CHAPTER IX
"How have I hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof!"—The Bible.
"Oh! dear!"
The plaintive ejaculation 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 assist.
And as much, and even more, attention is paid to the repoussé 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 glass, 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 locum tenens, understudy, you know, made pastry like cement; I always thought, too, that Principal 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 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?"
Dear unsophisticated soul, whose wanderlust 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 Principal'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 pronounced 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 bacchanalian dancer, as you will; but in any case in a way which in the present tense caused the Principal 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 gods."—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 encumbering 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-knob, 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 Principal 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 balustrades to watch developments.
But they all leapt in unison, as though spurred into action by an electric shock, when a deep voice boomed from the shadows round a green baize door in the hall which led to the servants' quarters.
Then a distinct sigh of relief whistled softly through the entire house when the electric lights suddenly blazed and the speaker was discovered to be cook.
Cookie in an emerald green moirette petticoat and a somewhat déclassé bedjacket, a tight knot of hair playing bob-cherry with her kindly right blue eye, and a rolling-pin clutched truculently in her red right hand.
Dear old Cookie who scolded and complained unceasingly, but who loved the entire school with a love which took the substantial form of delicious cakes, and buns, and jellies.
"H'I've come to h'investigate, Mum!" she called up. "Berglers or worse got into Miss Jessica's room through them dratted French windies, I'll be bound. Now just you stay where you are, Mum, an' I'll go an' see, an' if I screams then come along. And I think a policeman might come in handy, there may be one on the beat."
She waddled away to another green door always left open o' nights, and which led to the wing reserved entirely for the girls of the Upper Sixth; and where each one revelled in her own dainty separate bedroom.
"The young ladies will retire to their bedrooms and close their doors. Mademoiselle, I depend upon you!" With one hand on the banisters and one foot poised for descent, the Principal pitted her will against overwhelming curiosity and won.
Backing like a flock of sheep before the sheep-dog, they slowly retired and shut the doors, only to fling them wide open and rush to the balustrade in time to see the Principal, followed by Miss Primstinn, hurrying down the stairs to meet Cookie, who had run back into the hall shouting at the top of her voice.
"Come along, Mum! Quick! Miss Jessica's dead and Miss Gertrude dying.
And where's Miss Lee-onny—fetch her someone—it's 'er friend, little
Miss Jessica, wots—wots——"
The Principal, whose face looked suddenly livid and old, laid a hand on
Cookie's shoulder.
"Run and fetch the doctor, Cook, please, it will be quicker than the telephone! I can trust you to keep your head. Dr. Mumford is too far away, fetch the new one at the end of the road."
"Please to send Brown, Mum, she's younger an' quicker at runnin' than me. An' I think I can 'elp you, Mum," said Cookie quietly, unconsciously responding to the strength of her mistress's character. "An' I'd like to fetch Miss Lee-onny, Mum, she's that to be depended h'on an' clear'eaded."
The Principal sighed under the sudden inrush of relief which had come to her at the mention of her favourite pupil.
She loved Leonie with a love quite separate from her affection for all the young souls in her charge, and secretly admired the strength of will which more than once had been pitted against her own; moreover, accustomed to the quiet monotonous passage of time, she suddenly realised that she needed someone young and energetic in this emergency.
And the girl she needed in her distress was kneeling on her bed with arms upraised above her head.
The dying moon was slowly withdrawing her waning silvery light from the billowing mass of tawny hair, tumbling in lavender-scented masses around the girl; lingering for a moment on the eyes staring from under the unblinking eyelids, and for a second upon the glint of even teeth showing through the lips moving in prayer.
And then she spoke, in the eerie tones of those who talk in their sleep; and the words were even those of India's most holy writ, sonorous and full of a surpassing dignity, rising and falling as she knelt motionless, her eyelids slowly closing upon the terrible staring eyes.
"The sacrifice . . ." she chanted monotonously, "with voice, hearing, mind, I make oblation. To this sacrifice . . . let the gods come well willing!"
And as the moon sank to rest there was no sound save for a little sigh as Leonie, with closed eyes and white hands clasped upon her breast, stretched herself upon the bed, then with a violent movement sat up, and wide awake stared about the room.
"Yes?" she whispered. "Yes?"
And her strange eyes, with pin-point pupils in a yellow green circle, seemed to follow something which crept slowly round the bare walls as far as the chintz window-curtain moving softly in the breeze of the coming dawn. The room was full of shadows thrown by a creeper festooned outside the wide-open window; soft whisperings brought from the distant corners of the earth by the restless ocean filled the air, as she hastily twisted her hair into two great plaits with steady hands.
Then she slipped quietly to the edge of the bed and searched with her bare feet for the crimson slippers; searched fearfully as though afraid of what they might touch whilst her eyes glanced this way and that through the shadowed room.
"Who is calling me?" she whispered. "Who wants me?"
But there was no sound save for the whispering of the distant sea.
She bent her head sideways as though to listen, rose to her feet, and standing back against the bed, looked down at the shadows which danced about the hem of her garment. A swift furtive glance over her shoulder and her hand stole to the crimson kimono hanging on the brass rail, whilst a jewelled cat's-eye winked cunningly among the embroidery of her night-robe.
"Come in," she said suddenly and sharply, "don't stand outside the door, come in."
And when there came no answer she thrust her arms swiftly into the sleeves of the crimson kimono, and running across the room flung open the door, and finding the corridor empty passed hurriedly on, leaving the door wide so that the shadows skipped freakishly about the room in tune to the rhythmical whisperings which the sea bore from the distant corners of the earth.
CHAPTER XI
"Thy brother Death came, and cried,
'Wouldst thou me?'
