So mind you write and tell us when you have another holiday"--and Isabella"s smile beamed out once more, none the less kindly because it was caught, on its way to Laura, by the gate they were pa.s.sing through.
Laura, whose mind was set on a good, satisfying slab of cake, promised to do this, although her feelings had suffered so great a change that she was not sure whether she would keep her word. She was pulled two ways: on the one side was the remembrance of Mr. Shepherd hacking cantankerously at the bare mutton-bone; on the other, the cherry-blossom and the mousmes of j.a.pan.
XVII.
OHNMACHT ZUR LUGE IST LANGE NOCH NICHT LIEBE ZUR WAHRHEIT.... WER NICHT LUGEN KANN, WEISS NICHT, WAS WAHRHEIT IST.
NIETZSCHE
A pantomime of knowing smiles and interrogatory grimaces greeted her, when, having brushed the cake-crumbs from her mouth, she joined her cla.s.s. For the twinkling of an eye Laura hesitated, being unprepared.
Then, however, as little able as a comic actor to resist pandering to the taste of the public, she yielded to this hunger for spicy happenings, and did what was expected of her: clapped her hands, one over the other, to her breast, and cast her eyes heavenwards. Curiosity and antic.i.p.ation reached a high pitch; while Laura, by tragically shaking her head, gave it to be understood that no signs could transmit what she had been through, since seeing her friends last.
In the thick of this message she was, unluckily, caught by Dr Pughson, who, after dealing her one of his butcherly gibes, bade her to the blackboard, to grapple with the Seventh Proposition.
The remainder of the forenoon was a tussle with lessons not glanced at since Friday night.--Besides, Laura seldom forestalled events by thinking over them, choosing rather to trust for inspiration to the spur of the moment.
Morning school at an end, she was laid hands on and hurried off to a retired corner of the garden. Here, four friends squatted round, determined to extract her adventures from her--to the last pip.
Laura was in a pretty pickle. Did she tell the plain truth, state the pedestrian facts--and this she would have been capable of doing with some address; for she had looked through her hosts with a perspicacity uncommon in a girl of her age; had once again put to good use those "sharp, unkind eyes" which Mother deplored. She had seen an overworked, underfed man, who nagged like any woman, and made slaves of two weak, adoring ladies; and she very well knew that, as often as her thoughts in future alighted on Mr. Robby, she would think of him pinching and s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g, with a hawk-like eye on a shadowy bishopric. Of her warm feelings for him, genuine or imaginary, not a speck remained. The first touch of reality had sunk them below her ken, just as a drop of cold water sinks the floating grounds in a coffee-pot ... But did she confess this, confess also that, save for a handful of monosyllables, her only exchange of words with him had been a line of Virgil; and, still more humbling, that she had liked his wife and sister better than himself: did this come to light, she would forfeit every sou of the prestige the visit had lent and yet promised to lend her. And, now that the possible moment for parting with this borrowed support had come, she recognised how greatly she had built on it.
These thoughts whizzed through her mind, as she darted a look at the four predatory faces that hemmed her in. Tilly"s was one of them: the lightly mocking smile sat on it that Laura had come to know so well, since her maladroit handling of Bob. She would kill that smile--and if she had to die for it herself.
Still, she must be cautious, wary in picking her steps. Especially as she had not the ghost of an idea how to begin.
Meanwhile cries of impatience buzzed round her.
"She doesn"t want to tell."
"Mean brute!"
"Shouldn"t wonder if it"s too dashed shady."
"Didn"t I SAY he was a bad "un?"
"I bet you there"s nothing to tell," said Tilly c.o.c.kily, and turned up her nose.
"Yes, there is," flung out Laura, at once put on the defensive, and as she spoke she coloured.
"Look at her! Look how red she"s got!"
"And after she promised--the sneak!"
"I"m not a sneak. I AM going to tell. But you"re all in such a blooming hurry."
"Oh, fire away, slow-coach!"
"Well, girls," began Laura gamely, breathing a little hard.--"But, mind, you must never utter a word of what I"m going to tell you. It"s a dead secret, and IF you let on----"
"S" help me G.o.d!"
"Ananias and Sapphira!"
"Oh, DO hurry up."
"Well ... well, he"s just the most--oh, I don"t know how to say it, girls--the MOST----"
"Just scrumptious, I suppose, eh?"
"Just positively scrumptious, and ..."
"And what"d he do?"
"And what about his old sketch of a wife?"
"Her? Oh"--and Laura squeezed herself desperately for the details that WOULD not come--"oh, why she"s just a perfect old ... old cat. And twenty years older than him."
"What on earth did he marry her for?"
"Guess he"s pretty sick of being tied to an old gin like that?"
"I should say! Perfectly MISERABLE. He can"t think now why he let himself be induced to marry her. He just despises her."
"Well, why in the name of all that"s holy did he take her?"
Laura cast a mysterious glance round, and lowered her voice. "Well, you see, she had LOTS of money and he had none. He was ever so poor. And she paid for him to be a clergyman."
"Go on! As poor as all that?"
"As poor as a church-mouse.--But, oh," she hastened to add, at the visible cooling-off of the four faces, "he comes of a MOST distinguished family. His father was a lord or a baronet or something like that, but he married a beautiful girl who hadn"t a penny against his father"s will and so he cut him out of his will."
"I say!"
"Oh, never mind the father."
"Yes. Well, now he feels under an awful obligation to her, and all that sort of thing, you know."
"And she drives it home, I bet. She looks a nipper."
"Is always throwing it in his face."
"What a ghoul!"
"He"d do just ANYTHING to get rid of her, but--Girls, it"s a dead secret; you must swear you won"t tell."