Sleep in Peace (33 page)

Life was glorious! thought Grace as, in white satin with a yellow girdle, she waltzed vehemently in the arms of Bernard Duchay. Bernard's grandfather was a City Alderman and a member of one of the City guilds; and accordingly the Duchay dance was taking place in ah old guild hall, rich with dark carving and
painted scutcheons, aromatic with the history of centuries. The band was playing the
Blue Danube
with rhythmic gusto; Grace's feet in their white slippers, dusty at the toes from the trespass of innumerable partners, flew through the air in joyous bounds; Margherita passed in pink ninon, brightly smiling; everything was vibrant with life, and life was glorious.

Bernard, Margherita's twin, as tall as Grace, very fair, handsome and laughing, held her more firmly and began to reverse. He reversed all down the hall, across the end and up the other side. The ends of Grace's sash flew out horizontally as her fine large body swayed to the rhythm; people began to look at the couple, smiling.

“Bernard!” cried Grace, laughing heartily. “Stop reversing!”

“Do you really want to stop?” said Bernard, bringing his sparkling eyes very close to his partner's glowing cheek.

“No,” laughed Grace. “Why should I? But we mustn't be a nuisance to the other dancers.”

“Rubbish!” said Bernard, and he reversed all down the centre of the hall.

Grace's hair came down; a comb flew out and bounced at the feet of Mr. Duchay. Mr. Duchay, who sat talking to a very small old man who was his superior at the Treasury, picked up the comb, looked at it with grave interest, smiled and nodded at Grace, and put it in his pocket. Mr. Duchay was a pet, thought Grace, and Mrs. Duchay, observing Grace and Bernard with a friendly air through her monocle, though ugly, was a woman infinitely distinguished. In her youth Mrs. Duchay had been a governess, and she had horrific tales to tell of the hardships of that condition. Now on Sundays in her upstairs drawing-room on Chiswick Mall she received all the most progressive people in England—Civil Servants, artists, musicians, writers, painters, feminists, Members of Parliament. Mrs. Duchay's Sundays were really glorious! Bernard, holding Grace more firmly still, halted on one foot and swung her round in the customary direction. Her sash
sank; Grace, breathless and wide-eyed, smiled, rejoiced by the successful termination of their manoeuvre.

The music died, and Grace and Bernard ceased to twirl; they were left standing very close, just on a level; flushed cheeky to flushed cheek, eye to [sparkling eye. Bernard with a gleeful smile gave her hand a quick friendly squeeze and released her. A crowd formed about the Duchays; the guests were making their farewell thanks to their host and hostess. Grace stood where Bernard had left her, warm and happy, not looking, not thinking, just drinking life in. Life was glorious!

Presently the Duchay house-party, twelve in all, straggled from the hall, and, shepherded by Mrs. Duchay, collected on the steps amid the eddying crowd of guests. They looked about for their conveyance. Margherita shivered a little as the queue of cabs moved, paused, and moved, but Grace stood warm and erect in her new fawn cloak. What fun to drive to Chiswick in a wagonette! What fun to share a room with Margherita! What fun to be staying with the Duchays! Life was glorious!

A uniformed policeman, who had been sent at Mr. Duchay's request to control the bustle of arrival and departure, now spoke to them.

“Can I help you find your conveyance, sir?” he said.

“Yes. We want our wagonette,” said Bernard.

“A wagonette, sir?! What name, sir?” said the policeman in a supercilious tone.

“Duchay!” cried Bernard.

“Beg pardon, sir, I'm sure,” said the policeman, crawling. He turned away, shouting obsequiously: “Carriage here for Mr. Duchay!”

“Snob!” said Bernard heartily.

The wagonette came up, drawn by two brown horses; everyone climbed in, laughing and talking. Bernard contrived to squeeze himself between his mother and Grace.

At first everyone chattered with great animation, but presently
one by one fell silent—after all, it was three o'clock next morning. Mrs. Duchay slept, huddled in her Chinese shawl; the others drowsed, with an occasional low murmur of voices. As they drove on through the interminable London streets the night thinned; Grace, looking out in a cold grey dawn, saw dustmen. Bernard had been sitting with his head drooping and his hands between his knees, looking tired and boyish, but at the sound of the carts and spades he raised his head and gazed out of the window. His face grew stern. He looked at Grace, who nodded slowly. Bernard cocked an eyebrow interrogatively.

