_Tuesday._
_My dear Richard,_
_Thank you for your last letter which was very interesting. I
should think your bridge was wonderful. Will you come back to
England when it's finished? There is not much to tell you except
that a man called Guy Hazlewood has taken Plashers Mead. He is very
nice, or else I should have hated him to take the house you wanted.
He is very tall--not so tall as father, of course--and he is a
poet. He has a very nice bobtail and a touching housekeeper who is
deaf. Birdwood likes him very much; so I expect you would too.
Birdwood wants to know if it's true that people in India--oh,
bother, now I've forgotten what it was, only I know he's got a bet
with Godbold's nephew about it. Guy--you mustn't be jealous that we
call him Guy because he really is very nice--has just been in to
tea. Margaret is a darling, but I wish you'd take my advice and
write more about_ her _when you write. Of course I don't know what
you do write, and I'm sure she really is interested in your bridge,
but of course you must remember that she's not used to the kind of
bridges you're building. But she's a darling and I'm simply longing
for you to be married so that I can come and stay with you when I'm
an old maid which I've quite made up my mind I'm going to be. Guy
has been gardening with Father a good deal. Father says he's_
fairly _intelligent. Isn't Father sweet? He drank your health at
dinner the other night without anybody's reminding him it was your
birthday. I think Guy likes Monica best. I don't think he cares at
all for Margaret except of course he must admire her--Margaret is
such a darling! Oh, a merry Christmas because it will be Christmas
before you get this letter. Percy Brydone and Charlie Willsher came
to dinner last month. They were so touching and bored._
_Lots of love from_
_Your loving_
_Pauline_.
_Don't forget about writing to Margaret more about herself._
Pauline put the letter in its crackling envelope with a sigh for the
unformed hand in which it was written. Nothing brought home to her so
nearly as this handwriting of hers the muddle she was always apt to make
of things. How it sprawled across the page, so unlike Monica's that was
small and neat and exquisitely formed or Margaret's that was decorated
with fantastic and beautiful affectations of manner. It was obvious, of
course, that her sisters must always be the favourites of everybody, but
it had been rather unkind of Guy to avoid her so obviously to-day.
Richard had always realized that even if she were impulsive and foolish
she was also tremendously sympathetic.
"For I really am sympathetic," she assured her image in the glass, as
she tried to make the light brown hair look tidy enough to escape
Margaret's remonstrances at dinner. If Guy were hopelessly in love with
Margaret, how sympathetic she would be; and she would try to explain to
him how interesting an unhappy love-affair always made people. For
instance there was Miss Verney whom everybody thought was just a cross
old maid; but if they had only seen, as she had seen, that cracked
miniature, what romance even her cats would possess. She must take Guy
to see Miss Verney or bring Miss Verney to see Guy: a meeting must
somehow be arranged between these two, who would surely be drawn
together by their misfortunes in love. Guy was exactly the person whom
an unhappy love-affair would become. It would be so interesting in ten
years' time, when she would be nearly thirty and old enough to be Guy's
confidante without anybody's interference, to keep back the inquisitive
world from Plashers Mead. No doubt by then Guy would be famous: he
always spoke with such confidence of fame. Monica and Margaret would
both be married, and she would still be living at the Rectory with her
father and mother. Pauline, as she pictured the future, saw no change in
them, but rather sacrificed to the ravages of time her own appearance
and Guy's, so that at thirty she fancied both herself and him as already
slightly grey. The gong sounded from the depths of the house, and
hastily she snatched from her wardrobe the first frock she found: it
happened to be a white one, more suitable to June than to December,
with a skirt of many flounces all stiffly starched. After rustling down
passages and stairs she reached the dining-room just as the others were
going into dinner.
"Pauline, how charming you look in that frock," her mother exclaimed.
"Why it's like Summer just to see you."
Pauline was very happy that night because her mother and sisters petted
her with the simple affection for which she was always longing.
The next day seemed fine enough to justify Mrs. Grey, Margaret and
Monica in making an expedition into Oxford to see about Christmas
presents; and in the afternoon, while Pauline was sitting alone in the
nursery, Guy was shown in by Janet. Pauline felt very shy and blushful
when she met him so intimately as this, after all her plans for him on
the night before. He too seemed ill at ease, and she was sadly positive
he missed Margaret. The sense of embarrassment lasted until tea-time,
when Janet came in to say that the Rector hearing of Mr. Hazlewood's
arrival had decided to have tea in the nursery.
"Oh, what fun," cried Pauline clapping her hands. "Janet, do give him
the mug with 'A PRESENT FOR A GOOD BOY' on it."
"Dear me, Miss Pauline, what things you do think of, I do declare. Well,
did you ever? Tut-tut! Fancy, for your father too!"
Nevertheless Janet sedately put the mug on the tray. When she was gone
Pauline turned to Guy, and said:
"I'm sure Father thinks he ought to come and chaperone us. Isn't he
sweet?"
Presently the Rector appeared looking very tall in the low doorway. He
nodded cheerfully to Guy:
"Seen Vartani? You know, he's that pale blue fellow from Nazareth. Very
often he's a washy lilac, but this is genuinely blue."
"No, I don't think I noticed it--him, I mean," said Guy apologetically.
"Oh, Father, of course he didn't! It's a tiny iris," she explained to
Guy, "and Father puts in new roots every year...."
"Bulbs, my dear, bulbs," corrected Mr. Grey. "It's one of the Histrio
lot."
"Well, bulbs. And every year one flower comes out in the middle of the
winter rain and lasts about ten minutes, and then all the summer
Birdwood and Father grub about looking for the bulb, which they never
find, and then Father gets six new ones."
They talked on, the three of them, about flowery subjects while the
Rector drank his tea from the mug without a word of comment on the
inscription. Then he went off to write a letter, and Guy with a
regretful glance at the room supposed he ought to go.
"Oh, no, stay a little while," said Pauline. "Look, it's raining again."
It was only a shower through which the declining sun was lancing silver
rays. As they watched it from the window without speaking, Pauline
wondered if she ought to have given so frank an invitation to stay
longer. Would Margaret have frowned? And how odd Guy was this afternoon.
Why did he keep looking at her so intently as if about to speak, and
then turn away with a sigh and nothing said.
"I do love this room," said Guy at last.
"I love it too," Pauline agreed.
"May I ask you something?"
"Yes, of course."
"You spoke to Margaret the other day about someone called Richard. Do
you like him very much?"
"Yes, of course. Only you mustn't ask me about him. Please don't. I've
promised Margaret I wouldn't talk about him. Please, please, don't ask
me any more."
"But leaving Margaret out of it, do you like him ... well ... very much
better than me, for instance?"
Guy used himself for comparison with such an assumption of carelessness
as might give the impression that only by accident did he mention
himself instead of the leg of the table, or the kitten.
"Oh, I couldn't tell you that. Because if I said I liked you even as
much, I should feel disloyal to Richard, and he's the best friend I've
got. Oh, do let's talk about something else. Please do, Mr. Hazlewood."
"Oh, look here, I'm going," exclaimed Guy, and he went instantly.
Pauline felt unhappy to think she had hurt his feelings; but he should
not expect her to like him better than Richard. If Richard were married
to Margaret, it might be different; but suppose that Margaret fell in
love with Guy? Pauline felt her heart almost stop beating at the notion,
and she made up her mind that if such a calamity befell it would be
entirely her fault. The idea that she should so betray Richard's
confidence made her miserable for the rest of the evening. Yet, though
she was unhappy about Richard, it was always the picture of Guy hurrying
from the nursery and his reproachful backward look that was visibly
before her mind. And in the morning when she woke up, it was with a
strange unsatisfactory feeling such as she had never known before.
