The book was left open for the roaming letters to dry themselves without a smudge, because there was never any blotting-paper in this desk that was littered with childish things. Then Pauline went to the window; but a gusty wind of late Summer was rustling the leaves and she could not stay dreaming on the night as in May she had dreamed. There was something faintly disquieting about this hollow wind which was like an envoy threatening the trees with the furious winter to come, and Pauline shivered.
"Summer will soon be gone," she whispered, "but nowadays it doesn't matter, because all days will be happy."
On this thought she fell asleep, and woke to a sunny morning, though the sky was a turbid blue across which swollen clouds were steadily moving. She lay watchful, wondering if this quiet time of six o'clock would hold the best of Guy's birthday and if by eight o'clock the sky would not be quite grey. It was a pity she and Guy had not arranged to meet early, so that before the day was spoiled they should have possessed themselves of its prime. Pauline could no longer stay in bed with this sunlight, the lucid shadows of which caught from the wistaria leaves were flickering all about the room. She must go to the window and salute his birthday. Suddenly she recalled something Guy had once said of how he pictured her always moving round her room in the morning like a small white cloud. Blushful at the intimacy of the thought she looked at herself in the glass.
"You're his. You're his," she whispered to her image. "Are you a white goose as Margaret said you were? Or are you the least bit like a cloud?"
Guy came and knelt by her in church that morning, and she took his action as the sign he offered to the world of holding her now openly. In the great church they were kneeling; rose-fired both of them by the crimson gowns of the high saints along the clerestory; and then Guy slipped upon her finger the new ring he had bought for their engagement, a pink topaz set in the old fashion, which burned there like the heart of the rosy fire in which they knelt suffused.
Breakfast was to be in the garden, as all Rectory birthdays were except Monica's which fell in January; and since the day had ripened to a kind of sweet sultriness as of a pear that has hung too long upon a wall, it was grateful to sit in the shade of the weeping-willow by the side of the lily-pond. To each floating cup, tawny or damasked white or deepest cramoisy, the Rector called their attention. Nymphaeas they were to him, fountain divinities that one after the other he flattered with courteous praise. When Guy had been given all his presents, Pauline saw her father put a hand in his coat and pull out a small book.
"Father has remembered Guy's birthday," she cried clapping her hands. "Now I do call that wonderful. Francis, you're wonderful. You're really wonderful."
"Pauline, Pauline, don't get too excited," her mother begged. "And please don't call your father Francis in the garden."
"Propertius," Guy murmured, shyly opening the book; but when he was going to say something about that Roman lover to the Rector, the Rector had vanished.
After breakfast Pauline and Guy walked in the inner wall-garden that was now brilliant with ten thousand deep-throated gladioli.
"Pauline," said Guy, "this morning I learnt Milton's sonnet on his twenty-third birthday, and I feel rather worried. Listen,
Stol'n on his wing my three-and-twentieth year!
My hasting days fly on with full career,
But my late Spring no bud or blossom shew'th.
Well, now, if Milton felt like that," he sighed, "what about me? Pauline, tell me again that you believe in me."
"Of course I believe in you," she vowed.
"And I am right to stay here?" he asked eagerly.
"Oh, Guy, of course, of course."
"You see, I shall be writing to my father to-night to tell him of our engagement, and I don't want to feel you have the least doubt of me. You haven't, have you? Never? Never? There must never have been the slightest doubt, or I shall doubt."
"Dearest Guy," she said, "if you changed anything for me, our love wouldn't be the best thing for you, and I only want my love to be my love, if it is the love you want, Guy. I'm not clever; you know. I'm really stupid, but I can love. Oh, I can love you more than anyone, I think. I know, I know I can. Guy, I do adore you. But if I felt you were thinking you ought to go away on account of me, I would have to give you up."
"You couldn't give me up," he proclaimed, holding her straight before him with looks that were hungry for one word or one gesture that could help him to tell her what he wanted to say.
"Does my love worry you?" she whispered, faint with all the responsibility she felt for the future of this lover of hers.
"Pauline, my love for you is my life."
But quickly they glided away from passion to discuss projects of simple happiness; and walking together a long while under the trees beyond the wall-garden, they were surprized to hear the gong sound for lunch before they had finished the decoration of Plashers Mead as it should be for their wedding-tide. Back in the sunlight, they were dazzled by the savage colour of the gladioli in the hot August noon and found them rather gaudy after the fronded half-light where nothing had disturbed the outspread vision of a future triumphantly attainable.
After lunch her mother called Pauline aside and told her that now was the moment to impress the Rector with the fact of her engagement. The tradition was that her father went up to his library for half-an-hour every day in order to rest after lunch before he sallied out into the garden or the parish. As usual his rest was consisting of standing on a chair and dragging down old numbers of The Botanical Magazine or heavy volumes of The Garden in order to search out a fact in connection with some plant. When Pauline and Guy presented themselves the Rector gave them a cordial invitation to enter, and Pauline fancied that he was being quite exceptionally kindly in his tone toward Guy.
"Well, and what can I do for you two?" he asked, as he lit his long clay pipe and sat upright in his old leather armchair to regard them.
"Father," said Pauline coming straight to the heart of her subject. "Have you seen my engagement ring?"
She offered him the pink topaz to admire, and he bowed his head, conveying that faint mockery with which he treated anything that was not a flower.
"Very fine. Very fine, my dear."
"Well, aren't you going to congratulate me?" Pauline asked.
"On what?"
"Oh, Father, you are naughty. On Guy of course."
"Bless my heart," said the Rector. "And on what am I to congratulate him?"
"On me of course," said Pauline.
"Now, I wonder if I can honestly do that," said the Rector very seriously.
"Father, you do realize, don't you, because you are being so naughty, but you do realize that from to-day we are really engaged?"
"Only from to-day?" the Rector asked, a twinkle in his eye.
"Well, of course," Pauline explained. "We've been in love for very nearly a year."
"And when have you decided to get married?"
Pauline looked at Guy.
"We thought in about two years, Sir," said Guy. "That is, of course, as soon as I've published my first book. Perhaps in a year really."
"Just when you find it convenient in fact," said the Rector still twinkling.
"Well, Father," Pauline interrupted, "have we got your permission? Because that's what we've come up to ask."
"You surprize me," said the Rector, starting back with an exaggerated look of astonishment such as one might use with children.
"Father, if you won't be serious about it, I shall be very much hurt."
"I am very serious indeed about it," said the Rector. "And supposing I said I wouldn't hear of any such thing as an engagement between you two young creatures, what would you say then?"
"Oh, I should never forgive you," Pauline declared. "Besides we're not young. Guy is twenty-three."
"Now I thought he was at least fifty," said the Rector.
"Father, we shall have to go away if you won't be serious. Mother told us to explain to you and I think it's really unkind of you to laugh at us."
The Rector rose and knocked his pipe out.
