The Getting of Wisdom (11 page)

It was thus a heavy blow to Laura to find, on going home, that Mother had already bought her new spring dress. In one respect all was well: it had been made by the local dressmaker, and consequently had not the home-made cut that Laura abhorred. But the colour! Her heart fell to the pit of her stomach the moment she set eyes on it, and only with difficulty did she restrain her tears.—Mother had chosen a vivid purple, of a crude, old-fashioned shade.

Now, quite apart from her personal feelings, Laura had come to know very exactly, during the few months she had been at school, the views held by her companions on the subject of colour. No matter how sumptuous or how simple the material of which the dress was made, it must be dark, or of a delicate tint. Brilliancy was a sign of vulgarity, and put the wearer outside the better circles. Hence, at this critical juncture, when Laura was striving to ape her fellows in all vital matters, the unpropitious advent of the purple threatened to undo her.

After her first dismayed inspection, she retreated to the bottom of the garden to give vent to her feelings.

"I shall never be able to wear it," she moaned. "Oh, how COULD she buy such a thing? And I needed a new dress so awfully, awfully much."

"It isn't really so bad, Laura," pleaded Pin. "It'll look darker, I'm sure, if you've got it on—and if you don't go out in the sun."

"You haven't got to wear it. It was piggish of you, Pin, perfectly piggish! You MIGHT have watched what she was buying."

"I did, Laura!" asseverated Pin, on the brink of tears. "There was a nice dark brown and I said take that, you would like it better, and she said hold your tongue, and did I think she was going to dress you as if you were your own grandmother."

This dress hung for weeks in the most private corner of Laura's school wardrobe. Her companions had all returned with new outfits, and on the first assemblage for church there was a great mustering of one another, both by girls and teachers. Laura was the only one to descend in the dress she had worn throughout the winter. Her heart was sore with bitterness, and when the handful of Episcopalians were marching to St Stephen's-on-the-Hill, she strove to soothe her own wound.

"I can't think why my dress hasn't come," she said gratuitously, out of this hurt, with an oblique glance to see how her partner took the remark: it was the good-natured Maria Morell, who was resplendent in velvet and feathers. "I expect that stupid dressmaker couldn't get it done in time. I've waited for it all the week."

"What a sell!" said Maria, but with mediocre interest; for she had cocked her eye at a harmless-looking youth, who was doing his best not to blush on passing the line of girls.—"I say, do look at that toff making eyes. Isn't he a nanny-goat."

On several subsequent Sundays, Laura fingered, in an agony of indecision, the pleasing stuff of the dress, and ruefully considered its modish cut. Once, no one being present, she even took it out of the wardrobe. But the merciless spring sunshine seemed to make the purple shoot fire, to let loose a host of other colours it in as well, and, with a shudder, she re-hung it on its peg.

But the evil day came. After a holiday at Godmother's, she received a hot letter from Mother. Godmother had complained of her looking "dowdy", and Mother was exceedingly cross. Laura was ordered to spend the coming Saturday as well at Prahran, and in her new dress, under penalty of a correspondence with Mrs. Gurley. There was no going against an order of this kind, and with death at her heart Laura prepared to obey. On the fatal morning she dawdled as long as possible over her mending, thus postponing dressing to go out till the others had vacated the bedroom; where, in order not to be forced to see herself, she kept her eyes half shut, and turned the looking-glass hind-before. Although it was a warm day, she hung a cloak over her shoulders. But her arms peeped out of the loose sleeves, and at least a foot of skirt was visible. As she walked along the corridor and down the stairs, she seemed to smudge the place with colour, and, directly she entered the dining-hall, comet-like she drew all eyes upon her. Astonished titterings followed in her wake; even the teachers goggled her, afterwards to put their heads together. In the reception-room Marina remarked at once: "Hullo!—is THIS the new dress your mother wrote us about?"

Outside, things were no better; the very tram-conductors were fascinated by it; and every passer-by was a fresh object of dread: Laura waited, her heart a-thump, for the moment when he should raise his eyes and, with a start of attention, become aware of the screaming colour. At Godmother's all the faces disapproved: Georgina said, "What a guy!" when she thought Laura was out of earshot; but the boys stated their opinion openly as soon as they had her to themselves.

"Oh, golly! Like a parrot—ain't she?"

"This way to the purple parrot—this way! Step up, ladies and gentlemen! A penny the whole show!"

