That night she had the familiar dream that she was being "stood up" and expelled, as Annie Johns had been: thousands of tongues shouted her guilt; she was hunted like a wallaby. She wakened with a scream, and Marina, her bedfellow, rose on one elbow and lighted the candle. Crumpled and dishevelled, Laura lay outside the sheet that should have covered her; and her pillow had slipped to the floor.

"What on earth's the matter? Dreaming? Then depend on it you've eaten something that's disagreed with you."

How she dragged her legs back to school that morning, Laura never knew. At the sight of the great stone building her inner disturbance was such that she was nearly sick. Even the unobservant Marina was forced to a remark.

"You do look a bit peaky. I'm sure your stomach's out of order. Your should take a dose of castor-oil to-night, before you go to bed."

Though it was a blazing November day, her fingers were cold as she took off her hat and changed her white frock. "For the last time," she murmured; by which she meant the last time in untarnished honour. And she folded and hung up her clothes, with a neatness that was foreign to her.

Classes were in full swing when she went downstairs; nothing could happen now till the close of morning school. But Laura signalised the beginning of her downfall, the end of her comet-like flight, by losing her place in one form after another, the lessons she had prepared on Friday evening having gone clean out of her head.

Directly half-past twelve struck, she ran to the top of the garden and hid herself under a tree. There she crouched, her fingers in her ears, her heart thumping as if it would break. Till the dinner-bell rang. Then she was forced to emerge—and no tottering criminal, about to face the scaffold, has ever had more need of Dutch courage than Laura in this moment. Peeping round the corner of the path she saw the fateful group: M. P. the centre of four gesticulating figures. She loitered till they had scattered and disappeared; then with shaking legs crept to the house. At the long tables the girls still stood, waiting for Mr. Strachey; and the instant Laura set foot in the hall, five pairs of eyes caught her, held her, pinned her down, as one pins a butterfly to a board. She was much too far gone to think of tossing her head and braving things out, now that the crisis had come. Pale, guilty, wretched, she sidled to her seat. This was near Maria's, and, as she passed, Maria leant back.

"You VILE little liar!"

"How's that shy little mouse of a girl we had here a month or two ago?" Mr. Shepherd had inquired. "Let me see—what was her name again?"

To which Miss Isabella had replied: "Well, you know, Robby dear, you really hardly saw her. You had so much to do, poor boy, just when she was here. Her name was Laura—Laura Rambotham."

And Mrs. Shepherd gently: "Yes, a nice little girl. But very young for her age. And SO shy."

"You wretched little lying sneak!"

In vain Laura wept and protested.

"You made me do it. I should never have told a word, if it hadn't been for you."

This point of view enraged them. "What? You want to put it on us now, do you? ... you dirty little skunk! To say WE made you tell that pack of lies?—Look here: as long as you stay in this blooming shop, I'll never open my mouth to you again!"

"Someone ought to tell old Gurley and have her expelled. That's all she's fit for. Spreading disgusting stories about people who've been kind to her. They probably only asked her there out of charity. She's as poor as dirt."

"Wants her bottom smacked—that's what I say!"

Thus Maria, and, with her, Kate Horner.

Tilly was cooler and bitterer. "I was a dashed fool ever to believe a word. I might have known her little game. She? Why, when I took her out to see my cousin Bob, she couldn't say bo to a goose. He laughed about her afterwards like anything; said she ought to have come in a perambulator, with a nurse.—YOU make anyone in love with you—you!" And Tilly spat, to show her disdain.

"What have they been saying to you, Laura?" whispered Chinky, pale and frightened. "Whatever is the matter?"

"Mind your own business and go away," sobbed Laura.

"I am, I'm going," said Chinky humbly.—"Oh, Laura, I WISH you had that ring."

"Oh, blow you and your ring! I hate the very name of it," cried Laura, maddened.—And retreating to a lavatory, which was the only private place in the school, she wept her full.

They all, every girl of them, understood white lies, and practised them. They might also have forgiven her a lie of the good, plain, straightforward, thumping order. What they could not forgive, or get over, was the extraordinary circumstantiality of the fictions which with she had gulled them: to be able to invent lies with such proficiency meant that you had been born with a criminal bent.—And as a criminal she was accordingly treated.

Even the grown-up girls heard a garbled version of the story.

"Whyever did you do it?" one of them asked Laura curiously; it was a very pretty girl, called Evelyn, with twinkling brown eyes.

"I don't know," said Laura abjectly; and this was almost true.

"But I say! ... nasty tarradiddles about people who'd been so nice to you? What made you tell them?"

"I don't KNOW. They just came."

The girl's eyes smiled. "Well, I never! Poor little Kiddy," she said as she turned away.

But this was the only kind word Laura heard. For many and many a night after, she cried herself to sleep.



XIX.

Thus Laura went to Coventry.—Not that the social banishment she now suffered was known by that name. To the majority of the girls Coventry was just a word in the geography book, a place where ribbons were said to be made, and where for a better-read few, some one had hung with grooms and porters on a bridge; this detail, odd to say, making a deeper impression on their young minds than the story of Lady Godiva, which was looked upon merely as a naughty anecdote.

But, by whatever name it was known, Laura's ostracism was complete. She had been sampled, tested, put on one side. And not the softest-hearted could find an excuse for her behaviour.

It was but another instance of how misfortune dogs him who is down, that Chinky should choose this very moment to bring further shame upon her.

On one of the miserable days that were now the rule, when Laura would have liked best to be a rabbit, hid deep in its burrow; as she was going upstairs one afternoon, she met Jacob, the man-of-all-work, coming down. He had a trunk on his shoulder. Throughout the day she had been aware of a subdued excitement among the boarders; they had stood about in groups, talking in low voices—talking about her, she believed, from the glances that were thrown over shoulders at her as she passed. She made herself as small as she could; but when tea-time came, and then [P.192] supper, and Chinky had not appeared at either meal, curiosity got the better of her, and she tried to pump one of the younger girls.

Maria came up while she was speaking, and the child ran away; for the little ones aped their elders in making Laura taboo.

"What, liar? You want to stuff us you don't know why she's gone?" said Maria. "No, thank you, it's not good enough. You can't bamboozle us this time."

"Sapphira up to her tricks again, is she?" threw in the inseparable Kate, who had caught the last words. "No, by dad, we don't tell liars what they know already.—So put that in your pipe and smoke it!"

