Chapter II: Part ONE: I (2)

Guy used to hunt too, and made friends with people he met out hunting. They would come to meals and sometimes spend the night. We liked them when they came, but did not miss them when they went away. We were I think too contented by ourselves. Later when they were at Oxford they made friends who counted in a different way, and became a part of all our lives.

Hugo was very happy at this time. When I think of him in those years, it is generally happy. He did not laugh as Guy did, loud, with his head thrown back; his was a lower, more gurgling kind of laughter; but his eyes danced and his whole face twinkled.

I remember his laughing at me one day in the hay. They were making hay on the grass hill below the wood, and we had been helping, and he threw himself down on one of the new-made ‘pikes,’ and Guy and I had buried him; and he burrowed out, and his head came through all tangled and stuck over with hay, and his dark laughing eyes shone out of the nest of hay like some wild, but not frightened animal.

One summer we had a passion for Conrad, and read aloud to each other up in our Happy Tree. Another time it was Shakespeare that we discovered for ourselves. Hugo knew a great deal of poetry by heart, more than anyone I have met, but he was not a mooning, moping sort of boy as poetical people are supposed to be. He loved games and swimming and fishing and dancing too—when we were older and used to dance.

I think one of the special qualities about both Guy and Hugo was the way they enjoyed so many different things.

We used to fish in the stream very often—long afternoons with the sun flickering through the willows on to the clear bright water. There was a big pool to the east of the house, below the temple, with a willow slanting out across it, almost horizontally, from the bank, and the bank was rather high. There were perch there, and ling. Sometimes Cousin John would come with us and teach us the art of ‘casting,’ or tell us about places he had fished in in Norway, and in Persia. He had been in the diplomatic service when he was a young man, before he married. He knew endless curious unrelated things, about places and people and armour and folklore, and the history of weapons of all sorts

Guy would fish for hours at a time, sitting almost motionless on the slanting willow, but Hugo and I would bring books with us as a rule. We would fish for a bit and then read for a bit and then fish again. Guy thought that rather childish, but he never interfered with us or tried to stop us. That was, I think, part of the special charm of Yearsly. No one ever interfered with anyone else. There was no pressure on anyone or anything to be different from what it was.

One thing we missed during these years was the autumn at Yearsly, when the trees in the High Wood turned red and gold, and the leaves floated down about you as you walked, through the still air, and rustled round your feet. There was a blue haze among the tree trunks and a nip in the air, and often the smell of bonfires, burning up leaves and sticks, and the dew on the grass would lie thick till midday, though the sun was shining. And in the walled garden, the dahlias would be out, and dark red chrysanthemums and michaelmas daisies, and old Joseph, the gardener, would be pottering slowly about the summer borders, clearing up, and rooting out and burning up piles of finished flowers, on the rubbish heap behind the potting shed.

We had to go back to school now, at the very beginning of autumn, leaving with the trees still green and coming back again when they were quite bare.

In the Christmas holidays there were carol singings. Cousin Delia trained the people in the village to sing carols, and they would come in and sing in the hall by candle-light, sometimes with lanterns in their hands, on Christmas Eve; and Guy would sing with them, and Cousin Delia would teach them special things, besides carols. Once it was Bach’s Christmas Oratorio. And Guy sang the solo parts. I think that is the most beautiful music I know. They stood there in the shadow of the hall, about twenty people altogether, with their lanterns on the ground. The light flickered upward on the dark wood of the staircase and on faces here and there, but it was mostly shadow, and the sound of the voices rose up and died away in the high darkness of the roof. Sometimes they would go round being waits and sing at other houses, and at farms, and we would go with them, walking back with our lantern after midnight over dark frosty fields, with stars very clear in the frost. Of course it was not always like that—sometimes it was wet and we had colds, and it was all a disappointment—but not often, and somehow I don’t remember those times.

We had Christmas Trees too, generally on New Year’s Day, and the children from the village came, and some old people, and then there would be games.

My grandmother came to stay very often at Christmas. We all liked it when she came.

VIII

My own life at school was uneventful. I was not unhappy, nor unkindly treated. I think it was rather a good school, but I did not learn much, and it never mattered to me one way or another. It was time to be lived through, and that was all; and I lived through it without much trouble or distress.

