"Could I come near your beauty with my nails,
I'd set my ten commandments in your face!"--_Shakespeare_.
Leonie was sitting on the edge of her bed waiting for the _gharri_ to
take her to the station; she had lunched and breakfasted in her
bedroom, in fact she had lived there since her interview with the
manager, which had been indescribably unpleasant for him, in that it
had been so distressing to the gentle girl as she had sat and nodded
her head and looked at him out of agonised, forgiving eyes.
The hotel _en masse_, at least the feminine portion of it, had had a
prior interview with the manager which had been _superlatively_
unpleasant for him.
Coerced by a force which was closely allied to the brute; almost
shouted down when he essayed to argue in favour of the hounded girl;
threatened by the immediate transfer of the entire visiting list to the
books of a rival hotel, he had ultimately owned to defeat; and Leonie
sat on the edge of her bed, staring vacantly into the denuded
dressing-room, while the native staff, yea! even unto him who had done
her no service, buzzed round in the vicinity of her door.
Strange things had happened, things undefined, and therefore not
capable of bearing the light of honest dissection or discussion.
What _had_ happened during the night of rioting--so-called--in the
city? What had been the meaning of those white-robed figures which had
fluttered near her door? And oh! why had her faithful ayah been found
on the edge of the river the morning after, stabbed through the heart?
As if anyone in India with any sense at all _would_ make inquiries
about the last event.
All that and a lot more! and quite enough to slam the gates of heaven
or the hotel upon any lovely woman on her own!
Yes! but--did all _that_ really do the actual slamming?
Not a bit of it!
It was the most convenient excuse the womenfolk could find to hang upon
the peg of jealousy which had been knocked into the wall of feminine
conceit and bad intent, by the hammer of Leonie's beauty, and
irritating indifference to both men and women, especially the former.
Let any woman lure to her side some other woman's own particular bit of
masculine property; poach successfully upon her understocked male
preserves; and figuratively, maybe verbally, most assuredly positively
if she live east of Blackfriars, the claws of jealousy will be
sharpened upon her; _but_--ignore the bit of masculine property, pass
it by on the other side, consider it as belonging to somebody else,
leave the preserves severely alone, and vials of execration, anathema,
and denunciation, which are all synonyms for the same thing, will be
poured upon her because of her lack of the appreciative faculty.
Fact!
Very few women can see the difference between joyfully hoarding genuine
antique pewter, and wearing a second-hand négligé.
So Leonie was fleeing home via Calcutta, and she sat without movement,
hating herself and the world, even the man who, having taken her at her
word, had left her alone to stumble as best she could along the
crooked, lonely road which would end, as far as she could see, in a
padded cell.
"How could you?" she suddenly cried aloud, and the natives made
surreptitious signs, and withdrew to a certain distance out of respect
to the disorder of her mind. "How _could_ you leave me! Didn't you
_know_ that it is because I love you so that I would rather _die_ than
let you share my curse? But couldn't you have done _something_, tried
to follow that clue, gone somewhere, oh! done _anything_ just to show
that----!"
The rumble of wheels cut her agitation short, and drew the native
element closer to the door, in order that it should be quite near the
mem-sahib when she appeared--with her purse in her left hand.
And while she sat on her bed, and later on in the train, striving to
break the mental thongs which bound her to some intangible stake, Jan
Cuxson was sitting in the secret places of the jungle temple, striving
to break the bonds of raw hide by which he had found himself fastened
to a ring in the wall.
As he struggled he speculated savagely upon that insensate sense of
security, common to most Britishers, which had caused him to try and
find the Hindu temple under the guidance of an unknown native.
He mentally reviewed his journey from the boat to the temple, fighting
through the tiger-grass, breaking through the delicate impeding
branches of the sundri trees, crushing the sundri breathers under his
heavy boots as he tramped behind the guide, having failed to notice,
owing to the resemblance that exists between one ordinary native and
the next, that the guide and coolie of the jungle were not the guide
and coolie of the paddle boat.
He remembered that once he had stopped dead and laid a detaining hand
on the guide's shoulder, as through the darkening forest had come a
cry, eerie as it wailed through the shadows, to be taken up ahead of
them, and echoed and re-echoed until it became faint in the distance
and died away altogether.
"What's that?"
The native had not hesitated.
"The cry, O Sahib, Protector of the poor, of the jungle owl as it seeks
its food!"
Cuxson, unobservant for once, and anxious to get to the end of the
trail again failed to notice that it was still far too light for any
member of the owl family to be abroad.
Also, when he sat down on a fallen tree trunk to readjust his boot
strap, he had mistaken for the booming of a huge jungle insect
something which whizzed through the space where his head had been a
second before.
It is true he had questioned the guide as to the route they were
taking, pointing out that it was not the one traversed in the _shikar_.
To which the guide had replied that doubtless the _shikari_ had taken
the sahibs many miles out of their way to ensure a big toll to the
sahibs' guns, and those of the mem-sahibs.
Jan Cuxson had accepted every explanation.
Extraordinary is this complacent sense of security of the British male
when he butts into the paths and customs of countries of which he knows
literally _nothing_; and he had arrived at the temple all in good time.
Silence, intense and rather overwhelming, had hung about the forbidding
place which allied to the abomination of desolation had disconcerted
him, and made him turn to the guide for further reference.
He had frowned, and involuntarily recoiled towards the wall when he
found that his guide had disappeared, and that he stood alone in the
heart of the jungle.
But strangely enough, even as he stood staring at a white wall in front
of him, a sudden apathy had fallen upon him, also a strong
disinclination to move hand or foot; in fact, he remembered laughing
stupidly, and pulling out his cigarette case with the intention of
soothing a distinct sense of irritation aroused by something which
hammered incessantly upon his inner consciousness, warning him to be on
the look out.
He remembered also looking once or twice in the direction of the temple
door with the feeling that someone was on the point of coming out
towards him, and then he had slipped contentedly to the ground, yawned,
and gone to sleep.
All the sounds of a jungle dawn had greeted him on his awaking: a
monkey had swung itself up to the top of the ruined wall where it had
sat grimacing at him; an adjutant bird had clapped at his boot with its
huge bill as it stalked past him towards the door; and he had found
himself bound by waist and wrists to a stout ring in a wall which still
held traces of brilliant colouring.