_March_
The doubts and the joys of the future broke upon Guy with so wide and
commingled a vision, that before the others got home and even before
Janet came in with tea he hurried away from that nursery, where over the
half-stilled echoes of childhood he had heard the sigh of Pauline's
assent. The practical side of what he had done could be confronted
to-morrow, and with a presage of hopelessness the word might have lain
heavily upon his mind, if on the instant of sinking it had not been
radiantly winged with the realization of the indestructible spirit that
would henceforth animate all the to-morrows of time. No day could now
droop for him, whatever the difficulties it brought, whatever the
hazards, when he had Pauline and Pauline's heart: and like disregarded
moments the years of their life went tumbling down into eternity, as the
meaning of that sighed out assent broke upon his conscience with fresh
glory.
"You'll tell your mother to-night?" he asked. "I think Margaret will
know when she sees your shining eyes."
"Are my eyes shining?"
"Ah, don't you know they are, when you look into mine?"
Guy could have proclaimed that he and she were stars flashing to one
another across a stupendous night; but there were no similes that did
not seem tawdry when he threw them round Pauline.
"Child, child, beloved child," he whispered; and his voice faltered for
the pitiful inadequacy of anything that he could call her. What words
existed, with whatever tenderness uttered, with whatever passion
consecrated by old lovers, that would not still be words, when they were
used for Pauline? Guy watched for a moment the cheek that was closer to
his lips write in crimson the story of her love. He wished he could tell
his love for her with even the hueless apograph of such a signal; and
yet, since anything he said was only worthy of utterance in so far as
she by this ebb and flow of response made it worthy, why should he
trouble that cheek which, sentient now as a rose of the sun, hushed all
but wonder.
"Good-bye."
He bent over and touched her hand with his lips. Then the Rectory stairs
had borne him down like a feather: the Rectory door had assumed a kind
of humanity, so that the handle seemed to relinquish his grasp with an
affectionate unwillingness. Out in the drive, where the purple trees
were washed by the February dusk, he stood perplexed at himself because
in a wild kiss he had not crushed Pauline to his heart. Had it been from
some scruple of honour in case her father and mother should not
countenance his love? Had it sprung out of some impulse to postpone for
a while a joy that must be the sharpest he would ever know? Or was it
that in the past he had often kissed too lightly so that now, when he
really loved, he could not imagine the kiss unpassionate and fierce that
would seal her immortally to love, yet leave her still a child?
As he paused in that golden February dusk, Guy rejoiced he had told his
love in such an awe of her girlhood; and when from the nursery window
Pauline blew one kiss and vanished like a fay at mortal trespassing, he
floated homeward upon the airy salute, weighing no more than a seed of
dandelion to his own sense of being. Upon his way he observed nothing,
neither passer-by nor carts in the muddy roads. As he crossed the
bridge, the roar of the water into the mill-pool was inaudible, nor did
he hear his melodious garden ways. And when Miss Peasey came to his
room with the lamp, he could not realize for a moment who she was or
what she was talking about. The hour or two before dinner went by as one
tranced minute; in a dream he went down to dinner; in a dream he began
to carve; in a dream the knife remained motionless in the joint, so that
Miss Peasey coming to enquire after his appetite thought it was stuck in
a skewer. Upstairs in the library again, he dreamed the evening away;
and when the lamp hummed slowly and oilily to extinction he still sat
on, till at last the fire perished and from complete darkness he roused
himself and went to bed.
Guy was under the cloud of a reaction when he rang the Rectory bell on
the morning after. The door looked less amicable, and the dragon-headed
knocker stared balefully while he was waiting to be let in. He wondered
for whom of the family he ought to ask, but Mrs. Grey came nervously
into the hall and invited him into the drawing-room.
"Pauline has gone over to Fairfield," she began in jerky sentences.
"Charming ... yes, charming, you came this morning."
