However that might be, the two girls, the big fair one and the little dark one, were, outside class-hours, seldom apart. Evelyn did not often, as in the case of the birdlike Lolo, give her young tyrant cause for offence; if she sometimes sought another's company, it was done in a roguish spirit—from a feminine desire to tease. Perhaps, too, she was at heart not averse to Laura's tantrums, or to testing her own power in quelling them. On the whole, though, she was very careful of her little friend's sensitive spots. She did not repeat the experiment of taking Laura out with her; as her stay at school drew to a close she went out less frequently herself; for the reason that, no matter how late it was on her getting back, she would find Laura obstinately sitting up in bed, wide-awake. And it went against the grain in her to keep the pale-faced girl from sleep.

On such occasions, while she undid her pretty muslin dress, unpinned the flowers she was never without, and loosened her gold-brown hair, which she had put up for the evening: while she undressed, Evelyn had to submit to a rigorous cross-examination. Laura demanded to know where she had been, what she had done, whom she had spoken to; and woe to her if she tried to shirk a question. Laura was not only jealous, she was extraordinarily suspicious; and the elder girl had need of all her laughing kindness to steer her way through the shallows of distrust. For a great doubt of Evelyn's sincerity had implanted itself in Laura's mind: she could not forget the incident of the "mostly fools"; and, after an evening of this kind, she never felt quite sure that Evelyn was not deceiving her afresh out of sheer goodness of heart, of course—by assuring her that she had had a "horrid time", been bored to death, and would have much preferred to stay with her; when the truth was that, in the company of some moustached idiot or other, she had enjoyed herself to the top of her bent.

On the night Laura learned that her friend had again met the loathly "Jim", there was a great to-do. In vain Evelyn laughed, reasoned, expostulated. Laura was inconsolable.

"Look here, Poppet," said Evelyn at last, and was so much in earnest that she laid her hairbrush down, and took Laura by both her bony little shoulders. "Look here, you surely don't expect me to be an old maid, do you?—ME?" The pronoun signified all she might not say: it meant wealth, youth, beauty, and an unbounded capacity for pleasure.

"Evvy, you're not going to MARRY that horrid man?"

"Of course not, goosey. But that doesn't mean that I'm never going to marry at all, does it?"

Laura supposed not—with a tremendous sniff.

"Well, then, what IS all the fuss about?"

It was not so easy to say. She was of course reconciled, she sobbed, to Evelyn marrying some day: only plain and stupid girls were left to be old maids: but it must not happen for years and years and years to come, and when it did, it must be to some one much older than herself, some one she did not greatly care for: in short, Evelyn was to marry only to escape the odium of the single life.

Having drawn this sketch of her future word by word from the weeping Laura, Evelyn fell into a fit of laughter which she could not stifle. "Well, Poppet," she said when she could speak, "if that's your idea of happiness for me, we'll postpone it just as long as ever we can. I'm all there. For I mean to have a good time first—a jolly good time—before I tie myself up for ever, world without end, amen."

"That's just what I hate so—your good time, as you call it," retorted Laura, smarting under the laughter.

"Everyone does, child. You'll be after it yourself when you're a little older."

"Me?—never!"

"Oh, yes, indeed you will."

"I won't. I hate men and I always shall. And oh, I thought"—with an upward, sobbing breath—"I thought you liked me best."

"Of course I like you, you silly child! But that's altogether different. And I don't like you any less because I enjoy having some fun with them, too."

"I don't want your old leavings!" said Laura savagely. It hurt, almost as much as having a tooth pulled out, did this knowledge that your friend's affection was wholly yours only as long as no man was in question. And out of the sting, Laura added: "Wait till I'm grown up, and I'll show them what I think of them—the pigs!"

This time Evelyn had to hold her hand in front of her mouth. "No, no, I don't mean to laugh at you. Come, be good now," she petted. "And you really must go to bed, Laura. It's past twelve o'clock, and that infernal machine'll be going off before you've had any sleep at all."

The "machine" was Laura's alarum, which ran down every night just now at two o'clock. For, if one thing was sure, it was that affairs with Laura were in a sorry muddle. In this, the last and most momentous year of her school life, at the close of which, like a steep wall to be scaled, rose the university examination, she was behindhand with her work, and occupied a mediocre place in her class. So steadfastly was her attention pitched on Evelyn that she could link it to nothing else: in the middle of an important task, her thoughts would stray to contemplate her friend or wonder what she was doing; while, if Evelyn were out for the evening, Laura gave up her meagre pretence of study altogether, and moodily propped her head in her hand. This was why she had hit on the small hours for the necessary cramming; then, there were no distractions: the great house was as still as an empty church; and Evelyn lay safe and sound before her. So, punctually at two o'clock Laura was startled, with a pounding heart, out of her first sleep; and lighting the gas she sat up in bed and pored over her books. Evelyn was not disturbed by the light, or at least she did not complain; and it was certainly a famous time for committing things to memory: the subsequent hours of sleep seemed rather to etch the facts into your brain than to blur them.

