Sleep in Peace (17 page)

Next morning Gwen took the watch and the bracelet to the jeweller's for the attachment of safety chains.

“You are a snob, Laura,” said Ludo.

The school which had hitherto educated Gwen and Laura had collapsed that summer, starved out at last by the competition of the Hudley Girls' High School. Gwen had determined that Laura should “go away to school”, as most of her schoolmates were now preparing to do, and she had employed all her customary devices of coaxing, nagging and tears upon Papa to that effect. Papa—whose curly hair was growing rather thin, Laura noticed, about his centre parting—under her persistent harrying almost yielded his consent; when an unexpected obstacle was encountered in the shape of Ludo, who said that this luxury could not be afforded. Gwen turned and rent him; he had been away to school himself, she said, and now he denied this boon to Laura. Ludo remained silent under her tirades, but set his mouth obstinately. At last, after several weeks of battle, when Papa's resistance was visibly sinking, Ludo burst into speech.

“Do you want us to go bankrupt?” he demanded.

Gwen quailed. She kept up the fight for some days longer, but in a half-hearted style, and all of a sudden began to take it for granted that Laura was to go to the High School in September.

September had come, and Laura was to begin attendance at her new school to-morrow.

It was her custom to sharpen all her pencils on the night before a new term; she had drawn them out to-night as usual, but observed
mournfully that probably they didn't bother about sharp points at the High School. Her notion of this detested place had been carefully fostered by Gwen in the days of the boarding-school plan into that of a hideous and dirty barn, filled with coarse, rough people; she felt like a Christian martyr about to enter a den of exceptionally smelly lions, and her tone revealed this conviction. Gwen coloured a little; how
simple
Laura is, she thought with exasperation; the child swallows everything she's told, takes everything at its face value; you can't say a word but she snatches it up and thinks it's Gospel. Ludo's reaction was different.

“You
are
a snob, Laura,” he repeated. “If you don't take care you'll be as bad as Gwen when you grow up.”

“Oh,
no
, Ludo!” cried Laura. This was positively the first criticism she had ever received in her life from Ludo, and she was horrified. “Oh, no!” she repeated earnestly.

She edged round the nursery table to her brother, and leaned on the arm of his chair. Ludo was busy improving a political game he had devised, to show the necessity for Tariff Reform. There were five or six lidless cardboard boxes, labelled England, France, the United States, and so on; the sides of these boxes were proportionate in height to the tariffs their respective countries imposed on imports. Each player was allotted a country, some counters for money, and a heap of coloured cardboard squares which represented foodstuffs and manufactures; as soon as you reached a certain score in a card game, you could send goods to the countries whose tariffs were below that score, and exact money for them. The aim of the players was to get rid of goods and heap up money. England's tariff wall being practically non-existent, imports flowed in upon the unfortunate players who represented her. It was the accompanying card game which did not as yet satisfy Ludo, and he was solemnly playing out a hand, with his boxes arranged in a circle about him. Laura looked on with interest; lacking words, as usual, she put her arms round her
brother's neck and leaned her cheek against his smooth warm hair.

“You're getting spoiled,” grumbled Ludo, nevertheless mollified. “Goodness knows what you'll be like when you grow up.”

“I hope Laura will grow up into a lady, Spencer, if that's what you mean,” said Gwen in a lofty tone. She had taken to calling her brother by his second name of late, having decided that “Ludo” was undignified for a young man of nearly twenty. Ludo and Laura thought this an abominable affectation on her part, but could not oppose it as strongly as they wished, because they had at the same time a sneaking feeling that she was right.

“Real ladies are not snobs,” said Ludo with conviction.

Laura sighed. Life was really
very
difficult. She wished only to think and do what was right and noble, but it seemed so difficult to find out what that was. Did Ludo really think she ought to try and like the High School? How confusing!

The morning came; Laura put on the new school-dress Gwen had made for her, of dark blue-and-green plaid, with tiny golden buttons; and rose from the breakfast-table in good time, with a very long face, very sorry for herself, ready to go to school.

“Aren't you going to take her?” Ludo asked Gwen.

Papa looked up with a frown.

