Leonie of the Jungle

by Joan Conquest

  CHAPTER XXXVII

  "Let us pass our lives at Benares, living by the banks of the divine river, clad only in a single garment, and with our hands uplifted over our heads."--_The Vairagya Sataka_.

  The Praying Ghats or Steps lay desolate in the light of the full moon.

  Hundreds of small lights twinkled and flickered before the countlesstemples; hundreds of fading flower garlands, hung about the templedoors or festooned about the gods--some of which are quiteindescribable--perfumed the night air; and to the right and to the leftthe smouldering bodies on the Burning Ghats cast a crimson glow on theslow, silvery waters of India's most holy river.

  Of worshippers there was not one.

  Of the countless priests who crowd the steps at dawn there was but one.

  The mad priest.

  Naked save for a loin cloth, he stood as he always stands from dawn todawn with feet wide apart and hands upraised to the heavens, outlinedagainst some one of the Rajah's palaces which crown the top and stretchthe length of the terraces like a mighty rampart between the holinessof the place, and the fret and traffic of the outer world.

  The holy man's arms, his legs, his emaciated body are covered with afine ash powder, his long hair is matted with cinders and cow-dung, hismad eyes stare across the river into the infinite, at that which _we_cannot see, as he stands shouting unintelligible, maybe mad words,maybe not, to the glory of his goddess, Kali the Terrible.

  Was he born mad? no one knows! What does he eat or drink? A handfulof rice, a sip of water from his glittering bronze vessel! When doeshe sleep? No one can tell you.

  Who knows! who cares!

  He is a holy man! the mad priest of the Holy City!

  He alone had taken no heed of the incessant resistless throbbing of thedrums behind him in the city; neither did he take notice of the twowhite figures as they ran lightly, swiftly, hand-in-hand down thesunken, crooked, granite steps to a place between the praying rafts atthe water's edge.

  For a moment Leonie hesitated with the water lapping her feet on thethird step, then she turned her head slowly, and looked straight intothe man's eyes which had been fixed intently on the nape of her neck.

  She gave a little sigh, drew out the dagger and let fall the plaitedglory of her hair, and lifting the garlands from about her neck threwthem out on to the waters; then with a native woman's movement pulledthe _sari_ backwards from her head, and unwound it from her shoulderswhich gleamed like ivory in the moonlight. Slowly, but withouthesitation, even as the man dropped his shawl and long white garmentupon the waters, she untwined the _sari_ from about her body, droppedit across a _suttee_ stone, and the dagger upon the step behind, andstood swaying gently with naught but the sheeting about her waist andlimbs.

  The man, naked save for a loin cloth, stood like some splendid bronzestatue two steps lower; straight as a pine was Madhu, the descendant ofprinces, with a width of shoulder most unusual in the native of India,and which served to emphasise the slimness of the waist. Musclerippled under the bronze skin of back, and chest, and limbs; andbetween the breasts gleamed the painted symbol of his religion, just asit shone between the brows.

  The lean face with its hawk nose, and curved mouth set close in astraight line, had the look of an eagle as he stood gazing up at thegirl with burning eyes, in which fanaticism, heightened by the lappingmovement of the holy water about his knees, warred with an overwhelmingpassion roused by the slenderness of the white girl's waist, thevirginity of her beautiful breast, and the satin whiteness of her skin.

  And she placed her hand in his and followed him submissively down thesteps.

  The waters bathed her ankles, her knees, her waist, as she made a cupof her two hands and drank of the holy water; the jackals yelled fromthe far shore, and the unseemly body of a dead youth floated past facedownwards a few yards away.

  For some long minutes she stood with her face uplifted, then dippingher hands again into the water raised them and poured it upon her headuntil she glittered as though beset with diamonds. Strange littlemovements she made to right and left with both hands, circles she drewon the face of the waters, and the man within an inch of her beautifulbody stood with arms folded hiding his hard clenched hands.

