The Getting of Wisdom

by Henry Handel Richardson

  Still, she must be cautious, wary in picking her steps. Especially as she had not the ghost of an idea how to begin.

  Meanwhile cries of impatience buzzed round her.

  ‘She doesn’t want to tell.’

  ‘Mean brute!’

  ‘Shouldn’t wonder if it’s too dashed shady.’

  ‘Didn’t I say he was a bad ’un?’

  ‘I bet you there’s nothing to tell,’ said Tilly cockily, and turned up her nose.

  ‘Yes, there is,’ flung out Laura, at once put on the defensive, and, as she spoke, she coloured.

  ‘Look at her! Look how red she’s got!’

  ‘And after she promised—the sneak!’

  ‘I’m not a sneak. I am going to tell. But you’re all in such a blooming hurry.’

  ‘Oh, fire away, slow-coach!’

  ‘Well, girls,’ began Laura gamely, breathing a little hard. ‘But mind, you must never utter a word of what I’m going to tell you. It’s a dead secret, and if you let on——’

  ‘S’ help me God!’

  ‘Ananias and Sapphira!’

  ‘Oh, do hurry up!’

  ‘Well…well, he’s just the most—oh, I don’t know how to say it, girls—the most——’

  ‘Just scrumptious, I s’pose, eh?’

  ‘Just positively scrumptious, and…’ ‘An’ what’d he do?’

  ‘An’ what about his old sketch of a wife?’

  ‘Her? Oh’—and Laura squeezed herself desperately, for the details that would not come—‘oh, why she’s just a perfect old…old cat. And twenty years older than him.’

  ‘What’n earth did he marry her for?’

  ‘Guess he’s pretty sick of being tied to an old gin like that?’

  ‘I should say. Perfectly miserable. He can’t think now why he let himself be induced to marry her. He just despises her.’

  ‘Well, why in the name of all that’s holy did he take her?’

  Laura cast a mysterious glance round, and lowered her voice. ‘Well, you see, she had lots of money, and he had none. He was ever so poor. And she paid for him to be a clergyman.’

  ‘Gwon! As poor as all that?’

  ‘As poor as a church mouse. But, oh,’ she hastened to add, at the visible cooling-off of the four faces, ‘he comes of a most distinguished family. His father was a lord, or a baronet, or something like that, but he married a beautiful girl who hadn’t a penny against his father’s will and so he cut him out of his will.’

  ‘I say!’

  ‘Oh, never mind the father.’

  ‘Yes…Well, now he feels under an awful obligation to her, and all that sort of thing, you know.’

  ‘And she drives it home, I bet. She looks a nipper.’

  ‘’S always throwing it in his face.’

  ‘What a ghoul!’

  ‘He’d do just anything to get rid of her, but—Girls, it’s a dead secret; you must swear you won’t tell.’

  Gestures of assurance were showered on her.

  ‘Well, he’s to be a Bishop some day. It’s promised him.’

  ‘Holy Moses!’

  ‘And I s’pose he can’t divorce her, cause of that?’

  ‘No, of course not. He’ll have to drag her with him like a millstone round his neck.’

  ‘And he’d twigged right enough you were gone on him.’

  Laura’s coy smile hinted many things. ‘I should say so. Since the very first day in church. He said—but I don’t like to tell you what he said.’

  ‘You must!’

  ‘No. You’ll only call me conceited.’

  ‘No fear, kiddy. Out with it!’

  ‘Well, then, he said, he saw me ’s soon as he got in the pulpit, and he wondered ever so much who the girl was with the eyes like sloes, and the skin like…like cream.’

  ‘Snakes-alive-oh! He went it strong.’

  ‘And how often were you alone with him?’

  ‘Yes, and if he had met me before he was married—but no, I can’t tell any more.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be such an ass!’

  ‘No, I can’t. Well, I’ll whisper it then…but only to Maria,’ and, leaning over, Laura put her lips to Maria’s ear.

  The reason for this by-stroke, she could not have told: the detail she imparted did not substantially differ from those that had gone before. But, by now, she was at the end of her tether.

