The Getting of Wisdom Part 12

"It isn't really so bad, Laura," pleaded Pin. "It'll look darker, I'm sure, if you've got it on--and if you don't go out in the sun."

"You haven't got to wear it. It was piggish of you, Pin, perfectly piggish! You MIGHT have watched what she was buying."

"I did, Laura!" a.s.severated Pin, on the brink of tears. "There was a nice dark brown and I said take that, you would like it better, and she said hold your tongue, and did I think she was going to dress you as if you were your own grandmother."

This dress hung for weeks in the most private corner of Laura's school wardrobe. Her companions had all returned with new outfits, and on the first a.s.semblage for church there was a great mustering of one another, both by girls and teachers. Laura was the only one to descend in the dress she had worn throughout the winter. Her heart was sore with bitterness, and when the handful of Episcopalians were marching to St Stephen's-on-the-Hill, she strove to soothe her own wound.

"I can't think why my dress hasn't come," she said gratuitously, out of this hurt, with an oblique glance to see how her partner took the remark: it was the good-natured Maria Morell, who was resplendent in velvet and feathers. "I expect that stupid dressmaker couldn't get it done in time. I've waited for it all the week."

"What a sell!" said Maria, but with mediocre interest; for she had c.o.c.ked her eye at a harmless-looking youth, who was doing his best not to blush on pa.s.sing the line of girls.--"I say, do look at that toff making eyes. Isn't he a nanny-goat."

On several subsequent Sundays, Laura fingered, in an agony of indecision, the pleasing stuff of the dress, and ruefully considered its modish cut. Once, no one being present, she even took it out of the wardrobe. But the merciless spring sunshine seemed to make the purple shoot fire, to let loose a host of other colours it in as well, and, with a shudder, she re-hung it on its peg.

But the evil day came. After a holiday at G.o.dmother's, she received a hot letter from Mother. G.o.dmother had complained of her looking "dowdy", and Mother was exceedingly cross. Laura was ordered to spend the coming Sat.u.r.day as well at Prahran, and in her new dress, under penalty of a correspondence with Mrs. Gurley. There was no going against an order of this kind, and with death at her heart Laura prepared to obey. On the fatal morning she dawdled as long as possible over her mending, thus postponing dressing to go out till the others had vacated the bedroom; where, in order not to be forced to see herself, she kept her eyes half shut, and turned the looking-gla.s.s hind-before. Although it was a warm day, she hung a cloak over her shoulders. But her arms peeped out of the loose sleeves, and at least a foot of skirt was visible. As she walked along the corridor and down the stairs, she seemed to smudge the place with colour, and, directly she entered the dining-hall, comet-like she drew all eyes upon her.

Astonished t.i.tterings followed in her wake; even the teachers goggled her, afterwards to put their heads together. In the reception-room Marina remarked at once: "Hullo!--is THIS the new dress your mother wrote us about?"

Outside, things were no better; the very tram-conductors were fascinated by it; and every pa.s.ser-by was a fresh object of dread: Laura waited, her heart a-thump, for the moment when he should raise his eyes and, with a start of attention, become aware of the screaming colour. At G.o.dmother's all the faces disapproved: Georgina said, "What a guy!" when she thought Laura was out of earshot; but the boys stated their opinion openly as soon as they had her to themselves.

"Oh, golly! Like a parrot--ain't she?"

"This way to the purple parrot--this way! Step up, ladies and gentlemen! A penny the whole show!"

That evening, she tore the dress from her back and, hanging it up inside the cloak, vowed that, come what might, she would never put it on again. A day or two later, on unexpectedly entering her bedroom, she found Lilith Gordon and another girl at her wardrobe. They grew very red, and hurried giggling from the room, but Laura had seen what they were looking at. After this, she tied the dress up with string and brown paper and hid it in a drawer, under her nightgowns. When she went home at Christmas it went with her, still in the parcel, and then there was a stormy scene. But Laura was stubborn: rather than wear the dress, she would not go back to the College at all. Mother's heart had been softened by the prizes; Laura seized the occasion, and extracted a promise that she should be allowed in future to choose her own frocks.-- And so the purple dress was pa.s.sed on to Pin, who detested it with equal heartiness, but, living under Mother's eye, had not the spirit to fight against it.

"Got anything new in the way of clothes?" asked Lilith Gordon as she and Laura undressed for bed a night or two after their return.

"Yes, one," said Laura shortly.--For she thought Lilith winked at the third girl, a publican's daughter from Clunes.

"Another like the last? Or have you gone in for yellow ochre this time?"

Laura flamed in silence.

"Great Scott, what a colour that was! Fit for an Easter Fair--Miss Day said so."

"It wasn't mine," retorted Laura pa.s.sionately. "It ... it belonged to a girl I knew who died--and her mother gave it to me as a remembrance of her--but I didn't care for it."

"I shouldn't think you did.--But I say, does your mother let you wear other people's clothes? What a rummy thing to do!"

