Carolyn Wells - "Two Little Women on a Holiday"

Kirk Munroe - "Wakulla"

Wallace Irwin - "The Love Sonnets of a Hoodlum"

Rex Beach - "The Winds of Chance"

The Getting of Wisdom

H >> Henry Handel Richardson >> The Getting of Wisdom




No sooner had he drawn in his chair to the table than he began. Lifting
his head and thrusting out his chin, he sniffed the air in all
directions with a moving nose--just as a cat does. Everyone looked at
him in surprise. Tilly, who sat next him, went pink.

"What is it, dear?" his wife at last inquired in a gentle voice; for it
was evident that he was not going to stop till asked why he did it.

"Mos' extraor'nary smell!" he replied. "Mother, d'you know, I could take
my appledavy some one has been using my scent."

"Nonsense, Tom."

"Silly pa!" said the little girl.

Ramming his knuckles into his eyes, he pretended to cry at his
daughter's rebuke; then bore down on Laura.

"D'you know, Miss Ra . . . Ra . . . Rambotham"--he made as if he could
not get her name out--"d'you know that I'm a great man for scent? Fact.
I take a bath in it every morning."

Laura smiled uncertainly, fixed always by the child.

"Fact, I assure you. Over the tummy, up to the chin.--Now,
who's been at it? For it's my opinion I shan't have enough left to
shampoo my eyebrows.--Bob, is it you?"

"Don't be an ass, pater."

"Cut me some bread, Bob, please," said Tilly hastily.

"Mos' extraor'nary thing!" persisted the Uncle. "Or--good Lord, mother,
can it be my monthly attack of D.T.'s beginning already? They're not
due, you know, till next week, Monday, five o'clock."

"Dear, DON'T be so silly. Besides it's my scent, not yours. And anyone
is welcome to it."

"Well, well, let's call in the cats!--By the way, Miss Ra . . . Ra . . .
Rambotham, are you aware that this son of mine is a professed
lady-killer?"

Laura and Bob went different shades of crimson.

"Why has she got so red?" the child asked her mother, in an audible
whisper.

"Oh, CHUCK it, pater!" murmured Bob in disgust.

"Fact, I assure you. Put not your trust in Robert! He's always on with
the new love before he's off with the old. You ask him whose glove he's
still cherishing in the pocket next his heart."

Bob pushed his plate from him and, for a moment, seemed about to leave
the table. Laura could not lift her eyes. Tilly chewed in angry silence.

Here, however, the child made a diversion.

"You're a lady-kilda yourself, pa."

"Me, Thumbkin?--Mother, d'you hear that?--Then it's the whiskers,
Thumbby. Ladies love whiskers--or a fine drooping moustache, like my
son Bob's." He sang: "'Oh, oh, the ladies loved him so!'"

"Tom, dear, DO be quiet."

"Tom, Tom, the piper's son!" chirped Thumbby.

"Well, well, let's call in the cats!"--which appeared to be his way of
changing the subject.

It seemed, after this, as though the remainder of lunch might pass off
without further hitch. Then however and all of a sudden, while he was
peeling an apple, this dreadful man said, as though to himself: "Ra . . .
Ra . . . Rambotham. Now where have I heard that name?"

"Wa . . . Wa . . . Wamboffam!" mocked Thumbkin.

"Monkey, if you're so sharp you'll cut yourself!--Young lady, do you
happen to come from Warrenega?" he asked Laura, when Thumbkin's excited
chirrup of: "I'll cut YOU, pa, into little bits!" had died away.

Ready to sink through the floor, Laura replied that she did.

"Then I've the pleasure of knowing your mother.--Tall dark woman, isn't
she?"

Under the table, Laura locked the palms of her hands and stemmed her
feet against the floor. Was here, now, before them all, and Bob in
particular, the shameful secret of the embroidery to come to light? She
could hardly force her lips to frame an answer.

Her confusion was too patent to be overlooked. Above her lowered head,
signs passed between husband and wife, and soon afterwards the family
rose from the table.

But Tilly was so obviously sulky that the tense could not let
her escape him thus.

He cried: "For God's sake, Tilly, stand still! What on earth have you got
on your back?"

Tilly came from up-country and her thoughts leapt fearfully to scorpions
and tarantulas. Affrighted, she tried to peer over her shoulder, and
gave a preliminary shriek. "Gracious!--whatever is it?"

"Hold on!" He approached her with the tongs; the next moment to
ejaculate: "Begad, it's not a growth, it's a bustle!" and as he spoke he
tweaked the place where a bustle used to be worn.

