The Getting of Wisdom (18 page)

After those first few awkward moments, however, which had come wellnigh being a fiasco, Laura had no more trouble with her story. Indeed, the plunge once taken, it was astounding how easy it became to make up things about the Shepherds; the difficulty was, to know where to stop. Fictitious details crowded thick and fast upon her—a regular hotchpotch; she had only to stretch out her hand and seize what she needed. It was simpler than the five-times multiplication-table, and did not need to be learnt. But all the same she was not idle: she polished away at her flimflams, bringing them nearer and nearer probability, never, thanks to her sound memory, contradicting herself or making a slip, and always able to begin again from the beginning.

Such initial scepticism as may have lurked in her hearers was soon got the better of. For, crass realists though these young colonials were, and bluntly as they faced facts, they were none the less just as hungry for romance as the most insatiable novel-reader. Romance in any guise was hailed by them, and swallowed uncritically, though it was no more permitted to interfere with the practical conduct of their lives than it is in the case of just that novel-reader, who puts untruth and unreality from him, when he lays his book aside.—Another and weightier reason was, their slower brains could not conceive the possibility of such extraordinarily detailed lying as that to which Laura now subjected them. Its very elaboration stood for its truth.

And the days passed, and Laura had the happiest ideas. A strange thing about them was that they came to her quite unsought, dropping on her like Aladdin's oranges on his turban. All she had to do was to fit them into their niche in her fabrication.

At first, her tale had been chiefly concerned with the internal rift in Mr. Shepherd's home-life, and only in a minor degree with herself. But her public savoured the love-story most, and hence, consulting its taste, as it is the tale-maker's bounden duty to do, Laura was obliged to develop this side of her narrative at the expense of the other. And the more the girls heard, the more they wished to hear. She had early turned Miss Isabella into a staunch ally of her own, in the dissension she had introduced into the curate's household; and one day she arrived at a hasty kiss, stolen in the vestry after evening service, while Mr. Shepherd was taking off his surplice. The puzzle had been, to get herself into the vestry; but, once there, she saw what followed as if it had actually happened. She saw Mr. Shepherd's arm slipped with diffident alacrity round her waist, and her own virtuous recoil; saw Maisie and Isabella waiting, sheep-like, in their pew, till it should please the couple to emerge; saw the form of the verger moving about the darkening church, as he put the lights out, one by one.

But the success this incident brought her turned Laura's head, making her so foolhardy in her inventions that Maria, who for all her boldness of speech was at heart a prude like the rest, grew uneasy.

"You're not to go to that house again, Kiddy. If you do, I'll peach to old Gurley."

Laura ran upstairs to dress for tea, taking two steps at a time. On the top landing, beside the great clothes-baskets, she collided with Chinky, who was coming primly down.

"O ki, John!" she greeted her, being in a vast good-humour. "What do you look so black for?"

"Dunno. Why do you never walk with me nowadays, Laura? I say, you know about that ring? You haven't forgotten?"

"Course not. When am I to get it? It never turns up." Her eyes glittered as she asked, for she foresaw a further link in her chain. "Soon, now?"

Chinky nodded mysteriously. "Pretty soon. And you promise faithfully never to take it off?"

"But it must be a NICE one . . . with a red stone in it. And listen, Chink, no one must ever know it was you who gave it me."

"All right, I swear. You're a darling to say you'll wear it," and putting her arm round Laura's shoulders, Chinky gave her a hearty kiss.

This was more than Laura had bargained for;—she freed herself, ungraciously. "Oh, don't!—now mind, a red stone, and for the third finger of the left hand."

"Yes. And Laura, I've thought of something to put inside. SEMPER EADEM . . . do you like that, Laura?"

"It'll do.—Look out, there's old Day!" and leaving Chinky standing, she ran down the corridor to her room.