Only bit by bit did Laura dig out their meaning: then, the horrible truth lay bare. Chinky had been dismissed—privately because she was a boarder—from the school. Her crime was: she had taken half-a-sovereign from the purse of one of her room-mates. When taxed with the theft, she wept that she had not taken it for herself, but to buy a ring for Laura Rambotham; and, with this admission on her lips, she passed out of their lives, leaving Laura, her confederate, behind.—Yes, confederate; for, in the minds of most, liar and thief were synonymous.

Laura had not cared two straws for Chinky; she found what the latter had done, "mean and disgusting", and said so, stormily; but of course was not believed. Usually too proud to defend herself, she here returned to the charge again and again; for the hint of connivance had touched her on the raw. But she strove in vain to prove her innocence: she could not get her enemies to grasp the abysmal difference between merely making up a story about people, and laying hands on others' property; if she could do the one, she was capable of the other; and her companions remained convinced that, if she had not actually had her fingers in some one's purse, she had, by a love of jewellery, incited Chinky to the theft. And so, after a time, Laura gave up the attempt and suffered in silence; and it WAS suffering; for her schoolfellows were cruel with that intolerance, that unimaginative dullness, which makes a woman's cruelty so hard to bear. Laura had to accustom herself to hear every word she said doubted; to hear some one called to, before her face, to attest her statements; to see her room-mates lock up their purses under her very nose.

However, only three weeks had still to run till the Christmas holidays. She drew twenty-one strokes on a sheet of paper, which she pinned to the wall above her bed; and each morning she ran her pencil through a fresh line. She was quite resolved to beg Mother not to send her back to school: if she said she was not getting proper food, that would be enough to put Mother up in arms.

The boxes were being fetched from the lumber-rooms and distributed among their owners, when a letter arrived from Mother saying that the two little boys had sandy blight, and that Laura would not be able to come home under two or three weeks, for fear of infection. These weeks she was to spend, in company with Pin, at a watering-place down the Bay, where one of her aunts had a cottage.

The news was welcome to Laura: she had shrunk from the thought of Mother's searching eye. And at the cottage there would be none of her grown-up relatives to face; only an old housekeeper, who was looking after a party of boys.

Hence, when speech day was over, instead of setting out on an up-country railway journey, Laura, under the escort of Miss Snodgrass, went on board one of the steamers that ploughed the Bay.

"I should say sea-air'll do you good—brighten you up a bit," said the governess affably as they drove: she was in great good-humour at the prospect of losing sight for a time of the fifty-five. "You seem to be always in the dumps nowadays."

Laura dutifully waved her handkerchief from the deck of the SILVER STAR; and the paddles began to churn. As Miss Snodgrass's back retreated down the pier, and the breach between ship and land widened, she settled herself on her seat with a feeling of immense relief. At last—at last she was off. The morning had been a sore trial to her: in all the noisy and effusive leave-taking, she was odd man out; no one had been sorry to part from her; no one had extracted a promise that she would write. Her sole valediction had been a minatory shaft from Maria: if she valued her skin, to learn to stop telling crams before she showed up there again. Now, she was free of them; she would not be humiliated afresh, would not need to stand eye to eye with anyone who knew of her disgrace, for weeks to come; perhaps never again, if Mother agreed. Her heart grew momentarily lighter. And the farther they left Melbourne behind them, the higher her spirits rose.

But then, too, was it possible, on this radiant December day, long to remain in what Miss Snodgrass had called "the dumps"?—The sea was a blue-green mirror, on the surface of which they swam. The sky was a stretched sheet of blue, in which the sun hung a very ball of fire. But the steamer cooled the air as it moved; and none of the white-clad people who, under the stretched white awnings, thronged the deck, felt oppressed by the great heat. In the middle of the deck, a brass band played popular tunes.

At a pretty watering-place where they stopped, Laura rose and crossed to the opposite railing. A number of passengers went ashore, pushing and laughing, but almost as many more came on board, all dressed in white, and with eager, animated faces. Then the boat stood to sea again and sailed past high, grass-grown cliffs, from which a few old cannons, pointing their noses at you, watched over the safety of the Bay—in the event, say, of the Japanese or the Russians entering the Heads past the pretty township, and the beflagged bathing-enclosures on the beach below. They neared the tall, granite lighthouse at the point, with the flagstaff at its side where incoming steamers were signalled; and as soon as they had rounded this corner they were in view of the Heads themselves. From the distant cliffs there ran out, on either side, brown reefs, which made the inrushing water dance and foam, and the entrance to the Bay narrow and dangerous: on one side, there projected the portion of a wreck which had lain there as long as Laura had been in the world. Then, having made a sharp turn to the left, the boat crossed to the opposite coast, and steamed past barrack-like buildings lying asleep in the fierce sunshine of the afternoon; and, in due course, it stopped at Laura's destination.

Old Anne was waiting on the jetty, having hitched the horse to a post: she had driven in, in the 'shandrydan', to meet Laura. For the cottage was not on the front beach, with the hotels and boarding-houses, the fenced-in baths and great gentle slope of yellow sand: it stood in the bush, on the back beach, which gave to the open sea.

Laura took her seat beside the old woman in her linen sunbonnet, the body of the vehicle being packed full of groceries and other stores; and the drive began. Directly they were clear of the township the road as good as ceased, became a mere sandy track, running through a scrub of ti-trees.—And what sand! White, dry, sliding sand, through which the horse shuffled and floundered, in which the wheels sank and stuck. Had one of the many hillocks to be taken, the two on the box-seat instinctively threw their weight forward; old Anne, who had a stripped wattle-bough for a whip, urged and cajoled; and more than once she handed Laura the reins and got down, to give the horse a pull. They had always to be ducking their heads, too, to let the low ti-tree branches sweep over their backs.

About a couple of miles out, the old woman alighted and slipped a rail; and having passed the only other house within cooee, they drove through a paddock, but at a walking-pace, because of the thousands of rabbit-burrows that perforated the ground. Another slip-rail lowered, they drew up at the foot of a steepish hill, beside a sandy little vegetable garden, a shed and a pump. The house was perched on the top of the hill, and directly they sighted it they also saw Pin flying down, her sunbonnet on her neck.

"Laura, Laura! Oh, I AM glad you've come. What a time you've been!"

"Hullo, Pin.—Oh, I say, let me get out first."

"And pull up your bonnet, honey. D'you want to be after gettin' sunstruck?"

