CHAPTER XL
"Could I come near your beauty with my nails,
I'd set my ten commandments in your face!"—Shakespeare.
Leonie was sitting on the edge of her bed waiting for the gharri to take her to the station; she had lunched and breakfasted in her bedroom, in fact she had lived there since her interview with the manager, which had been indescribably unpleasant for him, in that it had been so distressing to the gentle girl as she had sat and nodded her head and looked at him out of agonised, forgiving eyes.
The hotel en masse, at least the feminine portion of it, had had a prior interview with the manager which had been superlatively unpleasant for him.
Coerced by a force which was closely allied to the brute; almost shouted down when he essayed to argue in favour of the hounded girl; threatened by the immediate transfer of the entire visiting list to the books of a rival hotel, he had ultimately owned to defeat; and Leonie sat on the edge of her bed, staring vacantly into the denuded dressing-room, while the native staff, yea! even unto him who had done her no service, buzzed round in the vicinity of her door.
Strange things had happened, things undefined, and therefore not capable of bearing the light of honest dissection or discussion.
What had happened during the night of rioting—so-called—in the city? What had been the meaning of those white-robed figures which had fluttered near her door? And oh! why had her faithful ayah been found on the edge of the river the morning after, stabbed through the heart?
As if anyone in India with any sense at all would make inquiries about the last event.
All that and a lot more! and quite enough to slam the gates of heaven or the hotel upon any lovely woman on her own!
Yes! but—did all that really do the actual slamming?
Not a bit of it!
It was the most convenient excuse the womenfolk could find to hang upon the peg of jealousy which had been knocked into the wall of feminine conceit and bad intent, by the hammer of Leonie's beauty, and irritating indifference to both men and women, especially the former.
Let any woman lure to her side some other woman's own particular bit of masculine property; poach successfully upon her understocked male preserves; and figuratively, maybe verbally, most assuredly positively if she live east of Blackfriars, the claws of jealousy will be sharpened upon her; but—ignore the bit of masculine property, pass it by on the other side, consider it as belonging to somebody else, leave the preserves severely alone, and vials of execration, anathema, and denunciation, which are all synonyms for the same thing, will be poured upon her because of her lack of the appreciative faculty.
Fact!
Very few women can see the difference between joyfully hoarding genuine antique pewter, and wearing a second-hand négligé.
So Leonie was fleeing home via Calcutta, and she sat without movement, hating herself and the world, even the man who, having taken her at her word, had left her alone to stumble as best she could along the crooked, lonely road which would end, as far as she could see, in a padded cell.
"How could you?" she suddenly cried aloud, and the natives made surreptitious signs, and withdrew to a certain distance out of respect to the disorder of her mind. "How could you leave me! Didn't you know that it is because I love you so that I would rather die than let you share my curse? But couldn't you have done something, tried to follow that clue, gone somewhere, oh! done anything just to show that——!"
The rumble of wheels cut her agitation short, and drew the native element closer to the door, in order that it should be quite near the mem-sahib when she appeared—with her purse in her left hand.
And while she sat on her bed, and later on in the train, striving to break the mental thongs which bound her to some intangible stake, Jan Cuxson was sitting in the secret places of the jungle temple, striving to break the bonds of raw hide by which he had found himself fastened to a ring in the wall.
As he struggled he speculated savagely upon that insensate sense of security, common to most Britishers, which had caused him to try and find the Hindu temple under the guidance of an unknown native.
He mentally reviewed his journey from the boat to the temple, fighting through the tiger-grass, breaking through the delicate impeding branches of the sundri trees, crushing the sundri breathers under his heavy boots as he tramped behind the guide, having failed to notice, owing to the resemblance that exists between one ordinary native and the next, that the guide and coolie of the jungle were not the guide and coolie of the paddle boat.
He remembered that once he had stopped dead and laid a detaining hand on the guide's shoulder, as through the darkening forest had come a cry, eerie as it wailed through the shadows, to be taken up ahead of them, and echoed and re-echoed until it became faint in the distance and died away altogether.
"What's that?"
The native had not hesitated.
"The cry, O Sahib, Protector of the poor, of the jungle owl as it seeks its food!"
Cuxson, unobservant for once, and anxious to get to the end of the trail again failed to notice that it was still far too light for any member of the owl family to be abroad.
Also, when he sat down on a fallen tree trunk to readjust his boot strap, he had mistaken for the booming of a huge jungle insect something which whizzed through the space where his head had been a second before.
It is true he had questioned the guide as to the route they were taking, pointing out that it was not the one traversed in the shikar.
To which the guide had replied that doubtless the shikari had taken the sahibs many miles out of their way to ensure a big toll to the sahibs' guns, and those of the mem-sahibs.
Jan Cuxson had accepted every explanation.
Extraordinary is this complacent sense of security of the British male when he butts into the paths and customs of countries of which he knows literally nothing; and he had arrived at the temple all in good time.
Silence, intense and rather overwhelming, had hung about the forbidding place which allied to the abomination of desolation had disconcerted him, and made him turn to the guide for further reference.
He had frowned, and involuntarily recoiled towards the wall when he found that his guide had disappeared, and that he stood alone in the heart of the jungle.
But strangely enough, even as he stood staring at a white wall in front of him, a sudden apathy had fallen upon him, also a strong disinclination to move hand or foot; in fact, he remembered laughing stupidly, and pulling out his cigarette case with the intention of soothing a distinct sense of irritation aroused by something which hammered incessantly upon his inner consciousness, warning him to be on the look out.
He remembered also looking once or twice in the direction of the temple door with the feeling that someone was on the point of coming out towards him, and then he had slipped contentedly to the ground, yawned, and gone to sleep.
All the sounds of a jungle dawn had greeted him on his awaking: a monkey had swung itself up to the top of the ruined wall where it had sat grimacing at him; an adjutant bird had clapped at his boot with its huge bill as it stalked past him towards the door; and he had found himself bound by waist and wrists to a stout ring in a wall which still held traces of brilliant colouring.
CHAPTER XLI
"And unto wizards that peep and that mutter."—The Bible.
