Produced by Al Haines
LEONIE OF THE JUNGLE
BY
JOAN CONQUEST
Author of "Desert Love"
NEW YORK
THE MACAULAY COMPANY
Copyright, 1921, by
THE MACAULAY COMPANY
PRINTED IN THE U. S. A.
TO
THE SPLENDID NATIVE OF INDIA,
THE LIVING
MADHU KRISHNAGHAR
[Transcriber's Note: The name "Madhu" appears throughout this book.
The "u" in it can be correctly rendered only in Unicode, as
u-macron--uppercase U+016A, lowercase U+016B.]
CONTENTS
BOOK I
THE WEST
BOOK II
THE EAST
"And never the twain shall meet."
BOOK I
THE WEST
LEONIE OF THE JUNGLE
CHAPTER I
"To deliver thee from the strange woman!"--_The Bible_.
"Who found the kitten?"
"Me," quavered the childish voice.
Lady Susan Hetth tchcked with her tongue against her rather prominent
teeth at the lamentable lapse in grammar, and looked crossly at Leonie,
who immediately lifted up the quavering voice and wept.
Sobs too big for such a little girl shook the slender body, whilst
great tears dripped from the long lashes to the tip of the upturned
nose, down the chin and on the knee of the famous specialist, against
which she rested.
"Stand up, Leonie, and push your hair out of your eyes!"
The thin little body tautened like an overstrung violin string, and a
shock of russet hair was pushed hastily back from a pair of indefinable
eyes, in which shone the light of an intense grief strange in one so
young.
"Leave her to me, Lady Hetth!"
The surgeon's voice was exceedingly suave but with the substratum of
steel which had served to bend other wills to his with an even greater
facility than the thumb of the potter moulds clay to his fancy.
"Leonie is going to tell me everything, and then she is going to the
shop to buy a big doll and _forget_ all about it!"
"Please may I have a book instead of----"
"Leonie, that is very rude."
"Please, Lady Hetth. Go on, darling---what kind of book."
"'Bout tigers an' snakes, oh! an' elephants. Weal animals. Dolls, you
know"--she smiled as she confided the great secret--"aren't weal
_babies_, they're just full of sawdust."
He lifted the child on to his knee, frowning at the weight, and
smoothed the tangled mass of curls away from the low forehead with a
touch which caused her to make a sound 'twixt sob and sigh, and to lie
back against the broad shoulder.
It was a long and disjointed story, told in the inconsequent fashion of
a child of seven unused to converse with her elders; and continually
interrupted by the aunt, who, fretful and dying for her tea, jingled
her distracting bracelets and chains, fidgeted with the Anglo-Indian
odds-and-ends of her raiment, and disconcerted the child by the futile
verbal proddings; which are as bad for the infant mind as the criminal
attempts to force a baby to use its legs are to the infant body.
"So! and you found the dear little kitten lying quite still in the
nursery this morning?"
"Yes! Stwangled!"
"Do pronounce your _r_'s, Leonie."
The child shivered in the man's arms.
"Who told you it was strangled?"
"Auntie!"
The man's hand closed for a moment on a heavy paper-weight as he looked
across the room at the woman who was waggling her foot and knitting her
scanty brows at the sound of the rending sobs.
"Auntie was mistaken, darling. Kitty was asleep, tired out with
playing or running away from the dog next door."
Leonie shook her head. "Kitty's dead," she wailed, "lying all black
and quiet, like--like my dweams!"
There was a moment's pregnant silence, during which Leonie turned round
and snuffled into the great man's collar, and he frowned above the
russet head as he drew a block of paper and pencil towards him.
"What dreams, darling?"
"Don' know--dweams I dweam!"
The specialist sat still for a second and then laughed, the great kind
laugh of a man with a big heart who adores children.
"Let's play a game, Leonie! You tell me about the dreams, and I'll
tell you about my new motor-car, and the one who tells best will get a
big sweet!"
With a child's sudden change of mood Leonie sat up, swinging her black
silk legs to and fro, her eyes dancing, her lips parted over the even
little teeth.
"I _love_ sweets!" said she. "You begin!"
"My car's grey!" said Sir Jonathan Cuxson. "What colour are your
dreams?"
"_Black_!" was the unexpectedly decisive reply. "Black with lots of
wed--wet wed--and gween eyes--lots and lots of eyes--and--and soft
things I can't see, and--noises like kit--kit--kitty makes when she
purrs!"
"Yes?"
"Yes! and people with soft feet like the--the slippers Nannie wears at
night so that I can't hear them. And--and that's all!"
She laughed like the child she ought to have been as she bit the end
off a big pink fondant which had materialised out of one of a dozen
little drawers in the desk, then holding up the other end to the man
laughed again spontaneously and delightfully as he pushed the sweet
into her mouth.
Then he put her on her feet, tilted the little white face back till the
strong light shone into the opalescent, gold-flecked eyes, kissed the
curly head and told her to run round the room, open the cabinet doors
and look at the hidden treasures.
"May I touch them?"
"Of course, sweetheart!"
"I'm vewy sowwy _you_ didn't win," she said in her old-fashioned way,
"because you are vewy, vewy nice. And"--she continued, suddenly
harking hack as a child will to a previous remark--"and it is all vewy,
vewy black, with a teeny, weeny light like the night-light Nannie
lights, and----!"
She stopped dead and buried her head in the middle of Sir Jonathan's
waistcoat, fumbling his coat sleeves with her nervous little hands.
"Yes, darling!" said the man, without a trace of expression in his
voice as he held up a finger warningly to the woman who had rustled in
her chair.
"And--and sometimes there's a black woman. And I'm--I'm fwightened of
her 'cause she calls me, and--and--pulls me out of bed by my head."
"How do you mean, darling? Does she catch hold of your hair? It must
hurt you dreadfully!"
Leonie suddenly stood up, nervously pulling at the man's top waistcoat
button as she furtively glanced first over one shoulder and then over
the other.
"No! she doesn't touch me," she faltered, "and I--I don't always see
her. But--but"--she laid her open palm against her forehead in a
curious little gesture suggestive of the East--"but she pulls me
through my forehead, and when she pulls I've--I've _got_ to go! May I
_hold_ that elephant?"
The brain specialist looked straight into the strange eyes which smiled
confidingly back into his.
"Just a moment, sweetheart," said he. "What do your little friends,
and Nannie, and Auntie say when you tell them about the dreams?"
Leonie leant listlessly against the arm of the chair, and sighed as she
flashed a lightning glance at her aunt who was turning over a
periodical on a table by her side.
"I don't tell Nannie because I think she wouldn't weally understand,
and--and----"
Silence.
"Well, darling?"
"Auntie," she spoke in the merest whisper, "got awful cwoss the first
time I did tell her. She was going out to a dance, and I was telling
her whilst she was dwessing--it was a lovely dwess all sparkles and
little wosebuds--and I upset a bottle of scent over her gloves. The
scent too was like my dweams, just like--like--oh! I don't know, and I
haven't any!"
Once more the man intuitively bridged the gulf.
"No little friends? How's that?"
"Bimba died," she announced casually. "She liked books, too. It's
vewy silly thinking dolls are babies, isn't it; that's why I love
weading, it--it seems weal!"
Lady Hetth broke in hurriedly.
"We simply can't keep her away from books when she's in town. Of
course when we are in the country she simply lives out of doors. It is
very difficult to keep her amused. She sulks when she goes to a party
and always wants to go home!"
"I don't sulk weally, Auntie, I jus'--jus' don' seem to know how to
play!"
She smiled a wan little smile at the woman who had no children of her
own, and moved away slowly with a backward doggy look at the man.
"Good God!" he muttered. "Will you come here, Lady Hetth!"
CHAPTER II
"When your fear cometh as a desolation."--_The Bible_.
Susan Hetth rose.
She had always intensely disliked her brother-in-law's old friend,
failing utterly to perceive the heart of gold studded with rare gems
that was hidden under a bushel of intentional brusqueness.
But as she was under an obligation to him she decided to make herself
as pleasant as possible, and to obey his orders, however irksome.
Great brain specialist, great philanthropist, she had rung him up in a
panic that morning after having vainly ransacked her memory for some
other human being in whom she could with safety confide her fear, and
from whom she could expect some meed of succour.
She knew, as everybody knew, that years ago he had given up the hours
of consultation which had seen his Harley Street waiting-room filled to
overflowing; that little by little, bit by bit, indeed, he had given
himself up entirely to research work, travelling in every quarter of
the globe in his quest for the knowledge necessary to the alleviation
of the mental troubles of his fellow-beings. And that when he found it
or some part of it he had hurried home, and having brought it to as
near a state of perfection as possible, had flung it broad-cast to the
suffering; just as he flung the immense sums of money he made among the
destitute for whom he loved to work without thought of the morrow.
A genuine case of trouble he had never been known to dismiss, and Susan
Hetth had heaved a sigh of relief into the receiver when he fixed an
immediate appointment.
The spook of fear is not the cheeriest companion of the early cup of
tea, and Nannie's words, allied to Nannie's face when she entered
without knocking, had caused the silly, invertebrate woman to take
immediate action for once in her life.
Not for anything would she confess it, but she wished now she had
listened to Nannie when, just a year ago, she had so fervently urged a
visit to the doctor the first time she had discovered the baby girl
walking downstairs one step at a time in her sleep.
She remembered the way the ever-changing house-parlourmaids had
furtively looked at the child when she came in to dessert; how one
after the other they had given notice, declaring that although they
really loved the child their nerves would not stand the ever-recurring
shock of finding her sitting in some corner in the dark; or the
pattering of her little feet on the stairs when she occasionally evaded
the nurse and walked about the house in her sleep; and she remembered
how other nurses who brought baby visitors to tea had watched the
child, surreptitiously touching their foreheads and wagging their heads
at each other.
But, as is the way of the supine, she had put it off and put it off
until her negligence had culminated in the frightful scene of this same
very early morning, when Leonie, waking in the day nursery to find her
kitten dead, had screamed and shrieked hour after hour until the
house-parlourmaid had rushed in and given instant notice, with the
unsolicited information that the servants thought, and the neighbours
said, the child was mad and ought to be sent to a home.
Then, indeed, had terror suddenly tweaked Susan Hetth's heart, the
social one, the maternal one having long since atrophied through want
of use; for the shadow of lunacy is about the blackest of all the
shadows that can fall across a butterfly's sunny, heedless path.
Ten years ago she had lost her husband, in the year following most of
her capital had gone in a mad-cat speculation, and three years later
her gallant brother-in-law died, leaving her a yearly income sufficient
for expenses and education if she would undertake to mother his little
daughter. Since then she had led the usual abortive life of the woman
who lives on the past glamour of her husband's success and a limited
income, upon which she tries ineffectually to dovetail herself into a
society to which she does not rightly belong. Having noticed an
increasing plenitude of silver among the ash-gold of her hair, a
deepening of the lines of discord between her brows, and the threads of
discontent which were daily being hemstitched into her face by the
sharp needles of make-believe, covetousness, and a precarious banking
account, she had recently decided to try and annex, or rather try and
graft herself on to a certain unsuspecting male being _en secondes
noces_.
And that simply cannot be done if there is the slightest shadow upon
one's appendages.
So she sat down in the chair with as good a grace as she could muster,
and arranged her big picture hat so that the spring sun should not draw
Sir Jonathan's attention to the methods she employed to combat the
rapidity with which what remained of her prettiness, prematurely faded
by the Indian sun, was vanishing.
For a long and trying moment he sat silently staring at her, wondering
as he had always wondered what had induced his old friend to place his
little girl in such inadequate, feeble hands.
To break the tension Lady Hetth clanked a silver Indian bracelet bought
at Liberty's against an Egyptian chain sold by Swan & Edgar's, and the
man frowned as he drew a series of cats on his blotting-paper.
CHAPTER III
"Against stupidity the very gods
Themselves contend in vain!"--_Schiller_.
"Let me see," he said slowly. "You have been in India I believe. I
wonder if you know anything about it!"
"I lived _ten_ years in the Punjab." This information was given with
the intense self-satisfaction peculiar to the feminine Anglo-Indian.
"With my husband," was added after a rather damping silence, "who was
knighted for certain--er--work he did in the Indian Civil Service."
"That doesn't mean that you know anything about the country, Mam.
Leonie has been with you almost seven years, please correct me if I
make any mistake. She is seven this month you say. She was four
months old when she came over from India. Did her ayah come with her,
by the way? No! Had she been good to the baby--yes! yes! I know, they
always are, but these dreams indicate that the child has been badly
frightened some time or another!"
"But she _couldn't_ be frightened at four months," vacantly interrupted
Susan Hetth, who could not see the trend of the conversation, or the
need of the detailed interrogation. "She would be _far_ too young!"
"Too _young_!" snapped Sir Jonathan. "Rubbish! Do you know why you
are afraid to-day of falling from a height?"
"No," replied Susan Hetth, cordially loathing the man, his methods, and
his manners.
"Because," he answered roughly, "you were frightened of falling from
your mother's or your nurse's arms when you were a few months old, and
the impression of height and fear made upon your baby mind is still
with you, _that's_ why!"
"The brute!" she thought, as she smiled the propitiatory smile of one
who is afraid and murmured, "How very interesting!"
"Is there anything else you can tell me about your little niece? no
matter how trivial a detail! Has she ever screamed for hours as she
screamed this morning? Does she get angry? I mean mad angry!"
"No!" replied the aunt. "From what her nurse and daily governess tell
me she seems to be _remarkably_ sweet-tempered. You see I don't--I
haven't--I don't see much of her. I'm--I've--you see I have _so_ many
friends over here!"
The man snorted.
"I must say," she continued, "I have _never_ met a child so averse from
being kissed or being made a fuss of--she _hates_ anyone to touch her,
even--even _me_, her _mother_, as you might say; but they say she is
tractable, and has never been known to lose her temper, or slap, or
scratch, as some children do--no! there is _really_ nothing to tell
about her--of course she walks a bit in her sleep, at least so her
Nannie says!"
The specialist's hand crashed on the table. "Good God, woman!" he
flung at her, "what in heaven's name _are_ you modern women made of?
How long has she been walking in her sleep? Tell me all you know _at
once_--and remember it's your niece's _brain_ and her future you are
talking about, so try and describe this sleep-walking with as much
interest and regard to detail as you would if you were talking about a
new dress. Why in heaven's name didn't you send her with the
nurse--the _servant_--instead of coming yourself--I might have learnt
something about the child _then_!"
It seemed that Leonie while still quite a baby had walked about the
night nursery in her sleep; that she had been found in the day nursery
and on the lower landing, but had always gone back to bed without
waking; that she muttered a lot of rubbish which the nurse could not
understand, and was always very tired next day. That now that she was
older she slept in a room by herself as she became unaccountably
restless and wide awake if anyone slept in the room with her. No! the
nurse had never noticed the hour or the date, or anything, and that was
really all, and "couldn't you give the child a dose of bromide."
Which sentence served to finish the history and to bring Sir Jonathan
with a bound from his chair.
"Bromide," he snarled, "_bromide_! Now, Lady Hetth, listen to me.
There is something more than nerves and a highly strung temperament in
this. Next week I want Nannie, not _you_, to bring the child here on a
visit. I know India and her religions as far as any Englishman dare
say he knows anything about that unfathomable country--yes! Mam!
religions--Hinduism--Brahminism--Buddhism--why, I've passed the best
part of my life trying to unravel certain physical and psychical
threads knotted up in India; but the years are slipping by, and time is
getting shorter and shorter, and but a tithe done out of all there is
to do; but thanks be, my boy has inherited my love for this work, and
will carry on here when I have crossed the threshold and found the
solutions to my problems on the other side. Though I'm sure I don't
know why I'm telling _you_ all this," he finished brusquely, "we will
return to India."
"Yes! India is very, very interesting!" piped Lady Hetth, rising and
standing on one foot so as to rest the other suffering from an
oversmall shoe.
"Very, _very_ interesting!" she continued unctuously and with the
enthusiasm she reserved as a rule for the S.P.C.K.I, which letters
stand for an attempt to graft a new creed on to the tree of religion in
India which was bearing _fruit_ at a period when we were hobnobbing in
caves, with a boulder or good stout club as reasons for existence.
"I'll write and tell you when to send the child and her nurse, and
between us we'll manage to keep her amused. And in the meantime stop
all lessons and let her do exactly as she likes, and feed her up, Mam,
feed her up, her bones are simply coming through her skin."
Again he laughed a great rumbling laugh, as lifting the child from the
ground he felt the little hands in his mane of white hair.
"You're nice," she decided, "vewy nice."
"Like to come and stay with me?"
"Oh, yes! if you won't--won't make me----!"
She stopped short.
"Well! what--won't make you what?"
"Nothing--Auntie pulled my dwess!"
The door closed softly.
CHAPTER IV
"The kindest man,
The best conditioned and unwearied spirit
In doing courtesies."--_Shakespeare_.
They met on the threshold.
Swinging back the door to let Leonie and her aunt out, Ellen, the
middle-aged maid, almost an heirloom in the family of Cuxson, bristling
in starched cap and apron, let in the erstwhile plague of her life, but
now as ever the light of her eyes, Jonathan Cuxson, Junior.
He took Lady Hetth's hand in a mighty and painful grip when after a
moment's hesitation she introduced herself.
"Why, of course! You must be Jan! Except for being bigger you haven't
changed a bit since I saw you years ago one Speech Day at Harrow!" She
looked with open admiration at the very personable young man before her
who loomed large in the hall with his height of six feet two and a
tremendous width of shoulder. His eyes were grey, and as honest as a
genuine fine day; the jaw was just saved from a shadow of brutality in
its strength by a remarkably fine mouth; the ears were splendid from an
intellectual point of view, and the set of the head on the neck, and
the neck on the shoulders, perfect. The nose was a good nose, rather
broad at the top, with those delicate sensitive nostrils which usually
spell trouble for the owner.
"I don't believe you remember me!"
Happily the reply which must have been untrue or given in the negative
was averted by the hilarious arrival of a puppy.
Having heard the deep voice associated in its canine mind with bits of
cake and joyous roughs-and-tumbles, it had forsaken the happy though
forbidden hunting ground of the upper storeys and negotiated the stairs
in a series of bumps and misses.
Arrived in the hall it hurled itself blindly against Leonie's ankles,
and ricocheted on to its master's boots, where it essayed a _pas seul_
on its hind legs in its efforts to reach the strong brown hand.
"Oh!" said Leonie, as she fell on her knees with her arms outstretched
to the rampaging ball of white fluff and high spirits, the which
thinking it some new game squatted back on its hind legs with the front
ones wide apart, gave an infantile squeak, and whizzed round three
times apparently for luck, as tears welled up in the child's large eyes
and trickled down the white face.
"Hello, kiddie! You're crying!" said Jan Cuxson, who like his father
had a positive mania for protecting and helping those in trouble, which
mania got him into an infinite and varied amount of trouble himself,
and led him into unexpected boles and corners of the earth. "I'm--I'm
not crying weally!" choked Leonie, "it's--it's my kitten!"
"Oh! do stop, Leonie!" said her aunt, leaning down to catch the child's
hand and pull her to her feet. "She's coming to stay with you," she
added, as Leonie stood quite still with that piteous jerk of the chin
which comes from suppressed and overwhelming grief, as she watched the
puppy play a one-sided game of bumblefoot in a corner.
"That's jolly," said the young man.
"Oh! she's coming as a case. She walks a good deal in her sleep, and
as my brother-in-law, Colonel Hetth, if you remember, was such a----"
But Jan Cuxson was not listening.
He too had put his hand on the curly head and tilted it back gently so
that the light shone into the sorrow-laden eyes encircled by shadows.
Then he smiled suddenly down at the mite, and she, perceiving that a
ray of light had suddenly pierced the all-pervading gloom, smiled back,
and catching his left hand in both of hers pressed it to her forehead.
"Good Lord!" he muttered, as a thrill ran through him at the unexpected
and oriental action.
And Fate, plucking in senile fashion at the loose ends which lay
nearest her old hand, knotted two tightly together with a bit of rare
golden strand she kept tucked away in her bodice.
"And what shall we do when you come? Can you ride? I know of a lovely
pony a little boy rides!"
Leonie shook her head mournfully, feeling unconsciously but acutely the
penalty of her sex for the first time in her life.
"I can't wide astwide," she sighed, "I haven't any bweeches. Jill and
Maudie Wetherbourne always wide in skirts. But I can swim," she added
quickly, "an' jump in out of my depff. I learnt in the baff at the
seaside!"
"Oh! come along, child, _do_!" broke in her aunt to her own undoing.
"Auntie jumps in too, though she says she doesn't," proceeded Leonie in
a gallant effort to shore up her family's sporting reputation.
"I do _not_, Leonie! I can't imagine how you ever got such an idea
into your head!"
But Leonie, nothing daunted, shook back her russet mop of hair and gave
direct answer, to the confusion of the domestic who happily stood out
of Lady Hetth's eye-range.
"But, Auntie! I've _often_ heard Wilkins tell Nannie that you've been
in off the deep end before bweakfast! Oh! do let me hold him just for
ever such a little while!"
To save the expression of his face Jan Cuxson had bent and lifted the
pup by the scruff of its neck, and upon the piteous appeal put it
squirming and wriggling in the outstretched arms.
Great tears dripped all over the animal though Leonie stood on one
foot, bit her underlip, and squeezed the puppy to suffocation in a
valiant effort to restrain this appalling sign of weakness.
"Tell me what makes you cry like that?"
"My--my kitten was--was stwangled by--by someone this morning, an'--an'
she was all soft an'--an' fluffy like----"
The words ended in a paroxysm of sobs muffled in the puppy's coat
whereupon it ecstatically licked every visible part of the child's
neck, whilst Ellen, throwing decorum to the winds, knelt down and drew
the shaking little figure into her arms.
"Anybody in there!" suddenly and very gruffly asked Jan Cuxson, jerking
his head in the direction of the room where the few and favoured
awaited the pleasure of the specialist.
"No, Sir," replied Ellen, as she disentangled one of the puppy's claws
from the lace on Leonie's sleeve. "I'm going to call my father! I
don't think you understand your little girl very well!"
He spoke quite gently but his face was white with anger, that almost
terrifying rage which surges over and through the mentally and
physically strong at the sight, or thought, of cruelty to the small and
weak.
He whistled two exceedingly sharp notes and plunged his hands into his
pockets, where he scrunched up his keys and some loose change.
CHAPTER V
"The liberal soul shall be made fat."--_The Bible_.
"Well! well! well!"
Sir Jonathan walked over to the child and knelt down beside her as the
maid rose and straightened her crumpled apron.
"Let me have the doggie, darling!"
"No!--no!--_no_! I--I love him. He's all soft and cuddley. I want to
hold him for jus' a little, little longer!"
The child's voice was shrill with excitement as she pulled back from
the encircling arms, her lips quivering, her eyes staring distractedly
first at the younger man then at the dog.
"Would you like to have Jingles, kiddie?"
The change in the child's face was electrifying, and Sir Jonathan,
rising with his eyes fixed upon her, touched his son's arm to draw his
attention to it.
