring of gold set with small but real turquoise gleamed dully, "and once wedded she will return across the Black Water. O father of the people, O wise one, I love her and thou didst promise."
She suddenly beat her breast, and the heavy silver bracelets jingled faintly, then shrank back against the painted wall as a young man, even the jungle guide, and beautiful to the verge of unseemliness, stealing from the shadows, smote her fiercely across the mouth, and pulled the sari roughly over her head.
"Hold thy peace and watch," he whispered, with a swift movement of the arm, most suggestive of a cobra uncoiling itself with intent to strike, as Leonie turned away from the doorway with a shudder.
She took two steps and stopped irresolute, with the rays of the full moon shining upon her upturned perplexed face.
Then she stared down at the myriad things which crawled and hopped in and out of the gleaming bones which lay about in little heaps, or scattered in ones and twos, even up to the door and into the dim interior.
Too absorbed, neither Jan nor Leonie noticed the murmur of voices from the far end of the court, nor the reek of the tiger's blood which came from her stained dress and the carcase of the dead beast which was in the process of being skinned, and around which hovered the native staff awaiting the distribution of the coveted tiger's fat.
Which more by faith, than any medicinal property it contains, is supposed to work miracles in stressful times of rheumatism, and cattle sickness.
Jan Cuxson, trying to grasp and knot together the tag ends of a dawning knowledge, stood behind his beloved, patiently awaiting her next desire, instead of picking her up in his arms as he should have done, and carrying her off to safety, a good wash and a better dinner at the other end of the court.
He was surprised when she spoke quickly and below her breath.
"Take me away," she whispered hoarsely as he caught her outstretched hands and pulled her fiercely into his arms. "Take me away, the place is evil—evil I tell you—and"—she raised her hand and passed it across his face, laughing softly, "I think I am bewitched—something is—is—pulling—is———"
She looked back over her shoulder, stared hard for a moment, and then, tearing herself free, ran like a hunted deer through the crumbling doorway into the blackness of the temple.
"Who fears, O Woman?" whispered the man, whose beauty touched the unseemly as he sank to the ground. "Who fears?"
Half-way up the temple Leonie stopped, standing in a silver pool of moonshine which blazed like the blade of a knife through a hole in the roof; lighting up the ruined altar, the grass-grown stones, and the image of a female deity carved in bas-relief upon a huge block of granite.
Nude was the woman carved out of stone, and of so dark a blue as to be almost black; with tongue protruding and hair in waving masses, through which were thrust four arms; garlanded with skulls she danced wantonly upon the body of a man, with two hands raised in blessing, in the third a knife, in the fourth a bleeding head.
Kali! Kali! Kali!
If only Jan Cuxson had been able to do something, anything, what a mint of trouble he would have saved himself and others, but instead, he stood rooted to a spot just inside the door, incapable of moving hand or foot, held by a force he did not even guess at, and therefore could not fight, watching Leonie as she moved slowly forward, as though she were walking in her sleep towards the blood-stained altar.
"So will she always come," murmured the old priest as he laid his hand caressingly upon his well-beloved pupil. "So will she always come. Love? Pah! who fears the love of man in the Black One's temple? Who?"
And there was no answer from the shrouded future.
Leonie stood still, quite still, unconscious of the eyes about her, and everything save the terrible problem she was trying to solve.
Then suddenly she cried aloud, and the words, like wings, beat against the roof and walls.
"I know!" she cried, "I know! I know!"
And whirling round towards the spell-bound man, she turned her hands, palm downwards, with a wonderful eastern gesture of renunciation, and crumpled into a heap before the altar, and the three watching figures stole noiselessly back into the secret places of the temple as Cuxson, freed, strode hastily up to his beloved.
He gathered up the unconscious girl as tenderly as a woman, oh! a good deal more so, and turning her face to his shoulder, carried her out of the temple; stopping for a second to hold her more securely in his left arm as he bent to pick up something which glittered in the moonlight: a piece of orange silk heavily embroidered in silver, for which Leonie had ransacked the Old, the New, and the Lal Bazaars; a bit of her ayah's sari torn and caught in a sundri breather. "And she stayed behind on the boat," said Jan to himself, with a flash of inspiration as he turned the thing over in his hand, and slipped it into his pocket.
