Leonie of the Jungle Part 48

Leonie tried to speak, and failing, nodded her russet head.

"Even so, it is the mark of Kali which the priest cut upon thee and me, uniting us all those moons ago in the Mother."

She turned completely round and faced the man with a little look of wonder in her eyes.

"I have so often wondered about the--the little mark," she said. "But you see--how could I marry you--I could not, do not--love you!"

"Love," he said quietly. "_Love_! Thou wilt love me, aye! thou wilt love me in thy waking hours, even as thou wouldst have loved me in thy sleep if--if the G.o.ds had not intervened."

"You--have--been with me--in--my--sleep?" she whispered.

"When thou didst walk in thy sleep!"

CHAPTER XLVII

"For jealousy is the rage of a man; therefore he will not spare in the day of vengeance."--_The Bible_.

Suddenly she was struck with the full horror of those lost nights in which the man beside her had been her companion. She stretched out her hands and turned them over this way and that, scrutinising them with horrified eyes. She touched her mouth with her finger-tips and drew them with a shudder down her neck, and her breast, and her waist, as she looked upon the beauty of the man before her with his pa.s.sionate mouth and gleaming eyes.

"You--you have been with me when I have walked, unconscious in my sleep; you have----"

He interrupted her hastily, divining her thoughts.

"Yea!" he said, "I have been with thee when, under the influence of _my_ G.o.d, thou hast walked in thy sleep. I have watched over thee and helped thy cut and bleeding feet over the roughness of the roads, as I would help them over the perilous road of life. I have not touched thy hand save in support; I have not touched the glory of thy mouth with my mouth, because thou couldst not give me thy _consent_ so to do!

"Dost think it has been a child's task to keep my hands and my kisses from thee? Behold, I had but to make a sign, and thou, in thy unconsciousness, would have come unto my intent! Oh, thou bud of innocent fragrance; thou fruit ready to the plucking of loving hands!

Aye, thou wert, thou art in my power; and even have I seen thee in----"

"Ah!" said Leonie sharply as her hand slid to her shoulder and the words came through her closed teeth--"You _lie_!"

"Lie!"

"Yes, _lie_! You have not touched me you say; neither have you kissed me, but _you_, and _only_ you, can tell me what the mark is on my shoulder--a mark I shall carry to my grave."

The man threw back his turbaned head and was about to make reply, when, with those shrill cries which betray great fear, a troop of monkeys pa.s.sed them, chattering as they ran swiftly on all fours, or swung even more swiftly from tree to tree; and the native looked after them, and up to the sky, and over his shoulder along the narrow path by which they had come, showing black and white in the alternate lights and shadowings of the moon.

"Answer me!" said Leonie more sharply than she knew, and with a woman's superb indifference to any event or signs of approaching event outside her own love orbit.

"Nay, answer thou me!" replied the man who, expert in the knowledge of jungle signs, yet put aside all thought save of his love for the woman.

"Tell me that thou wilt be my wife and the mother of my sons, thou beautiful woman! Tell me that thou wilt come unto me this night, wedded to _me_, by yon old priest; and that, within the arms of Uma so sweet, of Parvati who steppeth so lightly, I may set my seal upon thee.

"Lifting from thee, as I and the priest _only_ may lift, that which thou callest the curse from about thee, bringing thee to happiness in the shadow of the temple."

But something had happened to Leonie, bringing her to a pitch of excitement foreign to her in her waking hours. She looked swiftly to right and left, and over her shoulder, and up the narrow path they must go to the temple; and up to the sky she could see faintly through the trees, and into the eyes of the man watching her intently. Then she clasped her hands tightly and moved close to him, her face as white as death.

"And the sahib, the white man, where is he?"

The native of India weaves and fashions the cloth of his cloak of love out of many colours. Gorgeous colours, blinding, dazzling, in which predominate the scarlet of pa.s.sion and the emerald of the supreme male's jealousy. And all, from the sweeper to the highest of birth and caste, wear this wondrous garment in India, though not one out of the teeming millions fashions his cloak upon the pattern of his neighbour's.