Like some infuriated bull he had fought and tugged at his chains and shouted for deliverance, until clouds of birds flew skywards in fright, and blood had spurted from his finger-tips and stained the shirt about his middle.
Thongs of hide sound inadequate against the strength of a man, but steel chains are weak compared with them for resistance, and to strive against them simply results in pure agony if they have been thoroughly soaked by the Indian dew which almost amounts to rain, and dried by the Indian sun which almost amounts to a furnace.
Of course, in a properly constructed novel he would have been left in a position which would have enabled him to gnaw the hide with his strong white teeth, or rub it until it wore through against some sharp stone.
But this he could not do because his wrists were bound behind, leaving the space of a foot or two between his waist and the wall; and when he leant back he had the tragic outline of a modern Prometheus bound; when he strained forward, that of one of Muller's pupils undergoing treatment for the development of the chest.
Neither could he, contort himself as he might, have brought his teeth within gnawing distance of deliverance; moreover, ruins exposed for centuries to the soft manipulation of a jungle climate, show no sharp stones; they are rounded and polished by the passage of time, soft feet, and that which crawls upon its belly.
At length, however, peace quite strangely fell upon him, and though he could not move, the agony of his hands and lacerated waist vanished entirely; such perfect peace that he leant back against the wall and idly tried to count the myriad tiny dainty hoof marks in the dust between the doorway facing him, and the ruined archway on his left.
He did not think it strange when turning his head he discovered an ancient priest seated against the wall with his mahogany coloured old body outlined against the dull blues and reds of the painted stones; and his eyes, bright with religious fervour, fixed through the crumbling arch, beyond the delicate sun-dried leaves, the blazing sun, and the steel blue heavens, upon Eternity.
The fine old man had no intention of torturing the white man, he had merely bound him to the ring until his goddess should inspire him, her servant, with her wishes concerning this stranger who was intimately connected with the white woman in the care of his beloved disciple, even Madhu Krishnaghar.
Neither did he intend to starve the white man nor bring him to the point of madness from thirst; but accustomed to hours and days of self-subjection in which he neither ate, drank nor felt the need of material sustenance, he failed to take into account the inner cravings of a man when he had been tied for two nights to a ring in the wall.
And he sprang to his feet and crossed the floor when Cuxson, after an interval of forty-eight hours during which he had neither eaten nor drunk, tortured by cramp from his waist to his feet caused by the strangling hold of the hide thong, with his heart pounding the blood against his brain until it shook, and his arms feeling like burning staves ending in blocks of ice, suddenly scrambled somehow to his knees, shouted, and fell forward with the soles of his feet against the wall, and the whole weight of his heavy body hanging upon the wrists.
It was but the work of an instant and a flashing knife and he lay face down upon the floor at the feet of the priest who passed swiftly through the doorway out into the jungle, and returning as swiftly, bound great green shining leaves about the wounds, and squatting on his heels gently massaged the black and swollen arms.
A holy man! a Hindu priest touching the contaminating flesh of an infidel! Impossible!
There are many methods of purification from contamination, but the main point in the priest's mental process of self-extenuation was that an infidel awaiting the verdict of the Great Mother should not be allowed to die.
Therefore more green and glistening leaves were placed upon the floor, and food, and water in coarse earthenware, set upon them, until Cuxson had revived sufficiently to eat, and enter into conversation with the priest, who, seeing no reason to withhold the information sought, and secure in the knowledge that the spreading jungle tied the sahib to the temple even more securely than the thongs of hide, gradually unfolded to him the dark history of the girl he loved.
"Eighteen years," began the tranquil voice of the old man, "as the sahibs count the passing of the moons, have gone since a high caste woman knelt at full moon in this temple at the foot of the altar of Kali, the Goddess of Destruction.
"Kali the Black One; daughter of the Himalayas, wife of Siva! Durga the inaccessible, Uma so sweet!
"Chandika the fierce, Parvati who steppeth lightly upon the mountains.
"Bhairavi the terrible, Kali of death, Kali! Kali!"
The old priest, who had leapt to his feet under the exaltation of his worship, sank down again upon the floor, and continued his tale in the Indian tongue.
"The high caste woman, chief wife of a great prince of Northern India, held in her arms her first, her only son, a weakling, a sickly babe nigh unto death. Thrice had she been shamed by the birth of a woman child, and now her crown, her glory, her great gift unto her lord was like to die.
"Followed only by her body servant she had sped from her palace in the shadows of the Everlasting Hills, even unto the southernmost limits of Bengal, a pilgrim to this holy, secret temple where I pass my last days in sacrifice and worship; I, even I, foremost guru, once teacher of the Thugs, those beloved servants of Kali—before the law of the white man forbade their sacrifices unto the goddess."
Jan Cuxson, knowing of the sacrifices both human and animal offered in bygone days to the terrible goddess, shivered as the horror of the place seemed to close in upon him.
"The high caste woman demanding from the Goddess of Death the boon of life for her son, cast her jewels upon the altar and made promise of cattle and grain and her three daughters as handmaidens in the secret places of the temple. And I, aforetime great among the Thugs, lamented that I had but a coal black kid to offer as a sacrifice, for behold, Kali demands life for life, and will not be denied.
"Flowers flung by the woman, O white man, strewed the stone floor upon which I have worn a path during the passing of the years; hundreds of small lights flickered in every corner, causing the shadows to dance about these weary feet and the eyes of the great gods to shine from the corners of the roof; and without I heard against the wall the rubbing of the great tiger as it waited for the blood sacrifice which it nightly devoured before the dawn, the striped cat upon which Kali rides forth at night on her journeyings through the jungle.
"Even as I plunged the sacrificial knife into the neck of the unworthy sacrifice, I heard footsteps as of one running swiftly; and behold, there came a low caste, pock-marked woman up the middle of the temple, who flung herself at the feet of Kali, laying a sleeping babe upon the altar steps."
"Ah!" barely whispered Jan Cuxson with his eyes fixed upon the fanatical old face.