That evening, she tore the dress from her back and, hanging it up inside the cloak, vowed that, come what might, she would never put it on again. A day or two later, on unexpectedly entering her bedroom, she found Lilith Gordon and another girl at her wardrobe. They grew very red, and hurried giggling from the room, but Laura had seen what they were looking at. After this, she tied the dress up with string and brown paper and hid it in a drawer, under her nightgowns. When she went home at Christmas it went with her, still in the parcel, and then there was a stormy scene. But Laura was stubborn: rather than wear the dress, she would not go back to the College at all. Mother's heart had been softened by the prizes; Laura seized the occasion, and extracted a promise that she should be allowed in future to choose her own frocks.— And so the purple dress was passed on to Pin, who detested it with equal heartiness, but, living under Mother's eye, had not the spirit to fight against it.

"Got anything new in the way of clothes?" asked Lilith Gordon as she and Laura undressed for bed a night or two after their return.

"Yes, one," said Laura shortly.—For she thought Lilith winked at the third girl, a publican's daughter from Clunes.

"Another like the last? Or have you gone in for yellow ochre this time?"

Laura flamed in silence.

"Great Scott, what a colour that was! Fit for an Easter Fair—Miss Day said so."

"It wasn't mine," retorted Laura passionately. "It . . . it belonged to a girl I knew who died—and her mother gave it to me as a remembrance of her—but I didn't care for it."

"I shouldn't think you did.—But I say, does your mother let you wear other people's clothes? What a rummy thing to do!"

She went out of the room—no doubt to spread this piece of gossip further. Laura looked daggers after her. She was angry enough with Lilith for having goaded her to the lie, but much angrier with herself for its blundering ineffectualness. It was not likely she had been believed, and if she were, well, it made matters worse instead of better: people would conclude that she lived on charity. Always when unexpectedly required to stand on the defensive, she said or did something foolish. That morning, for instance, a similar thing had happened—it had rankled all day in her mind. On looking through the washing, Miss Day had exclaimed in horror at the way in which her stockings were mended.

"Whoever did it? They've been done since you left here. I would never have passed such dams."

Laura crimsoned. "Those? Oh, an old nurse we've got at home. We've had her for years and years—but her eyesight's going now."

Miss Day sniffed audibly. "So I should think. To cobble like that!"

They were Mother's dams, hastily made, late at night, and with all Mother's genial impatience at useful sewing as opposed to beautiful. Laura's intention had been to shield Mother from criticism, as well as to spare Miss Day's feelings. But to have done it so clumsily as this! To have had to wince under Miss Day's scepticism! It was only a wonder the governess had not there and then taxed her with the fib. For who believed in old nurses nowadays? They were a stock property, borrowed on the spur of the moment from readings in THE FAMILY HERALD, from Tennyson's LADY CLARE. Why on earth had such a far-fetched excuse leapt to her tongue? Why could she not have said Sarah, the servant, the maid-of-all-work? Then Miss Day would have had no chance to sniff, and she, Laura, could have believed herself believed, instead of having to fret over her own stupidity.—But what she would like more than anything to know was, why the mending of the stockings at home should NOT be Sarah's work? Why must it just be Mother—her mother alone—who made herself so disagreeably conspicuous, and not merely by darning the stockings, but, what was a still greater grievance, by not even darning them well?

It was an odd thing, all the same, how easy it was to be friends with Lilith Gordon: though she did not belong to Laura's set though Laura did not even like her, and though she had had ample proof that Lilith was double-faced, not to be trusted. Yet, in the months that followed the affair of the purple dress, Laura grew more intimate with the plump, sandy-haired girl than with either Bertha, or Inez, or Tilly. Or, to put it more exactly, she was continually having lapses into intimacy, and repenting them when it was too late. In one way Lilith was responsible for this: she could make herself very pleasant when she chose, seem to be your friend through thick and thin, thus luring you on to unbosom yourself; and afterwards she would go away and laugh over what you had told her, with other girls. And Laura was peculiarly helpless under such circumstances: if it was done with tact, and with a certain assumed warmth of manner, anyone could make a cat's-paw of her.

That Lilith and she undressed for bed together had also something to do with their intimacy: this half-hour when one's hair was unbound and replaited, and fat and thin arms wielded the brush, was the time of all others for confidences. The governess who occupied the fourth bed did not come upstairs till ten o'clock; the publican's daughter, a lazy girl, was usually half asleep before the other two had their clothes off.

It was in the course of one of these confidential chats that Laura did a very foolish thing. In a moment of weakness, she gratuitously gave away the secret that Mother supported her family by the work of her hands.

