FOX HALL, GALTON, HANTS.

_September 10._

_Dear Guy,_

_I agree with some of what you say, but I disagree with a good deal

more, and I am entirely opposed to your method of procedure, which

is to put it very mildly rather casual. Your degree was not so good

as it ought to have been, but I did not reproach you, because in

the Consular Service you had chosen a career which did not call

specially for a first. At the same time you could, if you had

worked, have got a first quite easily. Your six months with the

Macedonian Relief people seems to have knocked all your consular

ambitions on the head rather too easily, I confess, to make me feel

very happy about your future. And now without consulting me you

take a house in the country for the purpose of writing poetry! You

imply in answer to my remonstrances that I am unable to appreciate

the 'necessity' for your step. That may be, but I cannot help

asking where you would be now if I at your age, instead of helping

my father with his school, had gone off to Oxfordshire to write

poetry. Perhaps I had ambitions to make a name for myself with the

pen. If I had, I quenched them in order to devote myself to what I

considered my duty. I do not reproach you for refusing to carry on

the school at Fox Hall. Your dear mother's last request was that I

should not urge you to be a schoolmaster, unless you were drawn to

the vocation. Her wishes I have respected, and I repeat that I am

not hurt at your refusal. At the same time I cannot encourage what

can only be described as this whim of yours to bury yourself in a

remote village where, having saddled yourself with the

responsibilities of a house, you announce your intention of living

by poetry! I am the last person to underestimate the value of

poetry, but as a livelihood it seems to me as little to be relied

upon as the weather. However, you are of age. You have L150 a year

of your own. You are with the exercise of the strictest economy

independent. And this brings me to the point of your last letter

in which you ask me to supplement your own income with an allowance

L150 a year from me. This inclination to depend upon your father is

not what I conceive to be the artist's spirit of independence. This

over-drawing upon your achievement fills me with dismay for the

future. However, since I do not wish you to begin hampered by debt

and as you assure me that you have spent all your own money on this

idiotic house, I will give you L150, to be paid in quarterly

instalments of L37 10s. as from the 21st of this month for one

year. Furthermore, at the end of next year if you find that poetry

is less profitable than even you expect, I will offer you a place

at Fox Hall, thereby securing for you the certainty of a life

moderately free from financial worries. After all, even a

schoolmaster has some spare time, and I daresay our greatest poets

did much of their best work in their_ spare _time. The idea of

writing poetry all day and every day appeals to me as enervating

and ostentatious._

_Your affectionate father,_

_John Hazlewood._

Guy stood still when he had finished the letter, and execrated mutely

the damnable dependence that compelled him to accept gratefully and

humbly this gift of L150. Yet with no money of his own coming in till

December, with actually a housekeeper on her way from Cardiff and his

house already furnished, he must accept the offer. In a year's time he

would have proved the reasonableness of his request; and he began to

compose a scene between them, in which his father would almost on bended

knees beg him to accept an allowance of L300 a year in consideration of

the magnificent proof he had afforded to the world of being in the

direct line of English poets.

"And I mustn't forget to send him a sonnet on his birthday," said Guy to

himself.

This notion restored his dignity, and he hurried on to overtake the trap

which was waiting on the brow of the hill.

"You were saying something about women being right," he reminded Mr.

Godbold, as he sat down again beside him. "Has it ever struck you that

fathers are nearly always wrong?"

"That wouldn't do for me at all," said Mr. Godbold, shaking his head.

"You see I'm the father of nine, and if I wasn't always right, sir, I

shouldn't be no better than a bull in a china-shop where I live. I've

_got_ to be right, Mr. Hazlewood."

"I suppose that's what the Pope felt," Guy murmured.

"Now do you reckon this here Pope they speak of really exists in a

manner of speaking?" Mr. Godbold asked, as the trap bowled along the

level stretch of upland road. "You know there's some of these

narrow-minded mortals at Wychford as will have it that Mr. Grey, our

parson, is in with the Pope, and I said to one or two of them the other

night while we was arguing in the post-office, I said, 'Have any of you

wise men of Gotham ever seen this Pope as you're so knowing about?'"

"And had they?" asked Guy encouragingly.

"Not one of them," said Mr. Godbold. "And I thought to myself as I was

walking up home, I thought now what if there wasn't no such thing as a

Pope any more than there's women with fish-tails and all this rubbish

you read of in books. If you ask my opinion of books, Mr. Hazlewood, I

tell you that I think books is as bad for some people as wireworms is

for carnations. They seem to regular eat into them."

Guy laughed. Misgivings about the wisdom of his choice vanished, and he

was being conscious of a very intimate pleasure in thus driving back to

Wychford from the station. The country tossed for miles to right and

left in great stretches of pasturage, and when Mr. Godbold pulled up for

a moment to look at a trace, the air brilliantly dusted with autumnal

gold seemed to endow him with the richness of its silence: along the

sparse hedgerow chicory flowers burned with the pale intense blue of the

September sky above, and Guy felt like them worshipful of the cloudless

scene. The road ran along the upland for half-a-mile before it dipped

suddenly down into the valley of the Greenrush from which the spire of

Wychford church came delicately up into the air, like a coil of smoke

ascending from the opalescent corona that hung over the small town

clustered against the farther hillside. Down in that valley close to the

church was Plashers Mead; and Guy watched eagerly for the first sight of

his long low house. Already the sparkle of the more distant curves of

the Greenrush was visible; but Plashers Mead was still hidden by the

slope of the bank. Presently this broke away to a ragged hedge, and the

house displayed itself as much an integral part of the landscape as an

outcrop of stone.

"Tasty little place," commented Mr. Godbold, while the trap jolted

cautiously down the last twist of the hilly road. "But I reckon old

Burrows was glad to let it. You're young though, and I daresay you won't

mind being flooded out in winter. Two years ago Burrows's son's wife's

nephew was floating paper boats in the front hall. But you're young, and

I daresay you'll enjoy it."

The pony swept round the corner and pulled up with a jerk at the wooden

gateway in the grey wall overhung by lime-trees that concealed from the

high road the moist fields and garden of Plashers Mead.

"I'm sleeping here to-night, you know, for the first time," said Guy. He

had tried all the way back not to make this announcement, but the sight

of his own gateway destroyed his reserve.

"Well, you'll have a fine night, that's one good job," Mr. Godbold

predicted.

"And the moon only just past the full," said Guy.

"That's right," Mr. Godbold agreed; and the tenant passed through the

gateway into the garden where every path had its own melody of running

water. He examined with proprietary solicitude the espaliers of

apple-trees and admired for the twentieth time the pledge they offered

by their fantastic forms of his garden's antiquity. He pinched several

pippins that seemed ripe, but they were still hard; and he could find

nothing over which to exert his lordship, until he saw by the edge of

the path a piece of groundsel. Having solemnly exterminated the weed,

Guy felt that the garden must henceforth recognize him as master, and he

walked on through a mass of dropsical cabbages and early kale until he

came face to face with the house, the sudden view of which like this

never failed to give him a peculiar pleasure. The tangled garden, long

and narrow, was bounded on the right, as one entered, by the Greenrush,

over which hung a thicket of yews that completely shut out the first

straggling houses of Wychford. On the left the massed espaliers ended

abruptly in a large water-meadow reaching to the foot of the hill along

which the high road climbed in a slow diagonal. By the corner of the

house the garden had narrowed to the apex of a thin triangle, so that

the windows looked out over the water-meadow and, beyond, up the wide

valley of the Greenrush to where the mighty western sky rested on

rounded hills. At this apex the Greenrush flung a tributary stream to

wash the back of the house and one side of the orchard, whence it wound

in extravagant curves towards the easterly valley. The main branch,

dammed up to form a deep and sluggish mill-stream, flowed straight on,

dividing Guy's domain from the churchyard. At the end of the orchard on

this side was a lock-gate through which a certain amount of water

continuously escaped from the mill-stream, enough indeed to make the

orchard an island, as it trickled in diamonded shallows to reinforce the

idle tributary. Somewhere in the farther depths of the eastern valley

all vagrant waters were united, and somewhere still more remote they

came to a confluence with their father the Thames.

Guy sat upon the parapet of the well under the shade of a sycamore tree

and regarded with admiration and satisfaction the exterior of his house.

He looked at the semi-circular porch of stone over the front-door and

venerated the supporting cherubs who with puffed-out cheeks had blown

defiance at wind and rain since the days of Elizabeth. He counted the

nine windows, five above and four below, populating with the shapes of

many friends the rooms they lightened. He looked at the steep roof of

grey stone-tiles rich with the warm golden green of mossy patterns. He

looked at the four pear-trees against the walls of the house barren now

for many years. He looked at himself in silhouette against the silver

sky of the well-water; and then he went indoors.