"I must finish off the perennials. Well, well, Pauline, my dear, you're twenty-one...."
Pauline would have liked to let him go on thinking she was of age, but she could not on this solemn occasion, and so she told him that she was still only twenty.
"Ah, that makes a difference," said the Rector pretending to look very fierce. And when Pauline's face fell, he added with a chuckle, "of one year. Well, well, I fancy you've both arranged everything. What is there left for me to say? You mustn't forget to show Guy those Nerines. God bless you, pretty babies, be happy."
Then the Rector walked quickly away, and left them together in his dusty library where the botanical folios and quartos displaying tropic blooms sprawled open about the floor, where along the mantelpiece the rhizomes of Oncocyclus irises were being dried; and where seeds were strewn plenteously on his desk, rattling among the papers whenever the wind blew.
"Guy, we are really engaged."
"Pauline, Pauline!"
In the dusty room among the ghosts of dead seasons and the mouldering store amassed by the suns of other years, they stood locked, heart to heart.
Before Guy went home that night, when they were lingering in the hall, he told Pauline that the next thing to be done was to write to his own father.
"Guy, do you think he'll like me?"
"Why, how could he help it? But he may grumble at the idea of my being engaged."
"When do you think he'll write?"
"I expect he'll come down here to see me. In the Spring he wrote and said he would."
"Guy, I'm sure he's going to make it difficult for you."
Guy shook his head.
"I know how to manage him," he proclaimed confidently.
Then he opened the door; along the drive the wind moaned, getting up for a gusty Bartlemy-tide.
Pauline stood in the lighted doorway letting the light shine upon him until he was lost in the shadows of the tall trees, sending, as he vanished, one more kiss down the wind to her.
"Are you happy to-night?" asked her mother, bending over Pauline when she was in bed.
"Oh, Mother darling, I'm so happy that I can't tell you how happy I am."
In the candlelight her new ring sparkled; and when her mother was gone she put beside it the crystal ring, and it seemed to sparkle still more. Pauline was in such a mood of tenderness to everything that she petted even her pillow with a kind of affection and she had the contentment of knowing she was going to meet sleep as if it were a great benignant figure that was bending to hear her tale of happy love.
ANOTHER AUTUMN
September
GUY became much occupied with the best way of breaking to his father the news of his engagement. He wished it were his marriage of which he had to inform him; for there was about marriage such a beautiful finality of spilt milk that the briefest letter would have settled everything. If now he wrote to announce an engagement, he ran the risk of his father's refusal to come and pay him that visit on which he was building such hopes from the combined effect of Pauline and Plashers Mead in restoring to the schoolmaster the bright mirror of his own youth. It would scarcely be fair to the Greys to introduce him while he was still ignorant of the relation in which he was supposed to stand to them, for they could scarcely be expected to regard him as a man to be humoured up to such a point. After all, it was not as if he in his heart looked to his father for practical help: in reality he knew already that the engagement would meet with his opposition notwithstanding Pauline ... notwithstanding Plashers Mead. Perhaps it would be better to write and tell him about it: if he came, it would obviate an awkward explanation and there could be no question of false pretences: if he declined to come, no doubt he would write such a letter as would justify his son in holding him up to the Greys as naturally intractable. Indeed if it were not that he knew how sensitive Pauline was to the paternal benediction, he would have made no attempt to present him at all.
His father kept him waiting over a week before he replied to the announcement Guy had ultimately decided to send him; and when it came, the letter did not promise the most favourable prospect.
FOX HALL,
GALTON,
HANTS.
September 1st.
Dear Guy,
I have taken a few days to think over the extraordinary news you have seen fit to communicate. I hope I am not so far removed from sympathy with your aspirations as not to be able to understand almost anything you might have to tell me about yourself. But this I confess defeats my best intentions, setting as it does a crown on all the rest of your acts of folly. I tried to believe that your desire to write poetry was merely a passing whim. I tried to think that your tenancy of this house was not the behaviour of a thoughtless and wilful young man. I was most anxious, as I clearly showed (i) by my gift of £150 (ii) by my offer of a post at Fox Hall, to put myself in accord with your ambition; and now you write and tell me after a year's unprofitable idling that you are engaged to be married! I admit as a minute point in your favour you do not suggest that I should help you to tie yourself for life to the fancy of a young man of just twenty-three. Little did I think when I wrote to wish you many happy returns of the 20th of August, although you had previously disappointed me by your refusal to help me out of a nasty difficulty, little did I think that my answer was going to be this piece of reckless folly. May I ask what her parents are thinking of, or are they so blinded by your charms as to be willing to allow this daughter of theirs to wait until the income you make by selling your poetry enables you to get married? I gathered from your description of Mr. Grey that he was an extremely unpractical man; and his attitude towards your engagement certainly bears me out. I suppose I shall presently get a post-card to say that you are married on your income of £150, which by the way in the present state of affairs is very likely soon to be less. You invite me to come and stay with you before term begins in order to meet the young lady to whom with extremely bad taste you jocularly allude as my 'future daughter-in-law.' Well, I accept your invitation, but I warn you that I shall give myself the unpleasant task of explaining to your 'future father-in-law,' as I suppose you would not blush to call him, what an utterly unreliable fellow you are and how in every way you have disappointed
Your affectionate father
John Hazlewood.
I shall arrive at two-thirty on the fifth (next Thursday). I wish I could say I was looking forward to seeing this insane house of yours.
There was something in the taste of marmalade very appropriate to an unpleasant letter, and Guy wondered how many of them he had read at breakfast to the accompaniment of the bitter savour and the sound of crackling toast. He also wondered what was the real reason of his father's coming. Was it curiosity, or the prospect of lecturing a certain number of people gathered together to hear his opinion? Was it with the hope of dissuasion, or was it merely because he had settled to come on the fifth of September and could not bear to thwart that finicking passion of his for knowing what he was going to do a month beforehand?
Anyhow, whatever the reason, he was coming, and the next problem was to furnish for him a bedroom. How much had he in the bank? £4 16s. and there was a blank counter-foil which Guy vaguely thought represented a cheque for £2. Of course Pauline's ring had lowered his balance rather prematurely this quarter; he ought to be very economical during the next one and, as ill luck would have it, next quarter would have to provide fuel. £2 16s. was not much to spend on furnishing a bedroom even if the puny balance were not needed for the current expenses of the three weeks to Michaelmas. Could he borrow some bedroom furniture from the Rectory? No doubt Mrs. Grey would be amused and delighted to lend all he wanted, but it seemed rather an ignominious way of celebrating his engagement. Could he sleep on the chest in the hall? and as it wobbled to his touch, he decided that not only could he not sleep on it nor in it, but that it would not even serve as a receptacle for his clothes.
"Miss Peasey," he said, when the housekeeper came in to see if he had finished breakfast. "My father is coming to stay here on Thursday."
