Joan Conquest

“ The light of his religion flared into a flame of love and passion almost uncontrolled when Leonie, lifting the chick, stood by his side in the full light of the moon, with a smile of welcome on her lips, and the light of unholy knowledge in her eyes.
Quite close to him she stood with one hand upon his arm, as he hung garlands of scented flowers about her neck, and then with a little beckoning gesture was gone; and the ayah crouching on the floor, beat her withered breast with her withered hand, a world of doubt in her monkey eyes. ”

“ Keenly intuitive, as are all the peoples of India, she had crept noiselessly across the matting and crouched at Leonie's feet in her desire to be near the beloved child in her distress.
There was a heaven of love and a world of indecision in the monkey eyes, but not a trace of fear when the beloved child suddenly twisted the sari from about the sleek head and pock-marked face and shook her violently by the shoulder. Instead she rocked herself gently to and fro, crooning in the toneless cracked voice of the native woman who tends a white child and loves it. ”

“ Leonie turned the handle of the door, but shrank back as the man, with a bound, flung himself at her and wrenched her hand free; and Susan Hetth clashed her bracelets and bits as she put her hands tightly over her face, in her fright forgetting the mixture of colours she heaped on it daily in the hope of stemming the neap tide of old age.
"Get out, you there!" snarled the man, lashed to fury by the whip of jealousy. "Get out, go away, wash your face—you look like a—a—like a damned fut'rist, get out!" ”

“ Like a cobweb thread, so fine it was; like a thread of gold, so sweet it was; rising and falling, to rise again in one throbbing cry of love, pleading, insisting, despairing.
The echoes caught and held it in the dim corners of the marble cupola, and answered cry with cry until the place seemed full of the sobbing of lost souls. Back and forth, at the girl's feet and around her head, surging over the dead lovers, beating against the walls and roof, to die away, sobbing, sobbing like a weary child.
Leonie, transfixed with ecstasy, stretched out her hands to catch the dying notes ”

“ She looked back over her shoulder, stared hard for a moment, and then, tearing herself free, ran like a hunted deer through the crumbling doorway into the blackness of the temple.
"Who fears, O Woman?" whispered the man, whose beauty touched the unseemly as he sank to the ground. "Who fears?"
Half-way up the temple Leonie stopped, standing in a silver pool of moonshine which blazed like the blade of a knife through a hole in the roof; lighting up the ruined altar, the grass-grown stones, and the image of a female deity carved in bas-relief upon a huge block of granite. ”

“ Madhu Krishnaghar, with his face one blaze of fury, stood still and called.
"Rama," he called. "Rama, hold," and as the wretched creature, forgetting the animal in his fear, sped past him, Rama curled his trunk swiftly about him and jerked him to a standstill.
Useless to strive against that strength; useless to fight against the gods or raise his voice in shrieking prayer.
For had he not looked upon the unveiled face of his master's woman.
Slowly Madhu Krishnaghar led Leonie up the marble steps and stopped.
"Thou dog," he said gently, "thou low-caste dog!" ”

“ Woolacombe, perched on the top of the hill, and she simply spoils me.
Will you have a cigarette?"
Leonie shook her head, and the two great, hastily twisted plaits wriggled like shining snakes, causing the dog to lay one paw on his bone and snarl.
"I don't smoke!"
"How delightful!" said Jan Cuxson. "I was sure you didn't—I love women who smell of lavender."
"Won't you smoke—your pipe—and tell me what you are going to make of your life." ”

“ The native of India weaves and fashions the cloth of his cloak of love out of many colours. Gorgeous colours, blinding, dazzling, in which predominate the scarlet of passion and the emerald of the supreme male's jealousy. And all, from the sweeper to the highest of birth and caste, wear this wondrous garment in India, though not one out of the teeming millions fashions his cloak upon the pattern of his neighbour's.
Madhu Krishnaghar, the son of princes, with eyes dimmed by the brilliance of his own particular garment, failed to perceive that Leonie, too, was wrapped in a love mantle. ”

“ Have you heard Leonie play the Moonlight?"
"No! What's it like?"
"Simply awful, just like Mam'zel when she thumps downstairs in her felt slippers."
There fell a space of drowsy silence in which the girls lay back on the grass incline, and solemnly munched chocolates with youth's delightful dissociation from anything more perplexing than the passing of the actual hour.
"No!" murmured Annie Smith, breaking the drowsy spell. "She's not like us—couldn't be with a V.C. father and India as a birthright. But isn't it all wonderfully mysterious?" ”

“ He turned with a snarl and hit up the old man's hand as it almost touched the nape of his neck, and stretching wide his arms made a shield of his body between Leonie and the intent he read in the priest's eyes, just as a brick fell and split to pieces at their feet.
"Linger not, my son," said the old priest fiercely. "Behold! the rites have been performed, the chants sung, and the offerings made. Drive the knife home, and give drink to thy mother of that which she loves. Hasten! for she is angry at thy slowness, and the very earth trembles at her wrath." ”

“ The specialist sat still for a second and then laughed, the great kind laugh of a man with a big heart who adores children.
"Let's play a game, Leonie! You tell me about the dreams, and I'll tell you about my new motor-car, and the one who tells best will get a big sweet!"
With a child's sudden change of mood Leonie sat up, swinging her black silk legs to and fro, her eyes dancing, her lips parted over the even little teeth.
"I love sweets!" said she. "You begin!"
"My car's grey!" said Sir Jonathan Cuxson. "What colour are your dreams?" ”