Yesterday came back to her remembrance with a great emptiness, seeming
to her a day which had somehow never been properly finished. Here was
the rain again raining, raining; and the old prospect of dreary weather
that would not change for months.
A week went by without any sign of Guy. There were no amusing evenings
now when he stayed to dinner: there were no delightful days of planting
bulbs in the garden: there was nothing indeed to do, but visit bedridden
old ladies to whom fine or bad weather no longer mattered. Yet nobody
else except herself seemed at all unhappy it. Actually not one of the
family commented upon Guy's absence.
"I really am afraid that Margaret _is_ heartless," said Pauline to her
image in the glass. "She doesn't seem to care a bit whether he is here
or not."
Then suddenly the weather changed. The country sparkled with hoar frost,
and everybody forgot about the rain, asking if ever before such weather
had been known for Christmas. Guy was invited to dinner at the Rectory,
and Pauline forgot about her problems in the pleasure that the jolly
afternoon brought. Self-consciousness under the critical glances of
Monica and Margaret vanished in the atmosphere of intimacy shed by the
occasion. She could laugh and make a great noise without being reproved,
and Guy himself was obviously more at home than he had ever been. There
seemed a likelihood that now once again the progress of simple
friendship would advance undisturbed by the complications of love, and
Pauline was glad to be able to assure herself that Guy did not that
afternoon display the slightest sign of a hopeless passion for Margaret.
He was more in his mood and demeanour of last month, and diverted them
greatly with an account of struggling to explain to Graves, the deaf and
dumb gardener, what he wanted done in the garden.
"But didn't Birdwood help you?" they asked laughing.
"Well, Birdwood showed me what I ought to do," said Guy. "But it seemed
such a rough method of information that I hadn't the heart to adopt it.
You see, as far as I could make out, it consisted of pulling up a
cabbage by the root, hitting Graves on the head with it, and then
nodding violently. That meant 'clear away these cabbages.' Or if
Birdwood wanted to say 'plant broccoli here,' he dug Graves in the ribs
with the dibbler and rubbed his nose in the unthinned seedlings."
"What does Miss Peasey say?" asked Pauline who was in a state of the
highest amusement, because deaf and dumb Graves was one of the villagers
who lived under her particular patronage.
"Well, at first Miss Peasey was rather huffed, because she thought
Graves was mocking her by pretending to be deaf. Now, however, she comes
out and watches him at work and hopes that next Spring there'll be a
little more variety in the garden."
The sunny sparkling weather lasted for a few days after Christmas; and
one morning Pauline, walking by herself on Wychford down, met Guy.
"I wondered if I should see you," he said.
"Did you expect to see me, then?"
"Well, I knew you often came here, and this morning I couldn't resist
coming here myself."
Pauline felt a sudden impulse to run away; and yet most unaccountably
the impulse led her into walking along with Guy at a brisk pace over the
close-cropped glittering turf. Round them trotted Bob in eddies of
endless motion.
"Listen," said Guy. "I'm sure I heard a lark singing."
They stopped, and Pauline thought that never was there so sweet a
silence as here upon the summit of this green down. Guy's lark could not
be heard. There was not even the faint wind that sighs across high
country. There was nothing but gorse and turf and a turquoise sky
floating on silver deeps and distances above the winter landscape.
"When the gorse is out of bloom, kissing's out of fashion," he said,
pointing to a golden spray.
Pauline had heard the jingle often enough, but spoken solemnly like this
by Guy on Wychford down it flooded her cheeks with blushes, and in a
sort of dear alarm the truth of it declared itself. She was startlingly
aware of a new life, as it were demanding all sorts of questions of her.
She felt a shyness that nearly drove her to run away from her companion
and yet at the same moment brought a complete incapacity for movement of
any kind, an incapacity too that was full of rapture. She longed for him
to say something of such convincing ordinariness as would break the
spell and prove to her that she was still Pauline Grey; while with all
her desire for the spell to be broken, she was wondering if every moment
she were not deliberately offering herself to enchantment.
"Have you ever felt," Guy was asking, "a long time after you've met
somebody, as if you had suddenly met them again for the first time?"
Pauline shook her head vaguely. Then with an effort she recaptured her
old self and said laughing:
"But then, you see, I never think about anything."
"Sleeping beauty, sleeping beauty," said Guy.
And with an abrupt change of manner, he began to throw sticks for Bob,
so that the lucid air was soon loud with continuous barking.
"I wonder if we shall ever meet again on Wychford down," said Guy as
together they swung along the rolling highroad towards the village.
A horse and trap caught them up before Pauline could answer the
speculation, and Mr. Godbold, as he passed, wished them both a very good
morning.
"Godbold seems extraordinarily interested in us," Guy remarked, when for
the third time before he turned the corner Mr. Godbold looked back at
them.
"Oh, I wonder...." Pauline began, expressing with her lips sudden
apprehension.
"You mean, he thought it strange to see us together?"
"People in the country...." she began again.
"Why don't you hurry on alone?" Guy asked. "And I'll come in to Wychford
later."
"Don't be stupid. What do the Wychford people matter? Besides I should
hate to do anything like that."
She was half angry with Guy for the suggestion. It seemed to cast a
shadow on the morning.
When Pauline got back home, she told them all about her meeting with
Guy: nobody had a word of disapproval, not even Margaret, and the faint
malaise of uncertainty vanished.
After tea, however, Mrs. Grey came in looking rather agitated.
"Pauline," she began at once. "You must not meet Guy alone like that
again."
"Oh, darling Mother, you _are_ looking so pink and flustered," said
Pauline.
"No, there's nothing to laugh at. Nothing at all. I was most annoyed.
Four of the people I visited actually had the impertinence to ask me if
you and Guy were engaged."
Pauline went off into peals of laughter and danced about the room; but
when she was alone and thought again of what the gossips were saying,
she suddenly realized it was not altogether for Richard's sake that she
had dreaded the idea of Guy's falling in love with Margaret.
_January_
Plashers Mead and the Rectory were not the only romantic houses in
Wychford. Indeed the little town as a whole had preserved by reason of
its remoteness from railways and important highroads the character given
to it during the many years of prosperity which lasted until the reign
of Charles the First. From that time it had slowly declined; and now
with a stagnation that every year was more deeply accentuated by modern
conditions it was still declining. New houses were never built, and even
the King's Head, a pledge of commercial confidence in the Hanoverian
succession, seemed to flaunt with an inappropriate modernity its red
bricks mellowed by the passage of two centuries. Apart from this rival
to the Stag Inn the fabric of Wychford was uniformly grey, to which,
notwithstanding Miss Peasey's declaration of sameness, variety was amply
secured by the character of the architecture. Gables and mullions; oaken
eaves and corbels carefully ornamented; latticed oriels and sashed bows;
roofs of steep unequal pitch to which age had often added strange
undulations; chimney stacks of stone and gothic entries, all these gave
variety enough; and if the whole effect was too sober for Miss Peasey's
taste, the little town on the hillside was now safe for ever from the
brightening of the dolls-house spirit.
