"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!"
"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.
"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.
"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.
"No, Sir," replied Ellen, as she disentangled one of the puppy's claws from the lace on Leonie's sleeve. "I'm going to call my father! I don't think you understand your little girl very well!"
He spoke quite gently but his face was white with anger, that almost terrifying rage which surges over and through the mentally and physically strong at the sight, or thought, of cruelty to the small and weak.
He whistled two exceedingly sharp notes and plunged his hands into his pockets, where he scrunched up his keys and some loose change.
"The liberal soul shall be made fat."—The Bible.
"Well! well! well!"
Sir Jonathan walked over to the child and knelt down beside her as the maid rose and straightened her crumpled apron.
"Let me have the doggie, darling!"
"No!—no!—no! I—I love him. He's all soft and cuddley. I want to hold him for jus' a little, little longer!"
The child's voice was shrill with excitement as she pulled back from the encircling arms, her lips quivering, her eyes staring distractedly first at the younger man then at the dog.
"Would you like to have Jingles, kiddie?"
The change in the child's face was electrifying, and Sir Jonathan, rising with his eyes fixed upon her, touched his son's arm to draw his attention to it.
Tears like dewdrops on brown pansy petals hung heavily from the lashes, but the corners of the mouth turned up in an adorable smile, and waves of gratitude and delight swept up from chin to brow obliterating the agony of the past hours.
"For me—to keep?" she whispered, as she stood on her toes in an instinctive effort to make the body reach and unite with the mind at the highest point of this most perfect moment, whilst her little breast heaved with the repressed sobs of her fully laden heart.
"Yes! for keeps, little one!"
The three elders stood silently, the specialist watching intently the light which kindled in the child's eyes as she looked from one to the other before she bent her head over the dog she had completely surrounded with her arms.
Jan Cuxson made a movement to end a situation which was bordering on cruelty when Lady Hetth anticipated him with her customary dire tactlessness.
"There now, Leonie! Now perhaps you'll be satisfied. Give Mr.
Cuxson a kiss and say thank you nicely!"
Leonie would have cheerfully put her hand in the fire to serve this wonderful being who royally distributed gifts, and live ones at that, and only hesitated for the barest fraction of a second before, her face suffused with crimson, she walked up to him.
"Of course if—if you want me to—I'll—I'll kiss you," she said heroically, unconsciously squeezing the puppy under the stress of the awful moment until it yelped, "but I'd—I'd wather——" She stopped and looked up hurriedly into the understanding face of the elder man.
He nodded as he caught her eye so that she finished all in a hopeful burst.
"But I'd wather not if you don't mind!"
Lady Hetth frowned and put out her hand, murmuring something about really having to go.
"I'll send for her and Nannie, Lady Hetth. And keep her out of doors as much as possible. Why don't you take her to the Zoo this afternoon?"
"I couldn't possibly!" came the prompt and irritable reply.
"What about me!" interrupted Jan Cuxson. "Eh! kiddie? You and I riding big, fat elephants at the Zoo!"
"You—and Jingles—and me!" said Leonie, disengaging her hand from her aunt's. "And you," she said sweetly, laying it on the elder man's coat sleeve.
Heaven had opened wide its gates and she was for pulling everybody in with her, and her eyes danced, and so did her patent shod feet on the rug.
"It's too kind of you, Jan!" broke in her aunt. "I really don't like to let you waste your time with a child!"
"Not at all, Lady Hetth! I love kids—and the Zoo. Where shall I bring her to afterwards?"
"Oh! Yes! bring her to the Ladies' Union Club where I am staying. No! you'd better take her to her Nannie as they don't allow children in the Club, thank goodness. They are staying in York Street, Baker Street, quite convenient for you."
She trailed through the door as she spoke, pouring out a cascade of vapid thanks and announcing also that she had shopping to do at Debenham and Freebody's.
She hadn't, she was going to catch an omnibus in Cavendish Square, being of those who, blindly extravagant in most things, think they economise when spoiling their clothes and temper in a penny ha'penny bus, instead of keeping both unruffled in a taxi, at two shillings.
Ellen, returning later triumphantly with a taxi, held wide the door, a wide and loving smile across her plain face.