“Unjust, isn't it?” said Grace.

“Damnably,” said Bernard.

“Why should we dance,” said Grace, “and they go scavenging?”

“Just so,” said Bernard. He looked at Grace more closely. “You understand everything, Grace,” he said.

Grace raised her head. “I think we all understand,” she said, speaking very quietly and slowly, “that the task of this generation is a reconstruction of the social system based on justice.”

“Yes, Grace,' said Bernard. “Yes.” He looked in her eyes. “Yes, Grace, yes,” he repeated.

Grace smiled. Life was glorious.

Laura was happy.

Life was now perfectly clear, a sustained and strenuous effort firmly directed to a single high end. Art was not a vague, woolly, namby-pamby affair, such as Mr. Armistead imagined; it was strong and clear and real, and required an immense amount of hard work and disciplined thought, not to mention the necessary skill of eye arid brain and hand. One's course therein was all ably planned by the Board of Education itself, a body which no one could accuse of sentimentalism, and clearly stated by the Hudley Technical College for Laura's benefit, in a syllabus inspiring, soul-stirring,
but thoroughly practical. One worked for a year, and took one's Art Class Teacher's Certificate; one worked for two years, and took Art Master's, Group I. Then, if one were an exceptionally good student, and Laura meant to be that, one became perhaps a pupil teacher, taught for eight or ten hours a week, and studied the rest of one's time for one's special groups; for Laura, those would be Drawing, and, in spite of Mr. Quarmby's discouragements on this subject, Painting. If one were slothful, dilatory or lacking in ability, one required, of course, more time to reach the standard necessary for these examinations. If one were exceptionally brilliant, one won a scholarship and went off to London. Meanwhile, one entered for the Board of Education National Competition every year. Mr. Quarmby was rather scornful about these National Competitions, and declined utterly all those subtle methods of supplementing one's students' work by one's own, which too often won gold medals; nevertheless he admitted that these competitions stimulated the students' work.

Not that Laura needed stimulating; Mr. Quarmby, at first grudgingly, later very kindly, admitted that too. At first he despised her heartily because she was an amateur; just another of the girls who took up Art as a hobby. Mr. Quarmby's contempt for people who took up Art as a hobby was splendid. Since they formed thirty per cent of his students he strove to conceal it, but it blew out like a flag from his honest and candid personality; Laura shared it, and quite agreed that she was as yet contemptible, though she hoped not always to remain so. The people who took up Art as a hobby were so feeble, so genteel, so wishy-washy. It was Mr. Quarmby's mission to rescue Art in Technical Colleges from the wishy-washy and the namby-pamby, to bring it firmly down from its genteel shelf to the smoky and turbulent arena of real life. Mr. Quarmby, who had only recently been appointed Head of the Hudley School of Art, was a sturdy little Yorkshireman, quiet but bristling; an able organiser, a sound teacher, with fine experienced eyes behind steel spectacles. He had been a nightschool
student as a boy; working in the mill during the day, it had taken him four years to reach Group I. Mr. Quarmby's motto was therefore Work, and he had an active contempt for anyone who did not appreciate it; his favourite anecdote was that of a huge lad, five feet eight in height and forty round the chest if he was an inch, said Mr. Quarmby, who complained that he, Mr. Quarmby, was working him too hard! Too much homework, this great lad said! Preposterous! Homework was kept to a minimum in the Hudley School of Art, he assured Laura, but eight hours a week devoted to this purpose were absolutely necessary.

So it was only natural that Mr. Quarmby should be rather cross and disagreeable at first to Laura, who had wandered timidly and vaguely in with the idea, he thought, of dabbling in Art for two or three hours a week so as to have pretty sketches to show off to her friends. But when he discovered that on the contrary she loved work, had a certain talent, not showy but solid, and a scorn for the sentimental as firm as his own, he was mollified, spoke to her encouragingly, and tried hard to forgive her late and irregular attendances, caused, he understood, by a tyrannical parent.