I was not naughty, so far as I can remember. I did not get into scrapes or mischief. But I was not clever at all. Arithmetic I have never been able to do, or the things connected with Arithmetic, and subjects like Literature and Poetry were badly taught. I had learned much more of them from Cousin Delia and from Hugo.

The only friend I made at school was Sophia Lane Watson. She was two years younger than me, and came to school when she was thirteen, so I had been there nearly three years when she came. But I was struck by her as soon as I saw her, and we made friends in a kind of way, almost at once.

She was standing in the ‘girls’ hall when I saw her first. It was the first day of the summer term, and everything was in a bustle: the noise and uncomfortableness of arrivals; girls rushing about everywhere and shouting to each other, and slapping each other on the back or kissing, according to the ‘set’ they belonged to. How I did hate those ‘first days’ at school!

I had come by a different train from most of the others—I don’t remember why—and drove up from the station alone. They had taken my luggage in, and I walked in by myself; and there I saw Sophia Lane Watson, standing quite still by the fireplace in the ‘girls’ hall.’ She was quite alone, not talking to anyone, nor reading; just standing still and watching all the hurrying about, quite impassively, with a perfectly expressionless face. She did not look shy or frightened or unhappy—just quite detached—and that interested me. She was a striking-looking child too, with her very big eyes and her straight black hair, and her very white face. Her eyes always looked so dark, much darker than mine or even Hugo’s; but they were not black or brown when you saw them close, only grey, sometimes almost green. She was medium height and very thin, and her hands and feet were too big; but rather beautifully made. Her clothes always looked as though they were falling off her; her skirt was always crooked, sagging down in a tail, either behind or at one side. She was certainly not pretty, though I still think she was prettier at that time than afterwards. Perhaps it was only that her queerness was more attractive in a child.

She certainly did attract me. I know I stopped then, on my way through the hall, and looked at her, and she looked at me perfectly stonily, without any change of expression. Then I went upstairs to my room and found the three other girls in it, all talking and sitting on their beds, and I had to stay and talk to them a few minutes while I took off my things; but when I came downstairs again, I went straight up to Sophia and asked her her name. She was still standing exactly as I had left her.

She answered rather slowly:

‘Sophia Lane Watson.’ Her voice was rather deep; a curious voice.

Then I asked her age, and she told me she was thirteen. She was not very easy to talk to, for she merely answered my questions and volunteered nothing. But I persevered, and offered to take her round the school, and show her the classrooms, and afterwards we went into the garden and walked round the playing field, and we sat together at tea.

She told me that she lived at Salchester, that her father was a Canon of the Cathedral, that she had two brothers and one sister, and that she had never been at school before.

I don’t know why, but I felt curiously consoled by her having come. The utter blankness of that first day, the blocks of bread at tea, the noise and hurry and ugliness, seemed less unbearable than usual, and I had a feeling when I went to bed that evening that something important, pleasantly important, had happened.

IX

Sophia Lane Watson and I made friends. It was a rather odd friendship, never very intimate. I used to doubt sometimes if she could be intimate with anybody. She seemed to live her own life inside a sort of fortress, and although she would open the door a little way, she never opened it wide and let one really in. And for me, any friendship at school was a subsidiary thing, not comparable really to my friendship for Guy and Hugo.

But life at school was very different for me after she had come.

She used to surprise me often; sometimes she shocked me; she seemed to have thought and decided upon so many subjects which had never crossed my mind at all.

She told me about the second week of our acquaintance that she was an atheist and an anarchist. She looked at me with a sort of quiet defiance as she said it, and added:

‘It is best to be quite plain about it—now you know.’

I don’t think I was very sure at the time what either meant. We had never discussed religion or politics at Yearsly. That may seem odd, but it had never come our way, and I only associated anarchists with bombs; but I was not disturbed, for I was sure that I liked Sophia.

She leant me Shelley’s _Essays_, and expounded Atheism and Anarchy of a very theoretic kind to me, and I was a good deal impressed. The very fact of not having defined my own beliefs made the shaking of them less severe. Afterwards of course I told Hugo what she had said, and he too read the _Necessity of Atheism_ and was interested in it; but Hugo never cared very much for Shelley, not as he cared for Keats, and Shakespeare, and Campion, and _Paradise Lost_.

