"For jealousy is the rage of a man;
therefore he will not spare in the day
of vengeance."--_The Bible_.
Suddenly she was struck with the full horror of those lost nights in
which the man beside her had been her companion. She stretched out her
hands and turned them over this way and that, scrutinising them with
horrified eyes. She touched her mouth with her finger-tips and drew
them with a shudder down her neck, and her breast, and her waist, as
she looked upon the beauty of the man before her with his passionate
mouth and gleaming eyes.
"You--you have been with me when I have walked, unconscious in my
sleep; you have----"
He interrupted her hastily, divining her thoughts.
"Yea!" he said, "I have been with thee when, under the influence of
_my_ god, thou hast walked in thy sleep. I have watched over thee and
helped thy cut and bleeding feet over the roughness of the roads, as I
would help them over the perilous road of life. I have not touched thy
hand save in support; I have not touched the glory of thy mouth with my
mouth, because thou couldst not give me thy _consent_ so to do!
"Dost think it has been a child's task to keep my hands and my kisses
from thee? Behold, I had but to make a sign, and thou, in thy
unconsciousness, would have come unto my intent! Oh, thou bud of
innocent fragrance; thou fruit ready to the plucking of loving hands!
Aye, thou wert, thou art in my power; and even have I seen thee in----"
"Ah!" said Leonie sharply as her hand slid to her shoulder and the
words came through her closed teeth--"You _lie_!"
"Lie!"
"Yes, _lie_! You have not touched me you say; neither have you kissed
me, but _you_, and _only_ you, can tell me what the mark is on my
shoulder--a mark I shall carry to my grave."
The man threw back his turbaned head and was about to make reply, when,
with those shrill cries which betray great fear, a troop of monkeys
passed them, chattering as they ran swiftly on all fours, or swung even
more swiftly from tree to tree; and the native looked after them, and
up to the sky, and over his shoulder along the narrow path by which
they had come, showing black and white in the alternate lights and
shadowings of the moon.
"Answer me!" said Leonie more sharply than she knew, and with a woman's
superb indifference to any event or signs of approaching event outside
her own love orbit.
"Nay, answer thou me!" replied the man who, expert in the knowledge of
jungle signs, yet put aside all thought save of his love for the woman.
"Tell me that thou wilt be my wife and the mother of my sons, thou
beautiful woman! Tell me that thou wilt come unto me this night,
wedded to _me_, by yon old priest; and that, within the arms of Uma so
sweet, of Parvati who steppeth so lightly, I may set my seal upon thee.
"Lifting from thee, as I and the priest _only_ may lift, that which
thou callest the curse from about thee, bringing thee to happiness in
the shadow of the temple."
But something had happened to Leonie, bringing her to a pitch of
excitement foreign to her in her waking hours. She looked swiftly to
right and left, and over her shoulder, and up the narrow path they must
go to the temple; and up to the sky she could see faintly through the
trees, and into the eyes of the man watching her intently. Then she
clasped her hands tightly and moved close to him, her face as white as
death.
"And the sahib, the white man, where is he?"
The native of India weaves and fashions the cloth of his cloak of love
out of many colours. Gorgeous colours, blinding, dazzling, in which
predominate the scarlet of passion and the emerald of the supreme
male's jealousy. And all, from the sweeper to the highest of birth and
caste, wear this wondrous garment in India, though not one out of the
teeming millions fashions his cloak upon the pattern of his neighbour's.
Madhu Krishnaghar, the son of princes, with eyes dimmed by the
brilliance of his own particular garment, failed to perceive that
Leonie, too, was wrapped in a love mantle.
The occidental mantle, made of honest homespun, uniform in colour, and
with a wide hem to allow for shrinkage; but guaranteed to stand all
weathers and to last a lifetime.
He might have been flicking a fly from his sleeve, so indifferent was
his answer in his blindness.
"The white man? He is bound to the temple walls, awaiting the woman he
allows to walk unveiled and alone throughout India."
"Ah!" said Leonie, with that little hush in her voice which is heard in
the mother's when she first sees her new-born babe. "I am sorry," she
continued quietly, "so sorry I have not been honest with you. I cannot
marry you because----"
She stopped and turned as with a sound like the tearing of silk a flock
of birds suddenly flew from the tree tops and whirled away into the
night.
"Because? _Because_, woman?"
For a moment Leonie unconsciously watched the flight of the birds, then
swung round, arms stretched wide, eyes shining, and her face aglow.
"Because I love the white man in the temple who is tied to the wall,
_that_ is why!"
Her voice rang clear and true under the sky, and she stepped back
quickly and threw out her hands as the man spoke. For the banked-down
fires of his passion and his love, and the hurt to his race, and his
own sudden-born agony flared in one half-second into a mighty, awful
conflagration. The flame of his words licked at her feet and the hem
of her garments, blazed across her hands with which she hid her face,
and swept right over her from head to heels, and yet he did not touch
her nor raise his voice one half tone.
"Thou _woman_! Then shall no man have thee, for I will drive my dagger
through the white man's heart before thine eyes, and watch thee, thou
beautiful thing, wed him in the shadow of death."
And Leonie, catching the look in his eyes and the set of the mouth,
knew that he meant what he said; and she laid her hand on his arm, so
that his agony was increased a thousandfold as he looked down upon her
whom he had lost.
"You would not, could not do _that_?" she whispered.
"Could not kill the _feringhee_?" and the hate in the old mutiny word
was terrible to hear. "What else should I do to him who has stolen the
sun from my sky, the fragrance from my rose?"
The man seized her by the wrist, and, pulling her to him, bent down,
whispering soft, passionate words.
"Shall I tell thee, love flower, what love is? It is the gold of noon,
and the silver of night, the might of the lion, and the soft cooing of
the gentle dove. As the slender vine around the straight palm, so will
my love twine around thy heart. Yea, and even as the banyan tree sends
out branches to draw dew from the rounded breast of earth, my love
shall yearn towards thee. Day and her lover, Night, with the Dawn and
the Sunset their children; the stag and the gentle doe, with their
fierce horned offspring, and their offspring as round and smooth even
as thy throat. So will our union be, for behold, my love for thee is
so surpassing that our sons could but be of the most perfect manhood,
and our daughter, why, she will be after thine own fashioning."
The man's eyes shone as he felt the trembling of the girl, and he
pressed her, tempting her, revelling after the strange way of the East
in the agony of the defeat his victory would bring him.
"And to save the life of the white man, thou opening bud of the passion
flower, wilt thou not come unto such a love as mine; to the shadowed
corners of my palaces, to the fragrance of my courts, wilt thou not?"
Then a strange thing happened, unheeded by the two sorely tormented
souls.
A great form crashed across the path behind them, followed by the
bounding passage of a herd of deer; and from all around came the sounds
of animals fleeing in panic, as Leonie lifted her face to the man's
with a desperate resolve in her stricken eyes.
And the man, reading the answer, bowed his head to her stone cold hands
and crushed them to his heart.
"Thou wilt marry _me_--_to-night_?"
"For the sake of the man I love," came the steady answer; "to save his
life I will be--your--your wife. No, wait! On these conditions. That
he is set free and shown a way to safety--that I follow him in
secret--and see that he is safe--and that you tell him that I am dead.
Swear that to me before your gods and I will keep my promise; swear
that you will tell him that I am dead."
And Madhu, the son of princes, put both hands to his forehead and bowed
before the woman; then stood erect, with hands upraised to heaven,
silent, wrestling with temptation; and having won, he spoke, his face
transfigured, his eyes half closed in agony.
"Thou star of heaven! Thou highest point of the Everlasting Hills,
behold hast thy great love triumphed. I love thee, but my heart could
hold no wife who loved another as thou hast shown thou lovest this man.
I----"
But, alas! Leonie, swept off her balance in her great relief, broke
across his words.
"Let us hasten quickly, quickly. You will tell the priest; you will
help me to set him--the man I love--free. Oh, come quickly, quickly!"
In her callous but uncalculated desire to use this man as a lever
wherewith to heave aside the mountain of trouble which threatened to
overwhelm Jan Cuxson; and, with the inexplicable cruelty of the woman
who loves, and will blissfully put a whole community to torture as long
as her beloved is saved a single hurt, she asked the one impossible
thing.
He moved so quickly, fiercely, closely to her that she backed until she
stood in a patch of moonlight which shone upon her face.
Higher she raised her face, and still higher, as she looked back
straight into the eyes intent on hers.
And Madhu Krishnaghar laughed savagely as he looked down upon her.
"Go!" he commanded; "go up the path to the temple gate to meet thy
fate. The Mother claims thee, and may thy blood and the blood of the
white man who has stolen thee from me flow upon her altar before she
shakes the earth in the fury of her displeasure."
Tortured, his soul sought relief in the fanaticism of his religion
which flared in his eyes; consumed with love, he called her back as she
turned to do the bidding of a stronger will than her own.
"Come!"
She stopped and turned, gave a vacant little laugh, and crept into his
arms when he held them out, and closed them about her without touching
her.
"Ah!" he whispered, "now that thou comest to me unknowingly I will have
none of thee. I love thee, love thee, love thee! Go to thy death that
my task may be well finished, and that everlasting torment may be
fastened upon the soul of him who stole thee from me! Go, beloved of
my soul, rose of the morning, delight of my heart! Ah, my love, my
love, go to thy death----!"
And he opened wide his arms and pointed up the path, and Leonie went
where he pointed; and never once looked back at the man standing with
his arms stretched out towards her, whilst monkeys chattered, and
parrots screamed, and the jungle teemed with flying, frightened shapes.