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.