Tears like dewdrops on brown pansy petals hung heavily from the lashes,
but the corners of the mouth turned up in an adorable smile, and waves
of gratitude and delight swept up from chin to brow obliterating the
agony of the past hours.
"For _me_--to _keep_?" she whispered, as she stood on her toes in an
instinctive effort to make the body reach and unite with the mind at
the highest point of this most perfect moment, whilst her little breast
heaved with the repressed sobs of her fully laden heart.
"Yes! for keeps, little one!"
The three elders stood silently, the specialist watching intently the
light which kindled in the child's eyes as she looked from one to the
other before she bent her head over the dog she had completely
surrounded with her arms.
Jan Cuxson made a movement to end a situation which was bordering on
cruelty when Lady Hetth anticipated him with her customary dire
tactlessness.
"There now, Leonie! _Now_ perhaps you'll be satisfied. Give Mr.
Cuxson a kiss and say thank you nicely!"
Leonie would have cheerfully put her hand in the fire to serve this
wonderful being who royally distributed gifts, and _live_ ones at that,
and only hesitated for the barest fraction of a second before, her face
suffused with crimson, she walked up to him.
"Of course if--if you want me to--I'll--I'll kiss you," she said
heroically, unconsciously squeezing the puppy under the stress of the
awful moment until it yelped, "but I'd--I'd wather----" She stopped
and looked up hurriedly into the understanding face of the elder man.
He nodded as he caught her eye so that she finished all in a hopeful
burst.
"But I'd wather not if you don't mind!"
Lady Hetth frowned and put out her hand, murmuring something about
really having to go.
"I'll send for her and Nannie, Lady Hetth. And keep her out of doors
as much as possible. Why don't you take her to the Zoo this afternoon?"
"I couldn't _possibly_!" came the prompt and irritable reply.
"What about me!" interrupted Jan Cuxson. "Eh! kiddie? You and I
riding big, fat elephants at the Zoo!"
"_You_--and _Jingles_--and _me_!" said Leonie, disengaging her hand
from her aunt's. "And you," she said sweetly, laying it on the elder
man's coat sleeve.
Heaven had opened wide its gates and she was for pulling everybody in
with her, and her eyes danced, and so did her patent shod feet on the
rug.
"It's _too_ kind of you, Jan!" broke in her aunt. "I really don't like
to let you waste your time with a child!"
"Not at all, Lady Hetth! I love kids--and the Zoo. Where shall I
bring her to afterwards?"
"Oh! Yes! bring her to the Ladies' Union Club where I am staying. No!
you'd better take her to her Nannie as they don't allow children in the
Club, thank goodness. They are staying in York Street, Baker Street,
quite convenient for you."
She trailed through the door as she spoke, pouring out a cascade of
vapid thanks and announcing also that she had shopping to do at
Debenham and Freebody's.
She hadn't, she was going to catch an omnibus in Cavendish Square,
being of those who, blindly extravagant in most things, think they
economise when spoiling their clothes and temper in a penny ha'penny
bus, instead of keeping both unruffled in a taxi, at two shillings.
Ellen, returning later triumphantly with a taxi, held wide the door, a
wide and loving smile across her plain face.
"You come too, Sir," said Jan Cuxson. "Do you heaps of good to ride an
elephant!"
"I only wish I could, boy," said the man as he laid one hand on the
shoulder of the son he loved, and the other on Leonie's head. "But
I've much to do in that opium case, and I'm dining out, and shall read
a bit when I get back----"
"And I'm dining out too, more's the nuisance, otherwise I could help.
Sure to be awfully late as it's a farewell dinner to a fellow at the
hospital----"
"Well! See you in the morning! Good-bye, sweetheart, I won't forget
the book, and just you make that lazy fellow show you everything!"
He bent and kissed Leonie as she lifted her face, which was an
unheard-of thing for her to do, and watched her as, hugging the
struggling dog, she ran down the steps and was lifted into the taxi by
her companion.
With his foot on the step Jan hesitated, then turned and walked back to
his father.
"I don't know why. Sir, but I do wish you'd come too," he said slowly,
looking at the man he loved with a love past the comprehension of the
younger generation of the present day.
He put out his hand as he spoke and gripped the elder man's hard, then
ran down the steps, jumped in beside Leonie, and turned to wave
hilariously with her as they sped away to the Zoo.
The brain specialist went back thoughtfully to his room, and when he
had closed the door stood for a long time looking out at the little
garden with its one big tree.
"I wonder, I _wonder_," he mused. "I'd give a good deal to get at that
ayah--well! why not?--I could start for----" He looked round suddenly,
then laughed as he passed his hand over his eyes. "Funny! I thought
someone opened the door."
He moved to his desk and turned over his diary, showing blank page
after blank page.
"Strange," he muttered. "There is nothing written down after to-day,
not a single engagement. I must have entered them in some other book;
very careless of me."
CHAPTER VI
"And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry
in their desolate homes."--_The Bible_.
"Gawd!"
Mrs. Henry Higgins called upon the Almighty in the vernacular of Seven
Dials, sought gropingly for the members of her progeny who clutched her
skirt, and fortunately kept her head.
"'Enery James--no! Gertrude Ellen--you've gotter better headpiece,
jest yer slip along to the keeper an' tell _'im_ to look slippy and
come along quick _h'and_ quiet!"
Gertrude Ellen, puffed up with pride at the pull she had had over her
brother, slipped off, as her mother continued in a raucous whisper,
"Now if that young miss don't deserve a thorough good 'iding! I'd take
the skin off yer if any of yer did such a fing, strite I would. Drat
yer, keep stilt cawn't yer--you'll rouse the brute!"
She shook her skirts so that the half-dozen clinging children rattled
like a bunch of keys, pushed her jet bonnet back from the shiny
wrinkled forehead, and waited, her motherly heart aquake in spite of
her drastic language.
Jan Cuxson was standing in front of the lions' cage at one end of the
lion-house, talking to his old friend the keeper, under the impression
that Leonie was close beside him; but she, having taken advantage of
their conversation and a practically empty house, had slipped quietly
away, climbed the barrier near the far window, and was _also_ holding
conversation--with a tiger from Bengal.
The animal lay outstretched with his wonderful head close to the bars,
and his unblinking opalescent gold-flecked eyes staring straight into
the opalescent gold-flecked eyes of the child as she stood on tip-toe
so that her face was almost on a level with that of the animal.
"_Poor_ tiger!" she was saying. "I'm vewwy sowwy for you--I'm sure
you're not so vewy, vewy wicked, an' if you will bend your head I will
stwoke you behind the ear same as I did Kitty."
Mrs. Henry Higgins gasped.
Holding on to one bar tightly just near the tiger's mouth so as to
steady herself, Leonie stretched, and thrusting her hand inside began
to rub the tiger's head quite forcibly behind the ear.
"Nice?" she inquired as the animal closed its eyes under the unexpected
and unexperienced caress, then opening them lifted the beautiful head
and yawned to the full capacity of the huge mouth, affording Leonie a
front row view of the splendid ivories and pale pink tongue.
"Oh--h--h!" said she admiringly, standing flat and patting the nearest
paw. "I _do_ like you though you _do_ fwighten me when you walk so
softly in my dweams--oh--h--h!"
She shivered with ecstasy as the tiger rolled on its back, displaying
its soft white belly as it bit its hind foot with the abandon of a
baby, then turned on its side, and leaping sideways to its feet, slunk
off to the far corner of the miserable den, which is all a civilised
country gives a wild animal in exchange for its jungle home.
Meanwhile the Higgins brood, like hungry sparrows on a rail, were
sitting open-mouthed on the lower steps provided for the benefit of
those spectators who wish to revel with safety in the degrading sight
of the royal beasts fed with lumps of bleeding meat pushed through the
lower bar on the end of a prong.
Rendered somewhat incoherent by fear, and haste, allied to the ghastly
English she had acquired in the streets and been allowed to retain in
the Council School, Gertrude Ellen had found it somewhat difficult to
arouse the keeper to a realisation of the impending disaster.
But when he _did_ look over his shoulder in the direction her dirty
little hand was pointing he swore a mighty oath and acted promptly.
"Keep still, Sir, for the love of heaven!" he whispered, catching hold
of Jan Cuxson's arm as the latter made a step forward. "Don't let that
there animal see yer, he's the blamedest, cussedest brute I've ever had
to do with. Never had a civil growl from him since he came here over
three years ago."
Whilst speaking the man had hurriedly discarded his boots and climbed
inside the barrier, whilst Cuxson held the child quiet by her thin
little shoulders.
"Damn that woman," went on the keeper, "why can't she keep still. Sure
as blazes if that there tiger sees her, which don't mean if he's
_looking_ at her, he'll go nasty and have that missy's 'and off."
Mrs. Higgins, having clumped her brood into silence, was making frantic
and what she imagined to be surreptitious signals of distress with her
left arm, keeping her eyes glued on Leonie, who was clinging to the
bars with both hands whilst calling upon the tiger to come back.
He came back, half crouched, noiselessly, stealthily, the hair of the
belly almost touching the ground, for all the world like a cat about to
spring upon an unsuspecting sparrow.
He came to a standstill within an inch of the bars and threw his
pointed ears straight forward so that they stood out at right angles to
the beautifully marked face; spasmodically twitched back the mouth
without a sound issuing therefrom, and then lay down and pressed his
head against the bars.
The tiny hand was stroking the silky ears, patting the head, and
prodding contentedly into the thick fur of the neck when suddenly with
a mighty heart-quaking roar the tiger leapt up and back, and then
hurled himself at the bars.
The keeper had crept, bent double, along the inside of the barrier, and
had most suddenly and surprisingly seized Leonie by the waist and
wrenched her free from the bars to which she had tried to cling,
holding her like a vice in his arms where she vainly kicked and
struggled for freedom.
CHAPTER VII
". . . that man could not be altogether cleared
from injustice in dealing with beasts as he now
does."--_Plutarch_.
The whole house was in an uproar.
The lions were trotting round and round, stopping to listen and snuff in
the sawdust near the bars; the stumpy jaguar, black as ink, with a body
like a steel case, was rushing up and down, rubbing its forehead fiercely
as it turned; a lion and his mate were rearing themselves one after the
other against the walls, half turning from the middle to fall almost
backward in that peculiar movement which reminds one forcibly of great
succeeding waves stopped and thrown back upon themselves by some bleak
rock.
People were pushing and straining to look in at the windows, and rattling
the doors which had been hurriedly locked by the keepers who had rushed
to ascertain the cause of the tumult, whilst the tiger made the place
resound with its terrific roars as it hurled its huge weight again and
again at the bars of its cage.
"Come _on_, Mother," shouted the keeper above the din, "bring all those
children and let's get out. They'll quieten down when we've gone. Can't
you _read_!"
He shook Leonie slightly under the stress of his agitation as he hauled
her in front of the notice which commands you to refrain from climbing
the barrier.
"Of course I can wead," she replied with dignity; "I'm weading the
little----"
"Well! read _that_!"
"But--but"--stammered Leonie, having read with difficulty--"but I knew
the tiger, Mr. Keeper!"
"_Oh_! yes! of course! You were tiger 'unting and brought him from the
Sunderbunds about four years ago; it wasn't the gentleman, of course not!"
"But weally," pleaded Leonie with the tears very near, "weally I've--I've
dweamed lots about him, and--and--and----"
"Take her away, Sir--she makes me see red she does. No thank you.
Sir--very much obliged, but it's part of my duty to see that people
_don't_ climb the barrier, and I kind of failed--p'raps the little girl
what came and----"
They were outside by this time and the centre of an interested admiring
crowd; it is only bleeding meat at three o'clock as a rule which can
rouse the inhabitants of the lion house from their prison apathy.
Taking the dirty little paw Cuxson, crumpling up a note, put it into the
dirty little palm and closed the fingers tightly over it. Whereupon
Gertrude Ellen blushed furiously, and went to her mother with her
clenched fist behind her back, where she kept it stiffly until tea-time,
when she held out the bit of paper without a word, to the tune of "Lawks
a mercy me!" from her mother, who immediately ordered more buns on the
strength of it.
"Lor' bless yer, lovey!" said Mrs. Higgins, whose bonnet was bobbing on
the nape of her neck, leaving the wisps of hair to straggle
unrestrainedly in the honest grey eyes, as she knelt on the ground and
tugged Leonie's short skirts into place. "Yer did give us a turn,
dearie; yer might 'av 'ad yer 'and nipped orf by that there brute. Come
'_ere_, Lil and 'Erb--I'll 'ave yer eaten by the camuls next!"
The bow-legged twins, with their spirit of adventure quashed, rolled back
to mother, and stood wide-eyed as she ran her work-worn hand through the
stranger's luxuriant curls.
"Give us a kiss, lovey, an' go an' get some tea!"
For the second time that day Leonie moved to obey the same command, but
this time there was no hesitation as she put her thin arms round the
woman's neck and kissed her sweetly once and again.
And the woman, who sensed something amiss in the quivering little body,
held her firmly, patting her gently with the same hand which dealt out
indiscriminately such resounding and often well-earned smacks among her
own; and Leonie sighed and leant confidingly against the stout, badly
corseted figure.
"How comfy," she whispered shyly. "How soft you are. Auntie never holds
me in her arms, and when Nannie does she's always full of bits of things
that stick _out_."
And then with a little scream of delight she was away, speeding over the
gravel in the wake of a lumbering great form wending its way in and out
of the crowd.
"Cut along, Sir, or you'll find her 'obnobbing with the gorilla next!
I've never _seen_ such a child for downright mischievousness."
Cuxson cut along as bidden and for all he was worth, pulling Leonie up in
front of the ticket office for elephant rides, and after purchasing
tickets sidetracked her to a tea-table.
* * * * * * * *
"Mind you bring Jingles when you come to stay!"
"Pwomise," called back Leonie from her Nannie's arms as she opened the
door to them and lifted the tired happy child from the taxi.
But she didn't because she never went.
CHAPTER VIII
"And make my seated heart knock at my ribs
Against the use of nature. Present fears
Are less than horrible imaginings."--_Shakespeare_.
Big Ben announced the approaching hour of midnight, throwing the
sonorous notes to the soft spring wind which wafted them up to Harley
Street.
Save for the light thrown by the dancing flames of a log fire, and the
orange disc made on the desk by the light of a heavily shaded lamp, the
room was dark; the silence broken only by the occasional crackle of the
wood fire and the faint rustle as Sir Jonathan turned a page.
"Notes" was written in letters of brass across the thick book heavily
bound in leather, and of which the small key to the massive Bramah lock
was kept in a pocket especially made in every waistcoat Sir Jonathan
possessed.
Slowly he read through the page he had just written, crossing a t,
dotting an i, adding or scratching out a word of the writing which was
in no way more legible than that of any other surgeon; and when he had
read he ran his hand through the mass of snow-white hair, sighed, and
pushed the book further back on to the desk.
It is an eerie sound that of someone speaking aloud to himself, and
still more eerie when it occurs in the middle of the night when the
only part of the speaker to be clearly seen is the strong white hands
moving in the orange disc thrown on the desk by the heavily shaded lamp.
And it is a strange habit this talking aloud of the solitary soul.
Mad?
Not a bit.
Dumb in the babel and din of chaotic midday, unresponsive to the
uncongenial matter around, it will talk on subjects gay and grave, and
even laugh with the silent sympathetic shades of midnight.
Nevertheless it is mighty eerie to hear it unawares.
For the twentieth time the famous specialist picked up a letter and
read it from beginning to end.
"Strange, Jim, old fellow," said he as he laid it down, "strange how I
think of you to-night. Seeing your little one, I suppose. But somehow
to-night more than ever I feel the blank you made in my life when you
left. How you'd have loved the kiddie, Jim. Strange wee soul with a
shadow already on her life--a big black shadow, Jim, which I--I am
going----!"
He turned his head and looked over his shoulder.
"Ugh!" he said, as he turned back to the desk and drew the book towards
him.
"Leonie Hetth--age seven--walks in her sleep and dreams--dreams are
evidently of India--things that walk softly and purr--a small
light--and wet red which may mean blood--green eyes and a black woman
who--who----"
Once more he ran his hand through his hair, but time irritably, then
shook his head from side to side rubbed his hand across his eyes.
"I've been sitting up too late these last few nights over that opium
case. Don't seem to be able to collect or hold my thoughts. Jim, old
fellow, I wonder what made you leave Leonie in the care of that damn
silly, shallow woman, and I wonder how you could ever have produced
anything so highly strung and temperamental as your little daughter. I
sup----"
He stopped quite suddenly and rose, standing with his head bent forward.
There was not a sound!
Feeling for the arm of his chair with his face still turned to the
curtained window he sank back, only to spring upright with a bound.
Noiselessly, swiftly he crossed to the window, and pulling back the
curtain an inch or two peered out into the small garden with its one
tree and border of shrubs.
There was no sound and nothing moved.
"Strange!" he muttered, "I could have sworn some-one knocked."
He jerked back the curtains so that they rasped on the brass rod,
letting in the almost blinding glare of the full moon which drew a
nimbus from the silvery head and threw shadows which danced and
gibbered by the aid of the log fire over the walls and ceiling, and in
and out of the open safe.
He turned, but stopped abruptly when half-way across the room, standing
stock still with his back to the window.
There was a faint distinct tapping as though slender fingers were
beating a ghastly, distant drum.
It stopped--it continued--it stopped.
Then fell one little solitary rap like a drop of water falling on a
metal plate, and it died away into silence.
And Sir Jonathan threw up his fine old head and laughed.
"Surely I've got India on the brain to-night, and as surely I want a
good long holiday," he said, as he sat down at his desk and picked up
his pen. "And I must remember to tell the gardener to clip that tree
to-morrow. How Jan will laugh when I tell him that I was absolutely
scared by a branch rubbing against the window."
For five long minutes he sat frowning down at the pen in his hand.
Three times he commenced to write, and three times he stopped; twice he
lit a cigarette and let it go out, and deeper grew the lines between
the brows and round the mouth, until he shivered and turned quickly in
his chair.
"That felt just like a sea-fog creeping up behind; stupid to keep the
window open even in spring," he said as he picked up a log from a
basket by his side and threw it deftly into the wide-open grate, leant
sideways to separate two brass ornaments on a table which had jangled
one against the other, and sighing turned restlessly in his chair.
"Confound those great market lorries," he muttered, looking round the
room with its cabinets and shelves filled with the strange and weird,
beautiful and unsightly curios he had brought back from every corner of
the globe. "They shake the house enough to bring it down about one's
ears."
The moon was slowly shifting as he leant back and settled himself
comfortably in the high leather chair; the room was getting darker and
there had fallen that intense almost palpable stillness which envelops
most great cities after midnight, and against which his thoughts stood
out like steel points upon a velvet curtain.
Clear and sharp as steel they shot indeed, this way and that through
his mind; but hold them he could not, analyse or arrange them he could
not, neither would his hand move towards the pen a few inches from the
finger-tips.
"God!" he suddenly thundered, striking the arm of the chair with his
fist. "The answer is just there on the tip of my tongue--before my
very eyes--within reach of my fingers, and yet I cannot grasp it--ah!
why! could it _possibly_ be----"
He rose as he spoke and crossed to a massive bookcase packed to
overflowing with books, switched on a light hanging near, opened the
glass door and ran his hand lovingly over the leather volumes.
Then he very gently laid his hand on his left shoulder and turned with
a smile lighting up his face, which abruptly went blank in astonishment.
"Upon my word," he said, "whatever made me think that Jan had come in
and had put his hand upon my shoulder. Old fool that I am to-night."
For a moment he stood looking into the shadowy corners, then turned
again to the case, ran his finger along a row of books until he came to
one with the title "India," pulled it out and opened it under the light.
The book opened quite suddenly and wide, and his eyes fell on the first
few lines. Without a movement he stood staring down at the printed
words, reading to the end of the page, then he violently closed the
book, thrust it back into the case, and closing the doors, pressed
against them with both hands as though in an endeavour to keep back
something which was trying to get out.
"No! my God! No! never! not that--not _that_ as an end--not for _that_
baby--and yet----"
He moved across to the desk, sank heavily like a very old man into his
chair and covered his face with his hands.
Then very slowly and as though against his will he uncovered his face,
and leaning forward stared across to the bookcase whilst he groped for
the pen beside the book.
"And the cure," he muttered, "the remedy--I _must_ find it--I--I----"
His heart was thudding heavily with the merest suspicion of a complete
pause between the beats, his hand trembled almost imperceptibly, whilst
his eyes glanced questioningly this way and that.
"I don't understand, I don't understand!" he whispered, just like a
frightened child as he plucked at his collar and moved his head quickly
from side to side as though trying to loosen some stranglehold about
his neck.
He turned and stared unseeingly into the fire with the look of
perplexity deepening on his face, then slowly he raised his eyes, first
to the delicate tracings of the Adams mantelpiece, then to the varied
ornaments on the shelf.
"Tish!" he said impatiently as they roved from the central figure of
benign undisturbed Buddha, to a snake of brass holding a candle, and on
to a blatant and grotesque dragon from China.
For a second he stared uncomprehendingly, then raised his head.
Inch by inch his eyes moved until they reached the top shelf of the
overmantel and stopped. A shiver shook him as he lay back in his
chair, his widespread fingers clutched at the chair arms, a tiny bead
of perspiration showed upon the broad forehead.
Staring down at him, shining evilly in the moonlight, was a glistening,
unwavering eye.
Just a slanting mother-o'-pearl eye in the battered head of a god or
goddess of India, with features almost obliterated by the passage of
centuries.
For a full minute Sir Jonathan sat staring up at the eye which stared
back; then moving with a convulsive jerk, ran both hands through the
mane of silvery hair as though to lift some crushing load from about
his head; and turning sideways in his chair stretched out one hand
between the eye above and his own as he clumsily seized the pen in the
shaking fingers.
"Ah! my God!" he muttered, "the answer is still there, on the tip of my
tongue, before my eyes, within reach of my fingers, and I cannot grasp
it--ah!--yes----"
Slowly and with infinite pain he wrote, printing the letters in thick
and crooked capitals, whilst his breath whistled through the dilated
nostrils and one foot beat unceasingly against the desk.
"The answer to the problem concerning Leonie Hetth is in the third
volume upon----"
His hand stopped suddenly when the fingers involuntarily spread wide
apart, letting fall the pen which rolled across the book; and the
silvery head turned inch by inch until the grey eyes had lifted to the
one shining in the shadows.
And there commenced a desperate, a bitter struggle for a child's
reason, perhaps for a child's life, as the moon gently withdrew her
light.
Like the clammy wraiths of fog upon the moor, like the searching
tentacles of some blind monster of the sea, fear crept upon the
splendid old man in this still hour of the night.
It held his hands, it was folded about his mouth, it pounded violently
upon his gallant heart, whilst the eye looked him between the eyes, so
that his brain was seared as strive he might to turn away his head he
kept his face turned piteously upward.
"What is it," he muttered thickly, as though his tongue clove to the
roof of the mouth, "what is it that is pulling me, pressing upon me,
choking me! I have no body, no--no hands--I--have--no power to
move--I----"
And then he screamed, though but a whisper fell, as with a spasmodic
jump of his whole body he flung himself round in his chair, and
cowering low against the arm, peered into the deepening shadows.