You cannot however rob Peter to pay Paul, with impunity, and in the weeks that followed, despite her nightly industry, Laura made no headway.

As the term tapered to an end, things went from bad to worse with her; and since, besides, the parting with Evelyn was at the door, she was often to be seen with red-rimmed eyelids, which she did not even try to conceal.

"As if she'd lost her nearest relation!" laughed her school-fellows. And did they meet her privately, on the stairs or in a house-corridor, they crossed their hands on their breasts and turned up their eyes, in tragedy-fashion.

Laura hardly saw them; for once in her life ridicule could not have her. The nearer the time drew, the more completely did the coming loss of Evelyn push other considerations into the background. It was bitter to reflect that her present dear friendship had no more strength to endure than the thin pretences of friendship she had hitherto played at. Evelyn and she would, no doubt, from time to time meet and take pleasure in each other again; but their homes lay hundreds of miles apart; and the intimacy of the schooldays was passing away, never to return. And no one could be held to blame for this. Evelyn's mother and father thought, rightly enough, that it was time for their daughter to leave school—but that was all. They did not really miss her, or need her. No, it was just a stupid, crushing piece of ill-luck, which happened one did not know why. The ready rebel in Laura sprang into being again; and she fought hard against the lesson that there are events in life—bitter, grim, and grotesque events—beneath which one can only bow one's head.—A further effect of the approaching separation was to bring home to her a sense of the fleetingness of things; she began to grasp that, everywhere and always, even while you revelled in them, things were perpetually rushing to a close; and the fact of them being things you loved, or enjoyed, was powerless to diminish the speed at which they escaped you.

Of course, though, these were sensations rather than thoughts; and they did not hinder Laura from going on her knees to Evelyn, to implore her to remain. Day after day Evelyn kindly and patiently explained why this could not be; and if she sometimes drew a sigh at the child's persistence, it was too faint to be audible. Now Laura knew that it was possible to kill animal-pets by surfeiting them; and, towards the end, a suspicion dawned on her that you might perhaps damage feelings in the same way. It stood to reason: no matter how fond two people were of each other, the one who was about to emerge, like a butterfly from its sheath, could not be asked to regret her release; and, at moments—when Laura lay sobbing face downwards on her bed, or otherwise vented her pertinacious and disruly grief—at these moments she thought she scented a dash of relief in Evelyn, at the prospect of deliverance.

But such delicate hints on the part of the hidden self are rarely able to gain a hearing; and, as the days dropped off one by one, like over-ripe fruit, Laura surrendered herself more and more blindly to her emotions. The consequence was, M. P.'s prediction came true: in the test-examinations which took place at midwinter, Laura, together with the few dunces of her class, was ignominiously plucked. And still staggering under this blow, she had to kiss Evelyn good-bye, and to set her face for home.



XXIV.

WAS MICH NICHT UMBRINGT, MACHT MICH STARKER.

NIETZSCHE

Mother did not know or understand anything about "tests"; and Laura had no idea of enlightening her. She held her peace, and throughout the holidays hugged her disgraceful secret to her, untold. She had never before failed to pass an examination, having always lightly skimmed the surface of them on the wings of her parrot-like memory; hence, at home no one suspected that anything was amiss with her. The knowledge weighed the more heavily on her own mind. And, as if her other troubles were not enough, she was now beset by nervous fears about the future. She saw chiefly rocks ahead. If she did not succeed in getting through the final examination in summer, she would not be allowed to present herself for matriculation, and, did this happen, there would be the very devil to pay. All her schooling would, in Mother's eyes, have been for naught. For Mother was one of those people who laid tremendous weight on prizes and examinations, as offering a tangible proof that your time had not been wasted or misspent. Besides this, she could not afford in the event of a failure, to pay the school-fees for another year. The money which, by hook and by crook, had been scraped together and hoarded up for Laura's education was now coming to an end; as it was, the next six months would mean a terrible pinching and screwing. The other children, too, were growing day by day more costly; their little minds and bodies clamoured for a larger share of attention. And Laura's eyes were rudely opened to the struggle Mother had had to make both ends meet, while her first-born was acquiring wisdom; for Mother spoke of it herself, spoke openly of her means and resources, perhaps with some idea of rousing in Laura a gratitude that had so far been dormant.

If this was her intention she failed. Laura was much too fast entangled in her own troubles, to have leisure for such a costly feeling as gratitude; and Mother's outspokenness only added a fresh weight to her pack. It seemed as if everybody and everything were ranged against her; and guilty, careworn, lonely, she shrank into her shell. About school affairs she again kept her lips shut, enduring, like a stubborn martyr, the epithets "close" and "deceitful" this reticence earned her. Her time was spent in writing endless, scrawly letters to Evelyn, which covered days; in sitting moodily at the top of the fir tree which she climbed in defiance of her length of petticoat glaring at sunsets, and brooding on dead delights; in taking long, solitary, evening walks, by choice on the heel of a thunderstorm, when the red earth was riddled by creeklets of running water; till Mother, haunted by a lively fear of encounters with "swags" or Chinamen, put her foot down and forbade them.

