Leonie of the Jungle

by Joan Conquest

CHAPTER XLVI

"Out of the abundance of the heart,
the mouth speaketh."—The Bible.

One thing after another happened to prevent Leonie from continuing what remained of the journey during the cooler hours of sunrise.

One coolie strayed and was not retrieved until the other two men were hoarse from shouting, then another ran something into his foot, which was only extracted after a mighty fuss, and something akin to a major operation, skilfully performed with the bearer's knife and a few thorns plucked from the bush.

Last but not least, as they were on the point of starting, a snake about two yards long had blithely wriggled its shining length across their very path; and nothing short of hours of prayer and offerings to their gods would move the coolies along that path after such a sign of ill omen; no! rather than budge an inch they would have laid down in their tracks and died of snake-bite, or a marauding tiger; and Leonie was far too wise a traveller to lose sight of her luggage for one second—in India.

Although she had no idea why she was in such haste, she inwardly fretted at the hours lost, but passed them with outward patience in the shade of the jungle trees; eating what was brought her, and sleeping away the afternoon stretched on a rug; unconscious of the fact that her bearer sat behind her head, fanning her face gently, and with the lightest and deftest of fingers removing the various insects, long and short, fat and thin, smooth or horny, which seemed to have taken unlimited return tickets for the journey over her body.

They had been for some time on the way, the coolies trapesing behind to the tune of some monotonous chant; and the moon was beginning to fling handsful of silver out of her heavenly mint when Leonie, overcome by a most unromantic craving for tea, gave the order to halt.

"How much farther is it?" she asked, as she busied herself with a spirit lamp and a tin of evaporated milk.

Her bearer looked up at the moon.

"Another half-hour, mem-sahib, and we reach the outer walls of the temple—ah! allow me——"

Leonie had dropped a teaspoon and was bending to pick it up, but instead, straightening herself with the kind of snap an over-strung violin string gives when it breaks, took one step forward and fixed her eyes on her servant's face.

"Of course," she said, speaking half to herself, "of course—no wonder I thought I knew you—I saw you in London once—and it was you I saw on the station—and your voice——" she clasped her hands together and took a step quickly backwards—"you were the guide in the tiger hunt, you—you have been following me—you are dogging me—hunting me down—why—tell me why? What harm have I done you?—tell me?"

Her eyes, which were shining strangely in the quickly falling night, swept the man before her from head to foot, and she instinctively threw out her hands and took another step backwards as she realised at last his extraordinary beauty.

"Why is the mem-sahib afraid? What has her servant done to cause trouble to her soul? He meant but to lighten her load, and make smooth her path."

Leonie, with the desire common among women to hide the tell-tale expression of their faces by the movement of their hands, knelt and began fiddling among the tea things.

"Sit down," she said abruptly, pointing to-the ground on the other side of the earthy tea-table, "and tell me everything."

"Nay, mem-sahib! A humble native may not sit in the presence of a white woman."

Leonie lifted her head.

"Sit down," she said simply.

And there in the heart of the jungle, by the side of the fire that had been lighted to scare off any animal, they sat, those two splendid specimens of two splendid races divided by custom and colour, while he told her the strange story of the night on which they had both been dedicated to the Goddess of Destruction, and the happenings thereafter.

"Do you mean to tell me that you willed me to come to you in the museum that day in London?"

He looked straight into her perplexed eyes as he answered slowly:

"I felt that if I could draw you through the ebb and flow and the floods of London traffic, I could do as I would with you on the plains of India. I did not know you—then!"

"And the priest has made me come to the temple—against my will?"

"Even so."

"And what is to happen to me there to-night?"

"A danger threatens you, beautiful white woman, a great danger threatens you from which I alone can save you, yea! and will in spite of all the gods!"

"You will save me—you—and why?"

"Because I love you!"

The words were out, and Leonie, springing to her feet, drew back as the man rose and stood motionless in the dancing shadows thrown by the fire.

"What do you mean? Oh, how dare you——"

"How dare I—dare I—tell you that I love you and want you for wife? Why should I not love you from your beautiful head to your perfect feet? Why should you not be my wife? Because I am what you call black? because of this colouring of my skin which, outside my own land, damns me to eternity, and bars me from all that I desire? Nay, you shall listen, and you shall answer! You will, will you not?"

