"I don't mind what anybody does," said Pauline desperately. "I only want to be out of this wind—this wind."
She was rather glad that Guy, perhaps to punish her for the loss of control, said he must go and work instead of coming back to tea at the Rectory. It strangely gave her the ability to smile at him and be in their parting herself again, whereas had he come back with her she knew that she would still have felt irritated. Her smile may have abashed his ill-humour, for he seemed inclined to change his mind about the need for work; but she would not let him and hurried towards home at the back of the west wind. Should she ask her sisters if they had seen her in the Abbey? It would be better to wait until they said something first. It would really be best to say nothing about this afternoon. Tea was in the nursery that day, for the Rector was holding some sort of colloquy in the drawing-room which he always used for parochial business, because he dreaded having his seeds scattered by the awkward fingers of the flock.
Tea had not come in yet, and Pauline took her familiar seat in the window, glad to be out of the wind but pondering a little mournfully the lawn mottled with leaves, and the lily-pond that was being seamed and crinkled by every gust that skated across the surface. When the others arrived, Pauline knew that she turned round to greet them defiantly, although she would have given much not to feel excuseful like this.
"You didn't see Monica and me?" Margaret asked.
"Only after you'd gone too far for us to call to you," Pauline answered, nervously assuring herself that Margaret had not tried to 'catch her out,' as Janet would have said.
"We had taken the short cut through the Abbey," Monica explained.
Pauline felt that what Monica meant to say had been: 'we did not spy upon you deliberately.' And that she should have had this instinct of putting her sisters in the wrong prepared her for something unpleasant, that and the fuss her mother was making over the tea-tray. Pauline was more than ever grateful to the impulse which had not allowed Guy to change his mind and come back with her. As soon as tea was over, Margaret and Monica went away to practise a duet; and in the manner of their going from the room Pauline felt the louring of the atmosphere.
Her mother began at once:
"Pauline, I'm surprized at your going into the Abbey with Guy."
"Well, it was really an accident. I mean it was because we wanted not to meet any of the Brydones, who were rushing at us from every side."
Pauline tried to laugh, but her mother looked down at the milk jug and flushed nearly to crimson in the embarrassment of something she was forcing herself to say.
"It's not merely going into the Abbey ... no ... not merely that ... no, not merely going into the Abbey ... but to let Guy make love to you like that is so vulgar. Pauline, it's the sort of way that servants behave when they're in love."
She sprang from the window-seat.
"Mother, what do you mean?"
"Margaret and Monica saw you sitting on Guy's knee. In any case I would rather you never did that. In any case ... yes ... but in a place where people passing might have seen ... yes, would have seen ... oh, it was inexcusable.... I shall have to make much stricter rules...."
"Are you going to speak to Guy about this?" Pauline asked. The house seemed to be whirling away like a leaf, such a shattering of her love were these words of her mother.
"How can I speak to Guy about it?" Mrs. Grey demanded irritably. "How can I, Pauline? It has nearly choked me to speak to you."
"I think Monica and Margaret are almost wicked," Pauline cried in flames. "They are trying to destroy everything. They are, they are. No, Mother, you shan't defend them. I knew they felt guilty when they went out of the room like that. How dare they put horrible thoughts in your mind? How dare they? They're cruel to me. And you're cruel to me. I don't understand what's happening to everybody. You'll make me hate you all, if you speak like that."
She rushed from the nursery and went first to the music-room where Margaret was sounding deep notes, hanging over her violoncello, and where Monica was playing one of those contained, somewhat frigid accompaniments.
"Margaret and Monica," said Pauline standing in the doorway. "You're never to dare to speak about me to Mother as you must have spoken this afternoon. Because neither of you have any emotion but conceit and selfishness, you shall not be jealous of Guy and me. Margaret, you can have no heart. I shall write to Richard and tell him you're heartless. Don't smile down at your violoncello. You shall not rule me into being like yourself. Oh, I'll never play music with either of you again."
Then she left them and in her white room for an hour she listened hopelessly to the trolling wind.
November
GUY was very indignant when he heard from Pauline the sequel of her sisters' vigilance. That they should afterward have tried to atone with gentleness for what they had made her suffer did not avail with him. Monica and Margaret now impressed him with their unworldly beauty in a strange way, for they became sinister figures like the Lady Geraldine in Christabel, sly malignant sylphs set in ambush to haunt the romantic path of his love. He was intensely aware that he ought not to resent their interference, but that he ought in fact to acknowledge the justice of it and by a stoical endeavour prove himself entitled to the cares of this long engagement. Actually Guy was enduring a violent jealousy, and illogically he began to declare how the others were jealous of him and Pauline. The consciousness that he could not carry her off into immediate marriage galled him and he suffered all the pangs of an unmerited servitude. He and Pauline became the prisoners of tyrants who were urging them to accept the yoke of convention; the more he suffered, the more he knew in his heart that he was culpable, and the more culpable he recognized himself, the more he chafed against the burden of waiting. All the resolutions that with the announcement of their betrothal had seemed to sail before a prospering breeze now turned and beat up against adverse influences and were every moment in danger of being irreparably wrecked.
