Читать книгу First the Blade - Clemence Dane - Страница 4

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As usual, you are perfectly right. The first thing, I agree, is to decide where to begin; that is, to discover at what period Laura and Justin, who, after all, interest themselves from the days when they were as old as their tongues, and months ahead of their teeth, begin to be interesting to other people. That is a simple matter? I believe you think, oh trustful Collaborator, that you have but to drop a suggestion, like a penny in a chocolate machine, for a chapter to roll out, ready written, for your censorship! Consider the initial difficulties! Who, for instance, is to decide this question of the interesting moment? John Smith, who likes a good wholesome love story with Sweet Seventeen for heroine? Or Sweet Seventeen herself, whose Prince Charming must be fifty if a day, grey-headed, iron-mouthed, and hopelessly entangled with a repentant actress of at least three distinct, disreputable pasts? Would they be interested in the countrified Laura, not yet a schoolgirl, whom I should dearly love to draw? Of course not!

No, the protagonists must be at least in their quarter century. But what would Mrs. Cloud, on the other hand, say to that? Slur over, if not ignore, the first ten, let alone the first thirty, years of her son’s life, we are, of course, at liberty to do. It is our affair! But, in that case, the book, frankly, will not be worth reading. A character such as Justin’s is not so easily deciphered. Thoroughly to appreciate Justin we must begin at the beginning. We are probably not aware that he weighed, at the very beginning, ten pounds. And speaking of teeth half a page ago—do we know that there is a little white tooth, in a little white thimble-box, in Mrs. Cloud’s big work-basket, that still bears witness how unflinchingly, at five and a quarter, Henry Justin could bear pain? Mrs. Cloud showed it to Laura one expansive day, and Laura, fingering it as she listened to the anecdote that led so inevitably to another anecdote, and another, and yet another, was whimsically jealous that his mother should have had so much more of him than she. Had, as she put it away again in the big basket under the pile of socks, a cold eye for the exquisite darns: wondered that Justin had not got blisters on his heel before now. And without an attempt at consistency, sat herself meekly down at Mrs. Cloud’s feet to beg a darning lesson; which Mrs. Cloud, with the discerning twinkle her son has not as yet acquired, was very ready to give. They were excellent friends, those two. They had affection, and that confident respect for each other which comes of thinking exactly alike on an extremely important subject. They would have both agreed, Collaborator, that to make our book a success, we unquestionably must begin at the beginning—the beginning, of course, of Henry Justin Cloud.

But I would rather talk about Laura.

I know the precedence is Justin’s: for Adam was first formed, then Eve.... Yet Eve, bless her ingenuous, enterprising heart, is always so much more interesting than Adam. If Adam were not in the Bible, wouldn’t you call him ‘stodgy’? And don’t you think Eve did, under her breath?

‘Adam—what’s that, in that tree?

‘Look, Adam!

‘No, not there! Can’t you see where I’m pointing?

‘Rather like a pear, only round.

‘Adam, if you put your foot so—and swing yourself up.

‘Of course the branch will bear you!

‘Oh, Adam, you might!

‘I don’t want to eat it. I only want to know what it is.

‘I do think you might!

‘Don’t then!’

And there the serpent’s bright, unwinking eye catches hers, and the serpent, all unperceived of Adam, whispers in her ear the one adjective adequate to the situation.

And as, from that day to this, young birds have twittered as old birds sing, I shouldn’t be surprised if Laura, in her turn, has had moments—red, secret, shameful, iconoclastic moments when she, too, has rolled the word relishingly over her tongue——

“Stodgy! Stodgy! Stodgy!”

But she was always very sorry afterwards. And so, I daresay, was Eve.

Adam was never sorry. He was always perfectly happy and self-satisfied. That is why I prefer to begin, at any rate, with Eve—Laura, I mean. For a happy man or woman is necessarily dull, dull as a healthy oyster, and as safe. Few enough will care to pry open the hard shell and prod the smug, snug mollusc inside. But when, as will sometimes happen, a grain or two of sharp-edged sand sifts in, to scrape and fret and fester the soft flesh, why, then the pearls begin to come, and the oyster is worth a dive at last.