Sufferers are seldom sweet-tempered; and Laura formed no exception. Pin, her most frequent companion, had to bear the brunt of her acrimony: hence the two were soon at war again. For Pin was tactless, and took small heed of her sister's grumpy moods, save to cavil at them. Laura's buttoned-upness, for instance, and her love of solitude, were perverse leanings to Pin's mind; and she spoke out against them with the assurance of one who has public opinion at his back. Laura retaliated by falling foul of little personal traits in Pin: a nervous habit she had of clearing her throat—her very walk. They quarrelled passionately, having branched as far apart as the end-points of what is ultimately to be a triangle, between which the connecting lines have not yet been drawn.

Sometimes they even came to blows.

"I'll fetch your ma to you—that I will!" threatened Sarah, called by the noise of the scuffle. "Great girls like you—fightin' like bandicoots! You ought to be downright ashamed o' yourselves."

"I don't know what's come over you two, I'm sure," scolded Mother, when the combatants had been parted and brought before her in the kitchen, where she was rolling pastry. "You never used to go on like this.—Pin, stop that noise. Do you want to deafen me?"

"She hit me first," sobbed Pin. "It's always Laura who begins."

"I'll teach her to cheek me like that!"

"Well, all I can say is," said Mother exasperated, and pushed a lock of hair off her perspiring forehead with the back of her hand. "All I say is, big girls as you are, you deserve to have the nonsense whipped out of you.—As for you, Laura, if this is your only return for all the money I've spent on you, then I wish from my heart you'd never seen the inside of that Melbourne school."

"How pretty your eyes look, mother, when your eyelashes get floury!" said Laura, struck by the vivid contrast of black and white. She merely stated the fact, without intent to flatter, her anger being given to puffing out as suddenly as it kindled.

"Oh, get along with you!" said Mother, at the same time skilfully lifting and turning a large, thin sheet of paste. "You can't get round ME like that."

"You used to have nice, ladylike manners," she said on another occasion, when Laura, summoned to the drawingroom to see a visitor, had in Mother's eyes disgraced them both. "Now, you've no more idea how to behave than a country bumpkin. You sit there, like a stock or a stone, as if you didn't know how to open your mouth."—Mother was very cross.

"I didn't want to see that old frump anyhow," retorted Laura, who inclined to charge the inhabitants of the township with an extreme provinciality. "And what else was there to say, but yes or no? She asked me all things I didn't know anything about. You don't want me to tell stories, I suppose?"

"Well, if a child of mine doesn't know the difference between being polite and telling stories," said Mother, completely outraged, "then, all I can say is, it's a ... a great shame!" she wound up lamely, after the fashion of hot-tempered people who begin a sentence without being clear how they are going to end it.—"You were a nice enough child once. If only I'd never let you leave home."

This jeremiad was repeated by Mother and chorused by the rest till Laura grew incensed. She was roused to defend her present self, at the cost of her past perfections; and this gave rise to new dissensions.

So that in spite of what she had to face at school, she was not altogether sorry, when the time came, to turn her back on her unknowing and hence unsympathetic relations. She journeyed to Melbourne on one of those pleasant winter days when the sun shines from morning till night in a cloudless sky, and the chief mark of the season is the extraordinary greenness of the grass; returned a pale, determined, lanky girl, full of the grimmest resolutions.

The first few days were like a bad dream. The absence of Evelyn came home to her in all its crushing force. A gap yawned drearily where Evelyn had been—but then, she had been everywhere. There was now a kind of emptiness about the great school—except for memories, which cropped up at each turn. Laura was in a strange room, with strange, indifferent girls; and for a time she felt as lonely as she had done in those unthinkable days when she was still the poor little green "new chum".

Her companions were not wilfully unkind to her—her last extravagance had been foolish, not criminal—and two or three were even sorry for the woebegone figure she cut. But her idolatrous attachment to Evelyn had been the means of again drawing round her one of those magic circles, which held her schoolfellows at a distance. And the aroma of her eccentricity still clung to her. The members of her class were deep in study, too; little was now thought or spoken of but the approaching examinations. And her first grief over, Laura set her teeth and flung herself on her lessons like a dog on a bone, endeavouring to pack the conscientious work of twelve months into less than six.

The days were feverish with energy. But at night the loneliness returned, and was only the more intense because, for some hours on end, she had been able to forget it.

On one such night when she lay wakeful, haunted by the prospect of failure, she turned over the leaves of her Bible—she had been memorising her weekly portion—and read, not as a school-task, but for herself. By chance she lighted on the Fourteenth Chapter of St John, and the familiar, honey-sweet words fell on her heart like caresses. Her tears flowed; both at the beauty of the language and out of pity for herself; and before she closed the Book, she knew that she had found a well of comfort that would never run dry.

