Chapter 15

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.

XXIII.

GUT UND BOSE 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 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 had 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 [P.241] 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 lawn with her characteristically lazy saunter. Minutes went by; she did not return.

"Look at her Laura-ship!" said a saucebox to her partner. The latter made "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, looking 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.

"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 to have 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 out-ran 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 birdlike 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 were 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 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 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.