Justin, kindly born and bred, is, as far as we know, to be happy all his life, though he had those ill-used months somewhere in his twenties for which Mrs. Cloud, at least, never quite forgave Laura. But Laura’s happiness cracked like a cup when she was six, and though she drank from it later, often enough, and pure nectar at that, it was always uncertainly, with a frightened eye upon the rivets with which Time, who mends most things, had put it together again.

I told you, I think, that the two were orphaned: he had lost one and she both parents: and if it were a schoolboy’s misfortune to have forgotten his father (Mrs. Cloud had no opinion of Solomon: if his precepts could produce nothing better than Rehoboam, she had every intention of sparing the rod!) it was very much more definitely a small girl’s tragedy that she could remember her mother.

From six o’clock in the morning, undisturbed by the erection of a tent in her bed, to six o’clock in the evening, comprehending that the gutterings from the night-light, surreptitiously kneaded in small hot hands, are more soothing and inductive to sleep than hymns, chocolates, or even The Three Little Men in the Wood, Laura’s mother was the most wonderful and satisfactory person in the whole world.

She had tweedy, uncomplaining skirts that could get through the scratchiest holes in a hedge without tearing like Nurse’s, and blouses with blue fluttery ribbons, and petersham waistbelts that would go twice round Laura if she pulled hard, and a little straw hat like a schoolboy’s. And she hardly ever wore gloves. But on Sundays she had a floppy thing with a rose in it and a great trailing feather, and a beautiful brown frock, with red silk down the front, that Laura called the robin dress. She could sing like a robin too, high and sweet, and she knew all the songs that had ever been sung, and had read all the books that had ever been written, and could tell you all about them all. She had a dear smiling face, and her hair was so long that she could sit on it, just like Rapunzel, and nobody could brush it as Laura did, because her mother, twisting a little in her chair and making funny faces, often said so. Her mother was always saying and doing funny things: she could make Laura laugh by just looking at her. Yet she was always properly serious over a dead bird or a bumped forehead, and had a most soothing way of making an armchair of lap and arm and shoulder for Laura to curl up in till she felt better.

With Nurse she was simply magnificent. She had a way of pretending that she wasn’t afraid of her that made Laura gasp. She had poured a glass of rhubarb and magnesia into the slop-pail once, before Nurse’s own eyes: and had said, of course Laura might have the door of the night-nursery left open if she wanted it—why not?—though she explained those shadows that dance upon the wall privately to Laura afterwards, and so satisfactorily that Laura was ready to withdraw her objection.

Yes, she was an understanding person. When they drove out in the low pony-trap through the narrow lanes that were hedged with damson trees, she never wondered that Laura should want the long yellow straws that dangled from the branches to show where a waggon-load of corn had passed. She would stand up and rake them down with her whip without more ado. She would stop half a dozen times in half an hour to let Laura jump out and pick herb-robert, or convolvulus, or ropes of briony, and give advice as to the weaving of a wreath, and wear it round her hat when it was done at whatever angle Laura preferred, with an air that proved to Nurse and other mothers that she wore it to please herself quite as much as Laura.

And Laura, subconsciously, was aware that the mother she worshipped, worshipped with equal frankness a small daughter whom no one else found particularly attractive. And it was possibly that knowledge that allowed the mother’s personality so to interknit with the daughter’s, that its uprooting came near to tearing out the child’s heart also.

Yet the alliance was so inevitable. There were the twins, of course, but they were obviously Nurse’s property. They were fat, greedy, red-crested darlings, with mottled arms and legs, and mouths that were always half open like baby thrushes. Laura and her mother were very fond of them, though Laura’s attitude was prompted, I fear, by the glory of sharing a responsibility with her mother, rather than by sisterly devotion, for she was always persuasively protestant when Mrs. Valentine suggested a visit to the nursery.

“My chick, we really must go and play with Wilfred and James!”

“Oh, Mother! Ten minutes more! They’re quite happy. They don’t really want us, you know. Oh, Mother, just another ten minutes! Because, Mother—darling, dear Mother—in the inside of the very inside of your heart, you would rather read to me, wouldn’t you?”

“What? Read to a whipper-snip like you, when the poor little twins—I never heard of such a thing!” And Mother’s knees would give way suddenly and Laura, slipping to the floor, would be tickled till she squealed. And when she had had her ten minutes, full measure, Mother would recollect herself guiltily, and hurrying upstairs, be very, very kind to Wilfred and to James. But Laura, in dutiful imitation, would yet be glancing, ever and again, from Noah’s Ark and pat-ball, to watch the beloved face, and wait for a stray smile; and when it came her way, would whisper to herself in fierce, delicious exultation——

“But she’s my mother most!”