Glad though Laura was to see her sister again, she did not manage to infuse a very hearty tone into her greeting; for her first glimpse of Pin had given her a disagreeable shock. It was astonishing, the change the past half-year had worked in the child; and as the two climbed the hill together, to the accompaniment of Pin's bubbly talk, Laura stole look after look at her little sister, in the hope of growing used to what she saw. Pin had never been pretty, but now she was "downright hideous"—as Laura phrased it to herself. Eleven years of age, she had at last begun to grow in earnest: her legs were as of old mere spindleshanks, but nearly twice as long; and her fat little body, perched above them, made one think of a shrivelled-up old man who has run all to paunch. Her face, too, had increased in shapelessness, the features being blurred in the fat mass; her blue eyes were more slit-like than before; and, to cap everything, her fine skin had absolutely no chance, so bespattered was it with freckles. And none of your pretty little sun-kisses; but large, black, irregular freckles that disfigured like moles. Laura felt quite distressed; it outraged her feelings that anyone belonging to her should be so ugly; and as Pin, in happy ignorance of her sister's reflections, chattered on, Laura turned over in her mind what she ought to do. She would have to tell Pin about herself—that was plain: she must break the news to her, in case others should do it, and more cruelly. It was one consolation to know that Pin was not sensitive about her looks; so long as you did not tease her about her legs, there was no limit to what you might say to her: the grieving was all for the onlooker. But not today: this was the first day; and there were pleasanter things to think of. And so, when they had had tea—with condensed milk in it, for the cow had gone dry, and no milkman came out so far—when tea was over—and that was all that could be undertaken in the way of refreshment after the journey; washing your face and hands, for instance, was out of the question; every drop of water had to be carried up the hill from the pump, and old Anne purposely kept the ewers empty by day; if you WOULD wash, you must wash in the sea—as soon, then, as tea was over, the two sisters made for the beach.

The four-roomed, weatherboard cottage, to which at a later date a lean-to had been added, faced the bush: from the verandah there was a wide view of the surrounding country. Between the back of the house and the beach rose a huge sand-hill, sparsely grown with rushes and coarse grass. It took you some twenty minutes to toil over this, and boots and stockings were useless impedimenta; for the sand was once more of that loose and shifting kind in which you sank at times up to the knees, falling back one step for every two you climbed. But then, sand was the prevailing note of this free and easy life: it bestrewed verandah and floors; you carried it in your clothes; the beds were full of it; it even got into the food; and you were soon so accustomed to its presence that you missed the grit of it under foot, or the prickling on your skin, did old Anne happen to take a broom in her hand, or thoroughly re-make the beds.—When, however, on your way to the beach you had laboriously attained the summit of the great dune, the sight that met you almost took your breath away: as far as the eye could reach, the bluest of skies melting into the bluest of seas, which broke its foam-flecked edge against the flat, brown reefs that fringed the shore. Then, downhill—with a trip and a flounder that sent the sand man-high—and at last you were on what Laura and Pin thought the most wonderful beach in the world. What a variety of things was there! Whitest, purest sand, hot to the touch as a zinc roof in summer; rocky caves, and sandy caves hung with crumbly stalactites; at low tide, on the reef, lakes and ponds and rivers deep enough to make it unnecessary for you to go near the ever-angry surf at all; seaweeds that ran through the gamut of colours: brown and green, pearl-pink and coral-pink, to vivid scarlet and orange; shells, beginning with tiny grannies and cowries, and ending with the monsters in which the breakers had left their echo; the bones of cuttlefish, light as paper, and shaped like javelins. And, what was best of all, this beach belonged to them alone; they had not to share its treasures with strangers; except the inhabitants of the cottage, never a soul set foot upon it.

The chief business of the morning was to bathe. If the girls were alone and the tide full, they threw off their clothes and ran into a sandy, shallow pool, where the water never came above their waists, and where it was safe to let the breakers dash over them. But if the tide were low, the boys bathed, too, and then Pin and Laura tied themselves up in old bathing-gowns that were too big for them, and all went in a body to the "Half-Moon Hole". This pool, which was about twenty feet long and ten to fifteen deep, lay far out on the reef, and, at high tide, was hidden beneath surf and foam; at low water, on the other hand, it was like a glass mirror reflecting the sky, and so clear that you could see every weed that waved at the bottom. Having cast off your shoes, you applied your soles gingerly to the prickles of the rock; then plop!—and in you went. Pin often needed a shove from behind, for nowhere, of course, could you get a footing; but Laura swam with the best. Some of the boys would dive to the bottom and bring up weeds and shells, but Laura and Pin kept on the surface of the water; for they had the imaginative dread common to children who know the sea well—the dread of what may lurk beneath the thick, black horrors of seaweed.

Then, after an hour or so in the water, home to dinner, hungry as swagmen, though the bill of fare never varied: it was always rabbit for dinner, crayfish for tea; for the butcher called only once a week, and meat could not be kept an hour without getting flyblown. The rabbits were skinned and in the stew-pot before they were cold; the crayfish died an instant death: one that drove the blood to Laura's head, and made Pin run away and cry, with her fingers to her ears; for she believed the sizzling of the water, as the fish were dropped in, to be the shriek of the creatures in their death-agony.

Except in bathing, the girls saw little of the boys. Both were afraid of guns, so did not go out on the expeditions which supplied the dinner-table; and old Anne would not allow them to join the crayfishing excursions. For these took place by night, off the end of the reef, with nets and torches; and it sometimes happened, if the surf were heavy, that one of the fishers was washed off the rocks, and only hauled up again with considerable difficulty.

Laura took her last peep at the outside world, every evening, in the brief span of time between sunset and dark. Running up to the top of one of the hills, and letting her eyes range over sky and sea, she would drink in the scents that were waking to life after the burning heat of the day: salt water, warmed sand and seaweeds, ti-scrub, sour-grass, and the sturdy berry-bushes, high as her knee, through which she had ploughed her way. That was one of the moments she liked best, that, and lying in bed at night listening to the roar of the surf, which went on and on like a cannonade, even though the hill lay between. It made her flesh crawl, too, in delightful fashion, did she picture to herself how alone she and Pin were, in their room: the boys slept in the lean-to on the other side of the kitchen; old Anne at the back. For miles round, no house broke the solitude of the bush; only a thin wooden partition separated her from possible bushrangers, from the vastness and desolation of the night, the eternal booming of the sea.

Such was the life into which Laura now threw herself heart and soul, forgetting, in the sheer joy of living, her recent tribulation.

But even the purest pleasures WILL pall; and after a time, when the bloom had worn off and the newness and her mind was more at leisure again, she made some disagreeable discoveries which ruffled her tranquillity.

