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!