“ And in the jungle clearing where the fire smouldered dimly, and the coolies, flat on their faces from abject terror, refused to move, Madhu Krishnaghar sat, garbed as a servant, his brain in a whirl of religion and hate, and his heart filled with love of the white girl he had sent to certain death.
Suddenly he sprang to his feet, and tearing his raiment from him flung it wide, and stood nude save for the loin cloth about the slender middle, and the turban which outlined his tortured face, looking like some lost bronze statue in the deserted places of the jungle. ”

“ CHAPTER XXVII "For lo! the winter is past, and the rain is over and gone!"—The Bible.
"That's Lady Hickle!"
The two men turned in their saddles as Leonie went by at a canter near the rails.
The raking great waler forging ahead like an engine of destruction was kept in check by Leonie, exuberant with health, the knowledge of a perfect seat and hands, and that uprush of spirits which an early ride on the Maidan brings—to some of us.
"Not the Lady Hickle?"
"The same!"
"Well, I'm damned! she's only a girl, and what a seat! Chucked the millions, too, didn't she? Having a good time?" ”

“ Leonie was standing knee deep in a pool.
The saw-edged rocks rose behind her, shining like steel in the moonlight; great strands of seaweed swirled about her, for all the world like snakes, weaving in and out of the burnished hair which spread itself fanwise on the water about her knees.
Save for the thinnest, finest silk bathing dress which clung to the perfect body, as does the soft fragrant skin to the peach, she was nude, and so unaware of eyes upon her that the man held his breath, fearing she might spy him in the shade. ”

“ In the black shades of the jungle, understanding at last that for him there could be no life outside the life of the white woman he loved, and no happiness outside her happiness, he had raced Time down the jungle path, through the outer gates and temple door, pausing not for the fraction of a second; realising, as he ran, that upon his speed alone depended the life of his beloved. And even as the priest flung back his arm with a scream of ecstasy, the knife was wrenched out of his hand from behind. ”

“ With her bearer's hand to balance her, Leonie stepped off the gangway into the rocking, canoe-shaped boat, made in the dim past by digging out the interior of some tree trunk, and in the bows of which were huddled the coolies with her luggage.
Two bronze-hued rowers, nude save for the loin cloth, paddled the boat round the bends of the narrow creek with a dexterity due to habit; and then by chance or misfortune wedged her firmly into a glutinous mud-bank from out of which it took the five men two hours and every ounce of their united strength to push her. ”

“ We have a surer way, aye, and a quicker one. Struggle not to-night, sahib, when I tie you to the ring in the wall. Bound you must be, for the Black One has spoken; and it is her pleasure that I shall lift my will from you, even as I did by mischance yesterday. India has suffered through this white woman; 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 the white 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 to slowness. ”

“ They were mad indeed the people, but none so mad as Leonie as she stood with feet apart glaring down at the ayah's sleek head, which she held by the hair, in one hand.
So mad was she that the priests drew back as from one divine; all but the high-caste youth who stood unnoticed amongst them and who advanced one step as Leonie raised her face to the moon.
"She of the full moon," she chanted, "was the first worshipped one with depths of days, of nights. They who, O worshipful one, gratify thee with offerings, those well doers are entered into thy firmament!" ”

“ Leonie tried to speak, and failing, nodded her russet head.
"Even so, it is the mark of Kali which the priest cut upon thee and me, uniting us all those moons ago in the Mother."
She turned completely round and faced the man with a little look of wonder in her eyes.
"I have so often wondered about the—the little mark," she said. "But you see—how could I marry you—I could not, do not—love you!"
"Love," he said quietly. "Love! Thou wilt love me, aye! thou wilt love me in thy waking hours, even as thou wouldst have loved me in thy sleep if—if the gods had not intervened." ”

“ Leonie, swept off her balance in her great relief, broke across his words.
"Let us hasten quickly, quickly. You will tell the priest; you will help me to set him—the man I love—free. Oh, come quickly, quickly!"
In her callous but uncalculated desire to use this man as a lever wherewith to heave aside the mountain of trouble which threatened to overwhelm Jan Cuxson; and, with the inexplicable cruelty of the woman who loves, and will blissfully put a whole community to torture as long as her beloved is saved a single hurt, she asked the one impossible thing. ”

“ Jan Cuxson paused a moment as he looked across towards the still figure of Madhu Krishnaghar stretched peacefully upon the ground.
"By the whitest man that has ever lived, dear!—by him!"
And he turned without another word and strode through the temple and out of the gates to the narrow way which led to safety. And where the trees met in an arch above his head he stopped and looked back, and Leonie, turning her face, passed her hand wonderingly over the tousled masses of her hair and the silken drapery about her body. ”

“ Love or religion? Who knows!
Are they divided by much more than the breadth of a hair?
Leonie turned and walked up the steps, the wet heavy sheeting hobbling her about the knees and ankles, clinging to her as the skin to the peach, her dripping hair making little pools of holy water upon the holy steps; until, standing upon the one where lay the little crumpled heap of her silken sari, she unplaited it and shook it out in the night breeze. ”