WYCHFORD RECTORY OXON.
Wednesday.
I am writing to you at my desk. I began this morning but it was time to go out when I began. Now it's after tea. Margaret came in just now and said I looked all crinkled up like a shell: it's because I simply don't know how to write to you. I have read your letter over and over and over again. I never thought there could be such a wonderful letter in the world. But I feel very sorry for poor Richard who can't write letters as exquisite as yours. I really feel miserable about him. And this letter to you makes me feel miserable because I can't write letters even as well as Richard. Mother was glad you thought of going to Oxford because she says we are a great responsibility to her. Isn't she sweet? She really is you know. So I talked to Father myself very seriously. I explained to him that I was quite old enough to know my own mind, and he listened to all the things I told him about you. He said he supposed it was innevvitable, which looks very funny somehow. Are you laughing at my spelling? And then he said it was nothing to do with him. So of course I rushed off to Mother and told her and when you come back we are to be allowed to go out twice a week and in three more months we can be engaged properly. Are you happy? Only, dear Guy, Mother doesn't want you to come back till my birthday. She thinks the idea of you and me will be better when Father has got an Iris Lorti or some name like that. He has never had a flower of it before and he's so excited about it's coming out just when my birthday is. Every day he goes down and pinches the stalk of it. He says it's the loveliest flower in the world and grows on Mount Lebanon. So if it comes out on my birthday, you and I can certainly be engaged in August. Guy, I do hate my handwriting.
Your loving Pauline.
It was a letter of gloriously good news, thought Guy, though he was a little disappointed not to have had the thrill of Pauline's endearment. Then, on the blank outside page, he saw scrawled in writing that went tumbling head over heels down the paper: My darling Guy, I love you and underneath I have kissed the letter for you.
The sentence died out in faint ink that seemed to show forth the whisper in which it had been written. For Guy the tumbledown letters were written in fire; and with the treasure in his heart of that small sentence, read a hundred times, he did not know how he should endure ten long days without Pauline, and in this old college garden, on this sedate and academic lawn, he cried out that he adored her as if indeed she were beside him in this laylocked air. At the sound of his voice the birds close at hand were all silent: they might have stopped to listen. Then a green-finch called 'sweet! sweet!', whose gentle and persistent proclamation was presently echoed by all the other birds twittering together again in the confused raptures of their Spring.
The days with Michael at St. Giles went by slowly enough, and their fairness was a wasted boon. Guy wrote many long letters to Pauline and received from her another letter in which she began with 'My dearest' as he had begged her. Yet when he read the herald vocative, he wished he had not tried to alter that old abrupt opening, for never again would she write in the faint ink of shyness such a sentence as had tumbled down the back of her first letter.
Michael seemed to divine that he was in love, and Guy wondered why he could not tell him about it. Once or twice he nearly brought himself to the point, but the thought of describing Pauline kept him mute: Michael must see her first. The canoe would be ready at the end of the week, and Guy announced he should paddle it up to Wychford, travelling from the Isis to the upper Thames and from the upper Thames turning aside at Oldbridge to follow the romantic course of the Greenrush even to his own windows.
"Rather fun," said Michael. "If the weather stays all right."
"By Jove," Guy exclaimed, "I believe it was at Oldbridge Inn that I first met you."
"On May Day three years ago," Michael agreed.
And, thought Guy with a compassionate feeling for mere friendship, what a much more wonderful May Day should be this when Pauline was twenty. There was now her birthday present to buy, and Guy set out on the quest of it with as much exaltation as Percival may have sought the Holy Grail. He wished it were a ring he could buy for her; and indeed ultimately he could not resist a crystal set on a thin gold circlet that she, his rose of girls, would wear like a dewdrop. This ring, however, could not be his formal gift, but it would have to be offered when they were alone, and it must be worn nowhere but in the secret country they haunted with their love. The ring, uncostly as it was, took nearly all Guy's spare money, and he decided to buy a book for her, because in Oxford bookshops he still had accounts running. The April afternoon wore away while in his own particular bookshop kept by Mr. Brough, an ancient man with a white beard, he took down from the shelves volume after volume. At last he found a small copy of Blake's Lyrics bound in faded apple-green calf and tooled in a golden design of birds, berries and daisies. This must be for Pauline, he decided, since someone must have known the pattern of that nursery wall-paper and, loving it, have wished it to be recorded more endurably. What more exquisite coincidence could assure him that this book was meant for Pauline? Yet he was half-jealous of the unknown designer who had thought of something of which himself might have thought. Oh, yes, this must be for Pauline; and, as Guy rescued it from the dust and darkness of the old shop, he ascribed to the green volume an emotion of relief and was half-aware of promising to it a new and dearer owner who with cherishing would atone for whatever misfortune had brought it to these gloomy shelves.
