Leonie of the Jungle Part 47

"Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaketh."--_The Bible_.

One thing after another happened to prevent Leonie from continuing what remained of the journey during the cooler hours of sunrise.

One coolie strayed and was not retrieved until the other two men were hoa.r.s.e from shouting, then another ran something into his foot, which was only extracted after a mighty fuss, and something akin to a major operation, skilfully performed with the bearer's knife and a few thorns plucked from the bush.

Last but not least, as they were on the point of starting, a snake about two yards long had blithely wriggled its shining length across their very path; and nothing short of hours of prayer and offerings to their G.o.ds would move the coolies along that path after such a sign of ill omen; no! rather than budge an inch they would have laid down in their tracks and died of snake-bite, or a marauding tiger; and Leonie was far too wise a traveller to lose sight of her luggage for one second--in India.

Although she had no idea why she was in such haste, she inwardly fretted at the hours lost, but pa.s.sed them with outward patience in the shade of the jungle trees; eating what was brought her, and sleeping away the afternoon stretched on a rug; unconscious of the fact that her bearer sat behind her head, fanning her face gently, and with the lightest and deftest of fingers removing the various insects, long and short, fat and thin, smooth or h.o.r.n.y, which seemed to have taken unlimited return tickets for the journey over her body.

They had been for some time on the way, the coolies trapesing behind to the tune of some monotonous chant; and the moon was beginning to fling handsful of silver out of her heavenly mint when Leonie, overcome by a most unromantic craving for tea, gave the order to halt.

"How much farther is it?" she asked, as she busied herself with a spirit lamp and a tin of evaporated milk.

Her bearer looked up at the moon.

"Another half-hour, mem-sahib, and we reach the outer walls of the temple--ah! allow me----"

Leonie had dropped a teaspoon and was bending to pick it up, but instead, straightening herself with the kind of snap an over-strung violin string gives when it breaks, took one step forward and fixed her eyes on her servant's face.

"Of course," she said, speaking half to herself, "of course--no wonder I thought I knew you--I saw you in London once--and it was you I saw on the station--and your voice----" she clasped her hands together and took a step quickly backwards--"you were the guide in the tiger hunt, you--you have been following me--you are d.o.g.g.i.ng me--hunting me down--why--tell me why? What harm have I done you?--tell me?"

Her eyes, which were shining strangely in the quickly falling night, swept the man before her from head to foot, and she instinctively threw out her hands and took another step backwards as she realised at last his extraordinary beauty.

"Why is the mem-sahib _afraid_? What has her servant done to cause trouble to her soul? He meant but to lighten her load, and make smooth her path."

Leonie, with the desire common among women to hide the tell-tale expression of their faces by the movement of their hands, knelt and began fiddling among the tea things.

"Sit down," she said abruptly, pointing to-the ground on the other side of the earthy tea-table, "and tell me everything."

"Nay, mem-sahib! A humble native may not sit in the presence of a white woman."

Leonie lifted her head.

"Sit down," she said simply.

And there in the heart of the jungle, by the side of the fire that had been lighted to scare off any animal, they sat, those two splendid specimens of two splendid races divided by custom and colour, while he told her the strange story of the night on which they had both been dedicated to the G.o.ddess of Destruction, and the happenings thereafter.

"Do you mean to tell me that you willed me to come to you in the museum that day in London?"

He looked straight into her perplexed eyes as he answered slowly:

"I felt that if I could draw you through the ebb and flow and the floods of London traffic, I could do as I would with you on the plains of India. I did not know you--_then_!"

"And the priest has made me come to the temple--against my will?"

"Even so."

"And what is to happen to me there to-night?"

"A danger threatens you, beautiful white woman, a great danger threatens you from which I alone can save you, yea! and will in spite of all the G.o.ds!"

"_You_ will save _me_--_you_--and why?"

"Because I love you!"

The words were out, and Leonie, springing to her feet, drew back as the man rose and stood motionless in the dancing shadows thrown by the fire.

"What do you mean? Oh, how dare you----"

"How dare I--_dare_ I--tell you that I love you and want you for wife?

Why should I not love you from your beautiful head to your perfect feet? Why should you not be my wife? Because I am what you call _black_? because of this colouring of my skin which, outside my own land, d.a.m.ns me to eternity, and bars me from all that I desire? Nay, you _shall_ listen, and you _shall_ answer! You _will_, will you not?"

The voice had dropped from the pitch of fierce denunciation to the sound as of a deep river flowing in pleasant places, and Leonie nodded mutely, succ.u.mbing, as is the way of woman, to the entrancing pastime of playing with fire.

She closed her eyes and clasped her hands tightly together when the man, stepping across the barriers of interracial convention, came and stood just behind her shoulder without touching her withal, and spoke in his own tongue.

"Ah, woman, I would call thee wife. Behold, I have much to offer: a great name, vast wealth, palaces, broad lands, jewels, elephants, villages; the esteem of my people, the love of my father and of my mother, of whom I am the only son. All of which is nothing, nothing compared with my love for thee. A love as virgin as the snow upon the Everlasting Hills, swifter than Mother Ganges, deeper than the Indian Ocean, and higher than the vault of heaven. What matter custom, or law, or regulation, or colour, when such a love as mine is offered?

Thou as my wife, _thou_, and thy children my only children. Am I not beautiful? even as beautiful a male as thou art a female? Would not the days and the nights, the months and the years be as heaven--together? _Love me_--nay! say but that I may call thee wife.

Give me thy promise and I will save thee!"

"Save me?--from what?"

Leonie turned and faced this splendid lover, shivering slightly as a low moaning wind rustled the leaves of the trees and stirred the undergrowth.

"Even from death!"

"Death?" she said quietly, looking straight into the man's eyes.

"_Death_--for _me_? Why I thought I was being willed to the temple to make sacrifice to your G.o.d?"

"To-night thou must surely die unless I save thee."

"Oh! you are mistaken," came the quick, decisive reply. "Why, if I was murdered, the whole Empire would be up in arms."

"The British Raj would not know," was the quiet answer.

"Oh! but----"

"You have not seen the Fort of Agra, the sad, dead palace. There, in the dungeons, is a beam stretched across the hidden wells and marked with the fret of a rope. Many a beautiful woman has swung from that beam by neck, or feet, or wrists, and her body dropped through the well into the Holy Jumna without the knowledge of any save her master and her executioner."

"Oh!--oh! don't----"

"Twice," continued the quiet voice relentlessly, "the sacrifice has been averted, but _now_ the hour has come. Thou art here alone, none knowing, and I--I _alone_ can save thee. And will not Kali, our mother, raise her hands in blessing upon us united, even as we were united when babes, and being appeased, lift the curse from off the land. She is soft and gentle, treading lightly upon life's stony paths, Uma so sweet, Parvati, daughter of the eternal snows. Oh!

woman, say that thou wilt be my wife, for behold, are we not marked with the same mark which----"

"Mark? _What_ mark?" Leonie questioned abruptly, looking back over her shoulder, her mouth perilously near to his as he bent his head slightly towards her; and there fell a little silence in which the thudding of his heart could be felt against the silk thread of her jersey.

"Between thy b.r.e.a.s.t.s, thou white dove, hast thou no mark?"