He would not go to bed, but sat crouched over the fire in the armchair that Laura had never before realized was so much too big for Gran’papa. She, when she could, sat with him, eternally knitting socks for the army that must always be to her but a multiplication of Justin, thinking of him and herself, and now, with new, bewildered thoughts, of Gran’papa.
She had been touched, almost beyond her strength, by that thought of his for her—by the sight of the paper in Gran’papa’s shaking hand, handed to her with a gesture that he could not, even then, prevent from being gingerly. The knowledge that he had guessed something, that he had been aware of the anxiety that showed itself in her feverish lust for news, that he, behind his reserves and absorptions, had watched her, felt for her—made her want to cry. She could be Spartan, but of necessity, not from choice. There was nothing of the Emily Brontë in her nature: she took as generously as she gave. She had strength and pride, but though she did without it, she never pretended that sympathy would not have been sweet. In those days, though she did not know it, though she had nearly forgotten her, she wanted her mother.
Gran’papa’s look at her as she came to him that Sunday, his silence, his awkward thrust of the rag he abhorred into her hand, did more than touch her—it strengthened her. She, to whom kith and kin had never meant much, had felt for the first time the comfort of the blood-tie, of the clan-love that is independent of all accidents of personality or desert. Gran’papa might not love Laura, but she realized at last how faithfully he loved his granddaughter.
She had taken the paper and thanked him, and settling herself opposite him in her grandmother’s chair, had sat quietly reading the aching headlines. And in the silence that followed she had felt, through all her urgent anxiety, how the icy crust under which the quiet river of their mutual affection had always flowed imprisoned, was melting at last. They made no demonstration. It was not in his nature, even in its strength, and now he was old, enfeebled; while she had been so drilled by the necessities of her life with Justin that she wore repression, like a dress, laced over her natural impulsiveness; nevertheless they had eased each other. For the first time in her life she was not on her best behaviour with him: her little ways, the occasional mannerisms, he passed over in silence, or perhaps, because she was at her entire ease, they occurred no longer.
She nursed him, in as far as he would allow it, in her busy aunt’s stead; for his cold ran no normal course: a spell of sunshine did not brisken him: he coughed and faded.
After a paroxysm—it was distressing to see him—he would lie exhausted in his chair, and sometimes wander a little or, rather, break into speech that was but drifting and idle thought. And Laura, listening, half guiltily, as one eavesdropping, marvelled how little she knew, and yet she had thought she knew, Gran’papa.
He talked to her, of his schooldays, of his youth, of mild adventures before he married. But they all led in the end, she noticed, to Grandmamma, whom she remembered vaguely as a sweet voice and a smile, in a pale-brown camel’s-hair shawl.
He would speak of her, watching Laura’s face and her beautiful, busy hands.
“You don’t remember your grandmamma, of course?”
“You are very like your grandmamma.”