XX
I did not speak to Mollie about Walter at first, nor to Hugo. It was almost a week before I saw Hugo again and then we were all together, and Sophia was there too. We were going to a concert, a Mozart concert at the Queen’s Hall. We did not go to dances so often since Sophia came, because she couldn’t dance. I danced with George and Guy sometimes, Mollie and I, without Hugo; but of course that was not the same thing.
The concert was lovely. It made us all happy. I felt that I had been horrid to Sophia, and that I would be nicer.
We went back to Hugo’s rooms and had coffee. It looked very pleasant, Hugo’s room that night, with the fire flickering on the low ceiling and the blue curtains and the charioteer.
Hugo said:
‘That music does one good. People could not be bad-tempered or fussed or worried if they heard some Mozart played every day before they got up.’
Guy hummed an Aria from Don Giovanni, a bit we had heard.
‘That is about the most perfect thing of all,’ he said.
Mollie was pouring out the coffee; she always did that part.
‘I think sometimes,’ said Sophia, ‘that music is all wrong, and poetry too, and all that we call art. I wonder sometimes if it isn’t all a kind of dope that we make for ourselves because we can’t face life; and it seems all pointless then.’
I said:
‘How odd that you should say that. It is almost what Mr. Sebright said.’
‘Sebright?’ said George. ‘When did he talk about it?’
‘I went to the British Museum with him the other day.’ I tried to say it nonchalantly, but I felt self-conscious, and that vexed me, for why shouldn’t I go with him? ‘He says Greek vases are like faces without souls.’
‘So they are,’ said George.
Hugo said:
‘No, they are not at all like that. They are more like souls without faces—impersonal and rather cold. Why did you go there?’ he asked abruptly.
And I said:
‘Because he asked me to. It was very interesting there.’
‘I don’t suppose he would care for vases,’ said Hugo, ‘or statues. He would like just objects of interest. Did you like them?’
I felt then that I could not discuss Walter, nor repeat what he had said, even what he had said while Mr. Furze was there. I felt suddenly that they were all hostile, my own dear people, and that Walter had somehow put his trust in me.
I said:
‘I did when he explained them to me.’
Guy said:
‘I should not have expected him to explain very well.’
‘Who is Mr. Sebright?’ asked Sophia. ‘Was that the man we met at the Roman Camp?’
‘Yes,’ said Mollie. ‘He is an archæologist.’
‘Epigraphist,’ corrected George.
Sophia said:
‘I liked him. He was a wild man.’
Guy said:
‘Oh, not at all wild. Quite a model young man—no vices and a credit to his college.’
Sophia said:
‘I didn’t mean wild in that way. More fanatical—or ruthless—I meant—as though he would be burned alive for something quite foolish—or burn other people.’
Sophia understood him better than the others, I thought, and I liked Sophia for it.
‘We might see Sebright some time,’ said George. ‘He is here now, isn’t he, at the Grey College?’