Sleep in Peace (11 page)

“You'll miss this very much in the winter, Laura,” said Gwen, watching from the quay her little sister bring a boat skilfully alongside, as Ludo had taught her, smiling the while all over her sun-browned face.

“I shall! I shall!” cried Laura ecstatically.

Papa and Gwen were not quite as fond of the sea as Laura and Ludo, so the party often divided on these lines; they all met, however, by a rule of Gwen's, for their morning swim. This
took place sometimes on the shore from a bathing van drawn by a horse, which Laura preferred—she was frightened of the horse (whose brown haunches, spied from a peephole in the van, looked huge and muscular and coarse, quite terrifying) but loved the waves; sometimes in the new open-air baths, which Gwen preferred, the rows of little boxes being less damp and sandy and altogether more proper in her opinion. One morning towards the end of their stay, as Laura was standing in her red twill bathing-costume on the steps of the open-air pool, waiting for Gwen, she suddenly received a violent shove, and promptly fell over into the water. Coming to the surface vexed and sputtering, she perceived Gwen, in the place she had so unexpectedly vacated, haranguing a boy swimming vigorously in the distance. Gwen's expostulations were over-vehement, and Laura's resentment died at once.

“It doesn't matter, Gwen,” she urged.

“I never heard of such a thing!” fumed Gwen. “Really I don't know what some people are thinking of!”

That evening, as Laura was playing ball alone on the top of the cliffs, a boy approached her. He wore a red school cap above fair hair, a freckled face and a pair of spectacles, and appeared older than Laura but younger than Ludo.

“I say, I'm awfully sorry I knocked you over this morning,” he apologised.

“Oh, was it you?” said Laura, interested.

“Yes. I never saw you at all,” said the boy. “On my word of honour, I didn't. I hadn't my glasses on, you see.”

“Oh, I believe you,” said Laura earnestly.

The ball which she was bouncing escaped from her control and rolled off down the sandy path; they strolled after it together.

“Is this the first time you've been to Port Erin?” asked the boy.

“Yes,” said Laura.

“We come every year,” said he.

They turned a corner of the zigzag path. By chance this slope was deserted; nothing moved, only sea and cliff were visible;
the herbs and grasses sent up a thick warm scent; there was a feeling of remoteness, escape, adventure. The boy picked up the ball and handed it to her courteously.

A voice from above them rang out: “Laura! Laura!”

“Oh dear, that's my sister,” said Laura, vexed. She hesitated, dallied from one foot to the other, and moved away. The schoolboy, with a rather disappointed look, touched his cap and bounded off downwards, whistling.

“What were you doing down there with that boy?” demanded Gwen as Laura reached the top of the cliff. “I saw you from my bedroom window and came down to fetch you.”

“We were talking,” explained Laura. “It was he who knocked me into the baths this morning.”

“You shouldn't talk to boys alone, especially in the evening,” said Gwen severely. “Papa wouldn't like it at all; Laura.”

Her voice made talking with a boy sound obscene and shameful, like something connected with a lavatory. Laura blushed scarlet and hung her head.

For the remaining few days of their stay, though she several times saw the boy with the red cap in the distance, she took pains to avoid him. Next year when holiday plans were discussed at Blackshaw House, Laura remembered that the red cap went to Port Erin every year. She did not second Ludo's efforts to revisit the Isle of Man, and for many years the Armisteads holidayed, by Gwen's choice, in large seaside resorts where there were bands and pretty dresses and elegant people walking up and down.

It was Sunday evening; Grace and Edward had colds, so they were allowed to remain at home; Frederick also had a cold, but he, as usual, was swept off to Chapel.

For some time Grace and Edward read, then Grace grew restless. She began to do gymnastic exercises, to stretch her strong
young body; her lion's mane fell over her shoulders as she stooped, her face rose flushed and laughing. Edward watched with his usual calm detachment. Grace proceeded to sketch out the steps of the “old English dances” they learned sometimes during the gym period. Mr. Hinchliffe had at first vetoed Grace's participation in these, but on learning that they were folk dances, round dances without partners, performed among girls only, in gymnastic costumes, for health's sake, he withdrew his veto. Grace, who was not interested in dancing as an art, regarding it merely as a chance to jig about in a lively manner, had not taken much notice of the various provisos in her father's permission; she understood that to dance at school was all right because school was school, and so danced heartily whenever the chance offered, without particularly seeking it.

“Is that dancing?” enquired Edward now.

Grace nodded, shaking her mane. “We do this in break sometimes, when it's too wet to go out,” she said.

