As usual, you are perfectly right. The first thing, I agree, is to
decide where to begin; that is, to discover at what period Laura and
Justin, who, after all, interest themselves from the days when they were
as old as their tongues, and months ahead of their teeth, begin to be
interesting to other people. That is a simple matter? I believe you
think, oh trustful Collaborator, that you have but to drop a suggestion,
like a penny in a chocolate machine, for a chapter to roll out, ready
written, for your censorship! Consider the initial difficulties! Who,
for instance, is to decide this question of the interesting moment? John
Smith, who likes a good wholesome love story with Sweet Seventeen for
heroine? Or Sweet Seventeen herself, whose Prince Charming must be fifty
if a day, grey-headed, iron-mouthed, and hopelessly entangled with a
repentant actress of at least three distinct, disreputable pasts? Would
they be interested in the countrified Laura, not yet a schoolgirl, whom
I should dearly love to draw? Of course not!
No, the protagonists must be at least in their quarter century. But what
would Mrs. Cloud, on the other hand, say to that? Slur over, if not
ignore, the first ten, let alone the first thirty, years of her son’s
life, we are, of course, at liberty to do. It is our affair! But, in
that case, the book, frankly, will not be worth reading. A character
such as Justin’s is not so easily deciphered. Thoroughly to appreciate
Justin we must begin at the beginning. We are probably not aware that he
weighed, at the very beginning, ten pounds. And speaking of teeth half a
page ago—do we know that there is a little white tooth, in a little
white thimble-box, in Mrs. Cloud’s big work-basket, that still bears
witness how unflinchingly, at five and a quarter, Henry Justin could
bear pain? Mrs. Cloud showed it to Laura one expansive day, and Laura,
fingering it as she listened to the anecdote that led so inevitably to
another anecdote, and another, and yet another, was whimsically jealous
that his mother should have had so much more of him than she. Had, as
she put it away again in the big basket under the pile of socks, a cold
eye for the exquisite darns: wondered that Justin had not got blisters
on his heel before now. And without an attempt at consistency, sat
herself meekly down at Mrs. Cloud’s feet to beg a darning lesson; which
Mrs. Cloud, with the discerning twinkle her son has not as yet acquired,
was very ready to give. They were excellent friends, those two. They had
affection, and that confident respect for each other which comes of
thinking exactly alike on an extremely important subject. They would
have both agreed, Collaborator, that to make our book a success, we
unquestionably must begin at the beginning—the beginning, of course, of
Henry Justin Cloud.
But I would rather talk about Laura.
I know the precedence is Justin’s: _for Adam was first formed, then
Eve_.... Yet Eve, bless her ingenuous, enterprising heart, is always so
much more interesting than Adam. If Adam were not in the Bible, wouldn’t
you call him ‘stodgy’? And don’t you think Eve did, under her breath?
‘Adam—what’s that, in that tree?
‘Look, Adam!
‘No, not there! Can’t you see where I’m pointing?
‘Rather like a pear, only round.
‘Adam, if you put your foot so—and swing yourself up.
‘Of course the branch will bear you!
‘Oh, Adam, you might!
‘I don’t want to eat it. I only want to know what it is.
‘I do think you might!
‘Don’t then!’
And there the serpent’s bright, unwinking eye catches hers, and the
serpent, all unperceived of Adam, whispers in her ear the one adjective
adequate to the situation.
And as, from that day to this, young birds have twittered as old birds
sing, I shouldn’t be surprised if Laura, in her turn, has had
moments—red, secret, shameful, iconoclastic moments when she, too, has
rolled the word relishingly over her tongue——
“Stodgy! Stodgy! Stodgy!”
But she was always very sorry afterwards. And so, I daresay, was Eve.
Adam was never sorry. He was always perfectly happy and self-satisfied.
That is why I prefer to begin, at any rate, with Eve—Laura, I mean. For
a happy man or woman is necessarily dull, dull as a healthy oyster, and
as safe. Few enough will care to pry open the hard shell and prod the
smug, snug mollusc inside. But when, as will sometimes happen, a grain
or two of sharp-edged sand sifts in, to scrape and fret and fester the
soft flesh, why, then the pearls begin to come, and the oyster is worth
a dive at last.
Justin, kindly born and bred, is, as far as we know, to be happy all his
life, though he had those ill-used months somewhere in his twenties for
which Mrs. Cloud, at least, never quite forgave Laura. But Laura’s
happiness cracked like a cup when she was six, and though she drank from
it later, often enough, and pure nectar at that, it was always
uncertainly, with a frightened eye upon the rivets with which Time, who
mends most things, had put it together again.