Wychford could still be called a town, for it possessed a few
side-streets, along the grassgrown cobbles of which there still existed
many houses of considerable beauty and dignity. These had lapsed into a
more apparent decay, because a dwindling population had avoided their
direct exposure to the bleak country and had left them empty. In the
High Street this melancholy of bygone fame was less noticeable, and here
scarcely a house was unoccupied. Some buildings, indeed, had been
degraded to unworthy usages; and it was sad to see Perpendicular
fireplaces filled with cheap lines in drapery, or to find an ancient
chantry trodden by pigs and fowls. Generally, however, the High Street
to the summit of its steep ascent had an air of sedate prosperity that
did not reflect the reality of a slow depopulation.
About half way up the hill on the other side of the town from Plashers
Mead and the Rectory was a side-street called Abbey Lane that, instead
of leading to open country, was bounded by a high stone wall. This
blocked the thoroughfare except so far as to allow a narrow path to
skirt its base and give egress along some untidy cottage-gardens to a
cross-road farther up the hill.
In the middle of the wall confronting the street two columns surmounted
with huge round finials showed where there had once been a gate wide
enough to admit a coach. Above the wall a belt of high trees obscured
the view and gave a dank shadow to the road beneath. At one corner a
small wooden wicket with a half obliterated proclamation of privacy
enabled anyone to pass through the wall and enter the grounds of
Wychford Abbey. This wicket opened directly on a path that wound through
a plantation of yews interspersed with tall beeches and elms whose
overarching tops intensified even in wintry leaflessness the prevalent
gloom. The silence of this plantation made Wychford High Street seem in
remembrance a noisy cheerful place, and the mere crackling of twigs and
beech-mast induced the visitor to walk more quietly, fearful of
profaning the mysteriousness even by so slight an indication of human
presence. The plantation continued in tiers of trees down the hill to
the Greenrush, which had been deepened by a dam to support this gloom
of overhanging branches with slow and solemn stream. The path, however,
kept to the level ground and emerged presently upon a large square of
pallescent grass the farther side of which was bounded by a deserted
house.
There were no ruins of the ecclesiastical foundation to fret a gothic
moonlight, but Wychford Abbey did not require these to justify the
foreboding approach; and the great Jacobean pile, whose stones the
encroaching trees had robbed of warmth and vitality, brooded in the
silence with a monstrous ghostliness that was scarcely heightened by the
signs of material decay. Nevertheless the casements whose glass was
filmy like the eyes of blind men or sometimes diced with sinister gaps;
the cracks and fissures in the external fabric; the headless supporters
of the family coat; and the roof slowly being torn tile from tile by
ivy, did consummate the initial impression. Within, the desolation was
more marked. A few rotten planks had been nailed across the front door,
but these had been kicked down by inquisitive explorers, and the hall
remained perpetually open to the weather. In some of the rooms the
floors had jagged pits, and there was not one which was not defiled by
jackdaws, owls and bats. Strands of sickly ivy, which had forced an
entrance through the windows, clawed the dusty air. A leprosy had
infected the plaster ceilings so that the original splendour of their
mouldings had become meaningless and scarcely any longer discernible;
and the marble of the florid mantelpieces was streaked with abominable
damp. The back of the house seemed to go beyond the rest in the
expression of utter abandonment. Crumbling walls with manes of ivy
enclosed a series of gardens rank with docks and nettles and almost
impenetrable on account of the matted briars. As if to add the final
touch of melancholy the caretaker (for somewhere in the depths of the
house existed ironically a caretaker) had cultivated in this wilderness
some dreary patches of potatoes. Beyond the forsaken parterres stretched
a great unkempt shrubbery where laurels, peterswort and hollies
struggled in disorderly and overgrown profusion for the pleasure of
numberless birds, and where a wide path still maintained its slow
diagonal down the hillside to the river's edge.
Such were the surroundings Guy chose to embower the doubts and
hesitations that followed close upon the morning when on Wychford down
he had been so nearly telling Pauline he loved her. Perhaps the almost
savage gloom of this place helped to confirm his profound hopelessness.
A black frost had succeeded the sparkle of Christmastide. The banks of
the river in such weather were impossible, for the wind came biting
across the water-meadows and piped in the withered reeds and rushes with
an intolerable melancholy. Here in the grounds of Wychford Abbey there
was comparative warmth, and the desolation suited the unfortunate end he
was predicting for his hopes. To begin with, it was extremely improbable
that Pauline cared about him. His assay with regard to Richard had not
been encouraging, and his worst fears of being too late for real
inclusion within the charm of the Rectory were surely justified. He had
known all along how much exaggerated were his ambitions, and he wished
now that in the first moment of their springing he had ruthlessly
strangled them. Moreover, even if Pauline did ultimately come to care
for him, how much farther was he advanced upon the road of a happy
issue? It were presumptuous and absurd with only L150 a year to propose
marriage, and if he gave up living here and became a schoolmaster at
home, he knew that the post would be made conditional upon a willingness
to wait as many years for marriage as the wisdom of age decreed.
Besides, he could not take Pauline from Wychford and imprison her at Fox
Hall to dose little boys with Gregory's Powder or check the schedule of
their underclothing. The only justification for taking Pauline away
from the Rectory would be to make her immortal in poetry. Yet
encouraging as lately one or two epithets had certainly been, he was
still far from having written enough to fill even a very thin book; and
really as he came to review the past three months he could not say that
he had done much more or much better than in the days when Plashers Mead
was undiscovered. Time had lately gone by very fast not merely on
account of the jolly days at the Rectory, but also because weeks that
were terminated by weekly bills seemed to be endowed with a double
swiftness.
"I really must eat less meat," said Guy to himself. "It's ridiculous to
spend eleven shillings and sixpence every week on meat ... that's
roughly L30 a year. Why, it's absurd. And I don't eat it. Bother Miss
Peasey! What an appetite she has got."
He wondered if he could break through the barrier of his housekeeper's
deafness so far as to impress upon her the fact that she ate too much
meat. She spent too much, also, on small things like pepper and salt.
This reckless buying of pepper and salt made the grocer's bill an
eternal irritation, for it really seemed absurd to be spending all one's
money on pepper and salt. Yet people did live on L150 a year. Coleridge
had married with less than that and apparently had got on perfectly
well, or would have if he had not been foolish in other ways. How on
earth was it done? He really must try and find out how much for instance
Birdwood spent every week on the necessities of life. That was the worst
of Oxford ... one came down without the slightest idea of the elementary
facts of domestic economy. There had been a lot of soda bought last
week. He remembered seeing it in one of those horrid little slippery
tradesmen's books. Soda? What was it for? Vaguely Guy thought it was
used to soften water, but there were plenty of rain tubs at Plashers
Mead, and soda must be an unjustifiable extravagance. Then Miss Peasey
herself was getting L18 a year. It seemed very little, so little indeed
that when he paid her every month, he felt inclined to apologize for the
smallness of the amount, but little as it was it only left him with
L132. Knock off L30 for meat and he had L102. L18 must go in rent and
there was left L84. Then there was milk and bread and taxes and the
subscription to the cricket-club and the subscription to all the other
vice-presidencies to which the town had elected him. There was also
Graves his deaf and dumb gardener, and a new bucket for the well. Books
and clothes, of course, could be obtained on credit, but even so
sometime or other bills came in. Guy made a number of mental
calculations, but by no device was he able to make the amount required
come to less than L82. That left L2 for Pauline, and then by the way
there was the dog-licence which he had forgotten. Thirty-two and
sixpence for Pauline! Guy roamed through the sad arbours of Wychford
Abbey in the depths of depression, and watched with a cynical amusement
the birds searching for grubs in the iron ground. He began to feel a
positive sense of injury against love which had descended with
proverbial wantonness to complicate mortal affairs. He tried to imagine
the Rectory without Pauline, and when he did so all the attraction was
gone. Yet distinctly when he had first met the Greys, he had not thought
more often of Pauline than of her sisters. What perversity of
circumstance had introduced love?
