Justin’s next leave was nominally due in June. In September he began to be hopeful of getting it: his Christmas epistles were models of linguistic control: and he arrived soon after New Year to laugh at his sympathetically indignant household for taking any notice of anything he might have said in a letter: and, sobering, to be angry with his mother for waiting at home for him instead of going to Bournemouth like a sensible woman till the raids and the fogs were over. He could have wired! She could have got back in half a day: or he could have gone down to her, even if it were jollier, in a way, to spend his leave at home. Laura ought to have packed her off long ago, instead of letting her sit day after day on that windy hill-top catching influenza!

But Mrs. Cloud, sitting up in bed and coughing between her smiles, would not have Laura blamed. She did not know what she and Timothy should have done without Laura—and would Laura run down once again, dear, to see that Mary understands about an early lunch? “And now, my son, let me look at you——”

Laura slipped away.

It was a dreamlike week. It was so utterly incredible to her that circumstances should have once more established her at the Priory, that she could confront the situation with comparative calmness, could even put aside her human prerogative of saying suspiciously to happiness, “Yesterday you were not! Tomorrow, where will you be?” and bask as complacently as a cat or a flower in the spell of sunshine. But she could not believe it to be real.

For she found herself sitting down to meals with Justin, catching scraps of his talk with his mother, making no bones about sending him out of the room when she thought Mrs. Cloud had had enough excitement, finding him ten minutes later, when she had pulled the blind and settled Mrs. Cloud for a nap and had come downstairs again, tapping the barometer, raking the bookshelves or lounging by the fire, abstractedly admiring the set of his puttees, bored by the weather, very ready to talk to her. That, you see, was what amazed her. She could understand his acceptance of her, with reserve, as a necessary evil while his mother was ill; but—he was ready to talk to her! He was himself with her, unembarrassed, friendly, apparently unconscious that he had a right to be otherwise. It was unbelievably generous. It was in every way too good to be true. She could not understand it in the least. It was the most astonishing thing that had ever happened. It took her just five minutes to become entirely accustomed to it.

Yet she found that in his talk he was gradually and unwittingly explaining himself to her. He was on a holiday: he wanted to be happy. He was unconsciously doing what she was doing consciously. He was trying to put aside all that could spoil his respite.

How great that respite was he told her, not knowing that he told her, in a hundred tragi-comic ways. She was ready to cry over his little comfortable movements in his chair, his new, observant appreciation of the decencies of life. His extraordinary interest in the concerns of the Gedges and the Clouds and the Mouldes, expressed as it was with all the old lordliness of manner, was so funny that, but for the lump in her throat, she could have laughed outright. Dear Justin—he had always been thorough!... And then her attention would be caught afresh by some unwonted gesture, some unfamiliar sentiment: and she would tell herself anxiously that her disturbance was out of all proportion to such causes. They were trifles, merest trifles ... but they pained and touched her. It struck her that he was boisterous in his laughter over very simple jokes. He moved more heavily, had acquired a nervous trick of the hands. He was patently anxious to put the war out of his mind, and it was obvious that he could not do it. They would find themselves talking of the war, he speaking as if compelled, yet with increasing unwillingness, flagging into dull silence, and then, rousing himself, beginning to talk of it again, formally, lifelessly, incessantly. Bad for him—she knew that it was bad for him.... She wondered if he thought her efforts to divert him mere callousness?... Yet surely he must have his holiday in peace?... It was their business—hers and his mother’s—to see that he went back to his intolerable duty with an aired and rested mind. But how?... Was it, she wondered, better for him first to disburden himself as he wanted, yet did not want, to do?...

But at that she was, again, uneasily aware of change in him, of a new reserve between them, a reserve born, not of their personal estrangement, but of an experience unshared. Where she had imagined, he had seen. It was not wonderful if, subconsciously, he distrusted her capacity, the capacity of any safe and sheltered woman, to enter into his memories, see with his eyes. But she, acknowledging, not the justice, but the inevitability of his attitude, thought only, ‘What does that matter? The thing is to make him rest. I’m a poor creature if I can’t get him out of himself.’...

And on the third day she got her opportunity.

The second had passed in a whirl of excitement and laughter (only a little forced) and pleasure at his return, and anxiety and fondness for his mother, in silent meals that had given Laura her first inkling of the cloud upon him. On the third day he had gone to town to do his necessary shopping, and, in delighted extravagance, had brought back half Covent Garden for Mrs. Cloud, and chocolates for no one in particular, and complicated mechanical toys that did not appease Timothy. For Timothy, playing second fiddle for the first time since his grandmother had adopted him, had a grievance against his Uncle Justin. Timothy gave Laura a bad moment as she put him to bed.

“Did you say thank-you to Uncle Justin when you said good-night?”

“Don’t like Uncle Justin.” Timothy wriggled from under the towel.

“Oh, Timothy, when he brought you that lovely motor-car!”

“Don’t like old motor-car. Want to see the birds in Uncle Justin’s room.”

“What, my duck?”

“Birds sitting on eggs in Uncle Justin’s room. Grannie told me, only they’re locked up till Uncle Justin comes home.”

“Grannie said that? Are you sure, Timmy?”

“Yes, and said Uncle Justin would show me. And Uncle Justin wouldn’t. Said—said—Uncle Justin said——”

“Said what, Timothy?”

Timothy scowled adorably.

“Don’t like Uncle Justin. Where’s my motor-car?”

“But Timothy——”

“Want my motor-car.”

And Laura, having been acquainted with that particular tone in the Cloud voice for some thirteen years, gave him his motor-car and said no more.

