It was her own fault, as she candidly admitted to herself—her own, Justin’s a little, still more Mr. Kipling’s, but mainly and responsibly, her own. You observe that she did not blame Aunt Adela at all. She was always a just child.
And yet, of course, it was Aunt Adela who had been anxious for at least a year that Laura should go to school, who had said so, plaintively, once to Papa, who did not commit himself, and incessantly to Brackenhurst; for boarding schools had a Refining Influence ... and Companionship, you know ... and she had a bosom friend, a Miss Massingberd, such an Intellectual woman, who had recently opened a school and needed pupils....
Upon the horns of that altar Aunt Adela intended that Laura, entirely for her own good, should be offered up; for Aunt Adela was indefatigably benevolent at second hand. She used to make opportunity for little chats with Laura, and paint flamboyant pictures of the delights that awaited her if she would only tell Gran’papa that she should like to go to school. (Already the household was finding Laura a convenient mediator.) Laura listened politely, with her head on one side, like a wary robin. But she, too, did not commit herself.
One unlucky morning, however, fate overtook her.
She was engaged at the time in the particularly fascinating occupation of tidying Mrs. Cloud’s wardrobe drawers. If I were Laura, I could write a poem on Mrs. Cloud’s wardrobe, big as a little house, brown and grained and polished like a horse-chestnut or a ha’penny bun, with its clinking handles and the long looking-glass door, which, as it swung open, reflected in the mantel-glass opposite your own side face, unfamiliar, gratifying. It had dark shelves that ran up like ladder-rungs to the ceiling—but they pulled out disconcertingly if you tried to climb—and great drawers in which you could easily have hidden Prince Charlie (lying flat with blouses over him) what time the Butcher and his Southrons clanked up the stairs. Oh, the long shelves and the deep draws it had, all vaguely sweet with orris-root and lemon-weed, and the piles of smooth linen (Laura’s night-dresses were flannel, a hygienic brown) and the tiny scented bags that dropped from them, tied up with rainbow ribbons! And there were boxes—Japanese boxes—each with its special smell of lace or leather, and its name upon its lid in golden handwriting; and a little wicker basket where the dead gloves went, that Laura might take for finger-stalls or gardening; and shawls for dressing-up, and a feather fan, and a scarf from India all sewn over with silver and as heavy as a tennis net, for playing mermaids. There was a piece-drawer like Mrs. S. F. Robinson’s enchanted bag; and a carved comb six inches high and once, in a corner, candles and glass balls from last year’s Christmas tree; and little trinket cases that Laura was allowed to open, and the great jewel box with the baize petticoat that was always locked because it had diamonds inside it, and Justin’s watch, and more rings than would go on all Laura’s fingers, counting thumbs.
The sea hath its pearls, and argosies unload in London Town; but have you ever tidied Mrs. Cloud’s wardrobe?
Tidying (she called it tidying!) this delectable wardrobe that day, what should Laura come upon but a fat bundle which, deposited with the dumb eloquence of a retriever on Mrs. Cloud’s lap, was deprived of its elastic band and displayed to her as a sheaf of reports—Justin’s reports at his preparatory school. She was allowed to go through them, and because she could not help wheedling explanations out of a particularly busy Mrs. Cloud, to read to herself a few, a very few, of Justin’s letters home. Here was literature indeed! There was Shakespeare, no doubt: there was the B. O. P. There was Louisa Alcott and Sir Thomas Malory; but what were such scribblers then to Laura reading Justin’s letters home?
To top that revelation came Stalky and Co. for a birthday present.
Naturally she dreamed of going to school herself. In that mood Aunt Adela surprised her, and, striking while the iron was hot, settled matters with her, with her own friend, and with Papa, who wrote, in grim silence, the necessary cheques. He had never approved of boarding schools for his women-folk.
Neither did Laura. The door of the prim drawing-room had not closed behind Aunt Adela, she had barely rubbed Aunt Adela’s farewells from her cheeks, before she had realized that she had been trapped again, that she hadn’t intended to go to school, that she would never meet Beetle at ‘The Laburnums,’ and that she was stuck there for a term at least, because, when there is a chance that they may be read by Mrs. Cloud who would tell Justin, one does not fill one’s letters home with supplications and lamentings. Justin never once said that he wanted to come back!... Finally, she was going to be horribly homesick....