The big stone-paved hall was very cool, and the sound of the stream at

the back came babbling through lattices open to the light of a green

world. Guy could not make up his mind whether the inside of the house

smelt very dry or very damp, for there clung about it that odour

peculiar to rustic age, which may be found equally in dry old barns and

in damp potting-sheds. He wished he could furnish the hall worthily. At

present it contained only a high-back chair, an alleged contemporary of

Cromwell, which was doddering beside the hooded fireplace; a

warming-pan; and an oak-chest which remained a chest only so long as

nobody either sat upon it or lifted the lid. There was also a

grandfather-clock which had suffered an abrupt resurrection of four

minutes' duration when it was recently lifted out of the furniture-van,

but had now relapsed into the silence of years. Leading out of the hall

was a small empty room which had been dedicated to the possession of his

friend Michael Fane: together they had planned to paper it with gold and

paint the ceiling black. Michael, however, had still another year at

Oxford, and the room with an obelisk of lining-paper standing upright on

the bare floor was now a little desolate. On the other side of the hall

was the dining-room which Guy, by taxing his resources, had managed to

furnish very successfully. It was a square room painted emerald-green

above the white wainscot. Two inset cupboards were filled with glass and

china: there were four Chippendale chairs and an oval Sheraton table,

curtains of purple silk, some old English watercolours and two

candlesticks of Sheffield plate. Beyond the dining-room was the kitchen,

the corridor to which was endowed with a swinging baize-door considered

by the landlord to be the finest feature of the house. The problem of

equipping the kitchen had seemed insoluble until Guy heard of a sale in

the neighbourhood. He had bicycled over to this and bought the contents

of the large kitchen at auction. The result was that the dresser

encroached upon the table, that the table had one leg in the fender and

that a row of graduated dish-covers, the largest of which would have

sheltered two turkeys, occupied whatever space was left. All that

remained of Guy's own money had been invested in his kitchen, and he

accounted for the large size of everything by the fact of the auction's

having been held in the open air, where everything had looked so much

smaller. Now, as he contemplated dubiously the result, he wondered what

Miss Peasey would say to it. She and the books would arrive together at

half-past nine to-night. He hoped his unknown housekeeper would not be

irritated by these dish-covers, and as a precautionary measure he

unhooked the largest, carried it upstairs and deposited it on the floor

of an unfurnished bedroom. The staircase ran steep and straight up from

the hall into a long corridor with more casements opening on the orchard

behind. The bedroom at one end was dedicated to the hope of Michael

Fane's occupation and was always referred to in letters as his: '_By the

way I put the largest dish-cover in your bedroom_.' The next two

bedrooms were also empty and belonged in spirit to the friends with whom

Guy had lived during his last year at Oxford. The fourth was his own,

very simply and sparsely furnished in comparison with the bedroom up in

the roof which was intended for Miss Peasey. The preparation of that for

an elderly unmarried woman had involved a certain voluptuousness of rep

and fumed oak and heavily decorated china, the fruit of the second-best

bedroom in the house of the dish-covers. As Guy went up the crooked

stairs and knocked his head on three successive beams, he hoped Miss

Peasey would not be as disproportionately large as the kitchen dresser.

Her handwriting had been spidery enough, and he pictured her hopefully

as small and wizened. Miss Peasey's bower with the big dormer window

surveying the tree-tops of the orchard was certainly a success, and Guy

saw that Michael had with happy intuition of female aspiration hung on

the wall opposite her bed a large steel-engraving of Dore's Martyrs,

which had been included with two hammocks and a fishing-rod in one of

the odd lots lightly bid for at the auction. There did not seem anything

else she could want; so, having killed a bluebottle with a tartan

pincushion, he came downstairs.

Guy had left his own room to the last, partly because he regretted so

much the delay in the arrival of those books and partly because, however

inadequately equipped was the rest of the house, this room was always

the final justification of his tenancy. It was a larger room than any of

the others, for the corridor did not cut off its share of the back. It

possessed, in addition to the usual window looking out over the western

side of the valley, a very large bay which hung right over the stream,

with a view of the orchard, of the church-steeple, of the water-meadows

beyond and of the wold rolling across the horizon. This morning Michael

and he had pushed the furniture into place, had set in order the great

wicker chairs and nailed against the wall the frames of green canvas.

The floor was covered with a sweet-smelling mat of Abingdon rushes; and

the curtains of his old rooms in Balliol were hung in place, dim green

curtains sown with golden fleurs-de-lys. The ivory image of an emaciated

saint standing on the mantelshelf between candlesticks of old wrought

iron was probably a Spanish Virgin, but Guy preferred to say she was

Saint Rose of Lima because '_O Rose of Lima_' seemed a wonderful

apostrophe to begin a poem. Nothing indeed remained for the room's

perfection but to fill the new bookshelves on either side of the

fireplace. Why had he not hired a cart in Shipcot? They would have been

here by now, and he would actually have been able to begin work

to-night, setting thus a noble period to these last six weeks of

preparation.

Guy dragged a chair into the bay window and, balancing his long legs on

the sill, he made numerous calculations in which Miss Peasey's wages,

the weekly bills for food, and the number of times he would have to go

up to London were set against L150 a year. When he woke up, the

lime-trees that bordered the high road had flung their shadows half-way

across the meadow, and the air was a fume of golden gnats against the

dipping sun. Within ten minutes the sun vanished, and the mists began to

rise. Guy, feeling rather chilly and ashamed of himself for falling

asleep, rose hurriedly and went up into the town. He interviewed the

driver of the omnibus and told him to look out for his books, and as an

afterthought he mentioned the arrival of Miss Peasey. He wished now he

had written and told his housekeeper to spend the night in Oxford; and

he hoped she would not be prejudiced against Plashers Mead by a

five-mile drive in a cold omnibus after her tiring journey from Cardiff.

He dawdled about the steep village street for a while, gossiping with

tradesmen at their doors and watching the warmth fade out of the grey

houses in the falling dusk. Then he went to eat his last meal in the

Stag Inn.

After supper Guy returned to Plashers Mead, wandering round the house,

dropping a great deal of candle-grease everywhere and working himself up

into a state of anxiety over Miss Peasey's advent. It would be terrible

if she demanded her fare back to Wales the moment she arrived; and to

propitiate her he put the best lamp in the kitchen, whence (as with such

illumination it looked more than ever protuberant) he took another

dish-cover up to Michael's bedroom. Since it was still but a few minutes

after eight and the omnibus would not come for another hour and a half,

he lit all the wax candles in his own room and wondered what to do. The

tall shadows wavering in the draught were seeming cold and uncomfortable

without a fire, so he restlessly threw back the curtains of the bay

window to watch the rising of the moon. At that instant her rim appeared

above the black hills, and presently a great moon of dislustred gold

swam along the edge of the earth. Although she appeared to shed no

light, the valley responded to her presence, and Guy was lured from his

room to walk for a while in the dews.

Out in the orchard a heavy mist wrapped him in wet folds of silver; yet

overhead there was clear starlight, and he could watch the slow

burnishing of the moon's face in her voyage up the sky. It was a queer

country in which he found himself, where all the tree-tops seemed to be

floating away from invisible trunks, and where for a while no sound was

audible but his own footsteps making a music almost of violins in the

saturated grass. The moon wrought upon the vapours a shifting damascene;

and far behind, as it seemed, a rufous stain showed where the candles in

his room were still alight. Gradually a variety of sounds began to play

upon the silence. He could hear the dry squeak of a bat and cows

munching in the meadows on the other side of the stream. The stream

itself babbled and was still, babbled and was still; while along the

bank voles were taking the water with splashes that went up and down a

scale like the deep notes of a dulcimer. Far off, an owl hooted, an

otter barked; and then as he crossed the middle of the orchard he was

hearing nothing but apples fall with solemn thud, until the noise of the

lock-gate swallowed all lighter sounds. Here the mist had temporarily

dissolved, and in the moonlight he could see water gushing forth like an

arch of lace and the long bramble-sprays combing the shallows below.

Soon the orchard was left behind, and he was in the mist of a wide

meadow, where all was silent again except for the faint sobbing of the

grass to his footsteps. He walked straight into the moon's face,

stumbling from time to time over molehills with an eery fragrance of

fresh-turned soil, and wishing he could ever say in verse a little of

the magic this autumnal night was shedding upon his fancy.

"By gad, if I can't write here, I ought to be shot," he declared.

The church-clock struck the half-hour as appositely as if his own father

had said something about the need for hurrying up and showing what he

could do.

"Ah, but I'm not going to be hurried," said Guy aloud. And since the

clock could not answer him again, it was as good as having the best of

an argument.

Guy walked on, and after a while could hear once more the purling of the

stream. He thought there was something strangely human about this river

in the way it wandered so careless of direction. When he had left these

banks, they had been going away from him: now here they were coming back

like himself toward the moon, so that presently he was able without

changing his course to walk under their border of willows. The mist had

drifted away from the stream, leaving the spires of loosestrife plainly

visible and more dimly on the other side the forms of huge cattle at

pasture. There was, too, a smell of meadowsweet softening with a summer

languor the sharp September night. The willows gave way to overhanging

thickets of hawthorn, as the river suddenly swept round to make a noose

that was completed but a few yards ahead of where he was standing. He

could not see on account of the bushes the size of the peninsula so

formed, and when suddenly he heard from the depths a sound of laughter,

so full was his brain of moonshine that if he had come face to face with

a legendary queen of fairies, he would hardly have been surprized. It

was with the deliberate encouragement of a vision surpassing all the

fantasies of moon and mist that Guy stopped; and indeed, on a sensuous

impulse to pamper his imagination with an unsolved mystery he had almost

turned round to go back. Curiosity, however, was too strong; for, as he

paused irresolute, the fairy mirth tinkling again from the recesses of

that bewitched enclosure died away upon the murmur of a conversation,

and he could not leave any longer inviolate that screen of hawthorns.

