Chapter 11

This guerilla warfare continued throughout luncheon, and left Laura wondering why, considering the dearth of time, and the distress of the ladies at each fresh contretemps, they did not jump up and fetch the missing articles themselves--as Mother would have done--instead of each time ringing the bell and waiting for the appearance of the saucy, unwilling servant. As it turned out, however, their behaviour had a pedagogic basis. It seemed that they hoped, by constantly summoning the maid, to sharpen her memory. But Mrs. Shepherd was also implicated in the method; and this was the reason why Isabella--as she afterwards explained to Laura--never offered her a thimbleful of help.

"My sister-in-law is nothing of a manager," she said. "But we still trust she will improve in time, if she always has her attention drawn to her forgetfulness--at least Robby does; I'm afraid I have rather [P.165] given her up. But Robby's patience is angelic." And Laura was of the same opinion, since the couple had been married for more than seven years.

The moment the meal, which lasted a quarter of an hour, was over, Mr. Shepherd clapped on his shovel-hat and started, with long strides, for his class, Mrs. Shepherd, who had not been quite ready, scuttling along a hundred yards behind him, with quick, fussy steps, and bonnet an awry.

Laura and Isabella stood at the gate.

"I ought really to have gone, too," said Isabella, and smiled at the gutter. "But as you are here, Robby said I had better stay at home to-day.--Now what would you like to do?"

This opened up a dazzling prospect, with the whole of Melbourne before one. But Laura was too polite to pretend anything but indifference.

"Well, perhaps you wouldn't mind staying in then? I want so much to copy out Robby's sermon. I always do it, you know, for he can't read his own writing. But he won't expect it to-day and he'll be so pleased."

It was a cool, quiet little house, with the slightly unused smell in the rooms that betokens a lack of children. Laura did not dislike the quiet, and sat contentedly in the front parlour till evening fell. Not, however, that she was really within hundreds of miles of Melbourne; for the wonderful book that she held on her knee was called KING SOLOMON'S MINES, and her eyes never rose from the pages.

Supper, when it came, was as scrappy and as hurried as lunch had been: a class of working-men was momently expected, and Robby had just time to gulp down a cup of tea. Nor could he converse; for he was obliged to spare his throat.

Afterwards the three of them sat listening to the loud talking overhead. This came down distinctly through the thin ceiling, and Mr. Shepherd's voice--it went on and on--sounded, at such close quarters, both harsh and rasping. Mrs. Shepherd was mending a stole; Isabella stooped over the sermon, which she was writing like copperplate. Laura sat in a corner with her hands before her: she had finished her book, but her eyes were still visionary. When any of the three spoke, it was in a low tone.

Towards nine o'clock Mrs. Shepherd fetched a little saucepan, filled it with milk, and set it on the hob; and after this she hovered undecidedly between door and fireplace, like a distracted moth.

"Now do try to get it right to-night, Maisie," admonished Isabella; and, turning her face, if not her glance, to Laura, she explained: "It must boil, but not have a scrap of skin on it, or Robby won't look at it."

Presently the working-men were heard pounding down the stairs, and thereupon Maisie vanished from the room.

The next day Laura attended morning and evening service at St Stephen's-on-the-Hill, and in the afternoon made one of Isabella's class at Sunday school.

That morning she had wakened, in what seemed to be the middle of the night, to find Isabella dressing by the light of a single candle.

"Don't you get up," said the latter. "We're all going to early service, and I just want to make Robby some bread and milk beforehand. He would rather communicate fasting, but he has to have something, for he doesn't get home till dinner-time."

When midday came, Robby was very fractious. The mutton-bone--no cooking was done--was harder than ever to carve with decency; and poor Mrs. Shepherd, for sheer fidgetiness, could hardly swallow a bite.

But at nine o'clock that evening, when the labours of the day were behind him, he was persuaded to lie down on the sofa and drink a glass of port. At his head sat Mrs. Shepherd, holding the wine and some biscuits; at his feet Isabella, stroking his soles. The stimulant revived him; he grew quite mellow, and presently, taking his wife's hand, he held it in his--and Laura felt sure that all his querulousness was forgiven him for the sake of this moment. Then, finding a willing listener in the black-eyed little girl who sat before him, he began to talk, to relate his travels, giving, in particular, a vivid account of some months he had once spent in Japan. Laura, who liked nothing better than travelling at second hand--since any other way was out of the question--Laura spent a delightful hour, and said so.

"Yes, Robby quite surpassed himself to-night, I thought," said Isabella as she let down her hair. "I never heard anyone who could talk as well as he does when he likes.--Can you keep a secret, Laura? We are sure, Maisie and I, that Robby will be a Bishop some day. And he means to be, himself.--But don't say a word about it; he won't have it mentioned out of the house.--And meanwhile he's working as hard as he can, and we're saving every penny, to let him take his next degree."