"You come too, Sir," said Jan Cuxson. "Do you heaps of good to ride an elephant!"
"I only wish I could, boy," said the man as he laid one hand on the shoulder of the son he loved, and the other on Leonie's head. "But I've much to do in that opium case, and I'm dining out, and shall read a bit when I get back——"
"And I'm dining out too, more's the nuisance, otherwise I could help. Sure to be awfully late as it's a farewell dinner to a fellow at the hospital——"
"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 passed 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."
"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 shiny 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 shivered 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 prong.
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.
"Damn 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 surreptitious 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.
". . . 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 rushing 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 pushing 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!"
"But weally," pleaded Leonie with the tears very near, "weally I've—I've dweamed lots about him, and—and—and——"
"Take her away, Sir—she makes me see red she does. No thank you. Sir—very much obliged, but it's part of my duty to see that people don't climb the barrier, and I kind of failed—p'raps the little girl what came and——"
They were outside by this time and the centre of an interested admiring crowd; it is only bleeding meat at three o'clock as a rule which can rouse the inhabitants of the lion house from their prison apathy.
Taking the dirty little paw Cuxson, crumpling up a note, put it into the dirty little palm and closed the fingers tightly over it. Whereupon Gertrude Ellen blushed furiously, and went to her mother with her clenched fist behind her back, where she kept it stiffly until tea-time, when she held out the bit of paper without a word, to the tune of "Lawks a mercy me!" from her mother, who immediately ordered more buns on the strength of it.
"Lor' bless yer, lovey!" said Mrs. Higgins, whose bonnet was bobbing on the nape of her neck, leaving the wisps of hair to straggle unrestrainedly in the honest grey eyes, as she knelt on the ground and tugged Leonie's short skirts into place. "Yer did give us a turn, dearie; yer might 'av 'ad yer 'and nipped orf by that there brute. Come 'ere, Lil and 'Erb—I'll 'ave yer eaten by the camuls next!"
The bow-legged twins, with their spirit of adventure quashed, rolled back to mother, and stood wide-eyed as she ran her work-worn hand through the stranger's luxuriant curls.
"Give us a kiss, lovey, an' go an' get some tea!"
For the second time that day Leonie moved to obey the same command, but this time there was no hesitation as she put her thin arms round the woman's neck and kissed her sweetly once and again.
And the woman, who sensed something amiss in the quivering little body, held her firmly, patting her gently with the same hand which dealt out indiscriminately such resounding and often well-earned smacks among her own; and Leonie sighed and leant confidingly against the stout, badly corseted figure.
"How comfy," she whispered shyly. "How soft you are. Auntie never holds me in her arms, and when Nannie does she's always full of bits of things that stick out."
And then with a little scream of delight she was away, speeding over the gravel in the wake of a lumbering great form wending its way in and out of the crowd.
"Cut along, Sir, or you'll find her 'obnobbing with the gorilla next!
I've never seen such a child for downright mischievousness."
Cuxson cut along as bidden and for all he was worth, pulling Leonie up in front of the ticket office for elephant rides, and after purchasing tickets sidetracked her to a tea-table.
* * * * * * * *
"Mind you bring Jingles when you come to stay!"
"Pwomise," called back Leonie from her Nannie's arms as she opened the door to them and lifted the tired happy child from the taxi.
But she didn't because she never went.
"And make my seated heart knock at my ribs
Against the use of nature. Present fears
Are less than horrible imaginings."—Shakespeare.
Big Ben announced the approaching hour of midnight, throwing the sonorous notes to the soft spring wind which wafted them up to Harley Street.
Save for the light thrown by the dancing flames of a log fire, and the orange disc made on the desk by the light of a heavily shaded lamp, the room was dark; the silence broken only by the occasional crackle of the wood fire and the faint rustle as Sir Jonathan turned a page.
"Notes" was written in letters of brass across the thick book heavily bound in leather, and of which the small key to the massive Bramah lock was kept in a pocket especially made in every waistcoat Sir Jonathan possessed.
Slowly he read through the page he had just written, crossing a t, dotting an i, adding or scratching out a word of the writing which was in no way more legible than that of any other surgeon; and when he had read he ran his hand through the mass of snow-white hair, sighed, and pushed the book further back on to the desk.