In the apogee of the river's noose two girls, clearly seen against the

silver glooms beyond, were bending over a basket. Their heads were close

together, and it was not until Guy was almost on top of them that he

realized how impertinent his intrusion might seem. He drew back

blushing, just as one of the girls became aware of his presence and

jumped up with an 'oh' that floated away from her as lightly as a moth

upon the moonshine. Her sister (Guy decided at once they were sisters)

jumped up also and luckily for him, since it offered the opportunity of

a natural apology, overturned the basket. For a moment the three of them

gazed at one another over the mushrooms that were tumbled upon the grass

to be an elfin city of the East, so white and cold were their cupolas

under the moon.

"Can't I help to pick them up?" Guy asked, wondering to himself why on

this night of nights that was the real beginning of Plashers Mead he

should be blessed by this fortunate encounter. The two girls were

wearing big white coats of some rough tweed or frieze on which the mist

lay like gossamer; and, as neither of them had a hat, Guy could see that

one was very dark and the other fair.

"We wondered who you were," said the dark one.

"I live at Plashers Mead," said Guy.

"I know, I've seen you often," she answered.

"And Father says every day 'My dears, I really must call upon that young

man.'"

It was the fair one who spoke, and Guy recognized that it was her

laughter he had first heard.

"My other sister is somewhere close by," said the dark one.

Guy was kneeling down to gather up the mushrooms, and he looked round to

see another white figure coming toward them.

"Oh, Margaret, do let's introduce him to Monica. It will be such fun,"

cried the fair sister.

Guy saw that Margaret was shaking her head, but nevertheless when the

third sister came near enough she did introduce him. Monica was more

like Margaret, but much fairer than the first fair sister; and with her

reserve and her pale gold hair she seemed, as she greeted him, to be

indeed a wraith of the moon.

"Shall I carry the mushrooms back for you?" Guy offered.

"Oh, no thanks," said Monica quickly. "The Rectory is quite out of your

way."

He felt the implication of an eldest sister's disapproval, and not

wishing to spoil the omens of romance, he left the three sisters by the

banks of the Greenrush and was soon on his way home through the webs of

mist.

How extraordinary that he and Michael should have spent six weeks at

Wychford without realizing that the Rector had three such daughters.

Godbold had gossiped about him only this afternoon, reporting that he

was held by some of his parishioners to be in with the Pope: they might

more justly suspect him of being in with Titania. Monica, Margaret ...

he had not heard the name of the third. Monica had seemed a little

frigid, but Margaret and ... really when the omnibus arrived he must

find out the name of the Rector's third daughter, of that one so

obviously the youngest with her light brown hair and her laugh of which

even now, as he paused, he fancied he could still hear the melodious

echo. Monica, Margaret and ... Rose perhaps, for there had been

something of a dewy eglantine about her. Surely that was indeed the echo

of their voices; but, as upon distance the wayward sound eluded him, the

belfry-clock with whirr and buzz and groan made preparation to strike

the hour. Nine strokes boomed, leaving behind them a stillness absolute.

The poet thought of time before him, of the three sisters by the river,

of fame to come, and of his own fortune in finding Plashers Mead. Four

months ago he had been in Macedonia, full of proconsular romance, and

now he was in England with a much keener sense of every moment's

potentiality than he had ever known in the dreams of oriental dominion.

This sublunary adventure indicated how great a richness of pastoral life

lay behind the slumber of a forgotten town; and it was seeming more than

ever a pity Michael had not waited until to-night, so that he also might

have met Monica and Margaret and that smallest innominate sister with

the light brown hair. Guy could not help arranging with himself for his

friend to fall in love with one of them; and since he at once allotted

Monica to Michael, he knew that he himself preferred one of the others.

But which? Oh, it was ridiculous to ask such questions after seeing

three girls for three minutes of moonlight. Perhaps it really had been

sorcery and in the morning, when he met them in Wychford High Street,

they would appear dull and ordinary. They could not be so beautiful as

he thought they were, he decided, since if they were he must have heard

of their beauty. Nevertheless it was in a mood of almost elated

self-congratulation that Guy found himself hurrying through the orchard

toward the candlelight of his room.

The arrival of Miss Peasey, now that it was upon him, banished

everything else; and instead of dreaming deliciously of that encounter

in the water-meadows, he stood meditating on the failure of the kitchen.

As he regarded the enormous dresser; the table trampling upon the

fender; the seven dish-covers mocking his poor crockery, Guy had little

hope that Miss Peasey would stay a week: and then suddenly, worse than

any failure of equipment, he remembered that she might be hungry. He

looked at his watch. A quarter-past nine. Of course she would be hungry.

She probably had eaten nothing but a banana since breakfast in Cardiff.

Guy rushed out and surprized the landlord of the Stag by begging him to

send the hostler down at once with cold beef and stout and cheese.

"There's the bus," he cried. "Don't forget. At once. My new housekeeper.

Long journey. And salad. Forgot she'd be hungry. Salt and mustard. I've

got plates."

The omnibus went rumbling past, and Guy followed at a jog-trot down the

street, saw it cross the bridge and, making a spurt, caught it up just

as a woman alighted by the gate of Plashers Mead.

"Ah, Miss Peasey," said Guy breathlessly. "I went up the street to see

if the bus was coming. Have you had a comfortable journey?"

"Mr. Hazlewood?" asked the new housekeeper blinking at him.

The guard of the omnibus at this moment informed Guy that he had some

cases for Plashers Mead.

"Where is Mr. Hazlewood then?" asked Miss Peasey turning sharply.

Over her shoulder Guy saw that the guard was apparently punching the

side of his head, and he said more loudly:

"I'm Mr. Hazlewood."

"I thought you were. I'm a little bit deaf after travelling, so you'll

kindly speak slightly above the usual, Mr. Hazlewood."

"I hope you've had a comfortable journey," Guy shouted.

"Oh, yes, I think I shall," she said with what Guy fancied was meant to

be an encouraging smile. "I hope you haven't lost any of my parcels,

young man," she continued with a severe glance at the guard.

"Four and a stringbag. Is that right, mum?" he bellowed. "She's as deaf

as an adder, Mr. Hazlewood," he explained confidentially. "We had a

regular time getting of her into the bus before we found out she

couldn't hear what was being said to her. Oh, very obstinate she was."

"This is the garden," Guy shouted, as they passed in through the gate.

"Yes, I daresay," Miss Peasey replied ambiguously.

Guy wondered how she would ever be got upstairs to her room.

"This is the hall," he shouted. "Rather unfurnished I'm afraid."

"Oh, yes, I'm quite used to the country," said Miss Peasey.

Guy was now in a state of nervous indecision. Just as he was going to

shout to Miss Peasey that the kitchen was through the baize-door, the

hostler from the Stag came up to know whether mutton would do instead of

beef, and just as he said pork would be better than nothing, the guard

arrived with Miss Peasey's tin box and wanted to know where he should

put it. The hall seemed to be thronged with people.

"You'd like your boxes upstairs, wouldn't you?" he shouted to the

housekeeper.

"Oh, do you want to come upstairs?" she said cheerfully.

"No, your boxes. The kitchen's in here."

He really hustled her into the kitchen and, having got her at last in a

well-lighted room, he begged her to sit down and expect her supper. By

this time two men who had been summoned by the driver of the omnibus to

bring in Guy's books, were staggering and sweating into the hall.

However, the confusion relaxed in time; and before the clock struck ten

Guy was alone with Miss Peasey and without an audience was managing to

make her understand most of what he was saying.

"I'll come down in about half an hour," he told her, "and show you your

room."

"It's a long way," said Miss Peasey, when the moment was arrived to

conduct her up the winding staircase to her bower in the roof. Guy had

calculated that she would miss all the beams, and so from a desire to

make the best of the staircase he had not mentioned them. He sighed with

relief when she passed into her bedroom, unbumped.

"Oh, quite nice," she pronounced looking round her.

"In the morning, we'll talk over everything," said Guy, and with a

hurried good-night he rushed away.

In the hall he attacked with a chisel the first packing-case. One by one

familiar volumes winked at him with their gold lettering in the

candlelight. He chose Keats to take upstairs and, having read St.

Agnes' Eve, stood by the window of his bedroom, poring upon the moonlit

valley.

In bed his mind skipped the stress of Miss Peasey's arrival and fled

back to the meadows where he had been walking.

"Monica, Margaret...." he began dreamily. It was a pity he had forgotten

to find out the name of that sister who was so like a wild rose. Never

mind: he would find out to-morrow. And for the second time that day the

word lulled him like an opiate.

