From that timeless interval she woke one day to the realization of a darkened room and a clock ticking, and a calendar on the wall with ‘twenty-five’ in staring, black figures and July above it, and below a verse, and below that again a table with bottles and a cup. She recognized them at once—bottles and a cup and a table and a calendar, a calendar and a table——Why had somebody said something just now about Laura being delirious?... Poor Laura!... saying cruel things like that about poor Laura.... She was sorry for that poor girl....
And here she began to laugh aloud, weakly, because she was Laura herself, lying on her own bed, able to move and speak, though the bedclothes were a weight unbearable and there was a weight like bedclothes on her mind.
She looked up at an aunt appearing miraculously out of space.
“I’m Laura!” she told her.
“Of course you are. Now be a good girl and go to sleep.”
“Poor Laura,” she said—and obeyed.
After that she began to mend, yet so slowly that the doctor was puzzled. Day ate up day and still she lay passive, taking her medicines, doing as she was told, without wishes, almost without words, but listening with grave, uncomprehending attention to Aunt Adela, under orders to amuse, to rouse if she could, but not to excite the invalid. Aunt Adela, in undisputed command of Laura and the situation, now that the nurse was gone, enjoyed herself. She was conscientious, she was well-meaning: she sat by the hour at Laura’s bedside in a basket chair that creaked as she turned the pages, reading her items of interest from the paper (nothing exciting, of course—oh, the doctor might depend on her) and stories and poems from the parish magazine: and would break off in the middle with chit-chat of the village, with the news that the new curate had preached last Sunday, and that Annabel Moulde had called to enquire after Laura. But every one enquired regularly—most kind—because, of course, it was an extraordinary thing to get pneumonia in such weather, and, as she had told Annabel only that morning, she hoped it would be a warning to her never to be without wool next her skin, even in the height of summer. Mrs. Cloud had said the same thing. Yes, she had called before she went to the sea—oh, about a month ago now, Justin had gone on ahead, if Laura remembered—but Laura was looking so white that she was sure it was time for her tonic, and how often had she told Laura that she must try and not talk so much?
Laura thought feebly how kind she was, and how like the bluebottle buzzing on the pane.
But as July blazed over into August, Laura noticed, with the same trance-like impersonal interest in the phenomenon, that Aunt Adela’s manner was changing. She looked worried, yet greatly excited. She could not be talking ten minutes without pulling herself up short. She was always changing the subject for no reason that Laura could discern, for ever verging on tremendous revelations and for ever thinking better of it. She talked more than usual, too, of the twins and of how young they were, thank God—no, Laura, not eighteen, seventeen and nine months—and of the need for a good supply of tinned foods in the house, and of how much she had always admired Sir Edward Grey.
Laura, promising not to excite herself by talking to Ellen, when Ellen, obviously also under orders, dusted the room, did not even shrug a shoulder. Aunt Adela had always loved making a mystery. She was not curious. She had her own mystery to occupy her, the mystery of the dead weight upon her mind that was connected with the names that were for ever on Aunt Adela’s tongue—Justin—Mrs. Cloud—familiar names that hurt her to hear spoken. It was not that she had really forgotten things, of course ... but for the moment, only for the moment, the precise significance of certain far-away actions of her own had evaded her, as well as the exact relation to herself of this Justin.... Justin—and Mrs. Cloud—who was—who, of course, was Justin’s mother.... Now Justin—now she and Justin.... But it hurt her head to remember all that she knew about Justin.