Laura had wanted Justin to come with her to see the last of Coral. She
knew that Coral would expect it: she was of the class that could be
genuinely moved in public. But she knew also that Justin would shiver at
the idea of Coral’s farewells. She wished he did not have to be
considered: she wished he could laugh and say—“Oh, well, we must go
through with it, I suppose,” and provide himself with chocolates and
roses, and endure a farewell from his sister-in-law that might or might
not culminate in an embrace. She wished he would be vulgar and human and
uncritical for once. She wished——
Of course he would come if she asked him.... It would be a nuisance,
naturally, with the dinner-party in the evening, but they could go up by
one train and come back by the next, or start earlier and have their
lunch in town.... If she suggested lunch he would surely come.... A man
hates to be hurried, but with due time allowed for the importances of
life he would come?... He ought to come. After Coral’s message he ought
to come.... She would go up again to the Priory that very afternoon to
ask him....
She did. She went up to the Priory on Thursday, and again on Friday for
that express purpose, but she found when she tried that she was not able
to ask him. She could not get out the words. She was afraid of his
acquiescence, of his bored, impatient acquiescence that was worse than a
refusal. She was afraid—it gave her a shock to realize that she was
actually afraid of Justin.
She took the discovery up to town with her that Saturday, setting it to
the monody of the train.
“Afraid of Justin? Afraid of Justin?”
“Absurd! Absurd! Afraid of Justin?”
Coral, explicitly, and almost before they were in speaking distance,
explanatively out of mourning, did not soothe her. Coral must needs
interrupt embraces, and introductions to the company, and asides to
porters, and high-pitched laughter, and a rattle of news, to say—
“You’re no relation! Where’s my dear brother-in-law?”
“He was awfully sorry. He was kept at the last moment—quite
unexpectedly. He sent all sorts of messages,” said Laura successfully.
Then, because she was an amateur, she added the touch too much: “He was
sure you’d understand.”
Coral was appreciative.
“What a liar you are! You weren’t a week ago! What’s been happening?”
Then, with a scream of delight. “Don’t say—oh, my dear, don’t say you’ve
had a row with him!” She tucked her arm into Laura’s and trotted her off
down the platform. “Come on—come to my compartment (to myself, of
course—leading lady) and tell me all about it.”
Laura, in her fright, was cruel—
“And Timothy sent messages too. Such a lot. He did so want to come.”
“You might have brought him.” Coral stared in front of her.
“But you said—you said—” began Laura, distressed. But the clang of
trundled milk-cans drowned the answer. When they could hear themselves
again Coral had found her compartment, and, settling herself and Laura
in it, was giving her the private and professional history of every
member of the company at once till the carriage doors began to slam and
Laura had to jump out in a hurry.
Coral leant out of the window.
“Good-bye! You were a brick to come. Give my love to Grannie. I’ll write
from Gib, tell her. And tell Justin I quite understand.”
“What?”
Coral laughed.
“Oh, the message he didn’t send, and—” she raised her voice as the train
began to creak—“and the letter he didn’t write, for that matter.”
Laura ran along, level with the moving window, scarlet, voluble.
“No, no! I wanted to tell you. I forgot, talking. It was a mistake. I
ought to have reminded him. He couldn’t help it. It was the eggs—the new
cases—it put it all out of his head. He was awfully sorry.” She
quickened her pace, panting, as the train drew away from her. But
Coral’s was a carrying voice.
“Take my tip, Laura—smash up his old eggs! Then you’ll have some peace!
Good-bye! Kiss Timmy! Good-bye! Good-bye!”
The train roared out of the station.
Laura, as she muddled her way back to her own platform and settled
herself for the slow return journey, had a half smile for Coral and her
characteristic farewell. She must tell Justin ... or better not?... He
was not likely to stand a joke about his collection.... He wouldn’t see
anything funny.... And yet there was something comical in a grown man
being so absorbed.... If he could only realize that ... join in the joke
against himself.... People would laugh _with_ him then ... but as it
was—she winced—people who didn’t understand laughed _at_ him. He made
himself ridiculous....
She wriggled her shoulders uneasily.
“Of course,” she began, talking aloud to herself in her usual fashion,
“of course it’s only idiots like Coral and silly little Brackenhurst—and
Gran’papa’s always down on every one anyway—but they do laugh. I
wonder—I suppose I couldn’t tell Justin?” And then bitterly—“As if he’d
listen! I don’t count. Nothing counts with Justin except the collection.
