The Tower reached, the mare was hitched up, and the ascent of the light wooden erection began. It was a blowy day.
‘Boys first!’ commanded Joey. ‘Cos o’ the petticuts.’ His speech was as lazy as his walk.
He himself led the way, followed by Erwin and Marmaduke, and Laura, at Georgy’s bidding, went next. She clasped her bits of skirts anxiously to her knees, for she was just as averse to the frills and flounces that lay beneath being seen by Georgy, as by any of the male members of the party. Georgy came last and, though no one was below her, so tightly wound about was she, that she could hardly advance her legs from one step to another. Joey looked approval; but the boys sniggered, and kept it up till Georgy, having gained the platform, threatened them with a ‘clout on the head’.
On the return journey a dispute arose between the lovers: it related to the shortest road home, waxed hot, and was rapidly taking on the dimensions of a quarrel, when the piebald mare shied at a traction-engine and tried to bolt. Joey gripped the reins, and passed his free arm round Georgy’s waist.
‘Don’t be frightened, darling!’
Though the low chaise rocked from side to side, and there seemed a likelihood of its capsizing, the two boys squirmed with laughter, and dealt out sundry nudges, kicks and pokes, all of which were received by Laura, sitting between them. She herself turned red—with embarrassment. At the same time, she wondered why Joey should believe Georgy was afraid; there was no sign of it in Georgy’s manner; she sat stolid and unmoved. Besides, she, Laura, was only a little girl, and felt no fear. She also asked herself why Joey should suddenly grow concerned about Georgy, when, a moment before, they had been so rude to each other. These were interesting speculations, and, the chaise having ceased to sway, Laura grew meditative.
In the evening, Godmother had a visitor, and Laura sat in a low chair, listening to the ladies’ talk. It was dull work; for, much as she liked to consider herself ‘almost grown up’, she yet detested the conversation of ‘real grown-ups’, with a child’s heartiness. She was glad when nine o’clock struck, and Marina, lighting a candle, told her to go to bed.
The next day was Sunday. Between breakfast and church-time yawned two long hours. Georgy went to a Bible class; Marina was busy with orders for the dinner.
It was a bookless house—like most Australian houses of its kind: in Marina’s bedroom alone stood a small bookcase, containing school and Sunday school prizes. Laura was very fond of reading, and, as she dressed that morning, she had cast longing looks at these volumes, had even slyly fingered the glass doors. But they were locked. Breakfast over, she approached Marina on the subject. The latter produced the key, but only after some haggling, for her idea of books was to keep the gilt of their covers untarnished.
‘Well, at any rate it must be a Sunday book,’ she said ungraciously.
She drew out The Giant Cities of Bashan and Syria’s Holy Places, and with this Laura retired to the drawing room, where Godmother was already settled for the day, with a fitting magazine. When the bells began to clang, the young people, primly hatted, their prayer books in their hands, walked to the neighbourhood church. There, Laura sat once more between the boys, Marina and Georgy stationed like sentinels at the ends of the pew, ready to pounce down on their brothers if necessary, to confiscate animals and eatables, or to rap impish knuckles with a Bible. It was a spacious church; the pew was in a side aisle; one could see neither reading desk nor pulpit; and the words of the sermon seemed to come from a great way off.
After dinner, Laura and the boys were dispatched to the garden, to stroll about in Sunday fashion. Here, no elder person being present, the natural feelings of the trio came out: the distaste of a quiet little girl for rough boys and their pranks; the resentful indignation of the boys at having their steps dogged by a sneak and telltale. As soon as they had rounded the tennis court and were out of sight of the house, Erwin and Marmaduke clambered over the palings and dropped into the street, vowing a mysterious vengeance on Laura if she went indoors without them. The child sat down on the edge of the lawn, under a mulberry tree, and propped her chin on her hands. She was too timid to return to the house and brave things out; she was also afraid of someone coming into the garden and finding her alone, and of her then being forced to ‘tell’; for, most of all, she feared the boys, and their vague, rude threats. So she sat and waited…and waited. The shadows on the grass changed their shapes before her eyes; distant chapel bells tinkled their quarter of an hour and were still again; the blighting torpor of a Sunday afternoon lay over the world. Would tomorrow ever come? She counted on her fingers the hours that had still to crawl by before she could get back to school— counted twice over to be sure of them—and all but yawned her head off with ennui. But time passed, and passed, and nothing happened. She was almost on the brink of tears, when two black heads bobbed up above the fence, the boys scrambled over, red and breathless, and hurried her in to tea.