“I don't want to be taken,” said Laura quickly. And indeed she preferred all her ordeals to be undertaken alone.

But as she approached the building her heart failed her, and she almost wished for the protection of Papa or Gwen. (Ludo was not a protection; Laura always felt herself in charge of Ludo.) The Hudley Girls' High School had been thrust when founded,, by powers uncertain of its future, into an old mansion of the highest degree of inconvenience and cramp; to Laura however it looked immense. There were two doors with pillared porches, a façade of huge black windows, a new stone wing. All of it, to Laura, seemed to be smothered in chattering girls. She crept in by the side door, and seeing in a room ahead of her some rows of
pegs and boots in lockers, eventually made up her mind, when she had been brushed aside by a score or two of girls, to enter. The terrific hurly-burly of the cloakroom dazed her, and when she came out in her new black school shoes with straps and rubber heels, there was still nobody to ask where she should go. Everyone seemed to be streaming into a large hall marked “Assembly Room”, so Laura timidly streamed in too. Here she began to feel a little better, for there were prayers and psalms and hymns and such familiar matters, and really it was rather jolly to see so many girls—two hundred and twenty, the headmistress said—all standing together in neat rows. They were not neat themselves, however, thought the fastidious Laura; their hair was tumbled, their dresses were the very oddest she had ever seen. Some of them even had dirty handkerchiefs! Amazing! At the end of Prayers lists were read, and Laura heard her own name occurring in Form Four. She had not, naturally, the slightest notion where the Form Four classroom was; but on leaving the hall she chanced to see two girls from her own class in her former school walking ahead of her, and with much relief she followed in their train. They all stood together beneath the windows, while the twenty or thirty other pupils scrambled about choosing themselves desks, chattering hard and banging lids. Presently her two companions were called away and allotted places; Laura, blushing and anguished, stood alone. The form-mistress, an elderly woman in a dingy Paisley-patterned blouse, approached and asked her, in a kindly tone, her name.

“You are not in this form,” she told Laura when she heard it, consulting a list she held in her hand. “This is Five B. What form were you told to be in, after the entrance examination yesterday?”

Laura gaped; she had not attended an examination.

The mistress sighed impatiently.

“I think I'm in the Fourth,” murmured Laura.

“Grace!” called the mistress. “Take Laura Armistead upstairs to the Fourth Form room.”

Grace Hinehliffe stepped out of the front desk where she was sitting as head of the class.

The two girls exchanged glances of aversion.

“What a horrible dress,” thought Laura angrily as she followed Grace up the wide stone stairs. It was a travesty of her own, cut on the same lines and ornamented in the same way, but instead of a neat small plaid, it was patterned in large strong stripes; instead of tiny gold buttons, it bore large grey ones of bone. “She has lovely hair,” thought Laura grudgingly, observing the rippling tawny mass, “but how her feet turn out. Like the Frog Footman's in
Alice in Wonderland.”

“What a pretty frock!” thought Grace. “And curly hair. But what a silly babyish face. She looks as though she were going to cry. I expect she thinks she's come down in the world, coming to the High School after that silly private school she's attended. Snob! But what could you expect from Mr. Armistead's daughter?”

They approached the open door of the Fourth Form. Laura started back. “Oh, I can't go in there!” she cried. “Those girls are all too small and young. It's a lower form than Five B.”

“Of course,” said Grace.

“But I was in the same form as May and Dorothy,” cried Laura. “And they are in Five B here—I saw them.”

“Perhaps you were unlucky with your entrance examination,” suggested Grace, polite, but cold.

“I didn't do one at all,” wailed Laura. “I didn't know I had to do an examinational was in the same form as May and Dorothy at the other school—they're older than me, I know, but I was always top, I was really.” ,

Grace's face changed. “Then you must
say
so,” she urged. “You must say so
at once,”
she repeated earnestly.

“Don't stand talking out there,” commanded the form-mistress, coming to the door. She was young and looked rather fierce in a
very up-to-date white flannel blouse with a navy-blue tie; Laura shrank and was silent.

“Laura Armistead says that at her old school she was in the same form as two girls who are in Five B here,” stated Grace.

