Leonie of the Jungle Part 7

"Oh! dear!"

The plaintive e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n fell on the drowsy noonday air, and the speaker fished a chocolate out of the box, offered her in heartfelt sympathy by her companion.

"Buck up, old thing!" said the latter. "These very same old exam rods were laid up in pickle for our forbears, and they survived the ordeal.

The summer's here and the holidays are due, so let's grin and bear it, and what _does_ it matter if you _do_ mix your futures and conditionals? As long as it's French and you don't split your infinitives you're all right, the splitting, I believe, _is_ a mortal sin in some cases, though I don't quite understand how, or exactly what it means."

Seaview House is an establishment for the finishing of young ladies, which process includes the rounding of their anatomical angles by means of dancing and physical culture, and the polishing of the facets of their intelligence by the gentle manipulation of three or four foreign governesses and professors of music, singing, drawing, etc. These latter smile suavely through the excruciating half-hours they allot to each unfinished damsel, and tear their hair in private at the memory of the daily and hourly murderous executions of the old masters at which they must perforce a.s.sist.

And as much, and even more, attention is paid to the repousse work on the outside of the platter.

The hirsute covering is brushed and burnished until the heads of the two score damsels bob about in the sun like globes of ebony, or straw, or Dutch cheese, or ginger; finger nails shine like old cut gla.s.s, just enough and not too much; figures are repressed or augmented until they look more like figures and less like sacks of barley, or wood planks.

They are taught to sit down and stand up, and to cross, enter or leave a room like humans instead of colts, to pitch the voice in a low and gracious key, and to look upon slang as a luxury only to be enjoyed in the absence of those in temporary power. In fact the establishment is quite old-fashioned but infinitely charming, and has the reputation of having more old pupils to a score of years happily or advantageously married, and fewer ditto employed in a useful capacity than any other school in Eastbourne.

Which is all as it should be!

"Yes! but," continued, let's call her Annie Smith; she does not appear in the book again so that it really does not matter about her nomenclature. "I could just see Leonie from my desk and she was smiling all over her face and romping, simply _romping_ through the French papers."

"Oh! but," sympathised, let us call her Susan Brown for the same reason that we christened Annie Smith, "_she_ has a brain!"

Nice Susan Brown hadn't, but balanced the lack by a wealthy parentage.

"Yes! of course she has! And _isn't_ she beautiful!"

Nice Annie Smith was as plain as a bun, but balanced her defect by a heart of gold, and found her ultimate and perfect joy in an overworked curate and seven children by him, all of whom were destined to sit round the festive board like seven plain little currantless buns on a plate.

"Yes! isn't she! She's wonderful, I think, and oh! so very different to all of us."

"I found the very word to suit her in the dictionary," rather importantly added Susan Brown, "_bizarre_----"

"Whatever does it mean?" inquired Annie Smith, who was destined never again to run up against the word or its meaning during the rest of her neutral life.

"Er--a kind of a--er--_je ne sais quoi_ in the temperament--not exactly a nonconformist, you know; but just a little--well, not _quite_ like _us_!"

"I see!" contentedly replied mystified Annie Smith. "But I _do_ love her; she's such a dear. So gentle and so ready to help everybody, and so _splendid_ at sports. What tremendous friends she and Jessica have become, haven't they, since the night of the scare? I often wonder what made her walk in her sleep like that; she's never done it since."

"Indigestion, I've always thought. Cookie was away on her holidays, if you remember, and her _loc.u.m tenens_, understudy, you know, made pastry like cement; I always thought, too, that Princ.i.p.al gave her that lovely little room right away from the rest of us on account of it--the sleep-walking, I mean. I'm sure I should have _died_ if I'd found her standing over me in the moonlight in the middle of the night. It must be awfully jolly though having someone in India who writes to you every three months. _Isn't_ she lucky to have been _born_ in India, and to have had an ayah, a kind of native nurse, you know, who _still_ worships her, and writes to her, and sends _real_ Indian presents, and to have had a V.C. for a father--Leonie, I mean?"