And though his heart ached over his beloved's mental and physical distress, he inwardly rejoiced at the untoward occurrences of the day which had supplied his solid, trustworthy brain with the outline of a key to the problem.
Dear, stolid old Jan, who, given the time, could beat anyone at unravelling the hardest, hard-tied, knotted problem.
With a tale of sudden faintness he gave her into the care of Edna Talbot, who cooed and fluttered over her like the woman she was, in spite of her workmanlike appearance and her outrageous craving for a big meal. And she herded the sahibs to the far end of the court, where lay the sick man, after the big meal in which Leonie had joined right heartily; a little white about the face, truly, and shadowed about the eyes, but normal and content, with not the vaguest recollection of what had happened after the killing of the tiger.
"Oh! don't be dense," Edna Talbot said quite brusquely when Guy Dean, having brutally ignored the suffering native, suggested returning to the others. "You surely don't want to make a triangle."
"Triangle—what!"
"Well, you know the old saying about two being company, don't you?"
"Of course I do—that's where it comes in," replied the lad not over lucidly, "I want to make the two!"
The major laughed at the rueful countenance, as he clapped the boy on the shoulder.
"You'll get over it all right, old fellow; it's just like inoculation, a feeble taste of something which might have been ever so much worse. Trust me, you'll get over it!"
"Never!" stoutly maintained young Dean as he heaved a stone at something which fled across the court, his mental vision failing to register a picture of the future in which Jill Wetherbourne, daughter of Molly and Jack, occupied the principal position.
Later, Leonie, sitting with Jan Cuxson on a block of fallen masonry, smiled sweetly upon the head shikari, who, salaaming, prayed her to honour him by accepting a little memento of the shikar which had terminated so successfully upon the slaying of the tiger.
In his open palm he held two small bones about two and a half inches in length, two little superstitious tokens which ensure sons to the woman who treasures them, and which, he told her in his broken English, were only found in the tiger, one on each side of the chest, unconnected with any other bone at all.
"It is a charm, O! Mem Sahib, defender of the poor, which will assuredly bring you happiness.
"And may the sons of the sahib grow straight as the pine tree," he added slowly in his own tongue, as he felt the sahib's eyes fixed steadily upon him.
"What did he say to you, Jan?"
As the shikari turned away Cuxson caught the girl's hands and crushed them up against his heart.
"I will tell you some day!"
"Tell me now!"
"No! not now! It is of love that I should have to speak, and in all these past weeks you have not let me touch your hand or speak to you of love. You have put a barrier between us, a barrier of a misplaced fear, which has grown higher and stronger since I have had to confess to failure in finding any trace of your old servant. India is wide, dear, and its villages uncountable, and I am not distressed over the empty return of these last months; all that worries me is, that while prowling about the Himalayas out of reach of the post, I never knew what had happened to you, or that you were in India."
Leonie sighed as she opened her hand and looked at the small bones.
"Tell me now, Jan!" she insisted.
"No! Leonie, I cannot. There will be no one near us when I do tell you, and except as a souvenir of that very fine old man, you need not keep them, because my love is a still greater and surer charm to bring you the great happiness they promise."
CHAPTER XXXII
"And thou shalt become an astonishment, a proverb, a byword."—The Bible.
When Leonie returned to Calcutta she found that the tale of her courageous act which had preceded her, and of which home and local papers had exhausted themselves in praise, had not served to endear her to that little white community, which suffers from social myopia, and the self-adjusted chains of what it most mistakenly calls caste.
Not likely that the feminine members of Jute, military, railway, or law circles would open their arms any wider to this young, and beautiful, widowed creature with the mop of naturally curling hair, now that, if so minded, she could verbally and positively flap one of the finest tiger skins that had ever come out of Bengal in their heat-stricken faces.
In fact some of the young ones as they wrestled with the nightly problem of their own dank, straight particular bit of woman's glory, would doubtless, if questioned, have upheld the Hindu custom of completely shaving the widowed head.
Many, in fact, had been the meetings of these younger mem-sahibs in bungalows, or flats, at Firpoes, or in clubs, where, under the pretext of criticising the latest fashions from overseas, they discussed the pros and cons of accepting this person into the haven of their Anglo-Indian bosom.
