Part 41 (2/2)
Truly the dust, save for the deer marks, was undisturbed, but Cuxson shook his head stoutly, and refused to believe the evidence of his own eyes.
”The sahib will not believe! Then will I make her, the white woman, see thee, the man she desires as husband, a prisoner in the House of Kali, covered in blood, and she will hasten forthwith to thee--and to me!”
Cuxson sprang to his feet with murder in his eyes, but stopped and flung out his hands as though to thrust aside some obstacle.
The priest laughed softly.
”O babe in wisdom! Behold, thou shalt not be bound, yet shalt thou not stir beyond yon temple wall until she come, and with her the son of princes who yearns for her; then shall I lift my will from thee and tie thee to the wall that thou mayst behold the double sacrifice of _love_ and _life_ made to Kali the Terrible.”
The priest was gone, and Jan Cuxson sat down upon a fallen block of masonry, covering his face with his wounded hands; and faintly from the temple echoed the voice of the priest as he prayed to his G.o.d before projecting his will across the s.p.a.ce that divided him from the white woman.
Only for a little moment of despondency, and then he sat back and shook his great shoulders with the light of battle in his eyes, and grim determination in every line of the powerful jaw.
How he was going to circ.u.mvent the priest and save his beloved he did not know--he had no plan, but--he was going to pull it off.
”The son of princes,” he said, addressing a monkey which had flung a stick at him from the top of the wall, ”why I'd trust my dear, bewitched or not, with a thousand sons of princes. I love her and she loves me, you gibbering bit of fur, and d'you think _anything_ could stand against _that_. Let her come! Just let her be within reach of my arms, _then_ you'll see what you will see. Let the priest play into my hands, and bring her here, the sooner the better, for _that_ is exactly what _I_ want.”
And he laughed as he refilled his pipe, blessing the old priest for his consideration in annexing naught but his rifle and revolver.
Which is just about the simplest way of starting to get out of a tight corner.
Ignoring all obstacles, owning to no defeat. The splendid heritage of the English speaking race.
CHAPTER XLII
”A good name is better than precious ointment.”--_The Bible_.
”And in its light the Star of Love aglow, Shone with her beacon fire, a guide and guardian still.”--_Dante's Inferno_.
In the middle of the night Leonie lay face downwards upon her bed in the great Eastern Hotel.
All the luggage she had brought with her from England was stacked around the small room, and even in the dressing-room; in fact, there was that unfinished, unpacked air about the whole place which is inseparable from anyone in India who is in the throes of going home.
She had returned on the wings of panic from Benares, only to find that the gossip which had been circulated about her had arrived well in advance; and that, like crows after a dust cart, what remained of the city's female population was busy pulling her to a thousand pieces with claws and beaks sharpened by the million irritations of the hot weather.
A dignified bearer had salaamed gravely, and handed her a chit upon her arrival at the bungalow, where her friend was braving the pestilence of the hot weather in comrades.h.i.+p with her husband, who, in the secret places of his heart, wished to goodness she had gone to the hills with the rest of 'em.
Her luggage, the letter stated, had been s.h.i.+fted to the hotel, where a room had been taken for her, and there would, it seemed, be plenty of accommodation on the _City of Sparta_ which would be sailing in three weeks' time for home.
And that was all!
It is wise in the hot weather to pull the purdah, which is the Indian way of saying to shut the door, in the face of a young and unattached girl with a tawny head and opalescent eyes; especially if the dust has long been undisturbed upon the threshold of the secret places of the male heart supposed to be entirely in your keeping.
For days she had remained in her room, not daring to face the curious glances, and subdued whispers, of the few visitors to be met with in the marble desolation of the front hall; and not for worlds would she have used the telephone for fear of the direct snub the wire would surely have transmitted.
Food she hardly touched; sleep she did, heavily, waking dull and unrefreshed; and for hours she would sit and stare into the corners, or peer over her shoulder into the stifling shadows, or study her face in the mirror, wondering if her strange eyes were the eyes of a mad woman.
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