  Raising both arms straight above her head she called aloud in answer tothe spirit which moved her:

  "Flowing on, devoted to it," she cried in the soft words of India'sholy writ, "by day and by night flowing on; I, of desirable activity,call upon the heavenly waters!"

  From the temple above the mad priest took up her words as he scourgedhimself in the ecstasy of his worship, and shouted:

  "Kali! Kali! Kali!"

  Which eerie solitary cry brought the pigeons out of their nests inthousands, to wheel and whirl madly in their fright before resettlingin the facade of the palaces, of the niches and nooks of the temples,and the slender minarets of the Mosque of Aurangzeb.

  Bending backwards Leonie laughed up at the priest above, whose body wasrunning blood, then descending the last three steps worn by the feet ofthousands of pilgrims, and tilted by time and the resistless waters,flung out her arms and sank beneath the surface while the great plaitsof hair floated towards the man and crept about his waist like loving,living arms.

  Three times she sank, and three times she rose, singing gently toherself, while great tremors shook the man from his turbaned head tohis slender feet.

  Love or religion? Who knows!

  Are they divided by much more than the breadth of a hair?

  Leonie turned and walked up the steps, the wet heavy sheeting hobblingher about the knees and ankles, clinging to her as the skin to thepeach, her dripping hair making little pools of holy water upon theholy steps; until, standing upon the one where lay the little crumpledheap of her silken _sari_, she unplaited it and shook it out in thenight breeze.

  She picked up the _sari_ and the dagger, and ran a finger along therazor edge, looking sideways at the man who moved not an inch when shedrove the point of the blade beneath the skin above his heart until theblood ran; neither did she move when he dipped his finger in his ownblood and marked her between the brows with the sign of Kali.

  The mad priest, frothing at the mouth, swooned upon the slanting templeroof, the drums were silent, the jackals had ceased their indecentnoise, being intent doubtless upon the task of tearing some body topieces before the arrival of the hosts of enemy pariah dogs; andLeonie, beautiful, bewitched Leonie, holding the white _sari_ pickedout in silver against her breast, held out her hand, and with thesweetest, maddest laugh in all the world sped like a deer up the greatnights of steps.

  And at the top when the man, moving swift and as surefooted as a buck,closed in upon her, her heavy drapery folded itself soddenly about herankles so that when she essayed to save herself she twisted round andfell backwards.

  Her mouth quivered in a smile, and her eyes, like stars, flashed backinto the flaming ones so near her own as the man, lost to all but hisconsuming love for the girl, bent above her, and with slender handscrushed her back against the edge of the steps until the skin of hershoulders was torn and bruised.

  "As the creeper!" he said, whispering the words of the Vega hymn withhis eyes staring straight into her eyes. "As the creeper hascompletely embraced the tree so do thou embrace me, that thou mayest beone loving me, that thou mayest be one not going away from me!"

  He smiled softly as she half raised her arms and whispered to her, thewords sounding like a summer breeze blowing upon the hill-top.

  "As the eagle, flying forth, beats down his wings upon the earth, so doI beat down thy mind, that thou mayest be one loving me, that thoumayest be one not going away from me!"

  And his delicate finger-tips pressed about her temples as he whisperedto her.

  "As the sun goeth at one about the heaven--and--earth here, _so do I goabout thy mind_, that thou mayest be one loving me, that thou mayest beone not going away from me!"

  Slowly he bent still closer, and gently put one hand upon the graciouscur
ve of her slender throat; and Leonie, wanton, seductive, bewitchedLeonie smiled as she too whispered in the tongue of India's holy writ.

  "Let yon man love me; being dear to me let him love me; ye gods sendforth love, let yon man burn for me.

  "That yon man may love me, not I him at any time, ye gods send forthlove, let yon man burn for me!"

  The silence which followed was pierced by the call of the holy conchshell, so low, so sweet, to prayer, to sacrifice.

  Those who have not heard that call can never understand, those who haveheard will forgive this feeble description of the intoxicating,soul-shattering, maddening sound.

