‘No wonder they were mad about being had like that! You little rascal!’
She was equally amused by Laura’s description of the miserable week she had spent, trying to make up her mind to confess.
‘You ridiculous sprat! Why didn’t you come to me? We’d have let them down with a good old bump.’
But Laura could not so easily forget the humiliations she had been forced to suffer, and delicately hinted to her friend at M. P.’s moral strictures. With her refreshing laugh, Evelyn brushed these aside as well.
‘Tommyrot! Never mind that old jumble sale of all the virtues. It was jolly clever of a little dot like you to bamboozle them as you did—take my word for that!’
This jocose way of treating the matter seemed to put it in an entirely new light; Laura could even smile at it herself. In the days that followed, she learned, indeed, to laugh over it with Evelyn, and to share the latter’s view, that she had been superior in wit to those she had befooled. This meant a great and healthy gain in self-assurance for Laura. It also led to her laying more and more weight on what her friend said. For it was not as if Evelyn had a low moral standard; far from that: she was honest and straightforward, too proud, or, it might be, too lazy, to tell a lie herself—with all the complications lying involved—and Laura never heard her say a harder thing of anyone than what she had just said about Mary Pidwall.
The two talked late into every night after this, Laura perched, monkey-fashion, on the side of her friend’s bed. Evelyn had all the accumulated wisdom of eighteen, and was able to clear her young companion up on many points, about which Laura had hitherto been in the dark. But when, in time, the latter came to relate the mortifications she had suffered—and was still called on to suffer—at the hands of the other sex, Evelyn pooh-poohed the subject.
‘Time enough in a couple of years for that. Don’t bother your head about it in the meantime.’
‘I don’t, now—not a bit. I only wanted to know why. Sometimes, Evvy, do you know, they liked to talk to quite little kids of seven and eight, better than me.’
‘Perhaps you talked too much yourself—and about yourself?’
‘I don’t think I did. And if you don’t talk something, they yawn and go away.’
‘You’ve got to let them do the lion’s share, child. Just you sit still, and listen, and pretend you like it—even though you’re bored to extinction.’
‘And they never need to pretend anything, I suppose!—No, I think they’re horrid. You don’t like them either, Evvy, do you?…any more than I do?’
Evelyn laughed.
‘Say what you think they are,’ persisted Laura and waggled the other’s arm, to make her speak.
‘Mostly fools,’ said Evelyn, and laughed again—laughed in all the conscious power of lovely eighteen.
Overjoyed at this oneness of mind, Laura threw her arms round her friend’s neck, and kissed her. ‘You dear!’ she said.
—And yet, a short time afterwards, it was on this very head that she had to bear the shock of a rude awakening.
Evelyn’s people were in Melbourne that year, from the Riverina; Evelyn was allowed considerable freedom; and one night, by special permit, Laura also accepted an invitation to dinner and the theatre. The two girls drove to a hotel, where they found Evelyn’s mother, elegant, but a little stern, and a young lady-friend. Only the four of them were present at dinner, and the meal passed off smoothly; though the strangeness of dining in a big hotel had the effect of tying Laura’s tongue. Another thing that abashed her was the dress of the young lady, who sat opposite. This person—she must have been about the ripe age of twenty-five—was nipped into a tight little pink satin bodice, which, at the back, exposed the whole of two very bony shoulder-blades. But it was the front of the dress that Laura faced; and, having imbibed strict views of propriety from Mother, she wriggled on her chair, whenever she raised her eyes.
They drove to the theatre—though it was only a few doors off. The seats were in the dress circle. The ladies sat in the front row, the girls, who were in high frocks, behind.
Evelyn made a face of laughing discontent. ‘It’s so ridiculous the mater won’t let me dress.’
These words gave Laura a kind of stab. ‘Oh, Evvy, I think you’re ever so much nicer as you are,’ she whispered, and squeezed her friend’s hand.
Evelyn could not answer, for the lady in pink had leant back and tapped her with her fan. ‘It doesn’t look as if Jim were coming, my dear!’
Evelyn laughed, in a peculiar way. ‘Oh, I guess he’ll turn up all right.’
There had been some question of a person of this name at dinner; but Laura had paid no great heed to what was said. Now she sat up sharply, for Evelyn exclaimed: ‘There he is!’