"And behold, the low caste woman was ayah in the services of one, even a great colonel-sahib, who, being raised above his fellows, was hastening back across the Black Water to his own land, taking with him his one wife, and the one child of their union.
"Loving the white girl child with the great strange love of the servant of India for the offspring of the feringhee, the ayah had secretly brought the babe in the absence of the mem-sahib upon visits of farewell, that I might dedicate her to the goddess, binding her in spirit for ever to the land of her birth."
The white man sat in silence when the old man sprang to his feet, standing relentless and formidable in the light of the one lamp.
"See'st thou? See'st thou, sahib, my sin? The sacrifice was within my hands, and yet I spared the child because of the woman's beseechings. I hesitated, yea! I even asked a sign. Aye! and the sign was good, twice pleasing to the Goddess of Death, for behold the owl hooted not, neither was the voice of the jackal uplifted as the doe, coming from the right, looked through the open door.
"With the high caste woman I made covenant, that her male child in return for his life should be a servant of the Black One, obeying in all things the mandates of her priests.
"And I held those sleeping babes upon my arm, and within the lips of the girl child I placed the goor, the sacred sugar, and around her neck the roomal, the noose of sacrifice. And I cut the sign of Kali between the breasts of the man child and between the breasts of the woman child, and marked him between the brows with her blood, and marked her upon the forehead with his blood, so that his mind should be her mind. And her will I bent to my will, that her eyes should open in sleep at the light of the full moon, and that she should go forth upon the mission of the Black One, making sacrifice to the spouse of Siva.
"And yet, though she be bound to the secret temple and to Kali, and to the son of princes until death shall release her, the Great Mother is not pleased, nay, her wrath is terrible at the averted sacrifice, and India, my land, has suffered through my fault."
The priest stood motionless, staring down unseeingly upon the man at his feet who spoke softly.
"And what became of the white child?"
"The white child, the infant feringhee? She lay asleep in my arms with eyes wide open, and the high caste woman, picking up a jewel, even one of the colour and shape of cat's eye, smeared it with the blood of the kid, placed it above the heart of Kali, and then hung it by a slender golden chain about the neck of the woman child. And the women, content, departed, bearing with them the united babes, but since that ill-begotten night my land has travailed in agony, stricken with plague and pestilence and famine!"
"And?" Cuxson scarcely breathed the word.
The light of the moon slipped over the ruined wall, drawing a nimbus round the old white head as the tall thin figure in the snow-white garments swayed slightly.
"I waited for the command of Kali, and after many years I sent my beloved disciple, the son of princes, across the Black Water to bring the white woman by the force of his will back to the land of her birth and up to the altar steps. And now I wait—I wait—for a little, little while."
The old voice rose to a thin shout of triumph which lapsed into silence as, totally oblivious of his prisoner, he sank to the ground, lost, quite suddenly, in that wonderful abstraction of the East in which the native can find escape from the trials of life at odd moments, and in unaccountably odd places.
During the long silence that followed, Jan Cuxson sat patiently puffing at his pipe and trying to piece the strange tale together, until at an advanced hour of the night he once more felt the hawk-like eyes fixed upon his face.
Eagerly he picked up the thread of the story as though there had been no lapse.
"You mesmerised her, you say, eighteen years ago, and you pretend you can still bend her to your will?"
"Nay, Sahib! Through me Kali the Terrible imprinted her will upon the babe's tender mind those many moons ago!"
Cuxson shook his head.
"You can't make me believe that—it's rubbish—like the mango tree and rope trick—it's impossible, simply impossible to make strong-minded, level-headed people do things against their will."
In such wise does the westerner account to his own satisfaction for the mysterious workings of the East.
The old man said no word, but looked steadily between the young man's eyes.
"If the sahib will look to his right hand!"
Cuxson turned his head and started.
Eyes glaring, tail thrashing the ground, and ears flattened to the great head, a tiger half crouched.
"The devil!" he ejaculated, as the mouth of the great animal twisted spasmodically. "Here's a fix."
"The sahib will place his hand upon the tiger's head."
"Not much!"
"The sahib is afraid!"
The quiet scorn of the words struck Cuxson like a whip, and he stretched out his hand impulsively towards the smooth head with flattened ears and glaring eyes.
There was not a sound, though the tail swished the ground, and the huge mouth opened slowly, showing the splendid ivories.
"The sahib, if he is not afraid, will close his hand firmly upon the throat!"
Cuxson's hand closed gently upon the striped skin; then he exclaimed sharply on perceiving that the only thing his hand grasped was air.
"Why—what—how the——!"
The old man nodded his head gently, and answered without a smile. "It was the will of the Black One that the sahib should see the steed upon which she roams the jungle at night!"
But Cuxson was British, and would not be convinced.
"I don't believe it," he said shortly. "That was a tame animal, which strays in and out of the temple like a tame cat."
"Will the sahib look at the dust upon the ground. Is there sign of feet, marks of the body, or the lashing of the tail upon the dust?"
Truly the dust, save for the deer marks, was undisturbed, but Cuxson shook his head stoutly, and refused to believe the evidence of his own eyes.
"The sahib will not believe! Then will I make her, the white woman, see thee, the man she desires as husband, a prisoner in the House of Kali, covered in blood, and she will hasten forthwith to thee—and to me!"
Cuxson sprang to his feet with murder in his eyes, but stopped and flung out his hands as though to thrust aside some obstacle.
The priest laughed softly.
"O babe in wisdom! Behold, thou shalt not be bound, yet shalt thou not stir beyond yon temple wall until she come, and with her the son of princes who yearns for her; then shall I lift my will from thee and tie thee to the wall that thou mayst behold the double sacrifice of love and life made to Kali the Terrible."
The priest was gone, and Jan Cuxson sat down upon a fallen block of masonry, covering his face with his wounded hands; and faintly from the temple echoed the voice of the priest as he prayed to his god before projecting his will across the space that divided him from the white woman.
Only for a little moment of despondency, and then he sat back and shook his great shoulders with the light of battle in his eyes, and grim determination in every line of the powerful jaw.
