GUT UND BOSE UND LUST UND LEID UND ICH UND DU.

NIETZSCHE

“Laura, you’re a cipher!”

“I’m nothing of the sort!” threw back Laura indignantly. “You’re one yourself.— What does she mean, Evvy?” she asked getting out of earshot of the speaker.

“Goodness knows. Don’t mind her, Poppet.”

It was an oppressive evening: all day long a hot north wind had scoured the streets, veiling things and people in clouds of gritty dust; the sky was still like the prolonged reflection of a great fire. The hoped-for change had not come, and the girls who strolled the paths of the garden were white and listless. They walked in couples, with interlaced arms; and members of the Matriculation Class carried books with them, the present year being one of much struggling and heartburning, and few leisured moments. Mary Pidwall and Cupid were together under an acacia tree at the gate of the tennis-court; and it was M. P. who had cast the above gibe at Laura. At least Laura took it as a gibe, and scowled darkly; for she could never grow hardened to ridicule.

As she and Evelyn re-passed this spot in their perambulation, a merry little lump of a girl called Lolo, who darted her head from side to side when she spoke, with the movements of a watchful bird — this Lolo called: “Evelyn, come here, I want to tell you something.”

“Yes, what is it?” asked Evelyn, but without obeying the summons; for she felt Laura’s grip of her arm tighten.

“It’s a secret. You must come over here.”

“Hold on a minute, Poppet,” said Evelyn persuasively, and crossed the lawn with her characteristically lazy saunter. Minutes went by; she did not return.

“Look at her Laura-ship!” said a saucebox to her partner. The latter made “Hee-haw, hee-haw!” and both laughed derisively.

The object of their scorn stood at the farther end of the wire-net fence: all five fingers of her right hand were thrust through the holes of the netting, and held oddly and unconsciously outspread; she stood on one leg, and with her other foot rubbed up and down behind her ankle; mouth and brow were sullen, her black eyes bent wrathfully on her faithless friend.

“A regular moon-calf!” said Cupid, looking up from THE TEMPEST, which was balanced breast-high on the narrow wooden top of the fence.

“Mark my words, that child’ll be plucked in her ‘tests’,” observed M. P.

“Serve her right, say I, for playing the billy-ass,” returned Cupid, and killed a giant mosquito with such a whack that her wrist was stained with its blood. “Ugh, you brute! . . . gorging yourself on me. But I’m dashed if I know how Evelyn can be bothered to have her always dangling round.”

“She’s a cipher,” repeated Mary, in so judicial a tone that it closed the conversation.

Laura, not altogether blind to externals, saw that her companions made fun of her. But at the present pass, the strength of her feelings quite out-ran her capacity for self-control; she was unable to disguise what she felt, and though it made her the laughing-stock of the school. What scheme was the birdlike Lolo hatching against her? Why did Evelyn not come back?— these were the thoughts that buzzed round inside her head, as the mosquitoes buzzed outside.— And meanwhile the familiar, foolish noises of the garden at evening knocked at her ear. On the other side of the hedge a batch of third-form girls were whispering, with choked laughter, a doggerel rhyme which was hard to say, and which meant something quite different did the tongue trip over a certain letter. Of two girls who were playing tennis in half-hearted fashion, the one next Laura said ‘Oh, damn!’ every time she missed a ball. And over the parched, dusty grass the hot wind blew, carrying with it, from the kitchens, a smell of cabbage, of fried onions, of greasy dish-water.

Then Evelyn returned, and a part, a part only of the cloud lifted from Laura’s brow.

“What did she want?”

“Oh, nothing much.”

“Then you’re not going to tell me?”

I can’t.

“What business has she to have secrets with you?” said Laura furiously. And for a full round of the garden she did not open her lips.

Her companions were not alone in eyeing this lopsided friendship with an amused curiosity. The governesses also smiled at it, and were surprised at Evelyn’s endurance of the tyranny into which Laura’s liking had degenerated. On this particular evening, two who were sitting on the verandah-bench came back to the subject.

“Just look at that Laura Rambotham again, will you?” said Miss Snodgrass in her tart way. “Sulking for all she’s worth. What a little fool she is!”

“I’m sure I wonder Mrs. Gurley hasn’t noticed how badly she’s working just now,” said Miss Chapman; and her face wore it best-meaning, but most uncertain smile.

“Oh, you know very well if Mrs. Gurley doesn’t want to see a thing she doesn’t,” retorted Miss Snodgrass. “A regular talent for going blind, I call it — especially where Evelyn Souttar’s concerned.”

“Oh, I don’t think you should talk like that,” urged Miss Chapman nervously.

“I say what I think,” asserted Miss Snodgrass. “And if I had my way, I’d give Laura Rambotham something she wouldn’t forget. That child’ll come to a bad end yet.— How do you like that colour, Miss C.?” She had a nest of cloth-patterns in her lap, and held one up as she spoke.

“Oh, you shouldn’t say such things,” remonstrated Miss Chapman. “There’s many a true word said in jest.” She settled her glasses on her nose. “It’s very nice, but I think I like a bottle-green better.”

“Of course, I don’t mean she’ll end on the gallows, if that’s what troubles you. But she’s frightfully unbalanced, and, to my mind, ought to have some sense knocked into her before it’s too late.— That’s a better shade, isn’t it?”

“Poor little Laura,” said Miss Chapman, and drew a sigh. “Yes, I like that. Where did you say you were going to have the dress made?”

Miss Snodgrass named, not without pride, one of the first warehouses in the city. “I’ve been saving up my screw for it, and I mean to have something decent this time. Besides, I know one of the men in the shop, and I’m going to make them do it cheap.” And here they fell to discussing price and cut.

Thus the onlookers laughed and quizzed and wondered; no one was bold enough to put an open question to Evelyn, and Evelyn did not offer to take anyone into her confidence. She held even hints and allusions at bay, with her honeyed laugh; which was HER shield against the world. Laura was the only person who ever got behind this laugh, and what she discovered there, she did not tell. As it was, varying motives were suggested for Evelyn’s long-suffering, nobody being ready to believe that it could really be fondness, on her part, for the Byronic atom of humanity she had attracted to her.

However that might be, the two girls, the big fair one and the little dark one, were, outside class-hours, seldom apart. Evelyn did not often, as in the case of the birdlike Lolo, give her young tyrant cause for offence; if she sometimes sought another’s company, it was done in a roguish spirit — from a feminine desire to tease. Perhaps, too, she was at heart not averse to Laura’s tantrums, or to testing her own power in quelling them. On the whole, though, she was very careful of her little friend’s sensitive spots. She did not repeat the experiment of taking Laura out with her; as her stay at school drew to a close she went out less frequently herself; for the reason that, no matter how late it was on her getting back, she would find Laura obstinately sitting up in bed, wide-awake. And it went against the grain in her to keep the pale-faced girl from sleep.

On such occasions, while she undid her pretty muslin dress, unpinned the flowers she was never without, and loosened her gold-brown hair, which she had put up for the evening: while she undressed, Evelyn had to submit to a rigorous cross-examination. Laura demanded to know where she had been, what she had done, whom she had spoken to; and woe to............