"All round about me," he whispered, "all about me those hands are
pulling, and yet--and--and----"
He laughed until his face, a white cameo against a grey velvet pall,
grinned like a mask of mirthless death, as slowly he raised one
clenched fist and shook it weakly until it fell back with a dull thud,
useless, against the chair.
"I thought I was afraid--I--I thought I saw--I saw death behind--but
I--I shall not die until--until I have written--written--what is it I
am to write--ah! yes!"
Searching sideways with his left hand he groped and found the pen, then
very carefully, very slowly turned towards the desk.
He drove the pen in fiercely, making a thick black mark; he pushed it
until the nib stuck, spluttered, and broke as he flung out both hands
as if grasping at something which evaded him.
"Gone!" he mouthed, though there was no sound of speech in the room.
"Gone--gone!" and he suddenly tore at his collar and his cuffs as
though to break some bond which held him, as he glanced furtively about
the room.
For one long moment he sat leaning forward, staring far beyond the
Indian screen upon which his eyes were fixed, and then slowly, almost
imperceptibly, his head moved.
The drawn white face had the hunted look of some animal at bay, the
agonised eyes moved as the head moved; slowly, slowly, inch by inch,
the breath coming stertorously as the mouth tried vainly to frame some
word.
The moon had gathered the last fold of her silvery raiment about her
and was creeping away through the open window just as Sir Jonathan
looked straight up into the eye gleaming malevolently through the gloom.
And as he looked the head moved gently so that the eye leered cunningly
into the distorted face beneath; it, hovered for a fraction of time on
the edge of the shelf and fell, just as the old man, with a blinding
flash of understanding sweeping his face, sprang to his feet, stood
upright, swayed forward, and fell back sideways, dead, across his
chair, staring across the room into eternity with eyes full of
knowledge and infinite horror.
CHAPTER IX
"How have I hated instruction, and my heart
despised reproof!"--_The Bible_.
"Oh! dear!"
The plaintive ejaculation fell on the drowsy noonday air, and the
speaker fished a chocolate out of the box, offered her in heartfelt
sympathy by her companion.
"Buck up, old thing!" said the latter. "These very same old exam rods
were laid up in pickle for our forbears, and they survived the ordeal.
The summer's here and the holidays are due, so let's grin and bear it,
and what _does_ it matter if you _do_ mix your futures and
conditionals? As long as it's French and you don't split your
infinitives you're all right, the splitting, I believe, _is_ a mortal
sin in some cases, though I don't quite understand how, or exactly what
it means."
Seaview House is an establishment for the finishing of young ladies,
which process includes the rounding of their anatomical angles by means
of dancing and physical culture, and the polishing of the facets of
their intelligence by the gentle manipulation of three or four foreign
governesses and professors of music, singing, drawing, etc. These
latter smile suavely through the excruciating half-hours they allot to
each unfinished damsel, and tear their hair in private at the memory of
the daily and hourly murderous executions of the old masters at which
they must perforce assist.
And as much, and even more, attention is paid to the repoussé work on
the outside of the platter.
The hirsute covering is brushed and burnished until the heads of the
two score damsels bob about in the sun like globes of ebony, or straw,
or Dutch cheese, or ginger; finger nails shine like old cut glass, just
enough and not too much; figures are repressed or augmented until they
look more like figures and less like sacks of barley, or wood planks.
They are taught to sit down and stand up, and to cross, enter or leave
a room like humans instead of colts, to pitch the voice in a low and
gracious key, and to look upon slang as a luxury only to be enjoyed in
the absence of those in temporary power. In fact the establishment is
quite old-fashioned but infinitely charming, and has the reputation of
having more old pupils to a score of years happily or advantageously
married, and fewer ditto employed in a useful capacity than any other
school in Eastbourne.
Which is all as it should be!
"Yes! but," continued, let's call her Annie Smith; she does not appear
in the book again so that it really does not matter about her
nomenclature. "I could just see Leonie from my desk and she was
smiling all over her face and romping, simply _romping_ through the
French papers."
"Oh! but," sympathised, let us call her Susan Brown for the same reason
that we christened Annie Smith, "_she_ has a brain!"
Nice Susan Brown hadn't, but balanced the lack by a wealthy parentage.
"Yes! of course she has! And _isn't_ she beautiful!"
Nice Annie Smith was as plain as a bun, but balanced her defect by a
heart of gold, and found her ultimate and perfect joy in an overworked
curate and seven children by him, all of whom were destined to sit
round the festive board like seven plain little currantless buns on a
plate.
"Yes! isn't she! She's wonderful, I think, and oh! so very different
to all of us."
"I found the very word to suit her in the dictionary," rather
importantly added Susan Brown, "_bizarre_----"
"Whatever does it mean?" inquired Annie Smith, who was destined never
again to run up against the word or its meaning during the rest of her
neutral life.
"Er--a kind of a--er--_je ne sais quoi_ in the temperament--not exactly
a nonconformist, you know; but just a little--well, not _quite_ like
_us_!"
"I see!" contentedly replied mystified Annie Smith. "But I _do_ love
her; she's such a dear. So gentle and so ready to help everybody, and
so _splendid_ at sports. What tremendous friends she and Jessica have
become, haven't they, since the night of the scare? I often wonder
what made her walk in her sleep like that; she's never done it since."
"Indigestion, I've always thought. Cookie was away on her holidays, if
you remember, and her _locum tenens_, understudy, you know, made pastry
like cement; I always thought, too, that Principal gave her that lovely
little room right away from the rest of us on account of it--the
sleep-walking, I mean. I'm sure I should have _died_ if I'd found her
standing over me in the moonlight in the middle of the night. It must
be awfully jolly though having someone in India who writes to you every
three months. _Isn't_ she lucky to have been _born_ in India, and to
have had an ayah, a kind of native nurse, you know, who _still_
worships her, and writes to her, and sends _real_ Indian presents, and
to have had a V.C. for a father--Leonie, I mean?"
Annie Smith laughed that happy laugh which is the outcome of a
perfectly contented mind. "She deserves all the luck she gets, and
what luck for _us_ having her as head next term. What a favourite she
is with everyone, even old Signer Valenti! Oh, dear, I wish
to-morrow's exams were over; my fingers feel just like blanc-mange when
I think of that nocturne."
"Never say die, Ann! _Have_ you heard Leonie play the Moonlight?"
"No! What's it like?"
"Simply _awful_, just like Mam'zel when she thumps downstairs in her
felt slippers."
There fell a space of drowsy silence in which the girls lay back on the
grass incline, and solemnly munched chocolates with youth's delightful
dissociation from anything more perplexing than the passing of the
actual hour.
"No!" murmured Annie Smith, breaking the drowsy spell. "She's _not_
like us--couldn't be with a V.C. father and India as a birthright. But
isn't it all _wonderfully_ mysterious?"
Dear unsophisticated soul, whose _wanderlust_ was yearly arrested, or
rather satisfied, with the summer holiday by the sea, and whose rector
father acted as a weekly soporific to his congregation.
"I wonder who gave her that perfectly _horrible_ charm?" she added
sleepily.
"The ayah, I _think_," came an equally sleepy answer. "Did I tell you
that I found it in the bath-room the other night? It's an eye--a
cat's-eye, you know--a perfect beast of a thing; I would swear it
winked at me when I dropped it on the floor. Anyway I left it there
and simply _flew_ out of the room to tell Leonie, and Jessica pinched,
I beg Principal's pardon, took my bath. Ugh! and she wears it night
and day--oh! look, here she comes----"
"Oh!" sighed plain Annie Smith, "isn't she _beautiful_!"
She was!
Unaware that anyone was watching, Leonie stopped in front of a bush of
red roses. She neither touched or sniffed them; she just flung out her
arms, lifted her face to the blazing sun and laughed.
The simple school frock showed the wonder of her figure, with the
beautiful rounded bust, the slender waist, and the moulded limbs; the
sun drew red and yellow lights out of the heavy russet hair, gold
flecks out of the green eyes, and a flash of crimson from the rather
full clear-cut mouth with its turned-up corners.
Her skin was like ivory with the faintest tinge of pink just on the
very tip of the rather pronounced cheek-bones; her hands were small and
fine, and the fingers were like pea-pods, long and slender and slightly
dimpled.
And when she moved away towards the summer-house where she could see
the sea, she moved not at all from her waist upwards. She held her
head and shoulders as though she had carried baskets of fruit or
washing upon the crown of her pate since her youth; her glorious bosom
was like a bed of lotus buds in the southern wind; she moved like a
deer, or a snake, or a bacchanalian dancer, as you will; but in any
case in a way which in the present tense caused the Principal to mourn
in secret, and in the future brought the condemnation of women and the
eyes of men full upon her.
And behind the summer-house she leant against the wall.
"One more term," she said, "only one more term, and then I shall be
free--free to go--free to wander--free to follow the voice which is
calling, calling! Only one more little term!"
And Fate, grinning, pinched that one more little term between her
knotted old thumb and finger so that it was stillborn.
CHAPTER X
"And hath gone and served other gods."--_The Bible_.
Shriek upon shriek tore the peaceful stillness of the night, and in one
second the sleeping house was transformed from a place of rest and
quiet to the semblance of a disturbed rookery.
Deathly silence followed the horrible screams of fear and the sound of
the girls calling one to the other, during which mistresses extricated
themselves from the encumbering bedclothes to rush on to their
respective landings; elder girls peered in terror from their bedroom
doors, and younger ones clung to each other or the bed-post, or the
door-knob, anything in fact which would help to support their quaking
little knees.
Once again the terrible screams rent the air, whipping everyone out of
the stunned apathy which great fear brings to some folk, just as the
Principal came out on to her landing and looked up to the second storey.
"Miss Primstinn," she called, and her voice showed no sign of the
thudding of her heart.
Pushed by one of those willing hands always so eager to thrust someone
else to the forefront of the battle, Miss Primstinn, clutching her
courage and a drab dressing-gown in both hands, half ran, half slipped
down the stairs.
"_We_ will investigate, Miss Primstinn, and the young ladies will
retire to their rooms and shut the doors."
In days long past the house had been well built after the excellent
design of a wealthy old architect who had fled the place when
Eastbourne had become a centre for girls' schools and summer trippers.
The full moon flooded the hall round which ran the galleries belonging
to the successive storeys, each crowded with girls in various designs
of night attire who hung over the oak balustrades to watch developments.
But they all leapt in unison, as though spurred into action by an
electric shock, when a deep voice boomed from the shadows round a green
baize door in the hall which led to the servants' quarters.
Then a distinct sigh of relief whistled softly through the entire house
when the electric lights suddenly blazed and the speaker was discovered
to be cook.
Cookie in an emerald green moirette petticoat and a somewhat _déclassé_
bedjacket, a tight knot of hair playing bob-cherry with her kindly
right blue eye, and a rolling-pin clutched truculently in her red right
hand.
Dear old Cookie who scolded and complained unceasingly, but who loved
the entire school with a love which took the substantial form of
delicious cakes, and buns, and jellies.
"H'I've come to h'investigate, Mum!" she called up. "Berglers or worse
got into Miss Jessica's room through them dratted French windies, I'll
be bound. Now just you stay where you are, Mum, an' I'll go an' see,
an' if I screams then come along. And I think a policeman might come
in handy, there may be one on the beat."
She waddled away to another green door always left open o' nights, and
which led to the wing reserved entirely for the girls of the Upper
Sixth; and where each one revelled in her own dainty separate bedroom.
"The young ladies will retire to their bedrooms and close their doors.
Mademoiselle, I depend upon you!" With one hand on the banisters and
one foot poised for descent, the Principal pitted her will against
overwhelming curiosity and won.
Backing like a flock of sheep before the sheep-dog, they slowly retired
and shut the doors, only to fling them wide open and rush to the
balustrade in time to see the Principal, followed by Miss Primstinn,
hurrying down the stairs to meet Cookie, who had run back into the hall
shouting at the top of her voice.
"Come along, Mum! Quick! Miss Jessica's dead and Miss Gertrude dying.
And where's Miss Lee-onny--fetch her someone--it's 'er friend, little
Miss Jessica, wots--wots----"
The Principal, whose face looked suddenly livid and old, laid a hand on
Cookie's shoulder.
"Run and fetch the doctor, Cook, please, it will be quicker than the
telephone! I can trust you to keep your head. Dr. Mumford is too far
away, fetch the new one at the end of the road."
"Please to send Brown, Mum, she's younger an' quicker at runnin' than
me. An' I think I can 'elp you, Mum," said Cookie quietly,
unconsciously responding to the strength of her mistress's character.
"An' I'd like to fetch Miss Lee-onny, Mum, she's that to be depended
h'on an' clear'eaded."
The Principal sighed under the sudden inrush of relief which had come
to her at the mention of her favourite pupil.
She loved Leonie with a love quite separate from her affection for all
the young souls in her charge, and secretly admired the strength of
will which more than once had been pitted against her own; moreover,
accustomed to the quiet monotonous passage of time, she suddenly
realised that she needed someone young and energetic in this emergency.
And the girl she needed in her distress was kneeling on her bed with
arms upraised above her head.
The dying moon was slowly withdrawing her waning silvery light from the
billowing mass of tawny hair, tumbling in lavender-scented masses
around the girl; lingering for a moment on the eyes staring from under
the unblinking eyelids, and for a second upon the glint of even teeth
showing through the lips moving in prayer.
And then she spoke, in the eerie tones of those who talk in their
sleep; and the words were even those of India's most holy writ,
sonorous and full of a surpassing dignity, rising and falling as she
knelt motionless, her eyelids slowly closing upon the terrible staring
eyes.
"The sacrifice . . ." she chanted monotonously, "with voice, hearing,
mind, I make oblation. To this sacrifice . . . let the gods come well
willing!"
And as the moon sank to rest there was no sound save for a little sigh
as Leonie, with closed eyes and white hands clasped upon her breast,
stretched herself upon the bed, then with a violent movement sat up,
and wide awake stared about the room.
"Yes?" she whispered. "Yes?"
And her strange eyes, with pin-point pupils in a yellow green circle,
seemed to follow something which crept slowly round the bare walls as
far as the chintz window-curtain moving softly in the breeze of the
coming dawn. The room was full of shadows thrown by a creeper
festooned outside the wide-open window; soft whisperings brought from
the distant corners of the earth by the restless ocean filled the air,
as she hastily twisted her hair into two great plaits with steady hands.
Then she slipped quietly to the edge of the bed and searched with her
bare feet for the crimson slippers; searched fearfully as though afraid
of what they might touch whilst her eyes glanced this way and that
through the shadowed room.
"Who is calling me?" she whispered. "Who wants me?"
But there was no sound save for the whispering of the distant sea.
She bent her head sideways as though to listen, rose to her feet, and
standing back against the bed, looked down at the shadows which danced
about the hem of her garment. A swift furtive glance over her shoulder
and her hand stole to the crimson kimono hanging on the brass rail,
whilst a jewelled cat's-eye winked cunningly among the embroidery of
her night-robe.
"Come in," she said suddenly and sharply, "don't stand outside the
door, come in."
And when there came no answer she thrust her arms swiftly into the
sleeves of the crimson kimono, and running across the room flung open
the door, and finding the corridor empty passed hurriedly on, leaving
the door wide so that the shadows skipped freakishly about the room in
tune to the rhythmical whisperings which the sea bore from the distant
corners of the earth.
CHAPTER XI
"Thy brother Death came, and cried,
'Wouldst thou me?'
And I replied,
'No, not thee!'"--_Shelley_.
The electric lights gave out a kind of fictitious radiance against the
dull grey of the hall windows through which the dawn was struggling.
The place was packed with girls. Some clustered near the baize door,
standing nervously on tip-toe and with the intent of retiring
precipitately if there should be any sign of the Principal; others hung
over the stair or gallery banisters; the domestic staff stood round their
own particular door, their white faces shining dully like Chinese
lanterns; no one spoke or moved. In fact they might have been posing for
a photographer until those above suddenly swayed and bent this way and
that, and those in the hall parted to give way to Leonie.
Clad in crimson satin kimono, with feet thrust into crimson satin
slippers and her hastily plaited hair hanging in two great ropes, she
passed through them like a flame, emanating strength and resolve and a
tremendous power of will. Although she looked neither to the right nor
left as she ran swiftly and disappeared into the wing where lay her
little friend, there was something very pleasing in the way the girls put
out their hands to touch her as she passed; and something distinctly
encouraging in the whispered remarks that followed her, and which might
be summarised in the "_Now_ it's all right," which under the high
pressure of intense excitement almost burst from the lips of Annie Smith.
Like an arrow she sped to the bed, unconsciously pushing aside the women
who, almost frantic with fear and quite out of their bearings, were doing
their best to grapple with the problem of life or death so suddenly
placed before them.
Kneeling, she turned the girl's livid little face towards her, vainly
feeling for the pulse in the wrist and bruised neck; then sprang to her
feet, faced the Principal and took the situation into her strong, capable
young hands.
"What happened? And have you sent for the doctor?"
Her usually sweet, clear voice was like the dull sound of a cracked
earthenware pot when flipped by thumb and finger.
"Yes, dear!" was the quick reply. "The doctor will be here any
moment--and hot bottles and blankets are being prepared. Gertrude could
not sleep and crept into Jessica's room to look for a German grammar for
the examination to-morrow--to-day, and found Jessica in--in this--faint."
And the elder woman suddenly laid a hand on the girl's arm and looked up
at her with the confidence she always inspired. "Help me, dear!" she
whispered, with the dread of disgrace and an untimely ending to an
honourable career in her old grey eyes.
And Leonie smiled, answering with the superb confidence of youth, and a
slight ray of hope pierced the suffocating fog of fear, and brought
Cookie from the head of the bed where she had been standing in the shade
of a screen.
"Can I 'elp, Miss Lee-onny?"
"Cookie, _dear_--you and Miss Primstinn, Miss Leanto and--yes, and
Ellen--none of the girls--and quickly--there's not a moment to lose."
"The doctor's coming, Mum," said a voice from the half-open door.
"The doctor is coming, dear," repeated the Principal.
Leonie answered with a strange authority in her words.
"We will not wait for the doctor!" She passed the tips of her fingers
slowly across her forehead and down her cheek to the back of her neck, as
was her habit when trying to solve some problem. "No, we will not wait,
because--because _I_ know!"
Ten minutes later the door opened to let in a young man, who stood for a
moment outlined against a sea of faces, and then turned and shut the door
most decisively and locked it.
"Who thought of that, I wonder," he said to himself, as he watched the
four women kneeling round Jessica stretched out upon the floor.
They were going through the movements used in resuscitating the drowned,
and he, too, knelt at a nod by the side of the fat old woman in an
emerald green moirette petticoat and a somewhat _déclassé_ bedjacket, who
was breathing heavily through the unaccustomed exercise.
"Let us be--a bit, Sir!" she panted. "She don't some'ow feel--quite--as
dead--like! Give us a--a chance. One--two--three--four. It's
the--reg'lar--as does--it. Miss Lee--onny's orders--Sir--bless er----"
She jerked her head in the direction of Leonie, and the doctor looked.
Behind her friend's head she knelt, her plaited hair twining like snakes
to the ground, her eyes closed, her mouth slightly open, and the fingers
of both hands pressing the temples of the child upon the floor, whilst to
and fro, lifeless, dull, swung the great cat's-eye from a gold chain
about the neck.
"Good God!" muttered the young doctor who, having travelled the world as
ship's surgeon, knew that the scalpel and soda-cum-gentian do not
constitute the whole of the art of healing.
As he looked a great bead of perspiration dropped from Leonie's forehead,
between the taut arms, on to her knees; and a sudden shiver shook her
from head to foot, and he heaved his overcoat into a chair, and edged
very quietly until he knelt between her and Cookie.
"It's 'orrible, Sir!" the latter whispered, as she glanced at the pupil
she loved most.
And it was.
By now the perspiration was pouring in streams from the girl's face,
whilst the slim body shook and shook like a young tree in a storm; her
teeth chattered like castanets, her closed eyes were sunk in purple black
orbits, the cheeks were drawn and grey, and the nostrils were dilating
like those of a far-spent horse.
"For Gawd's sake stop 'er. Sir--she's a-killing of 'erself."
The doctor shook his head, took out a brandy flask and a metal box from a
leather case beside him on the floor. He held up the ready-filled glass
syringe to the light and sent a squirt of what looked like water through
the gleaming needle.
"If the young lady shows signs of life I want you to get this brandy down
her throat _at once_, and begin to massage her heart."
"Massige! that's same as kneading dough, ain't it, Sir!"
"That's it! Miss--Miss--oh! Leonie will want the most attention, she is
only just alive. I will give her another two minutes, and if nothing has
happened by then I'll stop her, though it'll be an awful risk!"
"What's she a-doin' of, Sir?"
"She's forcing her own life, her vitality into her friend; she's
practically raising the dead!"
"_Lor_, Sir!"
He had just raised his hand to touch Leonie, praying to heaven for the
girl's reason, when she suddenly flung back her head.
Up through the house-top, to the stars, the heavens, rushed the terrible
cry, wailing as wails the wolf who has lost its mate, insisting as
insists one who has staked his all on one final throw, imploring as
implores the mother in the last dire throes of childbirth.
What the language was, what the words meant, to whom the prayer was
addressed, no one knew.
But at the third terrible appeal to God, or Fate, or Death, or Life, and
even as those who listened outside and those who ceased their labours in
the room stuffed their ears with their fingers and sobbed, little Jessica
opened her eyes, and smiled just as Leonie, flinging up her arms, crashed
face downwards on the floor.
CHAPTER XII
"The fix'd events of Fate's remote decrees."--_Pope_.
Vultures drowsed in the shade thrown by the crumbling, sun-cracked,
heat-stricken mud walls and houses which lined the meandering unpaved
streets, or rather passages, of a certain village in northern India;
crows were packed everywhere, taking no notice for the nonce of the
feast of filth and garbage spread invitingly around them, and in which
sprawled the disgusting, distorted bodies of somnolent water buffaloes;
inside the houses hags, matrons, maidens, and little maids slept
through the terrific heat of the noonday hours; in the distance the
Himalayas, supreme and distressing, like a ridge across eternity, lay
behind the turrets and minarets of the town which, thanks to the Indian
atmosphere and the long distance, shone white, fretted, and--well,
exactly as you can see it any day in paint at the Academy or in Bond
Street.
Perfectly motionless upon the high khaki-coloured wall, which entirely
surrounds the village, with dust upon his aged feet and raiment and
once white turban, oblivious of the heat, the flies, and everything
that slept, sat a man with age written upon every gnarled joint, and in
every crack and fissure of the parchment-like skin.
_So_ old, and _yet_ with life, and hope, and youth eternal in the dark
hawk eye which gazed unseeingly through the outer world straight
towards the mountains.
And the old body made no sign of life, even when the vultures without
sound soared majestically heavenwards, whilst the crows rose in
shrieking disordered squads, and a kite whistling melodiously swooped
from nowhere downwards across his head to the filth of the streets.
