Leonie of the Jungle

by Joan Conquest

  CHAPTER XXIV

  "Many waters cannot quench love; neither can floods drown it."--_The Bible_.

  The girl kicked aside the jumble of clothes littering the cabin floor,and bending her head squatted upon the bunk, and incidentally, and quiteindifferently, upon a crepe-de-Chine blouse which badly needed washing,and casually watched her mother who was scrabbling through a cabin trunkin a manner reminiscent of a terrier ratting in a hedge.

  "Why on earth couldn't you stay on deck?" demanded the mother angrily, asshe lifted the transformation from her brow and heaved it on to the upperberth, thereby unashamedly exposing a head not unlike a gorse commondevastated by fire.

  "I can't find that--oh! here it is. What a state it's in. D'you thinkthe Chinese man could iron it?"

  _That_ was one of those hybrid negliges which can serve its turn as abath gown, a bedroom wrap, or, covered with a genuine native-made tinselshawl (bought at Teneriffe but made in Birmingham), can pass as anevening gown in the tropics. The cabin was on one of the liners which,calling at odd places like Genoa, Naples, Algiers, etc., allows you topick up letters brought by the mail boat to Port Said. The inhabitantsof the inner, double berthed black hole, called by courtesy a cabin, werethe mother and her last unmarried daughter who lived in Surbiton.

  The mother had successfully acquired a reputation as a world-widetraveller, and husbands for her numerous daughters amounting to a nettotal of six, by dint of travelling the latter backwards and forwardsover those heartbreaking routes which suffer from two weeks or more ofgoing without a break.

  Try from Aden to Sydney with one break at Colombo, and the above long andsomewhat involved paragraph will be easily understood.

  "I say, mater, guess who gave me these--have one?"

  Mater sat back on her heels, bumping her head against the washstand,plucked a Simon Artz from its cardboard nest, lit it, and emitted volumesof smoke from mouth, and nostrils, until the cabin resembled thesmoking-room of any West End ladies' club.

  "Oh! don't ask silly questions, it's too hot! Who?"

  "The Grizzly Bear!"

  "_No_!"

  "He _did_! He'd been ashore!"

  "_No_!"

  "Yes! I'd been talking to him, and had just turned to say something tothe Babe when he slipped down the gangway. I do wish we weren't so hardup. It's an awful rag going ashore. He came back an hour ago, found aletter, and has been sitting up and taking notice ever since. It was aman's handwriting, I saw the envelope!"

  Mater flung everything pell-mell into the trunk, pushed it back with theaid of her daughter's heels under the berth, bent her head and sat downbeside her.

  "He looked so different that I actually asked him for a cigarette, and hegave me the box, and if it hadn't been for Mrs. Tomlinson-Tomlinson'shateful little brat--you know--Muriel--we should have had a good longtalk. The little wretch actually sat on the arm of his chair; it'sextraordinary how he lets children worry him."

  "Yes! dear Lady de Smythe has christened him the wet nurse!"

  Which leaves no doubt whatever that some time, somewhere the dear ladyhad been clawed by the grizzly.

  "Why don't you get into your black sequin to-night! It'll be frightfullyhot going down the Canal, and you can slip on the scarf if you go up onthe boat deck, as everyone does the first time they go through the Suez."

  "Yes! I might--the blue _does_ want ironing!" replied the daughter,taking a hand in that weird game of "make-believe" which the majority ofwomen play between themselves. For what ultimate benefit it isimpossible to say, since from the moment the cards are shuffled theyknow, to a nicety, the tricks and manoeuvres of each player.

  Anyway the sequin was fished out from somewhere, and shaken and pulledthis way and that.

  It consisted of a skirt of a kind, a waistbelt, two shoulder straps, anda big jet butterfly poised just where, for the sake of decency, it wasnecessary, and as a toilette allied with the boat deck would doubtlessprove most attractive to the man who was not in search of a wife.

  The man it was intended to subjugate, meanwhile, was lying full length onhis deck chair intent upon a letter, oblivious of the noise of theharbour and the racket necessary to the boat's imminent departure.

  Jan Cuxson had read the letter five times and was just starting on it forthe sixth, subconsciously congratulating himself on his foresight, orhorse sense, which you will.

  His cabin was like nothing on earth, and in it, upon the outer edge of adead maelstrom of his entire wardrobe, stood John Smith, cabin steward.

  John Smith is not his name, but who does not know and bless him if theyhave ever travelled on this particular boat.