Sophia was at this time a Shelley devotee. She knew hundreds of lines by heart, not only the lyrics, but a great deal of the political verse as well. I remember her walking down the passage from her bath, in a blue dressing gown, saying over and over with intense feeling: ‘I met Murder by the way; He had a Mask like Castlereagh,’ and she told me about this time that she thought if Castlereagh were alive now she would kill him.

‘Or at least I would like to try,’ she added with the sudden drop into reasonableness which often surprised one.

She would talk endlessly on subjects of this sort—freedom and tyranny, and what truth was, and whether there was such a thing as goodness. I expect most of what she said was nonsense, but even so, she must have been precocious for a child of thirteen. But of her personal feelings she hardly ever spoke, nor of her home.

I thought at first she was homesick, but she was not. I don’t think she liked her home any more than school. She gave me the feeling sometimes of a creature at bay, on the defensive somehow against life. She said once—I forget how the subject came up:

‘I hate pretty people—my sister is pretty.’

And another time when I had been speaking about Yearsly, she looked at me seriously with her big green eyes and said:

‘It is curious how you love Guy and Hugo. I should have thought you would dislike them, being brought up with them like that.’

These were the sort of things that shocked me at first, but not when I knew her better. I realized then that she did not mean them in a shocking way.

I thought how differently I should feel if I had not lived at Yearsly, if, for instance, my own mother had brought me up, and I felt very sorry for Sophia, and that made me like her more.

She was in a higher form than me, although she was younger, and I did not see much of her during the day, but in our second term we were put to sleep together, just us two in the room, and we used to talk in the mornings and evenings, and on Sundays, when we went for walks. Sophia had been ill and she was not allowed to play games. She always went for walks, and I did so too when I could, and walked with her.

It was the end of that second term that she made her sensation.

There were always recitations at the end of that term, and a prize for the best recitation. That time there was a choice of three pieces, all Shakespeare, and one was Lady Macbeth’s speech.

I was considered good at this, and there were two or three others who were good. Nobody expected anything of Sophia—she was so unemotional and stiff as a rule.

And then suddenly she took us all by storm.

She stood up on the platform, looking like a ghost, and the moment she began to speak a thrill ran through us all. There were visitors there, parents and people, and they too were completely taken by surprise.

It was not like a child reciting at all. Her great deep voice rose and fell, with an odd little break in it at times. She held her hands in front of her and rubbed at the spot like some one in a dream. It was, I still believe, a marvellous bit of acting, quite on a different level from anything we were used to. When it was over there was a thunder of applause, and Miss Ellis, the head mistress, went across to Sophia and shook hands with her. The recitals were her special subject, and the visitors were all asking who Sophia was.

Sophia slipped off at the back of the platform and came back to her seat in the hall, but afterwards when the prize-giving was over people crowded up to her, girls and their parents and mistresses. There was a buzzing and a fuss, and I could see that Sophia was not liking it. Then she disappeared, and when Miss Ellis wanted to introduce her to a distinguished old man who had written about Shakespeare she couldn’t be found, and Miss Ellis was annoyed. Afterwards I found her under her bed, crying bitterly on the floor. She was quite wild and wouldn’t come out, and told me to go away. At last I got her to come out, and tried to find out what had upset her, but for a long time I couldn’t make out. She kept saying that she could never come back to school now, she could never face the girls again.

‘Why did I do it?’ she wailed. ‘What possessed me to do it? Now I have let them inside and I have given myself away. Oh, it is awful! And perhaps they will say something about it at home!’

I thought vaguely that she must have some plan of going on the stage, but it was not that.

‘Don’t you understand?’ she said at last. ‘It is as though you had got up and told all that crowd just what you feel about Guy and Hugo and Cousin Delia. You couldn’t live if you had done that, could you? Can’t you imagine it?—Ella Price and Rosa Baylis and all of them.’

She was beside herself. I think now it was probably a reaction from excitement, and that she hardly knew what she said, but I was frightened then. I did what I could with her, and got her into bed. I think she agreed to go to bed as a means of avoiding the girls downstairs. Then I told a Miss Singleton, whom we both liked, that she was not well, and Miss Singleton came up to see her. I don’t know how much she told Miss Singleton.

The next morning the school broke up, and we all went away. I wondered if Sophia would come back after all the next term. She did; but she would not speak about that evening, and she would not recite again all the time she was at school.

