Laura was awakened by a soft warmth upon her cheek, a touch that might
have been a kiss or a drifting feather or her kitten’s tentative paw,
but was, when she lifted lazy hands to it, no more than a beam of
sunshine, a finger-tip of morning, thrust in between thick hangings to
rouse a votary.
She was out of bed in an instant, barefooted and clear-eyed, paying her
vows in deep breaths of pure pleasure, while the hoarse jingle of the
curtain rings, as she pulled them apart, attuned like a clash of cymbals
to the choruses of the birds.
Early as it was, the dawn, dewy, startled, fugitive, had disappeared and
the perfect day spread itself before her, arrogantly, from hill to hill,
a peacock trailing splendours of blue and green and gold. Already
earth-line and sky-line were melting into one, and the distant valleys
and the little red-capped villages were half hidden in a quivering haze
of heat. The breeze, tiny and half asleep, was burdened with the scents
of a hundred fields and woods and gardens. The church clock, chiming
five, sang seconds to the treble of the larks and in the roses at her
elbow the bees boomed out their bass. And the sunlight, like the Spirit
of God, brooded over the beautiful land.
She leaned out and caught at the great barbed ropes of briar swinging
loose from the wall, and pulled them up to her to plunge with the
greater ease face and neck into the massed delicacy of the roses, pink
and white and cream, twenty sisters to a stalk: and drew back at last,
too drenched with dew to think of bed again, to have her bath and plan
over the expedition to come.
She sang herself joyful little songs as she sponged and splashed, till
old Mr. Valentine at the other side of the wall, an early reader if not
an early riser, drew the bedclothes about his afflicted ears.
Grandfather and granddaughter shared an inability to keep in tune that
was as constant as their wincing criticism of tunelessness in other
folk. They were both fond of music; yet, where music was concerned, they
had no sympathy whatever with each other. Gran’papa, an hour later,
before his study window, his fiddle at his chin, filled the house with
the staccato of _Duncan Gray has come to woo_, and was perfectly happy.
But Laura, setting the breakfast table, wondered merely how long the
canary would stand it and was impishly ready to applaud, with a chuckle
and a chink of cups, when the sudden spate of shrill, contemptuous
melody poured through the house like sunlight and left Gran’papa’s tune
to glimmer wretchedly like a day-foundered glow-worm or belated
will-o’-the-wisp.
But who could expect Laura to have thoughts or sympathies for a
grandfather when there was Cook to be interviewed, and a luncheon basket
packed, and a new ribbon to be twisted round an old hat before ten
o’clock and Justin came—or Gran’papa, fidgeted by the bustle, to
remember very clearly those outings of his own with sandal shoes and a
doll’s sunshade fifty years ago? The pair rasped each other throughout
breakfast with the sour implacability and perfect mutual understanding
of a couple of croquet players.
Gran’papa bent his head reverently over his dish of whiting as Laura
handed him his coffee.
“For-what-we-are-about-to-receive-may-the-Lord-make-us-truly-thankful-_under_done!”
he remarked.
Laura was perfunctory in her concern. She was wondering, with an eye on
the egg-boiler, if the eggs were hard yet and whether Justin would eat
more than three.
Gran’papa buried his hooked nose in his coffee cup, and emerged again,
wiping his beard while he selected his epithet.
“Dish-water,” he decided pleasantly. “And luke-warm. Another cup, if you
please.”
“Sorry, Gran’papa,” Laura prided herself on her coffee: could not be
expected to agree.
“Sorry! Sorry!” Gran’papa worried joyously at the word. “If it tread on
a gentlewoman’s gown or commit a murder, ‘sorry’ is this generation’s
utmost effort at apology.”
Sandwiches ... and a lettuce ... an egg for herself and three for
Justin.... Yes, that would do nicely.... Here Laura caught Mr.
Valentine’s eye and realized that an answer was expected.
“Oh, sorry, Gran’papa,” said Laura meekly and was instantly aware that
it was the wrong one.