The elder ones kept out of the clatter, having suffered and fought in similar crises in their own day as had their mothers, and their mothers' mothers before them since the days before the mutiny; being moreover resigned to the corrugated appearance of their faces, and the, in consequence, perambulatory instincts of their lords.
"Her undies," said a woman who, with the excuse of borrowing a book, had essayed to spy out the land of Leonie's cabin. "I saw her running ribbons in them—the most ex-quisite crêpe de Chine, hand embroidered and trimmed with real lace!"
"How de trop!" had answered a matron, whose household linge and personal lingerie showed complete only in the sections of finger napkins and undervests, as is the way of a careless, untidy woman's linen stock.
"Well, that's easily understood," chimed in a third. "After all she is trade."
And the no's had carried it.
Wherefore, although in ignorance of the verdict, she did exactly what every other woman did, and went where they went, she most certainly did not have what one would call a good time. She loved the Maidan and golf at the Jodhpur Club, or Tollygunge, before breakfast; she cordially loathed shopping and duty calls; grudged the hours lost out of life in the daily afternoon siesta, and took part in dances, bridge, dinners, and all the usual monotonous effort to kill time, with the air of an indifferent, disgruntled statue.
Gossip was no joy to her, scandal she would not tolerate, and the women commenced the task of ostracism by means of half-uttered phrases and little invidious smiles; and most men voted her odd owing to a certain indescribable barrier which they invariably encountered when they approached her over impulsively, and which really did not tally with her enticing, bizarre beauty.
Yes! they voted her odd, certainly, but in the secret places of their hearts and bungalows some of them would ponder.
Had not the major sahib's bearer curled himself up on the mat beneath the bed and gone to sleep, while the major sahib, after the ball, had sat in his shirt-sleeves upon that bed until three in the morning; and over and over again mentally slid up and down the room with supple, slender Leonie in his arms, where, in the earlier hours of the night, she had rested seemingly content for one half-second before he had let her go under the palms.
And, "Damn it all, she's not a flirt," did not a certain youthful sahib who worshipped openly at her shrine exclaim, as he thought, in the unpleasantly heated watches of the night, of that moment when she had smiled down sweetly into his adoring eyes, as his cheek brushed her hand while she was arranging her habit, and he her stirrup leather.
How were they to know that, distracted by an ever-increasing fear, and lost in an overwhelming love, Leonie had no more remembrance than the man in the moon of the fact that she had danced with the one, and smiled upon the other.
It was the final flare of the season in the shape of a ball at Government House; one of those mixed massed gatherings to which you are invited either on account of your rank, or your unblemished reputation, or the fact that you've had the forethought to inscribe your name in the visiting-book.
Leonie was standing with Jan Cuxson near an open door under a revolving fan which disturbed the outer masses of the hair she had piled haphazard upon the top of her small head, catching the great coils together with huge pins, and strengthening the entire structure by means of a finely wrought, diamond-hilted steel dagger, looted in the Mutiny by a not over-punctilious forbear.
"I wonder you don't cut your hair to bits," had once remarked before a multitude, an envious dame, whose curls reposed cosily in a box o' nights, and who had grave doubts as to the sincerity of Leonie's tawny locks.
"I run it through in its sheath," Leonie had replied, pulling the sheathed dagger out as she spoke, so that her hair had fallen in a jumbled scented mantle all over her, causing the men to put their hands in their pockets, or behind their backs, and the women to mechanically pat their heads; just as you fidget unconsciously with your veil, or the curls above your ear, when someone of your own sex, and far better turned-out, happens upon your horizon.
On this night her absurdly small feet made her head look almost top heavy, just as the uncorseted small waist emphasised the width of her shoulders, and the violet shadows enlarged the opalescent weird eyes looking wearily on the scene around her.
Why didn't she go back to England if she hated it all so much?
Because she couldn't! Because India held her and she waited upon Fate as patiently as ever did Mr. Micawber.
"Lady Hickle ought to go to the hills, she's looking absolutely fagged!"
The male voice drifted in through the window upon a pause in the music.
"Well! continuous sleep-walking's not likely to make you look your best, is it?"