It is an eerie sound that of someone speaking aloud to himself, and still more eerie when it occurs in the middle of the night when the only part of the speaker to be clearly seen is the strong white hands moving in the orange disc thrown on the desk by the heavily shaded lamp.
And it is a strange habit this talking aloud of the solitary soul.
Mad?
Not a bit.
Dumb in the babel and din of chaotic midday, unresponsive to the uncongenial matter around, it will talk on subjects gay and grave, and even laugh with the silent sympathetic shades of midnight.
Nevertheless it is mighty eerie to hear it unawares.
For the twentieth time the famous specialist picked up a letter and read it from beginning to end.
"Strange, Jim, old fellow," said he as he laid it down, "strange how I think of you to-night. Seeing your little one, I suppose. But somehow to-night more than ever I feel the blank you made in my life when you left. How you'd have loved the kiddie, Jim. Strange wee soul with a shadow already on her life—a big black shadow, Jim, which I—I am going——!"
He turned his head and looked over his shoulder.
"Ugh!" he said, as he turned back to the desk and drew the book towards him.
"Leonie Hetth—age seven—walks in her sleep and dreams—dreams are evidently of India—things that walk softly and purr—a small light—and wet red which may mean blood—green eyes and a black woman who—who——"
Once more he ran his hand through his hair, but time irritably, then shook his head from side to side rubbed his hand across his eyes.
"I've been sitting up too late these last few nights over that opium case. Don't seem to be able to collect or hold my thoughts. Jim, old fellow, I wonder what made you leave Leonie in the care of that damn silly, shallow woman, and I wonder how you could ever have produced anything so highly strung and temperamental as your little daughter. I sup——"
He stopped quite suddenly and rose, standing with his head bent forward.
There was not a sound!
Feeling for the arm of his chair with his face still turned to the curtained window he sank back, only to spring upright with a bound.
Noiselessly, swiftly he crossed to the window, and pulling back the curtain an inch or two peered out into the small garden with its one tree and border of shrubs.
There was no sound and nothing moved.
"Strange!" he muttered, "I could have sworn some-one knocked."
He jerked back the curtains so that they rasped on the brass rod, letting in the almost blinding glare of the full moon which drew a nimbus from the silvery head and threw shadows which danced and gibbered by the aid of the log fire over the walls and ceiling, and in and out of the open safe.
He turned, but stopped abruptly when half-way across the room, standing stock still with his back to the window.
There was a faint distinct tapping as though slender fingers were beating a ghastly, distant drum.
It stopped—it continued—it stopped.
Then fell one little solitary rap like a drop of water falling on a metal plate, and it died away into silence.
And Sir Jonathan threw up his fine old head and laughed.
"Surely I've got India on the brain to-night, and as surely I want a good long holiday," he said, as he sat down at his desk and picked up his pen. "And I must remember to tell the gardener to clip that tree to-morrow. How Jan will laugh when I tell him that I was absolutely scared by a branch rubbing against the window."
For five long minutes he sat frowning down at the pen in his hand. Three times he commenced to write, and three times he stopped; twice he lit a cigarette and let it go out, and deeper grew the lines between the brows and round the mouth, until he shivered and turned quickly in his chair.
"That felt just like a sea-fog creeping up behind; stupid to keep the window open even in spring," he said as he picked up a log from a basket by his side and threw it deftly into the wide-open grate, leant sideways to separate two brass ornaments on a table which had jangled one against the other, and sighing turned restlessly in his chair.
"Confound those great market lorries," he muttered, looking round the room with its cabinets and shelves filled with the strange and weird, beautiful and unsightly curios he had brought back from every corner of the globe. "They shake the house enough to bring it down about one's ears."
The moon was slowly shifting as he leant back and settled himself comfortably in the high leather chair; the room was getting darker and there had fallen that intense almost palpable stillness which envelops most great cities after midnight, and against which his thoughts stood out like steel points upon a velvet curtain.
Clear and sharp as steel they shot indeed, this way and that through his mind; but hold them he could not, analyse or arrange them he could not, neither would his hand move towards the pen a few inches from the finger-tips.
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