Neither did he turn his head or his eyes when a coal-black stallion,
guided only by the pressure of its rider's knees, came to a stand
directly beneath him in the shadow of the wall, having scrambled and
slithered, jumping like a deer, climbing like a goat down the
rock-strewn road which leads to the village from the great house at its
rear; one of those abominable roads allotted to the calloused native
foot, honoured for the first time in this instance by the passage of
the prince's son and heir.
An arresting picture the rider and his horse made as the man bent low
in the saddle and salaamed, then raised his turbaned head and sat
motionless, gazing at the holy man.
Minutes passed before, with arms filled with offerings and garlands of
marigolds and jasmin swinging from his wrists, he slid from the saddle
to the ground, and took his way up the narrow tortuous path which Fate
had marked out for him through all time.
High caste, high born, as slender and delicate and as pressed with life
as a budding branch in spring, Madhu Krishnaghar stood beside the
priest in the incongruous setting of the mud walls.
A coat of fine white linen with broad orange waistband came to just
below the knees; white trousers fastened tight about the ankle fitted
almost like a stocking from ankle to knee; the slender, narrow feet
were shod in native slippers, the white turban with its regulation
folds outlined the pale bronze face with the sign of the man's religion
traced between the eyebrows; diamond solitaires sparkled in the ears,
and one necklace of great pearls hung about his neck.
"Usual large gentle eye, hawk nose, mobile mouth and small-boned oval
face" would doubtlessly have been the flippant comment of any
occidental passer-by; "meet 'em everywhere, gambling at the street
corner, or squatting in the bazaar, or riding elephants."
Yes! but--is not India's future history writ large upon that
small-boned oval face for those who, having the vision, read as they
walk warily.
For those who run hastily past life's signposts cannot and will not see
that, like the fresh green grass which hides the dug pit, those gentle
luminous eyes draw attention from the subtle cruelty of the mouth,
through which gleam the pitiless perfect teeth.
Glorying in his bull-neck and massive chin, and blinded by his insular,
inherited upbringing, the European will exclaim "Pah!" at sight of the
thin cheek and delicate oval face, failing utterly to notice the set of
the ears on the head; just as, muscle bound through worship at the
shrine of Sport, he will mistake the eastern courtesy and poetry of
movement for obsequiousness and humility, ignoring the terrible root
from which these delicate flowers spring; the root of patience; with
its tentacles ever twining and twisting through the eastern mind,
causing the very old to die placidly with a smile on their shrivelled
lips, and the young to envisage plague, pestilence, and famine with a
mere lifting of the shoulder. Patience! the card which India does not
hold up her sleeve in the game of life she is playing; the
dull-coloured drab little bit of cardboard which she throws on the
table openly, but which we ignore amongst the highly coloured,
bejewelled pictures she places before us, smiling with the tender
luminous eyes so that we shall forget the subtle cruelty of the mouth.
Placing his offerings at the holy man's feet, and laying the garlands
gently about the bowed shoulders, Madhu Krishnaghar, the son of
princes, stooped and lifting the hem of the dust-covered garment, laid
it against his forehead, then quietly sat down a pace removed from the
ancient who took no notice whatever of his proceedings.
And time passed, linking one hour of noon to its neighbour and the
next, until the hags, matrons, maidens, and little maids awoke to the
freshness of the evening and the monotony of its tasks.
Kites called, crows screamed, men gambled in the shadows of the evening
and the upstanding, distorted, disgusting water buffalo; while the two
men, master and pupil in the religion of death, sat hour after hour
without movement, staring at the mountains, the dwelling-place of Siva
the terrible, and the birthplace of Kali his bride.
Far into the night they sat, until the last quarter of the moon had
sunk to rest, when, with one single movement, the old man sprang to his
feet, flung out his arms, and bent in utter humility and cast dust upon
his once white turban.
His voice was but a shrill cracked whisper when he called upon his god
from the crumbling top of the sunbaked, moon-drenched wall, and
turning, lifted his travel-stained mantle and laid it on the young
shoulders beside him.
An hour had passed, and more, before the holy man's tale, which ran
back through the past seventeen years, was finished. And when it had
been told the high caste youth trembled in the ecstasy of his religion,
amazed at the enlightenment thrown upon his own enigmatical life,
uplifted at the task before him. Yea! he trembled in the ecstasy of
his religion, forgetting that love and passion and life ran just as
riotously in his supple perfect body.
He leapt to his feet, smiting his forehead with clenched hand.
"Give me a sign, O Kali! Show me that thou art pleased!"
And he rent his garments in joy, showing the bronze breast with the
blood-red marks of his terrible religion traced upon it; then thrusting
his fingers in his ears sank to the ground and buried his head between
his knees.
A black kid, the happiest of all good omens, bleating with hunger,
tripped and stumbled from a courtyard; yet even as it found its mother
and buried its little head in the warmth of the soft side, there had
come across the plains a weird, long-drawn-out sound, fraught with
disaster to those who believe in signs.
Long and shrill it sounded and ceased; and once again--to be lost in
peals of indecent, discordant laughter.
Uncontrolled, uncontrollable, loathesome sound which tears India's
nights to shreds.
The jackals had found at dawn.
CHAPTER XIII
"A continual dripping in a very rainy day
and a contentious woman are alike."--_The Bible_.
In the late spring Leonie stood at a cottage window watching the rush
of the incoming water as she listened to her aunt's ceaseless lament,
idly wondering if both would reach high tide together, and if there
would be any chance of slipping out for a swim before bedtime.
She loved her aunt with the protective love of the very strong for the
very weak, and smilingly found excuses for the daily tirade against
fate, or ill-luck, or whatever it is weak people blame for the hopeless
knots they tie in their own particular bit of string by their haphazard
bursts of energy, or apathetic resignation to every little
stumbling-block they find in their path.
Daily, almost hourly, through the splendid North Devon winter the aunt
had wailed, and bemoaned, and fretted, driving the girl out on the
tramp for hours in the wind, and the wet, and the sun, only to return
hurriedly at the thought of the weak, hapless, helpless woman in the
cottage at Lee.
Susan Hetth complained about everything, from the lack of society to
the smallness of her income, plus a few scathing comments upon her
niece's weather-browned face and the hopeless outlook for her
matrimonial future.
Her own bid in the matrimonial market _en secondes noces_ had failed,
and though Hope had not taken it lying down, the passage of the years
had not been lightened by what seemed to be a daily addition of silver
threads to the jaded ash gold of her hair, and the necessity of a still
more flagrant distribution upon her face of the substances she employed
to camouflage the passage of old Time.
Ah, me! that moment before the stimulating advent of the early cup of
tea, when divested of our motley we see ourselves in the mirror as,
thanks be, others do not, and laying eager hands upon that offspring of
charity, the boudoir cap, wonder if it has been in hobnailed boots that
the old Father has tramped across our face during the night hours,
dragging his scythe behind him.
Leonie's school-days had ended abruptly.
Nothing definite had or could have been said, but it was not likely
that the parents would see exactly eye to eye with their daughters, who
wrote reams and whispered volumes of the delightful mystery which
surrounded the girl who next term would be head of the school.
Long and excited had been the conclaves with the Principal, persuasive
or threatening the arguments used, according to the parental
temperament, and the upshot of it all was that Leonie had been asked to
go; and proud, hurt Leonie had left, with a valiant smile on her lovely
mouth, and a strange little questioning look that had only quite lately
crept into the beautiful eyes, and which neither the outpourings of
Jessica's love, a demonstration of affection from the entire school in
the shape of numerous and weird presents, or the broken-hearted kiss of
both the Principal and Cookie had been able to eradicate.
The girl felt that she had left under a cloud, which a slight attack of
what the doctor had diagnosed as brain fever had not served to line
with silver.
He had insisted upon complete change and rest, and had called twice a
day when Leonie was really ill, and four times when she was
convalescent; so upon fair Devon had they decided, Leonie cajoling and
smiling until she had obtained a year's lease, at an absurdly low rent,
of the little cottage on the left of Lee harbour as you face the sea.
It is a place of charm if you are willing to do most of the work
yourself with the aid of a daily help.
It is certainly rather like a band-box with the lid on, and the ocean
at high tide is only prevented by the harbour wall from invading your
front garden, which is the size of a handkerchief.
But if you sit at the window you can feel the spray on your face, and
if you lie a-bed the tang of the air sweeping across the Atlantic will
get you out at the double; and the smell of the pines, and the hum of
the bees in summer, and the rush of the storm, and the crash of the
waves in winter, are of God's own fashioning.
What with shopping expeditions to that crime in brick and mortar called
Ilfracombe, visits here and visits there, croquet, bridge, and picnics,
the summer and early autumn months had not dragged unduly for Susan
Hetth.
But when the last visitor had gone, and the first real storm had broken
a window, then she had sunk like a lump of lead in a bucket of cold
water out of which she refused to be lifted.
Leonie was youth incarnate, causing even the courteous folk of Devon to
turn and stare as she swung past with a cheery greeting in a skirt and
hob-nailed boots ending at her knees.
For the first month, as one always does in Devon, she had walked
herself to the verge of scragginess, then had gradually put on weight,
as is the correct method. Her whistle could be heard in the woods and
fields, and on the beach from Lee to Hartland way; all the country folk
loved her, and scolded her for the risks she took in swimming, and she
seemingly had no care in the world.
But the great heat of summer, the shriek of the wind, and the scream of
the birds in autumn would bring a little pucker between her brows; the
storm would drive her spirits up to breaking point, the calm would
leave her eyes full of trouble; in the woods she would stop and turn to
listen, then frown and trudge along between the trees.
She was not at rest, for an unconfessed fear, a spook without name or
shape, was plucking at her will-power and her heart, a phantom of which
she would rather have died than have said one word.
So she stood twisting the blind cord and watching the rocks as they
gradually disappeared under the swirling waters.
Susan Hetth sat near the fire, which is oft-times necessary in the
spring at Lee, and tapped in irritation, and most irritatingly, with
her foot against the low fender.
She was worried.
She was not by birth or heredity a bad-tempered woman, merely one of
straw, who after the first two months of every quarter invariably found
herself in a corner which one injudicious move might render
uncomfortably tight.
Her financial situation, in fact, had become so critical, and the bank
manager's demeanour so unpropitious, that in the previous year more
than once the dawn had found her trying to decide between the Scylla of
the thankless post of lady companion to some wealthy parvenu on the
Riviera, and the Charybdis of raising money enough to allow her to
harbour paying guests in the no-man's-land of Earls Court.
Then Fate crossed her knees, and out of her lap had tumbled a widower
possessed of a substantial banking account and four children.
A few more days, a little more encouragement, and he would most
certainly have offered her his name and the half of his worldly goods
in return for her help in quelling the riotous behaviour of his
motherless brood.
But there had supervened the crisis at school.
And grasping for once in her life the necessity of immediate action if
she wished to prevent an embellished account of her niece's untoward
behaviour from reaching the man's ears, she had fled to Devon, leaving
behind a trail of dainty scented notes explaining that it was all on
account of a slight nervous breakdown from overstudy on the part of her
niece "who," she added casually, "as I think I told you, is the only
daughter of my dear brother, Colonel Hetth, V.C."
Snobbish, but quite effective as bait for a person who has not complete
control over the eighth letter of the alphabet.
That very morning, quite unheedful of the beauties of the little witch
village, she had gone to collect her mail lying at the post office,
which in summer is almost hidden in its garden of flowers; and amongst
an assortment of spring sale catalogues from emporiums, mostly situated
in South Kensington, had found a letter from the widower, begging to be
allowed to come down for a change of air, and an opportunity of laying
a proposition before her.
She had wandered up the side of the hill, unmindful of the birds and
buds almost bursting with the intoxication of spring; had pitched the
catalogues anywhere on the grass, as is the wont of the untidy who have
no bond with nature, and had tried to solve the problem as she scraped
the mud, with the aid of a twig, from her Louis-Quinze heels.
But she was harassed, poor, hapless creature, for more than one reason.
The words of alarm from the nurse, the innuendoes from departing
maid-servants, and the direct warning from the old specialist which had
long since faded from her mind, had been forcibly revived by the
happenings at the school; and being one of those who invariably plump
for the worst, and without giving the slightest thought to the
criminality of the proceeding, she had definitely decided, if she could
coerce the girl into falling in with her plans, to marry her to the
highest bidder before worse could happen.
But she was downright afraid of her niece. Afraid of her moral
strength which dominated everything and everybody; ill at ease with the
straightforward way she had of speaking her mind on occasions, and
following up her speech with action. Never an untruth had she known to
pass the girl's lips, not once had she heard her say one belittling
thing about a living soul, and only twice had she seen the sweetness
and gentleness swept with anger.
Cruelty to anything small or weak could transform the girl into a flame
of wrath, and her weakest spot was her overpowering sympathy with
anyone in distress, without any inquiries into the direct cause of the
adversity, which spot caused her to be considerably taken in by many of
those who had discerned it.
An almost abnormal moral strength, allied to great gentleness and pity,
combined to make a character extraordinary in one so young, and which
her aunt summed up and summarily dismissed from her mind in the trite
sentence that "she certainly did not take after her parents."
She was considered slow by the youths, and perplexing and therefore to
be avoided by the girls of her own age, and dull or frightfully
conceited by the men who had fluttered round her almost exotic beauty
until they had come up against the icy barrier of her supreme
indifference.
To those who knew her intimately, such as the fisherfolk and the
farmers, and the tramps with whom she would sit and converse by the
wayside and share her lunch, she was the most lovable, cheery soul in
the world, which, of course, meant the county of Devon.
"Damn standoffish, what!"
Such had been the verdict passed by someone married who hailed from
London town, when Leonie had refused to sit out a dance in a secluded
shady nook.
"Just a bit of heaven!" had said the tramp as he turned the corner in
the lane, leaving Leonie sitting on the milestone pondering upon the
man whose ragged clothes were out of keeping with the shape of his
nails, and the timbre of his voice with his unkempt hair.
But leaving all that aside, and in all conscience it was bad enough,
the biggest worry hung as heavy and as threatening upon the horizon as
does at times the monsoon over the Indian Ocean.
Once upon a time Susan Hetth had committed an indiscretion, nothing
_really_ wrong--she hadn't the nerve. But the nuisance of it was,
that, in addition to the indiscretion, she had broken the eleventh
commandment and had very nearly got hanged for her lamb.
In the second year of her widowhood in the month of November, whilst
her hair was still golden and her colouring unpurchased, she had dined
_à deux_ in one of those delectable, ghost-ridden, low-ceilinged sets
of chambers which are tucked away in a certain Inn within the Fleet
Street boundary.
Which is a silly thing to do if you do not own a car and a
long-suffering discreet chauffeur.
The _diner à deux_ and a bit of a play had been the honest programme;
but the inevitable had happened in an all-enveloping blanket of a fog,
on account of which everything in the shape of a hackney carriage had
gone home, and an excursion on foot to the nearest tube rendered
hopeless by the simple fact that you could not see your hand before
your face.
Which would not have mattered a bit if only, as the fog lifted and the
clock of St Dunstan's chimed the hour of three a.m., she had emerged
from the narrow opening into Fleet Street with the aplomb or
_savoir-faire_, which are almost twins, necessary to the occasion.
She would then have beckoned to and smiled sweetly upon the young
ruffian into whom she bumped as he lounged on his way to Covent Garden
Market, and promised him just enough to bring her a taxi or something
on wheels, into which she would have got if it had materialised, and
been whirled away to safety and bed after adieux to her host uttered
with the nonchalance necessary to allay the young ruffian's suspicions.
Instead of this she had slunk from the opening with her host close
behind, had bumped into the young ruffian and with an exclamation of
dismay had shrunk back into the shadows and her host's arms.
In consequence of which action the bare-footed ruffian had shadowed
them until they had met a four-wheeler, had held the lady's dress from
the wheel and overheard the address given to the driver for which he
had received tuppence, and had disappeared into a doorway where he had
spat on his unearned increment and made his plans.
The upshot of it all being the admittance a fortnight later of young
Wal. Hickle, attired in his best and primed with her family history,
into the presence of the terrified woman.
He had simply asked for twenty pounds on the nail in return for his
silence.
And she, scared out of her wits, instead of threatening him with the
law, had given him a cheque--yes! a cheque--and he, with a flash of
that cunning which was to lead him eventually to a seat amongst the
plutocrats, had pocketed it and grinned.
"I doan' wan' mor' 'en twenty uv the best, lidy, jus' to mike a
start--an' I doan' wanter part wiv yer 'and-writin' niver. So jes' yer
send two rustlers, wot means notes, of ten pun each, rigistered, to W.
'ickle spelt wiv a haitch, 2 H'apple Blossom Row, Coving Gardin, afore
this toime ter-morrer. An' jes yer remember that h'as long as yer
lives I've got yer bit of 'andwritin.' I ain't goin' ter use it, but
some dye it might come in 'andy. 'Ardly loikly as 'ow yer'd buy twenty
pun wurf of veg from Wal 'ickle eh, lidy?--it 'ud want _some_
h'explanation."
Then this soul made in the image and likeness of his God and found
good, but hidden under the civilising process of the twentieth century
which had given him the morals of a jackal and the status of a pariah
dog, sighed as he looked round the dainty room.
"S'welp me," he said, as he touched a satin cushion with his coarse,
broken-nailed finger-tips, "h'if oi h'understand wye a woman the loikes
uv _you_, wiv h'everyfink she wants, cawn't run _strite_!"
"Oh! but," whimpered the woman, "it was all the fault of the fog,
_really_ it was!"
"Garn!" replied the young ruffian as he opened the door and slammed it
behind him.
CHAPTER XIV
"Surely I am more brutish than any man!"--_The Bible_.
And just about midsummer Fate tweaked the string to which was hobbled
Susan Hetth.
A vulgar but resplendent bachelor middle-aged millionaire, sterling,
not dollars, in order to set his gastronomic house in order, had taken
a notion for the simple life for just as long as the notion should
last, and a perfect bijou of a thatched cottage t'other side of
Clovelly for a year.
With a notion of buying the cottage at Lee in which had dwelt the three
historic maids, he had swept one day through the village in the latest
thing in cars.
Baulked in his intent, and with time upon his podgy hands, he had
rolled, minus the car, along the village path over the strippet of
water and the sunbaked grass to the harbour.
There he had bent, with ardour and misgivings, to pick up Leonie's
towel, just as the soft wind caught her bathing cloak as she stretched
out her hand with a smile of thanks.
She had grabbed at the cloak and missed it by a bit, so that it had
swept behind her, hanging from one shoulder like some Grecian drapery,
and the rotund little man had trotted round her draped side, picked up
the cloak by the big button, and completed his trot, covering her up as
he moved.
And as he trotted his little porcine eyes had glistened as they
lingered upon the perfect figure, from the slim ankles to the confused
face, and Leonie had blushed, though you could not have discerned it
through the tan, pulled the cloak tighter and hurried across the road
to the cottage gate.
But with the clumsy swiftness of the elephantine, the man had run after
her and opened the cottage gate just as Susan Hetth opened the cottage
door with the welcoming announcement that tea was ready.
"Ha!" he had snorted as he almost ran up the path, leaving Leonie to
stand still and stare in amazement at the little scene. "And I'll have
some tea, too, Lady Susan Hetth, and how d'you do. Long time since we
met, eh?"
Diamonds sparkled in the sun as the man stretched out an effusive hand,
and a flame of anger sparkled in the small eyes as Lady Susan drew back
frigidly.
Not being of them herself she set all the greater store on knowing
those she considered exactly the right people.
"I don't think I have----" she commenced in her most primpsy voice,
when she was interrupted with a perfectly odious familiarity.
"Now you're not going to say that you don't remember our little
meetings in Earls Court _and_ Fleet Street and"--the man spoke with an
extreme slowness as though keeping guard over each letter of each
word--"_and_ our little correspondence, come now."
Leonie frowned and moved a step forward protectingly as her aunt caught
suddenly at the door handle, and then jerked herself forward with
outstretched hand.
"Auntie, dear----"
But her aunt was speaking in the falsetto of forced levity, and Leonie
held her peace and waited for an opportunity to slip past and into the
house.
"Why, I do believe," said Susan Hetth, suddenly metamorphosed by a
certain tone in the man's voice into the terrified woman of years ago,
"Yes! I do believe it is Mr. Walter Hickle----"
"_Sir_ Walter, _if_ you please."
"Indeed, in-deed--how _very_ delightful, and after _all_ these years!
Leonie, this is--is--er----"
"I'm one of your aunt's friends, Miss Leonie, bobbed up out of the
past. Glad to meet you, hope we shall be friends, too."
Leonie, who had gained the door, looked back over her aunt's shoulder
and spoke with a gentle courtesy very much her own.
"I always like to meet Auntie's friends!"
Not knowing the man from Adam she spoke no untruth, but in spite of
reiterated calls to come down to tea she remained in her bedroom until
the loud-voiced guest had taken his departure.
While the two women were having yet another cup of tea Sir Walter
Hickle, millionaire, tradesman, and knight, sat down gingerly upon a
rock and made his plans.
He had made his plans as a bull-necked, offensive youth the first day
he had pulled out from Covent Garden with a barrow piled with walnuts
bought out of two rustlers, value of ten pun each.
"I'll _get there_!" he had informed the nuts as he tweaked his cap over
one eye, and his red neckerchief into place; and had sworn a mighty and
quite unprintable oath as he struck a huge fist into a horny palm at
the corner of Ludgate Circus and New Bridge Street.
"I'll _get there_!" he informed the seaweed as he lifted the soft grey
hat from his bald head and adjusted the enormous pearl pin in the pale
pink satin tie; and he sighed stertorously as he complacently patted
his knee with a podgy hand, upon the manicured plebeian fingers of
which shone two magnificent diamond rings.
And if you cannot penetrate the strongholds of Devon county, it is not
difficult to make acquaintance with her visitors, especially if your
visiting card is a gilt edge security for future excursions and
diversions done in top-hole style.
Unsuspecting Leonie, who never kept a grudge, after a week or so of
astonishment and aversion, thinking in her innocence of heart that she
perceived the trend of events, made up her mind to meet the rotund old
knight with the simple graciousness due to her aunt's would-be husband.
True, the elasticity of her graciousness did not stretch enough to
allow her to accept the never-ending invitations which poured into the
cottage; but she would tuck her remonstrating aunt into the car which
was ever at the gate, and smile delightfully upon the infatuated old
fellow who put her aloofness down to mere girlish waywardness.
Although the corporeal part of the old vulgarian grated on her
susceptibilities, she was quite willing to believe that if one chose to
dig deep enough it would prove to be only the rough earth covering a
positive mine of rare temperamental gems; and in her blindness whistled
cheerily as she thought of the joy her aunt would feel at not having to
drop her title when she changed her name, and at being able to retain
the same initials for her monogram.
CHAPTER XV
"To sell a bargain well is as cunning
as fast and loose."--_Shakespeare_.
"Now I want you to listen to me, Leonie!"
"I am, Auntie!"
"I mean _seriously_! I want to talk about myself for one thing, and
our very straitened means, which do not permit us to go on living even
like this; and oh! lots of other things."
"Right, darling!" said her niece, moving across the room to sit on a
broad stool at her relation's feet, but twisting her head to one side
with a quick movement when her aunt laid her hand dramatically upon the
tawny hair.
"Please, Auntie, don't! I can't bear to have my head touched!"