It was Pin, poor, fat, little well-meaning Pin, who did the mischief

Pin was not only changed in looks; her character had changed, too; and in so marked a way that before a week was out the sisters were at loggerheads. Each day made it plainer to Laura that Pin was developing a sturdy independence; she had ceased to look up to Laura as a prodigy of wisdom, and had begun to hold opinions of her own. She was, indeed, even disposed to be critical of her sister; and criticism from this quarter was more than Laura could brook: it was just as if a slave usurped his master's rights. At first speechless with surprise, she ended by losing her temper; the more, because Pin was prone to be mulish, and could not be got to budge, either by derision or by scorn, from her espoused views. They were those of the school at which for the past half-year she had been a day-pupil, and seemed to her unassailable. Laura found them ridiculous, as she did much else about Pin at this time: her ugliness, her setting herself up as an authority: and she jeered unkindly whenever Pin came out with them.—A still more ludicrous thing was that, despite her plainness, Pin actually had an admirer. True, she did not say so outright; perhaps she was not even aware of it; but Laura gathered from her talk that a boy at her school, a boy some three years older than herself, had given her a silk handkerchief and liked to help her with her sums.—And to Laura this was the most knockdown blow of all.

One day it came to an open quarrel between them.

They were lying on the beach after bathing, trying to protect their bare and blistered legs from the sandflies. Laura, flat on her back, had spread a towel over hers; Pin sat Turk—fashion with her legs beneath her and fought the flies with her hands. Having vainly endeavoured to draw from the reticent Laura some of those school-tales of which, in former holidays, she had been so prodigal, Pin was now chattering to her heart's content, about the small doings of home. Laura listened to her with the impatient toleration of one who has seen the world: she really could not be expected to interest herself in such trifles; and she laughed in her sleeve at Pin's simpleness. When, however, her little sister began to enlarge anew on some wonderful orders Mother had lately had, she could not refrain from saying crossly: "You've told me that a dozen times already. And you needn't bawl it out for everyone to hear."

"Oh, Laura! there isn't anyone anywhere near us ... and even if there were—why, I thought you'd be so pleased. Mother's going to give you an extra shilling pocket-money, 'cause of it."

"Of course I'm pleased. Don't be so silly, Pin."

"I'm not ALWAYS silly, Laura," protested Pin. "And I don't believe you ARE glad, a bit. Old Anne was, though. She said: 'Bless her dear heart!'"

"Old Anne? Well, I just wonder what next! It's none of her dashed business."

"Oh, Laura!" began Pin, growing tearful both at words and tone. "Why, Laura, you're not ashamed of it, are you?—that mother does sewing?"—and Pin opened her lobelia-blue eyes to their widest, showing what very big eyes they would be, were they not so often swollen with crying.

"Of course not," said Laura tartly. "But I'm blessed if I can see what it's got to do with old Anne."

"But she asked me ... what mother was working at—and if she'd got any new customers. She just loves mother."

"Like her cheek!" snapped Laura. "Poking her ugly old nose into what doesn't concern her. You should just have said you didn't know."

"But that would have been a story, Laura!" cried Pin, horrified "I did know—quite well."

"Goodness gracious, Pin, you——"

"I've never told a story in my life," said Pin hotly. "And I'm not going to either, for you or anyone. I think you ought to be ashamed of yourself."

"Hold your silly tongue!"

"I shan't, Laura. And I think you're very wicked. You're not a bit like what you used to be. And it's all going to school that's done it—Mother says it is."

"Oh, don't be such a blooming ass!" and Laura, stung to the quick, retaliated by taunting Pin with the change that had come to pass in her appearance. To her surprise, she found Pin grown inordinately touchy about her looks: at Laura's brutal statement of the truth she cried bitterly.

"I'm not, no, I'm not! I haven't got a full moon for a face! It's no fatter than yours. Sarah said last time you were home how fat you were getting."

"I'm sure I'm not," said Laura, indignant in her turn.

"Yes, you are," sobbed Pin. "But you only think other people are ugly, not yourself I'll tell mother what you've said as soon as ever I get home. And I'll tell her, too, you want to make me tell stories. And that I'm sure you've done something naughty at school, 'cause you won't ever talk about it. And how you're always saying bad words like blooming and gosh and golly—yes, I will!"

"You were always a sneak and a tell-tale."

"And you were always a greedy, selfish, deceitful thing."

"You don't know anything about me, you numbskull, you!"

"I don't want to! I know you're a bad, wicked girl."

After this exchange of home truths, they did not speak to each other for two days: Pin had a temper that smouldered, and could not easily forgive. So she stayed at old Anne's side, helping to bake scones and leatherjackets; or trotted after the boys, who had dropped into the way of saying: "Come on, little Pin!" as they never said: "Come on, Laura!" and Laura retired in lonely dudgeon to the beach.

She took the estrangement so much to heart that she eased her feelings by abusing Pin in thought; Pin was a pig-headed little ignoramus, as timid as ever of setting one foot before the other. And the rest of them would be just the same—old stick-in-the muds, unchanged by a hair, or, if they HAD changed, then changed for the worse. Laura had somehow never foreseen the day on which she would find herself out of tune with her home circle; with unthinking assurance she had expected that Pin, for instance, would always be eager to keep pace with her. Now, she saw that her little sister would probably never catch up to her again. Such progress as Pin might make—if she were not already glued firm to her silly notions—would be in quite another direction. For the quarrel had made one thing plain to Laura: with regard to her troubles, she need not look to Pin for sympathy: if Pin talked such gibberish at the hint of putting off an inquisitive old woman, what would she—and not she alone—what would they all say to the tissue of lies Laura had spun round Mr. Shepherd, a holy man, a clergyman, and a personal friend of Mother's into the bargain? She could not blink the fact that, did it come to their ears, they would call her in earnest, what Pin had called her in her temper—bad and wicked. Home was, alas! no longer the snug nest in which she was safe from the slings and shanghais of the world.

And then there was another thing: did she stay at home, she would have to re-live herself into the thousand and one gimcrack concerns, which now, as set forth by Pin, so bored her: the colic Leppie had brought on by eating unripe fruit; the fact that another of Sarah's teeth had dropped out without extraneous aid. It was all very well for a week or two, but, at the idea of shutting herself wholly up with such mopokes, of cutting herself off from her present vital interests, Laura hastily reconsidered her decision to leave school. No: badly as she had suffered at her companions' hands, much as she dreaded returning, it was at school she belonged. All her heart was there: in the doings of her equals, the things that really mattered—who would be promoted, who prefect, whose seat changed in the dining-hall.—Besides, could one who had experienced the iron rule of Mr. Strachey, or Mrs. Gurley, ever be content to go back and just form one of a family of children? She not, at any rate!