"It's being alone," said Guy. "I feed myself upon dreams. Michael was
perfectly right. Wychford is a place of dreams."
He would cure this love-sickness. That was an idea for a sonnet. Damn!
'_I attempt from love's sickness to fly._' It need not be said again. At
the same time, poem or not, he would avoid the Rectory and shut himself
close in that green room which Margaret and Monica had thought so crude
with undergraduate taste. If this cold went on, there would be skating;
and he began to picture Pauline upon the ice. The vision flashed like a
diamond through these gloomy groves, and with the soughing of the skates
in his ears and the thought of Pauline's hands criss-cross in his own,
Guy's first attack on love ended in complete surrender. Skating meant
long talks with never a curious eye to cast dismay; and in long talks
and rhythmic motion possibly she might come to love him. Guy's footsteps
began to ring out upon the iron-bound walk, and of all the sad ghosts
that should have haunted his path, there was not one who walked now
beside him; for, as he dreamed upon the vision of Pauline, the
melancholy of that forsaken place was lightened with a sort of April
exultation and the promise of new life to gladden the once populous
gardens where lovers might have been merry in the past.
However, when he was back in his house, Guy's earlier mood returned, and
he made up his mind anew not to go to the Rectory. Nothing would do for
him but the metaphysics and passion of Dr. John Donne; and on the dreary
evening when the frost yielded to rain before there had been one day's
skating, Guy was as near as anyone may ever have been to conversing with
that old lover's ghost who died before the god of Love was born. All his
plans wore mourning, and the bills that week rose two-and-sixpence-halfpenny
higher than their highest total so far. Guy moped in his green library
and, as he read through the manuscripts of poetry that with the progress
of the night seemed to him worse and worse, he wished he could recapture
some of that self-confidence which had carried him so serenely through
Oxford; and he asked himself if Pauline's love would endow him once more
with that conviction of ultimate fame, to the former safe tenure of
which he now looked back as from a disillusioned old age.
Another week passed, and Guy wondered what they were thinking of him at
the Rectory for his neglect of all they might justly suppose had been
offered him. Absence from Pauline did not seem to have effected much so
far except a complete paralysis of his power to work with that diligence
he had always preached as the true threshold of art. Perhaps he had been
always a little too insistent upon the merit of academic industry, too
conscious of a deliberate embarkation upon a well-built career, too
careful of mere equipment in his exploration of Parnassus. So long as he
had been exercizing his technical accomplishment, everything had seemed
to be advancing securely toward the moment when inspiration should
vitalize the promise of his craftsmanship. Now inspiration was at hand,
and accomplishment had betrayed him. These effusions of restless love
which he had lately produced were surely the most wretched cripples ever
sent to climb the Heliconian slope. Guy looked at his notebook and
marked how many apostrophes, the impulses to declaim which had seemed to
scorch his imagination with bright ardours, had, alas, failed to kindle
his uninflammable pencil. He derived a transient consolation from
Browning's Pauline which was surely as inadequate as his own verse to
celebrate the name. '_Pauline, mine own, bend o'er me._' That opening
half-line was the only one which moved him. But after all Browning did
not esteem his own Pauline and had written it when he was twenty.
Himself was twenty-two, and could not declare his passion in one lyric.
A graceful sonnet for his father's birthday would not compensate for
this dismaying failure. Moreover in rhymes, thought Guy, Pauline was no
niggard; and with a flicker of sardonic humour he recalled how many
Swinburne had found for Faustine.
It was Godbold who fed the vexations and torments of untried love with
the bitterest medicine of all. He had come down to see Guy about an old
chair that had to be fetched from a neighbouring village and, when his
business was over, seemed inclined to chat for a while.
"Have you ever noticed, Mr. Hazlewood," he began, "as there's a lot of
people in this world who know more than a man knows himself?"
Guy indicated that the fact had struck him.
"Well, now, just because I happen to see you with Miss Pauline the other
morning, there's half-a-dozen wise gabies in Wychford who've almost
married you to her out of hand."
Guy tried not to look annoyed.
"Oh, you may well frown, Mr. Hazlewood, for as I said to them, it's
nothing more than nonsense to tie up a young man and a young woman just
because they happen to take a walk together on a fine morning."
"I hope this sort of intolerable gossip isn't still going on," said Guy
savagely.
"Oh, well, you see, sir, Wychford is a middling place for gossip. And if
it wasn't one of the Miss Greys it would be some other young Miss
roundhereabouts. Human nature, like pigeons, is set on mating."
"I hope you'll contradict this ridiculous rumour," said Guy.
"Oh, I have done already. In fact I may say that one of my principles,
Mr. Hazlewood, is to contradict everything. As I said to them, when they
was talking about it in the post-office the other night, and that
post-office is a rare place for gossip! Perhaps you've noticed that the
nosiest man in a town always gets made postmaster? Where had I got
to?--ah, yes, I said to them, 'You know a great lot about other people's
business,' I said, 'but when I tell you that old Mrs. Mathers who lives
in the last cottage but one in Rectory Lane says she's taken particular
note as Mr. Hazlewood has never been near the Rectory for the last
fortnight unless it was once when she heard footsteps and hadn't time
to get to the window to see who it was on account of the kettle being on
the boil at that moment, where's your Holy Matrimony?' I said. With that
up speaks Miss Burge from the back of the shop whose father used to keep
the King's Head before he dropped dead of the apoplexy on Shipcot
platform. 'That doesn't say he hasn't gone round by the field the same
as Mr. Burrows's servant used to when she was being courted by
We'll-mention-no-names.' 'No, and that he hasn't either,' said I
smacking the counter, for I was feeling a bit angry by now at all this
poking about in other people's business, 'that he hasn't,' I said,
'because the Rectory cook asked me most particular if there was anything
the matter down at Plashers Mead seeing as Mr. Hazlewood hadn't been
near the Rectory for a fortnight. That doesn't look like Holy
Matrimony,' I said, and with that I walked out of the post-office. Mr.
Hazlewood," Godbold concluded very earnestly, "the gossip of Wychford is
something as no one would believe, if they hadn't heard it, as I have,
every mortal day of my life."
Guy could have laughed on his own account, but the notion of Pauline's
being dragged into the chatter made him furious. Yet what could he do?
If he went frequently to the Greys' house, he must be engaged according
to Wychford. And if he did not go....
"I suppose they'll be saying next that the engagement has been broken
off," he enquired with cold sarcasm.
"Oh, they have said it. Depend upon it, Mr. Hazlewood, it undoubtedly
has been said."
It began to appeal to Guy as extremely undignified--the way in which he
had let Godbold chatter on like this.
"I'm afraid I must be getting back to my work," he said curtly.
"That's right. Work's the best answer to talk. Did you feel it much here
in that rainy spell?"
"The meadows were a bit splashy of course, but the water never got
anywhere near the house."
