XVIIAnd then, that Christmas, I met Walter again.We were on a walking tour along the Roman Wall, Guy and Hugo and the Addingtons and Sophia and I. We had begun at Hexham, and we walked along the wall towards Carlisle. It was on the fourth day that we met Walter, in the camp at Howstead.It was a windy day, very cold and clear and bright, and we reached the camp about the middle of the day. We had sandwiches with us, and we sat down to eat them at the Northern Gate, looking out over the waste space of fell towards Scotland.Suddenly I saw Walter. He had come up from behind somewhere, and was standing beside me.‘Hullo,’ said George. ‘Where have you come from, Sebright?’He said:‘How do you do, Miss Woodruffe?’I felt, that time, that he was looking at me, and that he was glad to see me.He said:‘I have waited three years for this.’Mollie said:‘It’s a wonderful place.’He meant that he had waited to see me. He told me afterwards that he had meant it, and I knew before he told me. I knew, I think, when he said it, up there on the hill, and the odd thing is that I wasn’t surprised.He sat down beside me on the stones of the Northern Gate.He said:‘The barbarians were down there. It looks like it, doesn’t it? And there were Southern soldiers up here. They must have hated it.’He took us round the camp afterwards and explained to us what the places were—where they washed their clothes and where they cooked. It seemed to me very interesting, what he told us, and there were inscriptions on some of the stones that he showed us too.‘Sebright is a dab at inscriptions,’ George said to Hugo.‘He got some honour in Berlin for a thing on inscriptions.’I thought that he made it very vivid, the life in that Roman camp, and I had never felt much interest in Rome before. Sophia was interested too, and George—but not Hugo. Hugo used to say sometimes that he had a blind spot in his mind for history; but I was vexed with him this time for not being interested. He was polite, of course—he was always polite; but I, who knew him well, could see that he was bored.Sophia began talking to Walter; she did not seem shy of him at all.‘They must have been hard, enduring sort of people, she said. Up here at the end of the world—it is like the end of the world,’ she went on half to herself, ‘looking out on to that. . .I like the Romans.’Walter looked pleased—but he was talking to me, and I knew it and was glad.I don’t know even now how much the difference was in him and how much in me. He seemed to me very different this time, from that afternoon at Oxford three years before. He seemed to me now to have more life and more assurance, as though he felt himself here on his own ground. But perhaps I was more ready to notice him now. There had been no room for him at all in my mind before.When we had finished looking at the camp Guy said we must go on. We were to sleep at Gilsland that night if we could, and the evenings were short.Walter had come that way the day before, and slept at a farm near by, but he said now that he would walk back with us. He did not say ‘if you don’t mind’ or ‘may I?’ as one somehow expected him to say. He just said:‘I will go with you. I know this wall pretty well.’We walked along the top of the wall for a long way, up hills and down, always at the edge of the cliff, with the barbarian country below. Then the others said they would take the lower track, farther down across the fell, but I wouldn’t. I kept along the top of the wall, and Walter came with me.Once Hugo called me.‘It is much easier along here,’ he said. ‘You had much better come down.’And I said:‘I won’t come down. I am going into the barbarian country.’And I laughed at him, and then I jumped down on the other side of the wall and ran down along the slope of the hill. It was not so steep in this place—towards a little lake with trees beside it, down in the flat wild country.‘Do you want to see the barbarians?’ Walter asked, and I said:‘Yes, but they are all gone.’Walter said:‘They are not gone, only civilized. Do you ever wish you could get away from civilized people, and culture and books and all that sort of thing?’And I said:‘No, I have never wished that. I have never thought about it.’He said:‘Perhaps you haven’t been oppressed by it, as I have. Routines and curricula and examinations—always doing what you have got to do and never what you want.’I said:‘No, I generally do what I want—or at any rate Idon’tdo what Idon’twant.’ And I thought of Cousin Delia and Yearsly, and how seldom the question had arisen.Walter said:‘That is better. That is much better. That is partly what I felt about you!’He said it with a sudden vehemence and then stopped short. I looked at him and he was looking at me. I felt suddenly uneasy, and an odd ridiculous feeling came over me that I was really outside a safe wall, in a strange country, and I wanted to go back.I said:‘We will go back now, or we shall be lost. It will be too steep further on.’Walter said:‘It is too steep now. We must go on now we are here.’And I felt as though we were walking in a dream, as though everything that he said and that I said were symbolic and fraught with a deeper meaning than we knew. It was an odd exciting feeling and made me a little bit afraid.We found a track along the fell, and walked on it, and Walter began to talk about his work on the Roman inscriptions in Britain. He told me too that he had been appointed to a lectureship in Archæology in London University.‘I shall be coming to live in London after Easter,’ he said, and then, ‘I hope I shall see you there.’I said:‘Yes, surely. We are all in London now.’He said:‘I know.’We came at last to a place where the wall was lower and broken down, and we climbed back and over it into the Roman country. The others were waiting for us—sitting on big stones.We stopped at Greenhead for the night, for it was getting dark already.Walter stopped with us and went back the next day.XVIIIWalter came to see me at Campden Hill Square.Grandmother was in the drawing-room when he came in.When I came downstairs I found them having tea.Grandmother said:‘Here is Mr. Sebright, my dear. He has been telling me about his studies in Roman Britain.’It was like my grandmother not to be surprised. She had never heard of Walter, I am sure, for we had none of us thought or spoken of him before, and since that walk at Christmas, I had thought of him a good deal, and not wanted to speak.Grandmother liked ‘antiquities.’ When she was a girl she had visited a great many museums; with her father first, who thought it was good for her, and then with her husband, who liked museums himself.She used to say that it was a sign of our generation not to like museums, and a bad sign. Some things about us she considered good. I could see that she was pleased with Walter.‘Mr. Sebright tells me that the inscribed rocks at Chester are not really so interesting as those at Corbridge,’ she said.Walter was standing up to shake hands with me.I knew again that he had been waiting for me, and wanting to see me very much.Grandmother went on talking to him about the inscriptions at Corbridge.It did not interest me at all what they were saying, but I felt excited at Walter’s being there. It was now that I noticed his hands, what beautiful hands they were, as he handed me my tea and bread and butter, and I watched his face as he was talking to Grandmother. He did not seem to me absurd now, as he had at first.Afterwards he was talking about something in the British Museum—bas-reliefs, I think, with some inscriptions on them—and I said I didn’t know the British Museum. I had only been there once, with Hugo, to look at Greek vases, and he said:‘Oh, but the Greek vases are very dull. It is the early things you should see—little pieces of things that mean nothing by themselves, but when you piece them together tell you about whole nations you didn’t know. You ought to see the Mycenaean fragments and the Hittite things. Won’t you come one day and let me show them to you?’I said I should love to see them; and even while I was saying so I wondered why I said it, for I did not care for fragments of things at all, and I did not like the Museum the one time I was there.‘Will you come next Thursday?’ Walter asked. ‘I shall be there all day Thursday. If you could come in the afternoon—any time in the afternoon—I shall be there. I could show you lots of things, and then,’ he added, more shyly, ‘we could have tea.’Grandmother laughed. She said:‘If you make an archæologist of Helen I will take off my hat to you.’I said:‘I will come at half-past three.’I did not mind Grandmother’s laughing. She did not laugh in a way one would mind.When Walter had gone away I wondered if I had been silly. Why had I said I would go and look at inscriptions? I felt uncomfortable about it, and not at ease with myself.XIXI went to the British Museum on Thursday. Walter was waiting for me on the steps, and there was another man with him. The other man was called Furze. He was a professor at some University in Wales. He was older than Walter, but not very much older. He had a very kind face, and a funny way of ducking down his head. I liked him and was glad he was there too. He had been working with Walter all the morning in the Assyrian Room, it seemed, and now he came round with us for a bit, till it was time for him to catch his train.He did not talk much; Walter did the talking. I thought he knew quite as much about the things as Walter, but he was not so excited about them.We looked at some Assyrian bas-reliefs of people hunting lions. They were more interesting than I had expected, and rather beautiful too, some of them—rather beautiful clean lines—but Walter said even these were too late, and we went on to cases of rougher broken things, and he explained what they once had been—pots and ovens and tiles and all sorts of household stuff.‘You will get back to your “Urdummheit,” ’ Mr. Furze said, smiling at Walter, ‘Ithink these pots were not very well made.’Walter tossed his head. He seemed self-confident here, as he had been at Howsteads; not a bit shy or nervous, as he was at Oxford.‘Who cares if they were well made? This is not an Arts and Crafts Exhibition. Of course Praxiteles made pretty ornaments, if you want that.’‘Well, I still maintain that if you make a pot at all, it is better to make a beautiful pot than a misshapen one.’It was evidently an old argument. I could see that.I agreed with Mr. Furze.‘I do get so sick of beauty,’ Walter said. ‘Beauty is quite beside the point.’And then he laughed, for he saw Mr. Furze was laughing.‘What do you think, Miss Woodruffe?’ he asked.And I said:‘Oh, I am afraid I like beautiful pots best, if there have got to be pots at all.’He looked at me oddly, with a troubled, perplexed expression.‘I expect you think me a Philistine,’ he said. ‘I am too, I suppose. All these shapes and designs and proportions that people keep talking about—they just mean nothing to me. They seem to me sodull—like rows of pretty faces with no souls.’‘When old age shall this generation wasteThou shalt remain in midst of other woe,’I said, and Walter wrinkled his forehead.‘What is that?’ he asked. ‘I ought to know it, I expect, but I don’t. Poetry is another of the fringes for me. I’ve never had time for it.’I was sorry I had used the quotation, for he looked vexed, and I had not meant to vex him.I said:‘It’s the Ode to a Grecian Urn. That’s what made me think of it—talking about urns.’Walter grunted, and I realized that he did not know the Grecian Urn, but I couldn’t say, ‘It’s by Keats.’Mr. Furze interposed.‘Sebright is quite incorrigible,’ he said. ‘He doesn’t like Grecian Urns, and he doesn’t like poetry. He will certainly not read a poem about a Grecian Urn.’Walter shrugged his shoulders and gave a little laugh, and I felt it had not mattered after all.Soon after that Mr. Furze had to catch his train. I was sorry when he went away.There was a tensity in the air when we were alone, and I felt somehow as though I were there on false pretences. Walter took me to a big stone in a square frame.‘This is the Rosetta Stone,’ he said. ‘I think this is one of the most exciting things here.’And he told me that there were three different languages on it, and three different scripts, and that had been the key to discovering a whole new civilization. People had worked out another language—Ancient Egyptian, he said it was—letter by letter, sign by sign, through comparing one side of the stone with the other, for the same legend was written on all three.I could see that that was rather an exciting thing to do.‘You know,’ he said suddenly. ‘I saw this stone first when I was ten years old. I had read about it in a book calledThe Wonders of Antiquity, and I came to see it with my mother, and it seemed to me even then the best thing in the world to work out new languages from old inscriptions, and discover new worlds like that—much better than discovering new things in this world. I have wanted to do it ever since, and now, partly, I can work at that; but I have to do Roman inscriptions too, because that was for a thesis to start with, to get my D.Litt., and I have to for the History school also. So I have got launched into Roman Britain, but what I really want to get at is the proto-Hittite script from Zenjirli and Sakjegöze and those things—those undeciphered hieroglyphs, you know.’I did not know what the proto-Hittite script was then; it seems curious now to think of a time when I had not heard of it, but I thought I understood what he meant about discovering new worlds that way.I asked:‘Do you feel you can find out quite a lot about the people who wrote those inscriptions? Do they get quite real to you in the end?’He said:‘No, not like that. I don’t want them real like that. It is more to me like fitting pieces into a puzzle—thousands of tiny pieces, and a very big puzzle—and if they do fit, if even quite a small piece of the puzzle gets done, you know it’s right. That is one of the satisfactory things, it can’t be just better or worse, it must be right or wrong. Do you see what I mean at all?’His voice changed; he asked the last question almost shyly. I think he did not expect people quite to understand.I thought I did, and it interested me. This was a new world to me too; a cold intellectual world that I did not know at all; and I was in a mood to explore.Afterwards we went out to tea in an A.B.C. near the Museum. At tea he was different again, more like he had been on the picnic. He was shyer and spoke more jerkily, and I felt much more that he admired me. The A.B.C. was crowded and rather noisy, and the marble top of the table was smudged with coffee that had been spilt. It seemed to me very odd to be sitting there with Walter. I seemed to be looking on from a long way off, and wondering how I came to be there.After tea we got on to a bus. I said I could go home alone, but Walter would come with me. We did not talk very much on the bus. It was beginning to rain, and we pulled up the mackintosh cover from the seat in front.He said good-bye to me on the steps of Campden Hill Square, and I thanked him for ‘a very interesting afternoon.’He waited on the step.‘May I come again?’ he asked. ‘May I take you out again?’He asked it in his funny, jerky way, as though it mattered to him very much. I could not answer him at once. I felt somehow, irrationally, that my answer was very important.I said:‘You know; I don’t agree with you at all about Beauty and Poetry—and—all that sort of thing. I think perhaps I let you think this afternoon that I did agree.’It sounded foolish even as I said it, and it was not even what I wanted to say.He said very quietly:‘I know that. You are the other side of life—all that I have not got, and don’t understand. I know I am one-sided. I would like to be different if I could.’My heart began to thump. I had not realized that he would talk like that, yet. I was not ready. I wanted to go inside and shut the door, but I couldn’t shut the door while he stood there. The rain was falling faster now, and as I moved my head a little stream of water ran off the brim of my hat, down my neck.I said:‘I suppose everybody would like to be different if they could. I should like to have black hair, quite black and straight’; and I tried to laugh. ‘But we can’t be different really, ever.’He said:‘Not completely different, of course; but we can alter. People do alter. They can develop new sides in themselves without losing what they have got.’I said:‘It is too wet to talk any more now. Good-bye.’He said:‘I may come again, mayn’t I?’I said:‘Of course, if you like.’ I tried to answer lightly, to make what we were saying seem of no consequence.I fumbled with my latch-key at the door. At last it opened, and a shaft of light shot out on to the steps. He turned away then and went down the steps, slowly at first and then faster. He turned down the Square to the north, towards Holland Park Road, and I went into the house. The hall was light and warm, and I shut the front door behind me with relief. Upstairs in my bedroom there was a fire. I took off my shoes and stockings and my wet coat, and then I sat down on the hearth-rug and cried for Hugo. He had never seemed so far away before.XXI did not speak to Mollie about Walter at first, nor to Hugo. It was almost a week before I saw Hugo again and then we were all together, and Sophia was there too. We were going to a concert, a Mozart concert at the Queen’s Hall. We did not go to dances so often since Sophia came, because she couldn’t dance. I danced with George and Guy sometimes, Mollie and I, without Hugo; but of course that was not the same thing.The concert was lovely. It made us all happy. I felt that I had been horrid to Sophia, and that I would be nicer.We went back to Hugo’s rooms and had coffee. It looked very pleasant, Hugo’s room that night, with the fire flickering on the low ceiling and the blue curtains and the charioteer.Hugo said:‘That music does one good. People could not be bad-tempered or fussed or worried if they heard some Mozart played every day before they got up.’Guy hummed an Aria from Don Giovanni, a bit we had heard.‘That is about the most perfect thing of all,’ he said.Mollie was pouring out the coffee; she always did that part.‘I think sometimes,’ said Sophia, ‘that music is all wrong, and poetry too, and all that we call art. I wonder sometimes if it isn’t all a kind of dope that we make for ourselves because we can’t face life; and it seems all pointless then.’I said:‘How odd that you should say that. It is almost what Mr. Sebright said.’‘Sebright?’ said George. ‘When did he talk about it?’‘I went to the British Museum with him the other day.’ I tried to say it nonchalantly, but I felt self-conscious, and that vexed me, for why shouldn’t I go with him? ‘He says Greek vases are like faces without souls.’‘So they are,’ said George.Hugo said:‘No, they are not at all like that. They are more like souls without faces—impersonal and rather cold. Why did you go there?’ he asked abruptly.And I said:‘Because he asked me to. It was very interesting there.’‘I don’t suppose he would care for vases,’ said Hugo, ‘or statues. He would like just objects of interest. Did you like them?’I felt then that I could not discuss Walter, nor repeat what he had said, even what he had said while Mr. Furze was there. I felt suddenly that they were all hostile, my own dear people, and that Walter had somehow put his trust in me.I said:‘I did when he explained them to me.’Guy said:‘I should not have expected him to explain very well.’‘Who is Mr. Sebright?’ asked Sophia. ‘Was that the man we met at the Roman Camp?’‘Yes,’ said Mollie. ‘He is an archæologist.’‘Epigraphist,’ corrected George.Sophia said:‘I liked him. He was a wild man.’Guy said:‘Oh, not at all wild. Quite a model young man—no vices and a credit to his college.’Sophia said:‘I didn’t mean wild in that way. More fanatical—or ruthless—I meant—as though he would be burned alive for something quite foolish—or burn other people.’Sophia understood him better than the others, I thought, and I liked Sophia for it.‘We might see Sebright some time,’ said George. ‘He is here now, isn’t he, at the Grey College?’XXIAfter that the Addingtons invited Walter to their flat. He came several times, and generally I was there. Sometimes Guy or Hugo came too, and once Sophia. Ralph Freeman was abroad at the time in Vienna, and Anthony Cowper had also been abroad.Mollie talked to Walter about his work at Grey College and his pupils and the courses they were taking. Mollie could talk to people about that sort of thing. She did not find it boring, if it made the conversation easier. That was partly why people liked Mollie.But he did not talk to her as he had to me, about the proto-Hittite script, and the Rosetta Stone. That side of his work was nearer, I felt, to him than the classes and lectures, and it was somehow a sort of secret between him and me.I used to watch Walter when he was talking to Mollie or to George, and I used to wish he looked different from what he did.I could not bear the black steel spectacles he wore, and I wished he would not speak so jerkily, nor come into a room as though he were afraid.He was worst, always, when Guy and Hugo were there. He seemed ludicrous then somehow, like a caricature of himself. He would say provocative things in a nervous voice, and I could see that he irritated Guy.He came for me again at Campden Hill Square, as he had said he would. Once he took me to a lecture on excavations in Syria. It was a dull lecture, but it seemed somehow an adventure to be there with him. It was like walking on a volcano, for I did not know his mind. I did not know what he would think or say next, as I did with Guy and Hugo, and with George.Another time we went for a walk by the Serpentine, and he told me how he used to go for walks there when he was a little boy, on Sundays with his mother. He had lived near Earl’s Court all his life. He still lived there, with his mother. His father had been a clergyman at some church round there, and had died when he was five. He had a half-sister much older than himself, who was headmistress at a school. He had been at St. Paul’s himself.He was devoted to his mother.‘She gave all her life to me when my father died,’ he said. ‘She was with me always and did whatever I did. I can’t think how children grow up with ordinary mothers, when I think what mine was to me.‘We were poor, of course,’ he said. ‘We were always poor. But I am glad of that. It made us closer together. In a household with lots of servants, children cannot be close to their mothers, as I was to mine.’I thought of Cousin Delia, and disagreed. But I did not interrupt him. Walter was never easy to interrupt.‘I owe a great deal to my sister too,’ he said. ‘She helped with my education. My mother would not have known about that, but Maud saw that I was well prepared, and that I worked hard. I don’t think I was idle by nature, but I am grateful to Maud.’He did not ask me about my childhood. He did not seem to like it when I spoke of Yearsly. He talked mostly about himself. He was ambitious, he told me that, and determined to do great things with his proto-Hittite script.And all that attracted me in an odd, contrary way. It was so unlike Hugo—and I thought of Walter as strong because Hugo was weak, and determined because Hugo was undetermined. I was trying hard during these weeks to think less well of Hugo. It seems a long time now, that time with Walter before we were engaged. It seems strange now, in a way, that Hugo did nothing—but when I think of the dates I know it was not long at all. It was at the end of February that Walter came first to Campden Hill, and he asked me to marry him on the 10th of April.We had met, I suppose, a dozen times, not more. We did not know each other at all.He came to me in the drawing-room at Campden Hill Square. He had not said that he was coming, and I was not expecting him.The room was full of tulips from Yearsly, for Cousin Delia sent them to us every week, and the parcel had just come. It was a warm sunny day, and the sun streamed in through the window at the end of the room. I was sitting on the window-seat, and the window was open. I had been putting the tulips in water. They were done now. I was gathering up the ends. There was string and brown paper, and a note from Cousin Delia as well, and the little stalks and ends of leaves from the tulips.I was thinking of Yearsly, and Cousin Delia, and not of Walter at all. I was thinking that I would go down to Yearsly for a bit; that I would write to Cousin Delia that evening and tell her I was coming. I had not been there lately even for week-ends. I would go alone now, without Hugo or Guy, and be there with Cousin Delia.And then the door opened and the parlourmaid came in and said:‘Mr. Sebright to see you, Miss.’It was a red-haired parlourmaid called Hannah. She had not been with us very long, and she married a policeman soon afterwards, soon after I was married.Walter came in, and she shut the door. It took me a little time to collect my thoughts—they had been so far from him—and then I looked at him, and I knew why he had come.He came into the middle of the room, and stood there. I asked him to sit down, but he didn’t listen.He said:‘I have come to ask you to marry me. I have meant to always, since the first day that I saw you—at Oxford, in those rooms in the Broad.‘I don’t see the good of waiting any longer. You are different from me, I know that. You are beautiful and bright, like a flower, and I love you for that. I love you for being what you are. I am a dull fellow in many ways. I know that too. But I could be different with you.’ He said it in a jerky, monotonous voice, as though he had learnt it by heart—and he did not look at me while he said it.His eyes were fixed on the floor, about a foot in front of me, and his hands were clasped behind him. My eyes followed his, instinctively, and I saw a leaf there—a little leaf that I had forgotten to pick up. I couldn’t pick it up now.I had known this was coming sooner or later, but I was not ready. It was as though I was paralysed and struck dumb—I could not say anything at all.And then he looked up suddenly and our eyes met. His were all alight—those pale blue eyes of his behind the steel spectacles. I had never seen them like this before, and his voice shook now when he spoke.‘I don’t suppose it is any use,’ he said. ‘I never thought it was. But I had to tell you—it can’t hurt you to be told.’I said:‘I am sorry.’He said:‘Don’t be sorry. There is nothing to be sorry about. I am glad I met you. My life was very empty before I met you. It can never be so empty again.’And I felt suddenly:‘What is this I am doing? What am I pushing away?’ I felt that it was wonderful to be wanted like that—and that Hugo did not want me—and I said: ‘Forgive me. I will marry you if you want me.’It was funny, I think, that I said, ‘Forgive me.’ I didn’t know then why I said it—I just heard myself saying it.Walter came up to me and kissed me. He did it awkwardly—very stiffly, as if he did not know how—and I thought how Hugo did not kiss me on the night of Guy’s party, at Yearsly by the Jasmine Gate. And I knew as he was kissing me that I had made a mistake.I felt very cold, and I shivered—perhaps because I had shivered with Hugo at the Jasmine Gate. But that had been different, quite.Walter said:‘Don’t be afraid, my precious. I will try to be what you want.’And I thought:‘Does he understand after all? How much does he understand?’XXIII went the next day to tell Mollie. It was a Saturday, I remember, and it had rained; all the streets were wet.Walter had stayed with me all the evening before, and I asked him not to come the next day. I felt that I must have a day in peace, without him, or anyone.I sat in my room all the morning, and tried to read. In the afternoon I went out and walked about.The trees were all green now, but it was not warm. Clouds had come up in the night, and the sky was still grey.I meant to go to Mollie in time for tea; I was on the Embankment by half-past four, but I did not go in; I went to a tea shop instead, a little restaurant, not far from Mollie’s flat, where we had had lunch together very often before. I sat a long time over my tea. I shrank somehow from seeing Mollie and George; he would be there too on a Saturday afternoon. They might be out of course, but I did not think so, for it had been arranged before, or half arranged, that I should go there this afternoon.I went out again, on to the Embankment; I walked along by the river, westward, past the Addingtons’ windows, towards the power station. The sun was beginning to go down, and the sky was all pink now, behind the four chimneys; the broad stretch of river where it bends, beyond Battersea Bridge, was pink too; a mist was coming up, with the tide, I suppose, from the sea, and the colours were dimmed and obscured by the greyness of the mist. A man came along with a stick, and lit the lamps, one lamp, and then two, and then three; it was quite light still, and the lamps looked small and rather foolish; I wondered why they lit the lamps so soon.There was an old man selling flowers by the corner of Battersea Bridge; I had never seen him there before; he looked a very poor old man; I bought a bunch of narcissi from him; it cost a shilling.I thought:‘That is expensive, for a bunch of narcissi.’I thought:‘It is no good; I must go in and tell them; it is too late to go back; I must tell them now what I have done.’I knocked on the door, and rang the bell. The woman from below opened it; she often did, and I went up.There was a knocker on the door of Mollie’s room; it was the first door one came to in their part of the house. I knocked on the door with the knocker and walked in.They were sitting beside the fire, George in his arm-chair, and Mollie on a cushion on the floor. There was tea on the table, pushed back again against the wall; they had finished tea, and were reading; the grey cat was with them, on the hearth-rug.It was comfortable, and familiar, and homely. There were blue curtains in this room too, but there were patterns on them, blue and white, and the cushions on the chairs were red; it was a homelier room than Hugo’s, and the chairs came mostly from their old home in Manchester, ordinary sort of chairs, not straight deep shapes like his. There was a Persian carpet that had been in Manchester too, the ordinary blue and red sort of carpet, a pinkish red like the cushions; Hugo said they did not match it quite, and Mollie said she would change them, but she never did; and we got to like the cushions that did not quite match, and we would not have liked to have them changed.‘We thought you were not coming,’ said Mollie, looking up from her book. George pulled up another chair for me.I threw the bunch of narcissi into Mollie’s lap:‘A peace offering,’ I said. ‘I meant to come sooner; I started out quite early after lunch.’‘You’ve had tea?’ asked Mollie, and I said, yes, had.George had his pipe; he always had; he took it out of his mouth, and held out his book.‘Have you read it?’ he asked. ‘Awfully good!’I looked at the book; it was Aksakov’sMemories of Childhood; I had not read it; I turned over the pages, and read bits of it, here and there. I said:‘I came to tell you, really, that I am engaged to Walter Sebright.’I did not look at either of them, only at the book.‘What?’ said George, sitting up sharply.Mollie said:‘Oh, Helen!’They were both looking at me; I knew it and pretended not to see. I felt as though I were going to cry, and was determined not to.‘Do you mean that, Helen?’ Mollie asked very gently.I said:‘Yes; are you surprised?’She said:‘Yes; very much surprised; I didn’t expect it at all!’I looked at George, but his face was turned away; he was staring at the fire, bending forwards, away from me.I said:‘Won’t you congratulate me, either of you?’ and my voice sounded odd, and jerky, even to myself, ‘Won’t you give me your good wishes?’‘Yes. . .oh surely, all good wishes. . .’Mollie said, ‘but. . .’She hesitated and I saw her look at George. . . .