IX
From this moment on—the moment when Mary the maid’s pleasant smile saluted her—Laura’s opinion of life at school suffered a change. She was glad to be back—that was the first point: just as an adventurous sheep is glad to regain the cover of the flock. Learning might be hard; the governesses mercilessly secure in their own wisdom; but here she was at least a person of some consequence, instead of as at Godmother’s a mere negligible null.
Of her unlucky essay at holiday-making she wrote home guardedly: the most telltale sentence in her letter was that in which she said she would rather not go to Godmother’s again in the meantime. But there was such a lack of warmth in her account of the visit that mother made this, together with the above remark, the text for a scolding.
“You’re a very ungrateful girl,” she wrote, “to forget all Godmother has done for you. If it hadn’t been for her supplying you with books and things I couldn’t have sent you to school at all. And I hope when you grow up you’ll be as much of a help to me as Marina is to her mother. I’d much rather have you good and useful than clever and I think for a child of your age you see things with very sharp unkind eyes. Try and only think nice things about people and not be always spying out their faults. Then you’ll have plenty of friends and be liked wherever you go.”
Laura took the statement about the goodness and cleverness with a grain of salt: she knew better. Mother thought it the proper thing to say, and she would certainly have preferred the two qualities combined; but, had she been forced to choose between them, there was small doubt how her choice would have fallen out. And if, for instance, Laura confessed that her teachers did not regard her as even passably intelligent, there would be a nice to-do. Mother’s ambitions knew no bounds; and, wounded in these, she was quite capable of writing post-haste to Mrs. Gurley or Mr. Strachey, complaining of their want of insight, and bringing forward a string of embarrassing proofs. So, leaving Mother to her pleasing illusions, Laura settled down again to her role of dunce, now, though, with more equanimity than before. School was really not a bad place after all—this had for some time been her growing conviction, and the visit to Godmother seemed to bring it to a head.
About this time, too, a couple of pieces of good fortune came her way.
The first: she was privileged to be third in the friendship between Inez and Bertha—a favour of which she availed herself eagerly, though the three were as different from one another as three little girls could be. Bertha was a good-natured romp, hard-fisted, thick of leg, and of a plodding but ineffectual industry. Inez, on the other hand, was so pretty that Laura never tired of looking at her: she had a pale skin, hazel eyes, brown hair with a yellow light in it, and a Greek nose. Her mouth was very small; her nostrils were mere tiny slits; and so lazy was she that she seldom more than half opened her eyes. Both girls were well over fourteen, and very fully developed: compared with them, Laura was like nothing so much as a skinny young colt.
She was so grateful to them for tolerating her that she never took up a stand of real equality with them: proud and sensitive, she was always ready to draw back and admit their prior rights to each other; hence the friendship did not advance to intimacy. But such as it was, it was very comforting; she no longer needed to sit alone in recess; she could link arms and walk the garden with complacency; and many were the supercilious glances she now threw at Maria Morell and that clique; for her new friends belonged socially to the best set in the school.
In another way, too, their company made things easier for her: neither of them aimed high; and both were well content with the lowly places they occupied in the class. And so Laura, who was still, in her young confusion, unequal to discovering what was wanted of her, grew comforted by the presence and support of her friends, and unmindful of higher opinion; and Miss Chapman, in supervising evening lessons, remarked with genuine regret that little Laura was growing perky and lazy.
Her second piece of good luck was of quite a different nature.
Miss Hicks, the visiting governess for geography, had a gift for saying biting things that really bit. She bore Inez a peculiar grudge; for she believed that certain faculties slumbered behind the Grecian profile, and that only the girl’s ingrained sloth prevented them.
One day she lost patience with this sluggish pupil.
“I’ll tell you what it is, Inez,” she said; “you’re blessed with a real woman’s brain: vague, slippery, inexact, interested only in the personal aspect of a thing. You can’t concentrate your thoughts, and, worst of all, you’ve no curiosity—about anything that really matters. You take all the great facts of existence on trust—just as a hen does—and I’ve no doubt you’ll go on contentedly till the end of your days, without ever knowing why the ocean has tides, and what causes the seasons. It makes me ashamed to belong to the same sex.”
Inez’s classmates tittered furiously, let the sarcasm glide over them, unhit by its truth. Inez herself, indeed, was inclined to consider the governess’s taunt a compliment, as proving that she was incapable of a vulgar inquisitiveness. But Laura, though she laughed docilely with the rest, could not forget the incident—words in any case had a way of sticking to her memory—and what Miss Hicks had said often came back to her, in the days that followed. And then, all of a sudden, just as if