Next morning, when Guy was ready to start, Michael presented him with a glazier's diamond pencil.
"When you fall in love, Guy, this will serve to scribble sonnets to your lady on the lattices of Plashers Mead. I shall probably come there myself when term's over."
"I wish you'd come and live there with me," said Guy in a last effort to persuade Michael. "You see, if you shared the house, it wouldn't cost so much."
"Perhaps I will," said Michael. "Who knows? I wonder what your Rectory people would think of me."
"Oh, Pauline would like you. Pauline's the youngest, you know," added Guy. "And I'm pretty certain you'd like Monica."
Michael laughed.
"Really, Guy, I must tell them in Balliol that, since you went down, you've become an idle matchmaker. Good-bye."
"Good-bye. You're sure you won't mind the fag of forwarding my bicycle? I'll send you a postcard from Oldbridge."
Guy, although there was still more than a week before he would see Pauline, felt, as he hurried towards the boat-builder's moorings, that he would see her within an hour, such airy freedom did the realization of being on his way give to his limbs.
The journey to Wychford seemed effortless, for whatever the arduousness of a course steadily upstream, it was nullified by the knowledge that every time the paddle was dipped into the water it brought him by his own action nearer to Pauline. A railway journey would have given him none of this endless anticipation, travelling through what at this time of the year before the season of boating was a delicious solitude. Guy could sing all the way if he wished, for there was nothing but buttercups and daisies, lambs and meadows and greening willows to overlook his progress. He glided beneath ancient bridges and rested at ancient inns, nearer every night to Pauline. Scarcely had such days a perceptible flight, and were not May Morning marked in flame on his mind's calendar, he could have forgotten time in this slow undated diminution.
O, stay and hear; your true love's coming,
That can sing both high and low:
Trip no further, pretty sweeting;
Journeys end in lovers meeting,
Every wise man's son doth know.
This was the song Guy flung before his prow to the vision of Pauline leading him.
Present mirth hath present laughter;
What's to come is still unsure:
In delay there lies no plenty;
Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty,
Youth's a stuff will not endure.
This was the song that Guy felt Shakespeare might have written to suit his journey now, as he paddled higher and higher up the stream that flowed toward Shakespeare's own country.
The banks of the Greenrush were narrower than the banks of the Thames: and all the way they were becoming narrower, and all the way the stream was running more swiftly against him. It was Sunday evening when he reached Plashers Mead; and so massively welded was the sago on his Sheraton table that Guy wondered if Miss Peasey to be ready for his arrival had not cooked it a week ago. But what did sago matter, when in his place there was laid a note from Pauline?
My dearest,
I've had all your letters and I've been very frightened you'd be drowned. To-morrow you've got to come to breakfast because I always have breakfast in the garden on my birthday unless it pours. I'm going to church at eight. I love you a thousand times more and I will tell you so to-morrow and give you twenty kisses.
Your own
Pauline.
Do you like 'your own' better than 'your loving'?
Guy went to bed very early and resolved to wake at dawn that he might have the hours of the morning for thoughts of Pauline on her birthday.
It was after dawn when Guy woke, for he had fallen asleep very tired after his week on the river; still it was scarcely six when he came down into the orchard, and the birds were singing as Guy thought he had never heard them sing before. The apple trees were already frilled with a foam of blossom; and on quivering boughs linnets with breasts rose-burnt by the winds of March throbbed out their carol. Chaffinches with flashing prelude of silver wings flourished a burst of song that broke as with too intolerable a triumph: then sought another tree and poured forth the triumphant song again. Thrushes, blackbirds and warblers quired deep-throated melodies against the multitudinous trebles of those undistinguished myriads that with choric paean saluted May; and on sudden diminuendoes could be heard the rustling canzonets of the goldfinches, rising and falling with reedy cadences.
