The Getting of Wisdom (8 page)

"What IS the matter with you girls down there?" cried Miss Snodgrass. "Carrie Isaacs, what are you laughing like that for?"

"It's Laura Rambotham, Miss Snodgrass. She's so funny," spluttered the girl.

"What are you doing, Laura?"

Laura did not answer. The girl spoke for her.

"She said—hee, hee!—she said it was blue."

"Blue? What's blue?" snapped Miss Snodgrass.

"That word. She said it was so beautiful . . . and that it was blue."

"I didn't. Grey-blue, I said," murmured Laura her cheeks aflame.

The class rocked; even Miss Snodgrass herself had to join in the laugh while she hushed and reproved. And sometimes after this, when a particularly long or odd word occurred in the lesson, she would turn to Laura and say jocosely: "Now, Laura, come on, tell us what colour that is. Red and yellow, don't you think?"

But these were "Tom Fool's colours"; and Laura kept a wise silence.

One day at geography, the pupils were required to copy the outline of the map of England. Laura, about to begin, found to her dismay that she had lost her pencil. To confess the loss meant one of the hard, public rebukes from which she shrank. And so, while the others drew, heads and backs bent low over their desks, she fidgeted and sought—on her [P.72] lap, the bench, the floor.

"What on earth's the matter?" asked her neighbour crossly; it was the black-haired boarder who had winked at Laura the first evening at tea; her name was Bertha Ramsey. "I can't draw a stroke if you shake like that."

"I've lost my pencil."

The girl considered Laura for a moment, then pushed the lid from a box of long, beautifully sharpened drawing-pencils. "Here, you can have one of these."

Laura eyed the well-filled box admiringly, and modestly selected the shortest pencil. Bertha Ramsay, having finished her map, leaned back in her seat.

"And next time you feel inclined to boo-hoo at the tea-table, hold on to your eyebrows and sing Rule Britannia.—DID it want its mummy, poor ickle sing?"

Here Bertha's chum, a girl called Inez, chimed in from the other side.

"It's all very well for you," she said to Bertha, in a deep, slow voice. "You're a weekly boarder."

Laura had the wish to be very pleasant, in return for the pencil. So she drew a sigh, and said, with over-emphasis: "How nice for your mother to have you home every week!"

Bertha only laughed at this, in a teasing way: "Yes, isn't it?" But Inez leaned across behind her and gave Laura a poke.

"Shut up!" she telegraphed.

"Who's talking down there?" came the governess's cry. "Here you, the new girl, Laura what's—your-name, come up to the map."

A huge map of England had been slung over an easel; Laura was required to take the pointer and show where Stafford lay. With the long stick in her hand, she stood stupid and confused. In this exigency, it did not help her that she knew, from hear-say, just how England looked; that she could see, in fancy, its ever-green grass, thick hedges, and spreading trees; its never-dry rivers; its hoary old cathedrals; its fogs, and sea-mists, and over-populous cities. She stood face to face with the most puzzling map in the world—a map seared and scored with boundary-lines, black and bristling with names. She could not have laid her finger on London at this moment, and as for Stafford, it might have been in the moon.

While the class straggled along the verandah at the end of the hour, Inez came up to Laura's side.

"I say, you shouldn't have said that about her mother." She nodded mysteriously.

"Why not?" asked Laura, and coloured at the thought that she had again, without knowing it, been guilty of a FAUX PAS.

Inez looked round to see that Bertha was not within hearing, then put her lips to Laura's ear.

"She drinks."

Laura gaped incredulous at the girl, her young eyes full of horror. From actual experience, she hardly knew what drunkenness meant; she had hitherto associated it only with the lowest class of Irish agricultural labourer, or with those dreadful white women who lived, by choice, in Chinese Camps. That there could exist a mother who drank was unthinkable . . . outside the bounds of nature.

"Oh, how awful!" she gasped, and turned pale with excitement. Inez could not help giggling at the effect produced by her words—the new girl was a 'rum stick' and no mistake—but as Laura's consternation persisted, she veered about

"Oh, well, I don't know for certain if that's it. But there's something awfully queer about her."

"Oh, HOW do you know?" asked her breathless listener, mastered by a morbid curiosity.