"I do hope you'll come again," she said the following morning, as they walked back to the College. "I don't mind telling you now, I felt quite nervous when Robby said we were to ask you. I've had no experience of little girls. But you haven't been the least trouble--not a bit. And I'm sure it was good for Robby having something young about the house. So mind you write and tell us when you have another holiday"--and Isabella's smile beamed out once more, none the less kindly because it was caught, on its way to Laura, by the gate they were passing through.

Laura, whose mind was set on a good, satisfying slab of cake, promised to do this, although her feelings had suffered so great a change that she was not sure whether she would keep her word. She was pulled two ways: on the one side was the remembrance of Mr. Shepherd hacking cantankerously at the bare mutton-bone; on the other, the cherry-blossom and the mousmes of Japan.

XVII.

OHNMACHT ZUR LUGE IST LANGE NOCH NICHT LIEBE ZUR WAHRHEIT.... WER NICHT LUGEN KANN, WEISS NICHT, WAS WAHRHEIT IST.

NIETZSCHE

A pantomime of knowing smiles and interrogatory grimaces greeted her, when, having brushed the cake-crumbs from her mouth, she joined her class. For the twinkling of an eye Laura hesitated, being unprepared. Then, however, as little able as a comic actor to resist pandering to the taste of the public, she yielded to this hunger for spicy happenings, and did what was expected of her: clapped her hands, one over the other, to her breast, and cast her eyes heavenwards. Curiosity and anticipation reached a high pitch; while Laura, by tragically shaking her head, gave it to be understood that no signs could transmit what she had been through, since seeing her friends last.

In the thick of this message she was, unluckily, caught by Dr Pughson, who, after dealing her one of his butcherly gibes, bade her to the blackboard, to grapple with the Seventh Proposition.

The remainder of the forenoon was a tussle with lessons not glanced at since Friday night.--Besides, Laura seldom forestalled events by thinking over them, choosing rather to trust for inspiration to the spur of the moment.

Morning school at an end, she was laid hands on and hurried off to a retired corner of the garden. Here, four friends squatted round, determined to extract her adventures from her--to the last pip.

Laura was in a pretty pickle. Did she tell the plain truth, state the pedestrian facts--and this she would have been capable of doing with some address; for she had looked through her hosts with a perspicacity uncommon in a girl of her age; had once again put to good use those 'sharp, unkind eyes' which Mother deplored. She had seen an overworked, underfed man, who nagged like any woman, and made slaves of two weak, adoring ladies; and she very well knew that, as often as her thoughts in future alighted on Mr. Robby, she would think of him pinching and screwing, with a hawk-like eye on a shadowy bishopric. Of her warm feelings for him, genuine or imaginary, not a speck remained. The first touch of reality had sunk them below her ken, just as a drop of cold water sinks the floating grounds in a coffee-pot ... But did she confess this, confess also that, save for a handful of monosyllables, her only exchange of words with him had been a line of Virgil; and, still more humbling, that she had liked his wife and sister better than himself: did this come to light, she would forfeit every sou of the prestige the visit had lent and yet promised to lend her. And, now that the possible moment for parting with this borrowed support had come, she recognised how greatly she had built on it.

These thoughts whizzed through her mind, as she darted a look at the four predatory faces that hemmed her in. Tilly's was one of them: the lightly mocking smile sat on it that Laura had come to know so well, since her maladroit handling of Bob. She would kill that smile--and if she had to die for it herself.

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 suppose, eh?"

"Just positively scrumptious, and ..."

"And what'd he do?"

"And 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 on 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."

"Go on! 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."

"Is 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 suppose he can't divorce her, because of that?"

"No, of course not. He'll have to drag her with him like 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 as 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 differ substantially 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 the meal, 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 wellnigh 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 none the less 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 moving about the darkening church, as he put the lights out, one by one.

But the success this incident brought her turned Laura's head, making her so foolhardy in her inventions 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 you 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's shoulders, 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, she ran down the corridor to her room.

XVIII.

DER VERBRECHER IST HAUFIG GENUG SEINER TAT NICHT GEWACHSEN.

NIETZSCHE

For a month or more, Laura fed like a honeybee 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 and uplifted by praise 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, that one stints a delicate rose tree in aids to growth. Laura could swallow praise in large doses, without becoming over-sure. 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 was in the grip of a heavy cold, which had not been improved by the draughts of the hall.

"I'm sorry, Miss Day. I thought I had. 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. No sooner had she begun her practising than 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 was beginning 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 has very perplexing; for otherwise her hearers did not shy at a mortal thing; she could drive them where and how 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 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 [P.181] 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 on 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.