Guy launched his canoe, which crushed the dewy young grass in its track and laded the morning with one more fragrance. He paddled down the mill-stream and, landing presently in the Rectory paddock now in full blow with white and purple irises, he went through the wicket into the garden. When he reached the lily-pond the birds on the lawn flew away and left it green and empty. He stood entranced, for the hush of the morning lay on the house, and in the wistaria Pauline's window dreamed, wide open. Deep in the shrubberies the birds still twittered incessantly. Why was he not one of these birds, that he might light upon her sill? Upon Guy's senses stole the imagination of a new fragrance, that was being shed upon the day by that wide-open window; a fragrance that might be of flowers growing by the walks of her dreams. And surely in those flowery dreams he was beside her, since he had lost all sense of being still on earth. A bee flew out from Pauline's room, an enviable bee which had been booming with indefinite motion for how long round and round the white tulips on her sill. Presently another bee flew in; and Guy's fancy, catching hold of its wings hovered above Pauline where she lay sleeping. So sharp was the emotion he had of entering with the bee, that he was aware of brushing back her light brown hair to lean down and kiss her forehead; and when the belfry-clock clanged he was startled to find himself back upon this green and empty lawn. He must not stay here in front of her window, because if she woke and came in her white nightgown to greet the day, she would be shy to see him standing here. Reluctantly Guy turned away and would have gone out again by the wicket in the wall, if he had not come face to face with Birdwood.
"I think I'm a bit early," he said in some embarrassment.
"Yes, I think you are a bit early, sir," the gardener agreed.
"Breakfast won't be till about half past eight?" Guy suggested.
"And it's just gone the half of six," said Birdwood.
"Would you like to see my canoe?" Guy asked.
Birdwood looked round the lawn, seeming to imply that, such was Guy's liberty of behaviour, he half expected to see it floating on the lily-pond.
"Where is it then?" he asked.
Guy took him through the paddock to where the canoe lay on the mill-stream.
"Handy little weapon," Birdwood commented.
"Well, I'll see you later, I expect," said Guy embarking again. "I'm coming to breakfast at the Rectory."
"Yes, sir," the gardener answered cheerfully. "In about another hour and a half I shall be looking for the eggs."
Guy waved his hand and shot out into midstream where he drifted idly. Should he go to church this morning? Pauline must have wanted him to come, or she would not have told him in her note that she was going. They had never discussed the question of religion. Tacitly he had let it be supposed he believed in her simple creed, and he knew his appearance of faith had given pleasure to the family as well as to Pauline herself. Was he being very honest with her or with them? Certainly when he knelt at the back of the church and saw Pauline as he had seen her on Easter Day, it was not hard to believe in divinity. But he did not carry away Pauline's faith to cheer his own secret hours. The thought of herself was always with him, but her faith remained as a kind of vision upon which he was privileged to gaze on those occasions when, as it were, she made of it a public confession. Had he really any right to intrude upon such sanctities as hers would be to-day? No doubt every birthday morning she went to church, and the strangeness of his presence seemed almost an unhallowing of such rites. Even to attend her birthday breakfast began to appear unjustifiable, as he thought of all the birthday breakfasts that for so many years had passed by without him and without any idea of there ever being any necessity for him. No doubt this morning he, miserable and unworthy sceptic, would be dowered with the half of her prayers, and in that consciousness could he bear to accept them, kneeling at the back of the church, unless he believed utterly they were sanctified by something more than her own maidenhood? Yet if he did not go to church, Pauline would be disappointed, because she would surely expect him. She would be like the blessed damozel leaning out from the gold bar of Heaven and weeping because he did not come. There was no gain from honesty, if she were made miserable by it. It were better a thousand times he should kneel humbly at the back of the church and pray for the faith that was hers. And why could he not believe as she believed? If her faith were true, he suffered from injustice by having no grace accorded to him. Or did there indeed lie between him and her the impassable golden bar of Heaven? A cloud swept across the morning sun, and Guy shivered. Then the church-bell began to clang and, urging his canoe towards the churchyard, he jumped ashore and knelt at the back of the church.
Guy had been aware during the service of the saintly pageant along the windows of the clerestory slowly dimming, and he was not surprized, when he came out, to see that clouds were dusking the first brilliance of the day. Mrs. Grey, Monica and Margaret had prayed each in a different part of the church; but now in the porch they fluttered about Pauline with an intimate and happy awareness of her birthday, almost seeming to wrap her in it, so that she in flushed responsiveness wore all her twenty years like a bunch of roses. Guy was sensitive to the faint reluctance with which her mother and sisters resigned her to him on this birthday morning; but yet to follow them back from church with Pauline beside him in a trepidation of blushes and sparkles was too dear a joy for him in turn to resign. Half-way to the house Pauline remembered that her father had been left alone. This was too wide a breach in her birthday's accustomed ceremony, and much dismayed she begged Guy to go back with her. At that moment the rest of the family had disappeared round a curve in the walk, and Guy caught Pauline to him, complaining she had not kissed him since he was home.