"I've been there—at Vaucluse—from a Saturday till Monday. She came in to lunch, and she only talked to herself, not to us. She tried to eat mustard with her pudding too, and her meat was cut up in little pieces for her. I guess if she'd had a knife she'd have cut our throats."

"Oh!" was all Laura could get out.

"I was so frightened my mother said I shouldn't go again."

"Oh, I hope she won't ask me. What shall I do if she does?"

"Look out, here she comes! Don't say a word. Bertha's awfully ashamed of it," said Inez, and Laura had just time to give a hasty promise.

"Hullo, you two, what are you gassing about?" cried Bertha, and dealt out a couple of her rough and friendly punches.—"I say, who's on for a race up the garden?"

They raced, all three, with flying plaits and curls, much kicking-up of long black legs, and a frank display of frills and tuckers. Laura won; for Inez's wind gave out half way, and Bertha was heavy of foot. Leaning against the palings Laura watched the latter come puffing up to join her—Bertha with the shameful secret in the background, of a mother who was not like other mothers.

Laura had been, for some six weeks or more, a listless and unsuccessful pupil, when one morning she received an invitation from Godmother to spend the coming monthly holiday—from Saturday till Monday—at Prahran. The month before, she had been one of the few girls who had nowhere to go; she had been forced to pretend that she liked staying in, did it in fact by preference.—Now her spirits rose.

Marina, Godmother's younger daughter, from whom Laura inherited her school-books, was to call for her. By a little after nine o'clock on Saturday morning, Laura had finished her weekly mending, tidied her bedroom, and was ready dressed even to her gloves. It was a cool, crisp day; and her heart beat high with expectation.

From the dining-hall, it was not possible to hear the ringing of the front-door bell; but each time either of the maids entered with a summons, Laura half rose from her chair, sure that her turn had come at last. But it was half-past nine, then ten, then half-past; it struck eleven, the best of the day was passing, and still Marina did not come. Only two girls besides herself remained. Then respectively an aunt and a mother were announced, and these two departed. Laura alone was left: she had to bear the disgrace of Miss Day observing: "Well, it looks as if YOUR friends had forgotten all about you, Laura."

Humiliated beyond measure, Laura had thoughts of tearing off her hat and jacket and declaring that she felt too ill to go out. But at last, when she was almost sick with suspense, Mary put her tidy head in once more.

"Miss Rambotham has been called for."

Laura was on her feet before the words were spoken. She sped to the reception-room.

Marina, a short, sleek-haired, soberly dressed girl of about twenty, had Godmother's brisk, matter-of-fact manner.

She offered Laura her cheek to kiss. "Well, I suppose you're ready now?"

Laura forgave her the past two hours. "Yes, quite, thank you," she answered.

They went down the asphalted path and through the garden-gate, and turned to walk townwards. For the first time since her arrival Laura was free again—a prisoner at large. Round them stretched the broad white streets of East Melbourne; at their side was the thick, exotic greenery of the Fitzroy Gardens; on the brow of the hill rose the massive proportions of the Roman Catholic Cathedral.—Laura could have danced, as she walked at Marina's side.

After a few queries, however, as to how she liked school and how she was getting on with her lessons, Marina fell to contemplating a strip of paper that she held in her hand. Laura gathered that her companion had combined the task of calling for her with a morning's shopping, and that she had only worked half through her list of commissions before arriving at the College. At the next corner they got on to the outside car of a cable-tramway, and were carried into town. Here Marina entered a co-operative grocery store, where she was going to give an order for a quarter's supplies. She was her mother's housekeeper, and had an incredible knowledge of groceries, as well as a severely practical mind: she stuck her finger-nail into butter, tasted cheeses off the blade of a knife, ran her hands through currants, nibbled biscuits, discussed brands of burgundy and desiccated soups—Laura meanwhile looking on, from a high, uncomfortable chair, with a somewhat hungry envy. When everything, down to pepper and salt, had been remembered, Marina filled in a cheque, and was just about to turn away when she recollected an affair of some empty cases, which she wished to send back. Another ten minutes' parley ensued; she had to see the manager, and was closeted with him in his office, so that by the time they emerged into the street again a full hour had gone by.