In spite of a certain flabbiness in its outward expression, deep down in Laura the supreme faith of childhood still dwelt intact: she believed, with her whole heart, in the existence of an all-knowing God, and just as implicitly in His perfect power to succour His human children at will. But thus far on her way she had not greatly needed Him: at the most, she had had recourse to Him for forgiveness of sin. Now, however, the sudden withdrawal of a warm, human sympathy seemed to open up a new use for Him. An aching void was in her and about her; it was for Him to fill this void with the riches of His love.—And she comforted herself for her previous lack of warmth, by the reminder that His need also was chiefly of the heavy-laden and oppressed.

In the spurt of intense religious fervour that now set in for her, it was to Christ she turned by preference, rather than to the remoter God the Father. For of the latter she carried a kind of Michelangelesque picture in her brain: that of an old, old man with a flowing grey beard, who sat, Turk-fashion, one hand plucking at this beard, the other lying negligently across His knees. Christ, on the contrary, was a young man, kindly of face, and full of tender invitation.

To this younger, tenderer God, she proffered long and glowing prayers, which vied with one another in devoutness. Soon she felt herself led by Him, felt herself a favourite lying on His breast; and, as the days went by, her ardour so increased that she could not longer consume the smoke of her own fire: it overspread her daily life—to the renewed embarrassment of her schoolfellows. Was it then impossible, they asked themselves, for Laura Rambotham to do anything in a decorous and ladylike way. Must she at every step put them out of countenance? It was not respectable to be so fervent. Religion, felt they, should be practised with modesty; be worn like an indispensable but private garment. Whereas she committed the gross error in taste of, as it were, parading it outside her other clothes.

Laura, her thoughts turned heavenwards, did not look low enough to detect the distaste in her comrades' eyes. The farther she spun herself into her intimacy with the Deity, the more indifferent did she grow to the people and things of this world.

Weeks passed. Her feelings, in the beginning a mere blissful certainty that God was Love and she was God's, ceased to be wholly passive. Thus, her first satisfaction at her supposed election was soon ousted by self-righteousness, did she contemplate her unremitting devotion. And one night, when her own eloquence at prayer had brought the moisture to her eyes—one night the inspiration fell. Throughout these weeks, she had faithfully worshipped God without asking so much as a pin's head from Him in return; she had given freely; all she had, had been His. Now the time had surely come when she might claim to be rewarded. Now it was for Him to show that He had appreciated her homage.—Oh, it was so easy a thing for Him to help her, if He would ... if He only would!

Pressing her fingers to her eyeballs till the starry blindness was effected that induces ecstasy, she prostrated herself before the mercy-seat, not omitting, at this crisis, to conciliate the Almighty by laying stress on her own exceeding unworthiness.

"Oh, dear Lord Jesus, have mercy upon me, miserable sinner! Oh, Christ, I ask Thy humble pardon! For I have been weak, Lord, and have forgotten to serve Thy Holy Name. My thoughts have erred and strayed like ... like lost sheep. But loved Thee, Jesus, all the time, my heart seemed full as it would hold ... no, I didn't mean to say that. But I was not ever thus, nor prayed that Thou shouldst lead me on. But now, dear Jesus, if Thou wilt only grant me my desire, I will never forget Thee or be false to Thee again. I will love Thee and serve Thee, all the days of my life, till death us do ... I mean, only let me pass my examinations, Lord, and there is nothing I will not do for Thee in return. Oh, dear Lord Jesus, Son of Mary, hear my prayer, and I will worship Thee and adore Thee, and never forget Thee, and that Thou hast died to save me! Grant me this my prayer, Lord, for Christ's sake, Amen."

It came to this: Laura made a kind of pact with God, in which His aid at the present juncture guaranteed her continued, unswerving allegiance.

The idea once lodged in her mind, she wrestled with Him night after night, filling His ears with her petitions, and remaining on her knees for such an immoderate length of time that her room-mates, who were sleepy, openly expressed their impatience.

"Oh, draw it mild, Laura!" said the girl in the neighbouring bed, when it began to seem as if the supplicant would never rise to her feet again. "Leave something to ask Him to-morrow."

But Laura, knowing very well that the Lord our God is a jealous God, was mindful not to scrimp in lip-service, or to shirk the minutest ceremony by means of which He might be propitiated and won over. Her prayers of greeting and farewell, on entering and leaving church, were drawn out beyond anyone else's; she did not doze or dream over a single clause of the Litany, with its hypnotising refrain; and she not only made the sign of the Cross at the appropriate place in the Creed, but also privately at every mention of Christ's name.

Meanwhile, of course, she worked at her lessons with unflagging zeal, for it was by no means her intention to throw the whole onus of her success on the Divine shoulders. She overworked; and on one occasion had a distressing lapse of memory.