How he was going to circumvent the priest and save his beloved he did not know—he had no plan, but—he was going to pull it off.
"The son of princes," he said, addressing a monkey which had flung a stick at him from the top of the wall, "why I'd trust my dear, bewitched or not, with a thousand sons of princes. I love her and she loves me, you gibbering bit of fur, and d'you think anything could stand against that. Let her come! Just let her be within reach of my arms, then you'll see what you will see. Let the priest play into my hands, and bring her here, the sooner the better, for that is exactly what I want."
And he laughed as he refilled his pipe, blessing the old priest for his consideration in annexing naught but his rifle and revolver.
Which is just about the simplest way of starting to get out of a tight corner.
Ignoring all obstacles, owning to no defeat. The splendid heritage of the English speaking race.
CHAPTER XLII
"A good name is better than precious ointment."—The Bible.
"And in its light the Star of Love aglow,
Shone with her beacon fire, a guide
and guardian still."—Dante's Inferno.
In the middle of the night Leonie lay face downwards upon her bed in the great Eastern Hotel.
All the luggage she had brought with her from England was stacked around the small room, and even in the dressing-room; in fact, there was that unfinished, unpacked air about the whole place which is inseparable from anyone in India who is in the throes of going home.
She had returned on the wings of panic from Benares, only to find that the gossip which had been circulated about her had arrived well in advance; and that, like crows after a dust cart, what remained of the city's female population was busy pulling her to a thousand pieces with claws and beaks sharpened by the million irritations of the hot weather.
A dignified bearer had salaamed gravely, and handed her a chit upon her arrival at the bungalow, where her friend was braving the pestilence of the hot weather in comradeship with her husband, who, in the secret places of his heart, wished to goodness she had gone to the hills with the rest of 'em.
Her luggage, the letter stated, had been shifted to the hotel, where a room had been taken for her, and there would, it seemed, be plenty of accommodation on the City of Sparta which would be sailing in three weeks' time for home.
And that was all!
It is wise in the hot weather to pull the purdah, which is the Indian way of saying to shut the door, in the face of a young and unattached girl with a tawny head and opalescent eyes; especially if the dust has long been undisturbed upon the threshold of the secret places of the male heart supposed to be entirely in your keeping.
For days she had remained in her room, not daring to face the curious glances, and subdued whispers, of the few visitors to be met with in the marble desolation of the front hall; and not for worlds would she have used the telephone for fear of the direct snub the wire would surely have transmitted.
Food she hardly touched; sleep she did, heavily, waking dull and unrefreshed; and for hours she would sit and stare into the corners, or peer over her shoulder into the stifling shadows, or study her face in the mirror, wondering if her strange eyes were the eyes of a mad woman.
The bearer had caused her long moments of worry.
The morning after her arrival at the hotel, instead of the little, dusky, nimble, monkey-eyed man of the night before, there had entered one, tall and dignified, who had cleared a space on the table beside her bed, deposited a bunch of flowers and the chotar hazri, or early tea, and raising his hand to his turban had departed.
Quite a usual procedure! But wakeful Leonie, who had indifferently watched him through the mosquito curtain and from under the pillow frill into which she had burrowed her head, frowned when something familiar in the man or his movements had particularly attracted her attention.
Most natives look alike to the newcomer in India, but she frowned again as she chewed the crust of buttered toast and racked her brain fruitlessly for a clue.
One by one she went over each city and place she had visited, each railway journey she had made, each hotel she had stayed in. Then had poured out a cup of tea and given it up.
Having fruitlessly worried over this seemingly insignificant detail of an Indian day's routine, she had impatiently countermanded the early tea for the following mornings, and had indifferently left the really lovely flowers which came up regularly on every tray, to the fantastic arranging of the little dusky man who looked at her like a wistful monkey, and slipped nimbly about the room in her service; and who, likewise, rejoiced greatly over certain backsheesch which he, with the joy the native has in all intrigue, imagined to be the outcome of love.
I wonder if Europeans in India know with what interest their bearers or ayahs watch, and what detailed accounts they could and do give of their masters' or mistresses' love affairs, great and small, legitimate and illegitimate.
It is to be surmised that they do not!
They were not the eyes of the nimble little bearer that were watching from the bathroom on this particular night, when Leonie very quietly raised herself in her sleep and, flinging back the netting, sat staring silently into the corner nearest the door.
She half knelt, half sat, with a faint look of surprise on her face, which changed slowly to absolute amazement, then to the faintest suspicion of love and happiness, during which transition her smile reflected the glorious lights of the seventh heaven.
"Oh, beloved!" she exclaimed, and laughed softly, the sound falling eerily in the absolute stillness of the night, the shadows dancing eerily upon the plaster walls as she threw out her arms.
She flung them out in a beautiful abandonment of love, and the hidden eyes glistened as they watched the fingers slowly curl and clench as a look of horror crept gradually over the whole face, blotting out its sweetness and light, changing it into a veritable mask of terror.
A horrible dream! A nightmare!
If you like! The label of casual explanation, tied by the string of ignorance, never did much harm to any psychological package.
Leonie was apparently asleep and evidently seeing things, so perforce she must have been dreaming, for what else could she have been doing!
Anyway her heavy, unrefreshing sleep, induced by fatigue, mental weariness, or a super-will, was very gradually being turned into a thing of moving shapes.
The shadows in the corner had lightened and darkened and lightened again, lifting at last to show a half-ruined, roofless room and a banyan tree outside an almost perfect archway.
A wick in a coarse earthenware saucer flickered feebly in one corner, two deer pattered swiftly across the flags and out of the door, and very slowly a man jerked himself on to his knees and twisted his death-white face towards the coming dawn.
Jan Cuxson suffering the tortures of the damned, chained by his rashness and his love to a ring in the wall with thongs of raw hide, which were drawing blood from his wrists and staining his shirt about his waist.
This way and that he wrenched and tore, then stopped quite still glaring into the shadows.
This way and that again, hurling himself back, against the wall, flinging himself forward until the agony of the thongs seemed to be beyond all human endurance.
