Leonie of the Jungle by Joan Conquest

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LEONIE OF THE JUNGLE

BY

JOAN CONQUEST

Author of "Desert Love"

NEW YORK

THE MACAULAY COMPANY

Copyright, 1921, by

THE MACAULAY COMPANY

PRINTED IN THE U. S. A.

TO

THE SPLENDID NATIVE OF INDIA,

THE LIVING

MADHU KRISHNAGHAR

[Transcriber's Note: The name "Madhu" appears throughout this book.
The "u" in it can be correctly rendered only in Unicode, as
u-macron--uppercase U+016A, lowercase U+016B.]

CONTENTS

BOOK I

THE WEST

BOOK II

THE EAST

"And never the twain shall meet."

BOOK I

THE WEST

LEONIE OF THE JUNGLE

CHAPTER I

"To deliver thee from the strange woman!"--_The Bible_.

"Who found the kitten?"

"Me," quavered the childish voice.

Lady Susan Hetth tchcked with her tongue against her rather prominent
teeth at the lamentable lapse in grammar, and looked crossly at Leonie,
who immediately lifted up the quavering voice and wept.

Sobs too big for such a little girl shook the slender body, whilst
great tears dripped from the long lashes to the tip of the upturned
nose, down the chin and on the knee of the famous specialist, against
which she rested.

"Stand up, Leonie, and push your hair out of your eyes!"

The thin little body tautened like an overstrung violin string, and a
shock of russet hair was pushed hastily back from a pair of indefinable
eyes, in which shone the light of an intense grief strange in one so
young.

"Leave her to me, Lady Hetth!"

The surgeon's voice was exceedingly suave but with the substratum of
steel which had served to bend other wills to his with an even greater
facility than the thumb of the potter moulds clay to his fancy.

"Leonie is going to tell me everything, and then she is going to the
shop to buy a big doll and _forget_ all about it!"

"Please may I have a book instead of----"

"Leonie, that is very rude."

"Please, Lady Hetth. Go on, darling---what kind of book."

"'Bout tigers an' snakes, oh! an' elephants. Weal animals. Dolls, you
know"--she smiled as she confided the great secret--"aren't weal
_babies_, they're just full of sawdust."

He lifted the child on to his knee, frowning at the weight, and
smoothed the tangled mass of curls away from the low forehead with a
touch which caused her to make a sound 'twixt sob and sigh, and to lie
back against the broad shoulder.

It was a long and disjointed story, told in the inconsequent fashion of
a child of seven unused to converse with her elders; and continually
interrupted by the aunt, who, fretful and dying for her tea, jingled
her distracting bracelets and chains, fidgeted with the Anglo-Indian
odds-and-ends of her raiment, and disconcerted the child by the futile
verbal proddings; which are as bad for the infant mind as the criminal
attempts to force a baby to use its legs are to the infant body.

"So! and you found the dear little kitten lying quite still in the
nursery this morning?"

"Yes! Stwangled!"

"Do pronounce your _r_'s, Leonie."

The child shivered in the man's arms.

"Who told you it was strangled?"

"Auntie!"

The man's hand closed for a moment on a heavy paper-weight as he looked
across the room at the woman who was waggling her foot and knitting her
scanty brows at the sound of the rending sobs.

"Auntie was mistaken, darling. Kitty was asleep, tired out with
playing or running away from the dog next door."

Leonie shook her head. "Kitty's dead," she wailed, "lying all black
and quiet, like--like my dweams!"

There was a moment's pregnant silence, during which Leonie turned round
and snuffled into the great man's collar, and he frowned above the
russet head as he drew a block of paper and pencil towards him.

"What dreams, darling?"

"Don' know--dweams I dweam!"

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?"

"_Black_!" was the unexpectedly decisive reply. "Black with lots of
wed--wet wed--and gween eyes--lots and lots of eyes--and--and soft
things I can't see, and--noises like kit--kit--kitty makes when she
purrs!"

"Yes?"

"Yes! and people with soft feet like the--the slippers Nannie wears at
night so that I can't hear them. And--and that's all!"

She laughed like the child she ought to have been as she bit the end
off a big pink fondant which had materialised out of one of a dozen
little drawers in the desk, then holding up the other end to the man
laughed again spontaneously and delightfully as he pushed the sweet
into her mouth.

Then he put her on her feet, tilted the little white face back till the
strong light shone into the opalescent, gold-flecked eyes, kissed the
curly head and told her to run round the room, open the cabinet doors
and look at the hidden treasures.