You protest? You think such jealousy, such ecstasy, unchildlike and fantastic? And if not impossible in such a baby, at least improbable and rather distressing? And you don’t believe children are like that? I can’t help it. You ought to be right, but you are not. Laura was ‘like that.’ An unpleasant child? If you please. But her mother never thought so. And if some premature instinct made her, young as she was, so proud and jealous of her place in her mother’s heart, the instinct was, at least, a sure one. For though many are to like her, and some to love, never in all her life will she be first fiddle with any one again.

Moreover her golden age was coming to its end. Not suddenly, with a hushed house and red eyelids and the definite, numbing ritual of carriages and handkerchiefs and hothouse flowers: not in a black day that would have yawned like a gulf between Then and Now, a cleavage, definitely unbridgeable, on whose further brink Mother would move ever more mistily, shrouded in hopeless glamour; but imperceptibly, tenuously, in an ever lengthening spider-thread of hope deferred.

For Mother had only gone away to get better! She was ill, because she had begun to wear little white shawls, although it was summer-time, and sat still so much, and did not pour away Nurse’s medicines any more. So Laura saved her sugar at tea-time for her mother, to take the taste away. There was a day when Mother cried. Laura had never known till then that mothers could cry. She held her head and tried to be grown-up and comforting, but she was secretly terrified, yet a little important too, because Mother would not let any one be called, but lay quiet against Laura’s shoulder, just as Laura had so often lain against hers. The next day, or week, or months, she could never remember how long it was, her lazy mother had breakfast in bed, and she was to be sent away to stay with Gran’papa Valentine. The twins were to be left behind. “Too young to understand,” said Nurse significantly to the parlour-maid. Understand what? She coaxed, implored, stormed, for an explanation. Why shouldn’t she stay, if the twins did? She had not been naughty—she had been good, good! Mother wanted her. Mother couldn’t want the twins without her. Mother always wanted her. And she wanted her mother—she wanted her mother——

She fought like a little wild cat while they dressed her, in a fit of passionate anger that shook her small body as wind shakes a bush, and that only her mother had ever been able to control. There was a wildness about it that startled even the stolid nurse, who could not guess at the foreboding, the desperation that underlay the paroxysm, and was, of course, as incomprehensible to the child herself as his own despair to the dog who watches you pack your trunk.

It was the friendly parlour-maid who came to the rescue with her cheerful——

“Now, Miss Laura, you won’t be let say good-bye to your ma if you can’t be good!”

That quieted her, banished the unreasoning fear that had been upon her of the hateful strength of her nurse’s arms, that at any peremptory moment might seize and bear her, struggling, helpless, into the wilderness where Mother was not. She would not, could not, go without a word from her mother, or a promise or a kiss.... But if she might say good-bye—why, the world had righted itself again!... Mother would make all clear.... Mother would make all right.... Could she go to Mother now? this directly minute?

She submitted herself to the maid (she would not go near the nurse) and was re-arranged and smoothed and tidied, and left at last at the bedroom door, with a final injunction to be a good girl, and very quiet, and not stay long.

She shook off the maid’s hand, and, awed a little in spite of herself, slipped into the room.

She was so small that the foot of the big bedstead blocked her vision like a wall, and for a blank moment she thought the room empty. Then the clothes rustled faintly, and emboldened she peeped round the post. There, sure enough, lay her mother, her beautiful long plaits disordered, an arm flung out weakly.

She clambered on to the bed and cast herself upon her in an ecstasy of relief.

“Mother! Mother!”

Well, she had her half-hour and was sent away comforted. Laura was to enjoy herself—and be very good—and go on with her lessons—and be kind to Wilfred and James: and there should be letters, many letters, in a round hand that Laura could read all by herself. And soon, very soon, Mother would come and fetch her home—and so good-bye to Laura, her Laura, her own little girl——

That is how Laura went to live at Brackenhurst with Gran’papa Valentine.

She got her letters, three of them, but no more, though that was only because there was a new postman! But though the twins followed her in a little while in white overalls and black sashes, and the weeks went by, and Laura grew daily more excited and impatient, her mother never came to fetch her home.