Laura handed her basket to the maid, but she had not long to wait. Mrs.
Cloud was at home, quite eagerly at home to an opportune Laura. Laura
wondered at the warmth of her greeting, at the gaiety of her air.
It was the first fine day of the spring, and the sun was doing his best
for an earth still wind-swept and doubtfully green, yet the light and
warmth and the radiance that filled the room seemed to emanate, not from
him, but from Mrs. Cloud herself, sitting in a glory by her windowful of
half grown daffodils, her lap a tumble of telegram and envelope and
Laura’s primroses, young lights in her eyes, and a letter, a letter, in
her hand.
Justin had got his leave, Laura! Justin had got his leave at last!
Justin was coming home—had written twice—contradictorily—and now a wire!
He would be home tomorrow night. And in the meantime his letter had
come, the letter he had written before he was quite sure.
If it had arrived earlier Laura might have heard less about it; but the
gate at the end of the drive had barely closed on the postman before it
had opened again to her, and Mrs. Cloud, full of her good tidings, had
yielded to old custom and the comfort of a listener. So Laura, though
she was not allowed to read the letter herself—such privileges were hers
no longer—yet heard its every word read aloud by a voice that,
strengthened by excitement, was more than ever the softened, haunting
shadow of Justin’s.
Such a delightful letter as it was too—such a hasty, pencilled letter
that yet found time to be full of problematical orderly detail of his
itinerary, to be margined with instructions as to what his mother was
and was not to do in the matter of coming to town and meeting trains—a
letter that had been so obviously written, not by Captain Cloud of the
Kentshires, but by H. J. Cloud of the Lower Fifth, arriving for his
half-term holiday and leaving no item of the program to chance. Justin
could write a good letter, couldn’t he, Laura?
Laura, always quiet and now quieter than ever, with controlled hands and
two bright spots of colour in her tired face, made the little necessary
ejaculations, steering so delicately between indifference and
absorption, that Mrs. Cloud enjoyed her responses as she enjoyed music,
as a soothing accompaniment to her own thoughts. So impersonal, indeed,
could Laura be, that it was not until she was left alone again that Mrs.
Cloud realized that she had broken through her rule of avoiding the
subject of Justin—the rule that she had devised, half to spare and half
to punish a criminal Laura.
She shrugged her shoulders. She could not be deeply disturbed. Her
anger, for she had had her guess-work anger on behalf of an injured but
uncommunicative son, had long ago died down. It smouldered, of course,
flickering up occasionally into perplexed resentment: would never, I
think—though Justin and Laura should miraculously adjust their
differences—be completely extinguished; for it was not in Mrs. Cloud’s
nature, so sweetly oblivious of sins against herself, ever to forgive a
harshness or forget a kindness rendered to those she loved; but the hot
ashes of it were hidden deep in her heart—she had found herself able, in
time, to be reconciled, to pretend justice to Laura. She said to herself
very often that she did not want to be unkind.... Justin, she admitted,
was not an ordinary boy.... He had needed understanding—and Laura was
very young.... If only they had either of them seen fit to confide the
cause of their quarrel to her, she was sure that she could have helped
them over it.... Justin was so much her own son that his reserve could
not hurt her, but she thought Laura should have come to her.... She
thought Laura owed her that....
Mrs. Cloud, you see, was hampered by being fond of Laura. She missed
her, for Laura did not come as often as in the old days: and Laura, as
more than Mrs. Cloud had discovered, had her insidious, disconcerting
way of becoming indispensable. You tolerated the harmless creature,
acknowledging even a pleasant quality in it, as of unobtrusive
furniture, and then, one day, when you felt yourself most free, it would
turn on you, not a chair, not a table, but a laughing woman, who
challenged you, with a twinkle, to try and do without her.
