Yet, to me, it seems nevertheless certain that Laura had, from the first, the trick of keeping him amused. From the first, too, she must have had her shepherding way with him and his belongings; for Mrs. Cloud, announcing tea, hardly recognized Justin’s den—Justin’s housemaid-proof den. Laura would appear to have tidied it. At any rate, however they had passed their afternoon, they came down to dripping cake and muffins at last, hungry and very well-pleased with each other.
Justin told his mother that Laura was a ripping little kid.
What Laura told the Memory who still came to her in the night-time, who knows? Yet that that yearning shadow was eased, appeased, by what it heard, I do believe; because, as the months sped, its anxious visits lessened and grew rare, until, at last, it came no more to a Laura grown happy again.
Justin, of course, was seldom at home, but you can see, with his open and unusual approval working upon Mrs. Cloud’s already aroused motherliness, how swift and steady would be her notice of Laura. It was in her nature to be kind, pitiful, easy. Her cheerful heart was like her cheerful house, with window-wide rooms, white and golden and domestic, filled with sunshine and flowers, with firelight and singing birds and kittens that never grew up. She had room in both for a child’s voice and a child’s ways, the more, perhaps, since the reserve her son shared would not, though she were lonely with Justin away, let her say easily to a stranger, “Come in—be at home!” But a child she could welcome.
Laura, on her side, had no hesitations whatever. Driven by the needs of her nature, shy Laura, timid, tentative Laura, could, like any starved sparrow, be insistent upon Mrs. Cloud’s threshold, cheeping hopefully till she was accorded entry-right, her crumbs, and a corner in the warm. Once in, once accepted, she was quiet. Too quiet ... thought Mrs. Cloud, yet a good little soul.... She was dazed, I dare say, in those first months, by her better fortune: was still eyeing life with meek vigilance, as a dog eyes you when you have stumbled on its paw. Also, though she clung to Justin’s mother, she had no special spontaneous affection for Mrs. Cloud, as Mrs. Cloud who was ready enough to pet her, soon realized. Grateful she was, but elusive too, cold, evading kisses, unresponsive when you took her on your knee, limply angular against a motherly breast. It was not Mrs. Cloud who had picked her up out of a haystack—out of a hell....
But, received discreetly as one representing a federate state, allowed to hunch by the hour (but on an individual footstool) at Mrs. Cloud’s feet, hugging her own knees, elaborating her own views of life and enquiring with luring, alluring interest into those of her hostess, Laura could be singularly companionable in an elderly and impersonal fashion that made Justin laugh and chaff them both when he caught them at their gossiping, but which had the undoubted effect of making Mrs. Cloud confidential.
‘Confidential’ is a strange word to link with Mrs. Cloud, who did not, originally because she would not (but ‘would’ had long ago hardened into ‘could’) expand or respond to any one save Justin: and how often, how intimately even to him, had she spoken of what lay closest to her heart? closer, more desperately dear than Justin, even than Justin; for women will always wonder how far the God-appointed seed consoles for Abel dead and Cain a fugitive. What should Justin know, beyond their names, of the two little girls who died, and of the first-born, John, the legendary brother, so like and so unlike himself, John Cloud the ne’er-do-weel, swallowed up years since by the continent that gives new lamps for old?
But watch Mrs. Cloud’s face (or, if you love her a little, do not watch) when Brackenhurst stirs its tea, and doubles up its thin bread-and-butter, and talks, with its air of bewildered but unshakable patronage, of America.
The grocer, bankrupt since Brackenhurst’s invasion by the smart, blue-painted Co-operative Stores (margarine given in with every pound of butter) poor Pringleson the grocer is doing very well out there. Has built a house and sent home for Mrs. Pringleson.
“Ah, well—one knows how they want men!” says Brackenhurst sagely. “Actually pay emigrants to come. Or is that New Zealand? And that girl from the ‘Plough’!” Brackenhurst coughs. “Yes, doing splendidly! Ah, well, they want servants so out there, you see! An absolute famine! Put up with anything—anything! Extraordinary! No caps! Bicycles provided! Evenings out! And wages! Incredible!”