And at length spring was gone and summer come, and the momentous week arrived on which her future depended. Now, though, she was not alone in her trepidation. The eyes of even the surest members of the form had a steely glint in them, and mouths were hard. Dr. Pughson's papers were said to be far more formidable than the public examination: if you got happily through these, you were safe.

Six subjects were compulsory; high-steppers took nine. Laura was one of those with eight, and since her two obligatory mathematics were not to be relied on, she could not afford to fail in a single subject.

In the beginning, things, with the exception of numbers, went pretty well with her. Then came the final day, and with it the examination in history. Up to the present year Laura had cut a dash in history; now her brain was muddled, her memory overtaxed, by her having had to cram the whole of Green's HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE in a few months, besides a large dose of GREECE and ROME. Reports ran of the exceptionally "catchy" nature of Dr Pughson's questions; and Laura's prayer, the night before, was more like a threat than a supplication. The class had only just entered the Headmaster's room on the eventful morning, and begun to choose desks, when there came a summons to Laura to take a music-lesson. This was outside consideration, and Dr Pughson made short work of the intruder—a red-haired little girl, who blushed meekly and unbecomingly, and withdrew. Here, however, Laura rose and declared that, under these circumstances, some explanation was due to Monsieur Boehmer, the music-master, to-day's lesson being in fact a rehearsal for the annual concert.

Dr Pughson raised his red-rimmed eyes from his desk and looked very fierce.

"Tch, tch, tch!" he snapped, in the genial Irish fashion that made him dreaded and adored. "How like a woman that is! Playing at concerts when she can't add two and two together!—Your arithmetic paper's fit for PUNCH, Miss Rambotham."

The smile he looked for went round.

"Have you seen the questions?—no? Well, give them here then. You've got to go, I suppose, or we might deprive the concert of your shining light.—Hurry back, now. Stir your stumps!"

But this Laura had no intention of doing. In handling the printed slip, her lagging eye had caught the last and most vital question: "Give a full account of Oliver Cromwell's Foreign Policy."—And she did not know it! She dragged out her interview with the music-master, put questions wide of the point, insisted on lingering till he had arranged another hour for the postponed rehearsal; and, as she walked, as she talked, as she listened to Monsieur Boehmer's ridiculous English, she strove in vain to recall jot or tittle of Oliver's relations to foreign powers.—Oh, for just a peep at the particular page of Green! For, if once she got her cue, she believed she could go on.

The dining-hall was empty when she went through it on her way back to the classroom: her history looked lovingly at her from its place on the shelf. But she did not dare to go over to it, take it out, and turn up the passage: that was too risky. What she did do, however, when she had almost reached the door, was to dash back, pull out a synopsis—[P.262] a slender, medium-sized volume—and hastily and clumsily button this inside the bodice of her dress. The square, board-like appearance it gave her figure, where it projected beyond the sides of her apron, she concealed by hunching her shoulders.

Her lightning plan was, to enter a cloakroom, snatch a hurried peep at Oliver's confounded policy, then hide the book somewhere till the examination was over. But on emerging from the dining-hall she all but collided with the secretary, who had come noiselessly across the verandah; and she was so overcome by the thought of the danger she had run, and by Miss Blount's extreme surprise at Dr Pughson's leniency, that she allowed herself to be driven back to the examination-room without a word.

The girls were hard at it; they scarcely glanced up when she opened the door. From her friends' looks, she could judge of the success they were having. Cupid, for instance, was smirking to herself in the peculiar fashion that meant satisfaction; M. P.'s cheeks were the colour of monthly roses. And soon Laura, crouching low to cover her deformity, was at work like the rest.

Had only Oliver Cromwell never been born!—thus she reflected, when she had got the easier part of the paper behind her. Why could it not have been a question about Bourke and Wills, or the Eureka Stockade, or the voyages of Captain Cook? ... something about one's own country, that one had heard hundreds of times and was really interested in. Or a big, arresting thing like the Retreat of the Ten Thousand, or Hannibal's March over the Alps? Who cared for old Oliver, and his shorn head, and his contempt for baubles! What did it matter now to anyone what his attitude had been, more than two hundred years ago, to all those far-away, dream-like countries? ... Desperately she pressed her hand to her eyes. She knew the very page of Green on which Cromwell's foreign relations were set forth; knew where the paragraph began, near the foot of the page: what she could not get hold of was the opening sentence that would have set her mechanical memory a-rolling.

The two hours drew steadily to a close. About half an hour beforehand the weakest candidates began to rise, to hand in their papers and leave the room; but it was not till ten minutes to twelve that the "crack" girls stopped writing. Laura was to be allowed an extra twenty minutes, and it was on this she relied. At last, she was alone with the master. But though he was already dipping into the examination-papers, he was not safe. She had unbuttoned two buttons and was at a third, when he looked up so unexpectedly that she was scared out of her senses, and fastened her dress again with all the haste she could. Three or four of the precious minutes were lost.