Just for one ghastly instant, one second, he stopped, staring straight into the eyes of his beloved, seeming to call insistently for help, his face distorted until it lost all human semblance; then pitched forward, hanging unconscious upon the thongs just as a priest, thin and gaunt, with knife gleaming in his hand, rushed towards him; and Leonie, with a piercing shriek, sprang straight out of bed, flung herself violently against the wall, and woke up with her hands feebly groping over the coloured plaster.
And next evening the news that Lady Hickle had left the hotel without her luggage, destination unknown, streaked like lightning through the almost deserted Chowringhee, the Strand Road, the Maidan, and clubs and bungalows.
What a godsend is a bit of gossip in the hot weather, when your neighbour's looks, wardrobe, and morals have been threshed bare; when the mail has not arrived; and the hill news has only served to upset your temperamental digestion; in fact there were little whirlpools of excitement in the Saturday Club's stifling atmosphere, serving to add a passing zest to the heat-stricken evening hours and pegs which no amount of ice seemed to cool.
Every man, high or low caste, white or not, who met Leonie, figuratively cast himself at her slender feet.
Men ran to do her service, they smiled in doing it, they mopped their heated brows and cheered up, even at one hundred and two in the shade, when she happened along to ask some good office with a smile on her red mouth.
She had paid her outrageous bill, left orders concerning her outrageous luggage, and walked out of the hotel almost unnoticed, because of the witchery of her most gracious manner which served to make her path easy—where men were concerned of course; and without let or hindrance she had cashed an outrageous cheque at her bank which left a few rupees to her credit, and had walked through the building to give orders as to her mail, and ask advice of the fair-haired, courteous young Englishman who rose from his table as she turned away with the sweetest words of thanks for the trouble he had taken in finding out for her how to get quickly to the Sunderbunds.
"I wonder why she's going there, of all places, in this infernal heat, and in such a desperate hurry, and I wonder if she's going alone!" he said half aloud as he drew beetles on his blotting-paper, and frowned as somebody, breathless from heat, sank heavily into the chair on the other side and slapped some documents on to the table.
Leonie was acting quite subconsciously in all she did on that blazing morning.
Which does not mean that she was still walking in her sleep with her eyes wide open, or that she was not aware of her own movements.
Not at all. She was wide awake with a fixed determination to get to the temple in the Sunderbunds as quickly as she could.
Why?—well, who knows?
As far as the dream was concerned her mind had been a perfect blank when she had awakened the previous night groping over the plastered walls; but branded across it, in letters of blood, had been the one word Sunderbunds, standing out clearly against the fog which surrounded something terrible she could not understand. No, she did not understand, but she knew that everywhere she looked she saw the lettering; and that every sound she heard, the soft slur of the lift, the throb of the motor engine, the call of the indefatigable kite, cried the one word aloud; and that in some inexplicable way the resistless summons was connected with the man she loved.
What was she to know of the working of an eastern mind in the secret places of a Hindu temple?
Neither did it strike her as strange that a taxi, with its flag up for hire, should be standing opposite the bank door, blocking the way for arriving vehicles; or that, having persistently refused many irate would-be hirers, and patiently listened to the asperity of their remarks, the driver should have opened the door and held it back as she walked straight across the pavement, got in, and, without hesitating gave the address of the Whiteway Laidlaw Company.
It might have seemed odd to a stranger; still more odd would it have appeared to any chance passer-by if they had overheard the following short conversation as Leonie got out at the shop.
"Can you drive me afterwards to Kulna?" she asked in her best but inefficient Hindustani.
"Even so, mem-sahib," promptly replied the lithe, good-looking son of the East as he salaamed. "If the mem-sahib will pardon her servant he would advise driving to Jessore and resting the night there at the dâk bungalow, that is if the mem-sahib is not in too great haste!"
Leonie frowned, only understanding half of what was said.
"Don't you speak English?"
"No, mem-sahib; but my brother, who lives near the New Market but a minute's drive from here, speaks the mem-sahib's language. Also, he is a good bearer, having travelled widely. If the mem-sahib permits, I will call him to accompany her on her journey to Jessore."
"Very well!" said Leonie, beckoning to a boy, who sprang towards her with a huge basket which, for a few annas, he would carry round the entire building after her, and into which she would throw her purchases of all sizes and shapes.
He emerged some time later jubilantly staggering with basket and hands full.
What a priceless mem-sahib who had not once complained about the price!
The brother had materialised! Oh, those brothers and fathers, and mothers and sisters, and all those relations who are always so strangely near at hand in India!
"If I may offer a suggestion," said the soft voice in the delightfully choice English of the educated native of India who has sojourned in England, "it would be that we drive only to Jessore, stopping at Bongong dâk bungalow for tiffin. If the mem-sahib is sight-seeing, I will arrange everything in the most convenient and pleasant manner for her. From here to Kulna in one day would be a long and wearisome journey in this great heat."
Leonie half turned with the slightest frown as she passed her hand over her eyes.
Once again had come that suggestion of something familiar—a suggestion too fleeting to be caught.
"You can do exactly as you think best as long as I start for the
Sunderbunds to-morrow morning."
"The public boat does not start for three days, mem-sahib."
"I can hire a private launch, can I not? Money is no object, only speed."
"Easily, mem-sahib. Consider it arranged!"
Leonie lifted her head for half a second, showing her face deathly white, the crimson line of her beautiful mouth and the shadow-encircled eyes emphasised by the dark green silk lining of her topee.
She glanced quickly at the dignified figure beside her on the pavement and looked away.
You do not, as a rule, recognise people you have met in your sleep; neither had her memory been impressed with the passing glimpses she had caught of the handsome face in the British Museum and during the chotar shikar.
No, in spite of the tugging of her memory, there was nothing to link this person in the spotless white turban and full-skirted coat of the bearer to her fastidious self.
Neither did that strange anonymous gift of glorious pearls which was round her neck even then, or an unaccounted for mark upon her shoulder, help her in any way.
She leaned back listlessly as her newly acquired bearer arranged the newly bought suit-case and the various packages.
