"But when the desire cometh,
it is a tree of life."--_The Bible_.
The first-class passengers, leastways the passengers travelling first
class, lay stretched out side by side, one sex to starboard, t'other to
port, divided, however, more by the fear of the eyes of the other sex,
than by any hatch piled with chairs, or ship rule pinned upon the
notice-board, and signed by the chief.
Surely the hours of the tropical nights passed in sleep on deck are
those in which we should return thanks for lacking the gift of seeing
ourselves as the officer going on, or coming off watch, the fugitive
apprentice, or some stray passenger see us.
Human chrysalis, wrapt in the cocoon of sheet or unsightly night
attire, with starboard boudoir cap awry, exposing the steel cracker or
the lanky lock; unsightly pedal extremities peeping from the unfeminine
pyjama; ruby lips, uncarmined, ajar; whilst to port like rocks from the
ocean, unshaven chins rise unrebuked from blanket billows, and pyjama
button and buttonhole play touch across the unseemly, unrestrained and
unconfined masculine torso.
It was one of those insufferably hot nights you get sometimes as you
turn into the Hoogli, when the smell of the land comes in sickening
wafts, and the enchantment of the East is considerably lessened in your
opinion by the oppression of the atmosphere.
You are going up the Hoogli! you are passing the Sunderbunds! you can
almost see the tigers squatting in rows at the water's edge! it is the
East! it is India!--also it is infernally hot, and having retired to
your cabin to disrobe, you anathemise your stable companion who has
been likewise inspired; curse your overworked cabin steward who has
heaved your bedding on to the wrong site; re-arrange everything and bed
down.
Everyone was asleep when the light of the full moon caused a subdued
lustre under the awnings, and a greenish light in Leonie's wide-open,
staring eyes, as she suddenly swung herself over the side of her bunk
and slid unhurt to the floor.
She made an arresting picture as she stood listening intently, her
flimsy garment falling away from her shoulders, leaving the slender
white back bare to the waist, while she held handfuls of the
transparent stuff crushed against her breast, upon which lay a jewel
hung from a gold chain.
Her feet were bare, her arms were bare, and her tawny mass of hair hung
in two thick scented plaits to her dimpled knees; and she repeated some
words over and over again like one insane or delirious.
"_Ham abhi ate hai--ham abhi ate hai_."
Which being translated means "I come--I come."
Without the slightest hesitation she opened the door of No. 1
state-room, which she had had to herself after Port Said, and which, as
anyone who has travelled on this particular boat will know, gives on to
the dining saloon; passed swiftly along the narrow passage past the
notice board and the head steward's cabin, and stood among the human
cocoons on deck.
For a moment she paused irresolute, turned, and swiftly mounted the
companion-way to the bridge deck, her bare feet making no sound, her
beautiful body shining like ivory through the flimsy garment she held
gathered to her breast.
Oh! well for her was it that the ship slept, and that the awnings made
it almost impossible for those on the bridge to see what took place on
the deck.
Though a report of sleep-walking on board would only have served to
broaden the lines of laughter in the chief officer's mercurial soul,
and deepen the lines of cynicism around the second officer's cynical
mouth when the one relieved the other on the bridge at the matutinal
hour of four a.m.
And very well for Leonie was it that the captain had forbidden sleeping
on his deck, and that the high caste native who had come aboard at
Colombo was sitting on the port side as she approached.
Owing to his high caste, and the purity of his habits, the young native
had passed the days apart from his fellow-passengers since he had come
aboard; and the days left were too few for the white folk to show any
curiosity concerning the handsome man.
You don't feel curious about anything after almost five weeks
seafaring; you feel kind of stunned.
Leonie, therefore, had not noticed him particularly as he sat apart
with his delicate oval face behind a book when she approached, or
passed his chair; neither had she felt the gentle luminous eyes resting
upon her from the nape of her sunkissed neck to her slim ankle.
Nor did he now, long after midnight, make any sign when, without
touching the rails, she came swiftly up the companion-ladder, bending
her bronze head to miss the edge of the awning; and he made no movement
as she sped past him, crossed the deck to the starboard rail, and
putting both hands upon it, swung her body back as you do when you are
going to vault clear.
No movement of his body, but he gave a jerk of his will-power which
brought the veins out like whipcord upon his forehead, and drove the
nails deep into the palms of his hands.
And in response, Leonie's arms slackened. She stood quite still,
staring out to where the Sunderbunds lay hidden under mist; then she
put one bare foot upon the lower rail, and swinging herself up, sat
sideways, leaning far over; in such a position that the slightest lurch
of the ship would have sent her headlong into the water.