Thus she lay, all day long, her hands clasped under her neck, a small white speck on the great wave-lapped beach. She watched the surf break, watched the waves creep up and hide the reef, watched the gulls vanish in the sun-saturated blue overhead. Sometimes she rose to her elbow to follow a ship just inside the horizon; and it pleased her to think that this great boat was sailing off, with a load of lucky mortals, to some unknown, fairer world, while she, a poor Cinderella, had to stop behind—even though she knew it was only the English mail going on to Sydney. Of Pin she preferred not to think; nor could she dwell with equanimity on her late misfortunes at school and the trials that awaited her on her reappearance; and since she HAD to think of something, she fell into the habit of making up might-have-been, of narrating to herself how things would have fallen out had her fictions been fact, her ascetic hero the impetuous lover she had made of him.—In other words, lying prostrate on the sand, Laura went on with her story.

When, towards the end of the third week, she and Pin were summoned to spend some days with Godmother, she had acquired such a gusto for this occupation, that she preferred to shirk reality, and let Pin pay the visit alone.



XX.

WIE SOLLTE EIN STROM NICHT ENDLICH DEN WEG ZUM MEERE FINDEN!

NIETZSCHE

Sea, sun and air did their healing work, as did also the long, idle days in the home garden; and Laura drank in health and vigour with every breath.

She had need of it all when, the golden holidays over, she returned to school; for the half-year that broke was, in many ways, the most trying she had yet had to face. True, her dupes' first virulence had waned—they no longer lashed her openly with their tongues—but the quiet, covert insults, that were now the rule, were every bit as hard to bear; and before a week had passed Laura was telling herself that, had she been a Christian Martyr, she would have preferred to be torn asunder with one jerk, rather than submit to the thumbkin. Not an eye but looked askance at her; on every face was painted a reminder of her moral inferiority; and even newcomers among the boarders soon learnt, without always knowing what her crime had been, that Laura Rambotham was "not the thing".

This system of slight and disparagement was similar to what she had had to endure in her first school term; but its effect upon her was different. Then, in her raw timidity, she had bowed her head beneath it; now, she could not be so lamb-like. In thought, she never ceased to lay half the blame of what had happened on her companions' shoulders; and she was embittered by their injustice in making her alone responsible, when all she had done was to yield to their craving for romance. She became a rebel, wrapping herself round in the cloak of bitterness which the outcasts of fortune wear, feeding on her hate of those within the pale. Very well then, she said to herself: if her fellows chose to shut her out like this, she would stop outside, and never see eye to eye with them again. And it gave her an unholy pleasure to mock, in secret, at all they set store by.

Her outward behaviour for many a day was, none the less, that of a footlicker; and by no sign did she indicate what she really was—a very unhappy girl. Like most rebels of her sex, she ardently desired to re-enter the fold of law and order; and it was to this end she worked, although, wherever she approached it, the place seemed to bristle with spears. But she did not let herself be daunted; she pocketed injuries, pretended not to hear them, played the spaniel to people she despised; and it soon became open talk, that no matter what you said to her, Laura Rambotham would not take offence. You could also rely on her to do a dirty job for you.—A horrid little toady was the verdict; especially of those who had no objection to be toadied to.

Torn thus, between mutinous sentiments on the one hand, a longing for restitution on the other, Laura grew very sly—a regular little tactician. In these days, she was for ever considering what she ought to do, what to leave undone. She learnt to weigh her words before uttering them, instead of blurting out her thoughts in the childish fashion that had exposed her to ridicule; she learnt, too, at last, to keep her real opinions to herself, and to make those she expressed tally with her hearers'. And she was quick to discover that this was a short-cut towards regaining her lost place: to conceal what she truly felt—particularly if her feelings ran counter to those of the majority. For, the longer she was at school, the more insistently the truth was driven home to her, that the majority is always in the right.

In the shifting of classes that took place at the year's end, she left the three chief witnesses of her disgrace—Tilly, Maria, Kate—behind her. She was again among a new set of girls. But this little piece of luck was outweighed by the fact that, shortly after Christmas, her room was changed for the one occupied by M. P., and M. P.'s best friend.

So far, Laura had hardly dared to lift her eyes in Mary Pidwall's presence. For Mary knew not only the sum of her lies, but also held—or so Laura believed—that she came of a thoroughly degenerate family; thanks to Uncle Tom. And the early weeks spent at close quarters with her bore out these fears. The looks both M. P. and her friend bent on Laura said as plainly as words: if we are forced to tolerate this obnoxious little insect about us, we can at least show it just what a horrid little beast it is.—M. P. in particular was adamant, unrelenting; Laura quailed at the sound of her step.

And yet she soon felt, rightly enough, it was just in the winning over of this stern, rigid nature that her hope of salvation lay. If she could once get M. P. on her side, all might yet be well again.

So she began to lay siege to Mary's good-will—to Mary, who took none but the barest notice of her, even in the bedroom ignoring her as if she did not exist, and giving the necessary orders, for she was the eldest of the three, in tones of ice. But it needed a great wariness on Laura's part. And, in the beginning, she made a mistake. She was a toadeater here, too, seeking to curry favour with M. P. as with the rest, by fawning on her, in a way for which she could afterwards have hit herself. For it did not answer; M. P. had only a double disdain for the cringer, knowing nothing herself of the pitfalls that lie in wait for a temperament like Laura's. Mary's friendship was extended to none but those who had a lofty moral standard; and truthfulness and honesty were naturally the head virtues on her list. Laura was sharp enough to see that, if she wished to gain ground with M. P. she must make a radical change in her tactics. It was not enough, where Mary was in question, to play the echo. Did she, Laura, state an opinion, she must say what she meant, above all, mean what she said, and stick manfully to it, instead of, at the least hint, being ready to fly over to Mary's point of view: always though, of course, with the disquieting proviso in the background that her own opinions were such as she ought to have, and not heretical leanings that shocked and dismayed. In which case, there was nothing for it but to go on being mum.

She ventured, moreover, little unobtrusive services, to which she thought neither of the girls could take exception; making their beds for them in the morning, and staying up last at night to put out the light. And once she overheard the friend, who was called Cupid, say: "You know, M. P., she's not such a bad little stick after all."—But then Cupid was easy-going, and inclined to be original.

May answered: "She's no doubt beginning to see she can't lie to US. But she's a very double-faced child."