“I assure you, my dear, that you are mistaken in thinking rudeness a
sauce to good wit,” said Gran’papa, always at his most Shakespearean
when offended.
Laura roused herself. She knew how to appease him.
“_Why, is it not a lamentable thing, grandsire, that we should be thus
afflicted by these ‘Pardon me’s’?_” she countered, twinkling.
He gave his gruff chuckle. His granddaughter did not wear her hair in
smooth bands as a gentlewoman should: used slang (mild enough, oh,
Gran’papa Valentine!) and slurred her speech in the detestable modern
fashion: had, in short, innumerable faults of her own; but she could
always be trusted to cap a quotation. He held out an olive branch.
“The weather seems likely to hold. You should have a pleasant picnic.
You are taking——?”
“Oh, eggs and salad and bread-and-cheese, and Justin’s bringing peaches
and anything else going. We shall have a gorgeous spread.”
“A feast,” agreed Gran’papa, too graciously, “of oriental magnificence.”
“Oh, you know what I mean!” Laura laughed. “Will you excuse me,
Gran’papa? There’s such a lot to see still and Justin hates
waiting—dislikes, I mean: sorry!”
Gran’papa hid his feelings in his newspaper.
But, hurry as Laura might, Justin was at the bow window when she
returned, elbows on the sill, talking over the morning’s news with
Gran’papa.
“Justin! Here already? I didn’t know.”
“Ai didn’t neu,” murmured Gran’papa abstractedly. He was annoyed at the
interruption.
Laura flushed. She could not bear being criticized before Justin.
“I’m awfully sorry to be late,” she began.
“Awfully,” commented Gran’papa with interest. “Filled, that is to say,
with awe——” Then, testily—“What is the matter now, my dear?”
“I’m awf—extremely sorry to bother you, Gran’papa,” said Laura
patiently, “but you’re sitting on the lettuce.” Then to the maid
crossing the hall—“Cook! Cook! Oh, Cook, you might bring me my basket,
will you? I left it in the kitchen.”
“_Her voice was ever soft_,” confided Gran’papa to Justin as he reseated
himself—“_and gentle and low, an excellent thing in woman!_”
Justin nodded.
“That always reminds me of Mother. All women squeak, it seems to me,
except Mother. Laura’s not half so bad as some, though, except when she
gets excited.” He smiled at her generously. “Hurry up, old thing! What
an age you are!”
“I am hurrying. I’m hurrying as much as ever I can. Can’t you see I’m
hurrying?” Laura, badgered beyond endurance, jabbed her hat-pins through
her hat and made heatedly for the door.
But she turned again, my tender-conscience Laura, to say pleasantly—
“You’ve got the paper, haven’t you? Good-bye, Gran’papa!”
“Goodbaye,” said Gran’papa, hunched in his chair like a malicious old
eagle. His shoulders shook as the door closed and he gave his dry,
birdlike chuckle.
“Goodbaye,” repeated Gran’papa with relish, and returned to his _Times_.
But Laura, edging along young cornfields in Justin’s wake, had been
stirred to expostulations.
“I do think you might have backed me. Gran’papa’s impossible sometimes.
It’s absolute pedantry. And he doesn’t mind who’s there. He says I slur
my words! I don’t, do I? As if I could help it, anyhow.”
“Adenoids, I expect,” said Justin sympathetically. “You ought to have
’em seen to,” and was surprised that Laura was silent for the next few
minutes.
Not that he objected. Laura listened so well that he would have
described her as a brilliant talker; but when she did talk she was
always a little too quick for him. She had had, indeed, to break herself
of a tendency to finish his sentences for him; for he never thought
ahead, but when a question was asked him, or an aspect presented, he
would always pause, in his unhurried fashion, to view the matter from
all points of the compass before proceeding on his conversational
itinerary, and so was apt to come from a totally unexpected quarter to
his impeccable conclusions. Indeed he presented his truisms with such an
air of having discovered them all by himself that nine out of ten people
thought him original; while the tenth—laughed and loved him. His
solemnity, you see, to those discerning ones, was—and would be all his
life—so disarmingly the seriousness of the small boy who, on one of his
mother’s at-home days, had greeted a clerical stranger encountered on
the doorstep with—
“How do you do? I’m Justin Cloud. Would you like to see my football?”