Even Bob had to join in the ensuing boohoo, which went on and on till
Laura thought the Uncle would fall down in a fit. Then for the third
time he invited those present to join him in summoning the cats,
murmured something about "humping his bluey", and went out into the hall,
where they heard him swinging Thumbby "round the world".

It was all the Aunt could do to mollify Tilly, who was enraged to the
point of tears. "I've never worn a bustle in my life! Uncle's a perfect
FOOL! I've never met such a fool as he is!"

Still boiling, she disappeared to nurse her ruffled temper in private;
and she remained absent from the room for over half an hour. During this
time Laura and Bob were alone together. But even less than before came
of their intercourse: Bob, still smarting from his father's banter, was
inclined to be stand-offish, as though afraid Laura might take liberties
with him after having been made to look so small; Laura, rendered
thoroughly unsure to begin with, by the jocular tone of the
luncheon-table, had not recovered from the shock of hearing her
parentage so bluffly disclosed. And since, at this time, her idea of the
art of conversation was to make jerky little remarks which led nowhere,
or to put still more jerky questions, Bob was soon stifling yawns, and
not with the best success. He infected Laura; and there the two of them
sat, doing their best to appear unconscious of the terrible spasms
which, every few seconds, distorted their faces. At last Bob could stand
it no longer and bolted from the room.

Laura was alone, and seemed to be forgotten The minutes ticked by, and
no one came--or no one but a little grey kitten, which arrived as if
from nowhere, with a hop and a skip. She coaxed the creature to her lap,
where it joined head to tail and went to sleep. And there she sat, in
the gloomy, overfilled drawing-room, and stroked the kitten, which
neither cracked stupid jokes nor required her to strain her wits to make
conversation.

When at length Tilly came back, she expressed a rather acid surprise at
Bob's absence, and went to look for him; Laura heard them whispering and
laughing in the passage. On their return to the drawing-room it had been
decided that the three of them should go for a walk. As the sky was
overcast and the girls had no umbrellas, Bob carried a big one belonging
to the Uncle. Tilly called this a "family umbrella"; and the jokes that
were extracted from the pair of words lasted the walkers on the whole of
their outward way; lasted so long that Laura, who was speedily finished
with her contribution, grew quite stupefied with listening to the other
two.

Collins Street was now as empty as a bush road. The young people
went into Bourke Street, where, for want of something better to do, they
entered the Eastern Market and strolled about inside. The noise that
rose from the livestock, on ground floor and upper storey, was
ear-splitting: pigs grunted; cocks crowed, turkeys gobbled, parrots
shrieked; while rough human voices echoed and re-echoed under the lofty
roof. There was a smell, too, an extraordinary smell, composed of all
the individual smells of all these living things: of fruit and
vegetables, fresh and decayed; of flowers, and butter, and grain; of
meat, and fish, and strong cheeses; of sawdust sprinkled with water, and
freshly wet pavements--one great complicated smell, the piquancy of
which made Laura sniff like a spaniel. But after a very few minutes
Tilly, whose temper was still short, called it a "vile stink" and clapped
her handkerchief to her nose, and so they hurried out, past many
enticing little side booths hidden in dark corners on the ground floor,
such as a woman without legs, a double-headed calf, and the like.

Outside it had begun to rain; they turned into a Waxworks Exhibition.
This was a poor show, and they were merely killing time when the
announcement caught their eye that a certain room was open to "Married
People Only". The quips and jokes this gave rise to again were as
unending as those about the umbrella; and Laura grew so tired of them,
and of pretending to find them funny, that her temper also began to give
way; and she eased her feelings by making the nippy mental note on her
companions, that jokes were evidently "in the blood".

When they emerged, it was time for the girls to return to
school. They took a hansom, Bob accompanying them. As they drove, Laura
sitting sandwiched between the other two, it came over her with a rush
what a miserable failure the day had been. A minute before, her spirits
had given a faint flicker, for Bob had laid his arm along the back of
the seat. Then she saw that he had done this just to pull at the little
curls that grew on Tilly's neck. She was glad when the cab drew up, when
Tilly ostentatiously took the fat half-crown from her purse, and Bob
left them at the gate with a: "Well, so long, ladies!"

The boarders spent the evening in sewing garments for charity. Laura had
been at work for weeks on a coarse, red flannel petticoat, and as a rule
was under constant reprimand for her idleness. On this night, having
separated herself from Tilly, she sat down beside a girl with a very
long plait of hair and small, narrow eyes, who went by the name of
"Chinky". Chinky was always making up to her, and could be relied on to
cover her silence. Laura sewed away, with bent head and pursed lips, and
was so engrossed that the sole rebuke she incurred had to do with her
diligence.

Miss Chapman exclaimed in horror at her stiffly outstretched arm.