She went out of the room--no doubt to spread this piece of gossip further. Laura looked daggers after her. She was angry enough with Lilith for having goaded her to the lie, but much angrier with herself for its blundering ineffectualness. It was not likely she had been believed, and if she were, well, it made matters worse instead of better: people would conclude that she lived on charity. Always when unexpectedly required to stand on the defensive, she said or did something foolish. That morning, for instance, a similar thing had happened--it had rankled all day in her mind. On looking through the washing, Miss Day had exclaimed in horror at the way in which her stockings were mended.

"Whoever did it? They've been done since you left here. I would never have pa.s.sed such dams."

Laura crimsoned. "Those? Oh, an old nurse we've got at home. We've had her for years and years--but her eyesight's going now."

Miss Day sniffed audibly. "So I should think. To cobble like that!"

They were Mother's dams, hastily made, late at night, and with all Mother's genial impatience at useful sewing as opposed to beautiful.

Laura's intention had been to shield Mother from criticism, as well as to spare Miss Day's feelings. But to have done it so clumsily as this!

To have had to wince under Miss Day's scepticism! It was only a wonder the governess had not there and then taxed her with the fib. For who believed in old nurses nowadays? They were a stock property, borrowed on the spur of the moment from readings in THE FAMILY HERALD, from Tennyson's LADY CLARE. Why on earth had such a far-fetched excuse leapt to her tongue? Why could she not have said Sarah, the servant, the maid-of-all-work? Then Miss Day would have had no chance to sniff, and she, Laura, could have believed herself believed, instead of having to fret over her own stupidity.--But what she would like more than anything to know was, why the mending of the stockings at home should NOT be Sarah's work? Why must it just be Mother--her mother alone--who made herself so disagreeably conspicuous, and not merely by darning the stockings, but, what was a still greater grievance, by not even darning them well?

XI.

It was an odd thing, all the same, how easy it was to be friends with Lilith Gordon: though she did not belong to Laura's set though Laura did not even like her, and though she had had ample proof that Lilith was double-faced, not to be trusted. Yet, in the months that followed the affair of the purple dress, Laura grew more intimate with the plump, sandy-haired girl than with either Bertha, or Inez, or Tilly.

Or, to put it more exactly, she was continually having lapses into intimacy, and repenting them when it was too late. In one way Lilith was responsible for this: she could make herself very pleasant when she chose, seem to be your friend through thick and thin, thus luring you on to unbosom yourself; and afterwards she would go away and laugh over what you had told her, with other girls. And Laura was peculiarly helpless under such circ.u.mstances: if it was done with tact, and with a certain a.s.sumed warmth of manner, anyone could make a cat's-paw of her.

That Lilith and she undressed for bed together had also something to do with their intimacy: this half-hour when one's hair was unbound and replaited, and fat and thin arms wielded the brush, was the time of all others for confidences. The governess who occupied the fourth bed did not come upstairs till ten o'clock; the publican's daughter, a lazy girl, was usually half asleep before the other two had their clothes off.

It was in the course of one of these confidential chats that Laura did a very foolish thing. In a moment of weakness, she gratuitously gave away the secret that Mother supported her family by the work of her hands.

The two girls were sitting on the side of Lilith's bed. Laura had a day of mishaps behind her--that partly, no doubt, accounted for her self-indulgence. But, in addition, her companion had just told her, unasked, that she thought her "very pretty". It was not in Laura's nature to let this pa.s.s: she was never at ease under an obligation; she had to pay the coin back in kind.

"Embroidery? What sort? However does she do it?"--Lilith's interest was on tiptoe at once--a false and slimy interest, the victim afterwards told herself.

"Oh, my mother's awfully clever. It's just lovely, too, what she does--all in silk--and ever so many different colours. She made a piano-cover once, and got fifty pounds for it."

"How perfectly splendid!"

"But that was only a lucky chance ... that she got that to do. She mostly does children's dresses and cloaks and things like that."

"But she's not a dressmaker, is she?"

"A dressmaker? I should think not indeed! They're sent up, all ready to work, from the biggest shops in town."

"I say!--she must be clever."

"She is; she can do anything. She makes the patterns up all out of her own head. "--And filled with pride in Mother's accomplishments and Lilith's appreciation of them, Laura fell asleep that night without a qualm.

It was the next evening. Several of the boarders who had finished preparing their lessons were loitering in the dining-hall, Laura and Lilith among them. In the group was a girl called Lucy, young but very saucy; for she lived at Toorak, and came of one of the best families in Melbourne. She was not as old as Laura by two years, but was already feared and respected for the fine scorn of her opinions.

Lilith Gordon had bragged: "My uncle's promised me a gold watch and chain when I pa.s.s matric."

Lucy of Toorak laughed: her nose came down, and her mouth went up at the corners. "Do you think you ever will?"

"G. o. k. and He won't tell. But I'll probably get the watch all the same."

"Where does your uncle hang out?"

"Brisbane."

"Sure he can afford to buy it?"

"Of course he can."

"What is he?"