Leonie of the Jungle Part 10

Uncontrolled, uncontrollable, loathesome sound which tears India's nights to shreds.

The jackals had found at dawn.

CHAPTER XIII

"A continual dripping in a very rainy day and a contentious woman are alike."--_The Bible_.

In the late spring Leonie stood at a cottage window watching the rush of the incoming water as she listened to her aunt's ceaseless lament, idly wondering if both would reach high tide together, and if there would be any chance of slipping out for a swim before bedtime.

She loved her aunt with the protective love of the very strong for the very weak, and smilingly found excuses for the daily tirade against fate, or ill-luck, or whatever it is weak people blame for the hopeless knots they tie in their own particular bit of string by their haphazard bursts of energy, or apathetic resignation to every little stumbling-block they find in their path.

Daily, almost hourly, through the splendid North Devon winter the aunt had wailed, and bemoaned, and fretted, driving the girl out on the tramp for hours in the wind, and the wet, and the sun, only to return hurriedly at the thought of the weak, hapless, helpless woman in the cottage at Lee.

Susan Hetth complained about everything, from the lack of society to the smallness of her income, plus a few scathing comments upon her niece's weather-browned face and the hopeless outlook for her matrimonial future.

Her own bid in the matrimonial market _en secondes noces_ had failed, and though Hope had not taken it lying down, the pa.s.sage of the years had not been lightened by what seemed to be a daily addition of silver threads to the jaded ash gold of her hair, and the necessity of a still more flagrant distribution upon her face of the substances she employed to camouflage the pa.s.sage of old Time.

Ah, me! that moment before the stimulating advent of the early cup of tea, when divested of our motley we see ourselves in the mirror as, thanks be, others do not, and laying eager hands upon that offspring of charity, the boudoir cap, wonder if it has been in hobnailed boots that the old Father has tramped across our face during the night hours, dragging his scythe behind him.

Leonie's school-days had ended abruptly.

Nothing definite had or could have been said, but it was not likely that the parents would see exactly eye to eye with their daughters, who wrote reams and whispered volumes of the delightful mystery which surrounded the girl who next term would be head of the school.

Long and excited had been the conclaves with the Princ.i.p.al, persuasive or threatening the arguments used, according to the parental temperament, and the upshot of it all was that Leonie had been asked to go; and proud, hurt Leonie had left, with a valiant smile on her lovely mouth, and a strange little questioning look that had only quite lately crept into the beautiful eyes, and which neither the outpourings of Jessica's love, a demonstration of affection from the entire school in the shape of numerous and weird presents, or the broken-hearted kiss of both the Princ.i.p.al and Cookie had been able to eradicate.

The girl felt that she had left under a cloud, which a slight attack of what the doctor had diagnosed as brain fever had not served to line with silver.

He had insisted upon complete change and rest, and had called twice a day when Leonie was really ill, and four times when she was convalescent; so upon fair Devon had they decided, Leonie cajoling and smiling until she had obtained a year's lease, at an absurdly low rent, of the little cottage on the left of Lee harbour as you face the sea.

It is a place of charm if you are willing to do most of the work yourself with the aid of a daily help.

It is certainly rather like a band-box with the lid on, and the ocean at high tide is only prevented by the harbour wall from invading your front garden, which is the size of a handkerchief.

But if you sit at the window you can feel the spray on your face, and if you lie a-bed the tang of the air sweeping across the Atlantic will get you out at the double; and the smell of the pines, and the hum of the bees in summer, and the rush of the storm, and the crash of the waves in winter, are of G.o.d's own fashioning.

What with shopping expeditions to that crime in brick and mortar called Ilfracombe, visits here and visits there, croquet, bridge, and picnics, the summer and early autumn months had not dragged unduly for Susan Hetth.

But when the last visitor had gone, and the first real storm had broken a window, then she had sunk like a lump of lead in a bucket of cold water out of which she refused to be lifted.

Leonie was youth incarnate, causing even the courteous folk of Devon to turn and stare as she swung past with a cheery greeting in a skirt and hob-nailed boots ending at her knees.

For the first month, as one always does in Devon, she had walked herself to the verge of scragginess, then had gradually put on weight, as is the correct method. Her whistle could be heard in the woods and fields, and on the beach from Lee to Hartland way; all the country folk loved her, and scolded her for the risks she took in swimming, and she seemingly had no care in the world.

But the great heat of summer, the shriek of the wind, and the scream of the birds in autumn would bring a little pucker between her brows; the storm would drive her spirits up to breaking point, the calm would leave her eyes full of trouble; in the woods she would stop and turn to listen, then frown and trudge along between the trees.

She was not at rest, for an unconfessed fear, a spook without name or shape, was plucking at her will-power and her heart, a phantom of which she would rather have died than have said one word.