She wakened next morning at daybreak, so eager was she to set out. But Marina had a hundred and one odd jobs to do before she was ready to start, and it struck half-past nine as the two of them neared the College. Childlike, Laura felt no special gratitude for the heavy pot of mulberry jam Marina bore on her arm; but at the sight of the stern, grey, stone building, she could have danced with pleasure; and when the front door had swung to behind her, she drew a deep sigh of relief.
IX
From this moment on—the moment when Mary the maid’s pleasant smile saluted her—Laura’s opinion of life at school suffered a change. She was glad to be back—that was the first point: just as an adventurous sheep is glad to regain the cover of the flock. Learning might be hard; the governesses mercilessly secure in their own wisdom; but here, at least, she was a person of some consequence, instead of a mere negligible null, as in Godmother’s house.
Of her unlucky essay at holiday-making, she wrote home guardedly: the most telltale sentence in her letter was that in which she said she would rather not go to Godmother’s again, in the meantime. But there was such a lack of warmth in her account of the visit that Mother made this, together with the above remark, the text for a scolding.
‘You’re a very ungrateful girl,’ she wrote, ‘to forget all Godmother has done for you. If it hadn’t been for her supplying you with books and things I couldn’t have sent you to school at all. And I hope when you grow up you’ll be as much of a help to me as Marina is to her mother. I’d much rather have you good and useful than clever and I think for a child of your age you see things with very sharp unkind eyes. Try and only think nice things about people and not be always spying out their faults. Then you’ll have plenty of friends and be liked wherever you go.’
Laura took the statement about the goodness and cleverness with a grain of salt: she knew better. Mother thought it the proper thing to say, and she would certainly have preferred the two qualities combined; but, had she been forced to choose between them, there was small doubt how her choice would have fallen out. And if, for instance, Laura confessed that her teachers did not regard her as even passably intelligent, there would be a nice to-do. Mother’s ambitions knew no bounds, and, wounded in these, she was quite capable of writing posthaste to Mrs Gurley or Mr Strachey, complaining of their want of insight, and bringing forward a string of embarrassing proofs. So, leaving Mother to her pleasing illusions, Laura settled down again to her role of dunce, now, though, with more equanimity than before. School was really not a bad place after all—this had been her growing conviction; and the visit to Godmother seemed to bring it to a head.
About this time, too, a couple of pieces of good fortune came her way.
The first: she was privileged to be third in the friendship between Inez and Bertha—a favour of which she availed herself eagerly, though the three were as different from one another as three little girls could be. Bertha was a good-natured romp, hard-fisted, thick of leg, and of a plodding but ineffectual industry. Inez, on the other hand, was so pretty that Laura never tired of looki
ng at her: she had a pale skin, hazel eyes, brown hair with a yellow light in it, and a Greek nose. Her mouth was very small; her nostrils were mere tiny slits; and so lazy was she that she seldom more than half-opened her eyes. Both girls were well over fourteen, and very fully developed: compared with them, Laura was like nothing so much as a skinny young colt.
She was so grateful to them for tolerating her that she never took up a stand of real equality with them: proud and sensitive, she was always ready to draw back and to admit their prior rights to each other; hence the friendship did not advance to intimacy. But such as it was, it was very comforting; she no longer needed to sit alone in recess; she could link arms and walk the garden with complacency; and many were the supercilious glances she threw at Maria Morell and that clique; for her new friends belonged socially to the best set in school.
