Part 25 (1/2)
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_.”