‘If you are going back now, I will go with you,’ George said abruptly.He knew, of course, that I had not meant to go back then, for I had only just come. Mollie looked at him again, surprised, I thought, and anxious.I nearly said: ‘I am not going back!’But I wanted to get away, and somehow, too, I had to do what George wanted.I said:‘Yes, I am going back now; but you needn’t come.’He got up from his chair and went to get his hat it was hanging up on the landing, outside the door. I stood up too. Mollie took both my hands in hers.She said:‘I wish you happiness with all my heart, you do know that, my dear!’I nodded; I felt I could not speak without crying, and I did not want to cry.George was waiting for me outside, at the top of the stairs; he waited for me to pass and then followed me down.We crossed the road to the pavement by the river, and turned Eastward, towards the bridges and the trams. We passed the two bridges, and Oakley Street, where my bus for Kensington would run; we did not, either of us, think about that. We were walking very quickly, along the river; the lamps were all lit now, broad streaks of light lay out in front of each, across the wet pavement and the road.‘It isn’t true, what you said just now?’ George asked at last.I said:‘Yes; why should it not be true?’‘I can’t believe it is true!’‘You mean that no one would want to marry me?’‘No,’ he said quietly, ‘I don’t mean that.’We walked along without speaking; we were nearly at Chelsea Bridge now.George stopped walking, and turned round:‘Does Hugo know?’ he asked.I said:‘No. I haven’t seen Hugo.’He leaned his elbows on the stone parapet and looked straight in front of him, across the river.‘You know, Helen,’ he said, ‘you must not do this; you can’t understand what you are doing; you haven’t thought.’I said:‘I am tired of thinking’‘I know it is not my business; you can say it is nothing to do with me; but it is; Hugo. . .and you are the best friends I have; I can’t stand by and see you. . .and Hugo messing up your lives. . .’His voice was very low; I had never heard George’s voice like this.I thought:‘How he loves Hugo! Why do we love him so?’I said:‘I thought you liked Sophia?’He said:‘I do like her.’‘And you like Walter Sebright too; you said you did.’‘I do,’ he said, ‘I like him too, but not for you.’I said:‘That is for me to judge.’He said:‘No, not now; you don’t know what you are doing. You are unhappy and angry, and. . .oh Helen, why do we beat about the bush? You and Hugo love each other far too well to marry other people? You know that. . .I know it. . .and Hugo knows it too!’I said:‘I don’t think Hugo does.’‘He does. . . .I know he does. Give him time, Helen. He will never care for anyone as he does for you.’I said:‘He leaves it to you, to say!’‘Can’t you wait a little while? Six months, or three months even. . .? That is not very long to wait. . .’I said:‘I am sick of waiting. I don’t know even, that I want Hugo, now.’George was silent; I knew how hard it must be for him to say these things, and I wanted to hurt him. There were sea gulls walking in the mud, at the edge of the river. They rose up in a cloud in front of us, calling and flapping their wings.I said:‘It is good of you to consider Hugo so much, but I don’t think he would be grateful to you.’I said it in a hard, horrible voice.George clasped his hands together; he clasped and unclasped his fingers, and said nothing at all.I said:‘I suppose you think I should wait for ever, on the chance of Hugo’s wanting me some day? You don’t mind what happens to me?’I can’t bear now to think how I spoke to George; it was as though a devil was in me. I did not mean what I said, and I knew that I did not mean it; I would have waited for Hugo always, if I had thought he would want me ever; but I did not think so. That was not George’s fault.George said:‘I did not mean that, Helen. You know, surely, that I did not. Do you think I should have said all this, if I did not mind what happened to you?‘It is not fair to Sebright,’ he said abruptly, ‘to marry him like this.’I said:‘That is his affair, and mine; you had better leave it alone.’We walked on again; past Chelsea Bridge, and along Grosvenor Road. There was no parapet here, only railings, and the river showed through the iron bars, with the lamplight on it. Across the water, where the wharfs and warehouses are, there were more lights, and a noise of hammering. A train went past with lighted windows, across the railway bridge. I did not ask George to leave me; I did not want him to go. Twice I looked round at him.‘Why does he mind so much?’ I wondered. ‘It is wonderful to mind so much about other people.’I said once:‘It is very dark for April.’He said:‘Yes, it is getting late.’Lorries went past us, a train of lorries, with iron girders on them. There was a Salvation Army meeting at the corner of a street.I said:‘I should like to be religious.’George said:‘So should I.’I wished already, that I had been kinder to George. I knew how hard it must have been for him to say all that to me. I was grateful to him for caring about it at all.We had left the river now, and were walking through streets with more warehouses and yards. We came out soon to Westminster, and crossed the wide space in front of the Houses of Parliament. We stood and waited for a bus.George said:‘Forgive me, Helen. I am afraid I have made it worse. I am sorry, if I have.’I wanted to say:‘Forgive me, George. I love you for what you said. It was dear and brave of you to say it. It was like you, George.’But there were people all round, near us, and my bus was coming, round the corner, and across to where we stood.I only said:‘It’s all right; you haven’t a bit. Good-bye.’I held out my hand, and George took it.Then I climbed up on to my bus, and went up the steps to the top. I turned round to wave to him again, but he did not see me. He was standing quite still, where I had left him, staring in front of him at the road.XXIIII did not write to Hugo. George told him, and Guy wrote to me at once.‘Congratulations and good wishes,’ he said; that was all.Cousin Delia asked me to bring Walter down to see her I said I would, the next week-end.Hugo wrote later:‘Helen dear, I hope you will be happy. I hope you have chosen right. Other people cannot judge for you, not even we, who have known you best.’I thought:‘He does not mind. He does not like Walter, but he does not mind.’Walter took me to see his mother. She looked old to be his mother; much older than Cousin Delia. She had light blue eyes like his, and fair hair. Her hair was not so grey as Cousin Delia’s, but her face was much more lined. She was small, and like a bird, with quick, nervous movements. She was dressed in purple; a purple silk bodice, with a high collar, up round her chin. She was very neat and slim, and her face was pink, like a soft apple.She lived in a high house, with steep, dark stairs. There were Indian things in the room; weapons, and powder horns, and inlaid tables. Walter’s grandfather had been in India; he was an Indian merchant who traded in rice. There were water-colours on the walls, of cottages, and churches in green trees; old-fashioned, rather charming pictures, but the room was dark all the same; the curtains were dark and heavy, and there was too much furniture; I felt very much a stranger in that room.Mrs. Sebright kissed me in a fluttering, half-frightened way.‘My dear, I am so glad to meet you,’ she said. ‘Walter has talked to me often about you. I should like to have seen you before.’She made me sit down in a big chair; it had a chintz cover with purplish flowers on it; faded, dull sort of flowers.‘I must look at you,’ she said, ‘you must let me look at you, my dear!’She put on her spectacles, and looked at me. It was natural that she should want to look, but I felt embarrassed.‘Yes, you are very pretty, very pretty indeed! Walter told me so. Walter is always right.’She gave a little nervous laugh.‘We must make friends now,’ she said; ‘you see, it seems so strange to me, that I do not know you at all. Walter has been such a good son to me, such a devoted son, and good sons make good husbands, so they say.. . .I am sure my Walter will. You are a fortunate young lady, my dear, though I say it, and I am sure you will do your best to deserve him.’I said I hoped I should. I liked her for thinking so much of Walter; she was so naive, and so single-hearted; the attitude of my friends would have been inconceivable to her.And I thought:‘She knows him much better than they do, after all.’She said:‘You must tell me all about yourself. Your parents are dead, I believe?’I told her that my father was dead, and my mother had married again.‘Poor dear, poor dear, so you were all alone?’I told her about Cousin Delia and Yearsly.I said:‘I was with her long before, after my father died.’‘Ah, yes; and you had cousins there, to play with, I believe?’I said:‘Yes; two cousins—Guy and Hugo.’‘They must be almost like brothers to you now?’I said:‘Yes; almost.’‘Walter knows them, I think? He knew them at Oxford.’I said:‘He does not know them very well.’‘They would not be quite Walter’s type, perhaps. . .you see, Walter is so clever, he does not care much for people who are not. . .but he will, of course, my dear, later on, if they are your cousins. He has a most affectionate nature, and I am sure they are very nice young men!’I suppose I did not respond, for she added quickly:‘I did not mean, of course, that your cousins were stupid, Walter has never said such a thing to me, oh, not at all, but I thought from what he told me that they were. . .just. . .not quite like Walter. . .he has, of course, a quite exceptional brain.’I said:‘Oh no; my cousins are not like Walter; but I love them very much; I hope he will be friends with them, more, later on.’I did not mind what Mrs. Sebright said; I did not mind what Walter had told her about them.I thought:‘She feels about Walter as I do about Hugo; I am glad that some one feels about him like that.’Walter came in then. He had left me alone with his mother for a talk. He stood beside her with his hand on her shoulder, and looked at me.‘Wasn’t I right, Mother?’ he asked softly. ‘Isn’t she all I said?’He looked flushed and happy; his eyes were shining; I wished he would not wear those black steel spectacles.Grandmother went to call on Mrs. Sebright. Grandmother was the only person who seemed really pleased at the engagement.She said:‘I like your young man. He has brains and character. You might have done worse. You won’t be well off, not at all well off; but that does not matter; we all value money too highly, and you will have enough when I die,’I don’t know what she said to Mrs. Sebright, or Mrs. Sebright to her, but she was not displeased.She said:‘A good woman, I think, but a fool; he must get his brains from his father. Stupid women often have clever sons; perhaps the clever men marry them. She will not trouble you, Helen, she won’t interfere, but you must be kind to her, and attentive.’I said that I would try. I was grateful to Grandmother for being pleased at all.XXIVGuy and Hugo were not at Yearsly that week-end; they were sorry they could not come, Cousin Delia said.She welcomed Walter, giving him both her hands, and looked at him hard, as his mother had looked at me; but she did not ask him questions. Some people said that Cousin Delia was hard to talk to, for she never asked you the ordinary things; she did not ask people how their relations were, as some women always do. She took people as they were, and left them alone; and she talked, when she did talk, about anything that was in her mind, or yours, at the moment.She showed Walter some gems, Greek gems, in the library; he told her about them, their dates, and where they were made. He did not say they were decadent, or ‘too late,’ as I expected. He was polite to Cousin Delia, and treated her with respect.He said:‘She is not at all like her sons.’I said:‘Oh, Walter, I think her so like them both.’He did not get on very well with Cousin John; that did not surprise me; Cousin John might seem dull to anyone who did not know him well.I took him to Joseph and Mathew, and the Elliots at the farm. He was awkward with them all, and did not know what to say. They shook hands with us, and wished us joy, but they were not hearty, and as we turned away, I heard Elliot say to his wife:‘I aye thought it would have been Mr. Hugo!’I don’t think Walter heard what he said.I took Walter to the Temple, and into the High Wood. He made love to me and kissed me, and called me pretty names; I would not have thought he could say the things he did, and I was glad he did; but I did not show him the Happy Tree, nor the Frog Pond, nor the Jasmine Gate.XXVCousin Delia came to see me in my bed, as she used to when I was little.She said:‘Dear Heart, are you happy?’I said:‘I don’t know, Cousin Delia. Ought I to be?’She said:‘I don’t know. I wasn’t; but some people are. It is better to be happy.’I said:‘Yes. I know it would be better.’She stood beside my bed, and looked across it at the window, and the branches of the trees. There was a moon outside and we could see the branches; I had pulled the curtain back.She said:‘Poor Hugo; I am thinking of my Hugo.’I said:‘You need not be sorry for him.’She looked down at me.She said:‘No? Need I not?’I said:‘No. Be sorry for me; and Walter.’She said:‘Walter has got what he wants. Not many people get that.’I said:‘No, not many people; I know that; and I don’t think Walter really has.’She said:‘Dear Heart, don’t be impatient; don’t decide too soon.’I said:‘I have decided.’She bent down and kissed my forehead.She said:‘I like your Walter; and he is very happy.’XXVIWalter took me to see his sister Maud. She was the headmistress of a school at Lessingham; a County Secondary School.We travelled by train for nearly two hours; we were to spend the night with Maud, at the school.We sat opposite to each other in the train; we had two corner seats.I thought:‘It will be like this when I am married to Walter. We shall travel together always. How funny that will be!’Walter had bought me newspapers at the station. He bought a lot of them and put them on the seat beside me; there wasVogue, andColour, and theDaily Mirror; and I laughed.I said:‘I should not have thought you would buy papers like this. Have you ever bought any of these before?’Walter laughed too.He said:‘No, of course not; I have never had any one to buy them for, before.’He had no newspaper himself; he did not read them; he had told me that before. He took out a German book,Der Hittitische Kult, and began to read it, but soon he put it down. I was looking at him, and now he looked at me.He said:‘Not even that, when you are here. I wonder if you know how much that means?’He leaned across, and took my hands in his.He said:‘Perhaps, you will make me human. Perhaps I shall be quite different when I am married to you.’I bent forward too and kissed his forehead; I felt curiously moved.I thought:‘Perhaps, he really needs me; perhaps I have something to give him that he really wants. . .beyond mere falling in love.’I felt that there were depths in him I had not fathomed.I thought:‘Can I do it? Am I what he thinks me?’And then I thought:‘Perhaps I shall love him more than any one, in time.’People got into the train at the next station. Walter talked to me about his sister Maud.He said:‘I hope so much you will like her’; and I felt behind his words, the hope, more doubtful, that she might like me.He said:‘She is a very remarkable woman; she took ai.i.at Cambridge, you know, that is not common for women, and she did it all herself. She was only seventeen when my father died. She was at school then, of course, and insisted on staying on. My mother would have taken her away, I think, and gone to live in the country, but Maud was right. She said it was better for us all, to keep her on at school, and at college too; she would earn more in the end, and of course she was right. She paid her own way with scholarships, all the way up, just as I did afterwards, and she helped with me too. She kept me up to the mark, and my mother too. My mother was inclined to spoil me. She thought I was delicate and that the work at St. Paul’s was too much for me, but Maud insisted on my working hard, and again, I am sure she was right. She is not so gentle as my mother, of course, nor so affectionate, but I admire her very much, and I am grateful to her.’I said:‘I don’t expect she will approve of me!’Walter hesitated.‘Not quite, at first, perhaps, but you mustn’t mind that. She does judge people on their merits, really, in the end, though sometimes she is prejudiced at first.’I was afraid that I should not like Maud, and I was sure that she would not like me.XXVIIMaud was waiting for us in her ‘Private Room.’ We came to it through long corridors with notices on the walls, and a place with pegs, and rows and rows of hats and coats. There was a smell of disinfectant, and ink, and books. It was different from the smell at Ellsfield, but reminded me partly of that.The ‘Private Room’ was pleasanter. There was a big window with green serge curtains, and a table with a green serge cover, and lots of books on it. There were daffodils on the table in a green, ‘art pottery’ jug, and reproductions of pictures by Watts on the walls, in broad, dark oak frames.Maud came forward to meet us. She was tall and fair; she seemed much taller and more powerful than Walter; she looked healthier, and more athletic. Her hair was parted in the middle, and pushed forward, very neatly, with little combs behind each ear. She was wearing a very clean, well ironed, white silk shirt, with a dark blue tie, a tie-pin, and a long, navy blue serge skirt; she had pince-nez, rimless ones, fastened by a fine, black cord.She smiled in a bright, business-like way, as though she were accustomed to smiling.‘My dear Walter, how do you do? How do you do, Helen?’She kissed us both, brightly too, and led us back to the tea-table, which was waiting by the hearth-rug. There was no fire, though the day was rather cold; the kettle was boiling on a brass spirit lamp, on the table.‘Your train must have been late,’ she said, as she made the tea. ‘I expected you a quarter of an hour ago. Fortunately, to-day is my “free day,” and I have an hour and a half, quite free, after tea.’She made us feel that it was our fault that the train was late, but that she forgave us.Walter murmured an apology, and she smiled again:‘It is of no consequence, none whatever. I have kept myself entirely at your disposal this afternoon. I had to take the chair at a staff meeting between three and four; we have a staff-committee now, you know, Walter, to decide on internal questions of policy in the school, slight variations in curriculum, and so forth, as far as our governing body will permit: it meets on Saturday afternoon. I find it a useful experiment. I find that it encourages keenness in the staff, more especially the younger members, if they feel they have some say in the management of the school. I have, of course, a casting vote myself, but I seldom use it. It is surprising to find how often we are unanimous, or practically so. Sugar, Helen and milk?’She gave me sugar and milk, without waiting for my reply, and handed me the cup.‘Let me see,’ she went on, ‘where were you at school? Walter did tell me, I believe.’I said:‘Ellsfield, in Surrey; Miss Ellis’s school.’‘Ah yes, of course! They do not take the Higher Certificate there, I think? There was some discussion about it at the last Headmistresses’ Conference. Miss Ellis takes, shall we say, an independent line?’I said:‘I don’t think they did many examinations. I believe Miss Ellis didn’t approve of them.’‘Quite, quite; and not many of the girls would go on to the Universities, I suppose?’‘Some did, I think; oh, several did. You could go if you liked.’Maud smiled.‘No compulsory abstention,’ she said, ‘but not unduly encouraged, I suppose. Of course here we have quite the opposite idea. We train our girls to regard a University training as the natural culmination of their education. Under present conditions they cannot always afford it, but it is surprising how many can, when once the girl and her family are made to feel it the natural and proper thing. There ought to be more scholarships, of course, for Oxford and Cambridge are too expensive for most girls of the class who come to us, but the Provincial Universities are now excellent. A number of our girls go to Birmingham and more still to the University College here.’I said:‘It must be very convenient to have a college here.’‘Yes, a good departure, quite good. Standard not very high yet, but that will come. I thoroughly approve of this movement for increasing the number of University Colleges in Provincial towns. By the way, Walter,’ she went on, ‘I want to speak to you about that last regulation of the Board of Faculties and Arts, about the P.Q.T. External Examinations, you know the one I mean, 1346; I think it is on the new schedule.’She took up a bunch of papers from the table beside her and began to look through them.‘Here it is,’ she said, and began to read it aloud.It was something about the qualifications necessary for anyone going in for some particular examination; it conveyed nothing, of course, to me. Walter said something about its not making much difference, and she interrupted him:‘I entirely disagree with you, Walter. Take the case, for instance, of a girl in the Vth Form who had already passed 3y and 6b in the Higher Certificate; her position would be quite anomalous!’‘But do many girls pass 3y and 6b, and nothing else?’‘Not many, but some do. In any case it ought to be made quite clear; would such a girl be eligible, or not?’‘You see,’ she said, turning to me, ‘so many of our girls take the London University External degree, and as Walter is now a Member of the University, I always apply to him in my difficulties.’Walter said:‘I am afraid I can’t be any use to you over this, Maud. I really have nothing to do with the External Examinations. You had better apply to the Secretary of the Board of Faculties, direct.’There was irritation in his voice; he held out his cup.‘May I have some more tea?’ he asked.‘Certainly, certainly. I did not see that you had finished; and, Helen, let me give you some more. You did say milk and sugar, I think. Walter, please give Helen some cake. Yes, I think I had better apply to the Board of Faculties direct. It is always best to go to the Fountain Head. But you must support me on the Board, if the question is raised. Helen must excuse us talking so much shop,’ and she turned brightly to me: ‘We Academic people have so much shop to talk, and so little opportunity.’Walter said:‘I find plenty of opportunity!’‘Ah, but you are at the Fountain Head! That is one of the advantages of University life over that of a school. It has that advantage, undoubtedly. But what is Helen most interested in? We must make friends, mustn’t we? Now that we are to be sisters-in-law!’Walter said:‘Helen is interested in a great many things. Literature and pictures, and music. . .aren’t you, Helen?’I felt like a child, being discussed and drawn out by grown-up people.I said:‘Yes. I am interested in that sort of thing, chiefly, I suppose.’‘I see,’ said Maud, artistic. ‘Well, that is a very important side of life. I always teach my girls to appreciate Art. We have lectures on Art, every alternate week, in the Winter terms, with lantern slides; and literature too; three of our girls took A.A. in the English Literature paper of the L.L.U.’‘Helen is a great dancer too!’Maud gave a little laugh.‘The lighter side,’ she said, ‘that we can hardly call Art!’I wondered why Walter had said it. I thought he might have known that Maud would not count dancing ‘Art.’‘It can be Art,’ said Walter doggedly. ‘Have you seen the Russian Ballet?’I was surprised that Walter should have seen it himself.Maud laughed again, her quick, business-like laugh.‘I am afraid I have no time for Ballets,’ she said:‘Helen will not find much time to dance when she is married, I am afraid. I am afraid Academic life will seem a little strange to you at first. We are poor, dull people you know, my dear, but we have our good points, if you take us as you find us! And now, would you like a walk round? We have extended the playing field since you were here last, Walter, and there are some new books in the Classical Library.’Walter and I were not alone all the evening. There were prayers for the boarders, and supper in a big dining hall, only two tables, at the end in use, for the day girls were not there.In the morning we went to church with Maud and two other mistresses, and the boarders.We were alone for a little, in Maud’s room, before lunch.‘When did you go to the Russian Ballet?’ I asked.And Walter said:‘When you said you liked dancing; in the tea-shop near the British Museum. I went the next evening.’I took his hand.I said:‘That was dear of you. Did you like it?’He said:‘I don’t know if I liked it really. Not very much, perhaps, but I liked to know what you liked. . .’He hesitated, and smiled shyly.‘I thought it made me understand you better.’I felt, somehow, nearer to Walter after that visit. I felt that there was an understanding between us in relation to Maud. He did not say it and I did not say it, but I felt that he was on my side, and not on hers; that he was resisting what she stood for, and defending me.I had dreaded the meeting with Maud, and now it was over I did not mind her; I was not afraid of her: it did not seem to me that she would count.XXVIIIWe were to be married in July, as soon as Walter’s term ended. Grandmother had arranged that, I think, with Walter.Cousin Delia said:‘Wait a little. Wait till the Autumn, or even Christmas.’Mrs. Sebright said July seemed rather soon.Walter said:‘Why wait, now it is settled?’I let them arrange it as they liked. I felt all the time quite passive, as though things happened, and decisions were made, quite separately from me; it was not my business to interfere; I just watched.And I thought:‘Now this is happening, now that. Now she is engaged to be married. Now she is looking for a house. Now they are getting clothes for her. Now, sheets. Soon there will be a wedding in a church. And what then?’It was as though I were watching it all from a long way off.We found a house in Hampstead; number seven, Edinburgh Terrace. It was a stucco house, semi-detached, with a garden back and front, and a high flight of steps up to the front door. There was a stucco wall between the road and the garden in front, and a straight path that sloped up from the gate to the front door, so that the house itself looked high up, higher than it really was. There were lilac bushes at the side of the house, where the back door was, and a trellis gate that led through to the garden behind. There was a verandah at the back, with iron steps leading down to the back garden. The gardens were oblong strips of grass, neglected for some time. The whole terrace had been built, I should think, about 1850; it was old-fashioned, and a little dilapidated; much more attractive, I thought, than more modern houses, and Walter thought it cheap.I wanted to have the outside of it painted; it had been painted a sort of cream colour once, and I wanted it white, and the windows and door bright green. It was the sort of house that ought to be white and green.Walter said he thought it would do as it was. We could decorate it inside, and then see how much money we had left. We had five hundred pounds to spend on decorating and furniture; Mrs. Sebright said that would be ample; Grandmother said we must do the best we could with that, and that she would make up the extras. I could see that she did not think it would be enough.Cousin Delia came to see the house. She stood on the steps and looked at the front garden.She said:‘You should grow roses here; red roses, I think. Richmond, or General Macarthur; and a pond in the middle, perhaps.’I said:‘Will roses grow in London?’She said:‘Oh surely they will! Do you think they won’t?’Cousin Delia seemed always a little lost when she came to London; a little bit as though she were walking in a dream.She said:‘It would be dreadful, of course, if the roses would not grow.’I showed her the rooms inside; upstairs and down; She said:‘It is a nice little house. You shall have the “Little chair,” from Yearsly. It would go well, I think, in that drawing-room. Your chairs must be small, for these rooms.’She said that the paint on the stairs would not do. It was dark brown paint, and very ugly, but Walter thought we should leave it.She said:‘It is all wrong, that brown paint, you must have it taken off.’Mrs. Sebright said we must have the drains relaid. I had thought we might leave the drains.Maud came up from Lessingham to see the house. She said we should have the paint inside green.She said:‘It saves work; white paint gives far more trouble.’But I did not want green paint inside.In the bedroom, she said:‘You can have a nice fumed oak suite, in here. There are excellent fumed oak suites at the Army and Navy Stores. I have furnished the bedrooms in our teachers’ hostel with their suites. Well made, and in very good taste.’Walter said:‘Helen does not like fumed oak.’‘Oh really! I thought every one liked fumed oak now. What does Helen like?’They always talked of me as though I was not there.Walter said:‘She likes old furniture. Old mahogany and. . .and walnut.’Maud laughed:‘Oh, of course,’ she said, ‘we should all like old walnut best, I imagine. I am afraid Helen will find that a professor’s salary will hardly allow of furnishing in that style!’She smiled at me, in what I think she meant to be an encouraging way.She said:‘Helen will soon learn, I am sure. A poor professor’s wife can hardly expect to live in the way she has been accustomed to; even clothes, for instance, the cost of clothes will have to be considered,’ and she glanced at mine, ‘but I feel sure that Helen will soon learn. We must all help her’; and she smiled again.I began to hate Maud. I wondered if she wanted to make it all seem horrid.I said:‘We can have packing-cases with chintz frills. Sophia Lane Watson has those in her room and they look very nice. I would rather have that than fumed oak.’‘Rather too, what shall we say?. . .Bohemian, perhaps, to live in packing-cases. I am sure you will have ample for your needs, if it is laid out carefully, with foresight, and consideration.’Mrs. Sebright gave us a sideboard; it was a big mahogany sideboard that had belonged to Walter’s grandfather.It was ugly and took up a great deal of room; and she gave us a portrait of his grandfather too, the India merchant; Walter was not at all like him. I could not say I did not want them, but they spoiled the rooms.I thought:‘It is only the dining-room, after all; we shall not sit in it very much.’George and Hugo came to see the house when it was almost finished. Mostly they liked it, but Hugo said:‘Oh, must you have that sideboard?’And I saw George nudge his elbow, to stop him speaking about it.I said:‘I rather like it. It belonged to Walter’s grandfather, who was a merchant in India. It is interesting to have it, I think.’Hugo said:‘Oh, yes. . .yes, of course! If there is a reason for it, that is quite different!’He looked at the portrait of the grandfather, a big portrait in oils, badly painted, but he said nothing about it.He said:‘That room upstairs is awfully nice! that drawing-room, with the steps down to the garden, and I am sure you can make the garden awfully nice.’I had hardly seen Hugo, since I had been engaged; only once or twice, at parties; at Campden Hill Square, and at Mollie’s. I did not want to see him much just then.He gave me an alabaster bowl; old white alabaster; I think it was Chinese. I put it on the drawing-room chimney-piece, in the middle, and straight silver candlesticks, from George and Mollie, on either side. Walter thought it looked rather bare. He thought it would have been more convenient to put a clock there, but he didn’t mind about things like that.We had old walnut furniture in the drawing-room, after all, for Cousin Delia and Cousin John gave me a walnut cabinet, a beautiful thing, like one at Yearsly, and Grandmother gave me a writing-desk, Queen Anne walnut too.
And then, that Christmas, I met Walter again.
We were on a walking tour along the Roman Wall, Guy and Hugo and the Addingtons and Sophia and I. We had begun at Hexham, and we walked along the wall towards Carlisle. It was on the fourth day that we met Walter, in the camp at Howstead.
It was a windy day, very cold and clear and bright, and we reached the camp about the middle of the day. We had sandwiches with us, and we sat down to eat them at the Northern Gate, looking out over the waste space of fell towards Scotland.
Suddenly I saw Walter. He had come up from behind somewhere, and was standing beside me.
‘Hullo,’ said George. ‘Where have you come from, Sebright?’
He said:
‘How do you do, Miss Woodruffe?’
I felt, that time, that he was looking at me, and that he was glad to see me.
He said:
‘I have waited three years for this.’
