She had often wondered that it should be such a favourite tune with Gran’papa. Today she knew why. The music, like strong sunlight shining on a palimpsest, revealed beneath her mind’s modernity an older picture, faint and faded, of a shadowy, gallant young Gran’papa, quarrelling deliciously, a fiddle under his chin, with a slim girl who was called Anne (like Anne, the ‘elegant little woman’ in Persuasion) and sat at a pianoforte fingering out the accompaniment of an old song. She had a sweet voice and wore a dress of lavender print, but her smooth golden hair, as the impression faded again, was not golden at all, but red, a dull, beautiful red, matching exactly, as Laura was aware, with the beech leaves under which she sat as she bickered with Justin and made it up again, one spring, not sixty springs, ago.
“Laura—you’ve shut your new skirt in the cupboard door! You never look.”
“Sorry, Auntie.”
“Well, as I was saying—I went down to the kitchen directly after breakfast and I said——”
Gran’papa had been playing that day too. They could see him at his window, sawing vigorously, from where they sat.... Justin had made one of his comical remarks about it.... It seemed such ages ago, now—that spring.... It had been the last of the happy times.... It was soon after that, that things began to go wrong ... badly wrong.... Her thoughts roamed achingly over all the trivial, tragical wrong that she and Justin had done each other in the eternity that was not two years—not two years.... Gran’papa had sixty years to retrace. Her thoughts hovered over Gran’papa awhile and then back again to Justin. He was hard.... She didn’t think she could be so cruel to her worst enemy as Justin was to her.... Not a word.... Not a message.... And not to want a word!... Yet he was essentially a kindly man. It was a queer lack of imagination, she supposed.... She supposed he never thought of her at all.... It was just—over—for him.... It never occurred to him that she loved him still ... that she lived in hell.... But it wasn’t that he wouldn’t have cared if he could have understood, she told herself in sudden passionate defence of him. He couldn’t help it—it was the way he was made....
Well—she had known all that.... That was why she had done what she had done. She had staked all she had ... failed ... so she must pay.... Yet such a price for birds’ eggs! Birds’ eggs! Her mouth twisted sardonically. If it had happened to any one else—how Justin would have laughed ... how they would have talked it over! She could hear him, laying down the law about it.... She missed that most of all—that dear, absurd solemnity of his as he laid down the law to her.... She stood, remembering, hardening her eyes and her heart against the tears she despised. How she missed him ... how unspeakably she missed him....
What a fool she had been.... What was the use of scruples.... Why hadn’t she kept what she had?... She might have been married to him at that moment.... Even if he didn’t love her—half a loaf was better than no bread.... Who was she to have imagined herself his keeper?... He knew his own mind.... He had asked her to marry him....
Ha, ha, the wooing o’t.
squeaked the violin.
“Did you ever hear of such a thing? Well—I said to her, quite quietly, you know, but with dignity—I said to her: ‘I think, Ellen, the time has come to make a change.’ Simply that. It was quite enough. She apologized at once.”