XXVI
Walter took me to see his sister Maud. She was the headmistress of a school at Lessingham; a County Secondary School.
We travelled by train for nearly two hours; we were to spend the night with Maud, at the school.
We sat opposite to each other in the train; we had two corner seats.
I thought:
‘It will be like this when I am married to Walter. We shall travel together always. How funny that will be!’
Walter had bought me newspapers at the station. He bought a lot of them and put them on the seat beside me; there was Vogue, and Colour, and the Daily Mirror; and I laughed.
I said:
‘I should not have thought you would buy papers like this. Have you ever bought any of these before?’
Walter laughed too.
He said:
‘No, of course not; I have never had any one to buy them for, before.’
He had no newspaper himself; he did not read them; he had told me that before. He took out a German book, Der Hittitische Kult, and began to read it, but soon he put it down. I was looking at him, and now he looked at me.
He said:
‘Not even that, when you are here. I wonder if you know how much that means?’
He leaned across, and took my hands in his.
He said:
‘Perhaps, you will make me human. Perhaps I shall be quite different when I am married to you.’
I bent forward too and kissed his forehead; I felt curiously moved.
I thought:
‘Perhaps, he really needs me; perhaps I have something to give him that he really wants . . . beyond mere falling in love.’
I felt that there were depths in him I had not fathomed.
I thought:
‘Can I do it? Am I what he thinks me?’
And then I thought:
‘Perhaps I shall love him more than any one, in time.’
People got into the train at the next station. Walter talked to me about his sister Maud.
He said:
‘I hope so much you will like her’; and I felt behind his words, the hope, more doubtful, that she might like me.
He said:
‘She is a very remarkable woman; she took a i.i. at Cambridge, you know, that is not common for women, and she did it all herself. She was only seventeen when my father died. She was at school then, of course, and insisted on staying on. My mother would have taken her away, I think, and gone to live in the country, but Maud was right. She said it was better for us all, to keep her on at school, and at college too; she would earn more in the end, and of course she was right. She paid her own way with scholarships, all the way up, just as I did afterwards, and she helped with me too. She kept me up to the mark, and my mother too. My mother was inclined to spoil me. She thought I was delicate and that the work at St. Paul’s was too much for me, but Maud insisted on my working hard, and again, I am sure she was right. She is not so gentle as my mother, of course, nor so affectionate, but I admire her very much, and I am grateful to her.’
I said:
‘I don’t expect she will approve of me!’
Walter hesitated.
‘Not quite, at first, perhaps, but you mustn’t mind that. She does judge people on their merits, really, in the end, though sometimes she is prejudiced at first.’
I was afraid that I should not like Maud, and I was sure that she would not like me.