Leonie of the Jungle Part 9

"Who thought of that, I wonder," he said to himself, as he watched the four women kneeling round Jessica stretched out upon the floor.

They were going through the movements used in resuscitating the drowned, and he, too, knelt at a nod by the side of the fat old woman in an emerald green moirette petticoat and a somewhat _decla.s.se_ bedjacket, who was breathing heavily through the unaccustomed exercise.

"Let us be--a bit, Sir!" she panted. "She don't some'ow feel--quite--as dead--like! Give us a--a chance. One--two--three--four. It's the--reg'lar--as does--it. Miss Lee--onny's orders--Sir--bless er----"

She jerked her head in the direction of Leonie, and the doctor looked.

Behind her friend's head she knelt, her plaited hair twining like snakes to the ground, her eyes closed, her mouth slightly open, and the fingers of both hands pressing the temples of the child upon the floor, whilst to and fro, lifeless, dull, swung the great cat's-eye from a gold chain about the neck.

"Good G.o.d!" muttered the young doctor who, having travelled the world as s.h.i.+p's surgeon, knew that the scalpel and soda-c.u.m-gentian do not const.i.tute the whole of the art of healing.

As he looked a great bead of perspiration dropped from Leonie's forehead, between the taut arms, on to her knees; and a sudden s.h.i.+ver shook her from head to foot, and he heaved his overcoat into a chair, and edged very quietly until he knelt between her and Cookie.

"It's 'orrible, Sir!" the latter whispered, as she glanced at the pupil she loved most.

And it was.

By now the perspiration was pouring in streams from the girl's face, whilst the slim body shook and shook like a young tree in a storm; her teeth chattered like castanets, her closed eyes were sunk in purple black orbits, the cheeks were drawn and grey, and the nostrils were dilating like those of a far-spent horse.

"For Gawd's sake stop 'er. Sir--she's a-killing of 'erself."

The doctor shook his head, took out a brandy flask and a metal box from a leather case beside him on the floor. He held up the ready-filled gla.s.s syringe to the light and sent a squirt of what looked like water through the gleaming needle.

"If the young lady shows signs of life I want you to get this brandy down her throat _at once_, and begin to ma.s.sage her heart."

"Ma.s.sige! that's same as kneading dough, ain't it, Sir!"

"That's it! Miss--Miss--oh! Leonie will want the most attention, she is only just alive. I will give her another two minutes, and if nothing has happened by then I'll stop her, though it'll be an awful risk!"

"What's she a-doin' of, Sir?"

"She's forcing her own life, her vitality into her friend; she's practically raising the dead!"

"_Lor_, Sir!"

He had just raised his hand to touch Leonie, praying to heaven for the girl's reason, when she suddenly flung back her head.

Up through the house-top, to the stars, the heavens, rushed the terrible cry, wailing as wails the wolf who has lost its mate, insisting as insists one who has staked his all on one final throw, imploring as implores the mother in the last dire throes of childbirth.

What the language was, what the words meant, to whom the prayer was addressed, no one knew.

But at the third terrible appeal to G.o.d, or Fate, or Death, or Life, and even as those who listened outside and those who ceased their labours in the room stuffed their ears with their fingers and sobbed, little Jessica opened her eyes, and smiled just as Leonie, flinging up her arms, crashed face downwards on the floor.

CHAPTER XII

"The fix'd events of Fate's remote decrees."--_Pope_.

Vultures drowsed in the shade thrown by the crumbling, sun-cracked, heat-stricken mud walls and houses which lined the meandering unpaved streets, or rather pa.s.sages, of a certain village in northern India; crows were packed everywhere, taking no notice for the nonce of the feast of filth and garbage spread invitingly around them, and in which sprawled the disgusting, distorted bodies of somnolent water buffaloes; inside the houses hags, matrons, maidens, and little maids slept through the terrific heat of the noonday hours; in the distance the Himalayas, supreme and distressing, like a ridge across eternity, lay behind the turrets and minarets of the town which, thanks to the Indian atmosphere and the long distance, shone white, fretted, and--well, exactly as you can see it any day in paint at the Academy or in Bond Street.

Perfectly motionless upon the high khaki-coloured wall, which entirely surrounds the village, with dust upon his aged feet and raiment and once white turban, oblivious of the heat, the flies, and everything that slept, sat a man with age written upon every gnarled joint, and in every crack and fissure of the parchment-like skin.

_So_ old, and _yet_ with life, and hope, and youth eternal in the dark hawk eye which gazed unseeingly through the outer world straight towards the mountains.

And the old body made no sign of life, even when the vultures without sound soared majestically heavenwards, whilst the crows rose in shrieking disordered squads, and a kite whistling melodiously swooped from nowhere downwards across his head to the filth of the streets.

