XI
And then Sophia Lane Watson came back. It seems odd now to think of that time without her, and then her coming back. She had mattered so much to me before, and now again in a different way, and in between she had not mattered at all.
It began in that Poetry Shop near Leicester Square. I was there with Hugo, looking at books, and I found a book on the shelf of new publications. Verses, by Sophia Watson. I was looking at the verses without thinking of her, for Sophia Watson seemed different somehow from Lane Watson, and then as I read the verses they reminded me of her. They reminded me of the poetry she used to write at school, and I suddenly wondered if it could be the same. I showed the book to Hugo, and he started to read it, and then he went on and on.
There was a great shaft of sunlight with dust in it—motes of dust floating in it; it shone through the little window high up at the back of the shop and across the foreign books in paper covers that were there, and on to Hugo, and I watched him as he read and felt pleased I had shown him the book, for he always found the new books as a rule.
‘By Jove,’ he said at length. ‘This is jolly stuff. Do you say you know the woman? Sophia Watson? I don’t remember her.’
‘She was at Ellsfield—at school you know. Don’t you remember, she came to Yearsly once? She was a great friend of mine then—at least I think this must be the same.’ Hugo puckered his brows.
‘Oh, a little dark thing. I believe I remember her. Was that her name?’
‘I wonder where she is now,’ I said. ‘I think I shall write to her again.’ I felt suddenly that I should like to see her.
Hugo bought the book, and I wrote to her and addressed the letter care of her publishers.
It was over a week before I had an answer. Then it was an answer very like her.
‘Dear Helen,—
‘Thank you for your letter. It was kind of you to write. I am glad you liked my poems. I don’t know if they are good. I am living in London now and this is my address.
‘Yours sincerely,
‘Sophia Watson.’
It was like a child’s letter, so stiff and abrupt, and it made me laugh. I invited her to tea at Campden Hill, and Hugo and Mollie to meet her.
She was very like what she had been as a child, but I think less striking. Her hair was up, of course, and did not look so much and so black, and it mattered more now she was grown up that she was so badly dressed.
She was wearing a cotton dress that afternoon—a lilac check that might have been quite nice, but it was all washed out and hung down behind in a tail, as her skirts used to do at school, and she had a green straw hat that did not go with it at all, and grey stockings and brown shoes.
She was very stiff and polite when she came in. Grandmother spoke to her first; she remembered her coming to lunch when we were little, and she had known her father long ago, she said. She smiled at me, but gravely, in a distant sort of way.
She said:
‘It is a long time since we have met, but I should have known you again.’
‘And I you,’ I said. ‘I am sure I should.’
Grandmother laughed at us.
‘What, six years, is it, or five? I should hope you would remember.’
I laughed too. I said:
‘Six years is a great deal at our time of life.’
Sophia smiled. ‘It seems a very long time,’ she said.
Hugo was watching her, but he did not say much. He never spoke to people about their poetry or pictures or things they did, unless he knew them well.
It was impertinent, he used to say—like talking about their feelings for their husbands or wives.
George said that was a mistake—that out of every ten authors nine at least liked to talk about their own works.
I never wrote myself, or painted, and I don’t know which is true in general, but I am sure that with Sophia, Hugo was quite right.
She seemed to unfreeze after a bit, when she saw we were not going to talk about her book.
She was living by herself, she said, in rooms near Sloane Square.
‘Not far from us,’ said Mollie. ‘You must come and see us. Do come and see us.’
Sophia said she would like to come, and Mollie gave her their address.
‘Come to supper on Thursday,’ she said. ‘Can you? Just my brother and me.’
And Sophia said she would.
‘A funny, quiet, little person,’ said Grandmother when she had gone. ‘Not at all like her father, as I remember him.’
‘Oh, not quiet—wild,’ said Hugo. ‘Like a wild animal in a cage.’
‘I think she was very shy,’ said Mollie, ‘but I liked her.’
‘She was wild when she was at school,’ I said. ‘Wild underneath, I mean’; and I wondered how Hugo had seen so much in so short a time. But that was like Hugo.