Leonie of the Jungle Part 24

That seat having the advantage of isolation, your conversation does not gladden the ears of your neighbour nor theirs yours.

You know what that is like--if you don't, well, it's the kind that if written would read in italics: _Ayah--kitmutgar--pukka--chotar hazri--syce_, with reference, ultra-distinct and emphatic, to _Government House_, _Simla_, and my dear old friend, _General Methuselah_.

Just those little British odds-and-ends which go to the ruling, more or less, of the land of the peac.o.c.k. Add to that the general, what shall I say, touch-and-go attire of the majority of the members. You know what it is like.

Lace collars over reconstructed tailor-mades; pseudo-suede gloves, chiffon scarfs, generally ropey and heliotrope of hue; odd-coloured jerseys affiliated to odd-cut skirts, plus jangling oriental bracelets and chains, and mix that with a few puckered, leather-hued countenances and you get the club's princ.i.p.al ingredient.

Anglo-Indian.

Anyway the place is conveniently situated, and quite bearable if you can put up with the waiter or the somewhat overdecorated and ever-changing waitress telling you, in front of your guest, that you "can only 'ave cakes and bread-un-b.u.t.ter forrer shilling, every-think-else-is extra."

Cheery, when you may have been doing your best to make an impression!

Of course every member (if she ever gets as far as this) of every ladies' club will here draw her pharisaical skirts about her and edge nearer to her neighbour.

"_Did_ you read this"--quotes--"_awfully_ good, isn't it? Of course it's meant for the Imperatrix--the Toga--the Ninth Century--the Spook."

It _isn't_!

It's just typical.

Is there any one thing in any one ladies' club to differentiate it from its sister establishment--especially in the canteen?

I will pay one year's town subscription to any woman knowing, of course, the difference between husks and food, who will honestly declare that her heart has _not_ plumped to her boots after a spur-on-the-moment invitation to a _man_ to lunch or dine at her club.

By spur-on-the-moment I mean when she has not had the time to negotiate with the cook, via the head waiter.

You do not need the menu to tell you that plaice is here your portion; or a lightning glance to ascertain that the exact number of your prunes is six, and that of your guest half a dozen; or just a sip of your coffee--well! there you begin to talk feverishly and to press liqueurs and cigarettes upon the suffering guest.

But to come back to the club tea-room.

"My dear," Susan Hetth was saying, jangling with the best, and pitching her voice so that it literally, though slangily, beat the band, "I really think, considering your position and recent bereavement, that you _should_ wear----"

"Please be quiet, Auntie," said Leonie, who in a grey and pale mauve confection looked like a field of statice against a pearl-grey sky. "I came here to talk about you, not clothes. You see I want to tell you how I have settled things before I sail."

Her aunt fretted with a teaspoon, and spoke in the absurd peevish way which had been so attractive at seventeen.

"For the last time, Leonie, I want you to listen to me!"

"Other way round, Auntie," said Leonie, who had chosen the club, of all places, for a last _tete-a-tete_ with her relation, in the hope that the presence of others would serve as a dam to the flood of tears which had streamed almost unceasingly during the last month.

"But it's absurd, idiotic----"

"Auntie, dear, we've been through all that a hundred times, and a hundred million times more won't make me change. I will _not_ touch a penny of Sir Walter's money----"

"Oh! Leonie, your _husband_!"

"Not my husband in any sense at all, except for the awful name.

Why"--and she spoke with sweet intense enthusiasm--"do you know they are going to build a house in Devon for blind babies out of my marriage settlement, and endow it, and have resident teachers--think of it----"

Leonie broke off to manipulate the tea-things to the rhythm of a one-step.

"And all the rest of the money, Leonie, oh! it's scandalous!"

"Oh, that!" said Leonie, manoeuvring the milk out of a broken milk-jug.

"Except for Sir Walter's special bequests, it all goes back to the family. They've almost all come to see me at the hotel, such honest, nice people; and oh! so grateful. Mrs. Sam Hickle is moving to Balham from the Waterloo Road to open a fruit shop, she brought me a huge basket of vegetables, carried it into my room herself; and a young Bert Hickle, who has a whelk-barrow in the Borough, brought me a whole turbot which had soaked through its newspaper wrapping. He gave it to the page-boy to carry, and I _do_ wish you had seen their faces when the tail suddenly burst through, just as the page-boy was gingerly laying it down on a most appropriate resting-place, a marble consol."

Leonie laughed just as the music stopped, a ringing, happy laugh which caused people to stare and then nudge, or kick each other surrept.i.tiously as they recognised her.

"It's all settled about you, Auntiekins. I'm paying your debts, which aren't so terrific, only foolish, and giving you five hundred pounds to go on with. That, with your own income, will be all right if only you will live in the country instead of hanging on to the edge of a society which doesn't want you. Still, you do exactly as you like, dear, only remember that I shall only have just enough to live on when I've got through the thousand pounds, and don't run up any more debts."

"Why not _invest_ the thousand, Leonie, _sensibly_." Susan Hetth's voice was dull, choked doubtlessly by the dust of her castle ruins.

"I've got to go to India!"

"Why, for goodness sake?"

"I don't know, Auntie, I've simply got to go!"

"How silly," said Auntie, as she forced a cigarette inartistically into a holder, adding abruptly, as her commonplace mind jumped at a commonplace loop-hole, "Where is Jan Cuxson? I should think----"

Leonie answered quickly, breaking her aunt's words.

"I have no idea! I haven't heard from him since he left England."

"Huh!" said Susan Hetth, putting up an absolute smoke screen, "and what will you do after the money is spent, pray?"

Leonie stared wide-eyed into the tobacco haze. "That," she said slowly, "is on the knees of the G.o.ds!"

Talking being temporarily suspended by the band in the death throes of the overture to Zampa, the two women sat silent; one frantically trying to solve financial problems, the other with her head a little on one side as though trying to catch the thread of some conversation.

A strange thing happened as the band stopped.

Leonie rose quite suddenly, with a half-eaten cake half-way to her mouth.

"I must go!" she said quite flatly, placing the cake on a plate and looking at her aunt without seeing her.

"_Go_!" shrilled Susan Hetth, putting her fourth cup of tea down with an irritated slam. "Where on earth _to_?"

But Leonie turned and walked away with never a word of explanation, and her aunt, with the thrifty side of her plebeian soul uppermost, turned to the task of getting through as much as possible of what was left of the two teas for which two shillings had been paid.

The porter looked hard at Leonie when she asked for a taxi, hesitated for a moment, looked hard again, and refrained from putting the question hovering on his tongue.

"Seemed quite dazed like," he explained later to his wife in Camberwell as she juggled with sausages, "pale as death, with a kind of funny look round her eyes!"

"To the British Museum," Leonie said through the window as the taxi door closed, and the funny look round her eyes deepened into a line of perplexity between the eyebrows, as the cab bore her swiftly to her destination and her destiny.

She walked swiftly up the steps to the inst.i.tution she was visiting for the first time, and through the gla.s.s swing doors, just as though she was hurrying to an appointment; she turned, without hesitating, sharply to the left up the long flight of stairs, pa.s.sed through the rooms filled with relics of Rome found in Britain, and stopped.