“Show me how to do it,” said Edward suddenly, rising.

Grace hesitated. “Will it be all right?” she said.

“Of course,” said Edward.

Grace took his hand, and went through the steps, counting the beats and thumping the floor firmly with her strong plain shoes. Edward did his best to follow her. His antics were comical, and Grace gave her ringing laugh; it was amusing to see
Edward
actually unable to do something she could do. Edward! Edward persevered with a serious face, however, and soon he knew all the steps that Grace could teach him.

“Let's do it together,” he said.

“There's no room,” objected Grace.

“That's soon rectified,” said Edward, stacking furniture in a workmanlike fashion against the walls.

He put his arm stiffly round her waist, and they moved off, clumsily, jerkily, but with great enjoyment, in a hearty polka. Grace hummed a tune:
One Two Three Four Five, Catching
Fishes All Alive
. What! with humming this tune, falling over Edward's feet which seemed singularly obtrusive, teaching him to steer away from the circumambient chairs, shaking back her hair, and laughing, Grace had a busy time; she was rosy and breathless when Annie, the current maid, looked in to see what was going on.

“I'm teaching Edward to dance!” cried Grace.

Annie snorted and seemed unimpressed. In her kitchen downstairs, she said reprovingly, the noise was awful; it sounded as if the ceiling would come through any minute.

“If it came down it would come in a minute, certainly,” said Edward.

Annie snorted sourly again and withdrew.”

“There's something in what she says, though, Edward,” suggested Grace.

“True,” said Edward. “We'll stop for the present.”

Brother and sister carefully replaced the furniture and settled down to their books again.

“Frederick,” said Edward when the boys were undressing together that night: “Grace has been teaching me to dance. I'll teach you if you like. I think we ought to know how to do these things, before we decide whether to do them or no.”

“
I am no admirer of a cloistered virtue,”
quoted Frederick thoughtfully. He sneezed. “I'll consider it,” he said.

“Grace, what is this I hear?” said Mrs. Hinchliffe sternly, entering her room next morning.

The startled Grace rapidly ran over yesterday's activities in search of some misdemeanour high enough to justify so stern a tone, but could not find one. “What is it, Mother?” she enquired in a resigned tone, sitting up in bed to show respect.

“Annie tells me you and Edward were dancing last night!” exclaimed Mrs. Hinchliffe.

Grace was silent. What a sneak Annie is, she thought.

“On Sunday night! Dancing! On Sunday! How could you be
so
wicked
, Grace?” said Mrs. Hinchliffe with severity. “Contaminating your brother.”

Grace made a movement of protest. “Mother,” she began.

“It is a girl's duty to lead her brothers into better ways, not worse,” said Mrs. Hinchliffe. “A woman is always purer and better than a man. How could you do so, Grace! Leading Edward astray! I'm disappointed in you, dear. You must ask God to forgive you, in your prayers this morning.”

There was a pause.

“I'm sorry if I displeased you, Mother,” said Grace then, haughtily. “I didn't think we were doing anything really wrong. I don't think Edward thought so, either.”

Her voice asked a question, and Mrs. Hinchliffe replied to it. “I haven't spoken to Edward on the matter,” she said. “Perhaps your father will do so, I don't know. It is you who are to blame, Grace. It was you who taught Edward.”

There was another pause.

“It's time for you to get up now,” concluded Mrs. Hinchliffe. “Remember what I told you about your prayers.”

“Yes, Mother,” said Grace coldly. “I remember.”

Mrs. Hinchliffe withdrew and closed the door.

“Well, upon my word!” thought the indignant Grace.

That
she
should be accused of leading
Edward
astray! Edward the daring, the dashing, the leader of the family; Edward who was eight years older than herself! That
she
should be accused of leading Edward! Apparently just because she was a girl! Well! Really! It was altogether too bad; it was quite beyond a joke. That
she
should be accused! Nay! (As Frederick sometimes said when he was deliberately being Yorkshire.) What an injustice! A core of resentment formed in Grace's heart: what an injustice!

