Sleep in Peace (9 page)

“Ah!” said Papa in a mysterious tone: “I hadn't forgotten that, Mother.” And he actually winked at his elder daughter, who replied with a knowing smile.

Stimulated by this opposition, and held firmly to his promise to do so by Gwen, Mr. Armistead actually wrote to a few public schools for their prospectuses. As soon as they arrived he completely changed his mind. The Hudley Grammar School had been good enough for him, he said; and he seemed to enquire,
as he stood by the hearth so handsome and well-groomed and glossy, what more could possibly be required.

“But, Papa,” began Gwen fretfully.

“Do let us have our meal in peace, Gwen,” requested Mr. Armistead with dignity, taking his place at the head of the table.

“Papa, you know you said the school had gone down terribly since your days,” re-opened Gwen when the food was served.

“Henry Hinchliffe thinks it good enough for his sons,” replied Mr. Armistead, uneasily, looking at his plate.

Even Laura was surprised by this
volte face
, and Gwen tightened her lips and was ominously silent.

After tea when Papa had gone to the Club and the children were sitting silent in the nursery together, Gwen and Laura sewing, Ludo doing his home-lessons, Gwen suddenly broke out:

“Ludo, would you
like
to go away to school?”

It was so unprecedented on her part to consult their likings thus that Laura was startled, and felt that a real crisis was at hand. Her heart beat heavily, she suspended her sewing and gazed earnestly at her brother. The notion of having to live without him desolated her, but all the same she desired passionately that Ludo should do this thing that other boys did, should go out into the world and triumph there. Ludo, looking away from his sisters, swung one foot agitatedly and was silent. He always found it difficult to submit his preferences to the criticism of a hostile world by voicing them, Laura knew; she waited, understanding this, till he could bring himself to the painful hazard of speech. But Gwen was exasperated by his delay.

“Well, Ludo!” she said impatiently. “Do you want to go or don't you? It's no use me making all this fuss with Papa if you'd rather stay at home.” She spoke in an aggrieved tone, the tone of a martyr; Laura felt there was something unfair in this, but could not just see where.

Ludo hesitated again', caught Laura's imploring eye, looked away and said in a strangled, resentful tone:

“I should like to go, of course. But. . .”

A warm relief gushed through Laura's heart. Gwen pursed her lips and was silent.

From that day the battle raged relentlessly. Gwen attacked Papa every evening before he went to the Club; indeed she would not let him go to the Club at his usual hour, but, having packed Grandmamma off to bed, sat with him in the dining-room, sewing and arguing. Their voices rose and fell; Laura, hanging over the banisters anxiously, blenched as the sounds of dissension grew. Ludo declined to take any interest in these discussions; he remained stubbornly in the nursery, too busy, as it appeared, with his homework to have ears for anything else. One evening when Laura was thus on the watch the dining-room door was violently burst open and Papa rushed out, crying:

“I tell you I can't afford!”

He was almost shouting, and his round black eyes looked harassed, hunted. Gwen followed him, embroidery frame in hand, calm and composed as always. She laid down the frame, took Papa's best coat (fine indigo serge with velvet collar) from the hat-stand and helped him into it carefully.

“Shall you be late? Shall I tell Cook to leave some sandwiches?” she enquired in her most dutiful tone.

“Yes,” grunted Papa, snatching his stick from the stand irritably.

This kind of scene occurred at frequent intervals for several weeks, and whenever Papa was out, Grandmamma and Gwen carried on the conflict. The feeling gradually permeated the whole house that Ludo was very selfish and extravagant to want to go away to school when poor Papa could not afford it, and Gwen was very unselfish and noble to bear the brunt of Papa's resistance. Grandmamma was on Papa's side, Mildred on Gwen's; Laura wished, of course, to be on Ludo's, but was not quite sure where it was to be found. It presently emerged that Gwen was offering
to Papa to economise by dismissing Ada; she proposed to leave school herself and carry on the house with Cook and Mildred alone. At this Ada wept, and Laura's heart was still further divided. Papa, however, snapped out angrily that it would be a mere drop in the ocean. He was very bad-tempered just now, perhaps not unnaturally, with Ludo; he addressed him such questions as: “Well, sir! And what have you been doing with your valuable time to-day?” in a sarcastic tone, and if Ludo asked for more meat, carved him far too much and slapped it down on his plate impatiently. The implication was that Ludo wished to eat the Armisteads out of house and home, and Papa, nobly, would deny him nothing.