I told you, I think, that the two were orphaned: he had lost one and she
both parents: and if it were a schoolboy’s misfortune to have forgotten
his father (Mrs. Cloud had no opinion of Solomon: if his precepts could
produce nothing better than Rehoboam, she had every intention of sparing
the rod!) it was very much more definitely a small girl’s tragedy that
she could remember her mother.
From six o’clock in the morning, undisturbed by the erection of a tent
in her bed, to six o’clock in the evening, comprehending that the
gutterings from the night-light, surreptitiously kneaded in small hot
hands, are more soothing and inductive to sleep than hymns, chocolates,
or even _The Three Little Men in the Wood_, Laura’s mother was the most
wonderful and satisfactory person in the whole world.
She had tweedy, uncomplaining skirts that could get through the
scratchiest holes in a hedge without tearing like Nurse’s, and blouses
with blue fluttery ribbons, and petersham waistbelts that would go twice
round Laura if she pulled hard, and a little straw hat like a
schoolboy’s. And she hardly ever wore gloves. But on Sundays she had a
floppy thing with a rose in it and a great trailing feather, and a
beautiful brown frock, with red silk down the front, that Laura called
the robin dress. She could sing like a robin too, high and sweet, and
she knew all the songs that had ever been sung, and had read all the
books that had ever been written, and could tell you all about them all.
She had a dear smiling face, and her hair was so long that she could sit
on it, just like Rapunzel, and nobody could brush it as Laura did,
because her mother, twisting a little in her chair and making funny
faces, often said so. Her mother was always saying and doing funny
things: she could make Laura laugh by just looking at her. Yet she was
always properly serious over a dead bird or a bumped forehead, and had a
most soothing way of making an armchair of lap and arm and shoulder for
Laura to curl up in till she felt better.
With Nurse she was simply magnificent. She had a way of pretending that
she wasn’t afraid of her that made Laura gasp. She had poured a glass of
rhubarb and magnesia into the slop-pail once, before Nurse’s own eyes:
and had said, of course Laura might have the door of the night-nursery
left open if she wanted it—why not?—though she explained those shadows
that dance upon the wall privately to Laura afterwards, and so
satisfactorily that Laura was ready to withdraw her objection.
Yes, she was an understanding person. When they drove out in the low
pony-trap through the narrow lanes that were hedged with damson trees,
she never wondered that Laura should want the long yellow straws that
dangled from the branches to show where a waggon-load of corn had
passed. She would stand up and rake them down with her whip without more
ado. She would stop half a dozen times in half an hour to let Laura jump
out and pick herb-robert, or convolvulus, or ropes of briony, and give
advice as to the weaving of a wreath, and wear it round her hat when it
was done at whatever angle Laura preferred, with an air that proved to
Nurse and other mothers that she wore it to please herself quite as much
as Laura.
And Laura, subconsciously, was aware that the mother she worshipped,
worshipped with equal frankness a small daughter whom no one else found
particularly attractive. And it was possibly that knowledge that allowed
the mother’s personality so to interknit with the daughter’s, that its
uprooting came near to tearing out the child’s heart also.
Yet the alliance was so inevitable. There were the twins, of course, but
they were obviously Nurse’s property. They were fat, greedy, red-crested
darlings, with mottled arms and legs, and mouths that were always half
open like baby thrushes. Laura and her mother were very fond of them,
though Laura’s attitude was prompted, I fear, by the glory of sharing a
responsibility with her mother, rather than by sisterly devotion, for
she was always persuasively protestant when Mrs. Valentine suggested a
visit to the nursery.
“My chick, we really _must_ go and play with Wilfred and James!”
“Oh, Mother! Ten minutes more! They’re quite happy. They don’t really
want us, you know. Oh, Mother, just another ten minutes! Because,
Mother—darling, dear Mother—in the inside of the very inside of your
heart, you would rather read to me, wouldn’t you?”
“What? Read to a whipper-snip like you, when the poor little twins—I
never _heard_ of such a thing!” And Mother’s knees would give way
suddenly and Laura, slipping to the floor, would be tickled till she
squealed. And when she had had her ten minutes, full measure, Mother
would recollect herself guiltily, and hurrying upstairs, be very, very
kind to Wilfred and to James. But Laura, in dutiful imitation, would yet
be glancing, ever and again, from Noah’s Ark and pat-ball, to watch the
beloved face, and wait for a stray smile; and when it came her way,
would whisper to herself in fierce, delicious exultation——
“But she’s _my_ mother most!”