At this point, the door opened and Mr. Strachey strode into the room. Dr Pughson blinked up from the stacks of papers, rose, and the two spoke in low tones. Then, with a glance at Laura, they went together to the door, which Dr Pughson held to behind him, and stood just over the threshold. As they warmed to their talk, the master let the door slip into the latch.

Laura could see them from where she sat, without being seen. A moment later they moved stealthily away, going down the verandah in the direction of the office.

Now for it! With palsied hands she undid her bodice, clutched at the book, forced her blurred eyes to find the page, and ran them over it. A brief survey: five or six heads to remember: a few dates. Flapped to again; tucked under her apron; shoved into her bosom.

And not a second too soon. There he came, hurrying back. And three buttons were still undone. But Laura's head was bent over her desk: though her heart was pummelling her ribs, her pen now ran like lightning; and by the time the order to stop was given, she had covered the requisite number of sheets. Afterwards she had adroitly to rid herself of the book, then to take part—a rather pale-eyed, distracted part—in the lively technical discussions that ensued; when each candidate was as long-winded on the theme of her success, or non-success, as a card-player on his hand at the end of a round. Directly she could make good her escape, she pleaded a headache, climbed to her bedroom and stretched herself flat on her bed. She was through—but at what a cost! She felt quite sore. Her very bones seemed to hurt her.

Not till she was thoroughly rested, and till she had assured herself that all risk attaching to the incident was over, did she come to reflect on the part God had played in the business. And then, it must be admitted, she found it a sorry one. Just at first, indeed, her limpid faith was shocked into a reluctance to believe that He had helped her at all: His manner of doing it would have been so inexpressibly mean. But, little by little, she dug deeper, and eventually she reached the [P.265] conclusion that He had given her the option of this way, throwing it open to her and then standing back and watching to see what she would do, without so much as raising an eyelid to influence her decision. In fact, the more she pondered over it, the more inclined she grew to think that it had been a kind of snare on the part of God, to trap her afresh into sin, and thus to prolong her dependence on Him after her crying need was past. But, if this were true, if He had done this, then He must LIKE people to remain miserable sinners, so that He might have them always crawling to His feet. And from this view of the case her ingenuous young mind shrank appalled. She could not go on loving and worshipping a God who was capable of double dealing; who could behave in such a "mean, Jewy fashion". Nor would she ever forget His having forced her to endure the moments of torture she had come through that day.

Lying on her bed, she grappled with these thoughts. A feeling of deep resentment was their abiding result. Whatever His aim, it had been past expression pitiless of Him, Him who had at His command thousands of pleasanter ways in which to help her, thus to drive a poor unhappy girl to extremities: one, too, whose petition had not been prompted by selfish ends alone. What she had implored of Him touched Mother even more nearly than herself: her part prayer to Him had been to save Mother—whose happiness depended on things like examinations—from a bitter disappointment. That much at least He had done—she would give Him His due—but at the expense of her entire self-respect. Oh, He must have a cold, calculating heart ... could one only see right down into it. The tale of His clemency and compassion, which the Bible told, was not to be interpreted literally: when one came to think of it, had He ever—outside the Bible—been known to stoop from His judgment-seat, and lovingly and kindly intervene? It was her own absurd mistake: she had taken the promises made through His Son, for gospel truth; had thought He really meant what He said, about rewarding those who were faithful to Him. Her companions—the companions on whom, from the heights of her piety, she had looked pityingly down—were wiser than she. They did not abase themselves before Him, and vow a lifelong devotion; but neither did they make any but the most approved demands on Him. They satisfied their consciences by paying Him lip-homage, by confessing their sins, and by asking for a vague, far-distant mercy, to which they attached no great importance. Hence, they never came into fierce personal conflict with Him. Nor would she, ever again; from this time forward, she would rival the rest in lukewarmness.—But, before she could put this resolve into force, she had to let her first indignation subside: only then was it possible for her to recover the shattering of her faith, and settle down to practise religion after the glib and shallow mode of her friends. She did not, however, say her prayers that night, or for many a right to come; and when, at church, Christ's name occurred in the Service, she held her head erect, and shut the ears and eyes of her soul.



XXV.

IHR LERNTET ALLE NICHT TANZEN, WIE MAN TANZEN MUSS—UBER EUCH HINWEG TANZEN!

NIETZSCHE

The school year had ebbed; the ceremonies that attended its conclusion were over. A few days beforehand, the fifth-form boarders, under the tutelage of a couple of governesses, drove off early in the morning to the distant university. On the outward journey the candidates were thoughtful and subdued; but as they returned home, in the late afternoon, their spirits were not to be kept within seemly bounds. They laughed, sang, and rollicked about inside the wagonette, Miss Zielinski weakly protesting unheard—were so rowdy that the driver pushed his cigar-stump to the corner of his mouth, to be able to smile at ease, and flicked his old horse into a canter. For the public examination had proved as anticipated, child's play, compared with what the class had been through at Dr Pughson's hands; and its accompanying details were of an agreeable nature: the weather was not too hot; the examination-hall was light and airy; through the flung-back windows trees and flowering shrubs looked in; the students were watched over by a handsome Trinity man, who laid his straw hat on the desk before him.