It was also with an eye to M. P.'s approval that Laura threw herself, with renewed zeal, upon her work. And in those classes that called only for the exercise of her memory, she soon sat high. The reason why she could not mount still higher was that M. P. occupied the top place, and was not to be moved, even had Laura dreamed of attempting it.

And at length, after three months of unremitting exertion in the course of which, because she had little peeps of what looked like success, the rebel in her went to sleep again—at length Laura had her reward. One Sunday morning M. P. asked her to be her partner on the walk to church. This was as if a great poet should bend from his throne to take a younger brother-singer by the hand; and, in her headlong fashion, Laura all but fell at the elder girl's feet. From this day forward she out-heroded Herod, in her efforts to make of herself exactly what Mary thought she ought to be.

Deep within her, none the less, there lurked a feeling which sometimes made as if to raise its head: a feeling that she did not really like M. P., or admire her, or respect her; one which, had it come quite to life, would have kicked against Mary's authority, been contemptuous of her unimaginative way of seeing and saying things, on the alert to remind its owner that HER way, too, had a right to existence. But is was not strong enough to make itself heard, or rather Laura refused to hear it, and turned a deaf ear whenever it tried to hint at its presence.—For Mr. Worldly-Wiseman was her model just now.

Whereas Cupid—there was something in Cupid that was congenial to her. A plain girl, with irregular features—how she had come by her nickname no one knew—Cupid was three years older than Laura, and one of the few in the school who loved reading for its own sake. In a manner, she was cleverer even than M. P.; but it was not a school-booky way, and hence was not thought much of. However, Laura felt drawn to her at once—even though Cupid treated her as quite a little girl—and they sometimes got as far as talking of books they had read. From this whiff of her, Laura was sure that Cupid would have had more understanding than M. P. for her want of veracity; for Cupid had a kind of a dare-devil mind in a hidebound character, and was often very bold of speech.

Yet it was not Cupid's good opinion she worked for, with might and main.

The rate of her upward progress in Mary's estimation could be gauged by the fact that the day came when the elder girl spoke openly to her of her crime. At the first merciless words Laura winced hotly, both at and for the tactlessness of which Mary was guilty. But, the first shameful stab over, she felt the better of it; yes, it was a relief to speak to some one of what she had borne alone for so long. To speak of it, and even to argue round it a little; for, like most wrongdoers, Laura soon acquired a taste for dwelling on her misdeed. And Mary, being entirely without humour, and also unversed in dealing with criminals, did not divine that this was just a form of self-indulgence. It was Cupid who said: "Look here, Infant, you'll be getting cocky about what you did, if you don't look out."

Mary would not allow that a single one of Laura's excuses held water.

"That's the sheerest nonsense. You don't seem to realise that you tried to defame another person's moral character," she said, in the assured, superior way that so impressed Laura.—And this aspect of the case, which had never once occurred to her, left Laura open-mouthed; and yet a little doubtful: Mr. Shepherd was surely too far above her, and too safely ensconced in holiness, to be injured by anything she might say. But the idea gave her food for thought; and she even tentatively developed her story along these unfamiliar lines, just to see how it might have turned out.

One night as they were undressing for bed, Mary spoke, with the same fireless depreciation, of the behaviour of a classmate which had been brought to her notice that day. This girl was said to have nefariously "copied" from another, in the course of a written examination; and, as prefect of her class Mary was bound to track the evil down. "I shall make them both show me their papers as soon as they get them back; and then, if I find proof of what's being said, I must tackle her. Just as I tackled you, Laura."

Laura flushed. "Oh, M. P., I've never 'copied' in my life!" she cried.

"Probably not. But those things all belong in the same box: lying, and 'copying', and stealing."

"You never WILL believe me when I say I didn't know anything about that horrid Chinky. I only told a few crams—that was quite different."

"I think it's most unfortunate, Laura, that you persist in clinging to that idea."

Here M. P. was obliged to pause; for she had put a lock of hair between her teeth while she did something to a plait at the back. As soon as she could speak again, she went on: "You and your few crams! Have you ever thought, pray, what a state of things it would be, if we all went about telling false-hoods, and saying it didn't matter, they were merely a few little fibs?—What are you laughing at?"

"I'm not laughing. I mean ... I just smiled. I was only thinking how funny it would be—Sandy, and old Gurley, and Jim Chapman, all going round making up things that had never happened."

"You've a queer notion of what's funny. Have you utterly no respect for the truth?"

"Yes, of course I have. But I say"—Laura, who always slipped quickly out of her clothes, was sitting in her nightgown on the edge of the bed, hugging her knees. "I say, M. P., if everybody told stories, and everybody knew everybody else was telling them, then truth wouldn't be any good any more at all, would it? If nobody used it?"

"What rubbish you do talk!" said Mary serenely, as she shook her toothbrush on to a towel and rubbed it dry.

"As if truth were a soap!" remarked Cupid who was already in bed, reading NANA, and trying to smoke a cigarette under the blankets.

"You can't do away with truth, child."

"But why not? Who says so? It isn't a law."

"Don't try to be so sharp, Laura."

"I don't mean to, M. P.—But what IS truth, anyhow?" asked Laura.

"The Bible is truth. Can you do away with the Bible, pray?"

"Of course not. But M. P.... The Bible isn't quite all truth, you know. My father——" here she broke off in some confusion, remembering Uncle Tom.

"Well, what about him? You don't want to say, I hope, that he didn't believe in the Bible?"

Laura drove back the: "Of course not!" that was all but over her lips. "Well, not exactly," she said, and grew very red. "But you KNOW, M. P., whales don't have big enough throats ever to have swallowed Jonah."

"Little girls shouldn't talk about what they don't understand. The Bible is God's Word; and God is Truth."

"You're a silly infant," threw in Cupid, coughing as she spoke. "Truth has got to be—and honesty, too. If it didn't exist, there couldn't be any state, or laws, or any social life. It's one of the things that makes men different from animals, and the people who boss us know pretty well what they're about, you bet when they punish the ruffians who don't practise it."

"Yes, now THAT I see," agreed Laura eagerly. "Then truth's a useful thing.—Oh, and that's probably what it means, too, when you say: Honesty is the best Policy."

"I never heard such a child," said M. P., shocked. "Cupid, you really shouldn't put such things into her head.—You're down-right immoral, Laura."

"Oh, how CAN you say such a horrid thing?"

"Well, your ideas are simply dreadful. You ought to try your hardest to improve them."

"I do, M. P., really I do."

"You don't succeed. I think there must be a screw loose in you somewhere."

