Part 39 (2/2)

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.

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