"Just what I want to talk about!" vaguely said Susan Hetth as she tried
to disentangle an old-fashioned ring which had unfortunately caught a
few shining hairs in its loose setting.
"Please don't touch my _head_, Auntie!" repeated Leonie as she sat
back. "Let my hair _go_, please!"
"I'm not touching your hair, child," impatiently replied the elder
woman. "It's got caught in one of my rings!"
Leonie's eyes were almost closed in a strange kind of psychological
agony; then just as though she acted unconsciously she seized her
aunt's hands and pulled them quickly from her head, tearing out the
hair entangled in the ring by the roots.
"I can't stand it, Auntie. I have never been able to bear anyone
touching my head," she said very quietly.
"I think you're insane at times, Leonie, _really_ I do!"
The terrible words were out, and for one long moment the two women
stared into each other's eyes.
"You think I am insane at times," whispered Leonie. "_You_--Auntie,
_you_ think I am _insane_!"
And the elder woman, floundering in dismay at the awful effect of her
unconsidered words, sank to her neck in a bog of explanation.
"No! Leonie--no, of course not--I wasn't thinking--of _course_ you're
not mad--insane I mean. What an idea! only I am worried about you, you
know that, don't you, dear! _Do_ be sensible, dear. Of course your
brain is not _quite_ normal. It can't be with all that sleep-walking,
can it, and all your abnormally brilliant exams!"
Susan Hetth's disjointed remarks sounded like the clatter of a pair of
runaway mules, while Leonie clasped her hands tight as she sat crouched
on her stool.
"Of course people _will_ talk, you know, dear! They did when you were
quite a baby and began walking in your sleep. And they did, you know,
at school after that unfortunate child nearly got strangled by her
sheets--I always do think that school fare is _most_ indigestible--and
_so_ likely to cause blemishes on the skin!"
Leonie bowed her head.
"Most unfortunate that you should have snubbed young
Mr--what's-his-name--so severely--and that his sister should have been
at school with you. Out of revenge _she_ has been talking about you
and your sleep-walking. People are most unkind and _most_ unjust--and
you are _far_ too pretty to receive any consideration from your _own_
sex, how_ever_ much attention you may receive from the opposition--I
mean sex--opposite sex, I mean----"
Leonie sat absolutely still.
"Anyway, my child, we need not worry--there is a way out of our little
difficulties."
Sensing that something was coming Leonie sat back with the light of the
oil lamp full on her face as she stared at the clutter on the
mantelpiece.
"I _do_ so want you to do something for me, darling."
The tone of Susan Hetth's voice and the touch of her hand on the girl's
arm were as wheedling as if she were about to ask her to tramp into
Ilfracombe on some trifling midnight errand.
Leonie answered quite mechanically.
"What is it, dear!" she said. "Say the word and I'll do it!"
"Is that a promise?"
"Ra-ther! Anything to please you, Auntiekins!"
Susan Hetth took her fence in a rush!
"I want you to get married," she said abruptly out of pure fright, and
wrenched at her bead chain when Leonie leapt to her feet.
The girl stood quite still, outlined in her simple low-cut,
short-sleeved dress by the wall, her hands pressed back against it.
There was no sound except the soft gurgle and murmur of the water until
she spoke, quietly, but with a world of horror in her low-pitched voice.
"You want me to marry--_you_--when a moment ago you said that you
thought I was mad--you want me to marry some honest, unsuspecting man,
and bear him children!"
Susan Hetth, shocked to the limit of her Pecksniffian soul, made a
nerveless fluttering gesture of protest with her hands.
"Don't speak," said Leonie quickly, "please don't speak until I have
done. Marriage! I will tell you what I have thought about it while I
have been waiting for my mate."
"Oh!" exploded Susan Hetth vehemently. "_My dear_! Surely you have
not been corresponding with anyone!"
Leonie hesitated.
How was she to make her aunt, this shallow, unbalanced being,
understand the joyous expectancy with which she had awaited the moment
when she should meet the man born for her?
How was she to take the exquisite longings, the veiled desires, the
beautiful virgin thoughts, from her heart and lay them before this
woman who had taught her nothing but the twenty-third Psalm without its
real interpretation, plus the correct Sunday collect and daily prayers.
How explain that to her the little golden ring would not represent a
key opening the door to the so-called freedom from which fifty per cent
of women descend, via the shallow flight of steps marked a good time,
to the plain of discontent; or that to her the word love was
sufficient, in that for her it included those of honour and obey,
without any separate declaration in public.
When she spoke she spoke hurriedly, flushing from chin to brow.
"Auntie--I correspond with no man--but my--my mate is waiting for me
somewhere--calling me all the time ever since--oh! ever since I can
remember--and--and I should have married him when I had met him
if--if----"
In anger at this fresh complication, piled upon her appalling want of
tact of a few moments ago, Susan Hetth struck her hands on the arms of
her chair.
"I think you absolutely _indecent_, Leonie, to go on like this about
someone you have never even seen. Now listen to me, and don't be so
theatrical. I have had an offer of marriage for you by someone who
knows all about you, and who, after my assurance that there is nothing
hereditary in your family on either side to account for the strangeness
of your actions at times, is perfectly willing, even anxious, to marry
you."
"To take the risk, you mean," broke in Leonie. "Oh!--well, go on."
Aunt Susan, somewhat out of breath from the rapidity and unaccustomed
lucidity of her words, inhaled deeply and continued.
"He will make you an astounding marriage settlement, give you
everything you want, and swears to make you per-fect-ly happy!"
"And his name?"
"Oh! don't be stupid, Leonie, of course you know whom I mean!"
Leonie leant forward, stretching out her hands, her face dead white in
the light of the lamp.
"Tell me _his name_ and don't drive me beyond breaking point, Aunt
Susan!"
"Tosh!" contemptuously remarked her aunt. "Don't be so childish--I
mean Sir Walter Hickle, of course!"
Expecting some violent words of protest the elder woman half rose from
her chair, but appalled by the deathly silence and the look on the
girl's face, sank back, cowering in her seat, and stared in the
direction her niece's hand was pointing.
"Look, Auntie, look!"
Leonie stood with one hand pointing at the mantelpiece and the other
pressed against her throat as she tried to speak coherently.
The pupils of her eyes were pin-points as she gazed at a wooden frame
which, adorned with edelweiss and the Lucerne Lion, held the snapshot
of a complaisant individual leaning over the harbour wall, attired in a
well-fitting but ill-placed yachting suit.
"Old Pickled Walnuts! You want me to marry him--when--when--oh! when I
thought _he_ wanted to marry _you_!"
She laughed, a laugh which sounded like the jangling of broken glass,
and died almost before it was born; and her aunt, terrified at the
sound and the expression on the girl's face, seized the outstretched
arm and shook it violently.
"What _are_ you talking about, Leonie!"
Leonie freed her arm with a shudder.
"Please don't touch me!" Then making a desperate effort she continued
quietly, so quietly indeed that Susan Hetth looked anxiously over her
shoulder towards the door.
"Don't you know that's his nickname? Oh! of _course_ you do! You
_know_ he made his fortune by pickling walnuts too rotten to sell. Sir
Walter Hickle--twist the name a bit and it's all in a nutshell--a--a
pickled walnut shell"--the little unnatural laugh broke across the
words--"and you want _me_ to marry him--Auntie! Auntie! he's awful
enough, heaven knows, but not bad enough, nobody could be, to have a--a
mad wife foisted on him--no! never--I'll go out and work!"
There was something very decisive in the last words, but Susan Hetth,
like most weak people, found her strength suddenly in a mulish
obstinacy, which is a quite good equivalent for, and often more
efficacious than mere strength of will.
This obstinacy, backed by the knowledge that people were beginning to
gossip about the girl's aloofness and love of solitude; that the
cashing of another cheque would see her overdrawn at the bank; and that
until the girl was settled and off her hands she would not be able to
solve her own matrimonial problem, drove her to a show of mental energy
of which she would not have been capable in an everyday argument.
"Work!" she cried, "work! What can you do? _Nothing_--except go out
as a companion or nursery governess!--and who would take you without a
reference--and who would give _you_ one? Tell me!"
Leonie remained silent--stunned.
"As I have told you, we simply cannot afford to live even like _this_!
I'm overdrawn as it is, and----"
"But," broke in Leonie with a gleam of hope, "but I have father's money
coming to me. I'm not quite sure how much it is, but you can have
it--_all_!"
"It's two thousand pounds down for yourself, and two hundred and fifty
a year in trust for your children--to be given you on your _wedding_
day."
"Oh!"
It was just a little pitiful exclamation as the girl realised the net
which was closing about her feet, but from the meshes of which she made
a last desperate effort to extricate herself.
"I think I--see--a way," she said slowly. "Yes--listen--this terrible
mystery that surrounds me, this--this curse which seems to bring
disaster or pain to everyone I love, simply makes life not worth
living--so if--if I make a will in your favour, Auntie, dear, and go
for a swim at Morte Point where the cross currents are--it will----"
But Susan Hetth interrupted violently, horror-stricken at the
suggestion made indifferently by the girl she loved as far as she was
capable of loving.
"How is suicide going to help?" she demanded shrilly. "There would be
an inquest, every bit of gossip, everything you had ever done would be
brought to light; the verdict would be insanity----"
"Oh, _Auntie_!"
Driven to desperation and without finesse Susan Hetth flung down her
trump card.
"But--I--I haven't told you the--the _worst_," she stammered, dabbing
her eyes with her handkerchief, and peering from behind it at Leonie
who, wearily pushing the hair off her forehead, stood apathetically
waiting.
"That--that man"--she jerked her head at the mantelpiece--"has--has a
hold on me!"
"What---do you mean Sir Walter--do you owe him _money_?" Leonie stared
in amazement as she spoke.
"Oh, no--it's worse!" came the reply, followed by a curtailed but
sufficiently dramatic recital of the past indiscretion, to which Leonie
listened spellbound.
"And you _do_ believe that it was just a bit of bad luck, and that
there was nothing _really_ wrong in it all, don't you, dear," insisted
the woman who, like ninety-nine per cent of humans, forgot the real
tragedy of the moment in the recital of her own pettifogging escapade.
"Absolutely," replied Leonie flatly.
"And you _do_ see the necessity of giving in, now that he has
threatened me with exposure if you refuse him when he proposes, _don't_
you, dear?"
"Absolutely," replied Leonie for the second time.
There followed long minutes of silence which the swirl of the waters
alone dared to break, and then the girl spoke.
"My life," she said very softly to herself; "my lovely, beautiful free
life done. The wind, and the birds, and the sea--Auntie--oh,
Auntie--_Auntie_!"
And she turned and flung herself against the wall with her face crushed
into her upstretched arms. "Think of it," she whispered hoarsely,
"think of it, my youth, my spirit, my body given into that old man's
keeping. I who have kept my thoughts, my lips, my eyes for my mate
that was to be; I who have longed for his love, for the hours and the
days, and the months, and the years, even unto death, with him. How
could----"
There was a click of the gate, and she flung round from the wall,
dry-eyed, dry-lipped, desperate, as her aunt hurriedly rose.
"It's him--Sir Walter, Leonie--are you going to accept him?"
"Of course," came the steady reply, and Leonie looked the elder woman
straight in the eyes, which darted this, that, and every way. "Will
you go upstairs, please."
* * * * * * * *
Just before dawn Leonie slid in through the window, and the water,
trickling from the bathing dress which clung to the wonderful figure,
formed little pools on the faded carpet.
"Nothing will ever make me clean," she whispered,
"nothing--nothing--nothing. There is no ocean big or wide or deep
enough for that, oh! God--my God!"
For five long minutes she stood absolutely still, looking straight and
unseeingly at the mantelpiece.
Then as a rooster somewhere shrilly heralded the coming day she awoke
to her surroundings and moved.
Like a beaten dog she crept to her bedroom, and stood staring at the
reflection of her haggard face in the mirror. A bird suddenly burst
into a song of welcome to the dawn which was dyeing the sky rose pink,
and she crossed to the window-seat, dropped to her knees, and buried
her lovely head in her outstretched arms, amid the ruins of her
beautiful Castle of Dreams.
CHAPTER XVI
"For Fate has wove the thread of life with pain!"--_Pope_.
When _empty_ Rockham is a haven of delight, whether the little
connecting coves be awash with the tide, or the limpets, in an unglued
state, are airing themselves awaiting the return of the water.
You can wander at will, if you have the right boots on, over the
never-ending sharp ridges of the rocks; you can pass hours gathering
_laver_, though it is not at its best just there; and you can find
sea-anemones and such treasure-trove as pit props, and boxes of butter,
yea! and even casks of wine after a storm if the gods be kind to you.
Also you can don your bathing dress in comfort behind the wreck, one of
many, which has remained as witness to the force of the terrific gales
and the ripping propensities of the saw-teethed rocks.
Walk in from Lee or Mortehoe, Woolacombe or Croyde, over fields in
which lambs stand on their front feet in exuberance of youth, or caper
on their back ones until called to order by their maternal parent; or
through lanes lined with primroses and violets, or roses, or nuts, or
berries, according to the season, whilst on the top twig of the high
hedges yellow-hammers, chaffinches, robins and the like gossip to you
about the hawk hovering in the distance.
Arrived there, pause on the edge of the incline. _Don't_ go down if
you see a paper bag fluttering in the breeze, because a paper bag is
but a forerunner of lanky locks dripping on a towel-covered shoulder,
and bare and uncomely feet fiddling in the warm sand, whilst adjacent
is the rock over which the faded blue bathing dress hangs out to dry.
Wait for the empty hour and then fly into the second cove, and the
next, and the next, but--_don't forget the tide_!
The sand-covered rough-haired terrier stood with his head cocked on one
side, looking at the wonderful, waving, glistening mass in front of him.
It certainly looked like seaweed, but it didn't smell like it, and long
bits of it floated in the air just like golden threads; besides, there
was something uncanny about it which sent thrills into the roots of his
rough hair, causing it to rise in clumps along his spine.
It looked as if there were something dead underneath, too, and yet it
didn't; anyway it certainly did not look as though it were meant to be
played with or barked at; and he hastened back along the treacherous
narrow passage, which connects the two last coves, in search of
him-who-knew-all and was never afraid.
"No, old fellow!" was the only response he got to his invitation to
"come and see." "I've already been fooled over anemones, and rooks,
and passing cloud shadows, and very dead starfish--nothing' doin', so
calm yourself!"
But the dog backed into a pool, emitting barks which were strangled at
birth, snapped at a bit of rock which caught him unawares upon his
unprotected flank, trotted forward, backed again into the pool, and
turning, ran down the passage, came back and did it all over again.
Talk about water-drops wearing away a stone, why they are simply not in
it when compared with a dog's method of wearing down your resistance.
After the fifth repetition of the above tactics the man rose,
stretched, put his pipe in his pocket, and hurling a pebble at the
delighted quadruped, followed in its wake.
"Just look at that, and don't say I've brought you here for nothing,"
said the terrier, as plainly as he could with eyes and quivering body
and tail.
The man looked and held up a finger, which caused the dog to sit up and
beg, and walked as softly as possible up to Leonie who, tired out with
worry, heartache, and a long swim, was sitting fast asleep on that one
slanting, delightfully comfortable rock seat, with her hair spread out
over her face, and down to her knees, mantle wise, to dry.
It is a somewhat ticklish job to lift an unknown lady's hair and tell
her abruptly that you think the tide is on the turn, and the man stood
in perplexity, while his brain refused obstinately to register anything
more practical than an overwhelming admiration for the picture before
him.
However, with the attempt to unravel the problem, his hand went
instinctively to the pocket which held his pipe, and the slight
movement simultaneously upset his balance and solved the problem.
He slipped with a rasp of nails on rock, waved his arms in a manner
likely to cause envy in any mere flag-wagger, and recovered himself
with all the clatter and confusion inseparable, under such
circumstances, from the saving of self-respect and the knees of skirt
or breeches.
Quite unconscious that her stockings and high boots were upon another
rock, her skirt only reached just below the knee and her legs and
beautiful feet were bare, Leonie sat up as straight as she could and
peered from between her masses of hair; upon which the dog, thinking
that he alone was responsible for the discovery of this wild beast,
yelped and barked and growled as he slid in and out of the pools.
Pushing her hair back, and shielding her eyes from the sun and her face
from the man, she flashed one swift glance from his shoes to his hair;
that non-looking, all-seeing glance of woman which leaves fork
lightning at the post, and causes you to wish you had spent a little
more time upon your toilet.
Although she had barely looked at him, Leonie could have described the
man before her down to the minutest detail.
No doubt about it he was good to look upon, with his steady eyes, the
straight ultra-refined nose with slightly-distended nostrils, and a jaw
which, in shape and strength, belied the almost feminine beauty of the
mouth.
He stood well over six feet, though you would hardly have thought so
because of the massive shoulders which seemed to have been created to
carry the troubles of the entire world.
His hands, the outward, visible and infallible sign of the inner man,
were perfect male hands, long and thin with square-tipped sensitive
fingers, and a certain look of steel about the back and wrists.
But although he had been looking at her steadily for quite a minute,
owing to some inexplicable overpowering sensation which had seized upon
him, he would most certainly not have been able to tell you the colour
of her hair or that her feet were bare.
"I beg your pardon," he said quite suddenly and a little hoarsely, "but
my dog brought me to you--and as I think the tide is on the turn, I
thought----"
But any further description of his thoughts was cut short in most
unseemly fashion as, with an ear-splitting bark, the terrier hurled
himself into the girl's lap, standing up to put its fore-paws round her
neck, wriggling and squirming until the four feet, collar, and head
were thoroughly knotted in the beautiful hair.
Leonie held on to her scalp to lessen the pain as stray hairs were
literally dragged out by the roots, whilst tears of agony streamed down
her face on to the man's hands as he held the squirming animal and
endeavoured to loosen its bonds.
"Cut it!"
"What! All that!"
"Oh! I can spare it, but I can't stand the pain much longer, and I
can't bear having my head touched. Look, I'll hold the dog firmly on
my lap and bend my head, it won't hurt quite as much then, only do be
quick!"
She put both hands on the shivering dog, who seemed to have sensed that
something had gone agley, and pressing him down upon her knees bent her
head, and her hair fell in waves about the man's feet as he unclasped a
pocket-knife.
What there was in the attitude, whether it was the humility of the bent
head or the utter abandon of the waving hair about his knees, the man
never knew, but he suddenly began to hack savagely and ruthlessly at
the great strands until the dog was freed and flung far on to the sands.
Then he bent and took hold of Leonie, lifting her bodily from her seat
into his arms, crushing her desperately against his breast.
Just for one moment he stared down with blazing eyes, the nostrils
quivering slightly, and the lips drawn back enough to show the white
even teeth, whilst the rough tweed of his coat marked her cheek, and
the strength of his arms and hands bruised her body even through her
clothes; then he frowned, pushed her hair almost roughly right off her
face, and looked at her with the dawn of recognition in his eyes.
And for just as long Leonie lay quite still, her eyes half closed, her
scarlet mouth opened slightly, enough to show the small white teeth.
And then, she was standing on her feet with her hands clenched in his
against his breast.
"_You_!"
"And _you_!" she replied, striving gently to release her hands.
"Forgive me! For God's sake forgive me! I--I have no excuse!"
A seagull perched itself on the point of a jagged rock, uttered its
raucous cry and was gone towards Bull Point Lighthouse shining in the
sun; a flock of rooks suddenly swirled from the cliffs, screaming
battle upon their opponents as Leonie answered.
"There is nothing to forgive! Some things are beyond our ken. Will
you get me my boots and stockings?"
Her hands shook ever so slightly under the strain of the control she
was forcing upon herself, and the pupils of her eyes were strangely
dilated, looking like bits of night sky set in a moon circle; but she
spoke and moved quickly as the man, having brought the foot-gear and
unwound the cut hair from the abject dog, leant down and picked up a
tough seaweed root.
"No!" she said sharply, laying her hand on his. "No! It's too late to
beat him!"
"I _must_!"
"I say _no_!"
"But you don't understand!"
Her lashes lay like a fringe on the cheek over which swept a flood of
colour as she whispered so softly that the lap of the water almost
drowned the word.
"_Please_!"
Save for the murmur of the water there was no sound whatever in the
rock-strewn empty spot; and save for the swaying of the seaweed in the
pools there was no movement as those two stood close to each other and
Fate counted time.
Then Leonie smiled radiantly and sat down upon a rock with a stocking
in each hand.
"Come and lunch in the next cove!" her companion said in a
matter-of-fact voice, carefully winding the cut strands of hair and
slipping them, without asking permission, into his breast pocket.
"It's not so sunny in there, and I've cold soup and cold chicken,
salad, jelly and cream--will you?"
"Ra-ther!" said she, beginning to lace her boots. And picnicking _is_
fun in the last cove at Rockham. The air smells so heavenly, the wind
is so soft, the clouds so lumpy and white; and there are little caves
in which to dress and undress for the purpose of bathing, to boil the
kettle, or hunt for those little bits of over-dried wood which go off
with the report of a pistol and plop out to singe your garments.
And so _very_ few get as far!
Somehow the tide is generally on the turn, and if by chance it is not,
the tortuous and narrow passages between the coves, with their rocking
rocks and hidden pools, are enough to twist the ankles and temper of
anyone who is not Devon born or bred.
"Yes! I am due to sail for India about this day month," said Jonathan
Cuxson, Jan for short, a little later, as he drove the cold drumstick
of a Devon chicken into the paper bag containing salt, while Leonie,
holding the fellow leg in both hands, or at least the fingers of both
hands, gnawed right heartily at the middle thereof, and the pardoned
dog sat quivering with hope deferred.
"Isn't this perfectly wonderful," he went on, and Leonie mumbled
"whum-whum" as interestedly and politely as her bone would allow. "I
mean our meeting like this!"
She smiled and sat forward, resting one hand upon the rocks, and the
puppy, with a lamentable slump in manners, crawled up from behind and
gently relieved her of the bone which still had luscious scraps of
white flesh adhering to it, and a dream of a shining gristly knob at
the end.
"Your idea of picnicing is somewhat luxurious," she said, taking a
cardboard plate full of jelly which he had smothered in cream. "Tell
me what you are going to make of your life!"
"You must blame or thank Mrs. Pugsley for the luxury. I'm at
Woolacombe, perched on the top of the hill, and she simply spoils me.
Will you have a cigarette?"
Leonie shook her head, and the two great, hastily twisted plaits
wriggled like shining snakes, causing the dog to lay one paw on his
bone and snarl.
"I don't smoke!"
"How delightful!" said Jan Cuxson. "I was sure you didn't--I love
women who smell of lavender."
"Won't you smoke--your pipe--and tell me what you are going to make of
your life."
"They--the plans--have all been fogged up this morning !" he said
slowly after a moment's pause. "How strange it all is. Do you know
that I was going up to town next week to hunt up _you_, of all people?
Do you remember anything of my father's death?"
"We don't talk about it," said Leonie quietly, and the man looked at
her with a sudden questioning in the steady eyes.
"I am taking on his work, you know, specialising in the brain. I have
got through all my exams quite decently, thanks, I think, to his
wonderful notes, have travelled a bit in the east, and before settling
down intended to go to India--what for do you think?"
