Leonie of the Jungle Part 39

There was not apparently an inch of s.p.a.ce to spare in all those narrow streets; but by the madness of religion which drove the packed humanity back against the walls, a way was made for her who appeared to the mult.i.tude as the long-promised earthly incarnation of the G.o.ddess of Death.

When she had pa.s.sed, those who were against the wall remained there, standing crushed to death, supported by the indifferent neighbours who had helped to drive in their ribs; and those who had slipped to their knees in religious fervour, or by reason of the state of the street, also remained p.r.o.ne upon the ground, the ma.s.s of people treading indifferently upon their broken backs and necks, while the threatening heavens were rent with screams of physical agony and cries of sensuous delight.

Straight up the steps ran Leonie, and into the interior of the temple, just as a priest, a lad, with his face twitching spasmodically, and calling upon his G.o.d, fell dead at her feet, smitten by the force of his religion.

Leonie, throwing up her arms, laughed as she put her cut and bleeding foot upon the boy's neck--laughed until the place pealed and echoed with the unseemly clamour, causing the crowds outside, held only in check by the mental force of the handful of priests, to strain against the invisible hypnotic barrier, and cry to high heaven for a sacrifice.

Then Leonie turned about and ran out on to the terrace, standing a ghastly, beautiful figure before the mult.i.tude; and only a pair of monkey eyes, in a pock-marked face, hidden by the deep shadows of a corner inside the temple, saw the high priest with _roomal_ in hand, creep stealthily up behind the girl.

No one in the tumult heard the growling of the elements; no one noticed the clouds bent on enveloping the moon; no one but the pock-marked woman understood what was towards for the appeasing of the outraged G.o.d.

"Blood!" screamed the tight packed ranks; "a sacrifice of blood! Kali is hungry! Kali is thirsty! Give unto the Black Mother that which she demands!"

Leonie flung up both arms and laughed, even as the high priest drew back one step, scowling at the averted sacrifice.

"A sacrifice!" went up the cry from thousands of throats; "a sacrifice!

a sacrifice!"

Again Leonie flung out both arms, and, just as the _roomal_ was slipping over the small head, with the scream of a tigress whose cub is in danger, the ayah leapt straight at her beloved child, wrenching the knotted handkerchief from the priest's hand.

A horrible cry of disappointed blood l.u.s.t shook the very earth; drums beat, horns screamed, daggers flashed in the dense ma.s.s, and fingers met round many a throat.

They were mad indeed the people, but none so mad as Leonie as she stood with feet apart glaring down at the ayah's sleek head, which she held by the hair, in one hand.

So mad was she that the priests drew back as from one divine; all but the high-caste youth who stood unnoticed amongst them and who advanced one step as Leonie raised her face to the moon.

"She of the full moon," she chanted, "was the first wors.h.i.+pped one with depths of days, of nights. They who, O wors.h.i.+pful one, gratify thee with offerings, those well doers are entered into thy firmament!"

To which the waiting mult.i.tude thundered a response.

"A sacrifice! A sacrifice! A sacrifice!"

Over and over again went up the cry as men and women and children fell foaming to the ground, "and conches and kettledrums, tabors and drums, and cow-horns blared."

Then came a silence, deep, sinister, and foreboding; only for one second before it was broken by a gasp, the catching of the breath in ecstasy of thousands of mankind.

And followed screams of pure delight as Leonie flung back her hand, in which gleamed the diamond hilted dagger, just as a terrific peal of thunder crashed upon the searing flash of lightning, which flamed from the dense clouds as they swept over and blotted out the moon.

CHAPTER XL

"Could I come near your beauty with my nails, I'd set my ten commandments in your face!"--_Shakespeare_.

Leonie was sitting on the edge of her bed waiting for the _gharri_ to take her to the station; she had lunched and breakfasted in her bedroom, in fact she had lived there since her interview with the manager, which had been indescribably unpleasant for him, in that it had been so distressing to the gentle girl as she had sat and nodded her head and looked at him out of agonised, forgiving eyes.

The hotel _en ma.s.se_, at least the feminine portion of it, had had a prior interview with the manager which had been _superlatively_ unpleasant for him.

