I don’t believe now that Hugo was in love with Sophia. His relation
to her was an intellectual one. He was fond of her, and very
intimate with her in a certain way, and she did have a great
influence in his life, yet in one way he was more like an elder
brother. We all treated him rather as though he were a dear,
precious child, even I, who was younger than him, felt always
as though I must protect him and defend him from something. He
protected her, and although he read the books she recommended
and went to the meetings she liked, she seemed to look up to
him and depend on him in a different way from us.
I did not see all this at the time. I see it more clearly now;
I am less prejudiced, and less entangled, and much less afraid.
It is fear, I think, that spoils everything. If one was never
afraid one would make no mistakes. George said that once, and
I think again that George was right.
I tried very hard to be fair to Sophia, to look at her impartially
and judge her suitable or not. I felt sure that Hugo would marry
her, and I wanted to be glad, but I could not. I don’t suppose
I could have been satisfied with any one for him; I loved him
too much. If it had been Mollie I should have felt different
about it. But Mollie was for Guy—that was settled.
Sophia was not beautiful enough for Hugo, nor comfortable enough.
I could not imagine her in a home of her own, and Hugo coming
back to her in the evening and being happy. He would not want
always to read Turgueniev, and books about people who were hanged.
There was a book called _The Seven that Were Hanged_: Sophia gave
it to me for my birthday, and I hated it. She understood one
side of Hugo, better perhaps than I did, but there was another
side, the more personal side, that she would never understand.
And then I would be angry with myself and miserable.
I went for long walks by myself at this time. It was the autumn
now. We had been at Yearsly and come back. Sophia had come too
for a week. She had fitted in better than I expected, and I thought
that Cousin Delia liked her.
Now it was October.
‘Very soon, now, they will be engaged,’ I thought, and wished
almost that it would be soon.
I went for a walk in Kensington Gardens and tried to think it
out. The gardeners were sweeping up the leaves—yellow leaves
of lime trees and planes.
‘It is my own fault,’ I kept saying to myself. ‘I have spoilt
it all myself.’
My relation to Hugo had been perfect once—a beautiful, almost
a holy thing. He had been my brother and something more, for
there was a freedom, an element of choice, which would not have
been there if we were really brother and sister; and now it was
as though I had made claims upon him that I had hardly realized
myself. I felt hurt by him and injured, though he had done me
no injury. ‘It is not his fault,’ I thought, ‘that he wants other
people besides me, and I want only him. That is quite natural.
It is only my feeling like this that is wrong’; and I felt ashamed
and unhappy.