Then came the annual concert, at which none of the performers broke down; Speech Day, when the body of a big hall was crowded with relatives and friends, and when so many white, blue-beribboned frocks were massed together on the platform, that this looked like a great bed of blue and white flowers; and, finally, trunks were brought out from boxrooms and strewn through the floors, and upper-form girls emptied cupboards and drawers into them for the last time.

On the evening before the general dispersion, Laura, Cupid, and M. P. walked the well-known paths of the garden once again. While the two elder girls were more loquacious than their wont, Laura was quieter. She had never wholly recovered her humour since the day of the history-examination; and she still could not look back, with composure, on the jeopardy in which she had placed herself one little turn of the wheel in the wrong direction, and the end of her schooldays would have been shame and disgrace.—And just as her discovery of God's stratagem had damped her religious ardour, so her antipathy to the means she had been obliged to employ had left a feeling of enmity in her, towards the school and everything connected with it: she had counted the hours till she could turn her back on it altogether. None the less, now that the time had come there was a kind of ache in her at having to say good-bye; for it was in her nature to let go unwillingly of things, places and people once known. Besides, glad as she felt to have done with learning, she was unclear what was to come next. The idea of life at home attracted her as little as ever—Mother had even begun to hint as well that she would now be expected to instruct her young brothers. Hence, her parting was effected with very mixed feelings; she did not know in the least where she really belonged, or under what conditions she would be happy; she was conscious only of a mild sorrow at having to take leave of the shelter of years.

Her two companions had no such doubts and regrets; for them the past was already dead and gone; their talk was all of the future, so soon to become the present. They forecast this, mapping it out for themselves with the iron belief in their power to do so, which is the hall-mark of youth.

Laura, walking at their side, listened to their words with the deepest interest, and with the reverence she had learned to extend to all opinions save her own.

M. P. proposed to return to Melbourne at the end of the vacation; for she was going on to Trinity, where she intended to take one degree after another. She hesitated only whether it was to be in medicine or arts.

"Oogh! ... to cut off people's legs!" ejaculated Laura. "M. P., how awful."

"Oh, one soon gets used to that, child.—But I think, on the whole, I should prefer to take up teaching. Then I shall probably be able to have a school of my own some day."

"I shouldn't wonder if you got Sandy's place here," said Laura, who was assured that M. P.'s massy intellect would open all doors.

"Who knows?" answered Mary, and set her lips in a determined fashion of her own. "Stranger things have happened."

Cupid, less enamoured of continual discipline, intended to be a writer. "My cousin says I've got the stuff in me. And he's a journalist and ought to know."

"I should rather think he ought."

"Well, I mean to have a shot at it."

"And you, Laura?" M. P. asked suavely.

"Me?—Oh, goodness knows!"

"Close as usual, Infant."

"No, really not, Cupid."

"Well, you'll soon have to make up your mind to something now. You're nearly sixteen.—Why not go on working for your B.A.?"

"No thanks! I've had enough of that here." And Laura's thoughts waved their hands, as it were, to the receding figure of Oliver Cromwell.

"Be a teacher, then."

"M.P.! I never want to hear a date or add up a column of figures again."

"Laura!"

"It's the solemn truth. I'm fed up with all those blessed things."

"Fancy not having a single wish!"

"Wish? ... oh, I've tons of wishes. First I want to be with Evvy again. And then, I want to see things—yes, that most of all. Hundreds and thousands of things. People, and places, and what they eat, and how they dress, and China, and Japan ... just tons."

"You'll have to hook a millionaire for that, my dear."

"And perhaps you'll write a book about your travels for us stay-at-homes."

"Gracious! I shouldn't know how to begin. But you'll send me all you write—all YOUR books—won't you, Cupid? And, M. P., you'll let me come and see you get your degrees—every single one."

With these and similar promises the three girls parted. They never met again. For a time they exchanged letters regularly, many-sheeted letters, full of familiar, personal detail. Then the detail ceased, the pages grew fewer in number, the time-gap longer. Letters in turn gave place to mere notes and postcards, scribbled in violent haste, at wide intervals. And ultimately even these ceased; and the great silence of separation was unbroken. Nor were the promises redeemed: there came to Laura neither gifts of books nor calls to be present at academic robings. Within six months of leaving school, M. P. married and settled down in her native township; and thereafter she was forced to adjust the rate of her progress to the steps of halting little feet. Cupid went a-governessing, and spent the best years of her life in the obscurity of the bush.