"How CAN you be so vulgar, Laura? To sew with a thread as long as that!"




XV.



For days Laura avoided even thinking of this unlucky visit. Privately,
she informed herself that Tilly's wealthy relations were a "rude, stupid
lot"; and, stuffing her fingers in her ears, memorised pages with a
dispatch that deadened thought.

When, however, the first smart had passed and she was able to go back on
what had happened, a soreness at her own failure was the abiding result:
and this, though Tilly mercifully spared her the "dull as ditchwater",
that was Bob's final verdict.--But the fact that the invitation was not
repeated told Laura enough.

Her hurt was not relieved by the knowledge that she had done nothing to
deserve it. For she had never asked for Bob's notice or admiration, had
never thought of him but as a handsome cousin of Tilly's who sat in a
distant pew at St Stephen's-on-the-Hill; and the circumstance that,
because he had singled her out approvingly, she was expected to worm
herself into his favour, seemed to her of a monstrous injustice. But,
all the same, had she possessed the power to captivate him, she would
cheerfully have put her pride in her pocket. For, having once seen him
close at hand, she knew how desirable he was. Having been the object of
glances from those liquid eyes, of smiles from those blanched-almond
teeth, she found it hard to dismiss them from her mind. How the other
girls would have boasted of it, had they been chosen by such a
one as Bob!--they who, for the most part, were satisfied with
blotchy-faced, red-handed youths, whose lean wrists dangled from their
retreating sleeves. But then, too, they would have known how to keep
him. Oh, those lucky other girls!

"I say, Chinky, what do you do when a boy's gone on you?"

She would have shrunk from putting an open question of this kind to her
intimates; but Chinky, could be trusted. For she garnered the few words
Laura vouchsafed her, as gratefully as Lazarus his crumbs; and a mark of
confidence, such as this, would sustain her for days.

But she had no information to give.

"Me? . . . why, nothing. Boys are dirty, horrid, conceited creatures."

In her heart Laura was at one with this judgment; but it was not to the
point.

"Yes, but s'pose one was awfully sweet on you and you rather liked him?"

"Catch me! If one came bothering round me, I'd do this" and she set her
ten outstretched fingers to her nose and waggled them.

And yet Chinky was rather pretty, in her way.

Maria Morell, cautiously tapped, threw back her head and roared with
laughter.

"Bless its little heart! Does it want to know?--say, Laura, who's your
mash?"

"No one," answered Laura stoutly. "I only asked. For I guess you KNOW,
Maria."

"By gosh, you bet I do!" cried Maria, italicising the words in her
vehemence. "Well, look here, Kiddy, if a chap's sweet on me I let him be
sweet, my dear, and that's all--till he's run to barley-sugar.
What I don't let him savvy is, whether I care a twopenny damn for him.
Soon as you do that, it's all up. Just let him hang round, and throw
sheep's-eyes, till he's as soft as a jellyfish, and when he's right down
ripe, roaring mad, go off and pretend to do a mash with some one else.
That's the way to glue him, chicken."

"But you don't have anything of him that way," objected Laura.

Maria laughed herself red in the face. "What'n earth more d'you want?
Why, he'll pester you with letters, world without end, and look as black
as your shoe if you so much as wink at another boy. As for a kiss, if he
gets a chance of one he'll take it you can bet your bottom dollar on
that."

"But you never get to know him!"

"Oh, hang it, Laura, but you ARE rich! What d'you think one has a boy
for, I'd like to know. To parlezvous about old Shepherd's sermons? You
loony, it's only for getting lollies, and letters, and the whole dashed
fun of the thing. If you go about too much with one, you soon have to
fake an interest in his rotten old affairs. Or else just hold your
tongue and let him blow. And that's dull work. D'you think it ever comes
up a fellow's back to talk to you about your new Sunday hat! If it does,
you can teach your grandmother to suck eggs."

But, despite this wisdom, Laura could not determine how Maria would have
acted had she stood in her shoes.

And then, too, the elder girl had said nothing about another side of the
question, had not touched on the sighs and simpers, the winged
glances, and drooped, provocative lids--all the thousand and one
fooleries, in short, which Laura saw her and others employ. There was a
regular machinery of invitation and encouragement to be set in motion:
for, before it was safe to ignore a wooer and let him dangle, as Maria
advised, you had first to make quite sure he wished to nibble your bait.
--And it was just in this elementary science that Laura broke down.