And I replied,
'No, not thee!'"—Shelley.
The electric lights gave out a kind of fictitious radiance against the dull grey of the hall windows through which the dawn was struggling.
The place was packed with girls. Some clustered near the baize door, standing nervously on tip-toe and with the intent of retiring precipitately if there should be any sign of the Principal; others hung over the stair or gallery banisters; the domestic staff stood round their own particular door, their white faces shining dully like Chinese lanterns; no one spoke or moved. In fact they might have been posing for a photographer until those above suddenly swayed and bent this way and that, and those in the hall parted to give way to Leonie.
Clad in crimson satin kimono, with feet thrust into crimson satin slippers and her hastily plaited hair hanging in two great ropes, she passed through them like a flame, emanating strength and resolve and a tremendous power of will. Although she looked neither to the right nor left as she ran swiftly and disappeared into the wing where lay her little friend, there was something very pleasing in the way the girls put out their hands to touch her as she passed; and something distinctly encouraging in the whispered remarks that followed her, and which might be summarised in the "Now it's all right," which under the high pressure of intense excitement almost burst from the lips of Annie Smith.
Like an arrow she sped to the bed, unconsciously pushing aside the women who, almost frantic with fear and quite out of their bearings, were doing their best to grapple with the problem of life or death so suddenly placed before them.
Kneeling, she turned the girl's livid little face towards her, vainly feeling for the pulse in the wrist and bruised neck; then sprang to her feet, faced the Principal and took the situation into her strong, capable young hands.
"What happened? And have you sent for the doctor?"
Her usually sweet, clear voice was like the dull sound of a cracked earthenware pot when flipped by thumb and finger.
"Yes, dear!" was the quick reply. "The doctor will be here any moment—and hot bottles and blankets are being prepared. Gertrude could not sleep and crept into Jessica's room to look for a German grammar for the examination to-morrow—to-day, and found Jessica in—in this—faint."
And the elder woman suddenly laid a hand on the girl's arm and looked up at her with the confidence she always inspired. "Help me, dear!" she whispered, with the dread of disgrace and an untimely ending to an honourable career in her old grey eyes.
And Leonie smiled, answering with the superb confidence of youth, and a slight ray of hope pierced the suffocating fog of fear, and brought Cookie from the head of the bed where she had been standing in the shade of a screen.
"Can I 'elp, Miss Lee-onny?"
"Cookie, dear—you and Miss Primstinn, Miss Leanto and—yes, and
Ellen—none of the girls—and quickly—there's not a moment to lose."
"The doctor's coming, Mum," said a voice from the half-open door.
"The doctor is coming, dear," repeated the Principal.
Leonie answered with a strange authority in her words.
"We will not wait for the doctor!" She passed the tips of her fingers slowly across her forehead and down her cheek to the back of her neck, as was her habit when trying to solve some problem. "No, we will not wait, because—because I know!"
Ten minutes later the door opened to let in a young man, who stood for a moment outlined against a sea of faces, and then turned and shut the door most decisively and locked it.
"Who thought of that, I wonder," he said to himself, as he watched the four women kneeling round Jessica stretched out upon the floor.
They were going through the movements used in resuscitating the drowned, and he, too, knelt at a nod by the side of the fat old woman in an emerald green moirette petticoat and a somewhat déclassé bedjacket, who was breathing heavily through the unaccustomed exercise.
"Let us be—a bit, Sir!" she panted. "She don't some'ow feel—quite—as dead—like! Give us a—a chance. One—two—three—four. It's the—reg'lar—as does—it. Miss Lee—onny's orders—Sir—bless er——"
She jerked her head in the direction of Leonie, and the doctor looked.
Behind her friend's head she knelt, her plaited hair twining like snakes to the ground, her eyes closed, her mouth slightly open, and the fingers of both hands pressing the temples of the child upon the floor, whilst to and fro, lifeless, dull, swung the great cat's-eye from a gold chain about the neck.
"Good God!" muttered the young doctor who, having travelled the world as ship's surgeon, knew that the scalpel and soda-cum-gentian do not constitute the whole of the art of healing.
As he looked a great bead of perspiration dropped from Leonie's forehead, between the taut arms, on to her knees; and a sudden shiver shook her from head to foot, and he heaved his overcoat into a chair, and edged very quietly until he knelt between her and Cookie.
"It's 'orrible, Sir!" the latter whispered, as she glanced at the pupil she loved most.
And it was.
By now the perspiration was pouring in streams from the girl's face, whilst the slim body shook and shook like a young tree in a storm; her teeth chattered like castanets, her closed eyes were sunk in purple black orbits, the cheeks were drawn and grey, and the nostrils were dilating like those of a far-spent horse.
"For Gawd's sake stop 'er. Sir—she's a-killing of 'erself."
The doctor shook his head, took out a brandy flask and a metal box from a leather case beside him on the floor. He held up the ready-filled glass syringe to the light and sent a squirt of what looked like water through the gleaming needle.
"If the young lady shows signs of life I want you to get this brandy down her throat at once, and begin to massage her heart."
"Massige! that's same as kneading dough, ain't it, Sir!"
"That's it! Miss—Miss—oh! Leonie will want the most attention, she is only just alive. I will give her another two minutes, and if nothing has happened by then I'll stop her, though it'll be an awful risk!"
"What's she a-doin' of, Sir?"
"She's forcing her own life, her vitality into her friend; she's practically raising the dead!"
"Lor, Sir!"
He had just raised his hand to touch Leonie, praying to heaven for the girl's reason, when she suddenly flung back her head.