The damnable giggle at the end of the remark brought a frown to Jan Cuxson's face as he picked up somebody's wrap from a chair, put it round Leonie and led her unresistingly down the steps into the grounds.
It sounds better to say "grounds" rather than "compound" when speaking of Government House.
"I—I hate all this," Leonie said impulsively as she sat down on a marble seat. "I hate India—I—I——"
She flung her head back, and it came to rest upon the man's shoulder, and she shivered ever so lightly when he pressed it still further back, pinioning her arms so that she could not move.
"Leonie."
The sudden authority in the voice brought a light to the eyes on a level with his mouth; she moved unconsciously, and Cuxson suddenly letting her go caught both her hands in one of his, pulled her round sideways, and jerked them up to his chin, and she laughed softly as she fell slightly forward; and laughed even more softly when he crushed her back again against him with his hands upon her breast.
Both heedless in their love of the eyes watching, of the hidden form, and above all of that relentless will which causes some of us uncontrollably to do odd things at odd moments under the Indian stars.
If only he had not hesitated, if only he had turned the face to him then and there and closed the gold-flecked eyes with kisses.
But instead he held her crushed to the point of agony against him with his mouth upon the sweetness of her neck, leaving the gold-flecked eyes to open wider, and still wider as they stared straight into the shrubbery around, where the flaming poinsettia flowers looked black under the stars.
"Beloved! Leonie, listen——"
"Don't! please don't!"
She pulled herself free and knelt on one knee upon the bench, with both hands outstretched against him; and he, not grasping the psychological points of the moment, sat down dumbly beside her, instead of mastering her physically, or mentally on the spot as it behoved him to do.
Heavens! what fools some men can be with that jungle animal woman within their hands.
"Leonie, listen dear, I want you to marry me, dear—soon!"
The words fell upon Leonie's clamouring soul as dismally as the raindrops of your childhood fell upon the window-pane when you were waiting to start for a picnic.
"You don't know what you are saying!" she replied. "It is criminal even to think of such a thing—mad as I believe I am—mad as I shall be when I end in a padded room!"
Her voice was barely a whisper, but it cut like slate on slate, and her eyes stared straight ahead as she continued speaking rapidly, almost uncontrollably, and yet with a certain air of relief as though glad to give vent in words to the horror which pressed upon her brain.
"Although you pretend it is only sleep-walking," she went on, heedless of his efforts to interrupt her, "you know perfectly well there is something wrong with me. You know it, so did your father, so does Auntie, people here are whispering it. Yes! they are, they are," she reiterated, "and they are right. Something more than just being frightened by my ayah happened to me in India all those years ago, oh! you know it did, I'm under a spell or bewitched—sometimes I have a—a—" she struck her forehead with her open hand as she crouched back upon the bench like some animal at bay—"a—oh! my God—you see—I cannot even say what it is. Can't you tell me, Jan? Can't you help me? You—you say you love me—you say you have found a clue—for pity's sake follow it, follow it and save me—you—you——"
"Leonie, look at me!"
Something in his voice forced her to look at him, and her eyes shone like flat pieces of opalescent glass so contracted were the pupils, but they widened even as she looked into the steadfast grey eyes, and her mouth relaxed into the shadow of a smile.
Good heavens, why didn't he take her in his arms and smother her up against his heart, or put a bag over her head, or failing the bag, put his hand before her eyes?
What fools some men can be with the woman they love within their reach.
But instead he left her, hurt and humiliated and desolate, to sit half crouched by herself, whilst her eyes, against all striving, slowly veered round to the shrub.
He held her hand, it is true, whilst he talked, but what good is that to a frightened woman whose heart is crying for protection, and whose body is clamouring to be forced into submission?
"Dear," he said as Leonie stared at the poinsettia bush, "I am on the track at last, and in a very little time shall know exactly what happened to you all those years ago. There is only one link missing, and that I shall surely find, as I find everything when I set my mind to it. Then the whole thing will be cleared up, and this mysterious cloud lifted from you. Look at me, dear!" Leonie turned and looked at him blankly, and as he continued speaking, slowly, and as though against her will, turned her eyes back to the poinsettia bush. "I want you now in your distress. I want you in the storm as well as in the sunshine, dear; I love to see you smile, it would be heaven to make you smile. Marry me, beloved, now. Dear, won't you? Let me lift the cloud from my wife. Oh! Leonie, think of it—my wife!"
