The Getting of Wisdom. Henry Handel Richardson
her not to wallop you too often," the tease had just begun afresh, when the opening of the door forced her to swallow her sentence in the middle.
Godmother would not sit down; so the dreaded moment had come.
"Now, Laura. Be a good girl and learn well, and be a comfort to your mother.—Not that there's much need to urge her to her books," Godmother interrupted herself, turning to Mrs. Gurley. "The trouble her dear mother has always had has been to keep her from them."
Laura glowed with pleasure. Now at least the awful personage would know that she was clever, and loved to learn. But Mrs. Gurley smiled the chilliest thinkable smile of acknowledgment, and did not reply a word.
She escorted the other to the front door, and held it open for them to pass out. Then, however, her pretence of affability faded clean away: turning her head just so far that she could look down her nose at her own shoulder, she said: "Follow me!"—in a tone Mother would not have used even to Sarah. Feeling inexpressibly small Laura was about to obey, when a painful thought struck her.
"Oh please, I had a box—with my clothes in it!" she cried. "Oh, I hope they haven't forgotten and taken it away again."
But she might as well have spoken to the hatstand: Mrs. Gurley had sailed off, and was actually approaching a turn in the hall before Laura made haste to follow her and to keep further anxiety about her box to herself. They went past one staircase, round a bend into shadows as black as if, outside, no sun were shining, and began to ascend another flight of stairs, which was the widest Laura had ever seen. The banisters were as thick as your arm, and on each side of the stair-carpeting the space was broad enough for two to walk abreast: what a splendid game of trains you could have played there! On the other hand the landing windows were so high up that only a giant could have seen out of them.
These things occurred to Laura mechanically. What really occupied her, as she trudged behind, was how she could please this hard-faced woman and make her like her, for the desire to please, to be liked by all the world, was the strongest her young soul knew. And there must be a way, for Godmother had found it without difficulty.
She took two steps at once, to get nearer to the portly back in front of her.
"What a VERY large place this is!" she said in an insinuating voice.
She hoped the admiration, thus subtly expressed in the form of surprise, would flatter Mrs. Gurley, as a kind of co-proprietor; but it was evident that it did nothing of the sort: the latter seemed to have gone deaf and dumb, and marched on up the stairs, her hands clasped at her waist, her eyes fixed ahead, like a walking stone-statue.
On the top floor she led the way to a room at the end of a long passage. There were four beds in this room, a washhand-stand, a chest of drawers, and a wall cupboard. But at first sight Laura had eyes only for the familiar object that stood at the foot of one of the beds.
"Oh, THERE'S my box!" she cried, "Someone must have brought it up."
It was unroped; she had simply to hand over the key. Mrs. Gurley went down on her knees before it, opened the lid, and began to pass the contents to Laura, directing her where to lay and hang them. Overawed by such complaisance, Laura moved nimbly about the room shaking and unfolding, taking care to be back at the box to the minute so as not to keep Mrs. Gurley waiting. And her promptness was rewarded; the stern face seemed to relax. At the mere hint of this, Laura grew warm through and through; and as she could neither control her feelings nor keep them to herself, she rushed to an extreme and overshot the mark.
"I've got an apron like that. I think they're so pretty," she said cordially, pointing to the one Mrs. Gurley wore.
The latter abruptly stopped her work, and, resting her hands on the sides of the box, gave Laura one of the dreaded looks over her glasses, looked at her from top to toe, and as though she were only now beginning to see her. There was a pause, a momentary suspension of the breath, which Laura soon learned to expect before a rebuke.
"Little gels," said Mrs. Gurley—and even in the midst of her confusion Laura could not but be struck by the pronunciation of this word. "Little gels—are required—to wear white aprons when they come here!"—a break after each few words, as well as an emphatic head-shake, accentuated their severity. "And I should like to know, if your mother, has never taught you, that it is very rude, to point, and also to remark, on what people wear."
Laura went scarlet: if there was one thing she, Mother all of them prided themselves on, it was the good manners that had been instilled into them since their infancy.—The rough reproof seemed to scorch her.
She went to and fro more timidly than before. Then, however, something happened which held a ray of hope.
"Why, what is this?" asked Mrs. Gurley freezingly, and held up to view—with the tips of her fingers, Laura thought—a small, black Prayer Book. "Pray, are you not a dissenter?"—For the College was nonconformist.
"Well … no, I'm not," said Laura, in a tone of intense apology. Here, at last, was her chance. "But it really doesn't matter a bit. I can go to another church quite well. I even think I'd rather. For a change. And the service isn't so long, at least so I've heard—except the sermon," she added truthfully.
Had she denied religion altogether, the look Mrs. Gurley bent on her could not have been more annihilating.
"There is—unfortunately!—no occasion, for you to do anything of the kind," she retorted. "I myself, am an Episcopalian, and I expect those gels, who belong to the Church of England, to attend it, with me."
The unpacking at an end, Mrs. Gurley rose, smoothed down her apron, and was just on the point of turning away, when on the bed opposite Laura's she espied an under-garment, lying wantonly across the counterpane. At this blot on the orderliness of the room she seemed to swell like a turkey-cock, seemed literally to grow before Laura's eyes as, striding to the door, she commanded an invisible some one to send Lilith Gordon to her "DI-rectly!"!
There was an awful pause; Laura did not dare to raise her head; she even said a little prayer. Mrs. Gurley stood working at her chain, and tapping her foot—like a beast waiting for its prey, thought the child. And at last a hurried step was heard in the corridor, the door opened and a girl came in, high-coloured and scant of breath. Laura darted one glance at Mrs. Gurley's face, then looked away and studied the pattern of a quilt, trying not to hear what was said. Her throat swelled, grew hard and dry with pity for the culprit. But Lilith Gordon—a girl with sandy eyebrows, a turned-up nose, a thick plait of red-gold hair, and a figure so fully developed that Laura mentally dubbed it a "lady's figure", and put its owner down for years older than herself—Lilith Gordon neither fell on her knees nor sank through the floor. Her lashes were lowered, in a kind of dog-like submission, and her face had gone very red when Laura ventured to look at her again; but that was all. And Mrs. Gurley having swept Jove-like from the room, this bold girl actually set her finger to her nose and muttered: "Old Brimstone Beast!" As she passed Laura, too, she put out her tongue and said: "Now then, goggle-eyes, what have you got to stare at?"
Laura was deeply hurt: she had gazed at Lilith out of the purest sympathy. And now, as she stood waiting for Mrs. Gurley, who seemed to have forgotten her, the strangeness of things, and the general unfriendliness of the people struck home with full force. The late afternoon sun was shining in, in an unfamiliar way; outside were strange streets, strange noises, a strange white dust, the expanse of a big, strange city. She felt unspeakably far away now, from the small, snug domain of home. Here, nobody wanted her … she was alone among strangers, who did not even like her … she had already, without meaning it, offended two of them.
Another second, and the shameful tears might have found their way out. But at this moment there was a kind of preparatory boom in the distance, and the next, a great bell clanged through the house, pealing on and on, long after one's ears were rasped by the din. It was followed by an exodus from the rooms round about; there was a sound of voices and of feet. Mrs. Gurley ceased to give orders in the passage, and returning, bade Laura put on a pinafore and follow her.
They descended the broad staircase. At a door just at the foot, Mrs. Gurley paused and smoothed her