“If thou faintest in the day of
adversity,
thy strength is small.-The
Bible.
Jan Cuxson was walking round and round
the ruined chamber, pausing at the doors as he passed
them to look out at the seemingly never-ending jungle;
he would have reminded any onlooker of some caged beast
as he went monotonously round and round.
He was rather a desperate sight, too,
with harassed eyes in a gaunt face, and his open shirt
exposing a somewhat emaciated chest; not that he had
been starved, far from it; but eat you ever so heartily,
fill your interior with all the fatty substances,
real or artificial, in the world, worry will push
in your cheek and temple, draw canals of woe from
your nose to your mouth, and force your cheek-bone,
nose, and ribs into high relief.
Of course he ought to have had a many
days’ growth of beard all over the face; but,
owing to one particular fad, he had not; and thank
goodness! for it would have been simply appalling to
have had to end the book with the hero looking like
a woolly hearthrug.
His fad which saves the situation
was that when travelling either for hours or for days
his safety razor invariably travelled in his pocket;
and the old priest had smiled when he caught him in
the act of lathering his face, less successfully,
it is true, than more, with a finger tip smeared in
ghee, which is clarified fat; and had come back later
with a handful of stuff which looked for all the world
and felt almost as sticky as French almond rock, a
certain vegetable root, slightly acid of smell, which
lathers beautifully in hot or cold water, and which,
in some districts, the natives use as soap.
He was simply in an agony of mind.
He had stormed, and threatened, and
pleaded in turn, and offered the whole of his kingdom
in exchange for her safety-all of which
had made about as much impression upon the priest
as a few snowflakes would upon the Himalayas.
His one and only attempt at escape,
which had taken place twenty-four hours before, had
been a dire failure.
Roaming around the courtyard outside
his chamber, which seemed curiously near, and yet
cut off from the rest of the temple, he had heard
the tinkle of silver anklets, the sound of a native
woman’s high-pitched laugh, and the bleating
of a goat.
And the thought struck him that if
a woman had come to seek counsel of the priest she
must have come through the jungle by some safe road
known to the native, and she would have to go back
by the same road; and if he could only find the way
into the temple itself, and watch her from the shadows,
what would be easier than to follow her and reach
Leonie in time to save her from the disaster and death
threatening her.
Although the thought of the death
straight to which Leonie was coming, blindfolded by
the curse upon her, made his blood run cold and turned
his heart to stone at the knowledge of his own impotence,
the picture of what might happen to her at the hands
of the native crazed with religion and love well-nigh
drove him frantic.
He was absolutely at the priest’s mercy.
A stronger will than his own allowed
him to wander so far and no farther; indeed, he had
been powerless even to reach the block of stones from
behind which the priest appeared when upon visiting
bent, and around which he disappeared when he went
to worship before his god.
“I am like a damned hen with
a chalk circle drawn round it!” Cuxson had exclaimed
when he tried over and over again to pass the invisible
line; and he cursed aloud as he felt the deep sleep
creeping upon him at various hours of the day and
night, and from which there was no escape, try as
he would to keep awake.
But upon the day when he heard the
tinkle of silver anklets and the bleating of the goat,
something, just as curiously incomprehensible, had
urged him to walk to the ruined mass of stones which
hid the priest’s entrance and exit; and he had
walked across the sun-stricken court without let or
hindrance, or covering to his head, and had found
on the other side a low doorway almost choked with
jungle growth.
He had not paused to think nor plan;
he had merely bent his tall figure and crept through
and down the narrow, decaying passage, along which,
dotted irregularly here and there, shone little lights
in tiny earthenware saucers. He had paused once
or twice, sickened by the sight of offerings of which
a description is not necessary, and shivered, strong
man though he was, when he had met the eyes of gods
leering, or glaring at him from little hewn-out shrines
in the crumbling masonry.
His feet made no sound, for the narrow
way was choked with the dust of ages, and he gave
no thought to what might lurk in the shadows in the
shape of beast or reptile, so intent was he on reaching
the place which held the woman, and which had seemed
near when she had laughed, and unaccountably far away
as he stole stealthily forward.