Up through the house-top, to the stars, the heavens, rushed the terrible cry, wailing as wails the wolf who has lost its mate, insisting as insists one who has staked his all on one final throw, imploring as implores the mother in the last dire throes of childbirth.
What the language was, what the words meant, to whom the prayer was addressed, no one knew.
But at the third terrible appeal to God, or Fate, or Death, or Life, and even as those who listened outside and those who ceased their labours in the room stuffed their ears with their fingers and sobbed, little Jessica opened her eyes, and smiled just as Leonie, flinging up her arms, crashed face downwards on the floor.
CHAPTER XII
"The fix'd events of Fate's remote decrees."—Pope.
Vultures drowsed in the shade thrown by the crumbling, sun-cracked, heat-stricken mud walls and houses which lined the meandering unpaved streets, or rather passages, of a certain village in northern India; crows were packed everywhere, taking no notice for the nonce of the feast of filth and garbage spread invitingly around them, and in which sprawled the disgusting, distorted bodies of somnolent water buffaloes; inside the houses hags, matrons, maidens, and little maids slept through the terrific heat of the noonday hours; in the distance the Himalayas, supreme and distressing, like a ridge across eternity, lay behind the turrets and minarets of the town which, thanks to the Indian atmosphere and the long distance, shone white, fretted, and—well, exactly as you can see it any day in paint at the Academy or in Bond Street.
Perfectly motionless upon the high khaki-coloured wall, which entirely surrounds the village, with dust upon his aged feet and raiment and once white turban, oblivious of the heat, the flies, and everything that slept, sat a man with age written upon every gnarled joint, and in every crack and fissure of the parchment-like skin.
So old, and yet with life, and hope, and youth eternal in the dark hawk eye which gazed unseeingly through the outer world straight towards the mountains.
And the old body made no sign of life, even when the vultures without sound soared majestically heavenwards, whilst the crows rose in shrieking disordered squads, and a kite whistling melodiously swooped from nowhere downwards across his head to the filth of the streets.
Neither did he turn his head or his eyes when a coal-black stallion, guided only by the pressure of its rider's knees, came to a stand directly beneath him in the shadow of the wall, having scrambled and slithered, jumping like a deer, climbing like a goat down the rock-strewn road which leads to the village from the great house at its rear; one of those abominable roads allotted to the calloused native foot, honoured for the first time in this instance by the passage of the prince's son and heir.
An arresting picture the rider and his horse made as the man bent low in the saddle and salaamed, then raised his turbaned head and sat motionless, gazing at the holy man.
Minutes passed before, with arms filled with offerings and garlands of marigolds and jasmin swinging from his wrists, he slid from the saddle to the ground, and took his way up the narrow tortuous path which Fate had marked out for him through all time.
High caste, high born, as slender and delicate and as pressed with life as a budding branch in spring, Madhu Krishnaghar stood beside the priest in the incongruous setting of the mud walls.
A coat of fine white linen with broad orange waistband came to just below the knees; white trousers fastened tight about the ankle fitted almost like a stocking from ankle to knee; the slender, narrow feet were shod in native slippers, the white turban with its regulation folds outlined the pale bronze face with the sign of the man's religion traced between the eyebrows; diamond solitaires sparkled in the ears, and one necklace of great pearls hung about his neck.
"Usual large gentle eye, hawk nose, mobile mouth and small-boned oval face" would doubtlessly have been the flippant comment of any occidental passer-by; "meet 'em everywhere, gambling at the street corner, or squatting in the bazaar, or riding elephants."
Yes! but—is not India's future history writ large upon that small-boned oval face for those who, having the vision, read as they walk warily.
For those who run hastily past life's signposts cannot and will not see that, like the fresh green grass which hides the dug pit, those gentle luminous eyes draw attention from the subtle cruelty of the mouth, through which gleam the pitiless perfect teeth.
Glorying in his bull-neck and massive chin, and blinded by his insular, inherited upbringing, the European will exclaim "Pah!" at sight of the thin cheek and delicate oval face, failing utterly to notice the set of the ears on the head; just as, muscle bound through worship at the shrine of Sport, he will mistake the eastern courtesy and poetry of movement for obsequiousness and humility, ignoring the terrible root from which these delicate flowers spring; the root of patience; with its tentacles ever twining and twisting through the eastern mind, causing the very old to die placidly with a smile on their shrivelled lips, and the young to envisage plague, pestilence, and famine with a mere lifting of the shoulder. Patience! the card which India does not hold up her sleeve in the game of life she is playing; the dull-coloured drab little bit of cardboard which she throws on the table openly, but which we ignore amongst the highly coloured, bejewelled pictures she places before us, smiling with the tender luminous eyes so that we shall forget the subtle cruelty of the mouth.
Placing his offerings at the holy man's feet, and laying the garlands gently about the bowed shoulders, Madhu Krishnaghar, the son of princes, stooped and lifting the hem of the dust-covered garment, laid it against his forehead, then quietly sat down a pace removed from the ancient who took no notice whatever of his proceedings.
And time passed, linking one hour of noon to its neighbour and the next, until the hags, matrons, maidens, and little maids awoke to the freshness of the evening and the monotony of its tasks.
Kites called, crows screamed, men gambled in the shadows of the evening and the upstanding, distorted, disgusting water buffalo; while the two men, master and pupil in the religion of death, sat hour after hour without movement, staring at the mountains, the dwelling-place of Siva the terrible, and the birthplace of Kali his bride.
Far into the night they sat, until the last quarter of the moon had sunk to rest, when, with one single movement, the old man sprang to his feet, flung out his arms, and bent in utter humility and cast dust upon his once white turban.
