CHAPTER XXXI
"For her house inclineth unto death!"--_The Bible_.
We lie beneath the mosquito net, we undress behind the purdah, we siton the verandah, or stroll in the compound; we dance, we ride, we eat,we sleep, ever heedless of the eyes watching, and of the hidden form;but above all of that relentless will which causes some of usuncontrollably to do odd things at odd moments under the Indian stars,to our subsequent disgust and wonderment.
Leonie, with Jan Cuxson behind her, stopped outside the temple door,which, hanging upon one hinge, moved slowly to and fro in the nightbreeze.
And at the side of the altar, in the black shadows of the doorway whichled to the secret places of the temple, a pock-marked native woman,draped in an orange coloured _sari_ embroidered in silver, laid onehand upon the priest's arm and pointed with the other.
"Behold the Sahib," she whispered with a snarl of hate at the cornersof her mouth, stained crimson with betel juice. "He who seeks her inwife," she continued, pushing the _sari_ back from about her head sothat the thirteen silver rings she wore in her crumpled left eartinkled faintly, and her nose-ring of gold set with small but realturquoise gleamed dully, "and once wedded she will return across theBlack Water. O father of the people, O wise one, I love her and thoudidst promise."
She suddenly beat her breast, and the heavy silver bracelets jingledfaintly, then shrank back against the painted wall as a young man, eventhe jungle guide, and beautiful to the verge of unseemliness, stealingfrom the shadows, smote her fiercely across the mouth, and pulled the_sari_ roughly over her head.
"Hold thy peace and watch," he whispered, with a swift movement of thearm, most suggestive of a cobra uncoiling itself with intent to strike,as Leonie turned away from the doorway with a shudder.
She took two steps and stopped irresolute, with the rays of the fullmoon shining upon her upturned perplexed face.
Then she stared down at the myriad things which crawled and hopped inand out of the gleaming bones which lay about in little heaps, orscattered in ones and twos, even up to the door and into the diminterior.
Too absorbed, neither Jan nor Leonie noticed the murmur of voices fromthe far end of the court, nor the reek of the tiger's blood which camefrom her stained dress and the carcase of the dead beast which was inthe process of being skinned, and around which hovered the native staffawaiting the distribution of the coveted tiger's fat.
Which more by faith, than any medicinal property it contains, issupposed to work miracles in stressful times of rheumatism, and cattlesickness.
Jan Cuxson, trying to grasp and knot together the tag ends of a dawningknowledge, stood behind his beloved, patiently awaiting her nextdesire, instead of picking her up in his arms as he should have done,and carrying her off to safety, a good wash and a better dinner at theother end of the court.
He was surprised when she spoke quickly and below her breath.
"Take me away," she whispered hoarsely as he caught her outstretchedhands and pulled her fiercely into his arms. "Take me away, the placeis evil--evil I tell you--and"--she raised her hand and passed itacross his face, laughing softly, "I think I am bewitched--somethingis--is--pulling--is------"
She looked back over her shoulder, stared hard for a moment, and then,tearing herself free, ran like a hunted deer through the crumblingdoorway into the blackness of the temple.
"Who fears, O Woman?" whispered the man, whose beauty touched theunseemly as he sank to the ground. "Who fears?"
Half-way up the temple Leonie stopped, standing in a silver pool ofmoonshine which blazed like the blade of a knife through a hole in theroof; lighting up the ruined altar, the grass-grown stones, and theimage of a female deity carved in bas-relief upon a huge block ofgranite.
Nude was the woman carved out of stone, and of so dark a blue as to bealmost black; with tongue protruding and hair in waving masses, throughwhich were thrust four arms; garlanded with skulls she danced wantonlyupon the body of a man, with two hands raised in blessing, in the thirda knife, in the fourth a bleeding head.
Kali! Kali! Kali!
If only Jan Cuxson had been able to do something, anything, what a mintof trouble he would have saved himself and others, but instead, hestood rooted to a spot just inside the door, incapable of moving handor foot, held by a force he did not even guess at, and therefore couldnot fight, watching Leonie as she moved slowly forward, as though shewere walking in her sleep towards the blood-stained altar.
"So will she always come," murmured the old priest as he laid his handcaressingly upon his well-beloved pupil. "So will she always come.Love? Pah! who fears the love of man in the Black One's temple? Who?"
And there was no answer from the shrouded future.
