March came crashing into this peace without disturbing the simple pattern into which the existence of Guy and Pauline had now resolved itself—a pattern, moreover, that belonged to Pauline's mother and sisters for their own pleasure in embroidery, so that the lovers were, as it might be, carried about from room to room. Sometimes, indeed, when Guy came to the Rectory, there was a pretense of leaving him and Pauline alone; but mostly they were in the company of the others, and Guy was now as deep in the family life as if he were a son of the house. Since he and Pauline never went for walks together, perhaps Wychford speculation had died down—at any rate there was no gossip to disturb Mrs. Grey; although, as she had by now given up the theory of a sort of engagement, yet without consenting to anything in the shape of a final announcement, it might not have mattered much.
Meanwhile, it began to dawn on Guy that the time was coming when he would have to make up his mind to do something definite, and on these bleak mornings of early March, as he watched the scanty snowflakes withering against the panes, he asked himself if there was any justification for staying on at Plashers Mead in the new circumstances of his life there. At night, however, when the wind piped and whistled round the house, he usedto dream upon the firelight and shrink from the idea of abandoning all that Plashers Mead had stood for and all that now still more it must stand for in the future. If only a plan could be devised by which the house were secured against sacrilege; and half-fantastically he began to imagine a monastic academy for poets, of which he would be Warden. Perhaps Michael Fane would like this idea, and since he had money he might come forward with an offer of endowment. Then he and Pauline could be married; for £150 a year would be an ample income, if there were no rent to pay and no wages. He, of course, would earn his living as superintendent of the academic discipline; and really, as he dreamed over his plan, such an establishment would be an admirable corollary to Oxford. It might gain even a sort of official recognition from the university. Plainly some sort of institution was wanted where in these commercial days young writers could retreat to learn their craft less suicidally than by journalism. What should he call his academy? With marriage as the reason for inventing this economy, he could hardly give it too monastic a complexion. The louder the wind beat against the house, the more feasibly in the lamplit quiet within did the scheme present itself; and Michael Fane, who was always searching for an object in life, would be the very person to involve in the materialization. He would say nothing to anybody else; not even would he mention the idea to Pauline herself. These sanguine dreams occupied his evenings prosperously enough, while March swept past with searing winds from Muscovy that skimmed the rich earth of the plow-lands with a dusty pallor, tarnished the daffodils, and seemed to crack the very bird-song. Guy, however, with every day either a day nearer to seeing Pauline again or the day itself, did not care about the wind that blew, and he was as happy walking on the uplands as the spindle-shanked hares that sported among the turfy mounds.
Later, the shrilling wind from the east surrendered tothe booming of the equinox. Louder than before the weather beat against Guy's house from the opposite quarter. Chimneys groaned like broken horns, and after a desperate gale even deaf Miss Peasey complained that she had heard the wind once or twice in the night, and that her bedroom had seemed a bit draughty. Guy discovered that several tiles had been blown from the roof, so that through the lath and plaster above her head there was a sound of demoniac fife-playing. Then the wind dropped; the rain poured down; but at last on Lady Day morning Guy woke up to see a rich sky between white magnificent clouds, a gentle breeze, and a letter from his father.
Fox Hall, Galton, Hants,March 24th.
Dear Guy,—I send you this with the third instalment of the £150. Please let me have a prompter acknowledgment than last time, when, I remember, you kept me waiting nearly three weeks. I am glad to have news of successful experiments in verse-making, but I should be much more glad to hear that you had made up your mind to make them as an accessory to a regular profession. You will notice that I do not attempt to influence your choice in this matter, and so I hope you will not retort with invidious comparisons between literature and the teaching of small boys.No, I do not remember a man called Grey in my time at Oxford, but I do remember a man of the same name as ours at Trinity. He came to grief, I believe, later on. You must assure your friend that this was not myself. I am glad you find the Rector and his wife such pleasant people. Have they any children? I wish I could say as much for the new Vicar of Galton, who is a pompous nincompoop and has introduced a lot of his High Church frippery which so annoys some of the parents. Your friend is lucky to be able to afford so much leisure for gardening. I am of course far too busy to think about anything like that except in the Summer holidays, when flowers would scarcely give me the change of air I want. This year I hope to come and see you for a week or two, and weshall be able to discuss the future. Don't work too hard and please oblige me by acknowledging the inclosed cheque.