"Anyhow, I vote we adjourn this meeting," said Cupid, recovering from a fresh cough and splutter. "Or old Gurley'll be coming in to put me on a mustard plaster.—As for you, Infant, if you take the advice of a chap who has seen life, you'll keep your ideas to yourself: they're too crude for this elegant world."

"Right you are!" said Laura cheerfully.

She was waiting by the gas-jet till M.P. had folded her last garment, and she shuffled her bare feet one over the other as she stood; for it was a cold night. The light out, she hopped into bed in the dark.



XXI.

But the true seal was set on her regeneration when she was invited to join the boarders' Literary Society; of which Cupid and Mary were the leading spirits. This carried her back, at one stroke, into the swing of school life. For everybody who was anybody belonged to the society. And, despite her friendship with the head of her class, Laura still knew what it was to get the cold shoulder.

But this was to some extent her own fault. At the present stage of her career she was an extraordinarily prickly child, and even to her two sponsors did not at times present a very amiable outside: like a hedgehog, she was ever ready to shoot out her spines. With regard, that is, to her veracity. She had been so badly grazed, in her recent encounter, that she was now constantly seeing doubt where no doubt was; and this wakeful attitude of suspicion towards others did not make for brotherly love. The amenity of her manners suffered, too: though she kept to her original programme of not saying all she thought, yet what she was forced to say she blurted out in such a precise and blunt fashion that it made a disagreeable impression. At the same time, a growing pedantry in trifles warped both her imagination and her sympathies: under the aegis of M. P., she rapidly learned to be the latter's rival in an adherence to bald fact, and in her contumely for those who departed from it. Indeed, before the year spent in Mary's company was out, Laura was well on the way towards becoming one of those uncomfortable people who, concerned only for their own salvation, fire the truth at you on every occasion, without regard for your tender places.—So she remained but scantly popular.

Hence, her admission to the Literary Society augured well.

Her chief qualifications for membership were that she could make verses, and was also very fond of reading. At school, however, this taste had been quiescent; for books were few. Still, she had read whatever she could lay hands on, and for the past half-year or more she had fared like a little pig in a clover field. Since Christmas, she was one of the few permitted to do morning practice on the grand piano in Mrs. Strachey's drawing-room—an honour, it is true, not overmuch valued by its recipients, for Mrs. Gurley's bedroom lay just above, and that lady could swoop down on whoever was weak enough to take a little rest. But Laura snapped her fingers at such a flimsy objection; for this was the wonderful room round the walls of which low, open bookshelves ran; and she was soon bold enough, on entering, hastily to select a book to read while she played, always on the alert to pop it behind her music, should anyone come into the room.

For months, she browsed unchecked. As her choice had to be made with extreme celerity, and from those shelves nearest the piano, it was in the nature of things that it was not invariably a happy one. For some time she had but moderate luck, and sampled queer foods. To these must be reckoned a translation of FAUST, which she read through, to the end of the First Part at least, with a kind of dreary wonder why such a dull thing should be called great. For her next repast, she sought hard and it was in the course of this rummage that she had the strangest find of all. Running a skilled eye over the length of a shelf close at hand, she hit on a slim, blue volume, the title of which at once arrested her attention. For, notwithstanding her fourteen years, and her dabblings in Richardson and Scott, Laura's liking for a real child's book was as strong as it had ever been; and A DOLL'S HOUSE seemed to promise good things. Deftly extracting the volume, she struck up her scales and began to read.

This was the day on which, after breakfast, Mrs. Gurley pulverised her with the remark: "A new, and, I must say, extremely interesting, fashion of playing scales, Laura Rambotham! To hold, the forte pedal down, from beginning to end!"

Laura was unconscious of having sinned in this way. But it might quite well be so. For she had spent a topsy-turvy, though highly engrossing hour. In place of the children's story she anticipated, she had found herself, on opening the book, confronted by the queerest stuff she had ever seen in print. From the opening sentence on. To begin with, it was a play—and Laura had never had a modern prose play in her hand before—and then it was all about the oddest, yet the most commonplace people. It seemed to her amazingly unreal—how these people spoke and behaved—she had never known anyone like them; and yet again so true, in the way it dragged in everyday happenings, so petty in its rendering of petty things, that it bewildered and repelled her: why, some one might just as well write a book about Mother or Sarah! Her young, romantic soul rose in arms against this, its first bluff contact with realism, against such a dispiriting sobriety of outlook. Something within her wanted to cry out in protest as she read—for read she did, on three successive days, with an interest she could not explain. And that was not all. It was worse that the people in this book—the extraordinary person who was married, and had children, and yet ate biscuits out of a bag and said she didn't; the man who called her his lark and his squirrel—as if any man ever did call his wife such names!—all these people seemed eternally to be meaning something different from what they said; something that was for ever eluding her. It was most irritating.— There was, moreover, no mention of a doll's house in the whole three acts.

The state of confusion this booklet left her in, she allayed with a little old brown leather volume of Longfellow. And HYPERION was so much more to her liking that she even ventured to borrow it from its place on the shelf, in order to read it at her leisure, braving the chance that her loan, were it discovered, might be counted against her as a theft.

It hung together, no doubt, with the after-effects of her dip into Ibsen that, on her sitting down to write the work that was to form her passport to the Society, her mind should incline to the most romantic of romantic themes. Not altogether, though: Laura's taste, such as it was, for literature had, like all young people's, a mighty bias towards those books which turned their backs on reality: she sought not truth, but the miracle. However, though she had thus taken sides, there was still a yawning gap to be bridged between her ready acceptance of the honourable invitation, and the composition of a masterpiece. Thanks to her wonted inability to project her thoughts beyond the moment, she had been so unthinking of possible failure that Cupid had found it necessary to interject: "Here, I say, don't blow!" Whereas, when she came to write, she sat with her pen poised over the paper for nearly half an hour, without bringing forth a word. First, there was the question of form: she considered, then abruptly dismissed, the idea of writing verses: the rhymes with love and dove, and heart and part, which could have been managed, were, she felt, too silly and sentimental to be laid before her quizzical audience. Next, what to write about—a simple theme, such as a fairy-tale, was not for a moment to be contemplated. No, Laura had always flown her hawk high, and she was now bent on making a splutter. It ended by being a toss-up between a play in the Shakesperian manner and a novel after Scott. She decided on the novel. It should be a romance of Venice, with abundant murder and mystery in it, and a black, black villain, such as her soul loved—no macaroon-nibblers or rompers with children for her! And having thus attuned her mind to scarlet deeds, she set to work. But she found it tremendously difficult to pin her story to paper: she saw things clearly enough, and could have related them by word of mouth; but did she try to write them down they ran to mist; and though she toiled quite literally in the sweat of her brow, yet when the eventful day came she had but three niggardly pages to show for her pains.