Mollie said:
‘It’s a wonderful place.’
He meant that he had waited to see me. He told me afterwards that he had meant it, and I knew before he told me. I knew, I think, when he said it, up there on the hill, and the odd thing is that I wasn’t surprised.
He sat down beside me on the stones of the Northern Gate.
He said:
‘The barbarians were down there. It looks like it, doesn’t it? And there were Southern soldiers up here. They must have hated it.’
He took us round the camp afterwards and explained to us what the places were—where they washed their clothes and where they cooked. It seemed to me very interesting, what he told us, and there were inscriptions on some of the stones that he showed us too.
‘Sebright is a dab at inscriptions,’ George said to Hugo.
‘He got some honour in Berlin for a thing on inscriptions.’
I thought that he made it very vivid, the life in that Roman camp, and I had never felt much interest in Rome before. Sophia was interested too, and George—but not Hugo. Hugo used to say sometimes that he had a blind spot in his mind for history; but I was vexed with him this time for not being interested. He was polite, of course—he was always polite; but I, who knew him well, could see that he was bored.
Sophia began talking to Walter; she did not seem shy of him at all.
‘They must have been hard, enduring sort of people, she said. Up here at the end of the world—it is like the end of the world,’ she went on half to herself, ‘looking out on to that. . .I like the Romans.’
Walter looked pleased—but he was talking to me, and I knew it and was glad.
I don’t know even now how much the difference was in him and how much in me. He seemed to me very different this time, from that afternoon at Oxford three years before. He seemed to me now to have more life and more assurance, as though he felt himself here on his own ground. But perhaps I was more ready to notice him now. There had been no room for him at all in my mind before.
When we had finished looking at the camp Guy said we must go on. We were to sleep at Gilsland that night if we could, and the evenings were short.
Walter had come that way the day before, and slept at a farm near by, but he said now that he would walk back with us. He did not say ‘if you don’t mind’ or ‘may I?’ as one somehow expected him to say. He just said:
‘I will go with you. I know this wall pretty well.’
We walked along the top of the wall for a long way, up hills and down, always at the edge of the cliff, with the barbarian country below. Then the others said they would take the lower track, farther down across the fell, but I wouldn’t. I kept along the top of the wall, and Walter came with me.
Once Hugo called me.
‘It is much easier along here,’ he said. ‘You had much better come down.’
And I said:
‘I won’t come down. I am going into the barbarian country.’
And I laughed at him, and then I jumped down on the other side of the wall and ran down along the slope of the hill. It was not so steep in this place—towards a little lake with trees beside it, down in the flat wild country.
‘Do you want to see the barbarians?’ Walter asked, and I said:
‘Yes, but they are all gone.’
Walter said:
‘They are not gone, only civilized. Do you ever wish you could get away from civilized people, and culture and books and all that sort of thing?’
And I said:
‘No, I have never wished that. I have never thought about it.’
He said:
‘Perhaps you haven’t been oppressed by it, as I have. Routines and curricula and examinations—always doing what you have got to do and never what you want.’
I said:
‘No, I generally do what I want—or at any rate Idon’tdo what Idon’twant.’ And I thought of Cousin Delia and Yearsly, and how seldom the question had arisen.
Walter said:
‘That is better. That is much better. That is partly what I felt about you!’
He said it with a sudden vehemence and then stopped short. I looked at him and he was looking at me. I felt suddenly uneasy, and an odd ridiculous feeling came over me that I was really outside a safe wall, in a strange country, and I wanted to go back.
I said:
‘We will go back now, or we shall be lost. It will be too steep further on.’
Walter said:
‘It is too steep now. We must go on now we are here.’
And I felt as though we were walking in a dream, as though everything that he said and that I said were symbolic and fraught with a deeper meaning than we knew. It was an odd exciting feeling and made me a little bit afraid.
We found a track along the fell, and walked on it, and Walter began to talk about his work on the Roman inscriptions in Britain. He told me too that he had been appointed to a lectureship in Archæology in London University.
‘I shall be coming to live in London after Easter,’ he said, and then, ‘I hope I shall see you there.’
I said:
‘Yes, surely. We are all in London now.’
He said:
‘I know.’
We came at last to a place where the wall was lower and broken down, and we climbed back and over it into the Roman country. The others were waiting for us—sitting on big stones.
We stopped at Greenhead for the night, for it was getting dark already.
Walter stopped with us and went back the next day.
Walter came to see me at Campden Hill Square.
Grandmother was in the drawing-room when he came in.
When I came downstairs I found them having tea.
Grandmother said:
‘Here is Mr. Sebright, my dear. He has been telling me about his studies in Roman Britain.’
It was like my grandmother not to be surprised. She had never heard of Walter, I am sure, for we had none of us thought or spoken of him before, and since that walk at Christmas, I had thought of him a good deal, and not wanted to speak.
Grandmother liked ‘antiquities.’ When she was a girl she had visited a great many museums; with her father first, who thought it was good for her, and then with her husband, who liked museums himself.
She used to say that it was a sign of our generation not to like museums, and a bad sign. Some things about us she considered good. I could see that she was pleased with Walter.
‘Mr. Sebright tells me that the inscribed rocks at Chester are not really so interesting as those at Corbridge,’ she said.
Walter was standing up to shake hands with me.
I knew again that he had been waiting for me, and wanting to see me very much.
Grandmother went on talking to him about the inscriptions at Corbridge.
It did not interest me at all what they were saying, but I felt excited at Walter’s being there. It was now that I noticed his hands, what beautiful hands they were, as he handed me my tea and bread and butter, and I watched his face as he was talking to Grandmother. He did not seem to me absurd now, as he had at first.
Afterwards he was talking about something in the British Museum—bas-reliefs, I think, with some inscriptions on them—and I said I didn’t know the British Museum. I had only been there once, with Hugo, to look at Greek vases, and he said:
‘Oh, but the Greek vases are very dull. It is the early things you should see—little pieces of things that mean nothing by themselves, but when you piece them together tell you about whole nations you didn’t know. You ought to see the Mycenaean fragments and the Hittite things. Won’t you come one day and let me show them to you?’
I said I should love to see them; and even while I was saying so I wondered why I said it, for I did not care for fragments of things at all, and I did not like the Museum the one time I was there.
‘Will you come next Thursday?’ Walter asked. ‘I shall be there all day Thursday. If you could come in the afternoon—any time in the afternoon—I shall be there. I could show you lots of things, and then,’ he added, more shyly, ‘we could have tea.’
Grandmother laughed. She said:
‘If you make an archæologist of Helen I will take off my hat to you.’
I said:
‘I will come at half-past three.’
I did not mind Grandmother’s laughing. She did not laugh in a way one would mind.
When Walter had gone away I wondered if I had been silly. Why had I said I would go and look at inscriptions? I felt uncomfortable about it, and not at ease with myself.
I went to the British Museum on Thursday. Walter was waiting for me on the steps, and there was another man with him. The other man was called Furze. He was a professor at some University in Wales. He was older than Walter, but not very much older. He had a very kind face, and a funny way of ducking down his head. I liked him and was glad he was there too. He had been working with Walter all the morning in the Assyrian Room, it seemed, and now he came round with us for a bit, till it was time for him to catch his train.
He did not talk much; Walter did the talking. I thought he knew quite as much about the things as Walter, but he was not so excited about them.
We looked at some Assyrian bas-reliefs of people hunting lions. They were more interesting than I had expected, and rather beautiful too, some of them—rather beautiful clean lines—but Walter said even these were too late, and we went on to cases of rougher broken things, and he explained what they once had been—pots and ovens and tiles and all sorts of household stuff.
‘You will get back to your “Urdummheit,” ’ Mr. Furze said, smiling at Walter, ‘Ithink these pots were not very well made.’
Walter tossed his head. He seemed self-confident here, as he had been at Howsteads; not a bit shy or nervous, as he was at Oxford.
‘Who cares if they were well made? This is not an Arts and Crafts Exhibition. Of course Praxiteles made pretty ornaments, if you want that.’
‘Well, I still maintain that if you make a pot at all, it is better to make a beautiful pot than a misshapen one.’
It was evidently an old argument. I could see that.
I agreed with Mr. Furze.
‘I do get so sick of beauty,’ Walter said. ‘Beauty is quite beside the point.’
And then he laughed, for he saw Mr. Furze was laughing.
‘What do you think, Miss Woodruffe?’ he asked.
And I said:
‘Oh, I am afraid I like beautiful pots best, if there have got to be pots at all.’
He looked at me oddly, with a troubled, perplexed expression.
‘I expect you think me a Philistine,’ he said. ‘I am too, I suppose. All these shapes and designs and proportions that people keep talking about—they just mean nothing to me. They seem to me sodull—like rows of pretty faces with no souls.’
‘When old age shall this generation wasteThou shalt remain in midst of other woe,’
‘When old age shall this generation wasteThou shalt remain in midst of other woe,’
‘When old age shall this generation waste
Thou shalt remain in midst of other woe,’
I said, and Walter wrinkled his forehead.
‘What is that?’ he asked. ‘I ought to know it, I expect, but I don’t. Poetry is another of the fringes for me. I’ve never had time for it.’
I was sorry I had used the quotation, for he looked vexed, and I had not meant to vex him.
I said:
‘It’s the Ode to a Grecian Urn. That’s what made me think of it—talking about urns.’
Walter grunted, and I realized that he did not know the Grecian Urn, but I couldn’t say, ‘It’s by Keats.’
Mr. Furze interposed.
‘Sebright is quite incorrigible,’ he said. ‘He doesn’t like Grecian Urns, and he doesn’t like poetry. He will certainly not read a poem about a Grecian Urn.’
Walter shrugged his shoulders and gave a little laugh, and I felt it had not mattered after all.
Soon after that Mr. Furze had to catch his train. I was sorry when he went away.
There was a tensity in the air when we were alone, and I felt somehow as though I were there on false pretences. Walter took me to a big stone in a square frame.
‘This is the Rosetta Stone,’ he said. ‘I think this is one of the most exciting things here.’
And he told me that there were three different languages on it, and three different scripts, and that had been the key to discovering a whole new civilization. People had worked out another language—Ancient Egyptian, he said it was—letter by letter, sign by sign, through comparing one side of the stone with the other, for the same legend was written on all three.
I could see that that was rather an exciting thing to do.
‘You know,’ he said suddenly. ‘I saw this stone first when I was ten years old. I had read about it in a book calledThe Wonders of Antiquity, and I came to see it with my mother, and it seemed to me even then the best thing in the world to work out new languages from old inscriptions, and discover new worlds like that—much better than discovering new things in this world. I have wanted to do it ever since, and now, partly, I can work at that; but I have to do Roman inscriptions too, because that was for a thesis to start with, to get my D.Litt., and I have to for the History school also. So I have got launched into Roman Britain, but what I really want to get at is the proto-Hittite script from Zenjirli and Sakjegöze and those things—those undeciphered hieroglyphs, you know.’
I did not know what the proto-Hittite script was then; it seems curious now to think of a time when I had not heard of it, but I thought I understood what he meant about discovering new worlds that way.
I asked:
‘Do you feel you can find out quite a lot about the people who wrote those inscriptions? Do they get quite real to you in the end?’
He said:
‘No, not like that. I don’t want them real like that. It is more to me like fitting pieces into a puzzle—thousands of tiny pieces, and a very big puzzle—and if they do fit, if even quite a small piece of the puzzle gets done, you know it’s right. That is one of the satisfactory things, it can’t be just better or worse, it must be right or wrong. Do you see what I mean at all?’
His voice changed; he asked the last question almost shyly. I think he did not expect people quite to understand.
I thought I did, and it interested me. This was a new world to me too; a cold intellectual world that I did not know at all; and I was in a mood to explore.
Afterwards we went out to tea in an A.B.C. near the Museum. At tea he was different again, more like he had been on the picnic. He was shyer and spoke more jerkily, and I felt much more that he admired me. The A.B.C. was crowded and rather noisy, and the marble top of the table was smudged with coffee that had been spilt. It seemed to me very odd to be sitting there with Walter. I seemed to be looking on from a long way off, and wondering how I came to be there.
After tea we got on to a bus. I said I could go home alone, but Walter would come with me. We did not talk very much on the bus. It was beginning to rain, and we pulled up the mackintosh cover from the seat in front.
He said good-bye to me on the steps of Campden Hill Square, and I thanked him for ‘a very interesting afternoon.’
He waited on the step.
‘May I come again?’ he asked. ‘May I take you out again?’
He asked it in his funny, jerky way, as though it mattered to him very much. I could not answer him at once. I felt somehow, irrationally, that my answer was very important.
I said:
‘You know; I don’t agree with you at all about Beauty and Poetry—and—all that sort of thing. I think perhaps I let you think this afternoon that I did agree.’
It sounded foolish even as I said it, and it was not even what I wanted to say.
He said very quietly:
‘I know that. You are the other side of life—all that I have not got, and don’t understand. I know I am one-sided. I would like to be different if I could.’
My heart began to thump. I had not realized that he would talk like that, yet. I was not ready. I wanted to go inside and shut the door, but I couldn’t shut the door while he stood there. The rain was falling faster now, and as I moved my head a little stream of water ran off the brim of my hat, down my neck.
I said:
‘I suppose everybody would like to be different if they could. I should like to have black hair, quite black and straight’; and I tried to laugh. ‘But we can’t be different really, ever.’
He said:
‘Not completely different, of course; but we can alter. People do alter. They can develop new sides in themselves without losing what they have got.’
I said:
‘It is too wet to talk any more now. Good-bye.’
He said:
‘I may come again, mayn’t I?’
I said:
‘Of course, if you like.’ I tried to answer lightly, to make what we were saying seem of no consequence.
I fumbled with my latch-key at the door. At last it opened, and a shaft of light shot out on to the steps. He turned away then and went down the steps, slowly at first and then faster. He turned down the Square to the north, towards Holland Park Road, and I went into the house. The hall was light and warm, and I shut the front door behind me with relief. Upstairs in my bedroom there was a fire. I took off my shoes and stockings and my wet coat, and then I sat down on the hearth-rug and cried for Hugo. He had never seemed so far away before.