Leonie answered mechanically, as though she were repeating a lesson and had not heard one word of the man's pleading.
"What have you found out? And what is missing?"
"I have found the woman who was your ayah."
Leonie pulled her hands away, and pushing the hair off her forehead, sat quite still listening, but not hearing the music as it floated through the night air, watching without seeing the couples as they strolled about the grounds.
And then she answered, but without any real interest, although very distinctly, shivering slightly as the man put the wrap over her bare shoulders.
"Have you? And who is she, really? Of course I know her name—but—but what do you know about her? I have had no answer to my letters since I've been out here, is the poor thing still working?"
"She's—not exactly working for a living, dear, and she is—is——"
He stopped short with a world of perplexity in his eyes, then went on as slowly and mechanically as Leonie had done.
"Perhaps, dear, I—I had—better not say any more until—until I have everything quite clear."
And he drew his hand sharply across his eyes as Leonie sighed.
"Very well!" she replied gently. "Just as you think best."
"Tell me you love me, Leonie, let me be sure of that, let me just hear you say it once."
She put out both her hands, and he took them and kissed them.
"Dear, do you count me as so little? Don't you know, cannot you feel that a love like mine endures for ever?"
"Do you still want the little white house behind the white wall—Leonie, do you!"
"Oh! Jan!"
"Well, marry me—marry me, beloved, and give me the right to protect you—from trouble, and these slanderous, murderous tongues."
Leonie's face was lovely to behold, swept by a wave of colour, and with eyes like stars; but she shook her head although a little smile parted the crimson mouth.
"No! Jan! Nothing will make me change. Not until we know and until I am cured. Do you think I would risk our love, and our happiness? I shall never, never marry you as long as I have this—this longing to—this desire to—to—oh! what is it. Find out what has happened to me, find out what I do when I walk in my sleep—just how mad I am, and if the madness can be cured, and if it can, then I will—will——"
"Yes, dear?"
"I will—will——!"
It was no pretty sight to watch her striving to speak, her mouth opening and shutting without sound, her hands against her throat.
Then she looked at him suddenly, smiling sweetly, and put both hands in his, while he, sick with pain and unconfessed fear, changed the conversation abruptly by the grace of understanding.
"I think you ought to go away, Leonie—to the hills—for a change.
It's getting frightfully hot, why don't you?"
"Yes!—I might—I think I will—I'm so tired of everything—so very—very tired!"
"Where to, dear?"
Leonie bent her head a little sideways as though listening, made a strange little movement with both her hands, then placed the open palms against her forehead and replied:
"To Benares!"
She had barely whispered the words, so quietly did she speak, as the poinsettia flowers bent slightly—to a passing breeze—may be!
CHAPTER XXXIII
"Dona praesentis cape laetus horae, ac
Lingue severa."—Horace.
Leonie's first long-distance journey was just like other people's first long-distance journey in India.
And being of the type which revels in the new and unknown, she loved it.
Who wouldn't!
The seething masses of dusky humanity enchanted her; she delighted in the glaring colouring, the clank of the holy man's chains, the incessant call of the water carrier and sweetmeat vendor, and the clang of iron on iron which announces the train's departure.
She absolutely thrilled on disrobing the first night in the little bathroom while her ayah spread her sheets and pillows and blankets upon the lower berth; and when her bodywoman disappeared through the door leading to the servants' compartment, she lay for a time watching the stars, and the glimmer of passing mosque, or temple, or tomb.
Then she laughed aloud in sheer content, wedged Jan Cuxson's box of chocolate biscuits safely into the side of the bunk, and turned to the side table to look for light literature in the shape of a magazine.
Having acquired the pernicious habit of eating biscuits and reading before going to sleep, she frowned upon the discovery that her ayah appeared to have left the books upon Howrah Station; and had stretched her arm to rap upon the wall to summon the woman, when her eye caught sight of a paper volume lying under the opposite bunk.