Madhu Krishnaghar, the son of princes, with eyes dimmed by the brilliance of his own particular garment, failed to perceive that Leonie, too, was wrapped in a love mantle.

The occidental mantle, made of honest homespun, uniform in colour, and with a wide hem to allow for shrinkage; but guaranteed to stand all weathers and to last a lifetime.

He might have been flicking a fly from his sleeve, so indifferent was his answer in his blindness.

"The white man? He is bound to the temple walls, awaiting the woman he allows to walk unveiled and alone throughout India."

"Ah!" said Leonie, with that little hush in her voice which is heard in the mother's when she first sees her new-born babe. "I am sorry," she continued quietly, "so sorry I have not been honest with you. I cannot marry you because----"

She stopped and turned as with a sound like the tearing of silk a flock of birds suddenly flew from the tree tops and whirled away into the night.

"Because? _Because_, woman?"

For a moment Leonie unconsciously watched the flight of the birds, then swung round, arms stretched wide, eyes shining, and her face aglow.

"Because I love the white man in the temple who is tied to the wall, _that_ is why!"

Her voice rang clear and true under the sky, and she stepped back quickly and threw out her hands as the man spoke. For the banked-down fires of his pa.s.sion and his love, and the hurt to his race, and his own sudden-born agony flared in one half-second into a mighty, awful conflagration. The flame of his words licked at her feet and the hem of her garments, blazed across her hands with which she hid her face, and swept right over her from head to heels, and yet he did not touch her nor raise his voice one half tone.

"Thou _woman_! Then shall no man have thee, for I will drive my dagger through the white man's heart before thine eyes, and watch thee, thou beautiful thing, wed him in the shadow of death."

And Leonie, catching the look in his eyes and the set of the mouth, knew that he meant what he said; and she laid her hand on his arm, so that his agony was increased a thousandfold as he looked down upon her whom he had lost.

"You would not, could not do _that_?" she whispered.

"Could not kill the _feringhee_?" and the hate in the old mutiny word was terrible to hear. "What else should I do to him who has stolen the sun from my sky, the fragrance from my rose?"

The man seized her by the wrist, and, pulling her to him, bent down, whispering soft, pa.s.sionate words.

"Shall I tell thee, love flower, what love is? It is the gold of noon, and the silver of night, the might of the lion, and the soft cooing of the gentle dove. As the slender vine around the straight palm, so will my love twine around thy heart. Yea, and even as the banyan tree sends out branches to draw dew from the rounded breast of earth, my love shall yearn towards thee. Day and her lover, Night, with the Dawn and the Sunset their children; the stag and the gentle doe, with their fierce horned offspring, and their offspring as round and smooth even as thy throat. So will our union be, for behold, my love for thee is so surpa.s.sing that our sons could but be of the most perfect manhood, and our daughter, why, she will be after thine own fashioning."

The man's eyes shone as he felt the trembling of the girl, and he pressed her, tempting her, revelling after the strange way of the East in the agony of the defeat his victory would bring him.

"And to save the life of the white man, thou opening bud of the pa.s.sion flower, wilt thou not come unto such a love as mine; to the shadowed corners of my palaces, to the fragrance of my courts, wilt thou not?"

Then a strange thing happened, unheeded by the two sorely tormented souls.

A great form crashed across the path behind them, followed by the bounding pa.s.sage of a herd of deer; and from all around came the sounds of animals fleeing in panic, as Leonie lifted her face to the man's with a desperate resolve in her stricken eyes.

And the man, reading the answer, bowed his head to her stone cold hands and crushed them to his heart.

"Thou wilt marry _me_--_to-night_?"

"For the sake of the man I love," came the steady answer; "to save his life I will be--your--your wife. No, wait! On these conditions. That he is set free and shown a way to safety--that I follow him in secret--and see that he is safe--and that you tell him that I am dead.

Swear that to me before your G.o.ds and I will keep my promise; swear that you will tell him that I am dead."

And Madhu, the son of princes, put both hands to his forehead and bowed before the woman; then stood erect, with hands upraised to heaven, silent, wrestling with temptation; and having won, he spoke, his face transfigured, his eyes half closed in agony.