Sleep in Peace (20 page)

They began to play a complex and difficult word game, in which Frederick, to Laura's interest, excelled.

On other occasions, however, when Laura visited Cromwell Place for tea, they sang very heartily—from the Students' Song Book, with Edward accompanying. And there were many such occasions, for Laura now went very often to Cromwell Place; the friendship was an established affair, recognised and approved by all the duly constituted authorities. An anxious moment in its history occurred when Grace first came to tea at Blackshaw House; suppose, worried Laura beforehand, oh, just
suppose
Grace liked Gwen and hated Ludo! Suppose Ludo disliked Grace! But luckily no such disasters occurred; Grace at once disliked Gwen heartily, and liked Ludo, on account of their respective treatment of other people's rights; while Ludo behaved to Grace like the darling he always was. He met her with a simple friendliness, and brought out all his best jokes and his newest gramophone records for her benefit, because she was so fond of Laura.
Ludo and Grace and Laura were always at ease with each other, and so were Frederick and Grace and Laura. (These groups were never combined, of course; Laura shuddered to think of the explosion which would surely result if a combination of such inharmonious elements were attempted.) When Edward was added to the latter group, it became at once more exciting and less comfortable. Grace and Laura both admired Edward immensely, but felt a nervous necessity to shine in his presence, or at least do nothing to excite his disapproval, which left them ill at ease, while the bickering between Edward and Frederick distressed Laura's compassionate heart. This bickering was supposed, by family tradition, to be perfectly friendly and unwounding, but Laura thought that Frederick suffered from it. One evening indeed, over cards in Cromwell Place, Laura was so far wrought upon as to exclaim:

“Oh, Edward, don't be so superior!”

“Am I superior?” asked Edward in a tone of surprise.

“Oh, very—in fact,
supremus,”
observed Frederick.

Poor Frederick was always in trouble for some reason or other, and Laura always instinctively took his side. Once, for instance, Laura arrived to find the air of the Hinchliffe household thick with strife; Frederick looked flushed and mutinous, Mr. Hinchliffe was quoting Scripture; a row was evidently at its climax.

“Whatsoever things are true,”
said Mr. Hinchliffe,
“whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, if there be any praise, think on these things.”

The quotation, as Laura paused respectfully in the doorway to await its ending, seemed interminable, and she saw with alarm that Frederick was opening and shutting his mouth in increasing exasperation, ready to burst forth into angry argument, the moment the words of the Apostle Paul (no Hinchliffe ever called him Saint) should cease. But Edward as usual saved the situation;
he seized the diversion of Laura's entrance to hustle all his contemporaries out of the room.

“But it's intolerable!” Laura heard Frederick cry passionately as Edward dragged him away upstairs towards the safety of the study. “Is a man to go through life without once mentioning the eternal verities?”

“They don't regard sex as one of the eternal verities,” came in Edward's dry tones.

“By God,” cried Frederick feelingly, “they'd better!”

Their voices died away as they turned the corner of the staircase, and Grace, blushing, threw on her hat and coat in acute embarrassment and hurried the equally embarrassed Laura from the house. Then she explained. Frederick had been reading a book of which Father disapproved; its name was
Ann Veronica
, and Frederick said it was a masterpiece.

“I've never heard of it,” wondered Laura.

“It's only just been published,” explained Grace.

Laura, struck with awe by Frederick's temerity but also staunchly upholding him, was excited by this news. Could
Ann Veronica
really be a masterpiece? If so, it was the only literary masterpiece of later date than the works of Dickens of which Laura and Grace had heard. There seemed to be an astonishing dearth of literary masterpieces in the present century, said Laura, and of artistic masterpieces too; between Old Masters and the twentieth century, why this curious gulf? Grace seemed dubious; she thought that Frederick found plenty of modern masterpieces to read.

“Then why aren't we told about them in literature lessons?” wondered Laura, incredulous.

