And then, alas! just as she rode high on this wave of approbation,
Laura suffered another of those drops in the esteem of her fellows,
another of those mental upsets, which from time to time had thrown her
young life out of gear.
True, what now came was not exactly her own fault; though it is
doubtful whether a single one of her companions would have made her
free of an excuse. They looked on, round-eyed, mouths a-stretch. Once
more, the lambkin called Laura saw fit to sunder itself from the flock,
and to cut mad capers in sight of them all. And their delectation was
as frank as their former wrath had been.--As for Laura, as usual she
did not stop to think till it was too late; but danced lightly away to
her own undoing.
The affair began pleasantly enough. A member of the Literary Society
was the girl with the twinkly brown eyes--she who had gone out of her
way to give Laura a kindly word after the Shepherd debacle. This girl,
Evelyn Souttar by name, was also the only one of the audience who had
not joined in the laugh provoked by Laura's first appearance as an
author. Laura had never forgotten this; and she would smile shyly at
Evelyn when their looks met. But a dozen reasons existed why there
should have been no further rapport between them. Although now in the
fifth form, Laura had remained childish for her age: whereas Evelyn was
over eighteen, and only needed to turn up her hair to be quite
grown-up. She had matriculated the previous Christmas, and was at
present putting away a rather desultory half-year, before leaving
school for good. In addition, she was rich, pampered and very
pretty--the last comrade in the world for drab little Laura.
One evening, as the latter was passing through the dining-hall, she
found Evelyn, who studied where she chose, disconsolately running her
fingers through her gold-brown hair.
"I say, Kiddy," she called to Laura. "You know Latin, don't you? Just
give us a hand with this."--Latin had not been one of Evelyn's
subjects, and she was now employing some of her spare time in studying
the language with Mr. Strachey, who taught it after a fashion of his
own. "How on earth would you say: 'We had not however rid here so long,
but should have tided it up the river'? What's the old fool mean by
that?" and she pushed an open volume of ROBINSON CRUSOE towards Laura.
Laura helped to the best of her ability.
"Thanks awfully," said Evelyn. "You're a clever chickabiddy. But you
must let me help you with something in return. What's hardest?"
"Filling baths and papering rooms," replied Laura candidly.
"Arithmetic, eh? Well, if ever you want a sum done, come to me."
But Laura was temperamentally unable to accept so vague an invitation;
and here the matter closed.
When, consequently, Miss Chapman summoned her one evening to tell her
that she was to change her present bedroom for Evelyn's, the news came
as a great shock to her.
"Change my room?" she echoed, in slow disgust. "Oh, I can't, Miss
Chapman!"
"You've got to, Laura, if Mrs. Gurley says so," expostulated the kindly
governess.
"But I won't! There MUST be some mistake. Just when I'm so comfortably
settled, too.--Very well, then, Miss Chapman, I'll speak to Mrs. Gurley
myself."
She carried out this threat, and, for daring to question orders,
received the soundest snubbing she had had for many a long day.
That night she was very bitter about it all, and the more so because
Mary and Cupid did not, to her thinking, show sufficient sympathy.
"I believe you're both glad I'm going. It's a beastly shame. Why must I
always be odd man out?"
"Look here, Infant, don't adopt that tone, please," said Cupid
magisterially. "Or you'll make us glad in earnest. People who are
always up in arms about things are the greatest bores in the world."
So the following afternoon Laura wryly took up armfuls of her
belongings, mounted a storey higher, and deposited them on the second
bed in Evelyn's room.
The elder girl had had this room to herself for over a year now, and
Laura felt sure would be chafing inwardly at her intrusion. For days
she stole mousily in and out, avoiding the hours when Evelyn was there,
getting up earlier in the morning, hurrying into bed at night and
feeling very sore indeed at the sufferance on which she supposed
herself to be.
But once Evelyn caught her and said: "Don't, for gracious' sake, knock
each time you want to come in, child. This is your room now as well as
mine."
Laura reddened, and blurted out something about knowing how she must
hate to have HER stuck in there.
Evelyn wrinkled up her forehead and laughed. "What rot! Do you think
I'd have asked to have you, if I hated it so much?"
"You asked to have me?" gasped Laura.
"Of course--didn't you know? Old Gurley said I'd need to have some one;
so I chose you."
Laura was too dumbfounded, and too diffident, to ask the grounds of
such a choice. But the knowledge that it was so, worked an instant
change in her.
In all the three years she had been at school, she had not got beyond a
surface friendliness with any of her fellows. Even those who had been
her "chums" had wandered like shades through the groves of her
affection: rough, teasing Bertha; pretty, lazy Inez; perky Tilly,
slangily frank Maria and Kate, Mary and her moral influence, clever,
instructive Cupid: to none of them had she been drawn by any deeper
sense of affinity. And though she had come to believe, in the course of
the last, more peaceful year, that she had grown used to being what you
would call an unpopular girl--one, that is, with whom no one ever
shared a confidence--yet seldom was there a child who longed more
ardently to be liked, or suffered more acutely under dislike. Apart
however from the brusque manner she had contracted, in her search after
truth, it must be admitted that Laura had but a small talent for
friendship; she did not grasp the constant give-and-take intimacy
implies; the liking of others had to be brought to her, unsought, she,
on the other hand, being free to stand back and consider whether or no
the feeling was worth returning. And friends are not made in this
fashion.
But Evelyn had stoutly, and without waiting for permission, crossed the
barrier; and each new incident in her approach was pleasanter than the
last. Laura was pleased, and flattered, and round the place where her
heart was, she felt a warm and comfortable glow.
She began to return the liking, with interest, after the manner of a
lonely, bottled-up child. And everything about Evelyn made it easy to
grow fond of her. To begin with, Laura loved pretty things and pretty
people; and her new friend was out and away the prettiest girl in the
school. Then, too, she was clever, and that counted; you did not make a
friend of a fool. But her chief characteristics were a certain sound
common sense, and an inexhaustible fund of good-nature--a careless,
happy, laughing sunniness, that was as grateful to those who came into
touch with it as a rare ointment is grateful to the skin. This
kindliness arose, it might be, in the first place from indolence: it
was less trouble to be merry and amiable than to put oneself out to be
selfish, which also meant standing a fire of disagreeable words and
looks; and then, too, it was really hard for one who had never had a
whim crossed to be out of humour. But, whatever its origin, the
good-nature was there, everlastingly; and Laura soon learnt that she
could cuddle in under it, and be screened by it, as a lamb is screened
by its mother's woolly coat.
Evelyn was the only person who did not either hector her, or feel it a
duty to clip and prune at her: she accepted Laura for what she was--for
herself. Indeed, she even seemed to lay weight on Laura's bits of
opinions, which the girl had grown so chary of offering; and, under the
sunshine of this treatment, Laura shot up and flowered like a spring
bulb. She began to speak out her thoughts again; she unbosomed herself
of dark little secrets; and finally did what she would never have
believed possible: sitting one night in her nightgown, on the edge of
Evelyn's bed, she made a full confession of the pickle she had got
herself into, over her visit to the Shepherds.
To her astonishment, Evelyn, who was already in bed, laughed till the
tears ran down her cheeks. At Laura's solemn-faced incredulity she said:
"I say, Kiddy, but that WAS rich. To think a chicken of your size sold
them like that. It's the best joke I've heard for an age. Tell us
again--from the beginning."
Nothing loath Laura started in afresh, and in this, the second telling,
embroidered the edge of her tale with a few fancy stitches, in a way
she had not ventured on for months past; so that Evelyn was more
tickled than before.
"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 mite 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 so far been in the
dark. But when, in time, she 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 came to 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. In the
intervals, 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
to-night." Her voice was shaky with tears.
"Oh, that's it, is it? Come now, get 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
to-night."
"I hate you--hate you!"
"I shall survive it."
She turned out the light 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 air would, it was
to be trusted, wake her. Meanwhile Laura sat in her thin nightgown and
shivered, feeling the cold intensely after the great heat of the day.
She hoped with all her heart that she would be lucky enough to get an
inflammation of the lungs. Then, 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 upright
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.