Leonie of the Jungle Part 18

They had tramped to Croyde, George Ham, Saunton, and all the other lovely spots, and whistled over the lighthouse wall at Bull Point to be regaled by tea on a tray, handed over by one of the perfectly charming family of Howgego, which comprises the lighthouse keeper, his wife, and his bonny daughter.

All this had been done by stealth.

Creeping about the cottage in stockinged feet at dawn, polishing the high boots before retiring to bed until they shone again; packing the haversack, creeping out of the cottage, vaulting the wall to the left to evade the gate which either jammed or creaked, and away up the steep incline, also to the left, and to wherever love listed.

Upbraidings at night are quite bearable when the heart is aglow, and the future dimmed by present happiness; but upbraidings in the early morning are quite intolerable when the outlook into the future shows a black abyss through the medium of an empty stomach.

She had seized upon every pa.s.sing moment, wringing the uttermost out of it that she might have something put by with which to fill in the blanks of the drear future, the vacuum where should have been a tumultuously throbbing heart of love, and a pulse of life and pa.s.sion.

Also did she glean and garner, so as to be tucked in stray corners, memories of a flower in a hedgerow, a boat on the wing, a look in a dog's eyes, and the indescribable smell of a mixture of tobacco, sea air, and leather; and all the other little genuine antique, and ever new odds-and-ends of the collection labelled Love in the heart museum.

Not a word had she said about the wedding.

Cowardly? Yes, indeed! But if a prisoner were given a bottle of champagne to drink just before his death by hanging, it's odds on that instead of merely tasting a few drops he would drink the whole bottle, and go to his doom with the exultant thought of something nice, anyway, having happened to cheer him on his final exit.

She simply radiated love, and allowed neither the frequent upbraidings of her distracted aunt, nor the hourly approach of the fatal day to dim the sunlight of the hour in hand.

"Never you worry," she said one day, when her aunt had waylaid and implored her to have her wedding-dress fitted, "We'll pin it with safety-pins if it doesn't hang right, and as long as I'm at the church door on time, nothing else really matters. And I've given you my word on that."

And she had vaulted the wall and taken a short cut through the golf course until she had come up behind the man who loved her; and he, reading the trouble in her strange eyes, had drawn her hands to his heart and held them tight.

How often had they stood in the shade of the fir trees in the heat of the day, with the intoxicating smell of the pines in their nostrils, and the soothing sound of the humming of many bees in their ears.

They had stood so still, so close, and so very much alone.

Oh! he loved her and her ways!

Loved the rarity of her beauty, and the vitality of her body, loved the extreme care she took not to allow her fingers to touch his when pa.s.sing a cup or a hefty sandwich.

Revelled in the surge of colour which swept her face when sometimes he caught and steadied her on a rock; and the way in which, when sitting on the sand, she would suddenly scrunch up her knees with her arms for no apparent reason, and bury her scarlet mouth, and the eyes which betrayed her, in the rough tweed of her skirt.

He exulted in the little half-catch of her breath, the little happy laugh, the extra polish he knew she put on her boots just for his sake; and, above all, that perfect sense of virgin woman which emanated from her, allied to the promise of a pa.s.sion which most inhabitants of a northern clime would have utterly misconstrued and misunderstood.

Yes! He revelled and he exulted in every minute of every hour spent with her; blinded with love, led astray by the thought of months ahead in which he felt that Fate surely would find a way out for them, he let the time slip by, up to the moment when Leonie said good-bye quite gravely, shaking her head without a smile at the usual invitation to meet on the morrow.

CHAPTER XX

"Working spells Upon a mind o'erwrought!"--_Thomas Hardy_.

Secure in the solitude of her last few hours of freedom; oblivious of the fact that her aunt, enraged and alarmed at the unseemly and most untimely absence of the morrow's bride, was idiotically wringing her hands as she ran up and down in front of the cottage; worn out and weary with despair, Leonie, in her bathing dress, had gone to sleep with the full moon shining down upon the small, pale face, full of shadows.

Jan Cuxson, uneasy at the girl's curt refusal to meet him during the last twenty-four hours, had started to walk to Woolacombe from Ilfracombe where he had spent a wretched, restless, futile day.

He had tramped through the sleeping village of Lee without a look at the historic cottage once inhabited by the Three Old Maids, and along to the other little cottage on the sea front where the absence of light in Leonie's room caused him to guess that she was abroad. He pa.s.sed as quietly and quickly as possible, having determined to avoid the place for fear of meeting the aunt, or old Hickle, and losing his self-control.

As long as you know exactly where to lay your hand on them you don't worry overmuch about your gold cigarette case, or your favourite pipe, or the diamond brooch you pin haphazard into your laces; but mislay them for a moment and see what a turmoil of inquietude you will be in!