Looking round her, she saw mainly experts. To take the example nearest
at hand: there was Monsieur Legros, the French master; well, Maria could
twist him round her little finger. She only needed to pout her thick,
red lips, or to give a coquettish twist to her plump figure, or to ogle
him with her fine, bold, blue eyes, and the difficult questions in the
lesson were sure to pass her by.--Once she had even got ten extra marks
added to an examination paper, in this easy fashion. Whereas, did she,
Laura, try to imitate Maria, venture to pout or to smirk, it was ten to
one she would be rebuked for impertinence. No, she got on best with the
women-teachers, to whom red lips and a full bust meant nothing; while
the most elderly masters could not be relied on to be wholly impartial,
where a pair of magnificent eyes was concerned. Even Mr. Strachey, the
unapproachable, had been known, on running full tilt into a pretty
girl's arms in an unlit passage, to be laughingly confused.

Laura was not, of course, the sole outsider in these things; sprinkled
through the College were various others, older, too, than she, who by
reason of demureness of temperament, or immersion in their work, stood
aloof. But they were lost in the majority, and, as it chanced,
none of them belonged to Laura's circle. Except Chinky--and Chinky did
not count. So, half-fascinated, half-repelled, Laura set to studying her
friends with renewed zeal. She could not help admiring their proficiency
in the art of pleasing, even though she felt a little abashed by the
open pride they took in their growing charms. There was Bertha, for
instance, Bertha who had one of the nicest minds of them all; and yet
how frankly gratified she was, by the visible rounding of her arms and
the curving of her bust. She spoke of it to Laura with a kind of awe;
and her voice seemed to give hints of a coming mystery. Tilly, on the
other hand, lived to reduce her waist-measure: she was always sucking at
lemons, and she put up with the pains of indigestion as well as a red
tip to her nose; for no success in school meant as much to Tilly as the
fact that she had managed to compress herself a further quarter of an
inch, no praise on the part of her teachers equalled the compliments
this earned her from dressmaker and tailor. As for Inez, who had not
only a pretty face but was graceful and slender-limbed as a greyhound,
Inez no longer needed to worry over artificial charms, or to dwell
self-consciously on her development; serious admirers were not lacking,
and with one of these, a young man some eight years older than herself,
she had had for the past three months a sort of understanding. For her,
as for so many others, the time she had still to spend at school was as
purgatory before paradise. To top all, one of the day-scholars in
Laura's class was actually engaged to be married; and in no boy-and-girl
fashion, but to a doctor who lived and practised in Emerald Hill: he
might sometimes be seen, from a peephole under the stairs,
waiting to escort her home from school. This fiancee was looked up to by
the class with tremendous reverence, as one set apart, oiled and
anointed. You really could not treat her as a comrade her, who had
reached the goal. For this WAS the goal; and the thoughts of all were
fixed, with an intentness that varied only in degree, on the great
consummation which, as planned in these young minds, should come to pass
without fail directly the college-doors closed behind them.--And here
again Laura was a heretic. For she could not contemplate the future that
was to be hers when she had finished her education, but with a feeling
of awe: it was still so distant as to be one dense blue haze; it was so
vast, that thinking of it took your breath away: there was room in it
for the most wonderful miracles that had ever happened; it might contain
anything--from golden slippers to a Jacob's ladder, by means of which
you would scale the skies; and with these marvellous perhapses awaiting
you, it was impossible to limit your hopes to one single event, which,
though it saved you from derision, would put an end, for ever, to all
possible, exciting contingencies.

These thoughts came and went. In the meantime, despite her ape-like
study of her companions, she remained where the other sex was concerned
a disheartening failure. A further incident drove this home anew.

One Saturday afternoon, those boarders who had not been invited out were
taken to see a cricket-match. They were a mere handful, eight or nine at
most, and Miss Snodgrass alone was in charge. All her friends [P.154]
being away that day, Laura had to bring up the rear with the governess
and one of the little girls. Though their walk led them through pleasant
parks, she was glad when it was over; for she did not enjoy Miss
Snodgrass's company. She was no match for this crisply sarcastic
governess, and had to be the whole time on her guard. For Miss Snodgrass
was not only a great talker, but had also a very inquiring mind, and
seemed always trying to ferret out just those things you did not care to
tell--such as the size of your home, or the social position you
occupied in the township where you lived.

Arrived at the cricket ground, they climbed the Grand Stand and sat down
in one of the back rows, to the rear of the other spectators. Before
them sloped a steep bank of hats gaily-flowered and ribbon-banded hats--
of light and dark shoulders, of alert, boyish profiles and pale, pretty
faces--a representative gathering of young Australia, bathed in the
brilliant March light.