Naturally coincident with all the stress of a situation, that owing to the temperament of the Greys was never relieved by discussion, was a complete failure to advance on the private road of his poetical ambition. All that he had written was seeming vain and bad: all that he was now trying to write deteriorated with every word painfully inscribed upon the cheerless empty page. He had conceived a set of eclogues that were to mark his contempt for the feverish incompetence of the modern school, whose ears had been corrupted by Wagner's filthy din; and all he could manage to achieve were seeming the banal inspirations of Mendelssohn. Guy was like an alchemist perpetually on the verge of discovering the stone that will transmute base metals to gold as he tried to find the secret by which such an one as Beethoven could purify with art the most violent emotions of humanity, yet always preserve their intrinsic value. He craved the secret which even the most obscure Elizabethans seemed to have possessed, that unearthly power of harmony which could fuse all baseness in a glittering song. Passion had never lost itself in arid decoration when they sang; nor yet had it ever betrayed itself with that impudently direct appeal these modern lyrists made, these shameless Rousseaus of verse. Yet he was as bad as any of them, for he was either like them when he tried to write his heart, or he expired in the mere sound of words like the degenerate ruck of the Caroline heirs to a great tradition. He was almost on the point of proclaiming his final failure, and if at that moment he could have received from his father the offer to come and teach small boys at Fox Hall, he would have gone.
And yet would he have gone? Could he abandon the delight of being with Pauline? The nearer he came to confessing his failure, the more he longed for her company. He was surely now in the midway of the thorny path of love, and whether he progressed or retreated he could not escape the spines. Well had he said to himself that night in May: 'La belle Dame sans mercy bath thee in thrall.'
All the fire and fever of his present life on the outskirts of a haunted country was for his imagination alone. However timidly his pen approached those dreams, they vanished; and whenever his pen betrayed him, Guy turned despairingly again to Pauline herself. These days without her were every day more unendurable. Once he had been content to talk about her to Mrs. Grey and her sisters, to listen to their praise of her: now every word they spoke wounded his pride. This madness of love could only feed itself in the very dungeons of his mind; and unless she were with him it did so horribly gorge itself that, if he had not swiftly seen her again, the madness would have broken the bars of its prison and ridden him like a hag.
It was when Guy had worked himself to this pitch of desire for the remedy of her sweet presence that Pauline was denied to him. He knew he must blame himself because, even after the warning of that afternoon in the Abbey, whenever they were together he would carry her away into the country, whence they would not return sometimes until night had fallen. Worse than that, by his now continuous withdrawal from the life of the Rectory he must have disquieted her family. He saw that they were becoming anxious about Pauline, but for that very reason he could not bring himself to mitigate a solitary doubt of theirs. Even to talk about her in the lightest way was now become an outrage upon the seclusion of their joint life. Such a conversation as that with Margaret about the silver photograph frame was now unimaginable. What right had anyone to know even what picture of Pauline burned upon his wall in the night-time? At first Pauline herself when the memory of the shock her mother's words had been to her died out, tried to justify the attitude of guardianship. She would explain to Guy how, ever since she could remember, her mother and sisters had treated her with this vigilance. They had, as she said, always so much adored her that it was natural for them to be unable at once to relinquish entirely to someone else the complete possession of her. Yet Guy must not be jealous, because she told them none of her secrets now: indeed she was distressed at the thought of how far outside her confidence they reproachfully esteemed themselves. Her love for him had severely shaken the perfect unity of their immemorial life together, and he must be generous and understand how gradual would have to be their renunciation of her to him. Guy, however, would not allow Pauline to have regrets like this. The most trivial consideration of her family aroused his jealousy; and when Mrs. Grey said she thought it would be better if the old rule of only seeing Pauline twice a week came into force again, Guy was determined that Pauline should resent the step as bitterly as he resented it. All the time he was with her he would be lamenting the briefness of their permitted intercourse, and since the weather was now so wet that even they could not reasonably claim beneath such streaming skies the right to abscond into deserted country, November shed a gloom upon their love.
On the days when Guy did come to the Rectory, no one attempted to rob them of their privacy; they were always granted the nursery to themselves, and even sometimes they had tea there together, if visitors came, so that the privilege of their few hours should not be infringed. Nevertheless, the old sense of time and the world at their service was lost. The dull November dusk came swiftly on; and out in the passage the cuckoo with maddening reiteration proclaimed each fleeting fifteen minutes. Often Guy was asked to dinner, but the old pleasure was mostly gone, for in the evening he and Pauline were not expected to retire by themselves; and there was always an implied reproach for his influence when she refused to play her violin. Then there came a dreadful day, because some cousins had arrived to stay at the Rectory; for these two girls like everyone else had been accustomed to adore Pauline, and so were determined to take an extreme interest in her engagement.
"We seem to have a ghastly lure for them," Guy groaned in exasperation, when Pauline had managed at last to secure the nursery for themselves.
"Guy, they're only staying a week."