I told Hugo about it in the holidays, and he did not seem at all surprised.

‘I quite understand her feeling like that,’ he said. ‘That is if it was really good, you know, not just good, but really first-rate, and it must have been from what you say. Like saying your prayers aloud, real prayers, and then finding suddenly you had done it. . . . I should like to see that Sophia.’

I asked Sophia to come to Yearsly at Easter, but she couldn’t. One of her brothers had whooping cough, and she was in quarantine; and I asked her again in the summer, but for some other reason she couldn’t come.

When she did come for a few days the next year, Hugo was disappointed in her. She didn’t talk and seemed out of it, and Guy thought her too ‘intellectual.’ He was in a phase of disliking ‘intellectual women.’

X

Sophia wrote a great deal of poetry. She did not show it to me till I had known her over a year. I don’t know now if it was good; I thought so then. It was odd, passionate stuff, very correct in form. She wrote a good many sonnets, some obscure, rather mystical things about the universe, and some love poems, which surprised me very much. I wanted to show them to Hugo, but she would not let me.

‘I don’t want anyone to see them ever,’ she said. ‘I have only shown them to you—and I shall be sorry about that!’

At the end of her second year at school Sophia got pneumonia. She was very ill indeed, and there were special prayers for her in the school service.

Several girls cried. Ella Price came up to me afterwards, wiping her eyes.

‘I shall never forgive myself,’ she sobbed, ‘never, if anything happens to Sophia.’

‘You were always unkind to her,’ I said.

Then I was sorry for Ella, for I thought how terrible it would be if Sophia did die, and she knew she had been unkind.

‘I don’t think you mattered very much to her,’ I said.

It did not console Ella, but it was the most I could say. I was unhappy about Sophia, and it made me angry with the people who had been unkind.

Sophia got better, and when she was better I was allowed to sit with her, and I asked her one day if she had been frightened when she was so ill.

She looked at me a long time without speaking, and her eyes looked enormous.

‘Not frightened of dying,’ she said. ‘I heard them talking once, and they said, “Not much hope now—just a chance,” and I was glad.’

I thought:

‘“Not much more to face.” I can’t face life when I am tired.’

It gave me a shiver to hear her.

‘Are you really so unhappy, Sophia?’ I asked.

And she said:

‘Not unhappy, exactly—but I do hate life. I feel it trying to down me all the time, and sometimes I am afraid that it will in the end.’

I wondered what Cousin Delia would have made of Sophia. She would not have felt like that, I thought, if she had been with Cousin Delia.

Sophia and I remained friends, but as the time went on it was not equal. She needed me more than I needed her. I think she wanted some one to admire and love very much, and she had no one else—and of course I had.

She said to me once:

‘I wonder sometimes what it would be like to be lovely like you.’

And I laughed at her and said:

‘But you don’t like pretty people.’ But I was pleased.

She said quite seriously:

‘I feel differently about it since I have known you, and besides, you’re more than pretty. You’re _lovely_. It’s like the sun coming out of clouds when you come into a room!’

I laughed at her, but I liked her saying that, all the same. Nobody had said things like that to me before.

When I went home the next holidays I wondered if Guy and Hugo thought me pretty, and Cousin Delia. I wanted to ask them, but I couldn’t.

What I enjoyed perhaps most at school was the dancing.

We had dancing lessons twice a week and practice dances on Saturday evenings.

It was like discovering a new world to me, learning to dance. We only danced with each other, of course, and with whichever partner was allotted to us, except on Saturdays, when we chose as we liked. There was one girl called Flora Hilman, whom I always danced with when I could. She was very tall, with red hair, and she danced beautifully. We hardly ever spoke to each other in between, but we danced together whenever we could, and I forgot everything else when we were dancing. I expect she did too, but she never said so and I never asked her.

I met her once after leaving school. She was walking in Kensington Gardens with a man in a top hat, and I was with Guy. We stopped when we saw each other and looked pleased. I think we both thought at first that we had lots to say to each other, and then found there was nothing at all. We said:

‘How funny to meet here.’

But it wasn’t funny really, as we both lived in London.

Then we said:

‘How nice to see you again,’ or something like that.

And she said:

‘Do you ever go down to Ellsfield now?’ (The School was called Ellsfield.)