His voice was but a shrill cracked whisper when he called upon his god from the crumbling top of the sunbaked, moon-drenched wall, and turning, lifted his travel-stained mantle and laid it on the young shoulders beside him.
An hour had passed, and more, before the holy man's tale, which ran back through the past seventeen years, was finished. And when it had been told the high caste youth trembled in the ecstasy of his religion, amazed at the enlightenment thrown upon his own enigmatical life, uplifted at the task before him. Yea! he trembled in the ecstasy of his religion, forgetting that love and passion and life ran just as riotously in his supple perfect body.
He leapt to his feet, smiting his forehead with clenched hand.
"Give me a sign, O Kali! Show me that thou art pleased!"
And he rent his garments in joy, showing the bronze breast with the blood-red marks of his terrible religion traced upon it; then thrusting his fingers in his ears sank to the ground and buried his head between his knees.
A black kid, the happiest of all good omens, bleating with hunger, tripped and stumbled from a courtyard; yet even as it found its mother and buried its little head in the warmth of the soft side, there had come across the plains a weird, long-drawn-out sound, fraught with disaster to those who believe in signs.
Long and shrill it sounded and ceased; and once again—to be lost in peals of indecent, discordant laughter.
Uncontrolled, uncontrollable, loathesome sound which tears India's nights to shreds.
The jackals had found at dawn.
CHAPTER XIII
"A continual dripping in a very rainy day and a contentious woman are alike."—The Bible.
In the late spring Leonie stood at a cottage window watching the rush of the incoming water as she listened to her aunt's ceaseless lament, idly wondering if both would reach high tide together, and if there would be any chance of slipping out for a swim before bedtime.
She loved her aunt with the protective love of the very strong for the very weak, and smilingly found excuses for the daily tirade against fate, or ill-luck, or whatever it is weak people blame for the hopeless knots they tie in their own particular bit of string by their haphazard bursts of energy, or apathetic resignation to every little stumbling-block they find in their path.
Daily, almost hourly, through the splendid North Devon winter the aunt had wailed, and bemoaned, and fretted, driving the girl out on the tramp for hours in the wind, and the wet, and the sun, only to return hurriedly at the thought of the weak, hapless, helpless woman in the cottage at Lee.
Susan Hetth complained about everything, from the lack of society to the smallness of her income, plus a few scathing comments upon her niece's weather-browned face and the hopeless outlook for her matrimonial future.
Her own bid in the matrimonial market en secondes noces had failed, and though Hope had not taken it lying down, the passage of the years had not been lightened by what seemed to be a daily addition of silver threads to the jaded ash gold of her hair, and the necessity of a still more flagrant distribution upon her face of the substances she employed to camouflage the passage of old Time.
Ah, me! that moment before the stimulating advent of the early cup of tea, when divested of our motley we see ourselves in the mirror as, thanks be, others do not, and laying eager hands upon that offspring of charity, the boudoir cap, wonder if it has been in hobnailed boots that the old Father has tramped across our face during the night hours, dragging his scythe behind him.
Leonie's school-days had ended abruptly.
Nothing definite had or could have been said, but it was not likely that the parents would see exactly eye to eye with their daughters, who wrote reams and whispered volumes of the delightful mystery which surrounded the girl who next term would be head of the school.
Long and excited had been the conclaves with the Principal, persuasive or threatening the arguments used, according to the parental temperament, and the upshot of it all was that Leonie had been asked to go; and proud, hurt Leonie had left, with a valiant smile on her lovely mouth, and a strange little questioning look that had only quite lately crept into the beautiful eyes, and which neither the outpourings of Jessica's love, a demonstration of affection from the entire school in the shape of numerous and weird presents, or the broken-hearted kiss of both the Principal and Cookie had been able to eradicate.
The girl felt that she had left under a cloud, which a slight attack of what the doctor had diagnosed as brain fever had not served to line with silver.
He had insisted upon complete change and rest, and had called twice a day when Leonie was really ill, and four times when she was convalescent; so upon fair Devon had they decided, Leonie cajoling and smiling until she had obtained a year's lease, at an absurdly low rent, of the little cottage on the left of Lee harbour as you face the sea.
It is a place of charm if you are willing to do most of the work yourself with the aid of a daily help.
It is certainly rather like a band-box with the lid on, and the ocean at high tide is only prevented by the harbour wall from invading your front garden, which is the size of a handkerchief.
But if you sit at the window you can feel the spray on your face, and if you lie a-bed the tang of the air sweeping across the Atlantic will get you out at the double; and the smell of the pines, and the hum of the bees in summer, and the rush of the storm, and the crash of the waves in winter, are of God's own fashioning.
What with shopping expeditions to that crime in brick and mortar called
Ilfracombe, visits here and visits there, croquet, bridge, and picnics,
the summer and early autumn months had not dragged unduly for Susan
Hetth.
But when the last visitor had gone, and the first real storm had broken a window, then she had sunk like a lump of lead in a bucket of cold water out of which she refused to be lifted.
Leonie was youth incarnate, causing even the courteous folk of Devon to turn and stare as she swung past with a cheery greeting in a skirt and hob-nailed boots ending at her knees.
For the first month, as one always does in Devon, she had walked herself to the verge of scragginess, then had gradually put on weight, as is the correct method. Her whistle could be heard in the woods and fields, and on the beach from Lee to Hartland way; all the country folk loved her, and scolded her for the risks she took in swimming, and she seemingly had no care in the world.
But the great heat of summer, the shriek of the wind, and the scream of the birds in autumn would bring a little pucker between her brows; the storm would drive her spirits up to breaking point, the calm would leave her eyes full of trouble; in the woods she would stop and turn to listen, then frown and trudge along between the trees.