The voice had dropped from the pitch of fierce denunciation to the sound as of a deep river flowing in pleasant places, and Leonie nodded mutely, succumbing, as is the way of woman, to the entrancing pastime of playing with fire.

She closed her eyes and clasped her hands tightly together when the man, stepping across the barriers of interracial convention, came and stood just behind her shoulder without touching her withal, and spoke in his own tongue.

"Ah, woman, I would call thee wife. Behold, I have much to offer: a great name, vast wealth, palaces, broad lands, jewels, elephants, villages; the esteem of my people, the love of my father and of my mother, of whom I am the only son. All of which is nothing, nothing compared with my love for thee. A love as virgin as the snow upon the Everlasting Hills, swifter than Mother Ganges, deeper than the Indian Ocean, and higher than the vault of heaven. What matter custom, or law, or regulation, or colour, when such a love as mine is offered? Thou as my wife, thou, and thy children my only children. Am I not beautiful? even as beautiful a male as thou art a female? Would not the days and the nights, the months and the years be as heaven—together? Love me—nay! say but that I may call thee wife. Give me thy promise and I will save thee!"

"Save me?—from what?"

Leonie turned and faced this splendid lover, shivering slightly as a low moaning wind rustled the leaves of the trees and stirred the undergrowth.

"Even from death!"

"Death?" she said quietly, looking straight into the man's eyes. "Death—for me? Why I thought I was being willed to the temple to make sacrifice to your god?"

"To-night thou must surely die unless I save thee."

"Oh! you are mistaken," came the quick, decisive reply. "Why, if I was murdered, the whole Empire would be up in arms."

"The British Raj would not know," was the quiet answer.

"Oh! but——"

"You have not seen the Fort of Agra, the sad, dead palace. There, in the dungeons, is a beam stretched across the hidden wells and marked with the fret of a rope. Many a beautiful woman has swung from that beam by neck, or feet, or wrists, and her body dropped through the well into the Holy Jumna without the knowledge of any save her master and her executioner."

"Oh!—oh! don't——"

"Twice," continued the quiet voice relentlessly, "the sacrifice has been averted, but now the hour has come. Thou art here alone, none knowing, and I—I alone can save thee. And will not Kali, our mother, raise her hands in blessing upon us united, even as we were united when babes, and being appeased, lift the curse from off the land. She is soft and gentle, treading lightly upon life's stony paths, Uma so sweet, Parvati, daughter of the eternal snows. Oh! woman, say that thou wilt be my wife, for behold, are we not marked with the same mark which——"

"Mark? What mark?" Leonie questioned abruptly, looking back over her shoulder, her mouth perilously near to his as he bent his head slightly towards her; and there fell a little silence in which the thudding of his heart could be felt against the silk thread of her jersey.

"Between thy breasts, thou white dove, hast thou no mark?"

Leonie tried to speak, and failing, nodded her russet head.

"Even so, it is the mark of Kali which the priest cut upon thee and me, uniting us all those moons ago in the Mother."

She turned completely round and faced the man with a little look of wonder in her eyes.

"I have so often wondered about the—the little mark," she said. "But you see—how could I marry you—I could not, do not—love you!"

"Love," he said quietly. "Love! Thou wilt love me, aye! thou wilt love me in thy waking hours, even as thou wouldst have loved me in thy sleep if—if the gods had not intervened."

"You—have—been with me—in—my—sleep?" she whispered.

"When thou didst walk in thy sleep!"

CHAPTER XLVII

"For jealousy is the rage of a man; therefore he will not spare in the day of vengeance."—The Bible.

Suddenly she was struck with the full horror of those lost nights in which the man beside her had been her companion. She stretched out her hands and turned them over this way and that, scrutinising them with horrified eyes. She touched her mouth with her finger-tips and drew them with a shudder down her neck, and her breast, and her waist, as she looked upon the beauty of the man before her with his passionate mouth and gleaming eyes.

"You—you have been with me when I have walked, unconscious in my sleep; you have——"

He interrupted her hastily, divining her thoughts.

"Yea!" he said, "I have been with thee when, under the influence of my god, thou hast walked in thy sleep. I have watched over thee and helped thy cut and bleeding feet over the roughness of the roads, as I would help them over the perilous road of life. I have not touched thy hand save in support; I have not touched the glory of thy mouth with my mouth, because thou couldst not give me thy consent so to do!