Then, graciously—“I keep it in the pantry.”
And in the pantry Mrs. Cloud at last discovered her rural dean, seated
on the housemaid’s-box and fiercely upholding Rugby football to a small
and intent, but entirely unconvinced, believer in Association methods.
For Justin, then as now, was not easily shaken in his belief. He was the
reverse of blatant: indeed, he seldom volunteered an opinion on any
subject unasked; but once asked, he was maddeningly sure of himself.
Laura always considered him her most liberal education—in self-control;
for she never argued with him (and they were both young enough to revel
in argument) without yearning in the latter end to shake him. Yet he had
an occasional attractive way of suddenly and so sweetly seeing your
point of view that you were bewildered into receiving the capitulation
with extravagant gratitude and a conscience-stricken sub-conviction that
he was probably right after all. But when, after hesitation, you looked
up to tell him so, you would usually find that his eye and his attention
had wandered past you to the new picture on the wall, or the robins on
the lawn. Indeed, you would be lucky if he had not picked up a book. To
avert that catastrophe you would, if you were Laura, begin humbly and
hastily to talk of something else.
So Laura, though the adenoids rankled, was at the end of her five
minutes ready for him again with a more attractive subject than herself.
She headed him gently towards his birds’ eggs, had him perfectly
contented rehearsing old finds and anticipating new ones.
And because he was happy, she was happy too. And they had a successful
morning, with three redstarts’ eggs in Justin’s moss-lined
collecting-box, and two photographs, at the end of it, and a peaceful
and protracted lunch. Justin gratified Laura, as a man always does
gratify a woman when he enjoys his food. It was so lucky that she had
boiled that third egg.... She had known that two would not be enough....
Afterwards Justin, lulled by the sun and the silence and the scent of
wild thyme, and possibly by that third egg, went to sleep: and Laura sat
and watched him and compared his serene repose with the lax, crimson,
open-mouthed slumber of lesser men—Wilfred and James, and gentlemen in
railway carriages, and even Gran’papa. You could hear Gran’papa quite
clearly on still nights.... But Justin stood the test of sleep. Sleep
did not betray Justin or betrayed only that there was nothing to betray.
For Life had dealt him no blow as she passed too close, her mighty wings
had as yet but fanned him from afar. There was no signature of care or
joy or sin about eyes and mouth and forehead: the face had no history:
was like a fine new building, needing the scars and mellowing of time to
temper it to beauty.
But Laura missed nothing. Laura, who never saw a fault in anything she
loved, could not be expected to find faultlessness a flaw. If Laura
thought at all, if the hot, scented quiet of the afternoon had not made
her mind as drowsy as Justin’s body, her thoughts were not critical,
only observant, as they strayed with her eyes in a voyage of discovery
over the face that she was never tired of watching.
It was so interesting to see Justin with his eyes shut.... It altered
him ... and the smoothing of the faint habitual frown between his brows
... gave him—self-reliant, self-sufficing Justin—a child’s look, a
defenceless look, that caused her a strange, maternal pang. It made her,
she did not know why, put out her hand to him and touch the rough tweed
of his coat: and so sit patiently, bent forward a little, watching over
him.
He woke at last, noiselessly, as he did everything, and surprised her
intent look.
“Hullo, Laura! What’s up?”
Laura in emergency was always superb. There was not the adumbration of a
pause between his question and her reply.
“A mosquito! Keep still!” She clapped her hands together over an
imaginary insect. “They’re beginning to bite. You’ve been asleep. Oh,
look!”
A rabbit, startled by the sudden noise, was scuttering into its hole,
fatly, with a flicker of white tail.
Laura laughed.