I did not speak to Mollie about Walter at first, nor to Hugo. It was almost a week before I saw Hugo again and then we were all together, and Sophia was there too. We were going to a concert, a Mozart concert at the Queen’s Hall. We did not go to dances so often since Sophia came, because she couldn’t dance. I danced with George and Guy sometimes, Mollie and I, without Hugo; but of course that was not the same thing.
The concert was lovely. It made us all happy. I felt that I had been horrid to Sophia, and that I would be nicer.
We went back to Hugo’s rooms and had coffee. It looked very pleasant, Hugo’s room that night, with the fire flickering on the low ceiling and the blue curtains and the charioteer.
Hugo said:
‘That music does one good. People could not be bad-tempered or fussed or worried if they heard some Mozart played every day before they got up.’
Guy hummed an Aria from Don Giovanni, a bit we had heard.
‘That is about the most perfect thing of all,’ he said.
Mollie was pouring out the coffee; she always did that part.
‘I think sometimes,’ said Sophia, ‘that music is all wrong, and poetry too, and all that we call art. I wonder sometimes if it isn’t all a kind of dope that we make for ourselves because we can’t face life; and it seems all pointless then.’
I said:
‘How odd that you should say that. It is almost what Mr. Sebright said.’
‘Sebright?’ said George. ‘When did he talk about it?’
‘I went to the British Museum with him the other day.’ I tried to say it nonchalantly, but I felt self-conscious, and that vexed me, for why shouldn’t I go with him? ‘He says Greek vases are like faces without souls.’
‘So they are,’ said George.
Hugo said:
‘No, they are not at all like that. They are more like souls without faces—impersonal and rather cold. Why did you go there?’ he asked abruptly.
And I said:
‘Because he asked me to. It was very interesting there.’
‘I don’t suppose he would care for vases,’ said Hugo, ‘or statues. He would like just objects of interest. Did you like them?’
I felt then that I could not discuss Walter, nor repeat what he had said, even what he had said while Mr. Furze was there. I felt suddenly that they were all hostile, my own dear people, and that Walter had somehow put his trust in me.
I said:
‘I did when he explained them to me.’
Guy said:
‘I should not have expected him to explain very well.’
‘Who is Mr. Sebright?’ asked Sophia. ‘Was that the man we met at the Roman Camp?’
‘Yes,’ said Mollie. ‘He is an archæologist.’
‘Epigraphist,’ corrected George.
Sophia said:
‘I liked him. He was a wild man.’
Guy said:
‘Oh, not at all wild. Quite a model young man—no vices and a credit to his college.’
Sophia said:
‘I didn’t mean wild in that way. More fanatical—or ruthless—I meant—as though he would be burned alive for something quite foolish—or burn other people.’
Sophia understood him better than the others, I thought, and I liked Sophia for it.
‘We might see Sebright some time,’ said George. ‘He is here now, isn’t he, at the Grey College?’
After that the Addingtons invited Walter to their flat. He came several times, and generally I was there. Sometimes Guy or Hugo came too, and once Sophia. Ralph Freeman was abroad at the time in Vienna, and Anthony Cowper had also been abroad.
Mollie talked to Walter about his work at Grey College and his pupils and the courses they were taking. Mollie could talk to people about that sort of thing. She did not find it boring, if it made the conversation easier. That was partly why people liked Mollie.
But he did not talk to her as he had to me, about the proto-Hittite script, and the Rosetta Stone. That side of his work was nearer, I felt, to him than the classes and lectures, and it was somehow a sort of secret between him and me.
I used to watch Walter when he was talking to Mollie or to George, and I used to wish he looked different from what he did.
I could not bear the black steel spectacles he wore, and I wished he would not speak so jerkily, nor come into a room as though he were afraid.
He was worst, always, when Guy and Hugo were there. He seemed ludicrous then somehow, like a caricature of himself. He would say provocative things in a nervous voice, and I could see that he irritated Guy.
He came for me again at Campden Hill Square, as he had said he would. Once he took me to a lecture on excavations in Syria. It was a dull lecture, but it seemed somehow an adventure to be there with him. It was like walking on a volcano, for I did not know his mind. I did not know what he would think or say next, as I did with Guy and Hugo, and with George.
Another time we went for a walk by the Serpentine, and he told me how he used to go for walks there when he was a little boy, on Sundays with his mother. He had lived near Earl’s Court all his life. He still lived there, with his mother. His father had been a clergyman at some church round there, and had died when he was five. He had a half-sister much older than himself, who was headmistress at a school. He had been at St. Paul’s himself.
He was devoted to his mother.
‘She gave all her life to me when my father died,’ he said. ‘She was with me always and did whatever I did. I can’t think how children grow up with ordinary mothers, when I think what mine was to me.
‘We were poor, of course,’ he said. ‘We were always poor. But I am glad of that. It made us closer together. In a household with lots of servants, children cannot be close to their mothers, as I was to mine.’
I thought of Cousin Delia, and disagreed. But I did not interrupt him. Walter was never easy to interrupt.
‘I owe a great deal to my sister too,’ he said. ‘She helped with my education. My mother would not have known about that, but Maud saw that I was well prepared, and that I worked hard. I don’t think I was idle by nature, but I am grateful to Maud.’
He did not ask me about my childhood. He did not seem to like it when I spoke of Yearsly. He talked mostly about himself. He was ambitious, he told me that, and determined to do great things with his proto-Hittite script.
And all that attracted me in an odd, contrary way. It was so unlike Hugo—and I thought of Walter as strong because Hugo was weak, and determined because Hugo was undetermined. I was trying hard during these weeks to think less well of Hugo. It seems a long time now, that time with Walter before we were engaged. It seems strange now, in a way, that Hugo did nothing—but when I think of the dates I know it was not long at all. It was at the end of February that Walter came first to Campden Hill, and he asked me to marry him on the 10th of April.
We had met, I suppose, a dozen times, not more. We did not know each other at all.
He came to me in the drawing-room at Campden Hill Square. He had not said that he was coming, and I was not expecting him.
The room was full of tulips from Yearsly, for Cousin Delia sent them to us every week, and the parcel had just come. It was a warm sunny day, and the sun streamed in through the window at the end of the room. I was sitting on the window-seat, and the window was open. I had been putting the tulips in water. They were done now. I was gathering up the ends. There was string and brown paper, and a note from Cousin Delia as well, and the little stalks and ends of leaves from the tulips.
I was thinking of Yearsly, and Cousin Delia, and not of Walter at all. I was thinking that I would go down to Yearsly for a bit; that I would write to Cousin Delia that evening and tell her I was coming. I had not been there lately even for week-ends. I would go alone now, without Hugo or Guy, and be there with Cousin Delia.
And then the door opened and the parlourmaid came in and said:
‘Mr. Sebright to see you, Miss.’
It was a red-haired parlourmaid called Hannah. She had not been with us very long, and she married a policeman soon afterwards, soon after I was married.
Walter came in, and she shut the door. It took me a little time to collect my thoughts—they had been so far from him—and then I looked at him, and I knew why he had come.
He came into the middle of the room, and stood there. I asked him to sit down, but he didn’t listen.
He said:
‘I have come to ask you to marry me. I have meant to always, since the first day that I saw you—at Oxford, in those rooms in the Broad.
‘I don’t see the good of waiting any longer. You are different from me, I know that. You are beautiful and bright, like a flower, and I love you for that. I love you for being what you are. I am a dull fellow in many ways. I know that too. But I could be different with you.’ He said it in a jerky, monotonous voice, as though he had learnt it by heart—and he did not look at me while he said it.
His eyes were fixed on the floor, about a foot in front of me, and his hands were clasped behind him. My eyes followed his, instinctively, and I saw a leaf there—a little leaf that I had forgotten to pick up. I couldn’t pick it up now.
I had known this was coming sooner or later, but I was not ready. It was as though I was paralysed and struck dumb—I could not say anything at all.
And then he looked up suddenly and our eyes met. His were all alight—those pale blue eyes of his behind the steel spectacles. I had never seen them like this before, and his voice shook now when he spoke.
‘I don’t suppose it is any use,’ he said. ‘I never thought it was. But I had to tell you—it can’t hurt you to be told.’
I said:
‘I am sorry.’
He said:
‘Don’t be sorry. There is nothing to be sorry about. I am glad I met you. My life was very empty before I met you. It can never be so empty again.’
And I felt suddenly:
‘What is this I am doing? What am I pushing away?’ I felt that it was wonderful to be wanted like that—and that Hugo did not want me—and I said: ‘Forgive me. I will marry you if you want me.’
It was funny, I think, that I said, ‘Forgive me.’ I didn’t know then why I said it—I just heard myself saying it.
Walter came up to me and kissed me. He did it awkwardly—very stiffly, as if he did not know how—and I thought how Hugo did not kiss me on the night of Guy’s party, at Yearsly by the Jasmine Gate. And I knew as he was kissing me that I had made a mistake.
I felt very cold, and I shivered—perhaps because I had shivered with Hugo at the Jasmine Gate. But that had been different, quite.
Walter said:
‘Don’t be afraid, my precious. I will try to be what you want.’
And I thought:
‘Does he understand after all? How much does he understand?’
I went the next day to tell Mollie. It was a Saturday, I remember, and it had rained; all the streets were wet.
Walter had stayed with me all the evening before, and I asked him not to come the next day. I felt that I must have a day in peace, without him, or anyone.
I sat in my room all the morning, and tried to read. In the afternoon I went out and walked about.
The trees were all green now, but it was not warm. Clouds had come up in the night, and the sky was still grey.
I meant to go to Mollie in time for tea; I was on the Embankment by half-past four, but I did not go in; I went to a tea shop instead, a little restaurant, not far from Mollie’s flat, where we had had lunch together very often before. I sat a long time over my tea. I shrank somehow from seeing Mollie and George; he would be there too on a Saturday afternoon. They might be out of course, but I did not think so, for it had been arranged before, or half arranged, that I should go there this afternoon.
I went out again, on to the Embankment; I walked along by the river, westward, past the Addingtons’ windows, towards the power station. The sun was beginning to go down, and the sky was all pink now, behind the four chimneys; the broad stretch of river where it bends, beyond Battersea Bridge, was pink too; a mist was coming up, with the tide, I suppose, from the sea, and the colours were dimmed and obscured by the greyness of the mist. A man came along with a stick, and lit the lamps, one lamp, and then two, and then three; it was quite light still, and the lamps looked small and rather foolish; I wondered why they lit the lamps so soon.
There was an old man selling flowers by the corner of Battersea Bridge; I had never seen him there before; he looked a very poor old man; I bought a bunch of narcissi from him; it cost a shilling.
I thought:
‘That is expensive, for a bunch of narcissi.’
I thought:
‘It is no good; I must go in and tell them; it is too late to go back; I must tell them now what I have done.’
I knocked on the door, and rang the bell. The woman from below opened it; she often did, and I went up.
There was a knocker on the door of Mollie’s room; it was the first door one came to in their part of the house. I knocked on the door with the knocker and walked in.
They were sitting beside the fire, George in his arm-chair, and Mollie on a cushion on the floor. There was tea on the table, pushed back again against the wall; they had finished tea, and were reading; the grey cat was with them, on the hearth-rug.
It was comfortable, and familiar, and homely. There were blue curtains in this room too, but there were patterns on them, blue and white, and the cushions on the chairs were red; it was a homelier room than Hugo’s, and the chairs came mostly from their old home in Manchester, ordinary sort of chairs, not straight deep shapes like his. There was a Persian carpet that had been in Manchester too, the ordinary blue and red sort of carpet, a pinkish red like the cushions; Hugo said they did not match it quite, and Mollie said she would change them, but she never did; and we got to like the cushions that did not quite match, and we would not have liked to have them changed.
‘We thought you were not coming,’ said Mollie, looking up from her book. George pulled up another chair for me.
I threw the bunch of narcissi into Mollie’s lap:
‘A peace offering,’ I said. ‘I meant to come sooner; I started out quite early after lunch.’
‘You’ve had tea?’ asked Mollie, and I said, yes, had.
George had his pipe; he always had; he took it out of his mouth, and held out his book.
‘Have you read it?’ he asked. ‘Awfully good!’
I looked at the book; it was Aksakov’sMemories of Childhood; I had not read it; I turned over the pages, and read bits of it, here and there. I said:
‘I came to tell you, really, that I am engaged to Walter Sebright.’
I did not look at either of them, only at the book.
‘What?’ said George, sitting up sharply.
Mollie said:
‘Oh, Helen!’
They were both looking at me; I knew it and pretended not to see. I felt as though I were going to cry, and was determined not to.
‘Do you mean that, Helen?’ Mollie asked very gently.
I said:
‘Yes; are you surprised?’
She said:
‘Yes; very much surprised; I didn’t expect it at all!’
I looked at George, but his face was turned away; he was staring at the fire, bending forwards, away from me.
I said:
‘Won’t you congratulate me, either of you?’ and my voice sounded odd, and jerky, even to myself, ‘Won’t you give me your good wishes?’
‘Yes. . .oh surely, all good wishes. . .’Mollie said, ‘but. . .’She hesitated and I saw her look at George. . . .
‘If you are going back now, I will go with you,’ George said abruptly.
He knew, of course, that I had not meant to go back then, for I had only just come. Mollie looked at him again, surprised, I thought, and anxious.
I nearly said: ‘I am not going back!’
But I wanted to get away, and somehow, too, I had to do what George wanted.
I said:
‘Yes, I am going back now; but you needn’t come.’
He got up from his chair and went to get his hat it was hanging up on the landing, outside the door. I stood up too. Mollie took both my hands in hers.
She said:
‘I wish you happiness with all my heart, you do know that, my dear!’
I nodded; I felt I could not speak without crying, and I did not want to cry.