India is certainly a most dusty land, but a traveller can keep his railway compartment and boots spotless by distributing a few pice to the dusky, cheery youngsters, who, salaaming, solicit the favour of using boot polish, or floor brush, to the mutual benefit of self and the sahib. Leonie, therefore, felt no repugnance when, clutching the table with her left hand, she made a long arm and secured the book, which proved to be a guide to India's most famous beauty spots.
She turned the leaves casually and laughed.
"Why! I'd completely forgotten it," she said aloud, turning the book sideways to look at an illustration. "The wonderful tomb Guy Dean insisted upon my visiting if I ever went to Benares. How beautiful! Must be the tomb of some ancestor of that young prince he was talking about. Oh! how beautiful, and—oh! how helpful! I suppose some Englishman must have left the book in the train by mistake."
She had picked up a bit of paper which had fallen from the book; a rough time-table with directions in English as to the best means of getting to the world-famed monument.
"That decides it," she said sleepily as she switched off the light, pulled a miniature mosquito net, deftly arranged by the ayah, over her head, and the sheet up to her neck. "We get to the station to-morrow—sometime—disembark—put luggage into cloak-room—find elephant and—and dâk bungalow—and—oh! almost full moon—how—how delicious—-ride out and see the—the——"
She slept, oblivious of the fact that she was carrying out implicitly the programme mapped out for her.
Travelling in India is real sport when the train doors are likely to swing open at no given spot, soft-footed natives to enter surreptitiously and disappear as quietly upon sight of your open eyes; and guards to clamour for your ticket, while a mob collects outside your door at the junction to look at the pretty unveiled mem-sahib awakened from her slumber by a dignified bearer with his offering of chotar hazri, which means the thrice blessed early tea-tray.
Her restless spirit was soothed by the rush of the train through the endless plain; strange scenes, strange sights wrenched her mind from the terrible question everlastingly throbbing in her brain; and her eye was not quick enough to distinguish one delicate oval face from another, or to notice that at each stopping place her ayah meandered down the length of the train to a compartment where, in consequence of his high caste and rank, a man sat utterly alone—unconcerned and totally oblivious of the screaming, chattering crowd upon the platform, of beggars, pilgrims, and bonâ fide native travellers.
True, for one moment at the station where she alighted for the world-famed tomb, she glanced back hurriedly at a native who placed himself between her and an unsightly epileptic; and she looked back once again as her intuition rapped out a message she did not grasp, and her ayah suddenly besought her help with the coolies.
A dilapidated tonga, drawn by a pony of the same description, took her and her servant to the dâk bungalow, built on a concrete platform in a jungle clearing about two miles outside the village.
There she gave carte blanche for the arrangement of the evening trip to the guide who materialised serenely, all smiles and extreme deference. Bathed, and fed, she had her hair brushed for half an hour by her ayah; refused the offer of massage, which process she abhorred, and turned in and slept the afternoon away upon her own bedding spread on a charpoy.
Later she bathed again, attired herself in a simple low-cut, white silk dress, dined, and wrapping herself in a heavy white Bedouin cloak, wedding present from Jill Wetherbourne, who had got it from her godmother in Egypt, seated herself on the verandah to await the arrival of whatever means of locomotion the guide had chosen to take her to the tomb.
And down the jungle path loomed the shape of a great elephant, moving at a gentle shuffle but an almost incredible speed.
Without audible instructions it stopped in front of the verandah, threw back its trunk, twined it gently about the middle of the mahout or driver, lifted him from his seat behind its ears and placed him on the ground; then on a word, trumpeted shrilly in greeting to Leonie.
"Oh!" said she as she almost sprang from her chair in delight. "Oh!"
The mahout salaamed, standing in the moonlight at the animal's head.
He made a vivid eastern picture, dressed as he was from head to foot in white, with two pleated side-pieces to the turban, hanging in suchwise as to conceal half the face; and the guide, who had been squatting on the edge of the path, also salaamed, smiling in glee at the mem-sahib's delight.
"Behold, mem-sahib," he said, "is the elephant even Rama, the pearl of the prince's stables." His English was not quite as intelligible as these printed words, but Leonie made shift to understand.
"I have never seen such a beautiful elephant," she said, walking up to the great beast, followed by the guide, the ayah and the bungalow factotum.
