She swayed forward to the empty rocking-chair, and sat down, the child's body clasped to her breast. She looked like a young mother.
Clare, watching half stupified, saw a thin trickle of blood run out across her bare arm.
It woke her.
"Send for a doctor!" screamed Clare. "Send for a doctor! Will nobody send for a doctor?"
CHAPTER XXIV
The sudden death of Louise Denny had shocked, each in her degree, every member of the staff. The general view was that such a deplorable accident could and should have been impossible. Every one remembered having long ago thought that the old-fashioned windows were unsafe, and having wondered why precautions had never been taken. Every one, the first horror over, canvassed the result of the unavoidable inquest, and speculated whether any one would be censured for carelessness. The younger mistresses were so sure that it was nobody's business to be on duty in the dressing-room at that particular hour that they spent the rest of the hushed, horror-stricken day in telling each other so, proclaiming, a trifle too insistently, their relief that they at least had nothing, however remote, to do with the affair: while inwardly they ransacked their memories to recall if perchance some half-heard order, some forgotten promise of standing substitute or relieving guard could, at the last moment, implicate them.
But the task of quieting and occupying the frightened children, and of clearing away, as far as might be, all traces of the dress rehearsal, was at least distraction. On the heads of the school, real and nominal, the strain was immeasurably greater. It was first truly felt, indeed, many hours later. Old Miss Marsham, in whom the shock had awakened something of her old-time decision of character, had conducted the interview with the decorously grieving parents with sufficient dignity; had overseen the temporary resting-place of the dead child; had communicated with doctors, lawyers and officials. But the spurt of energy had subsided with the necessity for it. She had retired late at night to her own apartments and the ministrations of her efficient maid, a broken old commander, facing tremulously the calamity that had befallen her life-work: foreseeing and exaggerating its effect on the future of the school, planning feverishly her defence from the gossip that must ensue. An accident ... of course, an accident ... a terrible yet unforeseeable accident.... That was the point.... At all costs it must be shown that it was an accident pure and simple, with never a whisper of negligence against authority or underling.... But she was an old woman.... She needed, she supposed bitterly, a shock of this kind to humble her into realising that her day was over.... She had been driving with slack reins this many a long year.... She had known it and had hoped that no one shared her knowledge. And none had known.... So there came this pitiful occurrence to advertise her weakness to the world.... The poor child! Ah, the poor little child! There had been a lack of supervision, no doubt ... some such gross carelessness as she, in her heyday, would never have tolerated.... And she was grown too old, too feeble to hold enquiry—to dispense strict justice.... She must depend on the lieutenants who had failed her, to hush the matter up—to make the administration of the school appear blameless.... They could do that, she did not doubt, and so she must be content.... But in the day of her strength she would not have been content.... But she was old.... It was time for her to abdicate.... She must put her affairs in order, name her successor—Clare Hartill or the secretary, she supposed.... They knew her ways.... There was that bright girl who had faced her to-day with the little child in her arms ... what was her name? Daughter or niece of some old pupil of her own.... She could more easily have seen her in her seat than either of her vice-regents.... So young and strong and eager.... She had been like that once.... Now she was a weak old woman, and because of her weakness a little child lay dead in her house.... Yes, Martha might put her to bed.... Why not? She was very tired.
Henrietta Vigers had also her anxieties. She had so long claimed the position of virtual head that there was no doubt in her own mind that other people would consider her as responsible as if she had been the actual one. She worried incessantly. Should she have had bars put up to those old-fashioned windows? She, who was responsible for all the household arrangements? Ought she not to have foreseen the danger and guarded against it? And there was the matter of the dressing-room mistress.... For the school machinery she had made herself even more pointedly responsible.... She should have arranged for some one to oversee the children.... But the dressing-room had been a temporary one and she had overlooked the necessity.... Yet if some one had been in the room the accident could impossibly have happened.... She felt that she would be lucky to escape public censure, that loss of prestige in the eyes at least of the head mistress was inevitable.