_October_

It was a blowy afternoon early in October, and Pauline was sitting by

the window of what at Wychford Rectory was still called the nursery. The

persistence of the old name might almost be taken as symbolic of the way

in which time had glided by that house unrecognized, for here were

Monica, Margaret and Pauline grown up before anyone had thought of

changing its name even to schoolroom. And with the old name it had

preserved the character childhood had lent it. There was not a chair

that did not appear now like the veteran survivor of childish wars and

misappropriations, nor any table nor cupboard that did not testify to an

affectionate ill-treatment prolonged over many years. On the walls the

paper which had once been vivid in its expression of primitive gaiety

was now faded: but the pattern of berries, birds and daisies still

displayed that eternally unexplored tangle as freshly as once it was

displayed for childish fancies of adventure. Pauline had always loved

the window-seat, and from here she had always seen before anyone else at

the Rectory the first flash of Spring's azure eyes, the first greying of

Winter's locks. So, now on this afternoon she could see the bullying

Southwest wind thunderous against whatever laggards of Summer still

tried to shelter themselves in the Rectory garden. Occasionally a few

raindrops seemed to effect a frantic escape from the fierce assault and

cling desperately to the window-panes, but since nobody could call it a

really wet day Pauline had been protesting all the afternoon against her

sisters' unwillingness to go out. Staying indoors was such a surrender

to the season.

"We ought to practise that Mendelssohn trio," Monica argued.

"I hate Mendelssohn," Pauline retorted.

"Well, I shall practise the piano part."

"Oh, Monica, it will sound so dreadfully empty," cried Pauline. "Won't

it, Margaret?"

"I'm reading Mansfield Park. Don't talk," Margaret murmured. "If I could

write like Jane Austen," she went on dreamily, "I should be the happiest

person in the world."

"Oh, but you are the happiest person already," said Pauline. "At least

you ought to be, if you'd only...."

"You know I hate you to talk about him," Margaret interrupted.

Pauline was silent. It was always a little alarming when Margaret was

angry. With Monica one took for granted the disapproval of a fastidious

nature, and it was fun to teaze her; but Margaret with her sudden

alternations of hardness and sympathy, of being great fun and

frightfully intolerant, it was always wiser to propitiate. So Pauline

stayed in the window-seat, pondering mournfully the lawn mottled with

leaves, and the lily-pond that was being seamed and crinkled by every

gust of the wind that skated across the surface. The very high grey wall

against which the Japanese quinces spread their peacock-tails of foliage

was shutting her out from the world to-day, and Pauline wished it were

Summer again so that she could hurry through the little door in the wall

and across the paddock to the banks of the Greenrush. In the Rectory

punt she would not have had to bother with sisters who would not come

out for a walk when they were invited.

The tall trees on either side of the lawn roared in the wind and

showered more leaves upon the angry air. What a long time it was to

Summer, and for no reason that she could have given herself Pauline

began to think about the man who had taken Plashers Mead. Of course it

was obvious he would fall in love either with Monica or with Margaret,

and really it must be managed somehow that he should choose Monica.

Everybody fell in love with Margaret, which was so hard on poor Richard

out in India who was much the nicest person in the world and whom

Margaret must never give up. Pauline looked at her sister and felt

afraid the new tenant of Plashers Mead would fall in love with her, for

Margaret was so very adorable with her slim hands and her sombre hair.

"Really almost more like a lily than a girl," thought Pauline. Somehow

the comparison reassured her, since it was impossible to think of

anyone's rushing to gather a lily without a great deal of hesitation.

"I wish poor Richard would write and tell her she is like a lily,

instead of always writing such a lot about the bridge he is building,

though I expect it's a very wonderful bridge."

After all, Monica with her glinting evanescence was just as beautiful as

Margaret, and even more mysterious; and if she only would not be so

frightening to young men, who would not fall in love with her! Pauline

wondered vaguely if she could not persuade Margaret to go away for a

month, so that the new tenant of Plashers Mead might have had time to

fall irremediably in love with Monica before she came back. Richard

would certainly be dreadfully worried out in India when he heard of a

young man at Plashers Mead, and certainly rather ... yes, certainly in

church on Sunday he had appeared rather charming. It was only last

Spring that poor Richard had wished he could be living in Plashers Mead

himself, and they had had several long discussions which never shed any

light upon the problem of how such an ambition would be gratified.

"I expect Monica will be like ice, and Margaret will seem so much easier

to talk to, and if I dared to suggest that Monica should unbend a

little, she would freeze me as well. Oh, it's all very difficult,"

sighed Pauline to herself, "and perhaps I'd better not try to influence

things. Only if he does seem to like Margaret much better than Monica, I

shall have to bring poor Richard into the conversation, which always

makes Margaret cross for days."

As she came to this resolution, Pauline looked half apprehensively at

her sister reading in the tumbledown armchair by the fire. How angry

Margaret would be if she guessed what was being plotted, and Pauline

actually jumped when she suddenly declared that Mansfield Park was

almost the best book Jane Austen ever wrote.

"Is it, darling Margaret?" said Pauline with a disarming willingness to

be told again that it certainly was.

"Or perhaps Emma," Margaret murmured, and Pauline hid herself behind the

curtains. How droll Father had been about the 'new young creature' at

Plashers Mead. It had been so difficult to persuade him to interrupt one

precious afternoon of planting bulbs to do his duty either as a

neighbour or as Rector of the parish. And when he came back all he would

say of the visit was:

"Very pleasant, my dears, oh, yes, he showed me everything, and he

really has a most remarkable collection of dish-covers, quite

remarkable. But I ought not to have deserted those irises that Garstin

sent me from the Taurus. Now perhaps we shall manage that obstinate

little plum-coloured brute which likes the outskirts of a pine-forest,

so they tell me."

Just as Pauline was laughing to herself at the memory of her father's

visit, the Rector himself appeared on the lawn. He was in his

shirt-sleeves: his knees were muddy with kneeling: and Birdwood the

gardener, all blown about by the wind, was close behind him, carrying an

armful of roots.

Pauline threw up the window with a crash and called out:

"Father, Father, what a darling you look, and your hair will be swept

right away, if you aren't careful."

The Rector waved his trowel remotely, and Pauline blew him kisses, until

she was made aware of protests in the room behind her.

"Really," exclaimed Monica. "You are so noisy. You're almost vulgar."

"Oh, no, Monica," cried Pauline dancing round the room. "Not vulgar. Not

a horrid little vulgar person!"

"And what a noise you do make," Margaret joined in. "Please, Pauline,

shut the window."

At this moment Mrs. Grey opened the door and loosed a whirlwind of

papers upon the nursery.

"Who's vulgar? Who's vulgar?" asked Mrs. Grey laughing absurdly. "Why,

what a tremendous draught!"

"Mother, shut the door, the door," expostulated Margaret and Monica

simultaneously. "And do tell Pauline to control herself sometimes."

"Pauline, control yourself," said Mrs. Grey.

When the papers were settling down, Janet the maid came in to say there

was a gentleman in the drawing-room, and in the confusion of the new

whirlwind her entrance raised, Janet was gone before anyone knew who the

gentleman was.

"Ugh," Margaret grumbled. "I never can be allowed to read in peace."

"I was practising the Mendelssohn trio, Mother," said Monica

reproachfully.

"Let us all practise. Let us all practise," Mrs. Grey proposed, beaming

enthusiastically upon her daughters. "That would be charming."

"Father is so sweet," said Pauline. "He's simply covered with mud."

"Has he got his kneeler?" asked Mrs. Grey.

Pauline rushed to the window again.

"Mother says 'have you got your kneeler'?"

The Rector paused vaguely, and Birdwood tried to indicate by kicking

himself that he had the kneeler.

"Ah, thoughtful Birdwood," said Mrs. Grey in a satisfied voice.

"And now do you think we might have the window shut?" asked Margaret

resignedly.

Monica was quite deliberately thumping at the piano part she was

practising. Mrs. Grey sat down and began to tell a long story in which

three poor people of Wychford got curiously blended somehow into one, so

that Pauline, who was the only daughter that ever listened, became very

sympathetic over a fourth poor person who had nothing to do with the

tale.

"And surely Janet came in to say something about the drawing-room," said

Mrs. Grey as she finished.

"She said a gentleman," Pauline declared.

"Oh, how vague you all are," exclaimed Margaret, jumping up.

"Well, Margaret, you were here," Pauline said. "And so was Monica."

"But I was practising," said Monica primly. "And I didn't hear a word

Janet said."

There was always this preliminary confusion at the Rectory when a

stranger was announced, and it always ended in the same way by Mrs. Grey

and Monica going down first, by Pauline rushing after them and banging

the door as they were greeting the visitor, and by Margaret strolling in

when the stage of comparative ease had been attained. So it fell out on

this occasion, for Monica's skirt was just disappearing round the

drawing-room door when Pauline, horrified at the idea of having to come

in by herself, cleared the last three stairs of the billowy flight with

a leap and sent Monica spinning forward as the door propelled her into

the room.

"Monica, I am so sorry."

"Pauline! Pauline!" said Mrs. Grey reprovingly. "So like an avalanche

always."

Guy, who had by now been waiting nearly a quarter of an hour, came

forward a little shyly.

"How d'ye do, how d'ye do," said Mrs. Grey quickly and nervously. "We're

so delighted to see you. So good of you ... charming really. Pauline is

always impetuous. You've come to study farming at Wychford haven't you?

Most interesting. Don't tug at me, Pauline. Monica, do ring for tea. Are

you fond of music?"