  Here, fortunately for Laura, the dinner bell rang, and the girls had to take to their heels, in order to get their books put away before grace. Throughout dinner, from their scattered seats, they exchanged looks of understanding, and their cheeks were pink.

  In the afternoon, Laura was again called on to prove her mettle. Her companion, on the daily walk, was Kate Horner. Kate had been one of the four, and did not lose this chance of beating up fresh particulars.

  After those first few awkward moments, however, which had come well-nigh being a fiasco, Laura had no more trouble with her story. Indeed, the plunge once taken, it was astounding how easy it became to make up things about the Shepherds; the difficulty was, to know where to stop. Fictitious details crowded thick and fast upon her—a regular hotchpotch: she had only to stretch out her hand and seize what she needed. It was simpler than the five-times multiplication table, and did not need to be learnt. But, all the same, she was not idle: she polished away at her flimflams, bringing them nearer and nearer probability, never, thanks to her sound memory, contradicting herself or making a slip, and always able to begin again, from the beginning.

  Such initial scepticism as may have lurked in her hearers was soon got the better of. For, crass realists though these young colonials were, and bluntly as they faced facts, they were nonetheless just as hungry for romance as the most insatiable novel-reader. Romance in any guise was hailed by them, and swallowed uncritically, though it was no more permitted to interfere with the practical conduct of their lives than it is in the case of just that novel-reader, who puts untruth and unreality from him, when he lays his book aside. Another and weightier reason was, their slower brains could not conceive the possibility of such extraordinarily detailed lying as that to which Laura now subjected them. Its very elaboration stood for its truth.

  And the days passed, and Laura had the happiest ideas. A strange thing about them was that they came to her quite unsought, dropping on her like Aladdin’s oranges on his turban. All she had to do was to fit them into their niche in her fabrication.

  At first, her tale had been chiefly concerned with the internal rift in Mr Shepherd’s home life, and only in a minor degree with herself. But her public savoured the love story most, and hence, consulting its taste, as it is the tale-maker’s bounden duty to do, Laura was obliged to develop this side of her narrative, at the expense of the other. And the more the girls heard, the more they wished to hear. She had early turned Miss Isabella into a staunch ally of her own, in the dissension she had introduced into the curate’s household; and one day she arrived at a hasty kiss, stolen in the vestry after evening service, while Mr Shepherd was taking off his surplice. The puzzle had been, to get herself into the vestry; but, once there, she saw what followed, as if it had actually happened. She saw Mr Shepherd’s arm slipped with diffident alacrity round her waist, and her own virtuous recoil; saw Maisie and Isabella waiting, sheep-like, in their pew, till it should please the couple to emerge; saw the form of the verger move about the darkening church, as he put the lights out, one by one.

  But a success such as this incident brought her turned Laura’s head, making her so foolhardy in what she said, that Maria, who, for all her boldness of speech, was at heart a prude like the rest, grew uneasy.

  ‘You’re not to go to that house again, kiddy. If you do, I’ll peach to old Gurley.’

  Laura ran upstairs to dress for tea, taking two steps at a time. On the top landing, beside the great clothes-baskets, she collided with Chinky, who was coming primly down.

  ‘O ki, John!’ she greeted her, being in a vast good humour. ‘What do yo
u look so black for?’

  ‘Dunno. Why do you never walk with me nowadays, Laura?—I say, you know about that ring? You haven’t forgotten?’

  ‘Course not. When am I to get it? It never turns up.’ Her eyes glittered as she asked, for she foresaw a further link in her chain. ‘Soon, now?’

  Chinky nodded mysteriously. ‘Pretty soon. And you promise faithfully never to take it off?’

  ‘But it must be a nice one…with a red stone in it. And listen, Chink, no one must ever know it was you who gave it me.’

  ‘All right, I swear. You’re a darling to say you’ll wear it,’ and, putting her arm round Laura, Chinky gave her a hearty kiss.

  This was more than Laura had bargained for; she freed herself, ungraciously. ‘Oh, don’t!—Now mind, a red stone, and for the third finger of the left hand.’

  ‘Yes. And Laura, I’ve thought of something to put inside. Semper eadem…do you like that, Laura?’

  ‘It’ll do. Look out, there’s old Day!’ and leaving Chinky standing, Laura ran down the corridor to her room.