"Well," he protested, "and for me to stay with you a week takes months of these miserable little hours we have. Oh, Pauline, I must see more of you."
Then back came the adoring cousins, and Guy felt that no torture he could imagine was bad enough for them. Their cordiality to him was so great that he had to be superficially pleasant; and, as smile after smile was wrung from him, by the end of the afternoon he felt sick with the agony his politeness had cost.
"Hurry and dress! hurry! hurry!" he begged Pauline, in a whisper when the gong sounded. "Let us at least have five minutes alone before dinner comes and I must go."
Pauline was scarcely five minutes in coming down again, but Guy counted each tick of the clock with desperate heartsickness.
"Oh, my darling, my darling," he said when she was held in the so dearly longed for, the so terribly brief embrace. "I cannot bear the torment of to-day."
She tried to soothe him; but Guy had reached the depths and this relief after such effort was almost too late.
"Pauline, listen," he said quickly. "You must come and say good-night to me in the garden. Do you hear? You must. You must. I shan't sleep unless you do. You must."
"Guy," she murmured, "I couldn't."
"You must. Promise ... you must. Come down and say good-night to me on the lawn. I shall wait there all night. I shall wait...."
The cuckoo burst out to cry seven o'clock.
"You must come. You must come. Promise."
"Perhaps," she whispered faintly. Then she said she could not.
Guy went to the door.
"Remember, I have not kissed you good-night," he proclaimed solemnly. "And now I'm going. I shall wait from eleven o'clock, and stay all night until you have kissed me."
"Oh, but Guy...."
"To-night," he said. "You promise?"
"Guy, if I dare, if I dare."
There were footsteps in the passage. He fled across the room, kissed her momentarily and hurried out, saying good-bye to the cousins, as he passed them, with a kind of exultant affection.
Outside, the November night hung humid and oppressive; Guy looking up felt rain falling softly yet with gathering intensity, and he lingered a few moments in the drive held by the whispering blackness. Behind him, the lamplight of the Rectory windows seemed for the moment sad and unattainable and gave him the fancy he was drifting away from a friendly shore. Then suddenly he marched away along the drive, content; for the thought of 'to-night,' which latterly had often brought such a presentiment of loneliness, now sounded upon his imagination like the rapture of a nightingale.
Plashers Mead had never appeared so desirable as now when it was the prelude to such an enterprise as this of consecrating with a last embrace the rain and gloom of November. If he had any hesitation about the rightness or even, setting probity aside, about the prudence of such an action, he justified himself with romantic reasons; and if he was driven by conscience to an ultimate defence, he justified himself with the exceptional circumstances that gave him a sanction to accept from Pauline this sacrifice of her traditions. Impulses to consider what he was doing were easily dismissed: indeed before he reached his house there was not one left. Inside, the warmth and comfort of Plashers Mead were additional incentives to prosecute his resolve; every gleaming book, the breathing of the dog upon the mat before the fire, the gentle purr of the lamp, all seemed to demand that voluptuous renunciation which would later urge him forth again into the night. That it would probably be raining was not to prove an obstacle: Pauline would be more sure to come if she thought he were standing outside in the rain. It was a second Eve of St. Agnes; and Guy went across to his shelf and took down Keats. He had come to the knights and ladies praying in their dumb oratories, when there was a knock at the front-door, and his mind leapt to the thought that Pauline might have sent a note by Birdwood to prevent his coming to-night. The knock sounded again, and as Miss Peasey was evidently too deeply immersed in The Pilgrim's Progress, her vespertine lectionary, to pay heed to visitors at this hour of nine o'clock, he must go down and open the door himself.
"Are we disturbing you?"
It was the voice of Brydone, and with Willsher in his wake he came into the hall.
"Charlie and I have made several shots to find you in, but of course we know you're a busy man nowadays."
"Go on upstairs, will you?" said Guy making a tremendous effort to appear hospitable. "I'll dig out the whisky."
He went along and shouted in Miss Peasey's ear what was wanted. She looked up as if it were Apollyon himself come to affront her holy abstraction.
"I think there's some left from that bottle we got in August.... I shall lay it on the mat," she told him.
Guy nodded encouragingly and went upstairs to join his guests.
"Well, I suppose you'll be soon having a missus in charge here," said Brydone heartily.
Willsher hummed Bachelor Boys as a contributory echo of the question.
"Oh, no, we're not getting married at once, you know," Guy explained.
"Well, you're quite right," Brydone declared heartily. "After all, being close at hand like this, you're not much likely to draw a blank in the lottery."
"Marriage is a lottery, isn't it?" said Guy with polite sarcasm.
"Rather," sighed Willsher. "Terrific!"
"I suppose I shall have to be looking round preparatory to getting married in two or three years' time," Brydone added. "Well, you see, after Christmas I shall be thinking about my finals, and then I'm going to come in as the old man's partner. Country people like it best, if a doctor's married. No doubt about that, is there, Charlie?"
The solicitor's son agreed it was indubitable.