  He has a big, very black mole on the extreme tip of his nose, and is thecheeriest, most optimistic soul on the ocean wave, yea! even thoseout-size waves in the Bay at its worst.

  After the first lightning perusal of the God-sped letter, Jan Cuxson hadgiven divers urgent orders for as much as possible of his gear in thehold to be thrown ashore.

  Imagine it, and the boat almost due to sail!

  He had then rushed to his cabin and initiated the maelstrom, until commonsense had smitten him between the love-fogged eyes of his desire;whereupon he had heaved a huge sigh of utter contentment, propped himselfagainst the door for the second perusal, rung the bell, countermanded allhe had ordered, and left John Smith to it.

  He had pulled the letter out of its envelope, growled at a vendor ofEgyptian wares, and turned with a whole-hearted smile at the sound of asmall voice.

  "Is 'oo velly unhappy, Mr. Bear?"

  The man did not know that he had become the object of that loathsomehabit of nicknaming all and sundry which a certain clique on every boatconsider so smart.

  "I'm the happiest man on earth--water, I mean, little one. Yes! comealong up--and why Mr. Bear?"

  Followed a scramble, a gurgle, and arranging of infinitesimal frills.

  "Mummie calls 'oo Mr. Grizzly Bear because you're cwoss! Mrs.Tom--Tom--li'son says Mummie's cwoss 'cos 'oo wouldn't take the buns shewanted 'oo too. Why didn't 'oo take the buns--buns nice, I fink!"

  An agitated nurse swooped down at this crucial moment and recovered thatwhich she had lost, leaving the man laughing aloud to the astonishment ofall near him.

  _Laugh_! Why he had not laughed since he had left Mortehoe Church,neither had he smiled at any time upon the boat, or upon anybody exceptthe children; and now he laughed, all on account of an atrocious scrawlon many sheets of thin paper which he started once more to read.

  "I hope," ran the scrawl of the man for whom Cuxson had fagged at Harrow,"that this catches you at Port Said, because"--followed a badly expressedbit of business. "London's had the shock of many seasons, by the way.You know that old brute, Pickled Walnuts, well I won't say anything aboutthe old scallawag because he's dead. Well! he married the other day,you'd sailed I think, I didn't go to the wedding. Did you know Susan,old Hetth, V.C.'s sister by marriage--up to her eyes in debt--sold herniece to pay them, I suppose, to the old millionaire--wonder what holdshe had on the girl.

  "Anyway they went off somewhere in Devon for the honeymoon, God help her.It seems that she had had an accident the night before, or something, andfainted, or something, directly after dinner--the wedding dinner, I mean.Did you ever learn composition on the Hill? I _didn't_!

  "The woman who looks after the cottage put Lady Hickle to bed and tuckedher up; placed a bottle of port in--all came out at the inquest--oldHickle's room, and left the house. Next thing, about two o'clock in themorning, a shepherd or something saw a blaze and went to look. Cottageon fire, old Hickle burnt to a cinder, and the girl hauled out of bedjust in time, gibbering in French or something in panic I suppose.

  "The charwoman thinks the curtains caught fire in the candle, and thatthe port had made the old man sleep heavily and that he was suffocated bythe smoke.

  "Full moon, too. What a sight it must have been! Place burned to theground.

  "I believe Lady Hickle is quite a girl and very bea
utiful--and isstarting on a tour round the world or something--she'll get most of hismillions, I believe. By the way, who _do_ you think have fixed it up.Dear old Bumble and Diana Lytham. Heaven be good to him. Your turnnext, old boy! Well she'll be darned lucky who gets you, see how well Itrained you, d'you remember, etc., etc."

  The man sat still for some long time, then suddenly sprang to his feetand went aft.

  The dressing bugle had sounded but he had not heard; the dinner bugle hadsounded and still he had not heard, as he stood at the stern watching theswirling wash of the slow-moving boat.

  "Full moon, too! She was hauled from her bed gibbering in French orsomething."

  He quoted the words, and crushed the letter savagely in his hands, foreven in the fullness of his joy he remembered Leonie's words, "Terriblethings happen wherever I am--they follow me." But in the greatness ofhis love he figuratively shrugged his shoulders, gathered his belovedinto the safe haven of his arms, and closed the moonlit eyes with kisses.

  Whilst a jet butterfly fluttered in vain over a very decollete expansewhich covered a heart agitated by rage and disappointment on the boatdeck.