The sun had not yet reached the oriel of the drawing-room, that with
shadows and fragrance was welcoming Guy where he sat in a winged
armchair beside the fire. Time was seeming to celebrate the
momentousness of his visit by standing still as in a picture, and he
knew that every word and every gesture of Mrs. Grey would in his memory
rest always enambered. He was glad, and yet in the captivating quiet a
little sorry, that she began to speak at once:
"Of course Pauline told me about yesterday. And of course I would sooner
she were in love with a man she loved than with a man who had a great
deal of money. But of course you mustn't be engaged at once. At least
you can be engaged; you are engaged. Oh, yes, of course, if you weren't
engaged, I shouldn't allow you to see each other, and you shall see
each other occasionally. Francis has not said anything. The Rector will
probably be rather doubtful. Of course I told him; only he happened to
be very busy about something in the garden. But he would want Pauline to
be happy. Of course she is my favourite--at least I should not say that.
I love all my daughters, but Pauline is--well, she has the most
beautiful nature in the world. My darling Pauline!"
Mrs. Grey's eyes were wet, and Guy was so full of affectionate gratitude
that it was only by blinking very hard at a small picture of Pauline
hanging beside the mantelpiece he was able to keep his own dry.
"I have a nicer picture than that, which I will give you," Mrs. Grey
promised. "The one that I am fondest of, the one I keep beside my bed.
Perhaps you would like a picture of her when she was seventeen? She's
just the same now, and really I think she'll always be the same."
"You are too good to me, Mrs. Grey," he sighed.
"We are all so fond of you ... even the Rector, though he is not likely
to show it. Pauline is perhaps more like me. Her impulsiveness comes
from me."
"Ought I to talk to the Rector about our engagement?" Guy asked.
"Oh, no, no ... it would disturb him, and I don't think he'll admit that
you are engaged. In fact he said something about children: but I would
rather ... at least, of course, you are children. But Margaret says you
can't be quite a child or you would not be in love with Pauline. And now
if you go along the Fairfield road, you'll meet her. But that is only an
exception. Not often. I think to-day she might be disappointed if you
didn't meet her. And come to lunch, of course. Poetry is a little
precarious, but at any rate for the present we needn't talk about the
future. I wish your mother were still alive. I think she would have
loved Pauline."
"She would have adored her," said Guy fervently.
"And your father? Of course you'll bring him to tea, when he comes to
stay with you. That will be charming ... yes, charming. Now hurry, or
you'll miss her."
Guy had no words to tell Mrs. Grey of the devotion she had inspired; but
all the way down the Fairfield road he blessed her and hoped that
somehow the benediction would make itself manifest. Then, far away,
coming over the brow of a hill he saw Pauline. It was one of those hills
with a suggestion of the sea behind them, so sharply are they cut
against the sky. This was one of those hills that in childhood had
thrilled him with promise of the faintly imaginable; and even now he
always approached such a hill with a dream and surmise of new beauty.
Yet more wonderful than any dream was the reality of Pauline coming
towards him over the glistening road. She was shy when he met her, and
the answers she gave to his eager questions were so softly spoken that
Guy was half afraid of having exacted too much from her yesterday. Did
she regret already the untroublous time before she knew him? Yet it was
better that she should walk beside him in still unbroken enchantment,
that the declaration of his love should not have damaged the wings
seeming always unfolded for flight from earth: so would he wish to keep
her always, that never this Psyche should be made a prisoner by him. The
elusive quality of Pauline which was shared in a slighter degree by her
sisters kept him eternally breathless, for she was immaterial as a cloud
that flushes for an instant far away from the sunset. And yet she was
made with too much of earth's simple beauty to be compared with clouds.
Her sisters had the ghostly serenity and remoteness that might more
appropriately be called elusive. Pauline gave more the effect of an
earthly thing that transcends by the perfection of its substance even
spirit; and rather was she seeming, though poised for airy regions,
still sweetly content with earth. She had not been more elusive than
eglantine overarching a deep lane at Midsummer, for he had pulled down
the spray, and it was the fear of a petal falling too soon from the
tremulous flowers that gave him this sense of awe as he walked beside
her.
Yet once again Guy found his comparisons poor enough when he looked at
Pauline, and he exclaimed despairingly:
"There _are_ no words for you. I wanted to say to your mother what I
thought about you. Oh, she was so charming."
"She is a darling," said Pauline. "And so is Father."
They were come to the stile where he and Margaret had watched their
footprints on the snow.
"And Margaret was very sympathetic, you know," he went on. "Really, if
it hadn't been for her, I should never have dared to tell you I loved
you. We talked about her and Richard...."
