Leonie of the Jungle Part 33

Having acquired the pernicious habit of eating biscuits and reading before going to sleep, she frowned upon the discovery that her ayah appeared to have left the books upon Howrah Station; and had stretched her arm to rap upon the wall to summon the woman, when her eye caught sight of a paper volume lying under the opposite bunk.

India is certainly a most dusty land, but a traveller can keep his railway compartment and boots spotless by distributing a few _pice_ to the dusky, cheery youngsters, who, salaaming, solicit the favour of using boot polish, or floor brush, to the mutual benefit of self and the sahib. Leonie, therefore, felt no repugnance when, clutching the table with her left hand, she made a long arm and secured the book, which proved to be a guide to India's most famous beauty spots.

She turned the leaves casually and laughed.

"Why! I'd completely forgotten it," she said aloud, turning the book sideways to look at an ill.u.s.tration. "The wonderful tomb Guy Dean insisted upon my visiting if I ever went to Benares. How beautiful!

Must be the tomb of some ancestor of that young prince he was talking about. Oh! how beautiful, and--oh! how helpful! I suppose some Englishman must have left the book in the train by mistake."

She had picked up a bit of paper which had fallen from the book; a rough time-table with directions in English as to the best means of getting to the world-famed monument.

"That decides it," she said sleepily as she switched off the light, pulled a miniature mosquito net, deftly arranged by the ayah, over her head, and the sheet up to her neck. "We get to the station to-morrow--sometime--disembark--put luggage into cloak-room--find elephant and--and dak bungalow--and--oh! almost full moon--how--_how_ delicious---ride out and see the--the----"

She slept, oblivious of the fact that she was carrying out implicitly the programme mapped out for her.

Travelling in India is real sport when the train doors are likely to swing open at no given spot, soft-footed natives to enter surrept.i.tiously and disappear as quietly upon sight of your open eyes; and guards to clamour for your ticket, while a mob collects outside your door at the junction to look at the pretty unveiled mem-sahib awakened from her slumber by a dignified bearer with his offering of _chotar hazri_, which means the thrice blessed early tea-tray.

Her restless spirit was soothed by the rush of the train through the endless plain; strange scenes, strange sights wrenched her mind from the terrible question everlastingly throbbing in her brain; and her eye was not quick enough to distinguish one delicate oval face from another, or to notice that at each stopping place her ayah meandered down the length of the train to a compartment where, in consequence of his high caste and rank, a man sat utterly alone--unconcerned and totally oblivious of the screaming, chattering crowd upon the platform, of beggars, pilgrims, and _bona fide_ native travellers.

True, for one moment at the station where she alighted for the world-famed tomb, she glanced back hurriedly at a native who placed himself between her and an unsightly epileptic; and she looked back once again as her intuition rapped out a message she did not grasp, and her ayah suddenly besought her help with the coolies.

A dilapidated tonga, drawn by a pony of the same description, took her and her servant to the dak bungalow, built on a concrete platform in a jungle clearing about two miles outside the village.

There she gave carte blanche for the arrangement of the evening trip to the guide who materialised serenely, all smiles and extreme deference.

Bathed, and fed, she had her hair brushed for half an hour by her ayah; refused the offer of ma.s.sage, which process she abhorred, and turned in and slept the afternoon away upon her own bedding spread on a charpoy.

Later she bathed again, attired herself in a simple low-cut, white silk dress, dined, and wrapping herself in a heavy white Bedouin cloak, wedding present from Jill Wetherbourne, who had got it from her G.o.dmother in Egypt, seated herself on the verandah to await the arrival of whatever means of locomotion the guide had chosen to take her to the tomb.

And down the jungle path loomed the shape of a great elephant, moving at a gentle shuffle but an almost incredible speed.

Without audible instructions it stopped in front of the verandah, threw back its trunk, twined it gently about the middle of the _mahout_ or driver, lifted him from his seat behind its ears and placed him on the ground; then on a word, trumpeted shrilly in greeting to Leonie.

"Oh!" said she as she almost sprang from her chair in delight. "Oh!"

The _mahout_ salaamed, standing in the moonlight at the animal's head.

He made a vivid eastern picture, dressed as he was from head to foot in white, with two pleated side-pieces to the turban, hanging in suchwise as to conceal half the face; and the guide, who had been squatting on the edge of the path, also salaamed, smiling in glee at the mem-sahib's delight.

"Behold, mem-sahib," he said, "is the elephant even Rama, the pearl of the prince's stables." His English was not quite as intelligible as these printed words, but Leonie made s.h.i.+ft to understand.

"I have never seen such a beautiful elephant," she said, walking up to the great beast, followed by the guide, the ayah and the bungalow factotum.