You protest? You think such jealousy, such ecstasy, unchildlike and
fantastic? And if not impossible in such a baby, at least improbable and
rather distressing? And you don’t believe children are like that? I
can’t help it. You ought to be right, but you are not. Laura was ‘like
that.’ An unpleasant child? If you please. But her mother never thought
so. And if some premature instinct made her, young as she was, so proud
and jealous of her place in her mother’s heart, the instinct was, at
least, a sure one. For though many are to like her, and some to love,
never in all her life will she be first fiddle with any one again.
Moreover her golden age was coming to its end. Not suddenly, with a
hushed house and red eyelids and the definite, numbing ritual of
carriages and handkerchiefs and hothouse flowers: not in a black day
that would have yawned like a gulf between Then and Now, a cleavage,
definitely unbridgeable, on whose further brink Mother would move ever
more mistily, shrouded in hopeless glamour; but imperceptibly,
tenuously, in an ever lengthening spider-thread of hope deferred.
For Mother had only gone away to get better! She was ill, because she
had begun to wear little white shawls, although it was summer-time, and
sat still so much, and did not pour away Nurse’s medicines any more. So
Laura saved her sugar at tea-time for her mother, to take the taste
away. There was a day when Mother cried. Laura had never known till then
that mothers could cry. She held her head and tried to be grown-up and
comforting, but she was secretly terrified, yet a little important too,
because Mother would not let any one be called, but lay quiet against
Laura’s shoulder, just as Laura had so often lain against hers. The next
day, or week, or months, she could never remember how long it was, her
lazy mother had breakfast in bed, and she was to be sent away to stay
with Gran’papa Valentine. The twins were to be left behind. “Too young
to understand,” said Nurse significantly to the parlour-maid. Understand
what? She coaxed, implored, stormed, for an explanation. Why shouldn’t
she stay, if the twins did? She had not been naughty—she had been good,
good! Mother wanted her. Mother couldn’t want the twins without her.
Mother always wanted her. And she wanted her mother—she wanted her
mother——
She fought like a little wild cat while they dressed her, in a fit of
passionate anger that shook her small body as wind shakes a bush, and
that only her mother had ever been able to control. There was a wildness
about it that startled even the stolid nurse, who could not guess at the
foreboding, the desperation that underlay the paroxysm, and was, of
course, as incomprehensible to the child herself as his own despair to
the dog who watches you pack your trunk.
It was the friendly parlour-maid who came to the rescue with her
cheerful——
“Now, Miss Laura, you won’t be let say good-bye to your ma if you can’t
be good!”
That quieted her, banished the unreasoning fear that had been upon her
of the hateful strength of her nurse’s arms, that at any peremptory
moment might seize and bear her, struggling, helpless, into the
wilderness where Mother was not. She would not, could not, go without a
word from her mother, or a promise or a kiss.... But if she might say
good-bye—why, the world had righted itself again!... Mother would make
all clear.... Mother would make all right.... Could she go to Mother
now? this directly minute?
She submitted herself to the maid (she would not go near the nurse) and
was re-arranged and smoothed and tidied, and left at last at the bedroom
door, with a final injunction to be a good girl, and very quiet, and not
stay long.
She shook off the maid’s hand, and, awed a little in spite of herself,
slipped into the room.
She was so small that the foot of the big bedstead blocked her vision
like a wall, and for a blank moment she thought the room empty. Then the
clothes rustled faintly, and emboldened she peeped round the post.
There, sure enough, lay her mother, her beautiful long plaits
disordered, an arm flung out weakly.
She clambered on to the bed and cast herself upon her in an ecstasy of
relief.
“Mother! Mother!”
Well, she had her half-hour and was sent away comforted. Laura was to
enjoy herself—and be very good—and go on with her lessons—and be kind to
Wilfred and James: and there should be letters, many letters, in a round
hand that Laura could read all by herself. And soon, very soon, Mother
would come and fetch her home—and so good-bye to Laura, her Laura, her
own little girl——
That is how Laura went to live at Brackenhurst with Gran’papa Valentine.
She got her letters, three of them, but no more, though that was only
because there was a new postman! But though the twins followed her in a
little while in white overalls and black sashes, and the weeks went by,
and Laura grew daily more excited and impatient, her mother never came
to fetch her home.
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