Miss Peasey smiled encouragingly with the strained look in her eyes that always showed when she was hoping to find out from his next sentence what he had told her. Guy shouted his information over again, when, of course Miss Peasey pretended she had heard him all the time.
"Well, that will make quite a little variety, I'm sure."
"Where will he sleep?" Guy asked.
Miss Peasey jumped and said that there, she'd never thought of that.
"Well, think about it now, Miss Peasey."
Miss Peasey thought hard, but unfruitfully.
"Could you borrow a bed in the town?" Guy shouted.
"Well, wouldn't it seem rather funny? Why don't you send in to Oxford and buy a bed, Mr. Hazlewood?"
Her pathetic trust in the strength of his financial resources, which Guy usually tried to encourage, was now rather irritating.
"It seems hardly worth while to buy a bed for two or three days," he objected.
"Which reminds me," said Miss Peasey, "that you'll really have to give that Bob another good thrashing, for he's eaten all the day's butter."
"Well, we can buy more butter in Wychford, but we can't get a bed," Guy laughed.
"Oh, he didn't touch the bread," said Miss Peasey. "Trust him for that. I never knew a large dog so dainty before."
Guy decided to postpone the subject of the bed and try Miss Peasey more personally.
"Could you spare your chest of drawers?" he asked at top voice.
Miss Peasey, however, did not answer and from her complete indifference to his question Guy knew that she did not like the idea of such a loan. It looked as if he would be compelled to borrow the furniture from the Rectory; and then he thought how after all it would be a doubly good plan to do so, inasmuch as it would partially involve his father in the obligations of a guest. Moreover it could scarcely fail to be a slight reproach to him that his son should have to borrow bedroom furniture from the family of his betrothed.
Pauline was of course delighted at the idea of lending the furniture, and she and Guy had the greatest fun together in amassing enough to equip what would really be a very charming spare room. Deaf and dumb Graves was called in; and Birdwood helped also, under protest at the hindrance to his work, but at the same time revelling, if Birdwood could be said to revel, in the diversion. Mrs. Grey presided over the arrangement and fell so much in love with the new bedroom that she pillaged the Rectory much more ruthlessly than Pauline, and in the end they all decided that Guy's father would have the most attractive bedroom in Wychford. Guy with so much preparation on hand had no time to worry about the conduct of his father's visit, and after lunch on Thursday he got into the trap beside Godbold and drove off equably enough to meet the train at Shipcot.
Mr. Hazlewood was in appearance a dried-up likeness of his son, and Guy often wondered if he would ever present to the world this desiccated exterior. Yet after all it was not so much his father's features as his cold eyes that gave this effect of a chilly force: he himself had his mother's eyes and, thinking of hers burning darkly from the glooms of her sick bed, Guy fancied that he would never wither to quite the inanimate and discouraging personality on the platform in front of him.
"The train's quite punctual," said Mr. Hazlewood in rather an aggrieved tone of voice, such as he might have adopted if he had been shown a correct Latin exercise by a boy whom he was anxious to reprove.
"Yes, this train is usually pretty punctual," Guy answered, and for a minute or two after a self-conscious handshake they talked about trains, each, as it seemed, trying to throw upon the other the responsibility of any conversation that might have promoted their ease.
Guy introduced his father to Godbold, who greeted him with a kind of congratulatory respect and assumed toward Guy a manner that gave the impression of sharing with Mr. Hazlewood in his paternity.
"Hope you're going to pay us a good long visit," said Godbold hospitably flicking the pony.
Mr. Hazlewood, who squashed as he was between Guy and fat Godbold looked more sapless than ever, said he proposed to stay until the day after to-morrow.
"Then you won't see us play Shipcot on Saturday, the last match of the season?" said Godbold in disappointed benevolence.
"No, I shan't, I'm afraid. You see, my son is not so busy as I am."
"Ah, but he's been very busy lately. Isn't that right, Mr. Hazlewood?" Godbold chuckled with a wink across at Guy. "Well, we've all been expecting it for some time past and he has our good wishes. That he has. As sweetly pretty a young lady as you'll see in a month of Sundays."
His father shrank perceptibly from a dominical prevision so foreign to his nature, and Guy changed the conversation by pointing out features in the landscape.
"Extraordinarily inspiring sort of country," he affirmed.
"So I should imagine," said his father. "Though precisely what that epithet implies I don't quite know."
Guy was determined not to be put out of humour and, surrendering the epithet at once, he substituted 'bracing'.
"So is Hampshire," his father snapped.
"I hope Wilkinson's successor has turned out well," Guy ventured, in the hope that such a direct challenge would force a discharge of grievances. Surprizingly, however, his father talked without covert reproaches of the successor's virtues, of the field-club he had started, of his popularity with the boys and of the luck which had brought him along at such short notice. At any rate, thought Guy, he could not be blamed for having caused any inconvenience to the school by his refusal to take up office at Fox Hall. The constraint of the long drive came to an end with the first view of Plashers Mead, at which his father gazed with the sort of mixture of resentment, interest and alarm he might have displayed at the approach of a novel insect.
"It looks as if it would be very damp," was his only comment.
Here Godbold, who had perhaps for some time been conscious that all was not perfectly well between his passengers, interposed with a defence of Plashers Mead.
"Lot of people seeing it from here think it's damp. But it isn't. In fact it's the driest house in Wychford. And do you know for why, sir? Because it's so near running water. Running water keeps off the damp. Doctor Brydone told me that. 'Running water,' he says to me, 'keeps off the damp.' Those were his words."
Mr. Hazlewood eyed Godbold distastefully, that is so far as without turning his head he could eye him at all. Then the trap pulled up by the gate of Plashers Mead, Guy took his father's bag, and they passed in together. The noise of wheels died away, and here in the sound of the swift Greenrush Guy felt that hostility must surely be renounced at the balm of this September afternoon shedding serene sunlight. He began to display his possessions with the confidence their beauty always gave him.
"Pretty good old apple-trees, eh? Ribston pippins nearly all of them. The blossom was rather spoilt by that wet May, but there's not such a bad crop considering. I like this salmon-coloured phlox. General something or other beginning with an H it's called. Mr. Grey gave me a good deal. The garden of course was full of vegetables, when I had it first. I must send you some clumps of this phlox to Galton. Of course, I got rid of the vegetables."
"Yes, of course," agreed Mr. Hazlewood dryly.
"Doesn't the house look jolly from here? It's pretty old, you know. About 1590 I believe. It's a wonderful place, isn't it? Hulloa, there's my housekeeper. Miss Peasey, here's my father. She's very deaf, so you'll have to shout."
Mr. Hazlewood, who never shouted even at the naughtiest boy in his school, shuddered faintly at his son's invitation and bowed to Miss Peasey with a formality of disapproval that seemed to include her in the condemnation of all he beheld.
