Part 37 (1/2)

Was he born mad? no one knows! What does he eat or drink? A handful of rice, a sip of water from his glittering bronze vessel! When does he sleep? No one can tell you.

Who knows! who cares!

He is a holy man! the mad priest of the Holy City!

He alone had taken no heed of the incessant resistless throbbing of the drums behind him in the city; neither did he take notice of the two white figures as they ran lightly, swiftly, hand-in-hand down the sunken, crooked, granite steps to a place between the praying rafts at the water's edge.

For a moment Leonie hesitated with the water lapping her feet on the third step, then she turned her head slowly, and looked straight into the man's eyes which had been fixed intently on the nape of her neck.

She gave a little sigh, drew out the dagger and let fall the plaited glory of her hair, and lifting the garlands from about her neck threw them out on to the waters; then with a native woman's movement pulled the _sari_ backwards from her head, and unwound it from her shoulders which gleamed like ivory in the moonlight. Slowly, but without hesitation, even as the man dropped his shawl and long white garment upon the waters, she untwined the _sari_ from about her body, dropped it across a _suttee_ stone, and the dagger upon the step behind, and stood swaying gently with naught but the sheeting about her waist and limbs.

The man, naked save for a loin cloth, stood like some splendid bronze statue two steps lower; straight as a pine was Madhu, the descendant of princes, with a width of shoulder most unusual in the native of India, and which served to emphasise the slimness of the waist. Muscle rippled under the bronze skin of back, and chest, and limbs; and between the b.r.e.a.s.t.s gleamed the painted symbol of his religion, just as it shone between the brows.

The lean face with its hawk nose, and curved mouth set close in a straight line, had the look of an eagle as he stood gazing up at the girl with burning eyes, in which fanaticism, heightened by the lapping movement of the holy water about his knees, warred with an overwhelming pa.s.sion roused by the slenderness of the white girl's waist, the virginity of her beautiful breast, and the satin whiteness of her skin.

And she placed her hand in his and followed him submissively down the steps.

The waters bathed her ankles, her knees, her waist, as she made a cup of her two hands and drank of the holy water; the jackals yelled from the far sh.o.r.e, and the unseemly body of a dead youth floated past face downwards a few yards away.

For some long minutes she stood with her face uplifted, then dipping her hands again into the water raised them and poured it upon her head until she glittered as though beset with diamonds. Strange little movements she made to right and left with both hands, circles she drew on the face of the waters, and the man within an inch of her beautiful body stood with arms folded hiding his hard clenched hands.

Raising both arms straight above her head she called aloud in answer to the spirit which moved her:

”Flowing on, devoted to it,” she cried in the soft words of India's holy writ, ”by day and by night flowing on; I, of desirable activity, call upon the heavenly waters!”

From the temple above the mad priest took up her words as he scourged himself in the ecstasy of his wors.h.i.+p, and shouted:

”Kali! Kali! Kali!”

Which eerie solitary cry brought the pigeons out of their nests in thousands, to wheel and whirl madly in their fright before resettling in the facade of the palaces, of the niches and nooks of the temples, and the slender minarets of the Mosque of Aurangzeb.

Bending backwards Leonie laughed up at the priest above, whose body was running blood, then descending the last three steps worn by the feet of thousands of pilgrims, and tilted by time and the resistless waters, flung out her arms and sank beneath the surface while the great plaits of hair floated towards the man and crept about his waist like loving, living arms.

Three times she sank, and three times she rose, singing gently to herself, while great tremors shook the man from his turbaned head to his slender feet.

Love or religion? Who knows!

Are they divided by much more than the breadth of a hair?

Leonie turned and walked up the steps, the wet heavy sheeting hobbling her about the knees and ankles, clinging to her as the skin to the peach, her dripping hair making little pools of holy water upon the holy steps; until, standing upon the one where lay the little crumpled heap of her silken _sari_, she unplaited it and shook it out in the night breeze.

She picked up the _sari_ and the dagger, and ran a finger along the razor edge, looking sideways at the man who moved not an inch when she drove the point of the blade beneath the skin above his heart until the blood ran; neither did she move when he dipped his finger in his own blood and marked her between the brows with the sign of Kali.

The mad priest, frothing at the mouth, swooned upon the slanting temple roof, the drums were silent, the jackals had ceased their indecent noise, being intent doubtless upon the task of tearing some body to pieces before the arrival of the hosts of enemy pariah dogs; and Leonie, beautiful, bewitched Leonie, holding the white _sari_ picked out in silver against her breast, held out her hand, and with the sweetest, maddest laugh in all the world sped like a deer up the great nights of steps.

And at the top when the man, moving swift and as surefooted as a buck, closed in upon her, her heavy drapery folded itself soddenly about her ankles so that when she essayed to save herself she twisted round and fell backwards.

Her mouth quivered in a smile, and her eyes, like stars, flashed back into the flaming ones so near her own as the man, lost to all but his consuming love for the girl, bent above her, and with slender hands crushed her back against the edge of the steps until the skin of her shoulders was torn and bruised.

”As the creeper!” he said, whispering the words of the Vega hymn with his eyes staring straight into her eyes. ”As the creeper has completely embraced the tree so do thou embrace me, that thou mayest be one loving me, that thou mayest be one not going away from me!”