Leonie of the Jungle

by Joan Conquest

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.