"Quite a resemblance, I'm sure," Miss Peasey archly declared. "Tea will be ready at four o'clock and Mr. Hazlewood Senior's room is all in order for him." Then she disappeared in the direction of the kitchen.
"A little empty, I'm afraid," said Guy, as his father looked round the hall.
"Is that water I hear?"
"Yes, the river washes the back of the house."
"And this place isn't damp?"
"Not a bit," Guy declared positively.
"Well, it smells of bronchitis and double-pneumonia."
Guy showed his father the dining-room.
"I've got it rather jolly, I think," he ventured.
"Yes, my candlesticks and chairs, that your mother lent you for your rooms at Balliol, look very well," his father agreed.
Guy led the way to the spare bedroom.
"No wonder you spent all your money," Mr. Hazlewood commented, surveying the four-post bed and the Jacobean furniture. "How on earth did you manage to afford all this luxury?"
"Oh, I picked it up somehow," said Guy lightly. He had decided on second thoughts not to reveal the secret of the Rectory's loan.
When his father had rid himself of the dust from his journey, Guy introduced him proudly to his own room.
"Well, this is certainly quite a pleasant place," Mr. Hazlewood admitted. "If not too draughty with those two windows."
"You must scratch a motto on the pane with the diamond-pencil," Guy suggested.
"My motto is hard work."
"Well, write that. Or at any rate put your initials and the date."
His father took up the pencil with that expression of superiority which Guy most hated, and scratched his name rather awkwardly on the glass.
"I hope people won't suppose that is my ordinary hand," he said, grimly regarding the John Hazlewood of his inscription. During tea Guy wondered when he ought introduce the subject of Pauline. Beyond Godbold's unfortunate allusion on the drive, nothing had been said by either of them; and Plashers Mead had not as yet effected that enchantment of his father's senses which would seem to proclaim the moment as propitious. How remote they were from one another, sitting here at tea! Really his father had not accorded him any salutation more cordial than the coldly absent-minded 'good dog' he had just given to Bob. Yet there must be points of contact in their characters. There must be in himself something of his father. He could not so ridiculously resemble him and yet have absolutely nothing mentally in common. Perhaps his father did himself an injustice by his manner, for after all he had presented him with that £150. If he could only probe by some remark a generous impulse, Guy felt that in himself the affection of wonted intercourse over many years would respond immediately with a warmth of love. His father had cared greatly for his mother; and could not the love they had both known supply them with the point of sympathetic contact that would enable them to understand the ulterior intention of their two diverging lives?
"It was awfully good of you, Father, to come down and stay here," said Guy. "I've really been looking forward to showing you the house. I think, perhaps, you understand now how much I've wanted to be here?"
Guy waited anxiously.
"I've never thought you haven't wanted to be here," his father replied. "But between what we want and what we owe there is a wide gap."
Oh, why was a use to be made of these out-of-date weapons? Why could not one or two of his prejudices be surrendered, so that there were a chance of meeting him half-way?
"But sometimes," said Guy desperately, "inclination and duty coincide."
"Very rarely, I'm afraid, in this world."
"Do they in the next then?" asked Guy a little harshly, hating the conventionality of the answer that seemed to crystallize the intellectual dishonesty of a dominie's existence. He knew that the next world was merely an arid postulate which served for a few theorems and problems of education, and that duty and desire must only be kept apart on account of the hierarchical formulae of his craft. He must eternally appear as half-inhuman as all the rest of the Pharisees: priests, lawyers and schoolmasters, they were all alike in relying for their livelihood upon a capacity for depreciating human nature.
"I was merely using a figure of speech," said his father.
Exactly, thought Guy, and how was he ever to justify his love for Pauline to a man whose opinions could never be expressed except in figures of speech? He made up his mind to postpone the visit to the Rectory until to-morrow. Evidently it was not going to be made even moderately easy to broach the subject of Pauline.
"I expect you'd like to have a look at some of my work," he suggested.
"Very much," said Mr. Hazlewood; and in a moment with his dry assent he had reduced all his son's achievement to the level of a fifth-form composition. Guy took the manuscripts out of his desk, and disengaging from the heap any poems that might be ascribed to the influence of Pauline, he presented the rest to his father. Mr. Hazlewood settled himself as comfortably as he could ever seem to be comfortable and solemnly began to read without comment. Guy would have liked to get up and leave him alone, for though he assured himself that the opinion whether favourable or unfavourable did not matter, his suspense was sharp and the inexpression of his father's demeanour, that assumption of tutorial impartiality, kept him puzzling and unable to do anything but watch the critic's face and toy mechanically with the hair of Bob's sentimental head upon his knee.
At last the manuscripts were finished, and Guy sat back for the verdict.
"Oh, yes, I like some very much," said Mr. Hazlewood. "But I can't help thinking that all of them could have been written as well in recreation after the arduousness of a decent profession. However, you've burned your boats as far as Fox Hall is concerned, and I shall certainly be the first to congratulate you, if you bring your ambition to a successful issue."
"You mean monetarily?" Guy asked.
His father did not answer.
"You wouldn't count as a successful issue recognition from the people who care for poetry?" Guy went on.
"I'm not particularly impressed by contemporary taste," said Mr. Hazlewood. "We seem to me to be living in a time when all the great men have gone, and the new generation does not appear likely to fill very adequately the gap they have left."
"I wonder if there has ever been a time when people have not said just what you're saying? Do you seriously think you'd recognize a great man if you saw him?"
"I hope I should," said his father looking perfectly convinced that he would.
"Well, I don't believe you would," said Guy. "How do you know I'm not a great man?"
His father laughed dryly.
"I don't know, my dear Guy, of course and nothing would gratify me more than to find out that you were. But at least you'll allow me to observe that great men are generally remarkable for their modesty."
"Yes, after they've been accorded the homage of the world," Guy argued. "They can afford to be modest then. I fancy that most of them were self-confident in their youth. I hope they were, poor devils. It must have been miserable for most of them, if they weren't."
"However," said Mr. Hazlewood. "All these theories of juvenile grandeur, interesting though they may be, do not take us far along the road of practical politics. I'm to understand, am I, that you are quite determined to remain here?"
"For another year at any rate," Guy said. "That is until I have a volume of poems ready."
"And your engagement?" asked his father.
Guy smiled to himself. It was a minor triumph, but it was definitely a triumph to have made his father be the first to mention the subject that had stood at the back of their minds ever since they met on the Shipcot platform.
"Look here, before we discuss that I want you to see Pauline. I think you'll understand my point of view more clearly after you've seen her. Now, wouldn't you like to take a stroll round Wychford? The architecture...."
Guy and his father wandered about until dusk, and in the evening after dinner they played piquet.
"I suppose you wouldn't enjoy a walk in the moonlight?" Guy suggested after the third hand.
"I have my health to think about. Term begins in a fortnight you know," said Mr. Hazlewood.
