Leonie of the Jungle Part 20

Then sitting down beside her he leant over sideways and picked her up bodily, clear from the ground into his arms; no mean feat with a toilet jug full of water, let alone with a hefty maiden weighted with grief.

He held her in that heavenly, comforting clasp known and practised by stout old nurses and some mothers, within which you feel that you can defy anything, even to the onslaughts of peevish Fortune.

His left arm was under and round her shoulders, his left hand gently pressed her head against his breast, his right arm was round her just above the knees, and he rocked her gently.

Oh! the heavenly, comforting bliss!

History was repeating itself, for Leonie, with great dry sobs shaking her from head to feet, was snuffling into Jan Cuxson's collar as she had snuffled into his father's years ago.

"Beloved!"

Sobs.

"Beloved! there is nothing to cry about--_nothing_! As I am holding you now, so shall I always hold you, and no harm can come to you from ocean, tempest or life. _Nothing_ can hurt you because I love you!"

Sobs.

"_Leonie_!"

She lay absolutely still, unconsciously counting the beats of his heart which was thudding heavily against her right shoulder, and waiting for the moment when she would find the strength at last to turn down her "empty gla.s.s."

"Leonie! you've got to listen to me now, and I am not going to ask you to decide because Fate has decided for you. And oh! beloved, beloved, thank heaven that there is still time, that you are still free, that heaven instead of h.e.l.l is waiting for you. Yes! dear heart. Fate has decided!"

He stroked her hair as he looked down into the little face crushed against his shoulder, and s.h.i.+fted her a wee bit that she might rest more comfortably. Leonie closed her eyes and trembled from head to foot as Fate pinched the decision between claw-like thumb and finger so that it was stillborn.

"Dear," continued Jan Cuxson as he gently patted her shoulder with his left hand, "dear, oh! my dear, just as I hold you now, so I shall always hold you. I am going to keep you, marry you, and take you right away to India next week; I'll telegraph that my things are not to be put on board to-morrow. You must have a nervous breakdown to-day, _you_ darling, just to think of _that_," and his laugh rang out against the sullen stillness of the dawn, "then we will slip away, and get married, and--oh! Leonie, I _love_ you."

Leonie said no word, but from her head to her feet swept a thrill which the man felt from his feet to his head.

He laughed again, laughed as a G.o.d might laugh with the world in his hand, and crushed her fiercely to him.

"Beloved! I love you! love you! love you! And you? Tell me you love me! Why, you dare not look me in the face and say no! You love me, dear! You are part of me; you are bone of my bone, flesh of my fles.h.!.+

Sorrow shall not touch you when you are all mine, your joys shall be my joys! And--beloved, my children shall be your children!"

With a sudden movement Leonie wrenched herself from his arms and on to her feet, whilst a driving cloud surrounded them, and a growl of thunder came over from Lundy Island way.

"Love you!" cried the girl. "Yes! I love you, if that is the right word to describe what it is I have in my heart for you. No! don't touch me! Listen, I would live for you, _die_ for you in love. Pain through you would be joy, joy through you would be heaven."

She clasped her hands to her breast, then threw them out towards him, palm uppermost, in a wonderful gesture of pa.s.sionate surrender, but her face was terrible to see, with eyes like burned out fires, and great smears of blood across her mouth and cheek.

"All that I have for you and more--oh! much more--but--I--I cannot marry you!"

The gla.s.s went down with a little clatter upon the coldest of life's cold marble slabs as Jan Cuxson, grasping the girl's arms, pulled her roughly towards him.

That he had caught the arm right on the lacerated wound he had no idea as he stood looking down into the eyes which were on a level with the top b.u.t.ton, of his coat.

"Beloved! beloved! You are tired, distraught! You don't know what you are saying! You are to go straight home and sleep, for _hours_, then come out refreshed and gloriously happy to meet me where and when you like! And we will fix everything down to the very smallest detail, oh!

dear heart, think of it! and this day week we will sail for India!"

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 the cliff, the violence of the wind against her the only barrier between her and certain death.

"Tell me," she cried, pointing to the heaving, raging ma.s.s of waters with a hand above which shone dully a blood-soaked bandage. "Tell me what I did to myself down there just now. I awoke in a different place from which I went to sleep. I had no--I am cut and bruised. Terrible things happen wherever I am--they follow me. I woke one night in a pitch dark room and saw two green eyes staring at me from the wall.

They were my eyes--reflected in a looking-gla.s.s--_mine_--they s.h.i.+ne at night like a cat's--and there's a voice calling--often. Oh! I tell you 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 gra.s.s, bent the weary head back against his shoulder, and wiped away the blood-stains from the despairing face.

"You walk in your sleep, Leonie, by reason of the workings of an overwrought brain, that is all. India is the problem, and your ayah is the answer. _I_ think she frightened you somehow, made some deep impression on you, on your baby brain, and we are going to India to find her. It's very simple, dear, once find the cause we can easily find the remedy, and it will be much better if you come with me. By the 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 to you! Were--were you down _there_ near me, _before_ you called?"

"No," steadily lied the man, "but the thing slipped through your blouse one day--it's a brute. Who gave it to you?"

"My ayah! Do you know, I think you are quite wrong about her. Auntie says 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 on his face.

"Not a word!"

"Or Sanskrit?"

"Oh! no, neither, but the letters are in English, evidently written by one of those letter writers, who get so much for each letter they write for the illiterate poor. And in every one she says how she loves me and longs for my return, and although she is very happy in the service of some Ranee in the north of India, she wants to give it up and come to me."

There was a pause, broken by the nearing thunder and the crash of the waves against the cliffs.

"Don't let's worry about that yet, dear, as everything is settled splendidly and----"

But Leonie pulled away and stood facing him with her hands in his against his heart.

"Do you really _love_ me?"

The whisper was almost lost in the tumult of the breakers beneath.

"_Love_ you, Leonie, _love_ you!"