Leonie of the Jungle
Page 36
CHAPTER XXXV
"And thou shalt grope at noonday."--_The Bible_.
Jan Cuxson, hurt to the quick at Leonie's refusal to marry him, also ather rejection of his offer to accompany her upon her travels, shut hishurt away, and set his mind to the completion of his task.
His suspicions had been aroused by the finding of that orange andsilver scrap of _sari_ near the temple, when the ayah had presumablybeen left miles behind on the launch; and fully realising the futilityof employing the methods of the West against the subtlety of the Easthe decided to pit native craft against native cunning.
The only result of the investigation, however, was that Leonie'spresent ayah had been traced back via the Ranee's house to the dayswhen she had been in the service of the Colonel-Sahib Hetth, V.C., butbeyond that was a blank wall.
She had suddenly left the Ranee's service to become body-woman toLeonie; without a single reference to the time when she had been nurseto Leonie as a baby.
Who was keeping her silent, and why? And what was she doing, and whowas she with in the deserted temple in the jungle?
Whose tool was she?
Certainly not the Ranee's. She was wrapped up in her duties toward thefast ageing Rajah, and her only son, who seemed much the same as othersons of princes.
Having finally decided that the answer to the problem lay in thetemple, to the temple he decided to go, more with the intention ofhaving a look round than with any definite plan.
The decision was made with the fixed though unspoken determination thatif the solving of the problem should involve a sojourn of ten years inIndia, for ten years he would remain.
He hired a guide and a coolie, both of whom looked exactly like anyother guide and coolie, and having much to think out, and sure thinkingbeing anything but a rapid process with him, also because he did notwish to draw too much attention to his movements, he chose as a meansof conveyance the ugly flat-bottomed public paddle-boat which floatsunconcernedly down the Hoogli from Calcutta, through the bigger creeksof the Sunderbunds, and up the Pusaka River to Kulna.
If you want a few days' rest, or time in which to unravel a knot, praytake that means of locomotion; you can be dropped anywhere into a_nukur_ or native boat which will deposit you for a few annas on anyisland you choose, but don't do it if you are in a hurry, or are filledwith a desire to see the lesser creeks, and the quite small ones, wheretigers are supposed to sit in rows upon the water's edge, monkeys toswing across the water by means of the creepers interlacing the darkand dismal trees, and crocodiles to lie in tumbled masses waiting to beturned into portmanteau, dressing-case, or shoes.
Cuxson's method and brain were rather like his gait; as he had said inRockham cove, he was _slow_! He could not and never had, even atHarrow, been able to run a hundred yards without becoming mostuncomfortably blown; but he could walk anyone to death at a setplodding steady tramp, accomplishing twenty miles without turning ahair; while after a series of terrific spurts, and enforced periods ofrest, his companions would give up dishevelled, sweating, andunpleasantly mortified miles away from the desired goal.
Problems, mathematical or medical, were treated in just the same way.The more brilliant of his fellow-students would seize upon a pen, fillreams of paper and slap the result down triumphantly at the end of anhour, to find themselves later, and again with mortification at thebottom of the list, or not on it at all; whereas Cuxson, after hours ofsearching here and there in the convolutions of his grey matter, wouldlight on a thread, a grain or a speck of dust which he would proceed toturn inside out, or tear to pieces; the outcome of which process wouldbe printed at length in the _Lancet_ or some such-enlivening journal.
So he lay on the long chair in the corner reserved for sahibs, and wasnot too uncomfortable, nor in any way uneasy as to the result of hisinvestigations, although all that he had to build his hopes upon wasthe word of a native, and a piece of orange silk picked out in silverwith the dust of a sundri breather adhering, which lay in hispocketbook with a ring of seaweed, and some glistening strands of tawnyhair.
The serang, meanwhile, parleyed with certain gatherers of _golaputtah_which is a special palm leaf growing in the Sunderbunds for the expresspurpose of thatching boats and _suapatti_ huts; and having discussedthe ins and outs, and pros and cons of the situation with every maleupon the boat, had transferred the sahib with his guide and coolie to anative boat, after a gratifying give and take in silver rupees whichare so much nicer to handle than dirty notes.
And an old priest made sacrifice of a black kid unto his god, havingbeen apprised in the mysterious native way of the approaching arrivalof the last person on earth he wished to see.