Leonie of the Jungle Part 25

Just for a second she put the palm of her ungloved hand against her forehead, sighed quickly, with her head bent forward, then pa.s.sed through the doorway, turned to the left, stopped and said "Yes?"

And the man, in faultless western clothes save for the white turban which with its regulation folds outlined the pale bronze face, with a look of satisfaction in the dark eyes, salaamed before the beautiful woman who had looked at him questioningly.

"Allow me!" he said simply, bending to pick up the glove she had dropped, the smile of satisfaction deepening as he looked at her again.

She had turned from him, and stock-still was staring into the gla.s.s case which lined the wall.

Closer she pressed, until her nose, flattened against the gla.s.s looked like a white cherry.

"Kali," she read, "Kali, the G.o.ddess of Death. I thought--I----"

Lower she leant to look at the square stone image numbered thirty-seven.

High breasted, squatting on her crossed legs, garlanded with skulls, with five hands, holding a sword, a thunderbolt, a skull, a snake, a cup, and the other two raised in blessing, the G.o.ddess leers at you like a very old woman from behind the gla.s.s.

Leonie turned swiftly to find herself alone; and the hunted look in her gold-flecked eyes deepened to horror as she gathered her skirts about her, and fled blindly through the rooms, and down the stairs, and out of the building.

Heading straight down Museum Street for Oxford Street, she ran across the road at the risk of her neck and the wrath of a taxi-driver; gave one terrified backward glance at a law-abiding student from India, who was going to his cheery lodgings in Bloomsbury; and fled into the tea-rooms which lure you outside with the pretty apple-painted ware in the window, and where inside, one beautiful little blonde head s.h.i.+nes like a field of ripening wheat.

Safe, she crouched down behind the window curtain with her eyes fixed unseeingly on the distorted figures of the Java frieze.

BOOK II

THE EAST

CHAPTER XXVI

"But when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life."--_The Bible_.

The first-cla.s.s pa.s.sengers, leastways the pa.s.sengers travelling first cla.s.s, lay stretched out side by side, one s.e.x to starboard, t'other to port, divided, however, more by the fear of the eyes of the other s.e.x, than by any hatch piled with chairs, or s.h.i.+p rule pinned upon the notice-board, and signed by the chief.

Surely the hours of the tropical nights pa.s.sed in sleep on deck are those in which we should return thanks for lacking the gift of seeing ourselves as the officer going on, or coming off watch, the fugitive apprentice, or some stray pa.s.senger see us.

Human chrysalis, wrapt in the coc.o.o.n of sheet or unsightly night attire, with starboard boudoir cap awry, exposing the steel cracker or the lanky lock; unsightly pedal extremities peeping from the unfeminine pyjama; ruby lips, uncarmined, ajar; whilst to port like rocks from the ocean, unshaven chins rise unrebuked from blanket billows, and pyjama b.u.t.ton and b.u.t.tonhole play touch across the unseemly, unrestrained and unconfined masculine torso.

It was one of those insufferably hot nights you get sometimes as you turn into the Hoogli, when the smell of the land comes in sickening wafts, and the enchantment of the East is considerably lessened in your opinion by the oppression of the atmosphere.

You are going up the Hoogli! you are pa.s.sing the Sunderbunds! you can almost see the tigers squatting in rows at the water's edge! it is the East! it is India!--also it is infernally hot, and having retired to your cabin to disrobe, you anathemise your stable companion who has been likewise inspired; curse your overworked cabin steward who has heaved your bedding on to the wrong site; re-arrange everything and bed down.

Everyone was asleep when the light of the full moon caused a subdued l.u.s.tre under the awnings, and a greenish light in Leonie's wide-open, staring eyes, as she suddenly swung herself over the side of her bunk and slid unhurt to the floor.

She made an arresting picture as she stood listening intently, her flimsy garment falling away from her shoulders, leaving the slender white back bare to the waist, while she held handfuls of the transparent stuff crushed against her breast, upon which lay a jewel hung from a gold chain.

Her feet were bare, her arms were bare, and her tawny ma.s.s of hair hung in two thick scented plaits to her dimpled knees; and she repeated some words over and over again like one insane or delirious.