She was not at rest, for an unconfessed fear, a spook without name or shape, was plucking at her will-power and her heart, a phantom of which she would rather have died than have said one word.
So she stood twisting the blind cord and watching the rocks as they gradually disappeared under the swirling waters.
Susan Hetth sat near the fire, which is oft-times necessary in the spring at Lee, and tapped in irritation, and most irritatingly, with her foot against the low fender.
She was worried.
She was not by birth or heredity a bad-tempered woman, merely one of straw, who after the first two months of every quarter invariably found herself in a corner which one injudicious move might render uncomfortably tight.
Her financial situation, in fact, had become so critical, and the bank manager's demeanour so unpropitious, that in the previous year more than once the dawn had found her trying to decide between the Scylla of the thankless post of lady companion to some wealthy parvenu on the Riviera, and the Charybdis of raising money enough to allow her to harbour paying guests in the no-man's-land of Earls Court.
Then Fate crossed her knees, and out of her lap had tumbled a widower possessed of a substantial banking account and four children.
A few more days, a little more encouragement, and he would most certainly have offered her his name and the half of his worldly goods in return for her help in quelling the riotous behaviour of his motherless brood.
But there had supervened the crisis at school.
And grasping for once in her life the necessity of immediate action if she wished to prevent an embellished account of her niece's untoward behaviour from reaching the man's ears, she had fled to Devon, leaving behind a trail of dainty scented notes explaining that it was all on account of a slight nervous breakdown from overstudy on the part of her niece "who," she added casually, "as I think I told you, is the only daughter of my dear brother, Colonel Hetth, V.C."
Snobbish, but quite effective as bait for a person who has not complete control over the eighth letter of the alphabet.
That very morning, quite unheedful of the beauties of the little witch village, she had gone to collect her mail lying at the post office, which in summer is almost hidden in its garden of flowers; and amongst an assortment of spring sale catalogues from emporiums, mostly situated in South Kensington, had found a letter from the widower, begging to be allowed to come down for a change of air, and an opportunity of laying a proposition before her.
She had wandered up the side of the hill, unmindful of the birds and buds almost bursting with the intoxication of spring; had pitched the catalogues anywhere on the grass, as is the wont of the untidy who have no bond with nature, and had tried to solve the problem as she scraped the mud, with the aid of a twig, from her Louis-Quinze heels.
But she was harassed, poor, hapless creature, for more than one reason.
The words of alarm from the nurse, the innuendoes from departing maid-servants, and the direct warning from the old specialist which had long since faded from her mind, had been forcibly revived by the happenings at the school; and being one of those who invariably plump for the worst, and without giving the slightest thought to the criminality of the proceeding, she had definitely decided, if she could coerce the girl into falling in with her plans, to marry her to the highest bidder before worse could happen.
But she was downright afraid of her niece. Afraid of her moral strength which dominated everything and everybody; ill at ease with the straightforward way she had of speaking her mind on occasions, and following up her speech with action. Never an untruth had she known to pass the girl's lips, not once had she heard her say one belittling thing about a living soul, and only twice had she seen the sweetness and gentleness swept with anger.
Cruelty to anything small or weak could transform the girl into a flame of wrath, and her weakest spot was her overpowering sympathy with anyone in distress, without any inquiries into the direct cause of the adversity, which spot caused her to be considerably taken in by many of those who had discerned it.
An almost abnormal moral strength, allied to great gentleness and pity, combined to make a character extraordinary in one so young, and which her aunt summed up and summarily dismissed from her mind in the trite sentence that "she certainly did not take after her parents."
She was considered slow by the youths, and perplexing and therefore to be avoided by the girls of her own age, and dull or frightfully conceited by the men who had fluttered round her almost exotic beauty until they had come up against the icy barrier of her supreme indifference.
To those who knew her intimately, such as the fisherfolk and the farmers, and the tramps with whom she would sit and converse by the wayside and share her lunch, she was the most lovable, cheery soul in the world, which, of course, meant the county of Devon.
"Damn standoffish, what!"
Such had been the verdict passed by someone married who hailed from London town, when Leonie had refused to sit out a dance in a secluded shady nook.
"Just a bit of heaven!" had said the tramp as he turned the corner in the lane, leaving Leonie sitting on the milestone pondering upon the man whose ragged clothes were out of keeping with the shape of his nails, and the timbre of his voice with his unkempt hair.
But leaving all that aside, and in all conscience it was bad enough, the biggest worry hung as heavy and as threatening upon the horizon as does at times the monsoon over the Indian Ocean.
Once upon a time Susan Hetth had committed an indiscretion, nothing really wrong—she hadn't the nerve. But the nuisance of it was, that, in addition to the indiscretion, she had broken the eleventh commandment and had very nearly got hanged for her lamb.
In the second year of her widowhood in the month of November, whilst her hair was still golden and her colouring unpurchased, she had dined à deux in one of those delectable, ghost-ridden, low-ceilinged sets of chambers which are tucked away in a certain Inn within the Fleet Street boundary.
Which is a silly thing to do if you do not own a car and a long-suffering discreet chauffeur.
The diner à deux and a bit of a play had been the honest programme; but the inevitable had happened in an all-enveloping blanket of a fog, on account of which everything in the shape of a hackney carriage had gone home, and an excursion on foot to the nearest tube rendered hopeless by the simple fact that you could not see your hand before your face.
Which would not have mattered a bit if only, as the fog lifted and the clock of St Dunstan's chimed the hour of three a.m., she had emerged from the narrow opening into Fleet Street with the aplomb or savoir-faire, which are almost twins, necessary to the occasion.