"Oh, but Father!" she said breathlessly tugging. "He'll be so hurt if we've gone on without him."
Guy felt a stab of jealousy that even a father should intrude upon his birthday kiss for her.
"Oh, very well," he said half coldly. "If to see me again after a fortnight means so little...."
"Guy," said Pauline, "you're not cross with me? And Father was so sweet about you. He said, 'Is Guy coming to breakfast?' Guy, you mustn't mind if I think a lot about everybody to-day. You see, this is my first birthday when there has been you."
"Oh, don't remind me of the years before we met," said Guy. "I hate them all. No, I don't," he exclaimed in swift penitence. "I love them all. Hurry, darling girl, or we shall miss him."
Pauline's eyes were troubled by a question, behind which lurked a fleeting alarm.
"Kiss me," she murmured. "I was horrid."
A kind of austerity informed their kiss of reconciliation, an austerity that suited the sky of impending rain under which they were standing in the light of the last wan sunbeam. Then they hurried to the churchyard where in the porch the Rector was looking vaguely round for the company he expected.
"Lucky my friend Lorteti came out yesterday. This rain will ruin him. You must take Guy to see that iris, my dear. Fancy, twenty-one to-day, dear me! dear me! most remarkable!"
Pauline danced with delight behind the Rector's back.
"He thinks I'm twenty-one," she whispered. "Oh, Guy, isn't he sweet? And he called you Guy. Oh, Francis," she cried. "Do let me kiss you."
There was a short debate on the probability of the rain's coming before breakfast was done, but it was decided, thanks to Birdwood's optimism, to accept the risk of interruption by sitting down outside. The table was on the lawn, Pauline's presents lying in a heap at the head. As one by one she opened the packets, everybody stood round her, not merely her mother and father and sisters and Guy, but also Birdwood and elderly Janet and Mrs. Unger the cook and Polly who helped Mrs. Unger.
"Oh, I'm so excited," said Pauline. "Oh, I do hope it won't rain. Oh, thank you, Mrs. Unger. What a beautiful frame!"
"I hope yaw'll find someone to put in it, miss," said Mrs. Unger with a glance of stately admiration toward her present and a triumphant side look at Janet, who after many years' superintendence of Pauline's white fastness had brought her bunches of lavender and woodruff tied up with ribbons. All the presents were now undone, among them Guy's green volume, a paste buckle from Margaret, a piece of old embroidery from Monica and from Richard in India a pair of carved bellows, at the prodigal ingenuity of whose pattern Margaret looked a little peevish. When all the other presents had been examined, Birdwood stepped forward and with the air of a conjuror produced from under his coat a pot of rose-coloured sweet-peas that exactly matched the frail hue of Pauline's cheeks.
Breakfast was eaten, with everybody's eyes watching the now completely grey sky. How many such birthday breakfasts had been eaten on this cool lawn by these people who in their simplicity were akin to the birds in their shrubberies and the flowers in their borders; and Guy thought of an old photograph taken by an uncle of Pauline's tenth birthday breakfast, when the table was heaped high with dolls and toys and Pauline in the middle of them, while Monica and Margaret with legs as thin as thrushes' stood shy and graceful in the background. He sighed to himself with amazement at the fortune which like a genie had whisked him into this dear assemblage.
Breakfast was over just as the rain began to fall with the tinkling whisper that forebodes determination. There was not a leaf in the garden that was not ringing like an elfin bell to these silver drops; but, alas, the unrelenting windless rain gave no hope to Guy and Pauline of that long walk together they had expected all a fortnight. There was nothing to do but sit in the nursery and wonder if it would ever stop.
"I used to love rain when it kept me here," said Guy. "Now it has become our enemy."
Worse was to come, for it rained every day faster and faster, and there were no journeys for Guy's new canoe. He and Pauline scarcely had ten minutes to themselves, since when they were kept in the house all the family treated them with that old proprietary manner. The unending rain began to fret them more sharply because Spring's greenery was in such weather of the vividest hue and was reproaching them perpetually for the waste of this lovely month of May.
The river was rising. Already Guy's garden was sheened with standing moisture, and the apple-blossom lay ruined. People vowed there had never been such rain in May, and still it rained. The river was running swiftly, level with the top of its banks, and many of the meadows were become glassy firmaments. Very beautiful was this green and silver landscape, but oh, the rain was endless. Guy grew much depressed and Miss Peasey got rheumatism in her ankles. Then in the middle of the month, when Guy was feeling desperate and when even Pauline seemed sad for the hours that were being robbed from them, it cleared up.