Pauline withdrew from the conversation after the whispered attempt to

correct her mother about Mr. Hazlewood's having taken Plashers Mead in

order to be a farmer. She wanted to contemplate the visitor without

being made to involve herself in the confusions of politeness. 'Was he

dangerous to Richard?' she asked herself, and alas, she had to tell

herself that indeed it seemed probable he might be. Of course he was

inevitably on the way to falling in love with Margaret, and as she

looked at him with his clear-cut pale face, his tumbled hair and large

brown eyes which changed what seemed at first a slightly cynical

personality to one that was almost a little wistful, Pauline began to

speculate if Margaret might not herself be rather attracted to him. This

was an unforeseen complication, for Margaret so far had only accepted

homage. Pauline definitely began to be jealous for Richard whose homage

had been the most prodigal of any; and as Guy drawled on about his first

adventure of house-keeping she told herself he was affected. The

impression, too, of listening to someone more than usually

self-possessed and cynical revived in her mind; and those maliciously

drooping lids were obliterating the effect of the brown eyes. Sitting by

herself in the oriel-window Pauline was nearly sure she did not like

him. He had no business to be at the Rectory when Richard was building a

bridge out in India; and now here was Margaret strolling graciously in

and almost at once obviously knowing so well how to get on with this

idler. Oh, positively she disliked him. So cold and so cruel was that

mouth, and so vain he was, as he sat there bending forward over

hand-clasped, long, stupid, crossed legs. What right had he to laugh

with Margaret about their father's visit? This stranger had assuredly

never appreciated him. He was come here to spoil the happiness of

Wychford, to destroy the immemorial perfection of life at the Rectory.

And why would he keep looking up at herself? Margaret could be pleasant

to anybody, but this intruder would soon find that she herself was loyal

to the absent. Pauline wished that, when he met them all on that night

of the moon, she had been so horridly rude as to make him avoid the

family for ever. How could Margaret sit there talking so unconcernedly,

when Richard might be dying of sunstroke at this very moment? Margaret

was heartless, and this stranger with his drawl and his undergraduate

affectation would encourage her to sneer at everything.

"What's the matter, Pauline dearest?" her mother turned round to ask.

"Nothing," answered Pauline, biting her lips to keep back surely the

most unreasonable tears she had ever felt were springing.

"You're not cross with me for calling you a landslide?" persisted Mrs.

Grey, smiling at her from the midst of a glory momentarily shed by a

stormy ray of sunshine.

"Oh, mother," said Pauline, now fairly in the midway between laughter

and tears. "It was an avalanche you called me."

"Why do you always sit near a window?" asked Monica.

"She always rushes into a corner," said Margaret.

Pauline jumped up from her chair and would have run out of the room

forthwith; but in passing the first table she knocked from it a silver

bowl of pot-pourri and scattered the contents over the carpet. Down she

knelt to hide her confusion and repair the damage, and at the same

moment Guy plunged down beside her to help. She caught his eyes so

tenderly humorous that she too laughed.

"I think it must be my fault," he said. "Don't you remember how, last

time we met, your sister upset the mushrooms?"

Pauline knew she was blushing, and when the rose-leaves were all

gathered up, tea came in. Her attention was now entirely occupied by

preventing her mother from doing the most ridiculous things with cakes

and sugar and milk, and when tea was over, Guy got up to go.

There was a brief discussion after his departure, in which Margaret was

so critical of his dress and of his absurdities that Pauline was

reassured, and presently indeed found herself taking their visitor's

part against her sisters.

"Quite right, quite right, Pauline," said Mrs. Grey. "He's charming ...

charming ... charming! Margaret and Monica so critical. Always so

critical."

Presently the family hurried out into the drive to protest against the

Rector's planting any more bulbs, to tell him how unkind he had been not

to come in to tea, and to warn him that the bell would sound for

Evensong in two minutes. He was dragged out of the shrubbery where he

had been superintending a clearance of aucubas, preparatory to planting

a drift of new and very deep yellow primroses.

"Really, my dears, I have never seen Primula Vulgaris so fine in texture

or colour. My friend Gilmour has spent ten years working up the stock.

As large as florins."

So he boasted of new wonders next Spring in the Rectory garden, while

his wife and daughters brushed him and dusted him and helped to button

up his cassock.

"Doesn't Father look a darling?" demanded Pauline, as they watched the

tall handsome dreamer striding along the drive towards the sound of the

bell, that was clanging loud and soft in its battle with the wind.

"Oh, Pauline, run after him," said Mrs. Grey, "and remind him it's the

Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity. He started wrong last Sunday, and

to-day's Wednesday, and it so offends some of the congregation."

Pauline overtook her father in the church-porch, and he promised he

would be careful to read the right collect. She had not stayed to get a

hat and therefore must wait for him outside.

"Very well, my dear child, I shan't be long. Do go and see if those

Sternbergias I planted against the south porch are in flower. Dear me,

they should be, you know, after this not altogether intolerably overcast

summer. Sun, though, sun! they want sun, poor dears!"

"But, Father, I can't remember what Sternbergias look like."

"Oh, yes, you can," said the Rector. "Sternbergia Lutea. Amaryllidaceae.

A perfectly ordinary creature." And he vanished in the gloom of the

priest's door.

As Pauline came round the corner the wind was full in her face, and

under the rose-edged wrack of driving clouds the churchyard looked

desolate and savage. There were no flowers to be seen but beaten down

Michaelmas daisies and bedabbled phlox. The bell had stopped immediately

when the Rector arrived; and the wind seemed now much louder as it went

howling round the great church or rasping through the yews and junipers.

The churchyard was bounded on the northerly side by the mill-stream,

along which ran a wide path between a double row of willows now hissing

and whistling as they were whipped by the blasts. Pauline walked slowly

down this unquiet ambulatory, gazing curiously over to the other bank of

the stream where the orchard of Plashers Mead was strewn with red

apples. There in the corner by the house that was just visible stood

the owner playing with a dog, a bobtail too, which was the kind Pauline

liked best. She wanted very much to wave, but of course it was

impossible for the Rector's daughter to do anything like that in the

churchyard. Yet if he did chance to walk in her direction, she would,

whatever happened, shout to him across the stream to bring the dog next

time he came to the Rectory. Pauline walked four times up and down the

path, but first the dog disappeared and then the owner followed him, and

presently Pauline discovered that the path beside the abandoned stream

was very dreary. The crooked tombstones stood up starkly: the wind

sighed across the green graves of the unknown: the fiery roses were

fallen from the clouds. Pauline turned away from the path and went to

take shelter behind the East end of the church. From here, as she

fronted the invading night, she could see the grey wall of the Rectory

garden and the paddock sloping down to the river. How sad it was to

think of the months that must pass before that small meadow would be

speckled with fritillaries or with irises blow white and purple. The

wind shrieked with a sudden gust that seemed more violent, because where

she was standing not a blade of grass twitched. Pauline looked up to

reassure herself that the steeple was not toppling from the tower; as

she did so, a gargoyle grinned down at her. The grotesque was

frightening in the dusk, and she hurried round to the priest's door. The

Rector came out as she reached it, and accepted vaguely the information

that there were no flowers to be seen but Michaelmas daisies and phlox.

"Ah, I told Birdwood to confiscate those abominable dahlias which

wretched Mrs. Godbold will plant every year. I gave her some of that new

saxifrage I raised. What more does the woman want?"

Pauline hung upon his arm, while they walked back to the Rectory through

the darkling plantation.

"Isn't it a perfect place?" she murmured, hugging his arm closer when

they came to the end of the mossy path and saw the twinkling of the

drawing-room's oriel on the narrow south side, and the eleven steep

gables that cleft the now scarcely luminous sky, one after another all

the length of the house.

"I doubt if anything but this confounded cotoneaster would do well

against this wall," replied the Rector.

He never failed to make this observation when he reached his front-door;

and his family knew that one day the cotoneaster would be torn down for

a succession of camellias to struggle with the east winds of unkind

Oxfordshire. In the hall Mrs. Grey and Margaret were bending over a

table.

"Guy has left his card," said Margaret.

"Is that the man who came to see me about the rats?" asked the Rector.

"No, no, Francis," said Mrs. Grey. "Guy is the young man at Plashers

Mead."

"Isn't Francis sweet?" cried Pauline, reaching up to kiss him.

"Hush, Pauline. Pauline, you must not call your father Francis in the

hall," said Mrs. Grey.

"How touching of Guy to leave a card," Pauline murmured, looking at the

oblong of pasteboard shimmering in the gloom.

"Now we've just time to practise the Mendelssohn trio before dinner,"

declared Mrs. Grey. "And that will make you warm."

The Rector wandered off to his library. Margaret and Pauline went with

their mother up shadowy staircases and through shadowy corridors to the

great music-room that ran half the length of the roof. Monica was

already seated at the piano, all white and golden herself in the

candlelight. Languidly Margaret unpacked her violoncello: Pauline tuned

her violin. Soon the house was full of music, and the wind in the night

was scarcely audible.