She would then have beckoned to and smiled sweetly upon the young ruffian into whom she bumped as he lounged on his way to Covent Garden Market, and promised him just enough to bring her a taxi or something on wheels, into which she would have got if it had materialised, and been whirled away to safety and bed after adieux to her host uttered with the nonchalance necessary to allay the young ruffian's suspicions.
Instead of this she had slunk from the opening with her host close behind, had bumped into the young ruffian and with an exclamation of dismay had shrunk back into the shadows and her host's arms.
In consequence of which action the bare-footed ruffian had shadowed them until they had met a four-wheeler, had held the lady's dress from the wheel and overheard the address given to the driver for which he had received tuppence, and had disappeared into a doorway where he had spat on his unearned increment and made his plans.
The upshot of it all being the admittance a fortnight later of young Wal. Hickle, attired in his best and primed with her family history, into the presence of the terrified woman.
He had simply asked for twenty pounds on the nail in return for his silence.
And she, scared out of her wits, instead of threatening him with the law, had given him a cheque—yes! a cheque—and he, with a flash of that cunning which was to lead him eventually to a seat amongst the plutocrats, had pocketed it and grinned.
"I doan' wan' mor' 'en twenty uv the best, lidy, jus' to mike a start—an' I doan' wanter part wiv yer 'and-writin' niver. So jes' yer send two rustlers, wot means notes, of ten pun each, rigistered, to W. 'ickle spelt wiv a haitch, 2 H'apple Blossom Row, Coving Gardin, afore this toime ter-morrer. An' jes yer remember that h'as long as yer lives I've got yer bit of 'andwritin.' I ain't goin' ter use it, but some dye it might come in 'andy. 'Ardly loikly as 'ow yer'd buy twenty pun wurf of veg from Wal 'ickle eh, lidy?—it 'ud want some h'explanation."
Then this soul made in the image and likeness of his God and found good, but hidden under the civilising process of the twentieth century which had given him the morals of a jackal and the status of a pariah dog, sighed as he looked round the dainty room.
"S'welp me," he said, as he touched a satin cushion with his coarse, broken-nailed finger-tips, "h'if oi h'understand wye a woman the loikes uv you, wiv h'everyfink she wants, cawn't run strite!"
"Oh! but," whimpered the woman, "it was all the fault of the fog, really it was!"
"Garn!" replied the young ruffian as he opened the door and slammed it behind him.
CHAPTER XIV
"Surely I am more brutish than any man!"—The Bible.
And just about midsummer Fate tweaked the string to which was hobbled
Susan Hetth.
A vulgar but resplendent bachelor middle-aged millionaire, sterling, not dollars, in order to set his gastronomic house in order, had taken a notion for the simple life for just as long as the notion should last, and a perfect bijou of a thatched cottage t'other side of Clovelly for a year.
With a notion of buying the cottage at Lee in which had dwelt the three historic maids, he had swept one day through the village in the latest thing in cars.
Baulked in his intent, and with time upon his podgy hands, he had rolled, minus the car, along the village path over the strippet of water and the sunbaked grass to the harbour.
There he had bent, with ardour and misgivings, to pick up Leonie's towel, just as the soft wind caught her bathing cloak as she stretched out her hand with a smile of thanks.
She had grabbed at the cloak and missed it by a bit, so that it had swept behind her, hanging from one shoulder like some Grecian drapery, and the rotund little man had trotted round her draped side, picked up the cloak by the big button, and completed his trot, covering her up as he moved.
And as he trotted his little porcine eyes had glistened as they lingered upon the perfect figure, from the slim ankles to the confused face, and Leonie had blushed, though you could not have discerned it through the tan, pulled the cloak tighter and hurried across the road to the cottage gate.
But with the clumsy swiftness of the elephantine, the man had run after her and opened the cottage gate just as Susan Hetth opened the cottage door with the welcoming announcement that tea was ready.
"Ha!" he had snorted as he almost ran up the path, leaving Leonie to stand still and stare in amazement at the little scene. "And I'll have some tea, too, Lady Susan Hetth, and how d'you do. Long time since we met, eh?"
Diamonds sparkled in the sun as the man stretched out an effusive hand, and a flame of anger sparkled in the small eyes as Lady Susan drew back frigidly.
Not being of them herself she set all the greater store on knowing those she considered exactly the right people.
"I don't think I have——" she commenced in her most primpsy voice, when she was interrupted with a perfectly odious familiarity.
"Now you're not going to say that you don't remember our little meetings in Earls Court and Fleet Street and"—the man spoke with an extreme slowness as though keeping guard over each letter of each word—"and our little correspondence, come now."
Leonie frowned and moved a step forward protectingly as her aunt caught suddenly at the door handle, and then jerked herself forward with outstretched hand.
"Auntie, dear——"
But her aunt was speaking in the falsetto of forced levity, and Leonie held her peace and waited for an opportunity to slip past and into the house.
"Why, I do believe," said Susan Hetth, suddenly metamorphosed by a certain tone in the man's voice into the terrified woman of years ago, "Yes! I do believe it is Mr. Walter Hickle——"
"Sir Walter, if you please."
"Indeed, in-deed—how very delightful, and after all these years!
Leonie, this is—is—er——"
"I'm one of your aunt's friends, Miss Leonie, bobbed up out of the past. Glad to meet you, hope we shall be friends, too."
Leonie, who had gained the door, looked back over her aunt's shoulder and spoke with a gentle courtesy very much her own.
"I always like to meet Auntie's friends!"
Not knowing the man from Adam she spoke no untruth, but in spite of reiterated calls to come down to tea she remained in her bedroom until the loud-voiced guest had taken his departure.