Neither did he turn his head or his eyes when a coal-black stallion, guided only by the pressure of its rider's knees, came to a stand directly beneath him in the shadow of the wall, having scrambled and slithered, jumping like a deer, climbing like a goat down the rock-strewn road which leads to the village from the great house at its rear; one of those abominable roads allotted to the calloused native foot, honoured for the first time in this instance by the pa.s.sage of the prince's son and heir.

An arresting picture the rider and his horse made as the man bent low in the saddle and salaamed, then raised his turbaned head and sat motionless, gazing at the holy man.

Minutes pa.s.sed before, with arms filled with offerings and garlands of marigolds and jasmin swinging from his wrists, he slid from the saddle to the ground, and took his way up the narrow tortuous path which Fate had marked out for him through all time.

High caste, high born, as slender and delicate and as pressed with life as a budding branch in spring, Madhu Krishnaghar stood beside the priest in the incongruous setting of the mud walls.

A coat of fine white linen with broad orange waistband came to just below the knees; white trousers fastened tight about the ankle fitted almost like a stocking from ankle to knee; the slender, narrow feet were shod in native slippers, the white turban with its regulation folds outlined the pale bronze face with the sign of the man's religion traced between the eyebrows; diamond solitaires sparkled in the ears, and one necklace of great pearls hung about his neck.

"Usual large gentle eye, hawk nose, mobile mouth and small-boned oval face" would doubtlessly have been the flippant comment of any occidental pa.s.ser-by; "meet 'em everywhere, gambling at the street corner, or squatting in the bazaar, or riding elephants."

Yes! but--is not India's future history writ large upon that small-boned oval face for those who, having the vision, read as they walk warily.

For those who run hastily past life's signposts cannot and will not see that, like the fresh green gra.s.s which hides the dug pit, those gentle luminous eyes draw attention from the subtle cruelty of the mouth, through which gleam the pitiless perfect teeth.

Glorying in his bull-neck and ma.s.sive chin, and blinded by his insular, inherited upbringing, the European will exclaim "Pah!" at sight of the thin cheek and delicate oval face, failing utterly to notice the set of the ears on the head; just as, muscle bound through wors.h.i.+p at the shrine of Sport, he will mistake the eastern courtesy and poetry of movement for obsequiousness and humility, ignoring the terrible root from which these delicate flowers spring; the root of patience; with its tentacles ever twining and twisting through the eastern mind, causing the very old to die placidly with a smile on their shrivelled lips, and the young to envisage plague, pestilence, and famine with a mere lifting of the shoulder. Patience! the card which India does not hold up her sleeve in the game of life she is playing; the dull-coloured drab little bit of cardboard which she throws on the table openly, but which we ignore amongst the highly coloured, bejewelled pictures she places before us, smiling with the tender luminous eyes so that we shall forget the subtle cruelty of the mouth.

Placing his offerings at the holy man's feet, and laying the garlands gently about the bowed shoulders, Madhu Krishnaghar, the son of princes, stooped and lifting the hem of the dust-covered garment, laid it against his forehead, then quietly sat down a pace removed from the ancient who took no notice whatever of his proceedings.

And time pa.s.sed, linking one hour of noon to its neighbour and the next, until the hags, matrons, maidens, and little maids awoke to the freshness of the evening and the monotony of its tasks.

Kites called, crows screamed, men gambled in the shadows of the evening and the upstanding, distorted, disgusting water buffalo; while the two men, master and pupil in the religion of death, sat hour after hour without movement, staring at the mountains, the dwelling-place of Siva the terrible, and the birthplace of Kali his bride.

Far into the night they sat, until the last quarter of the moon had sunk to rest, when, with one single movement, the old man sprang to his feet, flung out his arms, and bent in utter humility and cast dust upon his once white turban.

His voice was but a shrill cracked whisper when he called upon his G.o.d from the crumbling top of the sunbaked, moon-drenched wall, and turning, lifted his travel-stained mantle and laid it on the young shoulders beside him.

An hour had pa.s.sed, and more, before the holy man's tale, which ran back through the past seventeen years, was finished. And when it had been told the high caste youth trembled in the ecstasy of his religion, amazed at the enlightenment thrown upon his own enigmatical life, uplifted at the task before him. Yea! he trembled in the ecstasy of his religion, forgetting that love and pa.s.sion and life ran just as riotously in his supple perfect body.

He leapt to his feet, smiting his forehead with clenched hand.

"Give me a sign, O Kali! Show me that thou art pleased!"

And he rent his garments in joy, showing the bronze breast with the blood-red marks of his terrible religion traced upon it; then thrusting his fingers in his ears sank to the ground and buried his head between his knees.

A black kid, the happiest of all good omens, bleating with hunger, tripped and stumbled from a courtyard; yet even as it found its mother and buried its little head in the warmth of the soft side, there had come across the plains a weird, long-drawn-out sound, fraught with disaster to those who believe in signs.

Long and shrill it sounded and ceased; and once again--to be lost in peals of indecent, discordant laughter.