The native's eyes narrowed to slits, and his nostrils dilated strangely
as he pitted his will against the force which was impelling her.
He dared not speak, he dared not touch her. For he knew that one
moment of recognition, one breath of scandal touching himself and the
woman he trailed, meant the crumbling of the altar he was building
stone by stone to his god.
For that reason he had taken the mail instead of the slow boat she had
chosen, and had thought long before deciding to come aboard, even at
Colombo.
He was afraid because of the evening she had answered when he called
her across London to his side, by the image of Kali the Terrible in a
glass case; afraid that she might recognise him and be on her guard,
undoing all that he had done in the last year in obedience to the
mandate of the old priest.
Sleeping Leonie, having descended from her perilous seat, stood for a
moment with outflung arms, looking across the waters; then turned and
walked swiftly and softly like a cat, straight up to the man who rose.
Sweetly she laughed up into his face as she laid one little hand upon
the great white cloak which swung from his shoulders, unaware that in
moving her hand her own garment had slipped, and that her beauty lay
exposed like a lotus bud before his eyes.
She came so close that her bare shoulder touched the fine white linen,
and the curves of her scarlet lips wet but a fraction of an inch from
his own; and her whimpered words in the eastern tongue were as a flame
to an oil well.
"This plant," she murmured, with the light of unholiness in her
gleaming eyes, "this plant is honey born--at the tip of my tongue
honey--mayest thou come unto my intent!"
He answered softly in the same sonorous tongue and she swayed towards
him like a flower.
"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!"
Where is the dividing line?
What is it that causes the saint suddenly to fling aside his holiness
and hurl himself headlong to perdition? or the sinner to hurl aside his
evilness and fling himself headlong into a monastery?
The jogging of memory, mostly, I think.
For what resolutions can not be conceived, and accomplished, or broken
by the scent of a flower, the touch of a hand, or the feel of a piece
of stuff.
Love, sudden, overpowering oriental love consumed the man, passion
scorched his soul, and desire shook him from his dark head to the
slender feet.
He was awake and the girl was asleep, and craving to set his seal upon
her in her unconsciousness, he bent towards her until the fierceness of
his breath disturbed the lacey frill about her breast, bringing to view
the jewel suspended from a golden chain.
Instantly his joined hands were raised towards his face mechanically in
prayer, his eyes burned with the fanaticism of his creed, and his face
became old in knowledge.
The dividing line? the lifted veil? Nay! nothing but a jewel with the
form and the colouring of a cat's-eye, which had cunningly winked up at
him from the secret places of the girl's bosom; so that she returned to
her cabin with her body unscathed, and her soul on the edge of the
precipice.
And the most razor-tongued, detested colonel mem-sahib of the line in
India thanked her stars that the mosquitoes had roused her frantically,
but just in time, to see the trailing edge of Leonie's indecorous night
attire disappear through the door.
Aloofness, allied to perfect shoes and silken hose, will find a woman
more enemies on board than all the pretty faces and frocks in the
world; and if, in addition, she _can_ heap on such items as a seductive
face and figure; and if gossip via the newspapers can and _does_ supply
information as to the contents of her pass-book, plus savoury rumours
concerning mysterious incidents in her past; well! 'twere better for
that woman to stop at home, bob her hair, and take to that field of
literature which is not bound on any side by the hedge of convention.
So it came about that her friends, after stumbling up the gangway at
the Kidderpore Docks, with handkerchiefs held against their noses to
protect them from the effluvia wafted from Garden Reach, lifted their
eyebrows slightly at the frostiness of the adieux between their guest
and her fellow-passengers.
And no one in the scramble and flurry noticed the elderly pock-marked
ayah who had been engaged as Leonie's bodywoman as she lifted the hem
of the mem-sahib's skirt and laid it against her forehead, and touched
the instep of the high caste native when he passed behind the girl and
disappeared in the crowd of his countrymen which opened up a way before
him.
An ayah, who, to the utter astonishment of her friends, had given up
the high position of head body-woman to a Ranee of the North, in order
to accept the humble post of ayah to a mem-sahib.
A post she had gained by the baffling methods of the East which bind
each man's work to that of his neighbour with an unbreakable,
untraceable chain; and gained too, over the sleek heads of many of her
sister ayahs, who, armed with countless and phenomenally laudatory
chits, had squatted patiently for hours in the servants' quarters of
the bungalow at Alipore.