“_The Duchess! The Duchess! Oh, my dear paws! Oh, my fur and whiskers!_
Did you ever see such a drunken lollop? He was tipsy with sunshine,
Justin. You know, it’s most dissipated for a rabbit to be out at this
hour. He ought to be in bed.” She stretched out lazy arms. “Oh—isn’t it
hot? How you can stand the sun pouring down on you like that! Come into
the shade, Justin—what there is of it, at least.”
She moved a little, leaving him half the ragged patch of shadow from the
sloe-bush under which she sat. She loved woods and shadow and cool, as
Justin loved heat and sunshine and open spaces; but unless she had
owned, as she would not do, to her one vanity, her delicate skin, she
was never allowed more than a sloe-bush for shelter.
But today Justin was ready to agree that the sun might be too hot even
for him. He dragged himself into the shade and sat beside her, pulling
idly at the yellow heads of hawksbit that shone like midget suns in the
cropped grass, while he stared out over the wide country that ran down
from the bare hot chalk slope into the green valley land, and up again
to hill-tops pale as the sky.
“Not bad,” he drawled at last, “not half bad! Do _you_ know anything
like it?”
Laura pronounced judgment.
“I don’t believe I’m biassed. The Alps—were the Alps. And I loved the
Rhone—and I’ve seen Italy—and I’ve heard Oliver talk about Greece. But
all of them—all Europe—is only a setting for England—and England’s only
a setting for Kent—and Kent’s only a setting for Brackenhurst. I believe
I love Brackenhurst as if it were a person. How I shall ever leave I
don’t know!”
“Leave it! Leave it! How d’you mean, leave it?” He was irritated. He
always disliked even a hint of change: it implied discomfort. He shrank
in angry boredom from spring-cleaning, and death, and new acquaintances.
Laura laughed.
“Oh, not for a year or two. But—dear old Gran’papa!—he’s wonderful, of
course. D’you know that he does his mile to the post and back every day
still? Will do it. But he’s eighty for all that. Is it hateful of me to
think ahead?”
Justin gave his thoughtful grunt.
“Of course, if the boys helped—cared about Green Gates—we could stay on.
But you know what Wilfred and James are. Besides, they’re bound to get
married.”
He gave her a quick look. But her grave, innocent eyes were fixed on the
distant hills.
Justin’s grunt was more pronounced than ever.
She continued. She enjoyed submitting her simple plans. It was so seldom
that Justin was in a listening mood.
“Oh, I’ve thought it out. When I have to—I’m going to teach. You know my
literature and English are pretty good. I can get a berth at my old
school any day. They’ve told me so. Well then, you see—if I have a screw
of my own—there’ll be plenty over if we let Green Gates, to take old
Mrs. Golding’s lodge at the top of the village. It wouldn’t be fair to
uproot Aunt Adela altogether. And then—” triumphantly she set the
roofing on her castle-in-the-air, “I can come home for all the holidays.
I shall still belong here.” Then, a little anxiously—“Shan’t I, Justin?”
He frowned. He did not answer her.
Her face fell.
“Don’t you——What do you think?”
“I’ve never heard such utter rot in my life,” said Justin. He paused. He
considered. Then he delivered himself, judgmatically.
“I don’t like it,” said Justin. “I don’t like the idea. I don’t like it
at all. Teaching! I don’t know what’s got into you,” he grumbled.
He was not thinking of her and she knew it. Yet his annoyance was an
exquisite gratification. She knew that he would miss her, but she had
not expected that he would realize it beforehand. She had looked for
interest, congratulation even. She had not dared hope for concern.
“You know,” he pursued, “the old lady won’t like it either. She’s got so
used to you.”
He was distinctly worried.
“So have I, for that matter,” he volunteered.
He fidgeted with his ear.
“It’s a problem,” he said.
Laura said nothing.
“Isn’t it?” he appealed to her in his turn.
She roused herself.
“Oh no! I’ve practically decided it all. Aunt Adela will expect me to
make up her mind, just as Gran’papa does for her now. It will work all
right.”
“There are all those eggs and things to be seen to when I’m away. And
not a maid I can trust!” He laughed; yet there was a touch of real
injury in his tone. “I suppose you haven’t thought of that?”