The mem's statement was quite within the range of possibility seeing that her elephant lore had been gathered from the Zoo and other low-caste specimens with their straight backs, mean tails, and long stringy legs.
"Does the—the mahout speak English, because my Hindustani is not very good. I would like to have the—the beauty of the animal explained to me, and why it has its face and body painted; and why does he, the mahout, I mean, wear those side pieces to the turban, they are very unusual."
A moment's pause, during which the mahout stood like a rock, and then the guide, shuffling his feet, answered to the effect that the driver could not speak English, but that her humble servant would translate if the mem-sahib would deign to listen to his mean speech; that the man was the prince's best beloved—mahout, he added after a second's pause, and that the side pieces were part of the uniform worn by the prince's head-mahouts.
Not a bit of which information was true, mais que voulez vous?
So they all walked round Rama the beautiful, the guide translating the soft Hindustani into lamentable English.
Rama, it seemed, was a koomeriah, a royal or high-caste elephant, and still a youth, being but forty years of age, vide his ears. His height was ten feet at the shoulder, and would the mem-sahib note the perfect slope of the back down to the beautiful, long, feathery tail. Also the massive chest and head, with the prominent lump between the eyes so bright and kind, and full of knowledge. Notice also the deep barrel, and short, so very short, hind legs, the heaviness of the trunk, the plump cheeks which would indeed grace a comely elephant maiden; count the eighteen nails upon the lovely feet, and place her hand upon the soft skin which fell in folds about the tail.
Leonie did as she was bid and ran her hand also down the nearest magnificent tusk, with tip cut off and ringed about the middle with bands of gold inlaid with precious stones.
"Perfect ivory," continued the guide, "five feet in length with tip, curving upwards with the curve of the sickle moon, and sloping slightly from each other as though in anger."
Leonie smiled at the guide's verbal imagery, and put her hand upon a cream coloured mark near the base of the broad trunk.
"Why, I thought it was paint!" she said, speaking over her shoulder to the mahout, who, unperceived, held a fold of her white cloak in his hand. "This is paint, surely," she added, running a finger-tip down the vermilion and white lines which covered the great beast's face and sides.
It seemed that the yellowy-white blotches raised the animal's value above that of sacksful of rubies, and the painting of the face and sides served two purposes; one to render it easier for the animal to find favour in the eyes of the gods, the other to bring about the same result in the eyes of man; even as does woman when she accentuates the night blackness of her eyes with antimony; and the slenderness of her finger-tips with henna.
In state procession it seemed that Rama the perfect carried a gold and jewel encrusted howdah upon his beautiful sloping back; that what was left uncovered of his anatomy was hung with a net of silver, with tassels of pearls; that strings of seed pearls were entwined in the glorious meshes of hair in the beautiful tail; and that his nails were manicured, bracelets of golden bells hung about the ankles, and buckets of perfume poured into his bath.
"The mahout has placed the humble cushioned seat this night upon the back, mem-sahib, so that nothing shall be between the mem-sahib and the light of the moon."
Leonie gave orders that a succulent cake full of currants and flavour should be brought forthwith from her hamper, and having pushed it as far back into the mouth as possible, where it was demolished to the accompaniment of the most disgusting masticatory noises, laughed aloud when the elephant stood on its short hind legs to show its appreciation, and said thank you by means of a soft purring sound in the throat.
The process of getting to the knees reminded Leonie somewhat of a sailing vessel she had seen rolling in a rough sea, but she settled herself comfortably in the cushioned seat and waited with glee for the mahout to get into position upon the animal's neck and order it to rise.
"What is he waiting for?" she asked, as he made no movement.
"He wishes to know where the ayah is to sit," answered the guide.
"Ayah!" said Leonie, and laughed gently. "But I am going alone!"
The mahout said something swiftly.
"The way is many miles through the jungle, mem-sahib; there is no dâk bungalow, no people, the mem-Sahibs and also the sahibs go always accompanied."
"I am going alone," said Leonie quietly. "Tell the mahout to get up."
Upon a word of command the elephant got to its feet, and raised one knee; the mahout placed one foot upon it and swung himself up to his seat upon the short neck, said something to the elephant, who moved off up the jungle path, while the servants salaamed deeply to Leonie, and again even more deeply in the direction of the elephant's head.