_November_

When Guy left the Rectory that October afternoon, he felt as if he had

put back upon its shelf a book the inside of which, thus briefly glanced

at, held for him, whenever he should be privileged to open it again, a

new, indeed an almost magical representation of life. On his fancy the

Greys had impressed themselves with a kind of abundant naturalness; but

however deeply he tried to think he was already plunged into the heart

of their life, he realized that it was only in such a way as he might

have dipped into the heart of a book. The intimacy revealed was not

revealed by any inclusion of himself within the charm; and he was a

little sad to think how completely he must have seemed outside the

picture. Hence his first aspiration with regard to the family was

somehow to become no longer a spectator, but actually a happy player in

their representation of existence. Ordinarily, so far as experience had

hitherto carried him, it had been easy enough to find himself on terms

of intimacy with any group of human beings whose company was

sufficiently attractive. For him, perhaps, it had even been particularly

easy, so that he had never known the mortification of a repulse. No

doubt now by contriving to be himself and relying upon the interest that

was sure to be roused by his isolation and poetic ambitions, he would

very soon be accorded the freedom of the Rectory. Yet such a prospect,

however pleasant to contemplate, did not satisfy him, and he was already

troubled by a faint jealousy of the many unknown friends of the Greys to

whom in the past the privilege of that freedom must have been

frequently accorded. Guy wanted more than that: in the excess of his

appreciation he wanted them to marvel at a time when they had not been

aware of his existence: in fact he was anxious to make himself necessary

to their own sense of their own completeness. As he entered his solitary

hall, he was depressed by the extravagance of such a desire, saying to

himself that he might as well sigh to become an integral figure of a

pastoral by Giorgione, or of any work of art the life of which seems but

momentarily stilled for the pleasure of whomsoever is observing it.

Guy was for a while almost impatient even of his own room, for he felt

it was lacking in any atmosphere except the false charm of novelty. He

had been here three weeks now, he and deaf Miss Peasey; and were the two

of them swept away to-morrow, Plashers Mead would adapt itself to

newcomers. There was nothing wrong with the house: such breeding would

survive any occupation it might be called upon to tolerate. On the other

hand were chance to sweep the Greys from Wychford, so essentially did

the Rectory seem their creation that already it was unimaginable to Guy

apart from them. And as yet he had only dipped into the volume. Who

could say what exquisite and intimate paragraphs did not await a more

leisurely perusal? Really, thought Guy, he might almost suppose himself

in love with the family, so much did the vision of them in that shadowy

drawing-room haunt his memory. Indeed they were become a picture that

positively ached in his mind with longing for the moment of its

repetition. For some days he spent all his time in the orchard, throwing

sticks for his new bobtail; denying himself with an absurd

self-consciousness the pleasure of walking so far along the mill-stream

even as the bank opposite to the Rectory paddock; denying himself a

fortuitous meeting with any of the family in Wychford High Street; and

on Sunday denying himself the pleasure of seeing them in church, because

he felt it might appear an excuse to be noticed. The vision of the

Rectory obsessed him, but so elusively that when in verse he tried to

state the emotion merely for his own satisfaction he failed, and he took

refuge from his disappointment by nearly always being late for meals.

Often he would see Miss Peasey walking about the orchard with desolate

tinkle of a Swiss sheep-bell, the only instrument of summons that the

house possessed. Miss Peasey herself looked not unlike a battered old

bell-wether, as she wandered searching for him in the wind; and Guy used

to watch her from behind a tree-trunk, laughing to himself until Bob the

dog trotted from one to another, describing anxious circles round their

separation.

"Your dinner's been waiting ten minutes, Mr. Hazlewood!"

"Doesn't matter," Guy would shout.

"Mutton to-day," Miss Peasey would say, and, "a little variety," she

always added.

Miss Peasey's religion was variety, and her tragedy was an invention

that never kept pace with aspiration. For three weeks Guy had been given

on Sunday roast beef which lasted till Wednesday; while on Thursday he

was given roast mutton, which as a depressing cold bone always went out

from the dining-room on Saturday night. Every morning he was asked what

he would like for dinner, to which he always replied that he left it to

her. Once indeed in a fertile moment he had suggested a curry, and Miss

Peasey, brightening wonderfully, had chirped:

"Ah, yes, a little variety."

But in the evening the taste of hot tin that represented Miss Peasey's

curry made him for ever afterward leave the variety to her own fancy,

thereby preserving henceforth that immutable alternation of roast beef

and roast mutton which was the horizon of her house-keeping.

These solitary meals were lightened by the thought of the Rectory.

Neither beef nor mutton seemed of much importance, when his mind's eye

could hold that shadowy drawing-room. There was Monica with her pale

gold hair in the stormy sunlight, cold and shy, but of such a marble

purity of line that but to sit beside her was to admire a statue whose

coldness made her the more admirable. There was Margaret, carved slimly

out of ivory, very tall with weight of dusky hair, and slow fastidious

voice that spoke dreamily of the things Guy loved best. There was

Pauline sitting away from the others in the window seat, away in her

shyness and wildness. Was not the magic of her almost more difficult to

recapture than any? A briar rose she was whose petals seemed to fall at

the touch of definition, a briar rose that was waving out of reach, even

of thought. Guy wished he could visualize the Rector in his own

drawing-room; but instead he had to set him in Plashers Mead, of which

no doubt he had thought the owner a young ass; and Guy blushed to

remember the nervous idiocy which had let him take the Rector solemnly

into the kitchen to look at dish-covers in a row, and deaf Miss Peasey

sitting by as much fire as the table would yield to her chair. But if

the Rector were missing from the picture, at any rate he could picture

Mrs. Grey, shy like her daughters and with a delicious vagueness all her

own. She was most like Pauline, and indeed in Pauline Guy could see her

mother, as the young moon holds in her lap the wraith of the old

moon....

"Why, you haven't eaten anything," remonstrated Miss Peasey, breaking in

upon his vision. "And I've made you a rice pudding for a little

variety."

The shadowy drawing-room faded with the old chintz curtains and fragile

almost immaterial silver; the china bowls of Lowestoft; the dull white

panelling and faintly aromatic sweetness. Instead remained a rice

pudding that smelt and looked as solid as a pie.

However, that very afternoon Guy was greatly encouraged to get an

invitation to dinner at the Rectory from the hands of the gardener.

Birdwood was one of those servants who seem to have accepted with the

obligations of service the extreme responsibilities of paternity; and

Guy hastened to take advantage of the chance to establish himself on

good terms with one who might prove a most powerful ally.

"Not much of a garden, I'm afraid," he said deprecatingly to Birdwood,

as they stood in colloquy outside. The gardener shook his head.

"It wouldn't do for the Rector to see them cabbages and winter greens.

'I won't have the nasty things in my garden,' he says to me, and he'll

rush at them regular ferocious with a fork. 'I won't have them,' he

says. 'I can't abear the sight of them,' he says. Well, of course I

knows better than go for to contradict him when he gets a downer on any

plant, don't matter whether it's cabbage or calceolaria. But last time,

when he'd done with his massacring of them, I popped round to Mrs. Grey,

and I says, winking at her very hard, but of course not meaning any

disrespectfulness, winking at her very hard, I says, 'Please, mum, I

want one of these new allotments from the glebe.' 'Good Heavings,

Birdwood,' she says, 'whatever on earth can you want with for an

allotment?' With that I winks very hard again and says in a low voice

right into her ear as you might say, 'To keep the wolf from the door,

mum, with a few winter greens.' That's the way we grow our vegetables

for the Rectory, out of an allotment, though we have got five acres of

garden. Now you see what comes of being a connosher. You take my advice,

Mr. Hazlenut, and clear all them cabbages out of sight before the Rector

comes round here again."

"I will certainly," Guy promised. "But you know it's a bit difficult for

me to spend much money on flowers."

"_We_ don't spend money over at the Rectory," said Birdwood, smiling in

a superior way.

"No?"

"_We_ don't spend a penny. _We_ has every mortal plant and seed and

cutting given to us. And not only that, but we gives in our turn. Look

here, Mr. Hazlenut, I'm going to hand you out a bit of advice. The first

time as you go round our garden with the Rector, when you turn into the

second wall-garden, and see a border on your right, you catch hold of

his arm and say, 'Why, good Heavings, if that isn't a new berberis."

"Yes, but I don't know what an old berberis looks like," said Guy

hopelessly. "Let alone a new one."

"Never mind what the old ones look like. It's the new I'm telling you

of. Don't you understand that everyone who comes down, from Kew even,

says, 'That's a nice healthy little lot of Berberis Knightii as you've

got a hold of.' 'Ha,' says the Rector. 'I thought as you'd go for to say

that. But it ain't Knightii,' he chuckles, 'and what's more it ain't got

a name yet, only a number, being a new importation from China,' he says.

You go and call out what I told you, and he'll be so pleased, why, I

wouldn't say he won't shovel half of the garden into your hands straight

off."

"Do the young ladies take an interest in flowers?" Guy asked.

"Of course they try," said Birdwood condescendingly. "But neither them

nor their mother don't seem to learn nothing. They think more of a good

clump of dellyphiniums than half-a-dozen meconopises as someone's gone

mad to discover, with a lot of murderous Lammers from Tibbet ready to

knife him the moment his back's turned."

"Really?"

"Oh, I was like that myself once. I can remember the time when I was as

fond of a good dahlia as anything. Now I goes sniffing the ground to

see if there's any Mentha Requieni left over from the frost."

"Sniffing the ground?"

"That's right. It's so small that if it wasn't for the smell anyone

wouldn't see it. That's _worth_ growing that is. Only, if you'll

understand me, it takes anyone who's used to looking at peonies and

suchlike a few years to find out the object of a plant that isn't any

bigger than a pimple on an elephant."