And I said:

‘No, do you?’

And she said:

‘Yes, I do sometimes.’

Then we waited a minute or two, and Guy and the man in the top hat said something to each other, and then we said ‘Good-bye.’

I have never seen her again. Somebody told me she had married a German just before the war, but I didn’t believe it somehow, I don’t know why.

Sophia couldn’t dance at all. It was funny how she couldn’t learn, and I think she was sorry about it. And she couldn’t play the piano. She started to learn Russian about this time. She got a dictionary and grammar, and some Russian books, and she used to try and learn it in odd moments, in bed at night, and at times when she ought to be preparing lessons. She had a passion for Tolstoy at this time, and said she must read him in the original. She did not get time to do much at school, but she learned quite a lot by herself in the holidays.

It seems odd in a way, considering how much we were friends at that time, that we did not keep up with each other more afterwards. It was my fault, I think. I left school two years before she did, and my life was so full of other things and people that she slipped out. We wrote to each other for a time, and she kept on writing for a bit after I had stopped. It was on my mind, I know, that I had not answered her letters. I kept meaning to, and putting it off, and then I wrote and she did not answer, and we let it drop. When we met again, later, it was quite a different thing, just as one meets a stranger.

XI

When I was sixteen my mother married again and went away for good. She married a Canadian judge, with some special scheme for prison reform. He had reorganized the penal system in Manitoba, my mother said, and that interested her. They went to live in Winnipeg, and only came back at long intervals to visit England. I believe she was happy in Winnipeg. She ran evening classes and formed Women’s Societies of different kinds. When I saw her next, about five years later, she seemed to me kinder than before, and more tolerant, and I think that may have been because she was happier.

Once, long after this, Cousin Delia said that she had been sorry for my mother, and that had surprised me very much. She had never seemed the sort of person one could be sorry for, but when Cousin Delia said that it made me think about it, and I wondered if she understood that nobody cared for her, none of my father’s people, I mean, and I wondered if perhaps that had made her harder and more aggressive. After all, she could not help being what she was, always wanting to alter things and put people right, and of course if she was like that, it must have been disappointing for her that my father was not and that I was not. I can see too that to her, Cousin Delia might be irritating just because she was so peaceful and didn’t want to upset things at all.

They never said they did not like her; they were very careful about that, except Guy and Hugo, of course; but I knew, and I knew that Cousin Delia had asked her to come to Yearsly and that she never came.

Her marriage made very little difference to me, but it was a certain relief. I felt as though a quite vague fear had been removed—a fear that some time she might assert herself and claim me, and take me away from Cousin Delia and my grandmother. Now I knew she would not.

XII

The next thing that happened was Guy’s twenty-first birthday. He had been at Oxford two years by then, and Hugo was just leaving Winchester.

It was on the 15th of July, and there was a party at Yearsly.

On the day before there was a dinner to the tenants and a school treat, but on the day itself there were no official festivities, just a party of people Guy wanted, mostly staying in the house, and a dance in the evening in the hall.

Hugo and I had come back from school for it, for the school terms were not quite over. It was my first real dance, and I was very excited.

A good many people were staying in the house. There were three Oxford friends of Guy’s—Ralph Freeman, John Ellis and Anthony Cowper. Ellis and Cowper had been at Winchester with him too, and stayed with us before. Ralph Freeman was new. Then there were Mary and Margaret Lacey, second cousins of Guy and Hugo on the other side, they too had stayed at Yearsly before, and Faith Vincent, the Vicar’s daughter, and Claude Pincent, who was also some sort of cousin of Cousin Delia’s. There were no other Laurier cousins, for my grandmother and Hugo’s grandfather had no other children but our fathers.

Claude Pincent too had come before, but not often. He was older than Guy and had been at Cambridge. He was supposed to be a very brilliant young man, and we were a little bit in awe of him. He was distinguished looking, with bright, big eyes and a crest of hair. He seemed much more mature and experienced than we were, and that impressed us too.

In the afternoon we bathed in the fishing pool by the willow, and then we had tea down there by the stream. Cousin Delia and Cousin John were at the picnic, and we liked them to be there. They never spoiled the fun of what we did—even rather silly young parties like this one.

