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 thespeaker fished a chocolate out of the box, offered her in heartfeltsympathy by her companion.
"Buck up, old thing!" said the latter. "These very same old exam rodswere 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 andconditionals? As long as it's French and you don't split yourinfinitives you're all right, the splitting, I believe, _is_ a mortalsin in some cases, though I don't quite understand how, or exactly whatit means."
Seaview House is an establishment for the finishing of young ladies,which process includes the rounding of their anatomical angles by meansof dancing and physical culture, and the polishing of the facets oftheir intelligence by the gentle manipulation of three or four foreigngovernesses and professors of music, singing, drawing, etc. Theselatter smile suavely through the excruciating half-hours they allot toeach unfinished damsel, and tear their hair in private at the memory ofthe daily and hourly murderous executions of the old masters at whichthey must perforce assist.
And as much, and even more, attention is paid to the repousse work onthe outside of the platter.
The hirsute covering is brushed and burnished until the heads of thetwo 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, justenough and not too much; figures are repressed or augmented until theylook 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 leavea room like humans instead of colts, to pitch the voice in a low andgracious key, and to look upon slang as a luxury only to be enjoyed inthe absence of those in temporary power. In fact the establishment isquite old-fashioned but infinitely charming, and has the reputation ofhaving more old pupils to a score of years happily or advantageouslymarried, and fewer ditto employed in a useful capacity than any otherschool in Eastbourne.
Which is all as it should be!
"Yes! but," continued, let's call her Annie Smith; she does not appearin the book again so that it really does not matter about hernomenclature. "I could just see Leonie from my desk and she wassmiling all over her face and romping, simply _romping_ through theFrench papers."
"Oh! but," sympathised, let us call her Susan Brown for the same reasonthat 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 aheart of gold, and found her ultimate and perfect joy in an overworkedcurate and seven children by him, all of whom were destined to sitround the festive board like seven plain little currantless buns on aplate.
"Yes! isn't she! She's wonderful, I think, and oh! so very differentto all of us."
"I found the very word to suit her in the dictionary," ratherimportantly added Susan Brown, "_bizarre_----"
"Whatever does it mean?" inquired Annie Smith, who was destined neveragain to run up against the word or its meaning during the rest of herneutral life.
"Er--a kind of a--er--_je ne sais quoi_ in the temperament--not exactlya nonconformist, you know; but just a little--well, not _quite_ like_us_!"
"I see!" contentedly replied mystified Annie Smith. "But I _do_ loveher; she's such a dear. So gentle and so ready to help everybody, andso _splendid_ at sports. What tremendous friends she and Jessica havebecome, haven't they, since the night of the scare? I often wonderwhat 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, ifyou remember, and her _locum tenens_, understudy, you know, made pastrylike cement; I always thought, too, that Principal gave her that lovelylittle room right away from the rest of us on account of it--thesleep-walking, I mean. I'm sure I should have _died_ if I'd found herstanding over me in the moonlight in the middle of the night. It mustbe awfully jolly though having someone in India who writes to you everythree months. _Isn't_ she lucky to have been _born_ in India, and tohave had an ayah, a kind of native nurse, you know, who _still_worships her, and writes to her, and sends _real_ Indian presents, andto have had a V.C. for a father--Leonie, I mean?"
Annie Smith laughed that happy laugh which is the outcome of aperfectly contented mind. "She deserves all the luck she gets, andwhat luck for _us_ having her as head next term. What a favourite sheis with everyone, even old Signer Valenti! Oh, dear, I wishto-morrow's exams were over; my fingers feel just like blanc-mange whenI 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 herfelt slippers."
There fell a space of drowsy silence in which the girls lay back on thegrass incline, and solemnly munched chocolates with youth's delightfuldissociation from anything more perplexing than the passing of theactual 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. Butisn't it all _wonderfully_ mysterious?"
Dear unsophisticated soul, whose _wanderlust_ was yearly arrested, orrather satisfied, with the summer holiday by the sea, and whose rectorfather acted as a weekly soporific to his congregation.
"I wonder who gave her that perfectly _horrible_ charm?" she addedsleepily.
"The ayah, I _think_," came an equally sleepy answer. "Did I tell youthat I found it in the bath-room the other night? It's an eye--acat's-eye, you know--a perfect beast of a thing; I would swear itwinked at me when I dropped it on the floor. Anyway I left it thereand 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 nightand 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 ofred roses. She neither touched or sniffed them; she just flung out herarms, lifted her face to the blazing sun and laughed.
The simple school frock showed the wonder of her figure, with thebeautiful rounded bust, the slender waist, and the moulded limbs; thesun drew red and yellow lights out of the heavy russet hair, goldflecks out of the green eyes, and a flash of crimson from the ratherfull clear-cut mouth with its turned-up corners.
Her skin was like ivory with the faintest tinge of pink just on thevery tip of the rather pronounced cheek-bones; her hands were small andfine, and the fingers were like pea-pods, long and slender and slightlydimpled.
And when she moved away towards the summer-house where she could seethe sea, she moved not at all from her waist upwards. She held herhead and shoulders as though she had carried baskets of fruit orwashing upon the crown of her pate since her youth; her glorious bosomwas like a bed of lotus buds in the southern wind; she moved like adeer, or a snake, or a bacchanalian dancer, as you will; but in anycase in a way which in the present tense caused the Principal to mournin secret, and in the future brought the condemnation of women and theeyes 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 befree--free to go--free to wander--free to follow the voice which iscalling, calling! Only one more little term!"
And Fate, grinning, pinched that one more little term between herknotted old thumb and finger so that it was stillborn.
Leonie of the Jungle Page 9