Edward, carrying a notebook with a mottled back and a handful of skeins of different coloured wools, entered the office of Blackshaw Mills. It was a handsome apartment, with a huge central table of polished mahogany, a Turkey carpet and a black marble mantelpiece, on which stood a grey marble clock with gold pillars, and two fighting horsemen in bronze. Above the mantelpiece hung an oil painting of old Spencer Thwaite; his fierce little eyes (one had a slight cast) seemed to glance sharply at Edward as he came in. Indeed it would be easy to read into those eyes, thought Edward, amused by his own fantasy, an appeal to the young man to share their contemptuous disapproval of the scene which was going on before them. The partners in Messrs. Armistead and Hinchliffe were engaged at the table with several ledgers and papers, from which they were compiling an approximate monthly balance sheet for the firm. Mr. Hinchliffe sat square and erect surveying the tumbled mass with a grieved judicial air; Mr. Armistead stood leaning over him, pointing at a figure with a very finely pointed pencil, which shook slightly in his slender and nervous hand. Edward surveyed them shrewdly. Mr. Armistead was a quick and able, if slightly inaccurate, manipulator of figures; the slower comprehension of his partner, who never passed a figure unless he understood it to its core, and was left far behind in Mr. Armistead's rapid explanations, maddened him.

“Don't you
see,”
Mr. Armistead was saying impatiently.

Mr. Hinchliffe stroked his chin, pushing up his sandy moustache in a gesture which was becoming habitual. “We shall have to economise,” he pronounced.

“Exactly,” agreed Mr. Armistead. To the listening Edward his voice seemed to hold a note of relief, which struck the boy as odd.

“We must draw less out ourselves,” said Mr. Hinchliffe sternly. “We must economise.”

“Exactly,” agreed Alfred Armistead again. “Exactly. As I said to Gwen this morning,” he went on eagerly: “No more oranges in the house till times improve.”

“What a fool the man is!” thought Edward. “What a fool!”

He wondered whether his father were as clearly aware of this fact as himself, but could not judge from the behaviour of Mr. Hinchliffe, who merely cleared his throat loudly in a non-committal way and continued to push up his moustache. At this moment a clerk came in from the outer office with the letters just arrived by second post. He put them, unopened, on a corner of the table and withdrew; the two partners looked them over and picked up the ones most likely to interest each respectively. Mr. Armistead, who attended to the marketing of the cloth, had the larger share, and Mr. Hinchliffe soon reached the envelopes neglected by both as apparently uninteresting. From one he drew a circular. Edward was intrigued to see his face grow warmly angry.

“I can't think,” said Mr. Hinchliffe emphatically, tearing the circular across and across in time with his words, “why—these shameless pests of society—continually send
us
—their abominable gambling communications. We have no speculators here, thank God!”

He turned to cast the stock-and-share circular contemptuously into the wastepaper basket, and saw his son.

“Why, Edward my boy,” he said kindly. “You here? Finished
your classes for the morning? You might go down to the packing-room and see if those indigos have gone off to Butterworths'. In a few minutes—” he drew out his gold repeater, a present from the Cromwell Street Sunday School on his marriage—“in fifteen minutes,” he decided, “we can walk down home together. You can wait in the outer office till then.”

Edward, though he guessed the errand an unnecessary one, went very gladly down into the mill. He found, as he had expected, that the indigos had been despatched some hours past; but he did not hurry back, strolling instead hither and thither about the building. He went down into the dyehouse, a place of reek and shadows, iridescent puddles and heaped skeins of steaming coloured wool; nodded his head, and made his way across the courtyard along whitewashed corridors to the weaving shed. Pushing open the rough wooden door, with its dangling, cloth-wrapped weight, he listened, his peaked face dreamy and abstracted, to the rhythmic bang and clatter of the shuttles, a complicated, counterpointed noise, he decided, quite unlike any other noise on earth. He felt deeply at home here; this was his world. After a few minutes—for Edward was never excessive, even in contemplation—he shook his sandy head again, roused himself and passed on. The rope and weight pulled the door to, behind him. Climbing a flight of stone steps, he paused a minute by the two men who, with serious faces, in the cold glare of a north light were perching a piece which seemed, judging by the number of strings to its selvedge, to have got itself considerably damaged. He envied them their skill, the calm certainty with which they examined, and discovered faults in, the cloth. Further along in the same room he had a word with the giggling menders, admired their geraniums, observed their shawls hanging over their heads and their kettle steaming for their midday tea. Next he dropped in to the designing and colour-matching room—and here he found Alfred Armistead. His father's partner was bending over a, sheet of the squared paper, changing the position of one
of the tiny dots with a fine little pen in his hand. The head designer stood beside him, watching respectfully. Mr. Armistead's hand did not shake now, and his face wore a pleased smile; ideas flashed in rapid succession through his mind, with a quick stroke he cancelled the whole of the original design, and dotted it in afresh with his emendations. The head designer gave an admiring murmur, and Edward took a step forward, eager to see the new pattern. Mr. Armistead's ear caught the step, he looked up, saw the lad, and frowned.