"Margaret does love him. She does," Pauline declared. "Only she will ask
herself questions all the time."
How she changed when she was speaking of Richard, thought Guy a little
jealously. Why could she not say out clearly like that her love for him?
"You do love me this morning?" he asked. She was standing on the step of
the stile, and he offered his hand to help her down. "Won't you say 'I
love you'?"
But only with her eyes could she tell him, and as, her finger-tips on
his, she jumped from the step, she was imponderable as the blush upon
her cheeks.
"In the summer," said Guy, "you and I will be on the river together.
Will you be shy when Summer comes?"
"Monica says I'm not nearly shy enough."
"What on earth does Monica expect?"
They were under the trees of Wychford Abbey, and Guy told her of the
days he had spent here, thinking of her and of the hopelessness of her
loving him.
"I could not imagine you would love me. Why do you?"
She shook her head.
"One day we'll explore the inside of the house together, shall we?"
"Oh, no, I hate that place. Oh, no, Guy, we'll never go there. Come
quickly, I hate that house. Margaret loves it and says I'm morbid to be
afraid. But I shudder when I see it."
They hurried through the dark plantation; and Guy under the influence of
Pauline's positive terror felt strangely as if, were he to look behind,
he would behold the house leering at them sardonically.
People too eyed them, as they went down High Street and turned into
Rectory Lane. Guy had a sensation of all the inhabitants hurrying from
their business in the depths of their old houses to peer through the
casements at Pauline and him; and he was glad when they reached the
Rectory drive and escaped the silent commentary.
When she was at home again Pauline's spirits rose amazingly; and all
through lunch she was so excited, that her mother and sisters were
continually repressing her noisiness. Guy on the contrary felt woefully
self-conscious and was wondering all the while with how deep a dislike
the Rector was regarding him and if after lunch he would not call him
aside and solemnly expel him from the house. As they got up from the
table, the Rector asked if Guy were doing anything particular that
afternoon and on receiving an assurance that he was not, the Rector
asked if he would help with the sweet-peas that still wanted sorting.
Guy in a bodeful gloom said he would be delighted.
"I shall be in the garden at two," said the Rector.
"Shall I come as well and help?" Pauline offered.
"No, I want you to take some things into the town for me," said the
Rector.
Guy's heart sank at this confirmation of his fears. Out in the hall
Margaret took him aside.
"Well, are you happy?"
"Margaret, you've been beyond words good to me."
"Always be happy," she said.
Even Monica whispered to him that he was lucky, and Guy was so deeply
impressed at being whispered to by Monica that it gave him a little
courage for his interview. He joined the Rector in the garden punctually
at two, and worked hard with labels and classifications.
"_A7,_" the Rector read out. "_A lavender twice as big as Lady Grizel
Hamilton._ _D21_. _An orange that will not burn._ Humph! I don't believe
it. Do you believe that, Birdwood?"
The gardener shook his head.
"There never was an orange as didn't burn like a house on fire the
moment the sun set eyes on it."
"Of course it'll burn, and anyhow there's no such thing as an orange
sweet-pea. If there is, it's Henry Eckford."
"Henry isn't orange," said Birdwood. "Leastways not an orange like you
get at Christmas."
"More buff?"
"Buff as he can be," said Birdwood. "What do you think, Mr. Hazlenut?"
he went on, turning to Guy and winking very hard.
"I really don't know him ... it...." said Guy.
"_O5,_" the Rector began again. "_A cream and rose picotee Spenser._
Yes, I daresay," he commented. "And with about as much smell as
distilled water."
So the business went on, with Guy on tenterhooks all the while for his
own summing-up by the Rector. He thought the moment was arrived when
Birdwood was sent off on an errand and when the Rector getting up from
his kneeler began to shake the trowel at him impressively. But all he
said was:
"Tingitana's plumping up magnificently. And we'll have some flowers in
three weeks--the first I shall have had since the Diamond Jubilee. Sun!
Sun!"
Guy jumped at the apostrophe, so nearly did it approximate to
'son-in-law.' But of this relation nothing was said, and now Pauline was
calling out that tea was ready.
"Go in, my dear fellow," said the Rector. "I've still a few things to do
in the garden. By the way was your father at Trinity, Oxford?"
"No, he was at Exeter."