"Of course if I had the cash to hang on in Harley Street for ten years as a specialist, it would be another matter. But I can't, so there it is."
Even this fellow had his dreams, Guy thought; even he would make acquaintance with thwarted ambitions.
"Been doing anything with a rod lately?" asked Willsher, whose pastime, when he could not be standing in action on the river's bank, was always to steer a conversation in the direction of anglers' gossip.
"No, not lately," said Guy. "Though I knocked down a lot of apples with one last month."
"Ha-ha! that's good," Brydone ejaculated. "That's very good, Hazlewood. That's good, isn't it, Charlie?"
"Awfully good," agreed the angler.
Their appreciation seemed perfectly genuine, and Guy was touched by the readiness of them to be entertained by his lame wit.
"I mustn't forget to tell the old man that," Brydone chuckled. "He's always digging at me over the fish. Done anything with a rod lately? I knocked down a lot of apples last month. Your governor will like that, Charlie!"
Guy heard the clink of a tray deposited cautiously on the floor of the passage outside. He allowed Miss Peasey time to retreat before he opened the door, because it was one of the clauses in her charter that she was never, as a lady-housekeeper, to be asked to bring a tray into a room when anyone but Guy was present. He hoped that after they had drunk, his visitors would depart; but alas, the unintended charm of his conversation seemed likely to prolong their stay.
"Rabelais," Brydone read slowly as he saw the volumes on the shelves. "That's a bit thick, isn't it?"
"In quantity or quality, do you mean?" asked Guy.
"I've heard that's the thickest book ever written," said Brydone.
"Do you read old French easily?" asked Guy.
"Oh, it's in old French, is it?" said Brydone in a disappointed voice. "That would biff me."
A silence fell upon the room, a silence that seemed to symbolize the 'biffing' of the doctor's son by old French. Willsher took the opportunity to steer the conversation back to fish, and ten o'clock struck in the middle of an argument between him and his friend over the merits of two artificial flies. Guy must be on the Rectory lawn by eleven o'clock, and he began to be anxious, so animated was the discussion, about the departure of these well-meaning intruders. He did not want to plunge straight from their company into the glorious darkness that would hold Pauline; and he eyed the volume of Keats lying face downward on the table, hoping he would be allowed to come back to the knights and ladies praying in their dumb oratories, while he thought with a thrill of the moment when he should be able to read:
These lovers fled away into the storm.
"If you can't get a chub any other way, you can sometimes get him with a bit of bacon," Willsher was saying. "And I know a fellow who caught one of those woppers under Marston's Mill with a cherry. Fact, I assure you."
"I know a man at Oldbridge, who caught a four pounder with a bumble-bee."
"I caught a six pounder at Oxford with a mouse's head myself," Guy declared.
The friends looked at him in the admiration and envy with which anglers welcome a pleasant companionable sort of a lie. It was a bad move, for it seemed as if by that lie he had drawn closer the bonds of sympathy between himself and his guests. They visibly warmed to his company, for Brydone at once invited himself to another 'tot' and was obviously settling down to a competitive talk about big fish; while Willsher's first shyness turned to familiarity, so completely indeed that he asked if Guy would mind his moving the furniture in order to try to explain to that fathead Brydone the exact promontory of the Greenrush where he had caught thirty trout in an hour when the mayfly was up two years ago.
Half-past-ten struck from the church tower, and Guy became desperate. There was nothing he hated so much as asking people to go, which was one reason why he always discouraged them at the beginning; but it really seemed as if he must bring himself to the point of asking Brydone and Willsher to leave him to his work. He decided to allow them until a quarter-to-eleven. The minutes dragged along, and when the quarter sounded Guy said he was sorry but that he was very much afraid he would have to work now.
"Right O," said Brydone. "We'll tootle off." But it took ten minutes to get them out of the house, and when at last they disappeared into the mazy garden Guy was in a fume of anxiety about his tryst. He could not now go round by Rectory Lane, as he had intended at first. No doubt Brydone and Willsher would stay talking half-an-hour on the bridge, for the rain had stopped and they had given the impression of having the night before them. In fact Brydone had once definitely announced that the night was still young. Yet in a way the fact of their nearness and of his having to avoid them added a zest to the adventure.
How dark it was and how heavily the trees dripped in the orchard. Guy pulled the canoe from the shed and dragged it squeaking over the wet grass: not even he in the exaltation of the moment was going to swim the Hellespont.
When he was in the canoe and driving it with silent strokes along the straight black stream; when the lantern was put out and the darkness was at first so thick that like the water it seemed to resist the sweep of his paddle, Guy could no longer imagine that Pauline would venture out. He became oppressed by the impenetrable and humid air, and he began to long for rain to fall as if it would reassure him that nature in such an annihilation of form was still alive. Now he had swung past the overhanging willows of the churchyard; his eyes grown accustomed to the darkness discovered against a vague sky the vague bulk of the church, and in a minute or two he could be sure that he was come to the Rectory paddock. He was wet to the knees and his feet, sagging in the grass, seemed to make a most prodigious noise with their gurgling.
Guy was too early when he crept over the lawn, for there were still lights in all the upper windows, and he withdrew to the plantation, where he waited in rapt patience while the branches dripped and pattered, dripped and pattered ceaselessly. One by one the lights had faded out, but still he must not signal to Pauline. How should he after all make known to her his presence on that dark lawn? Scarcely would she perceive from her window his shadowy form. He must not even whisper; he must not strike a match. Suddenly a light crossed his vision and he started violently before he realized that it was only a glow-worm moving with laborious progress along the damp edge of the lawn. Black indeed was the hour when a glow-worm belated on this drear night of the year's decline could so alarm him. For a while he watched the creeping phosphorescence and wondered at it in kindly fellowship, thinking how like it was to a human lover, so small and solitary in this gigantic gloom. Then he began to pick it up and, as it moved across his hand and gave it with the wan fire a ghostly semblance, he resolved to signal with this lamp to Pauline.
Midnight crashed its tale from the belfry, and nowhere in the long house was there any light. There was nothing now in the world but himself and this glow-worm wandering across his hand. He moved nearer to the house and stood beneath Pauline's window; surely she was leaning out: surely that was her shadow tremulous on the inspissate air. Guy waved, and the pale light moving to and fro seemed to exact an answer, for something fell at his feet and by the glow-worm's melancholy radiance he read 'now' on a piece of paper. Gratefully he set the insect down to vanish upon its own amorous path into the murk. Not a tree quivered, not a raindrop slipped from a blade of grass but Guy held out his arms to clasp his long awaited Pauline. The 'now' prolonged its duration into hours, it seemed; and then when she did come she was in his arms before he knew by her step or by the rustle of her dress that she was coming. She was in his arms as though like a moth she had floated upon a flower.
Their good-night was kissed in a moment, and she was gone like a moth that cannot stay upon the flower it visits.
Guy waited until he thought he saw her leaning from her window once more. Then he drew close to the wall of the house and strained his eyes to catch the farewell of her hand. As he looked up, the rain began to fall again; and in an ecstasy he glided back to Plashers Mead, adoring the drench of his clothes and the soft sighing of the rain.
ANOTHER WINTER
December
IN the first elation of having been able to prove to Guy how exclusively she loved him, Pauline had no misgivings about the effect upon herself of that dark descent into the garden. It was only when Guy, urging the success of what almost seemed disturbingly to state itself as an experiment, begged her to go farther and take the negligible risk of coming out with him on the river at night, that she began to doubt if she had acted well in yielding that first small favour. The problem, that she must leave herself to determine without a hint of its existence to anyone outside, stuck unresolved at the back of her conscience, whence in moments of depression it would, as it were, leap forth to assail her peace of mind. She was positive, however, that the precedent had been unwise from whatever point of view regarded, and for a while she resisted earnestly the arguments Guy evoked about the privileges conferred on lovers by the customary judgment of the world. Nevertheless in the end she did surrender anew to his persistence, and on two nights of dim December moonlight she escaped from the house and floated with him unhappily upon the dark stream, turning pale at every lean branch that stretched out from the bank, at every shadow, and at every sound of distant dogs' barking.
Guy would not understand the falseness of this pleasure and, treating with scorn her alarm, he used to invent excuses by which she would be able to account for the emptiness of the room in the event of her absence being discovered. The mere prospect of such deceit distressed Pauline, and when she realized that even already by doing what she had done deceit had been set on foot, she told him she could not bear the self-reproach which followed. It was true, as she admitted, that there was really nothing to regret except the unhappiness the discovery of her action would bring to her family, but of course the chief effect of this was that Guy became even more jealous of her sisters' influence. The disaccord between him and them was making visible progress, and much of love's joy was being swallowed up in the sadness this brought to her. She wished now that she had said nothing about the rebuke she had earned for that unfortunate afternoon in the Abbey. Margaret and Monica had both tried hard ever since to atone for the part they played, and having forgiven them and accepted the justice of their point of view, Pauline was distressed that Guy should treat them now practically as avowed enemies. She might have known that happiness such as hers could not last, and she reproached herself for the many times she had triumphed in the thought of the superiority of their love to any other she had witnessed. She deserved this anxiety and this doubt as a punishment for the way in which she had often scoffed at the dulness of other people who were in love. Marriage, which at first had been only a delightful dream the remoteness of which did not matter, was now appearing the only remedy for the ills that were gathering round Guy and her. As soon as she had set her heart upon this panacea she began to watch Guy's work from the point of view of its subservience to that end. She was anxious that he should work particularly hard and she became very sensitive to any implication of laziness in the casual opinion that Margaret or Monica would sometimes express. Guy was obviously encouraged by the interest she took, and for a while in the new preoccupation of working together as it were for a common aim the strain of their restricted converse was allayed.
One day early in December Guy announced that really he thought he had now enough poems to make a volume, news which roused Pauline to the greatest excitement and which on the same evening she triumphantly announced to her family at dinner.
"My dears, his book is finished! And, Father, he has translated some poems of that man—that Latin creature you gave him on his birthday."
"Propertius is difficult," said the Rector. "Very difficult."
"Oh, but I'm so glad he's difficult, because that will make it all the more valuable if Guy ... or won't it? Oh, don't let me talk nonsense: but really, darlings, aren't you all glad that his book is finished?"
"We'll drink the poet's health," said the Rector.
"Oh, Father, I must kiss you ... aren't you pleased Guy appreciated your present?"
"Now, Pauline, you're sweeping your napkin down on the floor...."
"Oh, but Mother, I must kiss Francis for being so sweet."
"He promised to show me the poems," said Margaret. "But Guy doesn't like me any more."
"Oh, yes, Margaret, he does. Oh, Margaret, he really does. And if you say that, I shall have to break a secret. He's written two poems about you."
Margaret flushed.
"Has he? Well, he must certainly show them to me first or I shall veto the publication."
"Oh, darlings," Pauline cried. "I am happy to-night! The famousness of Guy presently ... and oh, I forgot to tell you something so touching that happened this morning. What do you think? Miss Verney consulted me as to whether I thought it was time she began to wear caps."
"Guy ought to write a poem about that," said Monica.
"Oh, no, Monica, you're not to laugh at poor Miss Verney. I must tell her to-morrow morning about Guy's book. She so appreciates greatness."
It was a delightful evening, and Pauline in her contentment felt that she was back in the heart of that old Rectory life, so far did the confidence in Guy's justification of himself enable her to leave behind the shadows of the past two months, and most of all those miserable escapades in the watery December moonlight.
"A book, dear me, how important," said Miss Verney, when next morning Pauline was telling her the news. "Quite an important event for Wychford, I'm sure. I must write to the Stores and order a copy at once ... or perhaps, as a local celebrity ... yes, I think, it would be kinder to patronize our Wychford stationer."
"But, Miss Verney, it's not published yet, you know. We expect it won't be published before March at the earliest."
"I don't think I ever met an author," said Miss Verney meditatively. "You see, my father being a sailor ... really, an author in Wychford, ... dear me, it's quite an important occasion."
Pauline thought she would devote the afternoon to writing the good news to Richard, and Margaret hearing of her intention, announced surprizingly that Richard was coming back in April for two or three months.
"Oh, Margaret, and you never told me."
"Well, I didn't think you took much interest in Richard nowadays. He asked what had happened to you."
"I am glad he's coming back, Margaret. But oh, do tell me if you are going to marry him."
Margaret would not answer, but Pauline, all of whose hopes were roseate to-day, decided that Margaret had really made up her mind at last, and she went upstairs full of penitence for her neglect of Richard, but determined to make up for it by the good news she would send both of herself and of him.
WYCHFORD RECTORY
OXON.
December.
My Dear Richard,
I am sorry that I've not written to you for so long, but I know you'll forgive me, because I have to think about so many things. Margaret has just told me you are coming back in April. Be sure it is April, because my birthday is on the first of May, you know, and you must be in England for my birthday. Margaret looked very happy when she said you were coming home. Richard, I am sure that everything will be perfect. Guy's book is finished, and perhaps it will be published in March. If it's published early in March, I will send you a copy so that you can read it on the steamer coming home. There are two poems about Margaret, who was very sympathetic with Guy over me! That's one of the reasons why I'm sure that everything will be perfect for you. Guy wants to meet you very much. He says he admires action. That's because I told him about your bridge. Your father and mother are always very sweet to us when we go and have tea with them. Miss Verney is going to wear caps. Birdwood asked if you would bring him back a Goorcha's—is that the way to spell it—a Goorcha's knife because Godbold won't believe something he told him. Birdwood said you were a grand young chap and were wasted out in India. Father won a prize at Vincent Square for a yellow gladiolus. It's been christened—now I've forgotten what, but after somebody who had a golden throat. Guy's dog is a lamb. A merry Christmas, and lots of love from
Your loving
Pauline.
Pauline looked forward to Richard's return because she hoped that if Margaret married him her own marriage to Guy would begin to appear more feasible, it being at present almost too difficult to imagine anything like marriage exploding upon the quietude of the Rectory. The return of Richard, from the moment she eyed it in relation to her own affairs, assumed an importance it had never possessed before when it was only an ideal of childish sentiment, and Pauline made of it a foundation on which she built towering hopes.
Guy, as soon as he had decided to publish his first volume, instantly acquired doubts about the prudence of the step, and he rather hurt Pauline's feelings by wanting Michael Fane to come and give him the support of his judgment.
"I told you I should never be enough," she said sadly.
He consoled her with various explanations of his reliance upon a friend's opinion, but he would not give up his idea of getting him and he wrote letter after letter until he was able to announce that for a week-end in mid-December Michael was actually pledged.
"And I do want you to like him," said Guy earnestly.
Pauline promised that of course she would like him, but in her heart she assured herself she never would. It was corulean winter weather when the friend arrived, and Pauline who had latterly taken up the habit of often coming into the churchyard to talk for a while with Guy across the severing stream, abandoned the churchyard throughout that week-end. Guy was vexed by her withdrawal and vowed that in consequence all the pleasure of the visit had been spoilt.
"For I've been rushing in and out all the time to see if you were not in sight, and I'm often absolutely boorish to Fane, who by the way loves your Rectory bedroom so much."
"Has he condescended to let your book appear?" asked Pauline.
"Oh, rather, he says that everything I've included is quite all right. In fact he's a much less severe critic than I am myself."
Pauline had made up her mind, if possible, to avoid a meeting with Michael, but on Monday she relented, and they were introduced to each other. The colloquy on that turquoise morning, when the earth smelt fresh and the grass in the orchard was so vernally green, did not help Pauline to know much about Michael Fane, save that he was not so tall as Guy and that somehow he gave the impression of regarding life more like a portrait by Vandyck than a human being. He was cold, she settled, and she, as usual shy and blushful, could only have seemed stupid to him.
That afternoon, when the disturbing friend had gone, Pauline and Guy went for a walk.
"He admired you tremendously."
"Did he?" she made listless answer.
"He said you were a fairy's child, and he also said you really were a wild rose."
"What an exaggerated way of talking about somebody whom he has only seen for a moment."
"Pauline," said Guy, affectionately rallying her, "aren't you being rather naughty—rather wilful, really? Didn't you like Michael?"
"Guy, you can't expect me to know whether I liked him in a minute. He made me feel shyer than even most people do."
"Well, let's talk about the book instead," said Guy. "What colour shall the binding be?"
"What colour did he suggest?"
"I see you're determined to be horrid about my poor harmless Michael."
"Well, why must he be brought down like this to approve of your book?"
"Oh, he has good taste, and besides he's interested in you and me."
"What did you tell him about us?" Pauline asked sharply.
"Nothing, my dearest, nothing," said Guy, flinging his stick for Bob to chase over the furrows. "At least," he added turning and looking down at her with eyebrows arched in pretended despair of her unreasonableness, "I expect I bored him to death with singing your praises."
Still Pauline could not feel charitable, and still she could not smile at Guy.
"Ah, my rose," he said tenderly. "Why will you droop? Why will you care about people who cannot matter to us? My own Pauline, can't you see that I called in a third person because I dare not trust myself now. All the day long, all the night long you are my care. I'm so dreadfully anxious to justify myself: I long for assurance at every step: once I was self-confident, but I can't be self-confident any longer. Success is no responsibility in itself, but now...."
"It's my responsibility," cried Pauline melting to him. "Oh, forgive me for being jealous. Darling boy, it's just my foolish ignorance that makes me jealous of some one who can give you more than I."
"But no one can!" he vowed. "I only asked Michael's advice because you are too kind a judge. My success is of such desperate importance to us two. What would it have mattered before I met you? Now my failure would ... oh, Pauline, failure is too horrible to think of."
"As if you could fail," she chided gently. "And if you did fail, I would almost be glad, because I would love you all the more."
"Pauline, would you?"
"Ah, no I wouldn't," she whispered. "Because I could not love you more that I do now."
The dog with a sigh dropped his stick: he was become accustomed to these interludes.
"Bob gives us up as hopeless," Guy laughed.
"I'm not a bit sympathetic, you jealous dog," she said. "Because you have your master all day long."
The next time Guy came to the Rectory, he brought with him the manuscript, so that Pauline could seal it for luck; and they sat in the nursery, while Guy for the last enumeration turned over the pages one by one.
"It represents so much," he said, "and it looks so little. My father will be rather surprized. I told him I should wait another year. I wonder if I ought to have waited."
"Oh, no," said Pauline. "Everything else is waiting and waiting. It makes me so happy to think of these pages flying away like birds."
"I hope they won't be like homing pigeons," said Guy. "It will be rather a blow if William Worrall rejects them."
"Oh, but how could he be so foolish."
"I don't think he will really," said Guy. "After all, a good many people have endorsed the first half, and I'm positive that what I've written here is better than that. I rather wish I'd finished the Eclogues though. Do you think perhaps I'd better wait after all?"
"Oh, no, Guy, don't wait."
So, very solicitously the poems were wrapped up, and when they were tied and sealed and the parcel lay addressed upon the table, Mrs. Grey with Monica and Margaret came in. They were so sympathetic about the possible adventures in sight for that parcel, and Guy was so much his rather self-conscious self that the original relation between him and the family seemed perfectly restored. Pauline was glad to belong to them, and in her pride of Guy's achievement she basked in their simple affection, thrilling to every word or look or gesture that confirmed her desire of the cherished accord between Guy and the others.
"Now I'm sure you'd both like to go and post Guy's poems," Mrs. Grey exclaimed. "Yes ... charming ... to go and post them yourselves."
Pauline waited anxiously for a moment, because of late Guy had often seemed impatient of these permissions granted to him by her mother, but this afternoon he was himself and full of the shy gratitude that made her wonder if indeed nearly a year could have flown by since their love had been declared. Dusk was falling when they reached the post-office.
"Will you register it, Mr. Hazlewood?" asked the postmistress.
Guy nodded, and the parcel left their hands: in silence they watched it vanish into the company of other parcels that carried so much less: then back they came through the twilight to tea at the Rectory, both feeling as if the first really important step toward marriage had been taken.
"You see," said Guy, "if only these poems of mine are well received, my father must acknowledge my right to be here, and if he once admits that, what barrier can there be to our wedding?"
Pauline told him how much during the last month the distant prospect of their marriage had begun to weigh upon her, but now since that parcel had been left at the post-office, she said she would always talk of their wedding because that was such a much less remote word than marriage.
"Come out to-night," said Guy suddenly.
She put her hand on his arm.
"Guy, don't ask me again."
He was penitent at once, and full of promises never to ask her again to do anything that might cause an instant's remorse. They had reached the hall of the Rectory and in the shadows Pauline held him to her heart, suddenly caught in the flood of tenderness that a wife might have for a husband to whose faults she could be indulgent by the measure of his greater virtues kept, as it might be, for her alone.
January
GUY, as soon as he had sent off the poems to a publisher, was much less violently driven by the stress of love, which latterly had urged him along so wayward a course. He began to acquire a perspective and to lose some of that desperately clinging reliance upon present joys. The need of battling against an uncertain future had brought him to the pitch of madness at the thought of the hours of Pauline's company that must be wasted; but now when to his sanguine hopes marriage presented itself as at last within sight, sometimes even seeming as close as the fall of this new year, he was anxious to set Pauline upon more tranquil waters, lest she too should like himself be the prey of wild imaginations that might destroy utterly one untempered by any except the gentler emotions of a secluded life. Her mother and sisters, whom he had come to regard as hostile interpreters of convention, took on again their old features of kindliness and grace; and he was able to see without jealous torments how reasonable their attitude had been throughout, nay more than reasonable, how unworldly and noble-hearted it had been in confiding Pauline to the care of one who had so few pretensions to deserve her. He upbraided himself for having by his selfishness involved Pauline in the complexities of regrets for having done something against her judgment: and in this dreary rain of January, free from the burden of uncompleted labour, he now felt a more light-hearted assurance than he had known since the beginning of their love.
Bills came in by every post, but their ability to vex him had vanished in the promise his manuscript gave of a speedy defeat of all material difficulties. The reaction from the strain of decking his poems with the final touches that were to precede the trial of public judgment gave place to dreams. A dozen times Guy followed the manuscript step by step of its journey from the moment the insentient mailcart carried it away from Wychford to the moment when Mr. William Worrall threw a first casual glance to where it lay waiting for his perusal on the desk in the Covent Garden office. Guy saw the office-boy send off the formal postcard of acknowledgment that he had already received; and in his dream he rather pitied the youth for his unconsciousness of what a treasure he was acknowledging merely in the ordinary routine of a morning's work. Perhaps the packet would lie unopened for two or three days—in fact probably Mr. Worrall might not yet have resumed work, as they say, after a short Christmas vacation. Moreover when he came back to business, although at Guy's request for sponsors the poems had been vouched for by one or two reputed friends of the publisher with whom he was acquainted, he would no doubt still be inclined to postpone their examination. Then one morning he would almost inadvertently cut the string and glance idly at a page, and then....
At this point the author's mental visions varied. Sometimes Worrall would be so deeply transfixed by the revelation of a new planet swimming into ken that he would sit spellbound at his own good fortune, not emerging from a trance of delight until he sent a telegram inviting the poet to come post haste to town and discuss terms. In other dreams the publisher would distrust his own judgment and take the manuscript under his arm to a critic of taste, anxiously watching his face and as an expression of admiration gradually diffused itself knowing that his own wild surmize had been true. There were many other variations of the first reception of the poems, but they all ended in the expenditure of sixpence on a telegram. Here the dream would amplify itself; and proofs, binding, paper, danced before Guy's vision; while soon afterward the first reviews were coming in. At this stage the poet's triumph assumed a hundred shapes and diversities, and ultimately he could never decide between a leader on his work in The Times headed A NEW GENIUS or an eulogy on the principal page of The Daily Mail that galloped neck and neck for a column alongside one of The Letters of an Englishman. The former would bestow the greater honour: the latter would be more profitable: therefore in moments of unbridled optimism he was apt to allot both proclamations to his fortune. With such an inauguration of fame the rest was easy dreaming. His father would take a train to Shipcot on the same morning: if he read The Times at breakfast he would catch the eleven o'clock from Galton and, travelling by way of Basingstoke, reach Shipcot by half-past-two. Practically one might dream that before tea he would have settled £300 a year on his son, so that the pleasant news could be announced to the Rectory that very afternoon. In that case he and Pauline could be married in April; and actually on her twenty-first birthday she would be his wife. They would not go to the Campagna this year, because these bills must be paid, unless his father, in an access of pride due to his having bought several more eulogies at bookstalls along the line, offered to pay all debts up to the day of his wedding; in which case they could go to the Campagna: