CHAPTER XLIV
"If thou faintest in the day of adversity, thy strength is small."--_The Bible_.
Jan Cuxson was walking round and round the ruined chamber, pausing atthe doors as he passed them to look out at the seemingly never-endingjungle; he would have reminded any onlooker of some caged beast as hewent monotonously round and round.
He was rather a desperate sight, too, with harassed eyes in a gauntface, and his open shirt exposing a somewhat emaciated chest; not thathe had been starved, far from it; but eat you ever so heartily, fillyour interior with all the fatty substances, real or artificial, in theworld, worry will push in your cheek and temple, draw canals of woefrom your nose to your mouth, and force your cheek-bone, nose, and ribsinto high relief.
Of course he ought to have had a many days' growth of beard all overthe face; but, owing to one particular fad, he had not; and thankgoodness! for it would have been simply appalling to have had to endthe book with the hero looking like a woolly hearthrug.
His fad which saves the situation was that when travelling either forhours or for days his safety razor invariably travelled in his pocket;and the old priest had smiled when he caught him in the act oflathering his face, less successfully, it is true, than more, with afinger tip smeared in ghee, which is clarified fat; and had come backlater with a handful of stuff which looked for all the world and feltalmost as sticky as French almond rock, a certain vegetable root,slightly acid of smell, which lathers beautifully in hot or cold water,and which, in some districts, the natives use as soap.
He was simply in an agony of mind.
He had stormed, and threatened, and pleaded in turn, and offered thewhole of his kingdom in exchange for her safety--all of which had madeabout as much impression upon the priest as a few snowflakes would uponthe Himalayas.
His one and only attempt at escape, which had taken place twenty-fourhours before, had been a dire failure.
Roaming around the courtyard outside his chamber, which seemedcuriously near, and yet cut off from the rest of the temple, he hadheard the tinkle of silver anklets, the sound of a native woman'shigh-pitched laugh, and the bleating of a goat.
And the thought struck him that if a woman had come to seek counsel ofthe priest she must have come through the jungle by some safe roadknown to the native, and she would have to go back by the same road;and if he could only find the way into the temple itself, and watch herfrom the shadows, what would be easier than to follow her and reachLeonie in time to save her from the disaster and death threatening her.
Although the thought of the death straight to which Leonie was coming,blindfolded by the curse upon her, made his blood run cold and turnedhis heart to stone at the knowledge of his own impotence, the pictureof what might happen to her at the hands of the native crazed withreligion and love well-nigh drove him frantic.
He was absolutely at the priest's mercy.
A stronger will than his own allowed him to wander so far and nofarther; indeed, he had been powerless even to reach the block ofstones from behind which the priest appeared when upon visiting bent,and around which he disappeared when he went to worship before his god.
"I am like a damned hen with a chalk circle drawn round it!" Cuxson hadexclaimed when he tried over and over again to pass the invisible line;and he cursed aloud as he felt the deep sleep creeping upon him atvarious hours of the day and night, and from which there was no escape,try as he would to keep awake.
But upon the day when he heard the tinkle of silver anklets and thebleating of the goat, something, just as curiously incomprehensible,had urged him to walk to the ruined mass of stones which hid thepriest's entrance and exit; and he had walked across the sun-strickencourt without let or hindrance, or covering to his head, and had foundon the other side a low doorway almost choked with jungle growth.
He had not paused to think nor plan; he had merely bent his tall figureand crept through and down the narrow, decaying passage, along which,dotted irregularly here and there, shone little lights in tinyearthenware saucers. He had paused once or twice, sickened by thesight of offerings of which a description is not necessary, andshivered, strong man though he was, when he had met the eyes of godsleering, or glaring at him from little hewn-out shrines in thecrumbling masonry.
His feet made no sound, for the narrow way was choked with the dust ofages, and he gave no thought to what might lurk in the shadows in theshape of beast or reptile, so intent was he on reaching the place whichheld the woman, and which had seemed near when she had laughed, andunaccountably far away as he stole stealthily forward.