"Dost think it has been a child's task to keep my hands and my kisses from thee? Behold, I had but to make a sign, and thou, in thy unconsciousness, would have come unto my intent! Oh, thou bud of innocent fragrance; thou fruit ready to the plucking of loving hands! Aye, thou wert, thou art in my power; and even have I seen thee in——"

"Ah!" said Leonie sharply as her hand slid to her shoulder and the words came through her closed teeth—"You lie!"

"Lie!"

"Yes, lie! You have not touched me you say; neither have you kissed me, but you, and only you, can tell me what the mark is on my shoulder—a mark I shall carry to my grave."

The man threw back his turbaned head and was about to make reply, when, with those shrill cries which betray great fear, a troop of monkeys passed them, chattering as they ran swiftly on all fours, or swung even more swiftly from tree to tree; and the native looked after them, and up to the sky, and over his shoulder along the narrow path by which they had come, showing black and white in the alternate lights and shadowings of the moon.

"Answer me!" said Leonie more sharply than she knew, and with a woman's superb indifference to any event or signs of approaching event outside her own love orbit.

"Nay, answer thou me!" replied the man who, expert in the knowledge of jungle signs, yet put aside all thought save of his love for the woman. "Tell me that thou wilt be my wife and the mother of my sons, thou beautiful woman! Tell me that thou wilt come unto me this night, wedded to me, by yon old priest; and that, within the arms of Uma so sweet, of Parvati who steppeth so lightly, I may set my seal upon thee.

"Lifting from thee, as I and the priest only may lift, that which thou callest the curse from about thee, bringing thee to happiness in the shadow of the temple."

But something had happened to Leonie, bringing her to a pitch of excitement foreign to her in her waking hours. She looked swiftly to right and left, and over her shoulder, and up the narrow path they must go to the temple; and up to the sky she could see faintly through the trees, and into the eyes of the man watching her intently. Then she clasped her hands tightly and moved close to him, her face as white as death.

"And the sahib, the white man, where is he?"

The native of India weaves and fashions the cloth of his cloak of love out of many colours. Gorgeous colours, blinding, dazzling, in which predominate the scarlet of passion and the emerald of the supreme male's jealousy. And all, from the sweeper to the highest of birth and caste, wear this wondrous garment in India, though not one out of the teeming millions fashions his cloak upon the pattern of his neighbour's.

Madhu Krishnaghar, the son of princes, with eyes dimmed by the brilliance of his own particular garment, failed to perceive that Leonie, too, was wrapped in a love mantle.

The occidental mantle, made of honest homespun, uniform in colour, and with a wide hem to allow for shrinkage; but guaranteed to stand all weathers and to last a lifetime.

He might have been flicking a fly from his sleeve, so indifferent was his answer in his blindness.

"The white man? He is bound to the temple walls, awaiting the woman he allows to walk unveiled and alone throughout India."

"Ah!" said Leonie, with that little hush in her voice which is heard in the mother's when she first sees her new-born babe. "I am sorry," she continued quietly, "so sorry I have not been honest with you. I cannot marry you because——"

She stopped and turned as with a sound like the tearing of silk a flock of birds suddenly flew from the tree tops and whirled away into the night.

"Because? Because, woman?"

For a moment Leonie unconsciously watched the flight of the birds, then swung round, arms stretched wide, eyes shining, and her face aglow.

"Because I love the white man in the temple who is tied to the wall, that is why!"

Her voice rang clear and true under the sky, and she stepped back quickly and threw out her hands as the man spoke. For the banked-down fires of his passion and his love, and the hurt to his race, and his own sudden-born agony flared in one half-second into a mighty, awful conflagration. The flame of his words licked at her feet and the hem of her garments, blazed across her hands with which she hid her face, and swept right over her from head to heels, and yet he did not touch her nor raise his voice one half tone.

"Thou woman! Then shall no man have thee, for I will drive my dagger through the white man's heart before thine eyes, and watch thee, thou beautiful thing, wed him in the shadow of death."

And Leonie, catching the look in his eyes and the set of the mouth, knew that he meant what he said; and she laid her hand on his arm, so that his agony was increased a thousandfold as he looked down upon her whom he had lost.