DER VERBRECHER IST HAUFIG GENUG SEINER TAT NICHT GEWACHSEN.
NIETZSCHE

For a month or more, Laura fed like a honeybee on the sweets of success. And throve—even to the blindest eye. What had hitherto been lacking was now hers: the admiration and applause of her circle. And never was a child so spurred and uplifted by praise as Laura. Without it, her nature tended to be wary and unproductive; and those in touch with her, had they wished to make the most of her, would no more have stinted with the necessary incentive, that one stints a delicate rose tree in aids to growth. Laura could swallow praise in large doses, without becoming over-sure. Under the present stimulus she sat top in a couple of classes, grew slightly ruddier in face, and much less shrinking in manner.

"Call her back at once and make her shut that door," cried Miss Day thickly, from behind one of the long, dining-hall tables, on which were ranged stacks and piles of clean linen. She had been on early duty since six o'clock.

The pupil-teacher in attendance stepped obediently into the passage; and Laura returned.

"Doors are made to be shut, Laura Rambotham, I'd have you remember that!" fumed Miss Day in the same indistinct voice: she was in the grip of a heavy cold, which had not been improved by the draughts of the hall.

"I'm sorry, Miss Day. I thought I had. I was a little late."

"That's your own lookout," barked the governess.—"Oh, there you are at last, Miss Snodgrass. I'd begun to think you weren't going to appear at all this morning. It's close on a quarter past seven."

"Sorry," said Miss Snodgrass laconically. "My watch must be losing.— Well, I suppose I can begin by marking Laura Rambotham down late.—What on earth are you standing there holding the door for?"

"Miss Day knows—I don't," sauced Laura, and made her escape.

She did not let Miss Snodgrass's bad mark disturb her. No sooner had she begun her practising than she fell to work again on the theme that occupied all her leisure moments, and was threatening to assume the bulk of an early Victorian novel. But she now built at her top-heavy edifice for her own enjoyment; and the usual fate of the robust liar had overtaken her: she was beginning to believe in her own lies. Still she never ventured to relax her critical alertness, her careful surveillance of detail. For, just a day or two before, she had seen a quick flare-up of incredulity light Tilly's face, and oddly enough this had happened when she tried her audience with a fact, a simple little fact, an incident that had really occurred. She had killed the doubt, instantly, by smothering it with a fiction; but she could not forget that it had existed. It has very perplexing; for otherwise her hearers did not shy at a mortal thing; she could drive them where and how she chose.

At the present moment she was planning a great coup: nothing more or less than a frustrated attempt on her virtue. It was almost ready to be submitted to them—for she had read PAMELA with heartfelt interest during the holidays—and only a few connecting links were missing, with which to complete her own case.

Then, without the slightest warning, the blow fell.

It was a Sunday afternoon; the half-hour that preceded Sunday school. Laura, in company with several others, was in the garden, getting her Bible chapter by heart, when Maria called her.

"Laura! Come here. I want to tell you something."

Laura approached, her lips in busy motion. "What's up?"

"I say, chicken, your nose is going to be put out of joint."

"Mine? What do you mean?" queried Laura, and had a faint sense of impending disaster.

"What I say. M. Pidwall's asked to the you-know-who's next Saturday."

"No, she's not!" cried Laura vehemently, and clapped her Bible to.

"S'help me God, she is," asserted Maria.—"Look out, don't set the place on fire."

"How do you know? . . . who told you?"

"M. P. herself—Gosh, but you are a jealous little cub. Oh, go on, Kiddy, don't take it like that. I guess he won't give you away."—For Laura was as pale as a moment before she had been scarlet.

Alleging a violent headache, she mounted to her room, and sat down on her bed. She felt stunned, and it took her some time to recover her wits. Sitting on the extreme edge of the bedstead, she stared at [P.181] the objects in the room without seeing them. "M. P.'s going there on Saturday . . . M. P.'s going there on Saturday," she repeated stupidly, and, with her hands pressed on her hips, rocked herself to and fro, after the fashion of an older woman in pain.

The fact was too appalling to be faced; her mind postponed it. Instead, she saw the fifty-five at Sunday school—where they were at this minute —drawn up in a line round the walls of the dining-hall. She saw them rise to wail out the hymn; saw Mr. Strachey on his chair in the middle of the floor, perpetually nimming with his left leg. And, as she pictured the familiar scene to herself, she shivered with a sudden sense of isolation: behind each well-known face lurked a possible enemy.