The passage twisted at every few yards, and once he had found himselfat a dead end in what he thought must be the priest's living room, asfar as he could make out by the dim light coming through a tinyaperture high up in the wall. He had dimly seen a bed of leaves, asingle covering, and an earthenware platter and jug, before he turnedquickly and retreated when something hissed softly and rustled amongthe leaves.
Having got back into the passage and made some considerable headway, hewas almost choked, when on turning a corner he had been enveloped in asickly sweet smell of many flowers, allied to some sickening odour towhich he could give no name; and then he had stopped dead, andflattened himself against the wall as he realised that he had come outby the side of the altar into the temple itself.
Arranged neatly on each side of the doorway were glittering brassvessels, brass trays, and little piles of tiny earthenware saucers; tohis left was tethered a black kid, which lay contentedly upon a heap ofdying flowers; near it was what appeared to be a miniature guillotinestained almost black; and above his head, in front of him and hangingfrom a hook in a huge, upstanding block of granite, glittered, a short,needle-pointed knife.
One knife?
Nay! two, three, a dozen, scores, thousands, thousands of glitteringknives whirled around his head; and hundreds of goats grinned fromcorners and capered about his feet, and millions of evil eyes winked athim from the dusky shadows; and voices rose in choirs, male and femalevoices, whispering, laughing, singing. Louder, still louder, risinglike some all-conquering flood, while silver anklets clashed until thebrain was nigh to splitting with the din.
He must see, he _must_ see, and watch the women who laughed shrilly andoften; he must see the front of that great block of stone which barredhis way to Leonie. Yes! Of course that was it, just that one greatblock of stone which kept him from his love.
Jan Cuxson made a mighty effort to move his heathen foot over the inchof threshold which separated him from the holy place. His breath camein gasps, and the veins stood out in knots upon his forehead as hepushed with both hands at the empty air; he fought like a mad dog toovercome that mighty force arrayed against him which neither advancednor retreated, but was just _there_.
Then as something out of the void struck him cruelly between the eyeshe gave a mighty shout which made no sound at all, and fell with acrash, scattering the brass vessels and tiny earthenware saucers to thefour corners of the space around the altar.
Sunstroke?--well, _hardly_.
Because the next morning, when he awoke with the hide thongs fasteninghim by the wrist and the waist to the ring in the wall, he felt fit,and fresh, and extremely wide awake.
Perhaps it was that the blow, or whatever had struck Jan Cuxson down onthe threshold of the temple, had served to sharpen his wits; anyway,for some unknown reason, words uttered by the priest on the first dayof his imprisonment began to repeat themselves over and over again inhis brain, as he sat uncomfortably with his back to the wall and hiseyes fixed with a certain crafty understanding upon a piece of rustymetal half hidden under a fallen brick.
Wherefore he wheedled and cajoled when the priest came to visit himuntil the thongs were unfastened and his somewhat prescribed libertyrestored.
"Only until the shadows fall, sahib," the old man said as he gatheredthe hide thongs in his hands. "Tonight is the night of the full moonand the white woman is even now approaching."
"Leo
nie---I mean the mem-sahib--is in the _jungle_--with whom?"
"Verily, sahib, with the man who loves her!"
"Oh, my _God_!" said Cuxson slowly. "How do you know?"
"_We_ need no wires or poles to carry us news, sahib! We have a surerway, aye, and a quicker one. Struggle not to-night, sahib, when I tieyou to the ring in the wall. Bound you must be, for the Black One hasspoken; and it is her pleasure that I shall lift my will from you, evenas I did by mischance yesterday. India has suffered through this whitewoman; my people have been tormented by her, and Kali, the Black One,has commanded that the sufferings of the land shall be wiped out in thewhite woman's blood, and the torments of the people in your torments."
It has been said that Jan Cuxson was plodding to a degree akin toslowness.
He was! But you may be sure that if an idea came to him even at theeleventh hour it would be a good idea and would be developed until itreached an advanced stage of perfection.
Some time after the priest had departed he drew the piece of metal,which proved to be the broken blade of a knife, from under the fallenstone, slipped it into his pocket, and was as well content as hisharassed mind and overwrought imagination would allow him to be.
Leonie of the Jungle Page 44