In another way, too, their company made things easier for her: neither of them aimed high; and both were well content with the lowly places they occupied in the class. And so Laura, who was still, in her young confusion, unequal to discovering what was wanted of her, grew comforted by the presence and support of her friends, and unmindful of higher opinion; and Miss Chapman, in supervising evening lessons, remarked with genuine regret that little Laura was growing perky and lazy.
Her second piece of good luck was of quite a different nature.
Miss Hicks, the visiting governess for geography, had a gift for saying biting things that really bit. She bore Inez a peculiar grudge; for she believed that certain faculties slumbered behind the Grecian profile, and that only the girl’s ingrained sloth prevented them.
One day she lost patience with this sluggish pupil.
‘I’ll tell you what it is, Inez,’ she said; ‘you’re blessed with a real woman’s brain: vague, slippery, inexact, interested only in the personal aspect of a thing. You can’t concentrate your thoughts, and, worst of all, you’ve no curiosity—about anything that really matters. You take all the great facts of existence on trust—just as a hen does—and I’ve no doubt you’ll go on contentedly, till the end of your days, without ever knowing why the ocean has tides, and what causes the seasons. It makes me ashamed to belong to the same sex.’
Inez’s classmates tittered furiously, let the sarcasm glide over them, unhit by its truth. Inez herself, indeed, was inclined to consider the governess’s taunt a compliment, as proving that she was incapable of a vulgar inquisitiveness. But Laura, though she laughed docilely with the rest, could not forget the incident— words, in any case, had a way of sticking to her memory—and what Miss Hicks had said often came back to her, in the days that followed. And then, all of a sudden, just as if an invisible hand had opened the door to an inner chamber, a light broke on her. Vague, slippery, inexact, interest only in the personal!— every word struck home. Had Miss Hicks set out to describe her, in particular, she could not have done it more accurately. It was but too true: until now, she, Laura, had been satisfied to know things in a slipslop, razzle-dazzle way, to know them anyhow, as it best suited herself. She had never set to work to master a subject, to make it her own, in every detail. Bits of it, picturesque scraps, striking features—what Miss Hicks no doubt meant by the personal—were all that had attracted her. Oh, and she, too, had no intelligent curiosity! She could not say that she had ever teased her brains with wondering why the earth went round the sun and not the sun round the earth. Honestly speaking, it made no difference to her that the globe was indented like an orange, and not the perfect round you began by believing to be. But if this were so, if she were forced to make these galling admissions, then it was clear that her vaunted cleverness had never existed, except in Mother’s imagination. Or, at any rate, it had crumbled to pieces like a lump of earth, under the hard, heavy hand of Miss Hicks. Laura felt humiliated, and could not understand her companions, Inez in particular, treating the matter so airily. She did not want to have a woman’s brain, thank you; not one of that sort; and she smarted for the whole class.
Straightaway she set to work to sharpen her wits, to follow the strait road. At first with some stumbling, of course, and frequent backslidings. Intellectual curiosity could not, she discovered, be awakened to order; and she often caught herself napping. Thus, though she speedily became one of the most troublesome askers-why, her desire for information was apt to exhaust itself in putting the question, and she would forget to listen to the answer. Besides, for the life of her, she could not drum up more interest in, say, the course of the Gulf Stream, or the formation of a plateau, than in the fact that, when Nelly Bristow spoke, little bubbles came out of her mouth, and that she needed to swallow twice as often as other people; or that when Miss Hicks grew angry, her voice had a way of failing, at the crucial moment, and flattening out to nothing—just as if one struck tin after brass. No, it was indeed difficult for Laura to invert the value of these things. In another direction she did better. By dint of close attention, of pondering both the questions asked by Miss Hicks, and the replies made by the cleverest pupils, she began to see more clearly where true knowledge lay. It was facts that were wanted of her; facts that were the real test of learning; facts she was expected to know. Stories, pictures of things, would not help her an inch along the road. Thus, it was not the least use in the world to her, to have seen the snowy top of Mount Kosciusko stand out against a dark blue evening sky, and to know its shape to a tittlekin. On the other hand, it mattered tremendously that this mountain was 7308 and not 7309 feet high: that piece of information was valuable, was of genuine use to you; for it was worth your place in the class.