The two girls were sitting on the side of Lilith's bed. Laura had a day of mishaps behind her—that partly, no doubt, accounted for her self-indulgence. But, in addition, her companion had just told her, unasked, that she thought her "very pretty". It was not in Laura's nature to let this pass: she was never at ease under an obligation; she had to pay the coin back in kind.

"Embroidery? What sort? However does she do it?"—Lilith's interest was on tiptoe at once—a false and slimy interest, the victim afterwards told herself.

"Oh, my mother's awfully clever. It's just lovely, too, what she does— all in silk—and ever so many different colours. She made a piano-cover once, and got fifty pounds for it."

"How perfectly splendid!"

"But that was only a lucky chance . . . that she got that to do. She mostly does children's dresses and cloaks and things like that."

"But she's not a dressmaker, is she?"

"A dressmaker? I should think not indeed! They're sent up, all ready to work, from the biggest shops in town."

"I say!—she must be clever."

"She is; she can do anything. She makes the patterns up all out of her own head. "—And filled with pride in Mother's accomplishments and Lilith's appreciation of them, Laura fell asleep that night without a qualm.

It was the next evening. Several of the boarders who had finished preparing their lessons were loitering in the dining-hall, Laura and Lilith among them. In the group was a girl called Lucy, young but very saucy; for she lived at Toorak, and came of one of the best families in Melbourne. She was not as old as Laura by two years, but was already feared and respected for the fine scorn of her opinions.

Lilith Gordon had bragged: "My uncle's promised me a gold watch and chain when I pass matric."

Lucy of Toorak laughed: her nose came down, and her mouth went up at the corners. "Do you think you ever will?"

"G. o. k. and He won't tell. But I'll probably get the watch all the same."

"Where does your uncle hang out?"

"Brisbane."

"Sure he can afford to buy it?"

"Of course he can."

"What is he?"

Lilith was unlucky enough to hesitate, ever so slightly. "Oh, he's got plenty of money," she asserted.

"She doesn't like to say what he is!"

"I don't care whether I say it or not."

"A butcher, p'raps, or an undertaker?"

"A butcher! He's got the biggest newspaper in Brisbane!"

"A newspaper! Great Scott! Her uncle keeps a newspaper!"

There was a burst of laughter from those standing round.

Lilith was scarlet now. "It's nothing to be ashamed of," she said angrily.

But Lucy of Toorak could not recover from her amusement. "An uncle who keeps a newspaper! A newspaper! Well, I'm glad none of MY uncles are so rummy.—I say, does he leave it at front doors himself in the morning?"

Laura had at first looked passively on, well pleased to see another than herself the butt of young Lucy's wit. But at this stage of her existence she was too intent on currying favour, to side with any but the stronger party. And so she joined in the boisterous mirth Lilith's admission and Lucy's reception of it excited, and flung her gibes with the rest.

She was pulled up short by a hissing in her ear. "If you say one word more, I'll tell about the embroidery!"

Laura went pale with fright: she had been in good spirits that day, and had quite forgotten her silly confidence of the night before. Now, the jeer that was on the tip of her tongue hung fire. She could not all at once obliterate her smile—that would have been noticeable; but it grew weaker, stiffer and more unnatural, then gradually faded away, leaving her with a very solemn little face.

From this night on, Lilith Gordon represented a powder-mine, which might explode at any minute.—And she herself had laid the train!

From the outset, Laura had been accepted, socially, by even the most exclusive, as one of themselves; and this, in spite of her niggardly allowance, her ridiculous clothes. For the child had race in her: in a well-set head, in good hands and feet and ears. Her nose, too, had a very pronounced droop, which could stand only for blue blood, or a Hebraic ancestor—and Jews were not received as boarders in the school. Now, loud as money made itself in this young community, effectual as it was in cloaking shortcomings, it did not go all the way: inherited instincts and traditions were not so easily subdued. Just some of the wealthiest, too, were aware that their antecedents would not stand a close scrutiny; and thus a mighty respect was engendered in them for those who had nothing to fear. Moreover, directly you got away from the vastly rich, class distinctions were observed with an exactitude such as can only obtain in an exceedingly mixed society. The three professions alone were sacrosanct. The calling of architect, for example, or of civil engineer, was, if a fortune had not been accumulated, utterly without prestige; trade, any connection with trade—the merest bowing acquaintance with buying and selling—was a taint that nothing could remove; and those girls who were related to shopkeepers, or, more awful still, to publicans, would rather have bitten their tongues off than have owned to the disgrace.