Guy had been to tea, and after tea he and Pauline had sat watching the weather. Margaret had stayed with them all the afternoon, but had left them alone now, when it was half-past six and nearly time for Guy to go. The clouds, which all day had spread their pearly despair over the world, suddenly melted in a wild transplendency of gold.
"Oh, do let's go for a walk before dinner," said Guy. "Don't let's tell anybody, but let's escape."
"Where shall we go?"
"Anywhere. Anywhere. Out in the meadows by the edge of the water. Let's get sopping wet. Dearest, do come. We're never free. We're never alone."
So Pauline got ready; and they slipped away from the house, hoping that nobody would call them back and hurrying through the wicket into the paddock where the irises hung all sodden. They walked along the banks of a river twice as wide as it should be, and found they could not cross the bridge. But it did not matter, for the field where they were walking was not flooded, and they went on toward the mill. Here they crossed the river and, hurrying always as if they were pursued, such was their sense of a sudden freedom that could not last, they made a circuit of the wettest meadows and came to the hill on the other side. Everywhere above them the clouds were breaking, and all the West was a fiery mist of rose and gold.
The meadow they had found was crimsoned over with ragged robins that in this strange light glowered angrily like rubies. Pauline bent down and gathered bunches of them until her arms were full. Her skirt was wet, but still she plucked the crimson flowers; and Guy was gathering them too, knee-deep in soaking grass. What fever was in the sunset to-night?
"Pauline," he cried flinging high his bunch of ragged robins to scatter upon the incarnadined air. "I have never loved you, as I love you now."
Guy caught her to him; and into that kiss the fiery sky entered, so that Pauline let fall her ragged robins and they lay limp in the grass and were trodden under foot.
"Pauline, I have a ring for you," he whispered. "Will you wear it when we are alone?"
She took the thin circlet set with a crystal, and put it on her finger. Then with passionate arms she held him to her heart: the caress burned his lips like a flaming torch: the crystal flashed with hectic gleams, a basilisk, a perilous orient gem.
"We must go home," she whispered. "Oh, Guy, I feel frightened of this evening."
"Pauline, my burning rose," he whispered.
And all the way back into the crimson sunset they talked still in whispers, and of those rain-drenched ragged robins there was not one they carried home.
'La belle Dame sans mercy hath thee in thrall!'
'La belle Dame sans mercy hath thee in thrall!'
'La belle Dame sans mercy hath thee in thrall!'
The words did not cool Guy's pillow that night, but they led him by strange ways into a fevered sleep.
SUMMER
June
WHEN Pauline reached the Rectory dinner had already begun in the mixture of candlelight and rosy dusk that seemed there more than anything to mark Summer's instant approach, and as with flushed cheeks she took her place at table, she was conscious of an atmosphere that was half disapproval, half anxiety; or was it that she disapproving of herself expected criticism? Positively there was an emotion of being on her defence; she felt propitiatory and apologetic; and for the first time she was sharply aware of herself and her family as two distinct facts. It was to dispel this uneasy sense of potential division that she took up her violin with a faintly exaggerated willingness and that, instead of dreaming of Guy in a corner of the room, she played all the evening in the same spirit of wanting to please.
Her mother asked if she had enjoyed her walk, and Pauline had positively to fight with herself before she could answer lightly enough that the walk had been perfect. Why was her heart beating like this, and why did her sisters regard her so gravely? It must be her fancy, and almost defiantly she continued:
"There was no harm in my going out with Guy, was there? We've not been together at all lately."
"Why should there be any particular harm this evening?" Monica enquired.
"Of course not, Monica," and again her heart was beating furiously. "I only asked because I thought you all seemed angry with me for being a little late for dinner."
"I don't know why we should suddenly be sensitive about punctuality in this house," said Margaret.
Pauline had never thought her own white fastness offered such relief and shelter as to-night; and yet, she assured herself, nobody had really been criticizing her. It must have been entirely her fancy, that air of reproach, those insinuations of cold surprize. People in this house did not understand what it meant to be as much in love as she. It was all very well for Margaret and Monica to lay down laws for behaviour, Margaret who did not know whether she loved or not, Monica who disapproved of anything more directly emotional than a Gregorian chant. Yet they had not theorized to-night, nor had they propounded one rule of behaviour; it was she who was rushing to meet their postulates and observations, arming herself with weapons of offence before the attack had begun. Yet why had neither Monica nor Margaret, nor even her mother, come to say good-night to her? They did not understand about love, not one of them, not one of them.