Dear Guy,—I send you this with the third instalment of the £150. Please let me have a prompter acknowledgment than last time, when, I remember, you kept me waiting nearly three weeks. I am glad to have news of successful experiments in verse-making, but I should be much more glad to hear that you had made up your mind to make them as an accessory to a regular profession. You will notice that I do not attempt to influence your choice in this matter, and so I hope you will not retort with invidious comparisons between literature and the teaching of small boys.
No, I do not remember a man called Grey in my time at Oxford, but I do remember a man of the same name as ours at Trinity. He came to grief, I believe, later on. You must assure your friend that this was not myself. I am glad you find the Rector and his wife such pleasant people. Have they any children? I wish I could say as much for the new Vicar of Galton, who is a pompous nincompoop and has introduced a lot of his High Church frippery which so annoys some of the parents. Your friend is lucky to be able to afford so much leisure for gardening. I am of course far too busy to think about anything like that except in the Summer holidays, when flowers would scarcely give me the change of air I want. This year I hope to come and see you for a week or two, and weshall be able to discuss the future. Don't work too hard and please oblige me by acknowledging the inclosed cheque.
Your affectionate father,John Hazlewood.
Guy went out in the orchard to meditate upon the advisableness of telling his father at once about Pauline. If he were coming to stay here next August, he ought to know beforehand, for it would be horrid to have the atmosphere of Plashers Mead ruined by acrimonious argument. August, however, was still a long way off, and now there was going to be fine weather for a while, which must not be spoiled. Besides, perhaps in the end his father would not come, and, anyway, himself would be having to decide presently upon a more definite step. He would tell Pauline, when he saw her to-morrow, that he ought to go up to London and get some journalistic work so as to bring the time of their marriage nearer. Or should he wait until he had sounded Michael about that academy? Plashers Mead enlarged itself for Guy's vision until the orchard was a quadrangle famed with gray cloisters, along which Parnassian aspirants walked in meditation. Would any of them be married except himself and Pauline? On the whole, he decided that they would not, though, of course, if Michael were to find the capital he must be allowed to marry. How the Balliol people would laugh at these fantastic plans, thought Guy, and he stopped for a moment from the architectonics of his academy to laugh at himself. Certainly it would be better not to publish his plans even to Pauline until they showed a hint of conceivable maturity. Guy fell back into the comfort of spacious dreams, wandering up and down the orchard; and round about him the starlings, pranked in metallic plumage of green and bronze, quarreled over the holes in the apple-tree they coveted for their nests.
Suddenly Guy heard his name called, and, looking up, he saw across the mill-stream Margaret and Pauline standing in the churchyard.
"We've been to church," said Pauline. "And a dead bat fell down nearly on to Father's head when he was giving the Blessing. So he and the sacristan have gone up in the tower to see what can be done about it."
"Shall I come and help?" Guy suggested.
"You won't be able to do any more than they will," said Margaret, laughing. "But if you want to come and help, you'd better. Hasn't your canoe arrived yet?"
Guy shook his head.
"It's such a glorious morning that I could almost swim the river," he declared.
"Oh, Margaret, don't let him," Pauline exclaimed.
Guy said he would be in the churchyard before they were back in Rectory Lane to meet him, and with Bob barking at his heels he ran at full speed through the orchard, through the garden, over the bridge, and down Rectory Lane just as the two girls reached the lych-gate. They all went into the big church, even Bob, though he slunk at their heels as modestly as might the devil. High up over the chancel they could see the Rector and the shiny-pated sacristan leaning from the windows of the bell-ringer's chamber and scratching with wands at some blind arches where bats might most improbably lurk.
"Let's go to the top of the tower," Guy proposed.
"Father isn't on the top of the tower," said Margaret. "But you go up with Pauline. I'll wait for you."
So Guy and Pauline went through a low door beaked by Normans centuries ago, and climbed the stone stairs until they reached the bell-ringer's chamber, where they paused to greet the Rector, who waved a vague arm in greeting. The stairs grew more narrow and musty as they went higher; but all the way at intervals there were deep slits in the walls, framing thin pictures of the outspread country below the tower. Still up they went past the bell-ropes, past the great bells themselves that hung like a cluster of mighty fruit, until finally they came outthrough a small turret to meet the March sky. The spire, that rose as high again as they had already come, occupied nearly all the space and left only a yard of leaded roof on which to walk; but even so, up here where the breeze blew strongly, they seemed to stand in the very course of the clouds with the world at their feet. Northward they looked across the brown mill-stream; across Guy's green orchard; across the flashing tributary beyond the meadows, to where the Shipcot road climbed the side of the wold. Westward they looked to Plashers Mead and Miss Peasey flapping a table-cloth; to Guy's mazy garden and the gray wall under the limes; and farther to the tree-tops of Wychford Abbey; to the twining waters of the valley and the rounded hills. Southward they looked to Wychford town in tier on tier of shining roofs; and above the translucent smoke to where the telegraph-poles of the long highway went rocketing into Gloucestershire. And lastly eastward they looked through a flight of snowy pigeons to the Rectory asleep in gardens that already were painted with the simple flowers of Spring.