  XVIII

  Der Verbrecher ist häufig genug seiner. Tat

  nicht gewachsen.

  Nietzsche.

  For a month or more, Laura fed, like a honey-bee, on the sweets of success. And throve—even to the blindest eye. What had hitherto been lacking was now hers: the admiration and applause of her circle. And never was a child so spurred on and uplifted by approbation as Laura. Without it, her nature tended to be wary and unproductive; and those in touch with her, had they wished to make the most of her, would no more have stinted with the necessary incentive, than one stints a delicate rose tree, in aids to growth. Laura could swallow praise in large doses, without becoming oversure. Under the present stimulus, she sat top in a couple of classes, grew slightly ruddier in face, and much less shrinking in manner.

  ‘Call her back at once, and make her shut that door!’ cried Miss Day thickly, from behind one of the long dining hall tables, on which were ranged stacks and piles of clean linen. She had been on early duty since six o’clock.

  The pupil-teacher in attendance stepped obediently into the passage; and Laura returned.

  ‘Doors are made to be shut, Laura Rambotham, I’d have you remember that!’ fumed Miss Day, in the same indistinct voice: she had a heavy cold, which had not been improved by the draughts of the hall.

  ‘I’m sorry, Miss Day. I thought I’d shut it. I was a little late.’

  ‘That’s your own lookout,’ barked the governess. ‘Oh, there you are at last, Miss Snodgrass! I’d begun to think you weren’t going to appear at all this morning. It’s close on a quarter past seven.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Miss Snodgrass laconically. ‘My watch must be losing. Well, I suppose I can begin by marking Laura Rambotham down late. What on earth are you standing there holding the door for?’

  ‘Miss Day knows—I don’t,’ sauced Laura, and made her escape.

  She did not let Miss Snodgrass’s bad mark disturb her. As soon as she had begun her practising, she fell to work again on the theme that occupied all her leisure moments, and was threatening to assume the bulk of an Early Victorian novel. But she now built at her top-heavy edifice for her own enjoyment; and the usual fate of the robust liar had overtaken her: she began to believe in her own lies. Still, she never ventured to relax her critical alertness, her careful surveillance of detail. For, just a day or two before, she had seen a quick flare-up of incredulity light Tilly’s face, and, oddly enough, this had happened when she tried her audience with a fact, a simple little fact, an incident that had really occurred. She had killed the doubt, instantly, by smothering it with a fiction; but she could not forget that it had existed. It was very perplexing; for, otherwise, her hearers did not shy at a mortal thing; she could drive them how and where she chose.

  At the present moment, she was planning a great coup: nothing more or less than a frustrated attempt on her virtue. It was almost ready now to be submitted to them—for she had read Pamela, with heartfelt interest, during the holidays—and only a few connecting links were missing, with which to complete her own case.

  Then, without the slightest warning, the blow fell.

  It was a Sunday afternoon; the half-hour that preceded Sunday school. Laura, in company with several others, was in the garden, getting her Bible chapter by heart, when Maria called her.

  ‘Laura! Come here. I want to tell you something.’

  Laura approached, her lips in busy motion. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘I say, chicken, your nose is going to be put out of joint.’

  ‘Mine? What do you mean?’ queried Laura, and had a faint sense of impending disaster.

  ‘What I say. M. Pidwall’s asked to the you-know-who’s next Saturday.’

  ‘No, she’s not!’ cried Laura vehemently, and clapped her Bible to.

  ‘S’help me God, she is!’ asserted Maria. ‘Look out, don’t set the place on fire.’

  ‘How do you know?…who told you?’

  ‘M. P. herself. Gosh, but you are a jealous little cub! Oh, go on, kiddy, don’t take it like that! I guess he won’t give you away!’—for Laura was as pale as a moment before she had been scarlet.

  Alleging a violent headache, she mounted to her room and sat down on her bed. She felt stunned, and it took her some time to recover her wits. Sitting on the extreme edge of the bedstead, she stared at the objects in the room without seeing them. ‘M. P.’s going there on Saturday…M. P.’s going there on Saturday,’ she repeated stupidly, and, with her hands pressed to her hips, rocked herself to and fro, after the fashion of an older woman in pain.