"May I touch them?"

"Of course, sweetheart!"

"I'm vewy sowwy _you_ didn't win," she said in her old-fashioned way,
"because you are vewy, vewy nice. And"--she continued, suddenly
harking hack as a child will to a previous remark--"and it is all vewy,
vewy black, with a teeny, weeny light like the night-light Nannie
lights, and----!"

She stopped dead and buried her head in the middle of Sir Jonathan's
waistcoat, fumbling his coat sleeves with her nervous little hands.

"Yes, darling!" said the man, without a trace of expression in his
voice as he held up a finger warningly to the woman who had rustled in
her chair.

"And--and sometimes there's a black woman. And I'm--I'm fwightened of
her 'cause she calls me, and--and--pulls me out of bed by my head."

"How do you mean, darling? Does she catch hold of your hair? It must
hurt you dreadfully!"

Leonie suddenly stood up, nervously pulling at the man's top waistcoat
button as she furtively glanced first over one shoulder and then over
the other.

"No! she doesn't touch me," she faltered, "and I--I don't always see
her. But--but"--she laid her open palm against her forehead in a
curious little gesture suggestive of the East--"but she pulls me
through my forehead, and when she pulls I've--I've _got_ to go! May I
_hold_ that elephant?"

The brain specialist looked straight into the strange eyes which smiled
confidingly back into his.

"Just a moment, sweetheart," said he. "What do your little friends,
and Nannie, and Auntie say when you tell them about the dreams?"

Leonie leant listlessly against the arm of the chair, and sighed as she
flashed a lightning glance at her aunt who was turning over a
periodical on a table by her side.

"I don't tell Nannie because I think she wouldn't weally understand,
and--and----"

Silence.

"Well, darling?"

"Auntie," she spoke in the merest whisper, "got awful cwoss the first
time I did tell her. She was going out to a dance, and I was telling
her whilst she was dwessing--it was a lovely dwess all sparkles and
little wosebuds--and I upset a bottle of scent over her gloves. The
scent too was like my dweams, just like--like--oh! I don't know, and I
haven't any!"

Once more the man intuitively bridged the gulf.

"No little friends? How's that?"

"Bimba died," she announced casually. "She liked books, too. It's
vewy silly thinking dolls are babies, isn't it; that's why I love
weading, it--it seems weal!"

Lady Hetth broke in hurriedly.

"We simply can't keep her away from books when she's in town. Of
course when we are in the country she simply lives out of doors. It is
very difficult to keep her amused. She sulks when she goes to a party
and always wants to go home!"

"I don't sulk weally, Auntie, I jus'--jus' don' seem to know how to
play!"

She smiled a wan little smile at the woman who had no children of her
own, and moved away slowly with a backward doggy look at the man.

"Good God!" he muttered. "Will you come here, Lady Hetth!"

CHAPTER II

"When your fear cometh as a desolation."--_The Bible_.

Susan Hetth rose.

She had always intensely disliked her brother-in-law's old friend,
failing utterly to perceive the heart of gold studded with rare gems
that was hidden under a bushel of intentional brusqueness.

But as she was under an obligation to him she decided to make herself
as pleasant as possible, and to obey his orders, however irksome.

Great brain specialist, great philanthropist, she had rung him up in a
panic that morning after having vainly ransacked her memory for some
other human being in whom she could with safety confide her fear, and
from whom she could expect some meed of succour.

She knew, as everybody knew, that years ago he had given up the hours
of consultation which had seen his Harley Street waiting-room filled to
overflowing; that little by little, bit by bit, indeed, he had given
himself up entirely to research work, travelling in every quarter of
the globe in his quest for the knowledge necessary to the alleviation
of the mental troubles of his fellow-beings. And that when he found it
or some part of it he had hurried home, and having brought it to as
near a state of perfection as possible, had flung it broad-cast to the
suffering; just as he flung the immense sums of money he made among the
destitute for whom he loved to work without thought of the morrow.

A genuine case of trouble he had never been known to dismiss, and Susan
Hetth had heaved a sigh of relief into the receiver when he fixed an
immediate appointment.

The spook of fear is not the cheeriest companion of the early cup of
tea, and Nannie's words, allied to Nannie's face when she entered
without knocking, had caused the silly, invertebrate woman to take
immediate action for once in her life.