Annie Smith laughed that happy laugh which is the outcome of a perfectly contented mind. "She deserves all the luck she gets, and what luck for _us_ having her as head next term. What a favourite she is with everyone, even old Signer Valenti! Oh, dear, I wish to-morrow's exams were over; my fingers feel just like blanc-mange when I think of that nocturne."

"Never say die, Ann! _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 s.p.a.ce of drowsy silence in which the girls lay back on the gra.s.s incline, and solemnly munched chocolates with youth's delightful dissociation from anything more perplexing than the pa.s.sing 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?"

Dear unsophisticated soul, whose _wanderl.u.s.t_ was yearly arrested, or rather satisfied, with the summer holiday by the sea, and whose rector father acted as a weekly soporific to his congregation.

"I wonder who gave her that perfectly _horrible_ charm?" she added sleepily.

"The ayah, I _think_," came an equally sleepy answer. "Did I tell you that I found it in the bath-room the other night? It's an eye--a cat's-eye, you know--a perfect beast of a thing; I would swear it winked at me when I dropped it on the floor. Anyway I left it there and simply _flew_ out of the room to tell Leonie, and Jessica pinched, I beg Princ.i.p.al's pardon, took my bath. Ugh! and she wears it night and day--oh! look, here she comes----"

"Oh!" sighed plain Annie Smith, "isn't she _beautiful_!"

She was!

Unaware that anyone was watching, Leonie stopped in front of a bush of red roses. She neither touched or sniffed them; she just flung out her arms, lifted her face to the blazing sun and laughed.

The simple school frock showed the wonder of her figure, with the beautiful rounded bust, the slender waist, and the moulded limbs; the sun drew red and yellow lights out of the heavy russet hair, gold flecks out of the green eyes, and a flash of crimson from the rather full clear-cut mouth with its turned-up corners.

Her skin was like ivory with the faintest tinge of pink just on the very tip of the rather p.r.o.nounced cheek-bones; her hands were small and fine, and the fingers were like pea-pods, long and slender and slightly dimpled.

And when she moved away towards the summer-house where she could see the sea, she moved not at all from her waist upwards. She held her head and shoulders as though she had carried baskets of fruit or washing upon the crown of her pate since her youth; her glorious bosom was like a bed of lotus buds in the southern wind; she moved like a deer, or a snake, or a baccha.n.a.lian dancer, as you will; but in any case in a way which in the present tense caused the Princ.i.p.al to mourn in secret, and in the future brought the condemnation of women and the eyes of men full upon her.

And behind the summer-house she leant against the wall.

"One more term," she said, "only one more term, and then I shall be free--free to go--free to wander--free to follow the voice which is calling, calling! Only one more little term!"

And Fate, grinning, pinched that one more little term between her knotted old thumb and finger so that it was stillborn.

CHAPTER X

"And hath gone and served other G.o.ds."--_The Bible_.

Shriek upon shriek tore the peaceful stillness of the night, and in one second the sleeping house was transformed from a place of rest and quiet to the semblance of a disturbed rookery.

Deathly silence followed the horrible screams of fear and the sound of the girls calling one to the other, during which mistresses extricated themselves from the enc.u.mbering bedclothes to rush on to their respective landings; elder girls peered in terror from their bedroom doors, and younger ones clung to each other or the bed-post, or the door-k.n.o.b, anything in fact which would help to support their quaking little knees.

Once again the terrible screams rent the air, whipping everyone out of the stunned apathy which great fear brings to some folk, just as the Princ.i.p.al came out on to her landing and looked up to the second storey.

"Miss Primstinn," she called, and her voice showed no sign of the thudding of her heart.

Pushed by one of those willing hands always so eager to thrust someone else to the forefront of the battle, Miss Primstinn, clutching her courage and a drab dressing-gown in both hands, half ran, half slipped down the stairs.

"_We_ will investigate, Miss Primstinn, and the young ladies will retire to their rooms and shut the doors."

In days long past the house had been well built after the excellent design of a wealthy old architect who had fled the place when Eastbourne had become a centre for girls' schools and summer trippers.

The full moon flooded the hall round which ran the galleries belonging to the successive storeys, each crowded with girls in various designs of night attire who hung over the oak bal.u.s.trades to watch developments.