The passage twisted at every few yards,
and once he had found himself at a dead end in what
he thought must be the priest’s living room,
as far as he could make out by the dim light coming
through a tiny aperture high up in the wall.
He had dimly seen a bed of leaves, a single covering,
and an earthenware platter and jug, before he turned
quickly and retreated when something hissed softly
and rustled among the leaves.
Having got back into the passage and
made some considerable headway, he was almost choked,
when on turning a corner he had been enveloped in a
sickly sweet smell of many flowers, allied to some
sickening odour to which he could give no name; and
then he had stopped dead, and flattened himself against
the wall as he realised that he had come out by the
side of the altar into the temple itself.
Arranged neatly on each side of the
doorway were glittering brass vessels, brass trays,
and little piles of tiny earthenware saucers; to his
left was tethered a black kid, which lay contentedly
upon a heap of dying flowers; near it was what appeared
to be a miniature guillotine stained almost black;
and above his head, in front of him and hanging from
a hook in a huge, upstanding block of granite, glittered,
a short, needle-pointed knife.
One knife?
Nay! two, three, a dozen, scores,
thousands, thousands of glittering knives whirled
around his head; and hundreds of goats grinned from
corners and capered about his feet, and millions of
evil eyes winked at him from the dusky shadows; and
voices rose in choirs, male and female voices, whispering,
laughing, singing. Louder, still louder, rising
like some all-conquering flood, while silver anklets
clashed until the brain was nigh to splitting with
the din.
He must see, he must see, and
watch the women who laughed shrilly and often; he
must see the front of that great block of stone which
barred his way to Leonie. Yes! Of course
that was it, just that one great block of stone which
kept him from his love.
Jan Cuxson made a mighty effort to
move his heathen foot over the inch of threshold which
separated him from the holy place. His breath
came in gasps, and the veins stood out in knots upon
his forehead as he pushed with both hands at the empty
air; he fought like a mad dog to overcome that mighty
force arrayed against him which neither advanced nor
retreated, but was just there.
Then as something out of the void
struck him cruelly between the eyes he gave a mighty
shout which made no sound at all, and fell with a
crash, scattering the brass vessels and tiny earthenware
saucers to the four corners of the space around the
altar.
Sunstroke?-well, hardly.
Because the next morning, when he
awoke with the hide thongs fastening him by the wrist
and the waist to the ring in the wall, he felt fit,
and fresh, and extremely wide awake.
Perhaps it was that the blow, or whatever
had struck Jan Cuxson down on the threshold of the
temple, had served to sharpen his wits; anyway, for
some unknown reason, words uttered by the priest on
the first day of his imprisonment began to repeat
themselves over and over again in his brain, as he
sat uncomfortably with his back to the wall and his
eyes fixed with a certain crafty understanding upon
a piece of rusty metal half hidden under a fallen
brick.
Wherefore he wheedled and cajoled
when the priest came to visit him until the thongs
were unfastened and his somewhat prescribed liberty
restored.
“Only until the shadows fall,
sahib,” the old man said as he gathered the
hide thongs in his hands. “Tonight is the
night of the full moon and the white woman is even
now approaching.”
“Leonie –I
mean the mem-sahib-is in the jungle-with
whom?”
“Verily, sahib, with the man who loves her!”
“Oh, my God!” said Cuxson slowly.
“How do you know?”
“We need no wires or
poles to carry us news, sahib! We have a surer
way, aye, and a quicker one. Struggle not to-night,
sahib, when I tie you to the ring in the wall.
Bound you must be, for the Black One has spoken;
and it is her pleasure that I shall lift my will from
you, even as I did by mischance yesterday. India
has suffered through this white woman; my people have
been tormented by her, and Kali, the Black One, has
commanded that the sufferings of the land shall be
wiped out in the white woman’s blood, and the
torments of the people in your torments.”
It has been said that Jan Cuxson was
plodding to a degree akin to slowness.
He was! But you may be sure
that if an idea came to him even at the eleventh hour
it would be a good idea and would be developed until
it reached an advanced stage of perfection.
Some time after the priest had departed
he drew the piece of metal, which proved to be the
broken blade of a knife, from under the fallen stone,
slipped it into his pocket, and was as well content
as his harassed mind and overwrought imagination would
allow him to be.