"Getting hungry?" she inquired of Laura.

"A little. But I can wait," answered Laura politely.

"That's right," said Marina, off whose own appetite the edge had no doubt been taken by her various nibblings. "Now there's only the chemist."

They rode to another street, entered a druggist's, and the same thing on a smaller scale was repeated, except that here Marina did no tasting, but for a stray gelatine or jujube. By the time the shop door closed behind them, Laura could almost have eaten liquorice powder. It was two o'clock, and she was faint with hunger.

"We'll be home in plenty of time," said Marina, consulting a neat watch. "Dinner's not till three today, because of father."

Again a tramway jerked them forward. Some half mile from their destination, Marina rose.

"We'll get out here. I have to call at the butcher's."

At a quarter to three, it was a very white-faced, exhausted little girl that followed her companion into the house.

"Well, I guess you'll have a fine healthy appetite for dinner," said Marina, as she showed her where to hang up her hat and wash her hands.

Godmother was equally optimistic. From the sofa of the morning-room, where she sat knitting, she said: "Well, YOU'VE had a fine morning's gadding about I must say! How are you? And how's your dear mother?"

"Quite well, thank you."

Godmother scratched her head with a spare needle, and the attention she had had for Laura evaporated. "I hope, Marina, you told Graves about those empty jam-jars he didn't take back last time?"

Marina, without lifting her eyes from a letter she was reading, returned: "Indeed I didn't. He made such a rumpus about the sugar-boxes that I thought I'd try to sell them to Petersen instead."

Godmother grunted, but did not question Marina's decision. "And what news have you from your dear mother?" she asked again, without looking at Laura—just as she never looked at the stocking she held, but always over the top of it.

Here, however, the dinner-bell rang, and Laura, spared the task of giving more superfluous information, followed the two ladies to the dining-room. The other members of the family were waiting at the table. Godmother's husband—he was a lawyer—was a morose, black-bearded man who, for the most part, kept his eyes fixed on his plate. Laura had heard it said that he and Godmother did not get on well together; she supposed this meant that they did not care to talk to each other, for they never exchanged a direct word: if they had to communicate, it was done by means of a third person. There was the elder daughter, Georgina, dumpier and still brusquer than Marina, the eldest son, a bank-clerk who was something of a dandy and did not waste civility on little girls; and lastly there were two boys, slightly younger than Laura, black-haired, pug-nosed, pugnacious little creatures, who stood in awe of their father, and were all the wilder when not under his eye.

Godmother mumbled a blessing; and the soup was eaten in silence.

During the meat course, the bank-clerk complained in extreme displeasure of the way the laundress had of late dressed his collars—these were so high that, as Laura was not slow to notice, he had to look straight down the two sides of his nose to see his plate—and announced that he would not be home for tea, as he had an appointment to meet some 'chappies' at five, and in the evening was going to take a lady friend to Brock's Fireworks. These particulars were received without comment. As the family plied its pudding-spoons, Georgina in her turn made a statement.

"Joey's coming to take me driving at four."

It looked as if this remark, too, would founder on the general indifference. Then Marina said warningly, as if recalling her parent's thoughts: "Mother!"

Awakened, Godmother jerked out: "Indeed and I hope if you go you'll take the boys with you!"

"Indeed and I don't see why we should!"

"Very well, then, you'll stop at home. If Joey doesn't choose to come to the point——-"

"Now hold your tongue, mother!"

"I'll do nothing of the sort."

"Crikey!" said the younger boy, Erwin, in a low voice. "Joey's got to take us riding."

"If you and Joey can't get yourselves properly engaged," snapped Godmother, "then you shan't go driving without the boys, and that's the end of it."

Like dogs barking at one another, thought Laura, listening to the loveless bandying of words—she was unused to the snappishness of the Irish manner, which sounds so much worse than it is meant to be: and she was chilled anew by it when, over the telephone, she heard Georgy holding a heated conversation with Joey.

He was a fat young man, with hanging cheeks, small eyes, and a lazy, lopsided walk.

"Hello—here's a little girl! What's HER name?—Say, this kiddy can come along too."