Queer how men get wrapped up in a toy! If I told him what they said—not
that one cares a dandelion for what they say—but if I told him——They’re
always saying ‘Why doesn’t he get a job?’ Pure envy, of course. But he’d
only shrug his shoulders. ‘They say. Let them say!’ Justin doesn’t care
a bit about people. Half the time he doesn’t know they’re there. And he
walks on _all_ their corns—bless him! No wonder they get annoyed.
Because it _is_ pure jealousy. Why shouldn’t he play? He’s got plenty of
money. Besides,” she laughed aloud tenderly as she sat all by herself in
the empty carriage and thought of him, “it’s so lovable. It’s like a
child. He’s awfully like Timothy——”
“Only a child,” she was frowning again, “a child grows out of its toys.
But a man—what’s one to do with a man? A man’s so horribly careful of
his toys. What’s one to do? One can’t sit still and let him be laughed
at. What’s one to do with Justin?”
The Brackenhurst hills shrugged their tapestried shoulders as she stared
at them through the jolting windows, saying to her—
“Heaven knows! We bore him and bred him, but—what _is_ one to do?”
“One must do something, you know,” she found herself arguing, “because
he’s not selfish. He’s only self-absorbed. He only wants waking up.”
“Wake him up!” clanked the train, like a live thing. “Wake him up—wake
him up.”
She turned fretfully in her seat.
“How can one? What can one do with Justin? How can one get at him? He’s
never been unhappy, or poor, or ill. He doesn’t know what anything
means. What’s the use of being angry with him about Coral?
Besides—they’re all such little things. He’s never done anything really
wrong in his life.” And then, “I only wish he had. One could talk to
him, tackle him then. But if I did talk to him, what could I say? It’s
such little things. He’s like the man with one talent. I always did
think that man was in the right really: _Lo, thou hast thine own!_
Justin’s perfectly justified. It’s I who am the fool. Why can’t I leave
him alone?”
She put her hand to her aching head.
“I believe—I believe I think too much about Justin. I wish I could stop
thinking——”
But she could not. She was, for the first time in her life, in that mood
which many women and all artists know, when the accumulated, unconscious
thinking of many weeks, of many years sometimes, surges up and overflows
the surface consciousness. It is in that naked hour that
things—murders—masterpieces—happen. Those who know assert that it is not
an experience to encourage and that when it is over you are collapsed,
hysterical, and sleepless with fatigue.
But Laura, who did not in the least understand what was happening to
her, knew only with a vague discomfort that the world, the outer world,
the harmonious web of sounds and shapes and colours that is the
background of conscious life, had fallen apart, inexplicably and
amazingly, into individual, unrelated facts. The buttons of the dusty
railway cushions became important, importunate: the steeple on the
sky-line, the pony’s swivel ear, were each and equally a nucleus upon
which her thoughts settled like swarming bees, from which they lifted
again in ominous, buzzing clouds; while the trivial sounds about her,
the window straps padding against the doors, the rub-a-dub of hoofs, the
unlatched gate clicketing in the wind, the hum of the twins’ voices in
the next room, the very sigh and fall of her own breast, shaped
themselves as the swing of the train had shaped itself, into words, into
a whispering refrain of five words—
“Wake him up! Wake him up! Afraid? Absurd!”
“Wake him up! Wake him up! Afraid? Absurd!”
Underneath her gossip and laughter with the boys, and her altercation
with Aunt Adela as to when the trap should be ready and her necessary
appreciation of Gran’papa’s concomitant and rounded jest—underneath the
hurry of the dressing hour and her own delicious difficulties with hair
and frock, she was nevertheless aware of that refrain. In spite of
herself she listened, marked time to it, fled from it into the inmost
recesses of her mind, and still listened to it as a sick woman listens
to a fly roaming the room, or to a barrel-organ, devil-driven, in the
street below.
It left her at last. It left her when she reached the Priory and found
Justin glad to see her. It left her then and she forgot it at once and
as utterly as if it had never been. But as she sat at table enjoying
herself, enjoying the lights and the excitement, and the feel of her new
dress, and the looks of the folk she loved, she felt suddenly very
tired. She supposed that she wanted her dinner. She hadn’t done anything
special that day.... It was ridiculous to be so tired ... so dead
tired....
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