And then suddenly everything was all right again. Papa came in one midday from the mill rather late and in a very cheerful mood; he whistled in the hall and stood on the nursery hearth jingling his money and smiling down at his children, just as he used. And suddenly he said in his old jovial tone:

“Well, Ludo, my boy; shall it be Shrewsbury or Rugby?”

Gwen exclaimed; Ludo, startled out of his reticence, spluttered with his mouth full: “Rugby.”

“He's really to go, Papa?” demanded Gwen.

“Yes, I think I can see my way to it,” replied Papa cheerfully.

“Hurrah!” cried Laura.

“Well, you'll do as you like with your own, I suppose,” said Grandmamma grimly. “But I shall go and live at Ashworth with Mary.”

“Don't be so ridiculous, Mother,” said Mr. Armistead, laughing. “Why on earth should you leave us just because Ludo is going away to school?”

“You won't be wanting me any more, now you're so grand,” said the old woman bitingly.

“Don't be silly, Grandmamma,” said Gwen. “Auntie Mary doesn't want you, and we do.”

But her tone had no warmth, no affection, no conviction; and the old woman gave her a look of searing scorn. “I know my own business best, I reckon,” she said.

Mr. Armistead laughed to cover his embarrassment. “Well, Ludo wants to go to Rugby,” he said, “and Rugby it shall be.”

In the event it proved to be Shrewsbury, because the brother of one of Gwen's friends went to Shrewsbury.

From being the villain, Ludo now became the hero of the hour. Papa talked constantly to him, telling ancedotes of what went on at public schools and how one should behave there. There was linen to buy, and suits to buy, and a tuck-box to prepare, and everything had to be marked with Ludo's name; Gwen, Mildred and Laura all became very busy.

In the general bustle the departure of Grandmamma passed almost unnoticed; Ludo and Laura came in one day from a walk and to their surprise found her just driving away, in her sealskin cape and her best bonnet with the ostrich feather, tightly clutching a new black bag with a silver chain handle which Papa had given her as a farewell present. She stopped the cab and embraced her grandchildren, sniffing, seeming really reluctant to let them go. Her withdrawal left Gwen the undisputed mistress of the house; she at once moved her own belongings into Grandmamma's room and transferred the maids from the cellar to the ground floor kitchen—a reform which Grandmamma had long opposed as new-fangled nonsense.

But now that her double victory was secure, Gwen seemed not much pleased with it, Laura noticed; she was quiet, as if worried —about what Laura could not fathom. One day as the sisters sat together sewing on tapes, Gwen said:

“I wonder why Papa changed his mind about Ludo?”

“I suppose business is better at the mill,” suggested Laura.

“I don't think so,” said Gwen thoughtfully.

At last everything was ready, and the day came for seeing Ludo off. Laura had been sustained hitherto by excitement, but
now that all the fine new clothes were packed in the black tin trunks marked in white
L. S. Armistead
, and the trunks were in the hall and the cab was at the door, her heart sank into her new school boots. How to live without Ludo! And what would they do to him at school? Oh, what would they do to him there? Ludo looked pale, and was very stolid and gruff, as always when he did not trust himself to speak. He had expressed a preference that farewells should be said in the house rather than on the platform; Mr. Armistead was taking him to Shrewsbury, so Gwen and Laura, whose school did not open till the morrow, stood on the Blackshaw porch to see them go. Ludo gave Laura a hasty glutinous kiss and climbed at once into the cab. His velvet eyes were very bright, his lower lip trembled. Laura suddenly became very gay, skipping about up and down the steps, to help Ludo in his gallant attempt to leave home without crying. He succeeded, thanks to a tiff between Gwen and the cabman about the placing of a trunk; the cab drove off with both Armisteads erect and smiling—and looking, as Laura observed with surprise, oddly like each other.

Laura went straight upstairs and began to turn out the nursery cupboard. She did not want anyone to know how she felt.

Presently Gwen came upstairs, calling her name. To Laura's astonishment her sister's thin cheek was flushed and her grey eyes looked suspiciously bright.

“What do you think, Laura?” she said indignantly. “Ada's given notice!”

Laura sat back on her heels, amazed. “Ada!” she exclaimed. “But she cried when you thought you'd have to let her go!”