But Mrs. Cloud did not go into that. She only knew that of all possible
daughters-in-law she would have objected least to Laura Valentine. For
she and Laura had always shared, though they did not know it, their
prophetic dread of the Minx, rouged, gilded, and irresistible, who, if
they were not extremely careful, would one day carry off Justin and make
him miserable. Justin’s deportment at garden-parties, his invincible
indifference to musical comedies and mixed tennis, might reassure them
momentarily, but they never really believed that he could be trusted by
himself. And now he was in uniform——For they knew, the worldly twain,
cynically they knew What Women Were! There was that girl, for instance,
that much advertised friend of Rhoda’s—with the ear-rings—who had openly
announced herself as dying to meet Captain Cloud. Hussy! Impassive
Laura, handing tea-cakes, had been so grateful to Mrs. Cloud for
sniffing.
But then, in spite of their differences, Mrs. Cloud and Laura always did
understand each other.
Laura said good-bye at last, and went away, leaving Mrs. Cloud in a
happy fever of activity, bewildering herself with Bradshaw, interviewing
the coachman, and in defiance of her half a dozen servants, airing
sheets at the drawing-room fire. Master Justin—Captain Cloud, I mean—is
coming home!
Justin—Captain Cloud, I mean—is coming home.
The theme was Mrs. Cloud’s, rang in her head in Mrs. Cloud’s voice, but
the intricacies of its variations were Laura’s own. She was utterly
unable to force her mind from the subject. Her brain was a like a
keyboard at which her soul sat fingering out the Harmonious Justin, till
she was ready to scream. Her share of what the village called war-work
had not been light, and she was besides so wearied out by the strain and
the pain and the unlifting terror of the past months, that her thoughts
were often able to escape her control, to weaken her still further by
their irresponsibility. There were times when she could not think
consecutively at all: and yet she could never stop thinking, and at a
furious rate, till her mind seemed a cosmos bereft of gravity.
Into that chaos, which even Mrs. Cloud could never have connected with
Laura of the trim blue serges, and the Refugee Committee, and the
restful, smiling ways—into that chaos of dead hopes and living fears,
Mrs. Cloud’s news flashed like a comet, brilliant, portentous. Justin
was coming home.
She tried to be blind to this new light in her sky. She told herself
that it had nothing to do with her, that she must not, in pride, in
decency, let her thoughts be concerned with him.... But Justin was
coming home!... She had no right, she reminded herself fiercely, to be
sorry or glad any more for Justin.... But at least he would be safe....
For a whole week he would be safe.... She might sleep sound, if she
could, for a whole week.... She need not even pray.... All she might
do—all she could do—for a Justin safely home again, was to keep out of
his way.... He would not want to see her.... She would not afford him,
or herself, the embarrassment of a meeting.... She would not spoil his
holiday by appearing to exist....
She thought that she ought to go away altogether—pay some invented visit
to imaginary relatives.... But that she could not do.... That—probing
her soul—she could not do.... She found she had not, literally, the
strength to leave Brackenhurst when Justin was coming home. But she
would keep out of his way....
Not that it would upset Justin if he did run into her.... He would pass
her—she could see him—as carelessly as he might pass some futile cur
that had once snapped at him.... He would have put her out of his mind
by now, definitely and completely.... She knew his indifferent,
inexorable way.... She had bruised herself often enough against his
unimagination, his sturdy mind that was like a house with one window.
Oh, he saw life clearly through it—but how little he saw! But there was
no use in going over that.... All she had to remember was to keep out of
his way.... But she would not leave Brackenhurst.... For if
Justin—suppose that Justin—suppose that by some miracle Justin had
changed—had learned to forgive—to forget—to want her again! Miracles did
happen....
You are right—she cannot, at the time of his leave, have been quite
sane. For, all the long week, she lived, fiercely as she denied it to
herself, in mad, fantastic expectation of that miracle. Every passer-by
on the long road, every click of the gate, every bell rung in the
kitchen, every footstep on the gravel, from the paper-boy before the
maids came down to the gardener going home at night, was Justin—was
Justin! Fifty times in the weary day the impossible happened, the
miracle was vouchsafed, and Justin came to her—Justin, who never came.
In the window-seat, above the white high-road, where, so many years ago,
she had watched for the coming of another love, she crouched again and
peered out at the passers-by, and starved and starved for him.
