After that the Addingtons invited Walter to their flat. He came
several times, and generally I was there. Sometimes Guy or Hugo
came too, and once Sophia. Ralph Freeman was abroad at the time
in Vienna, and Anthony Cowper had also been abroad.
Mollie talked to Walter about his work at Grey College and his
pupils and the courses they were taking. Mollie could talk to
people about that sort of thing. She did not find it boring,
if it made the conversation easier. That was partly why people
liked Mollie.
But he did not talk to her as he had to me, about the proto-Hittite
script, and the Rosetta Stone. That side of his work was nearer,
I felt, to him than the classes and lectures, and it was somehow
a sort of secret between him and me.
I used to watch Walter when he was talking to Mollie or to George,
and I used to wish he looked different from what he did.
I could not bear the black steel spectacles he wore, and I wished
he would not speak so jerkily, nor come into a room as though
he were afraid.
He was worst, always, when Guy and Hugo were there. He seemed
ludicrous then somehow, like a caricature of himself. He would
say provocative things in a nervous voice, and I could see that
he irritated Guy.
He came for me again at Campden Hill Square, as he had said
he would. Once he took me to a lecture on excavations in Syria. It
was a dull lecture, but it seemed somehow an adventure to be
there with him. It was like walking on a volcano, for I did not
know his mind. I did not know what he would think or say next,
as I did with Guy and Hugo, and with George.
Another time we went for a walk by the Serpentine, and he told
me how he used to go for walks there when he was a little boy,
on Sundays with his mother. He had lived near Earl’s Court all
his life. He still lived there, with his mother. His father had
been a clergyman at some church round there, and had died when
he was five. He had a half-sister much older than himself, who
was headmistress at a school. He had been at St. Paul’s himself.
He was devoted to his mother.
‘She gave all her life to me when my father died,’ he said. ‘She
was with me always and did whatever I did. I can’t think how
children grow up with ordinary mothers, when I think what mine
was to me.
‘We were poor, of course,’ he said. ‘We were always poor. But
I am glad of that. It made us closer together. In a household
with lots of servants, children cannot be close to their mothers,
as I was to mine.’
I thought of Cousin Delia, and disagreed. But I did not interrupt
him. Walter was never easy to interrupt.
‘I owe a great deal to my sister too,’ he said. ‘She helped with
my education. My mother would not have known about that, but
Maud saw that I was well prepared, and that I worked hard. I
don’t think I was idle by nature, but I am grateful to Maud.’
He did not ask me about my childhood. He did not seem to like
it when I spoke of Yearsly. He talked mostly about himself. He
was ambitious, he told me that, and determined to do great things
with his proto-Hittite script.
And all that attracted me in an odd, contrary way. It was so
unlike Hugo—and I thought of Walter as strong because Hugo was
weak, and determined because Hugo was undetermined. I was trying
hard during these weeks to think less well of Hugo. It seems
a long time now, that time with Walter before we were engaged.
It seems strange now, in a way, that Hugo did nothing—but when
I think of the dates I know it was not long at all. It was at
the end of February that Walter came first to Campden Hill, and
he asked me to marry him on the 10th of April.
We had met, I suppose, a dozen times, not more. We did not know
each other at all.
He came to me in the drawing-room at Campden Hill Square. He
had not said that he was coming, and I was not expecting him.
The room was full of tulips from Yearsly, for Cousin Delia sent
them to us every week, and the parcel had just come. It was a
warm sunny day, and the sun streamed in through the window at
the end of the room. I was sitting on the window-seat, and the
window was open. I had been putting the tulips in water. They
were done now. I was gathering up the ends. There was string
and brown paper, and a note from Cousin Delia as well, and the
little stalks and ends of leaves from the tulips.
I was thinking of Yearsly, and Cousin Delia, and not of Walter
at all. I was thinking that I would go down to Yearsly for a
bit; that I would write to Cousin Delia that evening and tell
her I was coming. I had not been there lately even for week-ends.
I would go alone now, without Hugo or Guy, and be there with
Cousin Delia.
And then the door opened and the parlourmaid came in and said:
‘Mr. Sebright to see you, Miss.’
It was a red-haired parlourmaid called Hannah. She had not been
with us very long, and she married a policeman soon afterwards,
soon after I was married.
Walter came in, and she shut the door. It took me a little time
to collect my thoughts—they had been so far from him—and then
I looked at him, and I knew why he had come.
He came into the middle of the room, and stood there. I asked
him to sit down, but he didn’t listen.
He said:
‘I have come to ask you to marry me. I have meant to always,
since the first day that I saw you—at Oxford, in those rooms
in the Broad.
‘I don’t see the good of waiting any longer. You are different
from me, I know that. You are beautiful and bright, like a flower,
and I love you for that. I love you for being what you are. I
am a dull fellow in many ways. I know that too. But I could be
different with you.’ He said it in a jerky, monotonous voice,
as though he had learnt it by heart—and he did not look at me
while he said it.
His eyes were fixed on the floor, about a foot in front of me,
and his hands were clasped behind him. My eyes followed his,
instinctively, and I saw a leaf there—a little leaf that I had
forgotten to pick up. I couldn’t pick it up now.
I had known this was coming sooner or later, but I was not ready.
It was as though I was paralysed and struck dumb—I could not
say anything at all.
And then he looked up suddenly and our eyes met. His were all
alight—those pale blue eyes of his behind the steel spectacles.
I had never seen them like this before, and his voice shook now
when he spoke.
‘I don’t suppose it is any use,’ he said. ‘I never thought it
was. But I had to tell you—it can’t hurt you to be told.’