Not for anything would she confess it, but she wished now she had
listened to Nannie when, just a year ago, she had so fervently urged a
visit to the doctor the first time she had discovered the baby girl
walking downstairs one step at a time in her sleep.

She remembered the way the ever-changing house-parlourmaids had
furtively looked at the child when she came in to dessert; how one
after the other they had given notice, declaring that although they
really loved the child their nerves would not stand the ever-recurring
shock of finding her sitting in some corner in the dark; or the
pattering of her little feet on the stairs when she occasionally evaded
the nurse and walked about the house in her sleep; and she remembered
how other nurses who brought baby visitors to tea had watched the
child, surreptitiously touching their foreheads and wagging their heads
at each other.

But, as is the way of the supine, she had put it off and put it off
until her negligence had culminated in the frightful scene of this same
very early morning, when Leonie, waking in the day nursery to find her
kitten dead, had screamed and shrieked hour after hour until the
house-parlourmaid had rushed in and given instant notice, with the
unsolicited information that the servants thought, and the neighbours
said, the child was mad and ought to be sent to a home.

Then, indeed, had terror suddenly tweaked Susan Hetth's heart, the
social one, the maternal one having long since atrophied through want
of use; for the shadow of lunacy is about the blackest of all the
shadows that can fall across a butterfly's sunny, heedless path.

Ten years ago she had lost her husband, in the year following most of
her capital had gone in a mad-cat speculation, and three years later
her gallant brother-in-law died, leaving her a yearly income sufficient
for expenses and education if she would undertake to mother his little
daughter. Since then she had led the usual abortive life of the woman
who lives on the past glamour of her husband's success and a limited
income, upon which she tries ineffectually to dovetail herself into a
society to which she does not rightly belong. Having noticed an
increasing plenitude of silver among the ash-gold of her hair, a
deepening of the lines of discord between her brows, and the threads of
discontent which were daily being hemstitched into her face by the
sharp needles of make-believe, covetousness, and a precarious banking
account, she had recently decided to try and annex, or rather try and
graft herself on to a certain unsuspecting male being _en secondes
noces_.

And that simply cannot be done if there is the slightest shadow upon
one's appendages.

So she sat down in the chair with as good a grace as she could muster,
and arranged her big picture hat so that the spring sun should not draw
Sir Jonathan's attention to the methods she employed to combat the
rapidity with which what remained of her prettiness, prematurely faded
by the Indian sun, was vanishing.

For a long and trying moment he sat silently staring at her, wondering
as he had always wondered what had induced his old friend to place his
little girl in such inadequate, feeble hands.

To break the tension Lady Hetth clanked a silver Indian bracelet bought
at Liberty's against an Egyptian chain sold by Swan & Edgar's, and the
man frowned as he drew a series of cats on his blotting-paper.

CHAPTER III

"Against stupidity the very gods
Themselves contend in vain!"--_Schiller_.

"Let me see," he said slowly. "You have been in India I believe. I
wonder if you know anything about it!"

"I lived _ten_ years in the Punjab." This information was given with
the intense self-satisfaction peculiar to the feminine Anglo-Indian.
"With my husband," was added after a rather damping silence, "who was
knighted for certain--er--work he did in the Indian Civil Service."

"That doesn't mean that you know anything about the country, Mam.
Leonie has been with you almost seven years, please correct me if I
make any mistake. She is seven this month you say. She was four
months old when she came over from India. Did her ayah come with her,
by the way? No! Had she been good to the baby--yes! yes! I know, they
always are, but these dreams indicate that the child has been badly
frightened some time or another!"

"But she _couldn't_ be frightened at four months," vacantly interrupted
Susan Hetth, who could not see the trend of the conversation, or the
need of the detailed interrogation. "She would be _far_ too young!"

"Too _young_!" snapped Sir Jonathan. "Rubbish! Do you know why you
are afraid to-day of falling from a height?"

"No," replied Susan Hetth, cordially loathing the man, his methods, and
his manners.

"Because," he answered roughly, "you were frightened of falling from
your mother's or your nurse's arms when you were a few months old, and
the impression of height and fear made upon your baby mind is still
with you, _that's_ why!"

"The brute!" she thought, as she smiled the propitiatory smile of one
who is afraid and murmured, "How very interesting!"

"Is there anything else you can tell me about your little niece? no
matter how trivial a detail! Has she ever screamed for hours as she
screamed this morning? Does she get angry? I mean mad angry!"