"Ah, then, I didn't know him. I knew a Hazlewood at Trinity."
The Rector turned away to business elsewhere, and Guy was left to puzzle
over his casual allusion. Perhaps he ought to have raised the subject of
being in love with Pauline, for which purpose the Rector may have given
him an opening. Or did this enquiry about his father portend a letter to
him from the Rector about his son's prospects? He certainly ought to
have said something to make the Rector realize how much tact would be
necessary in approaching his father. Pauline called again from the
nursery window, and Guy hurried off to join the rest of the family at
tea.
In the drawing-room Mrs. Grey, Monica and Margaret all seemed anxious to
show their pleasure in Pauline's happiness; and Guy in the assurance
this old house gave him of a smooth course for his love ceased to worry
any longer about parental problems and was content to live in the merry
and intimate present. He realized how far he was advanced in his
relation to the family when Brydone, the doctor's son, came in to call.
Guy took a malicious delight in his stilted talk, as for half-an-hour he
tried to explain to Monica, a grave and abstracted listener, how the
pike would in March go up the ditches and the shallow backwaters and
what great sport it was to snare them with a copper noose suspended from
a long pole. There was, too, that triumphant moment he had long
desired, when Brydone, rising to take his leave, asked if Guy were
coming and when he was able to reply casually that he was not coming
just yet.
After tea Guy and Pauline, as if by an impulse that occurred to both of
them simultaneously, begged Margaret to come and talk in the nursery.
She seemed pleased that they wanted her; and the three of them spent the
time till dinner in looking at the old familiar things of childhood; at
photographs of Monica and Margaret and Pauline in short frocks; at
tattered volumes scrawled in by the fingers of little girls.
"I wish I'd known you when you were small," sighed Guy. "How wasted all
these years seem."
The gong went suddenly, and Margaret said that of course to-night he
would stay to dinner.
So once again he was staying to dinner and now on such terms as would
make this an occasion difficult to forget. As he waited alone in the
lamplit nursery, while Margaret and Pauline were dressing, he kissed
Pauline in each faded picture stuck in those gay scrap-books of Varese.
Nor did he feel the least ashamed of himself, although at Oxford his
cynicism had been the admiration even of Balliol, where there had been
no one like him for tearing sentiment into dishonoured rags. When the
Rector came in to dinner, carrying with him a dusty botanical folio that
swept all the glass and silver from his end of the table to huddle in
the centre, Guy tried to make out if he were very much depressed by his
not having yet gone home.
"Dear me," said the Rector. "I was sure I had seen it in here."
"Seen what, Francis?" asked his wife.
"A plant you wouldn't know. A Cilician crocus."
"Isn't Father sweet?" said Pauline. "Because of course Mother never
knows any plant."
"What nonsense, Pauline. Of course I know a crocus."
Toward the end of dinner Mrs. Grey said rather nervously:
"Francis dear, wouldn't you like to drink Pauline's health?"
"Why, with pleasure," said the Rector. "Though she looks very well."
Pauline jumped in her chair with delight at this, but Mrs. Grey waved
her into silence and said:
"And Guy's health too?"
The Rector courteously saluted him; but the guest feared there was an
undernote of irony in the bow.
After dinner when Monica, Margaret and Pauline were preparing for a
trio, Mrs. Grey said confidentially to Guy:
"You mustn't expect Francis--the Rector to realize at once that you and
Pauline are engaged. And of course it isn't exactly an engagement yet.
You mustn't see her too often. You're both so young. Indeed, as Francis
said, children really."
Then the trio began, and Guy in the tall Caroline chair lived every note
that Pauline played on her violin, demanding of himself what he had done
to deserve her love. He looked round once at Mrs. Grey in the other
chair, and marked her beating time while like his own her thoughts were
all for Pauline. In the heart of that music Guy was able to say anything
and he could not resist leaning over and whispering to Mrs. Grey:
"I adore her."
"So do I," said the mother, breaking not a bar in her beat and gazing
with soft eyes at that beloved player.
When the music stopped, Guy felt a little embarrassed by the remembrance
of his unreserved avowal; yet evidently it had seemed natural to Mrs.