It was a man, a real man—not a boy—with a drooping, fair moustache, a single eyeglass in one eye, and a camellia-bud in his buttonhole. For the space of a breathless second, Laura connected him with the pink satin; then he dropped into a vacant seat at Evelyn’s side.
From this moment on, Laura’s pleasure in her expensive seat, in the pretty blue theatre and its movable roof, in the gay trickeries of The Mikado, slowly fizzled out. Evelyn had no more thought for her. Now and then, it is true, she would turn, in her affectionate way, and ask Laura if she were all right—just as one satisfies oneself that a little child is happy—but her real attention was for the man at her side. The two kept up a perpetual buzz of chat, broken only by Evelyn’s low laughs. Laura sat neglected, sat stiff and cold with disappointment, a great bitterness welling up within her. Before the performance had dragged to an end, she would have liked to put her head down and cry.
‘Tired?’ queried Evelyn, noticing her pinched look, as they drove home in the wagonette. But the mother was there, too, so Laura said no.
Directly, however, the bedroom door shut behind them, she fell into a tantrum, a fit of sullen rage, which she accentuated till Evelyn could not but notice it.
‘What’s the matter with you? Didn’t you enjoy yourself?’
‘No, I hated it,’ returned Laura passionately.
Evelyn laughed a little at this, but with an air of humorous dismay. ‘I must take care, then, not to ask you out again.’
‘I wouldn’t go. Not for anything!’
‘What on earth’s the matter with you?’
‘Nothing’s the matter.’
‘Well, if that’s all, make haste and get into bed. You’re overtired.’
‘Go to bed yourself!’
‘I am, as fast as I can. I can hardly keep my eyes open,’ and Evelyn yawned heartily.
When Laura saw that she meant it, she burst out: ‘You’re nothing but a story-teller—that’s what you are! You said you didn’t like them…that they were mostly fools…and then…then, to go on as you did tonight!’ Her voice was shaky with tears.
‘Oh, that’s it, is it?—Come now, go to bed. We’ll talk about it in the morning.’
‘I never want to speak to you again!’
‘You’re a silly child. But I’m really too sleepy to quarrel with you tonight.’
‘I hate you—hate you!’
‘I shall survive it.’
She turned out the gas as she spoke, settled herself on her pillow, and composedly went to sleep.
Laura’s rage redoubled. Throwing herself on the floor, she burst into angry tears, and cried as loudly as she dared, in the hope of keeping her companion awake. But Evelyn was a magnificent sleeper and remained undisturbed. So, after a time, Laura rose, drew up the blind, opened the window, and sat down on the sill.
It was a bitterly cold night, of milky-white moonlight; each bush and shrub carved its jet-black shadow on paths and grass. Across Evelyn’s bed fell a great patch of light: this, or the chill night air, would, it was to be trusted, wake her. Meanwhile, Laura sat in her thin nightgown and shivered, feeling the cold intensely, after the burning heat of the day. She hoped with all her heart that she would be lucky enough to get an inflammation of the lungs. Th
en Evelyn would be sorry she had been so cruel to her.
It was nearly two o’clock, and she had several times found herself nodding, when the sleeper suddenly opened her eyes, and sat bolt up in bed.
‘Laura, good heavens, what are you doing at the window? Oh, you wicked child, you’ll catch your death of cold!—Get into bed at once!’
And, the culprit still maintaining an immovable silence, Evelyn dragged her to bed by main force, and tucked her in as tightly as a mummy.
XXIII
Gut und böse und Lust und Leid und Ich und Du.
Nietzsche.
‘Laura, you’re a cipher!’ .
‘I’m nothing of the sort!’ threw back Laura indignantly. ‘You’re one yourself. What does she mean, Evvy?’ she asked, on getting out of earshot of the speaker.
‘Goodness knows. Don’t mind her, Poppet.’
It was an oppressive evening: all day long, a hot north wind had scoured the streets, veiling things and people in clouds of gritty dust; the sky was still like the prolonged reflection of a great fire. The hoped-for change had not come, and the girls who strolled the paths of the garden were white and listless. They walked in couples, with interlaced arms; and members of the Matriculation Class carried books with them, the present year being one of much struggling and heartburning, and few leisured moments. Mary Pidwall and Cupid were together under an acacia tree, at the gate of the tennis court; and it was M. P. who cast the above gibe at Laura. At least Laura took it as a gibe, and scowled darkly; for she could never grow hardened to ridicule.