"No!" replied the aunt. "From what her nurse and daily governess tell
me she seems to be _remarkably_ sweet-tempered. You see I don't--I
haven't--I don't see much of her. I'm--I've--you see I have _so_ many
friends over here!"

The man snorted.

"I must say," she continued, "I have _never_ met a child so averse from
being kissed or being made a fuss of--she _hates_ anyone to touch her,
even--even _me_, her _mother_, as you might say; but they say she is
tractable, and has never been known to lose her temper, or slap, or
scratch, as some children do--no! there is _really_ nothing to tell
about her--of course she walks a bit in her sleep, at least so her
Nannie says!"

The specialist's hand crashed on the table. "Good God, woman!" he
flung at her, "what in heaven's name _are_ you modern women made of?
How long has she been walking in her sleep? Tell me all you know _at
once_--and remember it's your niece's _brain_ and her future you are
talking about, so try and describe this sleep-walking with as much
interest and regard to detail as you would if you were talking about a
new dress. Why in heaven's name didn't you send her with the
nurse--the _servant_--instead of coming yourself--I might have learnt
something about the child _then_!"

It seemed that Leonie while still quite a baby had walked about the
night nursery in her sleep; that she had been found in the day nursery
and on the lower landing, but had always gone back to bed without
waking; that she muttered a lot of rubbish which the nurse could not
understand, and was always very tired next day. That now that she was
older she slept in a room by herself as she became unaccountably
restless and wide awake if anyone slept in the room with her. No! the
nurse had never noticed the hour or the date, or anything, and that was
really all, and "couldn't you give the child a dose of bromide."

Which sentence served to finish the history and to bring Sir Jonathan
with a bound from his chair.

"Bromide," he snarled, "_bromide_! Now, Lady Hetth, listen to me.
There is something more than nerves and a highly strung temperament in
this. Next week I want Nannie, not _you_, to bring the child here on a
visit. I know India and her religions as far as any Englishman dare
say he knows anything about that unfathomable country--yes! Mam!
religions--Hinduism--Brahminism--Buddhism--why, I've passed the best
part of my life trying to unravel certain physical and psychical
threads knotted up in India; but the years are slipping by, and time is
getting shorter and shorter, and but a tithe done out of all there is
to do; but thanks be, my boy has inherited my love for this work, and
will carry on here when I have crossed the threshold and found the
solutions to my problems on the other side. Though I'm sure I don't
know why I'm telling _you_ all this," he finished brusquely, "we will
return to India."

"Yes! India is very, very interesting!" piped Lady Hetth, rising and
standing on one foot so as to rest the other suffering from an
oversmall shoe.

"Very, _very_ interesting!" she continued unctuously and with the
enthusiasm she reserved as a rule for the S.P.C.K.I, which letters
stand for an attempt to graft a new creed on to the tree of religion in
India which was bearing _fruit_ at a period when we were hobnobbing in
caves, with a boulder or good stout club as reasons for existence.

"I'll write and tell you when to send the child and her nurse, and
between us we'll manage to keep her amused. And in the meantime stop
all lessons and let her do exactly as she likes, and feed her up, Mam,
feed her up, her bones are simply coming through her skin."

Again he laughed a great rumbling laugh, as lifting the child from the
ground he felt the little hands in his mane of white hair.

"You're nice," she decided, "vewy nice."

"Like to come and stay with me?"

"Oh, yes! if you won't--won't make me----!"

She stopped short.

"Well! what--won't make you what?"

"Nothing--Auntie pulled my dwess!"

The door closed softly.

CHAPTER IV

"The kindest man,
The best conditioned and unwearied spirit
In doing courtesies."--_Shakespeare_.

They met on the threshold.

Swinging back the door to let Leonie and her aunt out, Ellen, the
middle-aged maid, almost an heirloom in the family of Cuxson, bristling
in starched cap and apron, let in the erstwhile plague of her life, but
now as ever the light of her eyes, Jonathan Cuxson, Junior.

He took Lady Hetth's hand in a mighty and painful grip when after a
moment's hesitation she introduced herself.

"Why, of course! You must be Jan! Except for being bigger you haven't
changed a bit since I saw you years ago one Speech Day at Harrow!" She
looked with open admiration at the very personable young man before her
who loomed large in the hall with his height of six feet two and a
tremendous width of shoulder. His eyes were grey, and as honest as a
genuine fine day; the jaw was just saved from a shadow of brutality in
its strength by a remarkably fine mouth; the ears were splendid from an
intellectual point of view, and the set of the head on the neck, and
the neck on the shoulders, perfect. The nose was a good nose, rather
broad at the top, with those delicate sensitive nostrils which usually
spell trouble for the owner.

