They had talked about Architecture in the Italian play-ground, about Botticelli, and Carpaccio, and Dante, and Excavations, and Francis of Assisi, and Giotto, and so on steadily through the alphabet to Virgil and Zenobius. And vaguely, without actually canvassing the matter, she expected to go on thinking and talking to Justin about these entirely satisfactory and absorbing subjects for the rest of their natural lives. But she had reckoned without Justin, without old habits, and a flying visit to Bellew, and an enlarged but by no means completed collection crying out for attention. Art?—when nests were tucked away in the Brackenhurst hedges and nests swinging high in the Brackenhurst woods and birds rising from every tussock of green heather on flat-topped Brackenhurst Hill to mislead the enemy? Art? Art was in Italy, or if she must cross Europe with them at Laura’s invitation, Justin, like a sensible Briton, insisted on finding her lodgings in town. And there they had left her, the foreigner, the bored great lady, to yawn away her days in Chelsea attics and overheated galleries. Of course they promised to come and look her up constantly: and Laura meant, and Justin thought he meant, to keep that promise. But the train service from Brackenhurst was a slow one: and the weather was perfect.
Besides—didn’t Laura understand?—he enjoyed pottering round the fields with a collecting-box.
But after Botticelli—birds’ eggs?
I know. I know. It’s distressing. Naturally, you want an explanation: and if the case were a woman’s, I could satisfy you. I’m sure I could; for, if you can but happen upon it, there is always sound policy behind a woman’s wildest extravagance—drinks of pearl or Bartholomew Eves. But Nero fiddles because he enjoys fiddling and wants to see the pretty fire. And if we accept that elementality as, if not justifying, at least explaining our mere man, how much more must it suffice us in considerating that amiable reductio ad absurdum of a man that we call a collector. I am to explain to you a collector? I am to explain why a respectable elderly lawyer runs about Epping Forest with a butterfly net on Sunday afternoons? why your favourite jeune premier haunts a down-at-heel farmhouse for the twin china spaniels’ sake upon its parlour mantelpiece? why a square inch of orange paper changed hands the other day for near a thousand pounds? and why H. J. Cloud, Esq., after refreshing dalliance with the wonders of a wonderful world, returns, unconscious of incongruity, to his home, to his habit, to his hobby, to his beloved and incomparable birds’ eggs? How can I explain? What am I to say? Collectors are made that way. We must accept them as we accept love, or triplets, or earthquakes, as eccentricities of Nature, unaccountable but interesting.
Besides, I collect pewter myself.
So taking Justin for granted——But that, you see, is what Laura could not do.
Here was Justin, with his years, his brains, his position—why—why—he had been to Oxford! He would have been a B.A. if he hadn’t had influenza! He had been round the world! He knew interesting people! He had once been to dinner with Mr. Wells! A man like Justin could do anything he chose—go into Parliament—write a book (she was convinced that he could write a book if he would only take the trouble, for there was a something about his letters ...) and here he was, settling down to—to collecting birds’ eggs! Birds’ eggs!!
She put it to him once in desperation—“Why birds’ eggs?”
But then, as Justin said to her—“Why not?”
They never got farther than that.