Scenes stand out to me from those school-time years.
Chiefly in summer. The summer holidays were longer—and the summer
days at Yearsly were lovelier than anywhere else.
The sound of the mowing machine in the clear mornings; haymaking
along the grass hill below the wood;—tossing the hay and playing
in it; romping in the little ‘pikes’ of hay with the dogs. One
hot afternoon in particular—it must have been late in August,
for they were cutting the corn in the field beyond the willows—paddling
in the stream while Guy fished.
Then there were agricultural shows; one in particular I remember,
when Guy rode his pony in a jumping competition and won the second
prize.
That must have been September, for the corn was cut in nearly
all the fields. We drove, Hugo and I, with Cousin Delia in the
dog-cart. Guy had ridden over earlier with Cousin John. It was
at Shelbury, nearly nine miles away, and we had tea in a tent
at the show, and wandered round the field and looked at the horses
and the cows—Cousin John was showing his Jersey cows—and flowers
in a big marquee and cheeses and butter and eggs. There was the
noise of the farmers talking, and the soft stamping noise of
the horses, and lowing of cows, and the hot strong sunlight over
everything; and then the excitement when Guy’s competition came
on. He had a grey pony called Griselda, and he rode very well.
Hugo and I were breathless with anxiety when it touched the bar
once and knocked it down. But there were two chances, and the
second time he cleared it. When he rode up to us afterwards with
his blue badge we were desperately proud of him, and some of
the farmers came and congratulated him, for the boy who won the
first prize was much older than Guy, and they were very close.
Afterwards we drove back in the cool of the evening, and all
along the road there were people coming away from the show, and
cattle and horses, and carts, and some called out good night
to us as we passed, and we felt how nice they all were; and when
we had turned off the main road on our way to Yearsly, the horses’
hooves sounded on the road in the stillness, and we heard the
rooks cawing over the trees in the High Wood, and saw them wheeling
in great circles, getting ready for bed; and we saw the smoke
going up very straight into the sky before we could see the house;
and we were very happy.
Walter laughed at me when I first told him that I liked agricultural
shows. He thought I was joking. It seemed to him, he said, an
impossible thing to like. But I do and always have. We went to
them often at Yearsly.
Guy was in the first eleven at Winchester. He sang and he danced,
and he rode, and he shot, and he fished, and he played tennis—all
well. Hugo and I did most of these things too, but not as Guy
did. It seemed at that time that there was nothing Guy could
not do. He was handsome too, not taller than Hugo, but much stronger
and browner, and he held himself better, and walked as though
the earth belonged to him. His eyes were grey—very merry eyes—and
his hair bright brown. Every one loved Guy. Hugo worshipped him.
He said:
“There is no one in the world like Guy. He can do everything.”
One had the feeling about Guy that the world must be his to do
what he liked with; that he could do or have whatever he set
his heart on. He threw his head right back when he laughed, and
opened his mouth very wide. Anyone who heard Guy laugh was bound
to laugh too. You could not help it; it made the world full of
laughter.
He used to sing with Cousin Delia a great deal. His voice was
a pleasure to her, and his love for the songs she loved.
I remember them singing the ‘Agnus Dei’ from Mozart’s Third Mass
one winter evening in the long drawing-room. Guy looked so tall
and big in the lamplight, and Cousin Delia so happy; and he let
himself go and sang with all his might. It was exciting and wonderful.
Sometimes people came to stay—various cousins and second cousins—and
sometimes Guy and Hugo brought friends back from Winchester;
but most of them did not count very much.
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.