It was an absurd way of starting out on a jungle trip, picking up a car any old how out of the streets, and a bearer from the labyrinths of the bazaar without even glancing at his chits, which, even it she had, would probably have been forgeries.
She had certainly had the sense to put on her knee-high boots and knee-length skirt, a low collared shirt waist and sports coat, also a topee; but, wishing to leave no clue as to her future movements at the hotel, she had slung everything else pell-mell into her trunks, locked and left them to be fetched and stored at her bank.
It had obviated the calling of a car and the giving of an address to the hall porter, but it had forced her to buy everything she might be likely to require for a day or two's sojourn in the waste places of an Indian jungle.
She had thought of everything with one exception, and that, of course, the one item which should have been the most important on the list.
Of weapons of defence she had none.
But then, what was she to know of the workings of the mind of the man sitting with his back to her as the car turned and sped swiftly down the streets, which seem to stretch endlessly, until you strike the heavenly tree-lined road which leads you through Dum Dum and other well-known places to the river edge.
CHAPTER XLIII
"Thence shall I pass, approved
A man, for ay removed
From the developed brute; a god,
Though in the germ."—Browning.
Blazing hot simply did not describe the degree of heat which pressed down upon and around Leonie as she sat totally unconscious of it on the verandah of the Bongong dâk bungalow.
For the benefit of those who have not experienced the assorted joys of travelling in India, a dâk—pronounced dork—bungalow is a travellers' rest, humble or spacious, presided over or not, as the case may be, by a simple and courteous native. They are to be found dotted about everywhere—in jungles, on roads, and outside ruined cities; and there you can stay for an hour or a night, sleeping in comfort, provided you have brought your own bedding and mosquito netting; eating according to the contents of your hamper.
In the cooler hours vivid flashes of orange and black, or black and red, or turquoise blue and green, or white flit across from tree to tree; parrots chatter, crows scream, and the brain-fever bird soothes or irritates you according to your mood, and you tap your fingers on the table in time to the metallic anvil cry of the coppersmith bird, until a tiger-ant or some such voracious insect claims your undivided attention.
In the heat of noon the only sounds to break the intense stillness are the metallic anvil cry of the aforesaid coppersmith bird, and the never-ceasing call of his brain-fever brother.
Except for your own there is no movement whatever—the voracious insect is always with you.
Quite alone in the bungalow, with her back to the open bedroom, Leonie sat undisturbed, with her eyes fixed unseeingly upon the tree-lined road, and a torrent of disconnected thought swirling through her mind.
Exactly what she was doing, and why she was doing it, she had no idea; she only knew that do it she must, and was content to let it rest.
Programme or plan she had none, only an intolerable desire to get to the ruined temple in the jungle.
For what?
She had no notion! She had to get there quickly, that was all she knew.
She sat on, with her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands, without stirring; in fact you would have sworn she was asleep so still was she in the silence broken only by the two birds.
She could see the car a little way down the road awaiting her, with the driver curled up sound asleep beside it at the foot of a tree; the bearer asleep too somewhere, she surmised hazily, as the sound of the packing of the hamper had altogether ceased.
And then something, instinct maybe, or whatever you like to label the incorporeal look-out in our psychological crow's nest, whispered to her that it might be wise if she awoke to her surroundings.
There had not been a sound, nevertheless she felt that somebody stood quite near to her.
She did not move her head, but her eyes flashed quickly to right and left, and she frowned ever so slightly when she remembered that her revolver had been left behind in Calcutta, safely tucked away at the bottom of her dressing-case.
As is the usual way when a revolver is owned by woman.
Nothing stirred except the little curls on the nape of her neck, which quivered when she shivered involuntarily.
It happens every day in India! The land where curtains take the place of wooden doors, and a deferential servant on noiseless, unshod feet glides into your chamber unannounced, and stands patiently behind you until it pleases your august self to turn and acknowledge his humble presence.
That's what you think, anyway.
And it takes quite a time to become accustomed to the noiselessness of this proceeding, and to control the start which gives you away completely.
Leonie could stand the uncertainty no longer, she suddenly swept round in her chair, and remained quite still with her mouth slightly open, and her eyes fixed upon the face of her bearer.
He was just behind her chair, his white full-skirted coat touching the back of it, his arms folded; but as Leonie turned he took one step back and salaamed with both hands before his face, completely hiding the blazing eyes for the one second sufficient for them to regain their normal placid, indifferent look, as he gently made it known that all was ready if the mem-sahib desired to depart or to sleep.
Yes, his eyes had blazed as they rested upon the gracious lines of this woman he loved, but whom, before he had known her, he had vowed, in the transports of his religion, to bring unto his god.
Yes! and the whole body of this magnificent being, vowed to holiness by his parents, had trembled as he stood close to her sweet-scented person; so close that it had seemed as though he stood knee deep in a bed of clover at dawn.
Yes! and he was alone with her, with the knowledge of his power upon her mind; yet he would not have touched one hair of her head, nor laid a finger upon her against her will, even though she was absolutely at his mercy, and the inner room was misty with shadows.
They are gentlemen of the finest type, these pure bred sons of India; not the ravening beasts of prey towards women described so minutely, and with such nauseating detail, in various religious and altruistic pamphlets; little literary atrocities written mostly by men and women who have gathered their experiences of the East from an exhibition or two at the White City or Earl's Court, and their data from their own scurrilous minds.
Bad types there are in every country! But for pity's sake let these social reformers stick to the West, and start on those who make it unpleasant, if not unsafe, for an honest, well-groomed woman, with pretty feet and veiled face, to walk slowly by day, or by night, through the so-called decent streets of London town.
Let them leave the fine, cultured men of India to their own gods and their own customs, remembering that their ways are not our ways; for which those of them who have tarried in our country, return thanks as, laying an offering of thanksgiving before their god, they lift the purdah, behind which awaits the modest, gentle little maid; perfumed with the scents of the East instead of the aroma of whisky or brandy pegs allied to the tobacco of Turkey or Virginia; and unbesmirched by the close embrace of the fox-trot which caused a certain Maharajah, on a visit to England, to remark to an Englishwoman:
"Why! I thought——"
Well, perhaps 'twere better that the damning commentary should be left unwritten.
