VII
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.