"Such carelessness! You girls would forget your heads if they weren"t screwed on," retorted the governess, in the dry, violent manner that made her universally disliked.
Thankful to escape with this, Laura picked out her book and hurried from the room.
But the thoughts of the group had been drawn to her.
"The greatest little oddity we"ve had here for some time," p.r.o.nounced Miss Day, pouting her full bust in decisive fashion.
"She is, indeed," agreed Miss Zielinski.
"I don"t know what sort of a place she comes from, I"m sure," continued the former: "but it must be the end of creation. She"s utterly no idea of what"s what, and as for her clothes they"re fit for a Punch and Judy show."
"She"s had no training either--stupid, I call her," chimed in one of the younger governesses, whose name was Miss Snodgra.s.s. "She doesn"t know the simplest things, and her spelling is awful. And yet, do you know, at history the other day, she wanted to hold forth about how London looked in Elizabeth"s reign--when she didn"t know a single one of the dates!"
"She can say some poetry," said Miss Zielinski. "And she"s read Scott."
One and all shook their heads at this, and Mrs. Gurley went on shaking hers and smiling grimly. "Ah! the way gels are brought up nowadays,"
she said. "There was no such thing in my time. We were made to learn what would be of some use and help to us afterwards."
Elderly Miss Chapman twiddled her chain. "I hope I did right Mrs.
Gurley. She had one week"s early practice, but she looked so white all day after it that I haven"t put her down for it again. I hope I did right?"
"Oh, well, we don"t want to have them ill, you know," replied Mrs.
Gurley, in the rather irresponsive tone she adopted towards Miss Chapman. "As long as it isn"t mere laziness."
"I don"t think she"s lazy," said Miss Chapman. "At least she takes great pains with her lessons at night."
This was true. Laura tried her utmost, with an industry born of despair. For the comforting a.s.surance of speedy promotion, which she had given Mother, had no root in fact. These early weeks only served to reduce, bit by bit, her belief in her own knowledge. How slender this was, and of how little use to her in her new state, she did not dare to confess even to herself. Her disillusionment had begun the day after her arrival, when Dr Pughson, the Headmaster, to whom she had gone to be examined in arithmetic, flung up hands of comical dismay at her befogged attempts to solve the mysteries of long division. An upper cla.s.s was taking a lesson in Euclid, and in the intervals between her mazy reckonings she had stolen glances at the master. A tiny little nose was as if squashed flat on his face, above a grotesquely expressive mouth, which displayed every one of a splendid set of teeth.
He had small, short-sighted, red-rimmed eyes, and curly hair which did not stop growing at his ears, but went on curling, closely cropped, down the sides of his face. He taught at the top of his voice, thumped the blackboard with a pointer, was biting at the expense of a pupil who confused the angle BFC with the angle BFG, a moment later to volley forth a broad Irish joke which convulsed the cla.s.s. He bewitched Laura; she forgot her sums in the delight of watching him; and this made her learning seem a little scantier than it actually was; for she had to wind up in a great hurry. He pounced down upon her; the cla.s.s laughed anew at his playful horror; and yet again at the remark that it was evident she had never had many pennies to spend, or she would know better what to do with the figures that represented them.--In these words Laura scented a reference to Mother"s small income, and grew as red as fire.
In the lowest cla.s.s in the College she sat bottom, for a week or more: what she did know, she knew in such an awkward form that she might as well have known nothing. And after a few efforts to better her condition she grew cautious, and hesitated discreetly before returning one of those ingenuous answers which, in the beginning, had made her the merry-andrew of the cla.s.s. She could for instance, read a French story-book without skipping very many words; but she had never heard a syllable of the language spoken, and her first attempts at p.r.o.nunciation caused even Miss Zielinski to sit back in her chair and laugh till the tears ran down her face. History Laura knew in a vague, pictorial way: she and Pin had enacted many a striking scene in the garden--such as "Not Angles but Angels," or, did the pump-drain overflow, Canute and his silly courtiers--and she also had out-of-the-way sc.r.a.ps of information about the characters of some of the monarchs, or, as the governess had complained, about the state of London at a certain period; but she had never troubled her head with dates. Now they rose before her, a hard, dry, black line from 1066 on, accompanied, not only by the kings who were the cause of them, but by dull laws, and their duller repeals. Her lessons in English alone gave her a mild pleasure; she enjoyed taking a sentence to pieces to see how it was made. She was fond of words, too, for their own sake, and once, when Miss Snodgra.s.s had occasion to use the term "eleemosynary", Laura was so enchanted by it that she sought to share her enthusiasm with her neighbour. This girl, a fat little Jewess, went crimson, from trying to stifle her laughter.
"What IS the matter with you girls down there?" cried Miss Snodgra.s.s.
"Carrie Isaacs, what are you laughing like that for?"
"It"s Laura Rambotham, Miss Snodgra.s.s. 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 Snodgra.s.s.
"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 cla.s.s rocked; even Miss Snodgra.s.s 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 gra.s.s, thick hedges, and spreading trees; its never-dry rivers; its h.o.a.ry 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 cla.s.s 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 a.s.sociated it only with the lowest cla.s.s 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 Sat.u.r.day 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."