Guy took Pauline's hand where it rested on the parapet.
"Dearest, Spring is here," he said, "and this is our world that you and I are looking at to-day."
Pauline in the happiness which had come to her lately had forgotten Miss Verney; and when one morning she met that solitary spinster, whose pale and watery eyes were uttering such reproach, she promised impulsively to come to tea that very afternoon and bring with her a friend.
"You've certainly quite deserted me lately," said Miss Verney, in that wavering falsetto of hers, through which the echoes maybe of a once-admired soprano could still be distinctly heard.
"Oh, but I've been so busy, Miss Verney."
"Yes, I dare say. Well, I used to be busy once myself. Here's lovely weather for the first of April. Quite a treat to be out of doors. Now, don't make an April fool of your poor old Miss Verney by forgetting to come this afternoon. Who's the friend you are anxious to bring?"
"Mr. Hazlewood. He's living at Plashers Mead, you know."
"Dear me, a gentleman? Then he won't enjoy coming to see me."
"But he will, Miss Verney, because he writes poetry, and you know you told me once that you used to write poetry."
"Ah, well, dear me, that's a secret I should never have let out. Well, good-by, my dear, and pray don't forget to come, for I shall be having cakes, you know."
Miss Verney, whose unhappy love-affair in a dim past had been Pauline's cherished secret since the afternoonof her seventeenth birthday, bowed with much dignity; and Pauline, lest she should offend her again, had to turn round several times to smile and wave farewells before Miss Verney disappeared into the confectioner's shop.
When she got home Pauline asked her mother if she thought it mattered taking Guy to tea with Miss Verney.
"Because, of course, she's sure to guess that we're engaged."
"But, my dear child, you're not really engaged, at least not publicly. You must remember that."
"But I could tell Miss Verney as a great secret. And I know she won't tell any one because once she told me a great secret about herself. Besides, she's gone to buy cakes for tea, and if I don't take Guy she'll be so dreadfully disappointed."
"Why can't you take Guy without saying anything about being engaged?" asked Mrs. Grey.
"Oh, because Miss Verney is so frightfully sharp, especially in matters of love. I think you don't like her much, Mother darling but really, you know, she is sympathetic."
Mrs. Grey looked hopelessly round for advice, but as neither Margaret nor Monica was in the room, she had to give way to Pauline's entreaty, and the leave was granted.
When Guy arrived at the Rectory about three o'clock he seemed delighted at the notion of going out to tea with Pauline, though he looked a little doubtfully at the others, as if he wondered at the permission's being accorded. However, they set out in an atmosphere of good-will, and Pauline was happy to have him beside her walking up Wychford High Street. Miss Verney's house was at the very top of the hill, which meant that the eyes of the whole population had to be encountered before they reached it. They could see Miss Verney watching for them as they walked across the slip of grass that with white posts and a festoon of white chains warded off general traffic. The moment they reached the gate herhead vanished from the window, and they had scarcely rung the bell when the maid had opened the door; and they were scarcely inside the hall when Miss Verney came grandly out of the drawing-room (which was not the front room) to greet them.
"How d'ye do? How d'ye do? Miss Grey will have told you that I rarely have visitors. And therefore this is a great pleasure."
Pauline threw sparkling blue glances at Guy for the Miss Grey, while they followed her into the drawing-room full of cats and ornaments. The cats all marched round Guy in a sort of solemn quadrille, so that what with the embarrassment they caused to his legs and the difficulty that the rest of him found with the ornaments, Pauline really had to lead him safely to a chair.
"Have you been long in Wychford, Mr. Hazlewood?" inquired Miss Verney. "I fear you'll find the valley very damp. We who live at the top of the hill consider the air up here so much more bracing. But then, you see, my father was a sailor."
So the conversation progressed, conversation that was cut as thinly and nicely as the lozenges of bread and butter, fragments of which on various parts of the rug the cats were eating with that apparent difficulty cats always find in mastication.
"I sadly spoil my pets," said Miss Verney. "For really, you see, they are my best friends, as I always say to people who look surprised at my indulgence of them.... Would you mind telling Bellerophon he's left a piece of butter just by your foot, that you might otherwise tread into the carpet. You'll forgive my fussiness, but then, you see, my father was a sailor."
Pauline was longing to know what Miss Verney thought of Guy, and presently when tea was over she suggested that he should be shown the garden, the green oblong of which looked so inviting from the low windows.
"Dear me, the garden," said Miss Verney. "Ratherearly in the year, don't you think, for the garden? My shoes. For though my father was a sailor, I do not, alas! inherit his constitution. I really think, Pauline, we must wait for the garden. But perhaps Mr. Hazlewood would care...."
"Guy, you must see the garden," Pauline declared.
So Guy rose and, having listened to Miss Verney's instructions about the key in the garden door, went out, followed by several cats. A moment later they saw him, still with two cats in attendance, bending with an appearance of profound interest over the narrow flower-beds that fringed the grass.
"I declare that Pegasus and dear Bellerophon have taken quite a fancy to him. Most remarkable and gratifying," said Miss Verney, watching from the window through which the western sun flaming upon her thin hair kindled a few golden strands from the ashes that seemed before entirely to have quenched them.
"Miss Verney, can you keep a secret?" asked Pauline, breathlessly.
"My dear, you forget my father was a sailor," replied Miss Verney, supporting with each arm a martial elbow.
"He and I are engaged," Pauline whispered through a blush.
"Pauline, you amaze me!" the old maid exclaimed. "My dear child, I hope you'll let me wish you happiness." She came to Pauline and kissed with cold lips her cheek. "You have always been so kind and considerate to me. Yes, I am sure, without irreverence I can say you have been to me as welcome as the sun. I pray that you will always be happy. Ah, the dear fellow!" exclaimed Miss Verney, looking with the utmost affection to where Guy was now completing the circuit of her borders. "The dear fellow, how droll he must have thought it when I referred to you as Miss Grey. Though to this flinging about of christian names without regard for the sacrednessof real intimacy, which is so common nowadays, I shall never submit."
Miss Verney tapped upon the window to summon Guy within again. When he was back in the drawing-room she fluttered towards him and took his hand.
"My dear Mr. Hazlewood (for, my father having been a sailor, I must always be rather blunter than most people), I have to congratulate you. This dear child! My greatest friend in Wychford, and indeed, really, so scattered now are all the people I have known, I might almost say, my greatest friend anywhere! You are a most enviable young man. But the secret is safe with me. No one shall know."
"I had to tell Miss Verney," Pauline explained.
"I'm delighted for Miss Verney to know," said Guy. "I only wish the time were come when everybody could know."
Miss Verney was in a state of the greatest excitement, and made so many references to her nautical paternity that Pauline half expected her to hitch up her skirt and dance a triumphant hornpipe in the middle of the cats' slow waltzing.
"This dear child," Miss Verney went on, clasping rapturous hands. "I have known her since she was twelve. The dearest little thing! I really wish you had known her; you would have fallen in love with her then, I do declare." And Miss Verney laughed in a high treble at her joke. "Lately I have been rather worried because I had an idea I was being deserted. But now I understand the reason. Oh, the secret is perfectly safe. In me you have a true sympathizer. Pauline will tell you that with the people she loves, there is no one so sympathetic as I am." Suddenly Miss Verney stopped and looked very suspicious. "You're not making an April fool of me?" she asked.
"Miss Verney!" Pauline gasped. "How could you think I would joke about love?"
The old maid's forehead cleared.
"Of course you wouldn't, my dear, but really this morning I have been so pestered by some of the boys ringing the bell and saying my chimney is on fire that ... ah, but I am ashamed of myself. You must forgive me, Pauline. And is it not the thing to drink the health of lovers? There is a bottle of sherry, I feel sure. I brought several bottles that were left from my father's cellar, when I first came to Wychford, eight years ago, and they have not all been drunk yet."
She rang the bell, and when the maid came in said:
"Mabel, if you take my keys and open the store-cupboard, you will find some bottles of wine on the top shelf. Pray open one, and, having carefully decanted it, bring it as carefully in with three glasses on the silver tray."
Mabel naturally looked very much astonished at this order, and while she was gone Miss Verney thought one after another of all the reasons that Mabel could possibly ascribe to her request for wine.
"But she will never guess the real one," said Miss Verney.
The wine was brought in and poured out. Miss Verney coughed a great deal over her glass, and two small pink spots appeared on her cheeks.
"I am sure," she said, "that when my dear father brought this wine back from Portugal he would have been happy to know that some of it would be drunk to the health of two young people in love. For he was, if I may say so without impropriety, a great lady's man."
Pauline and Guy drank Miss Verney's health in turn, and thanked her for the good omens she had wished for their love.
"My dear Pauline," said Miss Verney, "do you think? I wonder if I dare? You know what I mean? Do you think I could show it to Mr. Hazlewood?"
"Do you mean the miniature?" whispered Pauline.
Miss Verney nodded.
"Oh, do, Miss Verney, do! Guy would so appreciate it," Pauline declared.
The old maid went to her bureau and from a small locked drawer took out a leather case which she handed to Guy.
"The spring is broken. It opens very easily," she said in a gentle voice.
Pauline forgot her shyness of Guy and leaned over his shoulder while he looked at the picture of a young man rosy with that too blooming youth which miniatures always portray.
"We were engaged to be married," said Miss Verney. "But circumstances alter cases; and we were never married."
Pauline looked down at Guy with tears in her eyes and felt miserable to be so happy when poor Miss Verney had been so sad.
"Thank you very much for showing me that," said Guy.
Soon it was time to say good-by to Miss Verney and, having made many promises to come quickly again, they left her and went down the steep High Street, where in many of the windows of the houses there were hyacinths and on the old walls plum-trees in bloom.
"Pauline," said Guy, "let's go for a walk to-morrow morning and see if the gorse is in bloom on Wychford down. There are so many things I want to tell you."
"Do you think Mother will let us?"
"If we can go to tea with Miss Verney," said Guy, "we shall be able to go for a walk. And I never see you alone in the Rectory."
"I'll ask Mother," said Pauline.
"You want to come?"
"Of course. Of course."
"You see," said Guy, "it's one of the places where I nearly told you I loved you. And it wouldn't be fair not to tell you there, as soon as I can."
In the Rectory everybody was anxious to know how Guy liked Pauline's Miss Verney.
"Margaret, you are really unkind to laugh at her," protested Pauline. "Guy understands, if you don't, how frightfully sympathetic she is. She is one of the people who really understands about being in love."
Margaret laughed.
"Don't I?" she said.
"No, indeed, Margaret, sometimes I don't think you do," said Pauline.
"Nor I?" asked Monica.
"You don't at all!" Pauline protested.
"Well, if it means being like Miss Verney, I hope I never shall," said Monica.
"Now, children, children," interrupted Mrs. Grey. "You must not be cross with one another."
"Well, Mother, Margaret and Monica are not to laugh at Miss Verney," Pauline insisted. "And to-morrow Guy and I want as a great exception to go for a walk to Wychford down. May we?"
"Well, as a great exception, yes," said Mrs. Grey; and Guy, with apparently an access of grateful industry, said he must go home and work.
Pauline wondered what Guy would have to tell her to-morrow, and she fell asleep that night hoping she would not be shy to-morrow; for, since Guy was still no more to Pauline than the personification of a vague and happy love just as Miss Verney's miniature was the personification of one that was not happy, she always was a little alarmed when the personification became real.
Wychford down seemed to rest on billowy clouds next morning, so light was Pauline's heart, so light was the earth on which she walked; and when Guy kissed her the larks in their blue world were not far away, so near did she soar upon his kiss to the rays of their glittering plumes.
"Every time I see you," said Guy, "the world seemsto offer itself to us more completely. I never kissed you before under the sky like this."
She wished he would not say the actual word, for it made her realize herself in his arms and brought back in a flood all her shyness.
"I think it's dry enough to sit on this stone," said Guy.
So they sat on one of the outcrops of Wychford freestone that all around were thrusting themselves up from the grass like old gray animals.
"Now tell me more about Miss Verney," he went on. "Why was her love-affair unhappy?"
"Oh, she never told me much," said Pauline.
"You and I haven't very long," said Guy. "Love travels by so fast. You and I mustn't have secrets."
"I haven't any secrets," said Pauline. "I had one about Richard, but you know about him. And that was Margaret's secret, really. Why do you say that, Guy?"
"I was thinking of myself," he answered. "I was thinking how little you know about me—really not much more than you know of Miss Verney's miniature."
"Guy, how strange," she said. "Last night I thought that."
Then he began to talk in halting sentences, turned away from her all the time and digging his stick deep down in the turf, while Bob looked in with anxious curiosity for what these excavations would produce.
"Pauline, I so adore you that it clouds everything to realize that before I loved you I should have had love-affairs with other girls. Of course they meant nothing, but now they make me miserable. Shall I tell you about them or shall I.... Can I blot them for ever out of my mind?"
"Oh, don't tell me about them, don't tell me about them," Pauline murmured in a low, hurried voice. She felt that if Guy said another word she would run fromhim in a wild terror that would never let her rest, that would urge her out over the down's edge in desperate descent.
"I don't want to tell you about them," said Guy. "But they've stood so at the back of my thoughts whenever I have been with you; and yesterday at Miss Verney's, I had a sense of guilt as if I were responsible in some way for her unhappiness. I had to tell you, Pauline."
She sat silent under the song of the larks that in streams of melodious light poured through their wings.
"Why do you say nothing?" he asked.
"Oh, don't let's talk about it any more. Promise me never to talk about it. Oh, Guy, why 'of course'? Why 'of course'?"
"Of course?" he repeated.
"'Of course they meant nothing.' That seems so dreadful to me. Perhaps you won't understand."
"Dear Pauline, isn't that 'of course' the reason they torment me?" he said. "It isn't kind of you to assume anything else."
She forgave him in that instant; and before she knew what she had done had put her hand impulsively on his. To the Pauline who made that gesture he was no more the unapproachable lover, but some one whom she had wounded involuntarily.
"My heart of hearts, my adored Pauline."
With a sigh she faded to him; with a sigh the dog sat down by his master's neglected stick; with a sigh the April wind stole through the thickets of gorse and out over the down. And always more and more dauntlessly the larks flung before them their fountainous notes to pierce those blue spaces that burned between the clouds. No more was said of the past that morning, and with April come they were happy sitting up there, although, as Guy said, such weather could hardly be expected to last. And since this walk was a great exception to the rule of their life, they were back at the Rectory very punctually,so that by propitiating everybody with good behavior they might soon demand another exception.
That night there recurred to Pauline, when she was in her room, a sudden memory of what Guy had said to her about girls with whom he had had love-affairs; and with the stark forms of shadows they made a procession across her walls in the candle-light. She wished now she had let Guy tell her more, so that she could give distinguishing lineaments of humanity to each of these maddening figures. What were they like and why, taken unaware, was she set on fire with rage to know them? For a long while Pauline tossed sleeplessly on that bed to which usually morning came so soon; and even when the candle was put out she seemed to feel these forms of Guy's confession all about her. To-morrow she must see him again; she could no longer bear to think of him alone. These shapes that from his past vaguely jeered at her were to him endowed, each, with what memories? Oh, she could cry out with exasperation even in this silent house where she had lived so long unvexed!
"What is happening to me? What is happening to me?" asked Pauline, as the darkness drew nearer to her. "Why doesn't Margaret come?"
She jumped out of bed and ran trembling to her sister's room.
"Pauline, what is it?" asked Margaret, starting up.
"I'm frightened, Margaret. I'm frightened. My room seemed full of people."
"You goose. What people?"
"Oh, Margaret, I do love you."
She kissed her sister passionately; and Margaret, who was usually so lazy, got out of bed and came back with her to her room, where she read aloudAlice in Wonderland, sitting by the bed with her dark hair fallen about her slim shoulders.
In the morning the impression of the night's alarm remained sharply enough with Pauline to make her anxiousto see Guy, without waiting for the ordained interval to which they should submit; and all that day, when he did not come, for the first time she felt definitely the clamorous and persistent desire for his company, the absence of which the old perfection of her home "was no longer able to counteract. For the first time in her life the Rectory had a sort of emptiness; and there was not a room on this tediously beautiful day, nor any nook in the garden, which could calm her with the familiar assurance of home. When the time for music came round, that night, it seemed to Pauline not at all worth while to play quartets in celebration of a day that had been so barren of events.
"Don't you want to play?" they asked her in surprise.
"Why should we play?" she countered. "But I'll listen to you, if you like."
Of course she was persuaded into taking her part, and never had she been so often out of tune and never had her strings snapped so continuously. Always until to-night the performance of music had brought to her the peaceful irresponsibilities of being herself in a pattern; now this sense of design was irritating her with an arduous repression, until at last she put down her violin and refused to play any more. Pauline felt that the others knew the cause of her ill-temper, but none of them said anything about Guy, and, with her for audience in one of the Caroline chairs, they played trios instead.
Next day when Guy did come it was wet; and Pauline wished Margaret would leave them together, so that they could talk; but Margaret stayed all the afternoon in the nursery, and Pauline made up her mind that somehow she must go for another walk with Guy.
She found her mother alone in the drawing-room before dinner.
"Mother, don't you think Guy and I might go for a walk to-morrow?"
"Oh, Pauline, you went for a walk together only theday before yesterday. And you really must remember you're not engaged. The Wychford people will gossip so, and that will make your father angry."
"Well, why can't we be engaged openly?"
"No, not yet. Now, please don't ask me. Pauline, I beg you will say no more about it."
"Then I can go to-morrow," said Pauline. "Oh, Mother, you are so sweet to me."
Mrs. Grey looked rather perplexed and as if she were vainly trying to determine what she had said to make Pauline suppose that leave for walks had been given. However, she evidently supposed it had; and when next Guy came to the Rectory Pauline whispered to him they could go for a walk if they did not have to go through Wychford. She could not understand herself when she found it so difficult to tell Guy this delightful news, for it was she who had managed it; and yet here she was blushing in the revelation.
The fact that Wychford was out of bounds really made their walk more magical, for Pauline and Guy went past the lily-pond and the lawn in front of the house and slipped through the little wicket in the high gray wall, as it were in the very eye of the nursery window. They dallied for a while in the paddock, peering for fritillary buds; then they crossed the rickety bridge to the water-meadows, a territory not spied upon, silver-rosed with lady-smocks. To-day they would visit the peninsula where under the moon they first had met.
Pauline, as they walked over the meads, no longer had the desire to ask Guy more about his tale of old loves. His presence beside her had rested her fears; and she made up her mind that the disquiet of the other evening had been mere fatigue after the excitement of the day. This secluded world from which they were now approaching the even greater seclusion of their peninsula gave itself all to her and Guy.
"How often have I been here without you!" said Guy."How often have I wished you were beside me, and now you are beside me."
They were standing in a wreath of snowy blackthorn that almost veiled even the narrow entrance to this demesne they held in fief of April.
"What did you think about me that night we met?" Guy asked.
And for perhaps the hundredth time she whispered how she had liked him very much.
"Why don't you ask me what I thought about you?"
"What did you?" she whispered again.
"I went to sleep thinking of you," he said. "I did not know your name. I loved you then, I think. Pauline, when next September comes we'll pick mushrooms together—shall we? And I shall never gather any mushrooms, because I shall always be gathering your hands. And the September afterwards. Pauline! Shall we be married? Pauline Hazlewood! Say that."
She shook her head.
"Whisper it."
But she could not, and yet in her heart the foolish names were singing together.
"How can I leave you?" Guy demanded.
"Leave me?" she echoed.
"I ought. I ought. You see, if I don't I shall never persuade my father that we must be married next year. I must go to London and show that I'm in earnest."
"But when will you go?" said Pauline in deep dismay.
"Is your voice sad?" he asked. "Pauline, don't you want me to go?"
"Of course I don't," she replied, turning up to his a face so miserable that he held her to him and vowed he would not go.
"My dearest, I only thought it was my duty, but if you will believe in me, then let me stay in Wychford. After all, you are young. I am young. Why, you won't be twenty till May Morning. And I sha'n't be twenty-threetill next August. Even if we wait three years to be married, we shall be always together, and it won't seem so long."
So with her arm in his Pauline walked on through the lady-smocks, thinking that never had any one a lover so wonderful as this long-legged lover beside her.
Holy Week was at hand, and in the variety of functions that Monica insisted her father should hold and her family attend Pauline saw little of Guy, although he came very often to church, sitting as stiff and awkward, she thought, as a brass knight on a tomb. However, it pleased her greatly Guy should come to church, since it pleased her family. Yet that was least of all the true reason, and Pauline used to send the angels that came to visit her down through the church to visit Guy; her simple faith glowed with richer illumination when she thought of him in church, and while her mother and Monica tried to pull the Wychford choir through the notation of Solesmes, and while Margaret knelt apart in carved abstraction, Pauline prayed that Guy would all his life wish to keep Holy Week with her like this.
Pauline hurried through a shower to church on Easter Morning, and shook mingled tears and raindrops from herself when she saw that Guy was come to Communion. So then that angel had traveled from her bedside last night to hover over Guy and bid him wake early next morning, because it was Easter Day. With never so holy a calm had she knelt in the jeweled shadows of that chancel or retired from the altar to find her pew imparadised. When the people came out of church the sun was shining, and on the trees and on the tombstones a multitude of birds were singing. Never had Pauline felt the spirit of Eastertide uplift her with such a joy, joy for her lover beside her, joy for Summer close at hand, joy for all the joy that Easter could bring to the soul.
There were Easter eggs at breakfast dyed yellow, blue, and purple. There were new white trumpet daffodilsfor the Rector to gaze at. There was satisfaction for Monica in having defeated for ever Anglican chants, and for Margaret a letter from Richard, though, to be sure, she did not seem so glad of this as Pauline would have wished. There was all that happy scene and a new quartet for her mother; and for Guy and herself there was a long walk this afternoon to wherever they wanted to go.
At the beginning of the week Monica and Margaret went away on a visit, to which they set out with the usual lamentations now redoubled because they suddenly realized it was universal holiday time. With her two eldest daughters away from the Rectory, Mrs. Grey was no match for Pauline; so she and Guy had a week of freedom, wandering over the country where they willed.
Wychford down saw them, and the water-meadows of the western valley. The road to Fairfield knew their footsteps, and they even went to tea with Mr. and Mrs. Ford, who talked of Richard out in India and bemoaned the inferiority of their garden to the Rector's. They wandered by treeless roads that led to the hills, and to the grassy solitudes that seemed made to be walked over hand in hand. Once they went as far as the forest of Wych, a wild woodland that lay remote from any village and where along the glades myriads of primroses stared at them. Yet, though that day had seemed to Pauline almost more delicately fair than any of their days, it ended dismally with April in black misfeature, and before they reached home they were wet through.
By ill luck her mother met her just as she was hurrying up to her room.
"Pauline," she said, with a good deal of agitation, "I must forbid these walks with Guy every day. Wet to the skin! Oh dear, how careless of him to take you so far! You must be reasonable and unselfish. It's so difficult for me. Father asked where you were this afternoon, and I had to pretend to be deaf. He notices morethan you think. Now really Guy must not come for a week, and there must be no more walks."
Guy, however, came the next afternoon, and not only was he reproved by Mrs. Grey for yesterday's disaster, but actually he and Pauline were allowed only a quarter of an hour together in the garden.
"I'll go into Oxford for a week," said Guy, with inspiration. "And then we sha'n't be tempted to see each other this week, and if we don't see each other this week, perhaps next week we shall be able to go out again. Besides, I want to make arrangements about bringing the canoe down. My friend Fane has wired to me to go and stay with him. He's up for the Easter vac, working. Shall I go?"
Pauline wanted to say no, but she was, even after all these walks, still too shy to bid him stay.
"Perhaps you'd better go," she agreed. "But, Guy, come back for my birthday."
"As if I should stay away for that! Pauline, will you write to me? At least in letters you won't be shy to say you love me."
"Oh no, Guy, no. My writing is so horrid."
"But you must write. Pauline, if you want to know why I'm really going away, it's simply to have a letter from you."
"You must write to me first then," she whispered.
In truth Pauline felt terrified to think how she would ever begin a letter to Guy. He would cease to love her any more after she had written to him. He would hate her stupid letters.
"I shall be glad to see Michael again," said Guy. "But I suppose I must not say anything about you. No, I won't talk about you. Oxford will be wonderfully quiet without undergraduates, and I shall have letters from you."
Mrs. Grey came out into the garden.
"Now, Guy, I think you ought to go. Becausereally the Rector is getting worried about you and Pauline."
"I'm going into Oxford, Mrs. Grey."
"Well, that is a charming idea—charming, yes."
"But I'll be back for Pauline's birthday."
"Charming—charming," Mrs. Grey still declared. "The Rector will have forgotten all about it by then."
So Guy left Pauline for a week, and perhaps for more than a week. Margaret and Monica came home next day, and really, she thought, it was upsetting all the old ways of her life when she found herself not very much interested in what they had been doing. Miss Verney with her ecstatic praise of Guy was better company; but next morning her first love-letter arrived, and she could not resist peeping into it at breakfast.
99St. Giles, Oxford,April 18th.