The Jungle Girl Part 17

After tea, as the sun was nearing its setting and a deliciously cool breeze blew down from the mountains, a move was made to the garden, where the party sat in a circle and chatted. When evening came and the dusk rose up from the world below, blotting out the light lingering on the hills, Mrs. Dermot made her children say goodnight to the company and bore them reluctant away to their beds. As the darkness deepened the servants brought out a small table and placed a lamp on it, and by its light carried round drinks to the men of the party. Miss Benson was leaning back in a cane chair and chatting lazily with Burke, who sat beside her. She had one shapely silk-clad leg crossed over the other, and a small foot resting on the gra.s.s. Opposite her sat Colonel Dermot and Wargrave. As the brilliant tropic stars came out in the velvety blackness of the sky occasional silences fell on the party. A tale of Burke's was interrupted by the Political Officer's voice, saying in a quiet forceful tone:

"Miss Benson, please do not move your foot. Remain perfectly still. A snake is pa.s.sing under your chair. Steady, Burke! Keep still!"

There was a terror-stricken hush. Frank looked across in horror. The lamplight barely showed in the shadow under the chair a deadly hill-viper writhing its way out within a few inches of the small foot firmly planted in its dainty, high-heeled shoe. He looked at the motionless girl. Less pale than the men about her she sat quietly, smiling faintly and apparently not frightened by the Death almost touching her. One pink hand lay without a tremor in her lap, but the other rested on the arm of her chair and the knuckles showed white as the fingers gripped the bamboo tightly. She did not even glance down.

But the men, frozen with dread, watched the shadowy writhing line pa.s.sing her foot slowly, all too slowly, until it had wriggled out into the centre of the circle of motionless beings. Then Colonel Dermot sprang up. Seizing his light bamboo chair in his powerful grip he whirled it aloft and brought it cras.h.i.+ng down on the viper, shattering the chair but smas.h.i.+ng the reptile's spine in half a dozen places.

The other men had risen from their seats; but the girl remained seated and said quietly:

"Thank you very much, Colonel, for warning me. I might easily have moved my foot and trodden on the snake. I've seen so many of the horrid things in camp lately. Now, Captain Burke, I'm sorry that the interruption spoiled your story. Please go on with it."

Her coolness silenced the men, who were breaking into exclamations of relief and congratulation. Even her father sat down again calmly.

But Burke's enthusiastic admiration of her courage found an outlet at Mess that night when he recounted the adventure to Major Hunt and appealed to Wargrave for confirmation of the story of her plucky behaviour. Later in his room as he was going to bed Frank smiled at the recollection of the Irishman's exuberant expressions; but he confessed to himself that the girl's calm courage was worthy of every praise.

"She is certainly brave," he thought. "I'm not surprised at old Burke's infatuation. She is decidedly pretty. What lovely eyes she's got--and what a provokingly attractive little nose! Well, the doctor's a lucky man if she marries him. She seems awfully nice. Violet will certainly have two very charming women friends in the station if she hits it off with them."

But as his eyes rested on her pictured face his heart misgave him; for he remembered that she had little liking for her own s.e.x. And then, he told himself, these two would probably refuse to know a woman who had run away from her husband to another man. When he had turned out the light and jumped into bed he lay awake a long time puzzling over the tangle into which the threads of her life and his seemed to have got.

Time alone could unravel it.

He tossed uneasily on his bed, unable to sleep, and presently a slight noise on the verandah outside caught his ear. He lay still and listened; and it seemed to him that soft footfalls of a large animal's pads sounded on the wooden flooring. Then suddenly he heard a beast sniffing at his closed door. "A stray dog," he thought. But suddenly he remembered Burke's account of the panther that haunted the Mess; and a thrill of excitement ran through him and drove all his unhappy thoughts away. He sprang out of bed and rushed across the room to get his rifle, but in the darkness overturned a chair which fell with a crash to the ground. This scared the animal; for there was a sudden scurry outside, and by the time Wargrave had found the rifle and groped for a couple of cartridges there was nothing to be seen on the verandah when he threw open the door. It was a brilliant star-lit night. Burke called to him from his room and when Wargrave went to him said that he too had heard the animal, which was undoubtedly the panther.