While the two women were having yet another cup of tea Sir Walter Hickle, millionaire, tradesman, and knight, sat down gingerly upon a rock and made his plans.
He had made his plans as a bull-necked, offensive youth the first day he had pulled out from Covent Garden with a barrow piled with walnuts bought out of two rustlers, value of ten pun each.
"I'll get there!" he had informed the nuts as he tweaked his cap over one eye, and his red neckerchief into place; and had sworn a mighty and quite unprintable oath as he struck a huge fist into a horny palm at the corner of Ludgate Circus and New Bridge Street.
"I'll get there!" he informed the seaweed as he lifted the soft grey hat from his bald head and adjusted the enormous pearl pin in the pale pink satin tie; and he sighed stertorously as he complacently patted his knee with a podgy hand, upon the manicured plebeian fingers of which shone two magnificent diamond rings.
And if you cannot penetrate the strongholds of Devon county, it is not difficult to make acquaintance with her visitors, especially if your visiting card is a gilt edge security for future excursions and diversions done in top-hole style.
Unsuspecting Leonie, who never kept a grudge, after a week or so of astonishment and aversion, thinking in her innocence of heart that she perceived the trend of events, made up her mind to meet the rotund old knight with the simple graciousness due to her aunt's would-be husband.
True, the elasticity of her graciousness did not stretch enough to allow her to accept the never-ending invitations which poured into the cottage; but she would tuck her remonstrating aunt into the car which was ever at the gate, and smile delightfully upon the infatuated old fellow who put her aloofness down to mere girlish waywardness.
Although the corporeal part of the old vulgarian grated on her susceptibilities, she was quite willing to believe that if one chose to dig deep enough it would prove to be only the rough earth covering a positive mine of rare temperamental gems; and in her blindness whistled cheerily as she thought of the joy her aunt would feel at not having to drop her title when she changed her name, and at being able to retain the same initials for her monogram.
CHAPTER XV
"To sell a bargain well is as cunning as fast and loose."—Shakespeare.
"Now I want you to listen to me, Leonie!"
"I am, Auntie!"
"I mean seriously! I want to talk about myself for one thing, and our very straitened means, which do not permit us to go on living even like this; and oh! lots of other things."
"Right, darling!" said her niece, moving across the room to sit on a broad stool at her relation's feet, but twisting her head to one side with a quick movement when her aunt laid her hand dramatically upon the tawny hair.
"Please, Auntie, don't! I can't bear to have my head touched!"
"Just what I want to talk about!" vaguely said Susan Hetth as she tried to disentangle an old-fashioned ring which had unfortunately caught a few shining hairs in its loose setting.
"Please don't touch my head, Auntie!" repeated Leonie as she sat back. "Let my hair go, please!"
"I'm not touching your hair, child," impatiently replied the elder woman. "It's got caught in one of my rings!"
Leonie's eyes were almost closed in a strange kind of psychological agony; then just as though she acted unconsciously she seized her aunt's hands and pulled them quickly from her head, tearing out the hair entangled in the ring by the roots.
"I can't stand it, Auntie. I have never been able to bear anyone touching my head," she said very quietly.
"I think you're insane at times, Leonie, really I do!"
The terrible words were out, and for one long moment the two women stared into each other's eyes.
"You think I am insane at times," whispered Leonie. "You—Auntie, you think I am insane!"
And the elder woman, floundering in dismay at the awful effect of her unconsidered words, sank to her neck in a bog of explanation.
"No! Leonie—no, of course not—I wasn't thinking—of course you're not mad—insane I mean. What an idea! only I am worried about you, you know that, don't you, dear! Do be sensible, dear. Of course your brain is not quite normal. It can't be with all that sleep-walking, can it, and all your abnormally brilliant exams!"
Susan Hetth's disjointed remarks sounded like the clatter of a pair of runaway mules, while Leonie clasped her hands tight as she sat crouched on her stool.
"Of course people will talk, you know, dear! They did when you were quite a baby and began walking in your sleep. And they did, you know, at school after that unfortunate child nearly got strangled by her sheets—I always do think that school fare is most indigestible—and so likely to cause blemishes on the skin!"
Leonie bowed her head.
"Most unfortunate that you should have snubbed young Mr—what's-his-name—so severely—and that his sister should have been at school with you. Out of revenge she has been talking about you and your sleep-walking. People are most unkind and most unjust—and you are far too pretty to receive any consideration from your own sex, how_ever_ much attention you may receive from the opposition—I mean sex—opposite sex, I mean——"
Leonie sat absolutely still.
"Anyway, my child, we need not worry—there is a way out of our little difficulties."
Sensing that something was coming Leonie sat back with the light of the oil lamp full on her face as she stared at the clutter on the mantelpiece.
"I do so want you to do something for me, darling."
The tone of Susan Hetth's voice and the touch of her hand on the girl's arm were as wheedling as if she were about to ask her to tramp into Ilfracombe on some trifling midnight errand.
Leonie answered quite mechanically.
"What is it, dear!" she said. "Say the word and I'll do it!"
"Is that a promise?"
"Ra-ther! Anything to please you, Auntiekins!"
Susan Hetth took her fence in a rush!
"I want you to get married," she said abruptly out of pure fright, and wrenched at her bead chain when Leonie leapt to her feet.
The girl stood quite still, outlined in her simple low-cut, short-sleeved dress by the wall, her hands pressed back against it.
There was no sound except the soft gurgle and murmur of the water until she spoke, quietly, but with a world of horror in her low-pitched voice.
"You want me to marry—you—when a moment ago you said that you thought I was mad—you want me to marry some honest, unsuspecting man, and bear him children!"
Susan Hetth, shocked to the limit of her Pecksniffian soul, made a nerveless fluttering gesture of protest with her hands.