"Pauline?"
It was her mother's voice outside her door, who coming in seemed perfectly herself.
"Not undressed yet? What's the matter, darling Pauline? You look quite worried, sitting there in your chair."
"I'm not worried, Mother. Really, darling, I'm not worried. I thought you were cross with me."
Now she was crying and being petted.
"I don't know why I'm crying. Oh, I'm so foolish. Why am I crying? Are you cross with me?"
"Pauline, what is the matter? Have you had a quarrel with Guy?"
"Good gracious, no! What makes you ask that? We had an exquisite walk, and the sunset was wonderful, oh, so wonderful! And we picked ragged robins—great bunches of them. Only I forgot to bring them home. How stupid of me. Monica and Margaret aren't angry with me, are they? They were so cold at dinner. Why were they? Mother, I do love you so. You do understand me, don't you? You do sympathize with love? Mother, I do love you so."
When Pauline was in bed her mother fetched Margaret and Monica, who both came and kissed her good-night and asked what could have given her the idea that they were angry with her.
"You foolish little thing, go to sleep," said Monica.
"You mustn't let your being in love with Guy spoil the Rectory," said Margaret. "Because, you know, the Rectory is so much, much better than anything else in the world."
Her mother and sisters left her, going gently from the room as if she were already asleep.
Pauline read for awhile from Guy's green volume of Blake; then taking from under her pillow the crystal ring, she put it on her third finger and blew out the light.
Was he thinking of her at this moment? He must be, and how near they brought him to her, these nights of thoughts, for then she seemed to be floating out of her window to meet him half-way upon the May air. How she loved him; and he had given her this ring of which no one knew except themselves. It was strange to have been suddenly frightened in that sunset, for now, as she lay here looking back upon it, this evening was surely the most wonderful of her life. He had called her his burning rose. His burning rose ... his burning rose? Why had she not brought back a few of those ragged robins to sit like confidantes beside her bed? Flowers were such companions; the beautiful and silent flowers. How far away sleep was still standing from her: and Pauline got out of bed and leaned from the window with a sensation of resting upon the buoyant darkness. The young May moon had already set, and not a sound could be heard; so still indeed was the night that it seemed as if the stars ought to be audible upon their twinkling. If now a nightingale would but sing to say what she was wanting to say to the darkness! Nightingales, however, were rare in the trees round Wychford, and the garden stayed silent. Perhaps Guy was leaning from his window like this, and it was a pity their lights could not shine across, each candle fluttering to the other. If only Plashers Mead were within view, they would be able to sit at their windows in the dark hours and sometimes signal to one another. Or would that be what Margaret called 'cheapening' herself? Had she cheapened herself this evening, when she had kissed him for the gift of this ring? Yet could she cheapen herself to Guy? He loved her as much as she loved him; and always she and he must be equal in their love. She could never be very much reserved with Guy: she did not want to be. She loved him, and this evening for the first time she had kissed him in the way that often in solitude she had longed to kiss him.
"I only want to live for love," she whispered.
Naturally Margaret did not know what love like hers meant; and perhaps it was as well, for it was sad enough to be parted from Guy for two days, when there was always the chance of seeing him in the hours between; but to be separated from him by oceans for two years, as Richard and Margaret were separated, that would be unbearable.
"I suppose Margaret would call it 'cheapening' myself to be standing at my window like this. Good-night, dearest Guy, good-night. Your Pauline is thinking of you to the very last moment of being the smallest bit awake."
Her voice set out to Plashers Mead, no louder than a moth's wing; and, turning away from the warm May night, Pauline went back to bed and fell asleep on the happy contemplation of a love that between them was exactly equal.
The floods went down rapidly during the week; green Summer flung her wreaths before her: the cuckoo sang out of tune and other birds more rarely: chestnut-blossom powdered the grass: and the pinks were breaking all along the Rectory borders. These were days when not to idle down the river would have been a slight upon the season. So Pauline and Guy, with their two afternoons a week, which were not long in becoming four, spent all their time in the canoe. The Rectory punt could only be used on the mill-stream; and Pauline rejoiced, if somewhat guiltily, that they could not invite either of her sisters to accompany them. She and Guy had now so much to say to each other, every day more it seemed, that it was impossible any longer not to wish to be alone.
"Margaret says we are becoming selfish, are we?" she asked, dragging her fingers through the water and perceiving the world through ranks of fleurs-de-lys.