Guy was reluctant to let Birdwood go without bringing him to talk more

directly of the family and less of the flowers. At the same time he felt

it would be wiser not to rouse in the gardener any suspicion of how much

he was interested in the Rectory: he was inclined to think he might

resent it, and he wanted him as a friend.

"Who is working in your garden?" asked Birdwood, as he turned to go.

"Well, nobody just at present," said Guy apologetically.

"All right," Birdwood announced. "I'll get hold of someone for you in

less than half a pig's whisper."

"But not all the time," Guy explained quickly. He was worried by the

prospect of a gardener's wages coming out of his small income.

"Once a week he'll come in," said Birdwood.

Guy nodded.

"What's his name?"

"Graves he's called, but being deaf and dumb, his name's not of much

account."

"Deaf and dumb?" repeated Guy. "But how shall I explain what I want

done?"

"I'll show you," said Birdwood. "I'll come round and put you in the way

of managing him. Work? I reckon that boy would work any other mortal in

Wychford to the bone. Work? Well, he can't hear nothing, and he can't

say nothing, so what else can he do? And he does it. Good afternoon, Mr.

Hazlenut."

And Birdwood retired, whistling very shrilly as he went down the path to

the gate.

Two nights later, Guy with lighted lantern in his hand set out to the

Rectory. He did not venture to go by the orchard and the fields and so,

crossing the narrow bridge over the stream, enter by way of the garden.

Such an approach seemed too familiar for the present stage of his

friendship, and he took the more formal route through an alley of

mediaeval cottages that branched off Wychford High Street. Mysterious

lattices blinked at him, and presently he felt the wind coming fresh in

his face as he skirted the churchyard. The road continued past the back

of a long row of almshouses, and when he saw the pillared gate of the

Rectory drive, over which high trees were moaning darkly, Guy wondered

if he were going to a large dinner-party. No word had been said of any

one else's coming, but with Mrs. Grey's vagueness that portended

nothing. He hoped that he would be the only guest and, swinging his

lantern with a pleased expectancy, he passed down the drive. Suddenly a

figure materialized from the illumination he was casting and hailed him

with a questioning 'hulloa'?

"Hulloa," Guy responded.

"Oh, beg your pardon," exclaimed the other. "I thought it was Willsher."

"My name's Hazlewood," said Guy a little stiffly.

"Mine's Brydone. We may as well hop in together."

Guy rather resented the implication of this birdlike intrusion in

company with the doctor's son, a lanky youth whom he had often noticed

slouching about Wychford in a cap ostensibly alive with artificial

flies. Apparently Willsher must also be expected, against whom Guy had

already conceived a violent prejudice dating from the time he called at

his father's office to sign the agreement for the tenancy of Plashers

Mead. It was of ill augury that the Greys should apparently be supposing

that he would make a trio with Brydone and Willsher.

"Brought a lantern, eh?" said Brydone.

"Yes, this is a lantern," Guy answered coldly.

"You'll never see me with a lantern," Brydone declared.

Guy would like to have retorted that he hoped he would never even see

Brydone without one. But he contented himself by saying with all that

Balliol could bring to his aid of crushing indifference,

"Oh, really?"

Somebody behind them was running down the drive and shouting 'Hoo-oo' in

what Guy considered a very objectionable voice. It probably was

Willsher.

"Hullo, Charlie," said Brydone.

"Hullo, Percy," said Willsher, for it was he.

"Know this gentleman? Mr. Hazlewood?"

"Only officially. Pleased to meet you," said the new-comer.

"Not at all," answered Guy. He felt furious to think that the Greys

would suppose he had arranged to arrive with these two fellows.

"Done any fishing yet?" asked Brydone.

"No, not yet," said Guy.

"Well, your bit of river has been spoilt. Old Burrows let everyone go

there. But when you want some good fishing, Willsher and I rent about a

mile of stream farther up and we'll always be glad to give you a day.

Eh, Charlie?"

Charlie replied with much cordiality that Percy had taken the very words

of invitation out of his mouth; and Guy, unable any longer to be frigid,

said that he had some books at which they might possibly care to come

and look one afternoon. Mr. Brydone and Mr. Willsher both declared they

would be delighted, and the latter added in the friendliest way that he

knew an old woman in Wychford who was very anxious to sell a Milton

warranted to be a hundred years old at least. Was that anything in Mr.

Hazlewood's way? Guy explained that a Milton of so recent a date was not

likely to be much in his way, and Mr. Brydone remarked that no doubt if

it had been a Stilton, it would have been another matter. His friend

laughed very heartily indeed at this joke, and in an atmosphere of

almost hilarious good fellowship, that was to Guy still a little

mortifying, they rang the Rectory bell.

None of the family had reached the drawing-room when they were shown in,

and Guy was afraid they were rather early.

"Always like this," said Brydone. "Absolutely no notion of time.

Shouldn't be surprized if we had to wait another quarter of an hour.

Known them for years, and they've always been like this. Eh, Charlie?"

The solicitor's son shook his head gravely. He seemed to feel that as a

man of business he should display a slight disapproval of such a casual

family.

"Ever since I was a kid I can remember it," he said.

Guy tried to tell himself that all this talk of intimacy was merely due

to the accidental associations of country life over many years. But it

was with something very like apprehension that he waited for the Greys

to come down. It would be dreadful to find that Brydone and Willsher had

a status in the Rectory. When, however, their hosts appeared, Guy

realized with a tremendous relief that Brydone and Willsher obviously

existed outside his picture of the Rectory. To be sure, they were

Charlie and Percy to Monica, Margaret and Pauline; but galling as this

was, Guy told himself that after a lifelong acquaintance nothing else

could be expected.

It pleased Guy really that the dinner was not a great success, for he

was able to fancy that the Greys were encumbered by the presence of

Brydone and Willsher. Monica was silent; Margaret was deliberately

talking about things that could not possibly interest either of the

young men; and Pauline was trying to save the situation by wild

enthusiasms which were continually being repressed by her sisters. Mrs.

Grey alternated between helping to check Pauline and behaving in exactly

the same way herself. As for the Rector, he sat silent with a twinkle in

his eye. Guy wished regretfully, when the time came to depart, that he

could have stayed another few minutes to mark his superiority to the

other guests; but alas, he was still far from that position, and no

doubt he would never attain to it.

"Oh, have you brought a lantern?" asked Pauline excitedly in the hall.

"Oh, I wish I could walk back with you. I love lantern-light."

"Pauline! Pauline! Do think what you're saying," Mrs. Grey protested.

"I like lantern-light too," Margaret proclaimed.

"When you come to see us again," said Pauline, "will you bring your

dog?"

"Oh, I say, shall I?" asked Guy flushing with pleasure.

"Such a lamb, Margaret," said Pauline, kissing her sister impulsively

and being straightly reproved for doing so.

The good-nights were all said, and Guy walked up the drive with Brydone

and Willsher.

"Queer family, aren't they?" commented the doctor's son.

"Extraordinarily charming," said Guy.

"I've known them all my life," said Willsher a little querulously. "And

yet I never seem to know them any better."

Guy was so much elated by this admission that he repeated more warmly

his invitation to come and see him and his books, and parted from the

two friends very pleasantly.

Two or three days later Guy thought he might fairly make his dinner

call, and with much forethought did not take Bob with him, so that soon

there might be an excuse to come again to effect that introduction. Mrs.

Grey and Monica were out; and Guy was invited to have tea in the nursery

with Margaret and Pauline. He was conscious that an honour had been paid

to him, partly by intuition, partly because neither of the girls said a

conventional word about not going into the drawing-room. He felt, as he

sat in that room fragrant with the memories of what must have been an

idyllic childhood, the thrill that, as a child, he used to feel when he

read: '_The Queen was in her parlour eating bread and honey_.' This was

such another parlour infinitely secluded from the world; and he thought

he had never experienced a more breathless minute of anticipation than

when he followed the girls along the corridor to their nursery. The

matting worn silky with age seemed so eternally unprofaned, and on the

wall outside the door the cuckoo calling five o'clock was like a

confident bird in some paradise where neither time nor humanity was of

much importance. Janet, the elderly parlourmaid, came stumping in behind

them with the nursery tea-things; and, as Guy sat by the small hob-grate

and saw the moist autumnal sun etherealize with wan gold the tattered

volumes of childhood, the very plumcake on the tea-table was endowed

with the romantic perfection of a cake in a picture-book. When the sun

dipped behind the elms, Guy half expected that Margaret and Pauline

would vanish too, so exactly seemed they the figures that, were this

room a mirage, he would expect to find within as guardians of the rare

seclusion. Guy never could say what was talked about, that afternoon;

for when he found himself outside once again in the air of earth, he was

bemused with the whole experience, as if suddenly released from

enchantment. Out of a multitude of impressions, which had seemed at the

time most delicately strange and potent, only a few incidents quite

common-place haunted his memory tangibly enough to be seized and

cherished. Tea-cups floating on laughter against that wall-paper of

berries, birds and daisies; a pair of sugar-tongs clicking to the

pressure of long white fingers (so much could he recapture of Margaret);

crumpets in a rosy mist (so much was Pauline); a copper kettle singing;

the lisp of the wind; a disarray of tambour-frames and music, these were

all that kept him company on his way back to Plashers Mead through the

colourless twilight.