It was a perfect day, hot and almost cloudless, and the hay was not yet cut. Buttercups danced in the long grass, just as they had on that day nine years before when we heard that Hugo was going to school.

The pool was hardly big enough to swim in, but it was clear and deep and very lovely, and the dogs came too. Maurice, the deerhound, stood on the bank and watched us, but Libbet and Oscar, the spaniels, jumped in after us and swam all about. Then we lay in the long grass—we were allowed to spoil the hay for this occasion—and had tea, and laughed a great deal at silly jokes, and then we lay still and were lazy, and before we knew where we were it was time to pack up the tea things and get ready for the dance.

The Hall had been decorated since the morning. Cousin Delia and old Joseph had done it together, and I had helped them for a bit. There were big clusters of roses in silver vases—light coloured roses against the dark wood of the stairs and the panelled wall—and four white lilies in pots at the four corners, and there were sconces with pale green candles fixed up along the walls to light later on, when it got dark.

Mary and Margaret were sharing a room, and Faith Vincent, who was a special friend of theirs, had brought her dress to change in their room. I was alone in mine and I was glad. It was always the same room, looking out into the beech trees on one side, and the big light window to the north, and the shiny chintz curtains were the same that I had always had, and the little comfortable arm-chairs. There was a special jug and basin too—rather too small for general use, but pretty—very fine clear china and hand-painted flowers. Cousin Delia had put it there for me when I was little and I would not have it changed. Now there was a shining brass can of hot water waiting for me and a thick soft towel over it, and Nunky came in to help me dress.

I had a pale yellow dress, very pale yellow and very soft and plain. It was the first time I had worn a low-cut evening gown. The first time too that my hair was to be done up.

Nunky was as pleased dressing me as though she had been dressing a doll. I had yellow stockings and satin shoes too, and Cousin Delia had given me a coloured Spanish shawl, which belonged to Mary Geraldine. It was a beautiful shawl. The colours were a little faded, but still brilliant. It had a creamy background and a quaint intricate pattern of bright flowers upon it; red and pink flowers and bright green leaves.

I sat in front of the looking-glass while Nunky did my hair, and laughed at myself and her, reflected smiling at me in the glass.

My hair was not difficult to do, for it was always curly—a little bit curly, so that it stayed where it was put—and very bright golden brown. I know that it was pretty hair. It is so long ago now, that it is not silly to say so, for it isn’t like that any more.

I was pleased with my hair done up. It looked much nicer, I thought, than just tied behind with a ribbon. And with the stockings and the satin slippers and the dress. I was pleased with my bare neck and arms. I had a dark blue enamel bracelet that was almost black, and a little necklace of yellow topaz, that my father had brought back from India for me when I was a baby.

Then Cousin Delia came in to see me, and she turned me round and round, and then she kissed me, smiling as though she were pleased.

‘Dear heart,’ she said.

I put the Spanish shawl round my shoulders: I loved its many colours and its softness and we went downstairs.

They were mostly there already, standing about in the hall. Hugo was in the furthest corner talking to Anthony Cowper and Faith Vincent. Guy was standing at the foot of the stairs with Claude. They looked up at us as we came down. Cousin Delia came first, and I followed her. The candles were not lit yet, for it was still broad daylight, but the hall seemed filled with light, as though it were illuminated—coming down into it, with its flowers, from the shadow of the stairs. They both looked up at me and smiled.

Guy said:

‘That’s splendid, Helen. You do look nice’—and he too looked pleased.

I laughed and went past them into the hall, and as I passed I heard Claude say to Guy:

‘I say, Guy, that little cousin of yours is a beauty!’

And I felt all warm and glowing, and as though I was stepping on air. I ran across to Hugo, and he turned to look at me.

‘Jolly,’ he said, ‘and that shawl is just right. I love that shawl.’

There was supper first, two long tables in the dining-room; and after supper more people arrived, various neighbours, and the dancing began.

The music was in the drawing-room with the doors open, and we danced in the hall. The floor was polished oak, very smooth and perfect for dancing, and there were chairs at the end for the older people who were there.

Claude came up and asked me to dance, and I said, ‘Oh, the first is for Hugo’—but I danced with him afterwards, three times, and then with Guy.

Guy was the best dancer I know. It was like his riding and his singing and everything he did—a complete mastery and ease, as though it all came naturally to him with no trouble or effort at all.