But she went down to dinner and Justin with bright eyes and a flushed face, and had little to say as she sat thinking across to him over the pot of daffodils.

‘So—so you never told your mother! But you tell her everything! It was decent of you—it was good of you—not to tell your mother....’ And then, with such a pang of pride in him, ‘It was like you. Any one else——It was awfully good of you not to tell your mother.’...

And that evening, as they came down from Mrs. Cloud’s room (Mrs. Cloud hoped to get up the next day) she found herself, because that tale of Timothy’s had given her the strangest courage, able to find the right words, the right silences, able to unlock him at last.

And he spoke—to the room, to the fire, to his own hands, rather than to her—of certain things daily seen and heard and endured: spoke with a flatness of tone, a baldness of phrase, that, to her at least, underlined his facts as no eloquence could have done. He doled out horror like a school-marm teaching dull children to read.

‘The cat ate the rat.’

“Stuck him up against a wall and shot him.”

“Wiped out forty——”

“And after that there wasn’t much Fritz left!”

And, urged on as it were, by her quivering receptiveness, spoke finally of experiences, not (she thanked God) his own, yet of his own first-hand knowledge: and found no other way to tell her than with a hard stare, in direct and brutal sentences, as if he thought—

‘Well, if it comes to that, why shouldn’t you know? Do you good—you home people!’

She knew that his contempt was unconscious, impersonal; that she had no right to wince at it; nevertheless, it hurt. She wanted to say, ‘It’s not fair. I do understand. As if I wouldn’t cut off my hands to be there instead of you! It’s you who’ll never understand,’ and shook off that egotism to listen to him again, and had her reward when he ended, quite naturally and simply, in turning from the subject at last with that air of relief for which she had worked and hoped, with a comfortable relaxation of his whole body, and a smile that told her that he was feeling better and was ready to be amused.

Ten minutes later, with the victorious inconsistency of their race, they were shaking with laughter over the new Bairnsfather drawings.

The next day—already it was his last day but one—was a festival: Mrs. Cloud was to come down to tea and to stay up to dinner.

She had no business to do either, as she and Laura and the doctor knew, but—Mrs. Cloud was coming down!

They bargained with the doctor.

If it were a fine warm day—(But it was wet and cold.)

If she kept quiet all the morning—(“Then you must look after Justin, Laura!”)

If she promised to go to bed again really early——

If—if——

In short——Mrs. Cloud was coming down.

Hard upon Laura to be bothered with Justin, wasn’t it? When she was so particularly busy; when she had promised the DepÔt more work than she knew how to get through. But she made no objection whatever: came downstairs to him with obliging readiness: sat listening with an air that might have been mistaken for satisfaction, to the windy rain thudding at the windows. No going out in such rain!

She took up her half-finished sock and then had to put it down again to help Justin. Justin was raking through the bookshelves.

“Here—what can I take back? Something solid. I’m sick to death of sevenpennies. Mother is comical, you know. She’s got twice my brains—but the books she chooses!” He laughed: “I know she goes by the cover.”

“You’ve read all these.” Laura ran her hand along the shelves. “No good giving you poetry, I suppose?” She pulled out Men and Women. “Remember how Oliver was always spouting the Italian things?”

He sighed.

“He gave me that book too, poor devil!”

She looked at him, startled.

“Why—what?”

“Didn’t you see it? Artists’ Rifles. Shot, his first week out.”

“Oliver?”

He looked at her with a sad enough smile.

“Brings it home a bit, doesn’t it?”

She shook her head incredulously.

“I never saw it. I never knew.” And then: “His poor wife——”

Justin lit his pipe.

“I only met her once. She’s married again, I believe.”

There was a silence, with Laura whipping over page after page of the volume in her hand. Suddenly she flamed out—

“Such women—such women——They make you ashamed.” Her eyes were pitiless.

Justin frowned thoughtfully.

“I don’t know. I don’t suppose he left her much to live on. And she was an awfully pretty girl.”

But at that, after one look flashed at him, she stared the more resolutely at her book, lest he should see the amazement, the quick incredulous appreciation, in her eyes. There had been no superiority in his voice—nothing but the real tolerance of comprehension! It was not he, but she, Laura, who stood reproved for a lack of common charity.... Poor—young—an awfully pretty girl!... He was right.... It was not for them to judge.... But what had happened to Justin that he could see it and say it?... In a bewilderment so near happiness that it frightened her, she began to talk at random.

“Yes—yes—I suppose so. Well—will you take it then? There’s heaps of reading in it.”

He laughed.

“Too much for me. I started Sordello once. Pity he would try to rhyme prose instead of singing songs.” He looked over her shoulder, his eyes caught by the italics that laced the close print like birds’ voices ringing through a wood. “Ah—that’s better! Flower o’ the rose——What is it?”

“Lippi. You know! Oliver was mad about it. Oliver always said that Browning was a painter spoiled himself.”

He nodded.

“Shouldn’t wonder. Oliver generally knew what he was talking about. That now—

Now that’s good. That’s likeable. That’s poetry and truth too. But the rest goes wrenching and jerking along like—like Vulcan. Club-foot divinity.”

Again she was astonished. It was what she had always thought—but that he should think so too—should put it into words for her—was epoch-making. She was overwhelmed by the remorseful conviction that she had always and systematically undervalued him. She was so much occupied by that discovery that she did not notice, till he called to her to “listen to this rot” that the book had slid from her hand to his, that he was settling into his chair, preparing to see-saw delightfully, abolishing Browning and relenting to Browning, for the rest of the morning.

It was not quite what Laura wanted; but it was very pleasant.

And she finished her sock.