Leonie of the Jungle Part 21

"What would you _forgive_ me through love?"

"_Forgive_ you! Everything! Dishonour could not touch you, and everything else I should forgive!"

Leonie tried to speak as she looked past him to the little green track between the downs which led to the world, and all it contained for her; and he, obtuse male, content in the plans he had mapped out entirely to his own satisfaction, and having blissfully taken the girl's consent to the programme for granted, failed to read the agony written across her face in capital letters.

"Tell me that you will be content, dear. I'm rich enough, but nothing compared with--oh! tell me, what do you like--what do you want--what do you _really_ care for!"

She freed her hands and turned to look out to sea, where the day had been born in agony upon a bed of sullen, unbroken water.

Then she looked straight down at the waves flinging themselves against the cliffs, drenching her with spray, moaning, fretting at the barrier, retiring only to do the same thing over and over again.

"What do I want, O Man whom I love? I want a white house within high, white walls, on the edge of the sea. I want my arms full of children--yours and mine. I want love, oh! love and yet more love, that is what I want!"

The man twisted her round and held her at arms' length, her heels within an inch of the edge, her body bent back over the chasm, and her hair, spreading like a banner in the tearing wind, swept about his shoulders and across his face, intoxicating him with its perfume and silken caress.

Pa.s.sion swept over him, he shook her like a reed, and her foot slipped off the earth into nothingness.

But not a word said she, though she prayed that he might suddenly let go his hold and send her crashing to sweet death on the rocks beneath.

You see what happens when you are decent and honest and have a mind to keep your word--just death rather than dishonour, and pain to others.

Whereas if only she had been dishonest, and therefore commonplace, she would either have chucked her given word to the devil, or the deep grey sea over which she stood, and cleared for her own happiness and a marriage licence; or kept her word in one sense while making deedy little plans of triangular pattern for future reference.

"Is that what you want, oh! heart of mine?" said Jan Cuxson, exulting in the sensation that his hands alone held her metaphorically and actually safe from the depths beneath. "And that is what I am going to give you, beloved, and more, much more in exchange for the treasure you will put into my hands. Oh! Leonie, my love----"

And yet he did not kiss her, but pulled her farther inland and let her go as she essayed to free herself, having come to the absolute breaking point.

What a wooing!

The copper coloured clouds were ma.s.sed above and about them, the trees bent and straightened and bent again before the wind, the sea heaved in huge unbroken waves right to the horizon; Lundy Island, Hartland, and Baggy Point had disappeared in a driving sheet of rain.

How beautiful she looked as she stood in the storm, cut, bruised and dishevelled.

Just for one moment she looked into the eyes of the man she loved, whose hands were outstretched for the treasures she could not lay therein; and then she turned and fled as a great streak of lightning rent the clouds, and thunder like heavy artillery crashed about their heads.

She had not gone twenty yards when she stumbled and fell heavily.

Her boots were being hurled here and there by the waves in the cove where she had left them; her left foot was cut and bleeding badly, but a sudden desperate courage came to her when she felt herself raised and steadied.

"I shall carry you to the foot of the hill near your cottage!"

She struggled as he lifted her, struggled so violently that he put her on her feet.

"Don't touch me, Jan, don't come near me, because I--because----"

And the mantle of his satisfaction and content being suddenly rent into a thousand shreds by the knife edge of his intuition, he put both hands on her shoulders, looked down into the misery of her eyes, and very gently said one word.

"Because?"

"Because," and she began to laugh without making any sound, her mouth twitching, her shoulders shaking, "because I am to be married _to-day_ at noon!"

"To-_day_! but you said----"

"I lied."

"You lied--to _me_!"

She made a little sound which reminded him of an animal agonising in a trap, whilst the fury of his own pain drove him to hurt her even more.

"Why--_lie_?"

"Why?" her eyes blazed as she defied the storm, her h.e.l.l and fate.

"Why?--because I love you, because I love you so much that I wanted to cheat life out of one month of happiness. And I have had it--I have had it--and I love you----"

She flung her hands up to the stormy skies and brought them down, clenched against her breast. "I love you, _G.o.d_ hear me, I _love_ you!"

And with a terrible cry that went wailing out to sea she fled away through the lash of the blinding storm.

CHAPTER XXIII

"The lighted end of a torch may be turned towards the ground, but the flames still point upwards."--_The Satakas_.

The church was simply packed!

The lucky ones, almost all women, wedged tight and fast, crushed their beautiful clothes against their neighbours' lovely raiment in the pews.

The unlucky ones stood in rows in the side aisles, just as their commoner sisters stand in rows upon the pavement edge to watch some pa.s.sing show.

Some, less hindered by superfluous adipose tissue, had managed to seat themselves upon the tomb of one Sir William de Tracy, who had one time unduly concerned himself in the murder of a certain Thomas a Becket.

Indeed he built this church in atonement for his unseemly conduct, though something seems to have gone agley in the architectural penance, as the ghost of Sir William is to be met o' nights upon the sands of Woolacombe--so 'tis said.

Some of the still younger fry among the spectators, I mean worshippers in this solemn ceremony, clasped the heads in effigy of dead squire, or dame, or knight, in order to get the necessary purchase for the task of pulling themselves up for just one second in the supreme attempt to catch a glimpse of the princ.i.p.als in the parade.

Except for the setting of this beautiful house of G.o.d it might have been an _entr'acte_ at some theatrical first night; same comments upon actors and audience; same criticism upon dress and morals; same yawning and fidgeting.

What _had_ they not suffered and sacrificed to flatter the vulgar old millionaire! Anyway they expected a good deal in return for the excruciating journey down by rail or car, the whole day lost out of the season in London town, _and_ the wedding present.

Unless you own the genuine thing in rank or reputation, how _frightfully_ difficult it is to send an astute vulgar old millionaire the one present which will open his doors to you.

If you do own the genuine thing, an electro-plated toast-rack will be all-sufficient. If you _don't_, well it's simply no good worrying around the bottom rung of the ladder which he has climbed, and from the top of which he sits making faces of derision at you.

The princ.i.p.al performers had just disappeared into the vestry as the old clock chimed twelve, and Jan Cuxson, swinging back the churchyard gate, strode up the narrow tomb-lined path to the church door.