The mem's statement was quite within the range of possibility seeing that her elephant lore had been gathered from the Zoo and other low-caste specimens with their straight backs, mean tails, and long stringy legs.

"Does the--the _mahout_ speak English, because my Hindustani is not very good. I would like to have the--the beauty of the animal explained to me, and why it has its face and body painted; and why does he, the _mahout_, I mean, wear those side pieces to the turban, they are very unusual."

A moment's pause, during which the _mahout_ stood like a rock, and then the guide, shuffling his feet, answered to the effect that the driver could not speak English, but that her humble servant would translate if the mem-sahib would deign to listen to his mean speech; that the man was the prince's best beloved--_mahout_, he added after a second's pause, and that the side pieces were part of the uniform worn by the prince's head-mahouts.

Not a bit of which information was true, _mais que voulez vous_?

So they all walked round Rama the beautiful, the guide translating the soft Hindustani into lamentable English.

Rama, it seemed, was a _koomeriah_, a royal or high-caste elephant, and still a youth, being but forty years of age, _vide_ his ears. His height was ten feet at the shoulder, and would the mem-sahib note the perfect slope of the back down to the beautiful, long, feathery tail.

Also the ma.s.sive chest and head, with the prominent lump between the eyes so bright and kind, and full of knowledge. Notice also the deep barrel, and short, so very short, hind legs, the heaviness of the trunk, the plump cheeks which would indeed grace a comely elephant maiden; count the eighteen nails upon the lovely feet, and place her hand upon the soft skin which fell in folds about the tail.

Leonie did as she was bid and ran her hand also down the nearest magnificent tusk, with tip cut off and ringed about the middle with bands of gold inlaid with precious stones.

"Perfect ivory," continued the guide, "five feet in length with tip, curving upwards with the curve of the sickle moon, and sloping slightly from each other as though in anger."

Leonie smiled at the guide's verbal imagery, and put her hand upon a cream coloured mark near the base of the broad trunk.

"Why, I thought it was paint!" she said, speaking over her shoulder to the _mahout_, who, unperceived, held a fold of her white cloak in his hand. "This is paint, surely," she added, running a finger-tip down the vermilion and white lines which covered the great beast's face and sides.

It seemed that the yellowy-white blotches raised the animal's value above that of sacksful of rubies, and the painting of the face and sides served two purposes; one to render it easier for the animal to find favour in the eyes of the G.o.ds, the other to bring about the same result in the eyes of man; even as does woman when she accentuates the night blackness of her eyes with antimony; and the slenderness of her finger-tips with henna.

In state procession it seemed that Rama the perfect carried a gold and jewel encrusted howdah upon his beautiful sloping back; that what was left uncovered of his anatomy was hung with a net of silver, with ta.s.sels of pearls; that strings of seed pearls were entwined in the glorious meshes of hair in the beautiful tail; and that his nails were manicured, bracelets of golden bells hung about the ankles, and buckets of perfume poured into his bath.

"The _mahout_ has placed the humble cus.h.i.+oned seat this night upon the back, mem-sahib, so that nothing shall be between the mem-sahib and the light of the moon."

Leonie gave orders that a succulent cake full of currants and flavour should be brought forthwith from her hamper, and having pushed it as far back into the mouth as possible, where it was demolished to the accompaniment of the most disgusting masticatory noises, laughed aloud when the elephant stood on its short hind legs to show its appreciation, and said thank you by means of a soft purring sound in the throat.

The process of getting to the knees reminded Leonie somewhat of a sailing vessel she had seen rolling in a rough sea, but she settled herself comfortably in the cus.h.i.+oned seat and waited with glee for the _mahout_ to get into position upon the animal's neck and order it to rise.

"What is he waiting for?" she asked, as he made no movement.

"He wishes to know where the ayah is to sit," answered the guide.

"_Ayah_!" said Leonie, and laughed gently. "But I am going alone!"

The _mahout_ said something swiftly.

"The way is many miles through the jungle, mem-sahib; there is no dak bungalow, no people, the mem-Sahibs and also the sahibs go always accompanied."

"I am going alone," said Leonie quietly. "Tell the _mahout_ to get up."

Upon a word of command the elephant got to its feet, and raised one knee; the _mahout_ placed one foot upon it and swung himself up to his seat upon the short neck, said something to the elephant, who moved off up the jungle path, while the servants salaamed deeply to Leonie, and again even more deeply in the direction of the elephant's head.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV

"Some little talk awhile of me and thee There seem'd--and then no more of thee and me."--_Omar Khayyam_.

The elephant trumpeted before the gate.

The two halves of the door opened from within, clanged against the sides, and the _durwans_ in scarlet and silver bent almost double as they salaamed before the white woman who pa.s.sed under the red-stone, centuries-old gate upon the back of Rama the Great and Perfect.