It was late in the evening when Leonie questioned her servant.
"Does the serang know exactly where I want to go? And how quickly can he get there?"
She was having dinner, and quite a good one, in the front part of the living-room in Jessore's dâk bungalow. This room can be divided into two by means of a curtain drawn across, and you can listen, in fact you are obliged to listen, if there is another party ensconced behind, either to the furtive love-whispers of those who should not be there, or the frank abuse of each other of the bonâ fide couple suffering from intense heat and long years of matrimony.
Leonie spoke over her shoulder in the direction of the bedroom, where the bearer was arranging the mosquito net, her toilet things, and her new-bought dainty night attire.
It you are the right type or caste everything always goes smoothly for you in India; if you are not it most emphatically does not; so she had not given a thought to the extraordinary ease with which her wishes seemed to be carried out, in fact forestalled.
"It is the same serang who took the mem-sahib when she went on the shikar and killed the man-eating tiger. The two coolies to carry the mem-sahib's luggage have been hired, and the boat will be moored to-morrow night!"
"To-morrow night," said Leonie, the light from the adjoining room throwing up her white face against the shadows of the quickly falling night. "But it took us two nights to get there last time."
"We are going a shorter way, mem-sahib. The launch will be moored in a big creek on the front of the island at which the mem-sahib landed last time. A small boat will take us through the very narrow creek, which encircles the island, to the other side near which the temple stands. There will not be much walking for the mem-sahib, she can proceed immediately to the temple in time to see the sunrise, or pass the night in a suapattah——"
"Oh! never that!" said Leonie most decidedly, thinking of her last experience.
"But this hut is clean, mem-sahib!"
Leonie turned right round in her chair.
"How do you know that the last hut was not?"
"All huts are dirty, mem-sahib."
There was not a sign of confusion on the calm well-bred face, and he stood like a statue as Leonie, unconsciously striving for light in the darkness, continued her questioning.
"How did you know I wanted to go to the same place—to the temple, I mean?"
"I did not know, the mem-sahib told the chauffeur!"
At the last word Leonie lifted her head, and her eyes rested intently upon the handsome face in the doorway between the two rooms.
"No! I did not!"
"The great heat of the day doubtless caused the mem-sahib to forget the order she gave to her servant."
Never argue with a native of India, because educated or not he will invariably, and with the utmost courtesy, make you feel at the end of the argument that, if not a born, you are at least an excellent temporary liar.
"Did your parents have you taught your remarkable English?"
"The mem-sahib is too kind to inquire."
In India you do not show curiosity about your servants' private affairs or their families, it is not expected, it is not understood; and at the silence which followed the answer Leonie, feeling herself rebuked, rose from the table, and walked out on to the verandah to hide the colour which swept her face from chin to brow.
In the middle of the night, when suddenly and unaccountably aroused from a restless doze, she spoke sharply as her eyes rested on a white figure prone upon the floor in the reflected light of the moon.
"Bearer!"
Her voice was indignant, and the man with one movement rose to his feet and salaamed.
"What do you mean by sleeping in my room?"
Dear heaven, how he loved her as she sat like an image of wrath behind the mosquito net with the sheet pulled up to her neck.
"There are three doors to the mem-sahib's bedroom, and as the blinds fit badly, except for the presence of her servant, there is nothing to prevent a pariah dog, a jackal, or a thief from entering."
"Please leave my room and sleep somewhere else. I do not like it, and
I am quite safe."
Leonie, feeling acutely the want of dignity in her bunched-up attitude, did not know what to say when the man refused suavely, but point-blank, to leave her.
"I regret that I cannot obey, as the mem-sahib is in my care, and I am responsible for her safety; but until the day breaks I will keep watch at the foot of the bed where the mem-sahib's eyes cannot rest upon her servant!"
Oh! Leonie! Leonie! With that strange, angry, and unaccounted-for mark still upon your shoulder, if only you knew what a fuss you were making over nothing.
But she said thank you quite nicely when chotar hazri was placed beside her bed in the early morning, to the refreshing sound of water being heaved into the tin bath in the dressing-room.
CHAPTER XLIV
"If thou faintest in the day of adversity, thy strength is small."—The Bible.
Jan Cuxson was walking round and round the ruined chamber, pausing at the doors as he passed them to look out at the seemingly never-ending jungle; he would have reminded any onlooker of some caged beast as he went monotonously round and round.
He was rather a desperate sight, too, with harassed eyes in a gaunt face, and his open shirt exposing a somewhat emaciated chest; not that he had been starved, far from it; but eat you ever so heartily, fill your interior with all the fatty substances, real or artificial, in the world, worry will push in your cheek and temple, draw canals of woe from your nose to your mouth, and force your cheek-bone, nose, and ribs into high relief.
Of course he ought to have had a many days' growth of beard all over the face; but, owing to one particular fad, he had not; and thank goodness! for it would have been simply appalling to have had to end the book with the hero looking like a woolly hearthrug.
His fad which saves the situation was that when travelling either for hours or for days his safety razor invariably travelled in his pocket; and the old priest had smiled when he caught him in the act of lathering his face, less successfully, it is true, than more, with a finger tip smeared in ghee, which is clarified fat; and had come back later with a handful of stuff which looked for all the world and felt almost as sticky as French almond rock, a certain vegetable root, slightly acid of smell, which lathers beautifully in hot or cold water, and which, in some districts, the natives use as soap.
He was simply in an agony of mind.
He had stormed, and threatened, and pleaded in turn, and offered the whole of his kingdom in exchange for her safety—all of which had made about as much impression upon the priest as a few snowflakes would upon the Himalayas.
His one and only attempt at escape, which had taken place twenty-four hours before, had been a dire failure.
Roaming around the courtyard outside his chamber, which seemed curiously near, and yet cut off from the rest of the temple, he had heard the tinkle of silver anklets, the sound of a native woman's high-pitched laugh, and the bleating of a goat.
