XIII
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.