Guy from where in the stern he sat hunched over his paddle asked in what way they were supposed to be selfish.
"Well, it is true that I'm dreadfully absent-minded all the time. You know, I can't think about anything but you. Then, you see, we used always to invite Margaret to be with us, and now we hurry away in the canoe from everybody."
"One would think we spent all our time together," said Guy. "Instead of barely four hours a week."
"Oh, Guy darling, it's more than that. This is the fourth afternoon running that we've been together; and we weren't back yesterday till dinner-time."
Guy put a finger to his mouth.
"Hush! We're coming to the bend in the river that flows round the place we first met," he whispered. "Hush! if we talk about other people, it will be disenchanted."
He swung the canoe under the bushes, tied it to a hawthorn bough and declared triumphantly, as they climbed ashore up the steep bank, that here was practically a desert island. Then they went to the narrow entrance and gazed over the meadows which in this sacred time of growing grass really were impassable as the sea.
"Not even a cow in sight," Guy commented in well satisfied tones. "I shall be sorry when the hay is cut, and people and cattle can come here again."
"People and cattle! How naughty you are, Guy. As if they were just the same!"
"Well, practically you know, as far as we're concerned, there isn't very much difference."
For a long while they sat by the edge of the stream in their fragrant seclusion.
"Dearest," Pauline sighed. "Why can I listen to you all day, and yet whenever anybody else talks to me, why do I feel as if I were only half awake?"
"Because even when you're not with me," said Guy, "you're still really with me. That's why. You see you're still listening to me."
This was a pleasant explanation; but Pauline was anxious to be reassured about what Margaret had hinted was a deterioration in her character lately.
"Perhaps we are a little selfish. But we won't be, when we're married."
Guy had been scribbling on an envelope which he now handed to her; and she read:
Mrs. Guy Hazlewood
Plashers Mead
Wychford
Oxon.
"Oh, Guy, you know I love to see it written: but isn't it unlucky to write it?"
"I don't think you ought to be so superstitious," he scoffed.
She wished he were not obviously despising the weakness of her beliefs. This was the mood in which she seemed farthest away from him; when she felt afraid of his cleverness; and when what had been simple became maddeningly twisted up like an object in a nightmare.
Yet worries that were so faint as scarcely to have a definite shape could still be bought off with kisses; and always when she kissed Guy they receded out of sight again, temporarily appeased.
June, which had come upon them unawares, drifted on toward Midsummer, and the indolent and lovely month mirrored herself in the stream with lush growth of sedges and grasses, with yellow water-lilies budding, with starry crowfoot and with spongy reeds and weeds that kept the canoe to a slow progress in accord with the season. At this time, mostly, they launched their craft in the mill-stream, whence they glided under Wychford bridge to the pool of an abandoned mill on the farther side. Here they would float immotionable on the black water, surrounded by tumbledown buildings that rose from the vivid and exuberant growth of the thick-leaved vegetation flourishing against these cold and decayed foundations. Pauline was always relieved when Guy with soundless paddle steered the canoe away from these deeps. The mill-pool affected her with the merely physical fear of being overturned and plunged into those glooms haunted by shadowy fish, there far down to be strangled by weeds the upper tentacles of which could be seen undulating finely to the least quiver upon the face of the water. Yet more subtly than by physical terrors did these deeps affect her, for the fathomless mill-pool always seemed, as they hung upon it, to ask a question. With such an air of horrible invitation it asked her where she was going with Guy, that no amount of self-reproach for a morbid fancy could drive away the fact of the question's being always asked, however firmly she might fortify herself against paying attention. The moment they passed out of reach of that smooth and cruel countenance, Pauline was always ashamed of the terror and never confided in Guy what a mixture of emotions the mill-pool could conjure for her. Their journey across it was in this sunny weather the prelude to a cool time on the stream that flowed along the foot of the Abbey grounds. During May they had been wont to paddle directly up the smaller main stream, exploring far along the Western valley; but on these June afternoons such a course involved too much energy. So they used to disembark from the canoe, pulling it over a narrow strip of grass to be launched again on the Abbey stream, which had been dammed up to flow with the greater width and solemnity that suited the grand house shimmering in eternal ghostliness at the top of the dark plantation. Pauline had no dread of Wychford Abbey at this distance, and she was fond of gliding down this stream into which the great beeches dipped their tresses, shading it from the heat of the sun.
