A merry heart doeth good like a medicine!-The Bible.
Guy Dean, the cheery optimistic lad
who worshipped openly at Leonie’s beautiful
feet, and who was seeing the world at the behest of
his wealthy old father, had been as good as his word.
Bursting with excitement, he hurled
himself into his racing-car one Sunday morning, about
a fortnight after Leonie’s hasty ride riverwards,
and passed like a whirlwind through the fairly empty
streets of Calcutta and the suburb of Ballygunge to
the Jodhpur Club.
She was waiting for breakfast under
the trees with some friends, discussing the four-some
they had just finished, and watching the arrival of
various cars which were parked, with some difficulty,
with the others which had arrived earlier.
“Sounds all right,” said
Cuxson, as he looked with disfavour upon the club’s
breakfast piece de resistance, namely fatty
sausages and mashed of all things. “I
am beginning to feel quite thrilled. Let’s
see, it will take us about a day to get to Tiger’s
Point by launch from Kulna, and there we find monkeys,
adjutant birds, spotted deer, and tigers all ready.”
“Don’t rot!” said
young Dean. “I’ve bribed the finest
shikari in the whole of Bengal to stage-manage
the whole thing; he did seem rather contemptuous over
the chotar shikar, as he called it, I must say,
until I began to juggle with backsheesch, and then
he bucked up considerably and said he would do his
very best to provide sport for the mems. The
programme includes a ruined temple but not a tiger,
’cause he says it would be too risky a job at
such short notice; also, and the real reason I
should say, there hasn’t been a tiger seen,
anyway killed, since one was wounded and caught near
that same Hindu temple umpteen years ago.”
Leonie wrinkled her forehead at the
last sentence, and looking up caught Jan Cuxson’s
eyes upon her.
“That sounds so familiar,”
she said perplexedly, “I-
“The tiger at the Zoo which
we knew all those years ago was trapped near a ruined
Hindu temple in the Sunderbunds, Lady Hickle,”
he said quietly, watching the curious dilation of
the pupils in the greenish eyes as he spoke.
“The very one!” broke
in young Dean, as he suspiciously eyed a proffered
curry.
“How did you come to think of the stunt?”
“I ran up against a perfectly
top-hole native prince at polo last month. Amongst
other things we started talking elephant and bagh-tiger,
you know,” laughed the lad, who always seemed
to be on the point of bursting with high infectious
spirits. “No, take it away, I will not
eat a cold chupattie of the consistency of a
bicycle tyre-as I was saying, we talked
tiger, and somehow or other he suggested a few days’
pursuit, through the Sunderbunds, of the spotted deer,
muntjak or sambur-
“Neither.”
“Well, they’re spotted.”
“Dogs, perhaps.”
Ignoring the execrable repartee, the
boy turned completely round to Leonie.
“By the way, Lady Hickle, if
you ever go to Benares, don’t forget to get
off en route and visit the tomb of what’s-its-name,
it’s quite near-oh! I forget-but
it’s on one of this fellow’s father’s
estates. They don’t let many people go
and see it-afraid, I expect, of paper bags
but if you do go you’ll find an elephant
or two hanging about to take you to the place in state.
He’s, the native prince, got some of the finest
elephants in the whole of this mosquito-ridden land-makes
a hobby of them.”
“What happened to the original tiger?”
“Noah pushed him into the ark.”
The lad grinned, and offered his cigarette
to Leonie, who shook her head.
“Oh! stop fooling, Dean.
Did a sahib manage to trap the brute, or what?”
“Yes! and sent it across to
Blighty and shoved it into the Zoo. They’re
frightfully sick about that tiger being in a cage;
they wouldn’t have minded a sahib killing it
for the good of mankind it seems, but putting it behind
bars is an insult to some god, or something like that.
Are you any good as a gun, dear lady?”
Leonie smiled at the tardiness of
such an important question.
“Fair,” she said, refusing
an unkempt pot of marmalade as she turned to Cuxson.
“I used to pass most of my holidays with the
Wetherbournes, you know them, don’t you?
They were awfully keen on sports, and had a rifle-range,
but I could beat them any day with a revolver.”
“That doesn’t matter,
Lady Hickle,” said the lad blithely. “All
you’ll have to do’ll be to bob up and
down in the tiger-grass in the approved style; keep
your trigger away from the bush, and so as to feel
thoroughly creepy, your eye out for pugs; which, in
case some of you don’t know, means tiger-tracks,
not the dog with the beastly curly tail-and-oh,
jolly!-here come the Talbots-just
in time for the khubber which means tiger-news
for those whose Hindustani is not as perfect as mine.
Mrs. Talbot, don’t pass us by, we have plenty
of room and some superb sausages.”
Edna Talbot laughingly sank into a
chair next Leonie whom she liked, and immediately
became enthralled in the discussion.
Honest, sweet little woman, with an
honest plodding husband in a native regiment, inhabiting
the dreary crumbling fort, without a murmur, whilst
living in hopes of better things to come. Soft-voiced,
considerate towards her native servants who worshipped
her, one of the finest shots in India, and a true
upholder of the British Raj in word, action, and clothes.
A perfect oasis, in fact, among the
desert of her sisters, who storm in season and out
at their native staff, before whom they likewise show
themselves in ill-considered néglige, with their
unbrushed hair down their backs, and their bare feet
thrust into the evening shoes of last night’s
dance.
So it came about without any undue
fuss that, after surviving the excruciating heat of
the railway journey, three sahibs, two mem-sahibs,
and their servants steamed out of Kulna in two launches
to Tiger’s Point, where awaited them the finest
shikari in all Bengal, with an adequate retinue
in which was included a chukler or skin dresser.
And who would notice the look in an
ayah’s eyes as she wiped her beloved mem-sahib’s
ant-ridden bunk with cotton-waste soaked in kerosene,
and who on earth would connect the jungle guide with
the British Museum.