“Oh, Justin—I’d stay if I could,” said Laura piteously. “You don’t
suppose I shall enjoy leaving—home?”
“Well, but—look here——” He paused again.
“I shall be back for all the holidays,” she consoled herself and him.
“And your mother isn’t bed-ridden, you know. There’ll be plenty to take
my place.”
“Yes, but she’ll miss you.”
“I hope so,” said Laura wistfully.
He flushed.
“I daresay you’ll be surprised to hear me say so,” he prepared her, “but
so shall I.”
Laura glowed.
“I’m awfully glad.”
“But why should you——” he began again.
“Not yet, Justin. Gran’papa may live another two years. But he’s
breaking up. I noticed the difference at once. It’s the winter that the
doctor is afraid of—poor Gran’papa!”
“But even then——” Justin pursued his own thoughts. Then with an effort:
“Look here! Why shouldn’t you—Why shouldn’t we—I mean——Look here, Laura!
Would you care to stay on here—marry me? Then we needn’t have any
upset.”
“Justin!”
“Will you? Honestly—it wouldn’t be a bit a bad idea.”
Laura faced him with grave, scarlet-cheeked dignity.
“I don’t think—I don’t think—I don’t like that sort of joke. It’s not
like you. It’s hateful!” She was intensely distressed.
He opened his serious eyes.
“Joke?”
She stared at him, lips parted.
“Justin! You can’t mean—you couldn’t mean——Aren’t you pulling my leg?
Justin, you couldn’t possibly be in earnest?”
Some depth in his nature was stirred by her tone. He leant forward quite
eagerly.
“Will you marry me, then? Naturally I’m in earnest. I’m awfully fond of
you—really. And the old lady will be tremendously pleased. Will you
marry me?”
She looked at him, breathless, her lips trembling, day dawning in her
eyes.
“Oh, Justin—oh, Justin—what do you think? Of course I will!”
“That’s all right then!”
There was naïve complacency in his tone: it expressed his sense of a
wise measure successfully concluded—no more. No more—yet for an instant
he had remained leaning towards her with the strangest mingling of
indecision, emotion and intention in his pose, as if his body were wiser
than his soul.
But she, because she was frightened of her own happiness, and of him and
his quick movement, sat quite still, restraining the answering gesture
that would have won him: and the moment passed like a flower without
fruit. Justin, lazing back again, smiled at her with his immemorial air
of comfortable affection. Dear old Laura!... He was satisfied—pleased
with himself and her. Minor satisfactions, seen reminiscently,
subconsciously, out of the tail of his mind’s eye—the summer day, the
summer sun, the eggs in his collecting box, the crisp, crunchable
lettuce at lunch, his pipe and the smoke of his pipe—all added their
mites to the sum of his content. Dear old Laura!...
Her voice added itself soothingly to his meditations. He thought, as he
listened to her, that old Valentine had talked through his hat that
morning.... Laura rough? Laura shrill? Why, even he himself had never
noticed before how low and soft her voice was....
For Laura was talking—talking for time: she feared the silence that had
fallen upon them. She was not ready to be confronted with her naked
bliss. Feverishly she sought for words in which to clothe, to veil it
from herself. Yet she could think of nothing else. She began—
“Justin—I’ll be so good to you. You’ll see. I’ll never get in your way.
I’ll learn cooking. I’ll never read books till after tea. I’ll do
everything——” The sentence died away happily.
“I must say——” there was distinct gratification in Justin’s grave voice,
“it seems an excellent idea. I wonder I never thought of it before.
Mother’ll be awfully bucked. She likes you, you know.” He paused for
Laura’s gratitude.
But Laura, her heart full of dreams, forgot to respond.
“And I can tell you, you ought to be jolly pleased. It isn’t every one
Mother likes,” he added impressively.
“Of course I’m pleased.” Laura smiled. “But I knew she did, Justin. She
was always good to me. It was you—I didn’t know—I never thought——” She
checked herself prettily.
“That’s why,” he continued calmly, “it seems such a good arrangement.