Grey, for when he was saying good-bye in the hall, she whispered to
Pauline that she could walk with Guy a short way along the drive. His
heart leapt to the knowledge that here at last was the final sanction of
his love for her. Pauline flung round her shoulders that white frieze
coat in which he had first beheld her under the moon, misty, autumnal, a
dream within a dream; and now they were actually walking together. He
touched her arm half-timidly, as if even so light a gesture could
destroy this moment.
"Pauline, Pauline!"
He saw her clear eyes in the February starshine and folding her close he
kissed her mouth. When he woke, he was at home; and for hours he sat
entranced, knowing that never again for as long as he lived would he
feel upon his lips as now the freshness of Pauline's first kiss.
The rest of that February went by with lengthening eves that died on the
dusky riot of blackbirds in the rhododendrons. Here and there in mossy
corners primroses were come too soon, seeming all aghast and wan to
behold themselves out of the cloistral earth, while the buds of the
daffodils were still upright and would not hang their heads till driven
by the wooing of the windy March sun.
The grey-eyed virginal month, that is of no season and must as often
bear the malice of Winter's retreat as the ruffianly onset of Spring,
had now that very seriousness which suited Guy's troth.
Rules had been made with which neither he nor Pauline were discontented,
and so through all that February Guy went twice a week to the Rectory
and counted himself rich in Mrs. Grey's promise that he and Pauline
should sometimes be allowed, when the season was full-fledged, to go for
walks together. At present, however, the Rectory garden must be a
territory large enough for their love.
These first encounters were endowed with perhaps not much more than the
excitement of what were in a way superficial observations, since
neither of them was yet attempting to sound any deeps in the other's
character. Guy was engaged with driving a wedge into that past of the
Rectory whose least events he now envied, and he was never tired of the
talks about Pauline's childhood, so much of a fairy-tale she still
seemed and fit for endless repetition. And if Guy was never tired of
being told, her family was never tired of telling. Never, he thought,
was lover so fortunate in an audience as he in the willingness with
which he was accorded a confirmation of all his praises. Sometimes,
indeed, he had to look reproachfully at Monica or Margaret when Pauline
seemed hurt at being checked for some piece of demonstrativeness. If he
did so, the sisters would always take an opportunity to draw him aside
and explain that it was only Pauline's perfection which made them so
anxious for its security. Indeed they guarded her perpetually and with
such a high sense of the privilege of wardship that Guy always had to
forgive them at once. Moreover, he was so conscious of their magnanimity
in considering him as a lover that he was almost afraid to claim his
right.
"Margaret," he said one day. "I don't know how you can bear to
contemplate Pauline married. Why, when I think of myself, I'm simply
dumb before the--what word is there--audacity is much too pale and, oh,
what word is there?"
"I don't think I could contemplate her married to anybody but you," said
Margaret.
"But why me?"
"Why, because you are young enough to make love beautiful and right,"
Margaret told him. "And yet you seem old enough to realize Pauline's
exquisite nature. So that one isn't afraid of her being squandered for a
young man's experience."
"But I'm not rich," said Guy, deliberately leading Margaret on to
discuss for the hundredth time this topic of himself and Pauline.
"Pauline wouldn't be happy with riches. They would oppress her. She
isn't luxurious like me."
So round and round, backward and forward, on and on the debate would go,
until Margaret had arranged for Guy and Pauline a life so idyllic that
Shelley would scarcely have found a flaw in her conception.
Pauline, however demonstrative in the presence of her family, was still
shy when she was alone with her lover. Her mirth was turned to a
whisper, and her greatest eloquence was a speech of drooping silences
and of blushes rising and falling. Guy never tired of watching these
flowery motions that were the response of her cheeks to his love. Each
word he murmured was a wind to stir her countenance or ruffle her eyes,
so that they too responded with cloudy deeps and shadows and sudden
veilings.
Nothing more was mentioned of the practical side of the engagement, for
Mrs. Grey, Monica and Margaret were all too delightfully enthralled with
the progress of an idyll that was to each of them her own secret poem of
Pauline in love; while as for the Rector he remained outwardly oblivious
of the whole matter.