Guy had pulled back the curtains and was watching the full moon. This, though ten days short of the actual anniversary, was the lunary festival of the night when he first saw Pauline. Might it be accepted as a propitious omen? Who could say? They talked of dull subjects until it was time to go to bed.
Guy had sent a note to Mrs. Grey, suggesting that he should bring his father to tea next day; and so about four o'clock they set out to the Rectory, the lover in great trepidation of spirit. His father was seeming much more than ever parched and inhuman, and Guy foresaw that his effect upon Pauline would be disastrous. Nor did he feel that the strain upon his own nerves was going to be the best thing for the situation. On the way to the Rectory they met young Brydone, and Guy very nearly invited him to accompany them, in a desperate impulse to evoke a crowd in which he could lose this disturbing consciousness of his father's presence. However, he managed to avoid such a subversion of his attitude; and in a few minutes they were in the hall of the Rectory, where Mrs. Grey, as nervously agitated as she could be, was welcoming them. Luckily Margaret had arrived on the scene before Pauline, and Guy managed to place his father next to her, while he took up the task of trying to compose Mrs. Grey. At last Pauline came in, and Guy seemed to be only aware of a tremendous increase in the noise of the conversation. He realized that it was due to himself's talking nonsense at the top of his voice and that Pauline was vainly trying to get on with his father. Monica had gone to look for the Rector, and Mrs. Grey was displaying the kind of treasures she would produce at a mother's meeting, treasures to which his father paid but the most scant attention. The whole room seemed to revolve round his father who for Guy had become the only person in focus, as he stood there parched and inhuman and perhaps himself a little shy of what he was evidently supposing to be a very mad family. Guy, so miserable was he feeling at his father's coldness of manner toward the Greys, wished passionately that his mother were alive, because he knew how much she would have appreciated them. Monica had now come back with information that the Rector was undiscoverable, so Mrs. Grey volunteered to show Mr. Hazlewood the garden.
"She'll tell you all the flowers wrong," Pauline warned him.
Mr. Hazlewood bowed.
"I'm afraid I know nothing about flowers."
"Guy has learnt a lot from Father," said Pauline. "Haven't you, Guy?"
She was making the bravest effort, but it was hopeless, utterly hopeless, Guy thought.
How the promenade round these gardens that were haunted with his and her delights was banishing them one by one. How endless it was, and how complete was the failure to incorporate his father in a life which his advent had so detestably disturbed. Guy acknowledged that the meeting between him and Pauline had served no purpose, and as he looked forward to the final battle between their wills this evening, he set his teeth with rage to defeat his father, at the moment caring not at all if he never saw him again.
Guy knew, as they were walking back to Plashers Mead, how little worth while it was to ask what his father had thought of the Greys; but nevertheless he could not resist the direct enquiry.
"They seem a very happy-go-lucky family," was the reply. "I thought it extremely strange that Mr. Grey did not take the trouble to be at home for my visit. I should have thought that in regard to his daughter's future I might be considered sufficiently ... however, it's all of a piece."
Guy hated the mock-modest lacuna in the characterization, and he thought of the many schoolmasters he had known whose consciousness of external opinion never allowed them to claim a virtue for themselves, although their least action always contained an implication of merit.
Guy made some excuse for the Rector's absence and rather moodily walked on beside his father. The battle should be to-night; and after dinner he came directly to the point.
"I hope you liked Pauline?"
"My dear Guy, your impulsiveness extends too far. How can I after a few minutes' conversation pronounce an opinion?"
"But she's not a pathological case," cried Guy in exasperation.
"Precisely," retorted his father. "And therefore I pay her the compliment of not rushing into headstrong approval, or disapproval. Certainly she seemed to me superficially a very charming girl, but I should be inclined to think somewhat excitable."
"Of course, she was shy."
"Naturally. These sudden immersions in new relationships do not make for ease. I was myself a little embarrassed. But, after all, the question is not whether I like—er—Pauline, but whether I am justified on her account as well as on yours in giving my countenance to this ridiculous engagement. Please don't interrupt me. My time is short, and I must as your father fulfil my obligations to you by saying what I have to say."
Even in his speech he was epistolary, and while he spoke Guy was all the time, as it were, tearing him into small pieces and dropping him deliberately into the waste-paper-basket.
"Had I been given an opportunity," his father went on, "of speaking privately with Mr. Grey, I should have let him plainly understand how much I deplored your unjustifiable embarkation upon this engagement. You have, frankly, no right to engage yourself to a girl when you are without the means to bring the pledge to fruition. You possess, it is true, an income of £150 a year—too little to make you really independent, too much to compel you to relinquish your own mad scheme of livelihood."
"I have had the privilege of reading your verse," he continued, protesting against an interruption with upraised hand. "Well, I am glad enough to say that it seems to me promising: but what is promising verse? A few seedlings in a flower-pot that even if they come to perfection will serve no purpose but of decoration. It is folly or mere wanton self-deception for you to pretend that you can live by poetry. Why, even if you were an American you couldn't live by poetry. Now please let me finish. My commonsense no doubt strikes you as brutal, but if, when it is your turn to speak, you can produce the shadow of a probability that you will ever earn your own living, I shall be only too willing to be convinced. I am not so much enamoured of my schoolmaster's life as to wish to bind you down to that; but between being a schoolmaster and being what the world would call an idle young poseur lies a big gulf. Why did not you stick to your Macedonian idea? Surely that was romantic enough to please even you. No, the whole manner of your present life spells self-indulgence and I warn you it will inevitably bring in its train the results of self-indulgence. My dear Guy, do something. Don't stay here talking of what you are going to do. Say good-bye for the present to Pauline and do something. If she is fond of you, she will be prouder of you when she sees that you are determined to fight to win her. My boy, I speak to you very seriously and I warn you that this is the last protest I shall make. You are behaving wrongly: her parents are behaving wrongly. If you must write, get some regular work. Why not try for the staff of some reputable paper like The Spectator?"
"Good heavens!" Guy ejaculated.
"Well, there may be other reputable papers, though I confess The Spectator is my favourite."
"Yes, I know. It probably would be."
"It's this terrible inaction," his father went on. "I don't know how you can tolerate the ignominious position in which you find yourself. To me it would be unendurable."
Mr. Hazlewood sighed with the satisfaction of unburdening himself and waited for his son to reply, who with a tremendous effort not to spoil the force of his argument by losing his temper began calmly enough:
"I have never contended that I should earn my living by poetry. What I have hoped is that when my first book appears it would be sufficiently remarkable to restore your confidence in me."
"In other words," his father interrupted, "to tempt me to support you—or rather as it now turns out to help you to get married."
"Well, why not?" said Guy. "I'm your only son. You can spare the money. Why shouldn't you help me? I'm not asking you to do anything before I've justified myself. I'm only asking you to wait a year. If my book is a failure, it will be I who pay the penalty, not you. My confidence will be severely damaged whereas in your case only your conceit will be faintly ruffled."