Coerced by a force which was closely allied to the brute; almost shouted down when he essayed to argue in favour of the hounded girl; threatened by the immediate transfer of the entire visiting list to the books of a rival hotel, he had ultimately owned to defeat; and Leonie sat on the edge of her bed, staring vacantly into the denuded dressing-room, while the native staff, yea! even unto him who had done her no service, buzzed round in the vicinity of her door.

Strange things had happened, things undefined, and therefore not capable of bearing the light of honest dissection or discussion.

What _had_ happened during the night of rioting--so-called--in the city? What had been the meaning of those white-robed figures which had fluttered near her door? And oh! why had her faithful ayah been found on the edge of the river the morning after, stabbed through the heart?

As if anyone in India with any sense at all _would_ make inquiries about the last event.

All that and a lot more! and quite enough to slam the gates of heaven or the hotel upon any lovely woman on her own!

Yes! but--did all _that_ really do the actual slamming?

Not a bit of it!

It was the most convenient excuse the womenfolk could find to hang upon the peg of jealousy which had been knocked into the wall of feminine conceit and bad intent, by the hammer of Leonie's beauty, and irritating indifference to both men and women, especially the former.

Let any woman lure to her side some other woman's own particular bit of masculine property; poach successfully upon her understocked male preserves; and figuratively, maybe verbally, most a.s.suredly positively if she live east of Blackfriars, the claws of jealousy will be sharpened upon her; _but_--ignore the bit of masculine property, pa.s.s it by on the other side, consider it as belonging to somebody else, leave the preserves severely alone, and vials of execration, anathema, and denunciation, which are all synonyms for the same thing, will be poured upon her because of her lack of the appreciative faculty.

Fact!

Very few women can see the difference between joyfully h.o.a.rding genuine antique pewter, and wearing a second-hand neglige.

So Leonie was fleeing home via Calcutta, and she sat without movement, hating herself and the world, even the man who, having taken her at her word, had left her alone to stumble as best she could along the crooked, lonely road which would end, as far as she could see, in a padded cell.

"How could you?" she suddenly cried aloud, and the natives made surrept.i.tious signs, and withdrew to a certain distance out of respect to the disorder of her mind. "How _could_ you leave me! Didn't you _know_ that it is because I love you so that I would rather _die_ than let you share my curse? But couldn't you have done _something_, tried to follow that clue, gone somewhere, oh! done _anything_ just to show that----!"

The rumble of wheels cut her agitation short, and drew the native element closer to the door, in order that it should be quite near the mem-sahib when she appeared--with her purse in her left hand.

And while she sat on her bed, and later on in the train, striving to break the mental thongs which bound her to some intangible stake, Jan Cuxson was sitting in the secret places of the jungle temple, striving to break the bonds of raw hide by which he had found himself fastened to a ring in the wall.

As he struggled he speculated savagely upon that insensate sense of security, common to most Britishers, which had caused him to try and find the Hindu temple under the guidance of an unknown native.

He mentally reviewed his journey from the boat to the temple, fighting through the tiger-gra.s.s, breaking through the delicate impeding branches of the sundri trees, crus.h.i.+ng the sundri breathers under his heavy boots as he tramped behind the guide, having failed to notice, owing to the resemblance that exists between one ordinary native and the next, that the guide and coolie of the jungle were not the guide and coolie of the paddle boat.

He remembered that once he had stopped dead and laid a detaining hand on the guide's shoulder, as through the darkening forest had come a cry, eerie as it wailed through the shadows, to be taken up ahead of them, and echoed and re-echoed until it became faint in the distance and died away altogether.

"What's that?"

The native had not hesitated.

"The cry, O Sahib, Protector of the poor, of the jungle owl as it seeks its food!"

Cuxson, un.o.bservant for once, and anxious to get to the end of the trail again failed to notice that it was still far too light for any member of the owl family to be abroad.

Also, when he sat down on a fallen tree trunk to readjust his boot strap, he had mistaken for the booming of a huge jungle insect something which whizzed through the s.p.a.ce where his head had been a second before.

It is true he had questioned the guide as to the route they were taking, pointing out that it was not the one traversed in the _s.h.i.+kar_.

To which the guide had replied that doubtless the _s.h.i.+kari_ had taken the sahibs many miles out of their way to ensure a big toll to the sahibs' guns, and those of the mem-sahibs.