And Laura? ... In Laura's case, no kindly Atropos snipped the thread of her aspirations: these, large, vague, extemporary, one and all achieved fulfilment; then withered off to make room for more. But this, the future still securely hid from her. She went out from school with the uncomfortable sense of being a square peg, which fitted into none of the round holes of her world; the wisdom she had got, the experience she was richer by, had, in the process of equipping her for life, merely seemed to disclose her unfitness. She could not then know that, even for the squarest peg, the right hole may ultimately be found; seeming unfitness prove to be only another aspect of a peculiar and special fitness. But, of the after years, and what they brought her, it is not the purport of this little book to tell. It is enough to say: many a day came and went before she grasped that, oftentimes, just those mortals who feel cramped and unsure in the conduct of everyday life, will find themselves to rights, with astounding ease, in that freer, more spacious world where no practical considerations hamper, and where the creatures that inhabit dance to their tune: the world where are stored up men's best thoughts, the hopes, and fancies; where the shadow is the substance, and the multitude of business pales before the dream.

In the meantime, however, the exodus of the fifty-five turned the College upside-down.

Early the following morning Laura made her final preparations for departure. This, alas! was not to be on so imposing a scale as the departures of her schoolfellows. They, under special escort, would have a cab apiece, and would drive off with flying handkerchiefs and all their luggage piled high in front. Whereas Laura's box had gone by van: for she and Pin, who was in Melbourne on a visit, were to spend a couple of days at Godmother's before starting up-country. Even her farewells, which she had often rehearsed to herself with dramatic emphasis, went off without eclat. Except for Miss Chapman, the governesses were absent when the moment came, and Miss Chapman's mind was so full of other things that she went on giving orders while she was shaking hands.

But Laura was not destined to leave the walls, within the shadow of which she had learned so much, as tamely as all this. There was still a surprise in waiting for her. As she whisked about the corridors in search of Mrs. Gurley, she met two girls, one of whom said: "I say, Laura Rambotham, you're fetched. Your pretty sister's come for you."

"My ... who?" gaped Laura.

"Your sister. By gum, there's a nose for you—and those whopping eyes! You'll have to play second fiddle to THAT, all your days, my dear."

On entering the reception-room Laura tried hard to see Pin with the eyes of a stranger. Pin rose from her chair—awkwardly, of course, for there were other people present, and Laura's violent stare was disconcerting in the extreme: it made Pin believe her hat was crooked, or that she had a black speck on her nose. As for Laura, she could see no great change in her sister; the freckles were certainly paler, and the features were perhaps beginning to emerge a little, from the cushiony fat in which they were bedded; but that was all. Still, if outsiders, girls in particular, were struck by it ...

A keener stab than this—really, she did not grudge Pin being pretty: it was only the newness of the thing that hurt—a keener stab was it that, though she had ordered Pin repeatedly, and with all the stress she was master of, to come in a wagonette to fetch her, so that she might at least drive away like the other girls; in spite of this, the little nincompoop had after all arrived on foot. Godmother had said the idea of driving was stuff and nonsense—a quite unnecessary expense. Pin, of course, had meekly given in; and thus Laura's last brave attempt to be comfortably like her companions came to naught. She went out of the school in the same odd and undignified fashion in which she had lived there.

The wrangle caused by Pin's chicken-heartedness lasted the sisters down the garden-path, across the road, and over into the precincts of a large, public park. Only when they were some distance through this, did Laura wake to what was happening to her. Then, it came over her with a rush: she was free, absolutely free; she might do any mortal thing she chose.

As a beginning she stopped short.

"Hold on, Pin ... take this," she said, giving her sister the heavy leather bag they were carrying in turns to the tramway. Pin obediently held out her hand, in its little white cotton glove.

"And my hat."

"What are you going to do, Laura?"

"You'll see."

"You'll get sunstroke!"

"Fiddles!—it's quite shady. Here're my gloves.—Now, Pin, you follow your nose and you'll find me—WHERE you find me!"

"Oh, what ARE you going to do, Laura?" cried Pin, in anxiety.

"I'm going to have a good run," said Laura; and tightened her hair-ribbon.

"Oh, but you can't run in the street! You're too big. People'll see you."

"Think I care?—If you'd been years only doing what you were allowed to, I guess you'd want to do something you weren't allowed to, too.— Good-bye!"

She was off, had darted away into the leaden heat of the December morning, like an arrow from its bow, her head bent, her arms close to her sides, fleet-footed as a spaniel: Pin was faced by the swift and rhythmic upturning of her heels. There were not many people abroad at this early hour, but the few there were, stood still and looked in amazement after the half-grown girl in white, whose thick black plait of hair sawed up and down as she ran; and a man with mop and bucket, who was washing statues, stopped his work and whistled, and winked at Pin as she passed.

Cross and confused Pin trudged after her sister, Laura's hat and gloves in one hand, the leather bag in the other.

Right down the central avenue ran Laura, growing smaller and smaller in the distance, the area of her movements decreasing as she ran, till she appeared to be almost motionless, and not much larger than a figure in the background of a picture. Then came a sudden bend in the long, straight path. She shot round it, and was lost to sight.

THE END