Thus did Laura apply herself to reach the school ideal, thus force herself to drive hard nails of fact into her vagrant thoughts. And with success. For she had, it turned out, a retentive memory, and, to her joy, learning by heart came easy to her—as easy as to the most brilliant scholars in the form. From now on, she gave this talent full play, memorising even pages of the history book, in her zeal; and, before many weeks had passed, in all lessons except those in arithmetic—you could not, alas! get sums by rote—she was separated from Inez and Bertha by the width of the class.
But neither her taste of friendship and its comforts, nor the abrupt change for the better in her class fortunes, could counterbalance Laura’s luckless knack of putting her foot in it. This she continued to do, in season and out of season. And not with the authorities alone.
There was, for instance, that unfortunate evening when she was one of the batch of girls invited to Mrs Strachey’s drawing room. Laura, ignorant of what it meant to be blasé, had received her note of invitation with a thrill, had even enjoyed writing, in her best hand, the prescribed formula of acceptance. But she was alone in this; by the majority of her companions these weekly parties were frankly hated, the chief reason being that every guest was expected to bring a piece of music with her. Even the totally unfit had to show what they could do. And the fact that cream tarts were served for supper was not held to square accounts.
‘It’s all very well for you,’ grumbled Laura’s room-mate, Lilith Gordon, as she lathered her thick white arms and neck, before dressing. ‘You’re a new girl; you probably won’t be asked.’
Laura did not give the matter a second thought: hastily selecting a volume of music, she followed the rest of the white dresses into the passage. The senior girl tapped at the drawing-room door. It was opened by none other than the Principal himself.
In the girls’ eyes, Mr Strachey stood over six feet in his stocking soles. He had also a most arrogant way of looking down his nose, and of tugging, intolerantly, at his long, drooping moustache. There was little need for him to assume the frigid contemptuousness of Mrs Gurley’s manner: his mere presence, the very unseeingness of his gaze, inspired awe. Tales ran of his wrath, were it roused; but few had experienced it. He quelled the high spirits of these young colonials, by his dignified air of detachment.
Now, however, he stood there, affable and smiling, endeavouring to put a handful of awkward girls at their ease. But neit
her his nor Mrs Strachey’s efforts availed. It was impossible for the pupil to throw off, at will, the crippling fear that governed their relations with the Principal. To them, his amiability resembled the antics of an uncertain-tempered elephant, with which you can never feel safe. Besides, on this occasion, it was a young batch, and of particularly mixed stations. And so a dozen girls, from twelve to fifteen years old, sat on the extreme edges of their chairs, and replied to what was said to them, with dry throats.
Though the youngest of the party, Laura was the least embarrassed: she had never known a nursery, but had mixed with her elders since her babyhood. And she was not of a shy disposition; indeed, she still had to be reminded daily that shyness was expected of her. So she sat and looked about her. It was an interesting room in which she found herself. Low bookshelves, three shelves high, ran around the walls, and on the top shelf were many outlandish objects. What an evening it would have been had Mr Strachey invited them to examine these ornaments, or to handle the books, instead of having to pick up a title here and there, by chance. From the shelves, her eyes strayed to the pictures on the walls; one, in particular, struck her fancy. It hung over the mantelpiece, and was a man’s head seen in profile, with a long, hooked nose, and wearing a kind of peaked cap. But that was not all: behind this head were other profiles, of the same face, and seeming to come out of clouds. Laura stared hard, but could make nothing of it. And meanwhile, her companions were rising with sickly smiles, to seat themselves, red as turkey-cocks’ combs, on the piano stool, where, with cold, stiff fingers, they stumbled through the movement of a sonata or sonatina.
It was Lilith Gordon who broke the chain by offering to sing. The diversion was welcomed by Mrs Strachey, and Lilith went to the piano. But her nervousness was such that she broke down halfway, in the little prelude to the ballad.
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