"Were I really a conceited man, I should resent your last remark," said his father. "But let it pass, and finish what you were going to say."
Guy got up and went to the window, seeking to find from the moonlight a coolness that would keep his temper in hand.
"Would you have preferred that I did not ask Pauline to marry, that I made love to her without any intention of marriage?"
"Not at all," his father replied. "I imagine that you still possess some self-restraint, that when you began to feel attracted to her you could have wrestled with yourself against what in the circumstances was a purely selfish emotion."
"But why, why? What really good reason can you bring forward against my behaviour, except reasons based on a cowardly fear of not being prosperous? You have always impressed on me so deeply the identity of your youthful ambitions with mine that I don't suppose I'm assuming too much when I ask what you would have done, if you had met Mother when you were not in a position to marry her immediately? Would you have said nothing?"
"I hope I should have had sufficient restraint not to want to marry anybody until I was able to offer material support as well as a higher devotion."
"But if ... oh, love is not a matter of the will."
"Excuse me," his father contradicted obstinately. "Everything is a matter of will. That is precisely the point I am trying to make."
Guy marched over to the fireplace and, balancing himself on the fender, proclaimed the attainment of a deadlock.
"You and I, my dear Father, differ in fundamentals. Supposing I admit for a moment that I may be wrong, aren't you just as wrong in not trying to see my point of view? Supposing for instance Tennyson had paid attention to criticism—I don't mean of his work, but of his manner of life—what would have happened?"
"I can't afford to run the risk of being considered the fond parent by announcing you to the world as a second Tennyson. Thirty-five years of a schoolmaster's life have at least taught me that parents as parents have a natural propensity toward the worst excesses of human folly."
"Then in other words," Guy responded, "I'm to mess up my life to preserve your dignity. That's what it amounts to. I tell you I believe in myself. I'm convinced that beside will, there is destiny."
Mr. Hazlewood sniffed.
"Destiny is the weak man's canonization of his own vices."
"Well, then I will succeed," retorted Guy. "Moreover I will succeed in my own way. It seems a pity that we should argue acrimoniously. I shall say no more. I accept the responsibility. For what you've done for me I'm very much obliged. Would you care for a hand at piquet?"
"Oh, certainly," said his father.
Guy hugged himself with another minor triumph. At least it was he who had determined when the discussion should be closed.
The next day, as Guy stood on the Shipcot platform and watched the slow train puffing away into the unadventurous country, he had a brief sentiment of regret for the failure of his father's visit and made up his mind to write to him a letter to-morrow, which would sweeten a little of the bitterness between them. The bees buzzing round the wine-dark dahlias along the platform were once again audible: and close at hand was the hum of a reaper-and-binder. But as he drove back to Wychford his father passed from his mind, and mostly Guy thought of walking with Pauline under the pale and ardent blue of this September sky that was reflected in the chicory flowers along the sparse and dusty hedgerow.
October
"MY dears, he frightened me to death," Pauline declared to her family when Mr. Hazlewood had left the Rectory. "Only I expect, you know, that really he's rather sweet."
"I don't think he approved of us very much," said Margaret.
"I didn't approve of him very much," said Monica.
"And where was Francis?" asked Mrs. Grey.
"Francis was a naughty boy," said Pauline.
Since they were sitting in the nursery, her mother allowed the Christian name to pass without reproof.
"He was so exactly like Guy," said Margaret.
"Like Guy?" Pauline echoed incredulously.
"Yes, of course, didn't you notice that?" Margaret laughed.
"You're quite right, Margaret," said Mrs. Grey. "How clever of you to see. Now of course I realize how much alike they were ... how clever you are!"
"Without Pauline," Margaret went on, "Guy might easily become his father all over again."
"But, my dears," said Pauline, "that would be terrible. I remember how frightened I was of Guy the first day he came to the Rectory, and if he grows more like his father, I don't think I shall ever be anything else but frightened of him, even if we live for ever. For, though I'm sure he's really very sweet, I don't believe one would ever get quite used to Mr. Hazlewood."
Yet when Pauline was alone and had an opportunity to look back upon the visit, its effect was rather encouraging than otherwise. For one thing it curiously made Guy more actual, because until the personality of his father projected itself upon the scene of their love he had always possessed for Pauline a kind of romantic unreality. In the Spring days and Summer days which had seemed to dedicate themselves to the service of intimacy, Guy had talked a great deal of his life before they met, but the more he had told her, the more was she in the state of being unable to realize that the central figure of these old tales was not a dream. When he was with her, she was often in a daze of wonder at the credibility of being loved like this; and there was never an occasion of seeing him even after the briefest absence that did not hold in the heart of its pleasure a surprize at his return. The appearance of Mr. Hazlewood was a phenomenon that gave the pledge of prosaic authority to her love, like a statement in print that however absurd or uncomfortable has a value so far beyond mere talk. She had often been made rather miserable by Guy's tales of the ladies he had loved with airy heedlessness, but these heroines had all faded out in the unreality of his life apart from her, and they took their place with days of adventure described in Macedonia or with the old diversions of Oxford. The visit of Mr. Hazlewood with the chilly disapproval it had shed was more authentic than, for instance, the idea of Guy's dark-eyed mother, who had seemed in his narrations almost to threaten Pauline with her son's fairy ancestry, as if from the grave she might at any moment summon him away. Mr. Hazlewood had carried with him a wonderful assurance of ordinariness. The merely external resemblance between him and his son proved that Guy could grow old; and the sense of his opposition was a trifling discomfort in comparison with the assurance he offered of an imaginable future. She remembered that her first idea of Guy had been that of someone dry and cynical; and no doubt this first impression of his father was equally wrong. She who had been so shy and speechless was no doubt much to blame, and the family had done nothing to help out the situation. It had been unkind of her father to hide himself, since to Mr. Hazlewood, who could not have understood that it was the sort of thing her father would be sure to do, such behaviour must have presented itself very oddly.
The Rector on Pauline's remonstrating with him was not at all penitent.
"When your marriage, my dear, comes on the horizon—I don't mind how faint a horizon—of the probable, then it will be time to discuss matters in the practical way I suppose Mr. Hazlewood would like them to be discussed. Moreover in any case I forgot that the worthy gentleman was coming."
Pauline was anxious to make excuses for the Rector to Guy, but Guy when he came round next day was only apologetic for his own father's behaviour; and he and she came to a conclusion in the end that parents must be forgiven on account of their age.
"At the same time," Guy added, "I blame my father for his conventional outlook. He doesn't seem able to realize the extraordinary help that you are to my work. In fact he doesn't realize that my work is work. He's been teaching for so many years that now he can no longer learn anything. Your father's behaviour is reasonable. He doesn't take us quite seriously, but he leaves the situation to our disentanglement. Well, we shall convince him that nothing in the world is so simple as a love like ours; but the worst of my father is that even if he were convinced he would be more annoying than ever."
