Hugo and George went in for their examinations. George got a
first and Hugo a second.
Walter was in for the same examination; I remember seeing his
name in the list.
After that they were in London for the Civil Service Examination.
George did well in that too, but Hugo did not. His name was a
long way down in the list, and they said he might not get a post
at all. Cousin John was worried about it.
‘I don’t want him to get into some side show,’ he said. ‘He had
better give it up and try for something else.’
But Hugo said he would like to wait and see. He furnished the
two rooms that Guy had kept for him.
He had his Delphic Charioteer, and his Umbrian Madonna, and the
blue curtains and the grey chairs. It was very like his room
in Oxford had been. That autumn was a happier time. We were all
together again.
George got a post in the Treasury before Christmas, and he set
up house with Mollie in Cheyne Walk. They had the two top floors
of a house, far along where the river is wide, near the four
chimneys. Mollie worked in her laboratory in the mornings, and
sometimes after lunch as well. She was writing a thesis on enzymes.
It seemed funny always to me that Mollie should do that sort
of thing, but she liked it, and it never seemed to use up her
soul as I have seen it do since, with other people.
Mollie cared really far more about George and about Guy than
she did for all her science, and about me and Hugo too, and she
did not pretend not to.
‘I do the biology too,’ she said, ‘because it interests me and
I have plenty of time. If I had not plenty of time I should not
do it.’
‘The perfect dilettante,’ Walter called her, when I told him
that. ‘How much value will her biology be, treated like that?’
And I said:
‘I don’t know about the biology, but she is of value. She is
one of the most perfectly balanced people I know.’
And Walter did not deny it, for he liked Mollie.
X
Hugo joined a society of New Poets. They used to meet and read
poetry aloud in a room behind Leicester Square. Hugo was interested
in metres. He used to spend days in the British Museum reading
old Renaissance poets who did tricks with metres, and he started
to translate the Greek Anthology. Some of his verses, were, I
think, very beautiful, and George thought so too. But he wanted
to do more than that. He had not found He had not yet what he
wanted to do.
In February he had an offer of work in the Inland Revenue. He
refused it, and gave up the idea of the Civil Service. He thought
again at this time of a post in a museum, and began to qualify
for that.
I was learning dancing now, with a Russian lady called Ivanovna,
who had been in the Russian ballet. I loved those lessons, and
they filled in the time when Mollie was at work. I should like
to have done some definite work too, but I did not know what
to do, and I was happy just waiting and being alive.
That spring and summer we were very gay, and our party had grown
larger now, for Anthony Cowper had work in London too, at the
Chancery Bar, and Ralph Freeman was in the Foreign Office, and
we all enjoyed ourselves. We danced a great deal. We all liked
dancing.
And Ralph Freeman had a sister Daphne who used to come too, when
we liked; and we went to theatres, almost always in the pit,
and to races in Anthony Cowper’s car. Sometimes I rode with Guy
in the Park before breakfast, and sometimes we went down to Richmond
and had supper on the river in punts.
Often we went to Yearsly for the week-end, and Yearsly was always
the same, and Cousin Delia always the same.
I think of that summer often when I am in London in June; the
scent of limes and chestnut trees, and dust, and the fresh green
of the trees, and the watering carts in the streets, and people
coming out of houses in new clothes, pretty summer clothes, light-hearted
people as we were then. Hugo had a lavender-coloured tie that
summer, and George used to chaff him about it; and Guy had a
light grey suit; George said it was too light a grey. Walter
used to say that they must have spent a great deal of money on
clothes, but I don’t think they did. Their clothes amused them,
among other things. So did my clothes and Mollie’s, and we saw
no harm in that. I see no harm even now.
It was like the old days at Yearsly in one way. We lived in the
present. We did not look ahead much or wonder what was going
to happen. The days passed so quickly, one behind the other.
It was the long hot summer of 1911. Life was very full and very
sweet.