“I am going to school in the autumn,” Hugo said at last, and
his voice sounded muffled as though it came from a long way off,
and was not his.
It was like being shot—like the world stopping. I sat straight
up again; even so the grass came level with my head.
I could not realize it at first; it seemed too dreadful to believe;
and then a blind resistance came over me, an unreasoning impulse
to protect him from this unbearable thing. I felt much older
and stronger than Hugo and very fierce.
I snuggled down beside him and put my arm round his neck. He
seemed suddenly very little and helpless, with no one in the
world to protect him except me.
‘You shan’t go, Hugo,’ I was saying. ‘I won’t let them. . . .
They mustn’t do it.’
Hugo shook his head.
‘It is no good, Helen,’ he said. ‘I shall have to go. I don’t
want to. I am afraid of it—and nothing will ever be the same
any more.’
I thought he was crying, but he wasn’t, for he sat up then and
looked at me.
His face was quite white and his eyes that were always big and
dark looked bigger and darker. His whole face looked pinched
and tragic as though he saw and understood so much beyond this
one thing.
And I realized suddenly, for the first time, the relentlessness
of time and the inevitability of change. I understood that I
could not resist, and what that meant.
Something was passing, a door was closing, and nothing in the
world could hold it open. Hugo was helpless, and I was helpless;
and every one. We could not stand still and we could not go back;
and what we had had, we could never have again.
I shut my eyes very tight and tried to understand, and a queer
feeling came over me that in one moment more I would understand
everything—the secret of life and the universe—something unutterably
splendid and complete, but the moment passed, the secret receded.
It had gone, and I could not grasp it; only the sense of helplessness
remained, and of inevitability.
‘Is this growing up?’ I asked Hugo.
And he nodded.
‘I think it is the beginning of growing up,’ he said.
We sat very still for a long time, holding hands and not speaking.
The butterflies had fluttered away, but the sun shone just as
brightly; birds were singing in the willows by the stream, and
somewhere up by the house the dogs were barking.
‘Can you bear it, Hugo?’ I asked at last.
And he answered:
‘I don’t know. They will try and take away my inside world, and
perhaps they will take it away, and then what can I do?’