“Well, it's not your business,” said the mistress shortly. “Her name is on my list. Come in, Laura.”

Laura abandoned hope. With shoulders sagging and head bowed, she went in.

“But it's so
unjust,”
whispered Grace to herself as she descended the stairs.

The Five B classroom was still in a tumult, as the girls were unpacking their books and settling themselves in; Grace, ardent for her cause, told half a dozen girls of the injustice done to one of the new girls. They were not much interested, and Grace's indignation grew. Presently a bell rang, quiet was secured, and the mistress began to dictate the weekly time-table. Grace put up her hand.

“Well, Grace?” demanded the mistress.

“Laura Armistead says,” began Grace. In her clear precise tones, lifting her golden head, she narrated Laura's plight.

At noon Laura returned to Blackshaw House looking flushed but triumphant; to the relief of her family, she babbled happily over dinner about her new school.

“I was in a form too low for me,” she explained, “but I'm not now; I've been moved up. I was in a room upstairs with some quite young children, but now I've come downstairs into Five B.”

“How can you have been moved up if you've come down?” joked Ludo.

Laura smiled dutifully, but found herself thinking that really Ludo's jokes were sometimes rather feeble.

Papa cleared his throat as he always did when he was going to ask a pompous, lofty question.

“How do the girls compare with your former little companions?” he enquired.

“There's only one of them knows anything at all,” said Laura in a tone of wonder. “I was so surprised—the others simply don't know anything at all.”

“And who is the clever one?” asked Papa, smiling—no doubt at the cleverness of his own little girl.

Laura blushed.

“Grace Hinchliffe,” she said.

There was an awful silence.

It was really very difficult, reflected Laura, to remember just how it happened that Grace and she became such friends.

They sometimes discussed the matter themselves, but never reached any satisfying conclusion. The Montagu-Capulet feud between their families might lend a certain spice to their relation, thought the romantic Laura; Grace thought it added a spice, certainly, but could not have created the friendship. It might perhaps be the attraction of opposites, suggested Grace; Grace being so fair and large and sociable, and Laura so slight and dark and reserved. Laura, however, did not believe in the attraction of opposites, she thought friends must have something fundamentally similar in their natures, and strove earnestly to discover what in this instance it could be. They were both clever, she observed. Yes, of course there was that, agreed Grace; they were not stupid, they could understand each other's ideas. They thought the same about life, suggested Laura. Grace demurred; for indeed they argued on this subject constantly. Yes, but fundamentally, urged Laura, who was fond of this word,
fundamentally
, they thought the same. They each thought that life ought to be grand, fine, noble, gorgeously coloured, beautifully shaped, continually exciting, for everybody alive, while in fact it was none of these things at all—at any rate, not in Hudley. They differed as to what it actually was, in Hudley, but agreed that it ought to be different.
Laura thought it sordid, prosaic, vulgar; Grace thought it hedged about with paltry restrictions, arbitrary, stupid and unreasonable rules. People were mean and petty, thinking always about money and position, said Laura; they worried constantly about mending stockings and not stubbing the toes of one's shoes; life to them was nothing but an endless taking care of one's possessions, the world a storehouse of cherished material objects, amid which human souls peeped about to find themselves dishonourable graves. So long as one had handsome clothes and a good social position, in Gwen's philosophy, one must be happy. What an unutterably vulgar view of life! Grace was quite unconscious of her clothes; what a relief! How much better to have awful clothes, like Grace, thought Laura, and keep the mind fixed on high things, than look charming, like Gwen, and have no soul above drapery. Grace, on the other hand, thought the soul of man was deformed, made ugly, by being so cramped and thwarted; why should life be so dreary, when it might be so rich and gay? The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath, argued Grace. These points of view emerged clearly once when a Shakespearean company visited the Hudley theatre, and the upper forms were urged to visit a “schools matinee” which was especially arranged for the purpose. Laura and Grace cheerfully gave in their names, and then forgot the matter till the day on which the money for the tickets had to be handed to the mistress organising the party. Remorsefully each promised to bring it to school that afternoon. But when at the dinner-table, Papa being absent, Laura asked Gwen for the necessary half-crown, she was met by a storm.