Sleep in Peace (13 page)

“The bank won't extend,” he cried out loudly. “We shall have to sell the house.”

“Oh,
no!”
exclaimed Gwen. She spoke with a passion which
amazed Laura, who had never heard her sister speak with such warmth before.

“I tell you I can't go on any longer,” said Mr. Armistead in a fretful tone. “I'm tired out; I can't struggle any longer. We shall have to sell the house; there's nothing else for it. One of you take my boots off,” he concluded irritably, sinking on to the carved hall chair.

“Laura,” said Gwen, “take Papa's boots off.”

Laura hurried forward. As she knell before her father, dropping the forks, her heart swelled with pain; she remembered so well doing this same act in the happier days when she was a child, Papa rich, and the fabric of her world secure.

That night she prayed to God for Papa very long and earnestly —that he would see a way out of his difficulties, that he would have courage to persevere. From this a notion was born in her childish mind which she determined to put into practice the very next day. She woke herself early, hurried through her dressing and sat down eagerly at the nursery table with her paint-box, one of Ludo's old pattern-sheets and a brown cream-jug full of water. All the Armisteads had some skill in line and colour, as Laura was proudly aware—they inherited it, they knew, from Mr. Armistead. In Gwen this talent expressed itself in elegant embroideries, in Ludo in his childish passion for chalking flags; the text which Laura illuminated now was perhaps not equal to the others' efforts, but had at any rate some pretty harmonies of colour and some attempt at design. The water in the brown cream-jug was tinged with red and blue in turn, the short brown bristles of the camel-hair brushes swelled with colour, grew furry and blurry as they were dabbed into the clean water to wash them, then were sucked back into beautiful points by Laura's lips—though this last operation had been forbidden by Gwen. “Sepia” and “ultramarine” and “vermilion”—such lovely names, such lovely colours, thought Laura, stroking them in joyously;
such fun to squeeze Chinese White from the jolly little tube. The text, completed, read:

HE THAT ENDURES
TO THE END
SHALL BE SAVED.

Laura held it to the fire to dry, then, waiting her chance, slipped into Papa's room while he was shaving in the bathroom, and reared it against the mirror on his dressing-table. In such a prominent position he could hardly fail to see it, she thought, and was therefore perplexed when at breakfast-time he did not immediately mention it. The meal went on; Papa and Gwen were both frowning and silent. At length, unable to wait any longer, Laura asked Mr. Armistead timidly how he liked the text.

“I painted it myself,” she added hopefully.

“Very nice, very nice,” muttered the preoccupied Mr. Armistead.

Laura sighed.

Gwen rose abruptly from the table before the others had finished, saying that she had much to do and must ask to be excused. Laura, descending the stairs a few minutes later, ready to start for school, heard her voice, with Mildred's, proceeding from the dining-room, together with strange clinking sounds. Mr. Armistead, who had preceded her downstairs and was drawing on his gloves in the hall, evidently heard the sounds too, for with an air of curiosity temporarily replacing worry on his harassed face, he pushed wide the half-open door and entered the room. Laura followed.

“What on earth are you doing, Gwen?” demanded Mr. Armistead crossly.

And indeed the room looked unpleasantly disturbed. The lincrusta door of the big cupboard where the best china was kept
stood open; dust sheets were spread depressingly in front of it and over the table, soft paper lay strewn about the floor. Gwen was just lifting from a shelf twelve hand-painted dessert plates which were a treasured heirloom from old Grandfather Thwaite.

“I'm packing the china,” replied Gwen austerely.

“Packing the china!” repeated Mr. Armistead, bewildered.

“Well, if the house is to be sold!” said Gwen in an argumentative tone, “it will take months to get all our things ready for removing.”

Laura gasped.

“You're altogether premature, child,” said Mr. Armistead angrily. “Altogether premature. Put that stuff back into the cupboard and don't let me hear another word of such nonsense again.”

“Very well, Papa,” said Gwen. She smiled a little, her eyes downcast, as she replaced the dessert plates in the cupboard.

“Frightening Laura like that,” grumbled Mr. Armistead, giving his youngest child's pale face and staring eyes a glance of compunction. “I never heard such nonsense.” He turned round sharply and made for the door. “Come along, Laura,” he said: “It's time you were off to school.” Laura crept after him. Mr. Armistead, looking down at her, put his smart ash cane under one arm and offered her his hand. “Such nonsense,” he muttered angrily. Laura's world, which had reeled and tottered, so that the air seemed full of flying stones and crashing china, steadied on its foundation again as Papa's warm brown leather glove with the gilt button closed round her trembling fingers.

“I shan't be in to luncheon,” threw back Mr. Armistead snappily over his shoulder.

But in the evening Papa was jovial again. He shaved before going out to the club, changed his suit and his linen, and put pomade on his hair and his side whiskers. Gwen, too, seemed cheerful; it was plain, though no word of it was spoken, that the
crisis was past and Blackshaw House safe for the present. That night Laura slept very heavily.

Next day Ludo came home. He arrived in the afternoon, and Laura was surprised by his big black “coffin” in the hall when she returned from school. Then she was shocked by her own surprise; nothing could show more clearly, she thought, the terrible time the Armisteads were passing through, than that she should have forgotten that Ludo,
Ludo
was expected.

Ludo looked well and bright, thinner and taller and really quite good-looking: he laughed a good deal and was more talkative than Laura remembered him. He had this term developed, it seemed, a talent for bowling slow breaks which had brought him credit. He had also developed a talent for calling his father “sir”, at suitable moments and with a casual unconscious air, which pleased Mr. Armistead greatly.

“I'm glad you have such a good report for your last term, Ludo,” said Papa over the evening meal, scanning that document with a favourable eye.

Ludo's dark eyes widened in amazement, and Laura's heart galloped. Ludo said nothing, however, till the meal was over and Papa had departed to the club. Gwen hastily proposed a game of croquet, and the three young Armisteads wandered out into the garden, took out the mallets from their box, and began to knock the balls about in a desultory fashion. Gwen always disliked this behaviour, urging the others to play the game properly, but tonight she made no protest, and Laura's anxiety grew.

“What did Papa mean by saying it was my last term?” asked Ludo in an offhand tone, squatting to take a careful sight of hoop and ball. “Aren't I going back in September?”

“Ludo, you must be reasonable,” said Gwen sharply. “Papa can't possibly afford to keep you there any more.”

Ludo looked stricken.

“After all, you've had two years,” continued Gwen. “You must be ready to go to the mill and help Papa.”

“I wish I'd known before. There's presents and things I should have given. Of course if I can be any
help
to Papa,” said Ludo slowly.

There was no money for a seaside holiday this year, but Ludo and Laura were supposed to take long walks daily for a couple of weeks, to gain fresh air after being “cooped up”, as Mr. Armistead said, at school. They had not much heart for these, however; Laura did not think it fair to leave Gwen with the housework on her hands, Ludo seemed to feel he should be at the mill, recovering the family fortune. Laura therefore helped Mildred or Gwen to make beds, dust and wash up, while Gwen or Mildred wrestled with the family meals. Blackshaw House, from being a comfortable place, a home, gradually became to Laura a bugbear, an odious task; it was far too large for them, said Gwen, and with such inadequate help could not possibly be kept as clean as it ought to be. When Laura timidly suggested, however, that in that case perhaps it would be best to sell it, as Papa had said, Gwen turned on her angrily and said she must be mad to think of such a thing. The next moment she was irritably complaining again that she had far too much to do, that she never had a minute to herself, that she hated housework. Laura, wretched for her sister's unhappiness, said sympathetically that housework was, certainly, horrid; she hated it too. But this did not please Gwen either: “Don't be silly, Laura. What will you do when you're married, if you hate housework?” she said severely. Laura sighed and did not know. She knew, however, very definitely indeed that she hated housework, that it was the bitter enemy of everything she liked; for the moment she began to do anything she liked, such as paint or read, it appeared that she must stop at once because there was some household task awaiting her; it was time to set the table, help Gwen wash up, or make the beds. After six weeks of perpetual dishcloths in her hand, dust in her hair and Gwen's laments in her ears, Laura found her return to school a delicious liberation. To leave Blackshaw
House and Gwen behind, to go to a place where people had bright faces and laughed and talked, a place where people liked their work and did not need to be consoled, above all to feel that one was not neglecting one's duty or being unkind by going to such a place—what joy! Oh! It was heaven!

Meanwhile Ludo had begun to go to the mill with Papa, The first morning they set off very happily together, Ludo's velvet eyes very earnest and shining, Papa swinging his stick as he did when he was pleased. At night Ludo seemed tired and quiet.

“What do you do at the mill, Ludo?” asked Laura eagerly.

“Oh,” said Ludo. “Well.” He hesitated. “I take messages for Papa,” he said, “and post letters. And sometimes help to move pieces.” He hesitated again. “There isn't very much to do,” he said, and concluded in a tone of dislike: “Edward Hinchliffe's always there.”

