“Out of the abundance of the heart,
the mouth speaketh.-The Bible.
One thing after another happened to
prevent Leonie from continuing what remained of the
journey during the cooler hours of sunrise.
One coolie strayed and was not retrieved
until the other two men were hoarse from shouting,
then another ran something into his foot, which was
only extracted after a mighty fuss, and something akin
to a major operation, skilfully performed with the
bearer’s knife and a few thorns plucked from
the bush.
Last but not least, as they were on
the point of starting, a snake about two yards long
had blithely wriggled its shining length across their
very path; and nothing short of hours of prayer and
offerings to their gods would move the coolies along
that path after such a sign of ill omen; no! rather
than budge an inch they would have laid down in their
tracks and died of snake-bite, or a marauding tiger;
and Leonie was far too wise a traveller to lose sight
of her luggage for one second-in India.
Although she had no idea why she was
in such haste, she inwardly fretted at the hours lost,
but passed them with outward patience in the shade
of the jungle trees; eating what was brought her, and
sleeping away the afternoon stretched on a rug; unconscious
of the fact that her bearer sat behind her head, fanning
her face gently, and with the lightest and deftest
of fingers removing the various insects, long and
short, fat and thin, smooth or horny, which seemed
to have taken unlimited return tickets for the journey
over her body.
They had been for some time on the
way, the coolies trapesing behind to the tune of some
monotonous chant; and the moon was beginning to fling
handsful of silver out of her heavenly mint when Leonie,
overcome by a most unromantic craving for tea, gave
the order to halt.
“How much farther is it?”
she asked, as she busied herself with a spirit lamp
and a tin of evaporated milk.
Her bearer looked up at the moon.
“Another half-hour, mem-sahib,
and we reach the outer walls of the temple-ah!
allow me-
Leonie had dropped a teaspoon and
was bending to pick it up, but instead, straightening
herself with the kind of snap an over-strung violin
string gives when it breaks, took one step forward
and fixed her eyes on her servant’s face.
“Of course,” she said,
speaking half to herself, “of course-no
wonder I thought I knew you-I saw you in
London once-and it was you I saw on the
station-and your voice-”
she clasped her hands together and took a step quickly
backwards-“you were the guide in the
tiger hunt, you-you have been following
me-you are dogging me-hunting
me down-why-tell me why?
What harm have I done you?-tell me?”
Her eyes, which were shining strangely
in the quickly falling night, swept the man before
her from head to foot, and she instinctively threw
out her hands and took another step backwards as she
realised at last his extraordinary beauty.
“Why is the mem-sahib afraid?
What has her servant done to cause trouble to her
soul? He meant but to lighten her load, and make
smooth her path.”
Leonie, with the desire common among
women to hide the tell-tale expression of their faces
by the movement of their hands, knelt and began fiddling
among the tea things.
“Sit down,” she said abruptly,
pointing to-the ground on the other side of the earthy
tea-table, “and tell me everything.”
“Nay, mem-sahib! A humble
native may not sit in the presence of a white woman.”
Leonie lifted her head.
“Sit down,” she said simply.
And there in the heart of the jungle,
by the side of the fire that had been lighted to scare
off any animal, they sat, those two splendid specimens
of two splendid races divided by custom and colour,
while he told her the strange story of the night on
which they had both been dedicated to the Goddess
of Destruction, and the happenings thereafter.
“Do you mean to tell me that
you willed me to come to you in the museum that day
in London?”
He looked straight into her perplexed
eyes as he answered slowly:
I felt that if I could draw you through the ebb and flow and
the floods of London traffic, I could do as I would with you on the plains of
India. I did not know you-then!”
“And the priest has made me
come to the temple-against my will?”
“Even so.”
“And what is to happen to me there to-night?”
“A danger threatens you, beautiful
white woman, a great danger threatens you from which
I alone can save you, yea! and will in spite of all
the gods!”
“You will save me-you-and
why?”
“Because I love you!”
The words were out, and Leonie, springing
to her feet, drew back as the man rose and stood motionless
in the dancing shadows thrown by the fire.
“What do you mean? Oh, how dare you-
How dare I-dare
I-tell you that I love you and want you
for wife? Why should I not love you from your
beautiful head to your perfect feet? Why should
you not be my wife? Because I am what you call
black? because of this colouring of my skin
which, outside my own land, damns me to eternity,
and bars me from all that I desire? Nay, you
shall listen, and you shall answer!
You will, will you not?”
The voice had dropped from the pitch
of fierce denunciation to the sound as of a deep river
flowing in pleasant places, and Leonie nodded mutely,
succumbing, as is the way of woman, to the entrancing
pastime of playing with fire.
She closed her eyes and clasped her
hands tightly together when the man, stepping across
the barriers of interracial convention, came and stood
just behind her shoulder without touching her withal,
and spoke in his own tongue.
“Ah, woman, I would call thee
wife. Behold, I have much to offer: a great
name, vast wealth, palaces, broad lands, jewels, elephants,
villages; the esteem of my people, the love of my father
and of my mother, of whom I am the only son.
All of which is nothing, nothing compared with my
love for thee. A love as virgin as the snow upon
the Everlasting Hills, swifter than Mother Ganges,
deeper than the Indian Ocean, and higher than the
vault of heaven. What matter custom, or law,
or regulation, or colour, when such a love as mine
is offered? Thou as my wife, thou, and
thy children my only children. Am I not beautiful?
even as beautiful a male as thou art a female?
Would not the days and the nights, the months and
the years be as heaven-together? Love
me-nay! say but that I may call thee
wife. Give me thy promise and I will save thee!”
“Save me?-from what?”
Leonie turned and faced this splendid
lover, shivering slightly as a low moaning wind rustled
the leaves of the trees and stirred the undergrowth.
“Even from death!”
“Death?” she said quietly,
looking straight into the man’s eyes. “Death-for
me? Why I thought I was being willed to
the temple to make sacrifice to your god?”
“To-night thou must surely die unless I save
thee.”
“Oh! you are mistaken,”
came the quick, decisive reply. “Why, if
I was murdered, the whole Empire would be up in arms.”
“The British Raj would not know,” was
the quiet answer.
“Oh! but-
“You have not seen the Fort
of Agra, the sad, dead palace. There, in the
dungeons, is a beam stretched across the hidden wells
and marked with the fret of a rope. Many a beautiful
woman has swung from that beam by neck, or feet, or
wrists, and her body dropped through the well into
the Holy Jumna without the knowledge of any save her
master and her executioner.”
“Oh!-oh! don’t-
“Twice,” continued the
quiet voice relentlessly, “the sacrifice has
been averted, but now the hour has come.
Thou art here alone, none knowing, and I-I
alone can save thee. And will not Kali,
our mother, raise her hands in blessing upon us united,
even as we were united when babes, and being appeased,
lift the curse from off the land. She is soft
and gentle, treading lightly upon life’s stony
paths, Uma so sweet, Parvati, daughter of the eternal
snows. Oh! woman, say that thou wilt be my wife,
for behold, are we not marked with the same mark which-
“Mark? What mark?”
Leonie questioned abruptly, looking back over her
shoulder, her mouth perilously near to his as he bent
his head slightly towards her; and there fell a little
silence in which the thudding of his heart could be
felt against the silk thread of her jersey.
“Between thy breasts, thou white
dove, hast thou no mark?”
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 gods had not intervened.”
“You-have-been with me-in-my-sleep?”
she whispered.
“When thou didst walk in thy sleep!”