"You must make allowances, Guy. For one thing how few people, even when they're young, understand about love. Besides, he's anxious about your career."
"What right has he to be anxious?" Guy burst out. "If I fail, I pay the penalty, not he."
"But he would be so hurt if you failed," she urged.
"Pauline, if you can say that, you can imagine that I will fail. Even you are beginning to have doubts."
"I haven't any doubts," she whispered. "I know you will be famous. And yet I have doubts of another sort. I sometimes wonder if I shall be enough when you are famous."
The question she had raised launched Guy upon a sea of eloquence. He worried no more about his father, but only protested his dependence upon Pauline's love for everything that he would ever have accomplished.
"Yes, but I think I shall seem dull one day," she persisted with a shake of the head.
"No, no. How could you seem dull to me?"
"But I'm not clever...."
"Avoid that wretched word," he cried. "It can only be applied to thieves, politicians and lawyers. I have told you a thousand times what you are to me, and I will not tell you again because I don't want to be an egotist. I don't want to represent you to myself as a creature that exists for me. You are a being to whom I aspire. If we live for ever I shall have still to aspire to you and never be nearer than the hope of deserving you."
"But your poetry, Guy, are you sure I appreciate it? Are you sure I'm not just a silly little thing lost in admiration of whatever you do?"
Guy brushed her doubts aside.
"Poetry is life trembling on the edge of human expression," he declared. "You are my life, and my poor verse faints in its powerlessness to say so. I always must be alone to blame if the treasure that you are is not proved to the world."
How was she to convince him of her unworthiness, how was she to persuade this lover of hers that she was too simple a creature for his splendid enthronement? Suddenly one day he would see her in all her dulness and ordinariness, and turning from her in disillusion, he would hold her culpable for anything in his work that might seem to have betrayed his ambition.
"Guy," she called into the future. "You will always love me?"
"Will there ever be another Pauline?"
"Oh, there might be so easily."
"Never! Never! Every hour, every moment cries 'never!'"
In her heart she told herself that at least none but she could ever love him so well; and in the strange confidence his father's visit had given to her she told him in her turn how every hour and every moment made her more dependent upon his love.
"I want nothing but you, nothing, nothing. I've given up everything for you."
"What have you given up?" he demanded at once, jealously and triumphantly regarding her.
"Oh, nothing really; but all the foolish little interests. Nothing, my dearest; only pigeons and music and working woollen birds and visiting poor people. Such foolish little things ... and yet things that were once upon a time frightfully important."
"You mustn't give up your music and your pigeons."
They both laughed at the absurd conjunction.
"How can I play when I'm thinking of you always, every second? Why, when I do anything but think of you, every object and every word floats away as it does when I'm tired and trying to keep awake in a big room."
"You can play to me," he argued, "even when I'm not there."
"Guy darling, I do, I do; but you've no idea how hopelessly playing to an absent lover destroys the time."
The memory of Mr. Hazlewood's visit was soon lost in the celebration of their anniversary month. As they had promised themselves in Summer, they went on moonlit expeditions to gather mushrooms; and at the waning of the moon they rose early on many milkwhite dawns instead, when the mushrooms at such an hour were veritably the spoil of dew, gleaming in their baskets under veils of gossamer. On these serene mornings the sound of autumnal birdsong came to them out of misted trees, so that they used to talk of the woods in the next Springtime, themselves moving about the wan vapours with that very air of people who scarcely live in the present. There was in this plaintive music of robins and thrushes a regret for the days of Summer spent together that were now passed away, and yet a more robust melody might have affronted the wistful air of these milkwhite dawns. The frail notes of the birds hinted at silence beyond, and through the opalescent and transuming landscape Guy and Pauline floated in fancy once more down the young Thames from Ladingford. The sad stillness of the year's surrender to decline admonished them to garner these hours, making a ghost even of the sun as if to warn them of the fleeting world, the covetous and furtive world. They wonderfully enjoyed these hours, but Pauline when at breakfast the mushrooms came fizzling to the table could never believe that she had been with Guy, and she used often to be discontented on being reminded by her mother of how much of the day she had already spent in his company. Looking back at these immaterial mornings of autumnal mist, she saw them upon the confines of sleep: silvery spaces they seemed that were not robbed from any familiar time.
There was during all this month a certain amount of congratulation which had to be endured, and Margaret was angry one day because Mr. and Mrs. Ford came over from Little Fairfield and alluded at tea to their hope of Richard and her soon being engaged. Pauline was naturally subject to the inquisitiveness of everybody, but as she could not without being absent-minded talk about anything except Guy, she found the general curiosity not very troublesome. Guy, however, resented this atmosphere of enquiry and was always more and more anxious to carry her out of reach of Wychford gossip.
One day in mid-October they had set out together with the intention of taking a long walk to the open upland country on the other side of the town, when, as they were going up High Street, they saw two of the local chatterboxes.
"I will not stop and talk to Mrs. Brydone and Mrs. Willsher," Guy grumbled. "Let's cut up Abbey Lane."
They turned aside and were making their way to the path that led under the Abbey wall to the high road, when they saw Dr. Brydone and his son coming from that direction.
"Really, there's a conspiracy of Brydones to waylay us this afternoon," Guy exclaimed petulantly. "We shall have to go through the Abbey grounds."
Pauline had passed the wicket, which he had impulsively flung open, before she realized the violation of one of her agelong rules.
"It's really rather jolly in here to-day," said Guy. "I think we're duffers not to come more often, you know."
The autumn wind was booming round the plantation, and sweeping up the broad path down the hillside with a skelter of leaves that gave a wild gaiety to the usually tristful scene.
"Why shouldn't we explore inside?" suggested Guy. "There's something so exhilarating about this great West wind. Almost one could fancy it might blow away that ghost of a house."
Pauline hesitated: since earliest childhood the Abbey had oppressed her with ill omen, and she could not overcome her prejudice in a moment.
"You're not really afraid when you're with me?" he persisted.
Pauline surrendered, and they went across the etiolated lawn toward the entrance. The wind was roaring through every crevice, and the ivy was scratching restlessly at the panes or shivering where through the gaps it had crept in with furry tendrils.
"It's rather fun to be walking up this staircase as if this were our own house," said Guy.
Pauline had an impulse to go back, and she made a quick step to descend.
"Where are you going?"
"Guy, I think I feel afraid."
"Afraid of what?"
"Oh, not of anything. Just afraid."
"Come, foolish one," he whispered gently.
And she, though it was against her will, followed him up the echoing empty stairs.
They went into every room, and Guy declared how they with their love were restoring to each of them the life it had known in the past. Here was a pleasant fancy, and Pauline hoped it might be true. In the thought that their presence was in a way the bestowal of charity on these maltreated halls she lost much of her alarm and began to enjoy the solitude spent with Guy. Whether they looked out at the wilderness that once was a garden or at the rank lawn in front, the thunderous wind surging round the house brought them closer together in the consciousness of their own shelter and their own peace in this deserted habitation.
"Now, confess," said Guy. "Haven't we been rather stupid to neglect such a refuge?"
"But, Guy, we haven't needed a refuge very often," objected Pauline, who for all that she was losing some of her dread of the Abbey was by no means inclined to set up a precedent for going there too often.
"Not yet," he admitted. "But with winter coming on and the wet days that will either keep us indoors or else prevent us from doing anything but walk perpetually along splashy roads, we shan't be sorry to have a place like this to which we can retreat in comparative comfort."
"Oh, Guy," Pauline asked anxiously. "I suppose we ought to come here?"
"Why on earth not?"
"Don't be angry. But the idea just flashed through my mind that perhaps Mother wouldn't like us to come here very often."
He sighed deeply.
"Really, sometimes I wonder what is the good of being engaged. Are we for ever to be hemmed in by the conventions of a place like Wychford?"
"Oh, but I expect Mother wouldn't mind really," said Pauline, reassuring herself and him. "I'm always liable to these fits of doubt. Sometimes I feel quite weighed down by the responsibility of being grown up."
She laughed at herself, and the laughter ringing through the hollow house seemed to return and mock her with a mirthless echo.
"Oh, Guy," she exclaimed. "Oh, Guy, I wish I hadn't laughed then. Did you hear how strangely it seemed as if the house laughed back at me?"
She had gripped his arm, and Guy startled by her gesture exclaimed rather irritably that she ought to control her nerves.
"Well, don't let's stay in this room. I don't like the green light that the ivy is giving your face."
"What next?" he grumbled. "Well, let's go out on the balcony."
They went half way downstairs to the door that opened on a large balustraded terrace with steps leading from either end into the ruined garden. The wind beat against them with such force here that very soon they went back into the house, and Guy found a small room looking out on the terrace, in which he persuaded Pauline to come and sit for a while. All the other rooms in the house had been so dreadfully decayed, so much battered by every humiliation time could inflict upon them that this small parlour was in contrast positively habitable. It gave the impression of being perhaps the last place to which the long vanished owners had desperately held. There was a rusty hob-grate and in the window a deep wooden seat; while the walls were still painted with courtly scenes, and the inlaid wooden floor gave a decency which everywhere else had been destroyed by the mouldering boards.
"I say, it would be fun to light a fire some time," said Guy. "This is just the room for us."
"It's rather a frightening room," said Pauline doubtfully.
"Dearest, you insist on being frightened by everything this afternoon," he answered.
"No, but this room is frightening, Guy," she persisted. "This seems so near to being lived in by dead people."
"And what can dead people do to you and me?" he asked with that sidelong mocking smile which she half disliked, half loved.
Pauline looked back over her shoulder once: then she came across to where he invited her to sit in the window-bay.
"I ought to have brought my diamond pencil," he said. "This is such a window for mottoes. Why, I declare! Somebody has scrawled one. Look, Pauline. Pauline, look! 1770. R.G. P.F. inside a heart. Oh, what a pity it wasn't P.G. for Pauline Grey. Still the G can stand for Guy. Oh, really, I think it's an extraordinary coincidence! P.F.? We can find out which of the Fentons that was. We'll look up in the history of the family. Darling, I am so glad we came to this little room. Think of those lovers who sat here once like us. Pauline, it makes me cherish, you so."
She sat upon his knee, because the window seat was dusty and because in this place of fled lovers she wanted to be held closely to his heart.
The wind boomed and moaned, and the sun breaking through the clouds lit up the walls with a wild yellow light.
Suddenly Pauline drew away from his arms.
"Shadows went by the window," she cried. "Guy, I feel afraid. I feel afraid. There's a footstep."
She was lily-white, whose cheeks had but now been burning so fiercely.
"Nonsense," he replied half-roughly. "It was that burst of sunshine."
"Guy, there were shadows. Hark!"
She nearly screamed, because footsteps were going down the stairs of the empty house.
"It must have been the caretaker," said Guy.
"I saw a white person. Guy, never never let us come here again."
"You don't seriously think you saw a ghost?" he asked.
"Guy, how do I know? Come away, into the air. We should never have come here. Oh, this room! I feel as if I should faint."
"I'll see who it was," said Guy springing up.
"No, don't leave me. Wait for me. I'll come with you."
They hurried down the stairs and when they reached the pallid lawn they saw Margaret and Monica in their white coats disappearing among the yew trees by the entrance.
"There are your ghosts," said Guy laughing.
Yet, though Guy scoffed at her fears, Pauline was not sure that she would not have preferred a ghost to that disquieting passage of her sisters without hail or comment. Yet perhaps after all they had not seen her and Guy in that sinister small parlour.
"Shall we catch them up?" he asked.
And Pauline with a breath of dismay was conscious of an inclination to pretend that they had not been here this afternoon. She discovered herself, as it were, proposing to Guy that they should not overtake Monica and Margaret. A secretiveness she had never known before had seized her soul, and she hoped that their presence in the Abbey was unknown. Guy divined at once that she did not want to overtake her sisters, and he kept her under the trees, where they watched each assault of the wind tearing at the little foliage that still remained. He guided her tenderly away from the sight of the house; and they walked along the broad path down through the shrubbery, meeting a rout of brown and red and yellow leaves that swept by them. She clung to Guy's arm as if this urgent and tumultuous wind had the power to sweep her too into the confusion: such an affraying journey was life beginning to seem. This ghastly elation of the October weather would not allow her breath to examine the perplexity in which she had involved herself. She felt that if the wind blew any louder, she would have to scream out in defiance of its violence or else surrender miserably and be whirled into oblivion. A brown oakleaf had escaped from the perishable host and was palpitating in a fold of her sleeve like a hunted creature; but when Pauline would have rescued it at the same moment a gust came roaring up the walk under the hissing trees, and the driven leaf was torn from its refuge and flung high into the air to join the myriads in their giddy riot of death.
"Come away from here," she cried to Guy. "Come away or I shall go mad in this wind."
He looked at her with a sort of judicial demeanour, as if he were in doubt whether he ought not to reprove such excitement.
"It was really beginning to blow quite fiercely," he said when they had reached the comparative stillness of Abbey Lane.
Behind them Pauline still heard with terror and hatred the moaning of the trees, and she hurried away from the sound.
"Never, never will I go there again. Why did you ask me to go there? I would sooner have met a thousand Brydones than have been in that house."
"Pauline," he protested. "You really do sometimes encourage yourself to be overwrought."
"Guy, don't lecture me," she said, turning upon him fiercely.
"Well, don't let the whole of Wychford see that you're in a temper," he retorted. "People haven't yet got over the idea of us two as a natural curiosity of the neighbourhood. I don't want ... and I don't suppose you're very anxious for these yokels to discuss our quarrels in the post-office to-night."