Leonie of the Jungle Part 1

Leonie of the Jungle.

by Joan Conquest.

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 ma.s.s 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! Stw.a.n.gled!"

"Do p.r.o.nounce 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.