So she stood twisting the blind cord and watching the rocks as they gradually disappeared under the swirling waters.

Susan Hetth sat near the fire, which is oft-times necessary in the spring at Lee, and tapped in irritation, and most irritatingly, with her foot against the low fender.

She was worried.

She was not by birth or heredity a bad-tempered woman, merely one of straw, who after the first two months of every quarter invariably found herself in a corner which one injudicious move might render uncomfortably tight.

Her financial situation, in fact, had become so critical, and the bank manager's demeanour so unpropitious, that in the previous year more than once the dawn had found her trying to decide between the Scylla of the thankless post of lady companion to some wealthy parvenu on the Riviera, and the Charybdis of raising money enough to allow her to harbour paying guests in the no-man's-land of Earls Court.

Then Fate crossed her knees, and out of her lap had tumbled a widower possessed of a substantial banking account and four children.

A few more days, a little more encouragement, and he would most certainly have offered her his name and the half of his worldly goods in return for her help in quelling the riotous behaviour of his motherless brood.

But there had supervened the crisis at school.

And grasping for once in her life the necessity of immediate action if she wished to prevent an embellished account of her niece's untoward behaviour from reaching the man's ears, she had fled to Devon, leaving behind a trail of dainty scented notes explaining that it was all on account of a slight nervous breakdown from overstudy on the part of her niece "who," she added casually, "as I think I told you, is the only daughter of my dear brother, Colonel Hetth, V.C."

Sn.o.bbish, but quite effective as bait for a person who has not complete control over the eighth letter of the alphabet.

That very morning, quite unheedful of the beauties of the little witch village, she had gone to collect her mail lying at the post office, which in summer is almost hidden in its garden of flowers; and amongst an a.s.sortment of spring sale catalogues from emporiums, mostly situated in South Kensington, had found a letter from the widower, begging to be allowed to come down for a change of air, and an opportunity of laying a proposition before her.

She had wandered up the side of the hill, unmindful of the birds and buds almost bursting with the intoxication of spring; had pitched the catalogues anywhere on the gra.s.s, as is the wont of the untidy who have no bond with nature, and had tried to solve the problem as she sc.r.a.ped the mud, with the aid of a twig, from her Louis-Quinze heels.

But she was hara.s.sed, poor, hapless creature, for more than one reason.

The words of alarm from the nurse, the innuendoes from departing maid-servants, and the direct warning from the old specialist which had long since faded from her mind, had been forcibly revived by the happenings at the school; and being one of those who invariably plump for the worst, and without giving the slightest thought to the criminality of the proceeding, she had definitely decided, if she could coerce the girl into falling in with her plans, to marry her to the highest bidder before worse could happen.

But she was downright afraid of her niece. Afraid of her moral strength which dominated everything and everybody; ill at ease with the straightforward way she had of speaking her mind on occasions, and following up her speech with action. Never an untruth had she known to pa.s.s the girl's lips, not once had she heard her say one belittling thing about a living soul, and only twice had she seen the sweetness and gentleness swept with anger.

Cruelty to anything small or weak could transform the girl into a flame of wrath, and her weakest spot was her overpowering sympathy with anyone in distress, without any inquiries into the direct cause of the adversity, which spot caused her to be considerably taken in by many of those who had discerned it.

An almost abnormal moral strength, allied to great gentleness and pity, combined to make a character extraordinary in one so young, and which her aunt summed up and summarily dismissed from her mind in the trite sentence that "she certainly did not take after her parents."

She was considered slow by the youths, and perplexing and therefore to be avoided by the girls of her own age, and dull or frightfully conceited by the men who had fluttered round her almost exotic beauty until they had come up against the icy barrier of her supreme indifference.

To those who knew her intimately, such as the fisherfolk and the farmers, and the tramps with whom she would sit and converse by the wayside and share her lunch, she was the most lovable, cheery soul in the world, which, of course, meant the county of Devon.

"d.a.m.n standoffish, what!"

Such had been the verdict pa.s.sed by someone married who hailed from London town, when Leonie had refused to sit out a dance in a secluded shady nook.

"Just a bit of heaven!" had said the tramp as he turned the corner in the lane, leaving Leonie sitting on the milestone pondering upon the man whose ragged clothes were out of keeping with the shape of his nails, and the timbre of his voice with his unkempt hair.

But leaving all that aside, and in all conscience it was bad enough, the biggest worry hung as heavy and as threatening upon the horizon as does at times the monsoon over the Indian Ocean.

Once upon a time Susan Hetth had committed an indiscretion, nothing _really_ wrong--she hadn't the nerve. But the nuisance of it was, that, in addition to the indiscretion, she had broken the eleventh commandment and had very nearly got hanged for her lamb.