Leonie shook her head. "Holiday?"
"Er--yes, almost. You know I simply _loved_ my father, and his very
last entry in his book of notes was about _you_. One line was this:
'Most interesting--shall go to India and find the ayah.' He died of
heart failure, you know, and he must have written the last line before
he died--it is: 'The answer to the problem concerning Leonie Hetth is
in the third volume upon----' There was nothing after that--I thought
he would be awfully pleased if I carried out his last wishes, and meant
to hunt you up and see if you were still--er--bothered with dreams and
then----"
He stopped short as Leonie leapt to her feet and ran back from a wave
which had most unexpectedly swirled upon her from behind a rock.
"Quick!" she laughed, "quick--the tide will be in. Where's the dog?"
The dog was cavorting with a crab in a pool.
"Jingles!" sternly admonished his master, who was heaving everything
pell-mell into his haversack. "By the way, what became of Jingles the
first?"
A shadow crept into Leonie's eyes as she thought of the pain and
disaster she invariably seemed to bring to those she loved most.
"He--he was run over--it was my fault, I whistled him across the road
and a car caught him. If we hurry," she continued, "we shall be in
time for tea--Auntie will love to see you again!"
"Oh! of course--I'd almost forgotten her--will she?"
CHAPTER XVII
"He that rebuketh a wicked man getteth
himself a blot!"--_The Bible_.
By all the ill-luck in the world Sir Walter Hickle was sitting in the
patch called the garden, turning a small parcel elatedly over and over
in his pocket, as Leonie, and her companion, and the dog came sliding
down the hill towards the cottage.
For the time being Leonie had totally forgotten the proceedings of the
night before, which had metamorphosed her radiant self from a free into
a bond woman.
"Oh!" she said, putting one hand unexpectedly on Jan Cuxson's arm and
digging her stick fiercely into the ground, as the man in the garden
half rose from his chair and sank back with a frown.
"Oh!" she repeated.
"Tired, dear?"
Neither of them noticed the little endearing word which had slipped out
so naturally, but Leonie's face was wan and her eyes were dead as she
dragged herself down the last few yards, while her aunt fluttered down
to the gate to meet them, with her mind and skirts in a whirl.
"Jan Cuxson!" she exclaimed, offering a limp hand, and "How _very_
nice," she continued, lying quite successfully. "I should have known
you anywhere. _Do_ come in and have tea!"
And in the same breath, and with that strange cruel cunning of the
shallow mind, which is the abortive twin of decent feminine intuition,
she leapt at the difficulty she saw threatening, and tried to dispel it.
"Let me introduce you to Sir Walter Hickle, my niece's fiance."
Sir Walter ambled forward with outstretched hand as Cuxson, nodding
curtly, bent to pick up Leonie's stick, which had clattered to the
floor.
A malicious gleam shone in the elder man's little eyes as he looked at
the splendid young fellow who had seemed, physically anyway, so fit a
match for Leonie as they tramped down the hill together; and though
there was no sign of his inward perplexity and repulsion in Jan
Cuxson's face as his eyes swept the obese figure of the notorious old
knight, his jaw took a sudden, almost ugly, outward thrust with the
birth of a mighty resolution.
Leonie walked to the gate with him when he took his departure, having
refused tea from a certain undefined feeling that he could not even sit
in the same room as the man whom he intended to do out of the odd trick.
He crushed Leonie's hand as he looked straight into her eyes, so
desperate and ashamed, and spoke very gently and deliberately as he
slipped his hand to her wrist and pulled her a little closer.
"I shall be in the last cove to-morrow at eleven, waiting for you."
And naturally Leonie had responded to the mastery in the voice, as all
women do respond when the voice is the right one; and a soft wave of
colour swept from chin to brow as she turned from the gate, and walked
through the doorway straight to her bedroom; while her future lord
pranced furiously among the bric-a-brac, and her aunt's beads and
bracelets clashed against the china as she wrung her hands over the tea
things, and portending disaster.
Leonie sat down on her bed with her eyes shining like stars.
The lid of her life's casket had opened wide, and from under a hideous
heap of fear, disgust, lost illusions, and despair, hope had sprung,
spreading her iridescent wings in the warmth of love.
She sat until the shadows crept about her, then got up from her bed
with a little laugh, and descended to give battle for her life and
freedom.
Think of every synonym connected with the word tumult and you will get
a vague idea of the storm which crashed about the girl's defenceless
head as she stood with her back to the door of the tiny sitting-room,
with a perfectly gorgeous diamond ring sparkling and flashing in front
of her upon a table.
"I cannot marry you, Sir Walter, I simply cannot do it," she was
saying, slowly and distinctly. "You must let me go. So please give
the ring to somebody else, there are heaps of girls ever--oh, ever so
much nicer than me!"
She smiled sweetly as she picked up the ring and held it out to the
man, who snatched it from her as he sprang to his feet, and hurled it
through the window.
Then he moved to the other side of the table and leant both clenched
fists upon it as he looked Leonie up and down.
"You needn't wear the ring, my girl," he said slowly, "but no one picks
Walter Hickle up one day and throws him down the next. You're going to
marry me this day month, you take that straight from me. Let's hear
why you've changed your mind so sudden; willing to marry last night,
unwilling to marry to-day.
"Come on, now, out with it!" he suddenly shouted, bringing his hand
with a crash on the table as Leonie hesitated, blushing divinely.
"Only--be-cause I--I don't love you, Sir Walter, and it's--it's _not_
right to marry without love!"
"Posh! There wasn't so much of this 'ere right to marry last night.
Fallen in love with that young feller-me-lad, I suppose. Where did you
meet him? What were you doing? How--how----"
Leonie turned the handle of the door, but shrank back as the man, with
a bound, flung himself at her and wrenched her hand free; and Susan
Hetth clashed her bracelets and bits as she put her hands tightly over
her face, in her fright forgetting the mixture of colours she heaped on
it daily in the hope of stemming the neap tide of old age.
"Get out, you there!" snarled the man, lashed to fury by the whip of
jealousy. "Get out, go away, wash your face--you look like a--a--like
a damned fut'rist, get _out_!"
And not daring to pass the two near the door, she prepared to get, with
a great loss of dignity, through the bow window; in fact, one foot was
just over the sill when the man called her back.
"Come back," he bellowed, "I want you as witness to what I'm goin' to
say to your niece, the young lady what plays fast and loose with honest
men. Fast and loose, I _don't_ fink!"
Leonie shuddered as the veneer of refinement cracked under the strain
of the man's rage, showing the brutality and grossness immediately
underneath.
She pulled her hand free, and backed towards the mantelpiece, against
which she leant, staring at him.
"I am not going to marry you!"
The voice was low but positive, and the quiet in the room was intense
as Sir Walter bounced up within a foot of her and shook a fat
forefinger in her face.
"Aren't you," he said, "aren't you! And I'll just tell you three
things what'll make you change your tune, my girl.
"One," he placed the fat forefinger on the ill-bred thumb, "an' the
least important, you'll marry me 'cos you're an 'etth, daughter of
Colonel Bob Hetth, V.C., an' your fut'rist aunt ain't--hasn't half
rubbed it in about the Hetths never breaking their word, I give you
mine!"
"Please leave my father's name out of this," quietly replied Leonie,
her face dead white from the sickening thudding of her heart.
"Well, if you don't keep your word, Miss tiger cat, I'll run you in for
breach of promise, an' bring your father's name into court!"
"You couldn't!"
"_Couldn't_!--couldn't what?" stormed the man.
"Run," said Leonie gently, and added sweetly, and with great vulgarity,
"you're too fat!"
"Two!" continued Sir Walter, purple in the face, but wisely ignoring
the insult to his person. "You'll marry me 'cos no one else'll have
you. You're batty, my gel--gone in the top storey--can't even go out
to work for your living 'cause you ain't always to be trusted. I know
all about yer, but I'm willin' to take the risk. There won't be any
trapersin' round the 'ouse after dark once yer married to me, I give
you my word. Course, if you like to go on spungin' on your aunt,
obligin' her to live in a 'ole like this, well, that's your look
h'out--'ardly up to mark tho', being an 'etth, daughter of a V.C."
His small eyes gleamed as they rested on Leonie's stricken face.
"Stop, please," she said hurriedly, "I can't stand any more just now.
I--I couldn't really. Will you give me a week to think it over?"
The man laughed contemptuously.
"A few days, a few hours, then?"
There was something horrible in the humiliation of the girl's pleading,
but it made not the slightest impression on the ex-costermonger, who
had at one time been accustomed to enforcing his commands with the
buckle end of his waist-belt.
"Not a minute, not a second," he chortled, seeing the end of the chase
in sight. "Think of the 'old I have on yer aunt. Lady Susan Hetth,
sister of Colonel Bob 'etth, V.C., creeping out h'of a gentleman's
rooms at three h'o'clock of the mornin' an' payin' me 'ush money--think
of h'it. _Now_ what 'ev you got to say. Why don't you be sensible an'
quiet, gal? I've _got_ yer, it ain't no use kickin'. Be sensible an'
I'll smother you in di'monds, give yer two Rolls-Royce, yacht, Monty
Carlo any time, Park Lane--make every other woman want ter scratch yer
eyes out--what more _could_ yer want? Now what have yer got to say!"
What was there to say?
Aunt Susan tried to obliterate herself behind the window curtain; Sir
Walter, thumbs in armholes, tilted himself backwards and forwards on
toe and heel as Leonie came forward and leant with both hands the
table, as she looked from one to the other without speaking.
In fact the silence became intolerable to Sir Walter, who had expected,
and would have thoroughly enjoyed a heated altercation, in which he
would have known exactly where he was.
"Well, what 'ev yer got to say, my gel?"
Leonie looked from one to the other.
"I will marry you this day month, Sir Walter." She threw up her hand
as he laughed triumphantly. "Wait one moment! But until that day I
will have nothing to do with you, _nothing_. I will not meet you nor
go out with you, nor bother about a trousseau, nor the future in any
way. I shall go out and come in when I like, and go where and how I
like. I shall meet whom I like. I won't deceive you, I shall meet Jan
Cuxson just as often as I like. And I should advise you not to
interfere with me in any way. He is young and strong, and, as an old
friend of the family, might resent it. You can trust him, he is a
gentleman--which means--oh, well!--you will find the exact meaning in a
French dictionary."
She crossed to the door, turned, and looked, slowly from one to the
other.
"Is the bargain concluded?"
"Yes!--I'll take yer on those terms--but you'll pay a 'undred per cent
interest on the month, I've lent yer--an' _then_ some I give yer _my_
word!"
The door shut quietly as the man sank into a chair.
"Batty!" he said as he mopped his bald head, "absolutely balmy. But
it's worth while--it's worth while--let her have 'er month--let 'er--I
shall have a whole lifetime to break 'er in."
CHAPTER XVIII
"Why fret about them if to-day be sweet!"--_Omar Khayyám_.
The great grey breakers heaved themselves skywards, paused for half a
second, split and crashed down upon the rocks the next morning as
Leonie and Jan Cuxson sat on the sands under the lowering sky.
They had argued, analysed, plotted, and planned, only to find that each
road they launched out upon full of hope, terminated in the blind alley
of the old man's power over the girl.
"I've just got to go through with it," said Leonie, "there is simply no
way out."
The man caught both hands in his.
"Dear heaven, how I love you, child! How I long to pick you up, as I
did all those years ago, and carry you out of all this to happiness.
Leonie! Leonie! You must marry me, I love you so."
And she had sat quite still, not daring to move for fear of the mighty
passion which surged about her.
Yes! Quite true! They had only met twice; but there is a certain kind
of love, exceeding rare it's true in Europe, which from an
infinitesimal seed is capable in one second of blossoming into a tree,
fruit and all, in the shade of which you can sit content until your
life's end.
It simply sprouts all over the East.
Wishing to prevent a conflagration Leonie spoke quite calmly as she
withdrew her hands.
"And I couldn't marry you, even if I were free, because--at times--as I
have just told you--they say that I--I--am not responsible for my
actions? I'm--I'm supposed to be----"
"Be quiet!"
Cuxson pulled her fiercely into his arms, crushing her cheek against
his.
"Tell me all, every detail."
They sat there as the tide went out, and the man registered the facts
of the tragic tale in his mind, eager to be out on the trail of the
mystery overshadowing the girl he loved.
"Mad!" he laughed when she had finished, "_mad_!--no more than I am,
and I'm sane enough in all conscience except in my love for you. I
shall go to India, and wring or bribe the truth out of that ayah. But
we needn't worry about the date of starting yet a while, and between
then and now we shall have found a way out of this seeming impasse.
What is it?"
Leonie had twisted herself suddenly out of his arms, looked over her
shoulders and shivered.
"It is what I was telling you about, a sensation of someone standing
close behind me."
"It's nothing, Leonie, just imagination," said Jan Cuxson.
For how could he see a certain high caste native of India walking
slowly down the gangway from the great ship just docked at Tilbury, and
smiling inscrutably as he placed his foot in the country which held the
white woman he sought?
Leonie turned her head quickly, and shivered again, violently.
"It was just as though someone had called me," she said, speaking just
above a whisper.
"Look at me, dear!"
Leonie looked straight into the honest grey eyes, and the fear died out
of her own as she met the steady gaze.
"I'm slow, dear, dead slow, plodding I suppose they'd call me, but once
I'm on to something I never let go until I've won. Things are black,
sweetheart, but something is telling me that I shall find a way out.
When--when is----"
Leonie lied.
It was beyond her power of will to place a limit to her sudden newborn
happiness; she would not give a definite date, and relying on the
certainty that the man would never allow anyone to gossip to him about
the wedding, she lied--deliberately.
"Oh! there's _plenty_ of time, don't let's talk about it."
She sprang to her feet and flung out her arms to the sea.
"Let's forget, Jan, let's forget! Let's steal something from Fate and
be happy. Let's be friends, pals; we can't be anything else, because I
am in honour bound. And--and--I'm _so_ hungry "--she turned her
radiant, laughing face to him--"I'll race you to Barricane for tea."
She was off as she spoke, with Cuxson close behind. They jumped from
rock to rock, they slipped, they slithered, they splashed up to their
knees in pools and out again.
The man did not break the compact when he caught her in the shadow of
the wreck and drew her into the shelter of his arms.
"Pal!" he whispered. "Little pal!"
And she lay quite still until the thud of their hearts, caused by the
strenuous exercise, had given place to the stronger, steadier beat of
steadfast love; then she slipped down, ducked under his arms and was
away, and her laugh was caught by the wind and blown back to him as he
ran in hot pursuit.
CHAPTER XIX
"Write them upon the table of thine heart!"--_The Bible_.
Leonie's wrist watch very softly chimed midnight, announcing in gentle
tones the birth of her wedding-day, as she sat with her chin in her
hands staring out to sea.
She frowned and pulled savagely at the band until it broke; there was a
faint crash, and a faint splash, as the watch, hurtling through the
air, ricocheted from a rock into a pool as the girl stretched her arms
above her head, leant back, and closed her eyes.
Her last midnight swim, the last time she would slip the bathing dress
over her beautiful virgin body, the last time she would revel in
freedom, oh! the last time of anything decent, and pure, and sweet.
She had not lost her heart or her head, in fact she had gone through
none of those amorous gymnastics which seem necessary to the cardiac
state of being in love.
She _loved_, and she knew it, and confessed it on her knees at night,
and when she walked, or swam, or rode, or carried her food on her back,
or braided her hair in the day. She was loved and she knew it, and
thanked her God when she lay down to sleep at night, and when she
shopped, or placated her petulant relation, or played bridge or the
piano equally badly, or got wet through in the storm, and tanned by the
wind.
Many times Sir Walter had almost been on the verge of giving her her
desire.
_Almost_! Because it only needed two things to make him toe the line
of sensual infatuation; the first being the graciousness of every line
of her beautiful person when she met him by chance; and the second, the
ungraciousness of her distinctly unpleasant manner upon the same
occasion, over both of which he promised himself as he inwardly raged
at her frequent, prolonged and unexplained absences, he would shortly
have full control.
The month had slipped by so quickly, the month in which she had
indifferently left to her aunt and fiance the choosing of her
trousseau, and the arrangement of the ceremony; also the honeymoon,
that subsequent insight into purgatory which she was to endure as best
she could in an isolated, thatched cottage t'other side of Hartland
Point.
A month during which she had walked, and talked, and walked again with
Jan Cuxson, who caused her heart to thud heavily even though he did not
touch her hand in greeting, or parting, or at any other time.
They had gathered _laver_--that most delectable vegetable-seaweed--at
the base of the Woolacombe rocks; dug and scratched for the elusive
cowrie shell in the sands of Barricane Beach; devoured Mrs. Parker's
teas of bread and butter and cream, jam and cake, laid on snow-white
cloth upon trestle table; and watched their flat-pebbled ducks and
drakes skip more or less successfully across the waters.
They had tramped to Croyde, George Ham, Saunton, and all the other
lovely spots, and whistled over the lighthouse wall at Bull Point to be
regaled by tea on a tray, handed over by one of the perfectly charming
family of Howgego, which comprises the lighthouse keeper, his wife, and
his bonny daughter.
All this had been done by stealth.
Creeping about the cottage in stockinged feet at dawn, polishing the
high boots before retiring to bed until they shone again; packing the
haversack, creeping out of the cottage, vaulting the wall to the left
to evade the gate which either jammed or creaked, and away up the steep
incline, also to the left, and to wherever love listed.
Upbraidings at night are quite bearable when the heart is aglow, and
the future dimmed by present happiness; but upbraidings in the early
morning are quite intolerable when the outlook into the future shows a
black abyss through the medium of an empty stomach.
She had seized upon every passing moment, wringing the uttermost out of
it that she might have something put by with which to fill in the
blanks of the drear future, the vacuum where should have been a
tumultuously throbbing heart of love, and a pulse of life and passion.
Also did she glean and garner, so as to be tucked in stray corners,
memories of a flower in a hedgerow, a boat on the wing, a look in a
dog's eyes, and the indescribable smell of a mixture of tobacco, sea
air, and leather; and all the other little genuine antique, and ever
new odds-and-ends of the collection labelled Love in the heart museum.
Not a word had she said about the wedding.
Cowardly? Yes, indeed! But if a prisoner were given a bottle of
champagne to drink just before his death by hanging, it's odds on that
instead of merely tasting a few drops he would drink the whole bottle,
and go to his doom with the exultant thought of something nice, anyway,
having happened to cheer him on his final exit.
She simply radiated love, and allowed neither the frequent upbraidings
of her distracted aunt, nor the hourly approach of the fatal day to dim
the sunlight of the hour in hand.
"Never you worry," she said one day, when her aunt had waylaid and
implored her to have her wedding-dress fitted, "We'll pin it with
safety-pins if it doesn't hang right, and as long as I'm at the church
door on time, nothing else really matters. And I've given you my word
on that."
And she had vaulted the wall and taken a short cut through the golf
course until she had come up behind the man who loved her; and he,
reading the trouble in her strange eyes, had drawn her hands to his
heart and held them tight.
How often had they stood in the shade of the fir trees in the heat of
the day, with the intoxicating smell of the pines in their nostrils,
and the soothing sound of the humming of many bees in their ears.
They had stood so still, so close, and so very much alone.
Oh! he loved her and her ways!
Loved the rarity of her beauty, and the vitality of her body, loved the
extreme care she took not to allow her fingers to touch his when
passing a cup or a hefty sandwich.
Revelled in the surge of colour which swept her face when sometimes he
caught and steadied her on a rock; and the way in which, when sitting
on the sand, she would suddenly scrunch up her knees with her arms for
no apparent reason, and bury her scarlet mouth, and the eyes which
betrayed her, in the rough tweed of her skirt.
He exulted in the little half-catch of her breath, the little happy
laugh, the extra polish he knew she put on her boots just for his sake;
and, above all, that perfect sense of virgin woman which emanated from
her, allied to the promise of a passion which most inhabitants of a
northern clime would have utterly misconstrued and misunderstood.
Yes! He revelled and he exulted in every minute of every hour spent
with her; blinded with love, led astray by the thought of months ahead
in which he felt that Fate surely would find a way out for them, he let
the time slip by, up to the moment when Leonie said good-bye quite
gravely, shaking her head without a smile at the usual invitation to
meet on the morrow.
CHAPTER XX
"Working spells
Upon a mind o'erwrought!"--_Thomas Hardy_.
Secure in the solitude of her last few hours of freedom; oblivious of the
fact that her aunt, enraged and alarmed at the unseemly and most untimely
absence of the morrow's bride, was idiotically wringing her hands as she
ran up and down in front of the cottage; worn out and weary with despair,
Leonie, in her bathing dress, had gone to sleep with the full moon
shining down upon the small, pale face, full of shadows.
Jan Cuxson, uneasy at the girl's curt refusal to meet him during the last
twenty-four hours, had started to walk to Woolacombe from Ilfracombe
where he had spent a wretched, restless, futile day.
He had tramped through the sleeping village of Lee without a look at the
historic cottage once inhabited by the Three Old Maids, and along to the
other little cottage on the sea front where the absence of light in
Leonie's room caused him to guess that she was abroad. He passed as
quietly and quickly as possible, having determined to avoid the place for
fear of meeting the aunt, or old Hickle, and losing his self-control.
As long as you know exactly where to lay your hand on them you don't
worry overmuch about your gold cigarette case, or your favourite pipe, or
the diamond brooch you pin haphazard into your laces; but mislay them for
a moment and see what a turmoil of inquietude you will be in!
Never doubting the honesty of his beloved, tricked as it were by her
happy, care-free attitude, the man had drifted contentedly in the sun of
love, and the month of June; but to-night a bank of clouds was rising to
meet the moon half-way upon her celestial journey, and the winds of doubt
and uneasiness were lifting the corners of that warm, comforting mantle
of serenity which we seldom have a chance to take down from its peg in
the wardrobe of life.
Yesterday she had left him with a flat refusal to meet him, and her eyes
had been like the eyes of the dead, and her hands had been like ice, and
her voice had been most uncompromisingly final.
All day he had argued with himself, surmised and made excuses, sunned
himself in the cove at Rapparree, assuring himself stubbornly that
everything was quite all right; and at last, dinnerless, desperate, and
afraid, had started off hot foot to find her; intending to crush the
resistance out of her with the outpourings of his love, and force her to
risk everything for the sake of a life-long happiness.
It was just about one o'clock when he scrunched past the rusty old wreck
and clambered up and over the rocks and through the opening to the second
cove; and his heart leapt as he steadied himself when his eyes found that
which they had eagerly sought; then missed a beat as, for some unknown
reason, he stood stock still, and drew back into the shadows.
Leonie was standing knee deep in a pool.
The saw-edged rocks rose behind her, shining like steel in the moonlight;
great strands of seaweed swirled about her, for all the world like
snakes, weaving in and out of the burnished hair which spread itself
fanwise on the water about her knees.
Save for the thinnest, finest silk bathing dress which clung to the
perfect body, as does the soft fragrant skin to the peach, she was nude,
and so unaware of eyes upon her that the man held his breath, fearing she
might spy him in the shade.
