Sleep in Peace (10 page)

Dancing and gymnasium lessons—for of course Papa's daughters took all the extras—on Thursday and Friday afternoons, were lovely too. For dancing one wore a lovely white silk frock with elbow sleeves—unfortunately it tore rather easily, which vexed Gwen—and bronze shoes with no heels; one did dances with a fan, a skipping rope, a tambourine with coloured ribbons, a lovely yellow scarf. Laura danced well, being so thin and light, and Gwen was proud of her; on Thursday evenings there was always harmony in Blackshaw House. Fridays were not quite so nice. On Fridays one wore a thick navy-blue serge frock, embroidered with white braid at wrist and throat, blue serge bloomers, and black gym shoes. Gym was enjoyable only as long as one kept to exercises; for when it came to swinging on the horizontal bar, or climbing the ropes, Laura's arms seemed somehow to lack the necessary strength. At first Gwen was angry, and thought Laura was not trying to succeed, but when at last she was convinced otherwise, she explained Laura's weakness to the other girls by the accident which had happened on the day of Laura's birth. Of course it
did
make one different from other people, Laura supposed
wistfully, to be nearly burned to death before one was a day old, and carried to safety upside down.

Ludo, however, when he heard Gwen referring Laura's lack of gymnastic strength to this incident—it was the first day of the holidays, when Papa was looking at their school reports in the nursery upstairs—spluttered hurriedly that it was nothing whatever to do with it, and Gwen ought not to talk about it to Laura.

“I know what's best for Laura better than you do, Ludo,” Gwen rebuked him sharply.

“I can have my own opinion, I suppose?” said Ludo, stubborn.

At this Gwen coloured and bit her lip, but she made no reply. She was not so well able to impugn Ludo's manners as of old, for there was no doubt that his manners had improved enormously. (Indeed they almost, of course this could hardly be true, but they
almost
seemed better than Papa's.) Ludo was much thinner and looked as if he had been through a good deal, thought Laura, but he had grown a couple of inches and had a much more manly air. He did not spend as much time as formerly with Laura, so it was not quite such a wrench when he went back to school again.

At Laura's school there was an institution called the Good Conduct Medal. The Medal, a tastefully designed small silver wheel hung on a thin black cord, was at the beginning of the term slung round the neck of the top girl in the top class. It hung there till she forfeited it by receiving a silence mark (for speaking in forbidden hours), an order mark (for disorderly or impertinent behaviour), or earning less than half marks for any given lesson. From her it descended to the second girl, and so on down through the school, to the bottom girl in the bottom class; when she forfeited it the process was repeated. No girl could receive it who had not a clean sheet that day. At the end of the year the girl who had held the Medal for the longest number of days was presented with a replica to keep, engraved with her own name. The Medal was apt to hover long in the upper classes but rush through the
lower, the smaller girls not having attained either much ambition, or much control of their tongue. It was Laura's second term before the Medal reached her, and she was greatly excited when, one summer morning just as school was over, she was called back from the cloakroom to have the cord solemnly slung round her thin little neck. Released, she rushed out of the building in a delirium of joy, and called out to Gwen, who stood, as usual, in the centre of an attentive group:

“I've got the Medal!”

Gwen's face showed her pride and pleasure, but one of the younger children cried out spitefully:

“You can't have the Medal, Laura Armistead—you spoke in school this morning.”

“I didn't,” said Laura.

“Yes, you did,” said another. “Don't you remember? You spoke to me about the biscuits at lunch.”

Laura considered, and suddenly fell from heaven to hell. It was true, she had that day broken a rule. She flushed crimson, and seizing the Medal cord, began to tear it off from under her collar.

“Don't be so silly,” cried Gwen angrily, pulling down her hand. “What are you doing, Laura? You didn't get a silence mark, did you?”

“No,” admitted Laura, tearful and struggling.

“Well, then!” cried Gwen. “You're entitled to the Medal if you haven't a bad mark to-day.”

“That's true,” said one child.

“She spoke, all the same,” said another: “She broke a rule.”

“She's entitled to it if she hasn't a bad mark,” repeated Gwen, glaring round the circle defiantly.

Nobody cared to oppose Gwen, who was a formidable antagonist.