Yet life ran on as usual in Brackenhurst, though Belgium smoked to
heaven and Justin were home on leave: and Laura had her duties. Two
days’ grace, or three, might be allowed her for her imaginary
headache—but on the fourth Brackenhurst clamoured for its indispensable
Miss Valentine, and she must set out through by-ways to her Belgians and
her babies, to lunch at the other end of the village, with an
afternoon’s sewing to follow, and must keep her eyes bright and her
tongue wagging to amuse her world the while.
The sun was near the edge of the earth before the Depôt gates closed on
her and she was her own mistress again.
She hesitated. She was very tired, and Aunt Adela would be fretful if
she were late for tea.... She felt that a scolding from Aunt Adela, the
rasp of her plaintive voice, must at all costs be avoided.... She felt
that she might turn Tartar if Aunt Adela scratched her just then—which
wouldn’t be fair to poor old Aunt Adela.... Besides, she had no business
to keep Aunt Adela waiting.... She must take the short cut....
She had hesitated because, though it saved her a mile, it was a cut that
ran across the Priory woods, driving a broad grass-way through the heart
of them, and rounding at one point the Priory garden itself. And yet—it
was ridiculous to be late for tea, to involve oneself with an irritable
aunt, just because her nearest way home skirted Justin’s property....
Would Justin be wandering in damp woods at this time o’ day—at his
tea-time o’ day?... She knew Justin.... Besides, what should he do in
the woods? He didn’t collect birds’ eggs any more....
She turned into the shining chestnut thickets, for she knew the fox-ways
of the undergrowth, and emerged again, breathless, briar-whipped, into
the green, central glade, where the grass was twenty feet wide and the
white violets grew. This was her undoing. Laura could never resist
flowers. If Laura were being ferried over to hell she would still have
plunged to the elbow in the Styx, I think, after its blotched lilies—and
these were violets, English and very sweet. And they were the first of
the year. Do you think there is any one too old and too sad to pick
white violets when they get the chance?
Laura was sad enough, but she was only twenty. Forgetting her hurry, she
stooped down and began picking violets.
There were so many of them that the ground was soon covered with tiny
short-stalked bunches, tied up with Aunt Adela’s khaki knitting wool.
The soft spring air was like new milk after the close, people room she
had left. The scent of the violets pleased her. Each flower as she
picked it sent its ghost, like a little white thought, into her mind, to
soothe and heal and sweeten it. She was so blessedly absorbed, and the
grass was so thick and mossy, that she heard nothing, neither footsteps
nor creak of boots, till a voice, a familiar voice, spoke above her.
“Why, Laura!” said the voice.
She was on her feet in an instant, but she was badly startled. For,
after all her reckonings, it was Justin—Justin, taking like herself his
short cut through the woods to his tea—Justin, whom she had not seen for
nearly a year—Justin, who was never going to speak to her again.
She gave him a wavering, frightened smile—a smile that deprecated its
own existence, that assured him that it held no graceless hint of
welcome or intimacy, that it continued merely as the only salutation
that the lips on which it trembled could at the moment attempt. And with
that faded again and left a white face whiter.
“Why, Laura!” repeated the miraculous Justin, in the kind, solemn voice
that had not altered for all her wickedness, for all the war.
She found hurried words in which to answer, excusing herself when there
was no need.
“I was going home. And I was late. So I came this way. I only stopped
for a moment—to pick the violets——”
She stooped for her basket, huddling into it all the little bunches that
lay on the grass. She was thankful to have a use for her betraying
hands.
He was watching her, but she did not know what he thought, for she was
afraid to look up and see. She had her basket filled too soon, and
thereupon she stood like a schoolgirl, not knowing what to say or do.
She moved a step or two at last, to enable him to give her good-bye and
go his way. But his way was hers, it seemed: and he walked beside her in
silence down the green grass lane, between the whispering, watching
trees. If he thought of his tea he thought also, I suppose that Mrs.
Cloud would keep it hot for him. He was quite right: his mother would
have kept it hot for him till the crack of doom. But it is just possible
that he did not think about his tea.