He knew, as everyone knows, that through the criminal teaching of the
girl-child in Europe, she would have had it instilled into her mind as
soon as it was capable of understanding, that the slightly draped _tout
ensemble_ of her glorious body was something to be thoroughly well
ashamed of, though on other occasions, by means of slit skirts and
excessive dêcollétage, she could expose in sections just as much as she
liked to the eyes of any alien waiter who hung over her with the sauce,
or any chauffeur who helped her into a car.
Her eyes were wide and staring straight in his direction, and that she
was asleep he had not the faintest idea.
So clearly was she outlined against the rock that every line of the
lovely limbs, every exquisite curve of the beautiful bosom showed as
plainly as if she had been standing in the broad light of noon as she
stepped out of the pool.
With face upturned, and arms outstretched to the moon, she stood
undulating slightly with the exquisite movements of the nautch girl,
which has nothing to do with the _danse de ventre_ and other such
disgusting muscular exhibitions.
Watch a spider's thread floating in the air at dawn, then you will get
some idea of the gentle, supple, alluring movement.
The wind, blowing up before the storm, blew against her hair, and it
streamed out in front of her; her arms, twining and twisting, slid in and
out of the silky mass until she appeared to have at least four; her
exquisite feet seemed to beat upon a human figure which was really
nothing but the shadow of the rock behind her, and Jan Cuxson, in the
shadows, suddenly smote his forehead as she lifted up her voice and cried:
"Kali! Kali! Kali!"
The word thrice repeated rose softly on the night air, but struck like a
hammer upon the ears of the man who, in studying the brain, had found
himself often and inextricably entangled in the religions and mysteries
of the East.
"My God!" he whispered, "My God, she is asleep and----"
But he never moved as Leonie suddenly showed that she was aware of his
presence.
It was not that she saw him, or that she knew him; she was simply aware
that a man was watching her.
Not once did the eyelids close over the glaring eyes shining like two
green phosphorescent stones; not a sign of recognition showed in her face
as she laughed the sweetest little laugh in the world and moved towards
him.
Jan Cuxson had travelled pretty widely in the last few years, and had
seen almost every kind of dance in the various ports at which he had
called, and the towns he had visited in the East, but for absolute
voluptuousness, and the portrayal of physical passions, he had never seen
anything to compare with this which he watched horror-stricken by the sea.
"What have they done to her? What have they done to her? What spell has
been cast? What cruel thing have they done to her?"
Over and over again the questions raced unanswered through his brain.
For at the thrice repeated cry he had understood in a flash that
fastidious, pure, innocent Leonie was unconsciously performing the
preliminary rites customary to the worship of Kali, the goddess of death,
the wife of Siva, the daughter of the Himalayas; which rights might best
be described as a prolonged and terrible orgy of every passion known to
man.
And well was it for Leonie Hetth that Jan Cuxson was straight and
thoroughbred, and that his love was pure, else might it have gone badly
with her, bringing her perchance to the door of the madhouse; for there
is but a hair's breadth between those who are wakened roughly from the
sleep in which they walk, and act, and speak, and those who rave in
padded cells.
She held out her beautiful, bare arms in invitation, and as he remained
quite motionless, glided ever so swiftly to him, so close that he felt
the sweetness of her breath upon his cheek.
"Behold!" she cried softly in perfect Hindustani, "Behold! O my beloved!
has the Sweet One! the Gentle One! the most blessed Mother looked with
graciousness upon her children! May our lips cling in worship, yea! and
our bodies in worship! She looketh with soft eyes upon our love, blessed
is she, O! Durga! most terrible, most fierce, most cruel!"
Jan Cuxson hesitated.
If he put his arms about her she might waken at any moment, and then the
shame and horror of it all.
If he did not respond might she not hurt herself in her wrath as do those
who worship the Black One, and of whom he had heard in his travels in
India.
What on earth was he to do?
And where was he to find the strength to resist the overpowering appeal
of the sweet passion she offered him.
He loved her, desired her, hungered for the touch of the sweet mouth, and
there she stood in her youth, her innocence, her beauty, asking to be
held against his heart, touching his hands gently with her finger-tips,
desirous of his mouth, his hands, his love.
And even as he hesitated wild anger swept over the beautiful face, making
it terrible to behold as she raised it to the moon with a laugh that made
the man shudder to his soul, and gasp as she suddenly tore her bathing
suit from her and held it towards him in both hands. He unconsciously
took it from her, whereupon she shook from head to foot with wild
unseemly laughter, and her glorious hair swept about her, hiding her
completely from the desperate eyes that watched her.
"Behold, O Parvati! who steppeth lightly upon the mountains! Behold! has
he chosen my raiment, therefore shalt thou be pleased! Yea! and even
shall there be blood upon it!" [1]
And swinging her arm she struck it again and again against the rocks
until the flesh was torn and the blood streamed, causing the man to move
hurriedly with intent to waken the girl he loved, even at the risk of her
reason and his ultimate happiness. But he stopped.
Leonie was standing still with uplifted arms, dripping blood upon her
face whilst her sweet, clear voice rose sonorously in the _Vega_ hymn
known as the Love Spell.
Jan Cuxson had studied Hindustani in preparation for his travels in
India, but he frowned as he listened, for he did not understand one
syllable.
And then his eyes opened wide in astonishment as he caught the meaning of
a word here and there, and "Sanskrit!" he muttered in amazement.
Pulling a piece of pale green seaweed from the rock, she twined it and
whispered, "This plant is honey born; with honey we dig thee; forth from
honey art thou engendered; do thou make us possessed of honey.
"At the tip of my tongue, honey; at the root of my tongue, honeyedness;
mayest thou be altogether in my power, mayest thou come unto my intent.
"Honeyed is my in-stepping, honeyed my forthgoing, with my voice I speak
what is honeyed, may I be of honey aspect.
"Than honey am I sweeter, than the honey plant more honeyed; of me,
verily shalt thou be fond, as of a honeyed branch.
"About thee with an encompassing sugar-cane have I gone, in order to
absence of mutual hatred; that thou mayest be one loving me, that thou
mayest be one not going away from me!"
Leonie swayed slightly as the words passed faintly and yet more faintly,
like a moan, from her lips; her eyes were closing slowly, very slowly;
and she slipped to her knees, her bleeding arms held out towards the man
before whom she knelt, as the breeze blew her glistening hair this way
and that, exposing for a second, then hiding the glories of the exquisite
white figure from the eyes which could not help but see.
Drooping lower and lower she stretched herself, face downwards, upon the
sand, closed her eyes as the moon sank suddenly behind a dense mass of
clouds, and peacefully went to sleep.
[1]In one of the rites concerning the worship of Kali, women's garments
are thrown in a heap, from which men choose indiscriminately. The
garment he chooses gives the man a right to the woman who owns it.
CHAPTER XXI
"And wilt thou leave me thus
That hath given thee my heart?--Say nay! Say nay!"--Sir T. Wyatt.
What in heaven's name was he to do now?
Touch her he would not; let her know that he had seen her in all her
unhidden beauty he could not; yet the gurgling and rustling and
whispering between the water and the stones told him that the tide was
racing in, and that what he intended to do he must do right quickly.
All he wanted to do was to gather her up in his strong arms, and
wakening her with kisses carry her to safety.
Safety from the sea, safety from the unknown spell which had been laid
upon her, safety from the horrible future; a safety he felt which could
only be found within the circumference of his arms folded about her in
love.
But instead he looked round for the garments she must have left
somewhere, and seeing them, stepped quietly across the widening pools
and gathered up the soft, sweet-smelling heap of dainty raiment;
clenching his hands tight upon them to prevent himself from burying his
face in the perfumed delicate things which he had not the right even to
touch.
A little knot of pale pink bébé ribbon came away in his hand, and he
twisted it around the seaweed ring she had twined about his finger,
then untwisted them both and slipped them into his pocket, and stooped
to pick up something which had slipped from the garments and tinkled on
the rocks.
"Oh, you beauty!" he said as he held the jewel out in his open hand,
and "Oh, you brute!" he said again is the cat's-eye winked cunningly at
him with the knowledge of all ages in its lustrous depths.
Then he went back, crushing his flimsy burden to his heart; and placing
it upon a rock near the sleeping girl, strode off to the opening of the
little connecting cove, where he stood in the shadows and called;
"Leonie! Are you there, Leonie?"
Leonie stirred, settled down again to sleep, and stirred each time the
voice rang insistently.
Who knows if love would have brought her back to consciousness and the
immediate necessity to rise and clothe herself, and flee for safety?
Anyway, the tide decided and sent a little wave that thoroughly
drenched her and brought her to her knees shivering and bewildered.
"Tide in!"
She glanced round hurriedly and drew her hand across her eyes.
"Funny!" she said as she retreated before a wave which surged over the
rocks and swirled up behind her. "But--why--I've nothing on! And my
arm!--why, I'm simply cut to bits. And--and oh! I've been
dreaming--and how dark it is; there must be a storm coming!"
As she spoke she hurriedly flung herself into her clothes, biting her
lips as the lace and ribbons caught in the horrible gash in her arm,
and was standing waiting for the water to recede before she jumped,
just as a voice as from heaven itself called.
"Leonie! where are you? Leonie, the tide is coming in!"
She did not wait, she jumped clear, stumbling and falling on the other
side, ripping her feet until they bled.
Then she got up and ran blindly, impelled by terror pursued by the fear
of something far more terrible than death.
"Jan! Jan! help me!"
Without a word he caught her and lifted her, holding her closely.
Never a word he said as they raced through from one cove to the other,
neither when the waters buffeted him nor when weeds twined about his
feet, and rocks impeded him.
Swiftly he carried her up the slight incline and laid her on the grass,
took off his coat, ripped out his shirt sleeve, and tearing it into
strips, bound up the bleeding arm.
Then sitting down beside her he leant over sideways and picked her up
bodily, clear from the ground into his arms; no mean feat with a toilet
jug full of water, let alone with a hefty maiden weighted with grief.
He held her in that heavenly, comforting clasp known and practised by
stout old nurses and some mothers, within which you feel that you can
defy anything, even to the onslaughts of peevish Fortune.
His left arm was under and round her shoulders, his left hand gently
pressed her head against his breast, his right arm was round her just
above the knees, and he rocked her gently.
Oh! the heavenly, comforting bliss!
History was repeating itself, for Leonie, with great dry sobs shaking
her from head to feet, was snuffling into Jan Cuxson's collar as she
had snuffled into his father's years ago.
"Beloved!"
Sobs.
"Beloved! there is nothing to cry about--_nothing_! As I am holding
you now, so shall I always hold you, and no harm can come to you from
ocean, tempest or life. _Nothing_ can hurt you because I love you!"
Sobs.
"_Leonie_!"
She lay absolutely still, unconsciously counting the beats of his heart
which was thudding heavily against her right shoulder, and waiting for
the moment when she would find the strength at last to turn down her
"empty glass."
"Leonie! you've got to listen to me now, and I am not going to ask you
to decide because Fate has decided for you. And oh! beloved, beloved,
thank heaven that there is still time, that you are still free, that
heaven instead of hell is waiting for you. Yes! dear heart. Fate has
decided!"
He stroked her hair as he looked down into the little face crushed
against his shoulder, and shifted her a wee bit that she might rest
more comfortably. Leonie closed her eyes and trembled from head to
foot as Fate pinched the decision between claw-like thumb and finger so
that it was stillborn.
"Dear," continued Jan Cuxson as he gently patted her shoulder with his
left hand, "dear, oh! my dear, just as I hold you now, so I shall
always hold you. I am going to keep you, marry you, and take you right
away to India next week; I'll telegraph that my things are not to be
put on board to-morrow. You must have a nervous breakdown to-day,
_you_ darling, just to think of _that_," and his laugh rang out against
the sullen stillness of the dawn, "then we will slip away, and get
married, and--oh! Leonie, I _love_ you."
Leonie said no word, but from her head to her feet swept a thrill which
the man felt from his feet to his head.
He laughed again, laughed as a god might laugh with the world in his
hand, and crushed her fiercely to him.
"Beloved! I love you! love you! love you! And you? Tell me you love
me! Why, you dare not look me in the face and say no! You love me,
dear! You are part of me; you are bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh!
Sorrow shall not touch you when you are all mine, your joys shall be my
joys! And--beloved, my children shall be your children!"
With a sudden movement Leonie wrenched herself from his arms and on to
her feet, whilst a driving cloud surrounded them, and a growl of
thunder came over from Lundy Island way.
"Love you!" cried the girl. "Yes! I love you, if that is the right
word to describe what it is I have in my heart for you. No! don't
touch me! Listen, I would live for you, _die_ for you in love. Pain
through you would be joy, joy through you would be heaven."
She clasped her hands to her breast, then threw them out towards him,
palm uppermost, in a wonderful gesture of passionate surrender, but her
face was terrible to see, with eyes like burned out fires, and great
smears of blood across her mouth and cheek.
"All that I have for you and more--oh! much more--but--I--I cannot
marry you!"
The glass went down with a little clatter upon the coldest of life's
cold marble slabs as Jan Cuxson, grasping the girl's arms, pulled her
roughly towards him.
That he had caught the arm right on the lacerated wound he had no idea
as he stood looking down into the eyes which were on a level with the
top button, of his coat.
"Beloved! beloved! You are tired, distraught! You don't know what you
are saying! You are to go straight home and sleep, for _hours_, then
come out refreshed and gloriously happy to meet me where and when you
like! And we will fix everything down to the very smallest detail, oh!
dear heart, think of it! and this day week we will sail for India!"
CHAPTER XXII
"That day is a day of wrath--a day of clouds
and thick darkness."--_The Bible_.
"India!" repeated Leonie, "India!"
She flung round towards the sea, standing on the very edge of the
cliff, the violence of the wind against her the only barrier between
her and certain death.
"Tell me," she cried, pointing to the heaving, raging mass of waters
with a hand above which shone dully a blood-soaked bandage. "Tell me
what I did to myself down there just now. I awoke in a different place
from which I went to sleep. I had no--I am cut and bruised. Terrible
things happen wherever I am--they follow me. I woke one night in a
pitch dark room and saw two green eyes staring at me from the wall.
They were my eyes--reflected in a looking-glass--_mine_--they shine at
night like a cat's--and there's a voice calling--often. Oh! I tell
you I'm haunted, bewitched, _cursed_!"
"Come to me, beloved."
She turned and went like a child into the outstretched arms, and he,
having wet his handkerchief on the mist-damped grass, bent the weary
head back against his shoulder, and wiped away the blood-stains from
the despairing face.
"You walk in your sleep, Leonie, by reason of the workings of an
overwrought brain, that is all. India is the problem, and your ayah is
the answer. _I_ think she frightened you somehow, made some deep
impression on you, on your baby brain, and we are going to India to
find her. It's very simple, dear, once find the cause we can easily
find the remedy, and it will be much better if you come with me. By
the way, who gave you that cat's-eye?"
He had made a slip.
"When did you see it?" answered Leonie quickly, "I never showed it to
you! Were--were you down _there_ near me, _before_ you called?"
"No," steadily lied the man, "but the thing slipped through your blouse
one day--it's a brute. Who gave it to you?"
"My ayah! Do you know, I think you are quite wrong about her. Auntie
says Mother told her that she nearly broke her heart when I left India,
seventeen years ago, and she writes to me regularly every three months.
Only last week I had a letter from----"
"Do you speak Hindustani?" interrupted Cuxson abruptly, with a frown on
his face.
"Not a word!"
"Or Sanskrit?"
"Oh! no, neither, but the letters are in English, evidently written by
one of those letter writers, who get so much for each letter they write
for the illiterate poor. And in every one she says how she loves me
and longs for my return, and although she is very happy in the service
of some Ranee in the north of India, she wants to give it up and come
to me."
There was a pause, broken by the nearing thunder and the crash of the
waves against the cliffs.
"Don't let's worry about that yet, dear, as everything is settled
splendidly and----"
But Leonie pulled away and stood facing him with her hands in his
against his heart.
"Do you really _love_ me?"
The whisper was almost lost in the tumult of the breakers beneath.
"_Love_ you, Leonie, _love_ you!"
"What would you _forgive_ me through love?"
"_Forgive_ you! Everything! Dishonour could not touch you, and
everything else I should forgive!"
Leonie tried to speak as she looked past him to the little green track
between the downs which led to the world, and all it contained for her;
and he, obtuse male, content in the plans he had mapped out entirely to
his own satisfaction, and having blissfully taken the girl's consent to
the programme for granted, failed to read the agony written across her
face in capital letters.
"Tell me that you will be content, dear. I'm rich enough, but nothing
compared with--oh! tell me, what do you like--what do you want--what do
you _really_ care for!"
She freed her hands and turned to look out to sea, where the day had
been born in agony upon a bed of sullen, unbroken water.
Then she looked straight down at the waves flinging themselves against
the cliffs, drenching her with spray, moaning, fretting at the barrier,
retiring only to do the same thing over and over again.
"What do I want, O Man whom I love? I want a white house within high,
white walls, on the edge of the sea. I want my arms full of
children--yours and mine. I want love, oh! love and yet more love,
that is what I want!"
The man twisted her round and held her at arms' length, her heels
within an inch of the edge, her body bent back over the chasm, and her
hair, spreading like a banner in the tearing wind, swept about his
shoulders and across his face, intoxicating him with its perfume and
silken caress.
Passion swept over him, he shook her like a reed, and her foot slipped
off the earth into nothingness.
But not a word said she, though she prayed that he might suddenly let
go his hold and send her crashing to sweet death on the rocks beneath.
You see what happens when you are decent and honest and have a mind to
keep your word--just death rather than dishonour, and pain to others.
Whereas if only she had been dishonest, and therefore commonplace, she
would either have chucked her given word to the devil, or the deep grey
sea over which she stood, and cleared for her own happiness and a
marriage licence; or kept her word in one sense while making deedy
little plans of triangular pattern for future reference.
"Is that what you want, oh! heart of mine?" said Jan Cuxson, exulting
in the sensation that his hands alone held her metaphorically and
actually safe from the depths beneath. "And that is what I am going to
give you, beloved, and more, much more in exchange for the treasure you
will put into my hands. Oh! Leonie, my love----"
And yet he did not kiss her, but pulled her farther inland and let her
go as she essayed to free herself, having come to the absolute breaking
point.
What a wooing!
The copper coloured clouds were massed above and about them, the trees
bent and straightened and bent again before the wind, the sea heaved in
huge unbroken waves right to the horizon; Lundy Island, Hartland, and
Baggy Point had disappeared in a driving sheet of rain.
How beautiful she looked as she stood in the storm, cut, bruised and
dishevelled.
Just for one moment she looked into the eyes of the man she loved,
whose hands were outstretched for the treasures she could not lay
therein; and then she turned and fled as a great streak of lightning
rent the clouds, and thunder like heavy artillery crashed about their
heads.
She had not gone twenty yards when she stumbled and fell heavily.
Her boots were being hurled here and there by the waves in the cove
where she had left them; her left foot was cut and bleeding badly, but
a sudden desperate courage came to her when she felt herself raised and
steadied.
"I shall carry you to the foot of the hill near your cottage!"
She struggled as he lifted her, struggled so violently that he put her
on her feet.
"Don't touch me, Jan, don't come near me, because I--because----"
And the mantle of his satisfaction and content being suddenly rent into
a thousand shreds by the knife edge of his intuition, he put both hands
on her shoulders, looked down into the misery of her eyes, and very
gently said one word.
"Because?"
"Because," and she began to laugh without making any sound, her mouth
twitching, her shoulders shaking, "because I am to be married _to-day_
at noon!"
"To-_day_! but you said----"
"I lied."
"You lied--to _me_!"
She made a little sound which reminded him of an animal agonising in a
trap, whilst the fury of his own pain drove him to hurt her even more.
"Why--_lie_?"
"Why?" her eyes blazed as she defied the storm, her hell and fate.
"Why?--because I love you, because I love you so much that I wanted to
cheat life out of one month of happiness. And I have had it--I have
had it--and I love you----"
She flung her hands up to the stormy skies and brought them down,
clenched against her breast. "I love you, _God_ hear me, I _love_ you!"
And with a terrible cry that went wailing out to sea she fled away
through the lash of the blinding storm.
CHAPTER XXIII
"The lighted end of a torch may be turned towards the
ground, but the flames still point upwards."--_The Satakas_.
The church was simply packed!
The lucky ones, almost all women, wedged tight and fast, crushed their
beautiful clothes against their neighbours' lovely raiment in the pews.
The unlucky ones stood in rows in the side aisles, just as their
commoner sisters stand in rows upon the pavement edge to watch some
passing show.
Some, less hindered by superfluous adipose tissue, had managed to seat
themselves upon the tomb of one Sir William de Tracy, who had one time
unduly concerned himself in the murder of a certain Thomas à Becket.
Indeed he built this church in atonement for his unseemly conduct,
though something seems to have gone agley in the architectural penance,
as the ghost of Sir William is to be met o' nights upon the sands of
Woolacombe--so 'tis said.
Some of the still younger fry among the spectators, I mean worshippers
in this solemn ceremony, clasped the heads in effigy of dead squire, or
dame, or knight, in order to get the necessary purchase for the task of
pulling themselves up for just one second in the supreme attempt to
catch a glimpse of the principals in the parade.
Except for the setting of this beautiful house of God it might have
been an _entr'acte_ at some theatrical first night; same comments upon
actors and audience; same criticism upon dress and morals; same yawning
and fidgeting.
What _had_ they not suffered and sacrificed to flatter the vulgar old
millionaire! Anyway they expected a good deal in return for the
excruciating journey down by rail or car, the whole day lost out of the
season in London town, _and_ the wedding present.
Unless you own the genuine thing in rank or reputation, how
_frightfully_ difficult it is to send an astute vulgar old millionaire
the one present which will open his doors to you.
If you do own the genuine thing, an electro-plated toast-rack will be
all-sufficient. If you _don't_, well it's simply no good worrying
around the bottom rung of the ladder which he has climbed, and from the
top of which he sits making faces of derision at you.
The principal performers had just disappeared into the vestry as the
old clock chimed twelve, and Jan Cuxson, swinging back the churchyard
gate, strode up the narrow tomb-lined path to the church door.
Every woman turned to look at him as he passed.
"Look at 'e now, Mrs. Ovey! He be staying with me. Did 'ee iver zee
sich a butivul face. Jist like a picture. Sit 'ee still, young
Gracie, an' doan 'ee walk over thikee graves, now! I tell 'ee 'e'd
make a proper bridegroom, 'e wud!"
"Iss, I reckon! 'Er 'av done mighty fine fer 'erself, 'er 'ave; Mrs.
Tucker tol' me all 'bout 'un, but 'er be terr'ble young, b'ain't 'er,
for the likes of thikee ol' man?"
The country women patted and pulled at their best clothes, and turned
their sweet, slightly bronzed faces, with skins like satin, up to the
blazing sun.
"Iss, vrai! that 'er be Mrs. Pugsley! But did 'ee iver zee the likes
on they ther zatins an' laces an' juels they vine wimen be wearin'?"
"Iss! an' luk at th' ol' paint an' stuff ther be ol over ther vaces?
