Part 48 (1/2)
Leonie tried to speak, and failing, nodded her russet head.
”Even so, it is the mark of Kali which the priest cut upon thee and me, uniting us all those moons ago in the Mother.”
She turned completely round and faced the man with a little look of wonder in her eyes.
”I have so often wondered about the--the little mark,” she said. ”But you see--how could I marry you--I could not, do not--love you!”
”Love,” he said quietly. ”_Love_! Thou wilt love me, aye! thou wilt love me in thy waking hours, even as thou wouldst have loved me in thy sleep if--if the G.o.ds had not intervened.”
”You--have--been with me--in--my--sleep?” she whispered.
”When thou didst walk in thy sleep!”
CHAPTER XLVII
”For jealousy is the rage of a man; therefore he will not spare in the day of vengeance.”--_The Bible_.
Suddenly she was struck with the full horror of those lost nights in which the man beside her had been her companion. She stretched out her hands and turned them over this way and that, scrutinising them with horrified eyes. She touched her mouth with her finger-tips and drew them with a shudder down her neck, and her breast, and her waist, as she looked upon the beauty of the man before her with his pa.s.sionate mouth and gleaming eyes.
”You--you have been with me when I have walked, unconscious in my sleep; you have----”
He interrupted her hastily, divining her thoughts.
”Yea!” he said, ”I have been with thee when, under the influence of _my_ G.o.d, thou hast walked in thy sleep. I have watched over thee and helped thy cut and bleeding feet over the roughness of the roads, as I would help them over the perilous road of life. I have not touched thy hand save in support; I have not touched the glory of thy mouth with my mouth, because thou couldst not give me thy _consent_ so to do!
”Dost think it has been a child's task to keep my hands and my kisses from thee? Behold, I had but to make a sign, and thou, in thy unconsciousness, would have come unto my intent! Oh, thou bud of innocent fragrance; thou fruit ready to the plucking of loving hands!
Aye, thou wert, thou art in my power; and even have I seen thee in----”
”Ah!” said Leonie sharply as her hand slid to her shoulder and the words came through her closed teeth--”You _lie_!”
”Lie!”
”Yes, _lie_! You have not touched me you say; neither have you kissed me, but _you_, and _only_ you, can tell me what the mark is on my shoulder--a mark I shall carry to my grave.”
The man threw back his turbaned head and was about to make reply, when, with those shrill cries which betray great fear, a troop of monkeys pa.s.sed them, chattering as they ran swiftly on all fours, or swung even more swiftly from tree to tree; and the native looked after them, and up to the sky, and over his shoulder along the narrow path by which they had come, showing black and white in the alternate lights and shadowings of the moon.
”Answer me!” said Leonie more sharply than she knew, and with a woman's superb indifference to any event or signs of approaching event outside her own love orbit.
”Nay, answer thou me!” replied the man who, expert in the knowledge of jungle signs, yet put aside all thought save of his love for the woman.
”Tell me that thou wilt be my wife and the mother of my sons, thou beautiful woman! Tell me that thou wilt come unto me this night, wedded to _me_, by yon old priest; and that, within the arms of Uma so sweet, of Parvati who steppeth so lightly, I may set my seal upon thee.
”Lifting from thee, as I and the priest _only_ may lift, that which thou callest the curse from about thee, bringing thee to happiness in the shadow of the temple.”
But something had happened to Leonie, bringing her to a pitch of excitement foreign to her in her waking hours. She looked swiftly to right and left, and over her shoulder, and up the narrow path they must go to the temple; and up to the sky she could see faintly through the trees, and into the eyes of the man watching her intently. Then she clasped her hands tightly and moved close to him, her face as white as death.
”And the sahib, the white man, where is he?”
The native of India weaves and fas.h.i.+ons the cloth of his cloak of love out of many colours. Gorgeous colours, blinding, dazzling, in which predominate the scarlet of pa.s.sion and the emerald of the supreme male's jealousy. And all, from the sweeper to the highest of birth and caste, wear this wondrous garment in India, though not one out of the teeming millions fas.h.i.+ons his cloak upon the pattern of his neighbour's.