At the time Laura received no strong impression from his words, being too much concerned with the dreariness of her own life to have any feelings to spare for his. But when she had returned to school and felt restored, as the hymn said, to life and thought, she was able to forget herself again, and observed with grief that, while she had not been looking, so to speak, a decay had taken place in Ludo. His eyes no longer shone, his hair seemed to lack the brush; in the old suit he wore to the mill he looked dreary and neglected. In the evenings he slouched about the house, morose and moody; it appeared, in answer to Gwen's questionings, that some of the friends he had had in Hudley before going to Shrewsbury were still at school, and the rest had forgotten him. Presently, to Laura's horror, he began to be late for breakfast.… On one of these occasions Mr. Armistead lost his temper and shouted at him violently, ordering him out of the room in most intemperate language.

“Go and eat in the kitchen, sir!” he shouted. “That's the right place for you!”

Ludo, his long lashes sweeping his sallow cheek, withdrew
from the nursery without speaking. Laura listened intently for his footsteps, and heard him go, not downstairs as ordered, but to his bedroom. Pride and relief gushed through Laura's heart. He had defied Papa! How she admired him for this defiance; oh, how she admired him! Papa sat long over his newspaper that morning, and Ludo left for the mill without him. Laura walked at her brother's side down the garden drive. She longed to speak words of pride and consolation to him, but felt that he would dislike such a baring of the feelings even more than she would herself. At the gate they paused; unwilling to part without speaking, unwilling to speak.

“Is it Algebra first this morning, or French?” enquired Ludo.

“Latin,” said Laura.

“Mensa mensa mensam,”
said Ludo. He hesitated, and added in the same expressionless tone: “Papa has a lot to put up with from Henry Hinchliffe, you know.”

“I suppose so,” agreed Laura gravely.

Suddenly they both burst into action and sprang apart, Ludo walking briskly up the hill, Laura running away down, as though neither of them could spare a moment longer. Dear, good, gentle Ludo, thought Laura, as her long legs in ribbed tan stockings skipped cheerfully along Prince's Road; Ludo is incapable of saying a word against anybody in his own defence. She took pains, that evening, to say gravely to Gwen, in a grown-up voice, shaking her head soberly:

“Papa has a great deal to put up with from Mr. Hinchliffe, I believe.”

“I'm sure he has,” said Gwen, accepting her sister's tone and air by using the same tone and air in her reply.

After this there was a tacit understanding among the young Armisteads that if only they could all hold out, so to speak, until the Armistead-Hinchliffe partnership was dissolved, everything would come all right and life would be good again. Mr. Armistead himself seemed to show his acceptance of this view by taking
them all to the Hudley Fair, the day the deed of dissolution was actually signed.

The Fair was glorious! The roundabout, with music clicking from within and delicate china figures jerking rhythmically, and long gold curly poles (like barley-sugar, Papa said, but Laura had never seen barley-sugar), and spotted horses which slowly rose and fell as they swung round through the air—oh, it was glorious! There were little chariots, too, on the roundabout, with red velvet seats and sides painted in scrolls of pale colours, pink and blue and gold; Gwen thought Laura would be safer and happier in a chariot than on a horse. Laura thought so too, but all the same she was determined to ride a horse. She felt sick with fear as she sat on the dappled monster's back, clutching its coarse grey mane, and waited for the music to begin; Ludo, who proposed to run round with her in case she should show signs of falling off, stood on the ground below, gazing up at her anxiously. The music started; the horse pranced and rose; oh, it was terrible, awful, wonderful! Laura forced her anguished face into a sickly grin, and Ludo waved encouragingly. By the time she had completed one pennyworth on the roundabout, the roundabout was a delirious joy; she would not descend from her horse when the music ceased and the movement stilled, but called out pleadingly: “Another turn! Another!” Papa, delighted by his little daughter's spirit, laughed heartily and allowed her three more turns. Then there were the wild animals; real lions, looking (to Laura's surprise) very like the one in Ludo's picture book, only not quite as glossy; they were a rather dirty yellow but certainly yellow, with rough brown manes which needed brushing. The lions snarled and roared, stretched their huge sinuous length against the bars, then dropped with a soft thud to their padded feet. Laura trembled with ecstasy. “If one should escape!” she whispered to Ludo. “It won't,” he whispered back reassuringly; but she could see that he, too, felt the terrible joy of fearing the powerful terrible lions. Papa too felt it; his round eyes sparkled and his hand slightly
shook. Gwen, however, as Laura perceived, thought the lions vulgar and smelly.