‘Ever so long ago, when the tree of knowledge was still pink——’
‘Once upon a time, before the apples were ripe——’
Even so, Collaborator (clumsy title, but even in the Imperial Dictionary it has no synonym) even so—once upon a time, before the war, there lived a hero and a heroine—and their relations.
And, you know, we got as far as that four months ago.
It’s not so easy, writing a book!
Let us run over our facts.
The hero is called Justin, and the girl, Laura—Laura Valentine. I know you dislike it, but it is my turn to choose, and honestly, if you think it over, you will find that ‘Laura’ is the only name for her. She is real enough already to make me sure of that. Laura—grave, graceful, ageless word, fits like a glove my Laura, our Laura, so unmodern in her ways and thoughts, for all she was born in ’94. Yet the name stands, to you, for ringlets and bottleneck shoulders, for simpers and sighs and Harry and Lucy? But those were its evil days, when it was befrilled and crinolined by the same spirit that figleafs Apollo and measures the Milo Venus for a pair of stays. The name has older memories, older even than its Italian gardens and passionate poets, memories old as sunshine and song and the laurel-tree itself. Indeed, that enchanted bush, that grave tree with blood-red berries, that panting girl within stiff bark and quiet leaves, reminds me not a little of Laura, our own bewildered Laura, when Love, the crazy torch-bearer, came rioting down the Brackenhurst lanes, to break through the garden fences of her ignorance, and, entering, set the quiet house of her mind afire.
And so, unless you insist, we will keep the name: it has taught us already something about her.
What is she like—to look at?
She is shadowy as yet, but I think you said, and I agreed, that she has soft, shining eyes—shining, not sparkling—and is wonderfully light on her feet. I think, what with the sway of her pretty figure, and her quick white hands that are the only restless things about her, she has, though she is not a little woman, a fugitive, thistledown air, that makes you want to dance with her. Yet she cannot dance: never troubled to learn. Dancing bored Justin. Her dancing days were over before she learned that it is not always wise to humour Justin.