“Oh, let her have it,” said an older girl, turning away. “She's only a baby.”

“A cry-baby,” tittered another, marking Laura's tears.

“Well, I'm going home,” said Gwen in a bright, cheerful voice. “Are you coming, Muriel? Come along, Laura.”

With masterly tact—for to have left alone with Laura would have meant defeat—Gwen drew one girl with her by a word, another by linking arms, and retired victorious, with Laura, still wearing the Medal, trailing on the wing.

At the foot of Blackshaw Lane the group paused. Farewells, in these cases, were usually protracted, and Laura slipped away home. She felt in urgent need of moral support; she had done wrong; she felt it in every quivering fibre of her body, to retain the Medal, and she must put it right. Papa must write a note for her, saying that his little girl had later remembered that it was not right for her to take the Medal that day, because—and so on. Oh yes, Papa would put it right. If only he chanced to return from the mill in good time, before Gwen reached the house! What luck! His hat hung on the stand, he was already home! Laura ran about the house seeking him, and found him at last in his bedroom, standing by his new desk with the American top. The lid was rolled back, open, and Papa had a bunch of papers in his hand. He looked uneasy, harassed; indeed he looked just as Laura felt.

“Papa, I've got the Medal and it isn't right for me to have it because I spoke,” gasped Laura.

Mr. Armistead turned on her a pursed-up, irritable face. “Have you washed your hands for luncheon, Laura?” he said in a hurried virtuous tone. “Go and prepare for the meal at once, or you'll keep us all waiting.”

Laura withdrew. She had read somewhere, she reflected, that a child began to grow up as soon as it lost confidence in its parents. She thought now in despair:

“I am growing up.”

What should she do about the Medal, she wondered, as the three Armisteads, all rather silent and preoccupied, ate their midday meal. To give it back to the headmistress at once with a
proper explanation was the right course, but she dare not pursue it; the headmistress she might have tackled, but she was too much afraid of Gwen. The next best course was to break the silence rule very publicly, so as to earn a bad mark. Laura decided to adopt this heroic course, and felt comforted.

But when she reached school it was difficult to carry out this plan; the lesson was Dictation, which Laura loved, and everyone was very quiet, writing away industriously in the mellow sunshine. If she spoke now, it would be terrible; she might even be imagined to be trying to cheat! Oh, no, it could not be done now. The next lesson was Painting, and in painting you were actually allowed to talk, which was nice, though odd. And so somehow the golden afternoon wore away and Laura received no bad mark. She ran out happily into the lovely summer air; after all it was a great relief to have no bad mark and not make Gwen cross; besides, she wanted to keep the Medal.

When the end of the school year came, Laura was found to have held the Medal for a greater number of days than any other pupil, and so won the prize. None of her schoolmates seemed to remember the first day she received it. Laura, however, had not forgotten, and she was overwhelmed with guilt and shame. Her sense of sin weighed her almost to the ground, yet she could hardly ask God to forgive her when she did not propose to make proper restitution—and she could not, she could
not
, confess her crime now. Remorse made her look pale and ill, and it was largely for her sake that Mr. Armistead decided on a seaside holiday for his family. He conveyed them all proudly, by train and boat and train, to a little place he had frequented in his jolly bachelor days, a quiet little place, exclusive, no vulgar trippers there, he said—Port Erin in the Isle of Man. He boasted so much about the Manx charms that his children grew uneasy, and Laura hardly dared to raise her eyes to see the place when at last, in the middle of the afternoon, hot and dirty, they arrived at this alleged Mecca. Ludo, however, who had been as uneasy as the
others during the journey, cheered up as soon as he saw the little harbour full of boats, and wanted to drag them all off down to the sea at once, before they had unpacked or taken tea. (Ludo, it appeared, knew all about boats because there were boats at Shrewsbury.) Such enthusiasm on Ludo's part was so unusual that everyone felt it ought to be encouraged, and it was soon arranged that Gwen should remain in the hotel to unpack, while Papa and Laura went off with Ludo. Ludo almost ran ahead, down the steep cliff path which zigzagged between rough grass and sea pinks and yellow chickweed and not very prickly thistles, to the hard, ribbed, brown sand below. Laura, still shaken and bewildered by the journey, found herself lifted by a fisherman in a blue jersey and thigh boots into the stern of a little brown boat with faded red cushions. Papa sat beside her, without a hat, expansive, beaming; Ludo faced them, wielding a pair of oars. He dipped and pulled, and the boat jerked along the top of the sea. Laura turned pale. Every time Ludo pulled, the boat jerked and bumped; the sea would surely come through the floor in another minute! Laura screamed and clung to Papa.