"_Ham abhi ate hai--ham abhi ate hai_."

Which being translated means "I come--I come."

Without the slightest hesitation she opened the door of No. 1 state-room, which she had had to herself after Port Said, and which, as anyone who has travelled on this particular boat will know, gives on to the dining saloon; pa.s.sed swiftly along the narrow pa.s.sage past the notice board and the head steward's cabin, and stood among the human coc.o.o.ns on deck.

For a moment she paused irresolute, turned, and swiftly mounted the companion-way to the bridge deck, her bare feet making no sound, her beautiful body s.h.i.+ning like ivory through the flimsy garment she held gathered to her breast.

Oh! well for her was it that the s.h.i.+p slept, and that the awnings made it almost impossible for those on the bridge to see what took place on the deck.

Though a report of sleep-walking on board would only have served to broaden the lines of laughter in the chief officer's mercurial soul, and deepen the lines of cynicism around the second officer's cynical mouth when the one relieved the other on the bridge at the matutinal hour of four a.m.

And very well for Leonie was it that the captain had forbidden sleeping on his deck, and that the high caste native who had come aboard at Colombo was sitting on the port side as she approached.

Owing to his high caste, and the purity of his habits, the young native had pa.s.sed the days apart from his fellow-pa.s.sengers since he had come aboard; and the days left were too few for the white folk to show any curiosity concerning the handsome man.

You don't feel curious about anything after almost five weeks seafaring; you feel kind of stunned.

Leonie, therefore, had not noticed him particularly as he sat apart with his delicate oval face behind a book when she approached, or pa.s.sed his chair; neither had she felt the gentle luminous eyes resting upon her from the nape of her sunkissed neck to her slim ankle.

Nor did he now, long after midnight, make any sign when, without touching the rails, she came swiftly up the companion-ladder, bending her bronze head to miss the edge of the awning; and he made no movement as she sped past him, crossed the deck to the starboard rail, and putting both hands upon it, swung her body back as you do when you are going to vault clear.

No movement of his body, but he gave a jerk of his will-power which brought the veins out like whipcord upon his forehead, and drove the nails deep into the palms of his hands.

And in response, Leonie's arms slackened. She stood quite still, staring out to where the Sunderbunds lay hidden under mist; then she put one bare foot upon the lower rail, and swinging herself up, sat sideways, leaning far over; in such a position that the slightest lurch of the s.h.i.+p would have sent her headlong into the water.

The native's eyes narrowed to slits, and his nostrils dilated strangely as he pitted his will against the force which was impelling her.

He dared not speak, he dared not touch her. For he knew that one moment of recognition, one breath of scandal touching himself and the woman he trailed, meant the crumbling of the altar he was building stone by stone to his G.o.d.

For that reason he had taken the mail instead of the slow boat she had chosen, and had thought long before deciding to come aboard, even at Colombo.

He was afraid because of the evening she had answered when he called her across London to his side, by the image of Kali the Terrible in a gla.s.s case; afraid that she might recognise him and be on her guard, undoing all that he had done in the last year in obedience to the mandate of the old priest.

Sleeping Leonie, having descended from her perilous seat, stood for a moment with outflung arms, looking across the waters; then turned and walked swiftly and softly like a cat, straight up to the man who rose.

Sweetly she laughed up into his face as she laid one little hand upon the great white cloak which swung from his shoulders, unaware that in moving her hand her own garment had slipped, and that her beauty lay exposed like a lotus bud before his eyes.

She came so close that her bare shoulder touched the fine white linen, and the curves of her scarlet lips wet but a fraction of an inch from his own; and her whimpered words in the eastern tongue were as a flame to an oil well.

"This plant," she murmured, with the light of unholiness in her gleaming eyes, "this plant is honey born--at the tip of my tongue honey--mayest thou come unto my intent!"

He answered softly in the same sonorous tongue and she swayed towards him like a flower.

"About thee with an encompa.s.sing sugar-cane have I gone, in order to absence of mutual hatred; that thou mayest be one loving me, that thou mayest be one not going away from me!"

Where is the dividing line?