It was curious to catch her unawares, to see her trotting down a garden path, obviously absorbed in a discussion that required nods and laughter and expressive hands, and little quick, questioning, upward glances, while she endeavoured in vain to keep step with the long stride of an Invisible.
Intercourse with this Invisible who to Laura was one with—was, indeed, the real Justin, was so satisfying that when he arrived in the flesh for his holidays, she was able to be satisfactory in her turn, to exist demurely as no more than a domestic pet, with a trick of loosening his tongue for him and the still more stimulating habit of listening in intelligent admiration while it wagged.
She was quaintly accustomed, in the first half-hour of reunion, to a sensation of depression, to be chilled, startled into faint, disloyal protest—“But—but this isn’t Justin! I forgot he was like this.” And then she would round indignantly upon herself—“Anyhow I like him this way.” But in a day or two ideal and real would have more or less melted into one again, obstinate discrepancies being explained away by Laura airily enough—“It’s because I’m not grown-up.” Her child’s faith in that panacea was almost as strong as her faith in Justin. Yet that last would be sorely tried upon occasion. Their differences, when they occurred, were catastrophic—very funny to watch. There is the old simile of the Skye and the mastiff: or imagine, if you like, Bottom in the Bower, and Titania nearly frantic with him for not knowing (there’s the trouble—she would not mind nearly so much if it were pure wickedness, done a-purpose) but for not knowing that he had just sat down so heavily upon a spread of cowslips that there is little chance of a single gold-coated pensioner being left alive when he gets up again. Not that it is fair to compare Justin with Bottom. Justin, even in the twenties, was not in the least egregious, only solid. He couldn’t help it, could he, if he hadn’t any faults, or that his kindly tolerance of her tantrums could drive Laura into nothing more or less than a fuming replica of her Gran’papa’s canary? (You never realized how red Laura’s hair was until you saw her in a passion.) But, in those encounters, there was revealed a duality of temperament, a distinction in quality, a difference in their grip of life, in the mere meaning, sometimes, that they attached to the words they used, which made you marvel at the attraction that they undoubtedly had for each other. For if Laura enjoyed living in his pocket, Justin would have been equally disconcerted if, one fine day, he had not found her there, like his loose money, and his handkerchief, and his pencil-case, ready to his hand. Yet, as I say, they sparred. There was a clash of claims occasionally. It was not always easy to reconcile “what Mother used to do” with “Justin says.”
There were the birds’ eggs, for instance, cause of the most serious of their differences and the last, before she became a big girl and went away to France to be finished, as Aunt Adela phrased it. Justin, as you know, had the magpie instinct that as pleasantly infantizes the ponderous male as a pink paper cap from a cracker the bald head of an uncle at a Christmas dinner. He collected—as Brackenhurst, wisely refusing to involve itself with the objective case, would explain to its visitor behind a kid glove or a convenient Prayer Book—
“Yes—the Cloud pew—the only son. Oh, rolling! Oxford—intellectual, you know——He collects.”
Brackenhurst was right: he did collect. Collect? He trawled. There were no half-way measures. Interest him in a subject, from Cæsar’s wives to Palæolithic Toothpicks, and he had no peace until he had pursued that subject, netted it, stunned it with books of reference, stripped it of its robe of mystery, taken it to pieces, turned it inside out. And finally, when it was quite dead and done for, and its poor soul fled, he would hang up the dry bones in triumph in his den and look round for some one upon whom to discharge his accumulated information.
His mother was usually the sacrifice—his mother in her pretty parlour, with Justin’s Progress running round the walls chronologically, from ‘Grace Darling’ and ‘Hope’ on the orange, to Burne-Jones, ‘Marriage à la Mode,’ Post-Impressionism, and Japanese prints. She did not really mind, though he scraped the wall-paper dreadfully shifting things each holiday, and she couldn’t see why he should insist on moving ‘Wedded,’ into Cook’s bedroom, though Cook, of course, was very pleased. But sometimes, especially in the Beardsley phase, she did wonder, uneasily, if she were being over-educated.
Yet his changes of view did not disturb her as they disturbed Laura, because, wise for all her simplicity, she could always trace them back, as Laura could not, to the influence of the moment. He had so many acquaintances whom he called friends, he, who had never yet felt the need of a friend.
It was always the same. Damon collected stamps for a fortnight, and Justin, Pythias of the hour, would go and do likewise, and be amazed, a year later, to find that Damon showed no interest in the three albums he had contrived to fill meanwhile, beyond merely and inaccurately protesting that the beastly things always had bored him anyway. Justin could not understand that. Through the school years, however, he had naturally attracted his like and possessed, in consequence, a heterogeneous treasury of coins, and cigarette pictures, and birds’ eggs, and butterflies, and walking sticks, and medals, all correctly labelled and cased, and faithfully supervised by Laura, into whose charge they had long ago been given, partly because he was genuinely fond of his foundling and ready to humour her, partly because he had been impressed, from the first, by her neat ways and dexterous finger-tips. He admired neatness and precision as only a thoroughly untidy man can, and Laura always knew where he had left his tobacco pouch.
He seldom entirely outgrew his crazes, could always be fired anew by a rummage. Cigarette pictures, certainly, had definitely ceased to charm him, to the benefit of the twins (Laura, jealous-eyed, did not in the least appreciate the compliment of being passed over) but he still brought home an occasional carved stick, and his fourpenny bits and George III pennies had one by one given up their pads of honour to quite rare and beautiful coins. In fact, if he had not met Bellew——