"Don't speak," said Leonie quickly, "please don't speak until I have done. Marriage! I will tell you what I have thought about it while I have been waiting for my mate."
"Oh!" exploded Susan Hetth vehemently. "My dear! Surely you have not been corresponding with anyone!"
Leonie hesitated.
How was she to make her aunt, this shallow, unbalanced being, understand the joyous expectancy with which she had awaited the moment when she should meet the man born for her?
How was she to take the exquisite longings, the veiled desires, the beautiful virgin thoughts, from her heart and lay them before this woman who had taught her nothing but the twenty-third Psalm without its real interpretation, plus the correct Sunday collect and daily prayers.
How explain that to her the little golden ring would not represent a key opening the door to the so-called freedom from which fifty per cent of women descend, via the shallow flight of steps marked a good time, to the plain of discontent; or that to her the word love was sufficient, in that for her it included those of honour and obey, without any separate declaration in public.
When she spoke she spoke hurriedly, flushing from chin to brow.
"Auntie—I correspond with no man—but my—my mate is waiting for me somewhere—calling me all the time ever since—oh! ever since I can remember—and—and I should have married him when I had met him if—if——"
In anger at this fresh complication, piled upon her appalling want of tact of a few moments ago, Susan Hetth struck her hands on the arms of her chair.
"I think you absolutely indecent, Leonie, to go on like this about someone you have never even seen. Now listen to me, and don't be so theatrical. I have had an offer of marriage for you by someone who knows all about you, and who, after my assurance that there is nothing hereditary in your family on either side to account for the strangeness of your actions at times, is perfectly willing, even anxious, to marry you."
"To take the risk, you mean," broke in Leonie. "Oh!—well, go on."
Aunt Susan, somewhat out of breath from the rapidity and unaccustomed lucidity of her words, inhaled deeply and continued.
"He will make you an astounding marriage settlement, give you everything you want, and swears to make you per-fect-ly happy!"
"And his name?"
"Oh! don't be stupid, Leonie, of course you know whom I mean!"
Leonie leant forward, stretching out her hands, her face dead white in the light of the lamp.
"Tell me his name and don't drive me beyond breaking point, Aunt
Susan!"
"Tosh!" contemptuously remarked her aunt. "Don't be so childish—I mean Sir Walter Hickle, of course!"
Expecting some violent words of protest the elder woman half rose from her chair, but appalled by the deathly silence and the look on the girl's face, sank back, cowering in her seat, and stared in the direction her niece's hand was pointing.
"Look, Auntie, look!"
Leonie stood with one hand pointing at the mantelpiece and the other pressed against her throat as she tried to speak coherently.
The pupils of her eyes were pin-points as she gazed at a wooden frame which, adorned with edelweiss and the Lucerne Lion, held the snapshot of a complaisant individual leaning over the harbour wall, attired in a well-fitting but ill-placed yachting suit.
"Old Pickled Walnuts! You want me to marry him—when—when—oh! when I thought he wanted to marry you!"
She laughed, a laugh which sounded like the jangling of broken glass, and died almost before it was born; and her aunt, terrified at the sound and the expression on the girl's face, seized the outstretched arm and shook it violently.
"What are you talking about, Leonie!"
Leonie freed her arm with a shudder.
"Please don't touch me!" Then making a desperate effort she continued quietly, so quietly indeed that Susan Hetth looked anxiously over her shoulder towards the door.
"Don't you know that's his nickname? Oh! of course you do! You know he made his fortune by pickling walnuts too rotten to sell. Sir Walter Hickle—twist the name a bit and it's all in a nutshell—a—a pickled walnut shell"—the little unnatural laugh broke across the words—"and you want me to marry him—Auntie! Auntie! he's awful enough, heaven knows, but not bad enough, nobody could be, to have a—a mad wife foisted on him—no! never—I'll go out and work!"
There was something very decisive in the last words, but Susan Hetth, like most weak people, found her strength suddenly in a mulish obstinacy, which is a quite good equivalent for, and often more efficacious than mere strength of will.
This obstinacy, backed by the knowledge that people were beginning to gossip about the girl's aloofness and love of solitude; that the cashing of another cheque would see her overdrawn at the bank; and that until the girl was settled and off her hands she would not be able to solve her own matrimonial problem, drove her to a show of mental energy of which she would not have been capable in an everyday argument.
"Work!" she cried, "work! What can you do? Nothing—except go out as a companion or nursery governess!—and who would take you without a reference—and who would give you one? Tell me!"
Leonie remained silent—stunned.
"As I have told you, we simply cannot afford to live even like this!
I'm overdrawn as it is, and——"
"But," broke in Leonie with a gleam of hope, "but I have father's money coming to me. I'm not quite sure how much it is, but you can have it—all!"
"It's two thousand pounds down for yourself, and two hundred and fifty a year in trust for your children—to be given you on your wedding day."
"Oh!"
It was just a little pitiful exclamation as the girl realised the net which was closing about her feet, but from the meshes of which she made a last desperate effort to extricate herself.
"I think I—see—a way," she said slowly. "Yes—listen—this terrible mystery that surrounds me, this—this curse which seems to bring disaster or pain to everyone I love, simply makes life not worth living—so if—if I make a will in your favour, Auntie, dear, and go for a swim at Morte Point where the cross currents are—it will——"
But Susan Hetth interrupted violently, horror-stricken at the suggestion made indifferently by the girl she loved as far as she was capable of loving.
"How is suicide going to help?" she demanded shrilly. "There would be an inquest, every bit of gossip, everything you had ever done would be brought to light; the verdict would be insanity——"