"You would not, could not do that?" she whispered.

"Could not kill the feringhee?" and the hate in the old mutiny word was terrible to hear. "What else should I do to him who has stolen the sun from my sky, the fragrance from my rose?"

The man seized her by the wrist, and, pulling her to him, bent down, whispering soft, passionate words.

"Shall I tell thee, love flower, what love is? It is the gold of noon, and the silver of night, the might of the lion, and the soft cooing of the gentle dove. As the slender vine around the straight palm, so will my love twine around thy heart. Yea, and even as the banyan tree sends out branches to draw dew from the rounded breast of earth, my love shall yearn towards thee. Day and her lover, Night, with the Dawn and the Sunset their children; the stag and the gentle doe, with their fierce horned offspring, and their offspring as round and smooth even as thy throat. So will our union be, for behold, my love for thee is so surpassing that our sons could but be of the most perfect manhood, and our daughter, why, she will be after thine own fashioning."

The man's eyes shone as he felt the trembling of the girl, and he pressed her, tempting her, revelling after the strange way of the East in the agony of the defeat his victory would bring him.

"And to save the life of the white man, thou opening bud of the passion flower, wilt thou not come unto such a love as mine; to the shadowed corners of my palaces, to the fragrance of my courts, wilt thou not?"

Then a strange thing happened, unheeded by the two sorely tormented souls.

A great form crashed across the path behind them, followed by the bounding passage of a herd of deer; and from all around came the sounds of animals fleeing in panic, as Leonie lifted her face to the man's with a desperate resolve in her stricken eyes.

And the man, reading the answer, bowed his head to her stone cold hands and crushed them to his heart.

"Thou wilt marry me—to-night?"

"For the sake of the man I love," came the steady answer; "to save his life I will be—your—your wife. No, wait! On these conditions. That he is set free and shown a way to safety—that I follow him in secret—and see that he is safe—and that you tell him that I am dead. Swear that to me before your gods and I will keep my promise; swear that you will tell him that I am dead."

And Madhu, the son of princes, put both hands to his forehead and bowed before the woman; then stood erect, with hands upraised to heaven, silent, wrestling with temptation; and having won, he spoke, his face transfigured, his eyes half closed in agony.

"Thou star of heaven! Thou highest point of the Everlasting Hills, behold hast thy great love triumphed. I love thee, but my heart could hold no wife who loved another as thou hast shown thou lovest this man. I——"

But, alas! Leonie, swept off her balance in her great relief, broke across his words.

"Let us hasten quickly, quickly. You will tell the priest; you will help me to set him—the man I love—free. Oh, come quickly, quickly!"

In her callous but uncalculated desire to use this man as a lever wherewith to heave aside the mountain of trouble which threatened to overwhelm Jan Cuxson; and, with the inexplicable cruelty of the woman who loves, and will blissfully put a whole community to torture as long as her beloved is saved a single hurt, she asked the one impossible thing.

He moved so quickly, fiercely, closely to her that she backed until she stood in a patch of moonlight which shone upon her face.

Higher she raised her face, and still higher, as she looked back straight into the eyes intent on hers.

And Madhu Krishnaghar laughed savagely as he looked down upon her.

"Go!" he commanded; "go up the path to the temple gate to meet thy fate. The Mother claims thee, and may thy blood and the blood of the white man who has stolen thee from me flow upon her altar before she shakes the earth in the fury of her displeasure."

Tortured, his soul sought relief in the fanaticism of his religion which flared in his eyes; consumed with love, he called her back as she turned to do the bidding of a stronger will than her own.

"Come!"

She stopped and turned, gave a vacant little laugh, and crept into his arms when he held them out, and closed them about her without touching her.

"Ah!" he whispered, "now that thou comest to me unknowingly I will have none of thee. I love thee, love thee, love thee! Go to thy death that my task may be well finished, and that everlasting torment may be fastened upon the soul of him who stole thee from me! Go, beloved of my soul, rose of the morning, delight of my heart! Ah, my love, my love, go to thy death——!"

And he opened wide his arms and pointed up the path, and Leonie went where he pointed; and never once looked back at the man standing with his arms stretched out towards her, whilst monkeys chattered, and parrots screamed, and the jungle teemed with flying, frightened shapes.