George was waiting for me outside, at the top of the stairs; he waited for me to pass and then followed me down.
We crossed the road to the pavement by the river, and turned Eastward, towards the bridges and the trams. We passed the two bridges, and Oakley Street, where my bus for Kensington would run; we did not, either of us, think about that. We were walking very quickly, along the river; the lamps were all lit now, broad streaks of light lay out in front of each, across the wet pavement and the road.
‘It isn’t true, what you said just now?’ George asked at last.
I said:
‘Yes; why should it not be true?’
‘I can’t believe it is true!’
‘You mean that no one would want to marry me?’
‘No,’ he said quietly, ‘I don’t mean that.’
We walked along without speaking; we were nearly at Chelsea Bridge now.
George stopped walking, and turned round:
‘Does Hugo know?’ he asked.
I said:
‘No. I haven’t seen Hugo.’
He leaned his elbows on the stone parapet and looked straight in front of him, across the river.
‘You know, Helen,’ he said, ‘you must not do this; you can’t understand what you are doing; you haven’t thought.’
I said:
‘I am tired of thinking’
‘I know it is not my business; you can say it is nothing to do with me; but it is; Hugo. . .and you are the best friends I have; I can’t stand by and see you. . .and Hugo messing up your lives. . .’
His voice was very low; I had never heard George’s voice like this.
I thought:
‘How he loves Hugo! Why do we love him so?’
I said:
‘I thought you liked Sophia?’
He said:
‘I do like her.’
‘And you like Walter Sebright too; you said you did.’
‘I do,’ he said, ‘I like him too, but not for you.’
I said:
‘That is for me to judge.’
He said:
‘No, not now; you don’t know what you are doing. You are unhappy and angry, and. . .oh Helen, why do we beat about the bush? You and Hugo love each other far too well to marry other people? You know that. . .I know it. . .and Hugo knows it too!’
I said:
‘I don’t think Hugo does.’
‘He does. . . .I know he does. Give him time, Helen. He will never care for anyone as he does for you.’
I said:
‘He leaves it to you, to say!’
‘Can’t you wait a little while? Six months, or three months even. . .? That is not very long to wait. . .’
I said:
‘I am sick of waiting. I don’t know even, that I want Hugo, now.’
George was silent; I knew how hard it must be for him to say these things, and I wanted to hurt him. There were sea gulls walking in the mud, at the edge of the river. They rose up in a cloud in front of us, calling and flapping their wings.
I said:
‘It is good of you to consider Hugo so much, but I don’t think he would be grateful to you.’
I said it in a hard, horrible voice.
George clasped his hands together; he clasped and unclasped his fingers, and said nothing at all.
I said:
‘I suppose you think I should wait for ever, on the chance of Hugo’s wanting me some day? You don’t mind what happens to me?’
I can’t bear now to think how I spoke to George; it was as though a devil was in me. I did not mean what I said, and I knew that I did not mean it; I would have waited for Hugo always, if I had thought he would want me ever; but I did not think so. That was not George’s fault.
George said:
‘I did not mean that, Helen. You know, surely, that I did not. Do you think I should have said all this, if I did not mind what happened to you?
‘It is not fair to Sebright,’ he said abruptly, ‘to marry him like this.’
I said:
‘That is his affair, and mine; you had better leave it alone.’
We walked on again; past Chelsea Bridge, and along Grosvenor Road. There was no parapet here, only railings, and the river showed through the iron bars, with the lamplight on it. Across the water, where the wharfs and warehouses are, there were more lights, and a noise of hammering. A train went past with lighted windows, across the railway bridge. I did not ask George to leave me; I did not want him to go. Twice I looked round at him.
‘Why does he mind so much?’ I wondered. ‘It is wonderful to mind so much about other people.’
I said once:
‘It is very dark for April.’
He said:
‘Yes, it is getting late.’
Lorries went past us, a train of lorries, with iron girders on them. There was a Salvation Army meeting at the corner of a street.
I said:
‘I should like to be religious.’
George said:
‘So should I.’
I wished already, that I had been kinder to George. I knew how hard it must have been for him to say all that to me. I was grateful to him for caring about it at all.
We had left the river now, and were walking through streets with more warehouses and yards. We came out soon to Westminster, and crossed the wide space in front of the Houses of Parliament. We stood and waited for a bus.
George said:
‘Forgive me, Helen. I am afraid I have made it worse. I am sorry, if I have.’
I wanted to say:
‘Forgive me, George. I love you for what you said. It was dear and brave of you to say it. It was like you, George.’
But there were people all round, near us, and my bus was coming, round the corner, and across to where we stood.
I only said:
‘It’s all right; you haven’t a bit. Good-bye.’
I held out my hand, and George took it.
Then I climbed up on to my bus, and went up the steps to the top. I turned round to wave to him again, but he did not see me. He was standing quite still, where I had left him, staring in front of him at the road.
I did not write to Hugo. George told him, and Guy wrote to me at once.
‘Congratulations and good wishes,’ he said; that was all.
Cousin Delia asked me to bring Walter down to see her I said I would, the next week-end.
Hugo wrote later:
‘Helen dear, I hope you will be happy. I hope you have chosen right. Other people cannot judge for you, not even we, who have known you best.’
I thought:
‘He does not mind. He does not like Walter, but he does not mind.’
Walter took me to see his mother. She looked old to be his mother; much older than Cousin Delia. She had light blue eyes like his, and fair hair. Her hair was not so grey as Cousin Delia’s, but her face was much more lined. She was small, and like a bird, with quick, nervous movements. She was dressed in purple; a purple silk bodice, with a high collar, up round her chin. She was very neat and slim, and her face was pink, like a soft apple.
She lived in a high house, with steep, dark stairs. There were Indian things in the room; weapons, and powder horns, and inlaid tables. Walter’s grandfather had been in India; he was an Indian merchant who traded in rice. There were water-colours on the walls, of cottages, and churches in green trees; old-fashioned, rather charming pictures, but the room was dark all the same; the curtains were dark and heavy, and there was too much furniture; I felt very much a stranger in that room.
Mrs. Sebright kissed me in a fluttering, half-frightened way.
‘My dear, I am so glad to meet you,’ she said. ‘Walter has talked to me often about you. I should like to have seen you before.’
She made me sit down in a big chair; it had a chintz cover with purplish flowers on it; faded, dull sort of flowers.
‘I must look at you,’ she said, ‘you must let me look at you, my dear!’
She put on her spectacles, and looked at me. It was natural that she should want to look, but I felt embarrassed.
‘Yes, you are very pretty, very pretty indeed! Walter told me so. Walter is always right.’
She gave a little nervous laugh.
‘We must make friends now,’ she said; ‘you see, it seems so strange to me, that I do not know you at all. Walter has been such a good son to me, such a devoted son, and good sons make good husbands, so they say.. . .I am sure my Walter will. You are a fortunate young lady, my dear, though I say it, and I am sure you will do your best to deserve him.’
I said I hoped I should. I liked her for thinking so much of Walter; she was so naive, and so single-hearted; the attitude of my friends would have been inconceivable to her.
And I thought:
‘She knows him much better than they do, after all.’
She said:
‘You must tell me all about yourself. Your parents are dead, I believe?’
I told her that my father was dead, and my mother had married again.
‘Poor dear, poor dear, so you were all alone?’
I told her about Cousin Delia and Yearsly.
I said:
‘I was with her long before, after my father died.’
‘Ah, yes; and you had cousins there, to play with, I believe?’
I said:
‘Yes; two cousins—Guy and Hugo.’
‘They must be almost like brothers to you now?’
I said:
‘Yes; almost.’
‘Walter knows them, I think? He knew them at Oxford.’
I said:
‘He does not know them very well.’
‘They would not be quite Walter’s type, perhaps. . .you see, Walter is so clever, he does not care much for people who are not. . .but he will, of course, my dear, later on, if they are your cousins. He has a most affectionate nature, and I am sure they are very nice young men!’
I suppose I did not respond, for she added quickly:
‘I did not mean, of course, that your cousins were stupid, Walter has never said such a thing to me, oh, not at all, but I thought from what he told me that they were. . .just. . .not quite like Walter. . .he has, of course, a quite exceptional brain.’
I said:
‘Oh no; my cousins are not like Walter; but I love them very much; I hope he will be friends with them, more, later on.’
I did not mind what Mrs. Sebright said; I did not mind what Walter had told her about them.
I thought:
‘She feels about Walter as I do about Hugo; I am glad that some one feels about him like that.’
Walter came in then. He had left me alone with his mother for a talk. He stood beside her with his hand on her shoulder, and looked at me.
‘Wasn’t I right, Mother?’ he asked softly. ‘Isn’t she all I said?’
He looked flushed and happy; his eyes were shining; I wished he would not wear those black steel spectacles.
Grandmother went to call on Mrs. Sebright. Grandmother was the only person who seemed really pleased at the engagement.
She said:
‘I like your young man. He has brains and character. You might have done worse. You won’t be well off, not at all well off; but that does not matter; we all value money too highly, and you will have enough when I die,’
I don’t know what she said to Mrs. Sebright, or Mrs. Sebright to her, but she was not displeased.
She said:
‘A good woman, I think, but a fool; he must get his brains from his father. Stupid women often have clever sons; perhaps the clever men marry them. She will not trouble you, Helen, she won’t interfere, but you must be kind to her, and attentive.’
I said that I would try. I was grateful to Grandmother for being pleased at all.
Guy and Hugo were not at Yearsly that week-end; they were sorry they could not come, Cousin Delia said.
She welcomed Walter, giving him both her hands, and looked at him hard, as his mother had looked at me; but she did not ask him questions. Some people said that Cousin Delia was hard to talk to, for she never asked you the ordinary things; she did not ask people how their relations were, as some women always do. She took people as they were, and left them alone; and she talked, when she did talk, about anything that was in her mind, or yours, at the moment.
She showed Walter some gems, Greek gems, in the library; he told her about them, their dates, and where they were made. He did not say they were decadent, or ‘too late,’ as I expected. He was polite to Cousin Delia, and treated her with respect.
He said:
‘She is not at all like her sons.’
I said:
‘Oh, Walter, I think her so like them both.’
He did not get on very well with Cousin John; that did not surprise me; Cousin John might seem dull to anyone who did not know him well.
I took him to Joseph and Mathew, and the Elliots at the farm. He was awkward with them all, and did not know what to say. They shook hands with us, and wished us joy, but they were not hearty, and as we turned away, I heard Elliot say to his wife:
‘I aye thought it would have been Mr. Hugo!’
I don’t think Walter heard what he said.
I took Walter to the Temple, and into the High Wood. He made love to me and kissed me, and called me pretty names; I would not have thought he could say the things he did, and I was glad he did; but I did not show him the Happy Tree, nor the Frog Pond, nor the Jasmine Gate.
Cousin Delia came to see me in my bed, as she used to when I was little.
She said:
‘Dear Heart, are you happy?’
I said:
‘I don’t know, Cousin Delia. Ought I to be?’
She said:
‘I don’t know. I wasn’t; but some people are. It is better to be happy.’
I said:
‘Yes. I know it would be better.’
She stood beside my bed, and looked across it at the window, and the branches of the trees. There was a moon outside and we could see the branches; I had pulled the curtain back.
She said:
‘Poor Hugo; I am thinking of my Hugo.’
I said:
‘You need not be sorry for him.’
She looked down at me.
She said:
‘No? Need I not?’
I said:
‘No. Be sorry for me; and Walter.’
She said:
‘Walter has got what he wants. Not many people get that.’
I said:
‘No, not many people; I know that; and I don’t think Walter really has.’
She said:
‘Dear Heart, don’t be impatient; don’t decide too soon.’
I said:
‘I have decided.’
She bent down and kissed my forehead.
She said:
‘I like your Walter; and he is very happy.’
Walter took me to see his sister Maud. She was the headmistress of a school at Lessingham; a County Secondary School.
We travelled by train for nearly two hours; we were to spend the night with Maud, at the school.
We sat opposite to each other in the train; we had two corner seats.
I thought:
‘It will be like this when I am married to Walter. We shall travel together always. How funny that will be!’
Walter had bought me newspapers at the station. He bought a lot of them and put them on the seat beside me; there wasVogue, andColour, and theDaily Mirror; and I laughed.
I said:
‘I should not have thought you would buy papers like this. Have you ever bought any of these before?’
Walter laughed too.
He said:
‘No, of course not; I have never had any one to buy them for, before.’
He had no newspaper himself; he did not read them; he had told me that before. He took out a German book,Der Hittitische Kult, and began to read it, but soon he put it down. I was looking at him, and now he looked at me.
He said:
‘Not even that, when you are here. I wonder if you know how much that means?’
He leaned across, and took my hands in his.
He said:
‘Perhaps, you will make me human. Perhaps I shall be quite different when I am married to you.’
I bent forward too and kissed his forehead; I felt curiously moved.
I thought:
‘Perhaps, he really needs me; perhaps I have something to give him that he really wants. . .beyond mere falling in love.’
I felt that there were depths in him I had not fathomed.
I thought:
‘Can I do it? Am I what he thinks me?’
And then I thought:
‘Perhaps I shall love him more than any one, in time.’
People got into the train at the next station. Walter talked to me about his sister Maud.
He said:
‘I hope so much you will like her’; and I felt behind his words, the hope, more doubtful, that she might like me.
He said:
‘She is a very remarkable woman; she took ai.i.at Cambridge, you know, that is not common for women, and she did it all herself. She was only seventeen when my father died. She was at school then, of course, and insisted on staying on. My mother would have taken her away, I think, and gone to live in the country, but Maud was right. She said it was better for us all, to keep her on at school, and at college too; she would earn more in the end, and of course she was right. She paid her own way with scholarships, all the way up, just as I did afterwards, and she helped with me too. She kept me up to the mark, and my mother too. My mother was inclined to spoil me. She thought I was delicate and that the work at St. Paul’s was too much for me, but Maud insisted on my working hard, and again, I am sure she was right. She is not so gentle as my mother, of course, nor so affectionate, but I admire her very much, and I am grateful to her.’