"But it will. Don't you make any mistake. It will. Only of course we've
had a dry autumn. Why, last June year Miss Peasey could have been
fishing for minnows in her kitchen. Now that seems a nice upstanding
sort of woman. A Wesleen, they tell me? I haven't seen her in church
that I can remember, and which would account for it. But I never talk to
the chapel folk, they being that uncivilized. She's rather deaf, isn't
she?"
"Yes, and therefore cannot gossip," Guy snapped.
"Well, I don't know," said Godbold doubtfully. "Some of the most
unnatural scandals I ever heard were made by deaf women. Though that
doesn't mean I'm saying Miss Peasey is a talker."
"I'm sure she isn't," Guy agreed. "Good-night, Mr. Godbold."
"Good-night, Mr. Hazlewood, don't you be discouraged by the gossip in
Wychford. I always say, if you believe nothing you hear, next to nothing
of what you read, and only half of what you see, no one can touch you.
Good-night once more, sir. And don't you fret over what people say. I
remember they once said I tried to work a horse which had the blind
staggers, and Mrs. Godbold was that aggravated she went and washed a
shirt of mine twice over, worrying herself. Good-night, Mr. Hazlewood."
This time the red-bearded carrier of Wychford (not an inappropriate
profession for him) really departed, leaving Guy in a state of
considerable resentment at the thought of the Wychford commentary.
That night the raw drizzle turned to snow; and when he looked out of his
window next morning, it was lying thick over the country and was making
his bedroom seem as grey as the loaded clouds above. That exhilaration
of a new landscape which comes with snow drove away some of Guy's
depression, and after breakfast he went out, curious to contemplate its
effect upon the Abbey. In the black frost the great pile had seemed to
possess scarcely more substance than a shredded leaf; and when it lay
sodden beneath the dripping trees, a manifest decay had made extinction
infamous with the ooze of a rotting fungus. The weather now had brought
a strange restoration to the abandoned house, and so completely had the
covering of snow hidden most of the signs of dissolution that Wychford
Abbey seemed no longer dead, but asleep in the quiet of a winter
morning. The lawn in front stretched before it in decent whiteness, and
the veiling of the ragged unhealthy grass took away from the front of
the house that air of wan caducity, endowing the stones by contrast with
tinted warmth and richness. The decrepit roof was hidden, and Wychford
Abbey dreamed under its weight of snow with all the placid romance of a
house on a Christmas card. The dark plantation was deprived of its
gloom, and what was usually a kind of haunted stillness was now
aspectful peace. Guy went over the crinching ground and strolled down
the broad walk through the shrubbery. Everywhere the snow glistened with
the footprints of many birds, but not a single call broke a silence
which was cold and absolute except for the powdery whisper of the snow
where it was sliding from the holly leaves.
When Guy reached the bottom of the shrubbery, he sat down on a fallen
trunk by a backwater, which dried up here in the drift of dead leaves;
and he watched the surface of it glazing perceptibly, yet not so fast
but that the faint motion of the freezing air could write upon the
smoothness a tremulous reticulation. He had not been resting long when
he saw Margaret coming toward him down the walk, and with so light a
tread that in her white coat she might have been a figment created for
his fancy by the snow. He wondered if a sense of the added beauty her
presence gave the scene were in her mind. Probably it was, for Margaret
had a discreet vanity that would never gratify itself so well as when
she was alone; and plainly she must suppose herself alone, since here on
this snowy morning she would not have expected to meet anybody. Guy
thought it would be considerate to draw aside without spoiling her dream
whatever the subject of the meditation. However, as he rose from the log
to take the narrow path along the back-water and so turn homeward across
the fields by the river, Margaret saw him and waved with a feathery
gesture. As Guy went up the path to greet her, he was thinking how much
her hair was like a dark leaf that had shaken off the snow, so easily
might her blanched attire have fallen upon her from the clouds; then, as
he came close, every charming fancy was suddenly spoilt by a remembrance
of Wychford gossip, and he turned hastily round to see if there were
prying glances in the laurels.
"What are you looking at?" she asked.
"A squirrel," said Guy quickly. He would not have had his absence from
the Rectory ascribed to any fear of gossip; moreover, since a meeting
with Margaret did not make his conscience the thrall of public opinion,
he would not have her discreet vanity at all impaired. Therefore it was
a squirrel he saw.
"We've been wondering what has become of you," she said.
"Well, I've been working rather hard; and as a matter of fact I was
going to the Rectory this afternoon. Isn't the snow jolly after the
rain? Especially here, don't you think?"
She nodded.
"I've got to go and visit an old woman who lives almost in Little
Fairfield, and I thought I'd avoid as much as I could of the high road."
"Shall I come with you?" asked Guy, but in so doubtful a voice that
Margaret laughingly declared she was sure he was in a state of being
offended with the Rectory.
"Oh, Margaret, don't be absurd. Offended?"
"Over the curtains?" she asked.
"Why if it wouldn't betray a gross insensibility to your opinion, I
should tell you I thought no more about what you said. Besides, we've
had reconciling Christmas since then."
"Ah, but you see, Pauline is always impressing on Monica and me our
cruelty to you, and by this time Mother has been talked into believing
in our hard and impenitent hearts."
"Pauline is...." Guy broke off and saw another squirrel. He could not
trust himself to speak of Pauline, for in this stillness of snow he felt
that the lightest remark would reveal his love; and there was in nature
this morning a sort of suspense that seemed to rebuke unuttered secrets.
"Well, as you're walking with me to Fairfield--or nearly to
Fairfield--your neglect of us shall be forgiven," Margaret promised.
"Here we are out of the warm trees already. I'm glad I came this way,
though I think it was rather foolish. Look how deep the snow seems on
that field we've got to cross."
"It isn't really," said Guy, vaulting over the fence that ran round the
confines of the Abbey wood.
"Ah, now you've spoilt it," she exclaimed. But Margaret did not pause a
moment to regret the ruffling of that sheeted expanse and they walked on
silently, watching the toes of their boots juggle with the snow.
"It generally is a pity," said Guy after a while.
"What?"
"Impressing one's existence on so lovely and inviolate a thing as this."
He indicated the untrodden field in front of them.
"But look behind you," said Margaret. "Don't you think our footprints
look very interesting?"
"Interesting, perhaps," Guy admitted. "Yet footprints in snow never seem
to be going anywhere."
"Now I know quite well what you're doing," Margaret protested. "You're
making that poor little wobbly track of ours try to bear all sorts of
mysterious and symbolic intensities of meaning. Just because you're
feeling annoyed with a sonnet, footprints in the snow mustn't lead
anywhere. Why, Guy, if I told you what sentimental import my 'cello
sometimes gives to a simple walk before lunch.... I mean of course when
I've been playing badly."
She sighed, and Guy wondered if the violoncello had been used with as
little reference as a sonnet to the real cause of the mood.
"Why did you sigh just now?" he asked after another minute or two of
silent progress.
"I wonder whether I'll tell you. No, I don't think I will. And yet...."
"And yet perhaps after all you will," said Guy eagerly. "And if you do,
I'll tell you something in turn."
"That's no bribe," said Margaret laughing. "You foolish creature, don't
you think I know what you'll tell me?"
Guy shook his head.
"I don't think you do. You may suspect. But for that matter, so may I.
Isn't what you might have told me something that might most suitably be
told on the way to Fairfield?"
"You've been talking about me to Pauline," said Margaret angrily.