March came crashing into this peace without disturbing the simple
pattern into which the existence of Guy and Pauline had now resolved
itself--a pattern, moreover, that belonged to Pauline's mother and
sisters for their own pleasure in embroidery, so that the lovers were,
as it might be, carried about from room to room. Sometimes indeed, when
Guy came to the Rectory, there was a pretence of leaving him and Pauline
alone; but mostly they were in the company of the others, and Guy was
now as deep in the family life as if he were a son of the house. Since
he and Pauline never went for walks together, perhaps Wychford
speculation had died down--at any rate there was no gossip to disturb
Mrs. Grey; although, as she had by now given up the theory of a sort of
engagement, yet without consenting to anything in the shape of a final
announcement, it might not have mattered much.
Meanwhile, it began to dawn on Guy that the time was coming when he
would have to make up his mind to do something definite, and on these
bleak mornings of early March, as he watched the scanty snowflakes
withering against the panes, he asked himself if there was any
justification for staying on at Plashers Mead in the new circumstances
of his life there. At night, however, when the wind piped and whistled
round the house, he used to dream upon the firelight and shrink from the
idea of abandoning all that Plashers Mead had stood for and all that now
still more it must stand for in the future. If only a plan could be
devised by which the house were secured against sacrilege; and
half-fantastically he began to imagine a monastic academy for poets, of
which he would be Warden. Perhaps Michael Fane would like this idea, and
since he had money he might come forward with an offer of endowment.
Then he and Pauline could be married; for L150 a year would be an ample
income, if there were no rent to pay and no wages. He of course would
earn his living as superintendent of the academic discipline; and
really, as he dreamed over his plan, such an establishment would be an
admirable corollary to Oxford. It might gain even a sort of official
recognition from the University. Plainly some sort of institution was
wanted where in these commercial days young writers could retreat to
learn their craft less suicidally than by journalism. What should he
call his academy? With marriage as the reason for inventing this economy
he could hardly give it too monastic a complexion. The louder the wind
beat against the house, the more feasibly in the lamplit quiet within
did the scheme present itself; and Michael Fane, who was always
searching for an object in life, would be the very person to involve in
the materialization. He would say nothing to anybody else; not even
would he mention the idea to Pauline herself. These sanguine dreams
occupied his evenings prosperously enough, while March swept past with
searing winds from Muscovy that skimmed the rich earth of the
ploughlands with a dusty pallor, tarnished the daffodils and seemed to
crack the very bird-song. Guy, however, with every day either a day
nearer to seeing Pauline again or the day itself, did not care about the
wind that blew, and he was as happy walking on the uplands as the
spindleshanked hares that sported among the turfy mounds.
Later, the shrilling wind from the East surrendered to the booming of
the equinox. Louder than before the weather beat against Guy's house
from the opposite quarter. Chimneys groaned like broken horns, and after
a desperate gale even deaf Miss Peasey complained that she had heard the
wind once or twice in the night and that her bedroom had seemed a bit
draughty. Guy discovered that several tiles had been blown from the
roof, so that through the lath and plaster above her head there was a
sound of demoniac fife-playing. Then the wind dropped: the rain poured
down: but at last on Lady Day morning Guy woke up to see a rich sky
between white magnificent clouds, a gentle breeze, and a letter from his
father.
Fox Hall,
Galton,
Hants.
_March 24._
_Dear Guy_,
_I send you this with the third instalment of the L150. Please let
me have a prompter acknowledgement than last time when, I remember,
you kept me waiting nearly three weeks. I am glad to have news of
successful experiments in verse-making, but I should be much more
glad to hear that you had made up your mind to make them as an
accessory to a regular profession. You will notice that I do not
attempt to influence your choice in this matter, and so I hope you
will not retort with invidious comparisons between literature and
the teaching of small boys._
_No, I do not remember a man called Grey in my time at Oxford, but I
do remember a man of the same name as ours at Trinity. He came to
grief, I believe, later on. You must assure your friend that this
was not myself. I am glad you find the Rector and his wife such
pleasant people. Have they any children? I wish I could say as much
for the new Vicar of Galton, who is a pompous nincompoop and has
introduced a lot of this High Church frippery which so annoys some
of the parents. Your friend is lucky to be able to afford so much
leisure for gardening. I am of course far too busy to think about
anything like that except in the summer holidays, when flowers
would scarcely give me the change of air I want. This year I hope
to come and see you for a week or two, and we shall be able to
discuss the future. Don't work too hard and please oblige me by
acknowledging the enclosed cheque._
_Your affectionate father