Returning to bed Frank was dropping off to sleep half an hour later when he was startled by a shrill, agonised shriek coming from a distance.

Rifle in hand he rushed out on to the verandah again and heard faint shouts coming from a small group of Bhuttia huts on a shoulder of the hills hundreds of feet above the Mess. He called out but got no answer; and after listening for some time and hearing nothing further he returned to bed and at last fell asleep. In the morning he learned that the panther had made a daring raid on a hut and carried off a Bhuttia wood-cutter's baby from its sleeping mother's side, and had devoured it in the jungle not two hundred yards away.

The Durbar, or official ceremony of the public reception of the Bhutan Envoy and the paying over to him of the annual subsidy of a hundred thousand rupees, was held in a marquee on the parade ground in the afternoon. There was a Guard of Honour of a hundred sepoys to salute, first the Political Officer and afterwards the _Deb Zimpun_ when he arrived on a mule at the head of his swordsmen and coolies. The solemnity of his dignified greeting to Colonel Dermot was somewhat spoiled by shrieks of delight and loud remarks from Eileen (who was seated beside her mother in the marquee) at the stately appearance of the Envoy. He was attired in a very voluminous red Chinese silk robe embroidered in gold and wearing a peculiar gold-edged cap shaped like a papal tiara.

The Political Officer's official dinner took place that evening at his bungalow. Besides the officers and the three European visitors the _Deb Zimpun_ and the _Amban_ were present. The latter wore conventional evening dress cut by a London tailor, with the stars and ribands of several orders. But the old Envoy in his flowing red silk robe completely outshone the two ladies, although Miss Benson was wearing her most striking frock.

"Sure, don't we look like a State Banquet at Buckingham Palace or a charity dinner at the Dublin Mansion House?" said Burke, looking around the company gathered about the oval dining-table. He was seated beside Miss Benson, who was on the host's right and facing the _Amban_ on his left.

At the Durbar Wargrave had noticed that the Chinaman stared all the time at the girl, and now during the meal he seemed to devour her with an unpleasant gaze, gloating over the beauties of her bared shoulders and bosom until she became uncomfortably conscious of it herself. The unveiled flesh of a white woman is peculiarly attractive to the Asiatic, the better-cla.s.s females of whose race are far less addicted to the public exposure of their charms than are European ladies. While the _Deb Zimpun_ touched nothing but water the _Amban_ drank champagne, port and liqueurs freely--even the untravelled Chinaman is partial to European liquors--yet they seemed not to affect him. But his slanted eyes burned all the more fiercely as their gaze was fixed on the girl opposite him.

He endeavoured to engage her in conversation across the table, and appeared ready to resent anyone else intervening in the talk as he dilated on the gaieties and pleasures of life in London, Berlin and Paris, where he had been attached to the Chinese Emba.s.sies. He glared at Burke when the doctor persisted in mentioning the panther's visit during the previous night, for the conversation at their end of the table then turned on sport. A chance remark of Miss Benson on tiger-shooting made Wargrave ask:

"Have you shot tigers, too, like Mrs. Dermot? And I've never seen one outside a cage!"

The girl smiled, and the Colonel answered for her.

"Miss Benson has got at least six. Seven, is it? More than my wife has.

And among them was the famous man-eater of Mardhura, which had killed twenty-three persons. The natives of the district call her 'The Tiger Girl.'"

"Troth, my name for you is a prettier one, Miss Benson," said Burke laughing.

She made a _moue_ at him, but said to the subaltern:

"Cheer up, Mr. Wargrave, you've lots of time before you yet. You oughtn't to complain--you've only been a few days here and you've already got a splendid bison. And they're rare in these parts."

"We'll have to find him a tiger, Muriel," said their host. "When you hear of a kill anywhere conveniently near, let me know and we'll arrange a beat for him."

"With pleasure, Colonel. We're soon going to the southern fringe of the forest; and, as you know, there are usually tigers to be found in the _nullahs_ on the borders of the cultivated country. I'll send you _khubber_ (news)."