Laura’s eyes were decorously on the increasing circle of sky at the end
of the alley; yet with quick stolen glances now and then she gleaned
news of him. She thought he looked tired, older—a grey look.... She
thought he did not look well.... She disliked his yellowish clothes.
They did not suit him....
Well—at least she had seen him in his uniform.... She had not realized
before, she thought contradictorily, how jolly the ugly uniform could
look.... She thought how ordinary every other soldier she had seen would
look beside him.... She tried not to be ridiculously proud of him,
because she had no right, no right—to that exquisite pride.... She
thought that she had not been mistaken—there was no one in the world
like him....
They came to a footpath through the hazel underwood that ran at right
angles to the broad grass-way. She was sure he would make it his excuse
for leaving her if he did not want to talk. And how should he possibly
want to talk to her?... But Justin swung past the opening with no more
than a switch with his cane at the low-hanging catkins that sent the
pollen in clouds into the air. The target of sky still seemed a long way
off. Almost she could have wished that he had left her, the silence
oppressed her so. She supposed that she ought to talk to him about the
war.... Ridiculous phrases flitted through her head—‘How do you like the
trenches?’ ‘Do the guns make much noise?’—but she could think of no
sensible opening.
At last to her intense relief, for speech was always as much her
protection as silence was his, he opened his mouth.
“And how have you been rubbing along?” said Justin.
“Oh, all right,” said Laura. Then brilliantly: “Have you been all
right?”
“Oh, quite all right,” said Justin.
There was an interval for meditation.
“Miss Adela pretty fit?” enquired Justin.
“Oh, splendid,” said Laura.
“I should have called—but it’s such a short leave—I wish you’d
explain——”
“Oh, she quite understood,” said Laura too readily, and felt the
conversation sag in her hands like a caught cricket ball. She made an
effort.
“Have a decent crossing?” she hazarded.
“Quite decent,” said Justin.
“Oh—good!” said Laura.
They paused again.
Laura thought she would leave things to him: she knew by experience that
if he did not want to talk nothing would make him: she did not think he
was embarrassed, for he had always been too absorbed in himself to be
self-conscious: therefore, if he talked, it would have some
significance. She waited, passively curious; for the shock of meeting
him had, for the time, numbed her. She was as calm as is the heart of a
whirlwind.
And soon, as she expected, he explained himself.
“Mother’s been looking out for you,” he told her severely. “Why didn’t
you come? She says you always come on Tuesdays.”
‘Why didn’t you come?’ She threw up her hands over the denseness of his
Justinity, as she lied to him.
“Oh—I’m awfully sorry. I didn’t know—I mean I forgot. I mean—I’ve been
so fearfully busy this week.”
“What with?” he enquired.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Laura.
“Well, if you can, you might look in tomorrow,” he decided. “You see, I
have to be out.”
She glanced up at him: glanced down again. And then, suddenly, all the
dry deadness of her heart broke, like the pope’s staff, into bud, into
little blossoms of laughter, delicate bell-flowers that rang out in a
thousand fairy carillons of healing mirth.
Dear old Justin!... ‘You see—I have to be out.’ So exactly what Justin
might have been reckoned upon to say.... Her lips quivered: her
shoulders shook: she was in desperate danger of laughing aloud. She saw
so clearly the absurdity of their situation that it was all at once
naked of its embarrassment, of its sting. She wanted to share the joke
with him, but that was impossible. He would not have been Justin if he
could have seen the funny side of himself.
‘You see—I have to be out.’...
‘Yes, Justin dear—Yes, Justin, dear—I quite understand!’ she crooned to
herself with wicked, bright-eyed merriment.
“And the next day,” continued his unconsciousness, “I go back, you
know.”
The bells stopped ringing.
“Oh!” said Laura sedately.
The circle of light had grown into an arch that was wide as the sky.
They crunched off the soft grass on to the chalk of the road stretching
north and south of them to Green Gates and the Priory.
She found that they were to shake hands.
“Well—so long!” said he.
“So long!” said she.
They went their ways.
And that was the end, for Laura, of Justin’s first leave.
But she felt better. If it had done her good to see him, it had done her
all the good in the world, she thought, to laugh at him.
What Justin thought, History does not say.
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