The Getting of Wisdom Part 13

Lilith was unlucky enough to hesitate, ever so slightly. "Oh, he's got plenty of money," she a.s.serted.

"She doesn't like to say what he is!"

"I don't care whether I say it or not."

"A butcher, p'raps, or an undertaker?"

"A butcher! He's got the biggest newspaper in Brisbane!"

"A newspaper! Great Scott! Her uncle keeps a newspaper!"

There was a burst of laughter from those standing round.

Lilith was scarlet now. "It's nothing to be ashamed of," she said angrily.

But Lucy of Toorak could not recover from her amus.e.m.e.nt. "An uncle who keeps a newspaper! A newspaper! Well, I'm glad none of MY uncles are so rummy.--I say, does he leave it at front doors himself in the morning?"

Laura had at first looked pa.s.sively on, well pleased to see another than herself the b.u.t.t of young Lucy's wit. But at this stage of her existence she was too intent on currying favour, to side with any but the stronger party. And so she joined in the boisterous mirth Lilith's admission and Lucy's reception of it excited, and flung her gibes with the rest.

She was pulled up short by a hissing in her ear. "If you say one word more, I'll tell about the embroidery!"

Laura went pale with fright: she had been in good spirits that day, and had quite forgotten her silly confidence of the night before. Now, the jeer that was on the tip of her tongue hung fire. She could not all at once obliterate her smile--that would have been noticeable; but it grew weaker, stiffer and more unnatural, then gradually faded away, leaving her with a very solemn little face.

From this night on, Lilith Gordon represented a powder-mine, which might explode at any minute.--And she herself had laid the train!

From the outset, Laura had been accepted, socially, by even the most exclusive, as one of themselves; and this, in spite of her n.i.g.g.ardly allowance, her ridiculous clothes. For the child had race in her: in a well-set head, in good hands and feet and ears. Her nose, too, had a very p.r.o.nounced droop, which could stand only for blue blood, or a Hebraic ancestor--and Jews were not received as boarders in the school.

Now, loud as money made itself in this young community, effectual as it was in cloaking shortcomings, it did not go all the way: inherited instincts and traditions were not so easily subdued. Just some of the wealthiest, too, were aware that their antecedents would not stand a close scrutiny; and thus a mighty respect was engendered in them for those who had nothing to fear. Moreover, directly you got away from the vastly rich, cla.s.s distinctions were observed with an exact.i.tude such as can only obtain in an exceedingly mixed society. The three professions alone were sacrosanct. The calling of architect, for example, or of civil engineer, was, if a fortune had not been acc.u.mulated, utterly without prestige; trade, any connection with trade--the merest bowing acquaintance with buying and selling--was a taint that nothing could remove; and those girls who were related to shopkeepers, or, more awful still, to publicans, would rather have bitten their tongues off than have owned to the disgrace.

Yet Laura knew very well that good birth and an aristocratic appearance would not avail her, did the damaging fact leak out that Mother worked for her living. Work in itself was bad enough--how greatly to be envied were those whose fathers did nothing more active than live on their money! But the additional circ.u.mstance of Mother being a woman made things ten times worse: ladies did not work; some one always left them enough to live on, and if he didn't, well, then he, too, shared the ignominy. So Laura went in fear and trembling lest the truth should come to light--in that case, she would be a pariah indeed--went in hourly dread of Lilith betraying her. Nothing, however, happened--at least as far as she could discover--and she sought to propitiate Lilith in every possible way. For the time being, though, anxiety turned her into a porcupine, ready to erect her quills at a touch. She was ever on the look-out for an allusion to her mother's position, and for the slight that was bound to accompany it.

Even the governesses noticed the change in her.

Three of them sat one evening round the fire in Mrs. Gurley's sitting-room, with their feet on the fender. The girls had gone to bed; it was Mrs. Gurley's night off, and as Miss Day was also on leave, the three who were left could draw in more closely than usual. Miss Snodgra.s.s had made the bread into toast--in spite of Miss Chapman's quakings lest Mrs. Gurley should notice the smell when she came in--and, as they munched, Miss Snodgra.s.s related how she had just confiscated a book Laura Rambotham was trying to smuggle upstairs, and how it had turned out that it belonged, not to Laura herself, but to Lilith Gordon.

"She was like a little spitfire about it all the same. A most objectionable child, I call her. It was only yesterday I wanted to look at some embroidery on her ap.r.o.n--a rather pretty new st.i.tch--and do you think she'd let me see it? She jerked it away and glared at me as if she would have liked to eat me. I could have boxed her ears."

"I never have any trouble with Laura. I don't think you know how to manage her," said Miss Chapman, and executed a little manoeuvre. She had poor teeth; and, having awaited a moment when Miss Snodgra.s.s's sharp eyes were elsewhere engaged, she surrept.i.tiously dropped the crusts of the toast into her handkerchief.

"I'd be sorry to treat her as you do," said Miss Snodgra.s.s, and yawned.

"Girls need to be made to sit up nowadays."

She yawned again, and gazing round the room for fresh food for talk, caught Miss Zielinski with her eye. "Hullo, Ziely, what are you deep in?" She put her arm round the other's neck, and unceremoniously laid hold of her book. "You naughty girl, you're at Ouida again! Always got your nose stuck in some trashy novel."

"DO let me alone," said Miss Zielinski pettishly, holding fast to the book; but she did not raise her eyes, for they were wet.

