CHAPTER IV
"The kindest man, The best conditioned and unwearied spirit In doing courtesies."--_Shakespeare_.
They met on the threshold.
Swinging back the door to let Leonie and her aunt out, Ellen, themiddle-aged maid, almost an heirloom in the family of Cuxson, bristlingin starched cap and apron, let in the erstwhile plague of her life, butnow as ever the light of her eyes, Jonathan Cuxson, Junior.
He took Lady Hetth's hand in a mighty and painful grip when after amoment's hesitation she introduced herself.
"Why, of course! You must be Jan! Except for being bigger you haven'tchanged a bit since I saw you years ago one Speech Day at Harrow!" Shelooked with open admiration at the very personable young man before herwho loomed large in the hall with his height of six feet two and atremendous width of shoulder. His eyes were grey, and as honest as agenuine fine day; the jaw was just saved from a shadow of brutality inits strength by a remarkably fine mouth; the ears were splendid from anintellectual point of view, and the set of the head on the neck, andthe neck on the shoulders, perfect. The nose was a good nose, ratherbroad at the top, with those delicate sensitive nostrils which usuallyspell trouble for the owner.
"I don't believe you remember me!"
Happily the reply which must have been untrue or given in the negativewas averted by the hilarious arrival of a puppy.
Having heard the deep voice associated in its canine mind with bits ofcake and joyous roughs-and-tumbles, it had forsaken the happy thoughforbidden hunting ground of the upper storeys and negotiated the stairsin a series of bumps and misses.
Arrived in the hall it hurled itself blindly against Leonie's ankles,and ricocheted on to its master's boots, where it essayed a _pas seul_on its hind legs in its efforts to reach the strong brown hand.
"Oh!" said Leonie, as she fell on her knees with her arms outstretchedto the rampaging ball of white fluff and high spirits, the whichthinking it some new game squatted back on its hind legs with the frontones wide apart, gave an infantile squeak, and whizzed round threetimes apparently for luck, as tears welled up in the child's large eyesand trickled down the white face.
"Hello, kiddie! You're crying!" said Jan Cuxson, who like his fatherhad a positive mania for protecting and helping those in trouble, whichmania got him into an infinite and varied amount of trouble himself,and led him into unexpected boles and corners of the earth. "I'm--I'mnot crying weally!" choked Leonie, "it's--it's my kitten!"
"Oh! do stop, Leonie!" said her aunt, leaning down to catch the child'shand and pull her to her feet. "She's coming to stay with you," sheadded, as Leonie stood quite still with that piteous jerk of the chinwhich comes from suppressed and overwhelming grief, as she watched thepuppy play a one-sided game of bumblefoot in a corner.
"That's jolly," said the young man.
"Oh! she's coming as a case. She walks a good deal in her sleep, andas my brother-in-law, Colonel Hetth, if you remember, was such a----"
But Jan Cuxson was not listening.
He too had put his hand on the curly head and tilted it back gently sothat the light shone into the sorrow-laden eyes encircled by shadows.
Then he smiled suddenly down at the mite, and she, perceiving that aray of light had suddenly pierced the all-pervading gloom, smiled back,and catching his left hand in both of hers pressed it to her forehead.
"Good Lord!" he muttered, as a thrill ran through him at the unexpectedand oriental action.
And Fate, plucking in senile fashion at the loose ends which laynearest her old hand, knotted two tightly together with a bit of raregolden strand she kept tucked away in her bodice.
"And what shall we do when you come? Can you ride? I know of a lovelypony a little boy rides!"
Leonie shook her head mournfully, feeling unconsciously but acutely thepenalty of her sex for the first time in her life.
"I can't wide astwide," she sighed, "I haven't any bweeches. Jill andMaudie Wetherbourne always wide in skirts. But I can swim," she addedquickly, "an' jump in out of my depff. I learnt in the baff at theseaside!"
"Oh! come along, child, _do_!" broke in her aunt to her own undoing.
"Auntie jumps in too, though she says she doesn't," proceeded Leonie ina gallant effort to shore up her family's sporting reputation.
"I do _not_, Leonie! I can't imagine how you ever got such an ideainto your head!"
But Leonie, nothing daunted, shook back her russet mop of hair and gavedirect answer, to the confusion of the domestic who happily stood outof Lady Hetth's eye-range.
"But, Auntie! I've _often_ heard Wilkins tell Nannie that you've beenin off the deep end before bweakfast! Oh! do let me hold him just forever such a little while!"
To save the expression of his face Jan Cuxson had bent and lifted thepup by the scruff of its neck, and upon the piteous appeal put itsquirming and wriggling in the outstretched arms.
Great tears dripped all over the animal though Leonie stood on onefoot, bit her underlip, and squeezed the puppy to suffocation in avaliant effort to restrain this appalling sign of weakness.
"Tell me what makes you cry like that?"
"My--my kitten was--was stwangled by--by someone this morning, an'--an'she was all soft an'--an' fluffy like----"
The words ended in a paroxysm of sobs muffled in the puppy's coatwhereupon it ecstatically licked every visible part of the child'sneck, whilst Ellen, throwing decorum to the winds, knelt down and drewthe shaking little figure into her arms.
"Anybody in there!" suddenly and very gruffly asked Jan Cuxson, jerkinghis head in the direction of the room where the few and favouredawaited the pleasure of the specialist.
"No, Sir," replied Ellen, as she disentangled one of the puppy's clawsfrom the lace on Leonie's sleeve. "I'm going to call my father! Idon't think you understand your little girl very well!"
He spoke quite gently but his face was white with anger, that almostterrifying rage which surges over and through the mentally andphysically strong at the sight, or thought, of cruelty to the small andweak.
He whistled two exceedingly sharp notes and plunged his hands into hispockets, where he scrunched up his keys and some loose change.
Leonie of the Jungle Page 4