As she and Evelyn re-passed this spot, in their perambulation, a merry little lump of a girl called Lolo, who darted her head from side to side when she spoke, with the movements of a watchful bird—this Lolo called: ‘Evelyn, come here, I want to tell you something.’
‘Yes, what is it?’ asked Evelyn, but without obeying the summons; for she felt Laura’s grip of her arm tighten.
‘It’s a secret. You must come over here.’
‘Hold on a minute, Poppet,’ said Evelyn persuasively, and crossed the grass lawn with the lazy saunter that was characteristic of her.
Minutes went by; she did not return.
‘Look at her Laura-ship!’ said a saucebox to her partner; the latter cried ‘Hee-haw, hee-haw!’ and both laughed derisively.
The object of their scorn stood at the farther end of the wire-net fence: all five fingers of her right hand were thrust through the holes of the netting, and held oddly and unconsciously outspread; she stood on one leg, and, with her other foot, rubbed up and down behind her ankle; mouth and brow were sullen, her black eyes bent wrathfully on her faithless friend.
‘A regular moon-calf!’ said Cupid, who, at the last word, had looked up from The Tempest, which was balanced, breast-high, on the narrow wooden top of the fence.
‘Mark my words, that child’ll be plucked in her “tests”,’ observed M. P. magisterially.
‘Serve her right, say I, for playing the billy-ass,’ returned Cupid, and killed a giant mosquito with such a whack that her wrist was stained with its blood. ‘Ugh, you brute!…gorging yourself on me!—But I’m dashed if I know how Evelyn can be bothered with her always dangling round.’
‘She’s a cipher,’ repeated Mary, in so judicial a tone that it closed the conversation.
Laura, not altogether blind to externals, saw that her companions made fun of her. But at the present pass, the strength of her feelings quite outran her capacity for self-control; she was unable to disguise what she felt, and though it made her the laughing-stock of the school. What scheme was the bird-like Lolo hatching against her? Why did Evelyn not come back?— these were the thoughts that buzzed round inside her head, as the mosquitoes buzzed outside. And meanwhile, the familiar, foolish noises of the garden at evening knocked at her ear. On the other side of the hedge, a batch of Third-form girls was whispering, with choked laughter, a doggerel rhyme which was hard to say, and which meant something quite different, did the tongue trip over a certain letter. Of two girls who were playing tennis, in a half-hearted fashion, the one next Laura said ‘Oh, damn!’ every time she missed a ball. And over the parched, dusty grass, the hot wind blew, carrying with it, from the kitchens, a smell of cabbage, of fried onions, of greasy dish-water.
Then Evelyn returned, and a part, a part only, of the cloud lifted from Laura’s brow.
‘What did she want?’
‘Oh, nothing much.’
‘Then you’re not going to tell me?’
‘I can’t.’
‘What business has she to have secrets with you?’ said Laura furiously. And for a full round of the garden she did not open her lips.
Her companions were not alone in eyeing this lopsided friendship with an amused curiosity. The governesses also smiled at it, and were surprised at Evelyn’s endurance of the tyranny into which Laura’s liking had degenerated. On this particular evening, two who were sitting on the verandah-bench came back to the subject.
‘Just look at that Laura Rambotham again, will you!’ said Miss Snodgrass, in her tart way. ‘Sulking for all she’s worth. What a little fool she is!’
‘I’m sure I wonder Mrs Gurley hasn’t noticed how badly she’s working just now,’ said Miss Chapman; and her face wore its best-meaning, but most uncertain smile.
‘Oh, you know very well, if Mrs Gurley doesn’t want to see a thing, she doesn’t,’ retorted Miss Snodgrass. ‘A regular talent for going blind, I call it—especially where Evelyn Souttar’s concerned.’
‘Oh, I don’t think you should talk like that,’ urged Miss Chapman nervously.
‘I say what I think,’ asserted Miss Snodgrass. ‘And if I had my way, I’d give Laura Rambotham something she wouldn’t forget. That child’ll come to a bad end yet. How do you like that colour, Miss C.?’ She had a nest of cloth patterns in her lap, and held one up as she spoke.
‘Oh, you shouldn’t say such things!’ remonstrated Miss Chapman. ‘There’s many a true word said in jest.’ She settled her glasses on her nose. ‘It’s very nice, but I think I like a bottle-green better.”
‘Of course, I don’t mean she’ll end on the gallows, if that’s what troubles you. But she’s frightfully unbalanced, and, to my mind, ought to have some sense knocked into her, before it’s too late. That’s a better shade, isn’t it?’
‘Poor little Laura!’ said Miss Chapman, and drew a sigh. ‘Yes, I like that. Where did you say you were going to have the dress made?’
Miss Snodgrass named, not without pride, one of the first warehouses in the city. ‘I’ve been saving up my screw for it, and I mean to have something decent this time. Besides, I know one of the men in the shop, and I’m going to make them do it cheap.’ And here they fell to discussing price and cut.
Thus the onlookers laughed and quizzed and wondered; no one was bold enough to put an open question to Evelyn, and Evelyn did not offer to take anyone into her confidence. She held even hints and allusions at bay with her honeyed laugh; which was her shield against the world. Laura was the only person who ever got behind this laugh, and what she discovered there, she did not tell. As it was, varying motives were suggested for Evelyn’s long-suffering, nobody being ready to believe that it could really be fondness, on her part, for the Byronic atom of humanity she had attracted to her.
However that might be, the two girls, the big fair one and the little dark one, were, outside class hours, seldom apart. Evelyn did not often, as in the case of the bird-like Lolo, give her young tyrant cause for offence: if she sometimes sought another’s company, it was done in a roguish spirit—from a feminine desire to tease. Perhaps, too, she was at heart not averse to Laura’s tantrums, or to testing her own power in quelling them. On the whole, though, she was very careful of her little friend’s sensitive spots. She did not repeat the experiment of taking Laura out with her; as her stay at school drew to a close, she went out less frequently herself; for the reason that, no matter how late it was, on her getting back, she would find Laura o
bstinately sitting up in bed, wide awake. And it went against the grain in her, to keep the pale-faced girl from sleep.
On such occasions, while she undid her pretty muslin dress, unpinned the flowers she was never without, and loosened her gold-brown hair, which she had worn high for the evening: while she undressed, Evelyn had to submit to a rigorous cross-examination. Laura demanded to know where she had been, what she had done, whom she had spoken to; and woe to her, if she tried to shirk a question. Laura was not only jealous, but extraordinarily suspicious; and the elder girl had need of all her laughing kindness to steer her way through the shallows of distrust. For a great doubt of Evelyn’s sincerity had implanted itself in Laura’s mind: she could not forget the incident of the ‘mostly fools’; and, after an evening of this kind, she never felt quite sure that Evelyn was not deceiving her afresh—out of sheer goodness of heart, of course—by assuring her that she had had a ‘horrid time’, been bored to death, and would have much preferred to stay with her; when the truth was, that, in company of some moustached idiot or other, she had enjoyed herself to the top of her bent.
On the night Laura learned that her friend had again met the loathly ‘Jim’, there was a great to-do. In vain Evelyn laughed, reasoned, expostulated. Laura was inconsolable.
‘Look here, Poppet,’ said Evelyn at last, and was so much in earnest that she laid her hairbrush down, and took Laura by both her bony little shoulders. ‘Look here, you surely don’t expect me to be an old maid, do you?—me?’ The pronoun signified all she might not say: it meant wealth, youth, beauty, and an unbounded capacity for pleasure.
‘Evvy, you’re not going to marry that horrid man!’
‘Of course not, goosey. But that doesn’t mean that I’m never going to marry at all, does it?’
Laura supposed not—with a tremendous sniff.
‘Well, then, what is all the fuss about?’
It was not so easy to say. She was, of course, reconciled, she sobbed, to Evelyn’s marrying some day: only plain and stupid girls were left to be old maids: but it must not happen for years and years and years to come, and when it did, it must be to someone much older than herself, someone she did not greatly care for: in short, Evelyn was to marry only to escape the odium of the single life.
The Getting of Wisdom Page 21