Leonie of the Jungle Part 4

"Well! See you in the morning! Good-bye, sweetheart, I won't forget the book, and just you make that lazy fellow show you everything!"

He bent and kissed Leonie as she lifted her face, which was an unheard-of thing for her to do, and watched her as, hugging the struggling dog, she ran down the steps and was lifted into the taxi by her companion.

With his foot on the step Jan hesitated, then turned and walked back to his father.

"I don't know why. Sir, but I do wish you'd come too," he said slowly, looking at the man he loved with a love past the comprehension of the younger generation of the present day.

He put out his hand as he spoke and gripped the elder man's hard, then ran down the steps, jumped in beside Leonie, and turned to wave hilariously with her as they sped away to the Zoo.

The brain specialist went back thoughtfully to his room, and when he had closed the door stood for a long time looking out at the little garden with its one big tree.

"I wonder, I _wonder_," he mused. "I'd give a good deal to get at that ayah--well! why not?--I could start for----" He looked round suddenly, then laughed as he pa.s.sed his hand over his eyes. "Funny! I thought someone opened the door."

He moved to his desk and turned over his diary, showing blank page after blank page.

"Strange," he muttered. "There is nothing written down after to-day, not a single engagement. I must have entered them in some other book; very careless of me."

CHAPTER VI

"And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate homes."--_The Bible_.

"Gawd!"

Mrs. Henry Higgins called upon the Almighty in the vernacular of Seven Dials, sought gropingly for the members of her progeny who clutched her skirt, and fortunately kept her head.

"'Enery James--no! Gertrude Ellen--you've gotter better headpiece, jest yer slip along to the keeper an' tell _'im_ to look slippy and come along quick _h'and_ quiet!"

Gertrude Ellen, puffed up with pride at the pull she had had over her brother, slipped off, as her mother continued in a raucous whisper, "Now if that young miss don't deserve a thorough good 'iding! I'd take the skin off yer if any of yer did such a fing, strite I would. Drat yer, keep stilt cawn't yer--you'll rouse the brute!"

She shook her skirts so that the half-dozen clinging children rattled like a bunch of keys, pushed her jet bonnet back from the s.h.i.+ny wrinkled forehead, and waited, her motherly heart aquake in spite of her drastic language.

Jan Cuxson was standing in front of the lions' cage at one end of the lion-house, talking to his old friend the keeper, under the impression that Leonie was close beside him; but she, having taken advantage of their conversation and a practically empty house, had slipped quietly away, climbed the barrier near the far window, and was _also_ holding conversation--with a tiger from Bengal.

The animal lay outstretched with his wonderful head close to the bars, and his unblinking opalescent gold-flecked eyes staring straight into the opalescent gold-flecked eyes of the child as she stood on tip-toe so that her face was almost on a level with that of the animal.

"_Poor_ tiger!" she was saying. "I'm vewwy sowwy for you--I'm sure you're not so vewy, vewy wicked, an' if you will bend your head I will stwoke you behind the ear same as I did Kitty."

Mrs. Henry Higgins gasped.

Holding on to one bar tightly just near the tiger's mouth so as to steady herself, Leonie stretched, and thrusting her hand inside began to rub the tiger's head quite forcibly behind the ear.

"Nice?" she inquired as the animal closed its eyes under the unexpected and unexperienced caress, then opening them lifted the beautiful head and yawned to the full capacity of the huge mouth, affording Leonie a front row view of the splendid ivories and pale pink tongue.

"Oh--h--h!" said she admiringly, standing flat and patting the nearest paw. "I _do_ like you though you _do_ fwighten me when you walk so softly in my dweams--oh--h--h!"

She s.h.i.+vered with ecstasy as the tiger rolled on its back, displaying its soft white belly as it bit its hind foot with the abandon of a baby, then turned on its side, and leaping sideways to its feet, slunk off to the far corner of the miserable den, which is all a civilised country gives a wild animal in exchange for its jungle home.

Meanwhile the Higgins brood, like hungry sparrows on a rail, were sitting open-mouthed on the lower steps provided for the benefit of those spectators who wish to revel with safety in the degrading sight of the royal beasts fed with lumps of bleeding meat pushed through the lower bar on the end of a p.r.o.ng.

Rendered somewhat incoherent by fear, and haste, allied to the ghastly English she had acquired in the streets and been allowed to retain in the Council School, Gertrude Ellen had found it somewhat difficult to arouse the keeper to a realisation of the impending disaster.

But when he _did_ look over his shoulder in the direction her dirty little hand was pointing he swore a mighty oath and acted promptly.

"Keep still, Sir, for the love of heaven!" he whispered, catching hold of Jan Cuxson's arm as the latter made a step forward. "Don't let that there animal see yer, he's the blamedest, cussedest brute I've ever had to do with. Never had a civil growl from him since he came here over three years ago."

Whilst speaking the man had hurriedly discarded his boots and climbed inside the barrier, whilst Cuxson held the child quiet by her thin little shoulders.

"d.a.m.n that woman," went on the keeper, "why can't she keep still. Sure as blazes if that there tiger sees her, which don't mean if he's _looking_ at her, he'll go nasty and have that missy's 'and off."

Mrs. Higgins, having clumped her brood into silence, was making frantic and what she imagined to be surrept.i.tious signals of distress with her left arm, keeping her eyes glued on Leonie, who was clinging to the bars with both hands whilst calling upon the tiger to come back.

He came back, half crouched, noiselessly, stealthily, the hair of the belly almost touching the ground, for all the world like a cat about to spring upon an unsuspecting sparrow.

He came to a standstill within an inch of the bars and threw his pointed ears straight forward so that they stood out at right angles to the beautifully marked face; spasmodically twitched back the mouth without a sound issuing therefrom, and then lay down and pressed his head against the bars.

The tiny hand was stroking the silky ears, patting the head, and prodding contentedly into the thick fur of the neck when suddenly with a mighty heart-quaking roar the tiger leapt up and back, and then hurled himself at the bars.

The keeper had crept, bent double, along the inside of the barrier, and had most suddenly and surprisingly seized Leonie by the waist and wrenched her free from the bars to which she had tried to cling, holding her like a vice in his arms where she vainly kicked and struggled for freedom.

CHAPTER VII

". . . that man could not be altogether cleared from injustice in dealing with beasts as he now does."--_Plutarch_.

The whole house was in an uproar.

The lions were trotting round and round, stopping to listen and snuff in the sawdust near the bars; the stumpy jaguar, black as ink, with a body like a steel case, was rus.h.i.+ng up and down, rubbing its forehead fiercely as it turned; a lion and his mate were rearing themselves one after the other against the walls, half turning from the middle to fall almost backward in that peculiar movement which reminds one forcibly of great succeeding waves stopped and thrown back upon themselves by some bleak rock.

People were pus.h.i.+ng and straining to look in at the windows, and rattling the doors which had been hurriedly locked by the keepers who had rushed to ascertain the cause of the tumult, whilst the tiger made the place resound with its terrific roars as it hurled its huge weight again and again at the bars of its cage.

"Come _on_, Mother," shouted the keeper above the din, "bring all those children and let's get out. They'll quieten down when we've gone. Can't you _read_!"

He shook Leonie slightly under the stress of his agitation as he hauled her in front of the notice which commands you to refrain from climbing the barrier.

"Of course I can wead," she replied with dignity; "I'm weading the little----"

"Well! read _that_!"

"But--but"--stammered Leonie, having read with difficulty--"but I knew the tiger, Mr. Keeper!"

"_Oh_! yes! of course! You were tiger 'unting and brought him from the Sunderbunds about four years ago; it wasn't the gentleman, of course not!"