Chance favoured Guy next day by throwing him into the arms of the

Rector, who asked if he were fond enough of flowers to look round the

garden at a dull season of the year. Guy was so much elated that, if

love of flowers meant more frequent opportunities of going to the

Rectory, he would have given up poetry to become a professional

gardener. Of course there was nothing to see, according to the Rector--a

few Nerines of his own crossing in the greenhouse; a Buddleia Auriculata

honeycomb-scented in the angle of two walls; the double Michaelmas

daisy, an ugly brute already condemned to extermination; a white Red Hot

Poker, evidently a favourite of the Rector's by the way he gazed upon it

and said so casually Kniphofia Multiflora, as if it were not indeed a

treasure blooming in Oxfordshire's dreary Autumn.

"Tulips to go in next week," said the Rector, rolling the prospect upon

his tongue with meditative enjoyment. "A friend of mine has just sent me

some nice fellows from Bokhara and Turkestan. I ought to get them in

this week, but Birdwood must finish with these roses. And I've got a lot

of Clusiana too that ought to be in. I am going to try her in

competition with shrubbery roots and see if _they'll_ make her behave

herself."

"Could I come in and help?" offered Guy.

"Well, now that would certainly be most kind," said the Rector; and his

thin handsome face lit up with the excitement of infecting Guy with his

own passion. "But aren't you busy?"

"Oh, no. I usually work at night."

So Guy came to plant tulips and from planting tulips to being asked to

lunch was not far, and from finishing off a few left over to being asked

to tea was not far either. Moreover when the tulips were all planted,

there were gladioli to be sorted and put away. Incidentally too the punt

had to be caulked and the boathouse had to be strengthened, so that in

the end it was half way into November before Guy realized he had been

coming to the Rectory almost every day. The more he came, however, the

more he was fascinated by the family. They still eluded him, and he was

always aware, particularly between Margaret and Pauline, of a life in

which as yet he hardly shared. At the same time, so familiar now were

the inner places of the house and most of all the nursery, he felt as if

happily there would come a day when to none of the sisters would he seem

more noticeable than one of their tumbledown armchairs.

Once or twice he stayed to dinner, and the long dining-room with the

sea-grey wall-paper and curtains of the strawberry-thief design was

always entered with a particular contentment of spirit. The table was

very large, for somebody always forgot to take out the extra leaf put in

for a dinner sometime last summer, or perhaps two summers ago. The

result was that the Rector was far away in the shadows at one end; Mrs.

Grey equally remote at the other; while Guy would in turn be near to

Margaret or Pauline or even Monica in the middle. Old fashioned glasses

with spirals of green and white blown in their stems; silver that was

nearly diaphanous with use and age; candlesticks solid as the Ionic

columns they counterfeited, or tapering and fluted with branches that

carried the candle-flames like flowers, everything seemed as if it had

been created for this room alone. From the wall a lacquered clock as

round and big and benign as the setting sun wavered in the coppery

shadows of the fire, and with scarcely the sound of a tick showed forth

time. Guy had never appreciated the sacredness of eating in good company

until he dined casually like this at the Rectory. He never knew what he

ate and always accepted what was put before him like manna; yet he was

always conscious of having enjoyed the meal, and next morning he used to

face, unabashed, Miss Peasey's tale of ruined tapioca which had waited

for him too long.

The seal of perfection was generally set on these unexpected dinners by

chamber-music afterward, when under the arched roof of the big

music-room for an hour or more of trios and quartets Guy contemplated

that family. The Greys could not have revealed the design of their life

with anything but chamber-music, and setting aside any expression of

inward things, thought Guy, how would it be possible to imagine them

more externally decorative than seated so at this formal industry of

art? He liked best perhaps the trios, when he and Mrs. Grey, each in a

Caroline chair with tall wicker back, remained outside, and yet withal

as much in the picture as two donors painted by an old Florentine.

Monica in a white dress sat straight and stiff with pale gold hair that

seemed the very colour of the refined, the almost rarefied accompaniment

upon which her fingers quivered and rippled. Something of her own

coldness and remoteness and crystalline severity she brought to her

instrument, as if upon a windless day a fountain played forth its

pattern. Margaret's amber dress deepened from the shade of Monica's

hair, and Margaret's eyes glowed deep and solemn as the solemn depths of

the violoncello over which she hung with a thought of motherhood in the

way she cherished it. Was it she, wondered Guy, who was the ultimate

lure of this house, or was it Pauline? Of her, as she swayed to the

violin, nothing could be said but that from a rose-bloomed radiance

issued a sound of music. And how clearly in the united effect of the

three sisters was written the beauty of their lives. Guy could almost

see every hour of their girlhood passing in orderly pattern, as the

divine Hours dance along a Grecian frieze. There was neither passion nor

sentiment in the music: there was neither sorrow nor regret. It was

heartless in its limpid beauty; it was remote as a cloud against the

sunrise; cold as water was it, and incommunicable as a dream; yet in

solitude when Guy reconjured the sound afterward, it returned to his

memory like fire.

A great occasion for Guy was the afternoon when first the Greys came to

tea with him at Plashers Mead. Himself went into Wychford and bought the

cakes, so many that Miss Peasey held up her hands with that ridiculously

conventional gesture of surprize she used, exclaiming:

"Oh, dear, this is a variety!"

Guy led them solemnly round the house and furnished the empty rooms with

such vivid descriptions that their emptiness was scarcely any longer

perceptible. In his own room he waited anxiously for judgment. Margaret

was of course the first to declare an opinion. She did not like his

curtains nor his green canvas, and she was by no means willing to accept

his excuse that they were relics of undergraduate taste.

"If you don't like them now, why do you have them? Why not plain white

for the walls and no curtains at all, until you can get ones you really

do like?"

Pauline was afraid his feelings would be hurt and declared with such

transparent dishonesty how greatly she loved everything in the room that

Guy, grateful though he was to her intended sweetness, was more

discouraged than ever. Monica objected to his having Our Lady on the

mantelshelf, and would not admit her as Saint Rose of Lima; but Guy was

enough in awe of Monica not to justify the identification with Saint

Rose by his desire for a poetic apostrophe. As for Mrs. Grey, she

behaved as she always did when Monica and Margaret were being critical,

that is by firing off 'charmings!' in a sort of benevolent musketry; but

if Guy was not convinced by her 'charmings!' he could not resist her

when she said:

"I think Guy's room is charming ... charming!"

He felt his room could be an absolute failure if from the ashes of its

reputation he were alluded to actually for the first time as 'Guy.' Gone

then was Mr. Hazlewood: fled were those odious 'misses.' He turned to

Pauline and said momentously, boldly:

"I say, Pauline, you haven't seen my new kitten."

She blushed, and Guy stood breathless with the attainment of the first

peak. Then triumphantly he turned to Mrs. Grey:

"Monica and Margaret are very severe, aren't they?"

How easy it was after all, and he wished he had addressed them directly

by their Christian names instead of taking refuge in a timid reference.

Now all that was wanting for his pleasure was that Monica, Margaret or

Pauline should call him Guy. He wondered which would be the first. And

vaguely he asked himself which he wanted to be the first.

Pauline was talking to Margaret in the bay-window.

"Do you remember," she was saying, "when Richard came to look at

Plashers Mead and we pretended he was going to take it?"

Margaret frowned at her for answer; but for Guy the afternoon so lately

perfected was spoilt again; and when they were gone, all the evening he

glowered at phantom Richards who, whether Adonises or Calibans, were all

equally obnoxious and more than obnoxious, positively minatory. Next day

he felt he had no heart to make an excuse to visit the Rectory; and he

was drearily eating some of the cakes of the tea-party, when Mr. Brydone

and Mr. Willsher paid him their first call. Guy did not think they would

appreciate the empty rooms, however eloquently he narrated their future

glories; so he led his visitors forthwith to the cakes, listening to the

talk of trout and jack. After a while he asked with an elaborate

indifference if either of them had lately been round to the Rectory.

"Too clever for me," said Brydone shaking his head. "Besides, Pauline

kicked up a fuss a fortnight ago because we asked if we could have the

otter-meet in their paddock."

"They were never sporting, those Rectory kids," said Willsher gloomily.

"Never," his friend agreed, shaking his head. "Do you remember when

Margaret egged on young Richard Ford to punch your head because your old

terrier chivied the Greys' cat round the churchyard?"

"I punched _his_ head, I remember," said Willsher in wrathful

reminiscence.

"Does Richard Ford live here?" Guy asked.

"His father's the Vicar of Little Fairfield, the next parish, you know.

Richard's gone to India. He's an engineer, awfully nice chap and head

over heels in love with the fair Margaret. I believe there's a sort of

engagement."

In that moment by the lightening of his heart Guy knew that he was in

love with Pauline.

Outside, the November night hung humid and oppressive.

"I thought we should get it soon," said Willsher, and as the two friends

vanished in the mazy garden, Guy looking up felt rain falling softly yet

with gathering intensity. He stood for a while in his doorway, held by

the whispering blackness. Then suddenly in a rapture of realization he

slammed the door and, singing at the top of his voice, marched about the

hall. Once upon a time 'to-morrow' had been wont to drowse him: now the

word sounded upon his imagination like a golden trumpet.