That Summer, Walter was appointed to a Readership at Oxford.
It was a better post than the one he had before, at Grey College,
and he was glad to get it.
He said:
‘I shall have time at last to write my book.’
And so we left our house in Hampstead, and I was glad to leave
it. It looked shabbier and more forlorn when we left it, than
when we came. For a time, when we lived there first, it had been
better; when the garden was in order, and the bulbs came up in
the Spring; but the grass was all ragged again now, and I had
planted no bulbs that Autumn. The paint we had put on, inside
the house, was chipped and scratched already. Outside, it had
never been done as we had meant to do it, and the extra wear
and dirt of six years was over everything. The bath was more
worn than ever, for we had not had it re-enamelled, and the greasy
patch on the wall, behind the cedar mop, was bigger and darker.
I was glad to go, and I did not mind much where we went. There
were schools for the children in Oxford, and Walter longed to
be there.
He said:
‘It is the only place where people think.’
I did not find that at all, but I suppose that they thought about
different things.
We went down to Oxford and looked at houses. We did not enjoy
looking at them as we had the first time. We stayed at the hotel,
where Mollie and I had stayed with Cousin Delia for our Commemoration
dance. It seemed quite different now, and all the town seemed
different from what it used to seem when Guy and Hugo were at
college and we used to come and see them. We looked at a great
many houses and at last we took this one, where we live now.
It is strange to me to realize that we have lived here, already,
almost twice as long as we lived at Hampstead; so much was happening
then and so little now; one year is like another now, only the
children grow bigger, and we grow older, and I suppose it will
go on, just like this, until we die.
We moved to Oxford in November, just a year after the Armistice.
We moved our furniture and our pictures and our books, and put
them into new places in the new house. I put the alabaster bowl
on the new chimney-piece, and the candlesticks that George and
Mollie had given me. They looked all wrong in this room with
the ornate chimney-piece and the coloured panes in the window.
And I thought:
‘What does it matter? What does anything matter now?’
Cousin Delia sent me Hugo’s statue of the Delphic charioteer,
and I put it in the corner, on a shelf all to itself just as
Hugo used to have it in his room at Clifford’s Inn; our room
was not like his even when that was there, but I liked to have
it there.
People came to call on me, a great many people. They meant to
be kind to me, I knew that. They wanted me to join all sorts
of societies and to do all sorts of things. They asked me if
I was musical; if I took an interest in politics, or infant welfare.
And it seemed to me, when they asked me that I was not interested
in anything at all.
They thought so too, I think.
Walter was vexed with me. He said that I ought to make friends
with some of the ladies that came to see me; he said they would
think me stuck up, that I gave myself airs. I didn’t understand
how they could think that. I don’t now. Walter said that I would
find that I had lots of things in common with some of them, if
only I would try, and I expect that is quite true, but somehow
I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t make the effort. I felt then, and
I still do, as though there were no room for new people in my
life any more. I should never care for new friends as I did for
the old ones. When one has had the best of all, second best seems
not worth having.
Mollie came to see us. She helped me with the house; we arranged
the books together, and the pictures, and all the little things.
She stayed a little longer, and I thought:
‘There is still Mollie . . . if she can go on, I can.’
But she could not stay long. She was going to work again at her
Biological institute, and she had to go back. She said she would
come again, she said she would often come, and she does come,
and stay with us quite often. Even Walter is glad when she comes;
he says it is her intellectual interests that have kept her so
sweet and serene; he calls it so intelligent. I should not put
it in that way, I think it is something much deeper and more
fundamental in Mollie, than her interest in biology, that makes
her what she is; but it does not matter much what we call it,
we mean, really, the same thing. And often when she is not there,
when I am discouraged and downhearted, and wonder if it is worth
while going on, I think of Mollie, as I do of Cousin Delia, and
I am ashamed of my own poorness of spirit, and I think again,
how wonderful they are.