Leonie of the Jungle Part 27

The rest was lost in precipitate flight with the colonel mem-sahib's arms closely hugging her pony's neck, to the joy and the infinite delight of the rest of the spectators.

Unseen, uncouth John Thorne, furious at the scant courtesy shown to the lady of his dreams, had brought his whip down heftily, just above the mangy tail of the colonel mem's pony.

"I think I'll ride alone, if you don't mind," said Leonie with a ripple of suppressed laughter in her voice.

"All the way to Alipore?"

"Oh! it's not far, and I daren't trust the syce, the Devil would simply _eat_ him."

The boy sidled in between her and Thorne, to the latter's infinite annoyance.

"Are you still keen on the _s.h.i.+kar_ stunt, Lady Hickle?"

He gazed at her adoringly, and she smiled back into the honest, merry eyes.

"_s.h.i.+kar_ stunt?"

"Yes! you remember--Sunderbunds--dak bungalows--_s.h.i.+kari_--wild animals in bunches--discomfort and all the rest. Say yes! Oh! _do_!" as Leonie slowly shook her head, "It'll be such a rag! Major and Mrs.

Talbot--she's a fine shot--you and me, and we've got to get another fe--woman 'cos a simply top-hole fellow walked into the club last night, who's wonderfully keen on it; we're kind of related, his father was my mother's second cousin."

"And the higher the fewer," interposed Thorne, as Leonie laughed. "And what's the top-hole fellow's name?"

The youngster eyed the elder man with disapproval.

"Name--coming brain specialist--setting the old fossils in Harley Street by the ears--forgotten more than they've ever learned--name--why, Jan Cuxson. Won't you come, Lady Hickle?"

Leonie had suddenly bent to adjust her stirrup leather.

Her face was dead white, her eyes like stars, her mouth like a gate to heaven.

Almost a year and not a word, not a sign!

Tortured by doubt, racked with love, she had gone her way silently; blaming herself one moment for the ease with which she had shown her love; staking her all the next on the honesty of the man who had kissed her hand in forgiveness in the old Devon church.

Making excuses, heaping the blame upon herself, wearying, wondering--and now!

She lifted her face, which shone like the Taj at noon, and the wors.h.i.+pful company of men looked at her, almost stunned by its incomprehensible radiance.

"Yes," she said softly, without thought of the Devil's nerve-storm.

"Yes, I will surely come!"

As she spoke there was a terrific report as the hind tyre of a pa.s.sing car burst with due violence, a sudden convulsive bound as the Devil leapt with all four feet off the ground, and a thunder of hoofs as, with the bit between his teeth, he cleared for the open just as a man on a sixteen-hand bay turned in at the race-stand opening.

CHAPTER XXVIII

"To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus And witch the world with n.o.ble horsemans.h.i.+p!"--_Shakespeare_.

The onlookers behaved in the orthodox runaway-horse manner.

Women screamed, or took the opportunity to manipulate a surrept.i.tious powder-puff.

Men shouted and waved their topees, or shouted and performed equestrian gymnastics, and the jockeys _en ma.s.se_ cursed their masters' presence, and the more or less mythical value of their respective mounts.

Just for that one moment in which anything occurring out of your ordinary rut leaves you practically stunned into inertia.

Then things began to shape themselves, and for one unbelievable second caste was thrown to the soft wind which was sweeping up the last rags of mist.

Military mingled with commerce, the I.C.S. which, written in full, means G.o.d's Anointed, looked _at_ instead of _through_ the railway; jute condescended to the tourist, and white e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed to kaffyolay as they all sat gazing after the retreating form of the Devil and the pursuing shapes of one or two, who, fairly decently mounted, were pegging away stout-heartedly in a perfectly vain, but praiseworthy effort to save Leonie from certain death.

And then a sigh of relief went up.

A bay, stretched out, was flying like the wind, hoofs thundering on the hard ground, tail streaming, as, urged by his master's heel and voice, he strove to get to the tank before the runaway.

The distance and the speed were too great, the horse and kit were not sufficiently familiar to allow the spectators to identify the one man who seemed to have a plan in his head, and a horse under him.

The women strained their eyes in an endeavour to distinguish him, men kept theirs glued to Leonie who was riding straight and apparently making no effort to check the Devil, and policemen, forgetful of their dignity, their status, and their red turbans, hung over the rails near the grand-stand entrance with a riff-raff of taxi chauffeurs, pukka chauffeurs and syce.

For the first two hundred yards across the brown gra.s.s of the Maidan, Leonie thoroughly enjoyed the tearing gallop, having failed to grasp the fact that the Devil was bolting; but after having spoken soothingly, and pulled firmly without making any impression, somewhere about the middle of the polo ground she awoke to the fact that something had to be done.

"They're in it! No! missed, by Jove!"

The jockey bunched himself in an ecstasy of relief, and his mare danced with a fellow-electrical feeling as the Devil, wheeling sharply from the sparkling water in the tank, missed the lone tree by a foot; then gathering fresh impetus from the ever-nearing sound of thudding hoofs, tore towards the rails enclosing the two tracks.

They are not high, but they are fairly close together, and four in all, and a horse, blind from fear or temper, is quite as likely to let you down at the first as at the fourth.

But Jan Cuxson saw a gleam of hope.

Surely the runaway would slacken, surely no horse could possibly take four fences at that terrific speed; and if he did slacken, then the bay, as nimble as a cat in spite of his weight, would catch up, and something would be done before they dashed headlong across the tram-threaded, crowded Kidderpore Road.

Except for admiring her seat and seeming calm acceptance of her inevitable and horrible end, he had not bothered about the girl as a human being; but he frowned suddenly in a vague effort of recollection when she stretched out her hand in a beckoning gesture for help to the man she heard racing to her rescue.

"By Jove!" he cried, and "_By_ Jove!" repeated the others behind, and "By _Jove_!" echoed the distant on-lookers as, without hesitation or click of hoof on wood, the Devil rose to the first, the second, the third and the fourth rail, skimming them like a bird, while the bay, just two rails behind, crashed over them with nothing to spare.

Inky words take a long time to write, but Leonie's perilous career towards the river was merely the matter of a few cyclonic minutes, leaving the drivers of bullock and water-buffalo carts, _gharries_ and trams no time in which to make an opening for her tempestuous pa.s.sage.

"Wah! Wah!" shouted a group of natives, draped in gaily coloured shawls, who watched admiringly the woman's perfect seat, caring not an _anna_ that she might be thrown and break her neck or be crushed to death. In fact, the halo of death encircling the woman's head lent enchantment to the sport, causing some of the more wealthy to bet upon her end.

A woman, white or brown, more or less in India of what account? though it were a different matter in the case of the sahib who rode in pursuit, with a mouth like a steel trap and eyes of fire.

Two women, with babes astraddle on the hip, turned to watch Leonie, then stuffing more betel nut into their already crimson mouths, moved lightly through the dust towards the bazaar. Crouched at the foot of a tree, inhaling the smoke from the bowl of his rude native pipe, an old man under the benign influence of the drug, lost in dreams, took no notice whatever of the disturbance around him.

But the drivers, with raucous cries, twisted the tails of their kine to port or starboard, or beat them forcibly, and the tram driver, roused from the lethargy engendered by the cool of the early morning, by the shouts and cries, put on his brake, bringing his tram to a stand-still just as, with a terrific clatter of hoofs, Leonie dashed past the front of it with Cuxson at her heels.

There was a moment's uproar when, wis.h.i.+ng for a better view, the driver of a tawdry _ekka_ urged his half-starved pony forward.