Laura's seat was between her two companions, and it was here the malheur
occurred. During an interval in the game, one of the girls asked the
governess's leave to speak to her cousin; and thereupon a shy lad was
the target for twenty eyes. He was accompanied by a friend, who, in
waiting, sat down just behind Laura. This boy was addressed by Miss
Snodgrass; but he answered awkwardly, and after a pause, Laura felt
herself nudged.

"You can speak to him, Laura," whispered Miss Snodgrass.--She evidently
thought Laura waited only for permission, to burst in.

Laura had already fancied that the boy looked at her with
interest. This was not improbable; for she had her best hat on, which
made her eyes seem very dark--"like sloes," Chinky said, though neither
of them had any clear idea what a sloe was.

Still, a prompting to speech invariably tied her tongue. She half
turned, and stole an uneasy peep at the lad. He might be a year older
than herself; he had a frank, sunburnt face, blue eyes, and almost white
flaxen hair. She took heart of grace.

"I s'pose you often come here?" she ventured at last.

"You bet!" said the boy; but kept his eyes where they were on the pitch.

"Cricket's a lovely game . . . don't you think so?"

Now he looked at her; but doubtfully, from the height of his fourteen
male years; and did not reply.

"Do you play?"

This was a false move, she felt it at once. Her question seemed to
offend him. "Should rather think I did!" he answered with a haughty air.

Weakly she hastened to retract her words. "Oh, I meant much--if you
played much?"

"Comes to the same thing I guess," said the boy--he had not yet reached
the age of obligatory politeness.

"It must be splendid"--here she faltered--"fun."

But the boy's thoughts had wandered: he was making signs to a friend
down in the front of the Stand.--Miss Snodgrass seemed to repress a
smile.

Here, however, the little girl at Laura's side chimed in. "I think
cricket's awful rot," she announced, in a cheepy voice.

Now what was it, Laura asked herself, in these words, or in the
tone in which they were said, that at once riveted the boy's attention.
For he laughed quite briskly as he asked; "What's a kid like you know
about it?"

"Jus' as much as I want to. An' my sister says so 's well."

"Get along with you! Who's your sister?"

"Ooh!--wouldn't you like to know? You've never seen her in Scots'
Church on Sundays I s'pose--oh, no!"

"By jingo!--I should say I have. An' you, too. You're the little sister
of that daisy with the simply ripping hair."

The little girl actually made a grimace at him, screwing up her
nose. "Yes, you can be civil now, can't you?"

"My aunt, but she's a tip-topper--your sister!"

"You go to Scots' Church then, do you?" hazarded Laura, in an attempt to
re-enter the conversation.

"Think I could have seen her if I didn't?" retorted the boy, in the tone
of: "What a fool question!" He also seemed to have been on the point of
adding: "Goose," or "Sillybones."

The little girl giggled. "She's church"--by which she meant
episcopalian.

"Yes, but I don't care a bit which I go to," Laura hastened to explain,
fearful lest she should be accounted a snob by this dissenter. The boy,
however, was so faintly interested in her theological wobblings that,
even as she spoke, he had risen from his seat; and the next moment
without another word he went away.--This time Miss Snodgrass laughed
outright.

Laura stared, with blurred eyes, at the white-clad forms that
began to dot the green again. Her lids smarted. She did not dare to put
up her fingers to squeeze the gathering tears away, and just as she was
wondering what she should do if one was inconsiderate enough to roll
down her cheek, she heard a voice behind her.

"I say, Laura . . . Laura!"--and there was Chinky, in her best white
hat.

"I'm sitting with my aunt just a few rows down; but I couldn't make you
look. Can I come in next to you for a minute?"

"If you like," said Laura and, because she had to sniff a little, very
coldly: Chinky had no doubt also been a witness of her failure.

The girl squeezed past and shared her seat. "I don't take up much room."

Laura feigned to be engrossed in the game. But presently she felt her
bare wrist touched, and Chinky said in her ear: "What pretty hands you've
got, Laura!"

She buried them in her dress, at this. She found it in the worst
possible taste of Chinky to try to console her.

"Wouldn't you like to wear a ring on one of them?"

"No, thanks," said Laura, in the same repellent way.

"Truly? I'd love to give you one."

"You? Where would YOU get it?"

"Would you wear it, if I did?"

"Let me see it first," was Laura's graceless reply, as she returned to
her stony contemplation of the great sunlit expanse.

She was sure Miss Snodgrass, on getting home, would laugh with
the other governesses over what had occurred--if not with some of the
girls. The story would leak out and come to Tilly's ears; and Tilly
would despise her more than she did already. So would all the rest. She
was branded, as it was, for not having a single string to her bow. Now,
it had become plain to her that she could never hope for one; for, when
it came to holding a boy's attention for five brief minutes, she could
be put in the shade by a child of eight years old.

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