Dear, dear now, ther lips be terr'ble raid, b'ain't 'un? Luks lik'
they'd bin stealin' cherries! An' ther eyes be terr'ble black! Luks
lik' the'd bin fightin' with ther 'usbands."
Silence fell, during which sweet music stole through the church windows
to fall like a benison upon the charming simple folk who, by their
courtesy and gentleness, make Devon such a blissful county to dwell in.
"Can't think, now," suddenly remarked Mrs. Ovey, "w'y thikee young lady
'av chose Mortehoe Church fer 'er weddin'!"
"I've year'd tell that 'er vather be related to zum lord 'oo 'elped
kill some ol' parson, yers an' yers gone by! Gracie! now wat be th'
ol' man's name now that taicher tol 'ee 'bout?"
"Tracey!"
"Iss, iss! I've year'd tell 'e be buried zumwher yer 'bouts, an' th'
ol' bridegroom be proper zet to be married down yer!"
"After th' weddin'," continued Mrs. Ovey, supplying information, "all
th' vine volks be goin' on to Lay Hotel vur summat t' ate. Arter that
they tu be goin' vor 'oneymun over ta 'ardland in li'le ol' 'ouze.
Poor li'le lady, an' th' ouze they be goin' to be so small ther b'ain't
no room vur zervants nor nothin'!"
"My now, Mrs. Ovey, but that young feller be proper 'ansom, b'ain't 'e
now? I reckon it be a pity that 'er 'adn't zeen 'im befor 'er vixed up
with old 'un. I remember when Bill was courtin' me, 'ow----"
And so on and so forth, whilst inside the "vine wimen" from London Town
made comments after their own kind.
"Some women have all the luck," remarked an enamelled dame, whose
bridge and dressmakers' debts were on a par with those of her three
daughters who had safely, oh! quite, but most unsuccessfully survived
many seasons, "I wonder how Susie managed it? Gawky young miss, isn't
she? Just out of school. Um--um--um!"
"_Really! is_ she! Strange in her manner--you don't mean it--oh! of
_course_ not, dearest! _Fancy_! hates society, swims at night, walks
ten miles a day--yes, of course! not quite cosmos, what d'you call
it--um--um--um?"
"Miraud Soeurs, I believe--yes--did you like that draped effect? I
suppose he did--poor old Susie's up to her eyes in debt! Didn't the
happy bride look ghastly? Wonder how she came by the accident--and
what it was--and means--um--um--um!"
"Yes! _very_, in a bizarre way. I'm damned sorry for her. Did you
hear about the girl in the shop basement?--heavy! I should think
so--put the screw on what?--hear the bride's settlement is simply
enormous--um--um--um!"
And as they gossiped and criticised, tearing each other to pieces
without zest, having already done it so often that their minds
resembled rows of backyards piled with the rags and bones of their
mutual enemies--or so-called friends--the organ played softly, and the
sun through the stained glass flung dazzling lozenges of colour upon
the tiles and pillars.
Then came that unmistakable rustle of anticipation, followed by the
satisfied sigh of those who have patiently waited either for the
hoisting of the black flag upon the prison wall, or the appearance of a
popular bride in the doorway of the church.
There was a shimmer of white and silver, and a strenuous tussle in the
pews and aisles as the stereotyped march from "Lohengrin" crashed
through the little church.
Jan Cuxson made one step backwards, and stopped as his heel struck
against the wall, then stepped forward and stood right in the path of
the bridal party.
Straight down they came without a halt; gushing women who did not know
her darted forward to shower the bride with their unwanted
congratulations, hesitated and darted back with self-conscious giggles
as they met the stony, unresponsive eyes in the death-white face.
Very slowly she passed, with the fingers of one hand resting on the arm
of the corpulent, self-satisfied man beside her; the other arm,
bandaged from elbow to wrist, was held in a sling across her breast,
the fingers nearly touching the one jewel she wore, a sleepy cat's-eye
hanging from a slender golden chain.
The happy bride was looking straight in front, down the road to
Calvary, where stood a man outlined against the burst of light flooding
through the door.
She neither slowed nor hastened as she passed through the lane of
twitching mouths and popping eyes and approached him; then she stood
quite still, a gleaming, living statue in shimmering satin and lace,
and removing her hand from her husband's arm, laid it with a little
gracious gesture on Jan Cuxson's, and he, bending low, gently kissed it.
An artist made the record lightning sketch of his life when in a few
lines he drew the dignity, the despair, and the tenderness of the
girl's face, upon whose brow and above whose heart rested weirdly two
great crimson stains flung by the sun through the coloured windows.
For one brief second her moonlit eyes looked straight into the steady
grey ones; then the heavy lids sank slowly, and the faintest rose
colour swept from brow to chin, causing the artist to murmur to
himself, "The ice floes are breaking!" as, like the gallant gentleman
he was, he tore the sketch slowly across and across.
Two little words had been whispered loud enough to reach the ears
beneath the orange blossom.
"I forgive!"
When he had said it Leonie once more laid her hand upon her irate
husband's arm, and passed out into the sun to be met with the shrill
cheers of the children who flung basketsful of wild flowers upon the
bridal path, and the church was filled with a sound like a swarm of
startled bees.
"Um--um--um!"
CHAPTER XXIV
"Many waters cannot quench love;
neither can floods drown it."--_The Bible_.
The girl kicked aside the jumble of clothes littering the cabin floor,
and bending her head squatted upon the bunk, and incidentally, and quite
indifferently, upon a crêpe-de-Chine blouse which badly needed washing,
and casually watched her mother who was scrabbling through a cabin trunk
in a manner reminiscent of a terrier ratting in a hedge.
"Why on earth couldn't you stay on deck?" demanded the mother angrily, as
she lifted the transformation from her brow and heaved it on to the upper
berth, thereby unashamedly exposing a head not unlike a gorse common
devastated by fire.
"I can't find that--oh! here it is. What a state it's in. D'you think
the Chinese man could iron it?"
_That_ was one of those hybrid négligés which can serve its turn as a
bath gown, a bedroom wrap, or, covered with a genuine native-made tinsel
shawl (bought at Teneriffe but made in Birmingham), can pass as an
evening gown in the tropics. The cabin was on one of the liners which,
calling at odd places like Genoa, Naples, Algiers, etc., allows you to
pick up letters brought by the mail boat to Port Said. The inhabitants
of the inner, double berthed black hole, called by courtesy a cabin, were
the mother and her last unmarried daughter who lived in Surbiton.
The mother had successfully acquired a reputation as a world-wide
traveller, and husbands for her numerous daughters amounting to a net
total of six, by dint of travelling the latter backwards and forwards
over those heartbreaking routes which suffer from two weeks or more of
going without a break.
Try from Aden to Sydney with one break at Colombo, and the above long and
somewhat involved paragraph will be easily understood.
"I say, mater, guess who gave me these--have one?"
Mater sat back on her heels, bumping her head against the washstand,
plucked a Simon Artz from its cardboard nest, lit it, and emitted volumes
of smoke from mouth, and nostrils, until the cabin resembled the
smoking-room of any West End ladies' club.
"Oh! don't ask silly questions, it's too hot! Who?"
"The Grizzly Bear!"
"_No_!"
"He _did_! He'd been ashore!"
"_No_!"
"Yes! I'd been talking to him, and had just turned to say something to
the Babe when he slipped down the gangway. I do wish we weren't so hard
up. It's an awful rag going ashore. He came back an hour ago, found a
letter, and has been sitting up and taking notice ever since. It was a
man's handwriting, I saw the envelope!"
Mater flung everything pell-mell into the trunk, pushed it back with the
aid of her daughter's heels under the berth, bent her head and sat down
beside her.
"He looked so different that I actually asked him for a cigarette, and he
gave me the box, and if it hadn't been for Mrs. Tomlinson-Tomlinson's
hateful little brat--you know--Muriel--we should have had a good long
talk. The little wretch actually sat on the arm of his chair; it's
extraordinary how he lets children worry him."
"Yes! dear Lady de Smythe has christened him the wet nurse!"
Which leaves no doubt whatever that some time, somewhere the dear lady
had been clawed by the grizzly.
"Why don't you get into your black sequin to-night! It'll be frightfully
hot going down the Canal, and you can slip on the scarf if you go up on
the boat deck, as everyone does the first time they go through the Suez."
"Yes! I might--the blue _does_ want ironing!" replied the daughter,
taking a hand in that weird game of "make-believe" which the majority of
women play between themselves. For what ultimate benefit it is
impossible to say, since from the moment the cards are shuffled they
know, to a nicety, the tricks and manoeuvres of each player.
Anyway the sequin was fished out from somewhere, and shaken and pulled
this way and that.
It consisted of a skirt of a kind, a waistbelt, two shoulder straps, and
a big jet butterfly poised just where, for the sake of decency, it was
necessary, and as a toilette allied with the boat deck would doubtless
prove most attractive to the man who was not in search of a wife.
The man it was intended to subjugate, meanwhile, was lying full length on
his deck chair intent upon a letter, oblivious of the noise of the
harbour and the racket necessary to the boat's imminent departure.
Jan Cuxson had read the letter five times and was just starting on it for
the sixth, subconsciously congratulating himself on his foresight, or
horse sense, which you will.
His cabin was like nothing on earth, and in it, upon the outer edge of a
dead maelstrom of his entire wardrobe, stood John Smith, cabin steward.
John Smith is not his name, but who does not know and bless him if they
have ever travelled on this particular boat.
He has a big, very black mole on the extreme tip of his nose, and is the
cheeriest, most optimistic soul on the ocean wave, yea! even those
out-size waves in the Bay at its worst.
After the first lightning perusal of the God-sped letter, Jan Cuxson had
given divers urgent orders for as much as possible of his gear in the
hold to be thrown ashore.
Imagine it, and the boat almost due to sail!
He had then rushed to his cabin and initiated the maelstrom, until common
sense had smitten him between the love-fogged eyes of his desire;
whereupon he had heaved a huge sigh of utter contentment, propped himself
against the door for the second perusal, rung the bell, countermanded all
he had ordered, and left John Smith to it.
He had pulled the letter out of its envelope, growled at a vendor of
Egyptian wares, and turned with a whole-hearted smile at the sound of a
small voice.
"Is 'oo velly unhappy, Mr. Bear?"
The man did not know that he had become the object of that loathsome
habit of nicknaming all and sundry which a certain clique on every boat
consider so smart.
"I'm the happiest man on earth--water, I mean, little one. Yes! come
along up--and why Mr. Bear?"
Followed a scramble, a gurgle, and arranging of infinitesimal frills.
"Mummie calls 'oo Mr. Grizzly Bear because you're cwoss! Mrs.
Tom--Tom--li'son says Mummie's cwoss 'cos 'oo wouldn't take the buns she
wanted 'oo too. Why didn't 'oo take the buns--buns nice, I fink!"
An agitated nurse swooped down at this crucial moment and recovered that
which she had lost, leaving the man laughing aloud to the astonishment of
all near him.
_Laugh_! Why he had not laughed since he had left Mortehoe Church,
neither had he smiled at any time upon the boat, or upon anybody except
the children; and now he laughed, all on account of an atrocious scrawl
on many sheets of thin paper which he started once more to read.
"I hope," ran the scrawl of the man for whom Cuxson had fagged at Harrow,
"that this catches you at Port Said, because"--followed a badly expressed
bit of business. "London's had the shock of many seasons, by the way.
You know that old brute, Pickled Walnuts, well I won't say anything about
the old scallawag because he's dead. Well! he married the other day,
you'd sailed I think, I didn't go to the wedding. Did you know Susan,
old Hetth, V.C.'s sister by marriage--up to her eyes in debt--sold her
niece to pay them, I suppose, to the old millionaire--wonder what hold
she had on the girl.
"Anyway they went off somewhere in Devon for the honeymoon, God help her.
It seems that she had had an accident the night before, or something, and
fainted, or something, directly after dinner--the wedding dinner, I mean.
Did you ever learn composition on the Hill? I _didn't_!
"The woman who looks after the cottage put Lady Hickle to bed and tucked
her up; placed a bottle of port in--all came out at the inquest--old
Hickle's room, and left the house. Next thing, about two o'clock in the
morning, a shepherd or something saw a blaze and went to look. Cottage
on fire, old Hickle burnt to a cinder, and the girl hauled out of bed
just in time, gibbering in French or something in panic I suppose.
"The charwoman thinks the curtains caught fire in the candle, and that
the port had made the old man sleep heavily and that he was suffocated by
the smoke.
"Full moon, too. What a sight it must have been! Place burned to the
ground.
"I believe Lady Hickle is quite a girl and very beautiful--and is
starting on a tour round the world or something--she'll get most of his
millions, I believe. By the way, who _do_ you think have fixed it up.
Dear old Bumble and Diana Lytham. Heaven be good to him. Your turn
next, old boy! Well she'll be darned lucky who gets you, see how well I
trained you, d'you remember, etc., etc."
The man sat still for some long time, then suddenly sprang to his feet
and went aft.
The dressing bugle had sounded but he had not heard; the dinner bugle had
sounded and still he had not heard, as he stood at the stern watching the
swirling wash of the slow-moving boat.
"Full moon, too! She was hauled from her bed gibbering in French or
something."
He quoted the words, and crushed the letter savagely in his hands, for
even in the fullness of his joy he remembered Leonie's words, "Terrible
things happen wherever I am--they follow me." But in the greatness of
his love he figuratively shrugged his shoulders, gathered his beloved
into the safe haven of his arms, and closed the moonlit eyes with kisses.
Whilst a jet butterfly fluttered in vain over a very décolleté expanse
which covered a heart agitated by rage and disappointment on the boat
deck.
CHAPTER XXV
"And thy life shall hang in doubt before thee."--_The Bible_.
Leonie and her aunt were having tea at the Ladies' Union Club, of which
the latter was almost an original member.
You know the place where, arriving on foot or with the trail of the
omnibus upon you in the shape of a two-penny ticket grasped tightly in
your right hand, you receive a stony stare as welcome from the hall
porter, and one of dead fish glassiness from the rest of the staff.
There is a certain air of geniality diffused around a taxi arrival, but
a _car_!--two or eight cylinder--owned, borrowed, or stolen, well!
there you win in honours, no matter _what_ kind of private address you
camouflage with that of your club.
Having cleared a way across the tobacco-laden atmosphere, through which
can be spied ladies, young and old, inhaling and exhaling with more
vigour than grace, they had ensconced themselves in the seat for two
which lies isolated from the jumble of chairs and couches.
That seat having the advantage of isolation, your conversation does not
gladden the ears of your neighbour nor theirs yours.
You know what that is like--if you don't, well, it's the kind that if
written would read in italics: _Ayah--kitmutgar--pukka--chotar
hazri--syce_, with reference, ultra-distinct and emphatic, to
_Government House_, _Simla_, and my dear old friend, _General
Methuselah_.
Just those little British odds-and-ends which go to the ruling, more or
less, of the land of the peacock. Add to that the general, what shall
I say, touch-and-go attire of the majority of the members. You know
what it is like.
Lace collars over reconstructed tailor-mades; pseudo-suède gloves,
chiffon scarfs, generally ropey and heliotrope of hue; odd-coloured
jerseys affiliated to odd-cut skirts, plus jangling oriental bracelets
and chains, and mix that with a few puckered, leather-hued countenances
and you get the club's principal ingredient.
Anglo-Indian.
Anyway the place is conveniently situated, and quite bearable if you
can put up with the waiter or the somewhat overdecorated and
ever-changing waitress telling you, in front of your guest, that you
"can only 'ave cakes and bread-un-butter forrer shilling,
every-think-else-is extra."
Cheery, when you may have been doing your best to make an impression!
Of course every member (if she ever gets as far as this) of every
ladies' club will here draw her pharisaical skirts about her and edge
nearer to her neighbour.
"_Did_ you read this"--quotes--"_awfully_ good, isn't it? Of course
it's meant for the Imperatrix--the Toga--the Ninth Century--the Spook."
It _isn't_!
It's just typical.
Is there any one thing in any one ladies' club to differentiate it from
its sister establishment--especially in the canteen?
I will pay one year's town subscription to any woman knowing, of
course, the difference between husks and food, who will honestly
declare that her heart has _not_ plumped to her boots after a
spur-on-the-moment invitation to a _man_ to lunch or dine at her club.
By spur-on-the-moment I mean when she has not had the time to negotiate
with the cook, via the head waiter.
You do not need the menu to tell you that plaice is here your portion;
or a lightning glance to ascertain that the exact number of your prunes
is six, and that of your guest half a dozen; or just a sip of your
coffee--well! there you begin to talk feverishly and to press liqueurs
and cigarettes upon the suffering guest.
But to come back to the club tea-room.
"My dear," Susan Hetth was saying, jangling with the best, and pitching
her voice so that it literally, though slangily, beat the band, "I
really think, considering your position and recent bereavement, that
you _should_ wear----"
"Please be quiet, Auntie," said Leonie, who in a grey and pale mauve
confection looked like a field of statice against a pearl-grey sky. "I
came here to talk about you, not clothes. You see I want to tell you
how I have settled things before I sail."
Her aunt fretted with a teaspoon, and spoke in the absurd peevish way
which had been so attractive at seventeen.
"For the last time, Leonie, I want you to listen to me!"
"Other way round, Auntie," said Leonie, who had chosen the club, of all
places, for a last _tête-à-tête_ with her relation, in the hope that
the presence of others would serve as a dam to the flood of tears which
had streamed almost unceasingly during the last month.
"But it's absurd, idiotic----"
"Auntie, dear, we've been through all that a hundred times, and a
hundred million times more won't make me change. I will _not_ touch a
penny of Sir Walter's money----"
"Oh! Leonie, your _husband_!"
"Not my husband in any sense at all, except for the awful name.
Why"--and she spoke with sweet intense enthusiasm--"do you know they
are going to build a house in Devon for blind babies out of my marriage
settlement, and endow it, and have resident teachers--think of it----"
Leonie broke off to manipulate the tea-things to the rhythm of a
one-step.
"And all the rest of the money, Leonie, oh! it's scandalous!"
"Oh, that!" said Leonie, manoeuvring the milk out of a broken milk-jug.
"Except for Sir Walter's special bequests, it all goes back to the
family. They've almost all come to see me at the hotel, such honest,
nice people; and oh! so grateful. Mrs. Sam Hickle is moving to Balham
from the Waterloo Road to open a fruit shop, she brought me a huge
basket of vegetables, carried it into my room herself; and a young Bert
Hickle, who has a whelk-barrow in the Borough, brought me a whole
turbot which had soaked through its newspaper wrapping. He gave it to
the page-boy to carry, and I _do_ wish you had seen their faces when
the tail suddenly burst through, just as the page-boy was gingerly
laying it down on a most appropriate resting-place, a marble consol."
Leonie laughed just as the music stopped, a ringing, happy laugh which
caused people to stare and then nudge, or kick each other
surreptitiously as they recognised her.
"It's all settled about you, Auntiekins. I'm paying your debts, which
aren't so terrific, only foolish, and giving you five hundred pounds to
go on with. That, with your own income, will be all right if only you
will live in the country instead of hanging on to the edge of a society
which doesn't want you. Still, you do exactly as you like, dear, only
remember that I shall only have just enough to live on when I've got
through the thousand pounds, and don't run up any more debts."
"Why not _invest_ the thousand, Leonie, _sensibly_." Susan Hetth's
voice was dull, choked doubtlessly by the dust of her castle ruins.
"I've got to go to India!"
"Why, for goodness sake?"
"I don't know, Auntie, I've simply got to go!"
"How silly," said Auntie, as she forced a cigarette inartistically into
a holder, adding abruptly, as her commonplace mind jumped at a
commonplace loop-hole, "Where is Jan Cuxson? I should think----"
Leonie answered quickly, breaking her aunt's words.
"I have no idea! I haven't heard from him since he left England."
"Huh!" said Susan Hetth, putting up an absolute smoke screen, "and what
will you do after the money is spent, pray?"
Leonie stared wide-eyed into the tobacco haze. "That," she said
slowly, "is on the knees of the gods!"
Talking being temporarily suspended by the band in the death throes of
the overture to Zampa, the two women sat silent; one frantically trying
to solve financial problems, the other with her head a little on one
side as though trying to catch the thread of some conversation.
A strange thing happened as the band stopped.
Leonie rose quite suddenly, with a half-eaten cake half-way to her
mouth.
"I must go!" she said quite flatly, placing the cake on a plate and
looking at her aunt without seeing her.
"_Go_!" shrilled Susan Hetth, putting her fourth cup of tea down with
an irritated slam. "Where on earth _to_?"
But Leonie turned and walked away with never a word of explanation, and
her aunt, with the thrifty side of her plebeian soul uppermost, turned
to the task of getting through as much as possible of what was left of
the two teas for which two shillings had been paid.
The porter looked hard at Leonie when she asked for a taxi, hesitated
for a moment, looked hard again, and refrained from putting the
question hovering on his tongue.
"Seemed quite dazed like," he explained later to his wife in Camberwell
as she juggled with sausages, "pale as death, with a kind of funny look
round her eyes!"
"To the British Museum," Leonie said through the window as the taxi
door closed, and the funny look round her eyes deepened into a line of
perplexity between the eyebrows, as the cab bore her swiftly to her
destination and her destiny.
She walked swiftly up the steps to the institution she was visiting for
the first time, and through the glass swing doors, just as though she
was hurrying to an appointment; she turned, without hesitating, sharply
to the left up the long flight of stairs, passed through the rooms
filled with relics of Rome found in Britain, and stopped.
Just for a second she put the palm of her ungloved hand against her
forehead, sighed quickly, with her head bent forward, then passed
through the doorway, turned to the left, stopped and said "Yes?"
And the man, in faultless western clothes save for the white turban
which with its regulation folds outlined the pale bronze face, with a
look of satisfaction in the dark eyes, salaamed before the beautiful
woman who had looked at him questioningly.
"Allow me!" he said simply, bending to pick up the glove she had
dropped, the smile of satisfaction deepening as he looked at her again.
She had turned from him, and stock-still was staring into the glass
case which lined the wall.
Closer she pressed, until her nose, flattened against the glass looked
like a white cherry.
"Kali," she read, "Kali, the Goddess of Death. I thought--I----"
Lower she leant to look at the square stone image numbered thirty-seven.
High breasted, squatting on her crossed legs, garlanded with skulls,
with five hands, holding a sword, a thunderbolt, a skull, a snake, a
cup, and the other two raised in blessing, the goddess leers at you
like a very old woman from behind the glass.
Leonie turned swiftly to find herself alone; and the hunted look in her
gold-flecked eyes deepened to horror as she gathered her skirts about
her, and fled blindly through the rooms, and down the stairs, and out
of the building.
Heading straight down Museum Street for Oxford Street, she ran across
the road at the risk of her neck and the wrath of a taxi-driver; gave
one terrified backward glance at a law-abiding student from India, who
was going to his cheery lodgings in Bloomsbury; and fled into the
tea-rooms which lure you outside with the pretty apple-painted ware in
the window, and where inside, one beautiful little blonde head shines
like a field of ripening wheat.
Safe, she crouched down behind the window curtain with her eyes fixed
unseeingly on the distorted figures of the Java frieze.
BOOK II
THE EAST