Leonie stood still, quite still, unconscious of the eyes about her, andeverything save the terrible problem she was trying to solve.
Then suddenly she cried aloud, and the words, like wings, beat againstthe roof and walls.
"I know!" she cried, "I know! I know!"
And whirling round towards the spell-bound man, she turned her hands,palm downwards, with a wonderful eastern gesture of renunciation, andcrumpled into a heap before the altar, and the three watching figuresstole noiselessly back into the secret places of the temple as Cuxson,freed, strode hastily up to his beloved.
He gathered up the unconscious girl as tenderly as a woman, oh! a gooddeal more so, and turning her face to his shoulder, carried her out ofthe temple; stopping for a second to hold her more securely in his leftarm as he bent to pick up something which glittered in the moonlight: apiece of orange silk heavily embroidered in silver, for which Leoniehad ransacked the Old, the New, and the Lal Bazaars; a bit of herayah's _sari_ torn and caught in a sundri breather. "And she stayedbehind on the boat," said Jan to himself, with a flash of inspirationas he turned the thing over in his hand, and slipped it into his pocket.
And though his heart ached over his beloved's mental and physicaldistress, he inwardly rejoiced at the untoward occurrences of the daywhich had supplied his solid, trustworthy brain with the outline of akey to the problem.
Dear, stolid old Jan, who, given the time, could beat anyone atunravelling the hardest, hard-tied, knotted problem.
With a tale of sudden faintness he gave her into the care of EdnaTalbot, who cooed and fluttered over her like the woman she was, inspite of her workmanlike appearance and her outrageous craving for abig meal. And she herded the sahibs to the far end of the court, wherelay the sick man, after the big meal in which Leonie had joined rightheartily; a little white about the face, truly, and shadowed about theeyes, but normal and content, with not the vaguest recollection of whathad happened after the killing of the tiger.
"Oh! don't be dense," Edna Talbot said quite brusquely when Guy Dean,having brutally ignored the suffering native, suggested returning tothe others. "You surely don't want to make a triangle."
"Triangle--what!"
"Well, you know the old saying about two being company, don't you?"
"Of course I do--that's where it comes in," replied the lad not overlucidly, "_I_ want to make the two!"
The major laughed at the rueful countenance, as he clapped the boy onthe shoulder.
"You'll get over it all right, old fellow; it's just like inoculation,a feeble taste of something which might have been ever so much worse.Trust me, you'll get over it!"
"_Never_!" stoutly maintained young Dean as he heaved a stone atsomething which fled across the court, his mental vision failing toregister a picture of the future in which Jill Wetherbourne, daughterof Molly and Jack, occupied the principal position.
Later, Leonie, sitting with Jan Cuxson on a block of fallen masonry,smiled sweetly upon the head _shikari_, who, salaaming, prayed her tohonour him by accepting a little memento of the _shikar_ which hadterminated so successfully upon the slaying of the tiger.
In his open palm he held two small bones about two and a half inches inlength, two little superstitious tokens which ensure sons to the wom
anwho treasures them, and which, he told her in his broken English, wereonly found in the tiger, one on each side of the chest, unconnectedwith any other bone at all.
"It is a charm, O! Mem Sahib, defender of the poor, which willassuredly bring you happiness.
"And may the sons of the sahib grow straight as the pine tree," headded slowly in his own tongue, as he felt the sahib's eyes fixedsteadily upon him.
"What did he say to you, Jan?"
As the shikari turned away Cuxson caught the girl's hands and crushedthem up against his heart.
"I will tell you some day!"
"Tell me _now_!"
"No! not now! It is of love that I should have to speak, and in allthese past weeks you have not let me touch your hand or speak to you oflove. You have put a barrier between us, a barrier of a misplacedfear, which has grown higher and stronger since I have had to confessto failure in finding any trace of your old servant. India is wide,dear, and its villages uncountable, and _I_ am not distressed over theempty return of these last months; all that worries me is, that whileprowling about the Himalayas out of reach of the post, I never knewwhat had happened to you, or that you were in India."
Leonie sighed as she opened her hand and looked at the small bones.
"Tell me now, Jan!" she insisted.
"No! Leonie, I cannot. There will be no one near us when I do tellyou, and except as a souvenir of that very fine old man, you need notkeep them, because my love is a still greater and surer charm to bringyou the great happiness they promise."
Leonie of the Jungle Page 32