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.