"Thank you very much," said Wargrave. "I do want to get one."

All through the conversation the girl felt the Chinaman's bold eyes seeming to burn her flesh, and she was glad when the Political Officer spoke to him and engaged his attention. And she was still more relieved when dinner ended and Mrs. Dermot rose to leave the table. When the men joined them later on the verandah Burke and Wargrave made a point of hemming her in on both sides and keeping the _Amban_ off; for even the short-sighted doctor had become cognisant of the Chinaman's offensive stare.

When he and the _Deb Zimpun_ had left the bungalow she said to the two officers:

"I'm so glad you didn't let that awful man come near me. He makes me afraid. There's something so evil about him that I shudder when he looks at me."

"The curse av the crows on the brute!" exclaimed Burke hotly. "Don't ye be afraid. We won't let the divil come next or nigh ye, will we, Wargrave?"

And on the following day when the visitors were entertained by athletic sports of the detachment on the parade ground and an interesting archery compet.i.tion between excited teams of the _Deb Zimpun's_ followers and of local Bhuttias, they allowed the _Amban_ no opportunity of approaching her. During the sports Wargrave noticed on one occasion that he seemed to be speaking of her to the commander of his escort of Chinese soldiers, a tall, evil-faced Manchu, pock-marked and blind of the right eye, who stared at her fixedly for some time. At the dinner at the Mess that night the two ladies wore frocks that were very little _decollete_. Burke, as Mess President, had arranged the table so that the _Amban_ was as far away from them as possible; and Wargrave and he mounted guard over Miss Benson when the meal was ended.

The _Deb Zimpun_ had fixed his departure for an early hour on the following morning and was to be accompanied by the Political Officer, who was going to visit the Maharajah of Bhutan. In the course of the day the Chinese _Amban_ had announced to Colonel Dermot that he did not wish to leave so soon and desired to remain longer in Ranga Duar; but the Political Officer courteously but very firmly told him that he must go with the Envoy.

Early next morning, while Noreen Dermot was occupied with her children, and her husband was completing his preparations for departure, Muriel Benson went out into the garden. Badshah, pad strapped on ready for the road, was standing at one side of the bungalow swinging his trunk and s.h.i.+fting from foot to foot as he patiently awaited his master. The girl greeted and petted him, then went to gather flowers and cut bunches of bright-coloured leaves from high bushes of bougainvillea and poinsettia that hid her from view from the house.

Suddenly a harsh voice sounded in her ears.

"I have tried to speak to you alone, but those fools were ever in my way. Do not cry out. You must listen to me."

She started violently and turned to find the _Amban_, dressed in khaki and ready to march, behind her. Courageous as she usually was the extraordinary repulsion and terror with which he inspired her kept her silent as he continued:

"I want you, and I shall take you sooner or later. Listen! I am one of the richest men in all China. One day I shall be President--and then Emperor the next; and when I rule my country shall no longer be the effete, despised land torn with dissension that it is now. I can give you everything that the heart of a woman, white or yellow, can desire--take you from your dull, poverty-stricken life to raise you to power and immense wealth. I shall return for you one day. Will you come to me?"

The girl drew back, pale as death and unable to cry out. He glanced around. The tall, red-leaved bushes hid them; there was no one or nothing within sight, except the elephant s.h.i.+fting restlessly.

"Answer me!" he said almost menacingly.

She was silent. He sprang forward and seized her roughly.

"Speak! You must answer," he said.

The girl shrank at his touch and struggled in vain in his powerful grasp.

Then suddenly she cried out:

"Badshah!"

The Chinaman thrust his face, inflamed with pa.s.sion and desire, close to hers.

"You must, you shall, come to me--by force, if not willingly," he growled. "By all the G.o.ds or devils----."

But at that instant he was plucked from her by a resistless force and hurled violently to the ground. Dazed and half-stunned he looked up and saw the elephant standing over him with one colossal foot poised over his prostrate body, ready to crush him to pulp. Brave as the Chinaman was he trembled with terror at the imminent, awful death.

But a quiet voice sounded clear through the garden.

"_Jane do_! (Let him go!)"