“She says she doesn't want to stay now Ludo's gone to school. She says she's going to get married,” said Gwen in a rapid, angry tone.

“Really? To the young man who gave her Buller? Will she take Buller with her?” enquired Laura.

“Yes. She says she doesn't want to stay now Ludo's gone to
school,” repeated Gwen. “Isn't it absurd? So ridiculous. As if she could miss Ludo like we do!”

Her voice shook, and suddenly the sisters were in each other's arms. “Oh, Ludo!” they wept together.

This temporary sharing of feeling with Gwen eased Laura's path to school, for it caused her to feel warm and safe proceeding there under her sister's wing next morning, instead of diffident and chilled.

School was lovely! The big hall, with its red curtains dividing the classes, the blackboards, the desks, the ink, the chalk—how novel, how exciting! True, there was one awful moment, in an Arithmetic lesson, when Laura thought everything was going to be terrible and she would have to run away and never come back. The class (of four) was engaged upon “tables of measurement” addition sums. Laura had negotiated successfully a sum dealing with feet and inches, and another in pints and quarts. (These were always rather tricky, and she was proud of her achievement.) The next sum was in hours, days and weeks;
add together
, it said:
7w. 6d. 12h. 20m. and 4w. 4d. 14h. 41m
. What could “m” stand for, puzzled Laura. In a flash of inspiration she decided it meant “month”; pleased with her own perception she solemnly moved up the months to the head of the sum. But the answer was oddly wrong. The Arithmetic mistress came to investigate.

“Why have you put the minutes there?” she asked over Laura's shoulder.

“Minutes! I thought they were months!” cried poor Laura.

“But why did you think they were put after the hours then?” queried the other.

“To trick you—to make it more difficult,” stammered Laura.

The mistress gave her an odd look and explained that Arithmetic books were not written on those lines. Laura was so distressed by this failure that she could not bring out rightly one other sum.

But luckily the next lesson was French, and Ludo had taught
Laura a few words of French. The mistress was a French lady who drew things on the board and taught you their names, and then asked you to draw something and say the French for it. Well, of course! Laura had known Buller's French name for years and often drawn a cat! So she was quite a success; and when they were all having dinner, at home, and Papa asked her how she liked school, she told them all about the French cat and they were all very much pleased, especially Ada, and Papa said: “That's my clever little girl.” So it was quite settled that Laura was clever and loved school.

Laura was clever and loved school. There were books—beautiful new shiny exercise books with rows of double lines, or squares all over the pages, all beautifully ruled in palest blue. These were all one's own, not Gwen's or Ludo's. There were pencil-boxes of pale wood, painted with flowers on the top, with three tiers, opening in secret ways; inside the pencil-boxes were round, slender pencils, very crimson and smooth and glossy, and golden nibs in thin, brown, fluted pens. There were india-rubbers, white and red and sometimes even green. There was a pale yellow ruler, marked with inches on one side and centimetres on the other; there was delicious pink blotting-paper, beautifully creased. Nothing in the whole world gave Laura more pleasure than to use these lovely tools. Her fingers, so stupid, so clumsy, so disobedient when grasping a needle, wielded a ruler and a pencil with the most delicate certainty; she was never very good at Arithmetic, but Algebra and Geometry she simply adored; her geometrical figures were meticulously drawn; her “.·.” and “=” were never out of place. There were schoolbooks, too, telling you all about history, and geography, and Latin; the geography book had lovely coloured maps, the Latin book had a picture of the Dover shore. Best of all, there were books which were just Books, which you took out of the school library and read and read and read. “Laura's always reading nowadays,” complained Gwen. And why not, thought Laura, when life at home was so
painful, tiresome, dull, compared with the life lived in the printed page? Who would go shopping with Gwen (wearing gloves, too!) when they might be galloping the desert with Saladin, or fleeing the guillotine with Évremonde? Who would listen to talk of tucks and the new housemaid's petty misdemeanours, when they might be hearing the noble words of Arthur or Robin Hood? Not Laura Armistead, certainly, thought Laura, burying her nose still deeper in her book. Yes, school was lovely. There was no girl among the thirty attending the school who particularly attracted Laura, and she made no special friend. Indeed she had little opportunity for doing so; she walked to and from school with Gwen, and her sister usually kept her close in break. But the other girls were all
there
, laughing and chattering and jolly, and it was fun to see them, and lessons were really lovely, and there were the lovely books.