CHAPTER XXII
"That day is a day of wrath--a day of clouds and thick darkness."--_The Bible_.
"India!" repeated Leonie, "India!"
She flung round towards the sea, standing on the very edge of thecliff, the violence of the wind against her the only barrier betweenher and certain death.
"Tell me," she cried, pointing to the heaving, raging mass of waterswith a hand above which shone dully a blood-soaked bandage. "Tell mewhat I did to myself down there just now. I awoke in a different placefrom which I went to sleep. I had no--I am cut and bruised. Terriblethings happen wherever I am--they follow me. I woke one night in apitch dark room and saw two green eyes staring at me from the wall.They were my eyes--reflected in a looking-glass--_mine_--they shine atnight like a cat's--and there's a voice calling--often. Oh! I tellyou I'm haunted, bewitched, _cursed_!"
"Come to me, beloved."
She turned and went like a child into the outstretched arms, and he,having wet his handkerchief on the mist-damped grass, bent the wearyhead back against his shoulder, and wiped away the blood-stains fromthe despairing face.
"You walk in your sleep, Leonie, by reason of the workings of anoverwrought brain, that is all. India is the problem, and your ayah isthe answer. _I_ think she frightened you somehow, made some deepimpression on you, on your baby brain, and we are going to India tofind her. It's very simple, dear, once find the cause we can easilyfind the remedy, and it will be much better if you come with me. Bythe way, who gave you that cat's-eye?"
He had made a slip.
"When did you see it?" answered Leonie quickly, "I never showed it toyou! Were--were you down _there_ near me, _before_ you called?"
"No," steadily lied the man, "but the thing slipped through your blouseone day--it's a brute. Who gave it to you?"
"My ayah! Do you know, I think you are quite wrong about her. Auntiesays Mother told her that she nearly broke her heart when I left India,seventeen years ago, and she writes to me regularly every three months.Only last week I had a letter from----"
"Do you speak Hindustani?" interrupted Cuxson abruptly, with a frown onhis face.
"Not a word!"
"Or Sanskrit?"
"Oh! no, neither, but the letters are in English, evidently written byone of those letter writers, who get so much for each letter they writefor the illiterate poor. And in every one she says how she loves meand longs for my return, and although she is very happy in the serviceof some Ranee in the north of India, she wants to give it up and cometo me."
There was a pause, broken by the nearing thunder and the crash of thewaves against the cliffs.
"Don't let's worry about that yet, dear, as everything is settledsplendidly and----"
But Leonie pulled away and stood facing him with her hands in hisagainst his heart.
"Do you really _love_ me?"
The whisper was almost lost in the tumult of the breakers beneath.
"_Love_ you, Leonie, _love_ you!"
"What would you _forgive_ me through love?"
"_Forgive_ you! Everything! Dishonour could not touch you, andeverything else I should forgive!"
Leonie tried to speak as she looked past him to the little green trackbetween the downs which led to the world, and all it contained for her;and he, obtuse male, content in the plans he had mapped out entirely tohis own satisfaction, and having blissfully taken the girl's consent tothe programme for granted, failed to read the agony written across herface in capital letters.
"Tell me that you will be content, dear. I'm rich enough, but nothingcompared with--oh! tell me, what do you like--what do you want--what doyou _really_ care for!"
She freed her hands and turned to look out to sea, where the day hadbeen born in agony upon a bed of sullen, unbroken water.
Then she looked straight down at the waves flinging themselves againstthe cliffs, drenching her with spray, moaning, fretting at the barrier,retiring only to do the same thing over and over again.
"What do I want, O Man whom I love? I want a white house within high,white walls, on the edge of the sea. I want my arms full ofchildren--yours and mine. I want love, oh! love and yet more love,that is what I want!"
The man twisted her round and held her at arms' length, her heelswithin an inch of the edge, her body bent back over the chasm, and herhair, spreading like a banner in the tearing wind, swept about hisshoulders and across his face, intoxicating him with its perfume andsilken caress.
Passion swept over him, he shook her like a reed, and her foot slippedoff the earth into nothingness.
But not a word said she, though she prayed that he might suddenly letgo his hold and send her crashing to sweet death on the rocks beneath.
You see what happens when you are decent and honest and have a mind tokeep your word--just death rather than dishonour, and pain to others.
Whereas if only she had been dishonest, and therefore commonplace, shewould either have chucked her given word to the devil, or the deep greysea over which she stood, and cleared for her own happiness and amarriage licence; or kept her word in one sense while making deedylittle plans of triangular pattern for future reference.
"Is that what you want, oh! heart of mine?" said Jan Cuxson, exultingin the sensation that his hands alone held her metaphorically andactually safe from the depths beneath. "And that is what I am going togive you, beloved, and more, much more in exchange for the treasure youwill put into my hands. Oh! Leonie, my love----"
And yet he did not kiss her, but pulled her farther inland and let hergo as she essayed to free herself, having come to the absolute breakingpoint.
What a wooing!
The copper coloured clouds were massed above and about them, the treesbent and straightened and bent again before the wind, the sea heaved inhuge unbroken waves right to the horizon; Lundy Island, Hartland, andBaggy Point had disappeared in a driving sheet of rain.
How beautiful she looked as she stood in the storm, cut, bruised anddishevelled.
Just for one moment she looked into the eyes of the man she loved,whose hands were outstretched for the treasures she could not laytherein; and then she turned and fled as a great streak of lightningrent the clouds, and thunder like heavy artillery crashed about theirheads.
She had not gone twenty yards when she stumbled and fell heavily.
Her boots were being hurled here and there by the waves in the covewhere she had left them; her left foot was cut and bleeding badly, buta sudden desperate courage came to her when she felt herself raised andsteadied.
"I shall carry you to the foot of the hill near your cottage!"
She struggled as he lifted her, struggled so violently that he put heron her feet.
"Don't touch me, Jan, don't come near me, because I--because----"
And the mantle of his satisfaction and content being suddenly rent intoa thousand shreds by the knife edge of his intuition, he put both handson her shoulders, looked down into the misery of her eyes, and verygently said one word.
"Because?"
"Because," and she began to laugh without making any sound, her mouthtwitching, her shoulders shaking, "because I am to be married _to-day_at noon!"
"To-_day_! but you said----"
"I lied."
"You lied--to _me_!"
She made a little sound which reminded him of an animal agonising in atrap, whilst the fury of his own pain drove him to hurt her even more.
"Why--_lie_?"
"Why?" her eyes blazed as she defied the storm, her hell and fate."Why?--because I love you, because I love you so much that I wanted tocheat life out of one month of happiness. And I have had it--I havehad it--and I love you----"
She flung her hands up to the stormy skies and brought them down,clenched against her breast. "I love you, _God_ hear me, I _love_ you!"
And with a terrible cry that went wailing out to sea she fled awaythrough the lash of the blinding storm.
Leonie of the Jungle Page 22