And so gradually one began to put in more and more time at the School of Art. Papa had no idea how much time one put in there, or how much of the housekeeping money one spent on materials. He had no idea what one learned there; he had no idea when presently one began to attend the Life Class. Each student was solemnly charged to secure their parents' permission for this, but Laura, who knew that her father would never consent, would be horrified by the very idea and perhaps forbid her to go to the School of Art at all as a result, after several nights of anguish decided simply not to mention it. Since Papa was so often out at his club, and Ludo so busy with his Territorials, it was easy to be out oneself; there was a general notion at Blackshaw House that Laura “went to the Technical”, but no specific knowledge of her timetable. Ludo knew more of this than Papa, naturally, but so long as Laura was happy, Ludo did not care. Ludo was kind, too, about
posing for his sister, and he appeared often in Laura's homework, as Man Running Upstairs, Man Holding Weight, Man Climbing into Car.

Nowadays, therefore, Laura lived two lives. In Blackshaw House she ordered the meals, and sat at them patiently, trying not to look at the clock when Papa sat talking over his plate too long. Then, the moment her menfolk were out of the house, she snatched her hat and coat and satchel, and joyously fled to her real home, the Hudley School of Art.

How lovely it was there! One hurried up the vast steps, in company with hundreds of other students of the Hudley Technical College likewise hurrying, passed through the vast doors, hung up one's coat in the corridor on one of hundreds of pegs. Then, at ease because the large white clock said one had still a minute, one strolled up the echoing stairs and turned into the Big Room devoted to General Art Subjects. In the daytime, light streamed into the Big Room through eight huge windows; at night eight clusters of electric lamps made the room stiflingly hot. This peculiar hot brightness gave the air a gathered excitement, a sort of dazzling tension, which to Laura
was
the School of Art. The walls of the Big Room were hung with examples of the designs and figure compositions of former students, plaster casts, and squares of woven textiles in frames, lent by the Victoria and Albert Museum. At the far end of the room lived the gleaming white casts on pedestals; the Clapping Faun, the Discobolus, the Belvedere Torso, a white horse with a bushy tail, Michelangelo's Dawn and Lorenzo dei Medici, the Boy and Goose. Clustered there thus in a group, they were comic, but beautiful and very dear to Laura. One or two students, with a sober, determined air, usually stood at easels at this end of the room, drawing from the antique, wrestling with the dimples of an incomparable Hellenic back, or with the complicated folds of the great Italian master. Others, with sketches pinned to their easels of trousered legs, necks in collars, skirts and sleeves, all heavily creased and very
much shaded, the result of homework observation, strove to draw a figure in action from memory, perhaps a man sweeping leaves or a girl dancing. Others again sat with knitted brows striving to evolve a figure composition of some simple scene, say the entrusting of a piece of luggage to a porter. Next to these sat the group of textile designers; Laura, who had lived all her life off cloth, was amazed, alarmed, and disgusted with her own ignorance, when she discovered that Art and cloth were so intimately connected. She thought it would be nice to talk to Mr. Armistead about this, but dared not for fear he should resent her poking her nose into business matters far beyond her. Next to the textiles came the class in “elementary design”, who, with books beside them open at “plant form”, strove to turn botany into art, retaining the characteristics of leaf and petal but adapting them to the demands of a space-limited pattern. At one side sat the trio of young women busy with “fashion work”; they painted busily, when they were not changing their jars of water. Lastly came the first-year students by the door, young, timid and very earnest. Sometimes they painstakingly drew “freehand”, which the Board of Education now liked you to call “drawing from historic examples”. Sometimes they sat gazing with absorption at a cone, a pan lid and a white jug, arranged on a table between two drawing-boards at an angle; they were then engaged in dealing with “common objects”. Sometimes they gazed with equal absorption at the ceiling; they were then engaged in visualising the shape of some common object, say a chair, which they were endeavouring to draw from memory. Too often they found that they had not sufficiently memorised what Mr. Quarmby called the Facts of the Structure—Mr. Quarmby was great on the Facts of the Structure; a mere superficial general impression quite maddened him, and when maddened he could be alarmingly sardonic. He first began to be reconciled to Laura when he found that she had a good memory for the facts of the structure. For of all these groups Laura at one time and another formed
a part, working her way gradually from chairs to railway scenes, and from cones to Apollo.