  Soft and sweet it will steal insidiously into your ear, your brain, andthe whirlpool of your senses until you stand rooted in ecstasy in aflooded field of sweet desire. Rising swiftly and shrilly it will tearlike racing waters at the ramparts we and our forefathers, haveassiduously and mistakenly built around our inner selves; built untilyou and I and our neighbour have been metamorphosed through the agesfrom that mighty thing which went forth and took exactly what itwanted, to the almost shapeless slug form which, in the peace times ofthe present enervated century, contentedly eats lettuce in the dampseclusion of an overturned flowerpot.

  Yes! that call will pull those ramparts to pieces about your feet; andat the last indescribable, insistent scream of triumph which sears yourbrain and soul, it would be wise to be on the look out, and to keep astrong hand upon the vows you may have vowed, and upon those of thecommandments you may not already have broken; because at that strangeseductive sound the solid chunks of love, honour, chastity and rightthinking; everything, in fact, that is in any way decent and aboveboard is likely to break into a thousand infinitesimal, unconsideredatoms, and be blown broadcast by the wind of indiscretion.

  Leonie lay still, unconscious of the sound and the subtle changecreeping over the man who bent down to her, and who, high caste,over-educated, overstrung, aflame with love and afire with thesensuality of his religion, slowly tightened his hand upon the graciouscurves of the slender throat.

  Years ago Kali, his dire deity, had been outraged by denial in herdesire for sacrifice, and since then, in her wrath, the black goddesshad scourged the land with plague, pestilence, famine, and earthquake.

  Truly sacrifice of goats and buffaloes had been made until the altarsand the courts of her temples ran blood; offerings had been made to herpriests of grain and jewels, yet had she continued to whip the landuntil thousands died of hunger and disease.

  Why should not his hand bring the long-desired and long-sought peace tohis well-loved land, and what more fitting place and time for sacrificethan the steps of the Holy River, under the light of the full moonwhich is Kali's lamp?

  Ah! and why should he not have his earthly reward in love, one short,full hour of the delight he had denied himself, and then, even upon the_suttee_ stone, that little memorial of the burning alive of the youngwidow upon the funeral pyre of the beloved husband, drive the diamondhilted dagger through the soft breast in worship of his god, andthrough his own heart that he might follow his beloved quickly as shepassed to Paradise.

  Yes! sacrifice of the woman he loved that his god might be twicepleased.

  He was crazed with the delirium of his religion, mad with the call ofthe senses lashed to frenzy by the restraint which had been unnaturallyforced upon him throughout his life; his eyes had the look of the eyesof those gods who spy down upon you from the shadowy corners of India'stemples, and his nostrils dilated as he touched the dagger in her hand.

  Only for a moment! For even as he touched it the single beat of a drumfell heavily upon the air, causing him to sit back on his heels with asmile upon the full curved lips, and a light of sudden understanding inhis eyes.

  There was more toward than a mere sacrifice!

  The Holy City was, and had been for days, in a positive ferment ofreligious excitement; the bazaars were thronged with pilgrims who, byboat and train and on foot, had hurried to the city of a thousandtemples.

  Something unusual was in the air although no one could clearly explainwhat it was; something was to happen although no one could name thehour or the day!

  Rice, and flowers, and jewels cemented with blood had been thrust intoand pressed down until they completely filled the great crack which hadsuddenly appeared before the altar of the oldest and most veneratedimage of Kali, the Goddess of Destruction, in the Holy City; and theforeigner had been warned not to place his profane foot within theprecincts of the city upon this night of the full moon.

  The native laughed as he sprang to his feet, standing bare andexceeding beautiful beside the indescribable graven images; and helaughed as he searched in the folds of his turban, and having found thepellets bent down and pressed them between Leonie's teeth, then jerkedher to her feet, steadying her with his eyes.

  He flung her back against the kiosk wall, and encircling her with hisarms drove them fiercely down and against her as he met his splendidteeth in the whiteness of her shoulder--in love; and taking her handsped with her to the inner places of the city, shouting as he ran inthe frenzy of his religion.