"You know you'll count the washing all wrong again to-morrow, your head'll be so full of that stuff."

"Yes, it's time to go, girls; to-morrow's Sat.u.r.day." And Miss Chapman sighed; for, on a Sat.u.r.day morning between six and eight o'clock, fifty-five lots of washing had to be sorted out and arranged in piles.

"Holy Moses, what a life!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Miss Snodgra.s.s, and yawned again, in a kind of furious desperation. "I swear I'll marry the first man that asks me, to get away from it.--As long as he has money enough to keep me decently."

"You would soon wish yourself back, if you had no more feeling for him that that," reproved Miss Chapman.

"Catch me! Not even if he had a hump, or kept a mistress, or was over eighty. Oh dear, oh dear!"--she stretched herself so violently that her bones cracked; to resume, in a tone of ordinary conversation: "I do wish I knew whether to put a brown wing or a green one in that blessed hat of mine."

Miss Chapman's face straightened out from its shocked expression. "Your hat? Why do you want to change it? It's very nice as it is."

"My dear Miss Chapman, it's at least six months out of date.--Ziely, you're crying!"

"I'm not," said Miss Zielinski weakly, caught in the act of blowing her nose.

"How on earth can you cry over a book? As if it were true!"

"I thank G.o.d I haven't such a cold heart as you."

"And I thank G.o.d I'm not a romantic idiot. But your name's not Thekla for nothing I suppose."

"My name's as good as yours. And I won't be looked down on because my father was once a German."

"'Mr. Kayser, do you vant to buy a dawg?'" hummed Miss Snodgra.s.s.

"Girls, girls!" admonished Miss Chapman. "How you two do bicker.-- There, that's Mrs. Gurley now! And it's long past ten."

At the creaking of the front door both juniors rose, gathered their belongings together, and hurried from the room. But it was a false alarm; and having picked up some crumbs and set the chairs in order, Miss Chapman resumed her seat. As she waited, she looked about her and wondered, with a sigh, whether it would ever be her good fortune to call this cheery little room her own. It was only at moments like the present that she could indulge such a dream. Did Mrs. Gurley stand before her, majestic in bonnet and mantle, as in a minute or two she would, or draped in her great shawl, thoughts of this kind sank to their proper level, and Miss Chapman knew them for what they were worth. But sitting alone by night, her chin in her hand, her eyes on the dying fire, around her the eerie stillness of the great house, her ambition did not seem wholly out of reach; and, giving rein to her fancy, she could picture herself sweeping through halls and rooms, issuing orders that it was the business of others to fulfil, could even think out a few changes that should be made, were she head of the staff.

But the insertion of Mrs. Gurley's key in the lock, the sound of her foot on the oilcloth, was enough to waken a sense of guilt in Miss Chapman, and make her start to her feet--the drab, elderly, apologetic governess once more.

XII.

DA REGIERT DER NACHBAR, DA WIRD MAN NACHBAR.

NIETZSCHE

You might regulate your outward habit to the last b.u.t.ton of what you were expected to wear; you might conceal the tiny flaws and shuffle over the big improprieties in your home life, which were likely to damage your value in the eyes of your companions; you might, in brief, march in the strictest order along the narrow road laid down for you by these young lawgivers, keeping perfect step and time with them: yet of what use were all your pains, if you could not marshal your thoughts and feelings--the very realest part of you--in rank and file as well?

... if these persisted in escaping control?--Such was the question which, about this time, began to present itself to Laura's mind.

It first took form on the day Miss Blount, the secretary, popped her head in at the door and announced: "At half-past three, Cla.s.s Two to Number One."

Cla.s.s Two was taking a lesson in elocution: that is to say Mr. Repton, the visiting-master for this branch of study, was reading aloud, in a sonorous voice, a chapter of HANDY ANDY. He underlined his points heavily, and his hearers, like the self-conscious, emotionally shy young colonials they were, felt half amused by, half-superior to the histrionic display. They lounged in easy, ungraceful postures while he read, reclining one against another, or sprawling forward over the desks, their heads on their arms. It was the first hour after dinner, when one's thoughts were sleepy and stupid, and Mr. Repton was not a pattern disciplinarian; but the general abandonment of att.i.tude had another ground as well. It had to do with the shape of the master's legs. These were the object of an enthusiastic admiration. They were generally admitted to be the handsomest in the school, and those girls were thought lucky who could get the best view of them beneath the desk. Moreover, the rumour ran that Mr. Repton had once been an actor--his very curly hair no doubt lent weight to the report--and Cla.s.s Two was fond of picturing the comely limbs in the tights of a Hamlet or Oth.e.l.lo. It also, of course, invented for him a lurid life outside the College walls--notwithstanding the fact that he and his sonsy wife sat opposite the boarders in church every Sunday morning, the embodiment of the virtuous commonplace; and whenever he looked at a pupil, every time he singled one of them out for special notice, he was believed to have an ulterior motive, his words were construed into meaning something they should not mean: so that the poor man was often genuinely puzzled by the reception of his friendly overtures.--Such was Cla.s.s Two's youthful contribution to the romance of school life.

On this particular day, however, the sudden, short snap of the secretary's announcement that, instead of dispersing at half-past three, the entire school was to rea.s.semble, galvanised the cla.s.s.

Glances of mingled apprehension and excitement flew round; eyes telegraphed [P.119] vigorous messages; and there was little attention left for well-shaped members, or for the antics of Handy Andy under his mother's bed.