You know, I never have liked the idea of her being alone when I’m away:
only she never will have any one but old Mary. But if I knew you were in
the house I shouldn’t be uneasy. I shouldn’t have to hurry back so,
then.”
She lifted her head. For an instant her eyes had a strange, wise look in
them, as if some older self, till then quiescent in her, were roused in
her defence—were watching him with knowledge and foreboding of pain.
The look passed in a smile, smile at Justin verging upon unusual
enthusiasm; yet, though she herself did not know it, the look had been
there.
“Oh, it’ll make a big difference, Laura, I can tell you,” he was
concluding. “All the difference in the world.”
“All the difference in the world,” repeated Laura after him.
“There’s that expedition——” he burst out again as, his impedimenta
shouldered and the greasy luncheon-papers tucked down a rabbit hole,
they walked home together through the deep lanes. “You know—it’s still a
possibility. Bellew promised me the first refusal, though I’ve
practically told him I couldn’t manage it. And yet—to miss such a
chance! But now—once we’re married—eggs! Think of it, Laura! Up and down
every cliff from Lundy to the Orkneys—with Bellew. _Bellew!_ I tell you
he knows more about birds than any man in England. Wish I weren’t such a
rotten sailor, but that’s a detail.” He drew a deep breath. “And I
haven’t any gulls yet, you know. Remember those specimens at old Greets’
sale? I’m glad now I didn’t buy ’em. Not the same—bought stuff. But to
sweat up a cliff in a gale, hanging on by your teeth and your toe-nails
to get at a nest yourself, with the fat old mother-bird not knowing
enough to get out of your way—some’ll let you lift them right off before
they’ll budge, you know—that’ll be sport! Wish you could come.”
“Wish I could. Oh, Justin—I suppose I couldn’t?”
“Oh, no—it’s not a woman’s show,” he amended hastily. “It means roughing
it, you know. But when I get back,” he consoled her, “you shall do all
the classification. And honestly, Laura—it’ll be jolly nice knowing
you’re at home to come back to. There’ll be a heap to do, sorting, and
printing photographs. By the way, you’d better keep my letters. They’ll
be useful to refer to.”
“Yes, Justin,” said Laura, as one instructed. If her thoughts turned for
an instant’s satisfied inspection of a certain locked box in a certain
locked drawer of her dressing-table, her smile gave no hint of it to
Justin. And Justin’s mother was not there.
Thus ran their love-talk on that first afternoon, as they wandered home
together. But even when they reached Green Gates, and Laura stood on one
side of them and he on the other, Justin found it difficult to tear
himself away. Between his eggs and his engagement he was nearer
excitement than Laura had ever known him.
But Laura, too absorbed in him to listen to him at all, had grown quiet,
so quiet that at last even he must notice and be concerned.
“Don’t you think so, Laura? Laura! I say, Laura, is anything up?”
“Oh no, Justin.”
He took her hand, awkwardly, through the bars of the gate, with that
look of boyish, embarrassed kindliness that could always make Laura, at
least, give and forgive him anything.
“I say, old girl—it is all right? You are pleased too? You think it’s a
good idea?”
“The expedition?”
“Oh—that too! But this notion of our getting married?”
She looked up at him.
“It’s made me awfully happy, Justin.”
“Has it? Good. That’s right. So it has me. And so it will Mother. I say,
I ought to be home by now—telling her. It must be near tea-time too.
You’re coming round tonight, aren’t you?”
“I was—before——”
“Good! Come along early.”
Laura flushed brightly, but she said nothing.
He looked puzzled.
“Can’t you?”
Laura looked at him between laughter and that suspicious brightening of
her dark eyes that had never yet had any meaning for Justin.
“I thought it was all arranged,” he said rather impatiently.
“Was it?” She pulled a splinter from the gate-post and with it prodded a
scuttling ant up and down the little white groove.
“Wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then?”
“You might fetch me, Justin,” said Laura desperately.
“Oh, all right. But why? It’s not a bit dark!”
Laura did not attempt to explain.
------------------------------------------------------------------------