About twenty girls formed the Society, which assembled one Saturday evening in an empty music-room. All were not, of course, equally productive: some had brought it no further than a riddle: and it was just these drones who, knowing nothing of the pother composition implied, criticised most stringently the efforts of the rest. Several members had pretty enough talents, Laura's two room-mates among the number: on the night Laura made her debut, the weightiest achievement was, without doubt, M. P.'s essay on "Magnanimity"; and Laura's eyes grew moist as she listened to its stirring phrases. Next best—to her thinking, at least—was a humorous episode by Cupid, who had a gift that threw Laura into a fit of amaze; and this was the ability to expand infinitely little into infinitely much; to rig out a trifle in many words, so that in the end it seemed ever so much bigger than it really was—just as a thrifty merchant boils his oranges, to swell them to twice their size.

Laura being the youngest member, her affair came last on the programme: she had to sit and listen to the others, her cheeks hot, her hands very cold. Presently all were done, and then Cupid, who was chairman, called on "a new author, Rambotham, who it is hoped will prove a valuable acquisition to the Society, to read us his maiden effort".

Laura rose to her feet and, trembling with nervousness, stuttered forth her prose. The three little pages shot past like a flash; she had barely stood up before she was obliged to sit down again, leaving her hearers, who had only just re-adopted their listening attitudes, agape with astonishment. She could have endured, with phlegm, the ridicule this malheur earned her: what was harder to stomach was that her paper heroics made utterly no impression. She suffered all the humiliation of a flabby fiasco, and, till bedtime, shrank out of her friends' way.

"You were warned not to be too cocky, you know," Mary said judicially, on seeing her downcast air.

"I didn't mean to be, really.—Then you don't think what I wrote was up to much, M. P.?"

"Mm," said the elder girl, in a non-committal way.

Here Cupid chimed in. "Look here, Infant, I want to ask you something. Have you ever been in Venice?"

"No."

"Ever seen a gondola?"

"No."

"Or the Doge's palace?—or a black-cloaked assassin?—or a masked lady?"

"You know I haven't," murmured Laura, humbled to the dust.

"And probably never will. Well then, why on earth try to write wooden, second-hand rubbish like that?"

"Second-hand? ... But Cupid ... think of Scott! He couldn't have seen half he told about?"

"My gracious!" ejaculated Cupid, and sat down and fanned herself with a hairbrush. "You don't imagine you're a Scott, do you? Here, hold me, M. P., I'm going to faint!"—and at Laura's quick and scarlet denial, she added: "Well, why the unmentionable not use the eyes the Lord has given you, and write about what's before them every day of your life?"

"Do you think that would be better?"

"I don't think—I know it would."

But Laura was not so easily convinced as all that.

Ever a talented imitator, she next tried her hand at an essay on an abstract subject. This was a failure: you could not SEE things, when you wrote about, say, "Beneficence"; and Laura's thinking was done mainly in pictures. Matters were still worse when she tinkered at Cupid's especial genre: her worthless little incident stared at her, naked and scraggy, from the sheet; she had no wealth of words at her disposal in which to deck it out. So, with a sigh, she turned back to the advice Cupid had given her, and prepared to make a faithful transcript of actuality. She called what she now wrote: "A Day at School", and conscientiously set down detail on detail; so fearful, this time, of over-brevity, that she spun the account out to twenty pages; though the writing of it was as distasteful to her as her reading of A DOLL'S HOUSE had been.

At the subsequent meeting of the Society, expression of opinion was not lacking.

"Oh, Jehoshaphat! How much more?"

"Here, let me get out. I've had enough."

"I say, you forgot to count how many steps it took you to come downstairs."

Till the chairman had pity on the embarrassed author and said: "Look here, Laura, I think you'd better keep the rest for another time."

"It was just what you told me to do," Laura reproached Cupid that night: she was on the brink of tears.

But Cupid was disinclined to shoulder the responsibility. "Told you to be as dull and long-winded as that? Infant, it's a whacker!"

"But it was TRUE what I wrote—every word of it."

Neither of the two elder girls was prepared to discuss this vital point. Cupid shifted ground. "Good Lord, Laura, but it's hard to drive a thing into YOUR brain-pan.—You don't need to be ALL true on paper, silly child!"

"Last time you said I had to."

"Well, if you want it, my candid opinion is that you haven't any talent for this kind of thing.—Now turn off the gas."

As the light in the room went out, a kind of inner light seemed to go up in Laura; and both then and on the following days she thought hard. She was very ambitious, anxious to shine, not ready to accept defeat; and to the next literary contest she brought the description of an excursion to the hills and gullies that surrounded Warrenega; into which she had worked an adventure with some vagrant blacks. She and Pin and the boys had often picnicked on these hills, with their lunches packed in billies; and she had seen the caves and rocky holes where blackfellows were said to have hidden themselves in early times; but neither this particular excursion, nor the exciting incident which she described with all the aplomb of an eyewitness, had ever taken place. That is to say: not a word of her narration was true, but every word of it might have been true.

And with this she had an unqualified success.

"I believe there's something in you after all," said Cupid to her that night. "Anyhow, you know now what it is to be true, yet not dull and prosy."

And Laura manfully choked back her desire to cry out that not a word of her story was fact.

She was long in falling asleep. Naturally, she was elated and excited by her success; but also a new and odd piece of knowledge had niched itself in her brain. It was this. In your speech, your talk with others, you must be exact to the point of pedantry, and never romance or draw the long-bow; or you would be branded as an abominable liar. Whereas, as soon as you put pen to paper, provided you kept one foot planted on probability, you might lie as hard as you liked: indeed, the more vigorously you lied, the louder would be your hearers' applause.

And Laura fell asleep over a chuckle.



XXII.

UND VERGESST MIR AUCH DAS GUTE LACHEN NICHT!

NIETZSCHE

And then, alas! just as she rode high on this wave of approbation, Laura suffered another of those drops in the esteem of her fellows, another of those mental upsets, which from time to time had thrown her young life out of gear.

True, what now came was not exactly her own fault; though it is doubtful whether a single one of her companions would have made her free of an excuse. They looked on, round-eyed, mouths a-stretch. Once more, the lambkin called Laura saw fit to sunder itself from the flock, and to cut mad capers in sight of them all. And their delectation was as frank as their former wrath had been.—As for Laura, as usual she did not stop to think till it was too late; but danced lightly away to her own undoing.

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.