I said:
‘I don’t expect she will approve of me!’
Walter hesitated.
‘Not quite, at first, perhaps, but you mustn’t mind that. She does judge people on their merits, really, in the end, though sometimes she is prejudiced at first.’
I was afraid that I should not like Maud, and I was sure that she would not like me.
Maud was waiting for us in her ‘Private Room.’ We came to it through long corridors with notices on the walls, and a place with pegs, and rows and rows of hats and coats. There was a smell of disinfectant, and ink, and books. It was different from the smell at Ellsfield, but reminded me partly of that.
The ‘Private Room’ was pleasanter. There was a big window with green serge curtains, and a table with a green serge cover, and lots of books on it. There were daffodils on the table in a green, ‘art pottery’ jug, and reproductions of pictures by Watts on the walls, in broad, dark oak frames.
Maud came forward to meet us. She was tall and fair; she seemed much taller and more powerful than Walter; she looked healthier, and more athletic. Her hair was parted in the middle, and pushed forward, very neatly, with little combs behind each ear. She was wearing a very clean, well ironed, white silk shirt, with a dark blue tie, a tie-pin, and a long, navy blue serge skirt; she had pince-nez, rimless ones, fastened by a fine, black cord.
She smiled in a bright, business-like way, as though she were accustomed to smiling.
‘My dear Walter, how do you do? How do you do, Helen?’
She kissed us both, brightly too, and led us back to the tea-table, which was waiting by the hearth-rug. There was no fire, though the day was rather cold; the kettle was boiling on a brass spirit lamp, on the table.
‘Your train must have been late,’ she said, as she made the tea. ‘I expected you a quarter of an hour ago. Fortunately, to-day is my “free day,” and I have an hour and a half, quite free, after tea.’
She made us feel that it was our fault that the train was late, but that she forgave us.
Walter murmured an apology, and she smiled again:
‘It is of no consequence, none whatever. I have kept myself entirely at your disposal this afternoon. I had to take the chair at a staff meeting between three and four; we have a staff-committee now, you know, Walter, to decide on internal questions of policy in the school, slight variations in curriculum, and so forth, as far as our governing body will permit: it meets on Saturday afternoon. I find it a useful experiment. I find that it encourages keenness in the staff, more especially the younger members, if they feel they have some say in the management of the school. I have, of course, a casting vote myself, but I seldom use it. It is surprising to find how often we are unanimous, or practically so. Sugar, Helen and milk?’
She gave me sugar and milk, without waiting for my reply, and handed me the cup.
‘Let me see,’ she went on, ‘where were you at school? Walter did tell me, I believe.’
I said:
‘Ellsfield, in Surrey; Miss Ellis’s school.’
‘Ah yes, of course! They do not take the Higher Certificate there, I think? There was some discussion about it at the last Headmistresses’ Conference. Miss Ellis takes, shall we say, an independent line?’
I said:
‘I don’t think they did many examinations. I believe Miss Ellis didn’t approve of them.’
‘Quite, quite; and not many of the girls would go on to the Universities, I suppose?’
‘Some did, I think; oh, several did. You could go if you liked.’
Maud smiled.
‘No compulsory abstention,’ she said, ‘but not unduly encouraged, I suppose. Of course here we have quite the opposite idea. We train our girls to regard a University training as the natural culmination of their education. Under present conditions they cannot always afford it, but it is surprising how many can, when once the girl and her family are made to feel it the natural and proper thing. There ought to be more scholarships, of course, for Oxford and Cambridge are too expensive for most girls of the class who come to us, but the Provincial Universities are now excellent. A number of our girls go to Birmingham and more still to the University College here.’
I said:
‘It must be very convenient to have a college here.’
‘Yes, a good departure, quite good. Standard not very high yet, but that will come. I thoroughly approve of this movement for increasing the number of University Colleges in Provincial towns. By the way, Walter,’ she went on, ‘I want to speak to you about that last regulation of the Board of Faculties and Arts, about the P.Q.T. External Examinations, you know the one I mean, 1346; I think it is on the new schedule.’
She took up a bunch of papers from the table beside her and began to look through them.
‘Here it is,’ she said, and began to read it aloud.
It was something about the qualifications necessary for anyone going in for some particular examination; it conveyed nothing, of course, to me. Walter said something about its not making much difference, and she interrupted him:
‘I entirely disagree with you, Walter. Take the case, for instance, of a girl in the Vth Form who had already passed 3y and 6b in the Higher Certificate; her position would be quite anomalous!’
‘But do many girls pass 3y and 6b, and nothing else?’
‘Not many, but some do. In any case it ought to be made quite clear; would such a girl be eligible, or not?’
‘You see,’ she said, turning to me, ‘so many of our girls take the London University External degree, and as Walter is now a Member of the University, I always apply to him in my difficulties.’
Walter said:
‘I am afraid I can’t be any use to you over this, Maud. I really have nothing to do with the External Examinations. You had better apply to the Secretary of the Board of Faculties, direct.’
There was irritation in his voice; he held out his cup.
‘May I have some more tea?’ he asked.
‘Certainly, certainly. I did not see that you had finished; and, Helen, let me give you some more. You did say milk and sugar, I think. Walter, please give Helen some cake. Yes, I think I had better apply to the Board of Faculties direct. It is always best to go to the Fountain Head. But you must support me on the Board, if the question is raised. Helen must excuse us talking so much shop,’ and she turned brightly to me: ‘We Academic people have so much shop to talk, and so little opportunity.’
Walter said:
‘I find plenty of opportunity!’
‘Ah, but you are at the Fountain Head! That is one of the advantages of University life over that of a school. It has that advantage, undoubtedly. But what is Helen most interested in? We must make friends, mustn’t we? Now that we are to be sisters-in-law!’
Walter said:
‘Helen is interested in a great many things. Literature and pictures, and music. . .aren’t you, Helen?’
I felt like a child, being discussed and drawn out by grown-up people.
I said:
‘Yes. I am interested in that sort of thing, chiefly, I suppose.’
‘I see,’ said Maud, artistic. ‘Well, that is a very important side of life. I always teach my girls to appreciate Art. We have lectures on Art, every alternate week, in the Winter terms, with lantern slides; and literature too; three of our girls took A.A. in the English Literature paper of the L.L.U.’
‘Helen is a great dancer too!’
Maud gave a little laugh.
‘The lighter side,’ she said, ‘that we can hardly call Art!’
I wondered why Walter had said it. I thought he might have known that Maud would not count dancing ‘Art.’
‘It can be Art,’ said Walter doggedly. ‘Have you seen the Russian Ballet?’
I was surprised that Walter should have seen it himself.
Maud laughed again, her quick, business-like laugh.
‘I am afraid I have no time for Ballets,’ she said:
‘Helen will not find much time to dance when she is married, I am afraid. I am afraid Academic life will seem a little strange to you at first. We are poor, dull people you know, my dear, but we have our good points, if you take us as you find us! And now, would you like a walk round? We have extended the playing field since you were here last, Walter, and there are some new books in the Classical Library.’
Walter and I were not alone all the evening. There were prayers for the boarders, and supper in a big dining hall, only two tables, at the end in use, for the day girls were not there.
In the morning we went to church with Maud and two other mistresses, and the boarders.
We were alone for a little, in Maud’s room, before lunch.
‘When did you go to the Russian Ballet?’ I asked.
And Walter said:
‘When you said you liked dancing; in the tea-shop near the British Museum. I went the next evening.’
I took his hand.
I said:
‘That was dear of you. Did you like it?’
He said:
‘I don’t know if I liked it really. Not very much, perhaps, but I liked to know what you liked. . .’
He hesitated, and smiled shyly.
‘I thought it made me understand you better.’
I felt, somehow, nearer to Walter after that visit. I felt that there was an understanding between us in relation to Maud. He did not say it and I did not say it, but I felt that he was on my side, and not on hers; that he was resisting what she stood for, and defending me.
I had dreaded the meeting with Maud, and now it was over I did not mind her; I was not afraid of her: it did not seem to me that she would count.
We were to be married in July, as soon as Walter’s term ended. Grandmother had arranged that, I think, with Walter.
Cousin Delia said:
‘Wait a little. Wait till the Autumn, or even Christmas.’
Mrs. Sebright said July seemed rather soon.
Walter said:
‘Why wait, now it is settled?’
I let them arrange it as they liked. I felt all the time quite passive, as though things happened, and decisions were made, quite separately from me; it was not my business to interfere; I just watched.
And I thought:
‘Now this is happening, now that. Now she is engaged to be married. Now she is looking for a house. Now they are getting clothes for her. Now, sheets. Soon there will be a wedding in a church. And what then?’
It was as though I were watching it all from a long way off.
We found a house in Hampstead; number seven, Edinburgh Terrace. It was a stucco house, semi-detached, with a garden back and front, and a high flight of steps up to the front door. There was a stucco wall between the road and the garden in front, and a straight path that sloped up from the gate to the front door, so that the house itself looked high up, higher than it really was. There were lilac bushes at the side of the house, where the back door was, and a trellis gate that led through to the garden behind. There was a verandah at the back, with iron steps leading down to the back garden. The gardens were oblong strips of grass, neglected for some time. The whole terrace had been built, I should think, about 1850; it was old-fashioned, and a little dilapidated; much more attractive, I thought, than more modern houses, and Walter thought it cheap.
I wanted to have the outside of it painted; it had been painted a sort of cream colour once, and I wanted it white, and the windows and door bright green. It was the sort of house that ought to be white and green.
Walter said he thought it would do as it was. We could decorate it inside, and then see how much money we had left. We had five hundred pounds to spend on decorating and furniture; Mrs. Sebright said that would be ample; Grandmother said we must do the best we could with that, and that she would make up the extras. I could see that she did not think it would be enough.
Cousin Delia came to see the house. She stood on the steps and looked at the front garden.
She said:
‘You should grow roses here; red roses, I think. Richmond, or General Macarthur; and a pond in the middle, perhaps.’
I said:
‘Will roses grow in London?’
She said:
‘Oh surely they will! Do you think they won’t?’
Cousin Delia seemed always a little lost when she came to London; a little bit as though she were walking in a dream.
She said:
‘It would be dreadful, of course, if the roses would not grow.’
I showed her the rooms inside; upstairs and down; She said:
‘It is a nice little house. You shall have the “Little chair,” from Yearsly. It would go well, I think, in that drawing-room. Your chairs must be small, for these rooms.’
She said that the paint on the stairs would not do. It was dark brown paint, and very ugly, but Walter thought we should leave it.
She said:
‘It is all wrong, that brown paint, you must have it taken off.’
Mrs. Sebright said we must have the drains relaid. I had thought we might leave the drains.
Maud came up from Lessingham to see the house. She said we should have the paint inside green.
She said:
‘It saves work; white paint gives far more trouble.’
But I did not want green paint inside.
In the bedroom, she said:
‘You can have a nice fumed oak suite, in here. There are excellent fumed oak suites at the Army and Navy Stores. I have furnished the bedrooms in our teachers’ hostel with their suites. Well made, and in very good taste.’
Walter said:
‘Helen does not like fumed oak.’
‘Oh really! I thought every one liked fumed oak now. What does Helen like?’
They always talked of me as though I was not there.
Walter said:
‘She likes old furniture. Old mahogany and. . .and walnut.’
Maud laughed:
‘Oh, of course,’ she said, ‘we should all like old walnut best, I imagine. I am afraid Helen will find that a professor’s salary will hardly allow of furnishing in that style!’
She smiled at me, in what I think she meant to be an encouraging way.
She said:
‘Helen will soon learn, I am sure. A poor professor’s wife can hardly expect to live in the way she has been accustomed to; even clothes, for instance, the cost of clothes will have to be considered,’ and she glanced at mine, ‘but I feel sure that Helen will soon learn. We must all help her’; and she smiled again.
I began to hate Maud. I wondered if she wanted to make it all seem horrid.
I said:
‘We can have packing-cases with chintz frills. Sophia Lane Watson has those in her room and they look very nice. I would rather have that than fumed oak.’
‘Rather too, what shall we say?. . .Bohemian, perhaps, to live in packing-cases. I am sure you will have ample for your needs, if it is laid out carefully, with foresight, and consideration.’
Mrs. Sebright gave us a sideboard; it was a big mahogany sideboard that had belonged to Walter’s grandfather.
It was ugly and took up a great deal of room; and she gave us a portrait of his grandfather too, the India merchant; Walter was not at all like him. I could not say I did not want them, but they spoiled the rooms.
I thought:
‘It is only the dining-room, after all; we shall not sit in it very much.’
George and Hugo came to see the house when it was almost finished. Mostly they liked it, but Hugo said:
‘Oh, must you have that sideboard?’
And I saw George nudge his elbow, to stop him speaking about it.
I said:
‘I rather like it. It belonged to Walter’s grandfather, who was a merchant in India. It is interesting to have it, I think.’
Hugo said:
‘Oh, yes. . .yes, of course! If there is a reason for it, that is quite different!’
He looked at the portrait of the grandfather, a big portrait in oils, badly painted, but he said nothing about it.
He said:
‘That room upstairs is awfully nice! that drawing-room, with the steps down to the garden, and I am sure you can make the garden awfully nice.’
I had hardly seen Hugo, since I had been engaged; only once or twice, at parties; at Campden Hill Square, and at Mollie’s. I did not want to see him much just then.
He gave me an alabaster bowl; old white alabaster; I think it was Chinese. I put it on the drawing-room chimney-piece, in the middle, and straight silver candlesticks, from George and Mollie, on either side. Walter thought it looked rather bare. He thought it would have been more convenient to put a clock there, but he didn’t mind about things like that.
We had old walnut furniture in the drawing-room, after all, for Cousin Delia and Cousin John gave me a walnut cabinet, a beautiful thing, like one at Yearsly, and Grandmother gave me a writing-desk, Queen Anne walnut too.