“We'd better go back,” said Papa, alarmed. “Turn the boat, Ludo.”

“Oh,
no”
begged Ludo. “She'll be all right in a minute. Look at the seagulls, Laura.”

Laura, reading in Ludo's eyes his disappointment that she did not like his beloved boat, choked down her sobs, and clinging hard to the gunwhale, trembling, tried not to gasp or jump when the boat stirred beneath her. At first she felt she would be drowned if she removed her eyes for an instant from Ludo's, but presently, on Ludo's urgings, she began timidly to look about her.

And suddenly everything was all right, and Port Erin was the most beautiful place in the world.

The little bay across which their boat was dancing was sheltered on one side by some low cliffs and on the other by Bradda Head. Bradda Head was simply glorious! In shape it was rather like
Buller, when he lay looking into the fire with half-closed eyes and paws outstretched; in this hot sunshine you could almost hear it purr. At the top it was all purple heather, with sheep grazing, though the sides were so steep it was amazing they didn't fall off; then below the heather huge rugged black rocks sank down into the sea, and there lived the swooping, screeching gulls. The sea was very very clear, and beautifully blue; in some parts of the bay it sparkled so that you could hardly see it for light. The row of houses along the top of the grassy cliffs was coloured pink and white, and lots of little rowing boats, brown like their own, or sometimes even white, were tied to the shore in long rows, or dotted about the bay. And now Ludo had rowed them up to a very odd place, which Papa explained was called the breakwater. It seemed that the authorities built it out at the wrong angle from the land, quite against the fishermen's advice, and the first storm that came along, wrecked it. So now, instead of being a smooth pier such as you saw in the pictures in the railway trains, it was a jumble of concrete blocks, looking, thought Laura, as if a child had upset a box of bricks there. All kinds of seaweed—ribbed and flat and curly, and some like rope—were swaying about the breakwater in the gentle ripples of the tide; and there were fat red anemones, like velvet, and round prickly sea urchins, all lovely pinks and purples, clinging to the rocks below, and the water was so clear that you could see them, oh! ever so far down; and in some of the shallow places there were tiny darting fish and little green crabs and lobsters, all transparent, waving their pretty little feelers. Ludo stood up in the boat in the dark velvet shadow of the rocks, and plunged down his oar—how odd, in the water the oar seemed to curve—and after some manoeuvring managed to push the blade beneath one of the sea urchins and bring it up to the surface. Twice it fell off; the third time he managed to land it, all dripping, safely in the bottom of the boat. Laura clapped her hands. But in the boat the urchin looked less
pretty; its prickles sank, its segmented shell turned drab. It moved a little, painfully.

“Oh, Ludo, put it back!” cried Laura.

Ludo, nothing loth, obeyed.

Yes, the Isle of Man was the most beautiful place in the world. Behind Port Erin, in the country, there were little white cottages, with red and purple fuchsias in thick bushes by the door, and fields of golden barley all rusting, and red poppies, and old castles, and sparkling rocky streams; and always the blue sea appearing in the distance. It was a happy place, thought Laura; the sun always shone and the colours of everything were always very bright and vivid: the sky and sea very blue, the foam very white, the rocks very black, the sands and the cornfields very yellow. One never saw such colours in Hudley, said Laura, and Papa explained the reason, that in Hudley there was so much smoke. Once, the wind rose and the sea grew rough; the waves, very huge and green, thundered against the breakwater and threw up terrific clouds of dense white spray; oh, it was grand, it was grand! Laura's remorse about the Medal fell from her. After all, she had earned it, deserved it, on every day except the first one, and, as she now remembered with joy, her total of days exceeded her next competitor's by more than twenty. She had repented, and would never commit that sin again; surely God would forgive, would understand! In Port Erin, somehow, He seemed much kinder than at home, and Laura rejoiced accordingly.