She was standing in the ‘girls’ hall when I saw her first. It was the first day of the summer term, and everything was in a bustle: the noise and uncomfortableness of arrivals; girls rushing about everywhere and shouting to each other, and slapping each other on the back or kissing, according to the ‘set’ they belonged to. How I did hate those ‘first days’ at school!
I had come by a different train from most of the others—I don’t remember why—and drove up from the station alone. They had taken my luggage in, and I walked in by myself; and there I saw Sophia Lane Watson, standing quite still by the fireplace in the ‘girls’ hall.’ She was quite alone, not talking to anyone, nor reading; just standing still and watching all the hurrying about, quite impassively, with a perfectly expressionless face. She did not look shy or frightened or unhappy—just quite detached—and that interested me. She was a striking-looking child too, with her very big eyes and her straight black hair, and her very white face. Her eyes always looked so dark, much darker than mine or even Hugo’s; but they were not black or brown when you saw them close, only grey, sometimes almost green. She was medium height and very thin, and her hands and feet were too big; but rather beautifully made. Her clothes always looked as though they were falling off her; her skirt was always crooked, sagging down in a tail, either behind or at one side. She was certainly not pretty, though I still think she was prettier at that time than afterwards. Perhaps it was only that her queerness was more attractive in a child.
She certainly did attract me. I know I stopped then, on my way through the hall, and looked at her, and she looked at me perfectly stonily, without any change of expression. Then I went upstairs to my room and found the three other girls in it, all talking and sitting on their beds, and I had to stay and talk to them a few minutes while I took off my things; but when I came downstairs again, I went straight up to Sophia and asked her her name. She was still standing exactly as I had left her.
She answered rather slowly:
‘Sophia Lane Watson.’ Her voice was rather deep; a curious voice.
Then I asked her age, and she told me she was thirteen. She was not very easy to talk to, for she merely answered my questions and volunteered nothing. But I persevered, and offered to take her round the school, and show her the classrooms, and afterwards we went into the garden and walked round the playing field, and we sat together at tea.
She told me that she lived at Salchester, that her father was a Canon of the Cathedral, that she had two brothers and one sister, and that she had never been at school before.
I don’t know why, but I felt curiously consoled by her having come. The utter blankness of that first day, the blocks of bread at tea, the noise and hurry and ugliness, seemed less unbearable than usual, and I had a feeling when I went to bed that evening that something important, pleasantly important, had happened.
IX
Sophia Lane Watson and I made friends. It was a rather odd friendship, never very intimate. I used to doubt sometimes if she could be intimate with anybody. She seemed to live her own life inside a sort of fortress, and although she would open the door a little way, she never opened it wide and let one really in. And for me, any friendship at school was a subsidiary thing, not comparable really to my friendship for Guy and Hugo.