"Never," he declared. "But you don't suppose you can have all these
mysterious allusions to Richard without my guessing that his father is
Vicar of Fairfield. Dear Margaret, forgive me for guessing and tell me
what you were going to tell."
"Have you heard I was engaged to Richard Ford?" she asked.
"I heard he was in love with you."
"Oh he is, he is," she murmured, and Guy thinking of Richard in India
wondered if he ever dreamed of Margaret walking like this in a snowy
England. The clock in Fairfield church struck eleven with an icy tinkle
that on the muted air sounded very thinly. "But the problem for me,"
Margaret went on, "is whether I'm in love with him, or if Richard is
merely the nicest person who has been in love with me so far."
"Well, if you'd asked me that three months ago," Guy said, "I would have
answered decidedly that you weren't in love with him if you had one
doubt. But now ... well, you know really now I'm rather in the state of
mind that wants everybody to be in love. And why do you think you're not
in love with him?"
"I haven't really explained well," said Margaret. "What I'm sure of is
that I'm not as much in love with him as I want to be in love."
"You're living opposite a looking-glass," said Guy. "That's what is the
matter."
They had reached the stile leading over into the high road, and Margaret
gazed back wistfully at the footprints in the snow, before they crossed
it and went on their way.
"Yes," she said. "I am conceited. But my conceit is really cowardice. I
long for admiration, and when I am admired I despise it. I lie in bed
thinking how well I play the 'cello, and when I have the instrument by
me I don't believe I can play even moderately well. I am really fond of
him, but the moment I think that anybody else is thinking about my being
fond of him I almost hate his name. I can't bear the idea of going to
live in India and I detest bridges--you know he builds bridges--and yet
I couldn't possibly write to him and say that he must think no more
about me. I'm really a mixture of Monica and Pauline, and so I'm not as
happy as either of them."
"Yes, I suppose Pauline is very happy," said Guy in a depressed voice.
"What am I to do?" Margaret asked.
"I'm sure you're much more in love than you think," he declared quickly,
for he had the ghost of a temptation to tell her she was foolish to
think any more of a love so uncertain as hers. There was enough jealousy
of his standing at the Rectory to give him the impulse to rob Richard of
his foothold, but the meanness destroyed itself on this virginal morning
almost before Guy realized it had tried to exist. "Yes, I'm sure you're
really in love," he repeated. "I think I can understand what you feel."
"Do you?" said Margaret shaking her head a little sadly. "I'm afraid
it's only a very willing sympathy on your part, for I'm sure I don't
understand myself. That's why I'm conceited, perhaps. I'm trying to
build up a Margaret Grey for other people to look at, which I admire
like any pretty thing one makes oneself, and perhaps why I can't fall
really in love is because I'm afraid of someone's understanding me and
showing me to myself."
"You'd have to be very clever to disappoint that person," said Guy. "And
why shouldn't Richard Ford be the one?"
"Oh, he'll never discover me," said Margaret. "That's what's so dull."
"Aren't you a little unreasonable?" Guy asked.
"Of course I am. Now don't let's talk about me any more: I'm really not
worth discussing--only just because my family is so exquisite and
because I adore them, I never talk about Richard to them. Here's the old
woman's cottage. I shan't be more than a few minutes."
Guy felt honoured by Margaret's confidence, but his heart was so full
of Pauline that he transferred all the substance of what she had been
saying to suit his own case. Would Pauline never know if she were in
love? Would he be doomed to the position of Richard? Or worse, would
Pauline fly from his love in terror of anything so disturbing to the
perfection of her life at present? On the whole he was inclined to think
that this was exactly what she would do; and he felt he would never have
the courage to startle her with the question. When he thought of the
girls to whom in the past of long vacations he had made protestations of
devotion that were light as the thistledown in the summery meadows where
they were uttered, it was incredible that the asking of Pauline should
speed his heart like this. With other girls he had always imagined them
slightly in love with him, but for Pauline to be in love with him seemed
hopeless, though he qualified his humility by assuring himself that she
could be in love with nobody. Did Margaret really have a suspicion that
he was in love with Pauline? If she had, why had she not drawn his
confidence before she gave her own? She came out from the cottage as he
propounded this, and he told her, when their faces were set towards
Wychford and a chilly wind that was rising, how he had been thinking
about her confidence all the while she was in the cottage. Moreover, he
was under the impression this was the truth.
"But don't think about me any more," she commanded.
"Never?"
"Not until I speak first. Isn't it cold? You must have been frozen
waiting for me."
They hurried along talking mostly, though how the topic arose Guy never
knew, about whether Alice in Wonderland were better than Alice Through
the Looking-glass or not. The quotations that went to sustain the
argument were so many that they arrived back very quickly, it seemed, at
the stile leading into the snowy field.
"Will you go home the same way?" Guy suggested. "Look, nobody has spoilt
our tracks. They're jollier than ever, and do you see those rooks
farther down the field? It will snow again this afternoon and our
footprints will vanish."
By the time they reached the Abbey wood Guy had made up his mind that as
they walked up through the shrubbery, unless people were listening
there, he would tell Margaret how deeply he was in love with Pauline.
The resolution taken, his throat seemed to close up with nervousness,
and vaulting over the fence he tripped and fell in a snow drift.
"Why this violent activity all of a sudden?" Margaret asked.
He laughed gloomily and vowed it was the exhilarating weather. Up the
broad walk they went slowly, and every yard was bringing them dreadfully
nearer to Wychford High Street and the profanation of this snowy
silence. Abruptly a robin began to sing from a bough almost overhead;
and, Guy realizing half-unconsciously that unless he told Margaret now,
his words would die upon that robin's rathe melody, said:
"Margaret, you'll probably be angry, but I must tell you that I'm in
love with your sister."
He drove his stick deep into the snow to give his eyes the excuse of
looking down.
"With Pauline," she said softly.
He congratulated himself upon the cunning with which he had at least
thrown something on Margaret of the responsibility, as he almost called
it. Had she said Monica, it would have killed his hope at once.
"Of course I know it must sound ridiculous, but...."
"Is she in love with me?" asked Margaret with tender mockery. "Well, I
think she may be. Perhaps I'm almost sure she is."
"Margaret," said Guy seizing her hand. "I hope you'll be the happiest
person in the world always. You know, don't you, that I'm dying for you
to be happy."
There may have been tears in her eyes as she responded with faintest
pressure of her hand to his affection.
"And you won't forget all about me and take no more interest in what
will seem my maddening indecision, when you and Pauline are happy?"
"My dear, as if I could," he exclaimed.
"Lovers can forget very easily," said Margaret. "You see I've thought
such a lot about being in love that I've got everyone else's conduct
clearly mapped out in my mind."
Guy stopped dead; and, as he stopped, the robin now far behind them
ceased his song, and even the flute of the wind sounding on distant
hollows and horizons cracked in the frost so that the stillness was
sharp as ice itself.
"Margaret, what makes you think Pauline cares for me? How dare I be so
fortunate?"
"Because you know you are fortunate," said Margaret, nor could falling
snow have touched his arm more lightly than she. "Why do you suppose I
told you about Richard if it was not because I thought you appreciated
Pauline?"
"Ah, how I shall always love the snow," Guy exclaimed, grinding the
slippery ball upon his heel to powder.
"But now I've got a disappointment for you," said Margaret. "Pauline and
Monica are going into Oxford to-day for a week."
"You won't tell anybody what I've told you?" he begged.