If it had only not been M. P.!—that was the first thought that crystallised. Anyone else! . . . from any of the rest she might have hoped for some mercy. But Mary Pidwall was one of those people—there were plenty such—before whom a nature like Laura's was inclined, at the best of times, to shrink away, keenly aware of its own paltriness and ineffectualness. Mary was rectitude in person: and it cannot be denied that, to Laura, this was synonymous with hard, narrow, ungracious. Not quite a prig, though: there was fun in Mary, and life in her; but it was neither fun nor vivacity of a kind that Laura could feel at ease with. Such capers as the elder girl cut were only skin-deep; they were on the surface of her character, had no real roots in her: just as the pieces of music she played on the piano were accidents of the moment, without deeper significance. To Mary, life was already serious, full of duties. She knew just what she wanted, too, where she wanted to go and how to get there; her plans were cut and dried. She was clever, very industrious, the head of several of her classes. Nor was she ever in conflict with the authorities: she moved among the rules of the school as safely as an egg-dancer among his eggs. For the simple reasons that temptations seemed to pass her by. There was, besides, a kind of manly exactness in her habit of thinking and speaking; and it was this trait her companions tried to symbolise, in calling her by the initial letters of her name.

She and Laura, though classmates, had never drawn together. It is true, Mary was sixteen, and, at that time of life, a couple of years dig a wide breach. But there was also another reason. Once, in the innocence of her heart, Laura had let the cat out of the bag that an uncle of hers lived in the up-country township to which Mary belonged.

The girl had eyed her coldly, incredulously. "What? That dreadful man your uncle?" she had exclaimed: she herself was the daughter of a church dignitary. "I should say I did know him—by reputation at least. And it's quite enough, thank you."

Now Laura had understood that Uncle Tom—he needed but a pair of gold earrings to pose as the model for a Spanish Grandee—that Uncle Tom WAS odd, in this way: he sometimes took more to drink than was good for him; but she had never suspected him of being "dreadful", or a byword in Wantabadgery. Colouring to the roots of her hair, she murmured something about him of course not being recognised by the rest of the family; but M. P., she was sure, had never looked on her with the same eyes again.

Such was the rigid young moralist into whose hands her fate was given.

She sat and meditated these things, in spiritless fashion. She would have to confess to her fabrications—that was plain. M. P.'s precise mind would bring back a precise account of how matters stood in the Shepherd household: not by an iota would the truth be swerved from. Why, oh why, had she not foreseen this possibility? What evil spirit had prompted her and led her on?—But, before her brain could contemplate the awful necessity of rising and branding herself as a liar, it sought desperately for a means of escape. For a wink, she even nursed the idea of dragging in a sham man, under the pretence that Mr. Shepherd had been but a blind, used by her to screen some one else. But this yarn, twist it as she might, would not pass muster. Against it was the mass of her accumulated detail.

She sat there, devising scheme after scheme. Not one of them would do.

When, at tea-time, she rose to wash her face before going downstairs, the sole point on which she had come to clearness was, that just seven days lay between her and detection.—Yet after all, she reminded herself, seven days made a week, and a week was a good long time. Perhaps something would happen between now and Saturday. M. P. might have an accident and break her leg, and not be able to go. Or thin, poorly-fed Mr. Shepherd fall ill from overwork.—Oh, how she would rejoice to hear of it!

And, if the worst came to the worst and she HAD to tell, at least it should not be to-day. To-day was Sunday; and people's thoughts were frightfully at liberty. To-morrow they would be engaged again; and, by to-morrow, she herself would have grown more accustomed to the idea.—Besides, how foolish to have been in too great a hurry, should something come to pass that rendered confession needless.

On waking next morning, however, and accounting, with a throb, for the leaden weight on her mind, she felt braver, and quite determined to make a clean breast of her misdoings. Things could not go on like this. But no sooner was she plunged into the routine of the day than her decision slackened: it was impossible to find just the right moment to begin. Early in the morning everyone was busy looking over lessons, and would not thank you for the upset, the dinner-hour was all too short; after school, on the walk, she had a partner who knew nothing about the affair, and after tea she practised.—Hence, on Monday her purpose failed her.