"I don't believe you remember me!"

Happily the reply which must have been untrue or given in the negative
was averted by the hilarious arrival of a puppy.

Having heard the deep voice associated in its canine mind with bits of
cake and joyous roughs-and-tumbles, it had forsaken the happy though
forbidden hunting ground of the upper storeys and negotiated the stairs
in a series of bumps and misses.

Arrived in the hall it hurled itself blindly against Leonie's ankles,
and ricocheted on to its master's boots, where it essayed a _pas seul_
on its hind legs in its efforts to reach the strong brown hand.

"Oh!" said Leonie, as she fell on her knees with her arms outstretched
to the rampaging ball of white fluff and high spirits, the which
thinking it some new game squatted back on its hind legs with the front
ones wide apart, gave an infantile squeak, and whizzed round three
times apparently for luck, as tears welled up in the child's large eyes
and trickled down the white face.

"Hello, kiddie! You're crying!" said Jan Cuxson, who like his father
had a positive mania for protecting and helping those in trouble, which
mania got him into an infinite and varied amount of trouble himself,
and led him into unexpected boles and corners of the earth. "I'm--I'm
not crying weally!" choked Leonie, "it's--it's my kitten!"

"Oh! do stop, Leonie!" said her aunt, leaning down to catch the child's
hand and pull her to her feet. "She's coming to stay with you," she
added, as Leonie stood quite still with that piteous jerk of the chin
which comes from suppressed and overwhelming grief, as she watched the
puppy play a one-sided game of bumblefoot in a corner.

"That's jolly," said the young man.

"Oh! she's coming as a case. She walks a good deal in her sleep, and
as my brother-in-law, Colonel Hetth, if you remember, was such a----"

But Jan Cuxson was not listening.

He too had put his hand on the curly head and tilted it back gently so
that the light shone into the sorrow-laden eyes encircled by shadows.

Then he smiled suddenly down at the mite, and she, perceiving that a
ray of light had suddenly pierced the all-pervading gloom, smiled back,
and catching his left hand in both of hers pressed it to her forehead.

"Good Lord!" he muttered, as a thrill ran through him at the unexpected
and oriental action.

And Fate, plucking in senile fashion at the loose ends which lay
nearest her old hand, knotted two tightly together with a bit of rare
golden strand she kept tucked away in her bodice.

"And what shall we do when you come? Can you ride? I know of a lovely
pony a little boy rides!"

Leonie shook her head mournfully, feeling unconsciously but acutely the
penalty of her sex for the first time in her life.

"I can't wide astwide," she sighed, "I haven't any bweeches. Jill and
Maudie Wetherbourne always wide in skirts. But I can swim," she added
quickly, "an' jump in out of my depff. I learnt in the baff at the
seaside!"

"Oh! come along, child, _do_!" broke in her aunt to her own undoing.

"Auntie jumps in too, though she says she doesn't," proceeded Leonie in
a gallant effort to shore up her family's sporting reputation.

"I do _not_, Leonie! I can't imagine how you ever got such an idea
into your head!"

But Leonie, nothing daunted, shook back her russet mop of hair and gave
direct answer, to the confusion of the domestic who happily stood out
of Lady Hetth's eye-range.

"But, Auntie! I've _often_ heard Wilkins tell Nannie that you've been
in off the deep end before bweakfast! Oh! do let me hold him just for
ever such a little while!"

To save the expression of his face Jan Cuxson had bent and lifted the
pup by the scruff of its neck, and upon the piteous appeal put it
squirming and wriggling in the outstretched arms.

Great tears dripped all over the animal though Leonie stood on one
foot, bit her underlip, and squeezed the puppy to suffocation in a
valiant effort to restrain this appalling sign of weakness.

"Tell me what makes you cry like that?"

"My--my kitten was--was stwangled by--by someone this morning, an'--an'
she was all soft an'--an' fluffy like----"

The words ended in a paroxysm of sobs muffled in the puppy's coat
whereupon it ecstatically licked every visible part of the child's
neck, whilst Ellen, throwing decorum to the winds, knelt down and drew
the shaking little figure into her arms.

"Anybody in there!" suddenly and very gruffly asked Jan Cuxson, jerking
his head in the direction of the room where the few and favoured
awaited the pleasure of the specialist.

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