"Of course not. Secrets are much too fascinating not to be kept as long
as possible."
He opened the wicket, and presently they parted in the High Street.
"I shall come in this afternoon," he called after her. "Unless you're
bored with me."
She invited him with her muff and seemed to float out of sight.
Suddenly Guy remembered that sometime this morning (it seemed as long
ago as when Wychford Abbey was alive) Bob had been with him. He was glad
of an excuse to go back and look for the dog in those now consecrated
arbours. There the robin still sang his rather pensive tune; and there
from a high ash-bough a missel-thrush, wearing full ermine of the
Spring, saluted the vestal day.
_February_
Pauline started to Oxford with Monica, feeling rather disappointed she
had not seen Guy before she went; for Margaret had come home with news
of having walked with him to Fairfield, and it was tantalizing, indeed a
little disturbing, to leave him behind with Margaret.
"Nothing is said to Margaret," Pauline protested at lunch, "when _she_
goes out for a walk with Guy. Father, don't you think it's unfair?"
"Well, darling Pauline," interrupted Mrs. Grey with an anxious glance
towards her second daughter. "You see, Margaret is in a way engaged."
"I'm not engaged," Margaret declared.
"But I'm asking Father," Pauline persisted. "Father, don't you think
it's unfair?"
The Rector was turning over the pages of a seed-catalogue and answered
Pauline's question with that engaging irrelevancy to which his family
and parish were accustomed.
"It's disgraceful for these people to offer seeds of Incarvillea Olgae.
My dears, you remember that anaemic magenta brute, the colour of a
washed-out shirt? Ah," he sighed, "I wish they'd get that yellow
Incarvillea over. I am tempted to fancy it might be as good as Tecoma
Smithii, and of course coming from that Yang-tse-kiang country, it would
be hardy."
"Francis dear!" Pauline cried. "Don't you think it's unfair?"
"Pauline," said her mother. "You must _not_ call your father Francis in
the dining-room."
The Rector oblivious of everything continued to turn slowly the pages of
his catalogue.
"Oh, bother going to Oxford," said Monica looking out of the window to
where Janet with frozen breath listened for the omnibus under gathering
snow clouds.
"Now, really," Pauline exclaimed, diverted from her complaint of
Margaret's behaviour by another injustice. "Isn't Monica too bad? She's
grumbling, though it was she who made the plan to stay with the
Strettons. And though they're her friends and not mine, I've been made
to go too."
"Well, I hate staying with people," Monica explained.
"So do I," said Pauline. "And you accepted the invitation for me that
day you were in Oxford buying Christmas presents, when you forgot to buy
the patience-cards I wanted to give poor Miss Verney, so that I had to
give her a horrid little china dog though she hates dogs."
"Now I'm sure it'll be charming, yes, charming, when you get there,"
Mrs. Grey affirmed hopefully.
"Oh, how glad I am I'm not going," said Margaret.
"I think you ought to go instead of me," Pauline told her.
"They're not my friends," Margaret replied with a shrug.
"No, but they're more your friends than mine," Pauline argued. "Because
you're nearer to Monica. They're four years off being my friends and
only two from being yours."
"Miss Monica," said Janet coming into the room. "The bus has come out
from the King's Head yard, and you'll be late."
There was instantly a confusion of preparation by Mrs. Grey and Pauline,
while Monica sighed at the trouble of departure and Margaret with
exasperating indifference sat warm and triumphant by the fire.
"Good gracious," the Rector exclaimed, flinging the catalogue down and
speaking loud enough to be heard over the feverish search for Pauline's
left glove. "These people have the impudence to advertize Penstemon
Lobbii as a novelty when it's really our old friend Breviflorus. What on
earth is to be done with these scoundrels?"
The horn of the omnibus sounded at the end of Rectory Lane; and the fat
guard was marching through the snow with the girls' luggage. The
good-byes were all said; and presently Pauline with her muff held close
to her cheeks against the North wind was sitting on top of the omnibus
that was toiling up the Shipcot road. As she caught sight of Plashers
Mead etched upon the white scene, she wished she had left a message with
Margaret to say in what deep disgrace Guy was. On they laboured across
five miles of snow-stilled country with sparse flakes melting upon the
horses' flanks and never a wayfarer between Wychford and Shipcot to
pause and stare at them.
On the second night of their stay with the Strettons, Monica, when she
and Pauline were going to bed, suddenly turned round from the
dressing-table and demanded in rhetorical dismay why they had come.
"Never mind," said Pauline. "We've only got five more evenings."
"Well, that's nearly a week," Monica sighed. "And I'm tired to death of
Olive already."
"But I'm much worse off," Pauline declared dolefully. "Because I have to
sit next to the Professor, who does frighten me so. You see, he will
include me in the conversation. Last night at dinner, after he'd been
talking to that don from Balliol who knew Guy and whom I was dying to
ask ... to talk to myself, I mean, he turned round to me and said, 'I am
afraid, Miss Pauline, that Aramaic roots are not very interesting to
you.' Well, of course I got muddled between Aramaic and aromatic, and
said that Father had just been given a lot which were very poisonous."
Monica laughed that sedate laugh of hers, which always seemed to Pauline
like a clock striking, so independent was it of anybody's feelings.
"Monica darling, I don't want to be critical," said Pauline. "But you
know sometimes your laugh sounds just a little--a very little
self-satisfied."
"I think I am rather self-satisfied," Monica agreed, combing her golden
hair away from her high pale forehead. "And Margaret is conceited, and
you're twice as sweet as both of us put together."
"Oh, no I'm not, oh, no, no, Monica dearest, I'm not," Pauline
contradicted hurriedly. "No, really I'm very horrid. And, you know, when
I'm bored I'm sure I show it. Oh dear, I hope the Strettons didn't
notice I was bored. Mrs. Stretton was so touching with the things they
had brought back from Madeira, and I do hate things people bring back
from places like Madeira."
"And when you're not bored with anybody," said Monica, "you're rather
apt to make that too obvious also."
"Monica, why are you saying that?" Pauline asked with wide-open eyes.
"Even supposing Guy is in love with you," said Monica, slowly blowing
out the candles on the dressing-table as she spoke, so that nothing was
left but the rosy gas, "I don't think it's necessary to show him quite
so clearly that you're in love with _him_.
"Monica!"
"Darling little sister, I do so want you ... oh, how can I put it? Well,
you know, when you break the time in a trio, as you sometimes do...."
"But I'm not in love with Guy," Pauline interrupted. "At least, oh,
Monica, why do you choose a house like this to tell me such things?" she
asked with tears and blushes fighting in her countenance.
"Pauline, it's only that I want you to keep in time."
"I can't possibly stay with the Strettons another five days," declared
Pauline in deepest gloom. "You ought not to say things like that here."
She was looking round this strange bedroom for the comfort of familiar
pictures, but there was nothing on these pink walls except a view of the
Matterhorn. Monica was kneeling to say her prayers, and in the stillness
the frost outside seemed to be pressing against the window-panes.