It was a bright Saturday afternoon in summer; Grace and Laura, laden with lesson books and bottles of ginger-pop, made their way to Ellistone Beck, in order to spend the afternoon in the fresh air without wasting their time. The ginger-beer was Ludo's idea, and he had given Laura some coppers with which
to buy it; Mrs. Hinchliffe, when consulted on the subject, thought that a drink of milk from one of the moorland cottages would be much nicer; and would not give Grace more than a penny for the purpose. A drink of
milk!
Grace was upset about this, and inclined to be apologetic, but Laura said that Gwen would have been just the same if she had known about the ginger-beer, only fortunately she did not know; and all constraint slipped away from between Grace and Laura, as it always did. They sat down on a bluff which overlooked one of the lower reaches of the rocky, tumbling beck; a carpet of dock-leaves, and small boys with glass jars fishing in the sparkling, peaty water for tadpoles, lay beneath them; the green hill with its rough black walls swept up behind them into the dark heather cap of the moor. They soon finished their lessons, then turned with gusto to the ginger-beer. They sat up, lay down, rolled over on their stomachs, talking, talking. Presently the heat of the sun sank, the little breeze which was never long absent from Hudley rose, the light took on a quieter tone; the tadpole boys had gone away and everything seemed very still; it was time to go home. The two girls rose reluctantly and swung their school-bags on their backs, and climbed the long steep hill towards Hudley, talking, talking.

Yes, it was a splendid, an altogether perfect friendship. No misunderstanding ever clouded it; the two girls even managed, by a frank co-operation over all invitations, to arrange that neither Mr. and Mrs. Hinchliffe's natural dislike to having their daughter visit too frequently people whose principles they distrusted, nor the proud sense of hospitality of Papa and Gwen, should receive umbrage. At Blackshaw House, Papa was always extremely polite to Grace, extremely genial; he complimented her on her hair, and brought the two children equal shares of chocolates. Gwen, however, was always there, potentially critical. In Cromwell Place, on the other hand, while Mr. and Mrs. Hinchliffe were unfailingly kind to Laura, Mr. Hinchliffe was apt to tease her at the table about her politics, asking her in a rather sarcastic
tone what her father thought of Mr. Asquith as Premier, of Old Age Pensions, and the Licensing Bill. Political discussions were not the daily pabulum in Blackshaw House, so Laura found these questions awkward. Each girl also found the code of manners at the other's house strange and odd, needing to be negotiated carefully. But what did it matter, when as soon as they were alone together they frankly admitted all these difficulties? It was a perfect friendship.

The end of the summer term came, bringing the girls' first experience of public examinations. Grace bent her fair plait, Laura her dark curls, over the lovely smooth glossy pink paper in absorbed attention; they glanced rapidly, eagerly, at the printed questions, and perceived at once with joy that they knew all the answers; their minds worked quickly and strongly, rearranging all the knowledge with which they had so determinedly stuffed them; their hands, each wielding a favourite and beloved pen, flew along the lines for hours. After so much excitement the holidays at first seemed very flat. Then followed a period of acute suspense, and then came a day when Laura rose early and rushed downstairs to find the results in Papa's morning paper. Of course Grace Mary Hinchliffe and Laura Armistead had passed their Oxford Junior brilliantly, as everyone expected; they were each placed in the first class, with rows of distinctions in various subjects. At breakfast Laura was jubilant, and Papa kissed her delightedly.

“You think too much of those things,” said Ludo crossly. “Things like examinations don't matter at all.”

“What does matter, then?” asked Laura, puzzled. At school, examinations mattered very much indeed, and it was everyone's moral duty to do well in them; Grace and Laura regarded them as indispensable to the noble career of world-service which they had planned. Surely it was right to be ambitious! “What does matter?” she repeated.

Ludo hesitated, seemed about to speak out, then swerved aside,
turning the subject with a joke. “Something to eat,” he said. “So you might pass me the toast.”

Laura's responding laugh was half-hearted.

“Don't be so discouraging, Spencer,” said Gwen severely. Gwen was proud of Laura's successes; any distinction for Papa's family was meat and drink to Gwen.

Ludo, holding his head down, muttered that the child was becoming a conceited little prig—all the Hinchliffes were prigs, so what could you expect.