  The fact was too appalling to be faced; her mind postponed it. Instead, she saw the fifty-five at Sunday school—where they were at this minute—drawn up in a line round the walls of the dining hall. She saw them rise to wail out the hymn; saw Mr Strachey on his chair in the middle of the floor, perpetually nimming with his left leg. And, as she pictured the familiar scene to herself, she shivered with a sudden sense of isolation: behind each well-known face lurked a possible enemy.

  If it had only not been M. P.!—that was the first thought that crystallised. Anyone else!…from any of the rest, she might have hoped for some mercy. But Mary Pidwall was one of those people—there were plenty such—before whom a nature like Laura’s is inclined, at the best of times, to shrink away, keenly aware of its own paltriness and ineffectualness. Mary was rectitude in person: and it cannot be denied that, to Laura, this was synonymous with hard, narrow, ungracious. Not quite a prig, though: there was fun in Mary, and life in her; but it was neither fun nor vivacity of the sort that Laura could feel at ease with. Such capers as the elder girl cut, were only skin-deep; they were on the surface of her character, had no real roots in her: just as the pieces of music she played on the piano were accidents of the moment, without deeper significance. To Mary, life was already serious, full of duties. She knew just what she wanted, too, where she wanted to go, and how to get there: her plans were cut and dried. She was clever, very industrious, the head of several of her classes. Nor was she ever in conflict with the authorities: she moved among the rules of the school as safely as an egg-dancer among his eggs. For the simple reason that temptations seemed to pass her by. There was, besides, a kind of manly exactness in her habit of thinking and speaking; and it was this trait her companions tried to symbolise in calling her by the initial letters of her name.

  She and Laura, though of a class, had never drawn together. It is true, Mary was sixteen, and, at that time of life, a couple of years dig a wide breach. But there was also another reason. Once, in the innocence of her heart, Laura had let the cat out of the bag that an uncle of hers lived in the up-country township where Mary’s home was.

  The girl had eyed her coldly, incredulously. ‘What! That dreadful man your uncle?’ she exclaimed: she herself was the daughter of a church dignitary. ‘I should say I did know him— by reputation, at least. And it’s quite enough, thank you.’

 
Now Laura had understood that Uncle Tom—he needed but a pair of gold earrings, to pose as the model for a Spanish Grandee—that Uncle Tom was odd, in this way: he sometimes took more to drink than was good for him; but she had never suspected him of being ‘dreadful’, or a byword in Wantabadgery. Colouring to the roots of her hair, she murmured something about his of course not being recognised by the family; but M. P., she was sure, had never looked on her with the same eyes again.

  Such was the rigid young moralist into whose hands her fate was given.

  She sat and meditated these things, in spiritless fashion. She would have to confess to her fabrications—that was plain. M. P.’s precise mind would bring back a precise account of how matters stood in the Shepherd household: not by an iota would the truth be swerved from. Why, oh why, had she not foreseen this possibility? What evil spirit prompted her and led her on? But, before her brain could contemplate the awful necessity of rising and branding herself as a liar, it sought desperately for a means of escape. For a wink, she even nursed the idea of dragging in a sham man, under the pretence that Mr Shepherd had been a blind, used by her to screen someone else. But this yarn, twist it as she might, would not pass muster. Against it was the mass of her accumulated detail.

  She sat there, devising scheme after scheme. Not one of them would do.

  When, at teatime, she rose to wash her face before going downstairs, the sole point on which she had come to clearness was, that just seven days lay between her and detection. Yet, after all, she reminded herself, seven days made a week, and a week was a good long time. Perhaps something would happen between now and Saturday. M. P. might have an accident, and break her leg, and not be able to go. Or thin, poorly-fed Mr Shepherd fall ill from overwork. Oh, how she would rejoice to hear of it!

  And, if the worst came to the worst, and she had to tell, at least it should not be today. Today was Sunday; and people’s thoughts were frightfully at liberty. Tomorrow, they would be engaged again; and, by tomorrow, she herself would have grown accustomed to the idea. Besides, how foolish to have been in too great a hurry, should something come to pass that rendered confession needless.