Pauline thought it was rather unfair of Monica to fade like this into
unearthly communications; and she knelt down to pray somewhat vagrant
prayers into the quilted eiderdown that symbolized the guest-room's
luxurious chill. She longed to look up in aspiration and behold Saint
Ursula in that tall bed of hers or cheerful Tobit walking with his dog
in the angel's company, and in the corner her own desk that was full of
childish things. She rose from her knees at the same moment as Monica,
who at once began to talk lightly of the tiresome people at dinner and
seemed utterly unconscious of having wounded Pauline's thoughts. Yet
when the room was dark, for a long while these wounded thoughts danced
upon the wintry air that breathed of Wychford. '_Even supposing Guy is
in love with you._' It was curious that she could not feel very angry
with Monica. '_Even supposing Guy is in love with you._' It really
seemed a pity to fall asleep: it was like falling asleep when music was
being played.
The subject of Guy was not mentioned again, but during the days that
remained of the visit, Pauline scarcely felt that she was living in the
Strettons' house, and was so absent in her demeanour that Monica was
disturbed into what was for her a positive sociableness to counteract
Pauline's appearance of inattention. To consummate the vexation of the
visit there came a sudden thaw two days before they left, and Oxford was
ankle-deep in slush. Finally Pauline and Monica were dragged through
the very nadir of depression when on their last night they were taken
out to dinner in trams and goloshes through such abominable conditions
of weather.
"Fancy not ordering a cab," whispered Monica with cold disapproval.
"Perhaps they can't afford it," Pauline suggested.
"They can afford to go to Madeira," answered Monica, "and buy all those
stupid knick-knacks."
"Well, Monica, they are your friends, you know," said Pauline.
However, the first of February arrived next morning, and Oxford was left
behind. Pauline sighed with relief when they were seated in the train,
and the twenty miles of country to Shipcot that generally seemed so dull
were as green and welcome as if they were returning from a Siberian
exile.
"You know, Monica, I really don't think we ought to stay with people. I
don't think it's honest to spend such a hateful week as that in being
pleasant," she declared.
"I didn't notice that you were taking much trouble to hide your
boredom," said Monica. "It seems to me that I was always in a state of
trying to steer people round your behaviour."
"Oh, but Professor Stretton loves me," said Pauline.
She was trying not to appear excited as the omnibus swished and slapped
through the mud towards Wychford. She was determined that in future she
would lead that enclosed and so serene life which she admired in her
eldest sister. Nobody could criticize Monica except for her coldness,
and Pauline knew that herself would never be able to be really as cold
as that however much she might assume the effect.
"Grand weather after the snow," said the driver.
The roofs of Wychford were sparkling on the hillside, and earth seemed
to be turning restlessly in the slow winter sleep.
"This mud'll all be gone with a week of fine days like to-day," said the
driver.
Plashers Mead was in sight now, but it was Monica who pointed to where
Guy and his dog were wandering across the meadows that were so vividly
emerald after the snow.
"I think it is," agreed Pauline indifferently.
In the Rectory garden a year might have passed, so great was the
contrast between now and a week ago. Now the snowdrops were all that was
left of the snow; and a treasure of aconites as bright as new guineas
were scattered along the borders. Hatless and entranced the Rector was
roaming from one cohort of green spears to another, each one of which
would soon be flying the pennons of Spring. Pauline rushed to embrace
him, and he without a word led her to see where on a sunny bank Greek
anemones had opened their deep-blue stars.
"Blanda," he whispered. "And I've never known her so deep in colour.
Dear me, poor old Ford tells me he hasn't got one left. I warned him she
must have sun and drainage, but he would mix her with Nemorosa just to
please his wife, which is ridiculous--particularly as they are never in
bloom together."
He bent over and with two long fingers held up a flower full in the
sun's eye, as he might have stooped to chuck under the chin a little
girl of his parish.
Monica had brought back a new quartet, which they practised all that
Candlemas Eve. When it was time to go to bed Mrs. Grey observed in a
satisfied voice that after all it must have been charming at the
Strettons.
"Oh, no, Mother, it was terribly dull," Pauline protested.
"Now, dear Pauline, how could it have been dull, when you've brought
back this exquisite Schumann quartet?"
Margaret came to Pauline's room to say good-night, sat with her while
she undressed and tucked her up so lovingly that Pauline was more than
ever delighted to be back at home.
"Oh, Margaret, how sweet you are to me. Why? Is it because you really do
miss me when I go away?"
"Partly," said Margaret.
"Why are you smiling so wisely? Have you put something under my pillow?"
Pauline began to search.
"There's nothing under your pillow, except all the thoughts I have
to-night for you."
Once more Margaret leaned over and kissed her, and Pauline faded into
sleep upon the happiness of being at home again.
Next day after lunch her mother and sisters went to pay a long postponed
call upon a new family in the neighbourhood, because Margaret insisted
they must take advantage of this glorious weather which would surely not
last very long.
Pauline spent the early afternoon with the Rector and Birdwood, writing
labels while they sowed a lot of new sweet-peas which had been sent to
the Rector for an opinion upon their merits. The clock was striking four
when Guy strolled into the garden. Somehow Pauline's labels were not so
carefully written after his arrival, and at last the Rector advised her
to take Hazlewood and show him Anemone Blanda. They left the big
wall-garden and went across the lawn in front of the house to the second
wall-garden, where most of the Rector's favourites grew as it pleased
them best.
"Oh, they've all gone to bed," said Pauline.
Guy knelt down, and opened the petals of one.
"They're exactly the colour of your eyes," he said looking up at her.
Pauline was conscious that the simple statement was fraught with a
significance far greater than anything which had so far happened in her
life. It was ringing in her ears like a bugle-call that sounded some
far-flung advance, and involuntarily she drew back and began to talk
nonsense breathlessly, while Guy did not speak. Nor must she let him
speak, she told herself, for behind that simple comparison how many
questions were trembling.
"Oh, I wonder if the others are back yet," she finally exclaimed, and
forthwith hurried from the garden toward the house. She wished she must
not look back over her shoulder to see Guy following her so gravely. Of
course, when they were standing in the hall, the others had not come
back; and the house in its silence was a hundred times more portentous
than the garden. And what would Guy be thinking of her for bringing him
back to this voicelessness in which she could not any longer talk
nonsense? Here the least movement, the slightest gesture, the most
ordinary word would be weighted for both of them with an importance that
seemed unlimited. For the first time the Rectory was strangely
frightening; and when through the silent passages they were walking
toward the nursery, it was the exploration of a dream. Yet, however
undiscoverable the object that was leading them, she was glad to see the
nursery door, for there within would surely come back to her the ease of
an immemorial familiarity. Yet in that room of childhood, that room the
most bound up with the simple progress of her life, she found herself
counting the birds, berries and daisies upon the walls, as if she were
beholding them vaguely for the first time. Why was she unpicking
Margaret's work or folding into this foolish elaboration of triangles
Monica's music? And why did Guy behave so oddly, taking up all sorts of
unnatural positions, leaning upon the rickety mantelshelf, balancing
himself upon the fender, pleating the curtains and threading his way
with long legs in and out, in and out of the chairs?
"Pauline!"
He had stopped abruptly by the fireplace and was not looking at her when
he spoke. Oh, he would never succeed in lifting even from the floor that
match which with one foot he was trying to lift on to the other foot.
"Pauline!"
Now he was looking at her; and she must be looking at him, for there was
nothing on this settee which would give her a good reason not to look at
him. The room was so still that beyond the closed door the hoarse tick
of the cuckoo-clock was audible; and what was that behind her which was
fretting against the window-pane? And why was she holding with each hand
to the brocade, as if she feared to be swept altogether out of this
world?
"Pauline!"
Was it indeed her voice on earth that said 'yes'?
"Pauline, I suppose you know I love you?"