Never doubting the honesty of his beloved, tricked as it were by her happy, care-free att.i.tude, the man had drifted contentedly in the sun of love, and the month of June; but to-night a bank of clouds was rising to meet the moon half-way upon her celestial journey, and the winds of doubt and uneasiness were lifting the corners of that warm, comforting mantle of serenity which we seldom have a chance to take down from its peg in the wardrobe of life.

Yesterday she had left him with a flat refusal to meet him, and her eyes had been like the eyes of the dead, and her hands had been like ice, and her voice had been most uncompromisingly final.

All day he had argued with himself, surmised and made excuses, sunned himself in the cove at Rapparree, a.s.suring himself stubbornly that everything was quite all right; and at last, dinnerless, desperate, and afraid, had started off hot foot to find her; intending to crush the resistance out of her with the outpourings of his love, and force her to risk everything for the sake of a life-long happiness.

It was just about one o'clock when he scrunched past the rusty old wreck and clambered up and over the rocks and through the opening to the second cove; and his heart leapt as he steadied himself when his eyes found that which they had eagerly sought; then missed a beat as, for some unknown reason, he stood stock still, and drew back into the shadows.

Leonie was standing knee deep in a pool.

The saw-edged rocks rose behind her, shining like steel in the moonlight; great strands of seaweed swirled about her, for all the world like snakes, weaving in and out of the burnished hair which spread itself fanwise on the water about her knees.

Save for the thinnest, finest silk bathing dress which clung to the perfect body, as does the soft fragrant skin to the peach, she was nude, and so unaware of eyes upon her that the man held his breath, fearing she might spy him in the shade.

He knew, as everyone knows, that through the criminal teaching of the girl-child in Europe, she would have had it instilled into her mind as soon as it was capable of understanding, that the slightly draped _tout ensemble_ of her glorious body was something to be thoroughly well ashamed of, though on other occasions, by means of slit skirts and excessive decolletage, she could expose in sections just as much as she liked to the eyes of any alien waiter who hung over her with the sauce, or any chauffeur who helped her into a car.

Her eyes were wide and staring straight in his direction, and that she was asleep he had not the faintest idea.

So clearly was she outlined against the rock that every line of the lovely limbs, every exquisite curve of the beautiful bosom showed as plainly as if she had been standing in the broad light of noon as she stepped out of the pool.

With face upturned, and arms outstretched to the moon, she stood undulating slightly with the exquisite movements of the nautch girl, which has nothing to do with the _danse de ventre_ and other such disgusting muscular exhibitions.

Watch a spider's thread floating in the air at dawn, then you will get some idea of the gentle, supple, alluring movement.

The wind, blowing up before the storm, blew against her hair, and it streamed out in front of her; her arms, twining and twisting, slid in and out of the silky ma.s.s until she appeared to have at least four; her exquisite feet seemed to beat upon a human figure which was really nothing but the shadow of the rock behind her, and Jan Cuxson, in the shadows, suddenly smote his forehead as she lifted up her voice and cried:

"Kali! Kali! Kali!"

The word thrice repeated rose softly on the night air, but struck like a hammer upon the ears of the man who, in studying the brain, had found himself often and inextricably entangled in the religions and mysteries of the East.

"My G.o.d!" he whispered, "My G.o.d, she is asleep and----"

But he never moved as Leonie suddenly showed that she was aware of his presence.

It was not that she saw him, or that she knew him; she was simply aware that a man was watching her.

Not once did the eyelids close over the glaring eyes shining like two green phosph.o.r.escent stones; not a sign of recognition showed in her face as she laughed the sweetest little laugh in the world and moved towards him.

Jan Cuxson had travelled pretty widely in the last few years, and had seen almost every kind of dance in the various ports at which he had called, and the towns he had visited in the East, but for absolute voluptuousness, and the portrayal of physical pa.s.sions, he had never seen anything to compare with this which he watched horror-stricken by the sea.

"What have they done to her? What have they done to her? What spell has been cast? What cruel thing have they done to her?"

Over and over again the questions raced unanswered through his brain.

For at the thrice repeated cry he had understood in a flash that fastidious, pure, innocent Leonie was unconsciously performing the preliminary rites customary to the worship of Kali, the G.o.ddess of death, the wife of Siva, the daughter of the Himalayas; which rights might best be described as a prolonged and terrible orgy of every pa.s.sion known to man.

And well was it for Leonie Hetth that Jan Cuxson was straight and thoroughbred, and that his love was pure, else might it have gone badly with her, bringing her perchance to the door of the madhouse; for there is but a hair's breadth between those who are wakened roughly from the sleep in which they walk, and act, and speak, and those who rave in padded cells.