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 declasse 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.