"A merry heart doeth good like a medicine!"--_The Bible_.
Guy Dean, the cheery optimistic lad who worshipped openly at Leonie's
beautiful feet, and who was seeing the world at the behest of his
wealthy old father, had been as good as his word.
Bursting with excitement, he hurled himself into his racing-car one
Sunday morning, about a fortnight after Leonie's hasty ride riverwards,
and passed like a whirlwind through the fairly empty streets of
Calcutta and the suburb of Ballygunge to the Jodhpur Club.
She was waiting for breakfast under the trees with some friends,
discussing the four-some they had just finished, and watching the
arrival of various cars which were parked, with some difficulty, with
the others which had arrived earlier.
"Sounds all right," said Cuxson, as he looked with disfavour upon the
club's breakfast _pièce de résistance_, namely fatty sausages and
mashed of all things. "I am beginning to feel quite thrilled. Let's
see, it will take us about a day to get to Tiger's Point by launch from
Kulna, and there we find monkeys, adjutant birds, spotted deer, and
tigers all ready."
"Don't rot!" said young Dean. "I've bribed the finest _shikari_ in the
whole of Bengal to stage-manage the whole thing; he did seem rather
contemptuous over the _chotar shikar_, as he called it, I must say,
until I began to juggle with backsheesch, and then he bucked up
considerably and said he would do his very best to provide sport for
the mems. The programme includes a ruined temple but not a tiger,
'cause he says it would be too risky a job at such short notice; also,
and the real reason _I_ should say, there hasn't been a tiger seen,
anyway killed, since one was wounded and caught near that same Hindu
temple umpteen years ago."
Leonie wrinkled her forehead at the last sentence, and looking up
caught Jan Cuxson's eyes upon her.
"That sounds _so_ familiar," she said perplexedly, "I----"
"The tiger at the Zoo which we knew all those years ago was trapped
near a ruined Hindu temple in the Sunderbunds, Lady Hickle," he said
quietly, watching the curious dilation of the pupils in the greenish
eyes as he spoke.
"The very one!" broke in young Dean, as he suspiciously eyed a
proffered curry.
"How did you come to think of the stunt?"
"I ran up against a perfectly top-hole native prince at polo last
month. Amongst other things we started talking elephant and
_bagh_--tiger, you know," laughed the lad, who always seemed to be on
the point of bursting with high infectious spirits. "No, take it away,
I will _not_ eat a cold _chupattie_ of the consistency of a bicycle
tyre--as I was saying, we talked tiger, and somehow or other he
suggested a few days' pursuit, through the Sunderbunds, of the spotted
deer, muntjak or sambur----"
"Neither."
"Well, they're _spotted_."
"Dogs, perhaps."
Ignoring the execrable repartee, the boy turned completely round to
Leonie.
"By the way, Lady Hickle, if you ever go to Benares, don't forget to
get off _en route_ and visit the tomb of what's-its-name, it's quite
near--oh! I forget--but it's on one of this fellow's father's estates.
They don't let many people go and see it--afraid, I expect, of paper
bags but if you _do_ go you'll find an elephant or two hanging about to
take you to the place in state. He's, the native prince, got some of
the finest elephants in the whole of this mosquito-ridden land--makes a
hobby of them."
"What happened to the original tiger?"
"Noah pushed him into the ark."
The lad grinned, and offered his cigarette to Leonie, who shook her
head.
"Oh! stop fooling, Dean. Did a sahib manage to trap the brute, or
what?"
"Yes! and sent it across to Blighty and shoved it into the Zoo.
They're frightfully sick about that tiger being in a cage; they
wouldn't have minded a sahib killing it for the good of mankind it
seems, but putting it behind bars is an insult to some god, or
something like that. Are you any good as a gun, dear lady?"
Leonie smiled at the tardiness of such an important question.
"Fair," she said, refusing an unkempt pot of marmalade as she turned to
Cuxson. "I used to pass most of my holidays with the Wetherbournes,
you know them, don't you? They were awfully keen on sports, and had a
rifle-range, but I could beat them any day with a revolver."
"That doesn't matter, Lady Hickle," said the lad blithely. "All you'll
have to do'll be to bob up and down in the tiger-grass in the approved
style; keep your trigger away from the bush, and so as to feel
thoroughly creepy, your eye out for pugs; which, in case some of you
don't know, means tiger-tracks, not the dog with the beastly curly
tail--and--oh, jolly!--here come the Talbots--just in time for the
_khubber_ which means tiger-news for those whose Hindustani is not as
perfect as mine. Mrs. Talbot, don't pass us by, we have plenty of room
and some superb sausages."
Edna Talbot laughingly sank into a chair next Leonie whom she liked,
and immediately became enthralled in the discussion.
Honest, sweet little woman, with an honest plodding husband in a native
regiment, inhabiting the dreary crumbling fort, without a murmur,
whilst living in hopes of better things to come. Soft-voiced,
considerate towards her native servants who worshipped her, one of the
finest shots in India, and a true upholder of the British Raj in word,
action, and clothes.
A perfect oasis, in fact, among the desert of her sisters, who storm in
season and out at their native staff, before whom they likewise show
themselves in ill-considered négligé, with their unbrushed hair down
their backs, and their bare feet thrust into the evening shoes of last
night's dance.
So it came about without any undue fuss that, after surviving the
excruciating heat of the railway journey, three sahibs, two mem-sahibs,
and their servants steamed out of Kulna in two launches to Tiger's
Point, where awaited them the finest _shikari_ in all Bengal, with an
adequate retinue in which was included a _chukler_ or skin dresser.
And who would notice the look in an ayah's eyes as she wiped her
beloved mem-sahib's ant-ridden bunk with cotton-waste soaked in
kerosene, and who on earth would connect the jungle guide with the
British Museum.