Hugo was not so perfect, but I loved dancing with him, and we danced together a great deal.

Later the candles were lit, the pale green candles on the wall, but it was not dark outside, hardly twilight, and the big doors were open at each end of the hall, and people went out between the dances and walked about or sat in chairs on the lawn.

Hugo and I went out into the garden. We were hot with dancing and it was cooler outside.

There was a crescent moon, low down still over the walled garden, and a long line of pink sky where the sun had just gone down. There were stars beginning to show, pale stars in the light sky, and the air was very warm and still.

We turned towards the walled garden. Cousin Delia’s roses smelt sweet as we passed them, and we stopped and wandered about on the little flagged paths among the cupids. The tune of the last waltz kept echoing through my head, and my feet seemed to be dancing while we walked.

‘It is too hot to go in for a bit,’ said Hugo, ‘and awfully nice out here.’

And I said:

‘Yes, it is nice out here too.’

The jasmine on the Jasmine Gate smelled strong in the warm air. We stopped to smell it. There was something strange and exciting in the strong scent—all the garden round seemed excited that night, still and expectant and waiting for something, and I was excited, and Hugo. He pushed open the Jasmine Gate and we walked through into the walled garden. A spray of jasmine was hanging down. It caught in my hair as we stepped under it. I put up my hand to pull it away, but I couldn’t at first. Hugo undid it for me. He broke off the spray and gave it to me, and I stuck it into the front of my dress. The Spanish shawl slipped down from my shoulder and Hugo lifted it up. The music had begun in the house again. We could hear it, dimmed by the distance and the high garden wall. Up in the High Wood the owls had begun to call.

I looked up at Hugo and found him looking at me. There was something strange in his eyes that I had never seen before. I felt elated and a little frightened, and still very excited and happy. We stood and looked at each other, without speaking, and then Hugo touched my arm.

‘Oh, Helen, how lovely you are!’ he said suddenly. ‘I never knew you were like this!’

There was an odd excitement in his voice, and his face was very white. He was breathing fast.

A thrill ran through me, and then I was afraid. I looked at Hugo and he looked at me, and I felt his fingers, warm and strange, on my bare arm.

And it seemed to me suddenly that he had become strange himself—that he was not the Hugo I knew at all. I found that I was trembling all over, and could not stop. I could not bear his fingers on my arm. I wanted to pull it away, but I did not dare.

Then Hugo stepped back and took his hand away, and it seemed as though something had snapped. It seemed as though a barrier had come down between us, and we were suddenly very far apart. Something had happened to us that I could not understand. We had become strangers to each other and to ourselves, and for the first time in our lives we were afraid of each other, and shy.

Again I had the sense of a door closing, of time passing and not to be called back. It will never be the same again, never in all our lives, I said to myself, and a sense of complete desolation came over me. It seemed to me then that the best thing in my life had gone irretrievably. We had broken something that could never be mended.

I shivered, and Hugo asked if I was cold.

I said:

‘Yes, a little,’ and we turned back towards the house.

Hugo felt the same as I did, or something like it.

I knew that, and he knew that I knew, but we could not speak of what we felt. For the first time in our lives we had something to hide.

We turned back towards the house, through the Jasmine Gate, and past the rose garden. Francis, the cat, ran silently across the lawn in front of us. Two people were walking about by the statues at the end of the path. I think they were Anthony Cowper and Mary Lacey, but they did not matter. The light streamed out from the windows of the drawing-room, and in a great shaft from the open garden door. The music was stopping again as we reached it, and more couples came out, laughing, and some wiping their faces, for the night was still very warm. Hugo and I went in. We did not dance together again that evening, and the light had gone out for me.

I did not know what I had done, but I felt miserable, and somehow oddly ashamed.

The next day both Hugo and I went back to school.

We did not meet again till the end of the summer, for that August Guy and Hugo went abroad, to France and Italy.

My grandmother came to Yearsly with me, and part of the time the Lacey girls were there, but the place seemed empty and all wrong without Guy and Hugo.

They came back in September only a week before I went back to school, and two other friends of Guy’s came too.

In October Hugo went up to Oxford with Guy, but I did not see them there till the next spring.

PART TWO

‘For if they do these things in a green tree,
what will they do in the dry?’
—_Luke_ xxiii. 31.