“You're jealous, Ludo,” said Gwen with a titter.

But Laura had not heard these later passages; she had left the table and flown from the house to discuss the good news with Grace. Scarcely had she turned into Prince's Road when she saw Grace in the distance, hurrying towards her on the same errand; on a common impulse they waved their hands and ran to each other joyously.

Yes, it was a splendid friendship.

The following year Laura was confirmed.

Her preparation for this ceremony was conducted on Saturday mornings by an honest and able cleric of considerable experience, who perceived the nature of the material before him and presented Laura with a lofty conception of the Christian ethic. Laura, who learned so easily, found the familiar cadences of the Catechism child's play to memorise, nor were most of its exhortations new to her. She already heartily despised the pomps and vanities of this wicked world, while the sinful lusts of the flesh never had and never would, she felt sure, cross her horizon; the account given of her duty to her neighbour simply confirmed what she had always imagined it to be. The frequent repetition of her duty towards God, however, aroused in her a deep sense of guilt. Did she love God with all her heart, with all her mind, with all her soul, with all her strength? The heart, the soul, the strength—yes, thought Laura, I do; or at least I try to be. But the mind? There was a large tract of her mental activity, thought Laura sadly, of which God would most certainly not approve: her dreams. They must be conquered, they must be driven out, they must be given up, if Laura Armistead were to be able to present herself as a conscientious candidate for confirmation; if they were not given up, if they were still allowed to sprawl as a weed over half Laura's mind, when she made her confirmation vows she would be taking the name of God in vain. She made up
her mind to conquer in this holy strife, and never to “dream” again.

A really frightful struggle followed. It had been Laura's habit to dream whenever she was alone; dressing and undressing, walking to school, to her music lesson, even to her confirmation class. Of course, since she began attending the High School and had so much work to do, so many interesting things to think about, her mind strayed less often; she was alone less often, too, for there was Grace. But when you had vowed to live entirely in the real world, so that any slip into dreams was a sin, it was amazing how often temptation assailed you. Her favourite dream-characters, whom she knew so well, were apt to bounce into her mind whenever any incident occurred in real life which would suit their imaginary story. How often that happened, even in the ten minutes' walk from Blackshaw House to Cromwell Place! A large brown horse with feathered ankles, a dog barking and jumping, a tree waving its leaves—they all rushed at once into Laura's imaginary world, and served to develop the story or reveal the characters. To tear them out at once, to turn them back into mere real horse, dog, tree, required an effort of will which was quite exhausting.

To her horror, Laura found these temptations particularly strong as she walked back from her confirmation class on Saturday mornings. Doubtless it was so because after the hour's class her mind was tired and sought recreation, and her will was too tired to combat its wandering, decided Laura, but all the same the wandering was a sin and must be subdued. The simplest method of attack was to secure some company. Ludo, of course, was at the mill on Saturday mornings, so Laura tentatively approached Gwen; but on Saturday mornings Gwen, dressed in her best, always went to town, shopped a little and met her friends at a cafe. She was not inclined to give up this enjoyable parade, this lively social occasion, for a completely reasonless request from Laura; if there was a
reason
, began Gwen in sudden alarm—
Laura hastily withdrew. There remained Grace, who early on Saturday mornings had a music lesson from a professor of that art who resided in a distant suburb on the other side of the town. (Grace was good at music.) One Friday afternoon Laura made her request.

“Well, I
could
come on my way back from music,” considered Grace, “but it would be rather difficult. Mother might wonder where I was, you know.”

“Grace, I wish you would,” pleaded Laura fervently. “I can't explain why, but it's to do with religion, really.”

“All right, I'll come,” said Grace, unable to resist so solemn an appeal.

She did not ask its reason—Grace never asked personal questions. Because she did not ask, Laura suddenly began to tell her.

“Oh, I do that too,” said Grace in her usual cheerful tone. “I don't see that it matters—except that it's rather silly. A waste of time, you know. Why do you think it's wrong? Too many things are supposed to be wrong, I think.”