And the thought struck him that if a woman had come to seek counsel of the priest she must have come through the jungle by some safe road known to the native, and she would have to go back by the same road; and if he could only find the way into the temple itself, and watch her from the shadows, what would be easier than to follow her and reach Leonie in time to save her from the disaster and death threatening her.
Although the thought of the death straight to which Leonie was coming, blindfolded by the curse upon her, made his blood run cold and turned his heart to stone at the knowledge of his own impotence, the picture of what might happen to her at the hands of the native crazed with religion and love well-nigh drove him frantic.
He was absolutely at the priest's mercy.
A stronger will than his own allowed him to wander so far and no farther; indeed, he had been powerless even to reach the block of stones from behind which the priest appeared when upon visiting bent, and around which he disappeared when he went to worship before his god.
"I am like a damned hen with a chalk circle drawn round it!" Cuxson had exclaimed when he tried over and over again to pass the invisible line; and he cursed aloud as he felt the deep sleep creeping upon him at various hours of the day and night, and from which there was no escape, try as he would to keep awake.
But upon the day when he heard the tinkle of silver anklets and the bleating of the goat, something, just as curiously incomprehensible, had urged him to walk to the ruined mass of stones which hid the priest's entrance and exit; and he had walked across the sun-stricken court without let or hindrance, or covering to his head, and had found on the other side a low doorway almost choked with jungle growth.
He had not paused to think nor plan; he had merely bent his tall figure and crept through and down the narrow, decaying passage, along which, dotted irregularly here and there, shone little lights in tiny earthenware saucers. He had paused once or twice, sickened by the sight of offerings of which a description is not necessary, and shivered, strong man though he was, when he had met the eyes of gods leering, or glaring at him from little hewn-out shrines in the crumbling masonry.
His feet made no sound, for the narrow way was choked with the dust of ages, and he gave no thought to what might lurk in the shadows in the shape of beast or reptile, so intent was he on reaching the place which held the woman, and which had seemed near when she had laughed, and unaccountably far away as he stole stealthily forward.
The passage twisted at every few yards, and once he had found himself at a dead end in what he thought must be the priest's living room, as far as he could make out by the dim light coming through a tiny aperture high up in the wall. He had dimly seen a bed of leaves, a single covering, and an earthenware platter and jug, before he turned quickly and retreated when something hissed softly and rustled among the leaves.
Having got back into the passage and made some considerable headway, he was almost choked, when on turning a corner he had been enveloped in a sickly sweet smell of many flowers, allied to some sickening odour to which he could give no name; and then he had stopped dead, and flattened himself against the wall as he realised that he had come out by the side of the altar into the temple itself.
Arranged neatly on each side of the doorway were glittering brass vessels, brass trays, and little piles of tiny earthenware saucers; to his left was tethered a black kid, which lay contentedly upon a heap of dying flowers; near it was what appeared to be a miniature guillotine stained almost black; and above his head, in front of him and hanging from a hook in a huge, upstanding block of granite, glittered, a short, needle-pointed knife.
One knife?
Nay! two, three, a dozen, scores, thousands, thousands of glittering knives whirled around his head; and hundreds of goats grinned from corners and capered about his feet, and millions of evil eyes winked at him from the dusky shadows; and voices rose in choirs, male and female voices, whispering, laughing, singing. Louder, still louder, rising like some all-conquering flood, while silver anklets clashed until the brain was nigh to splitting with the din.
He must see, he must see, and watch the women who laughed shrilly and often; he must see the front of that great block of stone which barred his way to Leonie. Yes! Of course that was it, just that one great block of stone which kept him from his love.
Jan Cuxson made a mighty effort to move his heathen foot over the inch of threshold which separated him from the holy place. His breath came in gasps, and the veins stood out in knots upon his forehead as he pushed with both hands at the empty air; he fought like a mad dog to overcome that mighty force arrayed against him which neither advanced nor retreated, but was just there.
Then as something out of the void struck him cruelly between the eyes he gave a mighty shout which made no sound at all, and fell with a crash, scattering the brass vessels and tiny earthenware saucers to the four corners of the space around the altar.
Sunstroke?—well, hardly.
Because the next morning, when he awoke with the hide thongs fastening him by the wrist and the waist to the ring in the wall, he felt fit, and fresh, and extremely wide awake.
Perhaps it was that the blow, or whatever had struck Jan Cuxson down on the threshold of the temple, had served to sharpen his wits; anyway, for some unknown reason, words uttered by the priest on the first day of his imprisonment began to repeat themselves over and over again in his brain, as he sat uncomfortably with his back to the wall and his eyes fixed with a certain crafty understanding upon a piece of rusty metal half hidden under a fallen brick.
Wherefore he wheedled and cajoled when the priest came to visit him until the thongs were unfastened and his somewhat prescribed liberty restored.
"Only until the shadows fall, sahib," the old man said as he gathered the hide thongs in his hands. "Tonight is the night of the full moon and the white woman is even now approaching."
"Leonie—-I mean the mem-sahib—is in the jungle—with whom?"
"Verily, sahib, with the man who loves her!"
"Oh, my God!" said Cuxson slowly. "How do you know?"
"We need no wires or poles to carry us news, sahib! We have a surer way, aye, and a quicker one. Struggle not to-night, sahib, when I tie you to the ring in the wall. Bound you must be, for the Black One has spoken; and it is her pleasure that I shall lift my will from you, even as I did by mischance yesterday. India has suffered through this white woman; my people have been tormented by her, and Kali, the Black One, has commanded that the sufferings of the land shall be wiped out in the white woman's blood, and the torments of the people in your torments."
It has been said that Jan Cuxson was plodding to a degree akin to slowness.
He was! But you may be sure that if an idea came to him even at the eleventh hour it would be a good idea and would be developed until it reached an advanced stage of perfection.
Some time after the priest had departed he drew the piece of metal, which proved to be the broken blade of a knife, from under the fallen stone, slipped it into his pocket, and was as well content as his harassed mind and overwrought imagination would allow him to be.