Every hour they spent on the river made them long to spend more hours together, and Pauline began to tell herself she was more deeply in love than anyone she had ever known. Everything except love was floating away from her like the landscape astern of the canoe. She began to neglect various people in Wychford over whom she had hitherto watched with maternal solicitude: even Miss Verney was not often visited, because she and Guy could not go together, the one original rule to which Mrs. Grey still clung being a prohibition of walking together through the town. And with the people went her music. She did not entirely give up playing but she always played so badly that Monica declared once she would rather such playing were given up. In years gone by Pauline had kept white fantail pigeons: but now they no longer interested her and she gave them away in pairs. Birdwood declared that the small bee-garden which from earliest childhood had belonged to her guardianship was a 'proper disgrace.' Her tambour-frame showed nothing but half-fledged birds from which since Winter had hung unkempt shreds of blue and red wool. And even her mother's vague talks about the poor people in Wychford had no longer an audience, because Margaret and Monica never had listened, and now Pauline was as inattentive as her sisters. Nothing was worth while except to be with Guy. Not one moment of this June must be wasted, and Pauline managed to set up a precedent for going out on the river with him after tea, when in the cool afternoon they would float down behind Guy's house under willows, under hawthorns, past the golden fleurs-de-lys, past the scented flags, past the early meadowsweet and the flowering rush, past comfrey and watermint, figwort, forget-me-not and blue cranesbill that shimmered in the sun like steely mail.
On Midsummer Day about five o'clock Pauline and Guy set out on one of these expeditions that they had stolen from regularity, and found all their favourite fields occupied by haymakers whose labour they resented as an intrusion upon the country they had come to regard as their own.
"Oh, I wish I had money," Guy exclaimed. "I'd like to buy all this land and keep it for you and me. Why must all these wretched people come and disturb the peace of it?"
"I used to love haymaking," said Pauline, feeling a little wistful for some of those simple joys that now seemed uncapturable again.
"Yes. I should like haymaking," Guy assented, "if we were married. It's the fact that haymakers are at this moment preventing us being alone which makes me cry out against them. How can I kiss you here?"
A wain loaded high with hay and laughing children was actually standing close against the ingress to their own peninsula. The mellow sun of afternoon was lending a richer quality of colour to nutbrown cheeks and arms; was throwing long shadows across the shorn grass; was gilding the pitchforks and sparkling the gnats that danced above the patient horses. It was a scene that should have made Pauline dream with joy of her England: yet, with Guy's discontent brooding over it, she did not care for these jocund haymakers who were working through the lustred afternoon.
"Hopeless," Guy protested. "It's like Piccadilly Circus."
"Oh, Guy dear, you are absurd. It's not a bit like Piccadilly Circus."
"I don't see the use of living in the country if it's always going to be alive with people," Guy went on. "We may as well turn round. The afternoon is ruined."
When they reached the confines of Plashers Mead, he exclaimed in deeper despair:
"Pauline! I must kiss you; and, look, actually the churchyard now is crammed with people, all hovering about over the graves like ghouls. Why does everybody want to come out this afternoon?"
They landed in the orchard behind the house, and Pauline was getting ready to help Guy push the canoe across to the mill-stream, when he vowed she must come and kiss him good-night indoors.
"Of course I will; though I mustn't stay more than a minute, because I promised Mother to be back by seven."
"I don't deserve you," said Guy, standing still and looking down at her. "I've done nothing but grumble all the afternoon, and you've been an angel. Ah, but it's only because I long to kiss you."
"I long to kiss you," she murmured.
"Do you? Do you?" he whispered. "Oh, with those ghouls in the churchyard I can't even take your hand."
They crossed the bridge from the orchard and came round to the front of the house into full sunlight, and thence out of the dazzle into Guy's hall that was filled with watery melodies and the green light of their own pastoral world. Close they kissed, close and closer in the coolness and stillness.
"Pauline! I shall go mad for love of you."
"I love you. I love you," she sighed, nestling to his arms' enclosure.
"Pauline!"
"Guy!"
Each called to the other as if over an abyss of years and time.
Then Pauline said she must go back, but Guy reminded her of a book she had promised to read, and begged her just to come with him to the library.
"I do want to talk to you once alone in my own room," he said. "The evenings won't seem so empty when I can think of you there."
She could not disappoint him, and they went upstairs and into his green room that smelt of tobacco-smoke and meadowsweet. They stood by the window looking out over their territory, and Guy told for the hundredth time how, as it were, straight from this window he had plunged to meet her that September night.
"Hullo," he exclaimed suddenly, reading on the pane that was scrabbled with mottoes cut by himself in idle moments with the glazier's pencil: