Guy was very indignant when he heard from Pauline the sequel of her sisters' vigilance. That they should afterwards 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 endeavor 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 neverrelieved 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 hath 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 any one 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 naturalfor them to be unable at once to relinquish entirely to some one 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 seeing Pauline only 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 every one else, hadbeen 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 sha'n'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-by 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 lightness 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 defense, 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 housethere 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 leaped 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 inThe 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 up-stairs, 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 up-stairs 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 any one 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:
And they are gone; ay, ages long agoThese 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 whoppers under Marston's Mill with a cherry. Fact, I assure you."
"I know a man at Oldbridge who caught a four-pounder with a bumblebee."
"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 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 oh," 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 halfan 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 itwas 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.
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 favor. The problem, that she must leave herself to determine without a hint of its existence to any one 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 beingdiscovered. 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 dullness 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 surprisingly 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 up-stairs 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 beperfect. 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
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 beperfect. 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 lovingPauline.
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 cerulean 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 spoiled.
"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 smelled 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 gavethe 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 seen for only 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 color shall the binding be?"
"What color 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 youdroop? 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 than 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 surprised. I told him I should wait another year. I wonder if I ought to have waited."
"Oh no," said Pauline. "Everything else is waitingand 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 indorsed 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 post-mistress.
Guy nodded, and the parcel left their hands; in silence they watched it vanish into the company of other parcelsthat 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 towards 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.
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 fromthe burden of uncompleted labor, 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 mail-cart 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 post-card 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 judgmentand 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 surmise 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 afterwards 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 inThe TimesheadedA New Geniusor an eulogy on the principal page ofThe Daily Mailthat galloped neck and neck for a column alongside one of The Letters of an Englishman. The former would bestow the greater honor; 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 readThe Timesat breakfast he would catch the eleven o'clock from Galton and, traveling 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:
I wonder do you feel to-dayAs I have felt since, hand in hand,We sat down on the grass, to strayIn spirit better through the land,This morn of Rome and May?
They would drive out from the city along the Appian Way and turn aside to sit among the ghostliness of innumerable grasses in those primal fields, the air of which would be full of the feathery seeds and the dry scents of that onrushing Summer. There would be no thought of time and no need for words; there would merely be the two of them on a morn of Rome and May. And later in the warm afternoon they would drive home, coming back to the city's heart to eat their dinner within sound of the Roman fountains. Then all the night-time she would be his, not his in frightened gasps as when wintry England was forbidding all joy to their youth, but his endlessly, utterly, gloriously. They would travel farther south and perhaps come to that Parthenopean shore calling to him still now from the few days he had spent upon its silver heights and beside its azure waters. In his dream Pauline was leaning on his shoulder beneath an Aleppo pine, at the cliff's edge—Pauline, whose alien freshness would bring a thought of England to sigh through its boughs, and a cooler world to the aromatic drought. Theirs should be sirenian moons and dawns, and life would be this dream's perfect fulfilment. In what loggia, firefly-haunted, would he hold her? The desire with which the picture flamed upon his imagination was almost intolerable, and here he always brought her back to Plashers Mead on a June dusk. Then she could be conjured in this house, summoned in spirit here to this very room; and if they had loved Italy, how they would love England as they walked across their meadows, husband and wife! With such visions Guy set on fire each January night that floated frorely into his bedroom, until one morning a letter arrived from Mr. William Worrall that made his fingers tremble as he broke the envelope and read the news:
217Covent Garden, W.C.,January 6th.