"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 it 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 birdlike 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 obstinately
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 put up 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, she was
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 the 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 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 some one much older than herself,
some one she did not greatly care for: in short, Evelyn was to marry
only to escape the odium of the single life.
Having drawn this sketch of her future word by word from the weeping
Laura, Evelyn fell into a fit of laughter which she could not stifle.
"Well, Poppet," she said when she could speak, "if that's your idea of
happiness for me, we'll postpone it just as long as ever we can. I'm
all there. For I mean to have a good time first--a jolly good
time--before I tie myself up for ever, world without end, amen."
"That's just what I hate so--your good time, as you call it," retorted
Laura, smarting under the laughter.
"Everyone does, child. You'll be after it yourself when you're a little
older."
"Me?--never!"
"Oh, yes, indeed you will."
"I won't. I hate men and I always shall. And oh, I thought"--with an
upward, sobbing breath--"I thought you liked me best."
"Of course I like you, you silly child! But that's altogether
different. And I don't like you any less because I enjoy having some
fun with them, too."
"I don't want your old leavings!" said Laura savagely. It hurt, almost
as much as having a tooth pulled out, did this knowledge that your
friend's affection was wholly yours only as long as no man was in
question. And out of the sting, Laura added: "Wait till I'm grown up,
and I'll show them what I think of them--the pigs!"
This time Evelyn had to hold her hand in front of her mouth. "No, no, I
don't mean to laugh at you. Come, be good now," she petted. "And you
really must go to bed, Laura. It's past twelve o'clock, and that
infernal machine'll be going off before you've had any sleep at all."
The "machine" was Laura's alarum, which ran down every night just now
at two o'clock. For, if one thing was sure, it was that affairs with
Laura were in a sorry muddle. In this, the last and most momentous year
of her school life, at the close of which, like a steep wall to be
scaled, rose the university examination, she was behindhand with her
work, and occupied a mediocre place in her class. So steadfastly was
her attention pitched on Evelyn that she could link it to nothing else:
in the middle of an important task, her thoughts would stray to
contemplate her friend or wonder what she was doing; while, if Evelyn
were out for the evening, Laura gave up her meagre pretence of study
altogether, and moodily propped her head in her hand. This was why she
had hit on the small hours for the necessary cramming; then, there were
no distractions: the great house was as still as an empty church; and
Evelyn lay safe and sound before her. So, punctually at two o'clock
Laura was startled, with a pounding heart, out of her first sleep; and
lighting the gas she sat up in bed and pored over her books. Evelyn was
not disturbed by the light, or at least she did not complain; and it
was certainly a famous time for committing things to memory: the
subsequent hours of sleep seemed rather to etch the facts into your
brain than to blur them.
You cannot however rob Peter to pay Paul, with impunity, and in the
weeks that followed, despite her nightly industry, Laura made no
headway.
As the term tapered to an end, things went from bad to worse with her;
and since, besides, the parting with Evelyn was at the door, she was
often to be seen with red-rimmed eyelids, which she did not even try to
conceal.
"As if she'd lost her nearest relation!" laughed her school-fellows.
And did they meet her privately, on the stairs or in a house-corridor,
they crossed their hands on their breasts and turned up their eyes, in
tragedy-fashion.
Laura hardly saw them; for once in her life ridicule could not have
her. The nearer the time drew, the more completely did the coming loss
of Evelyn push other considerations into the background. It was bitter
to reflect that her present dear friendship had no more strength to
endure than the thin pretences of friendship she had hitherto played
at. Evelyn and she would, no doubt, from time to time meet and take
pleasure in each other again; but their homes lay hundreds of miles
apart; and the intimacy of the schooldays was passing away, never to
return. And no one could be held to blame for this. Evelyn's mother and
father thought, rightly enough, that it was time for their daughter to
leave school--but that was all. They did not really miss her, or need
her. No, it was just a stupid, crushing piece of ill-luck, which
happened one did not know why. The ready rebel in Laura sprang into
being again; and she fought hard against the lesson that there are
events in life--bitter, grim, and grotesque events--beneath which one
can only bow one's head.--A further effect of the approaching
separation was to bring home to her a sense of the fleetingness of
things; she began to grasp that, everywhere and always, even while you
revelled in them, things were perpetually rushing to a close; and the
fact of them being things you loved, or enjoyed, was powerless to
diminish the speed at which they escaped you.
Of course, though, these were sensations rather than thoughts; and they
did not hinder Laura from going on her knees to Evelyn, to implore her
to remain. Day after day Evelyn kindly and patiently explained why this
could not be; and if she sometimes drew a sigh at the child's
persistence, it was too faint to be audible. Now Laura knew that it was
possible to kill animal-pets by surfeiting them; and, towards the end,
a suspicion dawned on her that you might perhaps damage feelings in the
same way. It stood to reason: no matter how fond two people were of
each other, the one who was about to emerge, like a butterfly from its
sheath, could not be asked to regret her release; and, at moments--when
Laura lay sobbing face downwards on her bed, or otherwise vented her
pertinacious and disruly grief--at these moments she thought she
scented a dash of relief in Evelyn, at the prospect of deliverance.
But such delicate hints on the part of the hidden self are rarely able
to gain a hearing; and, as the days dropped off one by one, like
over-ripe fruit, Laura surrendered herself more and more blindly to her
emotions. The consequence was, M. P.'s prediction came true: in the
test-examinations which took place at midwinter, Laura, together with
the few dunces of her class, was ignominiously plucked. And still
staggering under this blow, she had to kiss Evelyn good-bye, and to set
her face for home.